Latest / Lucid Interval Podcast / What Modern Psychiatry Gets Wrong About Addiction and Depression - Dr. Rodrigo Nardi, MD

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What Modern Psychiatry Gets Wrong About Addiction and Depression - Dr. Rodrigo Nardi, MD · Lucid Interval Podcast

• Andrew Heacock: Rod, thanks for joining. Rod: I was looking forward, man. Thank you. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, me too, man. I'm so glad that I think was it Paul Andrews that put us in touch? Yeah. Yeah. Rod: Yeah, Paul. love that guy. He he's you know he's he's one of these modern names that I think Paul knows what what he's sitting on with his takes on depression. Some people don't know. Some people like for example, you you you know, right before you hit record, we mentioned Bruce Alexander. I don't know he knows the size of what he wrote in his own book. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, like just the magnitude of the implications behind what the research is showing. Can you would Rod: Y exactly, exactly. Andrew Heacock: could you elaborate for people that don't or not are used to the inside ball and know who Bruce Alexander or or Paul Andrews Rod: So Bruce Alexander is the guy that came up with the rat park, right? He said he was maybe the first f person to say there's no brain disease in addiction. And and so he had that rat park where he figured basically if the rat has a life drugs lose importance. And he said it's not like they don't do drugs anymore. It's just that they don't, that's no longer their center of their lives. They don't die of overdoses. But they have, you know, the rats need a life. They need to play, they need to date, they need to have babies and all that jazz. And then later he came with the concept of dislocation as one of the reasons for addiction or the reason, the main reason for addiction maybe. Meaning you are not you're not living a life that is livable. It's a way of understanding it. And you see, I took upon myself a while ago, because I'm a psychologist as well, so I took upon myself to look into the main psychological theories and see what they had in common. Because I started my psychological training in Brazil and I was a behaviorist for so many years. Then I switched to it's not that I switched, it's then I started to look into psychoanalysis. Then I looked into a Jung. Then I I looked into you know evolutionary psychology actually right after Behaviorism in before psychoanalysis, but you know, you don't stop learning this. And I'm not an evolutionist myself, you know, which is funny about my friendship with Paul. He's a he's an evolutionary, and I'm I'm a creationist, right? I I absolutely don't put it in stock in theory itself of evolution, but but it's tremendously useful if you consider that we're not that different from our primate cousins. And So when I started to look into these things, and then finally, you know, I met people like Paul Andrews, I met people like Bruce Alexander. and then I also looked into positive psychology from Seligman. And then I started to look, okay, what do they all have in common? And basically they have Maslow in common. They have with a few tweaks. You know, or maybe they have Saliman that has a lot of Maslow in Saleman, you know, with a few tweaks. They have all of that in common. Basically, they said what Freud said in Civilization and its discontents, he said, we are animals trying to live as humans, and that's where the suffering's coming from. And and then you start looking at the implications of it being the implications of what Bruce Alexander said, because he was He was dealing with addiction when he says dislocation, right? You're living a life that, like, what the hell, right? You're not designed for that life. but that applies to the whole world of psychology, the whole world of psychiatry, you know. So it's interesting to see that from different angles in different positions, like Paul and I, for example, from different positions, we look at a problem and we see the same thing. It it's hard to say, okay, then you know, psychiatry really has a problem because this guy is a evolutionist and he's look at psychiatry and he says, modern psychiatry doesn't make a lot of sense. And I come from a completely different background and understanding of things, and I look at it and I say, Hmm, modern psychiatry doesn't make a lot of sense. Andrew Heacock: So you were using the term dislocation, talking about Bruce Bruce Alexander's work. Yeah, Rod: Yeah, yeah that was that was Bruce Alexander's word. Andrew Heacock: yeah. And it's interesting. It's like of just kind of not being in the right place in life, not being in, you know, essentially. It's lit Rod: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: the literal meaning of that term and how it's like, I mean, I when I really when I learned about rat park, I was in a treatment center actually for addiction and depression. And you know, we the there was a guy who's an MD who studies whether addiction is a disease or not. And he talked about rat park. And and also about how Vietnam vets, you know, people in Vietnam would use heroin at very high rates. I mean, there were habitual heroin users. Do you do you know this the data on that? On how many people were Rod: I don't Andrew Heacock: using? Rod: I don't know the data, just I just know that it it became a problem then. Andrew Heacock: I mean, the magnitude would be something like 40% of GIs were were habitually using narcotics. And then when they get back to the US, the rates of heroin addiction were in the single digits, you know, much, much, much lower. So it almost is like being in a war, it you know, makes you more likely to want to take heroin. You know, as as if, you know, the idea had always been that the heroin was what was making people addicted. But obviously, if you put people in different contexts and they stop using it, there's something about the environment. Rod: Exactly, exactly. And and in yeah, and Vietnam has a few partic particularities. You know, it it was a particularly intense conflict, you know. I think I saw this comparison between World War Two versus basically how many days of combat a soldier saw on average on World War Two versus the average soldier soldier in in Vietnam. And it was It's like three, four times higher. Vietnam was a small, you know, conflict and there was always exposure to unbearable situations, right? And and of course, you know, being present is is a bit of a is a bit of a challenge. W which, you know, i it's still the same problem. Life is not a a Vietnam war, but if the complexity of life now, you know the the amount of things life is just tremendously more complex than it was in the times of our great grandparents you know we it's it's better in so many senses you know you may look at a popular car now and it's as good as a Roll Rolls Royce maybe in the thirties or something. But but the complexity, the difficulty of life, you know, the financial struggles we have. comparing buying power of middle class now in in the sixties for example it's it's ridiculous how things got harder. work rhythms, you know, careers, salaries, you know, social life, you know, everything's kind of a I mean I think I have my theories on why, but you know, Americans are tremendously lonely. And and then of course on account of that, who wants to be present? Right. 'Cause happiness happiness comes at a very high price. and it and actually pursuing understanding that and pursuing happiness, you know, it's i goes through some painful moments. But Andrew Heacock: Now w we haven't we haven't mentioned already, I think, that you're also a psychiatrist as well. Yeah. So you're Rod: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that's my actual career now. I I was a psychologist, I finished my training in Brazil and then I decided to go to medical school and I worked as a as a as a therapist for a few years and then during medical school as well and then I came to America for my residency in psychiatry and have been working in the field of psychiatry for ten years. Andrew Heacock: So when you just you were just mentioned that you s Americans are remarkably lonely, you have a particular context to that having grown up in Brazil. Do you see Rod: yeah. Andrew Heacock: do you I mean do you see a major difference just from having lived in the two countries of like culturally? Rod: y yes, yes, you can't it's incredible. Like 'cause you know, people like to say, Well, poverty, you know, is the the big problem and I'll say, Yeah, poverty is a problem and you know, it it's a growing problem in the country, in America. But is not the only or the main determinant of determinant of mental health. You know, Brazilians were way poorer than America, you know. But but we have fun. You know, we have Andrew Heacock: Carnival. Rod: well, even more than that. You know, we are a much more hedonistic society. But the difference, I think, that is important to say is Americans. The American culture took a turn in past decades to fulfill. Alright, his my thought. This is my thought. Take with a grain of salt. We all need a quantum of gratification on a daily basis. Right? This is this is, you know, all the names I mentioned would agree with it. If you don't attend to that quantum of gratification, it will make its way through you somehow. Through an addiction, through some excess somehow, some way, or through sheer misery, right? And maybe we're gonna give you a stamp, a diagnosis, and stuff like that. what I see the history of of American culture is that Most of that need of gratification started to be fulfilled by financial accomplishments. Right. And then America is no longer the America used to be. Right? Now you have a full-time job and you cannot afford rent. You know, so so so you can no longer look for that. But during that process, life was taking a shape where Because you could fulfill your need for gratification by buying stuff or by doing things that money would allow you to do, the more natural, I would say, emotional needs stop being met. One of them being social connections. So now we have a nation where the buying power is shrinking by the day. And and the connections are not there. You know, Americans are tremendously isolated. And I'll tell you that maybe between boredom and solitude, I would say n maybe eight out of ten patients that I that come to me with depression, I I have that actual diagnosis, you know, either boredom or solitude or both, because we are both designed for connections. And we're both designed for we're designed for both connections and in novelty. You can have a perfect life, it grows old, right? So there's there's no final product when it comes to human beings. It's only change, only movement, only chasing stuff. And people say, yeah, that's how we are designed, you know. Good luck trying to sit on a pile of accomplishments for 10, 5, 10, 15 years and see what happens to you, right? So I think the culture allowed us to get distracted with hobbies and things like that. And now that's all gone. you know, it it's not everyone that can just have, you know, an extra Jeep to go off-road on weekends and things like that. You know, like the finances are not allowing that type of thing anymore. And we're tremendously s isolated. And overcoming that is awfully difficult. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, I've thought about this a lot as well, leading up to this conversation and and what we might talk about about just the challenges that modern psychiatry has. a lot of them I think are cultural. And there's just, you know, we tend to look at people at the individual level and say, well, this person's not happy. Maybe there's a disease in their brain. But you don't really stop to think about the culture in which they live. And if you just because if it's normal, you know, a lot of psychiatric diagnoses are based kind of by judging someone against what is considered the norm, right? But when Everybody when the norm lives in kind of a toxic culture, there's no way to really account for that in that in in psychiatric diagnosis. And one of the things that we have in our country is we've made a series of policy choices over the last 75 years that have enabled us to become so wealthy as a country that we never have to talk to our neighbors. Like if you're lucky, you you can afford a big house that's far away from everybody else and you never even meet your neighbors. You never talk to them. And that's kind of the the bargain that we've made. And I submit that it's not. It's it has been in some terms, like in material terms, we're wealthy. We have the richest poor people in the world. I mean, that's that's that's part of the bargain of of America and capitalism is that we have you know, our poor people have the highest, you know, standard of living pretty much anywhere. but we have all this dislocation. Rod: Perfect, you know, and and that and that's why I say, you know, I don't know if Bruce knew the the size of this concept, which is actually the same as you know, Maslow says that Freud says that, Jung says that. So we have really we are living this weird life, you know, and and it's not surprising and don't get me wrong, I love American culture and every Brazilian I know that comes to America also loves it. I don't even understand why we're so unwelcome here. from an immigration perspective through history. I'm not talking about I I don't I talk politics, I don't talk ideology. but we really like the American culture, right? the hardworking bits, you know, the the the you know getting there and doing your thing, working and accomplishing things. But the isolation we have And now I think added to this is the the lack of perspective. Right? If if you think so for example, you don't need to interview a patient to know that he needs air and water and temperature regulation. That's 100% true for all human beings. And then we come to what we call what I would call emotional needs, basic emotional needs. And and they are all Not only are they linked to our survival and our biology, but for the most part they're self-evident, right? and then you have things like you know relationships, all types of relationships, right? but what we do is we end up having one partner when you're lucky, and that partner is your friend. And is your co-worker at times, then is your 'cause you know, where do you meet people in America after you're out of college? Just at work, right? And it and it's so it's so it's Andrew Heacock: Although now I mean so many people work remotely or they're gig and they just drive for Uber. So like this is another another thing I'm talking with someone about next week is relationships, like the challenge of finding love in modern times. And a lot of it is we don't go to work anymore with each other. And if we did, HR wouldn't let you date each other. Rod: Well, and I was going to mention, you know, every time I get to a a a new gig and now I stopped I was very nomadic for a few years. Now I found a place where I can practice my psychiatry in a way that actually makes scientific and artistic sense as opposed to the commercial psychiatry we know. So I'm very happy there. outstanding place. But until I got there, I and you every time you get a new job, you have these hours of AR HR training, you know, talking about harassment and stuff. And yet at every place you I saw couples starting, and you know, because it you cannot hope that someone sitting behind a desk. will determine how do you cope with such an urge that we have for connection. You can't. You never win, you know. Good luck. Because because we crave it, we need it, you know, there's there's no way around it. And and the consequences of of not attending to this, you know. you know, the isolation and everything. Maybe some people claim that's the reason of what we see in schools and shootings these days. You know, is the fact that when I was a teenager, myself and my friends, we only talked about girls. And now teenagers basically play video games or at best they play sports, but it's a huge cultural shift from, you know, seventies to now, to hitting, you know, the youth And on top of that, they have no perspective, right? You if you go back to the 60s and you are 18, 20 years old, you're like one block away of a nice paying job, a house, and you know, a wife, and starting the whole the whole thing. And above all, having responsibilities over people you love, like having kids, right? If you're responsible, you we usually think of responsibilities as burdens, but they are thrusts. When you wake up in the morning, you don't have what it takes to get out of bed. But you think of people that count on you, that depend on you, that you love, and you say, I'll do it, right? And now we have a drop in natality, we have less relations. Natalie, yes, Andrew Heacock: Natality, you mean birth rates? Yep. Rod: yes. We have a decrease in in income, in jobs, in opportunities. So a guy when his 20s, he's ages away of that type of accomplishment. but he does have the level five boss of a given video game to stick to and hope to defeat and 'cause we need that, right? We need so in the absence of the the actual things that are gratifying for us, we replace them with with cheap alternatives and they're cheap in terms of quality, not in terms of Not in terms of price, because they they end up being very expensive. You know, much we pay a much higher price for that, but they are cheap in terms of they don't satisfy us. You know, they're not attending our biology, we're not respecting our biology, you know, we're dislocated as Bruce would say. Andrew Heacock: You said that you have the ability to practice psych psychiatry in a way that's more scientifically and artistically valid, which I love that and I'd love to unpack what that means and just kind of talk about the challenges of modern psychiatry as you put it. But before we do, I just was thinking, you know, whether or not as a ther either as a therapist or a or a physician, the likelihood that when someone come a young person comes into a a person's office and they're lonely and they have all these problems, whether or not they would be more likely to prescribe a drug or to help that person get girlfriend or a boyfriend. I mean, because if you if you feel like the if you feel like it's not possible for you, it's hopeless that you would ever find love, you know, that seems like a pretty depressing state of affairs, but the I think the problem is that why would we see that as evidence of a disease? Rod: You see the the the mental health field is is tremendously corrupted, unfortunately. And I'm not talking about the professionals. I think they're all very well intended. But there's no complexity in discussions anymore. how can I give you I have a thousand examples, I just have to be careful about which ones I pick. the This so so so so you know modern psychology and psychiatry got reduced to a either a biochemical imbalance in our brain, right? Because because we lost track of what matters. And I don't say this in a in a idealistic way, in I don't say this in a It's not a critical thing that I'm talking about people. When I say we lost track of what matters, I'm trying to say that we are no longer living life. Right? And in if I have to blame one entity for that, I usually will blame, you know. the years that Singh Eisenhower of say, you know, once he got out, he said, hey, there's a whole impression here that the state's gonna start working for big companies. He was talking about the gun, the the the weapon industry. It turns out y yes, but Andrew Heacock: Military industrial complex, yeah. Rod: it turns out that the whole government works for all the corporations that finance their campaigns, right? That and they finance both sides. So don't fool yourself about right and left. but basically psychology w got reduced and and why CBT, right? Why CBT was so popular, you know, the guy shows up saying 12 sessions in the age of health management organizations, of course that will become super popular quickly, right? You can quit Andrew Heacock: What is C B T? Rod: it's cognitive behavioral therapy, right? So the Andrew Heacock: Right. This is the evidence base. Rod: Well yeah, because you know, and of course there's a study that shows that the the the the results have been declining over the years. Every time they compare with with something else, the results are lower. Question is the training declining, which I don't think so. I think it's simple enough to be trainable. I think is the only reason it it was such a hype was because it promised something quick and that's why it got so much traction, because quick means less money for You know, insurance companies, right? Imagine that the less you show the least the less you show to your work, the the higher your salary. That's how they how that's how they make money, right? The less they they do what they're supposed to do, the more money they have, the less they pay for treatments. That's a middleman. so that was part of the hype. The other part of the hype is the novelty bits, because we do need novelty. And I suspect that's also one aspect of modern psychiatry that feeds itself. You know, you have a new pill, so you should feel excited and there's novelty has this taste for us that is absolutely necessary and probably linked to survival. but whatever problems you bring to an office, the that level of complexity is no longer addressed, you know. No nobody a it's a taboo to ask about sex life. You know, to say, hey, are you having sex with your husband or your wife? And it's a such a big both, both, Andrew Heacock: In in psychiatry it's considered taboo to do that, basically. Rod: both. I supervise both, I can tell you. Because when I when I cause well, first I'm Brazilian, like second I have a loose crew, I don't care. Right. I'll I will ask the weird question. You know, recently I saw a patient and she's telling me about all her life and stuff, not recently, a few months ago. In in in in and I asked a question about her let's say secret love life and you know you do this for a few years, people don't don't hide it from you, they realize you're not judging them, and really I'm not because life is damn difficult. And when I disclosed that to the team, did you ask that? I said, Of course I asked that. And it's actually very important to understand the de the degree of deprivation or well-being this patient. And I was just making a case about insomnia for that patient. I was just making a case that because you know, people also think insomnia is some brain disease. And what insomnia is is an attempt to solve a problem. You know, y we human beings despite the myth, we don't die of sleep deprivation. But our biological design imposes that solitude, for example, will get you killed. Right? A lonely primate in nature, a lonely human in nature is probably a dead human or a dead primate. So our biological design, if you will, imposes that. And self-evident. Why is self-evident? Because loneliness sucks. It sucks to be lonely. And a lot of people who listen to this say, I love to be on my own. When you have options, right? When you Andrew Heacock: And when you choose it, totally different thing when you choose to retreat temporarily. Yeah. And what you Rod: Yes, it's a very beautiful. Andrew Heacock: just described about loneliness, I I think that's what depression is. Like I think that's why we have it. Yeah, it's like kind of what Paul was was and I were talking about, Paul Andrews. I mean, why would we get depressed in the first place? Because your body slows down and down regulates. It's almost like it's conserving resources because you've either been kicked out or you're about to get kicked out. And you better stop, Rod: Right. Andrew Heacock: save food, save energy, and think about. whatever it is that you can do to avoid happening, you know, making it happen in the future. you know, sit still, wait Rod: Yes, yes. And that Andrew Heacock: for people, don't go to sleep, like wait for people to come or sleep all the time, you know, but I mean these things kind of make sense that it's a social problem. Rod: Yes, and it it could be social, but it could also be sameness. It could be boredom. You see, the negative emotions, they're not there by chance. If you're an evolutionist or if you're a creationist like I am, you know, I don't believe we were made or selected by nature and and everything we feel is a byproduct, you know. Those things are there for a reason. Why why loneliness is such a a negative thing and we We do things to make up for it? Why either drunking drinking ourselves to sleep or or getting ourselves in bad company, right? Which happens a lot, just to overcome the loneliness? why do we do stupid things when boredom hits? Right? Why boredom is such a negative experience? You know, you've gotta ask yourself why this thing is like that? Is it really just because or has a function? Right? And while you know, I may not worry too much about the design of things. For me, those are self evident, you know. And then there's other things too, you know, the the the the matter of a a sense of purpose and then comes, you know, one step ahead, the sense of meaning about the sticker that I interviewed and you mentioned. those things are y you can live life without it. You can live life alone if you will. There is a small percentage of the population that can act that actually doesn't crave relationships, you know. Andrew Heacock: Are they do is that some sort of like psychopathology that they have or is it just a like I mean Rod: They would fall under, just for the sake of our conversation, right? They're a collection of personality traits and they would fall under the umbrella of schizoid and schizotypal traits, even though if the personality disorders as described have any validity, that's another conversation, right? But for the sake of this chat, you know. Because the diagnosis, psychiatric diagnosis have no not a lot of validity. Andrew Heacock: Yeah. Rod: but but you know, their traits. And you know, for the sake of communication, you would say well, some people don't crave connections. And and even some people don't crave novelty. They can have the pr same life for but most of us never met one of those guys because they don't really show up. They're fine in their corner, right? You don't you don't come to the office suffering on account of emotional reasons and say, no, I'm I'm fine alone. Boy, if you're fine alone, you should be fine, not here. Yeah, so we see that a lot. Andrew Heacock: I mean, it's an enormous it it does hammer blows to anybody's mood, isolation, disconnection, or or just a failure of relationships generally. Like if you haven't ever known what a healthy relationship was like. And so therefore you don't even know what you're missing, you like it it would make sense that you would be chronically dysphoric and that a drug like an opioid, which kind of feels like a hug, would be really, really appealing because it's like, okay, something has been wrong my whole life and I don't know what it is, but I didn't know. Until I went away for a minute when I took this drug. And so now let's only do that. Like let's just let's just do this thing. I've got the solution, Rod: Right. Perfect. Andrew Heacock: everything. Yeah. Rod: Perfect. Our new epidemic are the stimulants, right? The the pharmaceutical cocaines. America consumes more stimulants per capita per year than what was the countries if I remember? UK, France, and Germany together per capita. So we're all swimming now. America is swimming. America. say I don't would I don't want it to be sued. I was going to mention Dunking. but America is swimming in stimulants and if you think about it we don't know a lot about the brain, right? We definitely don't know enough to claim there's a brain disease anywhere because we never found anything. but the little we know or In the middle of the little things we know is that gratification is mediated by dopamine. Or I wouldn't say mediated, well, it's just part of the process, right? Because we don't know exactly what the hell. But so then you have an unlivable life, a terrible job, a family life that is not particularly gratifying, or maybe a a marriage that's not particularly gratifying. Then I give you a pill that over overloads your dopamine system with dopamine. And now working feels the same as seeing your children play or sex or watching a nice movie or walking around or dating, right? So we have this conversation in our clinic about the the adderall affect. Right, because you're like and of course you gotta understand also one of the the the fallacies of modern psychiatry is that no drug works forever because the brain learns it. We could talk about other regulation, down regulation, and other mechanisms, but but the brain learns it's tolerance, if you will, tachyphylaxis is the fancy name now. but the brain learns the drug and now you have to bump up the dose and bump up the dose until you get to a limit. And you continue to have, you know, this sort of a flat affect because you can actually cope with your work, you can cope with everything in your life that should be driving insane. Which comes again to what I said, the price of happiness is pretty high, right? You gotta go crazy with stuff if you really have any intentions of being happy. But most people are comfortable taking the pills. Andrew Heacock: So you just you just said something that I like I'd love to double click on, which is that because it still astounds me that the field of psychiatry doesn't it it doesn't seriously consider the fact that drugs cause tolerance. Taking a drug every day will cause a tolerance. And you know, the term for this podcast, the lucid interval, refers to a moment when I real I realized a lot of things about psychiatry and why I wasn't getting better. But one of them was I went looking for the evidentiary basis for polypharmacy. And and found a lot of people discussing the absence of that basis, of that evidence. But one of the things that I really did find that really stunned me was the whole basis for long-term use of psychotropics for maintenance, for the prevention of relapse, was mostly based on discontinuation studies. And the way these studies were performed is they would take people who were on the old drug that had lost its patent, like let's say Prozac. And so they have they need a new drug that they can patent like Zoloft. And so they they take people that are all first of all, already pre-selected to not have adverse reactions to SSRIs. They've been on them for years. And they'll take half of them and they'll switch them to Zoloft overnight. And then they'll take the other half and they will abruptly cold turkey them with with placebo after having done a washout period to further further pre-configure the results. And then when the placebo group, who have been abruptly cold turkey, get really symptomatic, they call that a relapse and not a withdrawal. And then they look, Zoloff prevents relapse. And and you know, I explained this in a room full of drug addicts a couple weeks ago. I went to the 12 step meeting for the first time and since I got sober, which is not an accident, but I did. And I explained this this is the basis for this. And, you know, I mean it it's insanity that really the entire basis for these long term maintenance of a polypharmacy. seems to depend upon not being honest about the fact that a withdrawal is not a relapse. Am I wrong about that? Have I gotten a r a wrong read of the of the evidence space? Rod: Now you can you're you're ultimately you're right. We can we can look at it in different in a more loving and forgiving way. you gotta understand that medical training is a compliance test. You see, doctors are not particularly brilliant people, they're good test takes. And you're n you're if you doubt it, befriend some. But they're good test takers. They're not this guy's intelligent. No, no, he has good school classroom performance. That's how got you, that's what gets you to be a doctor. and they're going through training, and the training is directly or indirectly determined by whoever's selling the candy. Right, whoever sells the meds, if you see all textbooks, they will quote a bunch of s research, and that bunch of research most of the time is not independent. The absolute majority of research that supports the use of drugs will come from pharmaceutical companies. You can I can give examples and they're quite shocking. so then now you have this guy going through training for so many years he just wants to finish the shit, start paying his bills. Sorry at Curst. Andrew Heacock: It's okay. That's okay. We're we're PG thirteen at at best on this podcast. Rod: and thanks. And then I appreciate I appreciate it. And then what happens is you know there's no critical thinking or medical philosophy being taught these days anymore. so the whole logic of what we're doing is lost and replaced with the procedural steps of saying sad into the press and manic mood stabilizers. Hearing voices, antipsychotics, right? And in between you you attribute a made-up diagnosis. When I say made up, I'm not saying they're completely useless. You know, they favor communication, that's a good thing, we should try, but we have to take it for what it is, which is at best, I guess. And they don't represent physical entities, because we haven't found the physical entities, which is the difference between syndrome and disease, which most people and professionals don't entertain. And I blame them for that. I blame them for listening to it and resisting, you know, because I for many years now I've been looking at folks and saying, you know, that's a syndrome, that's not a disease, it's a big difference, it matters, you know, and people don't give a fly. And then I go, like, all right, that upsets me, right? The fact that you didn't know until now, it's fine, you know, but there's a whole resistance to it. Then it comes the matter of the medications, You start a drug, patient comes back and says, and this is every day. I'm better. All right. See you in a month. Comes back and says, I'm not that good anymore. There's two things happening. One is if the medication actually did something for you, which is an emotional numbing, right? Most medic, most psych medications have that impact. And then we can go and talk about emotions in a second. That's being lost because the brain got the hang of it. It's no different of nicotine, you know, is no different from alcohol or caffeine. If you ever if you do every so often is God sent, if you s if you do every day, is reaping what you saw. Fair. and then well let's add another drug. Right. And and and the thing is is so shameless because you would expect us the doctors to be a gatekeeper for that kind of thing, but you see psychiatric drug advertisement on medical journals saying you know we hit more receptors. It's like I'm dirtier, basically. That's the statement. The drug is saying I'm dirtier, man. I mess up more. I and and the way we treat it in in my practice, in the approach that I developed, is drugs cause a desirable impairment at best. And at times, my man, I want to be impaired. Okay. Friday comes, I wanna smoke a cigar, have a shot at the kilo, I wanna be impaired, right? if I'm going to say I don't too old for that but when I was younger talk to a girl for the first time and I'm too tense maybe I want a desirable impairment even though I am operating exactly as I'm designed to operate at times you say whoa can I do something about it wonderful But doing it chronically is the issue, right? And that's like that for drugs, recreational drugs. And there's no different no reason to believe is that different for psychiatric. I'm open to to agree to to accept that there'll be exceptions out there, that there will be people that, man, if I don't take this drug, you know, I I do something really out of character. And it happened, and I t tested and I tried, and it was not a withdrawal, you know, it was tapered. Taper is another complicated matter because people think nowadays that tapers are just about going slowly off the meds, but there's that movement is ignoring something very important about human emotional experiences. Don't know if you want to talk about it. Andrew Heacock: I would love to. Let's can we get into that now? Rod: So, so so the thing is emotions exist for a reason, right? They have, if you have a chance, Kirth. it was Charlie I interviewed him he wrote a beautiful book called Emotion. he's a philosopher. So emotions have two two functions. One of them is sensorial. Right? Emotions tell you about your reality. Right? but there are bi yeah there are they they're there they are subject to bias. But perception also is. The things you see are subject to bias. The smells you f are sub we all all our senses are subject to to bias. So emotions are a sensorial component, but they also have a motivational component, just like many of our senses, right? If you take tact, pain, you know, it comes with a sensorial bit and also the the motivational bit that if you touch something that is hot, you know. You take your hand away, right? That's a motivational component of the the sense. And emotions come with the same package of things. So they are sitting there for a reason, right? So when people go talk to shrink and they're feeling a bunch of stuff, and everything they're feeling is legit. We don't like to call depression, we call it sadness. So so people, you know, we're trying to have our patients abandon this concept of brain disease. So they say, Well, you know, I'm depressed, and I say, Well, so since when have you been sad, right? And what Why you think you're sad? Because the matters. Why matters more than whatever treatment they may claim to have, right? Because we we're looking for the causes, which modern psychiatrist doesn't care about it anymore. If you're sad because you have a brain disease, depression, you need this pill. regardless of lack of evidence. but that emotion is there for a reason. And then the patient is given a pill or a bunch of them, as usually happens, and to take every day. And the result of that is, we hope, an emotional numbing. So you don't feel sad anymore about whatever was making you sad. Understanding what makes people sad requires knowledge. It's not instinctive. It's not because because the because psychology that could have made a difference in that sense got suppressed in the last 30, 40 years, right? So if I say someone, well, how long has your life been the same? And the person says, Well, freaking 10 years. So no wonder you're feeling miserable. Fair. So so that feeling miserable is there for reasons trying to tell you something and it's trying to motivate you to do something as well. Now I give a bunch of pills and you let's say you're successful, which you know here and there someone is successful with pills, you know, on a chronic basis, right? Without having to be changing drugs all the time. By the way, I say this on a on a small reel. And I posted on TikTok and got suspended for violating community policies and whatever they call it. Andrew Heacock: About about taking drugs. Rod: About saying that it's not sustainable to feel good by taking drugs. That's what I said. It's not a sustainable strategy to take medic to rely on medications to feel good, because you know you gotta live a life to feel good. so then years later, you find a psychiatrist that is critically minded and he says, let's do a taper. But the main question is, is your life today the same one it was when the pill was started? And the answer, if the answer is yes, if you don't have any more gratification, if your emotional needs are not more attended today than they were 10 years ago when you started on your drugs, it doesn't matter how slow you're gonna taper your thing. What you're gonna find at the end of this taper is a miserable person. Of course. Maybe the taper is the first step so you feel miserable again. So you feel motivated to actually, you know, get into a dating site or whatever we can do in America. ask a friend, can you introduce me someone that you know? Man, I need to date. Or maybe your misery is what's needed for you to Update your CV and apply for new jobs or get a new course or go to a prof trade school. I don't freaking know. Right? You need movement, right? At the end of the day, that's our philosophy. We had to elect a value. And the value is not not suffering, like modern psychiatry elected so suffering, suppressing suffering as its main goal. Modern psychiatry has suppressing suffering. And if you want to be a bit more dramatic, you can say that they are suppressing a disruption, right? Which I don't buy too much. the Thomas Sass thing. but it has he's it has a point, nevertheless. but but If you instead of suppressing suffering, you know, you put yourself in your place and realize that that's impossible. And and the success of suppressing suffering comes at a much higher price to your health for starters, right? You you you are taking a bunch of drugs, you're playing with your brain, you are developing a a 2023 we found out that antidepressants increase your chances of developing diabetes in three times compared to general population. It's like we Andrew Heacock: It's not surprising at all. Rod: thought it was safe, man, you know, and and and of course there's the premature mortality increases in about Andrew Heacock: They're obesogenic, are they not? Rod: say what? Andrew Heacock: They're obesogenic, are they not? I mean they cause weight gain. Rod: Dep well depends. It's maybe yes, depends. Andrew Heacock: But do you think that the diabetes i is more than what would be accounted for by just ordinary weight gain? Okay. All right. Rod: Yes. Yes. Yes. And I'll tell you why. Because we you see there's nothing. And psychiatrists full of these fallacies. There's there's not one thing in your body that has just one function. We don't freaking I mean you suppress you you take a ribtake inhibitor of serotonin. And your platelets don't work as well. What? Or you have GI issues because you know serotonin is the main neurotransmitter in your GI system. You suppress dopamine receptors, and the next thing you know, your cholesterol goes up. Or you have a heart attack, or you have a stroke. Right, which is a thing. Or you know, so the I I think we we have no clue what we're doing with those chemicals. That's my concern. It's not like alcohol that we have been exposed for so many thousand years, or nicotine. You know, I have friends, maybe acquitists don't know how to define them, but people in the field that have a critical view of psychiatry, and one day I made a comment to one, I was sort of saying, Well, you know. 'cause you know, people really like their psychiatric drugs. You know, I I'm just closing after three years I'm probably gonna close my my private practice on account of people are not interested in what I'm offering. You know, they want their ad roll, clonazepan, their you know, their Ciroquel and all that jazz. But I it's I made a I made a commented with a I made a comment with a friend via email and I said he's from Australia. And he's and I said, Well, even nicotine and alcohol have a function, can be useful at times. And his comment was, Well, but those are much safer. And he has a point, right? And and I think one of the one of the challenges is We stopped referring to drugs as drugs and started calling them medications. And I understand why pharmaceutical companies would do that, right? They are in the business of making money. Our politicians and our doctors should be in a slightly different place. But you know you're gonna you're gonna can you make a billion-dollar business out of taking drugs as needed? they're not gonna have it. When I started my training in twenty twelve on that on that matter, I'm just rambling, man, I'm sorry. But when I started my training in two thousand twelve, drug holidays were a thing. Right in psychiatry. My training psychiatry. You know, talk about drug holidays. Don't take Fridays and Saturdays to minimize side effects and then that topic died. Right. Died. And And and if you think about, for example, Adderall, you know, it makes no sense to pop it every day. But let's say you have two days of the week that are miserable and you want to cope with it. So, all right, man. You know, if you cannot do without it and you don't want to change your jobs, because I'm not the guy that's going to tell you you're living a wrong life. I'm going to point out and say, hey, you have no relationships, your relationships are not gratifying, your life has been the same for a while, right? So there's no novelty there. You're not really pursuing anything, which is the only antidote for anxiety that we that I have found in my career, you know. for the simple reason, well we can talk about that. And or you don't have any sense of meaning and you don't have a lot of accomplishments, y you you could have some movement in your life. But that's that's where my job stops. If the guy says no thanks, I want to stick where I am and bear my ex existence as it is. And as well, then you have some drugs that you can freaking swim in, in the progressively higher doses. yeah. That's it. So it it it's a f it's a f it's exactly and it's a philosophical matter. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: That's it. That's it. I mean, I I've taken a lot of Adderall in my life. yeah, I mean, well, and you just keep needing you keep needing more. You know, it's interesting what you're saying in 2012 is basically when I got sort of ensnared by psychiatry. And that that's when they people started phasing out. It you I mean, I've had the experience many times of being shamed for wanting to take a break from Adderall, but I just would would have to because it would just stop. I mean, I would need a rapid escalation, which I'm now told is tachyphylaxis. but also I realized now was what was being medicated all along is I have an autoimmune disorder, which was misinterpreted as rapid cycling bipolar disorder, of course. and yeah, I had all this brain fog. Now in 2010, or actually in the 90s when this became a problem for me, there was no such term as brain fog. I mean, it really was as a result of COVID and long COVID that medicine started really taking this kind of symptomology seriously outside of like things like fibromyalgia. But you know, I'd and I'd known now for I guess almost twelve years that I'd f started to figure out hey, if I eat like a ketogenic diet, I feel much better, but not entirely. and most of my symptoms go away, but not entirely. And the the the reason for that is that on a keto diet you tend to eat lot of dairy, which I did. And dairy is, you know, makes me really symptomatic. But it took me I years to taper from from Adderall. That was the one that I mean, I've tapered from I don't know, dozens of drugs. And the the one the mood the mood affecting drugs, you know, like the SSRIs and the atypical antipsychotics were the hardest ones. but Adderall took so long because it was hard to see until I eliminated caffeine, until I basically started went carnivore and started eating just meat and water and salt. There were so many other things causing brain fog that I couldn't see what was happening, which is that Adderall would cause more brain fog than it would resolve. Or, you know, maybe there was a slight five percent differential, but you c you constantly needing more to to Because I would start it like I would start a a new round and like one milligram, literally. And then I mean it just escalates from there. also would disrupt my sleep. So you need more. And and I've, you know, I realized like once I eliminated caffeine, I was like, wait, I it was more clear to see, but it was because I went on an elimination diet. and and it was only, you know, after after 15 years of basically being pretty much disabled. but so I've taken a lot of this drug. And I've been in treatment centers also for depression because I became an alcoholic. My life was pretty meanless. I I slept, I laid on the couch all day with brain fog, which is and I was told it was because I wasn't taking responsibility for my mental illness, which was really frustrating because I I read everything I could, I could do every what I I could, but you know, the the drugs just weren't working as as advertised, literally. And I've been in a few treatment centers, and three of them in particular, and then some intensive outpatient things like that. A lot of people there for addiction, slash mm everything's kind of dual diagnosis now, right? So like Addiction slash depression, a lot of trauma and a lot of war trauma have been around that, although I'm not a veteran. so I've been in treatment with hundreds of people. And every time you go, every person there basically has like this firm resolve to change something major about their life. And I swear to you, Rod, it's always one of three things. They want to change their essentially they want to make a change in who they married, where they live, or what they do for a living. And you're la you're smiling because it's like. And and and and you know, you what you said earlier about let's be let's have a compassionate take. I think you're right. We the problem we have in this country is not bad psychiatrists, it's bad psychiatry. And there it's you can't blame people for doing what they've been taught and everyone else in their profession expects them to do. But if you've if you've married the wrong person and have the wrong career and you live in the wrong city or part of the world, you've picked the wrong life. Like you're living someone else's life. How could you possibly not be dysphoric? Rod: What are you talking about Andrew? It's a brain disease. Andrew Heacock: Right, of course. Right. Well, and so I you know I think it was Ed Hagan, who I've talked to also recently. Do you know him? He's he's an anthropologist. He studies drugs, why we use drugs, but also why we have depression. and he had written a long critique of just the way the DSM treats depression is a really interesting thing on his blog, major depression and things of that nature. But there is, you know, if you look at the justifications. That the APA will give for why they think that there's a biological brace basis cause for depression. They'll say, well, the brain scans of people who are depressed are different than people who are not depressed. But that that's like saying there's a brain basis for depression, but there's a brain basis for everything. There's a brain basis for the conversation we're having right now. We're probably way more engaged. You know, like I Rod: It's it when I was in training I had an issue with that because I was already a psychologist, right? and I went to psych psychiatric residency and but you know you're a student and they're a doctor's you kind of keep your hand down. but let's assume so Skinner said that in 56. That's how bad modern psychiatry is. In 56, Andrew Heacock: Sub what? Rod: Skinner said, learning, when we we talk about learning as an accumulation of knowledge, that's a metaphor. There's nothing being accumulated. And he was right. If anything, as you age, after your 30s, your brain starts shrinking. He says if there was something being accumulated in your brain, there will be an increase in volume. Because he was a physicist in a sense, right? He was a philosopher, but he his his goal was to develop a psychology based on laws of physics. So then he said this brilliant thing in 56. He said, learning is brain changing. Right, you're changing your brain. Something is changed. We don't know what. He said maybe one day behavioral behavioral science is not gonna be needed anymore. He he said that clearly. You know, we're we're gonna know so much about the brain that you know you don't need the behavioral science anymore, because the behavior for him was an epiphenomenon, meaning we don't control behavior as a consequence of things. the same for emotions, of course. We don't control emotions. The best you can do is suppress them and they come back to bite us, as good old Freud would say. And so he says the brain is changing. So so whatever, let's assume there was, which does there isn't, but let's assume there was a deficiency of serotonin in people that are sad for a long time. You know, is that would that be a functional change or the cause of feeling sad? So if I put your brain in a if I put your head in a a functional MRI and I give you a radioactive sugar in your blood and I ask you to raise your arm or something, you know, you're gonna light a part of your brain. the motor strip on the left side about your right arm. is is that the cause of the movement in your arm? That is the movement in your arm. That is the movement of your arm. It's the same process, you know. So the changes are functional, you know. If we were to find them and we never found them, you know, we never found them. Now, if you drive through A new path to work that you never drove before. You may not even remember how you got there, but if you drive there again, you're probably gonna recognize it. You're gonna say, I've been here before. Which means something changed in your brain. If we could detect the change in that brain, we would say, What? That's the cause of taking a different path? You know that's the consequence, right? So so psychiatry, what happens with modern psychiatry is epistemology, right? The study of science, philosophy, you know. Semi Timimi said that. He said, you know, psychiatry is the philosophical arm or should be the philosophical arm of medicine. We should be thinking about this thing, you know, but we don't. It's quite the opposite. we we we got to a A level of simplification of the most complex thing in the known universe, that is the human behavior. We reduced that as much as we possibly could from a diagnostic and treatment perspective. And evidently, right, we we don't make a dent in suicidality. You know, more diagnosis, more drugs, we don't touch suicidality. Suicidality continues to be controlled by extraneous factors, usually government policies, because unemployment is the main cause of suicidality. Yeah, yeah. Andrew Heacock: unemployment. And and I guess I think it's probably that combined with no hope for for a change in that status. Like yeah. Rod: W beautiful, right? And and and then but we have we had recent before COVID we had a a record drop in unemployment and it was in maybe ten years the first time the societal in America dropped. And we had because COVID messed up with it. Well either COVID messed up or our reaction to it, I don't know. Andrew Heacock: before it exploded, right? Because of COVID. And then and then also, but there's been, and then well, it accelerated a lot of economic moves, you know, that probably have contributed to the problem. I mean, not just unemployment and automation, but work from home, you know, I mean, is another thing we were talking about. Like, I mean, you meet people at at work. You have you, you know, I mean, for a while there, we were just living in complete isolation for a long time. And even post lockdown, it sort of normalized It it did bring us technologies like this where you and I can talk, you know, like this is great. But this isn't this is well, actually it is this is not a substitute for my social life, although I can tell you that like my motivation to start this podcast, I wanted to do it years ago, but I didn't want to just talk about things that pissed me off was kind of how we started talking about this conversation. And this this podcast is about much more than just psychiatry. It's mostly about what's good about the mind and about psychology. But my I have a psychiatrist who had basically put himself out of a job. Because he's also was is was a therapist, is a therapist, and among the many things that makes him remarkable. And I had tapered off of all the drugs and and had become happy for the first time in my life. And he was like, you know, you're paying a lot of money to talk to me about how the mind works. Because I just wanted someone to talk I wanted someone to talk about my ideas with about the nature of what it means to be human and had wanted to do PhD for years and never really found the right, the right, you know. situation for me to do that. Honestly, the problem then was how do you pick? How do I pick the Rod: Right. Andrew Heacock: the aspects I didn't want, you know, clinical psychology, maybe, but don't want to spend my whole life thinking about the worst things that ever happened to me. You know, and so and ended up not doing it, but this is a a better way to do it. So I do get connection out of this. I there's something I'd like to ask you about, actually, since we're on the subject, you know, you talk about both boredom and loneliness. I have experienced most of my life something that I can only describe as intellectual loneliness. in that like there are things like this, like we're talking about, or like philosophy of mind or what makes us human or anything that burn within me. I I just am dying to talk about these things. I have these questions that I know I can answer and I I know I could probably answer them. This has been a hard thing of letting go of the idea of doing my own research at a at a doctoral level, is I I think I could probably answer questions that have never been answered before or maybe never been asked. And there's a kind of loneliness and a despair that I used to feel for a long, long time. I lived for most of my life in a relatively small town here in the American South and didn't really have access to a lot of people that even knew about the things I was interested in. And I was profoundly lonely. I I I would have described for until I moved, I live in Nashville, Tennessee now. until I moved here, I would describe myself as like a flower that didn't get enough sunshine. Like that's how I felt. Just kind of and you can even imagine the imagery of it as like a flower that would kind of droop. And like take on a depressed, you know, body posture. And it I as you were describing, talking about people are either bored or they're lonely. for me, this intellectual loneliness is I think it's almost a combination of the two. It's like not having anybody to play with. Rod: quote Skinner again. You know, a little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep or taste not. And what happens probably because of the pace of life is that when you decide to look into things, read an extra book, experience an extra thing, you start having a hard time talking. Explaining to folks where your mind is, right? Without sounding detached or crazy. I lost most of my f yeah, I lost Andrew Heacock: arrogant. Arrogant. Rod: I lost I lost most of my friends in the field of psychiatry, but Was pretty blessed. Well, to give an idea, three years ago I started this enterprise, right? said, I'm gonna have a network of providers, I'm gonna train them in this specific way of working psychiatry that I use, that I have experienced with, and my results just started to soar. I'm gonna explain to them the mindset, I'm gonna explain to them the the importance of actually being happy. 'Cause you cannot sell this thing if you haven't figured for yourself, you know, and once you decide to pay the price of happiness that is again super high, you know, that everybody looks at you and thinks of you as a little bit unhinged. That's the you know, one of the prices of being happy is you cannot give a shit about what people will think. And you know what you need and you go about it. Right. So your whole family, everybody's gonna be holding, pulling their hair, saying, What is that you're doing? And you said, I know what I'm doing, right? So there's a price to pay for that. takes a lot of guts. So I did a recruiting ad on LinkedIn, and for the first batch I got 40 people that wanted to hear about this part-time gig, right? And And I presented to those 40 people the the general ideas and the fallacies of psychiatry. They're all psych imped, right? the the general fallacies of modern psychiatry commercial psychiatry, as I call, and the alternative I was proposing. So this is how I propose to work. You know, this is what we have to help our patients achieve. If a drug comes into play for a day or two, fine, you know, but The the the goal here is really this is the philosophical approach. What is that makes people happy? You can you have to go there. You don't want to go there, fine. We have the backup plan that is to drug the shit out of you so you don't feel your life. And of those 40, the first batch, I think three people were like, I get it. Three folks out of 40 in the field of mental health understood what I was trying to say. And I have made more friends since then and and and and because of the podcast, of course, some people would reach me and say, Hey, I see it. So, you know, at the end of the day, having a podcast is a way to overcome that because then we don't agree, like you just see like take Paul for example, I interviewed him twice and I talked to him with some frequency. Brilliant guy, I love. I learned a lot from him. His take on depression being a p a problem solving emotion is just freaking self-evident, unbeatable argumentation. You know, you once you see, you cannot see and you you can you can't unsee. yet he's an evolutionist. I'm a Christian, right? I I was an evolutionist. I look into evolution. I d I did the math and I said, no. And yet we we we learned. I learned from him a lot, right? His ideas, you know, he at times we fail to communicate because of the complexity of them. But for the most part, I think you made a great decision to start a podcast to overcome that because it works. Andrew Heacock: Thank you. Thank you. And it, you know, it's also it's a way to connect. Rod: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: Like, you know, I mean, it's just like I can kind of share what's in my head and you can kind of share what's in your head. And we can occupy the same reality for a little bit. And honestly, when we when people disagree, I'm kind of counting on it. I mean, there there are definitely you you mentioned you're a Christian. I definitely don't hold that worldview, although I'd like to get into more of it because wouldn't you know it, like the whole spirituality thing, after I had exhausted every other alternative to become happy. Wouldn't you know, like spirituality is has helped? Christianity has not been the right, right mode for me. But in general, this is one of those things you definitely can't control for that, like in science. Although, I mean, you can study the phenomenon in psychology, psychology of religion. And I've been talking to a lot of people about that. Why do we believe in gods? but you know, the the thing that to me is more important than is XYZ claim true is why does it make us feel so good? Like why why why Rod: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: why are we so much happier? I think that's the bigger story, you know, is that like I I honestly I don't think that that spirituality, I don't think our capacity to be spiritual at all depends on belief. Like because people have spiritual experiences in basically every religious tradition. So the doctrine can't matter that much. It may matter a lot if it you believe it. Like that probably helps a hell of a lot. if you really have invested meaning into this particular tradition, but I'm sort of agnostic as far as like which tradition matters. There are some that I appeal more to me, which are contemplative, Zen, things like that, that kind of blend in with philosophy a little bit. And I can I get to kind of nerd out a little bit. but yeah, it having the ability to agreeably disagree is like a way that you find truth, right? Like that's how you Rod: Right. Andrew Heacock: get to the truth, is to try to find someone who's got the best possible argument against the position I hold so that I can maybe update my beliefs or if they have the best possible argument from against my position and I'm not convinced, now I don't have to worry that I haven't thought of something. You Rod: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: know, I mean it's it's and and we can sort of work things, you know, try to find truth in the world. This is the perfect, perfect format for me to do that. And it is a privilege to be able to talk to lots of really smart people from a lot of different domains. I mean, anthropology, I love talking to evolutionists. I'm kind of an evolutionist. I'm definitely am, but it's just amazing The more I learn about human evolution, the more miraculous we seem. Like to Rod: yeah. Andrew Heacock: me, it's actually more of a a vector towards spirituality and faith is just to learn more of like, My God, we are amazing creatures. It's such an unlikely thing that we came to be. Rod: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Exactly. Andrew Heacock: I I wanna ask about can you just synthesize, you know, the the approach that you were saying that you that you were offering that's different. I mean, is can you offer a synthesis of what it is? Rod: So so basically, yeah, I think it's it's ex it's complex, it's extensive, but I think I can I can give you a digestible version, which is based on our design, we have basic emotional needs. again, they're self-evident. Those emotional needs are relationships of all types. You know, you need a friend that just sits there with you, you need a friend that actually discusses and challenges the things you say. You need a task oriented friends like coworkers, you need a sexual partner, intimacy, kind of a thing. We need all of it. We need a sense of purpose in the sense of in that I could only clarify that with myself after I interviewed Steger. but purpose in the sense of pursuit. What is that you're pursuing? Because there's no final product for us. You know, we don't do well with this idea of okay, I got where I wanted to get. Right? It's that's a poison for human beings. So you need to be pursuing things. ideally, the pursuit of the things, this pursue is not this pursuit is not I want a house and a car. All right, those are good ones, right? It's something to pursue, but The idea is to pursue something of a higher level, you know, an overarching big goal that you don't have to achieve, but you have to move towards something that maybe is equivalent to the Japanese concept of Ikigai, that is what is that you are good at that brings you joy and you can make a living off, and the world needs it, right? So something meaningful. gives you a sense of identity. All of a sudden you're not a guy that wakes up in the morning and freaking tights and screws. You are the guy that is trying to show the world that the screws the way you tight or blah blah so right. So it gives you a sense of identity. And is also an antidote for anxiety, because anxiety turns out is not the same thing as fear. And it's anxiety is biological, it's gonna happen. Your body is designed to feel anxiety because anxiety is a threat anticipating emotion. You will feel it. If you have nothing to anticipate, if you are on disability watching Netflix, you're gonna suffer more anxiety than you suffered when you had a bad boss. because it's part of our biology, you know. and I can talk more about it. Then if you want, and then we have novelty, we need new things, doesn't matter how perfect your life is, it's gonna go old grow old, right? We call that hedonic adaptation in psychology and movement and change and things. Historically American people has have been fulfilling their need for novelty with things they buy, would recommend projects and things like that. And then finally we have accomplishments, which is basic behavioral science. You know, if things don't pan out every so often you you feel pretty bad. And then when all of that is attended to or even before, but you know, we have a sense of meaning, an overarching sense of meaning for your life. Why is that you're here? And the goal of all those things is to generate well-being. And it's very similar to positive psychology with a few tweaks, it's very similar to Maslow with a few tweaks, but that is our diagnostic tool. Right. And the beauty of it is people come in different moods to appointments. And at times they come in a great mood. And thanks to this tool, I can say if the improvement in mood is sustainable or not. Those changes, they're some are more sustainable than others. You can say, Okay, this guy's gonna be in a good spot for a while. you know, this guy is gonna be Good because of an idea. Like you know, he had an idea, he thought of something that made him see a problem differently. That's usually very short-lived because reality prevails by far. That's our approach. Reality prevails over your ideas. You can practice gratitude as much as you want. If your life sucks, eventually you feel miserable. And so we use that as a tool and as a guide for as a plan of treatment. Andrew Heacock: So I want to be sure I've I've got them all. I mean, we first talked about like the the emotional piece, like having emotional regulation, I think, and then having purpose. Rod: no the emotional regulation is is is not really there because whatever you're feeling is a result of the life you're living. That that's the pr the first premise. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, so I I'm curious. You studied, you became a psychologist at in Brazil, right? And then you came here and you did your residency in psychiatry. What do psychiatric residents in the United States learn about emotions? Rod: Nothing, man, there are symptoms. No. No, no. There's no there's no philosophical there's no it Andrew Heacock: Nothing, right? Does that even disgust? Yeah. Rod: you can't. It's you see, sadness is depression as long as it lasts so long and comes along with a change in sleep and here's the absurdity of DSM. Insomnia and tiredness or lack of energy are separate symptoms. Separate symptoms in in depression. Those count Andrew Heacock: Yeah. Rod: as they count as as two. But then again, you know, those criteria they have no validity. You know, you can do the calculations more than a hundred types of possible combinations. and then you're gonna claim that that's all the same thing. I like to give this example. Two guys lost their jobs, one got home, lay down in his bed, and didn't come out for a month. The other one got completely restless and anxious, right? since he lost his job. One will be diagnosed with depression, the other one with anxiety, but the cause is the same. Right? Unemployment and all the bills you have to pay, all the responsibilities you have. So, what what psychiatry did was it's a what we call topographic diagnostic, meaning. I don't care how you got here. It there it doesn't really matter. The shape of what you're feeling is the determinant of what I'm gonna call it. And unfortunately, because we can call whatever we want, it doesn't change a damn thing. But if that coordinate that determines the kind of drugs I'm gonna give you, pfft. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, I I I it's the term topographic, that's interesting that that's the term. I've I've used that I've had this conversation with my my own psychiatrist before that psych psychiatric diagnoses don't explain anything. They just describe that they Rod: Mm. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: will describe the symptoms that the person's having. And within the DSM, you can tell the difference in major depression versus bipolar two or something else, maybe. but it does not tell you how to differentiate between mental illness and something that's not mental illness, something that's adaptive. and Topographic is such a fascinating word for that because I'm, you my background, I've looked at lot of maps in my life. my background was in oil and gas and real estate. And so I've looked at a lot of maps, a lot of topography. I have a I have a thought that I've had for a while and I've been playing with, I'm not sure of it, but I just kind of want to float it and think out loud here for a minute. I have long suspected that people with MDs are uniquely unil suited for dealing with mental health. And it and I do mean MDs in particular, there because they're just in my experience, in many cases, nurse practitioners were actually better than than psychiatrists. There seems to be something, in my opinion, about the training of becoming a physician that I'm not quite 100% sure, but I think part of it might be there's a few things we could that could be possibilities. One is that I think an MD is just not a terminal degree to treat mental health. Like it it you're if you're not even taught about how emotions work, then there's no way. There's no way that you could understand a person's emotional life. And I think that seems to be a necessary precondition to understanding it. And so when psychiatrists stopped being therapists, I think that's where a real problem came in. I think there's also other factors that may contribute to the problem. And one of them is part of the training is that I mean, you see people get sick and die. it's just I think that's part of becoming a physician for every it's universal is coming to terms with that and becoming psychologically resilient to the idea that there are people that are things are going to be beyond your control. And I think that it must be enormously protective for someone to have an attitude of my training is legitimate. I've done everything that I was told to do. I did everything in my power and it's kind of out of my hands. And I'm sure, like I said, that is very protective for people. I don't know how I could do it otherwise, but it makes it psychologically threatening. when you suggest to someone that maybe their training is not fully valid in an area like psychiatry. And I think that there's a lot of bias that there seems to be a lack of training also around things like cognitive bias, which seems like a particular concern for me in psychiatry because none of the disorders are falsifiable. And so if it's impossible to prove a psychiatrist wrong, you get a lot of people who've never been wrong before. And it, you know, there's just there, there are cognitive safeguards that are missing from that field. so this is just kind of where it seems like it's it's like we're it's like hiring someone to be an electrician because he's really good at being a plumber. And they're sort of Rod: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: related. You need both to build a good house, but one is not necessarily a substitute for the other. Those are just some thoughts I have I wanted to share and see what you have any thoughts. Rod: Well I'll it turns out I agree with most of what you said. So I think you're gonna like to hear this. well in the sense of Andrew Heacock: I would be okay if you didn't agree with it too. I've I've I've gotten to where I don't take things personally, but thank you. Rod: no, but I think I think what I'm trying to say is I I always said very similar things. I have a predilection to work with psychic nurse practitioners then with a caveat, right? The the best professionals I have seen I were Psych and Ps and MDs and the worst ones were psych and Ps and MDs, right? someone that was very meaningful in my life for a window was a very talented psych and pee. And I learned a lot from her. And that's when probably the years where I opened my eyes because she was this very intense person and willing to pay whatever price for her happiness. and she had this impact on patients that was like unspeakable. and I learned that from her. about the doctors, consider this, which I think you know ratifies what you said. The training in the medical field is extremely difficult. Not only selects good test takers as the main trait. Okay, it's not about people, this is about taking tests. It also selects people that are highly highly adapted to a boring life. So to speak, the academic life, the sitting for hours, this the you know, the talking to attendees, not being a challenging you cannot be challenging with your attendings in the American culture, right? You gotta be there's all this hierarchical thing, which in Brazil, if I were to tell you things, you wouldn't believe that we did, because it's a cultural difference, right? We're much more disrespectful according to academic American standards, right? While so so think about it. in of course, in if you come from some countries, it's even worse, right? You had this life surrounded by extended family, and everything was in place, and then you go and you do your medical training, and that's all you have to worry about. Even your marriage is decided for you, right? Think of think of that. So come back to America. It's a very difficult training. It's it's not an easy thing to go through medical school. It's not an easy thing to get out of it. It's not an easy thing to go through residency. So you are kind of a predictable, stable guy with a predictable, stable life. Then you look into nurses, and I don't say this in an offensive way. Very intense people. Chaotic people. You're gonna and I'm not saying all nurses, please don't get me wrong. But you're gonna find more chaos in the lives of nurses than you're gonna find in the life of a guy in medical school. You're gonna find this girl that got pregnant when she was 16, and then she became a CNA, then decided to go to nursing school, then she decides to become a psyched. She has lived. She knows life. She did stuff. So when someone comes to her and says, I cheated on my husband. She doesn't think mania. Immediately. She says, you're laughing. Let me tell you a let me tell you a story. Andrew Heacock: Y I mean, I'm sorry I couldn't hold it right there because it's so plausible what you just said. Rod: But exactly. So check this out. I was a supervisor in a network of clinics in Massachusetts. And and there was this person, and she was describing a case of a 15, 14-year-old girl who had a party in the cul-de-sac, they lived, and her parents said, you are on timeout, you cannot go to that party. And she was confined to her room. So she then climbs out of her second floor window and goes down and goes to the party, which is standard teenager behavior in Brazil. she's the the professional said that's a very dangerous behavior. So I gave her a diagnosis of bipolar and started with Spring. For being yeah, well, yeah, yeah. She's gonna have high cholesterol, Andrew Heacock: For being a teenager. Right. Rod: maybe a stroke, maybe a heart attack, maybe obesity, maybe Parkinson's disease, right? So it's just the Jesus Christ. For going to a party. Andrew Heacock: Well, it's it's also extremely stigmatizing to take an anti psychotic drug for Christ's sake. Yeah. Like that that for me was the worst part was that yeah. I mean, yeah, for being a teenager that sneaks out and disobeys her parents. Yeah. Rod: I I can I can give you more examples, man. I I a girl was sort of an ugly duck, kind of a socially you know, because you see one thing when you talk about s loneliness in America that that became taboo is talk about attractiveness. Right? It's very i i you you can lose your license for saying something like, Okay, bud, you're lonely, let's lose some pounds and get in shape. Right? As a professional, a mental health professional, you can get Andrew Heacock: You can be you can really be disciplined for that. Rod: Well, if the patient leaves the office and goes complain with your boss and says, he called me fat or something like that, you you now you have to be Andrew Heacock: Yeah. Rod: scolded. But you're trying to help the guy to connect with reality and attractiveness is a is a token when it comes to social connection, it's it matters, but it became taboo in modern psychiatry and psychology because ideology, which as I said, I talk politic politics but not ideology, ideology took over most of what we do. So Andrew Heacock: You know, that also speaks for again, like, I mean, I've also I've just been wondering like, do we really even need the medical profession for this? Could we just train clinical psychologists in medication management or nurse practitioners or therapists? But I I've had many conversations with therapists about losing weight and getting in shape. I mean, it you know, I it although it was my idea was motivated to do it, and that's part of their job is motivational interviewing, but getting in shape builds self efficacy. It gives you an internal locus of control, right? Like and so, and this is another thing I've wanted to talk about trans diagnostic factors. Right. Rod: Don't get me don't go don't don't get me started. Don't even get me started. Yeah, don't even get me started. But but this girl then she was a sort of an ugly duck and didn't quite have a social life when she was younger. And then when she goes to college, college is college, brother. If you want to get laid, you will. So then she gets a little bit out of control with that. And after she takes that off her chest six months later, she looks back and says, What the fuck was I doing? And then she goes talk to Shrink. Apparently never had an exciting day in his life. And he said, yeah, you have mania. And gave her lithium, which kind of worsens a little bit her initial problem. and then she comes Andrew Heacock: Of Rod: to work with me after a while and we just tapered because there's no absolute no shade of mania or anything that will deserve to be put on lithium, whatever you want to call it. We get rid of it very slowly because lithium is a Messy thing, and the result is that she was fine, man. She was fine and continued to be fine. And it was really just situational, right? It was absolutely situational. But you know, and and back to you know, and you said psychologists, psychologists don't question those things either, because again, it's not their fault, ideology took over most of what we do, right? So so if you look at someone and says you're lonely, you're looking for a partner. Let's work on the basics here. Andrew Heacock: You know, that's a lot of what I've done. I've trained to do to be a men's coach. And and I'm s sort of trying now to step into that role as well, just to help men. and it's kind of almost kind of sort of validating to hear you saying this that I'm like, well, no, because there are lot of issues that men face that and it has been my personal experience that this is true, that people in mental health are just kind of oblivious to. And if you bring them up, like, hey, like, I haven't gotten laid in this many years. It's like they don't want to talk about it. It's it's taboo, or they'll look away in shame, or they'll change the subject, or they'll prescribe you cialis, which is not how that works at all. and there's there's a larger I mean, and then also there are some psychological disorders for which adversity to having sex could be a factor. So those things, but like they just it's like we're not gonna talk about it because it's almost like it's not a legitimate need. But like a lot of men, like if you if you would to tell a man Like, look, man, like you're twenty-one, it's sex is not gonna happen for you. I think it would a a lot of those men would start to consider whether they should continue living. And we can joke about that all we want, but like it's just a way that men are wired. And I know that that's a taboo thing to suggest for a lot of people, but for us in a many ways, that's the only way that we're gonna get physical co regulation from another human being. Rod: This is you see, Andrew, this type of conversation is gonna get me crucified. it as obvious Andrew Heacock: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Rod: as it is, I'll tell you this. I I bring that up with my patients, and they're all very thankful that I brought it up when we do something to address it, right? But brother, let me tell you, it's and and and it's true for females too. You know, if you want to know how My my first epiphany I had, I was working with a girl, it was in mass, and she had this refractory insomnia, which brings me to the conversation because the question I asked about that patient was to show her that her insomnia was a product of loneliness, the case I brought up in the beginning. but this girl had this refractory insomnia, all kinds of drugs that was tried already, were tried in nothing, nothing, nothing. One day she shows up and she looks and she says, I'm sleeping like a baby. And I'm like, my God. Right? Next thing she's gonna say, I'm the best doctor in the world. And she said, and I said, what happened? And she said, I found a boyfriend. And started Andrew Heacock: That'll do it. Rod: to laugh. And then I was like, and that was like the first epiphany I had to say, okay, why am I not using everything I've learned in psychology again? Because I wasn't. For many years I wasn't. And yeah, yeah, it's a thing. It's a thing, you know. you have gratifying sexual life, brother, you can put up with any job, with any boss, you know, yeah, yeah, but what Andrew Heacock: You're right. You're right. Yeah. I mean, there's so many I mean, even just at a purely biological level. It's a form of exercise, which is automatically gonna make you feel better. And then it's just, you know, I think the neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki says it's a bubble bath Rod: Sheer gratification. Andrew Heacock: for the brain. Rod: Yep, sheer gratification. You know, so in in my math, because I I have a lot of people, I wouldn't say a lot, some people are referred to me for diet diet, right? For behavioral eating issues. And and the approach is the same. I say if you don't have enough gratification outside of your refrigerator, you're not gonna succeed. Right, you're gonna eat because that's a source of pleasure that is available, it's cheap, is there sitting for you, is always reliable, right? So you gotta fix your life in order to and the other aspect of course is that diets should be faster than the dietitian suggests, obviously for the behavioral motivational component. You know, when you do a slow diet, you do it for a month, you feel like one month of deprivation, and then you step on a scale and it's like two pounds. Fuck it. Right. But if you do like an aggressive protein diet, for example, in one week you lose four or five pounds. That gets you going, you continue, and it's you're not undernourished in any ways, or at least nothing compared to a zempic or god knows what something. Andrew Heacock: Right, because you lose all that water. I've got a lot of experience with that because I mostly eat now carnivore, although I I mean I've been able to have a little bit of fruit now every now and then, but I get still get symptomatic and you know, I cycle. But I've seen the pounds go up and down on the scale. I weigh myself every day, actually. I've I know this is kind of controversial. I've known people who are both clinicians and who have also had histories with disordered eating. That's very controversial to weigh yourself every day. And I could totally see how it would become an object of obsession. For me, it makes it every day as just data. Because I would get on a scale once a week and I would have gained weight after being compliant on all my macros. I'm like, what the hell? Because I'm not seeing that the daily fluctuations in water. And so for me, for years, it's just what I do in the morning. I weigh myself, you know, naked and with an empty bowels platter. So like I just to get the standard and and but it for a long time I was a compulsive eater. I wouldn't say a compulsive eater, I was a hedonic eater. Rod: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: because I would eat extra delicious food and like a whole Rod: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: apple pie and half a gallon of ice cream or like all the I mean, I'm from Louisiana and our food is incredible. And I would have all the stuff and it would kind of also when I would have this brain fog, but I couldn't sleep. That's the worst part. It feels like you want to sleep, but you can't. alcohol is good for that. Stimulants will make you not want to sleep anymore. But if that's not available, alcohol puts you to sleep or just a big meal and you kind of pass out, but then you wake up and you want more. It was it was one of the harder things for me. But the biggest thing, you know, I've shared that. Like I got that diagnosis. It was really an autoimmune disorder, which meant the food in this country makes me sick. before when I was told that it was, you know, I was severely and incurably mentally ill, which is literally what I was told. I was also on sole option adderall at the time, which is also not surprising. Right. You just you're like, of course. so I I went about a I went about a decade without having love, without having any relationships with women. And it was basically because I believed I was too broken. Like and and then sort of I kept being told that. Like and I kept having to put drugs in my body that were called antipsychotics. I've never been psychotic or manic. But I had been told that I was I if I wasn't compliant, you know, meaning I didn't do what I was told what by my physician, I would be not taking responsibility for my mental illness. And that was unfortunately was very traumatizing for me to be told that. That was the the the line, you're not taking responsibility for your mental illness. That combination of ideas gave me PTSD for more than a decade. And and then the drugs I think also were arresting my recovery because they prevented me from grieving, essentially. They made my grief, you know, im impossible to complete. But the the worst part of everything that I'd been through, the loss of my career, my life, the meaninglessness was the the idea that I was never gonna have a partner again. Because it, you know, it and it seemed almost irrational to believe that anything would change. Cause it's because again, like this is another huge problem with Teaching people psychiatric diagnosis without teaching them psychology is there's this thing called a fixed mindset. And when you tell someone that they have an incurable and progressive mental illness and that's why they feel the way they do, it it creates a fixed mindset. Well, it's like, well, then if there's nothing I can do about it, I mean, why would I except for take your medications and do what you say? But when that doesn't make me feel better, now I'm hopeless. Like that, you know, because again, like a lack of outcomes is not necessarily considered cause for concern. in the field of psychiatry that it's arguably the norm. Rod: It gets worse. You see on our own you see the things you're telling me and I'm shaking my head because it's so heartbreaking and I'm sorry, you know, in the in name in the name of psychiatry, I apologize for everything Andrew Heacock: Thank you. Rod: you went through because so we have for example these things called PhQ9 and GAT seven. There are these little scales of how you feel. to to the they were created as screening for major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder but then you know they became diagnostic tools for some magical reason and and the only reason is because we don't take context into account right so if you're feeling sad and you can't say blah blah blah blah depression right if you score so many in this thing little thing we're gonna call it depression. Why you are feeling like that is irrelevant. So you go to the office, and this is one thing I say is that we modern mental health became we became professional enablers. because you you come suffering to me, living an unlivable life. I don't point to you in a loving way that your life is unlivable, because I'm not in the business of blaming you for what being where you are. I want to help you live an interesting life, an exciting life, something that gives you a sense of meaning. Instead, I say, you have a disease. Now a disease in your brain is out of who you are. Is how of what you do, it's out of what you can do. So it's an institutionalized external locus of control. This is out of your control, brother. And the only thing you can do is to take a pill. So take this pill. Then you come back the next month and you fill another JD 7 PHQ 9. None of those questions are, did you make any friends in the last month? Did you send any CVs to a new job? Did you sit with your wife and you told her what's missing in your life? Did you diet? Did you work out? Did you take care of yourself? Did you love yourself? None of those questions. Did you find meaning for yourself? Did you find a new purpose for yourself? None of those questions. Those questions only say, Are you feeling better? Because if the answer is no, who failed? The pill. So I'm enabling a passive position. All you have to do is to take this pill or that pill. Exactly. The drug Andrew Heacock: This drug didn't work. Gotta try a new one, right? Yeah. Rod: didn't work. And you, you know, not your fault, brother. I don't mind, I'm not in the fault business, but in the responsibility business, right? Who can Andrew Heacock: Yes. Rod: do something about which those are very different things. but that's modern psychiatry for you, man. And psychology is the same. Unfortunately, psychology has lost its depth. And a lot of people that work with psychology will agree with me because they do. They are deep. Andrew Heacock: So I yeah, when you earlier when you said on behalf of the field of psychiatry, you apologize. That it was very kind of you to say, but I also have to say I sort of don't really want to accept that because I've found that I don't need it. That's why. Like that because like I don't I you know I'm I'm not walking around feeling like I'm someone who's owed an apology. Because when you feel that way all the time, it's it's really ruinous to your mental health. and I found that again, like I mentioned earlier, fixed mindset. That's kind of the alternative to a growth mindset or to a a mindset of responsibility. And it is enormously psychoprotective to feel like, no, look, these things and and to find meaning from them. I mean, I I read Man Search for Meaning, which I know you've discussed on your show, Victor Frankel's work. And I read it in a treatment center actually. And and it was I I became an existentialist kind of I don't know. I had like a deconversion experience after all this happened. I was trauma, I was shattered psychologically. I couldn't finish law school and lost a relationship. I was engaged. I mean, I'd lost everything. And I sort of just was kind of like, yeah, I don't, I I don't think that there's a plan to all of this, but I think that's a good thing because it gives us the power to make the meaning that we want from life. And that was kind of where I was at that time. this this was 12 years ago, but and I still kind of am that like, yeah, I think it's up to us. There's a saying that there's a it's in a coup a few cultures. But my I think my favorite version of this is the Irish version. You can pray for potatoes, but you better w be ready to wake up next to a hoe. And you know what I mean? And and it's just funnier the way that's worded. In the Bhagavad Gita, it says you can pray to pray to God to move a mountain, but you better be ready to wake up next to a shovel a shovel. And yeah, like it's it's actually the doing the thing for myself is actually what is been the medicine. That's what's healed me and being able to do that. And so it It is wonderful that, you know, you said that. But I I'm sort of resistant to it 'cause like I wanna be gracious. It's a nice thing for you to say, but I I don't think of myself as someone who's been victimized. I think of myself as someone who was fortunate enough to have gone through something that lots of other people are going through, but those people might not have the same skills that I have to understand why and to be able to do something about it. You know, I just think that's kind of the purpose of my life now is to help people understand, you know, understand all of the institutional and intellectual factors that had to conspire for our healthcare system, our mental healthcare system to not work very well. Rod: Yeah. And I have to say when I apologize because it's not the first time I do it, I think I do it for myself because w when I started my whole True Psychiatry podcast, I was set into fixing psychiatry. And and because you know, I have seen what it can do. And I always feel like 'cause I hear these horror stories as you can imagine, on account of what I do. And I always go like, man, I'm so sorry because I have hopes that people are just not gonna hold They are resources. They're not that bad. They're just used in a commercial way. You know, I I people think, you're against drugs. No, that's not it. I'm not against drugs. You know, I I do my things. I I like a cigar, right? Like I keep it to a minimum so I I don't lose the pleasure of it. But it would be too hypocritical for me to say and and that happened, you know. I was in some groups and I realized that I was in the business of fixing psychiatry and they were in the business of destroying it. they were anti-psychiatry. And I said, I don't think we're on the same page, and you know, learn a lot, of course, but and and the reason I say that is because a lot of people will defend the benefits they had. And granted, that at times you just go like, you know, you could have done things differently, but that's also an arrogant take. So you've got to be humble at times and look and say, okay, this person, I always give the same example. You're the sole caregiver of a demented parent. And you need to be drugged away. I gotta be humble enough to say, alright. You know, there's there's no way around it. W that's I have that resource for you all hate to give, but we have that resource. But in the long run, of course, living 'cause you know, and that I think that's where my Christianity which is not exclusive of Christianity, don't is not a a a a monopoly, but the value of each life being lived with a purpose, you know. that is way better than the alternative that is, you know, just bear whatever conditions you have and regardless of your sense of identity. Just just numb yourself and get through it. Andrew Heacock: Yeah. What you were just describing there, the second part, I the term Russian novel came to mind, which is synonymous with depressing. You know, like endlessly depressing, really, really, really long and bleak and unjoyless. And of course that would be depressing. And and you're right. Like I I think that compassion compassion makes everything easier to understand when it comes to human behavior, in in addition to just being kind of the right, the morally right position. But If you have compassion for people, you know, there of course someone who's constantly miserable and has no hope for anything better is going to self-medicate or they're going to consider, you know, a final end to this to the to the problem, if not both. And and in some cases, like for me, being drunk or high a lot really kind of kept those kind of thoughts at bay because I knew I had I had to that, you know, I had to make it all mean something eventually. I just didn't know how to do that for a long time. But yeah, I I I mean I also think that psychiatrists, again, I'll say again, the problem is not the the clinicians. It's the training and also the system that doesn't want to pay them to spend enough time with their patients to differentiate, to make these distinctions. We just we won't pay for it. I mean, the reimbursements that I get, I don't actually really even get any reimbursements when I see my psychiatrist because he's out of network, but the the value that they place on an hour of his time, which they then chisel down to 50 minutes. It's preposterous given the level of expertise that he has. And also another it's a whole different problem. I could do, I could do a hundred podcasts on this, that insurance does not does not recognize expertise or the need for expertise. So like I have a particular personality style or a particular combination of factors that might merit working with a clinician that has a particular expertise in that, right? They don't believe in that. They don't they won't recognize that because some people Some needs are a little bit more exceptional than others. And the people that meet those needs are probably going to charge something differently. so the reality is that like my family, you know, has resources. That's why I've been able to get the kind of care that I've been able to get. I mean, that's just what it comes down to. And and I'm lucky that, you know, I because I was essentially deeply wounded by the field of psychiatry, the only way to get a corrective emotional experience from that was from a psychiatrist, was from building relationship with a psychiatrist. And I I mean we need we need thousands more like him, you know, like the guy that I that I've worked with. He's very exceptional, but I think the w among the the many things that makes him exceptional, he's also a therapist. And like that was the part that made the difference. And the more because I was also living constant self-doubt of I'd been gaslit so much about being mentally ill. There's always this constant rumination in self-doubt. And I've I've mentioned you before I think I I there's there's a chance I really do have OCD, I mean, which is a complicating fact. And I know these things are not easy, but you gotta spend a lot of time with someone on a regular basis over sometimes years just to track what they're doing, to get to know them, to be able to interpret. And it was, you know, him and a couple other therapists that I've had over the years who have gotten to know me well enough who have just had to assure me repeatedly, like you're not, you're not bipolar, you're not mentally ill. Like it a person told you that after talking to you for 30 minutes. and had no real context in your life. They just they slap this label on you and that was that was it. So it's not necessarily any psychiatrist's fault that they want to make more than $20 an hour because that's all that, you know, an insurance company will want to pay them. Like that, that's the real issue is that a a prescription for SSRIs is like five dollars. And to see a good therapist, you know, one hour a week, you're looking at 600. So it's like a 1200% increase and that's not someone with an MD who's got medical school debt to pay off. So there's a lot, there's there's a a multitude of factors that contribute to it. One day I I hope to just write them all out because they're so just to to exhaust the subject of all the things, the way the diagnoses work, the training, the lack of like you said, I mean, so many things you've said have been very validating. And one of them was the culture I I've long thought that conscientiousness is one of the biggest elements of this story. Psychiatrists are highly, highly conscientious people. Medical school selects primarily for that. And so, of course, that's kind of doing what you were told by an authority figure. And if some person comes in and says, But like, maybe that's not, maybe that's less than legitimate. You know, have you ever considered that what you were taught wasn't all there? It's just there's so much cognitive dissonance that person's going to experience. It's just easier to say, you're a mental patient and I'm a doctor. You don't know what you're talking about, right? So and like, I I one of the, you know, one of the PhDs I would have done was applied cognitive science and just to study the problem of of misdiagnosis and psychiatry and itrogenesis. And one of the solutions I think that you could offer is give people better training in their own cognitive biases or flatten hierarchies is another one. The thing you said about attendings and resonance. That's a big problem. And the way that we we actually there's a science to how we stopped airline crashes, commercial airline crashes. It's called safety science. And there were a number of things we did, but one of the biggest ones was we flattened hierarchy in the cockpit. No one can override anybody else. You need it's, you know, and we because we have noticed that there were so many more crashes in Southeast Asia and specifically in cultures and Asiatic cultures, and it's because they're highly their social structures are highly restricted, right? And so a a captain is like Rod: Right. Regit. Andrew Heacock: it's like this this, you know, the samurai. And, you know, I mean, it's a very and even they all speak English now too. This is another fascinating thing. Every cockpit in the world, they speak English. And the reason is because in some languages, it's impossible to tell a superior that he's wrong. Like linguistically, there's no there's no language. There's no way to do it. So like in Malaysia, like there were all these crashes because this, you know, you can tell on the black box, the co-pilot or the engineer, they know the guy's making a fatal mistake. And we were like, why wouldn't you say anything? It's like, because they can't. They can't in their culture, like l in their language, there's no way to do it. So This is another problem I've seen also with in psychiatry is that there's there's no Rod: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: there's no other person to question who could possibly question the the diagnosis. And and again, it's like, well, I mean, it's like, look, I've worked really hard to get here. I must be right. This must be valid. Because also, if if what I'm doing isn't helping and maybe it's hurting, that would be very, very upsetting. And we have this thing called an affective fallacy, which tells us that anything that's really upsetting must be untrue. especially when it's us. And so, you know, it's a complicated picture, but I think the solution is not in abolishing psychiatry. That would be a disaster. We just wanna we wanna improve it. Like we want to get better training and resources and money. so that's my that's kind of my my mini spiel on Rod: And I think I think makes a lot of sense. We we we see some changes coming up. I think above all is that after maybe what forty years of pursuing the right medication combination, people are starting to realize it's not coming. And professionals are starting to realize that there's no augmentation strategy, there's no this, there's no new drug, there's you know the new drug doesn't work better than the old one, and so slowly, but then then you see some weirdness happening in the field like acceptance. This this this term, this concept was just thrown like a blanket on top of modern psychiatry that has nothing to do with acceptance in any sense. just it was sort of a perverted to say i this is what it is, you know, as opposed to say what needs to be accepted, what can be changed. Andrew Heacock: It's that you're they're they're saying acceptance and they mean fatalism. Yeah. Rod: Exactly. So so and there's other things, right? Even like when you think of gratitude, that's a beautiful thing. does that mean we all of a sudden put away the fire we have in our chest for more? Do we do we do we do we get any less ambitious and is it a bad thing to want movement and novelty and excitement in life because we are grateful? But the way people get it and the way it's thrown there is like, you know, you're miserable because you have no gratitude. I'm very grateful for things. I'm just fed up of them, you know, and because that's the human nature. You know, there's no final product, only movement. And when you that maybe should be accepted. But Andrew Heacock: I have a couple I'm not gonna say controversial, but I have a couple contrarian things to offer to you because I'd love your opinion on them. The first one is I tend to look at boredom as a good thing. Now, it's like you said that I think the the reason for this is that I'm choosing it. so just like isolation, it's like, well, no, taking some time alone because you want it is different than being forced. I I also I used to take a lot of Adderall for years. So the withdrawal is excruciating boredom. That's the only real way I can describe it. I mean, you you can't focus on anything long enough to to be entertained by it, to be gratified by it. And it that's really, really tough. And it took kind of a long time for me to replenish that. But now I I'm thinking of how overstimulated we are with media, with digital media. As it basically we're just we're we're we've had gotten to where we never ever can allow ourselves to be bored even for a moment. And mindfulness has been such an important part of my life. I find that there is a there is an intentional spiritual practice of doing nothing and just kind of sitting with boredom. I tend to do this when I know I need to do something creative and I'm likely to procrastinate. I won't do anything in the morning. I'll wake up and I'll just do nothing. I'll look at the light change, but I just sit and eventually I'll start getting ideas because I think that creativity and especially art artistic creativity are adaptations to boredom. And if you can't tolerate being bored. then you're the good ideas you'll never you'll never put yourself in a position to be able to get the good ideas. does this resonate with Rod: I don't Andrew Heacock: you at all? Rod: I don't think you tolerate being bored, because if you did tolerate being bored, you wouldn't start having all those ideas. Those ideas are the are the antidote of the boredom. So yes, so it's like Andrew Heacock: Okay. We agree on that for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Rod: I see how you and you're right, right? Boredom exists for a reason to to to impose movement on you. but that doesn't mean I I'm saying, yeah, you should take all the cheap alternatives like freaking Instagram and just keep f flipping. No, no, no. The opposite. We we both agree that boredom needs to be respected and something it's telling you something, it's it triggers you something, it motivates you to do something. And having ideas inside of your head is one of those things. And you may take one of those ideas and say, That's my new project, and that's how you go about it. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: And then you get motivated. Rod: But exactly. So so the the very Andrew Heacock: Yeah, you get motivated 'cause you like the idea, yeah. Rod: the very point is to respect your emotions as opposed to say, you're bored, don't have any ideas. Take a pill. Suppress Andrew Heacock: I think that Rod: it with alcohol, suppress it because having ideas, starting projects, starting relationships, starting a new plan to dominate the world. like pinky and brain or something. that is the natural result of feeling bored. That is the natural antidote of it or treatment of it if you will. So when boredom hits, you know, imagine ourselves without TVs or computers five thousand years ago. You know, you come up with something, you come up with a wheel, you come up with you know pizza, I don't know. you know, so so yeah we We we're still saying the same thing in that sense. I I just my point is to say if that's all you have, it's all boredom in your life, you're gonna be miserable if you cannot respect it and and deal with it like you do, for example. Andrew Heacock: Well, there's this word that's been coming to my mind, which is ennui. You know, it's like it's like boredom without resolve. You know, I mean, it's like you've got boredom, but then you for whatever reason are not able to take any action based on it. The movement gets stuck. Maybe because like for me, I was bored with you know, maybe you're bored with because you picked the wrong life and you think it's not possible to to pick another life. You know, it's too late, right? I'm 30. I can't do a new career now, you know, like or I mean there then there are real consequences. Sometimes you I mean, like people feel like they've married the wrong person and now they've got kids. And so it's like, okay, I'll just bear it. You know, men tend to do that a lot. That's a that's a very male way of dealing with the problem. I'll just, you know, I'll I'll have a couple glasses of whiskey every night, you know, and and just live with being miserable. and it like you said before. Rod: Or of course or suraline and zero quail and maybe lithium and Andrew Heacock: Or something like that. Yeah. Or or cocaine or pornography or an affair, right? What's wrong with me? I'm such a bad Rod: My life is good. I shouldn't be the I shouldn't be depressed. My life is good. Andrew Heacock: person for being not not being happy. Cause then you have this other thing. If I could take anything away from this talk with you, is that is I think what makes you radical in your field is that you think emotions are useful. Like that they're useful messengers and it we should pay attention to them. We should and and This is to me is common sense. It has become common sense. This is essentially why Buddhism appeals to me so much, you know, or things like yoga and Hinduism and philosophy and meditation in particular is it trains you in knowing what you're feeling so that you can kind of work backward from. I did something called somatic experience therapy. Do you are you familiar with that therapy? So it's I was a lexithymic and it's common, you know, now with people who have who are traumatized. kind of be emotionally colorblind. And so you have this alexithymia and you just you don't know what you're feeling and all it's all below the neck. somatic experience therapy is you you will talk, you'll engage in therapy with a therapist and they will ask you to notice where in your body you're feeling a sensation. Okay. Yeah. And then and then so there's actually in Rod: I know it. Okay. Yeah. I know what you're talking about. Andrew Heacock: in the place that I went, there was a shape of a person, like an outline of a person on a big board with emotions on different word, guilt, shame, whatever, on different body parts. Because apparently, and I don't know the science behind this, the research, but at least in in this clinic where I was working with them, it was believed that it was it was reliable where which emotions would be located where in the body. That's interesting, by the way. And now what although Rod: Very. Andrew Heacock: it does make sense, like fear to me is usually in the gut. It's along the it's along the line of the vagus nerve. You know, guilt's gonna be in different places. but yeah, so it would start with being like, okay, well I feel a feeling here. And this thing says that that's probably fear based on where it's located in my body. So, like, then you kind of use that and you're like, well, okay, so in this context, is it appropriate for me to be feeling fear? You sort of reality test your emotion against what that is. You're I can see you smiling and nodding. It it's because this is because sometimes you have to learn what emotions are when you've been severely traumatized. I and if you have complex PTSD, you don't know. You don't even know that you're feeling emotion. You just think it's normal because you have anxiety. Or you're jittery or you can't sit still, but really you're just you're you're hyper-vigilant, you're chronically traumatized, and that just seems normal. So you don't know. But one of the other things is you have this second layer of emotion, which I call meta emotion. I talked to a neuroscientist last week that studies, he's a contemplative neuroscientist, studies meditation, spirituality, trans self-transcendence. And we talked about metacognition and meta-awareness. And he was like, you know, and I was telling him about meta-emotion, and he's like, I don't even know that anybody's ever studied that. And I'm like, how in the hell has nobody's noticed this? It's an emotion you feel about an emotion. Like if you feel Rod: Okay, nice. Andrew Heacock: it's like if you feel afraid and then you say, I'm such a I'm such a pussy, I shouldn't be afraid. I feel and then you feel ashamed about it. So it's like the first order of emotion is involuntary. I believe emotions are instincts. I mean I'm that's something I'm super fascinated to explore with like evolutionists of whether they fit think it fits that description. I don't think we have choice over our emotions at all. I think they're they're kind of involuntary behavioral. Yeah. But then the second layer, the story that we tell ourselves about it, like that's that's where that space in between stimulus and response that Young talked about or that Frankel talked about is we, you know, we do have some control over that second layer of emotion that we that we tell ourselves the story about and say, I'm a bad person, I'm ashamed that I'm not happy with this life I've chosen. You know, like I'm such a terrible person for not being happy being an accountant. If if like maybe really all you ever wanted to do was be a be an actor. You know, or something. Like it's just not your right career. And not to say there's some people who are really happy being accountants and I'm more power to you guys. We need you guys. But like, you know, for me, I w like I I went into like finance and law. I was so miserable in those fields. I I wanted to talk about ideas. I wanted to get on stage and play. And for a long time I thought I was just a bad person, which of course made it worse. Of course makes the problem worse. And for years I wasn't doing I wasn't doing therapy. I was just I was going in with psychiatry and just, this drug didn't work. I'm not better. Then no drug didn't work. I'm not better. And my lucid interval was when I realized like the person I was working with, this the provider, the psychiatrist, just couldn't see that the 40th drug we tried was not going to make a difference. And I I'd counted them up. I'd been like, yeah, I've taken over 40 drugs from psychiatrists by this point. And I'm worse off than when I began. And it really does seem like all of the symptoms I asked him at one point, it's like, how do you know that I'm bipolar? Give me the, give me, explain to me. And he gave me, he gave an answer to the things, and they were all adverse reactions to the drugs he was giving me. And I was like, okay, like I want to go back to baseline and just see. Like, I think really, I really do think it's the drugs that are making me sick. And I keep getting told I'm noncompliant or whatever for suggesting that. But to me, the scientific thing to do would be to just come off of them. That took two and a years. But I did have enough experiences. I'd come off a drug, the withdrawal would be terrible. But then a month or two later, when I get off of I'd slightly better and on and on and on. So over two and a half years I'd kind of tapered off. And yeah. But then after that, like my nervous system was a wreck, but I was finally thank god able to start exercising again, which a lot of the Rod: Nice. Andrew Heacock: drugs kind of negated. When you're on Adderall, you don't want to work out. Like I mean you you you could and I have but it doesn't it feels terrible. and it well it tightness in your Rod: I didn't know that. Why though? Why do you think that is? I didn't know that. Andrew Heacock: chest. Tightness in the chest, yeah, Rod: of course. Andrew Heacock: and shortness of breath, it raises your blood pressure. Exercise requires you to have H high HRV. Like it, I mean, if you want to sprint and be faster, or if you need to run away from a bear, like you don't want high HRV. Like you just you just want to book it. And so stimulants, there's a reason they're banned in like track, because if you're a sprinter, but you also they can kill you. Like, I mean, it's not good for your heart to work out on amphetamine. It's not a sustainable solution. And I really was getting into what started to heal me. I read The Body Keeps the Score a couple of times and was also working with therapists that were using these quote unquote trauma-informed approaches or what is more of a bottom-up approach to the physiology of the body. And I wanted to do yoga and I wanted to meditate and I could not do breath work. I could not expand my diaphragm. I was in c a chronic state of sympathetic overdrive. Which I like now looking back was kind of the ultimate causal symptom was because of my diet, because I have an autoimmune disorder, everything I was eating was causing all this brain fog, which would also activate my sympathetic nervous system. But then I was taking a bunch of stimulants, caffeine, nicotine, you know, Adderall for years. It's whatever I could get my hands on, because I had an understimulated brain and maybe, you know, ADHD, maybe for me, sure. But not life impairing ADHD. It was the brain fog, but I was between the cortisol from the food and then the the stimulants, I I was just a jittery mess, which of course could be imper interpreted as pressured speech or Rod: Okay. Andrew Heacock: flights of ideas or anxiety. And so I wanted to try like yoga and meditation, but I also other things too, Rod, theater. Like I I one of the things that really helped me, I moved to Nashville, Tennessee from a small town of Louisiana, smaller town, it's a mid sized city. And there's lots of artists here. And I started going to there's big, there's a cinema scene here. So I I would go to the theater. it was one of my things. I was very agoraphobic. So like I was literally afraid to leave the house after I got off drive. I mean, I was so traumatized from coming off everything. I was jittery. I was afraid of people. I was I would feel fear and and like irritability, like anger for like no reason, for a while. And it's just as my my nervous system was settling. So I needed to leave the house, which was a goal of mine at first. Like was okay, like my goal is I need to leave the house every day. And I would go for a walk, sometimes twice a day. And then it was like, okay, I need to be around people. And I was really getting into cinema. I love the movies. Not just movies, but the movies. Go into the I saw Jurassic Park when I was a little kid in the theater. It changed my life. And I've always wanted to watch every Oscar movie, but you you gotta go to the theater. You know, I would go on and go right away. We have an independent cinema here that's wonderful. And I started seeing them and I noticed that. colors were much more vivid to me. After I got off of the medications, things started getting better. Colors like I get I always saw color, but there's an the thing is beauty is a feeling inside of you. Like the reason depressed people don't, you know, don't have a sense for things like beauty, or they're there is that they're just numb. Like you can't, like you're like, I feel apathetic about what things that normally make me happy. 'Cause you you're blocked from feeling anything inside of you. So I started feeling it and then I got into learning about it and I went to a film school. And that's really bad by that point, it was kind of when I the first time of my life where I remember being happy was about a year ago. And I'd been there six months or so. I had friends. I'd gotten a girlfriend, not from that, but for the first time, so in 13 years. And so there was an end to that because you can't grieve what's not complete. So like That's called incohate grief or in or or ambiguous grief. But I got into the arts. I started doing photography and doing some filmmaking. And acting, acting requires presence. You have to be in the present moment, just like meditation or yoga, improv, like you have to be physically present and not completely dysregulated by anxiety. So that was another thing where like stimulants are a massive liability for that. Like you just Rod: Right. Andrew Heacock: can't be present. And I was looking for ways to combine exercise with mindfulness and presence. And I tried martial arts a little bit until I realized, like, that's yoga. Like, that's what yoga is, is a combination of exercise and mindfulness. And I learned a little bit about the I thought I might do a PhD in with in how the neuroscience of yoga works and maybe using that as as an intervention for trauma. And I just learned a little bit about how it works. I'm like, you're stretching the muscle because your nervous system is relaxing. That's why your muscle stretches, not because the tissue is getting longer, although it does. It's more about getting your nervous system to relax the the tension in the muscle. And I'm like, well, I can't do this on speed. Like defeats the purpose, right? Like, no wonder it's hard and you got to belly breathe with your diaphragm. Can't do that. And so it really Rod: You're right. Andrew Heacock: was like I kind of had a question of well, how healed do I want to be? And and now I'm in a place where I I don't even drink caffeine. It's been addition by subtraction in a big way. I I I same way with alcohol. I was an alcoholic legitimately, but man, it was just like no downside to cutting that that drug for me. so it's been a it's been a really cool thing and I have learned all this stuff because I've tried all the stuff that didn't work. The only thing I really ever did not try was ECT and I just wasn't willing to I wasn't willing to lose my my memory. I wouldn't I didn't want to affect my cognitive ability. But other than that, I tried, I tried it all. and then there's all these other things that would not ordinarily be recommended by a psychiatrist, like yoga and or spiritual practice or plant medicine has become an important part of my life. But even when there's not a medicine that you ingest, ceremony, holiness, togetherness, community, wouldn't you know it? Like I'm I'm really joyful almost all the time now. I mean, like it I'm not saying that should be everybody's benchmark for success to be joyful all the time. You know, years of spiritual practice can kind of do that for you. Rod: Yeah, and and th it's very interesting. it it has has been said that there there's as many theories of the mind as there are minds. And when it comes to the type of work that we're talking about here, we just need to find the things that are common enough. You know, it's common enough, we go from there. I have I I I have a great friend that doesn't like psychological theories. he's more into the whatever is about this person and he does a very good job in that sense. I respect him very much. But as it is, it's already difficult to do help people in a way that is disruptive disruptive for the establishment. So I I really like this type of No, because the the experiences you had and the way you go through it and you say, okay, so this matters, this helps, this is what's holding me back. And and the result of it is a is a not only a body not only a an an experience, but a body of knowledge that will you know, will have a lot of universal things and and be helpful for folks that are in a bad spot. That's pretty neat. Andrew Heacock: Thank you. That that does mean a lot because it's like, you know, like Frankel wrote, it makes everything that I've been through, which I've been through a lot of really hard things. It's kind of my superpower now. I tell people, like I've had the I've had the good fortune of having been deeply miserable for long periods of time. But now it's Rod: Yes, yes, yeah. Andrew Heacock: it's a it's a it's a miracle, it's a good fortune because it's now in the past. Exactly. Exactly. My meaning is to help other people know that like if they're going Rod: And more than that, you can give it a meaning. Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: through it, don't stop there. Rod: So why did I and you know, and people the the the power of giving meaning to things is that is it doesn't matter because me giving meaning is an exercise. So why did I go through all of this? Right, so I can be here today and do this. Right? And and if you look into it, it's always true. you to actually be present in life and not be you're still wounded but you can look at the scars and have all right you know proud of surviving it or some positive out of it you don't get stuck in the when you're able to give meaning to the bad stuff you're you don't get stuck in it you know it actually pushes you forward it's nice Andrew Heacock: Yeah, I I've said before, you know, I mentioned that I I just why wouldn't why not clinical psychology for me to to get a PhD in that? Because I didn't want to spend my whole life being defined by the worst things that ever happened to me, but I would be okay with them being defined by how I overcame the worst things that ever happened to me. It's a totally different reframe. But but the thing is on the second one, you still need the bad things to have happened. Like it you know what I mean? Like I I couldn't and I couldn't get to where I am today. I wouldn't be the same person. I mean Who knows what you know, what I would have been like if I'd had a different life. I mean, it's it's a silly thing to speculate about, really. I would be a different person, I guess, but I'm sure I'm much more compassionate. And I'm sure I mean you just you have to be. Compassion means to suffer with someone. And you need to really if when you really, really know what suffering is like, you tend to get a lot of compassion because you just know, like, I mean, I'm gentler. I know I've had to train my body to be calm enough to be gentle with people emotionally. You know, and to to be able to listen old space and to ask deep questions and not be afraid, you know, of getting too close. And it's been it's been a honestly a real blessing. However, I can to anybody who's you know, I get comments from angry people on YouTube quite often. and it's like, yeah, I mean, if you're going through hell now, it is hell. And I'm not saying that you're lucky to be there. I'm saying that if you keep going and don't stop there, I mean, eventually when you come out on the other side, you will be hopefully you'll be able to look back on it and see it as having been something that was an important part of your life that even if you wouldn't wish it on someone else, it was important part of your soul's growth. And it was something that enriched your experience of being alive. And there are benefits and gifts that can come of it, even if it wasn't something that you would you would want for yourself or for people that you love. Rod: It's it's hard to come across as validating and yet encouraging when the the media is like and social media for example is very difficult. I get a I get a lot of heat too. I get a lot of heat online on account of takes like mine. But, you know My clinical work is pretty gratifying. Andrew Heacock: good. Yeah, I mean you you get to see people get better. Rod: Yeah, yeah, live life. You know, get into the drama of things. Andrew Heacock: You know, I I was just thinking when you were talking about you get criticism online. I'm sure you do. You must. I mean, especially in anything controversial or medical, anything mental health related. And I start to see them too. And and honestly, the only thing that's what's really helped me is a lot of times I don't read the comments if I can avoid it. but sometimes I just I tend to just try to have compassion for the the kind of person that would be motivated to comment on a YouTube short. Like to leave a shitty comment on a YouTube short, like that person's suffering. And that you you could say, that's a judgmental thing, you don't know that person. And I'm like, I think I can say as a categorical matter, anybody that would motivate be that motivated to express negative emotion to a complete stranger over a th a two-minute vertical on YouTube and say that they don't understand how facts and logic work or whatever, they're doing that because they have an unmet psychological need that is going to get temporarily satisfied by. Rod: Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: by doing that. And maybe they're hurting. Maybe they feel like, you know, they're not being heard or they're not being seen. And that something taken out of context that I might have said or one of my guests might have said could invalidate their experience. And Rod: They they they it's displacement. People are angry and you know they found you to unleash. But you you have a point when we're happy someone can cut you on traffic and you say go go brother, it must be late. Andrew Heacock: That happened to me today. I mean, I was late to this yoga class, and of course, in rush hour traffic in Nashville, it took me 40 minutes to get there instead of 20. And I was just in my mind, I could, I could tell. I was starting to predict that she was gonna lock me out and not let me in the room. It was my first time in the yoga class. And I was like, this person's gonna be militant, and they're gonna say, No, if you're late, you can't come in. And so I was already, I was having like a premeditated resentment. And I've done enough work, mindfulness work to equanimity work to know, like, okay, I don't know. If that happens, it will be an interesting experience and I will have the opportunity to learn from it. And that's it. But I mean, God, you're right. Some I would hear people tell me to do stuff like that when I was really miserable. And when your brain is like rigid with depression, you're literally more rigid, you just can't like, and it's just, you know, it it comes off as kind of judgmental and condescending. And sometimes I think for a lot of people when they're going through stuff, all you can really do is just sometimes just kind of sit with them and be like, I know what you're going through is hard and and I see it and I if I could fix it, I would, but you know, maybe sometimes the fact that no one could just fix me with the pill, I now see was a good thing because it that would have robbed me of the experience of having to figure it out myself. And so now I'm like I'm kind of bulletproof in a way because I think I've already done the hardest thing I'm ever gonna have to do. So, like, you know, facing the fear of rejection on doing this, I mean. You know, I mean, I love doing this for I've loved it from the beginning, but you know, people saying, Who do you think you are? Who's this guy, this idiot that thinks he can have a podcast about all this stuff and he never went to a grad school? Like I hear those voices, but it's not as hard as maybe you really are crazy, because I heard that voice for a long time too. And so, like, yeah, coming through that stuff, it there are these things that you mentioned positive psychology a few times and it's almost like you could say what you're doing is positive psychiatry. Rod: Yeah, in in s it it has a lot of the things there. from a technical approach as well. I from a diagnostic maybe as well. the the f is aga again a few tweaks, right? It's it's a brilliant work by Seligman. and it it's heavily based on Maslow. But then again that's also heavily based on Freud, you know. So there's like these ideas have been around in when Again, that that that's why I think I took upon myself to find what is common to most theories of mind that were life like world changing, right? And and those things are what I found. And then there's of course a set of things that are from a technical perspective that will be also agreeable in that sense that are more like, okay, how do we go about helping people have an exciting life and realize that They are here with their soul, with their capabilities, with their intelligence, with their beauty as a human being, right? Because in my humble opinion, there's nothing more beautiful than human beings on earth. But their lives are here. It's not a match. You know, your life is not a match for who you are. And and you know, crazy crazy conclusions come out of it, like people realizing, my god, I really don't like peace. I'm an intense person trying to live a peaceful life. You know, things like that will come out of this sort of discovery like, No, but I like peace. Really do you? 'Cause you know, you have been miserable for a while in your life. Nothing happens in this freaking thing. And then Andrew Heacock: Uh-huh. Yeah. Rod: there, you know, so of course that doesn't happen so easily. It takes a second for the one to embrace the fact that they're much, that they were designed for greatness. And the opposite is true. Some people are like, man, no, you know what, it's too much. Or at this moment in my life, I need quiet, I need less. And, you know, you go there. But, you know, the movement is still the Andrew Heacock: Yeah. Movement. Movement. Rod: You can't stay in the same spot all the time. It it's just impossible for us. Andrew Heacock: We gotta be constantly, and we've sort of built kind of like I don't know, it it it's whatever that was that came before Rat Park. I mean, that's that's sort of what we've sort of built for ourselves in our society. You and you get a job, it stays the same, you get a mortgage, you get a bigger house, but it's still a house, you know, it's still basically the same thing. And once you're like mid twenties, this is your life now. And that to me seems really boring. but and and and and existentially boring. Like that's I think what you've been talking about with this boredom, like an existential boredom of like my yes, Rod: Same less. Andrew Heacock: just this this the insufferable sameness of everything. That's how Rod: Yep. Andrew Heacock: I used to feel. I mean, I and I also now and I I I think it's probably true. This has gotta be true. Some people have a higher need for novelty than others. It's gotta be true, you know. And we call those people ADHD, right? Rod: Yes, be you are absolutely right. And and nah, well I the Andrew Heacock: Maybe. Rod: diagnosis is is is difficult to use the diagnosis nowadays because yeah yeah yeah and and you Andrew Heacock: Yeah, that was a I meant that as a joke. Rod: that's a good one. I just missed it, I'm sorry. But yeah, like life is because you know i the I I always get jumpy with the the term ADHD. I missed the joke unfortunately. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, no, just like, yeah, you're you're you're curious, can't sit still in class. Yeah, right, right, right, right, right. Rod: It is the or yes. Or or you're so overwhelmed that you can perform or complete a task, which nowadays, Andrew Heacock: Mm, yeah. Rod: honestly, with the complexity of life and you know think about what it what it was like to start a business in in the sixties and what it is like to do it now. Right? Andrew Heacock: Yeah. And you see other people that are way richer than you are sp apparently on their Instagram and Rod: Or or or you know counting with the government as your business partner that never shows up for work. Anywho, but yeah, the and the other thing that I think we have been subtracted of on account of cultural changes is having kids. Andrew Heacock: Go on. You mean like not having kids? Rod: 'Cause not having kids is is a is a I suspect is a Andrew Heacock: And like it for in terms of a dearth of meaning. Rod: I think in terms of because having a ki you know, just like love and falling in love is like a freaking Andrew Heacock: There's nothing better. Yeah. Rod: Bless, you know, makes everything yeah, Jesus they teach it makes everything have meaning, just falling in love. And we're so designed for it, you know. And our culture says, you've got to learn how to live alone. You could it's good to have the the the the the resources, you know, to have the repertoire of how to live an interesting life alone. But it it for me is so evidently ingrained in our biology to fall to love, to to care about someone, to do stupid things on account of love. and then and then we have kids. Yeah, freaking you you see Andrew Heacock: Amen to that. Amen to that. Yeah. Yeah. And then we have kids. Like so we can have kids. Yeah. But that's, you know, my Rod: how life imposes this on us. And then when you have a a baby, mom man being a father, you know, It it's this constant love for this constantly changing creature. You know, it makes up for a lot of sameness. It makes up for a lot of stability that is crushing on your soul. Because that that fella is a different guy every week. You know, in the beginning he's walking and then he starts nagging and then he drives him insane and then he makes you laugh and it's a beautiful thing, you know. It and used to be used to be a let's say part of our blueprint. And now Andrew Heacock: And that Rod: you know when you think about it, when you think about you know how difficult life has become, how complex life has become, how expensive life has become, and you know, people avoid getting pregnant, they avoid getting married, they avoid all types of relationships. And I'm not saying you must, you should. That's not it. What I suspect is that our design is also, you know, so you see a lot of people struggling with loneliness in some, yeah, all kinds of things when they're in their later years. and it's not there. Andrew Heacock: as we're drawing things to a close, there's I think there's one more factor that we haven't really talked about that we've touched on, which is what's the problem that I think Nietzsche was dealing with when he talked about the death of God. and the problems that the problems that Rod: I s Andrew Heacock: that would leave for us of living in like a post religious society. Rod: Right, right. Andrew Heacock: Where do you see that fitting into like the problem of unhappiness? I mean a relationship to something greater than self? Rod: Well Nietzsche had a very interesting view of religion. And one of his criticisms to both Christianity and Buddhism was that he thought they were sapping what being a man means. And I Because of acceptance, because of submission, because of fatalism. That's how my impression is of how he saw those two things, Buddhism and Christianity. But if I look into this, I I get his point, I think he's a good point about Life is about struggle, is about disagreement, is about drama, is about adventure, unpredictability, is about chaos. I I I like to use the example of Adam and Eve for the metaphorical weight. they had it all. Everything was set, everything was perfect, you don't have to worry about anything. She chooses danger, he chooses the girl. I love that. I just love it. She says, okay, everything we are good for life, man. We're done. What we are all pursuing, right? Trying to make money, trying to, you know, retire and buy a boat and whatever type of life. They had it. She picks up danger. She likes this thing that she was told don't do, she does. And and Adam looks at it and says, I'll choose the girl. You know, and I think that's so that that's one of the ways of looking at it. And I like that metaphor a lot because I think it speaks so much about w us human beings and the beauty of us, right? And then if you take you know, if you continue on the Bible later, this Jesus guy shows up and says, Yeah, you guys are a mess, we love you just like that. You're good. Right, forgiven for being a mess, that's how we like it, and and and and and we gotta find beauty in it. So in a sense, I see Nietzsche saying that and saying, you know, you gotta be you cannot be like that. But on the other hand, myself being a Christian, I I see Jesus as the most viral, viral, what's the word? Andrew Heacock: Virile, virile. Rod: Thank you. masculine presence in all let's call it literature you know he makes well no wonder Tolkien broke down Jesus in Aragorn and Gandalf and Frodo and Samuise Genji and all those guys. you know he is this tough as nail, enough to be loving despite being so powerful, you know. So so in a sense I think Nietzsche has a good point, but from my perspective is the view of a non believer. Andrew Heacock: Interesting. That was that was really fascinating to hear you talk about it. Thank you. I would really love to have more of these conversations with you sometime. this has been great. We I feel I feel like we've Rod: Do you have my phone upon you? Andrew Heacock: I do. We've only scratched scratched the surface and we haven't really even talked about masculinity that much. I mean we talked we've danced around it, but we could probably have a whole other episode to just talk about the unique mental health challenges that are facing men and it's something that I hope to be able to to make some sort of difference in. Honestly, I'm still I'm still really trying to wrap my mind around. those problems are and understanding you're gonna have to start with understanding like what is masculinity is how I would how I would tend to approach the problem. so I'm not I'm not full my ideas aren't as fully formed on that as I would like but this has just been a really really fun conversation for me. I don't know what that says about my idea of fun. you know like you know what Rod: Same man, I really like it. It's a meaningful one. Andrew Heacock: it is it's it's incredibly meaningful. This is the kind of conversation I've been is been missing in my life and now I get to have it. And so it's it's just been an immense, immense pleasure. So thank you so much. and yeah, I look forward to seeing how things go with the kind of the reboot of the show and and you know, the direction that's gonna take. Rod: I appreciate it, man. I'll keep you posted and probably have you talk to me and Chris once Chris is once this whole thing is ready and he has some time. Chris is I I live in Rhode Island. Yeah, so Andrew Heacock: I would love that. Where where are you located? Rhode Island. Okay. So not close to me at all, but I could make it up there in the probably in the summer. Rod: Yeah, if you if we we're gonna have I'm trying to figure out the setup. Usually I do all everything online and and I always thought about podcasts is man one sponsor and I would start flying people around. But it's so difficult or it's so competitive and you know. Andrew Heacock: Yeah. It it it is. Well, so I've I've rented space a few times. what I've learned is okay, so I talked to a clinical neuro I talked to a lot of clinical neuropsychologists. Man, that's a fun group of people. Rod: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: one of them was neuroscience of religion and dreams, and another one was the neuroscience of intelligence, creativity, and genius. His name is Rex Young, and he told me one of his colleagues is a man named Dean. Dean Keith Simonton, who is also a creativity researcher, psychologist. And they surveyed all creative people, like these people that are creative geniuses. That's kind of Simonton's field of study. And they just looked at a various psychometric factors to tease out what is it that makes these people creative geniuses. And the only variable they found that was like positively correlated was they just produced more. And so that he came up with something called the equal odds rule. Which is that every creative product has equal odds of of being successful, because it's not really the the creator that has that determines whether it's going to be successful, it's everybody else. And something about being an artist is we just we sent we have we we think we have good taste and we do, but like most of the stuff we put out's not going to take off. A good statistic is Dolly Pardon, who just passed away. She wrote three thousand songs in her career. Only a hundred and ten were hits, but she had a hundred and ten hit records. You know, so like that makes her the incredibly but so they're just more prolific. And it's definitely true in the content world. What I've say assessed is that renting studio space doubles my cost basically on a one-to-one basis. And so I'm getting one episode for the price of two. And I would be better off getting two episodes for the price of two. and so I'm just going to recording here in my home and on Riverside, and I'm a little sweaty, but I'm all right. The one of the downsides is the audio. is not as good like on the guest side. So like this is gonna go up and to Spotify and and Apple. The audio between us is not going to be quite as good as or sometimes not nowhere near as good as it would be if we were in studio. And also the verticals are a big thing I'm learning. like the reels on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, this vertical content, they do better when you're in a studio. like those tend to get more legs and that that's noticeable, like a factor of ten. people are just they they pay more attention when someone's in a studio. So those are the things I've seen. And I would I I I one of the benefits of being in Nashville is the same reason the music industry is here, we're kind of centrally located to 80% of the United States population. And so it's easy to get people here. but and also easy to go around to other places and and do stuff. Rod: Yeah, the other thing I think is so relevant is the niche. Andrew Heacock: Your niche? Rod: Well, the niche itself, you know, like if you're talking about things that aren't general interesting for most people, you know, the other thing I found is depth also pushes people away. I hope you don't invent you cut this before you publish. Andrew Heacock: Definition, right? Yeah. No, no, no, it's okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure like if anybody makes it to the end, they'll get good information. If they've made it this far, they're not one of those people by definition. You know, I mean, look, by this point, if they've if they've been listening to my podcast, Rod: Yeah. Fair game. Andrew Heacock: I mean, I'm talking about the evolutionary psychology of religion or, you know, what is consciousness or things like that. And like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not doing what they do on call her daddy or whatever that that show is. Like, it's not a hangout Rod: Right, yeah. Andrew Heacock: podcast. Rod: Yeah, yeah. Andrew Heacock: But also I the benefit that what I'm making is also evergreen, hopefully. so Rod: Yes. Andrew Heacock: I'm not talking about current events, speaking of things that they keep you pissed off. I could talk about that, but I think that would just make me part of the problem, honestly. Like, and I'm more interested in the climate than I am in the weather, so to speak. So like I talk Rod: Amen. Andrew Heacock: about policy, but not politics. and yeah, I mean, I I'm really just making this for me. And I'm a I'm just hoping there's more than one me out there. You know what I mean? So I think that r it I don't know if I'll ever make money on this, although it's my goal. It's my goal to make this my career. Rod: Course. Andrew Heacock: I if all I ever did was break even but but it enabled me to just do it at infinitum, I would be blissfully happy because it's its own reward to be able to talk about these kind of subjects. You know, I mean this has kind of become the modern forum, like the Roman forum where people would go to have these great debates of the day. That happens now. On podcasts. Yeah. Rod: Yep. Yep. Andrew Heacock: So it's it's a cool, it's a cool medium that we have and it's a way to reach people. So yeah, I would love to my goal is also to start being a guest on more. I've been a guest on one. It was a business podcast with some with some fraternity brothers. And it usually goes for an hour. We went for two and I told them in every which way that I don't care about productivity. I'm like, I'm not optimizing for that. I'm optimizing for happiness. Like, like I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna trade away the thing I want in order to succeed at the thing that's gonna get it to me. Rod: That's the price, yeah. Price to pay for happiness, yeah, it's high. Andrew Heacock: And it is, well, you know, dude, I mean, I like I said, I was lucky to have been miserable enough to have to be radically honest with myself about who I am and what kind of life I want. Cause it you I mean, you you're smiling and it's but like you mentioned, like there's people that you're like you're here and then there's here, like and I was like, Yeah, but the the real the real misfortune is the people who never get miserable enough to to be forced to close the gap. They're comfortable enough. They're living in Rat Park, basically. Like they've they're in captivity, but they've got a facsimile of what real life is. And so Rod: You're gonna like you're gonna like Chris. Chris had a conversation like that recently with me. He mentioned about this type of he's an athlete, this type of fracture that is a microfracture. And the treatment Andrew Heacock: Mm. Rod: involves actually making it a macro fra frac so the body actually recognizes the damage and starts healing it. and I have no knowledge about it, but he was talking about things like that, like at times you really have to go down and the damage actually wakes you up. And I thought that was just freaking brilliant. And of course my mind goes to can we prevent that so people wake up before You know, too much damage is that can you can we bypass it in a in a in a similar way from a clinical perspective? You know, can can you just stop being so stubborn before s before reality slaps you in the face? Times at times yes, at times you don't, at times, you know, life at at the end of the day is a blessing. Andrew Heacock: I think that's kind of how Ibogaine works. I've taken that medication, that medicine. I've Rod: you did. Andrew Heacock: I've had it in the plant form, my boga. And I think the way it's it's profoundly anti-addictive and it's also anti-traumatizing. and I I mean those terms in the particular sense, like it's it the way it works is you're just profoundly sick. It disrupts your inner ear function radically. So like if I look just I'll show you how I'll turn my head. You'll you'll vomit. You'll be violently ill if you turn your head that fast. You can't walk. I mean, it's like you're like an old man. They call it in ceremonial context, they call it the great grandfather. You should move like an old man. Otherwise you'll just you'll be so sick. You you I mean, and I think that a way it works is it will associate the object of your addiction with a profound disgust response. So because you're you know, you're sick for twelve hours, but then there's there's more to come for another twenty four hours and you kind of get a different blend of neurotransmitters of you know, it's first serotonin and then you get some oxytocin and then Kind of the opiates coming at the end. But for me, my experience was it was like every time I was vomited for six, seven, eight hours, but I was just thinking about every time I'd ever thrown up from alcohol, which was for the last couple of years was like every day. I mean, it was a lot of vomiting. And I I'd been sober for four years when I took the medic the medicine. but it just was like it just the idea of doing any other drug, you're like, ugh, no, thank you. And it does kind of make you so sick that you never want to be sick again, and so you become healed. And that that is my overall assessment of of how that how that medicine works is that it and also there is sort of an indifference that comes with it. It's like a zen of like, okay, this is what I have to go through to get clean. And it's very anti-traumatizing because like you're just you're resilient, you're unbothered because what you just went through was such an ordeal that compared to that, nothing, I mean, really, it was an ordeal to use the bathroom. That's a two-hour ordeal where you're gonna vomit several times. Like was my experience getting to the bathroom. And so compared to that, being late to a yoga class. Rod: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: You know what I mean? Like it's just and it's like it it really is yeah. Rod: Well i yeah, it's like living life, right? Makes you makes you unfazed. It's a funny thing. I was so I'm I'm I'm dating this wonderful girl. She lives in Portugal and that imposes some traveling for me, right? And this sequence of events took place recently where I changed the an airplane ticket for October and and I was online doing this, changing the dates and stuff, and I was I caught myself anxious. Because you know, airlines, you change the thing, then you can't. There's nobody to talk to. And you know how it is, like and then I thought, dude, you are 50. I'm gonna be 50 in December, right? I said, you're 50 years old. If you cannot do this thing chill, nobody can. Like, put your shit together. And and and because you know, you gotta live a little to to get there. And today I forgot my my phone at the gym. after lifting, I got home and was like, my god, where's my phone? And then I s my first thought was like, All right, man, if someone can cope with this, is you chill, don't panic. Because it has happened before, and of course I was covered in sweat. So but you're absolutely right. You know, either life or some of those experiences, we we we need some beating. Awful. Andrew Heacock: It's so there's this concept I've learned about, but it's it's probably a a concept in positive psychology now that I think about it, it's where this idea would come from. There's a difference between being fragile and resilient and anti-fragile. Like if you're fragile, you're just breakable. You get stressed, you break. And that was me. For like I think that's why people get PTSD from this when other people don't from the same exact event, is that the people who went into it had had enough trauma that they were fragile coming into it. Resilience is when Life can stress you and it doesn't break you, but it does weaken you a little bit, but you make it, you're okay. But becoming anti-fragile is when life stresses you and you just get stronger. Rod: I didn't know that concept until last week. I kid Andrew Heacock: No shit, really. Rod: you not. And the claim I saw is like, we are anti-fragile. Like the human body is anti-fragile. The more you beat, the stronger you get. You know, and I was like, for starters, right? And or bone density, right? And I was like, Andrew Heacock: Yeah. Muscle, muscle hypertrophy, growing muscle. You're tearing your muscle so that it will grow. Yeah. So it'll get stronger. Right. And right after you work out, you're way weaker, right? Rod: it's incredible. And and we have a whole mental health field enabling people to be We'll stop here. Andrew Heacock: Fragile, pr terminally fragile, terminally unique is another term. Yeah, I know I I understand. But although I do have hope, one thing that one of the benefits that we do have this market economy that we live in is that people are gonna people are gonna go for what works. Like they're gonna go for what they perceive to work. And I know it's so complicated with medicine and science that there's there's Rod: I just Andrew Heacock: a lot of nonsense out there. But there is something about like one of the reasons that I'm doing this and I'm doing my men's work, men's coaching is that People will ask me, what are you doing? Like, because they saw what it was like before. And they're like, dude, what did you do? Like what what changed? And they want to know. Like there's thirst for it because we're not used to people going and getting in with psychiatry and then seeing a really dramatic change. Sometimes it is when there's when there's just, I mean, if someone's psychotic and they're not psychotic anymore, I mean, that's dramatic. But most people are going in and have this existential boredom. Rod: It's a chronifying approach to to mental health. Yeah. It it chronifies. Andrew Heacock: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rod: There's not designed to improve. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, chronifies, it makes it chronic. Yeah. Rod: Well w let's let's catch up on this because I I have some interesting experiences to share from my private practice, in that regard. And w the size Andrew Heacock: Okay. Yeah, I'd love to. Rod: of the beast that we're actually fighting against. Andrew Heacock: Okay, well it's fodder for a part two or for a for another collab. All right, Rod. Okay, man. Thank you so much. Best of luck for you. And Rod: Amen. Nice. I'll I'll be looking forward, man. Take care. Thank you. Andrew Heacock: let me know when you're getting the the new pod up and running. Okay. All Rod: I'll do it, I'll do it. I'll keep you posted. Andrew Heacock: right. Bye.