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135. How We Normalized Mood & Mind Altering Drugs as Mental Healthcare · Radically Genuine

• Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin. Sean, after reading Laura Doddsworth and Patrick Fagan's book, Free Your Mind, we had a great discussion with Laura Doddsworth in our last episode. I began to reflect on the societal shift that's taken place over the course of our lifetime in particular on how we actually view drugs and speak about them. Specifically, how did we normalize mood and mind altering drugs as mental health care in a generation? Like so quickly, I started remembering different campaigns throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. You talk about like public service announcements. Those public service announcements that were funded by the US government. They ran during like Saturday morning cartoons and... maybe different strokes like some of those shows we used to watch growing up. Well, it was certainly targeted at kids, of course, to influence how we thought about drugs. Because in my opinion, the rollout of psychiatric drugs to the public represents one of the boldest medical experiments ever conducted on humanity. Now, I don't think that's hyperbolic. Like, just imagine we started mass prescribing. drugs that manipulate brain chemistry to alter thought, emotions and behavior without any long term evaluation. Like it sounds almost ridiculous right now to us, you know, for us of our age range, because we've seen this profound shift. Yeah, we're also looking back over 25 years. And after 25 years, you can see where things go wrong. Even more than 25 years like I mean, 30, I was gonna say 30. Alright, 30 years, 30 to 40. Actually, my timeline is often messed up and happy birthday to you. yeah. A couple of days ago. Thank you. You just recently turned 46 years old. How the hell did that happen? It flies by. I don't feel 46. I feel 30. So I guess that's a good thing. Yeah. That's another thing. We were younger. Didn't we view like I remember thinking 30 was really old, but like for a 46 year old or a 47 year old. Sean (02:31.886) You know, I just saw somebody, you know, on the on the decline physically and mentally, you know, then there's the whole middle age thing, but not me. I'm aging backwards. I feel better. I had someone who works out at the YMCA where I go is older than me. Talked about the movie, The Quiet Man with John Wayne filmed in Ireland. Said it's one of his favorite films. He goes back on St. Patrick's Day and watches it every year with his wife and He told me to go watch it because I had never seen it. He was mad that as an Irishman, I've never seen this film. So I went back and watched it and it's good. I mean, it follows that pace of a 1950s film. But then John Wayne, I was just looking at him like, boy, he looks old and he's like courting this woman. So I went back to see how old he was when the movie was filmed. He was younger than me. Wow. But just the way that maybe life was, they were a little harder on themselves back then. Smoking, drinking and drinking. Yeah, they look older. Well, there was a time where it was promoted by doctors cigarettes as stress relief, like effective stress management, you know, and that's a very, that's really important for us to remember about how often our medical establishment and medical professionals are dead wrong on so many key areas. There's always this assumption to that. As the years pass, there's progress and society progresses. And there's a number of things that I think we're going to talk about today that's going to reflect some major steps backwards in, in culture. Yeah. Laura Doddsworth touched on that in the last podcast, like how vulnerable our minds are. And we continually repeat the mistakes over and over and over again. And we're going to continue to, yeah, I'm worried about what gets normalized. I'm old enough to remember ADHD, which. It was kind of spoken about as ADD. as a rare and controversial diagnosis that was applied to only the most behaviorally disruptive boys. And in our generation, during our childhood, the idea of drugging that behavior was met with such debate and concern for child welfare. And with as as most psychiatric presentations, you know, at the time, they were just considered rare and the use of drugs was Sean (04:56.654) viewed as a stabilization for maybe the most severe conditions that we never really had a whole lot of exposure to. Cause just knowing that drugs act on the brain in a way that alters states of mood and consciousness that have deleterious effects. I mean, it was so widely accepted. In fact, it was during the 1980s, there was that aggressive US government campaign against drugs. And this was during the Reagan administration. If you remember like the war on drugs, there was this period where drug cartels were pushing street drugs into the United States, still happening, of course. So there was, there was just much more of a vigilance to their, their impact. And this was like that whole just say no campaign and so forth. I remember in fact, you and I kind of found some of the YouTube clips. Do you want to play a couple of those? Sure. Sean (05:51.79) Is there anyone out there who still isn't clear about what doing drugs does? Okay, last time. This is your brain. This is drugs. Sean (06:11.342) This is your brain on drugs. Any questions? Yeah. How can you not remember? We remember it. And for those who might be younger or don't remember it at all, it's basically frying an egg in an egg pan. Like your brain is the egg. And, once you, you put it into the, the egg pan, it starts to fry it like as if the drug, the drug is frying your brain. And that does have an impact on how you think about drugs. So like whether it's taking a street drug or abusing prescription drugs, it was kind of akin to making a deal with the devil. Like, so for some, I mean, it's an escape that was worth it. You know, this altered state of consciousness was a way to deal with the challenges of living, drugs also though created dependence, right? And we knew this, that anything that acts on the brain in that way, eventually tolerance is going to set in and you're going to need more and more of the drugs to achieve the same high. And then. there's addiction, right? Addiction begins to settle in because you require the drug just to feel okay. It's not like you get high anymore. It's like your body becomes dependent. You become sick and it has cognitive effects and a number of things. And this was widely accepted. Drugs were viewed as dangerous. Sean (07:37.102) And then I had to reflect on what has changed. And there is this fine line between what is considered drugs and what is considered medicine. As a, actually I read your, your Substack article and I was thinking back to the time and I know where my head was at, like there were street drugs and then there was drugs that you get in a little orange. Cylinder that you could shake and those are the ones that are help you they fix a problem. Yeah, and That's interesting shift in language, right? So basically when the when the government approves a drug to be Utilized in health care it makes that shift from a drug to medicine and so I look up what the definition of medicinal is and medicinal is of a substance or plant having healing properties. And when I try to understand how we began to normalize psychiatric drugs as healthcare, the use of language as a powerful manipulator was something that stood out for me. Psychiatric medicine, taking your medicine and the use of that whole chemical imbalance theory. and how it was portrayed to the Western world, the American public, about imbalance in brain chemicals and this correcting it, so it having healing properties. And I think that is part of this slow, systematic desensitization into viewing. mind and mood altering substances that act on the brain as something that is medicinal that helps us. And that tried to reflect back on how this slowly became instituted into our culture. And one of the things that was certainly discussed in Freer Mind, the book, was the slippery slope technique. How you begin to add something into a culture. Sean (09:56.206) that previously would be met with great resistance, but you just slowly added into the lexicon and create narratives around it until it becomes normal. And I wonder, I mean, this is a discussion point for today, if we even move beyond some of the psychiatric drug aspect of this, but this happens in all areas of our society about how one thing is demonized and considered really harmful. then all of a sudden becomes widely accepted, although nothing's really changed around the science around it's like the narrative changes. Right. And if all always that's to benefit usually some industry or some government or some powerful idea and we allow it, we, we normalize it. So I was reflecting back to the 1990s and how things started to change in American television, like this idea of being in balanced or. portraying people who are mentally ill as if they're off their medicine, right? Like if you're on your medicine, you're stable. If you're off your medicine, you're not stable. And even referring to people who are struggling as imbalanced, new words that are conditioned into our lexicon. Yeah, I just wonder if that is because it's in the lexicon, if it's out there through... commercials and advertising which started happening in the late 90s how much that just kind of works its way into just the normal like if I were a writer for a TV show you know I'm influenced of course by what's being pushed out there through national advertising of course it's gonna find its way into the way I describe things in a TV show like if it's a hospital show we have lots of hospital and police shows that are very formulaic here in the United States. It's easy to work those things into a narrative and it just becomes normalized. Yeah, it does. And so that's part of it. And then the other part of it is the industry sponsored components of it. Right. So like, you know, Seinfeld would always have certain type of products that were available and you later realized that that was paid advertising. So they they pay for those product placements because there's so many eyes on it. And so if Sean (12:19.918) If Jerry Seinfeld, they're all eating a certain type of food routine. Roy Rogers fried chicken. Yeah. For some reason that one sticks out at me. Yeah, it becomes something that, you know, it's a way to increase your brand, eyes on the brand. And the pharmaceutical companies do the same exact thing. And I want to speak to it a little bit later in the show when we're going to show that clip of Tom Cruise, which is a... Infamous clip. I mean, that's interesting to talk about 20 years later, but you use celebrities to normalize things that were probably considered potentially dangerous and risky because if you're If the people that you're watching on television movies the ones you're looking up to as famous stars are Using this then it you know, it must be okay because we view them so glamorously and so forth so You know, those things are really, really important. But I started also reflect on since drugs were not available for us to use, how did we deal with things? How were emotions communicated? You know, how was life challenges discussed? You know, this was not shoved down our throats throughout the 80s and into the 90s. We did not discuss mental illness, depression, ADHD. You weren't exposed to it at all. So I started reflecting. How were we taught to deal with the full range of emotions growing up? If I were angry or frustrated, it was like process it, like deal with it. It's just, it's normal and to control yourself. Or if I was sad or if I was feeling like blah, it was get outside. Yeah, that's true. you know, it's interesting because permanent psychiatric, psychiatric illness was never brought up. So nor was the notion of feeling any anxiety or mood state as being Sean (14:25.166) like a link to an underlying brain disease that required medical treatment. Like it was always viewed as something temporary. It was. Well, our family is there's there's there was never really anything wrong with this. So I guess starting there was just a normal family growing up fighting with each other, arguing. Yeah. But how was that? How would that have been, you know, viewed from a different lens if it was the same family in 2020? Well, you, Sean used to chase after me with knives and throw them at me as I'm running out the steps. Butter knives. My aim was spot on and I always aim to the right. And let's face it. I had my share of getting in trouble during school. Are you, have oppositional defiance disorder? Yeah. Are you telling me that I would not have somehow been referred for some ADHD evaluation when I was in middle school, for example, ADHD was your problem. was your anger issues. I couldn't boxing club is what they remember boxing club. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was but you understand that that would most certainly lead to a referral today. Like the way that you view it is different. Well, the teacher that started boxing club would be fired. That's another thing that we should just tell the story. You got in a fight in school got in a fight in school. I don't know. Which happened? I think you may have been standing up for some, but I can't recall. I was. Yeah, I was. And, you know, that wasn't that abnormal. You know, we, we look back at some of these things and you just, you think about it as if it was barbaric, but sometimes you just, you know, you close the, the gate to the playground and you let it fly, you know, and that's just how you dealt with some, you know, how you dealt with some problems. So yes, I did get in a fight and One of the solutions at the school at that time was to get out my frustrations and anger through a boxing club, right? Which is interesting because you get tired really fast in boxing. You get tired really fast fighting. Yeah. And, and eventually like if you're boxing somebody in a controlled setting, the two of you just agree to stop, you know, I don't think, you know, you're 13 years old, 14 years old, you're getting a knockout punch. Yeah. But how that would have been, that would never have been allowed or even considered right now. Sean (16:43.982) But again, those were phases that I grew out of. Obviously I'm here on this mic. Yeah. So these things are, these things are temporary and not no longer, right? It's these are viewed as like these permanent immutable illnesses related to some genetic lineage. And, you know, you require medical treatment. So when that wasn't part of our reality and we are creators of our reality, we just think about things as different. you know, from a different perspective. And, you know, thank goodness you have you have parents or you have coaches who care about you. And, you know, you begin to regulate your behavior because of the consequences that you experience. And if you take away those consequences, which we have done in society, because now if we frame it as if it's an illness, we're actually communicating like the person has no control, which is inaccurate, another misrepresentation, and where the pendulum swings in a direction that actually harms people. So, you know, other things that we... Sean (17:54.83) Other things that we kind of did when we were younger is that we had to, we had to like reflect on our behavior and change our behavior, or we're going to be continuously face negative consequences. So whether it was the, you know, detentions, or if you're like an athlete or in your extracurriculars, like these things were very clear. Like if you didn't meet certain standards in the school system, then you weren't going to be able to be there. Yeah, there were like shameful moments. They should be shameful moments. Yeah, I mean, it did create an embedded. It wasn't a norm, right? It was creating an embarrassment. One of the things you're you talk to teachers now, and they'll say that some things are just out of control, like a complete lack of accountability, you got 20 % or more of your population on some mind or mood altering drug whenever there's a behavior problem, it's viewed for the lens of they got a disability or a medical condition, which then reinforces the notion for kids that Hey, if I can get this diagnosis, it's almost like a get out of jail free card in so many ways, but we're, we're really creating these psychiatric diagnoses. They frame a reality and it becomes their story, you know? And so you look back in your life and we all, we all create stories about, you know, ourselves and our behavior, you know? So what happens then when you view that your behavior is something that is not within your control because that you've been told, that's what you've been told. That's not what we were told. No. That's not what we were told. And the use of drugs was extremely rare. You know, Ritalin was being, you know, pushed into the American public to a degree, but you know, you've rarely met those kids. It really was not something that was prevalent. I think we were five to seven years protected from that environment. We were, I think it really exploded in the late nineties. Yes. When I was probably college, that's when I noticed that there were groups of kids that. We're on Ritalin. Yeah. I also don't think we were inundated with the constant media messages about new drugs to treat newly coined diseases. You know, like we are now, like drug advertising aimed at the public was practically non -existent when we were in elementary, middle school and into high school. Like the idea of children or teens facing mental health struggles, it just wasn't prominent in our popular culture. So it wasn't something that we, we considered. All right. And so now we step back. We're like, okay. Sean (20:19.886) Does that just mean we were in the dark ages? We just were not identifying kids who were really struggling and therefore, you know, the outcomes were poor, like there was a stigma attached to it. And that's not the case. Like there's no way you can look at where we are now, identifying statistics of kids, teens, adults suffering and identifying with. mental health related problems as if we're improving this. It's actually worsening. So we do have to ask ourselves very critical questions about what is going on in our society and what is going on in our culture. So what else did we begin to normalize that became part of our lexicon, our cultural consciousness? So the idea that there is a underlying medical condition that leads people to struggle with their emotions, their thoughts and their behavior. So even drug use changed. How so? So when somebody now was experimenting with drugs, they were now self -medicating. That was new. Well, I'm known to self -medicate with a glass of red wine. Well, you have I mean, you're not really self medicating, like you're not medicating because you don't have anything wrong with you. Well, Roger. It's my stress levels and my anxiety. I need to calm down at the end of a workday. This is new. It's justification. Yeah, I mean, we've always I mean, it's not new for human beings to seek out something to change the way they feel alcohol. is legal and alcohol is regulated, but it's still a drug. It's not a medicine. Right. And so there's another example of something that we view as a drug because it's not in any way sold through the pharmaceutical industry, but it still affects consciousness, right? It affects our thoughts, our emotions, behaviors. If you just have one glass of red wine, the deleterious effects are not significant. Sean (22:28.11) But if you have a bottle of red wine, it can create all these types of problems. So you're not self -medicating because there's nothing that is being healed. That's an important distinction. Yeah, but you got to reflect back on also the role of kids or teenagers or young adults going to their doctors and their doctors kind of reinforcing all these messages as well. Right. So when you talk about these normal emotional behaviors that happened during those teenage years, and it's just something you deal with, if you would have went to our local pediatrician during that time, the pediatrician would be like, what are you here for? Yeah, they would they wouldn't have any way to even but they'd say guidance or like, they would normalize it, go talk to somebody, I guess, you know, they would know they would normalize it. And they would probably not necessarily refer you to a mental health specialist, but they would talk about things like structure, discipline, chores, getting outside, even great foods, not sending you to a psychiatrist or they themselves giving you a prescription for something. Right. And they would also often ask the parents like, all right, what are the consequences? You know, there was like token economies, behavioral interventions, punishments, things like that, reinforcements. These things were discussed much more openly. So I do think this is part of the greater plan within the pharmaceutical industry. Not I don't I think I know because I've read enough on this. So well thought out marketing plan. Yeah. There's a great book by James Morgan. He's the author of Medical Industrial Medical Industry Complex. And so this is a quote from his book. Big Pharma needs sick people to prosper. Patients not healthy people are their customers. If everybody was cured of a particular illness or disease, pharmaceutical companies would lose 100 % of their profits on the products they sell for that ailment. What all this means is because modern medicine is so heavily intertwined with the financial profits culture. It's a sickness industry more than it is a health industry. It's true. I mean, from a business standpoint, it's just logical. I mean, think back to the, the, one of the Sean (24:45.326) best case studies that was ever communicated when I was in school was about Kodak. They were the first to invent the technology for the digital camera, but they didn't want to put the digital camera out because they realized, well, if we do this, then we're going to lose our entire film business. Polaroids. Yeah. So we don't want to lose the film processing side of our business because it's a huge revenue. So they held onto it. And then of course the technology comes out because everybody was working on it. And then by Kodak. Does that, does that get you to think of cancer treatments? Sure. Yeah. This is a podcast for the future, but apparently, and I've just started looking into this, there are some treatments that are believed to cure cancer that just are not. Yeah, there's always stories of those. But if there's one thing I've learned in this room is that the human body is very complex, unique, and we're all we're not the same. So I believe that there are some things that work. probably very well for some people where it doesn't work for others and continuing to evolve in that area and come up with some solutions. But if there needs to be, I think, unique solutions based on your genetic profile in terms of like increasing the likelihood of you having a successful outcome. But the point being is if there is something that exists, then that is not in the best interest of their bottom line. And so now let's think about the psychiatric drug industry. OK. Previously, when I talk about the rarity of psychiatric diagnoses, you know, the ones that would require a drug because of their severity, it's just not enough people for a lucrative industry. So they had to increase the prevalence rate of their conditions. They had to normalize it. And that was where they used academic psychiatry as a way to... increase the number of people who can identify with mental illness through hiring them as paid spokespeople and creating ideas around it. And that's where, when you think about how ADHD in itself has risen in prevalence rate is they created a lot of marketing campaigns that are lies. Like if you're ADHD and it goes untreated. Sean (27:09.71) then you are more likely to experience later mental health problems and substance abuse. When it's exactly the opposite, it is a gateway into the psychiatric industrial complex from multiple perspectives. From one, the idea that you have to turn to a drug in order to feel better primes a young person at a very young age to be placed onto a drug to alter their behaviors and their mood. Secondly, the drugs themselves have significant side effects. This goes back to the difference between drugs and medicine. These are drugs and the brain adapts to them, always seeking out homeostasis. Once the brain gets used to it, it's not going to have the same effect. You're going to have to increase the dose. Side effects of the drug can create mood dependence, mood problems. anxiety, and a range of other conditions that go beyond the scope of today's discussion. But when you experience those side effects, well, then you're going back to the doctor. It's a cycle that you stay in. And this became much more prevalent in the 90s into the 2000s. And then I started to recall that infamous interview between Matt Lauer. and Tom Cruise. And I wanted to go back and watch that again. And I did this morning and we'll play it again for our listeners today. And I wonder how people might think about this from a different lens. Take away Scientology from it, right? You know nothing about Scientology. You take Scientology out of this conversation and you tell me that Tom Cruise was not way ahead of his time. in how he was discussing this. Sean (29:11.79) I've never agreed with psychiatry, ever. Before I was a Scientologist, I never agreed with psychiatry. And then when I started studying the history of psychiatry, I started realizing more and more why I didn't agree with psychiatry. And as far as the Brooke Shields thing is, look, you got to understand, I really care about Brooke Shields. I think here is a wonderful and talented woman. And I want to see her do well. And I know that psychiatry is a pseudoscience. But Tom, if she said that this particular thing helped her feel better, whether it was the antidepressant or going to a counselor or a psychiatrist, isn't that enough? Matt, you have to understand this. Here we are today, where I talk out against drugs and psychiatric abuses of electric shocking people, OK, against their will. of drugging children with them not knowing the effects of these drugs. Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that? The difference is this was not against her will, though. But this wasn't against Brooke's will. Madam, I'm asking you a question. I understand there's abuse of all of these things. No, you see, here's the problem. You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do. Aren't there examples, and might not Brooke Shields be an example of someone who benefited? from one of those drugs. All it does is mask the problem, Matt. And if you understand the history of it, it masks the problem. That's what it does. That's all it does. You're not getting to the reason why. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance in a body. So postpartum depression to you is kind of a little psychological gobbly goop? No. No, I did not say that. I'm just asking, what would you call it? No, no. Matt, that is the... Post now you're talking about two different things, but that's what she went on the antidepressant for but what happens the antidepressant all it does is mask the problem There's ways of vitamins and through exercise and various things. I'm not saying that that isn't real. That's not what I'm saying That's an alteration of what what I'm saying I'm saying that drugs aren't the answer that these these drugs are very dangerous. They're mind -altering Antipsychotic drugs and there are ways of doing it without that so that we don't end up in a brave new world the thing that I'm saying about Brooke is that? Sean (31:34.766) There's misinformation, OK? And she doesn't understand the history of psychiatry. She doesn't understand in the same way that you don't understand it, man. But a little bit what you're saying, Tom, is you say you want people to do well, but you want them to do well by taking the road that you approve of, as opposed to a road that may work for them. No. No, I'm not. Well, if anti -depressants work for Brooke Shields, why isn't that OK? I disagree with it. And I think that there's a higher and better quality of life. Yeah, I think that's a good place to start. A couple of things. At this point, I have no reason to believe that Brooke Shields really went through postpartum depression, went on antidepressants, and it helped her. Because now I know what happened back then. They would hire people who were influential in a particular culture. They would pay for them to say such things. That is a fact. Is it possible she really did go through postpartum depression and she believed the antidepressant helped her? Maybe. I doubt it because antidepressants aren't very effective or not effective for postpartum depression. Right? It's logically speaking, we know that a drug that's targeting one neurotransmitter increasing the availability of serotonin when there's no serotonin deficit in the first place for something as complex hormonally and environmentally as someone... who is struggling with depressed mood following having a child. I mean, that's such a complex issue that needs to be treated with the complexity it deserves. But you throw that out into popular culture. And now you assume you have a medicine, it's correcting something, it's healing, it's a tool, whatever those words that exist. But Tom at least did some examination into like, what these drugs actually do. And I've always believed in the scientific method, right? So, you know, prove it right it is it is of the responsibility of those who are putting out the drug to prove its efficacy. Let's talk about this interview. So the date of this is June of 2005. So 20 years ago, almost 20 almost 20 years 19 years ago. Do you remember how you felt when you saw this interview for the first time and what was going through your mind? So Sean (33:58.83) I was in my doctoral program. Okay. And I remember the discussion distinctly in one of my classrooms. Were you going, you're getting your master's at the time or your doctorate? My doctorate. Okay. I was at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Okay. And I remember these two, I just remember them as very naive young women. Okay. Who were, who knew nothing about antidepressants or psychiatric drugs and you know from their work history were never placed in some of the environments that I was placed on. And I remember them. using ad hominem attacks on Tom Cruise, right? You're he's a like a science denier, you know, he's a Scientologist, almost like you're anti progress. And that's kind of the view like the view at that particular time, the prevailing view was science is progress. And what gets in the way is traditionalism, you know, that sometimes conservative or religious beliefs get in the way of progress. So there was no critical evaluation of safety or efficacy or what we know about the drugs at all. So I was that alternative voice. What do you know about antidepressant drugs other than they're using a marketing term antidepressant? Well, I know they help people. Well, how do you know that? Well, why would they be prescribed and why would people say that they help them if that wasn't the case? And I even knew then I said, well, scientifically, we're, I mean, we're studying to be psychologists. I would say, well, scientifically, you would understand why someone may report something to be helping him when it doesn't actually, you know, I just would ask a series of questions. And I said, we're psychologists, we're not psychiatrists. Why do you need to pound the drum for medicines for our mental health? What do we know about that? Where is that helping people? What are alternatives? And I got into that discussion only because of my history in Sean (36:05.774) both juvenile probation at the psychiatric hospitalization where I, you know, saw harms. You had perspective. I had a different perspective. I, to be honest, I didn't dismiss the idea that maybe there was some value. I just didn't accept it as absolute truth. You questioned it. Yeah. It was worth questioning. And, you know, you see then there's the, all the hit pieces. Like Tom Cruise is crazy. I remember that. That's what I was thinking. Yep. He's crazy. And that's at home. Honam and hominin attacks. I always have trouble with that. Yeah, you're that's where you're discrediting the person and not the idea Yeah, and that kept a lot of important science out of the mainstream, but every everything that he was saying now when you look back on it of You know nutrition and exercise. Yeah Reasonable what's those are drug the problems of drug and kids. Yeah. Yeah, you know, like I don't it's It's weird to look back on that and and know how I felt at the time and and how I view things now. Yeah. And that's what's interesting too is because you see the role of corporate media. We were really only exposed to corporate media. So the Today Show, which he was on with Matt Lauer, is one of the most popular shows in the entire country. There will never be one show that gets that many viewers anymore, right? Because of how the media landscape has changed. So fragmented. Yeah. And now you have all these podcasts, and most people are getting entertainment. Nobody listens to podcasts. I think, you know, Tucker Carlson on X when he had the interview with with Putin, you know, had millions of views, right? More than what he would ever have gotten on Fox News. So the landscape is changing the way people digest content now is just different and You know, you get all this fragmented kind of media space, but the use of a podcast, you know, like ours is you can have these conversations, you can talk to experts, you were only were exposed to what they wanted you to hear. And because the pharmaceutical industry began to almost like 60 % of their operating budgets, you know, they were paying their salaries. So they become paid spokespeople. Sean (38:31.662) And they start using the same terms like medicine. There's now you're you're you're talking about mental health in a different way. And it shapes our culture. Do you want to know another area where this has occurred? And it just it just thought about it now because I was watching the NFL draft the other day. No, not the other day. A couple of weeks ago. Two weeks ago. Yeah, two weeks ago. And the NFL commissioner, as the NFL always does is they pay tribute to our servicemen. And there is some alignment with the NFL and US military. And one of the things that keeps continues to get shoved down our throats. And when you thank servicemen, and this is again, not against people who sacrifice for our country and our military people, but they use the word protecting our freedoms. Okay. How does the US military protect our freedoms? How do they protect our freedoms? Yeah. Who's trying to take away our freedoms? Well, if there's any foreign threats, they're trying to, you know, maintain democracy in other countries. Our freedoms. Our freedoms? Our constitutional rights. How does the US military protect our constitutional rights? freedoms. I would just say by having a strong military presence here in the United States, it protects the homeland, right? Yeah. But they don't protect our freedoms. The ones who take away our freedoms would be our own government. And our the US military is not protecting us from the US government or foreign invasion. Then things will be taken away. Yeah, potentially. But who's more likely to take away our freedoms, our own government, or a foreign government? Let's be honest. Who knows? A world war would totally disrupt everything. So I think we have a role. Yeah, the US government would be involved in a world war. Yeah. Potentially the one provoking it. But if you look at what's going on in Congress, and with these FISA laws and what happened post 9 -11 with the Sean (40:46.478) commission. You mean the Patriot Act with the Patriot Patriot Act. Those are that is evidence of freedoms being taken away. The lockdowns are evidence of freedoms being taken away. That is from our own government and that would only happen within our US government. Use of use of vaccine passports and digital currency. A lot of our military push back against some of that and many of the military now serve in other public service. So police officers, a lot of them were resistant to a lot of those that influence. I think having that that pushback and that perspective actually does to a degree, protect our freedoms from from getting out of control or things being taken away from us out of control. Might be a stretch, but yeah, I think and what I'm talking about is how language gets manipulated, right? So if anything, the US military has invaded other countries, not necessarily to protect freedoms. Protect democracy. That's what sold to you. Okay. But where was democracy protected? Give me a specific Afghanistan. I mean, we're advanced Afghanistan. That's that's a we know how we were manipulated about going into Iraq. True. What the Korean War? Vietnam. Korean Yes. Are these? you know, these are this is evidence of us going into foreign countries to dictate to them how they should run their countries. It's not protecting our freedoms. So we have this large military industrial complex, right? But it's still conditioned to us, like we're trying to get the bravest, the strongest American military. And it's under the it's under the kind of association of like protecting us. Yeah, when And influence global global influence. It's more it's more of a global and commerce. We're in the business of business. So when you have influence in other countries, you expand your business outside domestic to international territory. I guess it's kind of expanding the American dynasty, which doesn't look like that's the goal anymore. It looks like there's some other potential goals. But again, it's just the use of that language over and over. It's more people into the military. Right? More if if you're going to protect your family, protect your people. Sean (43:11.854) And you view military like that, like probably the last war, World War Two, World War Two, where we were doing good. Those values were very true. I mean, that's why everybody enlisted was to protect our freedoms. But since then, there hasn't been a conflict that has, you know, had that type of, you know, support. Couldn't you make the argument that because of the strength of our military, we prevented those from ever occurring again? And from the alliance that we've established globally through all the other nations that we have a presence in and relationships with. I know there's wars going on every day of our lives. And there's always not here. It's just and that's that's kind of the goal is to I mean, we're in conflicts all the time. We just don't declare them wars. Yeah, I'd rather nobody wants a war or a conflict, but they're going to happen. And I think the ultimate goal is to keep those isolated. Yeah, you and I disagree on this. So it's probably not worth getting into. So I want to get back to the use of language. I just want to go the difference between a drug and a medicine. Right. Dr. Joanna Moncrief is the one psychiatrist she's out of the UK that I think has really done a great job of articulating this. So drugs, they're frequently prescribed for people with emotional and behavioral problems, problems that we label as depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ADHD. And in trying to understand more fully what these drugs actually do, she formulated two different models of drug action. The one which were sold is called the disease -centered model. And this suggests that psychiatric drugs work because they reverse or heal or partially reverse an abnormality or a disease that gives rise to symptoms of a mental illness or a psychiatric disorder. So for example, antipsychotics are used to treat or help counteract the biological abnormalities that produce the symptoms of psychosis or schizophrenia. Sean (45:35.214) Antidepressants that produce the symptoms of psychosis or mood -related problems are thought to act or we're told they act on biological mechanisms that produce these symptoms. Mood stabilizers are thought to correct the pathological process that gives rise to the condition of manic depression or bipolar disorder as it's sometimes claimed. Or just variability in mood or generally. This disease -centered model is constructed. It's a marketing campaign that's borrowed from general medicine and presents drugs through the prism of the disease. It is medicine. According to this view, the drugs have their effects on a disease or abnormal nervous system. Sean (46:34.158) This is how we've been massed conditioned. In contrast, there's what's called the drug -centered model. This is how we must accurately portray them. Please, everybody, public service announcement from myself here, stop calling psychiatric drugs medicine. In the drug -centered model, They do not correct anything that is abnormal because there isn't anything on the brain that's identified as abnormal. There is no disease. Instead, these psychiatric drugs induce an abnormal or altered state. Ironically, they induce an imbalance. Psychiatric drugs are psychoactive substances, not unlike alcohol, not unlike heroin. Not unlike cocaine. Psychoactive substances modify the way the brain functions and by doing so produce alterations in thinking, feeling, and behavior. Psychoactive drugs exert their effects on anyone who takes them regardless of whether or not they have a mental condition at all. Folks, if you take Adderall, it's going to affect you. It doesn't mean you have ADHD. You might get a boost in mood. Sean (48:08.526) Boost in energy, focus, concentration. This is why they're abused on college campuses. Sean (48:16.942) different psychoactive substances produce different effects. And the drug center model suggests that the psychoactive effects produced by some drugs could be useful therapeutically in some situations. They don't do this in a way that the disease center model suggests by normalizing brain function. They do not do that. They're not correcting. They are not healing. Sean (48:47.118) Back when modern psychiatric drugs were introduced in the 1950s, they were understood according to the drug center model. Antipsychotics, for example, were known as major tranquilizers. they were just regarded as a special sort of sedative. They were thought to have properties that made them uniquely useful in situations like an acute psychotic episode because they could slow up thought, dampen emotion without simply inducing sleep. But they were not regarded as disease targeting treatment. By the 1970s however, this view, was eclipsed and the disease -centered model of drug action became dominant to increase the sale and use of drugs. Sean (49:41.518) Psychiatric drugs started to be discussed in ways of targeting underlying disease or abnormality. This was pushed on the American people. And this change is demonstrated clearly by the way drugs have become named and classified. Prior to the 1950s, drugs were classified according to the nature of the psychoactive effects they produce, like a tranquilizer. Existing drugs were crudely classified as having either sedative or stimulant effects on the nervous system uppers and downers After the 1950s however drugs came to be named to classified according to the disease or disorder that they are trying to treat anti -depressant anti -psychotic mood stabilizing This is the use of language and how it conditioned all of us. Great example. Okay. Sean (50:43.918) alcohol for somebody who is socially anxious even a little bit. having alcohol, drinking alcohol is going to alter your emotional state and your thinking. It's going to decrease anxiety, lower inhibitions, fear muscles. That's why we see so many 18 to 22 year olds drinking alcohol. That's why so many people dance at weddings. True. But we wouldn't call alcohol antisocial anxiety drug. No, right. But it's inducing an altered state. All drugs do this. And so we have to stop misrepresenting these drugs, because it's giving people the false idea of what these drugs are. They're not medicines. So this is what ended up happening in the late 90s. early 2000s and maybe you can even find that commercial again. We opened up the radically genuine podcast with this commercial from Zoloft. Yeah, give me a second to track it down. Remember that up to this point, this is your brain. This is your brain on drugs, folks. You know, they are addictive. They are mind and mood altering. They have consequences. Maybe in the short term, there's effect like listen, Yeah, if you take some drug in the short term, maybe it helps you sleep. Maybe it helps you deal with some episode. But they were never something to take long term because of its negative effect on you. I'll play the one that's social anxiety because I think we've played the other one. Sean (52:37.422) I think this is the social anxiety. Social anxiety disorder may be related to an imbalance of natural chemicals between nerve cells in the brain. Prescription Zoloft works to correct this imbalance. You just shouldn't have to feel this way anymore. Only your doctor can diagnose social anxiety disorder. Zoloft is not for everyone. People taking MAOIs or Pemizide should not take Zoloft. Side effects may include dry mouth, insomnia, sexual side effects, diarrhea, nausea, and sleepiness. Zoloft is not habit forming. Talk to your doctor about Zoloft. the number one prescribed brand of its kind. Zoloft, when you know more about what's wrong, you can help make it right. There you go, folks. So a couple of things. Now there isn't just social anxiety, you know, part of being human. Now there's social anxiety disorder. There's the disease that's created. And now we're not just going to drug you. We're going to give you medicine and we're even going to lie to you. We're going to tell you it's non habit forming. The language. That's a lie. But the language in the kind of the body of the commercial. the way that they phrased everything. It's the cause of social anxiety is unknown. And it may be related to a chemical imbalance. May is the word and we're going to give you a drug that corrects that. So you're correcting something that you're not even confirming is a solution to the unknown cause of the problem. It's ridiculous. but it's how easy we can be manipulated. Sean (54:36.494) I think it's changing, Sean. I think we're doing good here on this podcast. I think the conversation is really starting to spread. It's lots of conversations all over the place. And when you have nutritional psychiatrists come on and speak about how over the last 20 years, they just haven't seen people get better or the majority of people don't do well on, on drugs. and. If you really want to solve the problem, what are the solutions you kind of go back to the basics, which is the irony of the whole situation. I'm gonna be honest. I think we're to blame. We as a people, we as society, we as a culture, we are vulnerable. Yeah, we repeat the mistakes over and over and over again. Yeah, I'm at this point, I'm done. You know, blaming it on the authority. I blame us are naive. consumer culture nurtured its growth without an ounce of critical thought or even resistance. We relinquished our common sense and bowed to the authority, be it in schools, the medical settings, our government, our corporate news media. We became obedient sheep, blindly following the dictates of those in power. We have biases. We are vulnerable to those biases. Those biases can be leveraged against us. I mean, it paved the way for the exploitation of our minds and bodies by profit driven interests. And there's a whole movement we are still ignorant to. We still don't really fully communicate and talk about the trans humanist movement and how dangerous people exist out there who hate humanity. And so we must relinquish this victim mentality and refrain from slowly from solely blaming doctors or pharmaceutical companies. Ultimately, we empowered them with that authority. We passively absorb the marketing messages and accepted them as truth. We as parents gave the public schools way too much power to raise our kids. We put our kids in daycare. We accept this system. Sean (57:02.446) It's time for us to accept accountability. We allowed it to occur. And now we need to reclaim our common sense. We must recognize the power we hold as consumers and citizens to demand transparency, integrity, and genuine care in our mental health systems. If we question the authority and we advocate for informed consent, We can dismantle this grip of profit -driven interest and ensure that the well -being of people takes precedence over profit. But you have to be willing to question those people in power. And that's the doctor who's has to get you out of there in 10 minutes. Fuck that. You stay. You owe me. You owe me this time to tell me what if you're going to prescribe this drug, you tell me what you know about it. You're not allowed to be a sheep anymore. You went to medical school. Don't you just passively absorb shit? Think! And don't give me this bullshit. Don't hand over the, well, this is the best available evidence. Sean (58:12.59) According to who? Sean (58:17.486) You have a responsibility, you have an ethical code. All you doctors out there, I'm dealing with it every single day. You primary care doctors are handing out these drugs in mass. You know nothing about them. How did you let this happen? Sean (58:38.094) You owe it. You owe it to them. You cannot just repeat the marketing propaganda. These are powerful mind, mood altering drugs with consequences and those consequences are severe and many of you are giving them to young developing brains. And parents are accepting it without critical thought following the doctor's orders. because that's what we do. We're just good patients because that's what we've been conditioned to do. Even if it goes against our better judgment, even if in your gut and in your heart, it's telling you, no, don't do this. Don't do this. But then your fear gets in the way. Sean (59:28.494) No more. No more active resistance. It is active resistance. Do not just blindly sign the informed consent without being provided informed consent. If we all stop doing it, they can't do it anymore. It's profit, folks. It's profit over your own well -being. probably extends beyond. And there's a couple of things we can do right now and that's the purpose of this podcast. Stop calling psychiatric drugs medicine. Sean (01:00:11.022) It's not medicine. There's nothing being corrected. Nothing being healed. You're being drugged. Almost everybody listening to this podcast should not be on a psychiatric drug statistically. Now might there be an incidence in emergency medicine where stabilization is necessary? Of course, that's what they're designed for. Stimulant sedatives. Sean (01:00:38.062) But they should not be marketed to the general public. We should not accept disease -mongering. disease inflation. And no longer should we be empowering primary care doctors, nurse practitioners, and psychiatrists to determine what is mental health, what is mental illness, and how it should be treated. We let it creep in to our society. Slowly, it was nudged, you know, like boiling a frog or a lobster. You slowly turn up the heat where you just get used to it and you just accept it. So there's things we just accept in society now. Psychiatric drugs, pornography. Sean (01:01:34.606) not defining what a man or a woman is. Sean (01:01:40.558) Social emotional learning. What is racism? All these things that are dividing and harming us, we slowly accepted them into our culture. Well, the pendulum is going to swing back in the other direction. Rationality, reason, critical analysis, and compassion and love for each other will prevail over this because it's evil. Sean (01:02:17.038) It is our time. our time to reflect on what has happened and how it got here and it is now of our generation to do something about it. Don't let them numb you with Netflix, phones, social media and just blindly accept what you're told to do. COVID is a lesson. It's an awakening. Sean (01:02:44.334) This is what we saw with COVID has been going on with the psychiatric industrial complex for 40 years. And if you're of Sean's age, 46 years old, you are in unique position to have seen the shift. That is the value of Generation X. I'm on the cusp of why. Yeah, I mean, we're raising the next generation of children and reflect back, correct the problem. It is up to us and each generation, you know, has its... Has it has its issues you have to stand up for you to demonstrate courage? And I think medical freedom is a defining moment of our time reclaiming sanity away from you know those who have created this mind virus It is it's a defining moment of our time and I'm gonna do something about it. There'll be a big announcement probably coming in the next podcast probably just soon as I'm ready to unveil it, which is shortly. We'll get right back on the microphone. We might even release an episode earlier. Just a big announcement because it's important. We're going to have to come together. There's a lot more of us than there are of them.