Curing melancholia

Palm readers and fortune tellers (in addition to genuine medical/neuro practitioners) have been grappling with the problem of depression for centuries. New psychiatric drugs and therapies have come out of the market like mushrooms, including non-drug placebos that promise to provide relief from depression and anxiety without the unpleasant side effects of the most commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs.

Yet, the solution is really that simple and you don't need to be a shrink to figure it out. Be happy. Take the cue from Bobby McPherrin. Of course, everyone will agree that this is not an option.

You wake up in the morning feeling the blues after a hard time at work the previous day, or wondering what the hell happened to your former self (read: machismo and sex machine), don’t think for the first time that you need to scour your medicine cabinet for serotonin reuptake inhibitors or even call your doctor-friend for a favour you have been meaning to ask him about that Viagra or Cialis option.

Ponder about the side effects: nausea, diarrhea, agitation, headaches or even sexually related fears like loss of libido, failure to reach orgasm and erectile dysfunction. Or the more serious but rare side effects like hepatitis, heart attack, stroke and seizures.

Remember that God must be punishing you for being so critical of others, for being heartless at times when ignoring a homeless person who kept nagging you on the street for a paltry dollar. If this is the case, then it’s time to go to church as quickly as possible. Pray for absolution of your sins.

But wait. Did you hear the angelic voices of the choir singing from the church loft? Eureka, you just have found the way back to youth and happiness! Jamming sessions, that’s it. Clean up the house basement that you have been putting off for years, and search for the drums you used to play wild like Ringo Starr. Summon up all your geriatric friends this weekend, and the next weekends until you get sore and tired with your hands banging the drums, and your vocal chords hoarse and crackling like frogs from your garden in the back of the house, and suffer another relapse and feel the blues again.

Or, maybe it’s too much to act like a child, especially at your age during the swinging sixties. Perhaps, going to a picnic in the park will soothe the troubles away. Join the barbecue contest. This shouldn’t be difficult, because you’re fond of red meat anyway. But then, your doctor has reminded you to stay away from red meat to avoid episodes of gout and all the inflammations you dread.

Remember the last time you were on antidepressants? Your weight ballooned because the medication made you crave and unable to feel full despite consuming enough calories. So you fell into binges of overeating and became too lazy to exercise, which then led you to ingest more calorie-laden beverages. You kept wondering why your brain doesn’t produce enough serotonin to control your appetite and balance your moods.

Aside from antidepressants, you’ve tried most alternative therapies available, yet the blues keep coming back. You’re now left with only two choices. Perhaps, it’s time to take the first remaining option: Siberian ginseng, an adaptogen or tonic plant shown to have significant antidepressant effects in rats. But then, would you put yourself in the shoes of a rat? Rodents wearing shoes? Maybe not.

The final option is to go back to your first love, the one thing you would like to touch again. That reminded you of the first essay you wrote in your freshman English. It’s not what you’re thinking about. It’s only the barrel of a gun. You can go back to pistol shooting just like your old college days when you were one of the school’s top marksmen. Who knows, you may even make the team for the next Olympics this time.

But what if all those serotonin inhibitors you ingested over the years had left traces of lethal hypertensive reaction in your system? Think about how much you love eating mature cheese and cured meats, anything that has high levels of tyramine. Your Glock is so accessible. It may be under lock and key in your bedroom drawers but that’s to prevent your children from accidentally finding and playing with it. You’ve got the keys and imagine what could happen if one of those mood changes suddenly swings again.

Ah, you’ve made up your mind. Jamming is much better than anything else. Move back the hands of time. Forget the sore hands, shoulders and back—even that hoarse throat, ignore what those grumpy old losers would think about you. Keep banging those snare drums. Nothing beats the company of The Beatles, The Eagles, Cosby, Steels & Nash, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Van Halen, or Queen.

Don’t worry. Be happy.

Consolation for unpopularity

Socrates was condemned to death by his accusers during his trial. The charges were so severe – failure to worship the city’s gods, introducing religious novelties and corrupting the minds of the young men of Athens.

Human civilization has gone past the barbaric notion of convicting to death those who espouse contrary opinions. On second thought, maybe not.

Although today one does not get the capital punishment for expressing views opposite to public opinion or against the state, public censure or ostracism that befell most critics in some ways would have almost an equivalent effect. In ancient Greece, they had the practice of banishing anyone by a popular vote because that person is regarded as dangerous to society. The same could very well be true today, e.g., extra-judicial killings or disappearances. A similar result happens when a critic is publicly rebuked. The same pain is felt by a critic when the public showers him with boos of displeasure. When a critic becomes a social pariah, it is almost like being banished.

What then is good from being a social critic?

Alain de Botton, in The Consolations of Philosophy, wrote about the consolation for unpopularity:

“But it is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems plausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs and at the same time that we be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts and follow the flock because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown, difficult truths.”

Writing about Socrates’ self-intransigence, de Botton spoke of true respectability not being conferred by the majority, but something that comes from proper reasoning. If Socrates sounded like elitist in his attitude, it did not have any trace of snobbery or prejudice. In the views of those who listened to him, Socrates might have been guilty of discrimination, but such discrimination was not on the basis of class or money, but on the basis of reason, which was an ability accessible to all.

But the story of Socrates has a redemption, too. Soon after his death, the mood in Athens began to change. People burst into tears, his accusers were eventually lynched, and the Athenians denounced his accusers. Out of despair after being socially shamed, his accusers in the end hanged themselves.

Alain de Botton warned us, however, about the danger that Socrates’ death may seduce us for the wrong reasons, that it may engender a sentimental belief in a positive nexus between being hated by the majority and being right.

De Botton, instead, wrote: “This was not Socrates’ intention. It would be as naive to hold that unpopularity is synonymous with truth as to believe it is synonymous with error. The validity of an idea or action is determined not by whether it is widely believed or widely reviled but by whether it obeys the rules of logic. It is not because an argument is denounced by a majority that it is wrong nor, for those drawn to heroic defiance, that it is right.”

Another sympathetic figure who passionately questioned the status quo and state authority was Dr. Jose Rizal, Philippine national hero. Rizal assailed the atrocities and corrupt practices of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the Philippines that the Spanish colonial government and the clergy hated him so much. They had him arrested, banished to Dapitan, then tried by a military court and sentenced to be shot to death.

Rizal was ambivalent about the revolution and was a man of contradictions. Miguel de Unamuno described him in “Rizal: the Tagalog Hamlet,” as a “soul that dreads the revolution although deep down desires it. He pivots between fear and hope, between faith and despair.” This contradiction was clearly evident in Rizal’s two novels where he opposed violence in Noli me Tangere but appeared to advocate it in El Filibusterismo.

Nonetheless, Rizal was a towering figure in the Filipinos’ quest for self-determination. If his criticisms of the Spanish colonial government stung his enemies, it was because he spoke the truth. Just like during the time of Socrates, Rizal’s accusers found it most convenient to put Rizal to death in order to stifle criticism.

A consolation from studying and reading the works of great critics is that we learn, according to Alain de Botton, that philosophy offers us “a way out of two powerful delusions: that we should always or never listen to the dictates of public opinion.” To follow the example of Socrates and those critics after him, we will be most recompensed if we do our best instead to listen always to the dictates of reason.