I was in Carrollton, Georgia last week, a beautiful town about an hour west of Atlanta. I was speaking to the Tanner Health System about the cultural shift in health care delivery from an interventional model to one based on prevention and healing in community. This hospital is the only one in the Southeast to have received a grant funded by the Affordable Care Act to implement community health activities.

My day started with an early morning radio program, at lunch I addressed the hospital staff at lunch, and spoke to the community in the early evening. By the end of the day I was ready to indulge in a well-deserved reward. Eating has always comforted me, there’s not a carbohydrate or sugar that doesn’t call out to me.

The waitress, a lovely young woman with a great drawl, introduces herself as Debbie and takes my order. While waiting she serves me great crusty garlic bread accompanied by olive oil with fresh grated Romano cheese. I proceed to inhale it, and find myself wanting some more. I know I don’t really need it, but when Debbie returns I tell her I’d love some more bread adding defensively that I know it’s not good for me. She asks why, I tell her carbs go straight from my lips to my belly, and I can hardly fit into my pants.

I was expecting the typical response from any server, which would be to encourage the customer to splurge tonight, and looking for permission to do what I wanted to do without feeling guilty about my overindulgence. But Debbie says “ if you have a goal, go for it”, and then added that she sometimes struggled with weight and would have loved if a server had encouraged her to hang in when she was getting ready to splurge.

I didn’t get the extra bread, thanked her for being the first Public Health Waitress I’ve ever met. She helped me choose to become the principal agent in my own healing.

Today’s technology is always looking to improve ways for us to connect and share information. Google has announced that for $1,500 it’s going to give a select group of “bold, creative individuals” a chance to buy the first version of Google glasses. These are voice activated eyeglasses that will render cell phones obsolete; in addition to phone, texting and internet access, the Google glasses will have a tiny video screen located in the upper right-hand corner of the frames that allow you to watch streaming video without it interfering with your vision.

Whether you are, biking, kayaking, fishing, jogging, or relaxing at the ocean you can tell your computer to search the Internet, get GPS directions, and participate in a video chat, or record what you’re seeing and doing through a tiny, mounted camera. The all-seeing glasses will also allow Google to collect a lot of data on you, which they will of course use to sell you something.

I’m a relic… I don’t want to know and hear everything, and actually would like less immediate information. I also don’t feel like I’m missing something if I’m not available in every moment. I like getting away to places where I can’t be easily found, and was delighted to find another relic who can wait years before he’s found.

Harvey is 62 years old, and has lived his entire life in Amagansett, a small town on the eastern tip of New York’s Long Island. Harvey’s idea of connecting and sharing information is to write notes, put them in a glass bottle and throw them into the ocean. Ever since he was a kid, Harvey has launched these notes that included his name and address, a thought, wish or a blessing.

Over the last 50 years Harvey has heard from about 50 people who found his bottles as far away as the Caribbean Islands and Europe. Sometimes it’s taken 20 years to hear, but whenever people get in touch they often strike up a friendship. It’s not Facebook fast, but the process is so much more romantic. Harvey says that when he hears back from somebody it always takes him back to when he was a kid and how he’d think about who else was out there in the vastness, that maybe something magical could happen.

Harvey is still practicing his primitive social networking, and I’m hoping I can convince you to do the same. Get out of wireless range, and alone in a place you love write a note, wish, or dream, stick it in a bottle and throw it into the sea, or bury it in the ground, hide it in a tree, and if somebody responds how sweet that will be. But treasure those precious moments because they launch the magic of dreams.

A new study sponsored by the National Institute on Aging predicted that 15% of people over the age of 70 will get dementia (NEJM, April 4, 2013). The cost to society both financially and in terms of human suffering is enormous. But just because you’re forgetting names, losing track in conversations, can’t remember where you left your keys does not mean you’re getting Alzheimer’s dementia.

The media and pharmaceutical company advertisements are telling us that if you’ve lost a bit of your edge better see your doctor because you could be suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s. Referrals to neurologists and neuropsychologists will increase, we’ll order more brain scans and we’ll surely order more drugs (that don’t work half the time and don’t slow the disease.

What ever happened to the days when Uncle Morris was forgetful but still reasonably well functioning, and we attributed it to hardening of the artery’s.. Just because you’re losing it doesn’t mean you’ve lost it. We are all losing it, that’s what happens as we age; we lose hair, hearing, sight, muscle mass, sexual urgency, because we’re getting older. The critical issue is finding a way to come to your losses appreciating what’s left and deal with it.

I’m losing a bit my balance, in part due to the acoustic neuroma in my brain, but mostly because my left leg and foot are weak as a result of disc disease and multiple back operations. I just finished working with a physical therapist who was very helpful; who at the end of our sessions told me that if I continued to do the exercises to strengthen my leg I’d be able to maintain my balance long into the future. If my foot did ultimately drop and I needed a brace, it was no big deal. I could still keep doing what I liked doing best.

My ego can’t imagine my needing a leg brace, but it’s getting tamed enough to appreciate that whatever helps me continue to celebrate who I am, I can live with it.

We are all losing it, but if it’s not enough to immobilize you, I say ____ everybody lighten up, celebrate whatever you have and surround yourself with friends and family that love you.

Dr. Lawrence Krauss is a distinguished physicist and Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. He invited a stellar panel of scientists and science writers to tell the story of science. (https://origins.asu.edu/events/science-myth-and-reality)

I couldn’t wait to buy a ticket to the event after all, I’m a scientist and a storyteller, but I was flabbergasted when 3,000 people showed up. Most of the world doesn’t see science as a story; they see it as a presentation of the facts. Science is not about facts; it’s a story about how to ask questions and being open to how they can be answered. To look for the truth even if it shakes the foundation of what you once believed.

Science is a great story, one that requires it’s practitioners to look at what is familiar in a new way; to be skeptical about ideas and beliefs that can’t be proven, to scrutinize, and to always to being willing to be surprised as the story unfolds. Science is the movement from confusion to clarity

Scientists agree that there are some questions that may not even be answerable, like the existential questions about life’s meaning and purpose; or what is consciousness? But all those questions should be asked; if they can’t be answered let’s acknowledge our helplessness, and not get defensive about it.

The great physicist, Richard Feynman said he had only approximate answers, and beliefs with varying degrees of uncertainty. He was not absolutely sure of anything, and there were many things he didn’t know anything about. He also said, “I don’t have to know an answer; I don’t feel frightened about not knowing things; by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which as far as I can tell, is the way it really is”.

I see myself as a scientist; I became a doctor because I had a passion for understanding disease and healing it. I became a psychiatrist because I developed a passion for wanting to understand the mind and human behavior. That pursuit led to an exploration about consciousness, altered states of consciousness, and the unfathomable unconsciousness.

Like Feynman, I have come to appreciate that I’m less sure about what I was once certain of about; all those things I was once sure about, now come with varying degrees of uncertainty. I love exploring the mystery, and I think we are all explorers watching this story unfold. Stay open; keep looking for new endings to old stories, and appreciate all the ways they can be told.

I was in Morocco recently and became captivated by a woodcarver working in a cobblestone alley in the old Marrakech marketplace. Hamid was carving intricate utensils, walking sticks, and art objects using a foot-powered lathe. Turning the wood with his foot, he applied varying sized chisels against the spinning wood to create these beautiful objects. I was staring at the wizardry of his hands as he carved a small amulet on which he wrote my name in Arabic, and then gifted me with it.

We spoke mostly with our hands; Hamid brought me an ingeniously carved box he called his “mystery box” because you had to figure out how to open it.  I worked on it for 5 minutes, gave up and handed it back to him for instructions. Hamid showed me how the parts moved to reveal first the key and then the lock. I watched intently, but it took me a while to finally get it right.

I told Hamid this box reminded me of a children’s story I’d written years ago about a magic box that contained the secret of life.  I wanted it and we indulged in the customary bargaining, until we both felt happy and the deal was sealed. I put the amulet inside the box.

The day I bought the mystery box was also the day of my grandsons 18th birthday, and I thought it would be a perfect gift for him, The weekend after returning I gave it to him on the day of our annual Passover/Easter/Spring equinox Sweat Lodge ceremony I told him the whole story of Hamid the woodcarver, and then gave him the mystery box. He worked on it and didn’t give up until he had discovered all the secret compartments and unlocked the box.

In the Sweat Lodge I told him this box would remind him of this day he legally became an adult. From now on he was responsible for making his own decisions and dealing with their consequences. I was confident he’d make good choices and if he sometimes didn’t that he’d learn from his poor choices and not repeat them. I said, “You’re opening the box of your new life. Your family has prepared you to make good decisions and walk a good path in life, now it’s up to you. Inside the box is my amulet, a reminder that wherever you are, I am also with you, in joy and blessing”.

As parents we must provide our children with a nurturing soil that give them solid roots in life, and later allow them to spread their wings and fly.

At the soul level we are all tribal people. As a species, we have a deep need to celebrate our joys and our sorrows in a community of kindred spirit. I am born into the tribe of Israel, and I am the son of Holocaust survivors, a history which has left a profound psychic imprint. I have always identified with the victimized, tortured and disenfranchised.

When I travel the world I often visit the old Jewish quarter’s, cemeteries, and synagogues because it always intensifies my tribal roots (at times it can get a bit heavy). I just returned from a visit to Spain and Morocco; in Toledo, Spain, one of the greatest centers of Jewish learning in the medieval world, It was also the center of the Inquisition. Spain’s Jews were expelled in 1492, many converted to Christianity but were accused of secretly maintaining ties to their ancestral faith and tortured. There is a museum in Toledo that houses those brutal instruments and of course my history is such that I visited it and left feeling sick to my stomach.

I went to Morocco to visit my granddaughter who has been studying and working there; visited the Jewish quarters in Fez, Rabat and Marrakech (also Mecca’s of Jewish scholarship in the Middle Ages). That was a far less heavy experience because in Morocco, I also participated in my other tribal tradition…I am also a member of the Clown tribe. The Clown/Fool/Jester has been an indispensable presence in every society, and since the beginning of time, has been allowed to break the rules, commit outrageous excesses, violate social norms, do things that lighten the mood reduce stress, anxiety, and lift the spirit..

My clown self gets me out of my head where my memories and preconceptions live, and into my heart, which is where my dreams and imagination live. When I put on my clown nose I connect with people from my most loving heart space. My granddaughter (also a member of the Clown tribe) made arrangements for us to clown in the pediatric oncology unit of the Hospital d’Enfants in Rabat.. We walked into the rooms where kids were getting chemotherapy infusions, and spoke the universal language of the heart, which is love. We touched, kissed, hugged, took pictures with entire families, the staff, the Medical Director, and made Facebook friends. It was such an incredible exchange of loving, healing energy and thinking about it still makes me glow.

Now, if you ask me what tribe I belong to say I am born into the Tribe of Israel, and live with the Tribe of Clowns. Find a tribe that makes your heart sing and let the love lift your soul.

Last week, Dr. Oz devoted his TV program to the use and abuse of Adderall, the addictive amphetamine that is prescribed for attention deficit disorders (ADD/ADHD) in children and young adults. The diagnosis has become so epidemic in our culture that one in seven children is now labeled developmentally disabled.

ADD/ADHD is not well defined; a schoolchild unable to stay focused, who doesn’t pay attention, can’t follow instructions, fidgets or daydreams, will find a doctor will prescribe this highly addictive medication. And it’s not just kids, young adults aged 20-29 are the fastest growing segment of people taking ADHD medications (14,000,000 prescriptions a year).

Dr. Oz spoke to the father of Richard Fee,  a bright 21 year old athlete, college class president and aspiring medical student. Richard wa prescribed Adderall to help him get more focused in his work and became addicted. His behavior changed, he became paranoid, violent and delusional. Richard was hospitalized, his father pleaded with the psychiatrist to stop prescribing the drug, said “you keep giving Adderall to my son, you’re going to kill him”. The psychiatrist told the father that he knew his son better than he did and gave him a 90-day prescription for it on his discharge from the hospital. Two weeks after he took the last one Richard Fee committed suicide.

As a culture we are pathologizing the ordinary ups and downs of the human experience and we are over prescribing drugs. We must find better ways of setting limits for our children other than chemically straitjacketing them; like the revolutionary idea of being willing to set limits on your kids and enforcing them. I’ve predicted (see Schlagbyte Archives, search ADHD) that we’d reduce 90% of problematic behaviors if we restored the dinner meal to a family ritual and talked to each other around the table about our day (with all electronics turned off).

To the Fee family my condolences are insufficient to express my sorrow. I cannot imagine the horror of of finding my child hanging in his bedroom closet. My heart aches for you, and as a psychiatrist I am ashamed of my colleagues behavior and hope you will continue to speak out on Richards behalf.

In March, 2001, 27-year-old Phoenix police officer, Jason Schecterle, was sitting in his parked patrol car when it was rammed by a taxi going over 100 miles an hour. His car exploded into a fireball and Jason sustained third degree burns over 40% of his body. He was not expected to make it through the night. But he did, and for 21/2 months he lay in a drug-induced coma wrapped like a mummy, and was never expected to talk, walk, or see again.

Amazingly, he survived, and was discharged from the hospital 6 months earlier than anyone believed he would. Jason was faced with many years of reconstructive surgery, but although he was severely disfigured, he left the hospital with his sense of humor intact. When his wife helped him put his sweater over his bald head, he said to her “careful now don’t mess up my hair”,

The first time I saw him was the night he carried the Olympic torch through Phoenix, Jan. 2002, on its way to the Winter Games in Salt Lake City. The organizing committees told Jason he could do it in a wheelchair; it might be easier for him to hold up the 3 1/2 pound butane torch, but Jason said he wanted to try and walk with it. I stood curbside as he ran by, his wife Suzie running around him with a camcorder. They were both laughing, the crowd cheered and I was moved to tears.

Jason retired from the police force; founded Beyond the Flames, a non-profit to help those who experience unimaginable adversity, triumph over their tragedy; and fathered his third child, chuckling when he said “not everything got burned.

I met him personally for the first time last week when he spoke at a gathering. Jason talked about what happened to him over the last 12 years, and showed us pictures of what he looked like before the fiery inferno. He described what it was like when he saw himself for the first time; his scarred face without eyelids, ears or nose, and decided that he could live with it. Jason said he knew his wife and children loved him, and reminded him of his soul, not just his disfigurement.

When he finished speaking I introduced myself, and told him about the first time I saw him jogging down Camelback Road holding the Olympic flame. I told him how much he inspired me. Jason thanked me, and said he thought he was the luckiest man in the world and couldn’t have imagined his life being so full.

Happy Valentines Day Relatives! Go out for a walk, run, or have dinner with your sweetie and carry the torch of your love.

I say this for All My Reltions, Mi Takuye Oyacin

At my first speaking engagement of the New Year, I had a scary experience that made me wonder what the rest of this year might bring. I was addressing the Minnesota Hospital Association about leadership in healthcare as our culture shifts from a delivery model based on intervention to one based on prevention. I suggested that authenticity, truth, transparency and accountability were the critical elements for successfully negotiating these uncharted waters.

When I speak, my style is one of passionate spontaneity; I have a basic outline, but as stories come to mind I tend to go off on tangents; this makes my presentations always different, and keeps me fresh and excited. This time, in the middle of my presentation, I got off on some tangential riff and then couldn’t remember where I was before I got sidetracked. The harder I tried to concentrate the blanker my mind became. It was only a matter 30 seconds but I felt a rising panic, and reached into my pocket to look at my notes, recovered my place and continued as if nothing had happened.

But I knew something had happened, and although I’m sure the pause was not what the audience remembered most about my talk, but it triggered some… OMG am I losing it …fears.

I would have loved to be able to find the courage in that panicky moment to share my truth, and say I forgot where I was; it would have been an example of what I was talking about, but at the moment I could not share my vulnerability.

The most profound teaching was not owning my truth but the awareness we never know when we might be stricken deaf, dumb, blind, lame, or otherwise incapacitated. Today I can still hear, see, smell, touch, and tell my stories. Today I am walking in the rain smelling the perfume of flowers, tasting with greater relish, listening more intensely and living life with joy. Above all is not to fear not fear and say thanks for every day.

Last week was the second anniversary of the serious wounding of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and the killing of 6 others including nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green. Christina’s mother was in New York promoting a national plan to prevent gun violence. Afterwards, she went to Newtown, Connecticut to support the families of the 20 children who were killed by another crazed young gunmen. Last week also featured the pretrial hearings of another sick young man who gunned down 70 people in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater last year. This surge of murders has us again scrambling for solutions; gun control, more intense background checks, and curbing media violence, but that’s not enough.

I’m reminded of the story about people picnicking by a riverside who suddenly see a drowning child in the water. The picnickers mobilize to form a human chain to reach and rescue the child. No sooner do they return to their fun than they see another child in distress. Again they link up to save the child, but when they emerge from the water one of the rescuers walks away. The others call out to him “where are you going, we may need you again?” To which he replied, “I’m going upstream to see how they are getting in”.

I think we need to be looking upstream, and addressing what’s happening to young people in our culture that sets the stage for such psychopathic acts of violence? Jared Diamond, the distinguished scientist and Pulitzer Prize winning author tells us in his new book “The World Until Yesterday” that when it comes to raising kids we can learn something from our ancestors who lived in traditional,‘ small-scale cultures’, where kids didn’t grow up to be psychopaths.

Kids raised in traditional cultures grew up in community, with extended families, all of who shared responsibility for childcare, training and the development of social skills. These people talked to each other, and didn’t spend much time by themselves in passive entertainment; their children felt secure, and became young people who were capable of facing their fears, insecurities, and challenges without becoming crazed killers.

These are lessons worth considering; let’s spend more time talking to each other rather than communicating only online. Let’s restore the evening meal to a family ritual; make it the rule to turn off phones, headsets, and computers at the dinner table. Share what’s happening and important in your life. We can find, create, and nurture a community of support; build a network of people who mirror your values, expectations, and who will be there for you in your joys and in your struggles.

Surely we need to enact some gun control, and also intensify the background checks, but let’s also go upstream and make some changes in our child rearing practices.