When we talk about healing, we tend to imagine progress - advances in science, better treatments, safer medicine. But what if the origins of psychiatric drugs tell a different story altogether?

In this episode of The Grace of Being, I explore the dark and often hidden history of psychiatry's "chemical revolution." From coal tar and petroleum byproducts to the CIA's mind control experiments under MK Ultra, we look at how powerful industrial forces shaped what we now call "mental health treatment."

I trace how the first psychiatric drugs weren't born from brain science, but from accident and opportunity and how their effects, once used to subdue behavior or control the mind, became rebranded as cures. Along the way, I ask what this legacy means for us now, when so many of these same substances circulate not just through our prescriptions, but through our very water supply.

You'll hear:

• How psychiatric drugs emerged from industrial chemistry—not neuroscience
• Why the 1950s marked psychiatry's rebrand from asylums to "modern medicine"
• How MK Ultra blurred the line between healing and control
• The lingering chemical legacy still shaping minds, bodies, and ecosystems today
• The question we have to keep asking: what are we really being healed from, and by whom?

This conversation isn't about rejecting medicine - it's about reclaiming awareness. When we know the story behind the story, we can begin to choose differently.

Resources & Links 📖 Mad in America by Robert Whitaker 📖 Rockefeller Medicine Men by Richard Brown 📧 Want to share your thoughts or be a guest on the show? Email me at [email protected]