#1077 - Johann Hari

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Johann Hari, I got it right.

Johann Hari (0:08)

You said it right, you are literally the first person to ever say my name. I was saying to you, I once waited for six hours with a broken arm in an emergency room because they were calling for Joanna Harry to come forward. So anyone who gets my name better than that is fine by me.

Joe Rogan (0:18)

Didn't you just assume that was you when you heard Joanna Harry?

Johann Hari (0:20)

To be fair, I had a broken arm, and I was lying there like weeping, and being like, fuck, someone help me. So to have to get my normal mind, I would have done.

Joe Rogan (0:28)

What went down with your arm?

Johann Hari (0:30)

Oh, I just, I fell. And tragically, nothing, no glamorous story to it. I fell down a staircase. I wasn't even drunk, I wasn't even fucked on anything. I just fell down the stairs, right? I wasn't even a victim of domestic violence. You know, like no surrounding narrative that would make that an interesting story, sadly.

Joe Rogan (0:44)

So give me your, if you had like a one paragraph take on depression.

Johann Hari (0:52)

Sure.

Joe Rogan (0:52)

What is your take on depression?

Johann Hari (0:54)

So this is why I wrote this book, Lost Connections, Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and Anxiety and the Real Solutions. So I wanted to understand why does depression and anxiety, why does depression and anxiety seem to be rising so much? It's very personal to me. When I was a teenager, I'd gone to my doctor, I'd explained that I was in this deep sense of pain and all my doctor did was tell me a biological story, just said basically your brain's broken and all he did was give me drugs, right?

And drugs play a role in treating people, but I was still depressed all that time I was taking these drugs, right? Most of the time.

And after 13 years of it, I thought, right, I need to understand what's really going on here. So I ended up going on this big long journey over 40,000 miles interviewing the leading experts in the world on what causes depression and anxiety and what solves them. And what I discovered is that we've told a ridiculously simplistic story to people about what depression is and how to solve it. That until I was a teenager and I went to my doctor, I thought depression was all in my head, meaning you're just being weak, you're being a pussy basically. And then the next 13 years, I thought it was all in my head, meaning it's a chemical imbalance in your brain. What I discovered is the overwhelming evidence from the World Health Organization, leading medical body in the world and loads of other places is, there are real biological factors that can make you more sensitive to this stuff, but the causes of depression and anxiety are overwhelmingly in the way we're living. There are these nine causes of depression and anxiety for which I could find scientific evidence, seven of which are in the way we're living and some of which are rising, which explains this kind of epidemic. And that opens up a whole different way of finding solutions.

Joe Rogan (2:24)

Now, when you were young and you were experiencing depression, how would you categorize it? Like, how would you describe it if you had to describe it to someone who didn't understand depression?

Try to keep this about a fist away from your face.

Johann Hari (2:37)

I think, I'll move a bit closer to you.

I think depression, depression is despair spreading. Everyone has moments of hopelessness in their lives, right? It's that spreading further. But I think one of the things I learned is a deeper way of thinking about this, which is everyone listening to this, everyone watching this knows that they have natural physical needs, right? You need food, you need water, you need clean air, you need warmth. If I took those things away from you, you would be in real trouble real fast, right? There's equally strong evidence that human beings have natural psychological needs, right? You gotta feel you belong.

You gotta feel your life has meaning and purpose. You gotta feel that people see you and value you. You gotta feel that you've got autonomy. You gotta feel that you've got a future that makes sense.

And our culture is good at lots of things. I'm glad to be alive today. But our culture has been getting less and less good at meeting these deep underlying psychological needs for lots of people. And that is the key reason, it's not the only one, but it's the key reason why we have this rising depression and anxiety epidemic. That can sound a bit weird in the abstract, so I can give you some specific examples if you want.