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122. Inside the Troubled Teen Treatment Industry · Radically Genuine

• Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin. On January 7, 2003, the International Survivors Action Committee filed a formal complaint with the United Nations against Melvin Sembler, Director of the Board of STRAIGHT, Inc., for the charge of crimes against humanity. Sean (00:29.44) It was known as straight incorporated and had a reputation for abusing kids as a drug and trouble teen rehabilitation program. This program was lauded by the Reagan and Bush administrations as well as British royalty, including Princess Diana. The troubled teen industry exists today under the disguise of treatment, including residential mental health facilities. In this modern version. Kids are quickly labeled with empty psychiatric labels, drugged, and receive pseudo mental health and behavioral therapy. It's a breeding ground for abusive and predatory professionals. In the psychiatric cult, kids raised in abusive, chaotic environments are often labeled with mental illness, behavioral disorders, and drugged. This is common. It's not an outlier. seen it throughout my career in various settings. In fact, it's fucking criminal. Sean (01:36.888) In a just world, prescribers will spend some time in prison for this type of behavior and understand exactly what abuse is and its implications. The survivors must tell their stories. Much of this continues to occur in the shadows. Children and teens who react to family dysfunction and trauma become scapegoats in a system that lacks moral, ethical, and scientific foundations. As adults, they tend to remain in the system hooked on multiple mind and mood altering drugs and are led to believe they are the problem as they're diagnosed with various psychiatric disorders. On today's podcast, I want to introduce Elaine Walters, who has emerged as an advocate for safe and ethical mental health care after being harmed by the troubled teen industry and psychiatry. She's here to tell her story with the hope of bringing attention to practices that continue today. What remains in the dark cannot heal. And us here at the Radically Genuine podcast are certainly going to make an effort. to bring light and attention to these stories for the greater public to have a better awareness of what actual mental health treatment looks like. Many families believe that they're making the right decision by sending their kids off to programs. Sean (03:16.676) knowing little about the efficacy or what actually happens on a day to day basis as they interact with some of the least qualified medical and mental health professionals. Elaine Walters, welcome to the radically genuine podcast. Elaine Walters (03:35.197) Welcome, it's so nice to meet you in person. I've been listening to your podcast since 2021, just I think when it started. Sean (03:37.88) RIP. Sean (03:44.344) Yeah, so we'll really appreciate of you reaching out to us. Kind of followed your story a little bit by listening to you on Dr. Josef Witt-Durings' podcast. And I know that you weren't completely open on that podcast about some of the things that you went through prior to starting psychiatric drugs. And you did mention to me that you think it's the right time for maybe, for to be open about how you were entered into the trouble team industry, which was straight incorporated. Start there if you can bring us back to that time in your life as a teenage girl. Just kind of what you were going through at that time. Elaine Walters (04:22.617) So I think I was having a lot of trouble at home in my family. I was absolutely the scapegoat. I was the one who was the troubled child and had all the issues. My mom and I were close when I was a toddler. But as I started growing up, I think we had a real hard time relating to each other. My mom, the more I sort of pushed back, the more it scared her, the more it severed our relationship. Um, my mom, it was in various sort of, um, strange mental health type therapies, and she would practice them on me. Um, I came from a, a kind of a family that wasn't. It wasn't physically abusive, but my mother was very smothering of me. Every little thing I did, if it was rejecting her at all, she thought something was wrong. So I was told very young something was wrong. I mean, she was seeking help for me at a very young child. So the theme in my life was always fighting. I'm okay. Like, it's not me. There's not something wrong. And I became... more and more rebellious because she pushed harder and harder and I pushed back harder and harder and it evolved so to skip out A lot of this just not make this story so long By the time I was like 14 or 15 She had let me go live with a friend of mine a family friend because she thought it would help me And then they forced me to come home after that. I fought that really hard. I was more rebellious. I started running away from home. That scared her more. She got involved with tough love, which if anybody knows anything about that, it's about basically full control over your children. Like it doesn't matter. There's no comfort. There's no support. There's no nothing. It's full blown. You have to give your child tough love. So I ended up in... Elaine Walters (06:32.053) a runaway shelter. And then from there, I ended up in a mental institute in Philadelphia, which from there, my mom still felt like because I still was fighting with her, no matter how well I was doing any program, I was still fighting with her. From there, I think the tough love people got her, had me headed over to Straight Incorporated. Now within that time, I had started to experiment with drugs. So Yes, I had done them. And I think that because my mom for so long was trying to find she had taken me to so much therapy and everyone kept saying, this is a family issue. This isn't your daughter. She would say no, something's wrong and move on and on and on. So so when they did realize that I just started experimenting with drugs automatically, it was like, yep, see, it was a drug problem all along when really that was very new. So that's how I ended up in street, which So many kids ended up being forced in there because kids would go in, their families would put one kid in that was actively doing drugs, but then a brother or a sister may have had a drink before or maybe smoked pot once before and automatically they were signed up in there too. I don't really know what that was about, if that was a money thing. I don't know why that is, but I know people outside of there that just... None of, most of us did not have drug problems and we were in there and forced in there. So that's the short version. Sean (08:04.06) It's good. Yeah, I'm gonna ask you some follow up questions, but this is I want to bring in Sean here, you know, as well. My brother, he and I certainly experimented in our teenage years. Yeah, I think there's a record for one of us. It would be me. I think one of the things that we don't necessarily talk enough about both in education, psychologists as well as what is can be considered developmentally Elaine Walters (08:21.233) Yeah. Sean (08:33.872) normal. There's something in adolescent development called healthy opposition to authority. Adolescence is a period of transformation, moving from childhood in control of your parents and controlled by your parents to taking steps towards being independent. And that often includes challenging authority, stinking out independence and freedom. And that should actually be considered healthy, necessary and necessary. Now we do have a responsibility as parents to be able to shape that behavior. Right. I often talk to parents. I use the analogy of like walking a dog, like you're learning to take your dog out for a walk. That dog has to have some freedom to move about, to sniff, to explore. But if that dog runs out into the middle of traffic, we have to have that dog on a leash and yank him back. And sometimes parents have to. do that as well. Now, we're not going to get into specifics, Elaine, with some of the things you were going through within your family. But let's just say it's a situation where a parent was expressing a high level of control over developmentally normal behaviors, and then misunderstood the range of normal as if it was a problem with their own child and sought out professionals. Now, one of the challenges that I see and have sought saw in the field over 20 plus years, is there are some parents who actually enjoy the process of taking their kids to doctors, to mental health specialists, to having conversations with teachers, and portraying their child as a difficult child in a way to bring attention to themselves. Sean (10:30.528) I think solid professionals can kind of see through that, but many, many can't, right? And children can be viewed as a scapegoat in a dysfunctional family system. On one end of the dialectical extreme, sometimes there's just flat out abuse, physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse. And kids in that environment, especially when they start experiencing adolescence and have a healthy opposition to that authority, run away. or oppose that environment, live with other family members, experience behavioral and emotional issues, all that would be understood as a natural reaction to that environment. But when you have these, the psychiatric industrial complex and the troubled teen industry, it's ripe to misunderstand, misrepresent childhood behavioral problems, take it out of context and see it as either two things. on both ends of the spectrum. One, they have a brain disorder, they're ill, that there's something broken within them that requires medical intervention, or even swing to the other side and see it as a moral deficit or a deficit of discipline. Those are the two dialectical extremes that have driven abuse in our system. And so as we start moving forward to understanding more about straight incorporated and Elaine going into that program, Elaine Walters (11:38.132) Mm-hmm. Sean (11:59.216) these programs take advantage of these situations with families, families who might lack education, might lack parenting skill, might be protecting an abusive and dysfunctional environment. Or parents who, you know, just simply do not understand normal childhood, behavioral problems and parents themselves might be struggling. Okay. So Elaine, thanks for just kind of the overview of some of the things that you were going through at that time. How old were you when you entered into Straight Incorporated? And then if you can just tell us your first experience with that program, what you knew of it and what you and your family were told. Elaine Walters (12:43.805) So I was 16 and the way that I ended up there was, and my parents were groomed for this, straight grooms the parents. First, they brainwash the parents as much as they do the kids. Parents are horrified. They think that your child's going to die. And they say at all costs, you know, do XYZ or your child will die. So that's where my mom was. I mean, she's terrified. So I was at... Fairmont Institute in Philadelphia and of course they did not put me on the drug unit. They told my mom I did not have a drug problem repeatedly. I was in the family problem kids group My mom still wasn't buying it. Um So they tricked me. I don't remember what they said I was going somewhere to visit something I think they did tell me that I was going to another facility, but it was just a visit and I didn't have to stay And I remember going, taking me from Fairmont. And the whole time I was like, I can leave, right? I don't have to stay. Totally voluntary, totally voluntary. I went in, they took me in an intake room, and it was kids, because straight is kids helping kids. It was 100%, all the therapy, all the rap groups, it was all kids. There were no adults there. I don't know who oversaw it. I know there was a psychiatrist there who I saw once when I left and that was it. It was all kids. Sean (14:12.032) Wait, hold on. Let me stop there. You're saying the entire straight incorporated program was children, there was no adult supervision. Elaine Walters (14:19.601) The only thing I don't remember seeing any adults, all the rap sessions, the way that it worked was when you earned your next level of trust, basically when you were kind of following their, where they wanted you to go, and you earned responsibilities, they would call it, but you got higher up in levels, you became, first you became trusted. and you didn't have to be held on to and all the other things that they did. And then you could move up another level and you could be a group leader. And so those group leaders were running all the raps. It was all kids. We didn't have adults. There was no psychiatrist or psychologist in there running any of this. It was... Sean (15:03.204) lane. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it the philosophy of straight ink was that many kids use drugs or alcohol and act out because of peer pressure and then their philosophy was using peer pressure to correct that? Elaine Walters (15:17.297) Yeah, that was part of it. So it was scared straight. So everything is based on fear, based on bullying, based on... But it was also kids helping kids because it sort of is along the AA theory, because we use the AA steps and all that kind of stuff, to where only other alcoholics are really going to be able to understand and help you. So when you go to AA, it's all other AA. So this was the same type thing. So... I am quite sure there were people, I mean, I know, there were people with much more severe mental health troubles than what I had and not to go too far ahead, but a lot of kids ended up committing suicide there. There were no professionals guiding any of this. Sean (16:02.988) Now, was this a place you would live there, like a residential facility? Where was it located? Elaine Walters (16:05.677) Yes, yes. So the one I was in Springfield, Virginia, there were a few of them. There was one in Florida and there may have been a couple more, but I was in Springfield, Virginia. You live in an old comers home. So what happens is every day you spend whatever, 12 to 16 hours in a warehouse. That's where you sit all day long, wraps all day. That's it. And then you go home and you stay in like a host family's home because I was out of state. So I had to stay with host families who lived in state. And the way that worked was when you're a newcomer, that means you've earned no responsibilities. You're not trusted. You haven't aligned with the program yet. Like they know that you could be a runner. Um, so they hold on to you everywhere you go. So when you leave the facility at night, you have like an old comer holding on to you. Sometimes they have two newcomers. They take you in a car, you get into the car with the parents, all the locks on the doors are dismantled, you cannot jump out. And then you go into their home. Now, as a newcomer, you can't talk to any of the other newcomers if there was another one there with you. You can't, like when you're at the dinner table, you can't pick things up because they have to be aware of you. the time. So if you want to pick up a fork, you say, being aware I'm picking up a fork now, or and you can't talk directly to another newcomer that's there, you talk to the old comer and you say, I want to tell the newcomer XYZ, because they know that if it's two newcomers, you might plot and plan and whatever, so they so they keep you separate. Going to the bathroom, showering, everything, your old comers always there with you, always. You either have clear shower curtains or When you're when the old comers in the shower you have to hold your hands over the shower curtain So they're always aware of where your hands are so that nobody stabs someone trying to escape Sean (18:09.271) So they treat you like a criminal. Elaine Walters (18:11.341) Oh, 100%. Well, there were people that did have, like, were serving time for drug dealing, that were in jail, that went to fill it, finish out their time at straight and they asked to go back to jail. They did not want to. Sean (18:14.284) I would say maybe worse than a criminal. Sean (18:31.188) So right now I am on the website Surviving Straight Incorporated. Are you aware of it? And it has survivor stories from all their different programs. I'm just going to read something here. Straight Incorporated did not publicly reveal what many survivors will tell you. The real Straight Incorporated was a facility that used coercive thought reform, also known as mind control and brainwashing. Elaine Walters (18:35.686) Mm-hmm. Sean (18:59.584) sleep and food deprivation, extremely harsh confrontational tactics, kidnapping, isolation and emotional, mental, psychological, verbal, and physical abuse to forcibly break us down then remold us in the Strait Incorporated image. No outsiders were ever permitted to know what really went on. Strait's rules, Strait ruled us out of fear and harsh punishment prevented us talking to outsiders or from reporting abuses. Trying to survive straight incorporated devastated many of us. Some former clients have committed suicide. Others have serious disorders as a result of their time in straight. For example, some of us suffer from post-traumatic stress, panic attacks and severe depression. In addition, many of us have experienced other long-term detrimental effects, such as inability to function normally in relationships, fear of therapists in form of counseling, severe distrust of people, paranoia and nightmares. This is certainly not a complete list, but gives one an inkling of the serious long-term adverse effects of survivors caused by straight incorporated. Sean (20:20.536) Does that sound accurate, Elaine? Elaine Walters (20:21.898) Oh, a hundred percent, hundred percent. Sean (20:24.8) As when I was reading some about it, it was making me think of the Stanford prison experiments. What was that like early 1970s? And then this is almost like, uh, you take that experiment and you just put it out in the real world and see what happens. Yeah. It's it's, it's unbelievable because I mean, it kind of represents the, the viewpoint of, of problem behavior or emotional behavior disorders in childhood during that. period of time that it can be modified through fear and just go ahead. Elaine Walters (20:57.849) Well, it was, yeah, it was, it was break you down and then build you back up and break you. And by break you down, it would, you know, we were in raps all day is what they were called and they would have various topics. And there were, so, so kind of like a, like group therapy sort of, but we called them rap sessions. And there were, I'm guessing there were. Sean (21:11.696) What does that mean in raps? Sean (21:16.725) Okay, yep. Elaine Walters (21:24.445) 150, 200 kids in the warehouse in the room. Guys were separated on one side, girls on the other. They'd have wraps with both male and female, and then we'd have separate wraps for girls. But a topic would come up, you'd have to do this thing called motivating, so you didn't raise your hand. You had to aggressively raise your hand and flap your hands to show how much you are committed to this topic and that you wanna speak. And if you don't do that, you're not working the program, that's part of it. But then you would stand up and you would talk or you would get stood up. And if you weren't working the program or they didn't feel like you were getting real about your feelings, that's when everybody would call, it's called motivating, would motivate like crazy. The staff member, remember these kids are like 16, 17 years old, would call someone out. And if you weren't working the program, or if they thought you weren't being honest about your feelings, or if they thought you were talking about something and you weren't emoting enough, they'd start screaming at you. They'd get in your face, they'd yell at you, you know, you're a slut, they did that to the girls a lot. They'd bring up things that you talked about in previous groups to prove that you're this way, you ruined your family, you ruined your mother, your father, your sister, anything they could do to, and they would do it. they would do it and it was called marathoning. So if you didn't break down when the first person did it, then they'd be like, who else wants to talk? And everybody would flap. And we had those industrial plastic chairs that are like linked together. And some people would, they would start motivating so hard that all of them would break apart and then you knew you were gonna get blasted. But that was a regular thing. Just a regular, that happened all the time. That was like the daily rap sessions. Sean (23:13.016) And this might sound extreme, like something like this rarely occurs, but it did set the foundation for the entire trouble team industry, whether you're talking about some of these wilderness camps or so forth. We still have heard and come across situations where a teenager is taken from their bed in the middle of the night and thrown into a van like they're being kidnapped, removed from their family. Elaine Walters (23:24.893) Mm-hmm. Elaine Walters (23:34.233) Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Elaine Walters (23:40.577) It happened to a lot in street. Right. Sean (23:43.16) and to be taken and driven to a quote unquote wilderness camp for behavioral problem teens. Now obviously you can only imagine how absolutely traumatic that incident in itself is. And then you go to these programs where you really are viewed to have some moral deficiency and you are kind of verbally abused and pushed to do things that are you would never be willing to do on your own and you have to comply to get out of them. And so this is viewed as scaring somebody straight in just a greater kind of way of thinking about it. And just to put some things into context, like a lot of people don't really understand why the evidence-based psychological therapies, you know, how they came to... be such a big part of our modern treatments. We were talking on a previous podcast about these standardized treatments. And a lot of this is a response to harm that has occurred in the mental health industry. I mean, it's really, as you can see, it's a complete freefall. It's the Wild West. You can make up anything and use it for justification as a... you know, a theory to support behavioral modification. And when you go in and you go see a therapist in 1975 or 1980 or 1985, you really know what you're going to get. It's completely determined dependent upon you know, the individual and it's such an early stage and trying to understand mental health problems and how people can heal. And you're pulling from like old Freudian ideas and then these new concepts are coming up. So in academia and cognitive behavioral world, and they wanted to study these concepts, create these standardized therapies, measure them in weightless controls against other treatments, and then to determine is there efficacy if someone's really depressed and I create this treatment and I standardize it and I compare it to control groups, is it a better treatment? Is it safe? Is it effective? Does it decrease symptoms? That's a reasonable and logical evolution in all this. Sean (26:08.024) Now, as you continue to grow and understand, you come to the conclusion that trying to mass apply a standardized treatment to everybody doesn't have great results. But yet you might still be able to isolate certain interventions that are really important. Like, for example, you know, what do we learn about exposure? When is it appropriate to revisit memories that them in itself are creating problems in day to day. Someone is obsessive, compulsive, someone has an eating disorder, whatever it may be. What do we need to include to be able to help that person to recover, right? Yeah, I would think a safe environment for that to happen is the most important thing. Sure, and there's behavioral science that is used in behavioral modification. We do it with raising our kids, we do it in classrooms. That is... Not abusive and doesn't have detrimental effects on kids. Right. Time out is not abusive. I had to use it last night. I'm sure you have you're at, you're at that age. I'm teaching them how to breathe properly. Good luck. You know, having a structured home environment, right? Praise some punishments, natural consequences, reinforcing behaviors you want to see. But to, to look at teenage behavioral problems. Elaine Walters (27:18.11) I'm sorry. Elaine Walters (27:22.518) It's good. Sean (27:37.244) from such a limited view without understanding the context in which they are experiencing these problems, right? To take it all off the family environment and use a teen as a scapegoat is one of my big problems with the psychiatric industrial complex. Yeah, what gets me the most though, are like these wilderness camps or the idea of like having other teenagers treating the teenagers to me. That's insane. It is. Like what does recovery? What is the expectation of recovery? What does it look like? To to make it to make you think that somebody could then train the next group of kids to come in and get well? How can they continue to abuse people and say that they're well? That to me is just it blows my mind. It sounds Elaine Walters (28:11.97) is insane. Yeah. Elaine Walters (28:34.273) Well, to even just put the downfall and the demise of your family unit on a child, I was 15. And I had been to other places who repeatedly said, this isn't your daughter's issue. Like, this is a family issue. Strait was the first one that would just, they took it in and, cause they were there to blame the kids, and tell the parents that these kids were gonna die if they weren't here. So, But to put that kind of weight on a child, and first of all, the fact, what I was experiencing in my home, Elaine Walters (29:14.605) was pretty challenging. And to never, and to be, you know, when you're a kid and you always have to listen to authority and authority is always right, to never have someone step in to help you. And this was talked about a lot when I was in therapy is that it gets very complicated when, if you're getting beaten, yes, someone's gonna come in and say, yes, you're being abused. You need to come out of the home. But if it's not flat out. physical child abuse, it gets really tricky and it gets really complicated. So who was there to advocate for me ever? No one. No one. And that's why I started rebelling and I started running away and you know, even though the runaway shelters and even Fairmont Institute kind of advocated for me to a certain level, Street did not. And here it was, my mom finally found this place that said, yeah, it's a hundred percent this child. And we got stood up, we had Friday night groups where we had the 200 kids on one side. Every Friday night was when families did come into the warehouse and we had our family night sessions. And so what would happen is they had us sing all these silly songs like we were children because it made us look real clean and pure. There's so much more that they made us do, so much more that happened. But it made you look like a child you sang we are you are my sunshine and you'd sing it to your It's ridiculous. But so then the family whatever you earned that week So if you're a newcomer you could earn talk Which means you could talk for 10 minutes to your family that night in a very organized like everybody's there If you earned nothing you got stood up in front of the 200 kids plus all their families You held the microphone, your parents held the microphone, and they stood up, and they, because they're coached on this, they stood up and talked about how disappointed, how angry, however, whatever the negative emotions they were about you not earning anything and how you're destroying the family in front of everyone. Each one, it would be my mom, my dad, my sister, my sister would cry about like how awful I was and how hurt she was. I mean, guilt, guilt. Elaine Walters (31:30.097) And you're not coming home unless you work the program. And the only thing that you were allowed to say is love you, mom, love you, dad, love you, sister, and sit down. And those were the rules. Sean (31:41.56) Yeah, it's brainwashing. When I was working in juvenile probation, you know, I'd see kids who were, both their parents were drug addicts and absent, and sometimes they wouldn't have food and they get into the juvenile justice system because they stole food, you know, stealing from a, from a grocery store and then maybe exhibiting some other problems in school. They'd see a psychiatrist who would lay the label them as oppositional defiant disorder and ADHD. In the worst of the cases. They would view their emotion, dysregulation, and behavioral problems as bipolar disorder. And before I knew it, they would be on like three or four psychiatric drugs that in all likelihood contributed to some of the further problems that they were having. It's just a great example of how the misrepresentation understanding of human behavior can be used to fuel kind of an industry in the manner in which they want to view problem behavior and also benefit from. their idea of treating it. And so if you want to understand some of the anger that comes out from using the words like psychiatric industrial complex, or even calling psychiatrists criminal, it is the manner in which those kids are treated. And I remember this girl who was being raped by her own father, who ended up becoming on my caseload as a juvenile probation officer. And she had like six psychiatric drugs she was prescribed. You know, imagine that being raped by your own father. Elaine Walters (32:53.753) Mm-hmm. Elaine Walters (33:06.987) sickening. Sean (33:08.988) and being drugged into horrible sedation and weight gain. It was, you know, these are the things that happened in the shadows. And certainly thrown out there on social media and other media, like there's a scientific basis for the field of psychiatry in managing human behavior and human emotions. But often it's these are the stories that reflect the realities of what's happening. And so when you start to see and view human emotions as symptoms of an illness, you are, it is, it's people like Elaine and those who were on my caseload when I was a probation officer, you know, those viewing those people from, and what their natural and expected emotions were given what they were going through, viewing that as illness is what I see as, as criminal. Elaine, I want to just kind of transition. into how it's kind of affected you, the things you were going through in your family, being placed in an environment like that. How did that then become like a gateway into the psychiatric system? Elaine Walters (34:19.55) So, my story is probably a little bit different than most and in some ways this is where I was lucky to get my dose of straight incorporated because I knew from being there You know, we were stripped of like all our clothes. We had to wear humbling clothes. We were not allowed to watch TV, listen to music, anything that would distract you from your emotions. You were supposed to be very emotionally based and you were supposed to be learning how to manage your emotions without drugs. That was the whole gist. You were not allowed to avoid your emotions. by putting on makeup to make yourself feel better or to watch TV or any of those things. So that was kinda, so I came out of there and I will say that my mom was never medication-based. She was not on board with that kind of stuff. I don't know how much it came up, but it just wasn't like her thing. So that wasn't. Sean (35:16.032) Also, to be honest, this is before that revolution. So when we're talking about 70s to mid 80s, it wasn't until 1987 where Prozac became available. It's into the 90s and mid 90s where the kids were really starting to get drugged. Okay. Elaine Walters (35:20.036) Yes. Elaine Walters (35:25.318) Mm-hmm. Elaine Walters (35:31.385) Yep, yep. And I honestly, to credit my mother, do not think that's... she's not really pro... pro drugs, pro any of that. Anyway. Sean (35:41.328) Hey, Elaine, before you move forward, I'm just, we've had conversations in here about how receiving like a label, there's a mindset shift that could happen to somebody. It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm curious, Elaine, by being transitioned from a hospital where you were free to leave when you wanted to, and then being pulled into straight ink, how did that affect you in terms of how you thought about yourself? And ultimately, how it continued throughout maybe your, your young adulthood. Elaine Walters (36:14.073) So I'll say the theme, even though I fought it and fought it and fought it as a kid, was that there was something was wrong with me. And I think the reason that I fought it when I was in street was because I was one of the few, I mean, many did, but I probably did it longer than some, is that I rebelled against the program. So I, what they called, I sat with my hand down and refused to work for a while. And so I got blasted a lot. and towards the end they were already having legal trouble otherwise I would have been there till I was 18 but they were having legal trouble so I was refusing to work so that is when I did see the psychiatrist who did not diagnose me with anything but they did let me leave the program so but it gave me this little thing like was there something is there really something wrong with me the fact that I couldn't endure that And I did have some strange thinking patterns for a little bit after that, because when you're in isolation, you're not talking to people, you're being abused. I got into this really weird, I don't know if it's OCD thinking, but some strange stuff. But for me, the difference was, and this is why I say this is very different from what I'm experiencing now, which is why I know that this medication injury is not the norm. So I was able to come out of there and I was just hell bent on moving forward and making a good life for myself. I did go through some weird anxiety fear stuff and weird patterns of thinking, but I was able to just kind of like, I was not suicidal. There were kids carving in their arms. I sat there next to people who were blood dripping on the floor, like all that kind of stuff. And I just never resorted to that and never went there. But when I came out, And I was seeing a therapist obviously I Had a lot of emotion about going through there and I had a lot I definitely had a lot of this only worsened my anger with my mom and destroyed Everything so there were a lot of emotions and that's when medication was suggested to me And so all these years I thought there's nothing wrong with me. I mean Screaming bloody murder in our house. We were a family My sister and I were a family of yellers because we were never listened to so we yelled Elaine Walters (38:37.297) a lot. And it was always there's nothing wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with me. Fought, fought, fought. And I will never forget the day that my therapist who I trusted, I still talk to some now, I have a lot of gratitude towards her for a lot of things. But that was the time that medication was getting popular. When she suggested that to me, I completely broke down because I thought that it was someone. a doctor who I respected was saying, there is really something wrong with your brain because that's what I thought. I don't know that I knew all about this chemical imbalance theory. It wasn't really talked about then, but I thought that meant there was something medically wrong with my brain. Maybe that's why I fought so hard in street. Maybe that's why, you know, and that was the theme. And from there. I took antidepressants because I thought they were safe. I knew that they weren't addicting because coming from street, I was not taking anything that I knew to be an addictive drug. And if I had any kind of like, if I got high from it or whatever, I wasn't taking it. So you know, I went on thinking that was fine. Now later down the road, because I already in the back of my mind decided something was wrong with my brain and the whole like ADHD thing was going on. why I have trouble focusing and I have, you know, and I was like, maybe I do have, you know, ADHD. Maybe I should try medication. I think I tried it for a day and I was like, I might as well be out doing lines of coke. Like this is ridiculous, I'm not doing this. And it made me so agitated and I didn't take it on the flip side now knowing what I know. It's not inappropriately, I will say, it's all bullshit. But. Um, yeah, like once you have that in the back of your mind and you think your brain is somehow broken and it needs and these medicines are designed to fix it and you think you need it, but then you do feel slightly broken. Even if you're not thinking that every day, you feel slightly broken. And I distinctly remember when I started learning about all this. Once I went into my antidepressant withdrawal, I immediately like found, I think I found you guys, I found a bunch of other things. Elaine Walters (40:56.905) Even though I haven't been able to control the damage that this has done at all, it immediately gives you the power back when you realize this is not about anything medically wrong with me. This is about my human experience, the experiences that I have been through, how I've been able to navigate it, how I haven't been able to navigate it. figuring out how to navigate these things. It's all just a compile of everything I've experienced in my life. This has nothing to do with something wrong with my brain. There very well could be now, now that one more time I've had someone come in and say, this is what you need. Something's wrong with you, this is what you need. The most hardcore damage I've ever had in my life comes from people on the outside telling me what I need and what would be best for me. And... inevitably it's been the most harmful, including my last really extreme setback that I had, that I fought the doctors on and ended up giving in. It was bad. Sean (42:03.652) Yeah, well said. Yeah, that'll be next. I just want to comment on a couple points you made. Because this Elaine Walters (42:04.037) And I can go down that road, but you tell me which way to go. Sean (42:13.916) quite ordinary, these are things that we see commonly, is that when someone has suggested that they have a psychiatric illness and that there are psychiatric drugs for them, it does change the way that they understand what they're going through. And that's the brainwashing. To have what would be normal and expected emotions given what you're going through. Elaine Walters (42:32.199) Mm-hmm. Sean (42:40.308) Even I heard you judge your thoughts as weird OCD thoughts. Well, they're not so weird when you've kind of been in a controlling and abusive environment. Your thoughts are very adaptive, especially when you get fixated on certain things around safety or security, difficulty with uncertainty. Is that like a surviving mechanism? Sure. Yeah. Like imagine that you did, you were in an abusive or controlling environment. Some way could be. Okay. a romantic relationship or it could be your family. Once you get out of something like that, it's quite normal to be somewhat paranoid, distrustful, to obsess and focus on some things related to safety and security at the expense of a lot of other things. You're not really free, right? That's just the natural response to kind of traumatic incidents. But it gets labeled in the psychiatric industry, right? Cause you just talk about, I have these thoughts, or these are the emotions I'm feeling. You might even take checklists. Elaine Walters (43:32.252) Mm-hmm. Sean (43:36.1) And then before you know it, there's this label. And now instead of understanding your emotions in context and having the freedom and the time to kind of understand them and work through them, now you understand it under a psychiatric conceptualization. Now I'm ill. Now there's something wrong with me, my brain chemicals, the way I feel, the way I think, they're not like other people. And maybe that can explain my history. Maybe that's why. Elaine Walters (44:03.665) Mm-hmm. Sean (44:03.744) my mom had the problems that she did with me. Maybe that's why I entered into straight incorporated. Maybe that's why I struggled in this class or lost this job. The problem is me. And oh, there's something that can help level me out. You can correct it. There's something with brain neurotransmitters. This can help me feel better. Maybe this is a crutch. This will help me get through it. This is medicinal. Whatever. The story is they try to sell you, that now becomes your idea of what is going on with you. And that is, go ahead. Elaine Walters (44:40.837) but also like what happens once you think that something's medically wrong with you? I mean, how many, almost every person I talk to is like, oh, that's just my ADD constantly, or my ADD made me do this or that or the other. It's like you're putting this little limit on yourself for what you have control over, because all of a sudden you've kind of surrendered to the idea that something's wrong with your brain that can... only be treated by medicine or that couldn't possibly, I mean, the ADD thing, you know, what kind of world do we live in? We have to bring back and forth between, you know, multitasking and everything all the time. Like, so all of us have symptoms for that. But I don't know. I just think it kind of once you decide that where you've been given the diagnosis or you gave yourself the diagnosis or whatever, I just think you give away a lot of your own power. in not just controlling it or helping it or whatever, but also in figuring out why it is that you do these things that are attention deficit like or depressive or whatever. Sean (45:53.404) They also tend to try to scientifically support their interventions. There was a gentleman on Twitter yesterday, X, which I found the entire post and the work that he's doing as misleading and harmful. Brain imaging studies. are some of the best evidence of pseudoscientific nonsense, where psychiatrists or neuroscientists will take a brain imaging study with all its limitations and try to draw conclusions to support that we can have drugs to treat neurocognitive emotional psychiatric disorders. There was a Dr. Sanel Riege, I don't know his name, R-E-G-E is how you sp- Elaine Walters (46:40.186) That stuff makes me crazy. Sean (46:49.636) Ballot posted this paper where the key findings of first episode psychosis, anti-psychotic treatment alleviates alterations in brain network functional connectivity. Now what he's not going to tell people is brain network functional connectivity is not an established scientific finding. It's something that's kind of made up and understood. Um, that's not really well understood. In fact, if you would talk to any neuroscientist, like the leading neuroscientist, and you say, scale one to 10, tell me. How much do we really know about the inner workings of the human mind, the human brain? They'll say maybe a three at best, but the, you'll have clowns start posting these things like, um, frontal perinatal connectivity, the modulation of front Elaine Walters (47:37.469) Mm hmm. Elaine Walters (47:47.033) Well, because I wouldn't know what that was. That sounds like something to me. Oh, wow. Sean (47:48.74) Yeah, no one does. That's, that's what that's why I'm reading it. Because 99% of people won't follow up on this bullshit. Right? fronto perinatal connectivity, the modulation of fronto perinatal connectivity is a crucial mechanism behind the effectiveness in anti psychotics for the treatment of ADHD, depression, PTSD. There's specific network changes. So significant changes in this frontal perinatal connectivity were observed in a default mode network, an executive control network. So why this is important, like this guy says that in treating psychosis, like basically you have a brain malfunction and this drug creates it. So here was my response. This drug corrects it is what he said. Yes, it corrects it. Elaine Walters (48:44.765) Corrects it. Sean (48:47.472) Or creates it. So I actually thought it was a parody account. It was such a joke. So, but I did respond and I want to just read my tweet because I think it helps in a lay person's term understand how unethical this is. It's my wheelhouse. Okay. So if two weeks into the ending of a longterm relationship, a person is experiencing intense sadness. Elaine Walters (48:48.445) .. Elaine Walters (48:53.294) I'm sorry. Sean (49:15.9) Brain imaging may indicate specific brain regions are activated while others are not. And if you compare that imaging to a person who's not in emotional distress and is in a happy relationship, for example, their brains are gonna look different. So here's the question. Does that mean that the person grieving the end of the relationship has a malfunctioning brain? Yeah. Now this as well, if the same person gets high on marijuana and then goes and gets a brain scan, Elaine Walters (49:29.126) Mm-hmm. Sean (49:46.432) imaging and it reveals that there's changes in that brain imaging and even structural aspects of the brain. And the person's sadness decreases. Psychiatrists will call that a symptom. Does that indicate that marijuana heals a functioning brain? This is how psychiatrists mislead the public. They say you have a disorder, which is fucking made up, that you can't test for. Oh wait! Do you see this? This is a malfunctioning depressed brain against a normal brain. And when we give this pharmaceutical substance, it changes how it looks. Therefore, we're correcting it. And since they checked here that they feel less sad than the last time, it is correcting that by very clear evidence base, the symptom of sadness has decreased. Elaine Walters (50:36.893) But the brain scan thing, I think, feels more sciencey to people that don't know anything about it. And so they're like, well, they're because I know once I see his stuff all the time, like your brain fires when this happens or that happens. And I'm thinking, but that's your brain activity. Like, that doesn't mean anything other than you happen to be super stressed out at that moment or sad or whatever it is. Like that doesn't. Sean (50:44.281) Yes. Sean (50:55.643) Yes. Elaine Walters (51:05.453) It doesn't mean anything, but we are also, since our recent pandemic, people are not allowed to do their own research, and it's very frowned upon to not listen to your doctors far more than it used to be. So it's really challenging. Even for me now, I would say like, well, I follow all the researchers. You know, it's kind of like, well, where's the research and the paper? I'm like, I'm not a medical doctor. I can't pull these journals and these research, you know, it's challenge, it's challenging right now. But, but yeah, so the brain scan thing is that's really impressive too. Sean (51:42.364) It's a it's a pivot. It's a it's a business pivot away from the serotonin theory towards something else that we don't understand as lay people, which is how the brain how a brain scan is just a temporary moment. It's like when serotonin like the levels of your serotonin go up or down throughout the day. So doing a test for serotonin levels means absolutely nothing. Yeah. So like a brain scan means absolutely nothing, unless you're watching your brain for a period of like 60 to 90 days continuously. Yeah, I Yeah, we are. Elaine Walters (51:49.925) right. Elaine Walters (51:58.821) Right. It's. Elaine Walters (52:07.917) We're good marketers here in the US. We are. We are good marketers of this stuff. Sean (52:13.452) I think if two things could happen, we make progress. One, if we just get to recognize bullshit and call it bullshit, like stop fucking saying things that are untrue. Like, you know, you're not allowed to say it anymore and you're gonna be held accountable to it. We're gonna put the cuffs on you every time you make something up. I feel like you're attacking me because I've heard that in my direction at least half a dozen times in this room. But that's one, that's one. Yeah. Elaine Walters (52:32.055) No, it's about, I mean, you know, but it's about money and it's about who's in charge of all this stuff. I mean... Sean (52:39.704) And then we can accept that there are things we don't know. Yeah. This is just what progress is. But let's not act like we know things when we don't and then put people down a path that creates harm. Right? How many people are calling themselves ADHD and believe that there is brain research to support it? A lot. You know, a lot because they've been lied to. They don't understand the least bit about the limitations. of what we're trying to do and trying to understand how the brain works. Right. And, and so that's a basic one. Right. Think about everything that what's going on in our brains at any one given time. You know, it's just so vast. And depending on when you go into that brain scan, it's just kind of measuring the activity at one given time and just in diversity, neurodiversity that exists, what does the brain look like of a professional athlete versus a neurosurgeon, what does the brain look like of an artist and they Elaine Walters (53:09.699) Mm-hmm. Sean (53:37.988) kindergarten teacher is one malfunctioning is one worse. We don't know any of this stuff. And that's disconnecting from just the human spirit and the mind and the soul things that we don't really have a good understanding of biologically. So we just have to move past the limitations of this biomedical error, call out bullshit when it exists. So people do not become victims to this nonsense. So I'm sorry, Elaine, you were going to actually talk about some of the experiences. Elaine Walters (54:05.701) No, that's fine. No, I can go down. I can go down that rabbit hole with you. Sean (54:07.512) that you've had. Yeah, you brought up the medication injury. Are you are you comfortable sharing any stories in that area? Elaine Walters (54:16.137) Sure. So, you know, I knew nothing about these medications. I took this thinking that antidepressants were safe. I, you know, I was always very healthy. I did not grow up in a medical family. We did not take a lot of medications. It just wasn't our go-to. I was lucky that my mom, she very much was focused on healthy food and all that kind of stuff. So that was just came naturally to me. Um, so when I was taking the antidepressants, um, my way of testing whether they were okay or not was take it for a week, had no side effects, move on. Um, but never really felt like they really did much of anything. I, in the very beginning, again, I had to ask myself this, I had to be like, hmm, is this working? And, and then I thought, I think my anxiety is a little less. That's about it. Um, and again. I come from a past history of bartending, working in the club scene. Like I've done my fair share of party drugs and all that kind of stuff. So I would have to really feel something to be like, oh, this isn't okay. But they did seem fine to me. I wasn't worried about it. So moved on. In hindsight, I know a lot of things that it did affect throughout my long time of taking them. But it really wasn't until my withdrawal that I realized how powerful, how dangerous these drugs are. I'm three years protracted withdrawal now and really still struggle all the time. I went from, you know, I've had two setbacks that have made me significantly worse. My last one And I'll say, I've never been a suicidal person ever. It's not my go-to, even through all my straight, all my everything, it just genetically, or it's just not part of my wiring. My head just doesn't go there. And now I struggle with it every day. This is from coming off these drugs. This is everything that's in that pamphlet with the side effects, they're real. And I think that pamphlet that none of us read, I never read it, because I was like, Elaine Walters (56:38.953) My doctor doesn't talk about all this and it's too small to read everything and this is for people that are just like really sensitive or have struggles with drugs. I don't like it's not going to apply to me. I remember the whole suicidal thing there was talk about that in the 90s and I and I was kind of like well that's just for people who are suicidal like they probably come off these drugs and revert back to whatever it was that they were and they can't deal with it like that's what I saw it I didn't know. But pretty much everybody in my protracted withdrawal community struggles with suicidal ideation on a regular basis, the akathisia, the, you know, I mean, I could go on and talk about all my symptoms. I can tell, but I went from at 51 years old doing CrossFit, working out in the gym, working on a farm, full-time job, you know, all this stuff being probably the healthiest and strongest that I've ever been in my life. Two, I can barely get to the gym. I had to quit CrossFit. I've multiple times thought, I don't even know how I can keep my job because some of these, it's so bad. And my corporate job is a desk job. It has flipped my life upside down. And I don't know. And for those of us in protracted withdrawal, where's the help for us? There isn't any, there isn't, there's nobody really doing any research on that. There's, as you know, there's now more research on safe tapering. A lot of things are changing in the UK. not here because we're business here. But they are making changes and that's wonderful for people coming into this. But in my lifetime, will there ever be any help for any of us? Will my life ever get any better? I'm terrified of taking medications. My last incident was so traumatic and... like I could get really upset about it but am I don't know do you want me to go down that road so my first setback I mean things were really bad my first year I had been on an antidepressant for 30 years I basically came off in a week um not knowing I tapered I do like cut the pill in half cut it in half I never thought they did anything so I didn't see there being any risk um my girlfriend luckily is functional medicine and she was like you're on withdrawal and I said Elaine Walters (59:00.89) there's no such thing, you know, and she gave me a book and I was like, shit, I'm in withdrawal. And I think right then immediately I was going out of town and so I took some of the medication and I immediately was better and I was like, oh my God. yeah, this is what's happening. And so I was like, I have to get off these. And so then I tapered again. Now I'm, I've always been anti-psychiatry. I've always thought it was bullshit. The fact that you walked in for five minutes to check the boxes and give you a pill, but you had to get someone to prescribe. And I was under the guidance of my psychologist. So this particular doctor that had prescribed this, at this point I was... sleeping three hours a night. I had all the burning, all the sensory stuff, couldn't watch TV, couldn't listen to loud noises, couldn't like all the stuff. And I was waking up in the night, my eyes were shaking back in my head, like it was, it was not good. And I and a little bit of psychosis, a lot of people have that, but I had it enough to where I just was like, this is not good. I asked the psychiatrist, they said, well, how fast can I come off these and be safe? I don't want to have a seizure. Okay, I want off these. And he said, you can do it. He was cocky. He said, you can do it as fast as you want to do it. And I just think back now, I'm like, you have to think about your audience when you're giving a blanket statement like that. I have worked on farms with horses for years. I, you know, doing CrossFit, working out. I know how to navigate pain. When you work with horses, you work sick. You ride with broken bones. You take care of horses with broken bones. You learn to navigate it. I thought I was going to white knuckle through this and get to the other side. That's what I thought. Well, it's three years and I'm worse than I was then. Where's the other side? So my first setback that took me out of the game was getting COVID my first round, which I don't really think. My parents are both in their eighties and they got COVID when it was like the first, you know, the first set of viruses or whatever it is. Elaine Walters (01:01:11.425) Um, where it should have killed them and they were really fine. Um, they don't really get panicky about stuff like that. Anyway, like they were just like, yeah, we have the COVID. I was like, Oh my God, you guys are like in your, in your eighties. But anyway, they were fine for me. Like I was coughing, but mine hit me neurologically because I already was having such issues and it happens to a lot of people in our community. So I was bedridden for like a month. I mean, my head was so inflamed. I was very sick. I couldn't eat, you know, that was bad. That's kind of never gone away I don't know. Is that long COVID? Is that just more injury to already an injury? so my next one and most dangerous one was I Ended up going to the ER which I don't normally do Because I thought I had a really bad bladder infection and I just I was like I can't sleep I'm in on this pain and I'm thinking like after all this you're going to the emergency room for a bladder infection and not for anything else. But anyway, I went, I was there for a million hours and they said that I had a small kidney stone, like three millimeters, and that I needed to call the urologist. Well, by the time I left, I didn't have any pee. So three days later, I go to the urologist, I don't have any pee. And I go in and he immediately tells me I need surgery. Immediately, whoa, gotta get you, and I said, whoa, whoa. And I said, I have akathisia. And at that time things had simmered down some, but it was still bad. And I said, I can't take antibiotics. Like I'm afraid of this. And he just stared at me blankly. I knew he had no idea what I was talking about, which is to me also insane since akathisia primarily comes from drugs. Go ahead. Sean (01:02:52.46) Yeah. And I think the challenge here, and this is what happens is with the doctors, not well informed of this, is that you present with these symptoms in to a, an emerging medical situation or another doctor. And two things are going to happen. Uh, one, it's going to be misdiagnosed to something else, or they're actually going to see that as a sign of mental illness, another sign of mental illness that is just going to provide you with another psychiatric drug. Elaine Walters (01:03:14.717) Mm-hmm. Good. Elaine Walters (01:03:20.561) Well, I went to not to skip over that, but I ended up going to Penn neurology, to a neurologist in the University of Penn, not thinking they would cure me, but thinking maybe they could dig around and find something. And her, she didn't really do any tests. She said, long haul COVID is inflammatory. We don't have anything to treat it. And she told me she would treat akathisia with an SSRI. which I'm like, this is what happens. This is why people get so injured. This is why people die. Like, I'm not even gonna like sugarcoat it. This is why people are dying. There have been six suicides in my community since June. So it makes me very angry. It's not even, it's infuriating. So with the, go ahead. Sean (01:03:47.889) Yeah. Sean (01:04:05.732) Unfortunately, these are very common stories, things we've been trying to highlight on this program and things that we see in clinical practice way too often. Elaine Walters (01:04:08.966) Mm-hmm. Elaine Walters (01:04:14.045) It's disgusting. It's enrages me. So the urologist was insistent on it. When I asked him about the akathisia, he said he didn't know what it was. I asked him, I said, do you know what that is? And he said, no. So I just was like, I'm not gonna waste my time. But I asked him if I could pass this stone on my own. Why did he need the surgery? And he was just telling me about how painful it is. He's like, don't worry, I'll give you a heavy narcotics. I thought there's so much wrong with this appointment. But so I was going to try to pass it on my own. I left there. My doctor called. She suggested that I strongly suggested I get the surgery. I'm telling everybody all along I have no pain. And I'm telling them I'm worried. But all the doctors were like, you should do it. If you end up passing this stone, it's so painful. You could be like out on vacation. I'm thinking, lady, I'm 90% confined to my home. I'm not on vacation because of this. Anyway. Um, so I finally get talked into doing the surgery against everything. I just kept thinking, I've had six, I've been under anesthesia six times in my life, never had a problem. I've taken antibiotics, never had a problem. Um, I bounced back so fast. So I'm like, maybe my body will do what it normally does. Go through the surgery one, no kidney stone. I had passed it the night of the ER. I was just. Sean (01:05:38.468) No. Elaine Walters (01:05:39.033) like it was infuriating. And I had told them all I had no pain and their rebuttal on that was like, oh, well, if you have the surgery this close to when you were diagnosed, we don't always run more scans, whatever. So anyway, so I have the surgery, I start taking the antibiotic and it's possible that the anesthesia was part of this, but it was like two days into I started getting what a lot of people don't understand is this akathisia terror. and agitation like, like nothing. There's no way to describe it. No way to describe what it is. I mean, there are not words that describe what this is like, other than if you've ever had a bad acid trip. Like it's, your mind is gone. Like it's not you and you're hysterical. You're, you're, I'm thinking I'm going to lose my house. I'm going to be homeless. I'm going to be, you're pacing. You can't, I mean, awful. So I immediately stopped the antibiotics. I Google it. I Google the name of it. Even though I told every single doctor, every doctor, the anesthesiologist, everybody, everybody about the akathisia, I Google it. And there was a phase four FDA study that showed that women of my age can get akathisia with this medication. So, you know, thank you. Thanks. When am I going to learn that I need to do my own research and I can't trust anything. So that was in June. Um, and that was, that got me to where I would try to go places and I would get this hysterical terror where I needed to run to my car. Like you're just so panicky. And the, what went from like, I mean, I have so many symptoms, but this was like raging skin burning. My tinnitus came back. So my, my ears are ringing the agitation, the terror. And this was like, from June and then July and sleep. You can't sleep with this. And for some reason, we think it's cortisol levels. Nobody really knows. We call it toxic sleep. Sleep makes you way worse. Sleep makes everything worse. So not only can you not sleep, I would repeatedly wake up in a very disturbing psychological states. Like... Elaine Walters (01:07:59.833) The worst night I woke up and was like, I have to jump out my window. I can't, I gotta get out of here. I can't like, and part of me just kept saying like, this isn't you, this isn't you. Now, if this was like, you know, a drug induced thing, it would be, I'm never doing this again and I just need to ride this out. Okay, but this is my brain doing this. This is, it is terrifying. So, so. That was the worst night. Then I had to have my 85 year old parents come stay with me because I did not, I did not, I thought that I was no longer in control of what I did. And so now here we are, eight months out. I think it took, it took three months before some of the terror leveled down a little bit. And it's now eight months to where I still have a lot of really scary, disturbing psychological stuff. I'm gonna knock. but the terror piece is lower, but I'm still, like I'll wake up and just be completely like suicidal out of nowhere. Like you just. Sean (01:09:04.7) Oh, Elaine, your story reminds me of Chris Page was on, I think it was an episode, like 64 for us when we talked about akathisia and he shared his story. I think he was on an airplane. Um, and then what ultimately happened after that? Yeah. So that's, it's frightening. Uh, and nobody really truly understands it, which is even more frightening. Elaine Walters (01:09:10.19) Yeah. Elaine Walters (01:09:18.757) His is horrific. Elaine Walters (01:09:25.865) What is so frightening to me now that this last incident happened is that all along, you're just hanging on to, if I do everything to support my body, my brain and my nervous system will heal. Please, please, please let this heal. And, but now, and so, so I may have had like everything that I ever thought about my future or dreamed my goals, like everything gone. I mean, out the window. So you're very dark anyway. Like it's the component of the injury and it's the component of what's happening to you. So I'm very dark anyway. And then you get this disturbing thing, this last setback, but now my fear is, you know, I'm 54 years old. How am I not going to have any medical problems? Oh, and my terror about having to ever take a medication again, because... I will die from disease before I die from akathisia. That's how horrific it is. Now I've been diagnosed with Hashimoto's. Everything I've seen on that, there is no way that you can avoid medication when it starts attacking your thyroid. People are like, Elaine, you will die if you don't take care of your thyroid, if that starts getting destroyed. I think, okay, am I dying from akathisia from trying to take this medication, or am I just going to die from... disease. Like this is where my mind is, which anybody who knows me, that's not, that's not who I am, but this is, this is my life now. It's, it's terrifying. Sean (01:11:00.484) Elena, yeah, I would prefer to go on a time machine here a little bit and go back to you at age 15. What did she require? What did she need to prevent going down the road into straight incorporated and psychiatric drugs and therapy? What do you think you needed at that time? Elaine Walters (01:11:21.613) It's just for people to just like accept me as normal. Like, you know, even with all this, I'm actually the most functioning person in my family, you know, like my sister's on disability and my mom has like a lot of social struggles and can't work and whatever. Like I have always been like the most driven. Elaine Walters (01:11:51.341) how I am emotionally. My mom, it was always like my anger towards her or my fighting with my little sister was anger. Her thing was she's so angry, you know, which so much of it was provoked. So much of it was provoked. But I think about having somebody, I would say the biggest thing is having somebody advocate for you because I think I I'm pretty like, I think about my emotions a lot and I try to be very self-aware. And I know that this is a theme, even like at work to feel like I'm not heard or I don't have somebody that has my back or supports me. Like it's kind of a running theme and it's not always true. There's been enough in my office where I've had very, very strong support. But it's a theme. And so now, so when I got out of straight. I had this, even though I no longer was a minor, I always had this little bit of fear, like what if my mother decided she didn't like the way that I was functioning and she tried to commit me or something like that, because I had gone through this trauma of being committed, like what if that happened? And that faded out, like that went away. Here we are again. I am terrified that I will go into this disturbing. Because akathisia makes you hysterical. You can't really control it. I mean, hysterical. What happens if something triggers it and I am so hysterical that I get committed or somebody lands me in the hospital? My girlfriend's a nurse and was telling me a story about how strapping somebody down and, you know, IV Hal doll, giving him IV Hal doll, and I burst into tears. And I was like, no, no. I can't hear that. And she was like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. That's how terrified I am. Because nobody, now, like, we have nobody in this community to advocate for us. The medical professionals are the ones that are causing the most damage and know the least, and that is terrifying. I'm not a medical doctor. I need somebody who can support me in this. Where do I go? Sean (01:13:43.907) Understood. Sean (01:14:03.908) Yeah. And Elaine, this really, the story is about how it begins in childhood, the impact of the response from your family, the environment, that program, later a therapist, later doctors, and what has been created through just a misunderstanding of who you were during a vulnerable teenage years in a controlling and chaotic family environment. And that's the lesson from today's podcast. The lesson is to return to compassionate, safe support for people who are struggling with their mental illness, mental health, especially when we're dealing with children and adolescents. That's a vulnerable developmental period where in a just society, we are child-centered and we're protective. And kids have to be protected when they grow up in environments and they begin to struggle. not to quickly label them and send them down the road of this troubled teen industry or the psychiatric industry. Elaine Walters (01:15:08.957) But it's the medication. It's terrible. Like my friends, it's sickening. It's the medication is. Sean (01:15:15.812) But Elaine, that's how they're being treated now. And it's much, much worse than when you were younger. As much as we can say that there's an awakening, I don't even wanna get too much into your story. Everyone knows it, right? And I appreciate you telling us every one of those symptoms, but we've heard it so many times, and we've had podcasts on it. It doesn't necessarily matter yet. We haven't created a dent in this. We have more young people on psychiatric drugs Elaine Walters (01:15:22.65) It's... Mm-mm. Elaine Walters (01:15:33.089) Right, yeah, that's why I know. Sean (01:15:45.292) right now than in any other point in history. And we've known a lot of these, this evidence has existed for 25 years. The problems associated with these drugs are well known. Elaine Walters (01:15:57.005) I'm in an online moms group and every other post is, I think I'm gonna put my kid on medication. And do you know how hard it is for me not to just go in and start raging about it, like about how dangerous that is and what it can do, but you can't. Sean (01:15:57.157) But it's true, it- Sean (01:16:11.688) because they're told it's medicine. And they believe medicine is healing and restorative. I mean, it's nonstop. So I'm hoping, Sean, that stories like this can help people wake up. You just share it to another person. You start conversations. You know, recently, this stuff is becoming much more mainstream. And thank God for podcasts. You know, we are really Elaine Walters (01:16:14.372) Yeah. Elaine Walters (01:16:35.046) Mm-hmm. Sean (01:16:40.856) legacy media. You know, the really the only people that are really watching legacy media at this point is like our parents ages. You know, the data supports that. Yeah, I saw demographic stuff about nightly news. It's Yeah, it's not anybody under the age of, you know, 45. But millennials, even Generation X, you know, they're listening to podcasts. And right now, Matt Walsh from the daily wire is somebody who is starting to become even more outspoken. The guy's got millions of followers. So being able to talk about this openly from laypeople's perspectives, from journalists, from commentators, right? They're starting to wake up and say, listen, this doesn't make sense. You know, we followed these recommendations for decades and everything's worse. Where's the evidence? The psychiatric industry is medicalizing every single aspect of being human. And we look back at the horror of straight incorporated. Well, you know, I'll tell you what, generations from now are gonna look back at the horror of the modern psychiatric care. Elaine Walters (01:17:48.849) They will. It will happen. Maybe not in my lifetime, but it will happen. Sean (01:17:54.852) But we're going to try to save as many people along the way, just with information. I think people, for the most part, are smart and reasonable. And you just have to ask some critical questions. And that's why just deference to authority is such a problem in free society. It's why you have to question authority consistently, constantly. No longer do our physicians who are following these protocols and being trained in the system deserve Elaine Walters (01:18:01.124) Yeah. Sean (01:18:24.38) to be lauded as if they have the best available evidence. And we follow their recommendations without any question. Those days are over. We have to end it. We have to be open to having these conversations and for people who've been harmed by the system, they have to be willing to speak out. As I said, when we opened up this podcast, what remains in the dark cannot heal. Elaine Walters, I wanna thank you for a radically genuine conversation. Elaine Walters (01:18:51.281) Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's good talking to you.