Dr Charles Raison is a professor. psychiatrist, and world-renowned expert in depression. His groundbreaking work explores depression from an evolutionary perspective, and argues that the inflammatory response characteristic of depression may have in fact ensured our survival.

This wide range conversation covers depression, Raison's theory of PATHOS-D, the relationship between autoimmune conditions like allergies and arthritis with depression, and so much more.

Find out more about Charles' work at Emory Spiritual Health

TOPICS INCLUDE:

• Why depression is no longer considered a “broken brain” in the scientific community
• Why depression is thought of as a syndrome, rather than as a disease—more like a “cloud” or a “cluster” in response to adversity
• Why do humans, worldwide and across history, share this constellation of immunological reactions in response to stress and adversity? What function could it serve evolutionarily?
• What purpose could depression serve?
• How the search for a depression gene has been unproductive: can’t reduce it to a single gene
• Depression is part of genetic makeup
• Why would depression hide itself from the person experiencing it?
• How the “fear of wounding” and infection risk explains the inflammatory response of depression
• Stress as a “early warning system for wounding,” which may result in infection
• Evolutionary, stress-activated inflammation proved to be advantageous for survival, which explains why depression may have been selected for
• Pathos-D helps explain why psychological stress creates a inflammatory response in humans and other animals-
• James suggests evolutionary underpinnings to why “chicks dig scars”
• Is depression a calling out for help?
• Charles’s theory that depression evolved to manage relationships with other humans and the microbial world
• Why Charles is surprised people like to visit zoos
• depression as a warning sign that you are failing at your chance of reproduction or survival
• How unquestionable “must-have” desires are proximally linked to evolutionary survival or reproductive needs
• Rather than a disease, depression evolved out of sickness
• Increased core temperature and inhibited sweat-response in depression and why that can’t serve as a diagnostic test for depression
• Why depression is like an environmental trigger activated by adversity depending on genetic risk factors—kind of like an allergy
• Depression as reminiscent of an allergy, albeit operating via different systems
• Depression, Allergies, and high-inflammation subtypes
• How metaphors are sometimes instantiated in science
• Why autoimmune disorders of all kinds are on the rise: an impaired relationship with the microbial world
• Graham Rook “The old friends theory” (link)
• Why the immune is more like a diplomacy service than an attack squad—it’s about learning what NOT to attack
• Anti-inflammatory properties of Microbactorium Baci and cancer treatment, research Chris Lowry and others (link)
• Why bugs were our ancient teachers
• What if allergies were an evolutionary response as well?
• How hyperactive immune responses were helpful in the bubonic plague—why survival is best served by a range of genetic variance in a population
• How might something like hay fever serve an evolutionary purpose?
• How our response to adversity shapes our perspective and healing.
• Why environmental interventions offer the best opportunities for treating “regular ol’ depression”
• Use changes in environment to signal wellbeing to the individual
• sauna as a treatment for depression
• The search for treatment that doesn’t involve the constant external stimulus of medication
• Why depression is a catch-22 in modern times—would it be crazy
• Psychedelics as a mode of restoring environmental connection
• Charles reflects on his English Lit studies and how discovering Freud led him to psychiatry
• How Charles read Siddartha at the perfect time in his adolescence
• analysis as a double-edge sword for the depressed
• Why Freud’s efforts to understand how our minds and world works constitute greatness for Charles
• Charles’ page Emory dept of spiritual health

FIND OUT MORE AT GREATLIFEWORK.COM

Marc Lewis is a professor, neuroscientist, author, and psychiatrist whose own personal struggle with opiate addiction continues to inform his groundbreaking work in the field.

In this wide-ranging discussion, Marc explains how addiction isn't actually a disease, but rather a highly motivated form learning--and how this understanding accounts for the ways in which people ultimately overcome addiction: often spontaneously and without external treatment.

To find out more about Marc's work, check out his website or buy one of his books (I highly recommend them!)

Other Topics include:

• Why Marc Lewis believes the “disease model” of addiction should be challenged
• Why the brain changes in addiction resembles the brain changes in other issues, like binge eating, porn, and internet addiction
• How the progress of addiction differs from that of a disease
• Reconsidering if “hijacking the brain” is useful metaphor for the addicted brain
• Depression as a strategy of self-regulation
• The feedback cycle of addiction and the relief of “Now appeal”
• Comparing an addicted brain to a brain in love
• Lisa Diamond: Research on Pair bonding
• How desire, not drugs themselves, “hijack the brain”
• The Biology of Desire
• Why addictions happen “despite the bad news they bring into a person’s life”
• Marc reflects on a recent career change to Clinical Psychology
• How can we meaningfully intervene into a person’s reward system?
• Internal Family Systems approach
• Is the brain like a morality play?
• James talks Morning Pages as a loose therapeutic space
• Freud and the importance of putting things into words
• Marc reflects on his journals of addiction
• James Pennebaker - writing to heal (article)
• why it’s so hard to predict when addicts quit
• Edward Slingerland - Drunk
• Huberman Lab - Alcohol
• weighing the social effects vs the physical effects of alcohol
• Carl Hart - Drug Use for Grown-Ups
• fentanyl and the mixing with stimulants
• Why Marc Lewis think drugs will be integrated into society in future policy
• Huberman on Nicotine
• Research into psychedlics, therapy, microdosing
• Why you have to have done drugs to understand drugs
• Terance McKenna “when you get the message hang up the phone”
• How Marc Lewis’ addiction experience became an asset in his career
• why the “Streets are Talented”
• if we forget the social, we are missing the whole picture

Find out more at GreatLifeWork.com