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

by Johann Hari

It also helps us to understand why the small early trial at University College London seems to have shown such remarkable results with severely depressed people. “Depression is a kind of constricted consciousness,” Bill Richards, who also led the experiments at Johns Hopkins, told me. “You could say people have forgotten who they are, what they’re capable of, have gotten stuck … Many depressed people can only see their pains, and their hurts, and their resentments, and their failures. They can’t see the blue sky and the yellow leaves, you know?” This process of opening consciousness up again can disrupt that—and so it disrupts depression. It takes down the walls of your ego and opens you to connecting with what matters. And “in spite of the fact that the [drug] experience fades,” Roland told me, “the memory of that experience endures,” and it can become a new guide through life.