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I put up a post last week about a date I had recently and it generated a good number of responses. During this date, the woman asked if it bothers me to be with someone who drinks.

In that post, one of the things that I said was that I would “deal with it” if all of the other aspects of the relationship were good and that the drinking was kept to a minimum. This response of saying that I would “deal with it” brought an interesting comment from Tancie, and I thought it was worth addressing in its own blog post here.

Tancie stated that the phrase “dealing with it” would bring up resentment and that I should avoid all women who drink if it makes me that uncomfortable.

For me, drinking is a very complicated issue and is not so cut and dry, especially given the fact that I feel so strongly about other things as well — organic food being one of them.

Last week, I was in Syracuse, NY to give a speech at the APCA (Association of the Promotion of Campus Activities) Northeast Regional Conference.

This is a very complex question that my father and I discuss from time to time. He insists that it was the right decision for me to go on it and doesn’t regret it at all. He also thinks I should never have gone off antidepressants when I did in 2001.  He and my mother were adamantly against this decision.

For me, the question of whether going on antidepressants was the right decision brings up many thoughts and additional questions.

* As I talked about in my last post related to this subject, there were tremendous and disastrous repercussions for going on Prozac. There is no doubt about it.

As you probably know by now, I am pretty fanatical and passionate about organic food. It is what I love. It has a superior taste to conventionally-grown food.  Also, it is best for my health, the farmers’ health and the planet.

Given that I am so concerned about what I put into my body and my overall health, I have been thinking about this topic a lot lately: organic food vs. organic thoughts.

So, what do I mean by this?

Organic food is clearly the best food for me and is critical to good health. There is no doubt about that. However, when I have negative thoughts, feelings of guilt or doubt, or start beating myself up for a variety of reasons, is that negating the benefits of my organic food habit?

I learned how to meditate in college when I took a Transcendental Meditation class and have maintained a very serious practice over the past 11 years.

For some reason, I don’t remember doing it that consistently in the 90s. Most likely, it was the hard-partying lifestyle that got in the way.

Anyhow, my meditation practice is something that I cannot live without. It calms me down, centers me and gets me more focused. Nothing makes me more relaxed or present.

So, when I get up in the morning I sit and meditate for 20 minutes. The meditation is Transcendental Meditation, which uses a mantra as a way to keep the mind from wandering.

And after I finish meditating, I do something called Creating My Day.

As I wrote about the other day, it was during college when I went on antidepressants. Each day was getting harder than the next. The sky was growing darker and darker. It was a major struggle just to survive.

I was overwhelmed with a variety of responsibilities — school work, in which I seemed to be drowning; the tennis team, which occupied several hours of my time per day, not including constant traveling to other schools for matches and tournaments; and my fraternity, something in which I was very actively involved.

With my voice becoming more heavy during each phone conversation, my parents suggested that I go visit a local psychiatrist to see if he could help. More specifically, they thought that antidepressants were the answer. After a brief chat with the doctor, he diagnosed me with a mild case of depression and believed that Prozac would indeed improve my situation.

As I mentioned the other day, there were tremendous repercussions for me going on Prozac during college. Yet at the time, I didn’t have any idea that they would be so disastrous.

What influenced my judgment to go on antidepressants was a real desperation to feel better. And to feel better quickly. Worrying about how this would impact my life 5 or 10 years down the road was of no consideration whatsoever. I wanted relief and I wanted it immediately.

These are the key repercussions: