When I first went on medication for depression, I believed in the magic: You take this pill, and the depression just goes away. Then you’re better, everything is great, you don’t have to think about it or change anything else in your life.
Like an addict learning the hard way about cross-addiction and relapse, it took me a long time to grasp that’s not how it works.
Like an addict learning the hard way about cross-addiction and relapse, it took me a long time to grasp that’s not how it works.
The pill helps, but my life improves in direct proportion to how well I live the Steps.
I didn’t really understand this until I got to Chimayo.
We live in Santa Fe, so we have company a lot. The Santuario of Chimayo is on our list of Places To Take Tourists. The “Lourdes of America” (really!) is very popular with Catholics, who visit the shrine and take away small amounts of dirt, confident of its healing power.
The priest in charge has tried, occasionally, to correct a misperception about the methodology behind the miracles of the Santuario: “It’s not the dirt!” he explains. “We truck the dirt in. We add new dirt every day. It’s NOT the dirt!”
The Santuario is filled with pictures of loved ones protected, crutches rendered superfluous, milagros, tributes of all kinds to the miracles attributed to the power of the shrine.
But it’s not the dirt.
It’s the dirt and.
The dirt and the belief that miracles are possible. The dirt and prayer that the miracle may happen to the one in need. The dirt and the acts of faith, the dirt and the willingness to see the miracle.
Okay, granted: There’s science behind the pill. This isn’t the placebo effect, its action has been demonstrated, it does have a measurable effect on brain chemistry. But like most anti-depressants, it’s not in any way a magic bullet.
The reality of this disease is that medicating it is neither an exact science nor a silver-bullet remedy. Medications help. But as most of us find out through painful experience, a medication that worked well for a time may lose effectiveness. It’s as if our jerkbrain, still determined to kill us, switches up neurochemical strategies.
Some medications work well for some people, some less so. For some of us, the medications work better depending on a whole array of variables: Time of year, general physical health, other medications we may be taking, the presence of stress triggers, etc.
So recovery isn’t a silver-bullet miracle. It’s not effortless, I can’t achieve it with just a pill.
It’s not the dirt.
I didn’t really understand this until I got to Chimayo.
We live in Santa Fe, so we have company a lot. The Santuario of Chimayo is on our list of Places To Take Tourists. The “Lourdes of America” (really!) is very popular with Catholics, who visit the shrine and take away small amounts of dirt, confident of its healing power.
The priest in charge has tried, occasionally, to correct a misperception about the methodology behind the miracles of the Santuario: “It’s not the dirt!” he explains. “We truck the dirt in. We add new dirt every day. It’s NOT the dirt!”
The Santuario is filled with pictures of loved ones protected, crutches rendered superfluous, milagros, tributes of all kinds to the miracles attributed to the power of the shrine.
But it’s not the dirt.
It’s the dirt and.
The dirt and the belief that miracles are possible. The dirt and prayer that the miracle may happen to the one in need. The dirt and the acts of faith, the dirt and the willingness to see the miracle.
Okay, granted: There’s science behind the pill. This isn’t the placebo effect, its action has been demonstrated, it does have a measurable effect on brain chemistry. But like most anti-depressants, it’s not in any way a magic bullet.
The reality of this disease is that medicating it is neither an exact science nor a silver-bullet remedy. Medications help. But as most of us find out through painful experience, a medication that worked well for a time may lose effectiveness. It’s as if our jerkbrain, still determined to kill us, switches up neurochemical strategies.
Some medications work well for some people, some less so. For some of us, the medications work better depending on a whole array of variables: Time of year, general physical health, other medications we may be taking, the presence of stress triggers, etc.
So recovery isn’t a silver-bullet miracle. It’s not effortless, I can’t achieve it with just a pill.
It’s not the dirt.