Are the Major Religions A Product of Mental Illness?

(Note:  This article isn't about whether religious people today are mentally ill but whether said religions arose from the delusions, obsessions & tics of mentally ill people thousands of years ago, a question I've rarely if ever seen asked). 

If there's one constant throughout human history, it's mental illness.  Even though they weren't always recognized as such, disorders like bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, OCD, psychopathy/Anti-Social Personality Disorder ("sociopathy") & all the rest have stalked Homo sapiens since we crawled down from the trees & set out on our mission to discover fire & invent the wheel.  As stated, we didn't always identify mental illness as a disorder originating in the brain--the mentally ill were called eccentrics, witches, shamans, hermits & demons and treated in any number of ways... most of which were terrible.  A few Indigenous cultures like the Maori of New Zealand believed schizophrenia to be a generational spiritual gift among other things.  But the proof that these conditions have always been with us exists across time & geographical locations.  

When laypeople think of mental illness, they often imagine a disheveled homeless person mumbling to themselves & pushing a shopping cart.  But this is only a tiny fraction of the mentally ill population.  Some are extremely charismatic, have a magnetic manic energy & great persuasive powers but can turn aggressive & punishing on a dime.  Think Jim Jones or David Koresh.  Others are quiet & introverted with a need for control over their immediate environment (germophobes, OCD, agoraphobics, socially anxious folks).  

There are endless types & severities of mental illness, and you don't always need a degree in psychology to spot them.  Think of mental illness as an extreme form of normal human behavior that interferes with some aspect of a person's life, be it work & finances, health & hygiene, interpersonal relationships or all of the above.  While most symptoms of mental illness cause distress, there can also be a few positive aspects, such as hypomania in bipolar disorder--which can cause increased productivity & euphoria--or depressive realism in those with clinical depression.

Mental Illness as the Seed of Religion

It's okay... Rorschach Jesus can't hurt you.

If you look at the 3 major Abrahamic religions, you see some very obvious threads of mental illness running through them--particularly the need for control, externalized.  In Islam this takes the form of intricate hand-washing rituals which are a textbook sign of OCD, not to mention all the other "purity" rules dictated in the Quran.  The Old Testament of Judaism & Christianity forbids wearing mixed fabrics, eating shellfish or picking up sticks on the Sabbath (punishable by death!), which points to an extreme need for order & control.  Just look how extremely detailed this entry on cleanliness is (Numbers 19:1-22).  

On a more general level, the overarching effect of organized religion on society--creating social hierarchies (God > Man > Woman > Child > Dog) is all about keeping order.  The more conservative or orthodox a religious person is, the more concerned with controlling the behavior of others they usually are.  The freedom of others to use drugs, get an abortion, marry/love any consenting adult they want, dress how they like & enjoy other freedoms greatly bothers these people.  This need for control & order can be part of a larger pathology and is seen in many abusive relationship dynamics.  

Hyper-religiosity is an intriguing symptom of various mental illnesses.  It can take many forms, such as a false belief that an individual is God or that every inconsequential event has a deep spiritual or mystical meaning.  Disorders in which hyper-religiosity has been observed include bipolar disorder (Kanye, you reading this?), schizophrenia spectrum disorders and more serious neurological conditions like Frontotemporal Dementia, temporal lobe epilepsy & Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.  In severe cases it can spin out of control & lead to deadly outcomes.  Child killers Lori Vallow & Andrea Yates both experienced religious hallucinations & delusions in the days/weeks leading up to their crimes.  

The resurrection of Christ sounds a lot like a case of Folie à deux, or "folly of two".  In this bizarre & rare condition, hallucinations or delusions become contagious, spreading from one person to another like an infectious illness.  (Below is a particularly disturbing case caught on tape in which two sisters ran into traffic for no apparent reason).  Whoever saw Jesus raise from the dead was likely experiencing something akin to mania or psychosis, either organically or perhaps due to lack of sleep, dehydration or even ingestion of a hallucinogen.  Perhaps they were bipolar or schizophrenic, or maybe just misinterpreting events like seeing the rock in front of his grave moved.  In any case, the other people who came along experienced Folie à deux when they became convinced by this person's complete & total conviction & the rest is history.  

Motorway Madness - Swedish Twins (Folie à Deux)

There's also the very real (if controversial) possibility that some of these saviors & messiahs were deliberately deceiving their flocks due to a desire for power & adulation.  Ask yourselves why it is that we can identify modern cult leaders as crazed manipulators but religious leaders from ancient times get the benefit of the doubt.  The Rajneesh is a laughable con artist but the Buddha was sooooo enlightened & zen?  Okay.  Mohammad openly slept with children as young as 9 (Aisha), yet Muslims fly into a rage if you so much as question this.  Many so-called moderate Muslims were silent when the fatwa was issued on author Salman Rushdie for his "crime" of writing The Satanic Verses, a book critical of Islam.  Ditto when the horrific attack at Charlie Hebdo happened as a result of another "thought crime" against Islam.  Crickets.

And let's not forget when Fox News host Bill O'Reilly issued his own fatwa of sorts against abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, referring to him as "Tiller the Baby Killer" on 28 episodes of his national TV show in the hopes that some psycho would do what psychos do.  And eventually they did:  Dr. Tiller was shot in the head at church in front of his wife & congregation by a "pro-life" Christian extremist.  O'Reilly suffered no legal or professional repercussions whatsoever.  One of Dr. Tiller's colleagues, Dr. LeRoy Carhart, was targeted by these same maniacs, having his home & barn full of horses burned down by another domestic terrorist acting in the name of their lord & savior.  Two family pets & 21 horses were killed in the terrorist attack on the Air Force-trained physician.  The media was silent.  

Bill O'Reilly issues fatwa on Dr. George Tiller

The negative effects of organized religion on society are endless while the positives are... well, can you think of any?   Aside from causing tribalism/division, reinforcing social hierarchies, promoting scientific illiteracy & spiritually abusing children by sparking fear of eternal damnation, I can think of nothing religion contributes to modern society.  Not one damn thing.  

The fact that so many (I'd even wager most) religious leaders are preaching political topics at the pulpit puts them in direct violation of the Johnson Amendment that forbids such behavior.  This means their tax exemption should be revoked at once according to the law.  Why isn't this happening?  Attempts to influence elections, bully churchgoers into not wearing masks in a pandemic, pass or defeat certain bills & similar behaviors are outright illegal.  Yet damn near every church in the South and Bible Belt is doing it, including many megachurches.  It's not a secret.  Where the hell is our government?  The IRS?  

TL;DR - If you can identify $cientology as a cult but believe Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Taoism, Sihkism or Shintoism are legitimate religions, your bias (and ignorance) is showing.   The only difference between a religion and a cult is the number of followers & how long ago it was created.  If you have a need for control in your life, start (and stop) with yourself.  Any relationship with the divine/universe/creator does not require a middleman telling you what God REALLY meant & asking for donations, the majority of which will be used to line their own pockets rather than helping the needy.  You know, the very thing that made Jesus flip the table 2,000ish years ago. 

Hi!  ✌😀  Like this article?  Drop a donation in one of the accounts below.  Google AdSense does not support "drug-related" content so I rely on your contributions to keep this blog running.  It's hard out here for an independent freelance writer in the digital age.  Thank you!

Cash App:
cash.me/$apphicomrade

BITCOIN:
18cwb3qFkGghVqqzNSX59EFypzzF8Dd7Vg

BITCOIN CASH:
qz84t4ua2achx90a7yk8efelvufggflhu5tzalry7l

The FDA's War on Supplements: Beta-Nicotinamide Mononucleotide Banned!

It's happening again:  The FDA has sided with Big Pharma by ruling that a compound already on the supplement market is "not a supplement," thereby freeing pharmaceutical companies up to push it out of the supplement aisle where customers will no longer be able to obtain it for a reasonable price without a prescription.  They tried this with n-acetylcysteine recently & were met with such pushback they had to step off & leave it on shelves as a supplement... at least in the U.S.  It had already been there for 30 years without issue, yet because it's also used in emergency rooms for acetaminophen overdose & was found to have promise in both preventing & treating COVID infection, greedy pharma companies tried to gold rush it & get rich(er).  

The compound in question now is beta-nicotinamide mononucleotide (b-NMN), found naturally in shrimp, tomatoes, edamame, avocadoes & broccoli.  Its purported health benefits include anti-aging effects, increased aerobic performance & neuroprotection, though these benefits remain unproven.  b-NMN was already sold on Amazon by several companies including SyncoZymes Co. Ltd. & Inner Mongolia Kingdomway Pharmaceutical Ltd., both of which were selling the compound without issue until pharmaceutical giant Metro International Biotech sicced the FDA on them.  Because it occurs naturally in food AND was sold as a supplement first, that would seemingly make it a food/supplement, yet the FDA has fallen squarely on the side of pharmaceutical companies & ruled it a drug.  It's now been banned for sale as a supplement in the U.S.  Case closed.

Why Should We Care?

Next time you see b-NMN, it'll be in a prescription bottle.

This matters to consumers because it allows pharma companies to patent the substance, set the (always ridiculous) price, allow doctors/dermatologists/whoever to require in-person visits & written prescriptions for it, bill private insurance companies, send patients to the pharmacy & make us jump through other hoops to obtain it.  All when we could've just logged onto the internet & had it delivered to our door for a reasonable price before.  This is not okay & has far-reaching implications.  

The FDA exists to protect consumers from deadly foodborne disease outbreaks, toxins in pet food & cosmetics and to prevent things like, oh, I don't know... the Sacklers saying "OxyContin is not addictive" for 3 decades while America falls victim to the biggest drug addiction crisis in our nation's history.  Not to aid the upward transfer of wealth into the pockets of those very pharma companies.  

If you've ever wondered why seemingly benign drugs like psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, ibogaine, khat & cannabis (which is still federally illegal) are in Schedule I while "hard" drugs like fentanyl & meth are in lesser Schedules, this is one of the main reasons.  It's also why the FDA has waged an all-out war on kratom.  The goal is to patent the active compounds & market them back to us while banning the whole plant, making themselves filthy rich in the process.  Speciogynine, a kratom compound, is currently being synthesized & studied by researchers at Purdue University's College of Pharmacy to treat alcohol use disorder.  According to their very own Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Richard Van Rijn: 

“The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has not scheduled kratom as a substance of abuse,” he said. “More research is needed to properly establish this, but one hypothesis for their lower risk for abuse is related to their cellular pharmacology.”

No, Rich, they haven't.  But not for lack of trying.  And they haven't stopped trying, issuing constant warnings/import alerts, seizing kratom shipments at the border and refusing to accept it as a New Dietary Ingredient for no good reason.  This, after seeking a GLOBAL ban on it in 2021 (lol).  If the nation's top scientific researchers are saying kratom is safe & has legitimate medicinal uses, why is the FDA still hellbent on banning it?  

For the hard-of-learning who missed it the first 17 times:  Because the FDA's sole purpose is helping pharmaceutical companies profit from any substance with a perceived medicinal or cosmetic benefit.  Duh.  Maybe they started as a legit regulatory agency with good intentions but that's not what they are now.  Like so many other American institutions, the FDA is a benevolent people-centered agency in name only.   In reality it's a revolving door of ex-pharma execs & stockholders that's been corrupted by money.  Speaking of money, pharma companies can't make it off a patented pharmaceutical molecule if everyone can buy the same (arguably superior whole plant) for much cheaper without a doctor's prescription on the internet or at the local GNC.  That's why they want to ban every recreational or medicinal substance under the sun:  so pharma has a total monopoly.  

Nobody's saying supplement companies are faultless here.  In fact, many popular supplements are made by pharma companies & megacorporations themselves.  The supplement market has its own serious safety and purity issues to contend with.  But the FDA has opted not to regulate supplements at all (see: DSHEA of 1994), which, again, tells me they aren't all that interested in protecting the public like they claim.  Absolutely no scientific backing is required for dietary supplements to be sold, & the companies selling them are entirely responsible for monitoring their purity & quality.  Fox guarding the hen house much?   🙄

Yet these very shortcomings leave the pharmaceutical industry wide open to compete with supplement makers fairly on the basis of safety, effectiveness, purity & compiled scientific data of their products.  A side by side comparison of pharmaceutical and supplemental b-NMN, for instance, would likely reveal that the former contains exactly what the label states while the latter does not.  (Supplements are routinely contaminated, adulterated or contain the wrong dose of the active ingredient, if any).  Rather than spending the money to point these things out, Big Pharma would rather twist the FDA's arm & have these compounds removed from the market entirely so there's no competition, and the FDA is all too eager to comply.  

That's corrupt as hell & we're sick of it.  

If there aren't going to be any concrete criteria for what constitutes a food, drug or supplement, the whole system is meaningless & needs to be thrown out.  The deep pockets of pharmaceutical companies are calling all the shots which isn't fair to supplement makers or the public.  As Michael A. Willis, corporate counsel to Metro International Biotech recently whined to the FDA regarding b-NMN: 

“protect the right of companies that have spent significant time and research to develop drug products from competition from dietary supplements that are clearly new dietary ingredients that have never filed a new dietary ingredient notification prior to the institution of substantial clinical trials.”

...and money, Mikey.  Time, research and money.  That's the key actor in this pay-to-play political drama where lobbyists make legislators & regulators jump like manic flaccid puppets while the rest of us go broke & die.

Outstanding Documentaries: The Fight for Water (2022)

"Once politics is dictated by the fight for water, then God help us." --- Thorsten Glauber, Bavarian Environment Minister

This ominous opener kicks off The Fight for Water, Part 1 of a three-part series by the always-gripping DW Documentaries (a German public broadcasting company). This doc has stuck with me more than anything I've watched in a long time. Its sober, fact-based tone tackles this giant topic in a way that makes it both easily digestible and a mobilizing call to action. By collecting a variety of viewpoints & statistics from around the world, DW manages to do what no American media outlet has yet managed to pull off: illustrate how climate change is already causing isolated crises around the world that will soon turn into a major catastrophe for the human race if something drastic isn't done. And probably a lot sooner than we'd anticipated.

Beginning in Mendocino, we're treated to a scene so disturbing you'll wonder why you haven't heard about it yet. Restaurant owners in this quaint beach town describe such a severe water shortage that they've had to have freshwater trucked in since the beginning of 2020. It's so bad that toilets won't flush, which has forced business owners to set up Port-A-Johns & "Bathrooms Closed" signs across a huge swathe of tourist spots like gift shoppes and bars. (I was slightly skeptical so I did some Googling and, yep, at a recent Mendocino Board of Supervisors meeting one member raised the question: "How many books will you be checking out from the library if your neighborhood’s on fire and you can’t flush your toilet?”) 

Mendocino official describes the shituation 

From there we travel around the world to Bavaria to check out the depleted rural wells that (used to) supply entire cities before heading to Phoenix, AZ to assess the crisis at the Colorado River which is at its lowest level in history. Having personally spent time at both of the river's reservoirs (Lake Powell and Lake Mead), I can confirm it's every bit as bad as they're reporting. We visit Las Vegas next, where Lake Mead & the Hoover Dam are at all-time lows from being sucked dry by an ever-growing population of thirsty desert dwellers.

But it's California--home to 40 million people & many water-hogging industries like Silicon Valley--that is faring worst of all. The wildfire crisis requires tons of extra water to contain, and with climate change bearing down, wildfire season is now year-round which makes prescribed burns difficult to carry out safely. A recent study found that the wood smoke pollution from these fires has reversed decades of policy-driven air quality gains in just a few years' time. The West Coast's lack of water has been referred to as a "drought" or "megadrought" for years, but it's become clear to climatologists that the problem is a lot more serious than that. So what's going on here?

Aridification--the long-term transformation of a region to a permanently more arid state--is the new normal for much of the world including the U.S. West Coast. And that's the overarching theme of this documentary, which poses the unavoidable question: What happens when the human race runs out of drinkable water?

The film attempts to answer this daunting question by interviewing a variety of experts including Jay Famiglietti of the Global Institute for Water Security; entrepreneur & engineer of California's de-salination plant Gary Kremen and a number of government leaders & citizens living on the frontlines of this crisis. Their answers aren't reassuring. Eventually we end up at our final and most depressing destination: Afghanistan, a desert region that's dealt with arid conditions longer than perhaps anywhere on Earth. We quickly learn this is different. I won't spoil the climax of the movie but let's just say what they're dealing with now is not sustainable for the maintenance of human life. The sight of children standing around a dry tap with empty water buckets is heartbreaking.

Water report from Afghani on the poor side of town

These thirsty climate refugees will have to go somewhere to survive, a point the film makes near the end. An estimated 3 billion (with a B) people are at risk of losing access to potable water by 2070 (or much sooner according to this counter) & will have to move to more favorable regions. It's already happening as Guatemalans face massive crop loss due to aridification & move northward to the U.S. But of course the mainstream media isn't referring to them as climate refugees. This silence combined with the government's inaction, corporate-funded disinformation about climate change & public apathy could prove fatal to homo sapiens as a species, particularly when combined with the "Four Horsemen of Climate Change" described here.

This is a depressing, doom-inducing topic that nobody likes to think about. But if you watch no other piece on the subject of climate change, let it be this. The Fight for Water highlights the urgency of the issue without injecting a bunch of partisan, emotional editorializing. I haven't gotten around to watching Parts 2 and 3 yet but I'm sure they're excellent companions to Part 1 which stands on its own just fine. DW is what Frontline PBS used to be before they became a glorified mouthpiece for the State Department sometime after 9/11. The fact that a foreign media outlet can come to the U.S. & release a film about our own country that better informs us about the situation here than our own reporters says a lot about the corruption of our corporate-owned media.

On Twitter's Newfound "Freedom"

While it's satisfying to watch the liberal tears fall like Niagara as Twitter changes hands, it's not exactly comforting that the pro-censorship Orwellian atmosphere has been replaced by a bunch of anti-vax, climate denialist misogynist Trump worshiping chuds screaming their ignorance into the void as if they've "won".  You haven't won anything; you're still just as overworked, underpaid & uneducated as you were when the other billionaire owned Twitter.  Your government is still controlled by a lying 2-party system whose only purpose is to aid the upward transfer of wealth out of your hardworking hands and into the pockets of people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos & Mark Zuckerberg--all of whom view you as a nondescript mass of dirty peons.  It would be really nice if Americans were capable of independent thought instead of this tribalistic cult idiocy.  But no.

We won't have "won" until social media giants are considered a public utility like the phone companies of old, when private citizens and CEOs couldn't cut off users' access at will without serious cause & ample evidence.  When the government wasn't allowed to spy on our conversations without a warrant & by the time said companies were able to cut off our access to the utility, we were well on our way to prison for a major crime like terrorism or conspiracy anyway.  

You can claim to stand for free speech all day.  It's a hollow promise if you engage in union-busting, sexual harassment, sending threatening emails & other bullying behaviors toward the very people who made you a billionaire.  There's nothing "free" about that.  Elon Musk's dad is a pedophile who literally groomed his own step-daughter from the age of 4 & impregnated her with his "lovechild".  They now have two kids together.  I dare somebody to try tweeting that.  

I've seen too many websites switch hands only for the new owner to start working with the Feds, resulting in a massive wave of arrests of the site's users.  We have no evidence that won't be the case here.  We don't know what could happen.  These social media sites are a data mining privacy breach by their very nature.  Nothing is free in this world.  Your celebrations are premature.  Stop taking crooked billionaires' words at face value.  They didn't get insanely rich by being generous, honest people.  And you won't become a billionaire by osmosis or brown-nosing these sociopaths. 

The answer to corporate ownership of speech isn't more corporate ownership of speech.  They're playing chess while you're still trying to master checkers & think a Tic Tac Toe win is worth celebrating.  You ride the corporate dick at your own peril.  

How Anxiety Warps Perception (And What to Do About It)

As someone with several anxiety disorders, I know all too well how these conditions can warp one's perception--particularly the perception of risk.  Anxiety about medical procedures can make a vaccine seem more dangerous than the disease it's meant to prevent or a colonoscopy seem more horrifying than the Stage IV colon cancer it will almost certainly save you from when it catches those pre-cancerous polyps.  A tiny harmless spider might cause an arachnophobe to run barefoot out of the safety of their cabin into the dark, snowy woods where actual danger awaits while a fear of public speaking can prevent an otherwise brilliant worker from advancing in their career.  

The stark contrast between flying with and without the aid of Xanax put this warped perception sharply into focus for me:  my first flight was "raw dog," aka sans medication.  I spent it paralyzed in a state of abject terror, fearing the plane would fall at any moment.  As we started to descend, my stomach was in my throat and I cried as the sweet ladies next to me held my hand, telling me everything was fine despite every fiber of my being telling me otherwise.  My subsequent flights were all medicated and I couldn't have cared less if we crashed.  As the flight attendant told us how to access our flotation devices, I recall thinking "Ugh, who the hell wants to reach all the way under the seat to grab the thing?  If we die, we die.  I have a nap to take."  

It was the same with my endoscopy.  I spent months freaking out to my therapist (who I hired just for that occasion) about how I would never make it to the clinic due to fear.  But once it was over and the propofol had worked its magic, I actually found it kinda fun.  If I could go back in time & tell my pre-endoscopy self not to waste so much time literally sickening myself with worry, I would.  But would I have listened?  

No, because anxiety is not a rational disorder.  It doesn't listen to reason.  

Except that it kinda does.  Anxiety doesn't respond well to unhelpful tropes like "calm down!" or "everything's fine," but it does listen to statistics & scientific facts.  That's because most of the things we worry about are blown way out of proportion & looking into the ACTUAL risks often proves that we're indeed overreacting.  It's just not helpful for others to tell us that when we're in the midst of a panic spiral.

While it's definitely possible to overdo it with the obsessing, Googling & thought-looping, having a little factual knowledge about the true risks of a given anxiety trigger can help put your fears to rest if you know when to stop.  Combined with physical relaxation techniques like deep rhythmic breathing, guided visualization, mindfulness meditation, biofeedback & massage, knowledge can be empowering in the right doses.  But you must know how to contextualize the risks of what you're learning about and when to stop looking into a topic.  I can't stress the "know when to stop" part enough.  I'm talking to you, fellow OCD heads.  

Assessing Risks & Benefits

Better decision-making starts here

One thing American schools are notoriously bad at is teaching Risk-Benefit Ratio.  This became abundantly clear during the COVID pandemic as society fell apart arguing over everything from the harms of distance learning to vaccine safety to whether masks caused "oxygen deprivation".  😒   Understanding the short- and long-term risks of a given intervention vs. the opposing alternative is vital for good decision making.  But this must be done based on facts, not emotions or desires.  Just because something causes temporary discomfort, inconvenience or anxiety does not necessarily make it a worse option.  It's only a worse option if the stress it causes is not worth the potential benefits it brings.  If the long-term pros outweigh the short-term cons, you should proceed regardless of any temporary discomfort.  

For instance:  does wearing a face mask reduce the risk or severity of COVID infection enough to justify the discomfort of wearing one?  This is easily testable & has been proven down to the type of mask & the distance that different-sized virus droplets can travel.  Verdict:  While masks don't entirely prevent the spread of COVID, they lower the viral load in the air (significantly when everyone wears them) & thus decrease the severity of infection when worn consistently & properly in indoor spaces.  And since COVID has killed 1,087,880 Americans & sickened many more at the time of this writing, that would make wearing one well worth the temporary discomfort by almost any measure because masks are a practically risk-free intervention.  They needn't be worn outdoors or during seasons when COVID rates are low unless you prefer to, but the benefits definitely outweigh the drawbacks during times when infection rates are high.  

But back to anxiety.  It has increased exponentially for many of us due to the pandemic, economic uncertainty & the political unrest in recent years.  Cases of OCD, eating disorders, generalized and social anxiety are skyrocketing around the country as kids are forced to adapt to new learning environments & losing loved ones to COVID.  Marriages are strained to the breaking point; domestic abuse is soaring.  Teachers are thrown back into classrooms that feel like Ground Zero for the Culture Wars without adequate pay or resources.  Nurses are running on fumes; the postal service is falling apart.  Mass shootings seem like an every day occurrence.  Nobody seems to trust our institutions or experts.  What's a person with a pre-existing anxiety disorder to do?

Aside from therapy & medication*, my best advice would be to unplug from the constant stream of bad news.  Whether that's social media, television or your coworker who likes to complain & be negative, make a conscious effort to curate the information and opinions entering your daily information bubble.  While we can't control everything bad in this world, we can control what we do with our free time, and we don't have to spend it doomscrolling or watching 24-hour blood-and-guts news on FOX & CNN.  I use a Facebook filter called FB Purity that allows me to remove keywords & related stories I don't want to see in my feed, and it's life changing.  (Especially around election season or when a new scary disease breaks out).  

Also make sure not to over-book yourself or take on too many responsibilities.  Staying busy is a common coping mechanism anxious people adopt to avoid sitting with their feelings. The result is exhaustion, lowered immunity & exploitation.  When you feel like you may be taking on too much or running from unpleasant feelings, give yourself the tender loving care you'd give a friend or loved one in that situation:  a relaxing day at the spa, kind words of affirming encouragement or a carefree day of play like when you were a child on holiday break.  Say "no" to taking on extra tasks if no is your kneejerk reaction.  If it feels like your boss, romantic partner or friend is making unreasonable requests of you, simply look around:  are other people in the situation carrying less weight than you?  Why should they be allowed to do less while you wear yourself out only to end up at the same destination?  They shouldn't, but you've got to let them know by assertively telling them how you feel before things reach a crisis point.  

  Many anxious people vacillate between passive & aggressive. Strive for assertiveness.

Whatever you do, make time each day to focus on your mental and physical well-being, & try to remember that anxiety DOES have a unique ability to warp your perception of reality, making situations seem worse than they really are.  While it does matter if the plane crashes, the likelihood of it happening is much lower than your anxiety would have you believe. 

*By medication I do not mean benzodiazepines, which should be reserved for occasional panic attacks or situations where severe anxiety is anticipated (flying, medical procedures, public speaking).  Using benzos daily or even several days a week for long periods will cause rebound anxiety that's infinitely worse than your baseline anxiety in most cases & can even lead to clinical depression or mania in people who are not bipolar.  

6 Ways Andy Kaufman Was Ahead of His Time

Love him or hate him (there really is no in-between), nobody can say Andy Kaufman was boring.  Even in an era marked by brilliant talent like Richard Pryor, Robin Williams & Rodney Dangerfield, Andy was still someone who made people sit up and say "That guy is going places.  I'm not sure where, but he's going places."  He was a comedian's comedian, except he didn't consider himself a comedian at all but a Song-and-Dance-Man... a troubadour.  He even christened himself  "Andy Troubadour Kaufman" as a child.

Everyone says The Simpsons are good at predicting the future.  Pshaw.  They've had 30+ years & several teams of writers to throw things at the wall--eventually some things were bound to stick.  Andrew Geoffrey Kaufman only graced the stage & screen for a short 10 years, much of that as a sitcom actor in a scripted series.  From his TV debut on Dean Martin Comedy World in 1974 until his death from a rare lung cancer in 1984, Andy proved time and again that he was on a whole other wavelength, predicting the future of entertainment, society & media in ways that are still revealing themselves to this day... some positive & others not so hot.   

Here are just 6 ways Andy Kaufman was ahead of his time:

Pee Wee's Playhouse -  The gonzo, semi adult-themed Pee-Wee's Playhouse was a staple in every '80s & early '90s household on Saturday mornings.  But did you know Paul Reubens supposedly got the idea for the show from Andy Kaufman?  That's right:  According to Bob Zmuda's book "Andy Kaufman: Revealed!" Reubens asked Kaufman for permission to use his ideas on the show shortly before his death in 1984.  You can see the seeds of the "Randy" puppet, Magic Screen, the secret word & other "Funhouse/Playhouse" ideas in this pilot from Uncle Andy's Funhouse.  The special was taped in 1977 but didn't air until 1979 while the first episode of Pee-Wee's Playhouse debuted in 1986.  (Though we gotta give Pee-Wee full credit for predicting the rise of video chat with his super futuristic "picture phone".)

Influencer-Style Videos: - While they're commonplace today, videos with a person facing a camera and egotistically yapping away were once pretty unusual.  But not for Andy Kaufman, who took great pleasure in making tons of these hilarious vignettes during his wrestling phase.  They were usually antagonistic, with Andy mocking Southerners, women or other specific demographics to get them riled up before matches.  ("Repeat after me:  Soap.  Not sa-oup.  Not saioooup").  

18 minutes of wrestling taunts.  You're welcome.

Reality TV -  My Breakfast with Blassie was a parody of My Dinner with Andre, a dramatic comedy about two actors having a deep discussion at a cafe.  But "Blassie" also gave us a brief glimpse into the future of television, with its half-scripted, half spontaneous plot in which we watch two B-list (okay, okay: D-list at that point) celebrities eating in a restaurant while discussing mundane topics like herpes & wet wipes.  Again, this wasn't a thing in 1982 when the film was made--the viewing public & his showbiz peers just thought it was Andy being a weirdo.  And they weren't wrong.  But in hindsight we can see that this brand of eavesdropping on the banal activities of the rich has largely supplanted sitcoms, soap operas & other forms of TV programming since its rise in the early 2000s.  His brawl with Jerry Lawler on Letterman's late night show would also foretell a very big trend:  talk show smackdowns a la Jerry Springer & Geraldo.  

Intergender Champion -  One of Andy's most polarizing and career-destroying bits was wrestling women.  He even crowned himself "Intergender Wrestling Champion of the World."  While he saw it as a joke, his fanbase was not amused.  Not only did it get him voted off SNL forever, eventually he was excommunicated from his transcendental meditation retreats as a result of this obsession.  (And in all honesty, his motives weren't entirely pure:  His dirty little secret was that he had to tape down his penis before matches to hide the boner he got from all the rubbing that occurred on the mat.  He also treated his fan mail like a personal dating service, answering letters from pretty young college students & throwing letters from men or fat, unattractive women into the trash).  The fact that males are now unironically competing against women in women's contact sports means the world has finally "caught up" to what was supremely unpopular even as a comedy bit way back then.  The situation has been parodied on South Park, Dave Chappelle's "The Closer" & any number of memes & cartoons online.  Once again, Andy beat us to the punch.

'Memba when this was just a (bad) joke?

Pro Wrestling -  At the time Andy got into pro wrestling (against men), his show business peers were perplexed as to why anyone would waste their time on such unrefined pursuits.  To be blunt, pro wrestling was largely considered a lowbrow form of entertainment for Southern hicks who fell for the dumbest sleight of hand trickery.  But as per usual, Andy was simply an early adopter who was ahead of the curve.  He didn't begin challenging pros like Jerry Lawler & Jimmy "Mouth of the South" Hart until October 12, 1981 & barely missed the Golden Era by dying prematurely in early 1984.  While far from the Dark Ages, things didn't really get exciting in the WWE (then the WWF) until 1985 when Hulk Hogan, MTV's Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection, the 1st Wrestlemania & the WCW kicked off.  I'm sure the Hollywood crowd's doubts were put to rest by the end of the '80s when the WWE was bringing in $137,553,873.  Total revenue for the years 1984-1990?  $644,026,574.  That's $1,538,241,890.71 in 2022 dollars.  

Singing ballad in neck brace on Letterman appearance preceding Lawler slap

Proto-Trolling -  From sending entirely fabricated stories to the tabloids to turning a late-night sketch comedy show into an all-out brawl, Kaufman was a master troll.  And he did it nearly 30 years before the internet as we know it existed.  Acting an ass anonymously behind a keyboard is easy but this guy was risking his career on national TV in front of millions of viewers at a time when network TV was the only game in town.  He claimed not to care whether the audience laughed, cried or got raging mad... as long as they reacted.  Classic troll behavior.  Another masterful moment:  attempting to read the entire Great Gatsby to a captive SNL audience in a thin British accent before being hurried offstage by an annoyed Lorne Michaels.  (Letterman was prime trolling territory too).  My personal fave was his fake engagement to Lawrence Welk gospel singer Kathie Sullivan, in which he claimed to be a born-again Christian & proceeded to sing hymns & lecture the audience about staying drug-free.  The full episode is available on Tubi.  

Bonus: These lyrics are as deep as anything on the Billboard charts today.  

Hi!  ✌😀  Like this article?  Drop a donation in one of the accounts below.  Google AdSense does not support "drug-related" content so I rely on your contributions to keep this blog running.  It's hard out here for an independent freelance writer in the digital age.  Thank you!

Cash App:
cash.me/$apphicomrade

BITCOIN:
18cwb3qFkGghVqqzNSX59EFypzzF8Dd7Vg

BITCOIN CASH:
qz84t4ua2achx90a7yk8efelvufggflhu5tzalry7l

Outstanding Documentaries - Chopper Down: Helicopter Deaths in the Movies (1989)

This short but powerful 12-minute piece was shown at 1989's Banned Film Festival after being shut down by HBO brass for potentially "offending business partners".  (Quiet part loud but okay).  It focuses on film set safety, or lack thereof, during the 1980s--particularly involving helicopter crashes.  I can't find director or producer credits for it anywhere online.

Three cases are recounted by witnesses & survivors, 2 of which involve Chuck Norris movies & the other being the notorious Twilight Zone: The Movie incident involving Vic Morrow & 2 child actors--one Taiwanese & the other Vietnamese--who were decapitated by helicopter rotors during filming.  (None of the scenes here is too gory or graphic, though the Twilight Zone deaths are shown).  Many people are familiar with this case as it involved an almost decade-long court battle for director John Landis & others who worked on the film.  They were eventually acquitted of manslaughter charges in 1987.

I was more surprised that two of the three helicopter crashes involved Chuck Norris films, both of which were shot in the Philippines only 2 years apart.  They killed 9 people in total & injured many more.  Very little has been made about this when lionizing Norris online.  While the directors, producers & stunt coordinators are more to blame than the actors in cases like this, it's definitely not a good look when your name is on the marquee of multiple movies that kill people.  And this is what Chuck had to say regarding these incidents:  

'I'm terribly depressed and sorry about the deaths of my friends and fellow workers in the crash, but there is nothing I could have done. I suppose there isn't anything anyone could have done to prevent it.  You try to reduce risks to a minimum. We took every possible precaution. I would not have gotten aboard the chopper, nor would any of the stunt men, if I felt there was any type of unsafe situation.  My heart goes out to the families of the people who lost their loved ones. I'm just lucky I wasn't aboard when the accident happened.'

Notice the "but".  The very fact that they chose to film in a region with lax safety regulations disproves his claim that there's "nothing more they could've done".  Family members of the victims of the 2nd crash sued Cannon Films in 1990, claiming that the studio had no ambulance or rescue provisions nearby during a treacherous jungle combat scene, and that the pilot flying the helicopter was unqualified.  One of the victims involved in the lawsuit is shown below.

Survivor Mateo Gomez recounts his story

This subject is especially timely after the shooting death of Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust in 2021.  Who's to blame when deadly accidents happen on a movie set due to cost cutting, unsafe working conditions & carelessness?  Is it fair to spread the blame around simply because there are a lot of people on set?  Should negligence be punished as harshly as murder?  The outcome is the same--an innocent person is dead and it could've been prevented.  What's more, negligence is often driven by the same greed, egoism & disregard for human life as murder... all that's missing is a plot to kill the victim.  And the outcome is the same.

Near the end of the film the question is posed:  "How many lives do we have to lose?"  I wanted to know so I did some digging.  Since this documentary was made in 1989, a horrifying number of lives have been lost on movie sets, including most famously that of actor Brandon Lee in 1994, but I was shocked to see how many lesser known deaths have occurred.  They include death by electrocution, exhaustion-induced car wreck, jousting accident, staged explosions gone wrong, balcony falls, accidental shootings & many more helicopter crashes.  And those victims were arguably the lucky ones.  

The survivors often fared even worse, incurring catastrophic brain damage, 3rd degree burns & other life ruining injuries.  The fact that these cases rarely make headlines because they involve lowly extras or stuntmen instead of big stars like Alec Baldwin should trouble us all.  Some of the victims were bystanders not involved in the film at all, which means the unsafe practices of the movie industry are endangering society as a whole.  No fictional piece of entertainment is worth a real person's life.  

Maybe if this film wasn't banned by HBO way back in 1989, awareness would've been brought to this issue sooner & some of these deaths could've been prevented.  The very fact that there is (or was?) a "Banned Film Festival" in what's supposed to be a free country is a whole other problem.  More docs like this and less Tiger King, please.