Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin

Renaud (00:04.189)
Roger McFillin, good morning.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (00:07.554)
Good morning. Great to see you.

Renaud (00:09.299)
Likewise. So Roger, I wanted to start with giving you a little opportunity to actually present yourself and to present your initiative, the conscious clinicians collective. But maybe you can do it while answering that question. mean, the French government declared mental health crisis as the prime national cause in 2025.

And we hear a lot about the mental health crisis in the United States. And I'd like to know how you situate yourself in that ramping up of fear around mental health and what you seek to achieve with your conscious clinician collective.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (00:58.754)
Of course, for now, thank you for having me on the podcast. Yeah, regarding the mental health epidemic that has really, if we look at the past 15, 20 years, it's been increasing dramatically the number of people who are identifying with psychiatric illnesses, something that was reserved for a small percentage of the population previously is now becoming a well-identified like episodic medical condition in which it has driven a quarter of the

American population to SSRIs. SSRIs are anti-depressant drugs. So I do trace back the current mental health problems in the United States to what I see as both a dark and deliberate psychological operation on the American people to induce a degree of fear and

what I identify as a constant battle and fight with your own internal experiences. So when you begin to medicalize the human condition, when you describe normal and expected reactions to adverse events, which are part of the human experience, there are signals that are to help you respond effectively and get back on your path. I'm a very spiritual man, so I often believe it's on your soul's path.

But whether that's, you know, a depressed mood or a fear and anxiety or an internal struggle, this is the design of the human experience. And we're supposed to use those emotions as powerful energies to be able to grow and to what I see as a transformational process in our own lives, because our emotions need to be really good indicators of what is going on in our environment. So when you trace it back to the mass

promotion of psychiatric drugs as a solution to the distress of living and medicalizing it as a psychiatric disorder. And within that, having the ability to mass program the American population through the 1997 FDA Modernization Act, which allows direct to consumer advertising. I'm within that time period. In 1997, I was a

Renaud (02:58.717)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (03:22.03)
21 year old man. So I remember the times that previous to this where we were pushed this, the psychiatric narrative or this narrative from the pharmaceutical companies that when you struggle emotionally, there is something inherently genetically wrong with the production of serotonin or other key neurochemicals. And just by doing that, just by bringing that into the collective consciousness,

allows you to now re-see and re-understand why you feel the way you do. And now you're turning to the medical authority as reporting that as a symptom in our medical centers. And then they have the solution, of course, which is a psychiatric drug. So although I see the mental health epidemic to be multifactorial, I do believe that there are cultural issues and industrial issues that help shape

the collective consciousness that would allow it to flourish. So when you do experience something like a pandemic in 2020, you're going to have a large percentage of the population seeking out immediate relief and over identifying with a psychiatric condition in which in my opinion leads people to become very dependent on the medical system.

As far as, as far as my, my conscious clinician collective, which is what you mentioned earlier, it's just, it's a nonprofit where I'm fighting back. I'm trying to align clinicians around the globe who want to move away from the medicalization of mental health and who want to identify emotions, not as symptoms of an illness, but rather a transformational process. And that when we feel these psychiatric symptoms,

that it could, the origins of this can be numerous from just environmental aspects, conditions in your life in which you need to face to also we're experiencing a chronic disease epidemic in our country. We've been mass poisoned with chemicals. Our food source obviously has become highly chemicalized and processed and we see the results of lot of metabolic illness. So a lot of people also go into the mental,

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (05:44.367)
mental health system or the medical system complaining of symptoms like fatigue or sleep problems, low mood, irritability, anxiety. And those get quickly labeled as psychiatric when indeed the origins are health related. It's lifestyle related. So my organization is on two ends. It's like, it's recognizing the psychological operation in which fear has been induced and getting us to over identify with a psychiatric condition and emotions and symptoms to be drugged.

and then also being able to ignore the mass poisoning and the lifestyle concerns with our population. You combine that with screen time, social media, sedentary lifestyle, and that's why you have what you have currently today in the United States.

Renaud (06:27.784)
Well, it's funny you mentioned the metabolic issues because I'm actually trained in regenerative farming. so one of my prime topic is precisely the effect of the green revolution and pesticides actually.

public health. I often compare what is pushed on us actually is almost forced on us by the medical community as pesticide. But you mentioned something very interesting in your introduction. It's not so much, mean, when we tend to think of like the official narrative on mental health,

we tend to see a linear progress that I mean from the discovery by Freud of the subconscious to our present day. The story we are told is a story of a constant improvement of the knowledge of things which have always been present in humanity, such as consciousness, but also we are told that mean we pretty much know everything about how the

brain functions, et cetera. And so if we look at the real story, and that's what you do by precisely analyzing with a critical eye all the scientific literature on mental health, it's a completely other story that we see emerging, which is far less linear than the official narrative. And you mentioned the year 1997.

And in particular, I think the moment when the paradigm becomes that mental health is about a chemical imbalance in our brain. I would like you to expand a little bit more on that and whether, and tell us, I mean, this has been.

Renaud (08:44.678)
seriously studied. mean, you have interviewed on your podcast someone like Joan and Moncrie, for example. And it's a paradigm which is under assault actually.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (08:57.421)
Yeah, it's a narrative that's more born out of marketing rooms than it is actual science. So when you're tasked with creating a drug and bringing that to market to help ease the suffering theoretically of people who are experiencing depression or anxiety, well, then you have to create a scientifically sound theory onto why that drug would be effective. And there's the assumption that

Renaud (09:11.858)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (09:26.467)
we had this strong foundation of empirical scrutiny in science that suggests that this key neurochemical, serotonin in particular, is implicated in our mood and that there are genetic variables, potentially some other variables that influence the production of serotonin. And we become depressed when there are deficiencies and they have created a medical miracle which

is able to increase the availability of this key neurochemical in our brain and that will solve the problem of depression that it can be treated like any other medical condition similar to you know insulin for diabetes and that is a narrative that again is it's brilliant in its darkness because one it's not anything that's objectively measured so it's not as if you go into the medical system and then you are

experiencing some objective medical test that suggests that you have this low serotonin and then you prescribe a drug and you're able to measure it something scientifically empirically. No, it doesn't become that. Instead, it becomes something that it sits within your mind. It's an idea. It's new aspect of consciousness that what I feel is not valid.

What I feel is wrong or broken. It's a biological abnormality. So now you are creating fear-based consciousness and a sickness in the brain, in the mind. And now you are taking an experimental drug because you can't create a drug for setbacks in life. You can't create a drug for the normal emotional responses of day-to-day living, but you can if you create it as a medical disease.

So that's where we saw this direct to consumer advertising revolution where they needed to be able to promote this drug to create that narrative, which is automatically going to lead to an explosion of their product. A pharmaceutical company's goal is to be able to sell as much of their product for as long as possible. Even though this was something that was only

Renaud (11:44.904)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (11:48.898)
studied in short six to eight week increments and created a symptom checklist to try to prove its effectiveness and get its approval for the use in our medical centers. This is a drug that people have been putting on for 15, 20 years. I mean, you're creating customers for life. And you're right, you're communicating something that's really important is that we...

have this false idea that we have better understood the mind and the brain and the psychology and wellbeing of human existence in a way that somehow suggests that we've made advancements or improvements in the human condition. That's a false narrative. In fact, every identifiable statistics will show

that we are dramatically worse when we started to accept this biomedical model and the professional help industry. So therapy and drugs, the collective mental wellbeing, as well as physical wellbeing has dramatically decreased in this last quarter of a century. The more psychiatric drugs we prescribe, the worse we become. So I say that it is creating a degree of sickness and dependence, and I think that's purposeful.

I think it's purposeful from a financial perspective, obviously, but also to influence and control a population to make them more sedated, more controllable, more easily influenced, and to accept that no, their freedoms are not provided to them by God. Instead, that they learn that they are sick, they are disconnected from their divinity.

And they need to seek out relief from a medical authority. So it really is a mass conditioning of creating an authority bias within the medical system. And then you see the consequences of this today with the degree in which we are utilizing medical services.

Renaud (13:57.023)
Talking about that, do you have figures about the exponential growth of use of psychiatric drugs since precisely 1997 to show an order of magnitude? where the dominant psychiatric drugs at the same time, at the time of this liberalization of advertising?

Already the SSRIs, which I'm going to give the meaning of the acronym, they are selective serotonin receptor inhibitor, reuptake inhibitors, or were they other psychiatric drugs like benzodiazepines?

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (14:45.358)
Yes, the dramatic increase in the use of psychiatric drugs has been demonstrated since the early 90s. The last that I saw was that we are nearing 20 % of females under the age of 25 are on at least one psychiatric drug. And about a quarter of the US population has taken at least one psychiatric drug in the

previous 365 days, one year. And to my knowledge, the prescription drug rates for SSRIs, stimulant drugs, are the ones that we've seen the most profound growth. And that also occurs with the ease in which that can be obtained. So now with these telehealth companies, where you just have to basically sign up and fill out a checklist,

and you can get these drugs delivered directly to your front door. And so it's a drug dealing operation that there is no medical condition, in my opinion, that in any way is benefited from taking an SSRI. It's only going to create problems, either in the short term or eventually in the long term. And people confuse some degree of emotional numbing and detachment

as if that's mental health treatment. Because feeling less is certainly not feeling better. And it's not in any way congruent with long-term mental health or physical health. So we see these dramatic increases in both these drugs. I don't know if we have accurate numbers because you're relying on government data to determine the prevalence rate. they are typically, you know, they underreport the amount of people that are using

drugs. know in our in our country, 17 % of American boys are taking a stimulant for ADHD. And then when there's a drug like like a benzodiazepine, for example, which can have some short term value as an emergency medicine, when that's being prescribed a drug that is that creates such dependence and problems like a benzodiazepine.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (17:08.324)
that really it shouldn't be prescribed for any more than like 10 to 14 days because of its dependency. Its ability to create such dependency and then you require more and more of the drug to yield the same result. That drug's being prescribed for years. It's being prescribed for sleep. It's being prescribed for anyone who just reports feeling anxiety. And what's shifted over the course of my career is the number of people that come into my practice on one or multiple psychiatric drugs.

and are clearly drug dependent. So what happens when they stop taking a drug is they experience pretty significant withdrawal. And those withdrawal symptoms then are miscommunicated to them as worsening symptoms of their mental illness. So it really keeps them in a cycle of dependency where they identify with a chronic mental health condition and they become customers for life.

Renaud (18:02.514)
Well, you are talking about the issue of withdrawal. mean, I think Jordan Peterson did a lot to popularize the idea that it's extremely difficult to get out of Benzos, for example. mean, he even went to Russia to be induced into a coma, actually, to withdraw from Benzos. is it as the, I mean, you had a wonderful interview of a Danish

psychiatrist, and your son on your on your podcast on this issue. Is it like mean, do SSRIs present the same withdrawal issues as as Benzos?

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (18:46.171)
They do. I'm not going to say that the degree of dependence is as rapid or it escalates as quickly as a drug like a benzodiazepine, but it's very clear that once you start taking an SSRI and you artificially increase the degree of serotonin in the nerve cell and through the down regulation process, you stop the natural production of serotonin.

that if you abruptly stop that drug or you taper off that drug too quickly, the reaction that the body has to that dependence on that drug ranges. I have seen it to be from mild for some people who experience mild symptoms and are able to get off the drug fairly easily to life-threatening

conditions where it induces suicidality, homicide, aggression, various forms of psychosis. And it's just a horrible experience. Now, what factors contribute to that? Well, I think the type of drug, the half-life of the drug, the person's unique genetic profile and how they metabolize the drug, and of course, the length of time in which they've used the drug.

So everyone is different and it's difficult to predict who's going to have such severe withdrawal reactions. But there is no doubt, this is widely accepted, that SSRIs create physical dependency. And getting off the drugs requires a very careful taper and medical monitoring. And hopefully you're also seeing a professional who can help you with the emotional struggles that come with the withdrawal process.

Renaud (20:40.648)
So we are, mean, let me summarize a little bit. So you have one in four, one in five, in four, one in five American who is actually under a psychiatric drug. Their efficacy is, mean, you have no biological marker actually to determine whether someone has one of the, has a mental disease that can be cured by it.

these drugs. They have very serious side effects. They trigger extremely complex withdrawal issues. And yet, they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. how can you explain that? I mean,

Maybe you can explain to us the process of approval of these drugs, by referring to one you have mentioned several times in your podcast, which is the Lexapro, which is a fairly recent SSRI.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (21:54.246)
Yeah, there's a kind of misnomer out there to believe that the FDA, the federal drug administration's regulatory process is to determine safety and efficacy of drugs. That's not the case. Their job has become to get the drug to market as quickly as possible. If their role was to determine the efficacy and safety of a a pharmaceutical or an intervention, you would see much greater scrutiny.

and you would see better studies. So they have allowed the pharmaceutical industry, which I think funds 60 % of the FDA's budget, to really be the ones who determine whether their product, the one they stand to benefit from billions of dollars in annual sales, to really be the gatekeeper on this. And I think the way that the US government will communicate it is it's up to the physician.

You know, we want to have these tools in the hands of the physician so the physician can be able to determine if there's any situation of need. Unfortunately, what has happened is most physicians believe that if the drug has been brought to market, its safety and efficacy has been proven. And now they have the freedom to use that drug in a fairly liberal manner. And they're receiving most of their education on the drug from the pharmaceutical industry itself.

That's either through pharmaceutical sales or it's through a for-profit publication industry that is also funded by the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry also has done an incredible job of being able to hire thought leaders. And those thought leaders from major medical institutions and academics then push the efficacy of the drug. They also write the medical textbooks. So you can see this.

this industry from its control over the regulatory process to its marketing to the American public, to the marketing directly to physicians has created this false idea of what a drug is. Now I'll use the area of where I've done my investigation, which is in particular, it's SSRIs. How do SSRIs then get approved when the efficacy is so poor and the harms are so substantial?

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (24:17.51)
Well, it's very easy to create the drug trials and the illusion that there are positive results. So one, the FDA only requires two positive studies and all a positive study requires is that the drug shows a statistical difference on an outcome measure in comparison to a control group, a placebo group. Now, if you are able to manufacture number one,

what the outcome measure is. So for example, if I wanted to create a study that alcohol is an effective treatment for adolescent social anxiety disorder, all I do is create an outcome measure that views anxiety as a symptom. I create the drug, which is alcohol. I could take a weed or I can take any other drug that has this sedative kind of role in physiology.

And then I have a measure about how they feel. And then I give somebody a placebo drug who doesn't have that same physiological impact. And I can create that difference. The interesting thing about the SSRI studies is, and especially in children, I think for Prozac, there were about 15 trials done by the pharmaceutical companies where only two or three showed a statistical difference. So this is the other aspect of publication bias. Like you don't have to produce the other 12 studies

Renaud (25:43.144)
Okay.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (25:44.401)
that shows that it didn't outperform placebo. You just have to find two. And there are ways to manipulate the drug trials by doing that. There's a placebo washing period. You can remove certain data sets if they had an adverse outcome, which the pharmaceutical companies have done in their drug trials. There's clear systemic fraud in allowing them to conduct their own trials. Also, we've become scientifically

illiterate. And you mentioned Lexapro as the best example. Lexapro for teens and children recently approved for the treatment of anxiety. And what we saw from, and it's in the paper, the data is in the paper, is that there was a six-fold increase in the children who took Lexapro, a six-fold increase in becoming suicidal in the children who took Lexapro in comparison to

Renaud (26:18.354)
Hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (26:43.888)
the placebo group. So tell me, in a safe, just society, one where the regulatory agencies were to protect the public, how do you approve a drug that is going to induce suicide and give that to such a normal experience as anxiety? And how do you view that children who are anxious, the safest and most effective way is to drug them?

Like we've accepted that mentality, that narrative in our country, that the reduction of a symptom means health. And that's the darkness around this, right? So you cannot tell me this isn't purposeful, it's not intentional, it's more than just about money. It's an attack on life itself. If you're going to drug children with a pharmaceutical that is going to, at the very least, numb out their experience, which is a key developmental period.

Renaud (27:20.242)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (27:41.158)
in their lives as adolescents to learn emotion regulation. the worst of it, it's going to do suicidality, metabolic illness. It's going to detach you from typical and normal growth. Like it affects your hormones. There's a bi-directional relationship with serotonin. Serotonin is not just a pleasure chemical in the brain. It affects the entire body, including, know, its origins are within the gut. So it's going to be a tack on your

Renaud (27:49.736)
Hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (28:10.599)
health, both short term and long term. And when the government approves this drug, despite the poor evidence and the significant health concerns, I see that as a deliberate and intentional attack on its people.

Renaud (28:24.69)
Do you remember the exact increase in suicidality of the Lexapro?

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (28:32.305)
Yes, was something about a little bit less than 10 % of the children who took the drug became suicidal.

Renaud (28:39.998)
So the kids who were on the drug group as opposed to the placebo group had a 10 % increase in suicidality.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (28:52.115)
about sixfold. about 2 % or less than 2 % of the group on the placebo identified increased suicidality. But like a little bit under 10, it ends up being like a 600 % increase in becoming suicidal, which extrapolate that to a larger population and that is significant.

Renaud (28:54.963)
Sixth form.

Renaud (29:09.438)
This is shocking.

Renaud (29:15.774)
is very frightening. It's a good transition. And the next topic I wanted to discuss, which is children precisely. And the Maha report, we'll get back to Maha, has really emphasized that the prior public health goal of the Maha administration is actually

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (29:17.596)
It's disturbing.

Renaud (29:44.947)
Children's health. But you mentioned several times ADHD. So ADHD for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which is also extremely massively diagnosed in France, though not on the same proportion as the US. Can you expand on what ADHD represents as a mental disease?

if it's even a thing, in the United States, what's the magnitude of the ADHD industry, actually?

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (30:26.035)
It's a good question. So let me communicate upfront that all psychiatric disorders, all they are are a constellation of symptoms. They are not discrete medical diseases in themselves. So we can't talk about ADHD, depression, bipolar disorder in the same realm we would talk about a tumor or diabetes.

because we don't have an objective measure to call that a disease. They are just a constellation of symptoms. So when I say that there is no such thing as ADHD, I do not say, I'm not referring to the fact that the symptom cluster of somebody who might be a bit hyperactive and have more difficulty focusing attention that can create.

problems in the public school system or they can become behaviorally unmanageable. Those things exist, but they don't exist because you were born with a genetic brain condition that requires a stimulant drug. It is a constellation of symptoms with unknown origins. I can off the top of my head probably think about 20 other conditions that would lead itself to having a difficult time focusing.

One of those is exposure to technology during key areas of brain development and early in life. Like you just should not plop a two year old in front of a television, an iPad or a phone. Because our brains are malleable, our intention is malleable. And what you're doing is it's hijacking your attention that you need that degree of stimuli, almost like a drug to be able to focus.

And then, so you come back into an environment where you're eventually go to daycare or you go to school and you're expected to sit and focus on a teacher who's gonna read you a book or you're supposed to read yourself when you're used to this high stimulation and this very activating way that hijacks the brain. So we have this advent of like technology, supercomputers that almost now every kid has even at younger and younger ages.

Renaud (32:26.696)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (32:44.85)
We have parents that are overworked and overstressed and raising kids on technology. So what is going to be the expected response to that? Well, you educate them in the same way we educate them in 1955, or we put them into environments where we're again, exposing them to technology and we expect them to sit still in a classroom that resembles a prison under fluorescent lighting without activity.

and we feed them poisons, which include going to a public school at any point. Like the food industry markets to kids. Like you have kids drinking soda and sports drinks with dyes that are banned in other countries that clearly and have been identified scientifically to induce the same ADHD symptoms that we identify as some genetic brain condition.

Renaud (33:21.982)
Yeah.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (33:42.473)
So it should not be surprising that we see these dramatic rises in the identification of ADHD because we do see the symptoms more frequently. the entire diagnosis to me is extremely problematic because it stops investigation into legitimate causes. Now people do contact me frequently. You're not talking about the vaccine injured enough.

and I'll say it right here. Yes. Those who were injured by a vaccine can experience ADHD symptoms. And yes, what happens when we continue to increase the number of vaccinations in shorter and discrete periods of time? What does that do to the immune system? What does that do to brain development? But again, my point stands there's no discrete identifiable medical condition called ADHD.

There's just symptoms and these symptoms can be related to causes that we have to be able to address in this country if we want a healthier population from the foods we eat to the manner in which we educate, to parental discipline, to the role of technology, to vaccines. All of these have to be studied and understood and be considered as a response that gets labeled as ADHD. And then there's the psychological aspect of this.

The response to traumatic events, so a kid that is getting abused or neglected is going to enter into the school system. And they're going to experience the same symptoms on a checklist for ADHD. So they're going to be again marked as being the problem. A kid who is being abused at home, neglected at home, is going to be the identified patient and drugged. You know, that is what we have created in our society. And if that doesn't make you angry,

or at the very least question all this, then that's a pretty good indicator that you are really under this mass control of the psychological operation. Anyone who believes that ADHD is a real identifiable condition has certainly been mass brainwashed into this and created consciousness around it. That's not to be critical of who you are, but if you've been identified with that diagnosis,

Renaud (35:42.332)
Yeah.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (36:11.368)
Like ask yourself, how did I receive that diagnosis? You you didn't receive that diagnosis from any advanced medical testing. You were just placed on a stimulant drug, right? And a stimulant drug is gonna have an effect. It would have an effect on both of us. I'm somebody who drinks coffee. And so my caffeine is a stimulant. And when I drink caffeine, I focus. I settle down.

Renaud (36:19.528)
Yeah.

Renaud (36:30.366)
Hmm.

Renaud (36:39.431)
Yeah.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (36:40.946)
feel alert, I feel better. Now, of course, that drug creates dependence as well. So you need more and more to kind of get the same response. But let's call it for what it is like we're we're drugging kids with a form of methamphetamine to induce a different reaction in them behaviorally, you're never getting to the root cause of what their struggles were, you're just trying to induce a level of sedation.

in order to make them more manageable.

Renaud (37:12.176)
How prevalent is ADHD in the US?

Kids in the US are diagnosed with ADHD.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (37:22.782)
Yeah, just recently did a podcast episode and I think the CDC has the numbers between 12 to 17%. But when you do these epidemiological studies in like certain pockets of the country, it's upwards about 20%. So yeah, it's dramatic, right? And that's the thing, like if psychiatry in the mental health industry was treating something that was a

disorder that deviated from the norm, you would be looking for pockets of one to 2 % of the population and they would be experiencing like such significant impairment in functioning that they would require some form of professional help, right? That's kind of this bell-shaped curve way of looking at what deviates from normal. But when you're looking at like treating and intervening,

with a quarter of the population, obviously it's very clear that you are treating normal. You are labeling, pathologizing, and intervening in an experimental way with normal.

Renaud (38:30.639)
What?

Renaud (38:36.478)
Well, on this topic, precisely Christopher Lash, I I wrote a book on Christopher Lash, actually. He dedicated a lot of time, actually, of his writing talking about the conscious design of a type of personality which is needed for a later stage capitalism or...

progressive society, which is based on consumption. And he explained that in prior stages, you needed a strong personality in the 19th century, mostly economic life was about producing. And then when economic life became about consuming, which becomes a total social factor, then we need a new kind of personality, which is the narcissistic personality.

which is a metaphor about like mean a trouble of personality that affects the newborn and the infants when they have trouble figuring out that there is a separation between themselves and their environment in the world. the narcissistic personality is not a strong self, it's not a selfish self, it's a...

It's a weak self, he called that a minimal self. do you think, I mean, the people who prescribe so massively drugs for treatment of ADHD, for example, are conscious that they are actually engineering a kind of dominant personality?

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (40:24.127)
Well, I've met so many of these prescribers in my journey, interviewed many of them, and you use the word conscious. My experience of them is unconscious, that they are really just in almost like a trans-like state, that they've been so conditioned by our culture that

and throughout their training that they have complete trust in centralized authority. So the medical physician, the psychological makeup of the medical physician in the United States, the allopathic doctor that really distributes pharmaceuticals as a form of healthcare. It's very interesting to me in how they've been able to construct a

mental idea of like human health and flourishing. So these are some of the best and the brightest, right? To be able to enter into medical school in the United States. It's very competitive. You have to have just really strong aptitude in math and science. And your ability to be able to be able to achieve in the public school system, I think

allows them to be very susceptible to this conditioning because the American public school system does not necessarily teach critical thinking. It really does a great job of being able to regurgitate through strong working memory back what the authority, the teacher, or what's in the textbook wants you to be able to memorize. So whether it's history or it's science, we're certainly not

training creative critical thinkers who are designed and taught to be able to challenge the authoritative position. In fact, you're punished for doing so. And they are so rewarded. So this is like operant conditioning for me is that they really care about being at the top of their class. So the top 1%, 2%, 3 % of their class requires them to really learn

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (42:52.34)
what it's going to take to be able to achieve that. So they're focused on that outcome, not necessarily the learning. So they're kind of primed when they go into medical school, that what they receive as far as the textbooks and their training is the pinnacle of modern science and that there's these advancements in this area. So I do believe that they are, they believe they are alleviating human suffering. So the psychiatrist,

Renaud (43:11.154)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (43:21.524)
somebody who was going to be prescribing these drugs, it's not really going further than that. Because when you ask the question about what the long-term consequences are on that individual, both health-wise, but also psychologically, they just see it as the person has a condition, I provide a pharmaceutical, the pharmaceutical has been proven scientifically, so they're told, to have minimal side effects.

but also it improves their performance or it improves their functioning. And so they have this condition, you hear this all the time, the benefits outweigh the costs. So yes, they might acknowledge that there's some adverse events or some side effects, but they're almost conditioned consistently to view those as rare. So you take the risk. And do they understand the quality?

of the science around these interventions, you would think so, but they do not. They work way too many hours. They're really just looking at abstracts or conclusions by authors, or they're just getting information from pharmaceutical marketing. And I don't think they're thinking deeply about these questions. See, I don't believe feeling better in the short term or decreasing like

emotions or improving focus, anything in the short term means long-term health outcomes. Because often, like what has to happen is that we have to face what has actually happened to us and make some legitimate changes, right? So even just from a health perspective, somebody comes in and they're on the verge of type two diabetes or pre-diabetic. You can say that ozempic

Renaud (44:53.49)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (45:16.401)
is going to produce this outcome in the short term. But what they're not doing is thinking what is the long-term impact of interfering with nature in this way and with the person not being able to engage in the behavioral changes that put them in that position in the first place. It's not supposed to be easy, as well as the times in our lives where we're struggling, whether that's focus for a kid, behavioral problems, depressed mood, fear.

Renaud (45:43.73)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (45:46.631)
All those symptoms and those experiences are there to serve us. That's part of the human experience. And so when we sell this notion of some quick and easy fix, it's like making a deal with the devil. You believe that you can swallow a pill and all those problems will go away, but all it's doing is creating new ones. And then we don't identify the new ones back to the interventions. So the explosion.

Renaud (46:02.366)
Hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (46:16.222)
in chronic disease, in cancer rates, autoimmune conditions. We're never gonna tie it back to the pharmaceutical pill that somebody was on, you know, back at a certain stage in their life, or the ideas that are cultivated in our consciousness about our health.

Renaud (46:27.326)
Hmm.

Renaud (46:36.06)
Well, it's perfect that you get into this topic because in your recent articles and podcasts, you have dedicated a lot of room to the soul. And you mentioned in one of your recent articles, a particularly troublesome one, that you receive patients who are medicated by psychiatrists for experiencing

transcendental experience or simply the experience of God simply. We also, mean, and you had a recent very interesting interview by Freya India in which like you ventured into the pathology of certain political tendency and particularly conservative

political tendencies. you expand a little bit on this?

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (47:39.873)
Yes, thank you for exploring this topic. So first of all, there's certain things I know to be true. And the paradigm in which we approach our physical health, the materialist paradigm that is driven by kind of atheist perspectives is a flawed and just flat out wrong paradigm that's going, it would keep people sick and dependent on a false God.

We are a soul in a body, inhabiting this body for human experience. We're energetic beings and the more that we get away from understanding ourselves outside of the materialist atheist paradigm, the sicker we become. The more we get disconnected from God, the more we get disconnected from nature, the worse we feel. I think that's obvious. I think we're supposed to be connected to one

with God and with our environment, with nature. And I think we're purposely being disconnected from God intentionally through the use of technology, media, and ideas around the materialist paradigm. We've just shifted our focus and our attention to a greater connection to divinity. And we've surrendered a lot of that authority to politicians.

and medical professionals, and we're supposed to blindly follow them. So when I wrote that article, I was speaking to what I see as increasing across the globe is the transcendental experience of connection to the oneness of all things, the experience of God in their lives, greater purpose and meaning turning to

prayer, turning to meditation, and feeling an awakening that the purpose of their life extends beyond just the ego and the developed identity of this one life. And speaking about that or talking about that in the US materialist atheist paradigm, the medical system, especially the mental health system and the way it's trained,

Renaud (49:42.237)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (50:05.215)
may be viewed as a religious delusion. It's certainly the way that you're conditioned and trained is not to talk about life as a journey, the hero's journey, a journey where the soul is continuously learning and there's a purpose and then you can experience God throughout this journey as a guide even to flow through you energetically as a creator.

And we don't have these type of conversations, although they've been written about for centuries. We kind of disconnect us to this idea that we are being spoken to through guides, angels, spirits, and that there is an all loving force in the universe. So when you deny that, when you create that to be quote unquote a delusion or psychosis, you're going to just create a fear based energy around it.

and then you report that in the medical system or with your therapist, it's going to be pathologized and drugged. So I titled an article, clearly that states the one thing you don't want to tell a mental health professional, because if you do, it's going to be misunderstood, misinterpreting your freedom can be taken away from you. And, you know, when we think about, you know, more conservative individuals, right? If you're more likely to skew towards the right,

or conservative values because of your belief in a greater source. You have religious beliefs. You believe that life in itself is supposed to be challenging and difficult. And you believe in individual freedom, an autonomy from a government, for example, that God is the ultimate authority and we're going to be judged individually based upon that. If you enter into a

a typical therapy with the poorly trained US therapists who've, you know, can be like 2526 27 years old with no experience, tend to be tend to be white women who skew liberal, then a lot of traditional viewpoints around family, around marriage, around gender roles, they can off they can all put you at risk.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (52:23.403)
from a therapist who kind of views that as somebody who is conditioned within a culture of oppression. And from this feminist perspective, social justice perspective, they believe it's their role as a therapist to try to get you to understand those belief systems to be culturally conditioned and that your happiness will come from breaking through those traditional like oppressive ideas.

That could be the institutions of marriage, the institutions of religion, or even the idea that there is a difference between a man and a woman. And so it's really not a favorable environment for somebody who is more conservative. I think it is an arm of the intelligence agencies in the United States.

Renaud (53:20.189)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (53:20.577)
to have its influence on the mental health industrial complex. How do I come to that conclusion? Well, the intelligence agencies have been involved in this for decades through MKUltra and they are interested in how you can create a more subservient population and also how to create division in a population. And when that occurs, you are more likely to act in fear.

Renaud (53:27.133)
Ha

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (53:49.105)
and you're more vulnerable to giving up your freedoms. That's what happens. mean, there's just the psychological operations in this. If you're somebody who believes that God is the ultimate authority, freedom is provided to you by God and that you're an energetic soul that extends beyond just this body, then you're more likely to engage in revolution. You're going to resist.

that authority because your purpose on this life is much greater than just clinging to this illusion of who you are and fearing death.

Renaud (54:27.708)
Well, it's perfect that you mentioned the intelligence agencies because it's, I mean, you're familiar with the the other adornos, the authoritarian personality. We know that there is a long cooperation between the intelligence agencies and precisely the aspect of like, I mean, promoting a certain kind of of weak personality.

And my friend Matthew Crawford, will be a guest on my podcast very soon, mentioned several times that, in fact, has a long article, even provocatively saying that the sexual revolution was a government setup. But precisely about the government agencies, well, let's go back to Maha.

Maha is part of a Make America First coalition. And when we think about what is the purest proposition of America First, it's that we need to heal the homeland, which is sick of the unlimited expansion of the American empire. So it makes perfect sense that Maha is integrated into that. What is your take on where it's going now that we are close to?

one year of Trump presidency and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at HHS and Jay Bhattacharya at the NIHS.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (56:05.802)
It's a good question. At its core, the Maha movement is an uprising of, I think, millennial mothers who are quite aware of the detrimental effects of the standard medical care and recommendations for nutrition in this country. And they're trying to prevent their children from experiencing the outcomes that the rest of the country is. So it's a

You know, it's an anti-authority, anti-establishment movement. And certainly, like those like Bobby Kennedy, for example, are instrumental in this by bringing attention to the chronic disease epidemic in this country and the harms of mass vaccination. COVID in itself, I think, has contributed to this uprising. And there's a lot more people awake to

Renaud (56:37.277)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (57:02.166)
what amounts to the significant conflicts of interest between industry and the US government in creating guidelines and influencing how our medical care is delivered. And so that in itself is a good thing. Like any movement, it's vulnerable to getting co-opted and used for purposes that are not designed with its original intent. So the role of the pharmaceutical industry in our

in our political world is so significant. The amount of dollars that are used to be able to fund campaigns and essentially control political discourse and the lobbying efforts is so dramatic and so significant. It's like, even if the intentions are pure from somebody like Bobby Kennedy and some of the people he's brought in, they're constantly navigating various landmines.

So obviously he's working in a greater Trump agenda and he's trying to survive. And I think some of the things he's are great and it's starting to bear fruit. Just as we're talking right now, we're seeing that the CDC changed its way of discussing vaccines and causing autism. They're now acknowledging that the link has not been established. It's uncertain because we...

We don't have any placebo controlled trials around it. So right there begins to change the narrative. We're looking at the over medicalization and the over prescriptions of psychiatric drugs. We certainly are starting to make changes around the poisonous chemicals. And then the movement that's being pushed culturally.

from a capitalistic standpoint, free market perspective is that industries are gonna have to adapt and adjust because they're gonna have to create products that have cleaner ingredients because you're gonna be able to measure this with sales. there's certainly a cascade of positive outcomes from the Maha movement. With that being said, we have to be aware of the vulnerability here because I think concessions are being made.

Renaud (59:01.565)
Yeah.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (59:22.581)
at the highest levels. for example, you know, think if Bobby Kennedy promoting Ozempuk or GLP-1s, I do not believe for a second that's what he believes, but he had to make some deal in order to work on other issues. This is unfortunate because what you're going to see is that we're going to, we're going to

Renaud (59:32.806)
Renaud (59:40.83)
Hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (59:51.866)
create the false narrative that we have a drug without consequence that helps target the consequences of poor diet and lifestyle and other problematic health issues. Again, same problem. Can you really be maha and on Ozempic? You know, no, right? You know, my belief is when you start fucking with nature, nature is gonna fuck you back, you know, excuse my language. And so that's what we've done.

Renaud (01:00:10.482)
Hmm. Yeah.

Renaud (01:00:17.437)
Hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:00:21.325)
We don't eat natural food. We're not exposed to nature. We're trying to alter our DNA with experimental technologies. And this is part of a greater transhumanist agenda. I firmly put myself in the humanist camp and we are moving into the front lines of a battle with the transhumanists whose agenda is to use various forms of technology to alter

human functioning DNA to upgrade, essentially upgrade to AI and wants to eliminate the human beings in its current form created by God. And I see it as a spiritual battle that's occurring. I think that's obvious. Anyone can see it. It's dark. They wanna be able to...

Renaud (01:00:52.7)
Mm-hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:01:17.259)
upgrade human consciousness, they want to live forever, they want to play the role of God. If you don't see how this is part of these competing factions that are playing out at the highest government level, then I don't think you're paying attention. So I don't believe that any of this is going to come from government. I don't think government should be our savior. I think we'll be falling into the same trap. Right? Why?

would you expect the same people who've created the problem to provide you the solution? It's going to come from a decentralized movement, grassroots, understanding your freedom and sovereignty is God made and being connected with nature and being connected with God. And in that, think we're going to, the response is going to be a return to community. And the decentralized movement will

push people back into, I'm gonna rely on my neighbor, right? How am I going to get the cleanest available food and water? Well, it's going to be from the person down the street who has that skillset or that farmer. And we're going to create some cooperation in our communities to be able to serve each other. The more you become decentralized and disconnected from each other, essentially you're alone in the wilderness.

Renaud (01:02:23.038)
Hmm.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:02:45.054)
And being alone in the wilderness means that you may be in a vulnerable state of fear when you'll rely on the help of some authority who's not there to really help you. And for psychologically, that's kind of what has happened. And I hope that Maha movement is a recognition that our bodies are designed by God, are designed to heal, and we have to get them back in alignment.

physically, energetically, spiritually back with nature and with God. Listen, you poison your environment, you poison the food source, the animals, you poison your minds, you try to disconnect us from all of nature, including sun exposure. You use artificial lighting, and then you try to provoke fear through targeted

media, social media campaigns and public education, you're going to get a disconnected, detached and sick population. And that's exactly what we've received.

Renaud (01:03:51.708)
Well, I think it's a perfect conclusion, both sobering and hopeful for this fascinating conversation. I have one regret that is that I'm rationed by the fact that French people have limited attention span for dubbed interview and by translating budget, but I could have gone on for it.

couple of hours more with you. I hope you will be back and well, I just wanted to thank you. This is wonderful.

Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:04:29.316)
Thanks for having me.