Daily meditation. Thanks to rise of wellness, the discussions and destigmatisation around mental health and my general openness to new things I dove heavily into meditation. Sam Harris became my guru and I devoured anything and everything around meditation.

The good news is, I think meditation is great. I feel more relaxed when I meditate, and I did it 4-5 times per week for years. However, I do not meditate right now and I didn’t find much efficacy in countering my depression. Having said that, I didn’t have a control group of me’s that were not meditating during the same period, so it’s somewhat hard to really know.

Cold showers, ice baths, Wim Hof breathwork. Next up, I found the trend of cold showering, ice baths and breathwork, partly thanks to the rise of Wim Hof, and gave that a shot for a long while as well.

I never went deep into the breathwork side, although I dabbled, but I did have a cold shower every morning for a long time. It’s something that I’d love to pick up again to be honest. Not really for mental health but just because it gives you a very invigorating feeling and is great for overall health, mood, circulation etc.

_{*Below is an interview I did with Wim Hof nearly 10 years ago.}

Journaling, gratitude and general. Next was journaling. We have all heard the studies about how much gratitude journaling increases overall wellness. And it makes sense. The best way I had it explained to me was that “Happiness is momentum, the more pleasant, empathetic, and positive thoughts you can have, the deeper the neural pathways become, the easier it is to keep skiing down those wellnessy slopes.”

I have no idea who told me that and I know they didn’t phrase it in exactly that way but you get my drift. I no longer have a gratitudinal (actual word) practice today.

Psychology and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. While I was in Australia, and for the most part of the last decade, I have had a consistent, albeit somewhat stop and start, relationship with my psychologist. I’ve learned a lot over the journey and do value having someone to talk to. Mainly to understand the brain in general rather than my brain per se.

Ketamine assisted therapy. In early 2022, when I was really struggling, and had just left Australia, I heard the founder of Field Trip Health interviewed by Professor Scott Galloway about the benefits of ketamine-assisted therapy in reducing the effects of otherwise treatment resistant depression.

Although psilocybin had not been approved by the FDA in the US this type of treatment was, and I was about to land in the US. With only a few days before heading further south I was able to secure a six-session treatment over the course of a month in their San Diego clinic.

The treatment itself cost me close to $10k + the additional time staying in an Airbnb in San Diego, but it was worth a roll of the dice. The experience itself was quite wonderful. You are given a doctor and a psychologist. The doctor will be the one who recommends how much ketamine to pump into your system every session—50mg to start, and up to 120mg to finish for me—and the psychologist is the one who will walk you through the journey.

I could not speak more highly of my experience at Field Trip and although the experiences were challenging at times it was definitely a worthwhile experience. My partner Taina some months later said she had seen a huge improvement in my overall mental health, and she was probably right.

Psilocybin (magic mushrooms). Out of respect for the sponsors of today’s post I will leave this section out for now, as experiences I may or may not have had were not done in a way I feel right expressing.

Ayahuasca in the Amazon. Unfortunately, following on from some positive effects of the ketamine therapy, and some shiny new depression medication I still seemed to not be able to get into a good place, even for small windows of time.

So in mid 2023, I did something that has been top of mind for me for close to a decade since I began my journey into the darker side of life. And that is, I booked myself to a week long Ayahuasca retreat in the jungles of Peru. This was, what I could only explain as a weeklong waking nightmare.

I walked into the centre with 22 or 23 other travelers, who were all there for one reason or another; lost loved ones, retrenchment, general feeling of being lost in life etc. And although, I felt like I was walking in with a relatively good outlook on life, I walked out of there 10 times more mentally shattered than when I entered.

This was very disappointing and hard to come to grips with. It probably took me three months to fully recover back to my baseline, which was depression.

Why was it so difficult? Well, ayahuasca is like nothing else. I have had what you would call a ‘Hero’s Dose’ of other psychedelics in the past and when quite deep during my ketamine experience, but ayahuasca is something unto itself. And if you are on the wrong end of a deep ayahuasca experience—which I was on each and every one of the ceremonies—you are in for a night of hell.

I spent the majority of the week thinking I was going insane or thinking much worse things than that. I felt like, for whatever reason, for me, the experience was very counterproductive.

There was also a way the retreat centre ran their program that I thought was insane. Each ceremony started in the evening at 8pm and lasted sometimes until 4am, with breakfast three hours later. I feel like people were irritable and exhausted due to the sleep deprivation they went through during the week. The experience cost around $5k when you add up the program, flights, etc.

Brain scans at Amen Clinic. Next up, following right after my trip to the jungle was to try to seek help from a professional brain care clinic in the US, the Amen Clinic. I wanted to assess the overall health of my brain because I had a sneaking suspicion all of my problems stemmed from an unsuccessful backflip-on-a-dancefloor attempt I made when I was 28. The attempt left my unconscious, soiling my pants and unresponsive for a total of 43 minutes. As I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance the doctors called my parents and told them I was suspected brain damage and spinal injury.

The results gave me good news, irrelevant news, and bad news. The good news was my brain was in incredible good condition for a 37 year old. The irrelevant news was it showed signs of chronic depression and anxiety. The bad news was I was still searching for answers.

_{*Note: In case you were wondering, that was my one and only backflip attempt in this lifetime. Officially retired from drunken gymnastics.}

BONUS: Ezra cancer scans. Not exactly mental health related but around this time I decided to drop by for a scan at Ezra, a clinic that has a tagline that reads; “We found cancer’s greatest weakness—early detection.” I thought now that I get paid well enough, I should start proactively looking after not only my mental health but my physical health too.

Two weeks after the scan, I was told that I had a 6 cm tumor in my lungs—but don’t freak out—as I don’t actually have said tumour. It took four weeks, multiple specialists, a three-day stint in a German hospital (oh yeah, we were on holidays), a bronchoscopy and a biopsy for them to tell me that ‘there was nothing to worry about.’

Ezra is awesome, I think. If you can genuinely get ahead of a scary diagnosis like the big C it can and will save your life. But I have also heard mixed reports of the efficacy of the scans and lots of people like me who basically had a bad flu going through hell to find they were actually fit as a fiddle.

I guess the stress is worth it in the end. Cancer is kinda preventable in a way if you get in early. (shrug) The scan itself costs around $3k and is recommended annually or bi-annually.

Desvenlafaxina (depression meds). Well, for starters, I am on medication. For the longest time, all the way up until last year, I stayed away from medication. There was one small period in which I was on meds, but my grandpa took his own life after his lifelong medication was discontinued and then changed on him at ~70 years old.

Plus, add to the fact that every study under the sun will show you that meds are about as efficacious as improving sleep, exercising once or twice a week etc. But anyway, I am on them, and they seem to be ok.

Brain care pills and GABA. I say brain care pills and GABA even though they are one and the same because I want to really make a highlight of the GABA part. GABA or Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid seems to be an incredible successful way for me to be able to really take the edge off my anxiety.

I mainly get anxiety for social situations, nothing else really. It’s the reason I love writing but hate podcasting. Podcasting just stresses me out. In my younger days I would pull the rower down in my bedroom—yes, I had a rowing machine in my bedroom—and bang out 5km or some 500m sprints to try to blow out the anxiety cobwebs. Today, because I am sin / sans the bedroom rower, I use GABA.

I also use a combination of personally recommended cerebral supplements from the work I did at the Amen Clinic. Every morning, midday and evening I have a combination of saffron, GABA, omega-3 and more.

Sport, competition, weightlifting. For me, I have been very active—training and sport wise—basically all my life. First it was Aussie rules football, then CrossFit for a split second, then weightlifting. The last thing I competed in properly was weightlifting, lifting at the 2016 National Championships as an 85 kg lifter.

I feel like I am happier when I have a goal, and something I am working towards. In 2016, my goal, even though I started weightlifting at 28, was to represent Australia. It was going to be hard because they don’t usually give spots to people who don’t have a long runway in the sport, unless you are the best in the country / world.

Funny thing was, after the 2016 comp, I gave myself the following week off, and then that extended to a fortnight, then a month. And then I didn’t really train hard again, aside from a quick dash into powerlifting, until last year.

Now I have a new goal. My lifetime goal is back on, training towards a 120 kg snatch and a 150 kg clean and jerk. And my looser, funner goal is to be the internet’s strongest startup founder.

Whoop, Eight Sleep, outlet timer. One thing I love right now is my Whoop. It helps me track my training, my recovery and most of all, my sleep. I also have an Eight Sleep bed, which is supposed to improve my sleep but we hardly even use it really. No shade on Eight Sleep, they are cool, we’ve just not really seen the benefits.

Whoop on the other hand, I live and breath. One other small change that has positively impacted my / our life is putting an outlet timer on our modem. At 10pm every single night our internet cuts off. And yes, we turn it back on from time to time but most of the time we do not.

A phenomenal way to force a habit of getting off the devices, Netflix and so forth early and prepping for a consistent bedtime.

No socials, no sim card. I think it’s been nearly two years now that I have been without a sim card, and much longer, maybe 4-5 years since I have had any social media on my phone.

My long term plan was to throw my phone in the bin and just use the Apple Watch but it’s actually impossible unfortunately. You can have the phone and just store it away but you can’t just live without one. Which is kinda shit.

I really just want an Apple Watch for podcasts and audiobooks, as I’d be heartbroken without them. I invested into Humane—which ended up a total flop—mainly because I believed in their mission of ridding the world of the scourge of our time, the smartphone. I think it’s coming, a world without phones, but it may still be some time yet.

Working with a dietician, and a chef. My partner and I, both started working with a dietician recently and it’s been quite good. I am now pretty diligently tracking my body fat, lean muscle etc. for the first time ever and I am really enjoying it. I started at 22% body fat, which is not super, but got that down to 18% pretty quickly.

We also pay for a chef / cook to come and prepare our meals for us every so often now too. Granted we were doing this ourselves but we do it every fortnight just to free up the Sunday a bit and because it’s quite economically feasible in Argentina, where we are currently living.

Weekly breakfasts. I still struggle a fair bit socially and pull out of a lot of things and weirdly, once it gets past 4pm the chances I’ll bail on something go through the roof. So I do breakfasts. On Wednesday and Friday of every week I catch up with a couple of team members from Athyna from different departments.

We spend very little, sometimes zero time, speaking about work. It’s just a great way for me to spend some time with people, and especially with the team in a less formal space. I really love it.

And most importantly, my partner and my dog. And it goes without saying, the most important part of your mental health stack should be your closest partners in crime. Your loved ones. For me, that would be my partner Taina and my dog, Ziggy.

Kanna chocolate and gummies. We have a new sponsor of the newsletter, Fun Guy, who will run a few ads with us in the future that I am pretty excited to test out. The success I have with GABA makes me feel like I want to test out more supplements that might be able to improve my X, Y, or Z in small but meaningful ways.

_{*And no this 5000 word essay was not just an ad for an incoming sponsor, haha.}

More co-working time. Pre-COVID I worked remotely, just like I do now, but I probably went into my co-work 2-3 days per week. Today, I probably go in 0.2 times per week. Once every 5 weeks, maybe less. Granted, I work from home and Taina and Ziggy are around, but it’s still nice to get out and say hi to some new people, be around some energy etc.

Serious gut health work. And the one major stone I have left somewhat unturned is my gut health. I did a program for a few months some years ago but I left feeling like there was a lot more work to do. And the more research that we do, the more it seems that the gut to brain link is hugely important to creation of serotonin. I do plan to dive heavily into this at some point in the not too distant future.

10% Happier, Dan Harris - March, 2014

Waking Up, Sam Harris - September, 2014

Tribe, Sebastian Junger - May, 2016

Lost Connections, Johann Hari - January, 2018

How To Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan - May, 2018