Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions

You can have everything a person could possibly need by the standards of our culture—but those standards can badly misjudge what a human actually needs in order to have a good or even a tolerable life.

There’s a house fire inside many of us,14 Vincent had come to believe, and we’ve been concentrating on the smoke.

If you want to look at other people and be happy for them, you can be happy every single day, regardless of what’s happening to you.”

He feels, he told me, that the experience made clear to him that people need a sense “of being accepted, to have some sense of importance, and to be loved. And I can give that to anyone at any time, and it’s that simple. It’s just paying attention. It’s just being with people. It’s loving.”

you are at a fork in the road now. You can try to muffle the signal. That will lead you to many wasted years when the pain will persist. Or you can listen to the signal and let it guide you—away from the things that are hurting and draining you, and toward the things that will meet your true needs.

Depression and anxiety might, in one way, be the sanest reaction you have.6 It’s a signal, saying—you shouldn’t have to live this way, and if you aren’t helped to find a better path, you will be missing out on so much that is best about being human.

Everyone I interviewed who worked with administering psychedelics clinically emphasized that these substances most often leave people with a profound sense of connection—to other people, to nature, and to a deeper sense of meaning.

Disempowerment,” Michael told me, “is at the heart12 of poor health”—physical, mental, and emotional.

What if changing the way we live—in specific, targeted, evidence-based ways—could be seen as an antidepressant, too?