My Story: from prozac to coffee enemas

photo provided by Bryan Coppede

I remember as a child feeling acutely aware of myself and the discomfort that permeated my body, my mind, and my being. I existed quietly between vague states of depression and anxiety, fatigue, and confusion. Without any elder wisdom to guide me through these times, I learned to cope by overriding my experience, attributing the unease to my environment and external circumstances.

Despite a general disconnection to myself and others, I was, with the help of my angels, able to live a somewhat normal life. Throughout high school, I managed to maintain an intimate, albeit incredibly turbulent, relationship, good grades, and strong friendships. Never without, however, the accompaniment of insecurity and self-doubt. It was when I entered into University that the proverbial shit hit the fan. My symptoms of depression, anxiety, and impaired cognition became all-consuming.  

My nervous system, having always been sensitive and without the appropriate external feedback to respond skillfully to stimuli, had eventually begun to collapse. For the next decade of my life, I danced intimately with my depression, falling in and out, each time being more difficult than the last. Unbeknownst to me, I was entering into, and with time was fully immersed in, the darkest nights of my soul, confronted with life’s adamant request that I look at myself. In these times, I could not think and I could not speak. I lived in such an immense fog, having very little ability to process my reality. I felt awkward and unsure of myself. In these times my experience was marked by an extreme fear of all people. I had no understanding of who I was; I could not show up and connect with others from a space of authenticity. I could not trust myself to interact and engage in a way that felt easeful, often having a heart-breaking time attempting to communicate myself. My narrative was engraved in stone: “something is wrong with me.” Today, I continue to witness and hold space for my wounding around feeling safe in relationship and allowing others to fully see me.

Even through the turbulence and utter confusion, I, at a very subconscious level (it seems), remained connected to my truth. A force within and without would not let me forget who I was and what I came here to do.

During my junior year of University, as I began taking courses more relevant to my chosen major of Environmental Science, I stepped into a very vague understanding that life in its highest, most reverent form commences only when one is truly connected to their food source. Which, by default, would require one to be deeply aligned and in-step with the rhythms and cycles of the Earth, She who resides in the microcosm of each individual being. I began to wonder about sustainable agriculture, food justice and sovereignty, food security for all. Simultaneously, I began taking courses in environmental and water law. At the time, being heavily steeped in a masculine, patriarchal mentality (within which logic and linear thinking are pedestal-ized), I, much to my surprise, began feeling into a budding captivation with the power apparently afforded by the law. While all other aspects of my personhood would suggest that I was the absolute antithesis to the ethos of the United States legal system (and by extension, politics), my rational, worth-seeking thinking effectively convinced me of the “fact” that the law was the only true way to affect meaningful change. I had tentatively decided, then, to pursue a Juris Doctor degree in food law.

Some years later, after another large, and this time very debilitating bout of depression and anxiety (which was inarguably made worse by a new prescription of hormonal birth control), I found myself having scored quite well on the Law School Admission Test. During this time, I had had countless visits with doctors of all specialties for neurological symptoms that were undiagnosable, at one point being put through an MRI and subsequently being tested for multiple sclerosis. In the time between applying to law school and attending, I moved to Washington state to learn how to grow food. At this point, I had gotten off of the birth control; had gotten on, yet again, the tried and true: Prozac; and had successfully recovered to a more functional state, with the additional help of Neurofeedback. Moreover, I had resolutely concluded that meditation, radical acceptance, and yoga were tools not quite potent enough to pull me out of the darkest of nights. I also understood, in my bones, that neither was Prozac. Eventually I weaned off of it and again, as I’d anticipated, as was very familiar to me, the depression and anxiety returned. I was, however, older and wiser, and was thus able to live more gracefully with the suffering.

Here, I must pause, to expound upon my experience of and relationship to depression. It was not and never was circumstantial. There was no explicit cause that I could point to in hopes of understanding the source of this pain. Of course, I attached stories to the feelings in order to gain a semblance of control. I attempted to work from a psycho-spiritual perspective in order to pull myself out, but found that I could not. The moment I would get on Prozac, however, all of the wounding would seemingly slip away ease-fully, effortlessly. This phenomenon revealed to me that the stories to which I’d been attributing my depression, may not, collectively, be the cause, but rather, the effect. I was very confounded by this, having had observed this pattern numerous times, and though I was far from understanding the mechanisms behind the biochemistry and physiology undergirding the manifestation of my depression, I knew, my body knew, that she was experiencing an imbalance that could be healed.

After having completed a demanding and also very fulfilling season on an organic vegetable farm in Washington state, I left the country to travel through Asia before embarking upon a lifelong commitment to the law. I continued to dance and to commune intimately with my depression, becoming quite adept at overriding my body’s adamant requests for rest, stability, and soul-nourishing foods. I lived in a constant fog, feeling disconnected from myself and my then current reality. Eventually, moments of hysteria and an uncontrollable, mind-fucking depression ended my trip short, and I returned to the States. With little rest and hardly any integration, I began law school, which lasted a short two months as my health complications finally, finally came to head, and I at last heeded the cries of my body to come home.

It is one thing to listen to your body, Source, your higher knowing, it is a completely different thing to follow the call. After many weeks of contemplation and many conversations with my professors who all pleaded that I carry out the first semester, and after many hours of reading, note taking, crying, and slowly dying, I resolutely decided with the utmost confidence to withdraw from the program. I came back home to the loving, always open arms of my parents and committed myself to the healing I intuitively knew was my birthright. At the time, I had been listening to Dr. Datis Kharrazian’s audiobook, “Why Isn’t My Brain Working?” sprinkled within which were testimonials of the success stories won by manifold practitioners. I learned of a functional nutritionist, Linda Clark, who was somewhat local and I promptly reached out for a consult.

My experience of working with, and eventually for Linda, changed my life and opened my eyes to my life’s work. Though it took me quite some time to feel consistently well and in control of my symptoms (which included depression and anxiety), I can say with confidence, that no other modality would have initiated healing for me at such a foundational, root-cause level as did the commitment I so desperately maintained to a massive overhauling of my life, changing, completely, the way I ate and lived. After many lab tests, dietary changes, more lab tests, and hundreds of coffee enemas, today, I feel the best I ever have (which isn’t to say that I don’t still experience symptoms of fatigue and brain fog). I do! But it is when I am not taking care of myself, when I am exposed to environmental factors that overload my “stress bucket” that I “regress” (though in my opinion, there is no such thing as regressing when on the healing path, as healing is non-linear. Rather, the path of healing is a spiral).

Since having returned from my brief encounter with law school, I have lived in an intentional community in Minnesota (Camphill Village Minnesota - a striving community interested in guiding people with special needs into a soul-supportive, life experience according to the Anthroposophical teachings of Rudolf Steiner). There, I worked as a Biodynamic farming apprentice learning to support and helpfully interact with the nature beings that are the real environmental stewards. I also spent a fair amount of time working with the holistic management of cattle, mimicking historical grazing patterns of large ruminants wherein predation played a key role in maintaining the movement of herds and preventing revisitation of the same grazing site before full recovery and establishment of the grasses were achieved. At some point in this time, my then, very-long-distance partner joined me, and we have since committed to co-creating a conscious and sacred life together.

Recently we returned to California, where we are engaged in similar practices of cattle management and regenerative agriculture. While we appreciate the profound effects these agricultural practices can have on the Earth and while we are ever grateful to those that are committed to the heart work that is farming, we are finding more and more that the embodiment of ancestral ways aligns more strongly with our values of wanting to live in reciprocity with the Earth. We are currently in transition from living within the agricultural model to living in ways that bring us closer to our ancestors. These days we are directing our attention and love towards the art and science of re-wilding (hunting and wild-crafting), while also holding reverent space for the art of cultivation on a scale that is microcosmic.

Additionally, we have begun to call into our lives our little one. Attending to our physical health and psycho-spiritual well-being, stepping into the roles of mama and papa by firstly being mamas and papas to ourselves. Perceiving that we are already parents to the one who is here and coming, and making decisions from a place of strength, courage, commitment, power, and fierce love.