Herbs for Depression
Recently I had a chance to hang out with a very sweet informed and high being his name is Thomas Easley and he's noted herbalist and he was at the Western Traditions In Herbalism Conference in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, put on by Kiva Rose and Jesse 'Wolf' Hardin. This is a great gathering of herbal teachers held annually. Next years conference will be in June 2017 in southern Colorado.
Thomas was a well received and respected presenter there. I on the other hands was on the periphery at this conference, I was more or less a peddler with a table hawking, selling some of the herbs and plants and tinctures that I had gathered from around my home, my place, my bioregion of The Southwest desert mountains and sky islands of the Arizona New Mexico border.
There was a break one morning and while most of the attendees of the conference were busy learning attending classes from some of the top amazing plant teachers at the conference, the rest of us were down there in the basement talking plant story.
Thomas Easley in his very easy-going relaxed way of being sat down directly on the floor and we proceeded to talk about things like liver stress, acetaminophen, birth control pills, pain relief, sleep, stress and addressing those topics within the framework of our understanding of herbal medicine. I had some plants there that I had wild harvested things like silktassel, oshá, Aralia , monarda and also things and bottles. The topic shifted to good herbs for sleep for producing restful sleep and hops came up, Humulus lupulus. We all came to a loose agreement, a gathering of the minds, sort of consensus that, "yes, some of these herbs would be helpful for a person with insomnia." Then Thomas dropped a bombshell as he does with his matter-of-fact, slight drawl, Alabama born and raised, sweet soft barely detectable southern accent and said, "Hops can help promote sleep, yet in my clinical practice I've never met a person with a hops deficiency."
And it's of course, no one has a hops deficiency. In the sense of someone may have a B12, reduced hemoglobin or protein deficiency, there's no such thing as a hops deficiency. Hops can help a person get to sleep yet there is no such thing as a hops deficiency. So in a sense the purpose of an herbalist is to get some one to a point where they no longer need The herbs that the herbalist provides.
I started out wanting to talk about depression specifically what herbs or herbal treatments may be helpful for a person with depression. A legitimate question would be, "what do you know about depression?", "about treating depression?", "what do you know about herbs?", "what do you know about herbs for depression?"
"Paul, what do you know about anything really?"
For 12 years, 5 days a week 8-16 hours a day, I had an opportunity to meet and greet people in crisis, working in an acute psych facility in America's fifth biggest city. They had decided to jump off a bridge.
They had decided to swallow bottles of pills.They had decided to fire a loaded handgun into parts of their body. They had decided they were going to stop eating, and now were experiencing kidney failure due to their inability to supply their body with the nutrients necessary to support the vital organs. They had decided to lay down on the railroad tracks and sever the limbs of the body, and in a sense they were successful in that now they had one arm rather than two. Most were at the end of their rope both literally and figuratively in that they were helpless hopeless and not wanting to live anymore. The basics like eating drinking water, bathing your body, talking to other people, working, engaging in any type of activity that might produce joy happiness peace, they were no longer interested. All sorts of stories presented themselves to me during these encounters.
And if depression, self harm, lack of interest, lack of feeling, lack of action are the north side, shady, yin side of this dilemma, I was also presented with the Yang. The people who slept 18 hours a day and the people who didn't sleep at all. The people who wanted to kill themselves and the people who wanted to kill other people. The people who would say nothing for weeks on end and the people who wouldn't stop talking. Who would eat standing up, constantly pacing. The person who wouldn't get out of bed in the morning and the person who might walk up to you and sucker punch you in the jaw and then walk away laughing. The constant stories of speculation and conspiracy, the government out to get you, implanted devices in our bodies controlling us, incredible fear of the world. Fear of microwaves and computers, fear of water, fear of listening, fear of trust, waves of fear, anger, hate, self loathing.
Besides the various issues that people presented in this environment there was also the drama of the caregivers. Their own wounded egos presenting themselves. In short it was a powerful place for learning growth, Learning how to grow. And it led me myself to seek out ways of healing myself in a sense of maintaining a neutrality where I could respond to the needs of others yet not be overwhelmed in the process. I had in front of me in the DSM5, a way to see into the minds of people in the sense of an allopathic medicine construct. Yet I also had the learning model and system of the plant person and place- herbs and herbal medicine.
My introduction to herbal medicine occurred in my late teenage years when while still in high school I decided to walk across the state, a northeast deciduous mountain rolling hill state. This backpacking trip was crucial to my development now and then. One of the most important parts of this trip in terms of learning, as a young teenager was that the world that I lived in, the world of schools and friends and family was very much an urban experience. Yet the world just outside my door was in a sense wild and untamed and I made a vow then and there on Sugarloaf Mountain, during a lightning storm that no matter how long it took, no matter what it took, I would learn about the place. I would learn about the plants. And I would learn how to use them.
Economic circumstances of the times let me away from that deciduous mountain cherry maple forest kingdom to come to the western United States, where I have lived since the 1980s continuing my study on the plants. I was able to work on a mobile drilling rig up and down the continental divide from Libby, Montana down to Silver city, New Mexico. I worked as a sheepherder in the middle of Wyoming. I worked for the park service,and forest service and state parks, often in very pristine beautiful places and during this time I always had my plant books always learning about new plants. I also lived for 14 years on the edge of a wilderness, 30 miles from the nearest gas station, or city of any size, this area which later became a national park on the Arizona Utah border. Again during this 14 years I always had my plant books my wife and family would be wandering around always with the plants. Michael's Moore's books always accompanied me on my journeys and eventually I came to the point where I needed to study and meet with others.
That led me to John Slattery and Michael Cottingham both advanced in herbal ways and willing to take students. I continue on that path even in the present moment informed by their gracious teaching.
