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Why do Mothers Kill their Children? | Jerm Warfare · UK Column Radio

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: So so My name is Jerm. This is Jerm Warfare,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the battle of ideas. Peter Bregan, thank you for joining
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: me in the trenches.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: We're ready to go. My personal trainer has decided the
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: best training he has for me is teaching me to box.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: He's a boxer. And it's to recover from my left-sided
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: weakness from my stroke and my incoordination of left and right.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: He's got me doing.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about that if you don't mind.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: He's got me.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: The stroke.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Well, the stroke, I had a stroke in my external
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: capsule of my thalamus, which is a control center. It
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: can hurt everything. You name it. Doesn't matter what, whatever
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: you can think of. Eating habits, sexuality, thinking. breathing and
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: it's unpredictable from could easily have ended up with a
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: complete left sided paralysis but I didn't I got weakness
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: on my left side and almost none on my right
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: and aphasia you can get aphasia where you can't speak
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: and I had that that was my dominant symptom started
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: with My speech was getting interfered with. And very quickly,
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: I couldn't talk anymore, and people around me realized I
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: must have had a stroke. I'm talking about my doctor,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: so I didn't know what was going on. And my
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: wife decided that the most important thing she could do
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: would be to save me. She took me out AMA,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: against medical advice from the doctors. Very brave of her.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: I watched it with amazement because I couldn't do anything.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: I just sat in a wheelchair and took me to
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Florida where I had three months of intensive post-stroke treatment.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: That was really quite extraordinary. I'd talk about the placement.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: but it closed immediately after I got finished. She must
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: have marshaled a band of angels and gotten me there
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: and got me taken in, got me the main part
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: of the treatment, which was hyperbaric oxygen, very intense, two
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: hours a day. And that was surrounded by occupational therapy,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: physical therapy of all kinds, aimed at strengthening my weaknesses.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: If you want to be frustrated, have somebody figure out
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: what your weaknesses are mentally and test them by giving
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: you puzzles that you're not prepared to do well on.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: That was really hard. And I got a lot better.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: People have seen me before and after can't believe how
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: well I'm doing medical people. And my PT is more
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: than a physical therapist. He's actually... I think his basic
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: identity is a personal trainer. And I told him one
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: of my concerns was that I'm sort of a very
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: protective man and I couldn't protect myself or anybody else
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: right now. So he said, well, I'm a former kickboxer.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: He said, I think it might help you a lot
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: if I touch a box. So, and the way he
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: does that is he has these gloves. that he blocks
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: me with. You may have seen this on TV when
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: guys are warming up for their fights. So I'm in
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: there practicing my one-two punches and making my hooks and
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: my uppercuts some more systematic and better produced and throwing
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: in an occasional kick.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: And he.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Reminds me, any fighting outside a ring is dirty fighting,
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: but you better be prepared to do it.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Who, in your view, is the greatest boxer of all time?
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, he and I think Mike Tyson.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I think you're right.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: And he would like me to fight like Mike.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali was pretty good, too.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Who?
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God, yeah. Of course. But probably the most
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: interesting one I watched in recent years was Tyson, and
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: he's showing me Mike's moves. He says, you know, you go, one, two,
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: and then when the guy doubles up a little bit,
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: you just get in there very, very close and bring
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: that uppercut in. Of course, Mike was 10 times stronger
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: than me and quite a bit bigger, too. So was
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: my trainer.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: You're one of the most prolific psychiatrists, I think, in
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: American history. Born in, if I've got this right, 1936.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: That means you're 90 years old. or 90 years young.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: I am 90 years old. And I've been married. I
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: first met Ginger 50 years ago. 50 years ago, and
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: we've been married for, what's the latest count, love?
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: We've been married for 42 and a half years.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: 42 and a half years.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: What is your secret?
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Well, right now my secret is Ginger. Ginger.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Now, what I meant was, what is your secret to
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: being married so long?
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: What is the secret to my being married so long, Ginger? Yeah,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: just loving that lady and discovering what it's like to
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: be loved by a lady. It's just amazing.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: You're Harvard trained. You spent decades, I think, as the
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: most prominent critic of biological psychiatry itself. What does that mean?
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Well, another way it's put is I've been called the
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: conscience of psychiatry. Yes. Is that an unenviable position? I
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: think it's an unenviable position. Don't do what anybody else.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Especially when you're young and just finding your way along
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: and stuff.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: But what does it mean, though?
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, why?
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, explain it to me.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Explain it to you. Well... I had a very acute...
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: confrontation with psychiatry when I was a very young man.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: My freshman year at Harvard, an undergraduate, a friend of
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: mine said, my brother is setting up a volunteer program
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: at the state mental hospital, Pete, and I just see
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: you studying all the time. I think you should get
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: off your chair and come on out and volunteer at
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: the state mental hospital. And I did. And the experience
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: changed my life. I really, I think I deeply connected
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: it in my mind with the Holocaust and Nazi extermination camps,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: and the more I got to know about it, the
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: more it seemed to me that all the treatments I
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: was seeing being given to the patients was either to
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: severely punish them or crush their spirit so there wouldn't
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: be any trouble. and that there was just no orientation
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: to the loving care they needed. And that just seemed
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: really apparent to me. It was so painful being on
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: the wards and seeing these conditions that we actually set
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: up groups sort of way ahead of my time, PTSD
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: to the hospital withdrawal groups. where we would talk about
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: what it was like and the headaches we got and
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: having trouble sleeping and how we felt about seeing people
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: living in such squalor and so lonely and so unable
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: to leave, really at jail, prison, big prison. And I
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: always wanted to be a reformer since I was a child.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: I can't remember what age I was, but I was
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: very young. I remember thinking that when I grow up,
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: I'm going to write about how tough childhood is so
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: people can finally understand that it's not a good place
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: to be and that parents need to be different and
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: schools need to be different. And I did do. I've
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: precisely done that. that, actually. I did grow up to
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: write about that. And when I finished up my training,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: I was accepted as a, lieutenant commander in the United
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: States Public Health Service and assigned to the plum job
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: that you could get for that, which was to be
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: an officer in the National Institute of Mental Health. About
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: the same time, Fauci did something similar and I ended
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: up in NIMH because that was mental health and he
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: went to NIAID, which was infectious diseases and epidemics and things.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: I decided though, I was offered a job to stay
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: there in the NIH and that would have been a
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: great professional career. But I could see the drug companies
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: were running everything that I could see. They were gonna
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: be running everything. And I didn't wanna be in that position.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: So I went into private practice. thanked them and turned
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: the job down after first accepting it. I could hardly
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: believe they really wanted to have me because my views,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: I was talking about my views. Probably nobody believed me.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: I meant it. And so I found myself in private
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: practice and people were coming to me on the drugs
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: and I could tell that it was practically impossible to
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: do psychotherapy if somebody was on the psych drugs. because
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: they didn't know their feelings, and they attributed their feelings
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: to what was the time of day and how the
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: drug might have been affecting them, and if they were
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: having trouble, they wanted more drugs or less drugs, but
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: it was all about drugs once they started on them,
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  Speaker 2: so that there was this crushing effect of thinking that
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: drugs were your solution or the cause of your problem. And...
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: I ended up getting some really serious patients and nonetheless
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: treating them without medication, which was unheard of. Taking them
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: off medication, which was even more unheard of, right out
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: of the state mental hospital, right out of St. Elizabeth's.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: You know, people would hear about me and they might
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: give me a call and say, we want to take
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: our daughter out of St. E's, but we don't want
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: her on drugs. We heard you don't believe in drugs.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: And like, see the patient right out of the state hospital.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: And it was much easier than I thought it would be.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: It just meant I had to pay a lot of
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: attention to my clients. And at one point, after maybe
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: a couple years in practice, I decided I'd ask each
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: of my clients, especially the ones who were doing better,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: what helped them. So I gave them a free session
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: for my benefit, He'd interview each of my clients about
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: what's helping you. And even some patients had finished up recently.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: And the answer I got was not like I thought
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: it might be, which is, well, you know, understanding what
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: happened with my parents really made a big difference. You know,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: looking at childhood was very important, of course, and all
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: your insights into my self-defeating patterns that were getting me
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: in trouble. But they all said pretty much something about
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: the same thing. They said, you cared about me so
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: much I started caring about myself. And I thought, whoa,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I didn't expect that. And that got me thinking more
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: and more about what mattered in life. And I certainly
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: knew in my own life that's what I wanted. I
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: wanted to find somebody who just cared about me so
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: much I'd care more about myself. I'd never had that.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: At least I didn't feel like I'd had it. If
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I'd had it, I didn't recognize it. And so I
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: stayed in private practice and was in private practice when
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: I met Ginger in 1973. She was 24 years old.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: I was about 34 years old.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: It was.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Crushing love at first sight for me. But you know,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: we were on the air, right? This being recorded. She
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: was a proper Christian, so the first date didn't end
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: in bed like I expected all first dates to do.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Which probably was not a bad thing. But I was
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: married at the time. I got divorced shortly afterward. And
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: she was a Christian, not Christian principles. And she was
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: the first person to ever tell me God loves me.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Do you remember that old TV show that was about
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: two ladies, one was African American?
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: Touched by an angel.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Touched by an angel. Well, at the end, one of
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: the women would say to whoever the guy was they
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: were all relating to and saving, God loves you. And
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: the guy would say, well, how do you know that?
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: She'd say, well, I'm an angel. And her hair would
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: light up. And one night, out of the blue, Ginger
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: came up to me and put a flashlight behind her
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: hair and said, God loves you. He just told me
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: he loves you. And that was transforming of me. And
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: I had had, and I don't talk much about this
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: on the air, I'd had an earlier experience with God. No,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: it was after.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: It was earlier.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: I'm here with my wife because since my stroke in
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: August of this year, I have a little difficulty with
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: time sequences, and she's telling me that I'm off on
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: my time sequence.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: You had your God experience before I started doing the
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: God loves you message. We were only married a year
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: or so when you went on that vacation, and you
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: ended up having your God experience. Actually, you went to
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: a conference.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: I went to a conference, yeah.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: I was at home.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: You were at home. So we were together for a while.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: For just a year or so, yeah.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: So I'd already heard that God loves me. And I
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: was taking a shower before I gave a talk to
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: about 500 people. And I was feeling it would be
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: a very friendly audience, very friendly. It was mostly psychiatric survivors,
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: people who had been hurt by psychiatry. And they were
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: always loving me and being grateful for me. And some
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: professionals who respected my work would also be there. But
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: I felt like my work wasn't going very well. It
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: just wasn't accomplishing as much as I wanted. I had
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: some big victories early on when I conducted a national campaign.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: It was my first big campaign to stop lobotomy, and
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: I succeeded. Stopped in the U.S., most of it in
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Great Britain and Canada and other places in the world.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: And I'd worked with the U.S. Congress on setting up
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: a psychosurgery commission a declared psychosurgery experimental, which really put
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: a warning out for clinicians not to just go using it.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: It said if you're going to do it, you've got
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: to do it under controlled clinical conditions. You've got to
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: do it as an experiment. You can't just claim you've
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: got this treatment. It's a dangerous experiment. And I testified
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: in a big case that led up to that. as
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: well as the Psychosurgery Commission. Well, it was a lot
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: to get done in my first year or two of full-time,
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: really working on, as a volunteer, just on reform issues.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: And Ginger, from the time I met her, was always
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: reminding me of all the things I did. If I
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: looked at all sad, she'd just sit beside me and
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: remind me about who I was. It was just remarkable
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: things I didn't quite understand, actually. Couldn't make sense out
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: why anybody would feel that way about me. And she's
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: just smiling with me.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Your underlying theme throughout your career was that psychiatry was
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: harming people due to the over-reliance and over-medicalization of drugs
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: rather than simply understanding people.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: And giving them wise direction if you could, and helping
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: them understand themselves, really. And care about themselves. Helping them
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: care about themselves. I'm teasing about being God-loving, but I
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: came out of my childhood believing I didn't deserve to
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: be loved. I think that's very common. I think that's
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: the big disaster is when you come out of childhood
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: not deserving to be loved. And Ginger paid no attention
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: to that and just loved me. And it was completely
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: baffling to me in the beginning. Other than I knew
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: something magnificent was going on, I didn't know what it was.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: You were involved in very big things. court cases over
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: the years. I think Columbine, that theater shooting, there was
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: a Canadian guy who used Prozac. What did you learn
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: from these cases?
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Well, I think I learned what happened to Clancy.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, the lady who killed her three kids.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. What I kept seeing with the psychiatric drugs was
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: that it impaired judgment because you couldn't know your feelings.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: If you're on any kind of psychoactive substance, you don't
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: know what your feelings are. You don't know if it's
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: an imbalance in your brain caused by the drugs. or
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: whether it's because you were actually being mistreated by somebody,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: or that you were remembering or under the influence of
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: some earlier abusive experiences. And I began to see one
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: after another cases of people committing murder on Prozac or Paxil,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: murdering a child. I had a very early case of
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: a man who, drowned his young son in which must
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: have been a pretty big feat in a tub and
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: then tried to drown himself on top of him failed
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: it was Paxil and um that particular case was interesting
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: because as part of the settlement I wasn't um allowed
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: to write about the case. And then, I don't know
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: just how it worked, but the lawyer said, you know,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: they want to settle now, and part of it, they
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: want you to put a gag order on you about it.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: And then later on, another judge opened it to the world.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Some other people tried to use it and it touched
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: for their case. And the drug company complained and said, no,
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: you can't do it. The judge said, I'm going to
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: do it. And it couldn't be used. So then I
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: wrote about it. I had a Canadian case where a
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: young man on Prozac out of the blue turned to
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: a friend sitting around BSing in a garage, pulled out
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: a kitchen knife and stabbed him in the heart. A chest.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Killed him. And the judge listened to my testimony, listened
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: to the testimony of top Canadians, including the clinic director,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: who was rather well-known where this young boy had gotten
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: this extra dose of Prozac because he was not feeling
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: well on the dose he was on. So they gave
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: him more. He got worse and worse and worse. And
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: he said that he agreed that the evidence was a
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: process that caused it. That was the first Canadian case
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: like that ever. And I had some big, I had
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: the first case ever, one against electroshock, surrounding electroshock. I
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: didn't play a decisive role in any of the big
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: shooter cases, like Columbine. I was involved in them as
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: a expert in cases, but surrounding Columbine, like lawsuits against
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: doctors or school or whatever somebody thought was to blame.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: And the drug companies. Because Eric Harris, the first shooter,
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: famous shooter, not the first shooter, but the first famous shooter,
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: though everybody else was mimicking, was on Zoloft. And he had, ironically,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: to identify how much he was on, the coroner said
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: he had a therapeutic level of Prozac in his bloodstream,
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: meaning an effective level, enough to make a difference one
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: way or another. But even that I learned just from
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: going through the records. I never testified in any of
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: those big cases. They preferred not to get mixed up
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: with the drugs. Most of them, when they push came
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: to shove. And they would go with it. For murder
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: or for not guilty by reason of insanity. Because they
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: sounded crazy. There was evidence they were feeling and acting crazy.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: But they didn't want to get involved too much with
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: the drugs. I think the drug companies have an amazing
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: ability to put pressure and suppress anybody from taking seriously
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: the drugs. It's really quite amazing. Um, Clancy, um, I
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: could just read you a paragraph from my, um, This
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: is my substack, and I don't know. I'm confused as
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: I look at it.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: You're in the wrong age.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Because I'm on the front.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the paragraph.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Where is the front? Where's the headline?
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: I don't think it printed out.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it didn't print out. The headline wouldn't print out.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: So here is the Lancy case. It's a list of
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: all her meds. Can you get an idea about that?
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Each one is a day and a medication. And, um....
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: Reading doesn't work.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I talk about her defense depends on postpartum mental
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: illness and 32 psychiatric medication prescriptions given in four months
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: leading up to her fatal.
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: Death.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: And then I point out that, um, Thanks, honey.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: Little paragraph.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Lindsay's trial has revealed that Clancy was a victim of
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: prescription polydrug treatment. Over the last 10 days, she was
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: prescribed quetiapine, trazodone, lorazepam, diazepam, trazodone, diazepam, diazepam, amitriptyline, diazepam, diazepam,
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: in various doses. Thiazepam is Valium. Every single one of
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: these drugs interacts with other drugs to increase their sedative effect.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: So she's on multiple sedatives. And as I wrote here,
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: that this was gonna have a generalized sedating or sedative
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: effect on her brain that would at the least seriously
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: compromise any individual's cognition, self-control, and judgment, rendering them ultimately
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: unable to adequately manage their emotions and behavior. Looking at
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: the chart, in January, all nine prescriptions were highly sedative drugs.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: They're benzos, mostly. And if you read the FDA's prescription
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: information for benzos, they talk about paradoxical reactions. that patients, uh,
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: people who just lose control of themselves on the drugs.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: It's a similar effect to alcohol, except you don't know
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: you're drunk. When you drink alcohol, you know it can
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: make you drunk. And, um, You also can feel the drunkenness.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: You're staggering, you're stumbling and mumbling, and you know that
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: you're not yourself. But with the benzo, you don't necessarily
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: have any of those adverse effects that are obvious. When
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: your cognition, though, is drunk, it's poisoned. And what I
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: discovered the more I looked at psychiatric drugs was that
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: every single one of them, to the degree that it worked,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: was a neurotoxin. And that this was true for the
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: so-called antipsychotic drugs, as well as the plain old sedative
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: drugs like Valium or Librium. That they're neurotoxins. You want
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: to know how they work? They work by poisoning brain cells.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: and reducing their ability to communicate with each other. And
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: that one of the effects that I think I was
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: the first to talk about was that what I called
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: medication spellbinding. That as part of the intoxication, the front
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: lobes always got enough of the drug to start ruining
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: your highest centers of self-reflection. And that almost all the time,
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: just like with an alcohol, acute alcohol intoxication, the person
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: has no idea how impaired they are. They may do
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: something really stupid like get in a fight in a
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: bar when you're 90 years old or whatever. Or drive
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: when they shouldn't be driving or come home and beat
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: their wives or whatever. Just losing impulse control. And that
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: happens on the benzos, and she was on enough benzos
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: to be having primarily a benzodiazepine effect. So you could
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: really identify it as a possible paradoxical reaction to benzos.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: And then every drug she was taking would add to
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: the sedative effect. Pretty much every drug. And one of
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: the more interesting parts of history of these drugs is
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: is that when they first discovered the antipsychotic drugs, first
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: one was Torazine, and then the second or third one
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: was Aldol, and now Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdal, Zyprexa, they were
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: all antipsychotic drugs, and they all blocked dopamine, which is
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: the primary nerve truck from the center of the brain
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: to the frontal lobes of the brain, and to the
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: area that's called the cerebral cortex, the surface of the brain,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: up in the front. And it just causes the inability
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: to know exactly what the drugs are doing to you.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: And people may feel like they're an impulse to kill,
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: but they have no idea what's going on or impulse
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: to kill themselves or I feel like they're dying, but
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: they don't know what it is.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: How did it get to that point? I mean, with
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: these drugs, were you on, were you taking so many drugs?
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: It starts somewhere. What is that starting point?
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't think anybody's ever asked me that. Um,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: What's the starting point of the multiple drug use? Well,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: it comes out of the drug companies and their marketing.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: And they never much talked about the dangers of combining
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: drugs because they were happy to have people do it.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: And they were happy to push diagnoses that would let
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: you give almost any drug you wanted, like bipolar disorder,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: all this big emphasis on bipolar disorder. There's two reasons
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: for that. One is that the antidepressants caused it, so
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: they had a lot more coming along. And before the antidepressants,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: it was rare to see anybody that seemed to have
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: a manic depressive reaction, which became re-diagnosed, just gave a
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: new diagnosis still of bipolar disorder. That you go up
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: and you go down, two poles. it just is a
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: good way to get a lot of drugs on a person.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Because you can treat them for being high, you can
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: treat them for being low. You can give them a
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: drug which does both, makes you high or low, and
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: you can't predict it. It just rationalizes giving all kinds
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: of garbage to people. As a result of that, drug
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: companies purposely pushed the diagnosis of bipolar disorder with a
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Harvard psychiatrist whom they paid to do it who did
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: it never got punished for it and um we all
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: of a sudden had a lot of bipolar kids who
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: gave them all kinds of drugs and that was the
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: goal of it that's the marketing it's like asking where
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: people get the idea they could need two cars I'm
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: sure the car companies play a role in it but
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: I haven't studied it um.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Do you think if Lindsay had not been on any drugs,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: she would not have killed her kids?
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think her children would be alive today if
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: she hadn't been on any drugs. Or at least on
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: more than one or two. Once you get up into
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: the three or four drugs thing, you have no way
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: of even predicting what the result is because there's never
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: been a study of it. So you can't go into
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: a textbook, at least not right now, and say, okay,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: I'm going to put my patient on these five drugs
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: in the first two weeks that I see her, or
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: I've already got her on all these drugs. What's the
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: effect of that? What kind of studies do we have? Well,
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: if you gave this to AI, I don't know what
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: they would do. Maybe I'll try. But what they should
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: do is say, you're conducting an experiment on your patient, doctor.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: because there's no studies like this. The FDA, who does
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: studies for drug approval, never puts the patient on multiple
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: drugs unless they're doing some sort of special study of that.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: They always have only one drug or two drugs. And
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: sometimes basically drug companies get special permission to do that
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: in their plan, because they don't want the FDA saying
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: this Persons with too many drugs, we can't make a
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: judgment of what the drug effect is here. And so
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: she was just an outright experiment. Hey, we'll take a bright,
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: attractive woman who seems to be in some sort of
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: problem with her husband, give her three children, and see
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: how it affects her. Well, she didn't come through gloriously,
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: needless to say. Sometimes the drugs can just confuse the
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: hell out of you. And so I give you this
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: impulse for that. They just confuse the hell out of you.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: And so you go along with your unconscious mind. And... Something.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Close to 20% of Americans are on antidepressants. Do you
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: think that the over-medicalization is making society mentally worse?
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. The over-medicalization has been making society worse since the 1950s,
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: I believe, when we flooded the mental hospitals with these
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: so-called anti-psychotic drugs. Let me give you a little piece
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: of that history. A surgeon in Paris found that he
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: had a drug which was a derivative of an antihistamine,
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: which when he gave to his patients, they still had
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: pain after the surgery, but they didn't care about it.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: So he quickly got in touch with his friends over
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: in the mental hospitals. and said, I think you ought
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: to try this one, and they did. And they found
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: it was a miracle. They could tell it was a
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: miracle because the nurses all reported after just a week
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: of the patients on the ward being given the drug
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: that their life was much easier, that the patients were
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: more obedient. They didn't have so many demands. It was quieter,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: much quieter on the ward. They lobotomized everybody with a neurotoxin.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: And then as they explored it, they began to see
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: all these symptoms. Now, since the majority of their patients
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: were women, They blamed it on some sort of female
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: problem rather than on the drugs, or at least that
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: the drugs were just bringing out some sort of, unmasking
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: some sort of female problem. And then the drug company
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: managed to conduct an experiment, giving it to a whole
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: huge boatload of sailors because it suppressed... the vomiting center
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: and these sailors are going to be out in rough
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: waters for a while so um so all these young
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: soldiers start getting the same abnormal neurological reactions that the
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: older ladies were getting on the hospital wards that's really
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: threw a monkey wrench into the dismissal of these symptoms
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: as the elderly and women and um They realized they
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: had a neurotoxin on their hands. And then one of
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: them was bright enough to say, you know, all these things,
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: the twitches and the deterioration of the thinking that people
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: are getting, that looks exactly like a viral disease that
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: occurred simultaneously with the flu during World War I. called
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: lethargic encephalitis. Viral, probably a viral encephalitis. And it made
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: people lethargic and dull, but didn't put them to sleep.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: And that's just what these drugs are doing. So you,
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: they were creating apathetic or lethargic patients without them having
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: to stay in bed, which was really great. And, uh,
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: for them. And, um, They thought about it some more.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: And this was the beginning of collaboration between pharmacology, pharmacy,
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: the pharmaceutical industry, I'm sorry, and psychiatry. Because they just
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: saw that these drugs were so spectacular in quieting the wards.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: They wanted to work with the drug companies on what
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: else they could find. And when they began to realize
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: it was all neurotoxin, they went to the drug company.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: I don't remember what you want to ask offhand. And
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: they said, what's your most neurotoxic drug that you have?
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: What one is causing the most of these permanent twitches
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: and abnormal movements? They had a quick answer for him.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Said in the monkeys, Haldol. Haldol. Haloperidol. And so that
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: became the choice of drug for... for many years because
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: it was the most neurotoxic. And psychiatrists have kind of
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: known this intuitively because every time you look at what's
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: the most popular version of a drug, it'll be the worst,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: the one that's doing the most crushing of mental processes.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: When they first started using stimulants for ADHD, One of
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: the first drugs they seized upon for using was methamphetamine.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: Docs were giving methamphetamine not instead of Ritalin, which is
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: a weaker stimulant, or instead of cocaine, which would just
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: have been outlandish. It's pretty outlandish they were using meth,
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: but they never talk about it anymore. Sure.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: If we accept that a drug, can remove someone's moral agency.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Are we therefore accepting that the drugs can remove the
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: concept of the self?
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: Well, the self's pretty complicated, but it certainly can confuse
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: and impair it. When I was in the hospital, I
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: don't know what would have happened to me if my
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: wife wasn't managing what they were doing to me. When
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: you had your stroke. When I had my stroke. Because
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: one day they decided that maybe this was a policy
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: that they had to protect against seizures in first-time stroke patients.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Is it protocol? It was part of their written protocols.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: So they gave me, without telling me, intravenous benzo. And
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: I got so confused, I didn't recognize my wife. She
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: came to my bedside and I was just totally out
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: of it from the Benzol. And they gave me intravenous.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: They had no idea I had it. It was Keppra. Keppra. K-E-P-P-R-A. Keppra. Keppra. Yeah.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: And they said there, well, how do you know it
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: causes confusion? I suppose they were tempted to put on
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: a little girl. And she said, I looked it up.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: I work with my husband. I know how to look
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: things up. I felt so proud of her, even though
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: I was, and I realized how in love with her
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: I was, as confused as I was. I said, are
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: we married or something? I don't know. What did I do?
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: What did I?
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: Oh, honey, you were so confused at that point. That
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: was days later. I don't think you were proud of me.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: That was days later.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you were very confused. Well, Peter, another way of
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: me asking that question, I suppose, is how does psychiatry
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: view the person, the human being?
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: They don't view us as human beings. The whole idea
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: of a human being is a God creature created by God.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: Beingness is a divine gift. Anything that implies that you
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: won't find in psychiatry. You look in the index of
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: your textbook of psychiatry, whichever one you want to, it'll
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: probably not even have the word love in the back.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: And it won't have being or beingness. It just doesn't
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: have the concepts. And when I was opposing lobotomy, One
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: of the lobotomists who was a very big deal at
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Harvard actually wrote something ridiculing me. Bragan thinks the frontal
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: lobes are the holy of holies, he said. Well, that
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: wasn't far from what I believed. Yeah, I think it's holy.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: You don't go in and destroy the part of your
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: brain that's required for you to even love God or
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: worship God properly. And that didn't make sense. They don't
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: think about those things. You have to let that go
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: when you're being a medical doctor, especially a psychiatrist, because
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: it would make you crazy. Think about giving an electroshock
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: to people and frying their brains. One of my professors, God, Bob,
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: I don't even know he's still around. When I was
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: in training, he was a psychoanalyst. He was ahead of
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: his time. He was a feminist. I'm really a free
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: thinker at the time. He said, Peter, psychiatrists hate the brain.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Think about what they do to it. They hate the brain.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: That's something I should try writing about someday. Why would
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: they hate the brain? Maybe psychiatry's demonic.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: You've written about it with shock doctors.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: I've written about it to some extent. My wife's reminding me.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: If we accept that drugs can end a moral agency,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: do we not run the risk of removing responsibility for
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: one's actions?
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what about the whole issue of responsibility? Well, I
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: don't like to take cases, for example, where the main
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: argument is not reasoned by... I'm not guilty by reason
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: of insanity, schizophrenia, psychosis, bipolar disorder, because I don't want
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: to take away moral agency from people who have normal brains.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: So where I've drawn the line is the person's really
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: got to be on psych drugs before I'll take this
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: position or have a serious brain damage. And for us
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: to be able to see it, correlates directly with the
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: change in their conduct. So I'm pretty tight on what
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: I'll take, and I won't take a case generally if
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: there's any past history of violence. And on occasion when
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: I found out there was a past history of violence,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: one case I had, I found out in the middle
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: of trial. the man in China had gotten into some
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: sort of trouble and been referred to some kind of
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: a anger management class in China, so word never got here.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: And I withdrew from the case right on the witness stand.
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: This was not, I'd been lied to and it was
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: not a part of my, making an accurate estimate of
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: why he got violent now.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: A normal, sane mother is not going to kill her kids.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: Not without some sort of serious stress. The maternal instinct
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: is so strong. But the other thing we find out
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: from all the women who are coming to our side
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: is that many, many women, I think, find that those
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: early years of being a mother are really tough. And
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: I think that many, many women are tempted to throw
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: a kid out a window or something. Especially when they
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: have several of them right away. And when their husband
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: goes off on work trips.
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: Remember what your doctor, what your professor told you.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: No, I was trying to remember exactly what he said
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: right now, and I couldn't.
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: He said that a human being reacts in one or
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: another way, in one way or another, under that kind
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: of stress of the constant crying.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they either hold the baby tighter and closer, or
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: they feel like throwing it down the stairs or something.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: But that thought is not the same as what she did.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: What she did was much more horrible, and I had
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: to overcome a lot of morality and ethics to do that.
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: When women have that kind of thought, they're horrified.
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: And she was seeking help again and again.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: I think that psychiatry is the problem when it comes
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: to eroding moral agency. Because... Psychiatry and psychology and psychotherapy
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: today don't recognize moral agency much at all. Bill Glasser,
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: who was a friend of mine before he died, there's
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: no connection there. No causative connection of any kind. Bill
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: used to come to my conferences. I used to come
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: to his. He developed the concept of reality therapy. And
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: in it, he talks about choice therapy, that people have
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: to learn that they make choices and they're responsible for them,
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: and that their most fundamental emotional problems are due to
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: bad choices. And I see that all along, going back
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: to children. One of the most abused women I ever
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: worked with much worse than most stocks I've ever seen,
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: made up her mind early on to never be like
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: her parents. And her problem isn't that she was going
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: to do to others what they did to her. Her
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: problem was she could barely relate to other people because
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: she was ruling out anything that people did that was
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: similar to their parents. Her parents, she just, she didn't
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: want to be anything like them. And she knew it
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: was wrong what they were doing. And later on, videos
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: of her were discovered during our treatment. And there's one
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: of them where they're trying to get her to do
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: something bad to one of the other kids. And she
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: is refusing. And God bless her, they're burning her with cigarettes.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: It's the first time she knew what the scars were from.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: And so some people, like my friend, this client, Early on,
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: no right from wrong. That's really clear. And they make
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: moral decisions early on, so I would emphasize the importance
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: of moral decisions. And I do in my work. But
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: when you've been brain damaged by psychiatry, somebody else is
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: really to blame. The people who damaged you. And electroshock treatment,
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: for example, I had an electroshock patient who, when the
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: police came to reinforce some sort of order, maybe it
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: was an order giving up his children and he didn't
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: want to, he stood outside his house with six guns
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: and drew them and started firing. And he had had
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: shock treatment the day before. And, you know, that's like being,
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: having multiple concussions in one day. And, um, I felt
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: very comfortable saying this man barely knew what he was
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: doing and certainly was not under his own control. But
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: I never had any experiences like that until I was
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: recovering from a surgery. Surgery. I think of it as psychosurgery.
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: From your stroke.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: From my stroke. And... And they started giving me drugs
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: without telling my preemie about them. And I was very
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: much in the same position. And one of the things
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: I experienced was that they also put restrictions on my
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: leaving the bed for fear I'd fall down. The old
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: drug doctors I was didn't tell me and I had
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: to pee. And I was going to go pee. And
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: a female nurse, a very big woman, put her arms
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: around me to stop me and said, you can't leave
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: your bed. And I cocked my fist back. I've never
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: done that with a woman in my entire life. I
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: feel guilty about that. That's how unusual it is. And
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: I said, I've never hit a woman in my life,
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: but you've got to let me go to the bathroom.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Because I had urgency from the stroke. My bladder felt
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: like it was going to split. So there was me
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: in my craziest ever under the influence of psych drugs.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: But I certainly don't argue that in court that that's
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: my source of information. But it certainly is confirmatory for me.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: And also how confused I got and it lasted for days.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: And it was a combination of It was like being
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: on multiple drugs. I had a head injury plus drugs,
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: and that makes things worse than I've ever had cases
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: where I've taken that position. The combination of the head
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: injury and the drugs further compromised his identity as you
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: would call it, or his self-restraint, a particular part of identity.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: If you could say one thing to a GP or
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: a psychiatrist right now who is about to reach or
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: the prescription pad, what would you say?
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: Oh. I'd say, how's it going with you and your
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: husband since the baby's born? I mean, quite literally. Oh,
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: he's like really bamboozled. Well, The first time one of
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: my wives got pregnant and had a baby, I told
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: her that I really felt left out and I wanted
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: to get a rabbit. And she wasn't kindly taught the
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: idea at all. So I don't think I ever told
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: Ginger that story.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: You told me that.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: Did I tell you everything?
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: You told me that.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Son is the gun. I was in med school at
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: the time. I had my hands full just going to
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: med school. And women, you know, there's a saying that
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton promoted was, it takes a village to raise
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: a child. That's communism. The truth is it takes a
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: village to support a mother who's raising a child. And
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: the women just don't get enough support for a lot
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: of what they do. Being a housewife, Being a wife
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: is a traditional wife. It's a beautiful thing, but very difficult.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: draining and difficult. And women need a lot more support.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: So this is what I might tell a mother. I
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: might tell them the story, everything I'm telling you. And
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: I tell her, you have a right to get as
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: much support as you can get. And And if she said, well,
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: I don't think I can do anything about my husband.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: And I said, does he love you? Oh, when we
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: were kids, we got married when we were kids, he
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: was head over heels in love with me. And you?
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: Me too. And she said, but I don't think it's
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: there anymore. I said, it's there. I can tell you.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: If somebody once loved you, when you were a kid,
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: they'd probably still love you if they haven't seen you
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: for five years. And we can find that love if
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: you want to have some couples therapy. And let's see
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: if we can rekindle the love and not let it
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: get snuffed out. Love often gets snuffed out early in
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: a marriage when the kids come. Parents stop paying enough
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: attention to each other. They stop having fixed times when
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: they get together. Have dinner together. See friends together. Go
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: for walks together. She said, well, that's happened to us.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: I said, well, let's talk about it. And, uh... So good.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: That'd be great. And what about the drug, Doc? What
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: do I do with the medicine? I'd say, um... Don't talk,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: don't do it. Let's try some other approaches. I never
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: give drugs to my patients. Let's see if we can
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: figure out just what you need. but I think probably
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: it's more of your husband. And she says, oh God, yes.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: I said, well, be brave. Let's go do it.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: Peter, there are very few people like you in the world.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: And I think we need more of you.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm trying to write about right now. I'm trying
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: to write about this, about love and guys being loving.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: I'm having a lot of trouble finding the right handle
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: on it. Maybe talking to you today will help me
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: get over that bump. I watch you smiling at me
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: as I talk and it makes me feel really good.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: Like maybe I'm doing all right here. You know, the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: funny thing that the, uh, one of the problems, the
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: issues for after the stroke was just doing ordinary typing
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: is difficult for me. Um, and, uh, So I can
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: think in a lot of ways as clearly as ever,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: but I have a heck of a time getting it
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: down as fast as I think, which is what I
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: used to do. I could just type as fast as
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: I thought, pretty much. So can my wife. She's like
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: listening to a straight line to hear her typing. And
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: I used to pretty much be like that, but not anymore.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: Maybe this will be a good thing, just talking with you.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: I've got your COVID book, but you've written a pile
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: of books, haven't you?
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: A pile of books, yes. So I'll promote them right now.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: I might need a list.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: What book would have a list of my most recent books? Well,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: here's a book about guilt, shame, and anxiety.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: Not readable. No. It's called Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety, Understanding
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: and Overcoming Negative Emotions. That's... 2000 and... I think it's
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: about 2013. It's pretty new. Oh, it's a 2014 copyright.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: It's 2026 today. Yeah. It's 12 years ago. Um....
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: The most recent book is COVID-19 and the Global Predator.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: Let's learn about it. Did you just say COVID, honey?
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: COVID-19 and the Global Predator.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: That's the one you have, yeah.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: Is our most recent book.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. You can just go to Amazon and put
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: my name in.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: And also your website.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: Peter Bragan.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: Bragan.com, isn't it?
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: Bragan.com, yeah. And we do a sub stack, which is Ginger.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: How does that people go?
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: It's gingerbregan.substack.com. Okay.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: And this covers everything about psych drugs. It's called Psychiatric
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: Drug Withdrawal, a guide for prescribers, therapists, patients, and families.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: It gives my theories, my new theories about medication spellbinding.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: It talks about how to withdraw from your drugs. Now,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: my view is very different on this than most psychiatrists.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: I never say to somebody, well, cut your drugs in
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: half and call me in the morning or in a
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: week or whatever. To me, you have to do it
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: much slower. I don't ever say 10% of the time.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: What I do with psych drugs, I say, when we're
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: comfortable together, when you feel like you can trust me,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: and you wanna start withdrawal, that's great. And what I'll
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: do is, we'll pick the smallest amount possible, conveniently possible,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: like breaking your smallest pill in half, what's your smallest pill?
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: One milligram, maybe we can break it in half. Or
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: I'll get the pharmacy to do it. But I wanna
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: just take a little bit off of your current dose,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: And if you're comfortable for that, we'll take a little more.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: If you're comfortable with that after a couple weeks, take
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: a little more. So there'll be no surprises. Because if
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: we do that, and when I take you off for
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: another half a milligram, you start to feel overexcited or
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: overly sad. All we do is go back to the
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: previous dose. That's a little bit that turns you into
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: a withdrawal. A little bit. Giving back to you will
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: set you back to normal balance for your brain. We
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: just don't want to unbalance your brain too fast. And
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: that's the basic idea. It's very different than ordinary psychiatric treatment.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: It's much more patient-oriented. We're doing this around how you feel.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: And I really mean how you feel, so you've got
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: to tell me how you feel so we go along.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: And by the way, you can just call me for
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: 10 minutes anytime you want during withdrawal. And there's no
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: charge even. I want you to feel that free to
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: call me. Just call me. So we can deal with it.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: Because if we catch her having a withdrawal reaction quickly enough,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: it'll end with just going back to the previous dose.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: And then we'll wait a little longer and we'll continue.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: So it's a very simple principle. But it's unfortunately very
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: unlike how most psychiatrists work. It would be a major
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: change for them.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: Peter, it has been such a privilege talking to you again.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad to see you. You've always cheered me up.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: I wish we could be best friends.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: You always cheer me up. Yeah, well, the feeling is
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: completely mutual. So on that note, Peter Bregan, thank you
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: for joining me in the trenches.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I'll come and talk with you anytime you want.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: Thank you.