Ask Dr. Drew - Mattias Desmet: The Madness Of Luigi Mangione Fan Worship & Modern Guillotine Spectacles w/ Dr. Aaron Kheriaty – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 436

Episode Date: December 21, 2024

Within hours of being identified as the assassin of a UnitedHealthcare CEO, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione gained hundreds of thousands of followers and was catapulted into fame by a fandom who believes that his murder of a father was justified violence – akin to a modern guillotine in the hands of the oppressed. Mattias Desmet, renowned worldwide as the leading expert on ‘mass formation’ and the madness of crowd behavior, joins psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Kheriaty to examine the shocking public support for a suspected murderer and why people react differently to a crime if it’s supported by a crowd who believes they are oppressed – even when their hero turns out to be an Ivy League heir to a multimillion dollar fortune who doesn’t follow gun control laws. Mattias Desmet is professor of psychology at the University of Ghent in Belgium and author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism. Desmet is the author of over one hundred peer-reviewed academic papers. In 2018 he received the Evidence-Based Psychoanalytic Case Study Prize of the Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and in 2019 he received the Wim Trijsburg Prize of the Dutch Association of Psychotherapy. Follow him at https://x.com/desmetmattias and learn more at https://mattiasdesmet.org Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is a psychiatrist, the director of the program in Bioethics and American Democracy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and author of The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State. He formerly taught psychiatry at the UCI School of Medicine, was the director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health, and was the chairman of the ethics committee at the California Department of State Hospitals. He is also the author of “The Catholic Guide to Depression: How the Saints, the Sacraments, and Psychiatry Can Help You Break Its Grip and Find Happiness Again.” Follow Dr. Kheriaty at https://aaronkheriaty.substack.com and https://x.com/AaronKheriatyMD 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors  • FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at https://drdrew.com/fatty15 • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

very excited for today's show it's a special time to accommodate dr matthias desmond you can follow him on x at desmond matthias he is an expert on mass formation and madness of crowd behavior and totalitarian psychology he is a bioethicist and psychiatrist. His name is Dr. Aaron Cariotti. You can follow him at Aaron Cariotti, M-D-K-H-E-R-I-A-T-Y-M-D. And we're going to get into a lot of stuff here. The last time we were all together was in Pittsburgh at the Brownstone Institute. And Susan became enraptured by their conversation together. And these guys have their finger on the pulse

of what we have been through and making sense of where we've been. And we've have also the latest example of our psychological excesses with this assassination of a insurance executive and the extraordinary and bizarre reaction of some people. Stay with us, but right here after this. Our laws as it pertained to substances

are draconian and bizarre. The psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin, ridiculous. I'm a doctor for, where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people.

I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want help stopping, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say.

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Take advantage of it. Go to fatty15.com slash drdrew to receive 15% off a 90-day starter kit subscription, or use code drdrew at checkout for that 15% off, or just go to our website, drdrew.com slash fatty15. All right, I want to give our guests their due here. I'm going to spend a little time introducing them so you understand who they are and where they have been. Matthias Desmet is a professor of psychology at the University of Ghent in Belgium, author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism. Psychology of Totalitarianism.

I suggest you read it. Desmond is the author of 100 peer-reviewed academic papers. In 2018, he received the Evidence-Based Psychoanalytic Case Study Prize of the Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Follow him on xdesmetmatias, M-A-T-T-I-A-S, and learn more about him at matiasdesmet.org. And Matias has been with us here before, as has Dr. Aaron Cariotti, never the two of them together. Aaron is a psychiatrist, the director of the program of bioethics and American democracy at the Ethics and Public

Policy Center in Washington, D.C. Author of The New Abnormal, The Rise of the Biomedical Security State. He was a teacher in the Department of Psychiatry at UC Irvine. He was the head of their bioethics committee. And when he dared to raise his hand and said, you know, I've been preaching to our students for years that you must walk the walk when a bioethical transgression occurs. And it is hard. He said said the time has arrived for me this is hard for me to say but you do not have the bioethical standing to mandate vaccines to our students at which point he was immediately

put on leave and eventually dismissed this is an egregious transgression uh he then went on to be one of the plaintiffs in Missouri versus Biden, which is still working its way through the courts. Doug Cariotti can be found at AaronCariotti.substack.com and also Aaron Cariotti, MD, on X. Gentlemen, welcome to the program. Thanks, Drew. It's great to be with you. Thanks.

And Matthias in Belgium belgium i know we'll get you late today we appreciate you being here um let's start susan would we're going to get into a little bit later this uh assassination of of an insurance executive and people's reaction to it but to me it is just the latest manifestation of mass formation scapegoating, except that we have now graduated from the virtual scapegoating violence in social media, the cancellation scapegoating. Now we're actually graduating to the guillotines. We are actually now supporting or or celebrating violent killing which is the

ultimate manifestation of mass formation i'm going to start with matthias take it from there if you would yes that's right uh aggression is the ultimate manifestation of the last stage of mass formation. I've often described that. Like in the end, like when people start to feel a lot of what they often called freely floating frustration and aggression. They just are constantly and desperately looking for an object to take it out on. And in the end, no matter what object can be found, will be used. And in this case, of course, well, I also agree that this is a strange phenomenon. It's a very strange phenomenon, which could be expected, of course, well, I also agree that it's a strange phenomenon, it's a very strange phenomenon which could be expected of course and which I also anticipated with my theory,

but to see it happen in real time now is still something baffling to a certain extent. So we see someone here, a CEO of an insurance company who for certain reasons can be connected to certain frustrations, frustrations which order in society, understandably to a certain extent like many people feel put under enormous pressure by all kinds of institutions and by insurance companies and when someone then makes the wrong, at the ethical level, the wrong move, people do not care anymore about ethical principles, but they just identify with that person.

And they applaud what he did, no matter how ethically problematic it might have been. So I guess something like that happens here in real time. And Aaron, does that surprise you? I mean, we certainly have been upside down morally and ethically in this country, and this is

just evidence of it for me. Yeah, I think that's right. I think there's an enormous amount of social tension, free-floating anxiety, as Matthias describes it. in this particular case of this murder that's being celebrated by so many otherwise ordinary, normal-looking people in society, that social tension builds up. Gerard called it mimetic violence, that people begin imitating not only other people's behaviors, but other people's desires. And in this case, it's a desire to purge or expunge the evil from our midst, right? In this case, that's projected onto this individual who, you know, whatever his faults might be, and perhaps the company that he was running was unjust or corrupt

in various ways, as all large corporations to some extent are going to be perhaps in one way or another. But then to place upon him all of the responsibility or sort of the symbolic distilled injustice right that people are feeling to place it all on this one person and then come to believe that if we can only do away with him if we can only in this case him, gun him down in broad daylight, then somehow we can, I don't know, make things right or establish justice. And you see this scapegoating mechanism repeat over and over again in various societies throughout human history. You see it in the history of religions. You see it in the history of political societies. It's been very well characterized, very well described. But when you see it in real time with something like this, and in this case, it's probably amplified by the power of social media, it's very striking. versus let's say 20 years ago, not only today do we have many people who are cheering on

the murder of this innocent person, presumably innocent person, let's say, but they're doing it very openly and visibly and publicly because they can post about know follow and endorse the account of um of someone who's celebrating this or someone who's been accused of this or you know someone who's cheerleading this uh it's so it's i mean it's very striking to see it in real time on the other hand given what we know about human history and given what we know about human nature, everything that Matthias has described, Rene Girard and others, it shouldn't surprise us, but it's still shocking when you see it unfolding in real time. It's shocking to me because, look, the whole thing has been shocking to me. Matthias alerted me to the fact that I was wrong. This didn't end in the 20th

century. I thought there was something that started in 1790 in France, and it sort of hit a peak in the mid-20th century. Okay, we did that. Lo and behold, now I find myself reading all the time about what you're saying, Aaron, is it happens all the time in human beings.

In fact, I'm thinking about the movie Master and Commander with Russell Crowe where they suddenly hit, they're at sea and there's no wind and they all become paranoid and believe this one kid is the reason there's no wind and he kills himself. Yeah.

And, you know, or he's going to be killed anyway if he doesn't kill himself. And then the wind comes back and they're all cathartists. There's been a catharsis. And Rene Girard does talk about a catharsis as well in some of this. That's right. Yeah. Matias, I don't know if you, yeah. Go ahead. You want to say something, Aaron? Go ahead.

Well, there is a catharsis, but it's always only temporary. That's one of Girard's observations is that there'll be immediate reduction of social tension. And probably some people felt some sort of catharsis when they read about the murder of this CEO. It was you, I heard it used. I heard the word catharsis used a couple of times on cable news. They said, whoa, people feel a catharsis. And I thought, you're not endorsing this behavior.

That's a tragic, the tragedy that they're feeling this way. Just so, and it's not going to last very long because people are going to wake up in a week or two and realize, no, actually my loved one still has cancer and it's still a pain in the neck navigating. And, you know, I was denied coverage for this procedure that I think I need or whatever, whatever it was that was being projected on this person. Or the healthcare system as a whole is broken. And I don't trust doctors. I don't trust hospitals.

I don't trust the whole machinery because of whatever. This murder is obviously not going to resolve that. And so the catharsis does happen, but it's always only temporary. And then the social tension builds up again. And the scapegoating cycle just repeats itself until we step back and get out of this mass formation and realize that it doesn't work. And this is why I think Matthias' description of what needs to happen in order to protect yourself from and extricate from this phenomenon of mass formation is so important for us to heed what do you say matthias extricate yourself ourselves i agree i agree but we need we need i think it's important to to need a take a little bit uh in society to take like a helicopter view and to understand like the root causes of the situation we find ourselves in

with all these frustration and aggression, which is rampant in our society. And only such a more profound analysis, I think, can help us to see the way, really the way out of the problems we find ourselves in. And like, well, one of the major problems, I think, is that in a certain way, our entire culture prioritized rational understanding and rational knowledge over ethical principles, which in a certain way led us into this atomized

state. I don't know if you're familiar with the term of the atomization of society. It was introduced by the German philosopher Hegel, and he referred to this phenomenon where something in our enlightenment culture, in our rational approach of life, as soon as we started to believe that rational knowledge or what seems to be rational knowledge should be the guiding principle in life, we got more and more lonely. And once people feel lonely and disconnected, they typically get more aggressive, of course, because as soon as you feel isolated

with the other, as soon as you do not resonate anymore with the other, you do not feel that you and the other actually are part of one and the same unity, entity. As soon as you do not empathically resonate anymore with the other, all ethical awareness disappears in society. You could say that all ethical awareness, whether it is religious in nature or not, comes from this feeling of unity and empathical resonance with the other. And if that disappears, if people do not feel anymore that when they are hurting someone else, they actually are hurting themselves, then there is no limit anymore to the aggression and frustration.

So that's what we need to realize, like the problems we find ourselves in now, both the fact that we are at the cusp of World War III, for instance, and all this ever-increasing aggression in society, within families, within society in general, at the level of speech, also on the social media, they are the consequence of something. They are the consequence of the fact that something made us lose or diminish ethical awareness. And that in its turn was a consequence of the loneliness and the disconnection in society, which is huge. Like the use of all this technology at the moment,

go on a train or a bus or no matter where, you see how everyone is watching his own smartphone. Nobody is actually talking anymore with each other, which means that the resonating and panic resonance between people decreases day after day. And it's dead in its turn,

as a consequence of the fact that it seems almost impossible to handle frustration and aggression anymore, and which leads to these strange outbreaks of aggression as we see now. It's bizarre to see, like someone murders someone and this guy becomes popular in a few hours of time across the world. So such strange mass phenomena will emerge more and more, of course, as the disconnection

gets worse. I worry about the health of our families as the zone most responsible for developing, I think you called them pathocatunemen or resonance. But let me push back on one little piece, and that is religion throughout human history, really until kind of Christianity, involves sacrifice.

And I would argue that the, you know, Aaron talked about how the catharsis associated with scapegoating only lasts so long. The Aztecs perfected that. They understood that and that's why they did it every day, to keep the cohesion together.

And then it seems like the on some level subconscious or otherwise the christians got it too and their position was um only we can stop all the sacrifice now because this one guy is sacrificed one guy got sacrificed for you and he is god's guy, we only have to do this once. And you can eat him and drink his blood every so often in this ritual, but it's still about sacrifice and still about scapegoating, isn't it, Matthias? Oh, yes, of course. You know, but there is a difference, of course,

between the seminal religious experience, which is an experience of mystical unity between yourself and the world around you, other people around you. It's this seminal religious experience, which is identical to the mystical experience, which is even identical to the experience some people have when using mescaline, which is identical to the near-death experience, to the Dionysian experience of the ancient Greeks. You could name a series of similar experiences which all have one thing in common, that they refer to a state where the ego disappears,

which means the psychological border between the individual and the world around it disappears. Also, a very young child is in this state. A young child, younger than six months has no ego yet before the recognition and the mirror and it also feels this direct unity. It can even not distinguish between itself

and someone else whom it observes. So that state which was the origin, the seminal religious experience, I think, that state which makes us feel that we actually are one with the other is the source of all ethical awareness. And of all, it's the source, the origin of all ethical principles,

including religious principles. But of course, the seminal religious experience more or less was institutionalized and became a system. It became a doctrine. It became a dogma. lost, in many cases, not always, but in many cases, lost all touch with the original religious experience and was used, as every dominant discourse is, as a tool of power. A tool of power which, when a discourse becomes dominant, it usually loses its characteristics of truth speech because it becomes the privileged instrument to become successful, to seize control of society, to become a tool of power and so on.

So that's what happens with every discourse which becomes successful. It loses its characteristics of sincerity and truth speech, becomes a tool of power. And as you said, it becomes the basis very often of a mass formation, which indicates an object of anxiety, an object of frustration and aggression and a scapegoat. Yeah, if you look at the history of religion, this is a very, very excellent question, really important question.

The word scapegoat actually comes from the Hebrew Bible, from the Jewish Old Testament, where essentially the Hebrew people on the Day of Atonement would place the sins of the people onto the head of literally of a goat. And they would take it out into the desert and throw it off a cliff. They would sacrifice it as this kind of, again, symbolic ritual of cleansing from sin. And probably there was some degree of reduction of social tension in there. And then you see this in pagan religions. You mentioned the Aztecs. Basically, most religious systems throughout human history, people had the implicit sense that something is off kilter, right? In Christian terms, that would be, that would be called original sin, but the universe is out of whack. Society is out of whack in some ways. The human nature is off kilter and, and something needs to be done to sort of make reparation for that. And then in some cases, this took the extreme form of actually sacrificing human beings and not just animals or grain or something that was valuable to the community.

Gerard's insight about Christianity is interesting because he said, yes, you obviously see that scapegoating mechanism in the story of the crucifixion. And it's, I mean, it's a clear Isabel example of the scapegoating mechanism at work. But what the Christian story does to sort of turn that on its head is the revelation that actually, in this case, the victim is innocent. The victim in this case is entirely innocent, the most innocent, which if we were to morally, ethically, spiritually fully assimilate that truth should rob the scapegoating mechanism of its power, of its social force. And, you know, should be, as you pointed out, should be the end of all of this repeated attempts to right all wrongs through the sacrifice of other human beings. But of course, we haven't assimilated that truth fully of the innocence of the scapegoated victim. And so, you know, we continue to do it over and

over again. We continue to place, you know, all of our social problems onto the head of a CEO of a company or some political leader or, you know, some other figure that becomes sort of the public object of this repeated mechanism. So I think one of the things that the story of the crucifixion, whether or not you're a Christian, the story of the crucifixion, if you read it very carefully, should remind you of is that the victim, the scapegoated victim in this case, is innocent. Maybe not wholly innocent, maybe not perfect like Christ, but certainly not responsible for everything that has been placed on his or her head. And as Matthias points out, this cannot be the resolution or the solution to the underlying social tensions, free-floating anxiety, loneliness, isolation, alienation that is currently infecting our society. It won't work. We could keep doing it over and over and over again.

But any catharsis or relief or quasi-social cohesion that you get from this is only going to be temporary. It's going to be fake, right? Because- I'm not hearing a clear solution from either of you. I'm hearing a dynamic that needs to be put in place but i i'm not hearing a solution is that because we don't have one aaron you first well i mean look

uh the solution the solution is anything that pushes back against the nature of the problem right so if the nature of the problem is loneliness isolation um and alienation then the solution is connecting with our fellow you know fellow human beings in ways that are uh deep and resonant and grounded in friendship and solidarity and care and concern um so it's kind of a dynamic. I'm sorry to sound corny, but like love is actually the solution. It's the Beatles answer. We'll call it the Beatles answer. So, but I'm looking for,

you know, we're talking a lot about forces and Matthias, I'll get you to answer this question too. They get put in place that are working against all this. What forces can can we put solutions what forces can we put in place to push things in the right direction I mean for instance putting things in place that helps families stay together helps families thrive things like that but Matthias you go ahead well there is a solution but but but but uh maybe not one that will solve the problem immediately. But I think we have to see it in terms of a large process that is going on.

I really believe that it is really helpful to understand how crucial disconnection and loneliness is, really. And to understand the connection with our rationalist-fueled men in the world, we really isolated ourselves in a narcissistic shell throughout the last few centuries. And, like,

we, this rationalist-fueled men in the world made us believe that the world we can see with our eyes, the material world, is the real world, while all major scientists would say that that is not true. that the world we can see with our eyes, the material world, is the real world. While all major scientists would say that that is not true, the world you can see is not the real world. Anyway, we started to believe it.

We started to believe that survival in this material world is the most important thing. We started to believe that the ultimate goal of life is to win the struggle to survive, and so on. And all these things isolate us more and more. And like in our ego, in a narcissistic shell,

and that's what is responsible for the escalation of aggression, frustration, and so on, which creates all this anxiety, which needs to be regulated through mass formations and scapegoating and all kinds of such things. And then once you understand that, and once you understand the little bit, the structure of narcissism and of the human ego, narcissism always means a psychological investment. It's investing your psychological energy, your attention, you could say,

in your outer ideal image as human beings, more and more, we started to believe that we are our outer ideal image, that we are our ego, meaning that our attention, rather than being invested in the human beings we are living together with, is constantly invested in the world of appearances, in our own ideal image, in this entire matrix of social rules we believe we have to live up to in order to be someone in this society. And that's the point. We disappeared behind as a human being, as an unouled body, as a body with a soul, we disappeared behind

this narcissistically investigated outer ideal image. And as soon as you understand that, you understand what the solution is. The solution has to be situated at the level of the act of sincere speech, the act of speech, because exactly this is speaking sincerely. Exactly this is truth. It means articulating words in a very vulnerable way, which reveals something or which shows something that is usually hidden behind the veil of appearances. That's sincerity. behind the veil of appearances. That sincerity, it's deciding in a moment

to put yourself at risk, to make yourself vulnerable by showing something that everyone seems to hide, but which nevertheless is the real and the truth. So the act of speech, the act of sincere speech, is pushing something you feel inside through the veil of appearances through

your ego it's on a voluntary way in a voluntary way damaging your own ego showing something that is usually hidden behind the ego and in that way creating a resonating connection in that way the bodies or the souls that are hidden behind this outer ideal image start to resonate again with each other. It creates a real human connection. No matter from which perspective you look at the problems we find ourselves in now, it's at that level that the real solution for the seemingly unsolvable crisis of our culture has to be situated. We see a society ruled by, in the grip of a propagandized mass, on the one hand. On the other hand, we see a group of people which start to become aware again how fundamental the truth and sincerity is to a human being.

And this group of people, the more it masters the art of sincere speech, the more strongly it will be connected. And in the end, it will become energetically stronger than the propagandized mass. And that is the moment where the era of totalitarianism, the era of the reign of propaganda, and all the anxiety, frustration, aggression

that is typical for it, will be over. So at that level, I situate a possible solution for the problems we find ourselves in now. I love it. I think. And I want to break it down a little bit.

And I will, Aaron, I've got to take a break. And I will pick up right with your comment, okay? Write it down. Remember what you want to say. Don't leave me because I'm sure it's something significant. We'll be right back. You can follow Matthias on MatthiasDesmond.org. Also, XDesmondMatthias, Aaron Cariotti, and Aaron CariottiMD, K-H-E-R-I-A-T-Y.

The New Abnormal is his book. The Psychological Totalitarianism is Desmond's. We'll be right back after this. The wellness company knows that taking charge of your family's health care is a top priority and being rationally ready. And who knows what the future will hold for us. Now, TWC has a service to cover your family's medical needs, including and especially prevention. For just $100 a month, the One Wellness Elite membership includes two free medical-grade nutraceuticals per month, free prescriptions for over 800 of the most common medications,

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It's all there. I ain't Dr. Drew. Dr. Drew. You want to spend the whole session talking about Dr. Drew? There you go. Even you call him Dr. Drew. And I want to encourage people the next few weeks to shop Paleo Valley for the holidays. Go to drdrew.com slash Paleo Valley for 15% off your first order, 20% off when you subscribe. Protein sticks, of course, make great stocking stuffers. Beef, venison, grass-fed and finished. This is a special flavor of beef stick. It's the garlic summer sausage.

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Stock up, send gifts, share healthy snacking with the people you care about. And do not forget the bone broth as well, which is made from bone, not hides. And this is the caramel, the salted caramel. We love the chocolate and the salted caramel here. It comes in flavor to vanilla as well. It's drdrew.com slash paleovaluery for 15% off your first order, 20% off when you subscribe. Susan, the camera just moved all over the place here. It just jumped. My head is cut off. All kinds of crazy things happening. All right, let's get back to this conversation. As I promised, Dr. Aaron Cariotti, psychiatrist, director of the program

in bioethics and American democracy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, D.C., and Matthias Desmond, who is a professor of psychology, University of Ghent in Belgium. Aaron, you were about to comment. There's been a lot of research in recent years on the psychological and social effects of forgiveness, Drew.

And you can only forgive someone if they have actually wronged you. And we are, because of our selfishness, our narcissism, our wounded, fallen human nature, we are going to hurt one another. That does happen. And people have been sincerely hurt. Everyone has, to some extent. Some people much more than others. So there's a lot of suffering people out there. And there's various ways to try to contend with that suffering. Retaliation and scapegoating would be a very common mechanism to try to deal

with the aggression, anger, hatred, resentment, and so forth that stems from those wounds, from having been wronged, in many cases, seriously wronged. Forgiveness is giving something to someone that they don't deserve. It's letting go and relinquishing that anger, hatred, resentment, and desire for revenge. It can be an interior process that doesn't necessarily entail that I reconcile a relationship, right? I can forgive someone who has abused me in a relationship without getting back into a relationship right i can forgive someone who's abused abused me in a relationship without getting back into a relationship with that person the forgiveness process can be an interior

process of letting go of that anger hatred resentment and so forth to me that is actually it's a much more difficult uh process to undergo it's it's very very hard sometimes forgiving someone who's sincerely wronged you is going to be one of the most difficult things a human being can do. But if you don't engage in that process, what are you left with? You're left with this cancer inside of you that eats you up and then finds an outlet in things like a public murder that I then go on online and celebrate because it feeds into that desire for vengeance that's been stewing in me for years or even in some cases maybe for decades. And again, at the risk of sermonizing, we can just go back to that paradigmatic

example of Christ's crucifixion, the centerpiece of which is he's there hanging on the cross, being tortured in the most gruesome way that the Romans could have devised. And he's praying for his persecutors. He's saying, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. That perfect act of love and forgiveness, even for those who were harming him in the most egregious and unjust possible way in that moment. So yeah, we could talk about love, but how do you actually make that real? Well, examine your life, examine your interior dispositions and ask yourself, okay, who's hurt me? Who has wronged me? And then go through a process of trying to relinquish and let go of the ill effects of that.

This is very characteristic as part of the 12-step programs that many recovering alcoholics and people recovering from other addictions have to go through. You understand this very well, given your medical background, Drew, right? You take a moral inventory. I think it's step four, right? And then you go in subsequent steps. You go through this process of trying to make amends and make apologies and seeking forgiveness from others, but also offering that to others who have wronged you. This is a very powerful process. It's not easy. Many people find support for this.

Well, it's interesting. It starts with resentments and fear, right? And then the people that talk about these inventories will always joke about or sort of put it, it strikes as funny when they say, yeah, I hated this person. You know, she was whatever. She was angry with me because, well,

I had to have my quart of vodka every night. In other words, there I was in this equation every time. You know, I was resentful, but really when you get right down to it, there I was in the middle of it. So you have to own your peace in a completely open and honest way. Yeah, and then it becomes kind of funny.

It's like, oh shit, it's me after all. And that's what Desmond's talking about. And Matthias Desmond is talking about is that is that it it is us really and we're sort of disconnected from these primary affects tis i want to ask you in your construct of the sort of pseudo is you know the narcissistic shell you were talking about part of the problem though with getting people to understand that is a really significant disconnect from their primary affects. So when we talk about we want sincere speech, which I totally agree with you, and I know what you mean by that. A lot of people don't even know

what you mean by that. We could say speaking from the heart. We could say all kinds of sort of things. A lot of people that have a narcissistic shell are really disconnected from their primary spontaneous affects. By definition, that's what narcissism does. It literally focuses your attention on the outward appearance. Initially, for a child, that's merely the outward appearance of its body. Later on, it's the car that you're driving in, the social status you have, the money you have. It doesn't matter. The ego is much more than just the outward appearance of the body.

But initially, just the outward appearance of the body, literally, it draws all your attention outwards. It literally makes your life superficial. Superficial, the outward appearance, the surface of the body. And it makes you lose connection with your resonating core. So that's exactly what narcissism does. It makes you lose connection. Like, you know, many people think that initially we are like savage, wild, aggressive beings. And later on, with a lot of education,

we might become a little bit more cultivated and polished. That's not true. Initially, we are loving beings. Initially, we resonate completely. Our core and essence is love and it's the world of appearances that makes us forget that. And sincerity in a certain way, I could explain it almost mechanically. Sincerity is literally the psychological act through which you punch holes in the narcissistic shell and make you feel your resonating inner core again, which says you are one with the other.

You are one with the other. And if you damage the other, you actually hurt yourself. So that's, I believe, that's the first layer of our, that's the core, the essence of our, of the human being. Now you mentioned the propagandized masses.

I want to drill on that a little bit. And forgive me, Aaron, I want to ask this of Matthias again, which is that you have theorized that about 20% of people gets swept into these mass formations and the propaganda. 70% just want to be left alone to live their lives

and 10% throw the bullshit flag like the three of us. What the hell is going on here? How do we get people to understand? This is kind of a different take on this topic because it seems to me a lot of the people with the residual aggression, a lot of the people I see celebrating the killer were in that 20% that got completely swept into COVID and masking and distancing and all these things. And how do we get them to have insight, to understand their liabilities so they don't get swept into these mass formations i've been saying lately hey you if you if you're the person you know reporting

your neighbor for having a party in 2020 be you know because you're they were going to cause a mass outbreak you would be a prison guard in nazi germany you would not fight hitler you would be in the mass formation how and of course people never allow you to say that to them how do we get them to understand what they're what do you oh taylor lorenz a good example of this tbc put up taylor lorenz who expressed joy at the at the um literally joy at the murder. And I thought, oh, she is a prison guard. She would be right in there with Goebbels and everybody. And she doesn't understand that.

She thinks I'm a good person. I'm part of the side of right. How do people tell where they sit during a mass formation? Yeah, you know, how to wake someone up who is in a mass formation is the one billion-dollar question I would say. That's the point. Like everyone who studied mass formations has concluded that it's so extremely difficult. And one thing for sure, rational argumentation usually won't work.

Won't work. If there is one thing people are resistant to in a mass formation, it's rational argumentation. You can't explain that. It's just because people's attention in a mass formation, all their energy is so much focused on this small aspect of reality that is in line or that seems to confirm the mass formation narrative that they just, when someone tries to use rational argumentation to show them that there is a part of reality that is in contrast, in conflict with the narrative, it will just have no impact because there is no psychological energy attached to these representations.

So that's the reason, in a nutshell, why rational argumentation don't work. Well, if someone, an authority figure, tells them repeatedly in an emotional way that the narrative of the mass formation is wrong, that might help to a certain extent to wake someone up from a mass formation. But the problem, of course, there always is that people situate authority only in these leaders or these propaganda makers or just these people who confirm the mass narrative. So usually it's good to understand or good to suppose that it will be very difficult to wake someone up who is really in a mass formation.

But, and that's important, of course, and that's crucial, the people who continue to speak out, I repeat that time and time again they might not be capable to wake up the people in the mass formation but they will nevertheless have an effect on the people in the mass formation they will usually make they will usually have the effect

that the mass formation doesn't go to the last stage Gustave Le Bon mentioned that already in the 19th century in his book The The Psychology of the Masses, The Psychology of the Crowd. He said, like, the people who speak out in as quiet a way as possible, not trying to convince too much, but just speaking out in a quiet way, not trying to convince, but rather trying to testify to your feeling that the mass narrative is wrong. If you just speak out in a quiet way, you might not be able to wake up the masses, but you will prevent the masses from going completely cruel, from going to the last stage where they start to eliminate everyone who doesn't go along with them. So that's just crucial. If there are enough people who continue to speak out in a sincere way,

they will prevent the masses from going to the final and most cruel and destructive stage. So these dissonant voices, they constantly disrupt, interfere with the mass formation or the mass hypnosis. And that's what propaganda makers know very well. If your propaganda wants to be really successful, you have to make sure that your voice is the only one who is heard in public space. Everyone knows that.

And that's what propaganda makers always try to do. They try to censor dissonant voices because intuitively they are aware of the fact that these dissonant voices prevent the propaganda from reaching its full efficaciousness. It feels like Rumble and X are two platforms where you've been able to fight that back a little bit, and we should celebrate them because they've made a big difference. So we can stop this just short of the reign of terror, Aaron. Sounds a little dicey, but good.

You know, it's funny. I'm going to let you comment on what Mattia said. I'm going to throw a little something more into the mix here. I was very preoccupied for some reason before COVID. I got very preoccupied with changing people's minds. I was aware that something was going on, that people were getting weird in terms of their belief systems. And I kept thinking to myself, how would I change a flat earther's point of view? And there was a podcast

around called You Are Not So Smart, where he too was just looking at and analyzing all these different theories about changing of minds. And the one thing, he said exactly what Mattia said, you can't change their minds. In fact, if you change them in one area, they may double down on another. But the goal becomes changing their worldview. They have to be able to look at the world a little differently. I think, did Mattias say something exactly like that? No, but in line with the mass formation, that's what you said. The information has to be in line with the mass formation. But what can be out of line is if you not the information about the mass formation, but how do you feel about the world right now? And can we change that? Aaron, you go ahead. comment section with Taylor Lorenz is a project obviously doomed to failure, which is why none of the three of us is spending a lot of time doing that. We all intuitively know we're just going to get stuck there in an endless, infinite loop. I thought about going after Keith Oberman today,

by the way, because I always liked Keith Oberman personally, and it's bizarre to me that he's attacking me. So I thought I might troll him and see what the crowd does, see what the mob does. Yeah, it's the crowd. So that's the key. That was going to be the point that I was going to make. I mean, the only reason to have public debates with someone like that, if there is a reason, is not for them, but for the person who's listening, right? To see how an individual like that behaves versus how you behave in conversation and in public discourse. who are not drinking the Kool-Aid, but who can be swayed either by reasonable voices on one end or by propaganda or the hypnotized mass on the other end. Those are the folks that we're trying to reach. And just to use those two examples that you just mentioned, right, if they convince 60, 80% of the population of what they're saying, that's only going to strengthen their own convictions.

But if they find themselves in a 20% minority where the rest of the population is not going on and going along with them, that might be the only occasion for them to introduce some doubts into their own thinking. Because these people are so mimetic and they don't have an original thought in their head right none of taylor lorenza's ideas are ones that she dreamed up on her own they're all borrowed from some weird zeitgeist um and um and always moving in this kind of toxic direction. And so I think it seems to me that the answer is not to try to persuade those people. If you do engage with them, realize that you're not actually going to persuade or change their mind, but you can do that as a demonstration to the onlookers of maybe a different way of engaging in public discourse and different set of ethical principles that you're trying to advance and so forth. So those are the folks that I think we're really trying to reach.

The people who are sitting back quietly just observing and listening and trying to get their bearings. We need to be a voice in the public square. And I mean, I say we as though I'm always behaving virtuously and I'm never prone to mass formation myself. I mean, all of us are vulnerable to these things. All of us are vulnerable to being wrong. So also the epistemic and intellectual humility to recognize that we don't have all the answers

and the stance that I have all the answers and the stance that I have all the answers and I'm one of the righteous rather than just another flawed, imperfect, sinful member of the human species. I think that's important as well. That was the part that I found most challenging during the darker hours of the international mass formation, which was, which side am I on? On the right side? Am I on the wrong side? Am I in the 20% or the 10%? It's hard to tell when it's underway.

Yeah, I think that's right and um i i think whenever i speak assuming that i am not infallible and i could be wrong and i want to maintain an open disposition which feels vulnerable i mean intellectual certainty provides some some sense of security that's why people seek it out so fiercely and cling to their ideas so fiercely. To be able to let go of some of that security and just I'm open to being persuaded. I'm open to being convinced

and let's learn how to have civil dialogue and debate. That's the Socratic method. That's the scientific method. And Matthias, I have been aware that irrational certitude has been afoot for quite some time. Is that part of this?

Well, of course. Yes. Certitude is the most problematic state a human being can find itself in. We need to be mature enough to be uncertain, to doubt and at least at a rational level.

But I wanted to add one more thing to the conversation, like what can we do about it? Like you know, very often of course when we see someone who really is into the mainstream corona narrative, we feel a certain impotence. We feel like, okay, we cannot convince that person, make them see the irrationality of what we think reality is. But that's the point. Sometimes we just have to do something at a completely different level.

Like, for instance, give that person a pumpkin you grew in your garden, go to him, say, hello, here, do you want a pumpkin of me? Everything that creates a human connection, a real human bond will inhibit the mass formation. Of course, because if you look at the mechanism of mass formation, you see first there is loneliness and all this frustration and aggression and anxiety that originates in this loneliness. So everything, no matter at what level, that creates a real connection will make these people a little bit less convinced of his narrative. That's a strange thing. This person won't understand what happens, but he will just feel it like, okay, he will

be less fanatically convinced of his narrative. Everyone who is connected with someone else is more open to someone else's opinion. So I think that's something very important to understand. Each act of sincerity, even if he's not related at all to the topic of the subject of a mass formation or to the narrative inhibits the mass formation. So we've

finally gotten there. The answer is the pumpkin. Offer a pumpkin to your neighbor and this is... We're finally... we got it. We're there. So, Matias, listen, I want to get an update from Aaron on his legal action. And I know it's like nine or God knows 10 o'clock at night where you are.

You've been very, very generous with your time. And I appreciate you being here with us. I think this has been very enlightening. I just love that we were able to walk through this. I really feel like we got kind of an encyclopedic survey of the scene here. I would suggest everybody do read The Psychology of Totalitarianism

to really cement, there it is, cement this in your mind. Use it as a reference. Everything we've talked about today is there except the pumpkin part which is what we arrived at we've solved that one today but Susan anything before I let

Dr. Desmond go I like the pumpkin good I'm glad you like the pumpkin Matthias I look forward to seeing you again soon pleasure if you're in this country if you're in this coast particularly the two of you

together i hope you will you'll tour around and and advocate on behalf of this solution uh because you know i i hope people understand what we're talking about it to me it's crystal clear and you guys lay it out with great clarity jordan peterson to. Well, I bet he would love this conversation, actually. And he might have some interesting sort of anthropological kinds of ideas about how this has been around and how to actualize it. So, all right, Matias, thank you so much. I'm going to talk to Aaron for a few more minutes and we'll hope to see you again very soon. Happy holidays. So I want an update on what's going on with what used to be called Biden versus Missouri where are you guys can you give us an update how's it going what's going on with does UC Irvine apologizing

are they recognizing anybody well you know why I have the I have the huevos to say that now because essentially Jay Bhattacharya the new president came in and said we need to we to start talking. And then the ultimate poetic justice is now we have Jay as the head of the NIH. It's just like, oh my God, this is like a movie I'm watching. And I'm wondering if anything like that is happening with you. Well, so that's a great update. And just, I'll answer your question about the case in just a minute. There has been a recent positive development in the case but just by way of background um many of your your viewers and listeners will know this but for those who don't so missouri versus biden later turned murthy v missouri is a case challenging government censorship on social media that i am a plaintiff in along with the state of missouri louisiana and

four other private plaintiffs and one of those other private plaintiffs, Jay Bhattacharya, my dear friend and colleague, has recently been appointed the director of the National Institute of Health. And he was censored by the previous director of the National Institute of Health. We have an internal email that we got on FOIA Discovery between Francis Collins, former director, and Anthony Fauci saying that we need a, quote, swift and devastating taked replace him as director of the NIH. I agree, that's just poetic justice at work there. Missouri, a man by the name of John Sauer, who is a tornado in the courtroom and an absolutely brilliant litigator, has just been tapped to be the United States Solicitor General. That is the highest litigator in the land, you could say. So we have two people from our case that will be taking up positions of considerable influence in the next administration. So that's very exciting. The case itself continues.

Of course, John is not going to argue again. He's going to have to recuse himself if this case goes back to the Supreme Court. Usually it would be the Solicitor General arguing on behalf of the government. But of course, he was involved in the case earlier, and he's very sympathetic to our side. So I'm not sure how much of a defense the government's going to be able to mount at this point. They'll probably have to get a replacement lawyer. But the case is back at the district court. The Supreme Court earlier in January set a very high threshold for a legal

requirement called standing. Basically, the ability for us to prove that it was the government, not social media companies that censored us. And so according to that strict criteria, we petitioned the court again for additional discovery. That means we're going to learn a lot more information. We're going to have more depositions of defendants. We're going to have more documents that we recover that were previously private communications between government and social media companies. So the court granted that request for additional discovery to try to help us establish standing. And so that is going to basically break things open even more.

And regardless of the final outcome in this case, the case is serving the purpose of shining a very bright spotlight on the nature of government censorship. And I think this next stage of the case where we're going to get additional discovery is going to continue to sort of blow this thing open and publicize what happened. And there was a very important moment, too, in the vice presidential debate with JD Vance. The very last question that they put to Vance, which was, what about January 6th? Isn't Trump a threat to democracy? And while acknowledging that there were obviously problems on January 6th, Vance said, but the real threat to democracy is the government-sponsored censorship that has been happening on an industrial scale for the last several years. And that was a clear reference to the information that's been

uncovered in our case. So the next administration is very aware of the censorship issue. They've said publicly they want to dismantle the government's censorship machinery. I like to tell people this is not a partisan issue. They shouldn't see it as a partisan issue. Maybe you don't want Donald Trump to be president. Fine. I don't want Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Obama or any other future president, left, right, Republican, Democrat, to have access to this kind of control over speech. So it's not a partisan issue. It's a constitutional issue. Regardless of who's in power,

you do not want to give them the ability to censor people online. And I think that's why this case continues to be important. And I'll come back on as soon as we have those documents that we recover on Discovery to discuss what we've found. Mark Zuckerberg, one other quick update on this case, was just a month or two ago, leading up to the election, I think you probably saw the writing on the wall and wanted to establish a good relationship with the next administration.

And Zuckerberg published a letter admitting exactly what we had accused the government of in this case, saying, yes, the government did pressure us to censor during the 2020 election and during COVID. And I regret that we caved into the inside, from someone at obviously one of the biggest platforms out there admitting precisely what we had alleged in the case. So I think at this point, there can be no doubt that it violated the United States Constitution and the free speech rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans, literally, on social media. So, you know, at the same time, we've seen the poetic justice of one of our plaintiffs now taking over the NIH, which funds 85% of biomedical research in the United States, obviously hugely influential for the future of science and medicine in this country. And the lead legal mastermind in our case that the man who argued the case of the district and appellate court level last year has now been tapped for this very important role as the Solicitor General of the United States. So I would say we're on the right track

with Missouri v. Biden. Who knew this would be your life when you were back there at UC Irvine? Can I tell you something, Dr. Cariotti? Yes, Susan. Cariotti. Cariotti. We could not go live on YouTube today.

So I don't find it a coincidence that you're on here talking about free speech. And we've been featured on YouTube. Yeah. Interesting, right? Yeah, YouTube is still at it. They're one of the worst. YouTube is still at it. It's unbelievable.

I was telling people on YouTube to go over to X, go over to Rumble, go over to Facebook, which is what I did a lot of during the pandemic. I told people, you know, we have these other platforms and now we have Rumble and X, which is all free and we don't have to worry and run from the law. But thank you for getting us censored again and giving your point that it's still alive and well.

And we'll be trying to upload this later. Hopefully they'll let us, but we'll find out. And I hope the conversation that the three of us had shined a bright light on the importance of not allowing censorship to propagandize the masses because it doesn't go well. Please send all the information as it comes out to Michael Schallenberger. So his,

you can use his platform also to sort of push it out there. He has, he has been remarkably effective at telling the stories of, of, of censorship and whatnot. I hope we also do something with public health. That's the other thing that worries me, but I guess that's, I don't know, there's too many fronts. We got to fight

so many battles on so many fronts, but the excesses of public health were also on full display during COVID. And I'm wondering what we're going to do about that one day. Well, you know, the new director of the CDC, I know less about, I'm not personal friends with him, but he is a physician, former member of Congress. And he did have the Weldon Amendment that is named for him, a law that he sponsored. It's a very important law for conscience protection for physicians and nurses that want to recuse themselves from procedures and cases that they believe would be unethical for me to participate in. So, you know, hopefully he canical for me to participate in so you know hopefully he can produce some um some changes at the cdc it's a very important agency to reform and the new fda

commissioner uh marty mccary is is a friend and he's terrific he's not yeah he wasn't perfect during the pandemic but he was very very very good during the pandemic i would say nobody was perfect nobody was perfect during the pandemic so i wasn say. Nobody was perfect. Nobody was perfect. I wasn't perfect during the pandemic. I wasn't perfect. It's exactly. It's just we did our best and we found our way through. But the excesses are really what we're pointing at.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Marty's not beholden to the pharmaceutical interests. And he's written some very good books on reform of medicine and public health. And so I think that is going to be a breath of fresh air. And hopefully he can, you know, that's an agency that's really been captured by the very industry that it's meant to regulate. So big pharma more or less controls the FDA in all kinds of ways

that undermine its mission. And so it's going to be a really heavy lift to try to change these agencies. He told me his first, let me tell you, you'll appreciate this. He told me his first plan was to issue a RICO action against the pharmaceutical companies and the major medical publications because they are in all in collusion. And he's going to give them a chance to unravel it. But if they don't, he's going at them. And that's something he's really good at. So that's the kind of stuff he can start putting pressure to get this right.

Listen, it's always a pleasure to see you. It was wonderful seeing you in Pittsburgh a couple weeks ago. And hopefully we'll run into you again very soon. All right. Sounds good. Thank you very much. Catholic Guide to Depression is one of the books and the other book caleb he had two books out right uh the other was the new abnormal the

rise of the biomedical security state so uh and the catholic guide to depression uh again a really good guest today as always i appreciate the bookings uh we so glad they came on together that was your call right susan susan was in rapture you can find their brownstone lecture probably online too find it on the brownstone youtube channel so they were the first i think the first panel on the first day of the event uh i think it was the first day you attended no i think it was the second day of the event i think it was the second day of the event i think but you'll find them though i could be wrong so um yeah so that was good and i'm i'm so pissed off at youtube right now i can't even tell you i know i'm so used to it i was watching

it and people said oh there's 14 people here right now and and we're waiting is this live and i'm like yeah it's live and then i went over to youtube and i was like we're not live so i i hope caleb can upload to the youtube channel although i don't want their blood money but um yeah i'm gonna try to upload it right after this once it finishes processing good i never promote youtube by the way so like this is an important the conversation we got to chop this one up and push it out on social. Because there's some real pearls those guys dropped today. Yeah, but listen, Drew, this is the most important thing about today. It's that you need to stop prostituting yourself.

Stop prostituting yourself, Drew. There it is. You just got to stop it. Please forgive him. He not knoweth what he said wait when did he say that that's something earlier this morning i had to go point at you mentioned i was like he didn't like nothing he didn't like me on hannity last night yeah so whatever uh everybody i'm getting so used to getting beaten up i just i told you not to do Hannity.

No, I'm just joking. You did not. No, actually, I was too tired to be the one doing the cameraman work. Yeah, I made you sit in a van where I look a little wonky. You were really heated up last night. Well, because I had a lot to say. And I said it all again on Will Kane's show today. We said it in some version

today across this conversation and we have three experts in here. We all agree this is not something subtle. Rene Girard has a ton of material out there. He's a name we brought up today. It might be a little hard to penetrate for the average person.'s a very heavy french accent i've been listening to his lectures

in french lately and they you know same as the english ones he's a stanford professor and he's yeah he's actually a he's actually a literary critic from the literary criticism world he's talking about how characters get into conflict by having a mutual mimetic source of desire that's generated from each other it's kind of a wild theory but the scapegoating it was a great insight and made sense to everyone who particularly deals with narcissism or unregulated aggression all right so can we put up the upcoming guests and we'll sign on out of here uh. Caleb has to get on the road in about six hours. So Justin Hart in on the 17th. All about Caleb. Josh Bernstein, Seth Dillon, Gad Saad.

This was my wife's idea. She convinced me to get up at 4 a.m. Don't tell me the problem. Jeff Dye might have to be moved there a little bit. Salty Crackers coming back. Gad Saad and his sneaky effer theory. Can we say that actually? said and his sneaky effer theory i can we can we say that actually you heard a sneaky effy effer theory sneaky fucker theory which is that in zoological system youtube today so who cares well it's actually a term to describe what animals do

to deal with an alpha male they become sneaky fuckers they pretend to be more feminine and sort of hang out with the females and that's how they get to be a sneaky fucker. You also have a salty cracker coming. I saw that at the end of the month. Did you mention it? I did. I did. A lot coming our way.

We appreciate you all being here. Sorry about the YouTube mess today. I have a funny story about putting kids in the car though, Caleb. So you can look forward to yours tomorrow, your seven-hour trip. I drove to San Diego in peak traffic with three three-year-olds. And one vomited. And then the next one vomited. And then the third one vomited.

And then I had to rinse them off in the gas station in their diapers with the water thing, you know, that goes in the car. I was like with, you know, one at a time, rinsing them all off. Oh yeah, that was lovely. I just can't, I can't say anything. I just, it doesn't matter

what I say about my two children that were born at separate times. No matter what, you always have triplets. We win. You always win. My husband wasn't with me. I was alone in the car

for three hours going. Wait, I need to call Taylor in here to listen to this. Taylor, you totally could have driven by yourself all those hours and I could have stayed home. If one vomits,

the next one will vomit. It's possible. She did it with three. All right, listen, have a good trip. We'll see you all next week. We are in on Tuesday at three, Wednesday at three,

and then we will be out, I believe, on the 19th. So we appreciate y'all being here and we will see you next Tuesday at three o'clock with Justin Hart. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment.

This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information

that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me. Call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.

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