Category: Health

Times have changed. Consider this, there was a long essay by Michael Pollan last month in The New Yorker magazine about the resurgence of research using psychedelic medicines in treating mental health issues, as well as for enhancing mental wellness.

And this month the popular Tim Ferriss podcast featured a long interview with James Fadiman who’s an authority on psychedelics and their use for spiritual, therapeutic, and problem solving purposes.

Psychedelic research was shut down and demonized as the war on drugs ramped up in the late sixties. At the time, the recreational use of psychedelics was perceived as a threat to the status quo and was thought to have little use as medicine – especially because the studies at that time were poorly designed. Now with better experimental protocols, and (wisely) pursued at the best universities (like Johns Hopkins and NYU), researchers are looking at an area of research that’s been untouched for 40 years.

It’s said that in the time since being criminalized, 25 million Americans have taken LSD, and more than 100 million have tried cannabis. Many of those people are in the educated class who’re now in positions of influence, and they’re opening the door for legitimate research. Compared to the hundreds of thousands of deaths a year attributed to alcohol and tobacco, psychedelics don’t seem so dangerous and may be beneficial in some situations.

A few of those situations are, end-of-life anxiety, addiction, and PTSD. There’s also some interest in using psychedelics for the vaguely described “betterment of well people,” which encompasses their spiritual wellbeing, which can now be studied with brain scans and imaging . From the sound of it, using screened participants, controlled experiments, and researched settings are showing positive results for the participants and the scientists.

Now that this sort of research isn’t off-limits or academically risky, maybe we’ll see some interesting and useful findings trickling down to help ordinary Americans in more useful ways than the recreational use of psychedelics .

A friend whose Mom lived to 99 told me about his Mom’s life and how she was healthy and vibrant up to the last week of her life.

Beyond having good genes, what influences made a difference in her life?

I started making a mental list of strong, positive influences on my life, the things that have served me well so far and which I’d do again. Of course saying yes to one thing usually means you’re saying no to something else, something that another person might think has more value, but this is my list. It’s also probably not complete and isn’t in any special order. Here’s the second half of the list:

– Two drinks a day, because alcohol is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.

– Owning the same car for twenty years was eccentric but I became fond of it and saved heaps of dough.

– Being born  white and male in America was a huge leg up. As weird as that may sound, consider what life would’ve been like if I’d been born female in the Middle East for example.

– As a very young child I was raised in a loving, stable environment. And then, I was allowed to be a free-range kid, taking risks that most kids now don’t.

– Following a simple formula for financial independence was important. It’s just: living simply, paying off my house, staying out of debt, and using a low-cost indexed stock fund.

– Jettisoning religion early was a good thing.

– Discovering some of the Stoic philosophers was refreshing.

– Avoiding sugar, wheat, and industrially processed food keeps me healthier than most.

– Not taking in too much news prevents worrying so much about things I can’t change.

– Having a few close friends.

– Visiting NYC, I’d live there too if I had more cash.

– Not having kids, some parents tell me that having kids is overrated.

– Getting my vision corrected surgically wasn’t life changing, but was a big improvement in my quality of life.

– Having a positive attitude, that and a down jacket will get you thought almost anything.

What drives cultural differences? I saw a couple of stories about countries that explain their underlying psyches in broad strokes.

In one story involving 14 countries, the US ranked second worst (only Italy was worse) in a recent survey about citizens’ knowledge of their respective countries. Citizens were asked what they thought the numbers were for things like teenage birth rates, unemployment rates, and immigration. Check out some of the answers:

Americans guessed that the unemployment rate is 32%, actually it’s 6%.

Americans guessed 15% US population identifies as Muslim when it’s only 1%.

70% of Americans guessed the US murder rate was rising, but it’s less than half of what it was in 1992.

Americans guessed almost 24% of girls aged 15-19 give birth each year. Hold on, it’s 3.1%.

Truthfully, I wouldn’t know the exact percentages either, but I think I’d have been a lot closer to the mark. But the responses seem to indicate that Americans have a heightened level of fear and worry that’s probably driven by unwarranted fears. We think most things are much worse than they are, and act accordingly. Look at all the regressive US politicians promising a return to the good ol’ days preying on scared, misinformed voters.

The drumbeat of unemployment, Muslims, immigration, murder, and teen pregnancy on the news doesn’t give Americans a good idea of what’s happening. And they’re so busy trying to get along in the system, they become too tired and uninterested to pay attention.

Which leads me to the next story, about Scandinavia. Why do Scandinavians put up with high taxes that would drive most Americans to revolt?

Scandinavian countries spend big on providing and subsidizing things that  complement working, like care for children and the elderly, healthcare, and transportation, basically the tiresome bullshit that wears Americans down. Scandinavian policies  subsidize the costs of market work, encouraging a labor supply. And they spend heavily on education, which is complementary to long-term labor supply. All this offsets some resentment toward high taxes.

Does the amount of tiresome bullshit Americans endure become inversely proportional to the amount of control they feel over their lives? Control is built and felt through a combination of skills, an optimistic attitude, money, and of course time and energy to consider what’s really going on in their world.

When the tiresome bullshit level is too high, people can’t pay attention to what’s really going on around them, they feel like a crab in a bucket full of crabs, and tend to make the safe choice of assuming everything around them is worse than it is.