My guest Dr. Michael Guy Thompson is creating a radically innovative home for people with serious emotional suffering in San Francisco.  Called Gnosis Retreat, it breaks completely with the medical model and views distress as a part of being human.   Michael and I talk about friendship and love in recovery and in life.  We examine the necessity of helping people “off the grid” to  avoid government and psychiatric interference.  The problem is not the “high cost” of good approaches because some of the best like Michael’s are the least expensive.  The best help often requires relatively little professional involvement and no expensive options like doctors, drugs and hospitals.  The supposedly high costs of mental health care are not about the services needed by struggling people.  The high costs are about feeding the bloated Pharmaceutical and Medical Empires.