A pandemic of isolation

When the pandemic started, and I first realized what the implications were, I thought the effect of it on me personally was going to be less than it has turned out to be.

I'm retired from my day job, and now am a full-time writer.  So even before the lockdown started, on a typical day I'd spend most of my time in my office.  (I was going to say "most of my time writing," but given how distractible I am, it'd be closer to the truth to say, "most of my time futzing around on social media and feeling guilty because I'm not writing."  The struggle is real.)  My social life consisted of gym nights with my pal Dave, weekly critique sessions with my writing partner Cly, and the occasional dinner out with my wife.

So I figured, "hey, I'm an introvert anyhow, this isn't going to change my day-to-day life much."

I was wrong.

The social isolation is really getting to me, and has been for some time.  Part of it, of course, is that now I can't socialize with people even if I want to.  I've tried to work in some socially-distanced visits; Dave and I do the occasional hike on a local trail, and I still meet with Cly on her front porch for our critiques, once every three weeks or so.  (What we'll do when the weather turns cold -- which in upstate New York could be by the end of September -- I have no idea.)

But it's been hard.  I miss people.  I miss being able to travel.  I was going to sign up for a three-week retreat in Thailand in January 2021 led by John Aigner, who led the transformative weekend retreat I attended last November (and about which I wrote here), but due to the piss-poor response our country's leaders had to the pandemic, there's now what amounts to a barrier around the United States preventing any of us from leaving and infecting the rest of the world.  (Donald Trump wanted a wall.  Well, he got one.)

I know in the grand scheme of things, this is all minor stuff.  First-world problems, you know?  And honestly, I'm fine with making these sacrifices to slow down the spread of this horrible disease.

But I'd be lying if I said it hasn't affected me.  And I'm not alone.  Research published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that since the pandemic started, the rates of depression in the United States have tripled.  The increase, unsurprisingly, is higher amongst people with low income, who are not only facing the social isolation but fears of medical bills, loss of jobs, threats of eviction, what to do about their children who are now staying home from school when they can't afford daycare, and being in a situation where just to survive they have to expose themselves and their families to illness.  The effect, though, was there regardless of demographic.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Sander van der Wel from Netherlands, Depressed (4649749639), CC BY-SA 2.0]

We're social primates, and a strong social context is important even to us introverts.  A study published this week in Nature Neuroscience looked at the effects of early social isolation in mice, and found that being alone caused an inhibition in activity in the neurons that link the prefrontal cortex to the paraventricular thalamus -- known to be part of the reward circuitry active in adults.  While the research could lead to targeted medical treatments for psychiatric disorders impairing socialization, it immediately made me wonder whether this could be at the heart of the spike in depression we're currently seeing.

Because that's part of what I'm experiencing in my own behavior since the pandemic started -- less activity in areas where, prior to the lockdown, the primary reward was dependent on socializing.  Now that I'm not hitting the weights at the gym three times a week with Dave, I haven't been using my home weight bench nearly as much.  I don't have Cly expecting me to have a chapter to read every Tuesday night, so I've been writing way less.

It's been an interesting exercise in self-examination to find out that basically, I'm extrinsically motivated.  When I'm at home alone, and no one is expecting me to get my ass in gear and write something on my work-in-progress or get my gym gear together and head on down to lift for a couple of hours, it's way easier just to say "I'll do it later" and go back to the inevitable focus on the news and social media.  I do have some pastimes I've kept up with -- I'm an amateur potter (not all that good at it; in my hands it's more "playing in the mud for adults") -- and I still hit the wheel three or four times a week.  But it's kind of astonishing to me now that I have more free time, in that I'm no longer teaching eight hours a day, I actually spend less time engaged productively.  And I think a lot of that has to do with the aimlessness that comes from being adrift, on a typical day having no contact with anyone but my wife.

Zoom and Skype and social media only take you so far.

Put simply, I -- and lots of people like me -- are lonely.  It's a hard time for everyone, but I think we can't discount the emotional toll this is taking on ordinary, average people.  There are a lot of jokes going around about how once the pandemic is over, we'll all be celebrating with drunken orgies, but the truth is, I think it's going to take us a long time to recover our equilibrium.

Like I said earlier, I'm still completely willing to make these sacrifices for the common good, and I think the people who are flouting the rules and getting together in large groups anyhow (or people like Florida's governor Ron DeSantis who have steadfastly refused to mandate wearing masks) are simply assholes.  But the fact remains that a lot of us are struggling.  So check in on your friends and family, even the ones for whom it's easy to say, "Oh, well, (s)he's an introvert, I'm sure (s)he's fine."  We need to be kind to each other in these times, and to understand that the illness itself isn't the only concern.

And take care of yourself, okay?  We need all of you to stay happy and healthy and whole through this.

**********************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week should be in everyone's personal library.  It's the parting gift we received from the brilliant astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who died two years ago after beating the odds against ALS's death sentence for over fifty years.

In Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Hawking looks at our future -- our chances at stopping anthropogenic climate change, preventing nuclear war, curbing overpopulation -- as well as addressing a number of the "big questions" he references in the title.  Does God exist?  Should we colonize space?  What would happen if the aliens came here?  Is it a good idea to develop artificial intelligence?

And finally, what is humanity's chance of surviving?

In a fascinating, engaging, and ultimately optimistic book, Hawking gives us his answers to the questions that occupy the minds of every intelligent human.  Published posthumously -- Hawking died in March of 2018, and Brief Answers hit the bookshelves in October of that year -- it's a final missive from one of the finest brains our species ever produced.  Anyone with more than a passing interest in science or philosophy should put this book on the to-read list.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

So lonely I could die

I just got back from a ten-day visit to my publisher, wherein I attended a writers' retreat and about 150 different meetings with other writers and staff members of Oghma Creative Media.  This was great from the standpoint both of seeing some old friends, and also networking, which is pretty critical to a fiction author.

Simultaneously, however, it made me want to curl up into a ball and whimper softly.  I am dreadfully shy and a natural-born introvert, and crowds of people, however friendly, sap my energy like nothing else.  I did kind of crash-and-burn one day, during which I was in conversation with people from, no lie, 7:30 in the morning until 10:30 at night without a single break.

By the end, my publisher said I looked like a lost puppy, standing there with a dazed, "where am I?" expression on my face.  He did bring me a scotch, which helped considerably.

This is why I took such interest in a paper presented last week at the 125th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, entitled, "Loneliness: A Growing Public Health Threat."  The paper described a meta-analysis done by a team led by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, professor of psychology at Brigham Young University.  What they did was first combine the results of 148 different studies of over 300,000 people, correlating social isolation with the risk of early death, and then do the same for a larger group of 3.4 million people.

The results were unequivocal.  Social isolation correlates with premature death -- and in fact is as big a risk factor as obesity!  Holt-Lunstad said in her presentation:

Being connected to others socially is widely considered a fundamental human need — crucial to both well-being and survival.  Extreme examples show infants in custodial care who lack human contact fail to thrive and often die, and indeed, social isolation or solitary confinement has been used as a form of punishment.  Yet an increasing portion of the U.S. population now experiences isolation regularly... There is robust evidence that social isolation and loneliness significantly increase risk for premature mortality, and the magnitude of the risk exceeds that of many leading health indicators.  With an increasing aging population, the effect on public health is only anticipated to increase. Indeed, many nations around the world now suggest we are facing a ‘loneliness epidemic.’ The challenge we face now is what can be done about it.

Which of course got me thinking about my own situation.  I'm pretty solitary even for an introvert; I have lots of pleasant acquaintances, a few true and deep friends, but almost no social life.  The majority of the people in my life are there because of my (much more extroverted) wife, and even most of the people that I consider good friends I seldom see.

Me and one of my best friends, who unfortunately lives 230 miles away...

The problem, apparently, is worse in men than in women, probably because we guys have been told since birth that to be a strong man means to be tough, silent, and to downplay our emotions.  This comes at a cost -- for men, social isolation is as correlated with heart attack and stroke risk as smoking is, and in fact shows an actual biological marker -- an elevated level of fibrinogen, a protein involved in blood clotting.

Of course, correlation isn't causation.  It could be that the elevated risk and social isolation are correlated because both of them are caused by something else -- such as depression.  Establishing a causation was beyond the scope of this study, although it is to be hoped that the researchers will investigate that next.

The problem, both in general and for me personally, is what exactly socially isolated people are supposed to do about all this.  Heaven knows I'd like more social connections, and I suspect others like me feel the same way, but connections don't just magically appear.  They require us to put ourselves out there and be more outgoing.  Which gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Maybe a scotch would help.

Anyhow, forewarned is forearmed, and there's nothing to be lost by trying to forge a better social life for myself.  I doubt that I'll ever be extroverted no matter what I do -- but I have to say that a couple of buddies with whom I could have a beer every now and then would be mighty nice.