Behind the Bastards - Part One: Dr. Sleep: The Australian Psychiatrist Who Made People Sleep Themselves To Death

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Robert sits down with Gabe Dunne to discuss Australia's "Dr. sleep" a man who spent twenty years prescribing two and three weeks comas to his patients for no real reason at all.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. I'm Robert Evans, and those of you watching this will notice, those of you listening, shouldn't notice shit, that I'm recording in a different location today. It's instead of being in my dank basement in Portland, Oregon, I am in a house in the French quarter of New Orleans, the city that never sleeps, the big apple. Anyway, here to not be in New Orleans with me, but here to podcast with me, the great Gabe Dunn. Welcome to the show, Gabe. Thank you. As I said before, I'm so excited, probably too excited. I am a big fan of you guys.

I would listen to you overnight at my warehouse job for hours and hours, and then I would get home and realize that I had only heard your voices for eight hours. Well, that actually happens to Sophie and I sometimes too. Yeah, I was like sometimes when I, I made this, I said this a joke to somebody the other day and then I realized it wasn't a joke. Sometimes I'll think things, but instead of it being in my voice, it's in Roberts. Wow, you've melded. Yeah. Yeah. And when I'm in a party and someone's like, hey, Robert, do you want to shoot this mystery powder into, you know, your veins?

And I'll be like, I'll hear Sophie's voice saying, yes, Robert. I think you should. Don't test it. Don't test it at all. Don't take any precautions. Just inject anything you find into your body. That does that sound like well in New Orleans. That's going to be thank you in New Orleans. It is. I mean, you know, Sophie's motto is Liv Moss. Taco Bell actually stole it from her. The lawsuit is ongoing. Wow. I believe it. Lo-key would plug things here at the top. I was going to say I would love to sue Taco Bell. If somebody can give me a reason, it just sounds fun.

But I think what Robert was saying is, Gabe, do you have any plugables? You want to plug up top here? I want to let the audience know who you are? Because this is your first time, my bastards. It is. Believe me, if I had been on it before, I would have been like, I can't come back because my life has peaked. I am a writer.

I am an activist out of L.A., so I do a lot of anti-ice. on the ground stuff. My life got taken over by it in June when the National Guard invaded. So that and then I do a fun time show called Best Gabe Ever, which is a spinoff of just between us, the show I've been doing for like 12 years. And then I have a substack called A Thousand Natural Shocks and a related podcast called A Thousand Natural Shocks that used to be called Bad with Money.

But then the world, financial advice became even more irrelevant than it already was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the best you can do you know is, I don't know, try to have money. Let's do your best. Yeah, I mean, truly.

I like tried to girl boss my way to whatever, and then it just ended up being, I don't know, buried in the ground, turn it into gold blocks. I don't know how to help you. You're talking about anti-ice activism in L.A. And I've been thinking about a surface-level aspect of this for a while, which is in Seattle and in the lesser extent in Oregon, during the 2020 protests, a major symbol of, like, the protests in those cities were, especially Seattle was the use of umbrellas. And it was kind of a significant thing because even though it rains all the time in the P&W, people don't use umbrellas here. Like the fastest way to tell someone is not from here or is not a resident is that they're using a fucking umbrella.

And so there was all sorts of like graffiti in Seattle during, you know, the height of the protest that was like, we never needed umbrellas before because we never saw a real storm. And anyway, I think there's something, there's some, there's some good bit in like, Like, Los Angeles never had to deal with ice before because it's L.A. So now we have to figure out. Something. We also, well, they have those signs that are like, California melts ice, you know. Right.

It does. That's actually a major problem that we have here. Right. Yeah. And we also, I thought you were going to say, because we've been using umbrellas to block stuff. And I think in California, people are buying umbrellas for the first time. Yeah. Not a city that had a lot of utility for.

umbrella owners previously. No, they go, where is car culture and those? Like, where do we even buy umbrellas? Is that, is that a, is that at the supermarket? Where do you get umbrellas? I grew up in L.A. I don't remember ever having an umbrella. So, right? It's one umbrella, Michael. How much could it cost?

$1,000. That's the people in Beverly Hills. Right. Right. Right. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Hi. It's Joe Interesting. Host of the Spirit Daughter podcast. where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life.

And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast.

I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security,

one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster.

Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where you get your podcasts. So, Gabe, it's probably time we get to the actual focus of our episode. This is a guy I don't think you have heard of. It's not a guy I had heard of before I started doing research on this. Love it. The episode title that I've got working is called The Real Doctor Sleep, which is the title entirely because I'm pretty sure Stephen King wrote a novel called Dr. Sleep.

I don't know what it's about. I've certainly never read it. I don't think it has anything to do with our episode. And it's a bad joke to make because I don't know. know anything about the Stephen King novel, but I did it and I can't take it back. I think that's the one his son wrote. I think his son wrote it. Maybe, maybe. But you know that. When you're a NEPO baby, you have to do exactly what your parents did. Well, that said, I could also imagine a Stephen King Nepo baby just being Stephen King writing books for his kid and pretending they're his kid's book. He has

time. He can put out five or six extra books a year. That's nothing. That's like three hours of work for Stephen King. You're imagining, like you're imagining a kid. Like, you're imagining a 10-year-old and Stephen King's writing for him. But I'm like, okay, so he's a 45-year-old man and Stephen King is still writing his books for him? Yeah, yeah, of course. As long as he's alive, you know. Yeah. So obviously, behind the bastards is a podcast.

I'm not complaining, but it takes a lot of work, right? These are generally 8 to 10,000 word scripts every week. I average reading probably one to one and a half books a week, sometimes two books a week, for doing like research for these episodes. And that's all year around, you know, 50 some weeks out of the year. The Epstein four-parters that we just did, thankfully, didn't require me to go through books because that does take a lot of extra time. But I spent hours trawling through the Epstein archives and hours more reading everyone else's coverage of what's in there. Then I had to write like 16,000 words on the motherfucker. So there's a lot to do, which is why I appreciate it whenever

fans of the show are so good to suggest episode topics on the mega thread and the behind the bastard subreddit. Because a lot of people, people will be like, you know, oh, I want to, when are we finally going to get the Mao episodes, or you should do Stephen Miller? And yeah, we'll get to all the big guys. Those guys do require a lot of work. What I really like from the episode's suggestions is that people often help me find subjects who are really interesting and really fun to hear about, but they're also like kind of obscure. And there's not a ton written about them, which means I can read everything written about them in the space of a couple of days, which is a lot lower research burden to me. And that's

the kind of episode that we've got here. So first off, I want to thank the admins of the subreddit for making the episode suggestion mega thread that I asked about during the Q&A episodes, because that came in handy this week. Somebody posted an unusually detailed thread, user Captain Ravioli, about an Australian quack doctor who killed a shitload of people by making them sleep themselves to death. We are talking about Australia's doctor's sleep. Gabe, have you heard of this story at all?

I have not, but so darkly my first thought was like, how is that bad? How is that? It is, this is an interesting quack medical treatment, both in that first. It starts in a good place. It's not a quack medical treatment that starts quack. It starts with some real doctors and scientists being like, shit, this might help. This might be a therapy that actually does something. And then it winds up not working, but this guy decides to make it his entire life.

and he gets a lot of people killed. But when I explain how this is supposed to work, you're going to be like, well, shit, I want to try that. That's the problem. And that's ultimately the dark humor of my whole thing is I'm like, oh, tell me more. What did he use?

That's so bad. That's so bad. I don't have to be online for a week. Shit. Yeah, exactly. And how gentle is the sleep? Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Not. We will talk about all this. But first, let's talk about our bastard. Let's introduce this motherfucker to the audience and to and to the Gabe. Harry Richard Bailey was born on October 29th, 1922 in Picton, New South Wales, Australia. His hometown was a tiny place, and it still is today. There's only about 5,000 people who live in Picton now. So it was even smaller, one presumes, back then.

Wow. And it was, it hadn't been, it had been like a town about 100 years when he was born, just a little over. Pichton was declared within the area of legal settlement in Australia in 1821. The town was named for a British Army officer who died at Waterloo and had been, quote, feared for his irascible temperament, which I just find funny. That is funny. That is this dead guy whose claim to fame was he was a real asshole. Let's name a town in Australia after him. Is that angry?

Like he was angry? Yeah, he's a dick. He's mean. Yeah, he's onry. Well, cussed. That might be a good quality to have. have for that kind of person. I don't know.

I can see being Henri being a benefit as a Napoleonic era military officer, although again, he dies at Waterloo. We can't have been that good, right? I like soldiers who don't die at Waterloo. Yeah. I'm such a flouncy little gay boy that I'm like, I don't know what qualities would be good for a soldier at Waterloo. Don't tell yourself short, Gabe.

Thank you. I believe if you were taken back in time to Waterloo, you could kill a lot of. of Frenchmen or Englishmen, depending on, you know, where you stand. Or Austrian. I, you know, I believe in you. I think I'm just off to the side, like, does anyone want chips? I think I'm sorry. Try to stay away from the canids.

But you guys are just, like, walking at guns? No, I don't want to walk towards a gun. That's a horrible idea. I'll be here with juice when you come back. Yeah. I'm going to introduce the concept of ducking behind cover to the Napoleonic era militaries and then get executed. Well, this is my problem.

with like unconfronting ICE and DHS where I am in L.A. Because my whole thing is like they'll just come do their little army thing. And I'm like, my thought, I'm so autistic that I'm like, you don't have to do this. Does any of us have to do this? None of us have to do this. I feel like I'd be out of the battlefield being like, guys, I think we should just go home. Oh, like the general from the dispatch song. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly like that. Yep. So, anyway, that was a digression. Harry Bailey was the eldest child of his parents, Jack Bailey, a railway night watchman, and eventually station master, and Ruth Smith, a homemaker. Smith was his mom's maiden name, at least, obviously.

She's Ruth Bailey, I presume, by the time that Harry is born. She and her husband came up, like grew up in the same general area in New South Wales, and they'd known each other most of their lives. They send Harry to a private Christian school for his basic education,

and unfortunately, this is one of those bad where we just have very little about their childhood and early life, like basically nothing. We don't have any quotes that he was an ambitious boy. We don't even have anyone talking about the fact that he was like a good student, which I presume he was, given, you know, what he does with the rest of his life. So we're just going to have to move forward knowing this guy's early backstory is kind of a black box to the world. The only hint of any kind of color or detail about his day-to-day life as a child came from this entry, came from his entry in the Australian

Encyclopedia of Biography. Quote, Harry enrolled in science at the University of Sydney in 1940. Lacking money, he did not finish the course and found work as a pharmacist's assistant. And in fact, there seem to be in, I think there's two times where Harry is trying to go through a degree program

and has to drop out for financial reasons. And from that, I think it's reasonable to infer he comes from a kind of poor family. You know, maybe it's probably not unusually poor for Picton, probably as poor is basically everybody else in Picton. But he doesn't have money growing up, right? Like, you don't have to drop out of school twice to work full time if your family's flush, generally speaking. Yeah. That'll put a chip on

your shoulder in medical school. For sure. And it, I think is, he is going to really follow the money his entire career in some very evil ways. And I think maybe that's kind of where it starts. Like, he grows up really poor. And that is kind of, that seems to be his primary motivation in life as I want to make money, even more than the medical stuff he's talking about doing. He wants to get paid, right? I feel like that happens to men. Like, men are poor, and then they grow up and they're like, I got to be evil about it. Yeah.

I mean, I get it because, like, you know, I have, like, as in my career, I have not done what a lot of other reporters do and focused on, like, getting staff jobs. I've focused on my reporting is usually been, like, my secondary job. and I did something else in comedy and entertainment because it paid better because I did grow up like poor and with a lot of economic anxiety. And so as a kid, there was this growing up there was this like, I have to at least, I don't want to like deal with the fear that my parents dealt with their whole childhood. I want to be more stable than they were. But Harry, I think it becomes like a I have to get rich at all costs. And it doesn't matter whatever I have to do to people to do it as opposed to maybe I won't work full time for a newspaper because that's, This doesn't seem like a future forward position.

Right. Yes. Chip on your shoulder. Entitlement. It starts like that. Yep. Yep. So, and this is reading between the lines a bit by me here.

So take it with a grain of salt. But the fact that he is, he's really committed to trying to get a scientific degree, right? Like a medical degree eventually. Because he tries a couple of times. He's to drop out and save up money. I see this as evidence that we've got this kind of, we've got a smart, determined, broke-ass boy who's desperate to make something of himself, right? Like, he really has to try. Yeah, I don't want to say that that's, I think that that's a

really admirable thing. It can go well or badly. I will maintain my admiration toward him until inevitably something happens. And he is kind of admirable at the start here. At least it seems that way. Yeah, to continue with a quote from the Australian Encyclopedia of Biography. On January 19th, 1945, at the Registrar General's Office, Sydney, he married Marjorie Jocelyn Noonan, a cashier. He studied medicine at the University of Sydney and got his M.B., and MS. winning the Norton Manning Memorial Prize for Psychiatry and the Major Ian Vickery Prize for Pediatrics. So, again, not a lot of color here, but he does finally get to graduate. And as soon as he starts working as a psychiatrist, because obviously you're doing like your internship and stuff, he's like winning awards very quickly.

in very short order, within a few years of starting, he is an award-winning psychiatrist. He's a psychiatrist for children, do we know? Child psychiatry is a major area of his interest, yes. He is like specializing in pediatrics for a period of time. Yeah. Well, so yeah, he's at this point, by the time he's, you know, in his early 20s, he's got his medical degree. He's won some awards.

He's married a working class girl, you know, who, we presume kind of busted her ass the whole time he was in school to help make his dream come true. And then it does. He seems to be doing really, really well, right? Everything's coming up Bailey. Now, I will say the fact that, because he's, when he's working on his medical degree, he did not initially want to be a psychiatrist. It's a choice he makes kind of late in his scholastic history. And there's a reason for this. By the 1950s, and this is true in Australia, but it's true all throughout like the Western world, psychiatry is not a super popular field for doctors, right? And because of this, in many parts of the West, including Australia, there are not enough

psychiatrists to meet the need. It's a very underserved job, right? Just like, I think a good example today, there's not nearly enough anesthesiologists, right? Right. If you're a nurse anesthesiologist or a fucking doctor, you are going to be working as much as you want to work because there is no limit to the amount of need for you. Sure. And that's not a super important part of that.

the surgery or anything. No, not. Of course not. It's huge. It's one of the most important parts. And as a result, if you are getting into a medical field today and it's something that you have an inclination for, you can make a lot of money as an anesthesiologist. And the same thing is kind of true of a psych in the 50s, right? There's not enough of them to meet the need. There's a lot of demand. And so Bailey being this kind of poor kid looking for a place to make his mark would both see, well, it'll be easy to get work as a psychiatrist. Like this is a field where they need more people, but also it's a new field. And there's a lot of shit being discovered every day.

I have a chance to get in kind of on, not on the ground floor, but pretty close and make a name for myself because there's less of us. So if I'm good at this, it'll be a lot easier for me to stand out than if I were to become, you know, a heart surgeon or whatever. And the state of mental health is not what we want it to be. Yeah. We'll talk about that too. But, you know, a big part of why he becomes a psychiatrist is psychiatry.

is what you want to get into if you're looking to make your mark in the medical field and you want the easiest time of it possible. So after graduate getting out and getting his degree, our boy spends a year interning at the Prince Alfred Hospital and then gets a full-time regular gig at the Broughton Hall Psychiatric Clinic and Leichhardt, which is a suburb of Sydney that I'm sure I have mispronounced. And we have a giant Australian audience, so they will let you know. Crookie! A go wrong!

that's my Australian. That's going to piss them off more. Oh, no. Sorry, guys. That was uncalled for. That was uncalled for. This is like when you spell something wrong on purpose in a TikTok so that you get a bunch of engagement.

You're doing this on purpose. So the more comments, the more emails, the more popular the show is. Yeah, I've discovered something with Australians, which is that they respond really well to negging. So I'm just kind of doing that to build our audience over there. Well, I just want to give a spoiler that. Roberts actually never intentionally mispronounced a single word a day in his life. Never.

I've never mispronounced the word. I'd all argue. Yeah, he's never mispronounced a word. And if it happened, it wasn't, it was, the job's done. What do you want for him? Yeah. Flood the emails. Let us know.

Yeah. Please don't. Let them know. I won't read the emails. I don't care. So he starts working at this, this clinic in a suburb of Sydney. And he seems to be really good at it. Opportunity start flooding and.

for him at this point, and he's so in demand that in the fall of 1954, he begins a 15-month tour for the World Health Organization, which is going to take him all across Canada, the United States, and Europe. Remember the World Health Organization, everyone? Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. This is, I mean, he doesn't do anything bad while he's with the WHO, but his time with

the WHO does kind of lead to something bad. It's not really the WHO's fault, but part of what this is is he's a young, up-and-coming doctor, and the WHO is having him shadow prominent psychiatrists in other countries, right, to see their methods to work with them. You know, it's a professional development thing. Right. And he finds himself as he's meeting these guys and he's seeing these new cutting-edge treatments they're working on. He finds himself gravitating to these, like, sexy new medications and electronic devices that are being used in therapy, like electroconvulsive therapy. He's really drawn to, right?

and that is, that's a real therapy. People use it's used today on, for example, people like epilepsy. But at this time, people are just kind of being electrocuted because they figure maybe that'll shake them out of it, right? And it did, right? It's not great. It's wildly overprescribed at this period of time in a way that is like often just torture. Yeah.

And he's also really interested, we're starting by the 50s. You have to remember, drugs aren't great until like the 9. is really when we start to figure out drugs, and especially we start to figure out sedatives, largely like binzos. Like, benzos have hit the, hit the floor, and doctors are like a pill that makes my patient just go away so I can do whatever I need to do on them and they won't say anything. Amazing, right? And he loves sedatives.

He finds himself, like, fascinated by benzos in particular. Honey, me too. Like what? Yeah. Who doesn't love a good Benzo, am I right? Yeah, they're good. But he's not taking them himself, right? He's just over prescribing them or loves to prescribe them?

At this point, yeah, he just loves to prescribe them. And it's important we would say over. But at the time, nobody's calling this over prescription. I don't even know that he's prescribing more than is normal for the day at this point in time because doctors love giving out Benzos in the 50s. Sure do. Sure do. Yeah.

That's why boomers are the way they are. maybe. Yeah. Like 80% of medicine is benzodiazepine and fucking cigarettes. Like that's most of modern medicine in the 50s. Bring it back. We should returvin. We should return it. That was the golden era. Yeah. God almighty. Speaking of gold, you know who might sell you benzos, you know, under the table if you're nice to them? Is it the products and services? That's right. That's right. We might be sponsored by a guy down the street who will sell you binzos or there might just be a guy down the street who will sell you benzos and if so i got to tell you that's just going to be straight fentanyl folks test your shit you know test your shit unless it's from our sponsors test your shit do whatever our sponsors give you or anyone

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Welcome back to the part, So, I don't know why I said it that way. What's happening here? New Orleans is getting to you. Yeah, that's got to be the Nalans. So let's take a step back here. We've just been talking about Dr. Bailey's live up to the kind of birth of his career and his tour with the WHO. He's trying out new drugs.

He's learning how to electrocute people, meeting fun doctors all over the world. So let's take a step back. And let's talk a little bit about the state of psychiatry and care for the mentally ill at this point, both in the West in general and in Australia in specific. primarily in Australia specifically. So the first mental health institution in Australia was the Australian lunatic asylum in Castle Hill in New South Wales, which they used to just call them that. Used to just call lunatic asylum. Crazy.

That's what I call my apartment. Yeah. So that was established in 1811, and I probably don't have to tell you. It wasn't a nice place. The lunatic asylum in 1811 attended. had no training. Treatment was not a, like people, there's no thought that you treat people. This is just a warehouse to stick crazy people until they die, right? Um, there's a lot of violence, a lot of brutality, a lot of sickness. It's gross. And it gets really crowded really quickly because

whenever someone doesn't, like, fit in and, you know, isn't able to, like, handle life on their own, they're just kind of thrown in here, right? A lot of these people are just like, not even folks that we would say have mental illnesses often. It's just like, oh, poor guy. Throwing. Roman the lunatic asylum. He's sleeping in the street. Something like that. I had a boyfriend who was six foot seven and he would sometimes be like, oh, what if about past lives for us?

And I was like, I would be in an asylum for being like having depression and being gay. And you're six foot seven. You would be in a freak show. Yeah. There's no romanticizing this. Yeah. You would be in a freak show or you would be in like one of those Austrian military units where they only hired tall guys.

to make the king look cooler. We're not having the Pleasantville experience. And I would have been burned at the steak. Like 100%. So that first lunatic asylum gets so crowded that in 1837, a new asylum has to be built and more follow a decade later. Per an article on the Chumsford Scandal blog, quote, mentally ill patients were commonly transferred from jails to these asylums

upon their opening. This gives clues as to the attitudes held towards those afflicted with mental illness. It was only in 1867 that an act of parliament made it mandatory for mentally impaired persons to be housed in asylums rather than prisons. This grouped together the mentally retarded or disabled and the mentally ill. In 1900, these categories were made distinct and the patients separated. Those are not all terms we use now, but this is what they're calling them at the time, right? They're bringing it back. Yeah, they're bringing it back.

Yeah, fucking streamers are. So things do start to get better, but even in asylums where the superintendents are promoting. like a philosophy of humane care and actually trying to treat people, there are still massive practical issues of there's never enough budget for these places to make them very nice. They're always overcrowded. It's hard to get supplies. And this leads to what's called a custodial approach. So asylums are regulating and housing people and they're acknowledged that they need treatment, but they're not providing treatment. The only thing that they use to control patients, they've got like violence and straight jackets, right? They're basically like beating them and

to comply them and putting them in straight jackets. The situation improves gradually and unevenly. By the time Dr. Bailey is in college, the focus had shifted to treating the illness as people presented, and that's now increasingly a part of the actual, like, asylum experience is now we're still, you know, pretty unpleasant places, but we're actually trying to treat you much more than we were before. And treatment in this case still does just often mean you're pounding people's brains with drugs, though, right?

There's not, you're not necessarily getting like useful therapy. They've figured out tranquilizers by this point, which have replaced straight jackets. They're like, look, we're not using straight jackets as much because we're just doping them up to the point where they can't move most of the time. Would the idea be to reintegrate them into society? Yes, that has finally broken through. And by the 50s and 60s, nurses and attendants theoretically at least, consider themselves to be working to treat and improve the conditions of their patients, not just to store them. People are often still just stored their whole lives, but there's at least an understanding that you're supposed to try to help these people.

You send your wife because she's depressed. They put her on benzos, send her back home. Now she just washes the dishes like a zombie. We did it. Exactly. Exactly. And honestly, theoretical 50s housewife, send me your benzos, please. I will put them to good use.

So, no, that's a joke. I would never. You never do something like that. Now, unfortunately, this is a primitive time still for mental health care treatment, and many doctors find themselves overwhelmed by the difficulty and horror of dealing with certain illnesses. This makes them desperate to find chemical solutions that are fast and simple. And this brings us to deep sleep therapy. The basic idea here is that for some mental illnesses, maybe you'll help a person if you just knock them out with drugs and keep them unconscious in something that's kind of, of adjacent to an artificially maintained coma for long periods of time, right?

How long? Great question, you know? We'll talk about that. But it's anywhere from, in some cases, because one thing they're using this for, where it might actually kind of help? I mean, the drugs are probably still making a net negative because of how much they're pumping, but like people who are insomniacs, they'll be like, okay, well, I can knock you out for 12 hours.

Then you catch up on your sleep, right? And that's initially a lot of the first tries. They are just trying for like a day, but they start trying it for like a couple a couple of days at a time, a week at a time, two weeks. Like, they'll do various versions of that as they explore it more. The first psychiatrist to try this, as far as we can tell, was a Scotsman named Neil McLeod. And he experimented with knocking people out for long periods of time as a treatment for schizophrenia, right?

His attitude is... I was going to say, I mean, I have mania, bipolar disorder. Mania could be good. It could be good for that. Yep, sleep it off, right? You can see why people would think this. He's not... McLeod is not a bad guy for wondering, fuck, this, maybe if I just let this person

sleep for like five days, they'll wake up better. I don't know. It's worth a try at the time, right? Now, as you probably know, all sleep is not created equal. You got your light sleep or slow wave sleep, and you've got deep sleep and you've got rapid eye movement sleep, better known as rim sleep because when you enter the rim stage of sleep, the human subconscious naturally generates the image and voice of Michael Stipe. We all experience this, right? That's why they call it REM sleep. You got me. I was not expecting it. I'll always make an R.A.M. joke, you know, it's a band. It's a band. They're definitely a band. Each stage of sleep has different effects and does different things for you. By this point, kind of the mid-20th century, scientists had

started to understand that deep sleep is particularly important for healing, right? Like, from physical ailments and stuff, you know, like, that's what you're, like, you're supposed to sleep if you're sick, you know, to get more sleep because your body does actually, like, heal and kind of restores itself during the sleep process. And deep sleep is really important for that, which is why if you don't get enough deep sleep, your health starts to suffer. Deep sleep also plays a role in memory consolidation, right? Your brain does a lot of its, like, sorting and filing memories, I guess, during the deep sleep stage. I want to quote from an article by the editorial team at neurolaunch. Proponents of deep sleep therapy hypothesized that by artificially extending the deep sleep phase,

they could enhance its restorative properties and provide therapeutic benefits for individuals suffering for mental health disorders. The theory suggested that prolonged deep sleep could allow the brain to reset natural neural pathways, reduce stress, and alleviate symptoms of various psychiatric conditions. However, it's important to note that the mechanisms proposed by deep sleep therapy advocates were largely speculative and lacked robust scientific evidence. The human sleep cycle is a complex and finely tuned process and artificially manipulating it for extended periods of time carries significant risks and potential consequences. Yeah, I was going to say the opposite. The opposite of that is you're sleeping so much that you have a fog and your brain is actually working worse. Yeah, yeah.

And that's the thing with depression, right? You want to sleep all the time. Or it's one thing that can happen with depression. People tend to want to just knock themselves out for long periods of time. Yeah, you lose track of, of, you lose track of the days, you lose track of like your own memories, what's a dream, what's not, you become Leonardo DiCaprio and Inception. Sure. Yep.

But I think you also, I feel like I get, I think you get why a well-meaning doctor or a patient would feel like, oh yeah, that makes sense. I see why that would help. Yeah, like, sure, you know, let's give it a try. Well, it's like you're depressed or you're stressed out, right? they do give you still a benzo. Yeah, if you're lucky. So let's talk about how deep sleep therapy works.

Once a patient was identified as a good candidate for this treatment, they'd be administered a heavy dose of various sedatives, described by the people at NeuroLunch as a cocktail of barbiturates and other sedative drugs, which if I'm honest. Oh, lucky. I know. It sounds pretty great, right? This is the worst two people to do this episode.

I know, I know. So as I was reading, as I was like doing my research, I kept being like, fuck, I do want to try this. This sounds rad. So the cocktail is three major ingredients. Chloral hydrate is a big one. This is a chemical that had come out of Germany as a popular sedative in the 1870s. And it works very well, but it's also extraordinarily dangerous. Just being close to the vapors of chloral hydrate can fuck you up.

It's also super addictive, which is a problem because if you're keeping someone unconscious and giving them this every day for two weeks, their body can wake up addicted to chloral hydrate, right? This is not ideal. Holy shit. Yeah. It's also, and it also causes lots of physical problems for patients, including because it's a central nervous system, depressant, heart and lung failure. So people can die pretty easily overdosing on this stuff.

Oh, my God, that's so much more dangerous than I thought. It's a serious drug. Chlorohydrate is a real-ass drug, and it's not the only one in this cocktail. No, but how much are you taking? Is it like a tincture or you're taking a lot of there? Great question. Great question. It varies on the doctor. It varies on the doctor. And sometimes it is administered via IV. Sometimes it's administered via like a series of pills, right? Usually they're taking pills to put them down initially and then an IV kind of keeps them topped up during the period of time where they're unconscious, right?

Another major ingredient of the cocktail is ammo barbitol, which is a barbiturate derivative that was known as a street drug under the name Blue Heavens and sounds awesome. It is also super addictive and causes horrific withdrawals that can straight up kill you. Benzos are one of those things if you are addicted to benzos and you stop, it can just kill your ass like the withdrawal can. You have to taper off, often with medical assistance. It can be a real problem. Blue Heaven? Blue Heavens is the street name for Ammo Barbital. And, yeah, another major part of the cocktail was sodium Theopentol, which is used as a general

anesthetic, but is better known as one of the more popular truth serums. Truth serum. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I knew that. I knew truth serum. Now, it's also a rapid onset barbiturate, like Amobarbital. So in addition to this is like chloral hydrate and two rhapsoderm. habit onset barbiturates is what you're taking together in this cocktail.

Okay. So your heart and lungs are failing. You are... Absolutely. You ain't breathing shit. You don't get your mind on something called blue heaven. And you won't stop telling your secrets. Exactly. Perfect. Wow. That's a Friday night, baby. Yeah. It sounds like a pretty nice Friday night. If you've never been on like a, if you've never taken like a heavy dose of Xanax or something, when I was a kid and I'm like a kid, I mean, like 20 years old.

The person I was seeing at the time gave me what we both thought we each took a quarter bar of Xanax. This is my first time taking Xanax. Sure. She'd been taking it for a while. But it was street zanz. And what we got was, thankfully, this was not the era of fentanyl yet. It was definitely Alprazolam that was pressed into that street pill.

But when you get a street pill, sometimes it's the strength of a normal pill. Sometimes it's much stronger. So I took a quarter bar, which should just kind of mellow you out. and I took it and I remember stepping down the street out in front of my house and then I came to myself sitting on my couch 30 hours later without any memories of the intervening period whatsoever. I would do that. It would totally wipe. Yeah.

I would not even know how I got. Yeah. Were you living in New York? Where were you? No, and I was in Texas at this point in time. Oh, Texas. Okay. But you've had some hot hot zans too, I'm guessing.

And that's part of why, especially. especially in the mid-aughts, there were a lot of deaths due to Zanz that had fint in them or who were just, that were just way too hot. Because if you're, I mean, Xanax is not a great drug. You don't want to, if you can kill yourself mixing it with alcohol, it's really dangerous to mix with like fucking Coke or whatever, especially in high quantities. I mean, if you have no idea how strong the pill you're taking is, like, that's particularly dangerous.

But I bring this up to be like, that's how powerful this shit is. You can take a pill the size of the end of your finger and you're just gone for a full 24 hours or more, right? And these people are taking way more good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is why they're throwing in the chloral hydrant.

They don't want you functioning for shit during this. I took, I was taking Ambien for a while. And I stopped because I would, I would go to bed wearing one thing, take the Ambien, and then wake up in different clothes in a different part of my house. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's fucking wild stuff. I was like, what is, a food would be missing? I'd be like, I guess I ate something. I must have done something.

Something. Yeah. Who knows? Who knows? One time I looked in my Google searches and I had Googled scary horses. Yeah, I have a couple of notebooks from times like that in my life where it'd be like, oh, I had a really great idea for an article while I was fucked up and I'll look over and it'll just say something like completely incomprehensible. Or I'll just not be able to read my own handwriting. It's like, thanks, drug me. Like really the idea of the century there. the word purple and then four paragraphs of unreadable squiggles around it. I'll turn this into a book immediately. Brilliant. That's like that thing where they're like, artists have to be like booked up to me. I'm like, I don't know about that.

Nah, no, no. There's certainly limits to when it's how much of that can be handy or useful. So one of the first physicians to explore the use of deep sleep therapy or DST was Jacob Klyssie. He was a Swiss psychiatrist who seems to have had a deal with the pharmaceutical manufacturer Roche because he only used their barbiturates in his cocktail. Per an article on the website Mad in America by Dr. Philip Hickey, quote, In Clacy's first publication on this matter, he acknowledged that three of the 26 patients

had died during the study due to bronchon pneumonia or cardiac hemorrhages. This is about 12%. Nevertheless, the method achieved some popularity in the 50s and 60s, and was used by William Sargent in the UK and Donald Cameron in Canada, both considered eminent psychiatrists. So the first guy to try deep sleep therapy kills 12% of the 26 patients that he... This is because people didn't talk to each other. I mean, no, unfortunately not.

They're reading this. Sargent and Cameron find out about this because they read this study where he kills 12% of his patients and are like, I got to get on that. But the people, the people don't know about it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the people taking agreeing to the treatment are not being told. So yeah, and the first study we did on the... this. It killed three of the 26 people in it. You want to roll those dice? Yeah. Exactly. No. And this is part of the problem is it is the standard to have consent in this period of time.

But what they, what consent means in the 50s and 60s is not what we would call consent today. Because a big thing, doctors, there's a bit, doctors don't like explaining stuff to patients in this period of time. I'm not, they don't always do it now. Doctors don't like explain stuff to patients now at all. Yeah. This is like, it is, but it's considered. it's like offensive to a lot of doctors that a patient would have any input at all. Oh, it's like how dare you question my expertise? I'm a doctor. La la la la la la la. Yeah.

Not to victim blame, but I think you should ask every time you're prescribed something, has this killed 12% of the people who take it? Does this kill 12% of the people who do it? And if they say no and they really killed 13%, that's on you. That's on you. Solid question to ask. One of the problems here, because these are doctors often working in public health for the mentally ill in the 60s, one of the issues is that a lot of the people they're being sent are not compas mentists anyway, so they're not able and often not asked to consent to anything. But there's certainly, these guys' attitude, no one outside is going to come in and say, like, well, you're giving all these guys a treatment that might kill 12% of them.

everyone else who is in the government is in like a local who should be a watchdog for this is just like we want these people off the streets keep them away from where anyone will watch them i don't care you're a doctor do whatever to them fuck it right that's not all that because obviously regular people who are out in society and stuff and not institutionalized get these therapies too but a lot of them are institutionalized people and just nobody gives a fuck what happens to them right that's why they're doing shit like this um yeah still now um so the amount of time you're kept under during deep sleep therapy varies pretty widely. The vast majority of therapeutic treatments in Europe seem to have been a day or less. It's very uncommon for the

credible doctors doing this at the time to keep people under for more than a day at a time. But some researchers experiment with extended periods of time up to like two weeks long. Her neuro launch quote. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, and it gets just you wait, my friend. Yeah. Two weeks. That's a coma. Legally, that's a coma. That's a fucking coma. Per neurolog.com, quote, during this time, patients were kept in a state of unconsciousness with brief periods of wakefulness for feeding

and basic care. Monitoring and safety protocols were essential components of deep sleeve therapy, given the risks associated with prolonged sedation. Medical staff closely monitored patients' vital signs, including heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory function. Intravenous fluids and nutritional support were provided to maintain hydration and prevent malnutrition. Sovie's going to put a picture up.

You can see on the video version. If not, I will describe it. Yeah, you're seeing a feeding of a patient here. So you've got a man in a hospital bed, a 60s-looking one, unconscious. There's a doctor or an orderly, I can't really tell, standing behind him who's got his, he's holding his head. He's got a hand on either side of this guy's head to keep his head straight. And then there is, you know, like a beer bong? I was going to say they're beer bonging food into him.

Yeah, it's like what they're using is like a funnel attached to a tube that goes into his nose. And this guy's just pouring from honestly what looks like a carafe of coffee. I'm sure it's some like nutritional supplement or just hydration or whatever. But it looks like he's just pouring coffee in this guy's nose. Me in the morning trying to get up. Two people have to nose feed me coffee. Yeah, you got a nose feed. I can't get out of bed until I've had an entire liter of coffee poured up my nose.

You know, so if you'll tell you, that's the only way I want. work in the morning. True. Right. And then as soon as they're done, my eyes pop open and I pop out of bed, like, don't wake daddy. Yeah, thank you for the don't wake daddy reference. That's really going, that's going to be really popular with the chunk of our audience whose knees are starting to fail. Oh, and REM isn't? Oh, and Michael Stipe isn't? Yeah, it's okay. The people who would most get the Michael Stipe joke can't hear anymore. They're Gen X. Robert. Like, their, their bodies fail to long ago. Stop insulting the people that support us.

I know. I love you guys. The Gen X listeners know. I love you, Gen X listeners. Yeah. So what I just described is how deep sleep therapy was supposed to work, the fact that you are supposed to generally be under for no longer than a day at a time, and you're woken regularly to be fed, to be, like, moved, to be like you should be walked around

to help prevent bed sores. But you know what that takes? work. You got to have people who are keeping track of everybody's schedule and like waking guys and putting them back down and moving them around and cleaning them. And if you really want to cut costs, why not just keep them knocked out instead and just have me unconscious the whole time. Like they need to, save money. And like, they need to stand you up and like weekend at Bernie's you around. Cheaper. Cheaper is better. Cheaper is better. They just have one guy that's kind of making you walk. Yeah, I mean, usually they just don't do that. Usually just leave you unconscious.

That becomes increasingly in big facilities, right? In psychiatric hospitals. Because they often don't have adequate staff, too. But they are supposed to, and I should know, even though the good places, they are waking you up regularly moving around feeding you, you don't remember any of that. You're still benzowed out the whole time. So for you, it's still like you were just gone for two weeks or whatever. So the most common early treatment deep sleep therapy is used for is schizophrenia. but it's also used for severe depression and, as I said, insomnia.

Over time, doctors explore treating anxiety disorders and addiction with this therapy as well. And you can see the logic here, right? Oh, somebody wants to sober up from whatever, knock them out for a few days until they detox, right? Great idea. Now, there's some downsides to this. There's some reasons why this is not as good an idea as it seems, which is that withdrawal from drugs you are physically addicted to often carries physiological effects. And most withdrawals are not fatal.

Right. But it can become fatal when someone is going through withdrawal from a drug they're physically addicted to and you deeply depress their central nervous system for days on in with huge doses of benzos. So people die sometimes. Why, wait, what do you mean? How? Like, they stop breathing. It's a CNS depressive. Yeah. So they just stop. I mean, there's other ways this kills them too, but a lot of times they just stop fucking breathing or their heart just stops, right? there are other ways this cocktail kills people. Some people are just allergic, right, and have bad reactions or some people are more vulnerable to benzos than others.

And so a dose that's okay for one is dangerous or fatal for another person, right? And they're not always being as careful as they should be, right? And allergies. And again, oftentimes this is being done in facilities where they're trying to deal with as many people as quickly as possible. And they're not overly concerned with stuff like, you know, safety as much as they should be, right? That said, physicians love this because psychiatrists love this because it gives what

certain kinds of psychiatrists, because obviously you get your Freudian types who it's all about talk therapy, but there are psychiatrists whose whole thing is drugs, drugs, give them something to, you know, that's all that matters is dosem, right? There's a place for aspects of that, obviously. Sure. But when you take it to the too far extent, you're like, I just don't want to deal, I don't want to talk to the patient at all. I don't want to deal with their shit. I want them knocked out, and then I can give them whatever medication I think will help them because I'm the doctor,

and it's only my opinion that matters, right? That is how a lot of these guys think. Were these people brought in by their families? Or, like, so if they died, would somebody care? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes no. Some of these people are basically wards of the state or are brought in by the state. They're arrested or something. They're sentenced to this place because they're they're non-composed menace, but they've committed a crime. But a lot of people take themselves in because, like, I can't sleep. I'm depressed. I'm suffering horrible anxiety, right?

So it's a mix of ways people get into this. But a lot of doctors are very enthusiastic about it. And in terms of when you're talking about the practitioners who are advocates of this therapy, they will tell patients that they can get relief from their symptoms after just a couple of weeks that they won't even be awake for. Instead of basically they're saying, look, you can go. go to the Freudian and maybe he'll help you, but it'll take years of therapy,

or knock your problem out in two weeks, you're not even awake. Wow. You know? That's like those, they have an ad on Santa Monica and Coanga for whatever that thing is. That's like the neuro link or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It literally says like, don't be, like depression, gone. I'm like, that can't be right. And I'm always, you should, and you should always be super, super on guard whenever anyone

is talking about like a serious mental health and like and this just knocks it out like well has that ever happens

mental health there's some stuff like the thing that changed my when I was a kid and very anti-drug the thing that like changed my mind

about pot legality is I had a friend with multiple sclerosis who like she was my wow guild and she got on we got on like a webcam chat so she could show me

how her hands were shaking as her friend prepared a joint for her so she can end like out and I was like oh of course right oh right that was all it took for me right sometimes you do get stuff that is that miraculous for certain things but not for something that's as complex and as wide ranging as just depression right right that's just I don't trust anybody making claims like that um so as time goes on it becomes clear the deep sleep therapy has a lot of deadly issues with it uh patients under going at have a high tendency to contract pneumonia.

They get bed sores that often get hideously infected in part because since these people are unconscious for days on end, the orderly these are supposed to be taking them to the bathroom. But if you're just letting someone sleep, maybe they're not. Maybe they're putting them in a diaper. Maybe the diaper overflows. Maybe they're not changing the diaper often enough. And so you have bed sores that then people get shit wedged into. Not good for your health.

For the video people that can see my face. You get it. But for the audio listeners, I would say through like 75% of what Robert's been saying, my mouth is just wide open. It's not pleasant. I am so shocked. And this is not everywhere that does this. There are good facilities where, and in the good facilities, people still die because the treatment is inherently dangerous and a bad idea. But they're not getting bed sores, right?

They're not sitting in their own shit. but there are places where that happens, right? And in all cases, even when you're doing this well, there's a risk of blood clots because people are on their backs laying down for days at a time. And when you do that, sometimes you pop a fucking clot, right? Right, right. The medical term is pop a clot. Pop a fucking clot.

There's a lot of risks with this shit. And it becomes very clear as time goes on. And so a lot of doctors start criticizing the therapy. And people pull back from it. A number of practitioners stop using it. a number of hospitals stop using it. And the practitioners that are using it, most of them substantially narrow the scope of its prescription, right? They start sending it out less and less and are more discriminating about when they use it. By the time World War II ends, the vast

majority of patients who are getting deep sleep therapy in the UK are war veterans with what we now describe as PTSD. And I got to tell you, thinking back to 2017 was when I had my first really bad PTSD break. There was like a three to four week period where I was borderline psychotic. Like I I was not making rational decisions. I couldn't hold a thought together. Like I was, I don't know how to describe you if you haven't been there, like how disorienting and debilitating it was. If I could have just been unconscious for three or four weeks, I probably would have said yes. Yeah, but do you think that would have helped you?

No, no, no. The data says it wouldn't have, right? But I do understand, I can see how in good faith a doctor would be like, this is probably the best thing for this guy. And I can see how a fucking vet would be like, please just knock me unconscious for a while. Like as long as I, you promise I won't dream, yeah, let's fucking do it. You know, like I get why people try this. Yeah. I mean, I have bipolar disorder.

And during mania, I could see like people well-meaning family members or something being like, knock them out. Knock them out. So that he can't do anything to himself. Right. And it's the, I should also note here that by this point, point in time in the UK, when they're prescribing these soldiers, they're not knocking them out for days at a time. The standard length of treatment is less than a day, right? They're doing that sometimes for, like, regularly, like periodically you'll go in and they'll knock you out for hours,

but they're not, they're not being unconscious for days at a time. So what did help you? Oh, me? Yeah. Time, some amount, some of it was therapy. It's mostly just like time. Honestly, like it's it's it's mostly just time like kind of PRN in the moment. There's some some medications that offer some benefits to some people, but when you actually look into PTSD medicine, there's a lot of like efficacy is not always very high for the medications that have been prescribed traditionally for PTSD. Time is the thing that's had the biggest impact on me. And these people don't want time. Well, yeah, they don't want time and they don't want time. and the doctors are like promising them they don't need it, right?

Right. So you see both these are not, this is not like a lot of con cures where like parents are shooting bleach into their kids to stop them from having autism or something. I understand and sympathize with the people who would think this might work, with the patients who would agree to this, right? I probably would have at this point, at that point in time, if I'd been dealing with fucking war trauma or something. I could see myself being like, yeah, man, knock me the fuck out, right?

So among most psychiatrists then who are still using deep sleep therapy have significantly like tempered down it, right? You're not knocking people out for days at a time anymore. You're only using it in a couple of cases. But some psychiatrists, a small number, still see deep sleep therapy is having a massive value. And the primary use it has is that when someone is unconscious, they can't stop you from doing stuff to them, right? And I don't mean... I don't mean if, in like, the gross, although that probably does happen. I mean electroconvulsive therapy, which is at this point, as I said, a common treatment

for all manner of mood disorders and compulsive behaviors. Because it's scary and unpleasant, a lot of patients refuse to have it done to them. So doctors start telling them, okay, what if I knock you out and you're not awake and we use electroshock therapy, you won't be aware of it or remember it. So some patients say, okay, we'll try it then. some doctors though and that's fine right i mean again it's time proved it's not a by a good idea but that's consent if a doctor's saying hey can i knock you unconscious and use eCT on you and you say yes that's consent right some doctors are like well if they're already unconscious why don't i need to get consent

i can just shock them like fuck asking them i'll just do it you know what are they going to do right well they'll be barred the fuck out if they say why did you do eCT on me i'll say you agree to it while you were barred the fuck out. That's what I was going to say. Are they later saying that they did it, or is the person, like, not aware that that's what happened? Usually, often people don't find out. And when they do, they're generally, because we have a good amount of it. Generally, when they find out and complain, they're told, no, no, you agreed to this, you know?

Right? Here's the paperwork, right? So this is not a high point for medical ethics. Dr. Donald Cameron, the famous Canadian. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Dr. Donald Cameron, the famous Canadian physician who experimented with deep sleep therapy, was later criticized for drugging and shocking patients without their consent and exploring practical torture techniques as a psychiatrist.

He was advising, I think, the government on how to, how theoretically torture should work, right? Oh, theoretically. Yeah. Dr. William Sargent, the prominent U.K. physician that I mentioned earlier, wrote this about electrocuting patients without their consent in a medical textbook that was published in 1970. Two. That's so recent. It's really recent. Here's Billy Sarge.

Many patients unable to tolerate a long course of ECT can do so when anxiety is relieved by narcosis. What is so valuable is that they generally have no memory about the actual length of the treatment or the numbers of ECT used. After three or four treatments without narcosis, they may ask for ECT to be discontinued because of an increasing dread of further treatments. Combining sleep with ECT avoids this. All sorts of treatment can be given while the patient has kept sleeping, including

a variety of drugs in ECT, which together generally induce considerable memory loss for the period under narcosis. As a rule, the patient does not know how long he has been asleep, or what treatment, even including ECT, he has been given. Under sleep, one can now give many kinds of physical treatment, necessary, but often not easily tolerated. We may be seeing here a new exciting beginning in psychiatry and the possibility of a treatment era, such as followed the introduction of anesthesia to surgery. So Sargent is saying, DST is in valuable because sleep therapy and of itself works. This is the future of all psychiatry because the future of psychiatry is knocking your

patient out and doing whatever the fuck you want to them until you fix them. Well, one, how do you even define fixed at that point? You're just like a blank. I got a lot of questions. Well, sure. Yeah, I'm asking, yes, right. And two, your body still remembers. Like, if you, if someone broke your leg and then knocked you out and then you woke

up and your leg had been healed, you would still have effects of like a broken leg. Right. Of course. Yes. Yes. The body keeps the score, which is certainly true in the case of a broken leg. Speaking of bodies, you know who's killed a lot of people? What?

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And we're back. So, deep sleep therapy speaks to a powerful desire among many mental health care practitioners. We want to be able to treat our patients under the hood without interference from their conscious objections or comments. Jesus Christ. Yeah, not great. This brings us back to Dr. Harry Bailey. Bailey became aware of Dr. Sargent and his methods while he was doing his 15-month

world tour with the WHO. He worked alongside Dr. Sargent. for a period of time and observed him treating his patients. When Bailey returned to Australia, he was full to bursting with exciting new ideas. He quickly convened Calan Park Mental Hospital to establish a cerebral surgery and research unit, which opened in 1957 with him as the director. Can we talk about how menacing Dr. Sargent sounds? It's a pretty cool name.

You said it several times, and I was like, ooh, I don't know about that guy. What I would like to find is a guy with a last name Sergeant to make him do a doctor, and then a guy with the last name doctor, and you have him join the military and becomes a sergeant. And then you've got Dr. Sargent and Sergeant Doctor. And they get married. Yeah, I don't know what to do after that point, but, yeah, there you go. And they get married and hyphenate their name.

So it's now Dr. Sergeant Doctor and Sergeant Dr. Sargent Doctor and Sergeant. The dream. The dream. The dream. Bailey begins experimenting with new ECT methods, often using various barbiturates and downers to knock patients unconscious first. For Dr. Philip Hickey, Sergeant and Bailey would mail each other, bragging about how many

patients they'd knocked out each week, keeping score like Gimley and Legolus during the Battle of Helms Deep. Like they're literally being like, here's how many people I put into a coma this week. Oh man, you're falling behind. Better knock some more people out. Which you might think maybe leads to them knocking people unconscious and drugging them who don't need it at all, even under their own standards just because they win a contest. Maybe.

So this all seems pretty fucked up, a lot of what we've talked about. But I got to say what Sergeant and Bailey are doing is still fairly widely accepted behavior within their professional circles. Not all of them, but within psychiatry, generally speaking, this is not controversial at this point in time. It's certainly not something people are angry about. There is general criticism of deep sleep therapy. But Dr. Sergeant and Dr. Bailey are both award-winning, prominent, and respected members

of the profession within their field within their countries. Now, do you know if those same medications were being used for other stuff? Like, were they giving you? Tons, yes. Like, were they were giving you benzos for, for like physical ailments and other things? Like, okay.

One of the reasons why it's so hard to get benzos now is that in, from the 50s through the 70s, they were handing them out like fucking candy, especially to like depressed housewives, um, who also drank because it was the 50s and 60s. And so a shitload of people lost their moms because they, would overdose on benzos and alcohol. It happened to fuckload in during this period of time. But I'm not

talking about depression. I'm talking about like, do they give amyl barbitol to someone who's like, my kidneys hurt? No, no, no, no, no. You wouldn't, I mean. It's all psychiatric. I think you, I think there is a degree because some of these, some of these are used before surgery and stuff. So yes, some of these, I don't know if it's amyl barbitol, but some of the stuff that is in this cocktail are used to help knock people out for other procedures, right? Because they're, They're good for that, yes. Okay. But no, someone's probably not getting prescribed ammo barbitol because, like, they've got a fucking stomach ache or whatever.

That would be kind of weird. So one of the issues at this point in time, and it's still somewhat of an issue today, but it's much worse back then, is that to people outside of the medical system, including people in the government, mental health care is basically a black box. No one really knows what goes on in these facilities that doesn't work or, you know, get admitted to them. and the people who don't work or get admitted to these facilities kind of don't want to know anything about them, right? So Dr. Bailey is primarily the only people who know what he's doing are his peers, and they love him. He receives the Norton Manning Memorial Prize for Psychiatry, as I said, and then, yeah, a prize

for pediatrics. Per the Australian Encyclopedia of Biography, his reputation high in 1959, Bailey was appointed medical superintendent of Calin Park, a large institution suffering from years of neglect in a culture of confinement. He proved to be an impatient reformer. Within a few months, he submitted a report to the Public Service Board with detailed allegations of staff cruelty, patient neglect, and daily pilfering from hospital stores. Subsequent police and Department of Public Health investigations found nothing to substantiate the charges. Undeterred, Bailey blew the whistle and dramatic newspaper headlines embarrassed the Heffron government,

particularly the responsible minister, William Sheehan. Despite the resulting Royal Commission report into Callan Park by John McCleman's confirmed many of Bailey's allegations while concluding that some are exaggerated. So he's looking pretty good at this point, right? He's a whistleblower. He's a whistleblower. There's real problems at this facility. But you're also seeing some of the signs of the later problem this guy's going to be because even though there's real problems that he's right about, he's lying too. He's pretending stuff's worse than it is. He's exaggerating. He's kind of a showman. He likes drama, right? He's also got this problem of of he knowingly judges up or just the truth or just lies,

but he also gets very convinced of his own rightness and righteousness. And even when people around him are convinced he's wrong, that just convinces him further that he's right. And in this case, that's a good thing, because this hospital did need to be investigated. But that's not going to be the case much longer. Yeah. Yeah.

He's like, he's like, it's not going to be bad enough to tell them this one thing. So I'll just make up a bunch of stuff. and then it will be undeniable. Right, right, right. And one of the issues here is that this is a good thing he does, and it makes him one of the most famous doctors in Australia at the time, because he's in the news, or at least in New South Wales at the time,

because he's in the news a lot because it's a big story that the shit got covered up. So you've got, at this point, Dr. Bailey is not just an award-winning psychiatrist with widespread professional acclaim in several continents, but a crusading activist for medical ethics. Obviously, this is the guy you trust. if your loved one needs mental health care, he's the best guy to go to. Dr. Bailey after this point.

Yeah. Not going to be good. Yeah. Too much power. Yep. The lesson here, folks, is if anyone ever does anything good, you need to.

Look into it. Yeah, look into it. Throw them into the ocean. The instant someone does anything good, toss them into the sea, you know? I just think it when you do that, like I see the merit of it, like he's trying.

But when you do that, But you don't get to the actual heart of the issues because you're just compounding stuff. So like your actual thing that you're worried about doesn't, it's not in the conversation because you're just making stuff up to have some sort of sweeping, you know? Yeah, part of the issue is that like Dr. Bailey probably even did hamper the reform efforts by lying about shit. Yes, that's what I was trying to say, yeah. But regular people don't know shit about that, right?

He's the hero doctor. So he starts a private practice and it's immediately a success. He's making a fuckload of money because I don't know if you all have noticed this, but a lot of people don't trust doctors. And so if you're the guy who's all over the news because he's the doctor who blew the whistle on a bunch of bad doctors, you might attract a really loyal following of people who don't trust doctors. This is kind of what, I mean, in a different way, this is kind of what Andrew Wakefield does, right? I mean, Wakefield doesn't ever actually bust any real problems. He doesn't ever bring up any, like, solve any real problems. But he's a doctor who's trying to warn people about the bad other doctors.

And if you're someone who doesn't trust a doctor, that's a really appealing kind of guy, right? I was thinking about him, yeah. Yep. Bailey is very appealing when he starts in private practice. This is 1962 when he begins his private practice. And in 1963, he works out of deal with two other doctors. Ian Gardner and John Gill to treat patients together at the Chelmsford Private Hospital. This is not a normal medical employment situation for Dr. Bailey.

Chelmsford was a small for-profit hospital, and Bailey had helped to fund it. He's a part owner in the hospital. VNSA on the website waking.io. The financial arrangements revealed by the Royal Commission painted a picture of systemic exploitation. Bailey received both his standard consultation fees and a percentage of the hospital's revenue from each patient he admitted. This created a perverse incentive to extend treatment duration regardless of medical necessity, to admit patients with minor conditions who didn't require hospitalization, to discourage early

discharge, even when families requested it, and to maximize the use of expensive medications and procedures. Every time someone comes in, and Dr. Bailey, he's like, he knows this person doesn't need to be hospitalized, but he tells him you need to be hospitalized for three days. He knows exactly how much of that money goes directly into his pocket, right? not just from seeing a patient, but from the, he gets a cut of the cost of their treatment every time. Yeah.

So every new thing he can stick on, money in the bank, right? Why wouldn't he use as much expensive drugs as possible and as many expensive, right? That's part of why he's doing, he likes ECT on unconscious people, is it allows him to charge for an expensive procedure that he doesn't have to get them to agree to and he can basically double his money on the fucking sleep therapy. He doesn't even have to do it. He can just say it. And he doesn't even have to do it.

Right. Right. Or have one of his other. Because he's got other doctors here. He often has them do it. Just going to say it, this Dr. Bailey guy. Not great guy. Yep.

So by the time he starts at Chelmsford, Dr. Bailey considers deep sleep therapy to be more than just a subject of intellectual interest. It is the core of a financial enterprise that he is starting to build. With DST, you can. You can keep patients down for weeks at a time and they're paying for every day in the hospital and you're getting money for every day they spend in the hospital. Dr. Bailey used his prestige in the fact that his hospital was the only one offering this treatment in the area to charge patients between 400 and 600 percent more than comparable treatments cost from other practitioners. He regularly kept people unconscious and sedated for days beyond what his treatment plans suggested to maximize the amount of time he could build. via that same essay, quote,

some families reported bills exceeding their annual income. Did the other doctors, the two other doctors that were working with him, did they know that he was scamming? Oh, yeah. Several of the doctors at Chelmsford are directly implicated. They are helping him. They are benefiting. So one way or the other benefiting as well from the scams. Yes, the other doctors are very implicated in this.

Now, I don't know if they're fully aware, especially at the start of how bad this is. There's some, especially the doctors and nurses working early on, might think they're really doing the best because, again, we don't, less is known, right? But he's doing this for almost 20 years. It becomes clear at a certain point, this is just a grift that's hurting people. Right. Yeah.

Speaking of grifts that hurt people, you know what my favorite grift is? Products and services? No, ending this podcast for the day. Because I'm tired. We'll be back Thursday with more. You want to plug your plugables at the end here, though? Sure. These are what one would call my products and services.

That's right. You can go to my substack, 1,000 natural shocks. That substack.com. There's also a... Just like ECT, by the way. Oh, yeah. Didn't even think that.

That's right. It's a Hamlet reference, because I'm unbearable. And then there's the 1,000 Natural Shocks podcast. I also do a podcast called Best Gabe Ever. That's more lighthearted. And that's it. Yay.

Gabe, I think I know how you and I can make a shitload of money. Is it shocking people? Well, not exactly. I'm a doctor in the state of New Jersey, according to this plaque I received once. So we open a clinic and I get people huge doses of benzos to knock them out. And then instead of giving them electroshock therapy, we play your podcast. of shops. Oh, I really thought you were going to say we play REM.

I really thought you were going to say we play REM. No, no. Incredible. Michael Stipe gets enough fucking money. All right, Gabe. Thank you very much. We'll be back with Part 2 on Thursday, folks. Until then, go to hell.

I love you. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel,

YouTube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking. Hi, it's Jill Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Amanda Knox. I'm Amanda Knox.

and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby,

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families.

Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.