I was depressed for 4 years and didn't even realise...

Depression has been with me for a huge chunk of my life. I barely made it through my teen years because of it, and even in much of the high points of my life it lingered in the shadows waiting for the silent moments to strike me and pull me into the pit.

Being in the wellness and spiritual scenes for quite some time now, I’ve heard every reason in the book to refute the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory that the medical/ pharmaceutical industry has given — A nervous system in freeze, unprocessed rage, not living your purpose, not enough sunlight, believing your stories about the world, not working out enough, not dancing enough, not being in your feminine enough, not seeing the nature of reality clearly...

I want to share from my personal experience of doing all the ‘right’ things and still having it haunt me, and what I actually needed to heal from it, in the hopes it can be of service to some people on their own journey.

(Hint… it has to do with inflammation)

In 2020, at around the same time, I was going through a deep awakening process being ravaged by Kali Ma, going through Saturn return and multiple Pluto transits, and dealing with immense chronic pain from a car crash that kicked off a range of health issues including MCAS and CFS. I also met my now-husband Tristen at the same time. Before that, I was in one of the biggest highs of my life— feeling sexy, abundant, on purpose and in the flow.

This period held some of the most intensive and transformational spiritual work I’ve ever done. I was cracking through the ways I had been perceiving self and reality on a profound level that was transforming me to my core, meditating daily, doing virtual traditional Tantra retreats, rituals and shadow work. I was being stripped of every identity, every story, everything that held me up and deluded me. I started to ‘become aware of awareness’ and was practicing profoundly ‘being with what it’. I was on my knees in surrender and living in devotion to the path. By many spiritual lineage definitions, I was reaching the final stages of spiritual awakening/enlightenment.

And through all this, suffering with serious health issues that broke me down for years. Autoimmune stuff, chronic pain, cervical instability with regular migraines, chronic fatigue... It was a shit show. I’ve only just barely made it out into near normal functioning now, though it came in waves. The suffering was motivating me to practice more to find a way through it all.

Through all the spiritual work I was learning to be with life how it is, to separate my story about myself and life from the experience of it, to strengthen my energy body, to access powerful trance states... And it helped me immensely through these challenges…

But it wasn’t enough

Because it turns out there is something to the ‘chemical imbalance’ thing. To the gut-brain connection to mental wellbeing. To the very real physical responses of the body and how that shapes the way our brain works and how we percieve things.

I thought I was just jaded from too many years in the scene. I blamed Pluto. I figured maybe my best days as a free spirited maiden was over. I thought maybe awakening has made me see reality so clearly and reality was just… not that great.

I even asked facebook what kind of things can help with being jaded, and got a lot of sound advice from people, but much of it had already been part of my routines.

Sure, I still could get into ecstatic peak states and orgasmic consciousness and play and enjoy, but my day to day state was always dipping into frustration. When people would ask how I was the response was always a bit of a pause and something like ‘You know, up and down’ (because awakening is also unmasking and my path required commitment to absolute Truth and I’m a shit liar so saying ‘good’ or ‘fine’ wasn’t accurate.) To be fair, I was having some big challenges in my business, I was burning out from travelling the world and at times running too many events. But I’d done all that before and it had felt different.

It wasn’t the depression of my teen years which was compounded by being stuck in highschool where I was being lightly bullied, from being in chronic freeze, unsure of myself, stuck in stories about how terrible and unlovable I was. That time I was in the deepest depths of it to the point that I wouldn’t consider myself sane at many moment. This round, I wasn’t exactly suicidal, but I did have my thoughts lean that way at times. I’d just say it was part of death contemplation for my Tantric sadhana.

I did all the ‘right things’ — my dedicated spiritual practice, good food, dancing (when my body let me!), orgasms, sunshine, shadow work… and still I had this negative bias clouding the way I was seeing life. Like yes, I had my reasons at times with many life challenges, but it was hard to even see the positive some days when I did have a lot to be thankful for. I even got confused realizing this jaded ‘mehness’ had started around when Tristen and I met, and I was so 100% sure about our relationship being a yes but I wondered why I wasn’t enjoying things in the same way even with an amazing partner, amazing job etc.

I wouldn’t actually realise that it was low-level depression I was suffering until, by chance, bought some 5htp + melatonin from a supermarket on Koh Phangan after some insomnia. After a few days of taking it before bed, there was a subtle yet profound shift in how I was experiencing the world.

For those that don’t know, 5htp is a serotonin-boosting amino acid. I had taken it as a teen to help with chronic depression (after a short trial of typical anti-depressants and feeling like a zombie and doing some online research) and had positive effects then… it had turned my suicidal-not-quite-sane brain and brought me to a regular level of unhappy ;P Lots of people take it after MDMA to recover their stores of serotonin. There are a lot of debates from studies about it’s efficacy, some saying it doesn’t work, and I would put this down to the fact that there are many reasons someone could be depressed, and low serotonin is just one of them. Like I found when I was young, it took an edge off but I still had a lot of work to do to heal and create a life I wanted to live.

When I started taking the 5htp again, I started suddenly feeling a general sense of happiness again. It was like a heavy veil had been lifted from the world. Resilience returned and the jadedness went away. Now all that awakening work actually felt good rather than feeling like a veil had been ripped away from something that was hiding some ugly world. My pessimism dissolved and more childlike wonder and positivity returned. I suddenly realised that I had actually been depressed for 4 years, and felt a little frustrated that I had been suffering more than what could be seen as necessary.

A reel popped up on my feed of a doctor sharing why we feel so shitty when we’re sick. The answer — when we’re sick we get inflamed and release histamine, histamine/inflammation stops serotonin production… your body gets busy protecting itself and feeling happy is lower priority! The penny dropped.

In 2020, after the car crash, my MCAS hit hard. This is an autoimmune disorder to do with histamine and mast cells, where your body goes into a ‘cell danger response’ and you start reacting to everything — having chronic inflammation, gut issues and generally your immune system starts acting like a little 5 yr old kid on a sugar high knocking everything over, instead of the sophisticated SWAT team coming to take out any intruders. Chronic injury and inflamation actually makes you depressed on a brain chemical level.

How inflammation and Depression link:

“Inflammation significantly depletes serotonin levels and impairs its signaling. When the body experiences inflammation, immune proteins called cytokines alter brain chemistry by redirecting the serotonin precursor tryptophan. Instead of making serotonin, tryptophan is converted into quinolinic acid—a compound toxic to nerve cells. Cytokines also stimulate the serotonin transporter, causing serotonin to be cleared and broken down much faster than normal.”

So yeah, some simple science that NO ONE SEEMS TO TALK ABOUT. I can’t tell you how many people I know struggling with immune issues and complex chronic health stuff that have no idea about this. So not only are we struggling with fatigue, food sensitivities, gut stuff… but also depression on top of that (and sometimes dysautonomia-created anxiety too, which is another topic!). And there is a very cheap, simple solution that can help a lot without the major side effects of pharma anti-depressants. (Which, by the way, NEVER MIX WITH 5HTP! It can cause serotonin syndrome where you brain floods with it and it can hospitalise you. I’ve had it before and DO NOT RECOMMEND)

People with health issues aren’t just moody because their life is getting impacted by their condition, but they actually can lack the neurotransmitters to feel hope and happiness because of those same issues. It’s a viscous cycle. It’s hard to get out of, hard to not fall into ‘victim consciousness’. Hard to feel hope enough to try and be motivated to keep going and healing.

While all the spiritual and wellness tools I had helped me greatly, so this round of health issues and depression were far more bearable than ever… There was a very physical, hormonal reason why things didn’t seem to be working. Why I was ‘awakened’ but not resting in bliss or feeling at peace.

I still struggled with another round of long COVID not long after rediscovering 5htp. I still had challenges with serious chronic fatigue and trouble exercising… But I was eternally grateful to this simple supplement, I was able to increase my quality of life while I figured out my other health issues and stay sane (well, as sane as one can be in this mad world!)

Even with all the spiritual tools and meditation and inquiry and shadow work, if our biology is out of whack, we can become grumpy jaded haters.

Sure, I’ll always continue to recommend breathwork, inquiry, meditation, nervous system regulation, dance etc to people who are depressed, but even in my coaching I find myself asking some clients about their diet and health if they’re prone to depression and getting them to look into potential MCAS or serotonin issues that could be easily solved.

Part of the Tantrika path is finding the balance in the recognition that we are both spirit and animal. Divine and human. I think mental health is both too. We’re made of complex hormonal cascades and nervous system signals, we are what we eat and we are impacted intimately by our environment. Our modern world is full of toxic chemicals, microplastics, EMFs and things that cause chronic inflammation that are near impossible to avoid without going completely off grid on an untouched island (and even there they’re finding microplastics in the water!).

Finding peace, joy, happiness etc is both a spiritual pursuit and a physical one. All the right ‘tools’ without the inner health may not truly work. And just peak physical fitness and health isn’t going to make a deeply fulfilling life.

The timing was so interesting with this recent experience of depression, as I found 5htp and started recovering as I was leaving Koh Phangan, a place I was challenged by and not finding aligned to be living in. It also happened to align with figuring out I had long covid and treating it (thank you nicotine patches!) and moving to Pai, which feels like my soul-mate town.

Perhaps it was just all divine timing that I was meant to feel shitty for a few years and the cycle ended at that time. Perhaps I needed to be jaded and frustrated for years as part of my evolution. Perhaps it could have been another way in another timeline.

Mental health, just like immune systems, nervous systems, personalities, life paths… they’re complex. Too many practitioners want to simplify solutions to whatever they’re selling (don’t worry, I’m not a supplement brand selling you 5htp…) and we can feel like a failure if we do everything right and still nothing shifts.

There are always so many factors at play — astrology timings (if you believe in that and in my experience they’ve been creepily accurate), viral/immune loads, life circumstances, global issues, trauma patterns etc. It can take years to find our way through challenge.

But there often is a way through if we explore and keep hope alive. Not seeking endlessly as if we’re broken but being so curious about the potential of what our wellbeing could be. I may still have lifelong health challenges that slow me down and cause me issues, but I can genuinely say I’ve found a deep peace and happiness through all of this that makes life 10000% worth living.

A lot of the practices and perspectives that have helped me to thrive over the years are in my book - The Liberated Sensualist. It guides seekers on their journey from numbness, disconnect and stagnation into the sweet intimacy and bliss with life (that’ll be even more juicy if your serotonin is topped up! ;P )
I even just released a book club free PDF so you can go through it with friends. It includes 6 practice audios, or you can get the course with all 40 practice audios.

Get my book here