Patrick Donohoe writes on the breakdown of social cohesion and solidarity.

I was ready to board a flight from Vancouver in Canada to head home to Ireland after a week in Las Vegas; tired after a 4am rise the last thing I wanted to hear was there would be no operational TVs for the ten-hour flight home. It's a time when even 36,000 feet in the air we are still connected to technology, so like when I recently left for work without my phone you feel a mild form of irritation at being naked of something to keep your mind occupied to pass the time, that all addicts of junk technology feel when without it. In my teen years (1993-1999), I consumed books at a rapid rate, mostly history related and anything relating to the struggle up north. My only distraction in those years was television and we only had one, which my old lad controlled much of the time with an iron grip. So, with a book I packed, with the good intention of reading on holiday, and didn't, I was going to read for ten hours like it was 1999 again.

The book I read Chasing the Scream which was a history of the drug war and making the case that what we think of drugs and addiction is wrong and why the war on drugs was creating a war for drugs that had whipped a carnival of reaction and was causing those involved to become more and more violent to establish and solidify their grip on a lucrative trade. It highlighted the inhumanity of how we treat addicts, mindful the genesis of their addiction was rooted in childhood sexual and physical abuse, and a neglected youth. The title of the book was a reference to the father of the drug war Harry Anslinger's first experience of a drug addict who was screaming in agony in the distance and this stayed with him throughout his life and affected him negatively and saw him embark on a war on drugs that rather than solve a problem that didn’t exist, but made it worse.


It reminded me of the time my father had a severe stroke. He had a six month stay in hospital. The person in the bed beside him in his ward was a great guy. He was always looking out for my old lad and letting us know how he was doing during the night and that. He didn't have to do it, but he did. He had a good soul, I suppose. He was a person who had a history of addiction and his internal organs were in a bad way; not due to the drugs themselves but the contaminants in the drugs that criminals put in them to increase their profits. He thought he was going to have a liver transplant, but everyone else, including us, knew he was going to die, and they had chosen not to tell him. It seemed cruel, everyone else knew but him. He became close to my family and, likely due to his time as an addict, he had no family around him when he was taken to a private room to die, other than my own mother and sister for company. He died in agony, his internal organs failing. His screaming haunted my mother. I thought of that as I was reading Chasing the Scream flying over the Atlantic last year. We’re still chasing the screams of addicts and those in emotional distress.

Inspired by Johann Hari's book, I wrote an article for this website making the case for republicans to take themselves out of the drug war and to campaign for evidence-based law reform pointing at the examples set by Portugal and Switzerland and for us to re-examine how we treat addicts leaving them in the hands of criminal gangs. I touched on the need for a social recovery to tackle addiction in our society, believing the issue was not with the substances involved, but the pain and trauma being felt in society that was causing people to connect with foreign substances to escape their everyday life.  Just as depression which is kinetically linked to addiction, is not a simple matter of a rise in chemical imbalances in the brain, the reasons in their concurrent rise are multifaceted, with the causes all around us. Thankfully, the solutions are also and need to be holistic in our approach to remedying them.

Today, one-in-five Americans are taking at least one drug for psychiatric problems (one in four middle aged women are taking antidepressants); France has one-in-three taking psychotropic drugs of some kind; with Britain being among the highest in Europe also. We take so many antidepressants they are in Western countries' water supply given so many take them and are excreting them that they can't be completely filtered out of our water supply.

We are told now is the greatest time to be alive with so many technological advances and with the advent of the internet and social media, we are the most connected society in human history and, in many ways, they're right; and yet so wrong at the same time. We see depression and anxiety have been on a steady upward trajectory and it's worth noting for the first time in the peacetime history of the United States white male life expectancy has decreased for the last three years in-a-row, largely down to addiction and suicides. Is there just simply a rise in chemically imbalanced brain defects, or - and this is worth noting for those of a left-wing persuasion - is the kind of hyper-capitalist and hyper-individualistic economy and society we've built making us ill and depressed?

In Johann Hari's book on depression, Lost Connections, he tells the story about a wand in the 18th century, that was claimed could heal physical pain. A thick metal rod, that had been patented by a company, which they called "tractor". The company claimed their metal rod, just like how lightning rods draw lightening, the tractor would draw the sickness and pain in your body and propel it out of your body and into the air without it ever touching you. People crippled by rheumatism, people tortured by pain, really did see their pain recede and hopeless cases were walking again free of any pain or impediment. The company who patented the tractor said they couldn't give their secret away as others would copy it and they would lose the money on what was their creation after all. Some doctors baffled by the amazing results did their own tests disguising an old stick as a metal rod and telling patients it was one of the now-famous Perkins wands; with it, they achieved the same results. A man with unbearable pain in his knee began to walk freely shortly after having the 'wand' waved over his body, and a patient with crippling rheumatic pain in his shoulder was able to lift his hands from his knees for the first time in years. There were other doctors who carried similar studies with the same results. What had been going on was the placebo effect - the process of patients given dummy medication and their strong belief in the story that this would make them better can invariably make it so. Just like some American soldiers in WWII who needed to be operated on when they had run out of opiate-based painkillers, had been operated on with a saltwater drip, which they had been told was morphine, so they didn't go into shock. The soldiers reacted just as they had been given morphine. There was no screaming or shouting. It worked just like it was morphine, because the soldiers believed it to be so. The tractor wand, of course, like the saltwater drop, was a fraud.

In the modern day, the placebo effect even plays a significant part in the process of the testing phase for potential drugs to getting it from the lab and ending up in our pharmacies and into the public domain. Any potential drug, such as antidepressants, must go through a rigorous process involving testing on two groups: one is given the real drug and the other is given a sugar pill, or some other placebo. Then the researchers compare the groups' results. You are only allowed sell the drug by the Food and Drugs Agency (FDA) if the real drug performs significantly better than the placebo. That would seem clear cut and fair enough, right? The thing is though there is a third group they left out. That being the third group they would give nothing to; no actual drug, no placebo - nothing. You need that group to test to see the rate that people will get better by themselves, with no chemical or placebo help. When tests were done involving three groups the results showed 25% would get better by themselves; 50% of them got better due to the story they were told about them, the placebo and 25% due to the actual chemicals. So, what of the research done with the two groups, it must show significantly more of an effect than the placebo to make it to market, remember? The problem with that is most of the research done to see if drugs work and can make it to market is done by the big pharmaceutical companies themselves. In secret. Over 40% of these studies never see the light of day. They also only publish the results that would make their drug look good and better than their rivals'. It's the same reason McDonald's would never release their studies that say their food is likely to make you overweight. It's called "publication bias".

The problem for the big pharma companies with a Freedom of Information Act request they must release their full medical research and those analysing the effects of antidepressants using the third group of participants of no drug or placebo, did just that. The results showed, for example, in one research trial, Prozac - possibly the most commonly known antidepressant - was given to 245 patients. They released the results for only twenty-seven of them. They just so happened to be the twenty-seven people the drug seemed to work for. The Hamilton Scale, which is the barometer for measuring how depressed someone is; with it starting at zero, which is someone as happy as can be, all the way to fifty-nine, which is someone ready to jump from a bridge. When scientists looked at the real data from the tests on anti-depressants it was found they do cause an improvement on the Hamilton Scale, but by only 1.8 points. To put it in perspective, a good sleeping pattern puts you up six points. That is three times the chemical effect of anti-depressants. While this was not completely insignificant, it was minimal. What it looked at a glance was the story itself was making them feel better for a time, but the underlying problem would reassert itself in time. The side effects though: weight gains, sexual dysfunction and profuse sweating etc were all very real.

Earlier on in this decade, Gallup conducted a poll worldwide, across 142 countries, and asked millions of people how they felt about their work. We spend most of my week there and we spend more time with our co-workers than we do with any of our family members or partners. Only 13% of those polled said they were engaged in their work, meaning they enjoyed it. 63% of them were not engaged, meaning they sleepwalked through their day and 24% of them were not only unhappy in their job, they actively acted out their unhappiness, which meant twice as many people hated their jobs as loved it. One researcher who studied the results advised the days of the 9-to-5 life are over in modern society. For example, one in three British workers checked their work email, couple that with 80% of employers in Britain seeing it as okay to phone workers outside of working hours. Today the typical worker starts his working day at 8:18am and will leave at 7:19pm. As Johann Hari put it in his book Lost Connections: "so this thing that 87% of us don't enjoy is spreading over more and more of our lives."

What I found in this same book was when it studied who was likely to be stressed in a job; who was more likely to suffer a heart attack; who was likely to be depressed. The common misconception was the boss, the person at the top of the tree who must make the stressful decisions that affect other people. An extensive study of the British civil service it was found those lower down the pay grade and ladder were four times more likely to suffer a heart attack than those at the top of the civil service. It was found those who had more control over their work and had some autonomy to make decisions were less inclined to be stressed and depressed about their work. When they examined their lives outside of work, they found those higher up the grade had better social lives and activities involving friends. Those who worked boring low status jobs had the reverse, they would just want to collapse in front of the television after work. One of the researchers put it simply: "when work is enriching, life is fuller".

While it is said we are the most connected society in history, the opposite could be said. What we are, also, is the loneliest. A survey done a few decades ago asked people in the U.S. how many real friends they had that they could turn to in the event of an emergency. The most common answer was five. The same asked a few years ago gave the most common to be zero. Not the majority, but the most common none-the-less. When Americans asked how many people in their lives, they felt really knew them; again, the most common answer, depressingly, was zero. An experiment to measure how loneliness increased stress levels was conducted for the first time, which involved participants wearing heart rate monitored and when they reached levels enough that would cause the monitors to beep, they had to take note of how lonely or connected you felt. One the second day when their monitor beeped, they had to spit into a test tube and give it to the lab. When you are stressed your heart rate would go up and your saliva becomes flooded with a hormone called cortisol. What the data told them was being lonely caused your cortisol levels to soar and being acutely lonely was as stressful as suffering a physical attack. Other studies done on lonely people comparing them with people with healthy social connections; when exposed to the cold virus it was found the lonely socially isolated people were three times more likely to catch the cold virus than those who were connected into a friends and social structure. When coupled with that, a scientist Lisa Berkman, did a similar comparison over a nine-year period and she discovered that isolated persons were two to three times more likely to die in that period. Cancer, heart disease, respiratory problems were all more fatal when people were alone. Its known stress is a killer; but loneliness?

The collective structure of society has eroded. In the U.S. in the ten years between 1985 to 1994 active participation in community organisations fell by 45%. In Clondalkin, the working-class estate in Dublin, where I grew up in the 1980's and 90's, the street parties and Summer projects are gone. I recently asked someone what had happened here and the simple answer was the people who were parts of residents’ committees moved out of the area, and nobody filled the void. I wonder are areas like Clondalkin a microcosm of the U.S.? It looks like we've turned away from community and turned inward; peoples' sense of belonging to a community is plummeting. The same can be said of our family lives. We eat together less as families; we go on less vacations together and just general activities as a family are all down. The social construct that binds us together, our sense of community and family, is slowly dissolving. We've redefined what human nature is. Our ancestors evolved in the savannas of Africa and survived in tribes. They took down bigger stronger animals on the plains of Africa because they worked collectively and cooperated. They did everything together; looked after their sick and pooled their resources. So human nature is honed towards being part of a tribe, not being alone in the hyper-individualistic capitalistic society we seen today, that is making us ill, mentally and physically.

A study called the Aspiration Index asked people straightforward questions. Do you think it is important to have expensive possessions and polar-opposite questions such as do you think it's important we make the world a better place? Alternatively, they then asked the same people if they were happy or unhappy and if they were suffering from depression or anxiety. The study was conducted on 316 students and the results showed those who answered the questions indicating they would be happier with accumulating stuff and status were far more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. When studies were done on 140 eighteen-year-olds and various other age groups and economic backgrounds the results were the same. Studies done to find the everyday emotions and moods of materialistic people found they were sicker and angrier. It's been found those who have intrinsic motives, those who do things because they genuinely value them, such as someone who plays an instrument because they genuinely love music. Then there are extrinsic values, which are people who do things because they'll get something in return such as likes on social media and status off it. It's worth pointing out, we all have some of these values in us, nobody is totally driven by either or. It was looked at those who has extrinsic values, if they had achieved their goals of getting valuables and status, they had not increased their general happiness one iota. The opposite side of the spectrum fared much better in that if they achieved their intrinsic values were far less likely to be depressed or anxious. When they helped a friend in need; became closer to their kids, did some charitable work because it was the right thing to do or doing anything for other people made them happier in their lives. 

The problem with all of this is our consumer culture. Go to the best schools, get the best grades, get a great paying job, flaunt your earnings by your nice house, car and clothes and that's the key to happiness and being valued by society. There have been twenty-two studies since and all have shown the more materialistic and extrinsically motivated you are the more depressed and anxious you will become, along with the fact you will have shorter relationships and they will have worse quality as people with extrinsic values place a higher emphasis on looks and how much you will impress other people if you're with them. So if something better looking comes along … you know the rest.

Similar studies have been done all over the world, on all continents, with similar results. What they have commonly been referred to as 'junk values' and we have moved more towards them and this has accelerated with the advent of the internet and social media. The commercialisation of our society has a part to play with this new value system taking place. The money spent on advertising has sky-rocketed over the decades and it's known the more teenagers are advertised to the more materialistic they become. In Lost Connections an ad executive puts it that at its heart advertising "is making people feel without their product, you're a loser. Kids are very sensitive to that...." And in a consumer society enough is never enough. There is no end. Capitalism needs consumerism. You're working more and more; your bosses are contacting you more and more outside of working hours. It was put perfectly that we all have intrinsic values as human beings, but it is too easy to distract us from them with our social model of consumerism that we begin to act extrinsically, and our economic model is built to do this that. Its existence depends on it. 

When I wrote previously on addiction it was also through the lenses as a republican, and critiqued them for the simplistic attitude that the problem with addiction is simply the substance. I argued that it was much more nuanced than that and I hope I've done that here with the depression and anxiety epidemic we see today in the Western world. I see, sometimes, the same lazy assertions for this from republicans. I've seen it being blamed on the rise of cocaine use, as without a doubt the day after it usually brings on a depressive state to the user, but so too does alcohol. The 'fear' as it is known is now a scientific fact. It increases the heart rate the following day and causes anxiety with a cycle of irrational thoughts, negative thinking and regret of behaviour while under the influence, but republicans don't target alcohol. Far from it, we use it to fundraise for our various causes knowing well binge-drinking will be the norm at said events. I'm not anti-alcohol and drink it myself, but it's the simplistic notions that disappoint me. The addiction and depression epidemics we see today are symptoms to the wider hyper-capitalistic economies we see today and that is something nearly all republicans can rail against. In 1800’s Britain, there was a gin addiction craze. You read that right, gin. It’s as freely available today as it was then, with more variants and flavours than ever today. But how was gin such an issue you ask? In England at the time, people were being moved from the countryside to the sprawling cities of London and Manchester etc, where they lived mainly in slums with deprivation all around them. This caused multiple problems, such as addiction, with gin being the main protagonist. There were propaganda pieces on the evil drink gin that was capturing their citizens and turning them into slumbering alcoholics. It seems almost funny now to see something like gin, that’s become such a trend in modern society, be once vilified as the cause for mass addiction. We know that to be silly now, and the cause was much more profound than a mere substance. 

I see today our issues involving addiction and depression being much more profound than mere substances and brain chemical defects, as it was in 1800’s Britain. The need to ditch the old tired arguments against evil substances is over and the conversation on a social recovery needs to begin. The studies and information on the causes are there for all to read. It's up to people to promote a new society and economic model that promotes it as the one we have now is making us ill. In the immediate now, maybe read this and reflect on your environment and those around you.

It's a cruel irony that those suffering from depression are treated by being filled with drugs of a legal kind with questionable results and very real side effects that can exacerbate the problem for many. Of course, the addiction and depression epidemic has become an industry for many, most notably big pharma so it's not much of a surprise that a conversation in the chambers of political power on a social recovery to take on addiction and mental illness has not been forthcoming, so like many of the positive changes in Ireland in recent times have come from grassroots bottom-up activist-based campaigns, who, in time, made it politically expedient for those in power to act. The political ideology in Ireland I belong to - republicanism - disappointingly, has not been the positive force it could be in the fight. I see populist slogans on boards telling people ‘Say No to Death Dealers’. It is simplistic nonsense given how multifaceted the causes of the addiction problem are. Saying no to gin in the 1800’s wouldn’t have cleansed England of the causes of their gin addiction, neither will such slogans cut it in Ireland 2019. It’s akin to campaigning for those suffering from depression and centralising the campaign on boards stating “Let’s End Chemical Brain Imbalances’, implying that is the central crux of the problem. Someone must break the mould on these problems, so why not republicans? 

To talk of treating addicts with love and compassion keeping in mind the root cause of addiction is childhood trauma, physical and or sexual abuse, a neglected childhood and broken families, is not going to get anyone any macho points. Neither will talking of social recoveries to tackle the depression and anxiety epidemic. It will involve talking to ordinary people in lay man terms about the system we have around us that forces two parents to work leaving children to develop away from their parents in understaffed creches; a system that leaves so many with a deep sense of lack of control and power in their workplace and a world of zero hour contracts leaving so many living on the breadline and in constant stress with no freedom from economic necessity. We have the emptiest people in power, and they won't submit to positive change until it's made politically expedient for them to do so. But that change isn't just about legislative law kind of change, but about changes on an individual and collective level. We can ignore the pain and screams of those in addiction and emotional, mental distress and continue to address them with nothingness and platitudes.

The New Ireland we hear referenced a lot since Brexit has to be about repairing our ruptured social bonds and building a country where people feel they belong, where their life has meaning and they have a say in their workplace. If we don’t then we’ll continue the be chasing the screams of our most abused and disenfranchised citizens and that will be a New Ireland not worth the paper it’ll be written on.



Patrick Donohoe is a member of the United Ireland Society, Áth Claith. Its aim is to make the economic and social case for Irish unity and a more egalitarian Ireland.

A Drugged & Depressed Society


Patrick Donohoe writes on the breakdown of social cohesion and solidarity.

I was ready to board a flight from Vancouver in Canada to head home to Ireland after a week in Las Vegas; tired after a 4am rise the last thing I wanted to hear was there would be no operational TVs for the ten-hour flight home. It's a time when even 36,000 feet in the air we are still connected to technology, so like when I recently left for work without my phone you feel a mild form of irritation at being naked of something to keep your mind occupied to pass the time, that all addicts of junk technology feel when without it. In my teen years (1993-1999), I consumed books at a rapid rate, mostly history related and anything relating to the struggle up north. My only distraction in those years was television and we only had one, which my old lad controlled much of the time with an iron grip. So, with a book I packed, with the good intention of reading on holiday, and didn't, I was going to read for ten hours like it was 1999 again.

The book I read Chasing the Scream which was a history of the drug war and making the case that what we think of drugs and addiction is wrong and why the war on drugs was creating a war for drugs that had whipped a carnival of reaction and was causing those involved to become more and more violent to establish and solidify their grip on a lucrative trade. It highlighted the inhumanity of how we treat addicts, mindful the genesis of their addiction was rooted in childhood sexual and physical abuse, and a neglected youth. The title of the book was a reference to the father of the drug war Harry Anslinger's first experience of a drug addict who was screaming in agony in the distance and this stayed with him throughout his life and affected him negatively and saw him embark on a war on drugs that rather than solve a problem that didn’t exist, but made it worse.


It reminded me of the time my father had a severe stroke. He had a six month stay in hospital. The person in the bed beside him in his ward was a great guy. He was always looking out for my old lad and letting us know how he was doing during the night and that. He didn't have to do it, but he did. He had a good soul, I suppose. He was a person who had a history of addiction and his internal organs were in a bad way; not due to the drugs themselves but the contaminants in the drugs that criminals put in them to increase their profits. He thought he was going to have a liver transplant, but everyone else, including us, knew he was going to die, and they had chosen not to tell him. It seemed cruel, everyone else knew but him. He became close to my family and, likely due to his time as an addict, he had no family around him when he was taken to a private room to die, other than my own mother and sister for company. He died in agony, his internal organs failing. His screaming haunted my mother. I thought of that as I was reading Chasing the Scream flying over the Atlantic last year. We’re still chasing the screams of addicts and those in emotional distress.

Inspired by Johann Hari's book, I wrote an article for this website making the case for republicans to take themselves out of the drug war and to campaign for evidence-based law reform pointing at the examples set by Portugal and Switzerland and for us to re-examine how we treat addicts leaving them in the hands of criminal gangs. I touched on the need for a social recovery to tackle addiction in our society, believing the issue was not with the substances involved, but the pain and trauma being felt in society that was causing people to connect with foreign substances to escape their everyday life.  Just as depression which is kinetically linked to addiction, is not a simple matter of a rise in chemical imbalances in the brain, the reasons in their concurrent rise are multifaceted, with the causes all around us. Thankfully, the solutions are also and need to be holistic in our approach to remedying them.

Today, one-in-five Americans are taking at least one drug for psychiatric problems (one in four middle aged women are taking antidepressants); France has one-in-three taking psychotropic drugs of some kind; with Britain being among the highest in Europe also. We take so many antidepressants they are in Western countries' water supply given so many take them and are excreting them that they can't be completely filtered out of our water supply.

We are told now is the greatest time to be alive with so many technological advances and with the advent of the internet and social media, we are the most connected society in human history and, in many ways, they're right; and yet so wrong at the same time. We see depression and anxiety have been on a steady upward trajectory and it's worth noting for the first time in the peacetime history of the United States white male life expectancy has decreased for the last three years in-a-row, largely down to addiction and suicides. Is there just simply a rise in chemically imbalanced brain defects, or - and this is worth noting for those of a left-wing persuasion - is the kind of hyper-capitalist and hyper-individualistic economy and society we've built making us ill and depressed?

In Johann Hari's book on depression, Lost Connections, he tells the story about a wand in the 18th century, that was claimed could heal physical pain. A thick metal rod, that had been patented by a company, which they called "tractor". The company claimed their metal rod, just like how lightning rods draw lightening, the tractor would draw the sickness and pain in your body and propel it out of your body and into the air without it ever touching you. People crippled by rheumatism, people tortured by pain, really did see their pain recede and hopeless cases were walking again free of any pain or impediment. The company who patented the tractor said they couldn't give their secret away as others would copy it and they would lose the money on what was their creation after all. Some doctors baffled by the amazing results did their own tests disguising an old stick as a metal rod and telling patients it was one of the now-famous Perkins wands; with it, they achieved the same results. A man with unbearable pain in his knee began to walk freely shortly after having the 'wand' waved over his body, and a patient with crippling rheumatic pain in his shoulder was able to lift his hands from his knees for the first time in years. There were other doctors who carried similar studies with the same results. What had been going on was the placebo effect - the process of patients given dummy medication and their strong belief in the story that this would make them better can invariably make it so. Just like some American soldiers in WWII who needed to be operated on when they had run out of opiate-based painkillers, had been operated on with a saltwater drip, which they had been told was morphine, so they didn't go into shock. The soldiers reacted just as they had been given morphine. There was no screaming or shouting. It worked just like it was morphine, because the soldiers believed it to be so. The tractor wand, of course, like the saltwater drop, was a fraud.

In the modern day, the placebo effect even plays a significant part in the process of the testing phase for potential drugs to getting it from the lab and ending up in our pharmacies and into the public domain. Any potential drug, such as antidepressants, must go through a rigorous process involving testing on two groups: one is given the real drug and the other is given a sugar pill, or some other placebo. Then the researchers compare the groups' results. You are only allowed sell the drug by the Food and Drugs Agency (FDA) if the real drug performs significantly better than the placebo. That would seem clear cut and fair enough, right? The thing is though there is a third group they left out. That being the third group they would give nothing to; no actual drug, no placebo - nothing. You need that group to test to see the rate that people will get better by themselves, with no chemical or placebo help. When tests were done involving three groups the results showed 25% would get better by themselves; 50% of them got better due to the story they were told about them, the placebo and 25% due to the actual chemicals. So, what of the research done with the two groups, it must show significantly more of an effect than the placebo to make it to market, remember? The problem with that is most of the research done to see if drugs work and can make it to market is done by the big pharmaceutical companies themselves. In secret. Over 40% of these studies never see the light of day. They also only publish the results that would make their drug look good and better than their rivals'. It's the same reason McDonald's would never release their studies that say their food is likely to make you overweight. It's called "publication bias".

The problem for the big pharma companies with a Freedom of Information Act request they must release their full medical research and those analysing the effects of antidepressants using the third group of participants of no drug or placebo, did just that. The results showed, for example, in one research trial, Prozac - possibly the most commonly known antidepressant - was given to 245 patients. They released the results for only twenty-seven of them. They just so happened to be the twenty-seven people the drug seemed to work for. The Hamilton Scale, which is the barometer for measuring how depressed someone is; with it starting at zero, which is someone as happy as can be, all the way to fifty-nine, which is someone ready to jump from a bridge. When scientists looked at the real data from the tests on anti-depressants it was found they do cause an improvement on the Hamilton Scale, but by only 1.8 points. To put it in perspective, a good sleeping pattern puts you up six points. That is three times the chemical effect of anti-depressants. While this was not completely insignificant, it was minimal. What it looked at a glance was the story itself was making them feel better for a time, but the underlying problem would reassert itself in time. The side effects though: weight gains, sexual dysfunction and profuse sweating etc were all very real.

Earlier on in this decade, Gallup conducted a poll worldwide, across 142 countries, and asked millions of people how they felt about their work. We spend most of my week there and we spend more time with our co-workers than we do with any of our family members or partners. Only 13% of those polled said they were engaged in their work, meaning they enjoyed it. 63% of them were not engaged, meaning they sleepwalked through their day and 24% of them were not only unhappy in their job, they actively acted out their unhappiness, which meant twice as many people hated their jobs as loved it. One researcher who studied the results advised the days of the 9-to-5 life are over in modern society. For example, one in three British workers checked their work email, couple that with 80% of employers in Britain seeing it as okay to phone workers outside of working hours. Today the typical worker starts his working day at 8:18am and will leave at 7:19pm. As Johann Hari put it in his book Lost Connections: "so this thing that 87% of us don't enjoy is spreading over more and more of our lives."

What I found in this same book was when it studied who was likely to be stressed in a job; who was more likely to suffer a heart attack; who was likely to be depressed. The common misconception was the boss, the person at the top of the tree who must make the stressful decisions that affect other people. An extensive study of the British civil service it was found those lower down the pay grade and ladder were four times more likely to suffer a heart attack than those at the top of the civil service. It was found those who had more control over their work and had some autonomy to make decisions were less inclined to be stressed and depressed about their work. When they examined their lives outside of work, they found those higher up the grade had better social lives and activities involving friends. Those who worked boring low status jobs had the reverse, they would just want to collapse in front of the television after work. One of the researchers put it simply: "when work is enriching, life is fuller".

While it is said we are the most connected society in history, the opposite could be said. What we are, also, is the loneliest. A survey done a few decades ago asked people in the U.S. how many real friends they had that they could turn to in the event of an emergency. The most common answer was five. The same asked a few years ago gave the most common to be zero. Not the majority, but the most common none-the-less. When Americans asked how many people in their lives, they felt really knew them; again, the most common answer, depressingly, was zero. An experiment to measure how loneliness increased stress levels was conducted for the first time, which involved participants wearing heart rate monitored and when they reached levels enough that would cause the monitors to beep, they had to take note of how lonely or connected you felt. One the second day when their monitor beeped, they had to spit into a test tube and give it to the lab. When you are stressed your heart rate would go up and your saliva becomes flooded with a hormone called cortisol. What the data told them was being lonely caused your cortisol levels to soar and being acutely lonely was as stressful as suffering a physical attack. Other studies done on lonely people comparing them with people with healthy social connections; when exposed to the cold virus it was found the lonely socially isolated people were three times more likely to catch the cold virus than those who were connected into a friends and social structure. When coupled with that, a scientist Lisa Berkman, did a similar comparison over a nine-year period and she discovered that isolated persons were two to three times more likely to die in that period. Cancer, heart disease, respiratory problems were all more fatal when people were alone. Its known stress is a killer; but loneliness?

The collective structure of society has eroded. In the U.S. in the ten years between 1985 to 1994 active participation in community organisations fell by 45%. In Clondalkin, the working-class estate in Dublin, where I grew up in the 1980's and 90's, the street parties and Summer projects are gone. I recently asked someone what had happened here and the simple answer was the people who were parts of residents’ committees moved out of the area, and nobody filled the void. I wonder are areas like Clondalkin a microcosm of the U.S.? It looks like we've turned away from community and turned inward; peoples' sense of belonging to a community is plummeting. The same can be said of our family lives. We eat together less as families; we go on less vacations together and just general activities as a family are all down. The social construct that binds us together, our sense of community and family, is slowly dissolving. We've redefined what human nature is. Our ancestors evolved in the savannas of Africa and survived in tribes. They took down bigger stronger animals on the plains of Africa because they worked collectively and cooperated. They did everything together; looked after their sick and pooled their resources. So human nature is honed towards being part of a tribe, not being alone in the hyper-individualistic capitalistic society we seen today, that is making us ill, mentally and physically.

A study called the Aspiration Index asked people straightforward questions. Do you think it is important to have expensive possessions and polar-opposite questions such as do you think it's important we make the world a better place? Alternatively, they then asked the same people if they were happy or unhappy and if they were suffering from depression or anxiety. The study was conducted on 316 students and the results showed those who answered the questions indicating they would be happier with accumulating stuff and status were far more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. When studies were done on 140 eighteen-year-olds and various other age groups and economic backgrounds the results were the same. Studies done to find the everyday emotions and moods of materialistic people found they were sicker and angrier. It's been found those who have intrinsic motives, those who do things because they genuinely value them, such as someone who plays an instrument because they genuinely love music. Then there are extrinsic values, which are people who do things because they'll get something in return such as likes on social media and status off it. It's worth pointing out, we all have some of these values in us, nobody is totally driven by either or. It was looked at those who has extrinsic values, if they had achieved their goals of getting valuables and status, they had not increased their general happiness one iota. The opposite side of the spectrum fared much better in that if they achieved their intrinsic values were far less likely to be depressed or anxious. When they helped a friend in need; became closer to their kids, did some charitable work because it was the right thing to do or doing anything for other people made them happier in their lives. 

The problem with all of this is our consumer culture. Go to the best schools, get the best grades, get a great paying job, flaunt your earnings by your nice house, car and clothes and that's the key to happiness and being valued by society. There have been twenty-two studies since and all have shown the more materialistic and extrinsically motivated you are the more depressed and anxious you will become, along with the fact you will have shorter relationships and they will have worse quality as people with extrinsic values place a higher emphasis on looks and how much you will impress other people if you're with them. So if something better looking comes along … you know the rest.

Similar studies have been done all over the world, on all continents, with similar results. What they have commonly been referred to as 'junk values' and we have moved more towards them and this has accelerated with the advent of the internet and social media. The commercialisation of our society has a part to play with this new value system taking place. The money spent on advertising has sky-rocketed over the decades and it's known the more teenagers are advertised to the more materialistic they become. In Lost Connections an ad executive puts it that at its heart advertising "is making people feel without their product, you're a loser. Kids are very sensitive to that...." And in a consumer society enough is never enough. There is no end. Capitalism needs consumerism. You're working more and more; your bosses are contacting you more and more outside of working hours. It was put perfectly that we all have intrinsic values as human beings, but it is too easy to distract us from them with our social model of consumerism that we begin to act extrinsically, and our economic model is built to do this that. Its existence depends on it. 

When I wrote previously on addiction it was also through the lenses as a republican, and critiqued them for the simplistic attitude that the problem with addiction is simply the substance. I argued that it was much more nuanced than that and I hope I've done that here with the depression and anxiety epidemic we see today in the Western world. I see, sometimes, the same lazy assertions for this from republicans. I've seen it being blamed on the rise of cocaine use, as without a doubt the day after it usually brings on a depressive state to the user, but so too does alcohol. The 'fear' as it is known is now a scientific fact. It increases the heart rate the following day and causes anxiety with a cycle of irrational thoughts, negative thinking and regret of behaviour while under the influence, but republicans don't target alcohol. Far from it, we use it to fundraise for our various causes knowing well binge-drinking will be the norm at said events. I'm not anti-alcohol and drink it myself, but it's the simplistic notions that disappoint me. The addiction and depression epidemics we see today are symptoms to the wider hyper-capitalistic economies we see today and that is something nearly all republicans can rail against. In 1800’s Britain, there was a gin addiction craze. You read that right, gin. It’s as freely available today as it was then, with more variants and flavours than ever today. But how was gin such an issue you ask? In England at the time, people were being moved from the countryside to the sprawling cities of London and Manchester etc, where they lived mainly in slums with deprivation all around them. This caused multiple problems, such as addiction, with gin being the main protagonist. There were propaganda pieces on the evil drink gin that was capturing their citizens and turning them into slumbering alcoholics. It seems almost funny now to see something like gin, that’s become such a trend in modern society, be once vilified as the cause for mass addiction. We know that to be silly now, and the cause was much more profound than a mere substance. 

I see today our issues involving addiction and depression being much more profound than mere substances and brain chemical defects, as it was in 1800’s Britain. The need to ditch the old tired arguments against evil substances is over and the conversation on a social recovery needs to begin. The studies and information on the causes are there for all to read. It's up to people to promote a new society and economic model that promotes it as the one we have now is making us ill. In the immediate now, maybe read this and reflect on your environment and those around you.

It's a cruel irony that those suffering from depression are treated by being filled with drugs of a legal kind with questionable results and very real side effects that can exacerbate the problem for many. Of course, the addiction and depression epidemic has become an industry for many, most notably big pharma so it's not much of a surprise that a conversation in the chambers of political power on a social recovery to take on addiction and mental illness has not been forthcoming, so like many of the positive changes in Ireland in recent times have come from grassroots bottom-up activist-based campaigns, who, in time, made it politically expedient for those in power to act. The political ideology in Ireland I belong to - republicanism - disappointingly, has not been the positive force it could be in the fight. I see populist slogans on boards telling people ‘Say No to Death Dealers’. It is simplistic nonsense given how multifaceted the causes of the addiction problem are. Saying no to gin in the 1800’s wouldn’t have cleansed England of the causes of their gin addiction, neither will such slogans cut it in Ireland 2019. It’s akin to campaigning for those suffering from depression and centralising the campaign on boards stating “Let’s End Chemical Brain Imbalances’, implying that is the central crux of the problem. Someone must break the mould on these problems, so why not republicans? 

To talk of treating addicts with love and compassion keeping in mind the root cause of addiction is childhood trauma, physical and or sexual abuse, a neglected childhood and broken families, is not going to get anyone any macho points. Neither will talking of social recoveries to tackle the depression and anxiety epidemic. It will involve talking to ordinary people in lay man terms about the system we have around us that forces two parents to work leaving children to develop away from their parents in understaffed creches; a system that leaves so many with a deep sense of lack of control and power in their workplace and a world of zero hour contracts leaving so many living on the breadline and in constant stress with no freedom from economic necessity. We have the emptiest people in power, and they won't submit to positive change until it's made politically expedient for them to do so. But that change isn't just about legislative law kind of change, but about changes on an individual and collective level. We can ignore the pain and screams of those in addiction and emotional, mental distress and continue to address them with nothingness and platitudes.

The New Ireland we hear referenced a lot since Brexit has to be about repairing our ruptured social bonds and building a country where people feel they belong, where their life has meaning and they have a say in their workplace. If we don’t then we’ll continue the be chasing the screams of our most abused and disenfranchised citizens and that will be a New Ireland not worth the paper it’ll be written on.



Patrick Donohoe is a member of the United Ireland Society, Áth Claith. Its aim is to make the economic and social case for Irish unity and a more egalitarian Ireland.

1 comment:

  1. An engaging piece.

    Not at all convinced about the tribe emphasis.

    A tribe always has a chief and his cabal and they shaft the rest.

    The orientation has to be towards the social where leadership is promoted rather than leaders.

    Thanks for publishing it with us Patrick. A lot of work went into it.

    ReplyDelete