In “Unshrunk,” Laura Delano chronicles her struggles with mental illness — and the endless parade of pills meant to treat it.

By Casey Schwartz (NYTimes.com)

Casey Schwartz is the author of “Attention: A Love Story.”

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UNSHRUNK: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance, by Laura Delano

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Laura Delano was 13, a studious, budding squash champion in Greenwich, Conn., when she looked in the mirror one night and felt her world dissolve. The life of pressure and privilege to which she belonged — she is related to Franklin Delano Roosevelt — became unreal to her, meaningless, “a performance.”

Lashing out at her parents, begging to be sent away, led to the first of many mental health professionals, then to her first psychiatric diagnosis: bipolar disorder. Soon after, she would swallow her first mind-altering prescription pill.

Though she went on to Harvard — and made her debut at the Plaza in a floor-length white gown — she did so while binge-drinking, cutting and burning her flesh and wrestling with her sense that her life was hollow.

After college, as her friends soared, her life became an endless round of psychiatrists, institutionalizations and outpatient programs. An incomplete list of the drugs she has been prescribed: Depakote, Prozac, Ambien, Abilify, Klonopin, Lamictal, Provigil, Lithium.

Delano was the subject of a 2019 profile in The New Yorker, on the cascading effects of prescription pills and the challenge of getting off them. In “Unshrunk,” she tells her own story, and she tells it powerfully. Her memoir evokes “Girl, Interrupted” for the age of the prescription pill, a time when more and more Americans are on at least one medication for their mental health, including millions of children and teenagers.

Delano nearly didn’t live to tell this story: After years of treatment, she hid behind a boulder near the ocean in Maine and swallowed three bottles of pills. Somehow, miraculously, her father found her before it was too late.

Recently diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and being treated by a male psychiatrist whom she experienced as misogynistic and tyrannical, she had an epiphany.

In a bookstore, she ran across Robert Whitaker’s “Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.” Although the meds she was on made her foggy and reading was a challenge, she bought it, and saw her own experience vividly and alarmingly reflected. “I’d been confronted with something I’d never considered before: What if it wasn’t treatment-resistant mental illness that had been sending me ever deeper into the depths of despair and dysfunction, but the treatment itself?” she writes. There is a technical term for this, she tells us: “iatrogenic harm.”

Delano’s story is compelling, important and even haunting, but plenty of readers will chafe at her lack of interest in those who have actually been helped by these medications — especially today, when they’re facing criticism from some quarters. Writing about the effects of lithium, still considered the gold standard treatment for bipolar disorder, she analyzes the writer Jaime Lowe’s powerful 2015 article “I Don’t Believe in God, but I Believe in Lithium.” Lowe, living with bipolar disorder, wrote of the mania that came on when, feeling better, she experimented with coming off her lithium

But Delano sees this testimony through a different lens. Rather than take Lowe’s story at face value, Delano instead wonders whether Lowe has ever asked herself if these manic episodes were actually brought on by lithium withdrawal, rather than by bipolar disorder itself.

One wonders about this assertion, and whether Delano is looking at the treatment of mental illness, and mental illness itself, through a particular lens, one that can feel reductionist in its own right, even as she accuses American psychiatry of doing the same.

But Delano becomes more and more unapologetic about her views. She meets Robert Whitaker and begins to write blog entries on his website, spurred by the emails she receives from readers describing similar experiences. When she writes about her suicide attempt, she definitively breaks from the Greenwich code of discretion and perfection, and her mother and sisters cut off contact.

By the end of the book, Delano has become an advocate for those hoping to get off their meds, speaking at conferences and helping to develop a schedule for safe withdrawal. She gets married and has a baby. She assures the reader from the outset that she is not against psychiatry, but that when it comes to the D.S.M., American psychiatry’s diagnostic bible, “I no longer view this textbook as a legitimate or relevant source of information about myself.”

She does not pretend to be cured; she does not claim that her mind is an easy or comfortable place to live. She knows that her immense privilege helped provide the scaffolding that ultimately enabled her to get off the medications.

But she makes a more universal point, one that bears repeating and applies not only to mental illness but to the struggles of daily life: “We’re built for tribes and villages and neighborhoods and potluck dinners. We’re meant to feel it all and bear it all, together.”

UNSHRUNK: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance | By Laura Delano | Viking | 337 pp. | $30

A version of this article appears in print on April 13, 2025, Page 9 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Lessons in Chemistry. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

(Contributed by Michael, Kelly, H.W.)

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American Minister

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

The Ten of Disks The Lord of Wealth is a card which talks about the manifestation of the fruits of our labours, in whatever area they have been directed. When we have aimed all our energies in a single stream of force toward one end, there comes a point, inevitably, where we shall attain our objective. And that is what the Ten of Disks indicates.Often, commentaries on this card warn that once sufficient wealth has been attained, you should make sure you distribute excess fairly and generously. This is because energy which remains unused eventually corrupts and dissipates.But there’s another aspect to the right use of energy which is not so often addressed. This is to do with the way the Will works. There’s a common misunderstanding about the use of Will among us – we tend to think that applying Will is something that we only do consciously. This is incorrect. The human Will works all the time. It runs around happily creating whatever seems most pressing in your mind.This has a rather unfortunate side effect. For many people, the most pressing emotions and responses in their minds are connected to fear, pain, unhappiness or deprivation. Once seized by feelings such as these, it can be very difficult indeed to keep your mind off them, and engage in positive thoughts, affirmations and actions.You know the feeling – something comes along and hurts you. Then you suffer. You keep circling the issue in your mind. You build up a nice collection of fears. You make a lot of (often wildly illogical) painful associations. And you do not find a relevant affirmation and repeat it with extraordinary fervour until you have your feelings back under control. You do not go and do something nice for yourself. You do not deliberately force your thoughts and feelings onto a more positive track.All the time that cycle is taking place, your Will is wildly scampering after all those negative feelings and channelling your energy out into life, attempting to create the things it thinks you want!DOH!!! Dissipation of power causing chaos!The Lord of Wealth teaches us the invaluable lesson… by bringing our thoughts and emotions to a conscious level, and by making positive choices about how we direct those energies, we create our world. So we need to decide what we what, and then think about that… not linger on the things that we don’t want. And we need to trust our own energy to fly out into the Universe and come back to us completed.Then we are endlessly wealthy. Affirmation: “I am endlessly wealthy.”

(Angelpaths.com)

My body’s cells are suffused with light

APR 14, 2025

the_burtons

My body’s cells are suffused with light

My body is a gift, enabling me to ground my spiritual journey within the illusion of time and space. It is neither my ultimate reality nor my true identity. I use the body as it was meant to be used – as a vessel through which to express my love.

I protect my body from the assaults of modernity – from thoughts of chaos to the contaminants of the physical environment. I do so by infusing my body with the light of the divine, seeing with my inner eye the spirit of God as it pours into my every cell.

Dear God,
I dedicate to You my body.
Pour into it Your spirit.
Protect it from the forces of fear
And use it for Your purposes.
Turn my body into a holy thing.
And so it is.
Amen

My body’s cells are suffused with light

*To receive a morning meditation each day, please upgrade to a paid subscription

Bernt Børnich | TED2025

• April 2025

LikeRead transcript

What if doing your chores were as easy as flipping a switch? In this talk and live demo, roboticist and founder of 1X Bernt Børnich introduces NEO, a humanoid robot designed to help you out around the house. Watch as NEO shows off its ability to vacuum, water plants and keep you company, while Børnich tells the story of its development — and shares a vision for robot helpers that could free up your time to focus on what truly matters.

• Technology
• Engineering
• Innovation
• Robots
• Future
• Demo
• AI

About the speaker

Founder and CEO of 1X

Ian Berwick • Oct 25, 2015 Hymn of the United Nations Organization (الأمم المتحدة, 联合国 , Organisation des Nations unies, Организация Объединённых Наций, Naciones Unidas) Music – Pablo Casals Written by – Wystan Hugh Auden

Eagerly, musician,
Sweep your string,
So we may sing,
Elated, optative,
Our several voices
Interblending,
Playfully contending,
Not interfering
But co-inhering,
For all within
The cincture
of the sound,
Is holy ground
Where all are brothers,
None faceless others.
 
Let mortals beware
Of words, for
With words we lie,
Can say peace
When we mean war,
Foul thought, speak fair
And promise falsely,
But song is true:
Let music for peace
Be the paradigm,
For peace means to change
At the right time,
As the world clock
Goes “tick” and “tock”.
 
So may the story
Of our human city
Presently move
Like music, when
Begotten notes
New notes beget
Making the flowing
Of time a growing
Till what it could be,
At last it is,
Where even sadness
Is a form of gladness,
Where fate is freedom,
Grace and surprise.

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove • Apr 12, 2025 Joseph Burkes, MD, is a board certified specialist in internal medicine. He is coauthor of the chapter titled “Medical Healings Reported by UAP Contact Experiencers: An Analysis of the FREE Date” in the anthology Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness and Contact with Non Human Intelligence. In this interview, rebooted from 2019, he describes the details of his work with several organizations of using mental techniques including visualization and meditation to initiate visual contact with unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs). These contacts included ostensible two-way communication with glowing orbs and lights in the sky and instances of missing time. Eventually, he concluded that the intelligences behind the phenomena were capable of manipulating human consciousness and human belief systems. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on March 30, 2019)

(Astrobutterfly.com)

On April 12th, 2025, we have a Full Moon at 23° Libra. This is a healing and potentially breakthrough Full Moon where something long-buried may finally come to light.

The most important aspect the Full Moon makes is a tight opposition to Chiron in Aries. There’s an urgency about this Full Moon, and Chiron adds intensity and emotional charge: it’s healing – now or never.

Healing, of course, means different things to different people; it can be physical healing – like in the case of a health concern – but also emotional, psychological, or spiritual.

Perhaps there’s a health symptom you’ve ignored for a while – but it has been nagging you in the background, and now you decide to do something about it.

Perhaps there has been some emotional backlog – things left unspoken, a trauma or a difficult episode that hasn’t been fully processed. 

Even more benign things, like not dealing with an unresolved conversation, or not opening an email because you fear it requires a difficult decision, can stir feelings of unease and emotional heaviness.

Or maybe there’s a psychological wound; mental health challenges – anxiety, obsession, spiraling thoughts – can often be traced back to an old experience or key piece of information that wasn’t fully understood or integrated at the time. 

Since then, it’s been whirling in the background, keeping us stuck. When we finally put 2 and 2 together – when we understand the root cause of our discomfort – healing can spontaneously happen.
Some of the most insidious wounds, however, are spiritual. These are wounds we’re not consciously aware of, because in our modern, ‘science’-driven reality, spirituality is no longer a priority – and it’s harder to define. Symptoms of spiritual wounds include a lack of faith, a sense of meaninglessness, emotional numbness, lethargy, and loss of motivation.

We could argue – especially now, with Chiron transiting Aries – that most wounds, if we really trace them back to their source, are spiritual.

In fact, the words heal, whole, and even holy are all etymologically related – they all come from the same root (Proto-Germanic “hailjan”), and reflect the idea that health, wholeness, and sacredness are interconnected.  

It’s this primal disconnection from the sacred that leaves us without a compass – and allows all kinds of other forms of dis-ease, confusion, or fragmentation to settle in. 

We, astrology lovers, still remember – somewhere deep down – that there is a higher meaning to our experience, a cosmic order that binds everything together.

The Full Moon in Libra – tightly opposite Chiron, the Wounded Healer – comes with a unique opportunity to take an outside perspective and look at the wound for what it is. 

Full Moon In Libra – The Opposition Aspect

Libra is known for being a discerning, objective sign; it’s the first sign (the 7th out of 12) to make the aspect of opposition. 

In fact, we could say that the opposition aspect – with all that it entails psychologically, i.e. the ability to remove oneself from the subjective experience and view things from the outside (initially through the mechanism of projection) – is, fundamentally, a Libra aspect.

So when the spiritual wound (Sun conjunct Chiron in Aries) reaches a boiling point, the Moon in Libra, in an exact opposition, comes to give us that sense of perspective. To help us name it, see it clearly, and hold it for what it is.

For some of us, the insight will be spontaneous. Something will trigger – usually feelings of inadequacy, being left out, feeling like a misfit – which are classic Chiron modus operandi – and we will suddenly know what it is.
And if it’s not immediately obvious, look back at your life – especially to your childhood, when you had a sparkle in your eye, an untouchable fire. 

When did you lose that spark? What made that flame go out, disconnect from the divine – from your inner sacredness?

Chiron’s role, as the bridge between Saturn (what’s visible and structured) and Uranus (what’s invisible and infinite), is exactly this: to reconnect us to the sacred and restore our sense of wholeness. 

Full Moon in Libra – The Aspects

The aspects the Full Moon makes with other planets will give us the full picture of this lunation. 

The Full Moon is not only tightly opposite Chiron (at 23° Aries), – but also square Mars (at 27° Cancer), and trine Jupiter (at 17° Gemini).

The Full Moon in Libra brings to light early wounds of abandonment (Chiron) and the walls and defense mechanisms we might have built as a form of self-protection (Mars in Cancer).

Perhaps in the process we’ve become the man or lady in the tower, guarding our hearts, sabotaging our relationships, rejecting others before they can reject us first. 

Maybe we didn’t receive the help we needed when we were young, and as a result, we learned to no longer ask for it. Perhaps our innocent enthusiasm was met with a blank stare – so we learned to no longer share it… and in time, we stopped feeling it altogether.

Perhaps we felt too much, or were told we were too intense, too sensitive, too inadequate. Some of our interests or passions may have been deemed “weird” – hello again astrology lovers, we know how that feels, right?

But we are who we are – our true self is the sum of all these fragments, stories, and longings – whether they are socially acceptable or not.

And learning to love all the bits and pieces of ourselves is not about throwing our wants and needs in people’s faces without consideration (an extreme Aries approach) – but it’s also not about shutting down parts of ourselves to please others (the opposite approach, Libra).

It’s about finding that wholeness where these two parts of ourselves can coexist and collaborate.

Just like Chiron was half-man, half-horse, we too carry dualities that are meant to work together, not cancel each other out.

The Full Moon is trine Jupiter in Gemini, sending a message of hope. If we open up a little, if we take initiative in social settings, we can create real connections.

Jupiter in Gemini reminds us to have faith in others. People often feel closed off not because they’re cold – but because they, too, were once met with indifference, judgment, or rejection. 

But what if we are the ones to smile first? To say the first hello? Perhaps we can do that without attachment to outcome, even if we get rejected. 

Because when it comes from a genuine place of wholeness, rejection – if it happens – doesn’t have to hurt the same way. It doesn’t mean we’re wrong. It just means the connection – or the timing – wasn’t aligned.

Full Moon in Libra – Healing, Now Or Never

Healing – now or never. Why now or never? Because without a sense of pressure, without a sense of urgency, we will never act.

It’s said that Libra is indecisive, which is not entirely true. Libra is the scale, and by design, the scales need to move back and forth to find that equilibrium. But this doesn’t mean Libra cannot act; quite the contrary, Libra is a cardinal sign. It’s just that it acts when the ‘planets align,’ i.e. when the conditions for right action are met.

With the tight Chiron aspect, with the square to Mars – that time has come.

So let’s do it now. Let’s confront what needs to be confronted. On the other side of fear and resistance are relief, joy, a renewed sense of wholeness, and a sense of purpose and direction.

By Aidin Vaziri,Staff Writer

April 11, 2025 (SFChronicle.com)

The cover portrait for Bells Larsen’s sophomore album, “Blurring Time.” The Canadian singer-songwriter, who is trans, announced he was forced to cancel all U.S. tour dates due to a new federal immigration policy that requires government-issued identification to reflect an individual’s sex assigned at birth.

Just weeks before the release of his deeply personal sophomore album “Blurring Time,” Canadian singer-songwriter Bells Larsen, who is trans, announced he was forced to cancel all U.S. tour dates due to a new federal immigration policy that requires government-issued identification to reflect an individual’s sex assigned at birth.

“I received an email on Tuesday from the American Federation of Musicians stating that I am no longer able to apply for a Visa because US Immigration now only recognizes identification that corresponds with one’s assigned sex at birth,” Larsen wrote in an Instagram post Friday, April 11. “To put it super plainly, because I’m trans (and have an M on my passport), I can’t tour in the States.”

The abrupt change follows an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on the first day of his second term, declaring that all U.S. documents must “accurately reflect the holder’s sex.” The administration claims the policy is immutable.

Larsen’s canceled tour included stops in Boston, New York and Los Angeles, as well as several Northern California dates, where he had hoped to perform for queer and trans audiences. He was scheduled to perform at the 4 Star Theater in San Francisco, June 25; Little Saint in Healdsburg, June 26; the Miniplex in Arcata, June 27; and the Partisan in Merced, June 28.

“Blurring Time” is an intimate project exploring Larsen’s gender transition, described by the artist as “my life’s work.”

“This new policy has crushed my dreams,” he wrote. “I’m cradling a very broken heart and the realization that I don’t know if or when I will be able to tour in the States again.”

Halifax artist T. Thomason, also trans, canceled a scheduled appearance at Maine’s All Roads Festival, citing similar concerns. “I just don’t feel like it’s worth the risk,” he said in a video post.

The policy shift has prompted broader fears among Canadian musicians. 

“There’s a lot of weight put on being able to break into that market,” Thomason added. “If you’re an artist that is legally not able to get into the U.S., that’s a huge hit to your career.”

Earlier this month, Canadian rocker Neil Young expressed concern that Trump may prevent him from reentering the U.S. after his upcoming European tour due to his outspoken political stance. 

“That’s right folks, if you say anything bad about Trump or his administration, you may be barred from re-entering USA. If you are Canadian,” he continued. “If you are a dual citizen like me, who knows? We’ll all find that out together.”

Reach Aidin Vaziri: avaziri@sfchronicle.com

April 11, 2025

Aidin Vaziri

STAFF WRITER

Aidin Vaziri is a staff writer at The San Francisco Chronicle.

Published: April 8, 2025 (TheOnion.com)

WASHINGTON—Warning that even the slightest dent, knick, or scratch would henceforth be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday that Raymond Pratt, a 54-year-old resident of Chula Vista, CA who bumped a Tesla while parallel parking, had been sentenced to death. “Let me be clear: This man, who attempted to park on the street and damaged the rear bumper of a Model 3, is a domestic terrorist who deserves to die,” said Bondi, adding that the United States now had a zero tolerance policy against people like Pratt, who gently bumped a Tesla, exited his 2018 Hyundai Elantra to inspect the electric vehicle for any damage, and—though he found none—left a note apologizing to the owner just in case. “There is no world in which this man can walk free after plotting to parallel park so poorly that he tapped the sleek, sophisticated Tesla with his bumper while nudging forward at around 2 mph. The only way to deal with criminals like this is to end their lives. He gets what he deserves: the electric chair.” Bondi also announced that she would also seek the death penalty for Tesla owners who exchanged their cars, blacked out the Tesla logo, or purchased a bumper sticker that said “I bought this before Elon went crazy.”