A uniquely wonderful show with nutritionist and medical consultant Pam Popper, PhD and a special unexpected call-in by another dear friend, psychiatrist Pinar Miski, MD.   We have a spontaneous, heartfelt three-way conversation about the realities and politics of nutrition, about saving animals from research, about doing our best to improve the world, and how blessed the three of us feel to know and work with one another other.  Also about our upcoming conference November 8-12 in Columbus, Ohio.  An inspiring conversation to remind you that life is worth living and that daring to live honestly is deeply rewarding and even full of fun.

Today’s open mic day (the last Wednesday of each month) begins with me announcing and discussing a  new revelation about pharmaceutical evil.   In in 1994, I was the scientific expert for all the combined 160 product liability suits against El Lilly alleging that Prozac was causing mayhem, mania, violence and suicide.   In retrospect, I was the only professional in the world standing up against the growing tidal wave of SSRI antidepressants.   In this hour of my show, I explain how Eli Lilly simultaneously fixed the trial and tried to destroy my credibility.   I managed to survive despite the fix which involved betrayal by the lawyers who hired me as well as the company itself.  Before the the fix was discovered many months after the trial, it looked like a clean victory for Eli Lilly and opened the floodgates to the new antidepressants which do far more harm than good.  I spend time on this drama because, after two and a half decades, we now know the size of Eli Lilly’s secret payoff to the plaintiffs.  It cost the company a mere 20 million dollars to get returns of multi-billions.

My guest Patrick Hahn and I focus on psychosis and so-called schizophrenia:   Is it a disease?   Is it genetic?  Is it biological?  Or are severe psychiatric disorders a normal human response to early trauma, neglect and deprivation.  Do the drugs work?   Are there better alternatives for helping people who received the more severe psychiatric diagnoses?   Patrick has an enormous fund of information and is a fountain of wisdom.   A very good discussion of these and related difficult topics that are often obfuscated by by false claims from the psychiatric establishment.

This open  mic Wednesday, which is always the last show of the month, turned into an extraordinary interview with my first caller.  I began the hour talking about the importance of self-determination, autonomy, independence, personal sovereignty and the dreadful “R—Word,” responsibility.   I described how all of us are tempted to let others take over at times while we lapse into some degree of helplessness .  I outlined the potentially deadly results when psychiatry takes over for people who feel or act helpless.   Then Julie called in and told the story of how she was taken over by psychiatry, put on drugs for decades, and finally developed kidney disease from lithium but was lied to about it.  But Julie is a powerful being and she managed to throw off the disabling impact of psychiatry suppress and to begin rebuilding her life.  Her story of retaking control of herself fit seamlessly into my introduction about taking charge of one’s own life. The conversation between Julie and me provides a marvelous opportunity to see with dramatic clarity the harm that psychiatry does in robbing people of their sense of personal sovereignty and free will—and how individuals can nonetheless find their own power, throw off the yoke, and begin to build lives for themselves.  A very strong hour!

A kind, gentle and thoughtful conversation with Beatrice Birch, an art therapist who founded Inner Fire, a non-drug, small residential “proactive healing community” in Vermont.  Her program’s mere existence makes me hopeful!   Beatrice has a caring, spiritual approach based on love which is, I am sure, the heart of healing.   She leaves behind the psychiatric framework, identifying participants as “guides” and “seekers.”  True healing comes through loving, healing relationships which by their very nature are health-giving to all involved, including those who offer and those who seek help.  She works with a psychiatrist to help her "seekers" withdraw from psychiatric drugs, relying on a variety of alternative approaches.   Her comparisons between drug therapy and true healing are worth listening to on this Dr. Peter Breggin Hour.

This the 4th appearance of journalist and scientist Patrick Hahn on the Dr. Peter Breggin Hour.  He is an extraordinary analyst of the history of psychiatry and its current manifestations.  His new book, Madness and Genetic Determinism has a much broader and more dramatic sweep than the title suggests.  We talk about the era of Moral Therapy, Fried Fromm-Reichmann and Chestnut Lodge, and Loren Mosher’s Soteria House, as well as the utter failure of psychiatric genetics.  This is a show that anyone will enjoy and learn from about the good and the bad in psychiatry.

Scientist Thomas Moore joins me to talk about psychiatric drugs both in a very general way about why they do so little good and so much harm, and in very specific ways about drugs that affect the neurotransmitter GABA including Ambien, Sonata, and Lunesta, as well as Lyrica and Neurontin and all the benzodiazepines.  Find out if there is such a thing as sleep driving and sleep sex caused by Ambien and similar drugs. If you or a loved one are taking these sedative drugs for sleep or anxiety or other purposes, this discussion may provide you information that you can usefully pursue further.   A valuable hour!

On Open Mic Wednesday, always the last Wednesday of the Month, I spend the first 15 minutes talking about suffering in relationship to love.   I spoke off the “top of my head” and the “bottom of my heart.”  Then I talked with six interesting callers about difficult matters in life such as recovery from medication injury, psychiatric drug withdrawal, how to help a grown son who stopped years of psychiatric drugs all at once, and how to help a fifteen year old son who has been hospitalized and heavily medicated.  It may help you think about how to talk with people in difficult psychiatric situations.

The martyrdom of America’s children is the theme of this hour.  I begin without a guest describing the great new documentary HBO film, “I Love You, Now Die,” about the Michelle Carter case—the 17-year-old girl who supposedly texted her boyfriend to death and got convicted of murder.  The HBO film is worth watching for the insights it gives into the horror that so many young people go through growing up today, from psychiatric diagnoses and drugs to the isolation of social media which separates them from their parents and other adults.  The film truly tells the untold story behind the fake one, often in my words.  I also mention another important documentary in which I am also featured, “The Minds of Men,” already seen by nearly 2 million people.   Then psychologist Michael Cornwall joins me and we talk about SPAC!—our new organization to Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children.  Our focus is on the latest assault on the brains and human rights of children: The FDA’s baseless approval of putting electrical stimulation through the brains of innocent children labeled with ADHD.  We predict that electrifying children will become a new plague upon them, one that can afflict any child who proves troublesome or looks distressed.   Finally, Michael and I talk about what children really need and it has nothing to do with disrupting and ruining their normal brain function.   If you want to talk to Michael Cornwall, the director of SPAC!,  you can email him at [email protected].

Once again Jeffrey Masson and I have a drama filled show about both psychoanalysis and psychiatry, and how both in different ways have betrayed the trust given them by society and by their patients.  Jeff provides intimate details about his discovery that Freud, and then his psychoanalyst daughter named Anna Freud, hid the truth that women were being abused by men.  Instead, they told their patients and the world the lie that the abuse of children never happened and was all a fantasy called the Oedipus Complex.   Jeff enlightened me about Dr. Asperger, viewed as an authority on autism, who curried favor with the Nazis by sending toddlers and young children to cruel deaths at the hands of organized medicine and psychiatry during World War II.   I add some details on the murder of mental patients by psychiatry as a prelude to the Holocaust.  The recent series of three  shows with Jeffrey are worth listening to as a group.  They touch on the evil perpetrated by mental health professionals in power and, in sharp contrast, on the love we share with animals.   Jeff has written great books on both animals and humans.