Story 3: Hole in the Skull

Our next story is about a woman who tried something so unusual and so viscerally uncomfortable making that I don't even want to say any more about it.

Our next story is called Hole in the Skull.

When she was 27, Kate took a drastic step to improve her life.

We do some incredible things in the name of feeling better.

We take yoga classes, we meditate, we take more time for ourselves, we spend more time with friends, we stop eating meat, we eat nothing but meat, we stop eating completely, we give ourselves enemas, we read self-help books, we study Eastern philosophy, we see therapists, we take drugs, we pray, hoping to improve our lives, hoping to feel better.

Kate went further though.

She went to Mexico and she got trepanned.

Trepanation is the drilling of a hole in the skull, which is mainly done these days to relieve pressure on the brain in cases of cerebral hemorrhaging.

Elective trepanation has a long history and has enjoyed a bit of a fringe revival in America and Europe since the 60s.

Proponents of the procedure, many of whom have trepanned themselves, claim that it can permanently relieve headaches, depression and anxiety.

Some go further and claim that it improves memory and can lead to higher levels of consciousness.

Those are some high claims.

They sound pretty amazing.

But even if trepanation does everything its proponents say it does, there's no getting around the fact that to get those benefits, you have to drill a hole in your head.

And that's just not something most of us are willing to do.

Well, Kate was willing.

Here's what happened.

I was at a friend's house.

They were playing poker.

And they had an old spin magazine that had an article in it.

The article was less about the actual operation and more about the reasons that people would do it and their perceived effects of it.

They sort of equated it to being a little bit high all the time.

And that appealed to you?

That still appeals to me.

Yeah.

I was instantly fascinated, completely fascinated and a little confused by why other people around me didn't seem as fascinated.

And I was also a little flipped out, frankly, because the idea that there might be this possibility that I'm missing out on and that in some ways seems to go against everything conventional or, you know, that God made us how we are, we're just perfect the way we are, but what if I could do this thing and feel better all the time or feel more peaceful?

I take it you weren't feeling peaceful at the time?

That's true, I have a long history of not feeling peaceful.

So this was, this to me was like this final frontier or something, because what if, you know, what if this were it?

And I was really fascinated but also really overwhelmed.

I felt really pretty petrified by the concept.

I wasn't fascinated by the procedure, I was fascinated by the possibility.

And what scared me is that I was worried that I would have to do it.

So I was taking an anatomy and physiology class and in order to get some extra credit, we had to write a paper.

And basically it had to be a paper that had anything to do with anatomy and physiology.

And I thought, oh, well, I'll write it on this, I'll do some research and I'll write it on trepanation because I'll enjoy that.

And I couldn't remember at that point even when it was called.

So when I did decide to look for it, I had to Google, like, hole in the head.

Basically the idea is that, like, all the membranes around your organs expand and contract on the heartbeat.

And that your dural membrane, the membrane around your brain when you're young expands and contracts in the same way when your cranial sutures are still cartilage.

And that in your early 20s those sutures seal and ossify.

And so that the dural membrane can expand or contract.

So one of the theories is that by putting a hole in the skull, it allows room for the dural membrane to expand on the heartbeat.

And therefore your brain is getting more blood and oxygen.

Do you know what a congenital fontanel is?

Um, no.

Some people have parts of their skull that isn't bone.

It's cartilage.

The top of the head, you know where the bones all grow together.

If that doesn't completely seal, that's like a congenital fontanel.

But what happens is generally it covers over with cartilage.

So it's still covered, but it's not bone.

That's considered to do the same thing as selective surgery.

So the other things that I researched were, like, a lot of doctors, particularly American doctors, saying that it was a bunch of hooey.

But I didn't feel like anybody ever addressed the actual theory behind it.

For the most part, people were just saying, oh, this is a bunch of crap.

And so I was reading all these people saying, no, but never saying why, no.

Just like, no, it's a bunch of craziness.

So as I continued on with my research, and my journey, and I kept finding that people were so opposed to it, I kind of thought, well, people are so terrified by that idea that they can't even, like, allow themselves to fathom it.

That sounds crazy, but...

And so there must be something there.

That's how I think.

So I started asking all my friends.

I sort of was doing the survey, and a very, you know, informal survey, and I would go out and I would say, Oh, have you heard of this?

And what do you think about that?

And, you know, people were like, okay, well, that's crazy.

Or, well, that sounds kind of like a cool idea, but that's crazy.

And so somehow that just fed my feeling of, well, people are terrified of this.

There must be something there.

Oh, and at that point, I was really feeling curious, and I wanted to know if I wanted to do it, what my options were.

It wasn't that I had made up my decision.

I wanted to know that if I could do it, that I had taken all the steps, and I was ready to go.

So it's kind of like working up to it without really committing to it.

And I emailed the guy, Pete Halverson, that's here in the States.

Pete Halverson is the guy that runs this group called ITAG, International Trepanation Advocacy Group.

He had a book that was written by Bart Huges, who's one of the original people to do this in the 60s.

He was also medically trained, and he had written a book called Brain Blood Volume, and was basically talking up this little book about the mechanism, the theory behind it.

So this is this little book, and it's 10 pages or so.

And he said, well, what we're doing is we're having people that are interested engram this book, and engramming is learning something through the process of reading, writing, and speaking repetition.

So what you have to do is hand write this book 10 times.

Just copy it word for word down on a piece of paper.

Yeah.

I think it's a really good idea, by the way, because it's a huge commitment to write a 10-page book 10 times by hand, and you know, you have a lot of time to think about why you think you're doing it and why you want to do it.

So I was about to start school again, and I was on a break, and I was at home in Oregon, and I thought, well, this is going to be my last chance to have any free time.

So while I'm in Oregon, I'm just going to write the book, and I'll just do it 10 times.

And that way, I have it out of the way, just in case, because I'm not going to be able to when school starts again.

So I did.

And then when I got back, I contacted Pete, and I said, oh, by the way, I finished that.

And he said, oh, well, we're arranging our first group of people to go to Mexico and have the surgery in a month.

And you're eligible.

You want to go.

So you were sort of put on the spot, I guess.

Yes.

Well, it's such a bizarre thing.

I mean, the whole thing is bizarre anyway, right?

I mean, objectively, even I know it's bizarre.

And to be doing this thing that is so profoundly subversive in some way and surreal and sort of unreal, too, you know?

It's kind of like it's hard to imagine that kind of idea was even going through my mind.

And for him to then say, well, you're eligible if you want to go after putting all its energy into it and edging towards it, and then to be able to do it in such a way that I wasn't going to have to find a drill and somebody to, you know, help me that I could actually, I was like, yeah, I want to go.

Can you give me an idea of what you were hoping for, what you were expecting?

Well, you know, there was a possibility that something horrible could go wrong, and I could come back a vegetable, or not come back, or, you know, really mess myself up.

But I just didn't feel like that was gonna happen.

It sounds stupid, but on the positive side, well, you know, I guess I was hoping I would be high for the rest of my life, but I'd always been kind of a seeker of, you know, collector of possibilities.

And that was my hope, I guess, that I would, I don't even know that I had a specific hope of how it would be.

I just, I was just fascinated, I guess, with the idea of changing my reality in a positive way permanently.

Were you in any way just attracted to just the idea of doing something that was so?

Bizarre.

Bizarre, yeah.

I think that was really secondary to just not being able, just knowing that I wouldn't be able to live if I, of course I'd be able to live, but I wouldn't be able to rest if I didn't, that was predominant more so than being, setting myself apart as a freak, which is always appealing, but wasn't my main motivation.

It was too risky, I think, for me to look at it as like getting a really bizarre tattoo or some other kind of thing somebody might do to set themselves apart.

It was just, it wouldn't have been enough reason for me to do it.

We took the bus, and we met up with Pete.

The other people that were there were, interestingly, all over the age of 50, all on medication for depression.

There was a couple, and another woman, and myself.

When you saw these people, what reaction did you have about, yeah, I mean, about the procedure, or about what you were doing?

When you're going to Mexico, to have a hole drilled in your head, nothing could surprise you.

I don't know.

I think that's all I can say.

I mean, you just can't gauge anything by normal standards.

The other people were Middle America types, not maybe mainstream.

I don't think they were mainstream, but they weren't progressive thinkers either.

They were actually kind of just awkward.

Yeah, they were all just slightly awkward.

I guess we all got there whenever we got there, and we all went for MRIs.

In Mexico?

Yeah, this very nice plastic surgery clinic with marble, and it was quite lovely actually.

And we went to the hospital, we met the doctor that was going to do the surgery.

We saw the clinic.

This doctor was a normal, like a medical doctor?

He was a plastic surgeon, specialized in hands.

And they had this drill, there's a specific drill that they use for drilling skulls.

They have to drill your skull if they're going to do any kind of brain surgery.

So it's not, the procedure itself isn't that cutting edge.

It was a plastic surgeon with the proper drill.

And then the next day, we got up early and we went to the clinic and I was going to leave the very next day so they decided to do me first, which I hadn't really anticipated.

I wasn't, I hadn't realized I'd signed up for that.

But they give everybody something, they give everybody else something else.

It kind of put them to sleep.

It wasn't an anesthetic but it was some kind of drug that made them sleepy, like a painkiller that made them sleepy.

But for me they didn't do that because I was the first one.

So I guess they just injected my skull with novocaine or whatever they put in there.

And so I was awake and they did the surgery and it sounded like there was a helicopter in my head.

The bone, your skull bone is hard and then squishy and then hard.

And a lot of times when people did themselves they would get through the hard part and then they'd get through the soft part and they'd stop because they think they were done.

But there's another layer.

So this drill basically drills it then bores it out and then automatically stops when it gets through that last layer.

Traditionally, people that have done it to themselves, they say that after you've gone through and as your fluids in your brain adjust, that there's this kind of fluttering noise or a feeling.

It's kind of like a noise that people hear after they've done it.

So they did the surgery and Pete came rushing over to me and he said, do you hear anything?

Do you hear anything?

And I said, no.

And he said, oh yeah, well, we thought maybe you already had a congenital funnel.

I'm like, what?

Are you kidding me?

What did he mean?

So they were saying basically the thought that they suspected because I was just naturally a fruit loop that I already had cartilage for part of my brain.

And therefore, the surgery wouldn't do anything.

So I was kind of disappointed because I was expecting this fluttering and that I know something had happened and I didn't get any of that.

So they bandaged me up and then I took whatever aspirin with sedative that they'd given everybody else and I went to sleep for a couple of hours.

When I woke up, everybody was done and we all went back to the hotel with our giant bandages, which is really pretty funny.

The four of us with our heads wrapped up.

And I took my bandage off, the big bandage, and wrapped myself up in a headband so I didn't look so weird.

And we all went out to lunch and imagined how wonderful our lives would be.

And then the next day, I got on a bus and went home.

So you came back from Mexico, and what, how, I mean, how was it?

How was it?

Well, subtle.

I remember being on the bus back and thinking, oh, this feels kinda nice.

If I stay like this my whole life, well then, you know, something's happened.

But, I mean, that can really be explained by the idea that I had just undergone this very intense and, you know, potentially dangerous experience that I had really sought and wanted.

And I had just completed this, you know, like doing a ropes course.

So, you know, basically I was coming off a natural high anyway.

Who knows if it was because I had actually, there was anything physiological changing or it was just because I had undergone this kind of intense emotional transformation by completing it.

But, you know, for the first couple weeks, of course, I was vigilantly trying to decide if anything had happened and really, to this day, I couldn't tell you.

I really couldn't tell you if it changed me.

But if I had it to do all over again, I would definitely do it.

Because otherwise, I would constantly be wondering, to this day, I would be wondering, I would be scheming, I would be distracted by thinking that maybe I should pursue this.

And what if fate was in my hands?

What if my future was really in my hands in that way?

Pete used to give out my number on occasion to other people who were interested after they'd made it through the first couple of hurdles if they wanted to talk to somebody that had had it done.

And he had done that for me, too.

He had given me the numbers of some people.

And they didn't want to talk to me.

The people who had had it done didn't want to talk to you?

They were like, well, it's something I did.

It was my decision.

I can't tell you if you should do it.

And I didn't feel that way.

I felt okay about them contacting me.

But I also felt like I wasn't giving them what they wanted to hear when they called me.

What do you think they wanted to hear?

I think they wanted to hear that all the claims were accurate.

And if they did this, that their lives would be easy and they would be brilliant and beautiful and rich and popular.

And all their wildest dreams would come true.

But no, you're still you.

And it's very, very subtle.

And if, you know, and I think that I think of all four of us and I've only, I can only speak for the, I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I believe that the four of us that did it, that none of us regret it.

But I don't know that it's because of the gains that I've gotten from it that make it so valuable.

Kate, which is not a real name, by the way, was trepanned seven years ago, cost about $1,200 then, it's more now.

She started taking antidepressant medication about two years after the procedure and continues to do so today.

Her new hole is about three inches above her left ear.

That story came to us courtesy of Will Rogers, who is a Stanford graduate.

It was made by his friend, Galen Menzel, who is a farmer out in western North Carolina.

Kate is a practicing therapist.