Probing the impact of “evolutionary mismatch” . . .
Anathema! - Beyond Redemption?
evolutionary mismatch - “is the evolutionary biology concept that a previously advantageous trait may become maladaptive due to change in the environment . . .“ (Evolutionary mismatch, 2023).
According to a New Yok Post article disclosing recent CDC findings, current indicators of our youth’s declining psychological and emotional wellbeing may signal an “ever expanding mental health crisis”. What’s more, the fact that “suicide” has now become “the second leading cause of death for US children, ages 10–14”, similarly reflects the likely magnitude of suffering (as a societal infirmity) with which we’re otherwise afflicted (Penley, 2023).
Yet, but as vested mainstream interests frequently do to simplify, manage, or otherwise normalize the impact of such unsettling reports — when asked in March by a CBS News moderator about factors “causing this increase in distress among young people” (approx. 1:40), Jamie Howard of the Child Mind Institute reiterated a classic certitude emphasizing the fact that youthful minds evince an “interplay between hormones and the developing brain” (CBS Mornings, approx. 1:50–2:05).
Thus, it’s sobering to compare Howard’s rationale behind causally related symptoms of pediatric “distress” — with that of a recently produced The Son (2022), with Zen McGrath and Hugh Jackman where, 17-year old Nicholas (McGrath) becomes despondent in the wake of his father Peter’s (Jackman) remarrying and birth of a succeeding sibling. Within the film’s contextual setting however — where intricately interwoven circumstances might otherwise reflect nothing more than a temporarily disheveled family milieu, Nicholas nevertheless, finds himself in a disparate struggle to retain his sense of place, meaning, and functional connection with the world and others.
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.” (Mathew 10:34-36 -ESV) — From the Lord Jesus’, “Great Commission” to his twelve Apostles.
Thus, and over the last three decades, it’s been within this same realm of everyday occurrence that my own experience as a husband, father, recovering alcoholic, childcare clinician, educator, grandfather, and writer — has, subsequently engrafted a qualified sense of impending ‘evil’ (e.g., avidyā?) stealthily masquerading itself, perhaps increasingly — in the relatively auspicious, yet effectually undeterred — sight of all.
I’ll venture an explanation . . .
So, but along similar lines, my own saga of ‘conscious awakening’ could be said to have been initiated a few days before Christmas of 1992 — roughly five weeks shy of my forty-second birthday with what proved at the time — an affectively ‘unconscious’ launch of personal sobriety. Having separated (by her choosing) from my wife and two preschoolers only months earlier, while simultaneously being chased from a relatively ‘high-profile’ job in mortgage banking, only to be starting another — by December . . . my life had become — well, as they say in ‘program’ . . . “unmanageable” (see - Workaholics Anonymous).
“Recovery is a deeply personal, unique process of changing one’s attitudes, values, feelings, goals, skills and/or roles. It is a way of living a satisfying, hopeful, and contributing life even with limitations caused by the illness. Recovery involves the development of new meaning and purpose in one’s life as one grows beyond the catastrophic effects of mental illness” [emphasis added] (Recovery model, 2023).
Thereto, while recovery’s path has posed its share of challenges in shaping my appreciation of, assuming responsibility for, and subsequently adapting to — “change” . . . such was southern California’s socioeconomic landscape for me as I strove to retain a reasonably propitious lifestyle during the early- and mid-90’s. For these reasons too, yet perhaps counter intuitively, I necessarily accepted a minimum wage, 32-hour a week, childcare position in the summer of 1994 with a north San Diego County agency — and that, prior to assuming additional ‘on-call duties’ some months later at a clinical facility in my local (Riverside County) community of Murrieta. It was also around this same period I’d first encounter Joel Dreyer, the (once) flamboyant, if not eccentric, “medical director” at Oak Grove Institute where “children with social and behavioral challenges” are said to have “loved him” (Hayasaki, 2015).
Moreover, but with something approaching the present clarity of 20/20 hindsight (I suppose), 1996 likewise marked an especially nefarious cross roads for a great many in the US — myself included, though few would yet possess a conscious grasp of either the manner or extent to which their socioeconomic autonomy was otherwise subject to ‘systemic undermining’. Yet, for me, after nearly two years of juggling simultaneous jobs — one entailing weekend graveyard shifts . . . by Fall, I was adequately situated nonetheless to inaugurate a graduate program in Couseling Psychology with National University in Vista.
In addition to this redirection of career path however and, while not directly related to nor, for that matter, was I particularly aware of either at the time — two especially impactful events were occurring around this same juncture. The first of these 1) involved thoroughgoing changes in “societal and corporate attitudes toward health services” as discussed by Steven Hayes and Nicholas Cummings, a past-President of the American Psychological Association (APA) in an interview published by the American Association of Applied and Preventative Psychology (AAAPP) for its The Scientist Practitioner newsletter (Cummings, 1996).
In retrospect now, the two figures’ dialogue revolved around a shared intent to assess the transitional meaning surrounding a systemwide redacting of mental health service delivery — one, they aptly termed, an “industrialization of health care”. However, and in navigating comparable contexts relating to my own experience over the last twenty-five years or so — today, I subsequently retain a measured focus on my relational proximity to, and familiarity with Steven Hayes due to our respective engagement(s) involving evolution (in general); the prosocial movement; ProSocial World; and (perhaps) evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson more particularly.
For these reasons though, and having been raised from the mid-50’s on in southern California’s predominantly protestant, ‘white’, ‘middle-, and upper middle-class’ communities — by the late 90’s I welcomed prospects of further exploring, and in turn, learning just how my fascination with spirituality (and ‘religion’) might better translate into practical applications involving “science” (please see: A Marriage of Sense and Soul - 1998). Similarly then, and as things have transpired, my introduction to Ken Wilber’s extensive body of work, beginning for me with Eye to Eye in 1997 — has thus proved of resounding influence.
Furthermore, and accompanying the incremental complexities of this same period, it was my further good fortune to be extended an invitation by a fellow classmate to visit Valley Center’s Wat Metta Forest Monastery in late August of 1997. As a result, and over the next nine years, I’d subsequently be afforded sufficient occasion to immerse myself within Theravada culture and, in turn — embrace both hatha yoga and meditative practice (see also anapanasati) as two personalized forms of life-enhancing discipline. From an interpersonal perspective too, this experience would also initiate the weaving of an expansive ‘meshwork’ comprised, in part, of notable others including Roger Walsh, a former department chair of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and a close personal acquaintance of Ken Wilber.
However, but within this same overarching context, the second major occurrence of note in 1996, 2) entailed Purdue Pharma’s introduction and marketing of a newly formulated opioid called OxyContin (see Oxycodone) whose “FDA approved” label assured those taking it “that iatrogenic addiction was very rare” [italics substituted for quotation marks] when “legitimately used in the management of pain”. Not coincidently then, yet perhaps to varying extents, Purdue’s sales representatives had conformingly been schooled “to carry the message that the risk of addiction was ‘less than one percent’” [emphasis added] (Van Zee, 2009).
Also dating back to this same period of time, because National University administrators had disrupted my matriculated course of study surrounding complications in arranging an internship — I was eventually retained as a Therapist Trainee within a dual-diagnostic (e.g., a co-occurring disorder involving mental illness and substance use) agency in Riverside, California. Fatefully though, my assigned tasks there would include the completion of client “intakes” both by, and under, Joel Dreyer’s direction. What’s more, yet as such matters sometimes occur—having amassed nearly half of the intern hours needed for graduation, I was summarily ‘fired’ following the fatal overdose of a woman with whom I’d met, prepared, and subsequently submitted paperwork, to my supervising psychiatrist.
As a further result too, but in the wake of these actualities, all taking place within the year prior to 2001’s 9/11 Attacks, I began to undergo very subtle, yet prodigious shifts in (my) conscious experience. Consequently, and informed in large part through my continued study of transpersonal psychology as proffered by those like Stanislav Grof, I came to better appreciate how the “non-ordinary states of consciousness” (NOSCs) I was now accessing via meditation, were subsequently arising in perceptible contrast to the crisis of faith by which I felt otherwise vexed . . . or, something known within Christian mysticism as a Dark Night of the Soul.
Within this same context however, and even today (more than 20 years later), it’s an interesting exercise to attentively recount my ‘personal experience’ with spiritual distress from this particular period in time. By 2009 though, and with Durà-Vilà & Dein’s publication of, “The Dark Night of the Soul: spiritual distress and its psychiatric implications”, contemporary academics were beginning to better express alternative vantage points to those solely of Western Science’s empirically induced sway.
In an attempt to throw light into the relationship between religious experience and psychopathology, researchers at the Alister Hardy Centre in Lampeter (formerly in Oxford) have looked into the idea of ‘‘good’’ madness and ‘‘bad’’ madness (Foskett, 1996). We would like to extend this analogy to the Dark Night’s experience of emotional suffering by calling it ‘‘good’’ sadness to differentiate it from ‘‘bad’’ sadness (that meets criteria for a depressive episode according to the ICD-10/DSM-IV). Similarly, Jackson and Fulford (1997, 2002) also talked about ‘‘psychosis good and bad,’’ claiming that the exclusively descriptive criteria developed by psychiatry in the twentieth century lack face validity to the extent that they fail to distinguish pathological from non-pathological forms of psychotic experience [emphasis added] (Durà-Vilà & Dein, p. 13–14, 2009).
What’s more though, but in comparable ways, Grof too had astutely recognized during the mid-80’s that “(t)raditional psychiatry” viewed these “unusual states of consciousness” as “pathological” and subsequently, attributable “to anatomical, physiological, and biochemical changes in the brain” (Grof & Grof, 1986/2017). However, and rather than acknowledging that such “emotional, perceptual, and psychosomatic manifestations” reflect “difficult stages in a natural developmental process” — yet, ones nonetheless capable of facilitating ”emotional and psychosomatic healing, creative problem-solving, personality transformation, and conscious evolution” — ‘contemporary psychiatry’ instead, exhibited historical patterns of “routinely and indiscriminately” utilizing “controlling and suppressive approaches to terminate such experiences” (Grof & Grof, 1986/2017).
healing - “In psychiatry and psychology, healing is the process by which neuroses and psychoses are resolved to the degree that the client is able to lead a normal or fulfilling existence without being overwhelmed by psychopathological phenomena. This process may involve psychotherapy, pharmaceutical treatment or alternative approaches such as traditional spiritual healing” (Healing, 2023).
From this (post-911) stage forward and over the next seven years however, this prior background would subsequently lead to my working as a ‘gig-economy educator’ functioning primarily as a ‘special assignment substitute’ in both local public and non-public (e.g., Oak Grove Institute) sectors, all-the-while, indigently subsisting within my community on a combination of per diem pay, county medical services, and (when necessary) food stamps.
“Between 1991 and 2010, the number of prescribed stimulants increased tenfold among all ages, with prescriptions for attention-deficit disorder drugs tripling among school-age children between 1990 and 1995 alone” (Macy, p. 134, 2018).
Then too, and as ‘fate’ sometimes takes place — in late July of 2007 with members of my immediate family including mother Helen, daughter Kaitlin, and 3-month old grandson Landon, all sharing in a vigil of my father’s remaining days of hospice . . . Kristy called our attention to an article in the morning’s paper recounting Joel Dreyer’s arrest from the previous day. In addition to his continued responsibilities with Oak Grove and “seeing private patients at” a nearby Temecula office, it seemed the arrant physician had inanely expanded his practice to handing out prescriptions in “parking lots”, “Chinese restaurants”, and from “his home” (Hayasaki, 2015).
Consequently, and following the overdose death of a Newport Beach woman over Christmas of 2005 possessing both “Oxycontin and Ambien” prescriptions obtained from Dreyer only “23 days earlier”, investigators would additionally find that “between 2004 and 2007” he’d similarly prescribed more than 200,000 combined doses of Actiq, Xanax, Concerta, Ritalin, Aderall, Norco, Oxycodone, and Hydrocodone. Moreover, and in a further twist of tragic irony, although the psychiatrist’s legal proceedings posed the reasonable likelihood that frontotemporal dementia had been a contributing factor to Dreyer’s indiscretions, in September of 2009 he’d nevertheless plead guilty to “charges of conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute” and — ultimately receive a 10 year prison sentence the following year (Hayasaki, 2015).
Ergo, and by early Spring of 2008, with little concrete information concerning any of these ‘goings-on’, nor, sufficient accreditation to sustain myself professionally — I cashed in a public employee’s retirement (PERS) account of $3000 to finance a swan-song exodus from California. With the primary intent of maintaining closer connection to both my daughter and grandson —and, just one year after Tech’s Shooting of 2007, I heedfully loaded a few prized belongings into a 1992 Jetta and, over the next four days, pioneered a cross-country trek to southwest Virginia.
So, and at fifty-seven years of age with over a decade and a half of sobriety to my merit, but — having neither the benefit of employment or income and, subsequently subsisting in two temporary housing shelters over the next five and a half years . . . I found myself relegated to a state of homeless, house arrest in Roanoke, Virginia. Again, and in reminiscence now, it’s interesting to reflect on this particular period as involving a radical learning experience (please see: “Design Challenge — Human Factors and My Ideal Learning Space”) in what I might term “alternative civics” —or, a process, informing my own sense of personal identity with regard to determining and subsequently adopting — my value, place, and/or “purpose” in relation to the immediate ‘community’!
It’s largely for these reasons though, my discovery of Erika Hayasaki’s 2015 publication of “Criminal Mind”, simultaneously with that of Beth Macy’s release of her ‘instant New York Times best-selling’ Dopesick in 2018, has proven so relevant in my recounting of this narrative.
In her new book, “Dopesick”, journalist and author Beth Macy takes readers to the front lines of the opioid epidemic. As Jeffrey Brown reports, she outlines what’s fueling a growing public health crisis that has killed more than 350,000 Americans in the last 15 years. It’s part of our ongoing series, “America Addicted” (Brown & Fritz, 2018).
In much this way too, one of the thematic constants running throughout Dopesick are the respective, gut wrenching, personal accounts as reported by some of my hometown’s (often ‘single’) mothers like Patricia Mehrmann (Brown & Fritz, 2018 - see above) and Bradley Free Clinic, Executive Director, Janine Underwood, or — for that matter . . . Melissa Etheridge’s (see - Talking to My Angels) own tale involving the loss of her 21 year-old son Beckett to opioid addiction. Each, in its own way, bearing testimony to the suffering, incalculable costs, and heartache of personal casuality.
anathema — “The word anathema has two main meanings. One is to describe something or someone that is hated or avoided. The other is to refer to a formal excommunication by a church.[1][2][3] These meanings come from the New Testament,[4] where an anathema was a person or thing cursed or condemned by God.[5] In the Old Testament, an anathema was something or someone dedicated to God as a sacrifice,[6] or cursed and separated from God because of sin.[7] These represent two types of setting apart, one for devotion, the other for destruction[8]” (Anathema, 2023).
Consequently though, and to better help readers grasp the immensity of the societal bane being addressed here, the Biden Administration published a statement in July (2023) by Dr. Rahul Gupta, Director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy citing the “latest CDC report” showing “predicted overdose deaths” for the “12-month period ending in February 2023” as totaling 109,940 individuals. Along these same lines, Gupta also referenced data revealing “that, for every fatal overdose, there were nearly 14 non-fatal overdoses . . . presented to the emergency department” [emphasis added]. What’s more, the West Virginia physician indicated previous analyses had estimated “costs associated with the (overdose) epidemic may be as high as $1.5 trillion for the year 2020” [parenthesis added] (Gupta, 2023).
Therefore, and within this overall context, the following three points could prove (especially) germane to informing an intelligible path forward:
- The issuance of a “White House Report on Mental Health Research Priorities” in February of this year coincided with President Biden’s State of the Union address similarly urging ‘a bipartisan effort on mental health’.
- In a 2021 MSNBC interview with Danny Strong, creator of the award-winning Hulu miniseries Dopesick, the executive producer discussed ‘the trial that should have happened’ as revealing a “dark side of American capitalism” involving a “collusion of government and industry”. Thus, Strong in this way, implied Purdue Pharma had been “aided and abetted” by the ‘turning of a blind eye’ among various governmental divisions including “the FDA, the Justice Department” and “Congress” (MSNBC, 2021, approx. 1:00–1:40).
- “On August 10, 2023, the Supreme Court granted a stay” in its Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P. (2023) case, reportedly, in response to “an emergency request by the Biden Administration to block” the Sackler family’s opioid settlement deal of $6 billion (CNBC Television, 2023, approx. 0:07-0:12). Consequently, the US Justice Department will present an appeal in December (2023) revisiting the settlement’s legality in shielding the Sacklers from civil lawsuits relating to “their role in the opioid epidemic” (Purdue Pharma, 2023).
In conclusion, I think it prudent to express a deep, regrettable, sense for how little innate human natures embodied in societal contexts, appear to have changed over the last 25 years — at least, as depicted here in comparison to the technological advances which have otherwise afforded me the means of drafting this article.
The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion is a 1998 book by American author Ken Wilber. It reasons that by adopting contemplative (e.g. meditative) disciplines related to Spirit and commissioning them within a context of broad science, that “the spiritual, subjective world of ancient wisdom” could be joined “with the objective, empirical world of modern knowledge”. The text further contends that integrating science and religion in this way would in turn, “have political dimensions sewn into its very fabric”.[1] from (Marriage of Sense and Soul, 2023)
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Brown, J., & Fritz, M. (2018, August 14): A festering opioid crisis, worn-out families and ‘so much pain to process.’ PBS NewsHour. Retrieved September 10, 2023, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-festering-opioid-crisis-worn-out-families-and-so-much-pain-to-process .
CBS Mornings. (2023, March 3): Kids in crisis: CBS News and stations address the Youth Mental Health Crisis in America. CBS News. YouTube Video. Retrieved 12:39, July 1, 2023, from https://youtu.be/tYs6aBvm-2Y .
CNBC Television. (2023, August 10): Supreme Court blocks Purdue Pharma’s $6 billion opioid settlement will hear challenge. CNBC Television. YouTube Video. Retrieved 13:29, August 17, 2023, from https://youtu.be/U3A2wkotahU?feature=shared .
Cummings, N. (1996): “Now we’re facing the consequences”. The Scientist Practitioner, 6 (1), 9–13. American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology (AAAPP) Newsletter [Internet]. “Managed Care and the Future of Psychology”, from http://www.fenichel.com/Managed2.html .
Durà-Vilà, G., & Dein, S. (2009): “The dark night of the soul: Spiritual distress and its psychiatric implications”. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 12(6), 543–559. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674670902858800 .
Evolutionary mismatch. (2023): Evolutionary mismatch. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:14, June 14, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evolutionary_mismatch&oldid=1150604575 .
Grof, C., & Grof, S. (2017): “Spiritual emergency: The understanding and treatment of transpersonal crises”. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 36(2), 30–43. Republished by permission from ReVision: The Journal of Consciousness and Change (Vol. 8, No. 2, 1986) from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/ijts-transpersonalstudies/vol36/iss2/5/
Gupta, R. (2023, July 27): Hearing on “Oversight and Reauthorization of the Office of National Drug Control Policy” - Statement. United States House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability. Retrieved September 15, 2023, from https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Dr.-Rahul-Gupta-Written-Statement-July-27-2023-COA-Hearing.pdf .
Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P. (2023, September 10): In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:57, September 18, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harrington_v._Purdue_Pharma_L.P.&oldid=1174734981
Hayasaki, E. (2015): “A Criminal Mind”, The California Sunday Magazine, October 4, 2015, from https://story.californiasunday.com/joel-dreyer-criminal-psychiatrist/ .
Healing. (2023): Healing. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:22, August 16, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Healing&oldid=1168200280 .
Macy, B. (2018): Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and The Drug Company That Addicted America. Little, Brown and Company.
The Marriage of Sense and Soul. (2023, July 27). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:24, September 18, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Marriage_of_Sense_and_Soul&oldid=1167442720
Matthew 10:34–36 (ESV). (2023): “Do not think that I”. Retrieved from https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/mat/10/34/s_939034 .
MSNBC. (2021, October 27): Hulu series “Dopesick” gives an inside look at America’s opioid epidemic. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NQLMnkCkrk .
PBS NewsHour. (2023): States confront mental health crisis with coerced treatment. Retrieved September 12, 2023, from https://www.pbs.org/video/coerced-care-1692647351/ .
Penley, Taylor (Fox News). (2023): “Shocking CDC statistics reveal extent of mental health crisis among children in US”, New York Post, June 18, 2023, from https://nypost.com/2023/06/18/shocking-cdc-statistics-reveal-extent-of-mental-health-crisis-among-children-in-us/ .
Purdue Pharma. (2023, September 12): In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 21:23, September 18, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Purdue_Pharma&oldid=1174998853 .
Recovery model. (2023): Recovery model. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:41, July 9, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recovery_model&oldid=1154477562 .
Van Zee, Art. (2009): “The Promotion and Marketing of OxyContin: Commercial Triumph, Public Health Tragedy”. Am J Public Health. 2009 Feb; 99(2):221–227. Retrieved August 1, 2023 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/ .
