I lament the industrialization of medicine with its preoccupation about costs at the expense of our humanity. I see the impact managed care has had on the healing spirit of doctors. I sometimes forget how many of my colleagues are still practicing medicine as a ministry and not an industry.

Dr. Gloria Wilderbrathwaite is a pediatrician who for the last 14 years has been providing healthcare in Washington DC’s poorest neighborhoods. She drives a bright blue van through the urban war zone that is DC’s southeast side, with it’s high rates of crime, teenage pregnancy and infant mortality. Violence has sometimes broken up her medical sessions. A drug addicted mother once pulled a knife on her, she’s witnessed murder, but she walks into public housing without security, armed only with a stethoscope and sometimes a baby scale. Asked if she was afraid, she said no, inner city poverty and desperation had been her life, and furthermore her mother and greatest inspiration, told her when you treat people well your life will be blessed.

Raised poor in the slums of Brooklyn, N.Y., she was a patient in this city’s free clinics which inspired her early in life, to pursue a career in healthcare. Though some of the doctors and nurses were kind, she felt the whole system was designed to humiliate people like her and her mom, who couldn’t afford to pay for treatment. Dr. Gloria says her mission was inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King who said “of all forms of injustice, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.

One of the most powerful lessons Gloria ever learned was the day her mother gave her 100 pennies, which was all they had, and sent her to the local grocery store for some bologna and bread. Little Gloria, was embarrassed at the thought that some kids might see her hundred pennies and realize how poor she was. But her embarrassment turned to shock when the store owner whisked the pennies off the counter, and called out to one of the stockboys, telling him to fill a big bag full of groceries, including a few precious peaches, for her and her mom. As she started to leave the store the owner said “Gloria, wait up a minute, you forgot your change” and he gave her back a quarter. That moment gave Dr. Gloria Wilderbrathwaite the faith and commitment to pursue her education and give back to others. On Dec. 6, 2005, Dr. Gloria was honored with a National Caring Award, she honors her mother, her community, and her profession.

I think life is supposed to work this way; when you get to the top of your ladder, you look back and see if there is somebody else who needs a helping hand, like the one somebody gave you. This is the season to reflect and rejoice, remember where you came from, pay it forward, and bring joy to the world.

Happy Holidays, To All My Relations

The “Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference,” the world’s largest psychotherapy conference ever, was just held in Anaheim, California. It brought together 8,000 mental health practitioners and teachers from all over the world. I brought in my holy brother, Patch Adams, to do a pre-conference workshop and deliver the opening keynote. The workshop was entitled “What is Your Love Strategy?” which was an unforgettable experience.

During the workshop, we had to pick someone whom we didn’t know, look into their eyes and tell them “I love you,” as if we really meant it. It wasn’t just a one-time utterance — we had to repeat it over and over again, changing the rhythm and inflection. I found it quite difficult. Patch said the only group that has been unable to do it, has been teenagers. It got easier after a while, and when I saw tears in my partner’s eyes, I knew that I made a connection. She told me later that hearing it again and again reminded her how long it had been since she’d heard those words, and how she longed to hear them again. I felt love for this complete stranger, who found comfort in my eyes and words.

Patch contends that loneliness is the source of most people’s despair, and if you can reach out and make a heartfelt connection they will feel better. He says reaching out to love a stranger is the critical element in doing the clowning work. He spends most of his time traveling around the world with a group of clowns going to war zones, disaster areas, visiting the sickest, loneliest, dying and discarded. The clowns don’t have to have any experience. They have to put together a costume, be able to endure long flights, 12-hour workdays without whining, come from a place of love and pay their own way. Patch says he’s never met anybody he didn’t love (which I must say I have always found a bit unbelievable).

His clowns get up real close and touch the suffering in ways that transmit love. He showed us some videotape footage of a little girl with third-degree burns that covered half her body. Her crusted, burned flesh was being debrided without anesthetic. I wanted to run away at the sight of such suffering, but the clowns under Patch’s tutelage don’t run away from anyone. While bandaging the wound, a clown playing a violin stood close by, and let the burned child touch her nose.

You don’t have to go to Dafur or Afghanistan to develop a love strategy that touches people who are hurting. Patch reminded us all that giving our love to those we are privileged to touch magnifies our healing power. This is the season of gratitude and renewal . . . imagine what we could achieve if loving more was a global strategy for the New Year.

P.S. We took this opportunity to sell an international audience on the first Patch Adams Full Moon Festival; our dream of bringing communities together in joy rather than disaster, and supporting local grass-roots charities. For those of you unfamiliar with this mind-boggling event in community mental health, go to the Schlagbyte Archives (Jan. 24, 2000) and smile.

Has the desire for self-improvement turned America into a country of addicts? This is the contention of Generation Rx, the new book by Greg Critser. He contends that drug companies, along with the nation’s physicians and the federal government, have transmogrified a self-reliant nation into a herd of functional drug addicts.

The use of prescription drugs has doubled in the last five years and will rise even more sharply. Why? Because Americans have been sold a bill of goods that says there are chemical cures for behaviors that are not diseases. Can’t stay awake after a day’s work? Don’t take a nap. Instead, take a pill developed for narcolepsy. Feeling sad, shy, or hyperactive? There are pills for that too, even though we have no solid ideas about their long-term impact or interactions.

Soon we will be treated to the New Year’s bowl game extravaganzas. This huge TV marketplace is a pipeline for selling more drugs. Lunesta, a sleeping pill, was prominently featured as a major sponsor of the 2005 World Series. Sleeping pills are not the best treatment for insomnia. The National Institutes of Health says that behavioral therapy is at least as effective as prescription drugs and far more capable of producing long-lasting results. The problem is that there is no equal marketing time for non-drug treatment, and there are not enough people trained to do the work.

Critser says a generation of Americans who have rebelliously experimented with drugs has now produced a generation who is growing dependent upon them with barely a squeak of protest. His relentlessly depressing message is a wakeup call … don’t get bowled over and take more drugs than are absolutely necessary.

It’s Thanksgiving morning, and I’m reading a USA Today poll about Americans’ attitudes about aging. Turns out, the greatest concern about aging is fear of a low quality of life —loss of the ability to care for oneself, loss of mental abilities, running out of money, not being able to drive or get around at all.

I read it with interest because I’ve been thinking about some of these issues myself. I’m getting older (my sons-in-law think I got there long ago), my body parts are begging for repair and I may be slowing down a bit. But I’m feeling pretty good, working out, and active. Better nutrition and advances in medical science have resulted in more people living longer and healthier lives. I’m thinking the idea of growing old may be scarier than growing old itself. We need to think less about loss and, instead, celebrate living our lives with everything we’ve got, as fully as we can.

This afternoon I will gather with my family and do just that, but, at the moment, I am sitting in my writing loft, outside on the patio. I feel a gust of wind come up, which causes thousands of tiny yellowing mesquite leaves to drizzle all over me. I smile at this reminder of the season of autumn leaves, as I listen to a CD playing a Crosby, Stills and Nash tune. I’m still here, teaching my grandchildren and still open to their teaching me. Later, I’ll sit around a table with my wife, sons, daughters, grandchildren, family and relatives. We will eat and laugh, and I will say thank you for being surrounded by such love and another chance to celebrate life.

In this season of appreciation, renewal and rebirth, remember to minimize your losses and come to every day with joy.