Lost Connections

So this was what my more recent book which is called lost connections uncovering the real causes of depression and the unexpected solutions is Is about because I think The core of addiction is about trying to deal with pain right but the causes of human pain are obviously huge But what I learned is the scientific evidence for nine causes of kind of deep despair, right?

So I wrote chasing the screen because of this addiction in my family And I go on this big journey all over the world to understand the drug war And I said a line in my I did a TED talk about it called everything you think you know about addiction is wrong And I said a line in that which is the opposite of addiction is connection. I said it earlier in our conversation Based on rat park right and lots of people started saying to me Well, are you just saying it's social isolation? Right like loneliness and I very clearly in my mind know that I don't think that's the lesson of rat park Right. I don't think that's just what's going on in rat park It's they don't have anything that makes life meaningful now rats are obviously much more Much less complex than us right so I started thinking well what What is actually missing for people who are addicted depressed Anxious what is driving this crisis?

So I ended up Again going on this big journey all over the world from a crazy mixture of places like an armish village in indiana because the armish have low levels of depression to a Lav in baltimore where they're giving people psychedelics to a city in brazil that banned advertising To see if that would make them feel better Did it

The weird thing is I sometimes feel like with all my we've both my books chasing screaming lost connections I sometimes feel like I'm giving people permission to know the thing they already know right like I had this completely bizarre experience when the book first came out where I was being Lost connections to depression one where I was being interviewed by some american interviewer. I don't know who it was and um I'll talk about how loneliness causes depression right And the interviewer goes saying like Well, this is a very controversial theory And i'm kind of sitting there and I thought How did we get to the point? We're pointing out the most fucking obvious thing you can imagine That if you're really lonely are much more likely to become depressed. I don't think there's controversy at all. I think that person's silly But I think but I think the reason it's controversial Is because these biological stories which have some truth in them Have dominated how when I was a teenager I went to my doctor It's only thought of as being a medical issue when I when I went to my doctor when I was a teenager And I was really depressed and I said I had this feeling like pain was leaking out of me and I couldn't control it My doctor told me an entirely biological treatment said there's just a problem with your brain here And all you need to do is drug yourself right and I drug myself and I got some relief from the chemical antidepressants But it did not solve my depression and one of the reasons I wrote lost connections is because after 13 years Of taking the maximum possible dose I was like well, what's going wrong here? There's something missing in this picture because I still feel depressed and every year that I've been alive I'm 40 depression and anxiety have increased in the united states and britain and across the western world There's something missing in this picture and I think the reason why that's controversial It seemed controversial to that woman even though to you and me it's crazy to think it's controversial Is because these biological stories which have some basis in reality have become the whole of the picture for a lot of people right I had a completely bizarre experience where You know peter teal if you had him on your show no, but I know him. Yeah, so peter teal people who don't know is the Founder of PayPal gazillionaire right back to the trump campaign I got an invitation from peter teal Just before it was after trump had been elected but before he'd been inaugurated his people to go to a they were organizing a um conference for app developers who were trying to Develop apps to deal with depression anxiety and addiction and i'm a bit like I don't think apps are really the solution But I wanted an excuse to go to san francisco anyway, so I go It's a day-long conference I didn't hear every speech but some really great scientists people like thomas ensor who's therefore my head of the national institute of health Who's a hugely admirable man? and i'm sitting there and i'm like All they're doing is looking at pictures of brain scans right if all you knew about depression and anxiety Was this conference and addiction you would literally think they were just things that happened inside the brain Yes, and i'm like the last person up. I don't think this was designed this way Maybe they did i'm sitting there. I'm thinking what do I say to these people and I thought you know It's like I was trying to get metaphors you could have a conference about obesity that just looked at scans of people's stomachs right It wouldn't be untrue. It wouldn't be bad science But you'd miss the whole fucking reason why they're fat right? You could you could tell the plot of romeo and juliet using like newtonian physics You could draw diagram romeo moves this way juliet means that you wouldn't understand a Damn thing about why anyone does anything right It was such a deep misunderstanding or not a misunderstanding such a partial truth right and I said to them So we were in san francisco We were really near the tenderloin which obviously people know is a place with a lot of chaotic street addiction. It's like Let's not discuss this. Let's all just walk over to the tenderloin Sit with the first person within an addiction problem we meet Listen to their life story for half an hour and come back and tell me the main problem here Is is a malfunction of the amygdala. It's a bizarre Is there something going on with those amygdalas? Yes, is it important to understand that science? Of course, right. I'm strongly in favor of brain science. I'm in favor of the science of understanding the stomach But it's a bizarre reduction of what human beings are To think that these are the main drivers of these crises, right? Yes. It's ridiculous Yeah, I agree. We have to wrap this up. We're already after

Chasing the Scream did this for drug addiction, Lost Connections did it for depression and loneliness.

Lost Connections was the name of that book, released in 2018, New York Times bestseller, The Real Causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions.

One of the quotes on the book is from Elton John, if you've ever been down or felt lost, this amazing book will change your life.

Do yourself a favor and read it now.

I read the same thing with Johann Hari's book, which is fantastic. Was it Lost Connections, is that the right one?

Johan Hari talks about in his book, Lost Connections, is one of my favourite books.

It's probably the number one book I recommend and you've heard me recommend on this podcast. The book Lost Connections.

especially this one especially Lost Connections which is one of my alltime favorite books by the way

there's also uh yohan harry wrote a great book also investigating ssri's in particular and pointing on a couple of things i mean first of all you know these drugs are meant to treat one aspect of depression which is decreased levels of serotonin but you know research that i think is widely accepted says there are a lot of factors that go into this it isn't just as simple as your brain has some problem that it you know isn't producing the right chemical balance there is a need for a more holistic approach there's also solid research that he goes through that shows that you know these drugs can be very effective in the short term but for a lot of people in the long term the the impact ultimately wears off

He found in his new book, which is called Lost Connections, what he found may change your view of depression.

So I wrote my book about depression lost connections because there were these two mysteries that were really hanging over me.

you wrote this book called Lost Connections also was a bestselling book.

the book Lost Connections is full of this advice

for my book Lost Connections like from my other books, I learned a huge amount from interviewing scientists and experts.