Highlights from Jonathan Otto's interview with David Wolfe, for the Depression & Anxiety Series. David talks about how depression and anxiety is helped by getting back to the 'source', and reconnection. He also digs deep into the topics of serotonin and SSRIs.

David Wolfe: 07:08 I've seen people come all the way back from the bring of the abyss. All the way from heroine addiction, uncontrollable cocaine addictions, uncontrollable alcohol addictions, uncontrollable addictions to violence, or the inability to communicate with even loved ones without being a burden. Just that level of negativity all the way to a life of meaning, all the way to a life of inspiration. All the way to happiness. Back to happiness from that.

David Wolfe: 07:42 Just the simple every day happiness that you and I might experience is almost impossible to someone who's in the depths of an addiction, or the depths of a spiritual crisis. So, it is possible to come all the way back. There are things that need to be there when you come all the way back. Spiritual connection to source. Very much aided and helped by connection to natural foods, and connection to where the food's coming from, and connection to food that's not treated with chemicals, nor preservatives, nor put into packages.

David Wolfe: 08:15 That's a big part of it actually. Getting reconnected to the waters of our earth, and the spring water of the earth, and that magical phenomenon of when a spring comes out of a rock and suddenly there's water to drink. Which I experienced a couple nights ago. There's something happy about it. There's something when you drink that water, something invigorating about it that seems to drive off these lower energy emotions that today we call depression, or anxiety, or addiction, or lack of control.

David Wolfe: 08:44 We can overcome these things, but we have to start moving the bar up. Food helps, spiritual connection to source is major, getting the emotional turmoils under control. And that means taking responsibility for our lives and what's happening in our lives. And then when we've done that, then we start to get this thing clear up here, right? But the heart has to open up first, and the heart has to clear first, and this starts to open up and we can start to think clearly.

David Wolfe: 09:09 And then really in the most advanced beings who now teach how to overcome addictions, how to get reconnected to source, people who have become spiritual leaders actually. In those cases, what I've seen, and what I think is the pattern is the heart gets connected first, and then the mind can be the servant of the heart.

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David Wolfe: 10:07 It's not a coincidence that when you look at some of the greatest athletes in the world, and you see how they are in their life, they connect it to Jesus, they connect it to God. That is not a coincidence, because to perform at some of these levels, to be a professional boxing champion, the physical stamina, the mental focus, the emotional discipline is supernatural. You need to be connected to higher source.

David Wolfe: 10:37 And that's the same type of thing when someone's in the throes of an addiction, or when they've lost all meaning and purpose. They're in a deep state of depression. They need to turn over the power to a higher power and get connected directly with the source. And I've known numerous people over the years who've done that, and successfully rejuvenated their lives and brought themselves all the way back from the brink of the abyss.

David Wolfe: 10:59 And it is that multiple connection on all levels, but starts really with the source. If you have that connection to source energy, if something happens in the depth of an addiction, where suddenly God's light shines through, the addiction is over. That has also happened to may people I know. Even famous rock stars, if you look into their stories of when they dropped the drugs, it happened in one flash of insight where suddenly the demons left them, and they became connected to source and didn't need it anymore.

David Wolfe: 11:23 And that, to me, is very interesting. It's fascinating. But I can tell you one thing too, and that is the drugs that are being manufactured based on totally materialistic science, based on the ideas of materialistic causation. No spirituality, no emotional connection to depression or any of the other ills of civilization. No connection to the mental neuroses. When you start giving somebody a materialistic pill, and saying that that's going to cure their spiritual crisis, that's when you can get into real trouble.

David Wolfe: 11:58 And that's what we're always doing is we're always looking for the more holistic solution because the pill will never cover up completely the ill.

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David Wolfe: 13:49 My personal research indicates that we don't know a whole lot about even serotonin, although we hear so much about it. Only in the last five years have we heard that the microbiome, which is our gut, is releasing most of our serotonin. So, imagine our whole lives we've eaten food that we didn't like, we ate food that was filled with chemicals, we ate food that was filled with preservatives. We ate food that was from an animal that was from a factory farm, is filled with adrenaline from being in that scary situation its whole existence and then eating that.

David Wolfe: 14:17 Imagine if we had food that causes us to have indigestion. Even that, that affects our serotonin, which affects our cognition. It affects how we feel. Serotonin is a feel good neurotransmitter as far as we're told, but was we get deeper into studying serotonin, serotonin can be used up, and if it lingers around in our system like a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor, which will cause more serotonin to stay in the system, it can have lethargic effects on us.

David Wolfe: 14:46 And you can prove this to yourself in the morning, when you wake up in the morning, until you have that first urination, you can be lethargic. And that's because you've used up the serotonin, and a lot of those neurotransmitters, like serotonin, come out in that first urine, and all of a sudden you're awake. You wake up. And this is a very big discovery that serotonin can be an irritant. And we know this, by the way.

David Wolfe: 15:10 If you look at stinging nettles, or wasp venom, or even a bee sting, one of the ingredients is serotonin. That causes the sting. It's the irritant.

Jonathan Otto: 15:24 So, then what does that mean in the practical world? How should we understand serotonin? Do we need it? Do we not need it?

David Wolfe: 15:32 We need it. We need a healthy gut to produce it. We need it to be naturally cycled back through our system. When we start interfering with SSRI drugs, we can start having serotonin stay in our system too long, where it becomes and irritant into our system and it can irritate us neurologically throughout all the cells of our system. So, therefore we're really banking on various different metabolisms hopefully not getting too irritated by these drugs which is never possible because the one size fits all drug never really works for everybody.

David Wolfe: 16:07 And there's gonna be people on this side and people on this side, that fall out of the bell curve. They're gonna be severe irritated by SSRI drugs, or even made to be suicidal or homicidal, and those are side effects. Those are listed side effects.