Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #52 Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression with Johan Hari PART 2

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

CAUTION ADVISED: this podcast contains swearing and themes of an adult nature. This week, I continue the conversation with the inspirational Johann Hari, who shares insights from his forty-thousand-mile journey across the world to interview the leading experts about what causes depression and anxiety, and what solves them. But it was not those experts that taught Johann the most, it was the incredible people of a Berlin district called Kotti – he shares the heart-warming story of how an unlikely community was borne out of desperation and the unbelievable transformations that occurred for the whole community as a result of it. We discuss how our isolated lives mean that our basic psychological needs are not being met and how this is impacting suicide rates, particularly for white males. We delve into how a dramatic change in societal ideals is leading to more unhappiness. Also, how people are turning to screens, social media and other addictions to fulfill their unmet needs. Finally, Johann shares some truly inspirational top tips. This really is a captivating and incredibly important conversation – I hope you enjoy it!  My new book, ‘The Stress Solution’ contains lots of practical solutions to help you with many of the issues discussed in this podcast. It is available to order on Amazon now. *Please note: this podcast contains swearing and themes of an adult nature. Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/52 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

you are incredibly powerful, right? Ordinary people have changed the world time and time again. They don't do it by sitting at home alone. They do it by joining up with other people. Together, we can deal with the reasons why we have been made to feel so shit. These things were not ordained by nature. They weren't like earthquakes. They were decisions that were made by human beings. And we can undo those decisions. We can build a much better world for ourselves and for our children. We don't have to live like this. And you have the power with other people to change and challenge that. presenter. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people,

both within as well as outside the health space, to hopefully inspire you, as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier, because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome to episode 52 of my Feel Better, Live More podcast. My name is Ron Ganchastri and I am your host. Today is part two of my conversation with the inspirational Johan Hari. It's been incredible to see how much you all enjoyed part one of our conversation and the feedback on social media this week has been truly amazing. In last week's conversation we finished off talking about the importance

of human connection. This week, I continue the conversation with Johan as he shares more insights from his 40,000 mile journey across the world to interview the leading experts about what causes depression and anxiety, and importantly, what solves them. Interestingly enough though, it was not those experts that taught Johan the most. It was the incredible people of a Berlin district called Kotti. I think you're really going to love the story that he tells. We also discussed how our isolated lives mean that our basic psychological needs are not being met and how this is impacting suicide rates, particularly for white males. suicide rates, particularly for white males. We delve into how societal ideals have changed dramatically and how this is leading to more unhappiness. Also, how people are turning to

screens, social media and other addictions to fulfil their unmet needs. Finally, Johan shares some truly inspirational top tips. This is a really captivating conversation and I know you're going to enjoy it. Again, just like last week, I do need to let you know that there is a fair bit of swearing in this podcast. So if you do listen to this podcast with your children, I would recommend that this episode may be one that you should listen to yourself or solely in the company of adults. Now, before we get started, I do need to give a very quick shout out to our sponsors who are essential in order for me to be able to put out weekly podcast episodes like this one. Athletic Greens continue their support of my

podcast. And whilst I prefer that people get all their nutrition from foods, I've seen that for some of us, it's simply not possible. Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics and digestive enzymes. If you are looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you're meeting your own nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens,

which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. I think the theme of connection is really important because you're saying, you know, we know this when individuals see themselves as part of a kind of connected tapestry of wider meaning, right? Just like which would have happened in the tribes in which humans evolved. They feel much better about their lives. They feel much more satisfied. And actually, I learned so much from scientists,

some of the leading scientists in the world, and reading loads of studies. I think the place that taught me the most about depression and anxiety were not those people, actually. And I'll just tell you the story of what happened in this place, if that's okay, because it's something I think about every day. So in the summer of 2011, on a big anonymous council estate in berlin um a a german turkish woman called nuria chengis climbed out of her wheelchair and put a sign in her window she lives on the

ground floor the sign said something like i got a notice saying i'm going to be evicted next thursday so on wednesday night i'm going to kill myself now this is a council estate um it's in a funny area it's called Cotty it's a poor part of what used to be West Berlin and basically no one wanted to live there for years it was a mixture of recent Muslim immigrants like Nuria um gay men and punk squatters right as you can imagine these three groups didn't get on very well but no one really knew anyone right no one knew who this woman was people are walking past her window and they're worried about her and they're also pissed off could their rents are going up loads of people are being evicted so they know they might be next people start to knock on nuria's door they said do you need any help and

at first nuria said fuck you i don't want any help shut the door in their faces right they're like we can't we shouldn't just leave her what should we do and this was actually the summer of the revolution in egypt and one of them was watching it on the telly and they had an idea, right? They thought, well, if we, there's a big road that goes through Kotti into the center of Berlin.

And he said, you know, if we just blocked the road for a day, it goes right through this council estate. He said, if we just block the road for a day and, you know, we protest and we wheel Nouria out,

there'll be a bit of a fuss. The media will probably come they'll probably let us stay um they'll probably you know um there might even be a little bit of pressure to keep our rents down right so they decide to do it they're like why not they block the road nuria's like i'm gonna kill myself anywhere i may as well let them push me into the middle of the street and they sit there and they protest and the media does come it's a little bit of a kerfuffle that day in berlin and then at the end of the day the police come and they say okay you've had your fun take it all down and the people there are like well hang on a minute you haven't told

nuria she gets to stay actually we want a rent freeze for this whole council estate so when we've got that then we'll take it down but of course they knew the minute they left the barricades that they put up the police would just tear it down anyway so one of my favorite people at cotty tanya gartner who's one of the punk squatters she wears um tiny little mini skirts even in berlin winter she's quite hardcore tanya had this idea in her flat she had a klaxon you know those things that make a loud noise at football matches so she went and got it she came down and she said okay here's what we're gonna do we're gonna drop a timetable to man this barricade 24 hours a day until we've got what we want if the until nuria gets told she can stay in until we get a rent freeze um and if the police

come to take the barricade down let off the klaxon we'll all come down from our flats and stop them so people start signing up to man this barricade people who would never have met right so uh this very unlikely pairing so nuria who's very religious muslim in a full hijab was paired with tanya in her tiny little mini skirt right and i can't remember what night shift they got it was it might be tuesday nights so they're sitting there tuesday nights super awkward they're like we've got what have we got in common we've got nothing to talk about as the weeks went on they started talking and Tanya and Nuria realized there's something really profound in common.

Nuria had come to Berlin when she was 16 from her village in Turkey. She had two young children and her job was to raise enough money to send back for her husband to come and join her. And sitting there in the cold in Cottey, she told Tanya something she never told anyone in Germany. She'd always told people. So after she'd been in Berlin for 18 months, she got word from home that her husband was dead. And she'd always told people that he died of a heart attack.

He'd actually died of tuberculosis, which was seen as a kind of shameful disease of poverty. That's when Tanya told Nuria something she never talked about. She'd come to Cotty when she was even younger, when she was 15. She'd been thrown out by a middle-class family she made her way she lived in this punk squat and she got pregnant not long after she arrived so they both realized that they had been children with children of their own in this frightening place they didn't understand right they realized they had loads in common there were loads of these pairings happening over cotty of people who would never have taught

there was a young uh a young lad who kept being a Turkish-German lad who kept being nearly thrown out of school. They said he had ADHD. He got paired with a very grumpy old white German guy called Dieter who said he didn't believe in direct action because he loved Stalin. But in this case, he'd make an exception. He started helping him with his homework. He started doing much better at school.

Directly opposite this council estate, there's a gay club called Zudblock that's run by a man I love called Rick Hardstein who, to give you a sense of what he's like, the previous place he owned was called Cafe Anal. Okay, this is a pretty hardcore gay club, right? And when they opened it, about two years before the protest began, you know, there's a lot of religious Muslims there. Some of them had smashed the windows. People were really pissed off and when the protest began they the Zudblock the gay club gave gave all their furniture to the protest um and after a while they said you know you guys could have all your meetings in our club you could you know we'll give you drinks we'll give you free food um and even the lefties at Kotti were like look we're

not going to get these very religious Muslims to come and have meetings underneath posters for things so obscene I won't describe them on your podcast right it's not going to happen but actually it did start to happen as one of the Turkish German women put it to me we all realized we had to take these small steps to understand each other after the protest had been going on for about a year one day a guy turned up at the protest called Tunkai who was in his early 50s and Tunkai when you meet him it's obvious he's got some kind of cognitive difficulties and he'd been living homeless but he has an amazing energy about him and everyone he started asking if he could help out everyone liked him and by this time they'd actually the barricade had turned into a physical structure with a roof right a lot of them are

construction workers um so they started saying to tonkai you know you should come and live in this thing we've built right it's quite nice we don't want you to be homeless he started living there became a much-loved part of the protest camp and after he'd been there for nine months one day the police came they would come every now and then to inspect and Tung Kai doesn't like it when people argue so he went to hug one of the police officers but they thought he was attacking them so they arrested him that was when it was discovered Tung Kai had been shut away for 20 years in a psychiatric hospital, often literally in a padded cell.

He'd escaped one day, lived on the streets for a couple of months and made his way to Kotti, at which point the police took him back to the psychiatric hospital. So this entire Kotti protest turned itself into a free Tungkay movement. They descend on this psychiatric hospital at the other side of Berlin. And these psychiatrists are like, what is this got you know had this person shut away for 20 years and suddenly they've got all these women in hijabs these punks and these very camp gay men demanding his release they're like oh they don't understand it and i remember uli hartman one of

the protesters said to them yeah but you don't love him. He doesn't belong with you. We love him. He belongs with us. And many things happened at Cottey. I guess the headline is they got a rent freeze for their entire housing project. They then launched a referendum initiative to keep rents down across the entire city. They've got the largest number of written signatures in the history of the city of Berlin. They got Tungkay back. He lives there still. But the last time I saw Nuria, I remember her saying to me, you know, I'm really glad I got to stay in my neighborhood. That's great. I gained so much more than that. I was surrounded by these incredible people all along and I would never have known. And so many of the people there, these insights would just blow the surface. I remember Neriman Tanker, who's another one of the Turkish German women there, saying to me, you know, when I grew up in Turkey,

I grew up in a village and I called my whole village home. And I learned when I came to live in the Western world that what you're meant to call home is just your four walls. And then this whole protest began and I started to call all these people my home, right? And she said she realized in some sense in this culture, we are homeless, right? There's a Bosnian writer called Alexander Heyman who said, home is where people notice when you're not there. By that standard, lots of us are homeless. And it was so clear to me in Kotti, think about how unhappy these people were, right? Nuria was about to kill herself. Tunkai was shut away in a padded cell. Loads of them were depressed and anxious.

In the main, these people did not need to be drugged. They needed to be together. They needed to be seen. They needed to be loved and valued. They needed to have a sense that they were part of a tribe, that they had purpose and meaning in their lives. And I remember sitting with Tanya one time outside Zublock and her saying to me,

you know, when you feel like shit and you're all alone, you think there's something wrong with you. But what we did is we came out of our corner crying and we started to fight. And we realised we were surrounded by people who felt the same way. And to me, this is the most important thing I learned, right? I love these people in Cotty, as I'm sure you can tell, but in one sense, they are not exceptional. They were entirely randomly selected people right that could have been anyone this hunger for reconnection and and for rediscovery of meaning and other people and meaningful values is just beneath the surface for all of us right and and arguably it's the most important thing as a society we should be trying to promote um that that quote is profound i can't stop

thinking about at home is when someone notices when you are not there yeah i i know that that's gonna sit with me all day and maybe for the next week i'm just gonna be reflecting on that because i think it's so profound and i've been thinking about this a lot i've got um three teenage nephews a teenage niece and two young godchildren i was thinking about you know sometimes you have these kind of philosophical thoughts where you think, what do you want for them in their lives, right? I don't want them to be rich. It's nice if they're rich. I'm not going to stop them if they want to make money, but I want them to be in a place like Cotty. I want them to know that they have a home where people see them and value them and want them to

be there. And I see that in this culture and we've got all sorts of problems like people interacting primarily through screens this does not give you that sense right those people digital interaction is not the same as human connection no but they're two completely separate things yeah and and we've got to stop you know for many of us unfortunately we're replacing reallife human connection with digital transactional sort of behavior. And again, this is not about demonizing screens necessarily. We can use things like social media to do a lot of good in the world. We are both active on social media.

I'd like to think that what we are doing is helping society in some way. Other people can be the judge of that, of course. But I think social media and screens can be used in very, very helpful ways. But I think many of us are using it as a substitute for, you know, what it really means to be human. And as you were describing that story, it made me think, you know, we are living isolated lives these days. You know, many people have moved for work. We're getting more and more urbanized. We don't have, you know, we often don't, you know, often two, there are often two working parents now who are trying to raise children without parents

nearby, without family nearby. Of course, that's going to be stressful, actually. It's inherently stressful to try and do that for many people. And in some ways, are we in the 21st century conducting a social experiment that the actual, the resulting effect of it is that we're going to have poor mental health. Is it almost, in many ways, is it almost not inevitable, the way that we've constructed society now, the way many of us are living, that mental health problems are going to be on the rise? Yeah, I think that's so important. If we think about, we've created a society that is not meeting many basic psychological needs for most people, right? And there are all sorts of indicators of distress that are related to that, right? So we think about, I spend a lot of my time in the US and I wrote a previous book which is about addiction. I look at addiction in a similar way to the way we're talking about depression.

It's called Chasing the Scream. And if you look at just in the US at the moment, the figures about addiction. the scream and and you know if you look at just in the u.s at the moment the figures about addiction so white male life expectancy has fallen for the first time in the entire peacetime history of the united states and that is overwhelmingly driven by suicide and opioid addiction right and overdoses from opioid addiction and the the people who've done the best research on this um sir angus deaton and anne case call those deaths of despair right that's exactly what we're seeing a massive rise in deaths of despair um and if if you create a society where people are profoundly lonely where they are controlled and humiliated at work where they're

taught that life is about buying crap and displaying it on screens. That is going to be a society with terrible mental health. And it's going to have terrible mental health, not because those people are weak or stupid or biologically broken. It's because of the society, you know, Krishnamurti, the great Bengali philosopher said, it's no sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society. I don't mean this glibly. If you don't feel you belong in a society where the most powerful person in the world is as profoundly sick as Donald Trump is, that's not a sign you're crazy. That's a sign you're sane. Right.

And if we think about these, and I think the rise of political extremism all over the world is very closely related to this. If people are living in a culture that doesn't meet their needs you're going to get a significant number of people who are going to say well burn the fucking house down then you know um and and the worst thing we can do in response to that is to tell those people they're thick or just that they're racist or that they're they're stupid that that that is profoundly wrong they're not actually it's not it's not this is not an individual issue is it it's a societal issue and we've got to start taking it much more seriously as a societal issue. Exactly. And what I think one of the worst, one of the, you know, since you mentioned obesity before, right? And when I started promoting this book a year ago, there's an analogy I would use and I've stopped using it because it was too problematic right I think the reason why is really

interesting so I used to say okay so depression like we're talking about depression is risen for social reasons largely for social reasons um and we all know if you look at a photograph of British people on a beach in 1970 everyone is what we would call skinny now there are no fat people right um we know that obesity is massively risen And obviously it's not that just suddenly everyone in Britain got lazy or suddenly became gluttonous, right? What happened is our food supply changed. It's very hard to walk and bicycle around our cities, a whole range of things that kind of very extreme couldn't be more well-documented, right? So I'd say just like social causes have driven up obesity not just weakness and laziness or not not weakness laziness at all um social causes

driven up depression i have stopped saying that because really often people would reply going but fat people are really lazy i mean you would just i would have thought it's so obvious that social... I mean, compare Copenhagen and Kansas City, right? They are both humans, right? There's no significant biological difference between the people in Copenhagen and the people in Kansas City. There is epidemic obesity in Kansas City and virtually none in Copenhagen. Why? Right? Copenhagen's a different environment. It's easy to walk. It's really easy to get delicious, fresh food. A whole range of reasons, right? There's social norms around these things. And it's almost impossible to do those things in Kansas City, right? You can't walk anywhere. That's an obvious bit. But I think

part of the problem is, you know, when you and me were kids, Margaret Thatcher said, there's no such thing as society. There's only individuals and their families. And I think we have so deeply internalized that idea right so that when someone comes along and i don't say this any sense of superiority as you could probably guess i never liked margaret thatcher but the the i was depressed all those years i had literally studied social sciences at cambridge university and it never occurred to me that there were these deep social forces playing out in my life that was so even someone who thought they'd consciously rejected

this you know that's right vision that we're all just isolated individuals and maybe you got your family if you're lucky i had internalized that this is so i think you've gone to the absolute core of the problem which is if you think about yourself primarily as an individual you are going to feel like shit right there's a really interesting piece of research about this. A woman I went to interview called Dr. Brett Ford, who was at Berkeley in California, did really interesting research with her colleagues. It's really simple. They wanted to figure out if you decided you were going to spend more time trying to be happier, would you actually become happier? Let's say you said, I'm gonna spend two hours a day making myself happy, right? Would it actually work? And they did this research in four countries. It was in the US, Taiwan,

Russia, and Japan. What they found at first seems really weird. In the US, if you try to make yourself happier, you do not become happier. In the other countries, if you try to make yourself happier, you do become happier. And they're like, what's going on, right? How can that be? When they looked at it more, what they discovered was in the US, if you try to make yourself happy, I'm pretty sure it should be true for us. Generally, it's exceptions, of course, but generally, you would do something for yourself. You buy something for yourself. And this is definitely true of me. earn more money i would show off i would get some kind of external achievement i would buy something for myself but in the other countries generally if you tried to make yourself happier you did something for someone else your friends your family your community right so we have an instinctively individualistic idea what it means to be happy and they have an instinctively collective idea what it means to be happy and it turns out our vision of happiness the one that we've been sold that

we're impregnated you're not impregnated we're bombarded with from birth just does not work a species of individualist would have died out on the savannahs of africa we wouldn't be sitting here now right so if they'd said there's no such thing as society there's only individuals and their families that you know this would just london would just be wild empty fields right yeah and you you've you've said that you've suffered from depression in the past it's been very well documented that um are you still depressed no I'm careful in how I put it in the book because I don't want to do that very American thing of like hey dear reader I did this and you can too for a range of reasons firstly

I was in an incredibly privileged position where i could change lots of things about my life one of my closest relatives is a struggling single mom who works every hour she can to keep her kids in their home and gets home and is so knackered she can't watch coronation street so the idea is saying to her hey i did this you can your job now is to join a gardening program democratize your workplace fight for a universal basic i mean it would be grotesque to say that to her right so a big part of the book is about how we can change the society to free up people like my relative to do the things they want to do that would make their lives better and reduce their depression and anxiety but in terms of myself yeah i made a lot of changes that massively reduced my depression anxiety and actually the one we

were just talking about the thing that flows from Brett Ford in some ways that I remember interviewing Brett and it's such a simple insight and yet it was so transformative for me I started to picture don't know if you remember this but um I can't find it online so if anyone's listening who knows where it is tell me I remember when I was a kid seeing a short, a silent film that I think was Buster Keaton and he's sinking in quick, it might've been Laurel and Hardy actually, I can't remember.

He's sinking in quicksand and his legs are sinking and to get out of it, he reaches in with his hands to try to pull out his legs, which of course means he sinks faster. And then he reaches in with his head to try to pull out his arms and then he's gone, right? And I realize now my strategy for dealing with depression was a bit like that. I would start to feel bad partly because for all sorts of reasons and some of the ones we've touched on, but you know, for example, my values were wrong. I was

pursuing happiness in all the wrong ways. Right. So what did you change there? So if something is simple as when I feel those acutely painful feelings coming and I do feel them sometimes, instead of trying to do something for myself, I will leave my phone at home and go and just try to do something for someone else. And I'm not like Oprah, I can't turn up with a car for them, but just turn up and just listen to someone. In a culture where people are not seen and not heard, the greatest gift you can give someone is turn up and listen. And don't every five minutes look at your phone and don't be partially present right just be present with someone it's such a simple tip isn't it that that obviously you felt the benefits um it you know i think what's great about your book

is that you've you've you have researched it so deeply you've gone all around the world as you said what was it 40 000 miles you traveled yeah it really is an incredible insight for people i think if you want to dig deep into this and really understand what the the root causes of many cases of depression are in society i was thinking about what you said i think it's really interesting about screens because there was one experience i had on that journey that really helped me to understand this it was um i went to the first ever internet rehab center in the world it's in in, it's outside Spokane in Washington state. I remember when I arrived there, it's a big clearing in the woods.

I got out of the car and I instinctively looked at my phone and felt really pissed off. I couldn't check my emails because there was no reception. I was like, oh wait, you're in the right place, right? You came to the internet rehab center. But I think it's totally important what you said. So I spent a lot of time there talking, they get all kinds of people.

It's called Restart Washington. They get all kinds of people there, but they disproportionately get these young men who are obsessed with multiplayer role-player games like world of warcraft it'd be fortnite now but fortnite didn't exist then um and i'm talking to these young men and and the woman who runs it is an amazing person you should have on your podcast she's brilliant dr hillary cash said to me you know you've got to ask yourself what are these young men getting out of these games, right? They're getting something. They're getting the things they used to get from the culture, but they no longer get. They get a sense of status. They get a sense of identity. They get

a sense of a tribe, right? They get a sense that they can roam around because most teenagers are like prisoners in their own home. They can't go out. They don't go out. But what they're getting, I started to think as I listened to it, it was almost like a parody of those things. I started to think the relationship between social media and social life is a bit like the relationship between porn and sex right i'm not opposed to porn but no one spends an hour looking at porn and feels like valued and satisfied the way you do after you've had sex right um because we didn't evolve to look at sexual images on screens we evolved to actually have sex right and if your whole sex

life consisted of looking at porn you would be going around pissed off and irritated the whole time because your deeper needs as a human being would not be being met right um and in a similar way it's not that there's no place for social media right of course there's a place for it you know professor cassioppo said to me gave me a good little rule of thumb he said um if social media is a way station for meeting people offline and staying in touch with people who you know offline, it's a good thing.

If it's the last stop on the line, something's gone wrong there, right? It's really good, isn't it? Yeah, it's really good. But I think this move towards, I had an unbelievably depressing conversation. I have to check out if it's true, but someone I was at university with, I hadn't seen since we left and I bumped into them,

it's 20 years now, nearly 20 years. And when we were students at the college we were at, everyone would meet in the bar, right? It was a big social area and he's still there in Cambridge. And I said, oh, you know, what's it like when you talk to students in the bar now? And he said, oh, they've actually, they're shutting down that bar because no one goes there anymore and I said well what I don't understand what's there an alternative social space they're like no they just they're just talking to each other on screens they're just the physical meeting but and that's like when you're a student when you actually do live really close to it that's a real hijacking of values right it really is um that it's incredible how many you know how many themes

you've written about that i also cover in particularly in my latest book on stress the stress solution i i've got this section on how to become a regular really and lots of tips people how do you become a regular again as pubs are closing down across the country as churches you know these areas where we used to congregate know, were pubs there to be places where we used to drink or were they there places for community and unwinding? You know, maybe it's a bit of both, but I think we've lost something. And I think there are many ways that we can start to become a regular again. The first quarter of the book is on meaning and purpose. And I really thought long and hard about this. I thought, I can't write a book on stress without covering this really important topic, which is we need

meaning and purpose. And we don't have time to go through it now, but I created a new framework called the Live Framework, L-I-V-E, on how we can start to get more meaning and purpose in our lives, because it's all very well to say we need more meaning and purpose, but some people will be listening and go, yeah, well, how the hell do I do that? And L-I-V-E stands for love, intention, vision, and engagement. And, you know, maybe we can talk about this on a future podcast, but that the engage piece is about doing something with others, doing something for others. And, you know, if, you know, you're feeling down, as you say, you just go and do something for someone else. Or, you know what I say to people when I've been going around the country talking about this book,

I say, look, the simple thing you can do is, you know, at your work office, make someone a cup of tea, right? Do it for someone else. Even better, make someone you don't like in your office a cup of tea, right? Do it for someone else. Even better, make someone you don't like in your office a cup of tea. That's interesting. And I feel there is really something powerful about doing things for other people. We've become far too individualistic as a society. I think there's also something that you mentioned about, I guess in many ways it's about intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation.

So much of what I see now is that we're doing things so that we can post them on social media, right? In many ways, I talked to a lot of people who, if they don't post about it on social media, it didn't happen. It didn't exist. What was the point of experiencing that if I can't go and share that? And look, again, I'm not, I criticizing it I'm not standing on my high horse right I will do things sometimes and post them on social media but I'm very conscious that I don't post everything I do on social media um I you know this is I don't know if you how much you use Instagram but uh insta stories is um you know something that lots of people are using all the time and you know it's where you document various parts of your day and you show things.

And I've got on one level, I have a real issue with it because I actually post a lot on Insta Stories when I'm away. So I'm in London at the moment, so I'll be posting. As soon as I get back home later today, you won't see me on Insta Stories for a few days because I'm around my kids, I'm around my wife. I don't want to model that sort of behavior

to my children that every moment in life has to be captured and shared with the world what's incredible is it's a catastrophic hollowing out of experience right you see this so for example recently whenever it was not that recently about four or five months ago i was just because i happened to be there for a different reason i was um no it's more than that might be a year ago now i was at elton john's last ever residency in caesar's palace in vegas right incredible like and he's the most incredible performer and literally a third of the audience did not look at elton john they're just looking at their iphone screens right and you the person people either side of me literally did not look out and i want to tell them go no one wants to

see your shitty little iphone video about john you will never see this again put your phone down right but it's that thing about we talk a lot actually about um envy right we talk a lot about the experience of feeling envy but people do talk about that what we don't talk about as much is living in a way that is designed to invite the envy of others right and actually i think that is the more important conversation so much of how we live now is designed it's like you're in an envy contest you you look at instagram and i feel it myself you look at instagram you think of that person's in fucking fiji right well i've got to show you that i'm and you this i had a funny experience related to this perfectionist presentation yeah exactly and

there's an interesting thing. So we know, what we say about Professor Kasser and junk values, we know the more you live your life like that, the more you're living your life to display it rather than to be in the moment and to enjoy the thing itself, the more likely you will be depressed.

This is actually a cause of depression and anxiety. And I had a moment that to me was like a kind of surreal illustration of this. One of my nephews loves Elvis. I've never quite understood why. So I took him to Grac Graceland I've been promising for years in Memphis where Elvis lived and we arrived and when you arrive in Graceland there's no physical guide to show you around anymore they give you an iPad right so you put in headphones and the iPad says you know turn left this is this was Elvis's front room or whatever and um we're standing in the jungle room which is like one of Elvis's front room or whatever. And we're standing in the jungle room,

which was like one of Elvis's famous rooms. And what happens is everyone just walks around and goes and looking at the iPad because there's a representation of the room in front of you in the iPad, right? So we're in the jungle room, the actual jungle room, Elvis's actual room and everyone is looking at their iPads

and a guy turns to his wife and goes, honey, this is amazing. If you swipe left, you can see the jungle room to the left. And if you swipe right, you can see the jungle room to the right. And I almost thought he was joking. And I looked at him and I said, right, but sir, there's an old fashioned form of swiping you can do. It's called turning your head because we're actually in that room. And he looked at me like I was completely mad and carried a look at the iPad. And I thought we've lost the ability to literally look at the thing that's right in front

of us. And occasionally I've been like uh touristy places where people have to leave their phones I went to Victoria Falls a few years ago just I was doing some research nearby and it was so fascinating to me because um you can't take your phone into the waterfall right if the spray comes up and it would ruin your phone and there's almost like a moment of blissful relief when people you're like, leave that for a minute. You can be present and you can be in this extraordinary thing. That's why I'm such a huge fan of promoting swimming, actually, because I think swimming is one of the last forms of exercise where you're sort of forced to be mindful. You can't, well, actually, I'm sure you can now, but you can't really go in the water.

I know you can. Please, no one design that thing, thing right where you could do that yeah yeah i mean it's it's just how can you enforce how can you cut yourself how can you do an activity that forces you to switch off i just want to say on the thing about concerts um i think i think just to be sort of with the understanding and kind and compassionate to people who are doing that because i think it's a reflection of where we've got to in society i understand why people do that uh you know i'm a bit of a music uh i won't say addicts but music's a huge part of my life i've been to thousands of concerts i love going to concerts i'm i um you know i passionately dislike this whole new trend of that it's i think it ruins the i think it

spoils the experience of people around us i don't think people are meaning to do that just to be clear right i'm not i'm not blaming people i do understand that i don't think they're meaning to do that but i know very a lot of artists now actually say at the start of their concerts um please guys put your phone off we want you to really be present and enjoy this um i think i think eddie vedder from pearl jam says that at his concerts i believe uh which i think is incredible and i think some people get really frustrated by that they said well i've you know i've spent x amount of pounds on this concert ticket i want to document it so i think there's something about that that we it's really a societal issue that we need to talk about and for people who do do that all i would ask them is to

think about well why do you do that you know, is it something you genuinely want, you know, to get that bit of video footage and watch it about later? OK, fine. You know, fair enough. I think we need to sort of ask ourselves those questions. Are we doing it because everyone else is doing it? We think we have to do that. I don't know. I think I think these are complex issues. So she said that because I remember talking to Dr. Hilary cash in that internet rehab center about some of these questions and she said something really important i think which is you have to think about the relation to social media and this desire to share these things on social media you have to think about it's too simplistic to blame it on social media there's a complex thing going on here if you think about the moment when the internet

arrives in human history right so most of it's the late 90s the early 2000s a lot of the things we're talking about a lot of these causes of depression and anxiety were already supercharged by then so loneliness had got up well before the internet comes along right um what what happens is the internet arrives and it looks a lot like the things we've lost yeah right so you've lost friends but here's facebook friends you've lost status here's some status updates right but it's not the thing we've lost and i think like all all addictions are partly the core of addiction is not trying to i'd say the core of addiction is trying not to be present in your life because your life's too painful but it's also an attempt to fill a hole right it's an attempt to and so we both share a mutual friend in gabble matty love you know gabble's amazing he was on

the podcast episode 37 on the podcast i talked to him and i love his phrase which is we shouldn't be asking why the addiction we should be asking why the pain exactly exactly yeah i spent a lot of time with gabriel on the downtown east side in vancouver for my previous book chasing the scream and he's an amazing person i think that's exactly right that well think about the opioid crisis in the us right the temptation is to focus on the painkillers and there are real chemical hooks and painkillers that are a problem but actually if you want to understand why people are taking so many painkillers you've got to understand why they're in such deep pain, right? And I think we can understand this mobile phone addiction by thinking about the wider evidence about addiction itself, right? About what addiction is. really transformed how I thought about addiction I've been thinking about this a lot the last week one of my relatives has gone into a rehab center in the last week but and I've been thinking about

this again a lot but um you know I grew up with a lot of addiction in my family and I thought I understood what I was seeing right so let's think about heroin addiction which is something close to me most people if we were sitting here in in in central London if we stopped a load of people on the street and said well what causes heroin addiction they're gonna look at us like we're thick and they're gonna say well mate the clue's in the name right heroin causes heroin addiction we've been told this story for 100 years it's become totally part of our common sense we think if we kidnap someone off the street and we injected them with heroin every day for a month, at the end of that month, they'd be heroin addicts because there's chemical hooks in heroin that their bodies would start to desperately physically need.

And they'd have this terrible physical hunger for heroin. And that's what addiction is, right? Now that's real, but it's a very small part of what's going on with addiction. It's actually, I understand addiction was really transformed by an incredible man, a friend of Gabbo's as well, and a friend of mine, an incredible man called Professor Bruce Alexander, who's based in Vancouver, who did this amazing experiment in the 70s. So Professor Alexander was, you know, looking at this theory that, you know, depression is just, sorry, that addiction is just caused by the chemical hooks. And he starts to look at where does this come from and it comes from a series of experiments that were done earlier in the 20th century they're really simple experiments your listeners can try

them at home if they feel a little bit sadistic you take a rat you put it in a cage and you give it two water bottles one is just water the other is water laced with either heroin or cocaine if you do that the rats will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill themselves quite quickly right so there you, it's our story. But in the 70s, Professor Alexander's looking at this and he goes, well, hang on a minute. You put the rat alone in an empty cage. It's got nothing that makes life meaningful for rats.

What would happen if we did this differently? So he built a cage that he called Rat Park, which is basically like heaven for rats, right? They've got loads of friends, they've got loads of cheese, they've got loads of colored balls, they can have loads of sex. Whatever a rat can want in life, it's there. And they've got loads of friends they've got loads of cheese they've got loads of colored balls they can have loads of sex whatever a rat can want in life it's there and they've got both the water bottles the normal water and the drugged water and of course they try both they don't know what's in them it's just a fascinating thing in rat park they don't like

the drugged water they hardly ever use it none of them ever use it compulsively none of them ever overdose so you go from 100% compulsive use and overdose when they don't have the things that make life meaningful to none when they do have the things that make life meaningful. There's lots of human examples that I could talk about, but to me, what I took from this is the opposite of addiction is connection, right? And we can think about that in relation to not just drug addiction, but things like mobile phone addiction, right? In an environment where you feel starved of the things that make life meaningful, there's a guy called Professor Peter Cohen in Amsterdam,

who says we shouldn't call it addiction, we should call it bonding. Human beings have an innate need to bond and connect. And when we're happy and healthy, we'll bond and connect with the people around us. But in an unhealthy where that's we're cut off from that either because you're isolated or traumatized or you've been taught to value the wrong things you will bond and connect with something that gives you some sense of value and meaning right now if the only source of meaning you've been given in your life or the primary one is the likes you get on instagram then yeah it's not foolish or we don't want to be judgmental or sneering at people who have become addicted to that form

of reinforcement in it it's understandable totally understandable again comes back to that thing we're talking about the whole way through your pain makes sense right these problems occur for reasons that are entirely understandable and i know they seem mysterious when you're in the middle of them right i could when you're in the middle of depression it feels like it has no meaning when you're in the middle of addiction it it feels like it has no meaning. When you're in the middle of addiction, it doesn't feel like it's about these deeper things. It feels like it is about the immediate object of the addiction and not the deeper causes. But there are these deeper causes. We know this. There's enormous amounts of scientific evidence for this. And you know, maybe it's, well, not maybe, this is where my thinking has got over the last few months is that it's not necessarily the drug or the technology that's the problem. As your rat study actually demonstrates quite nicely, it's how are you using with your buddies, you have a meal and a glass of wine, let's say, right? As opposed to when you come back from work, you're super stressed,

you feel isolated, you feel there's no meaning and you have no agency in your life and you're using alcohol to soothe that pain, the alcohol is going to have a different effect. And in some ways you can talk about that with social media in the same way. If you're using it, as you mentioned, to sort of keep in touch with people interact with people you know build these sort of networks online where you have you share similar values it can be a very valuable tool but if you're using it every time you feel down to sort of get that connection um of course that can be helpful for some people right just just to be clear but i think that's when it can start to be a slippery slope down um johan look this has already become the longest conversation sorry I know not at all I've

really enjoyed it and I feel like we've we barely scratched the surface so um I I hope we get the chance to do this again definitely because I think so much more we could talk about but but one thing I'd just like to finish on if you don't mind is the point of me setting up this podcast and the reason i call it feel better live more is i genuinely feel that when we feel better in ourselves we get more out of life and and the goal with each conversation really is yes to challenge people maybe think about things in a slightly different way but i want to empower every listener as much as possible to become the architects of their own health. And I appreciate that's tricky in a society that can make it very hard for us to do the things

that we want to do. But I wonder, with the deep levels of research you've done, the books you've written, do you have some sort of top tips for people who are listening to this, you know, some sort of short and sweet tips for them that they can think about applying into their life that are going to help improve the way that they feel. Yeah, I think, remember, your pain makes sense. It has causes. We can understand those causes together. And if you cannot solve them as an individual, and it's likely you can't, connect with groups who can change them. And I think one of the reasons that can sound so daunting, one of the reasons I'm really optimistic about that is because I've seen the most unbelievable transformation in my lifetime. I'm 40 years old, I'm gay. One of the people I think

about all the time is a friend of mine called Andrew Sullivan who a lot of your listeners will know he's an amazing writer and journalist based in the US and in 1993 Andrew was diagnosed as HIV positive it's the height of the AIDS crisis his best friend Patrick had just died and it's a death sentence as far as he knows so he went he quit his job and he went to a place called Provincetown which little town in Cape Cod to die and he decided he was going to do one last thing before he died. He was going to write a book about a completely crazy utopian idea that no one had ever heard of. And he's like, okay, I'm not going to live to see this. No one alive now is going to live to see this, but someone somewhere down the line might pick up this idea. The book he, the idea he wrote the first ever book about was gay marriage, right? And when I get depressed, because we're talking about these big things we've got to fight right i try to imagine going back in time to 1993 to andrew in provincetown

saying to him okay andrew you're not going to believe me 24 years from now okay first thing you're going to be alive you wouldn't believe that for a moment secondly you'll be married to a man thirdly i'll be with you when the supreme court of the United States quotes this book you're writing now in its judgment, making it mandatory for every state in the United States to introduce gay marriage. And the next day you'll be invited by the president of the United States to a white house that will be lit up in the colors of the rainbow flag to celebrate what you and so many other people have achieved, gay people and straight people who sided with us. Oh, and by the way, that president is going to invite you. He going to be black right every aspect of that would

have sounded like the most bonkers science 25 years ago right yeah nothing right nothing though those transformation that andrew is alive he saw that happen right every everyone listening to your program has lived through incredible transformations the women listening don't need me to mansplain this to them, but my grandmothers, when they got married, weren't even allowed to have bank accounts in their own names, right? I mean, we've lived through incredible transformations. The main thing I would say is we are living at a moment

when people are deeply pessimistic for all sorts of understandable reasons. If we're broken up, if we're taught to value the wrong things, if we're controlled and humiliated all day at work, it's easy to get into a mode where you think we are powerless. The single most important thing I would say to anyone who's depressed and anxious or anyone at all listening to this is you are incredibly powerful, right? Ordinary people have changed the world time and time again. They don't do it by sitting at home alone. They do it by joining up with other people.

Together, we can deal with the reasons why we have been made to feel so shit. These things were not ordained by nature. They weren't like earthquakes. They were decisions that were made by human beings. And we can undo those decisions. We can build a much better world for ourselves and for our children. We don't have to live like this this and you have the power with other people to change and challenge that yeah what a wonderfully optimistic note to end this conversation on um guys i i really would highly encourage you check out johan's books both of them actually uh i think they're incredible i think they will cause you to rethink some of the things you may have thought um johan i'm absolutely going to try and get you on the podcast again at some point

in the future my publishers always tell me off if i don't say they gave me a script to read at the end which makes me sound like a psychopath so i'm not going to read it but anyone who wants any more information about where they can get the book or the audio book uh can go to www.thelostconnections.com and they can take a quiz to see how much they know about causes of depression and anxiety and they can listen to audio of loads of the people we've been talking about and watch videos and do other cool stuff incredible guys check it out i just want to say as well i'm really proud to have done this show with you i think you are doing amazing work i really urge people to read your books and i just think we need you're doing exactly what we need doctors to do and you should be really really proud of the work you're doing because you're

communicating in such a brilliant way and they're such important and profound insights so i'm just feel really chuffed to have met you and and really admire what you're doing johan thank you so much and we'll speak again soon hooray that concludes today's episode of the feel better live more podcast i have to say that my conversation with johan has probably been one of my most enjoyable on the podcast so far and I really do hope you got as much out of the conversation as I did. If you have not yet heard part one of this conversation I highly recommend that you go back into your podcast app and take a listen. As always do let Johan and I know what you thought of today's conversation. Johan is on Twitter at JohanHari101 and on Instagram at Johan.Hari.

Please do tag us both and please do use the hashtag FBLM or feel better live more so that I can easily find your comments. You can see everything that Johan and I talked about today on the show notes page for this episode, which is drchatterjee.com forward slash 52. Do check it out. There are plenty of links to other articles that Johan has written that I really do think you will find super interesting. One of the reasons that I really enjoy this chat with Johan is that I feel we share a very similar philosophy. How do you get to the root cause of a problem rather than simply suppress the symptoms? I do believe that stress is one of the biggest factors that is driving ill health in society today, which is why I wrote my new book, The Stress Solution, to really give stress the airtime that it deserves, and most importantly,

to give you simple practical tips that you can use to live a happier and calmer life. Many of the themes and issues that we discussed on the podcast today are topics that I have covered and written about in the book. I mentioned the live framework in my chat with Johan which is a brand new framework that I've created to help people get more meaning and purpose in their lives. It's something that I use with my patients and they find it incredibly helpful. I also talk about the importance of relationships and I know from the feedback that I've received that many of you have found this one of the most enjoyable sections in my book.

If you have not yet picked up a copy, you can order The Stress Solution in all the usual places in paperback, ebook, and as an audio book, which I am narrating. If you enjoy my weekly podcasts, one of the best ways that you can support them is by leaving a review on whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. You can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family on your social media channels or you can do it the good old-fashioned way and simply tell your friends about the show i really do appreciate your support that's it for today i hope you have a fabulous week make sure that you have pressed subscribe and i'll be back

in one week's time with my latest episode. Remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.