Original subtitles

It's a transient lifestyle.

And long story short, I take drugs for a living.

Human drug testing.

When a lot of people see my scars,

they think I'm a drug user,

kind of think they're, like, track marks...

for, uh, injecting heroin, but--

After they get about 100 needles in there, it's gonna leave a mark.

That's for damn sure.

And I've been in studies...

where we had 100 sticks in, like, 14 days.

That's a lot more traffic than I like going through my veins.

I mean, that's what I'm being paid to do.

I'm being paid to be poked, prodded, uh, tested.

And if I didn't want to do that, I wouldn't be here doing it.

I have to believe that I'm doing something to help out society.

I could be saving the lives of many people.

But do I really believe that?

It's hard to.

Compared to what we have.

And when you look for mascara, look for--

Output is a wall--

My name is Robert Helms,

and I am a professional guinea pig.

There's a take/take relationship between me and the pharmaceutical companies.

My name is Robert Helms, and I am a professional guinea pig.

They need bodies to do the testing, and I need money.

So, uh, no, I don't have any moral qualms.

My name is Robert Helms, and I'm a professional guinea pig.

The real Robert Helms makes his living...

as a human guinea pig for scientific exper--

When you're a guinea pig,

you have to fit the description they're looking for.

You have to be drug-free, and you have to pass a medical screening,

and the only way to consistently do that over and over is to lie.

To Tell the Truth.

- Now let's meet our panelists.

If you say you've got anything wrong in your medical history,

you're going to be less likely to get the job...

than the next guy in line who's very consistently lying.

Number three, d-did something happen to you...

that made you want to do something like this?

The doctor who examines you knows that you're lying,

but when I lie to them, I'm only lying so I can get work, which I need.

Okay, number two, how much do you make for doing something like this?

Up to something like $350 a day.

Now, how that plays into determining whether the drug is safe and effective,

that's not my work.

Number two or number three?

It's time to find out now which one of our players...

is the real human guinea pig.

Will the real Robert Helms please stand up?

If I'm lying, I'm lying for pennies.

This is not a mansion you're looking at here.

This is a rented room where I and my cats live.

When they lie, they're lying so that they can make billions of dollars...

over the course of many years while they have the patent on the drug.

They have an agenda to prescribe these drugs...

to as many people as possible.

It's their agenda inside your body.

They want to make money, and they have to use healthy guinea pigs...

in the regular society.

They're not able to use prisoners anymore. They wish they could.

This is Holmesburg prison here.

This is where I served time at from 1964 to 1966.

I was in for sales of marijuana.

This is my first time there. I'm scared, young-- 20 years old.

When I first got in there, I seen all these inmates walking around...

with bandages all over their bodies.

I found out these guys was on tests from the University of Pennsylvania...

under Dr. Albert Kligman.

And at first, they were minor tests,

you know, like a Johnson & Johnson bubble bath test.

And at the time, it was paying something like 30-something dollars.

So I said, "Put me on that."

But it wasn't the bubble bath. The people was crooked in the hospital.

They sprayed this stuff on my back that had all these deadly chemicals in it...

that went into my bloodstream.

I start breaking out with these little red, pustular bumps all over my body.

My hands and feet got that big.

One finger was that fat.

This stuff here on my fingers,

they are constantly itchy, burning.

I scratch them till they bleed. I have prostate cancer,

degenerative rheumatoid arthritis and hepatitis C.

Bubble bath does this to somebody, man?

Dr. Kligman didn't look at us as human beings.

He looked at us as a commodity...

or a number or skin to experiment on.

You know, sure enough, guinea pigs.

Now, I got on the other test, uh, taking pills.

I had to take seven pills three times a day.

But they did a job on me. They dehydrated my intestines.

They locked my bowels.

And they're taking me in the back of Holmesburg and butchered me.

They butchered me back there.

These tests, man, was something that should've never been.

You doing time in there. That's part of your life missing.

That's penalty enough.

I'm damaged, man. I'm damaged goods...

from getting into things blindly,

not knowing what I was really doing to myself,

and they knew.

They knew. They knew exactly.

They coerced us to believe that the testing was safe.

You can destroy your life taking stuff into your system.

It's gonna come back to haunt you, man, you know?

And that's the way life is, you know?

All right, man. Let's get out of here, man.

It's getting late. I got to get up in the morning and go to the clinic.

Follow that light, Jack.

Been doing med studies for...

two, going on three years now,

I believe.

Doing a study to pay for my wedding.

Met my fiancée hopping freight trains,

and, uh, we've been together ever since.

And now we're trying to save up money,

trying to start a family here pretty soon hopefully...

and get the heck out of here.

Here's Laura when I first met her.

I got pictures of her all over.

We even each other out.

Yeah, we're good-- good balance.

I've always done kind of odd-job stuff for medical studies.

I can help you get on a freight train...

or hitchhike wherever in a couple days,

but I'd like a home, and you need a steady income for that.

I'm worried about money now, you know?

It's just-- I hate money.

Yup.

Dollar bills. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dan always looked into things very, very deeply--

much too deeply.

And I do think that did contribute to his mental illness.

He didn't laugh things off.

I wish he had.

This was his college graduation in 2000.

And a birthday card that he made for me.

I think he was probably about seven.

And he says everybody is smiling, but no,

everybody is not smiling anymore.

Dan became ill,

and I got him into Fairview Riverside Hospital...

in Minneapolis in November of 2003.

And within a few days, he was put into a clinical study...

that was run by his attending physician, Dr. Stephen C. Olson.

He was his attending physician...

and also the principal investigator in the clinical study.

It's an obvious conflict of interest.

Dan had the choice of either going into the study...

or going into a mental hospital.

He chose the study.

Dr. Olson had control over Dan's freedom.

He was taken off his treatment medication...

and put on the study medication,

which turned out to be Seroquel.

These clinical studies are marketing ploys for the pharmaceutical companies...

on drugs that were approved over a dozen years ago...

and should no longer have to be studied.

I had no one else to turn to.

You know, we had tried for everyone to help us.

Because Dan was of legal age, I had no way of getting him out of the study,

you know, other than pleading with the doctors to let him out,

which they would not.

It was obvious he was deteriorating by his demeanor.

He was losing a lot of weight,

and he was gaunt.

And he felt he was being plagued by devils.

He was-- psychotic.

I told Dr. Olson, "I know my son."

I said, "I see this inner rage.

Please, don't let it come boiling out."

Which it did.

And I can still remember Father O'Hotto saying that,

"Your son passed away."

And...

I remember thinking, "Oh, how ridiculous.

No, he didn't pass away. He was killed."

He didn't pass away. They let him die.

And they need to be held accountable.

And there we go. See?

I was a former drug rep who helped shape the Zoloft marketplace,

which was the S.S.R.I. marketplace in the early '90s.

It was a blockbuster market. It was huge.

I mean, every drug in that market did over $1 billion.

Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Lexapro.

So I've been tracking that market for a couple of decades on and off.

Years ago, I met a psychiatrist who got consulted at the zoo...

to treat a particular young bonobo chimp...

who was injuring himself.

And it got to a point where it was almost a matter of life and death.

So that's why they called in this psychiatrist,

'cause they wanted him for a prescription.

They wanted a psychiatric medication beyond what they normally use.

So he wrote a script for Paxil to reduce his anxiety,

to help with the O.C.D. behavior.

The young male chimp stopped hurting himself,

lost his anxiety, was resocialized.

He's part of the troop.

He's in line to be an alpha male at some point.

So you could say it's an incredible success story,

but it was how he envisioned Paxil being used in his human patients--

medication plus psychodynamic intervention.

He was able to do it with the bonobos.

It's easy to say, you know, we're a world on drugs,

and specifically, we're becoming a world on psychiatric medication.

I mean, that's indisputable.

Even if you looked at primates in institutions--

Human and apes, they develop certain psychopathologies that are very common.

I mean, if you go across the street here,

there's a county-run mental facility...

with human primates on a lot of medications.

But there's interesting differences.

They're trying to get everyone out of that institution...

on heavy-duty drugs and polypharmacy,

and they don't have a lot of success.

Many times, people end up there...

because they want to be institutionalized.

They don't want to be deinstitutionalized at that particular moment.

They're scared. They're frightened. They have no social support.

They don't know how to take care of themselves.

They realize that their psychiatric symptoms are overwhelming them.

But the whole push at those institutions...

is to get them medicated, short-term stay, pharm 'em out.

They have people checking in on them,

but not a lot of "socialness," not a lot of care--

A lot of pharmaceuticals, maybe cash to survive in our economy.

Then you come across the street. You're at the zoo with your great apes,

and if they have psychological issues or psychiatric problems,

they're addressed immediately.

It's a fine-tuned approach.

They incorporate the same psychiatric methodology...

and psychiatric thinking and styles of care,

and they often get the right results...

within an institutional setting.

We're in the bigfoot museum.

And Michael and I have lived here for a year.

It's the overall "ah" in the background.

Almost to the day. Claimed to have seen some...

and had some experiences with invisible Bigfoot.

She actually explained in her book--

I love my man, but gosh darn it,

I want a little break from Bigfoot.

This is the sound of the Sasquatch.

There's definitely a Bigfoot that lives in people's minds.

Where the difference is between what goes on in your mind and what goes on in reality,

I don't think we've got that all figured out yet.

My brain is a beast.

I am severely bipolar.

They call it bipolar rapid cycling borderline schizophrenia.

Bipolar disorder creates noise in your brain that is constant.

Voices come from this way, and voices come from that way.

And it's really like being possessed by Satan.

The nuances of mental illness require the nuances...

of different medications to tone down the mania,

because when I go off manic, it is tornado.

This is Seroquel Extended Release...

um, that I take at night.

This is Depakote, which I take twice a day.

Abilify for depression.

Docusate sodium so I can poop.

Nuvigil, Ambien, Cymbalta, Simvastatin,

Lorazepam, Lortab, Zoloft,

Seroquel Extended Release again,

aspirin, marijuana.

So that's it.

How many actual pills do I take a day?

About 20...

or more.

This is the healthiest I have been ever both mentally and physically.

The drugs are doing their thing.

And they're working.

It's rare that I give in to any of the side effects,

although I have them every day.

All right.

I'm from Iowa City, Iowa.

I was born and raised here.

Joined the Iowa National Guard when I was 17 years old...

as a medic with the 109th Medical Company.

I figured, you know, if I'm a medic,

I'm probably not gonna be fighting people, you know? I'm gonna be helping people.

I was just really into everything...

that the Bush Administration was putting out there.

And so... two days after I turned 17, I joined the National Guard,

'cause it's the earliest I could join.

All right, I'd say it's go time.

I found out right before I left that I was gonna be stationed at the Abu Ghraib Prison.

I never in my life thought I would work in a prison facility,

especially not one that was notorious for abuse and torture.

I was so young when I was there,

and I was so afraid, and I wanted to get home so badly...

that I just tried to do what I was ordered to do...

and, I guess, just deal with it when I got home,

and it-it's been pretty rough.

I knew I had a problem when I got home--

ruining relationships, getting into legal trouble.

And I knew I was drinking to try to forget the things that had happened.

And I showed up at the V.A., made an appointment,

and they diagnosed me with P.T.S.D....

and put me on Zoloft and Hydroxyzine that day.

That's all the shit I haven't taken here.

I was taking this shit, you know.

The V.A. has these contracts...

with certain pharmaceutical companies,

and if there's a medication that can help you...

or even maybe save your life, you might not get that medication.

So then they use other medications...

for uses that they aren't really intended for...

just 'cause they don't have as big of a selection.

If I saw a normal doctor if I had health insurance,

if I could afford it, dude,

like, I wouldn't have to deal with this crap...

and having to pick from this selection...

of, you know, who they have their deals with.

I really don't know what's working.

The stuff that haunts me the most is just the memories.

I have nightmares every single night, and you wake up sweating.

They're impacting right there!

Hey, let's go! They're impacting!

It's hard to explain to people...

that at a certain point in time, you have such extreme anxiety...

that you don't even know what to do.

You're pacing. You're crying. You're throwing up.

There's Andy up there. Andy, take the video.

We're, uh--

Eventually, it just becomes overwhelming...

for friends and family members.

You just feel you've given so much of yourself...

and got so little in return except for all these problems.

I don't need medication. I need help.

I need somebody to listen to me, to talk to me.

If they want to give me medication,

give me medication that works.

God has a prescription.

And inside man,

locked up in his spine,

is 10,000 deadly diseases locked up in cells.

And every time you go outside of the boundaries,

of the prescription that life is supposed to be about,

God releases one of those deadly diseases or germs into your system...

as a warning that something is wrong that needs to be corrected.

You see what I mean?

Salvation is to be healthy...

so that you can be in tune with God and happy.

My ideology is that I'm going to get as pure...

as I possibly can before I die.

Drug-free, doing the right thing,

so when I meet my maker that I believe in,

I'll get a little bit of paradise.

I'm writing this book. It's called Tales from the Script.

And it's kind of just assessing the last 20 years...

of how the industry gets doctors to write prescriptions.

It's sort of a simple question, but I think it's complex once you start to unravel it.

And I do this chapter where I talk about,

well, what anthropologists do is a lot like what drug reps do.

You know, we have to do reconnaissance. We have to build relationships.

It's all for different reasons, you know.

One is sort of gaining knowledge and insight to help people, hopefully,

and the other, you know, is to make a buck.

From a drug rep's point of view, you have to go where the scripts are being written,

and they're gonna be written in this building.

And this is where they happen to keep their samples.

Might come in and assess. This is my product.

I'm gonna get this one nice and high.

I'm gonna put my competition, like, over here, so you put it down there.

I might even just throw it in the corner... depending on how mad I was.

And then I'd put my sample of Zoloft right here.

That's probably gonna stay there for a while...

till maybe my competition comes and goes, "Oh, the Pfizer rep was here again."

Put this back up here. We're gonna get things back to normal.

These are the little games you play. It's neurotic drug rep stuff.

At the same time, I'm sending anonymous mailers on Zoloft,

whether approved or unapproved.

I'm leaving Zoloft file cards everywhere.

What I'm trying to do is over, like, a three-month period,

make sort of-- kind of make it seem...

like it's naturally occurring that Zoloft is a big deal,

that Zoloft is the new drug to be using.

I think many reps know that doctors think...

about what they do in terms of cases,

so if you can get a physician talking about a case,

they start to sell themselves.

Let's say Dr. "W" comes up to me and I say,

"Hey, how is Zoloft working for you?" And he says, "It's good."

I say, "You're using it for depression in your patients?"

"Of course. It's indicated for depression."

I say, "You using it anywhere else?" Now, I've done nothing illegal.

Now, let's say by chance, Dr. "W" says,

"Well, you know, I do use it for some patients with panic disorder."

That's an off-label use of the drug.

I say, "Well, I got your signature for samples.

"Would you like some clinical information...

on what you just told me you were using Zoloft for?"

"Sure." Then officially, I can put his name in the computer.

Our medical department can send all these articles...

on using Zoloft for panic disorder,

which, at the time, is illegal.

I never did one thing wrong.

I didn't mention it for off-label.

I didn't do anything.

I just asked him, you know, some questions.

That was legal, and that's what we were trained to do.

You know, at least that's the way I did it.

Your time's done. You're onto the next call.

Now, there might be a rep out here. Sometimes there is.

This is a pharmaceutical rep who's here, probably. Yes?

Yes or no?

Okay, so they don't talk to anybody.

Ah, she was terrified. I felt it for her.

In a way, I actually feel sorry for drug reps,

because they've been kind of cast as the problem.

They're sort of the mediator between medicine and the market.

And the sad thing for reps is, they're told over and over...

they're delivering a message of good clinical science.

I don't begrudge drug reps. I mean, they're nice people.

They're hard workers for the most part.

Unless they've had their epiphany or they're hyper-reflexive on what they do,

they think they're doing a good job.

I worked with some that thought they were doing God's work.

They looked at it as a vocation.

So, you know, it's interesting.

There's kind of a religiosity to being a drug rep...

in terms of believing that you are doing some good work...

educating doctors with these available products you have--

That they're missing something.

In retrospect, you do see it more for what it was,

you know, which is sort of this, um,

really, a business branding model applied to health care,

really, almost at all costs.

But, um, no one ever shouted, "That's unethical,"

until the end, you know, until I was almost done,

you know, that I realized,

"Wow, you know, what we're doing here is really sort of shady."

I think I spent a lot more time in the system...

than most people would have.

I was adopted by American parents...

and had a lot of behavioral issues...

and ended up in a group home.

I was on Ritalin a good six years.

I think any kid could have a problem with that.

But what's done is done.

Here's all my childhood stuff just this box here,

stuff I hang onto,

family photographs.

Being in a clinical research study...

was pretty much no different than being in a group home.

You have all that structure. You're told what to do, when to do it.

But then when I'm not in a study,

I'm in a territory that I'm not comfortable with.

You know, I feel lost half the time.

Lately I've been thinking this whole town is just built on death,

'cause it's a giant hospital.

People fly from all over just to come here to die pretty much,

you know?

There's people dying everywhere, though, but--

They definitely make money off of it here.

Okay, thanks.

Please, don't.

Get out of here.

Sickness is the glue that holds this place together.

Without the Mayo Clinic, without the sickness,

it would be another small, dying, Midwest town.

The primary reason why many young people are here...

are for the sole purpose of their family working at Mayo Clinic.

I've been prescribed Adderall, Hydrocodone--

Zoloft and Paxil and--

Ritalin, Paxil. That was fun.

I've taken every amount of fucking antidepressants you can ever imagine.

None of them worked.

- Prozac-- - Adderall most definitely.

- Adderall and Ritalin. - Adderall--

Wellbutrin for smoking cigarettes and trying to quit,

which never happened, obviously.

I just got prescribed Percocet, Nexium, Prilosec. Um--

- What else? - Seroquel--

- Seroquel. - Zoloft.

- Lithium-- - Valium, Percocet.

- Oxycontin. - Effexor, Benztropine, and Abilify.

All those S.S.R.I.'s or whatever they are--

serotonin "ip-tup-take" inhibit-- whatever they are--

I don't know. Whatever. Fucking--

I don't know the names of the things I've been prescribed,

I guess, is my problem.

Robert, now, you record your experiences...

in this newsletter which is entitled-- I'll hold it up.

It's called the-- I'm guessing. Is that right? The Guinea Pig Zero?

- Correct, Guinea Pig Zero. - Explain the title.

I, uh, write about the history of human experiments...

and news stories about sometimes abuses...

and things that go wrong in the experiments.

So not only do you do the experiment...

but you're the investigative journalist as well within the industry.

- You could say that. - I-- Keeping them honest. Keeping them honest.

'Cause they have to be. 'Cause the guinea pigs themselves can't do it.

- Well, they all doped up.

Nope. I'm gonna take my pill.

This is Adderall.

One day I decided I had A.D.H.D.

That's a person who gets more work done when they take amphetamines.

It's the scientific definition.

This is a humane animal trap.

This is for a fairly small animal...

like a possum or a raccoon or a cat, a stray cat.

And I got it...

so that I could catch animals...

on the idea that I might eat them.

And I wanted to be ready to know how to get food,

get meat on the table.

It was because I had no money, and it was because I'm over the age of 45,

and that's the cut-off date for drug experiments.

When there's no money, there's no money.

So you have to do something that doesn't cost anything.

In my little world, part of the complexity is...

that I take a drug to help me continue my writing and research,

and I also have a lot of problems with the way...

the drug manufacturers go about their business and make fantastic profits.

My work helps to address some of the contradictions in my life.

It has a healing effect on the world, I think, in some modest degree.

And the Adderall has helped me produce my writing.

The relationship is not complicated to me.

It just works.

This has been an educated trial.

All the doctors that I am seeing do not stay on top of my drugs,

and it's a good thing that I do.

I'm my own case manager.

It's true.

Keeps me on my toes.

I can see how right now she would feel really strongly...

that she's doing the right thing.

Of course, a lot of the medicine she takes have these side effects.

Always mitigating symptoms,

but not dealing really directly with the problem necessarily.

That's the way it seems to me a lot of the time.

I did get hospitalized for polypharmacy.

All kinds of weird drugs were prescribed,

and I got very sick and had to be hospitalized.

That took two weeks to detox.

And then they started me on a whole different pile of drugs.

I was watching it happen and saying to myself,

"This doesn't seem right."

Especially when one of her doctors refused to see her,

and yet he was still giving her psychotropic drugs...

but not monitoring her with it, which, you know--

I was under the impression that was-- that was wrong.

That's polypharmacy in a nutshell.

I could've died.

Duffy, are you nervous? What do you think about this?

I'm scared.

What I did in Iraq is not what I imagined...

I would be doing when I enlisted in the army.

There's their makeshift mosque out of our tents.

My first impression of Abu Ghraib prison was,

"This looks like a concentration camp."

I didn't know who I should be watching,

what I should be doing, how I should be conducting myself.

I didn't know how I made it there.

Very overwhelming for a 19 and 20-year-old kid to be around,

to be in charge of whether somebody lives or dies.

Get it done, retard!

I would never act like I did at Abu Ghraib prison...

in normal life-- never, ever.

They way we were using medicine there...

was to get at the prisoners and break them down.

Instead of treating people, it was almost like...

we were punishing them for seeking treatment from us.

I mean, when I'm ordered to give somebody a 14-gauge needle,

especially if they're not in a massive trauma,

I know that that's not needed.

I know that that's purely to inflict pain.

And that was explicitly explained to me...

by the officer in charge as,

"Give these guys 14-gauge needles.

"They won't want I.V.'s anymore, 'cause they're so huge and they're so painful."

Usually the prisoners are crying and wailing and screaming at you...

when you're doing this.

There's nothing to feel good about sticking a 14-gauge I.V. in somebody for no good reason.

I couldn't take doing that to those people anymore.

I'm sure there was other people who also felt the same way as I did,

but Abu Ghraib Prison was not the place you spoke out against--

against any type of practices there whatsoever.

When Dan died, he didn't leave much of a suicide note.

He simply wrote, "I leave this experience smiling."

That's all he wrote.

You know, doing it all over again,

you know, I don't know what I could've done differently.

I mean, for heaven sakes, I didn't want him in the study.

It was not important at all how Dan was doing.

If it were important how he was doing, they would've contacted me...

after we contacted them on Good Friday and said,

"Do we have to wait for him to kill himself?"

And we did. We had to wait for that.

I called the coroner the Monday after he died.

I said I wanted to see him.

And I remember her kind of yelling at me and saying,

"Well, don't you know how he died?"

And I said, "Well, evidently, I don't."

And I didn't.

You know, I-- When you find out your son kills himself,

you don't say, "Oh, what did he do?"

No, I didn't know.

But it wasn't a normal suicide.

He slit his throat so badly...

that the coroner's office said he almost decapitated himself.

And then she said probably because he wasn't dying fast enough,

that he slit his abdomen open...

and reached his hand inside,

and she said when they found him,

his one hand had the box cutter frozen in it,

and the other hand was inside his abdomen up to his wrist.

And, you know, I want people to know...

this is what the drugs do.

If Dan simply wanted to kill himself...

he wouldn't have done that.

Sunday is a big day.

Getting hitched. Tying the old knot.

This whole wedding was paid for by medical studies.

Yeah, this is what $7,000 worth of a med study looks like.

Jordan likes to be really independent,

and I love him for that, that he-- you know,

he's able to do these things that are ultimately dangerous...

to avoid having to do a 9:00 to 5:00.

We still keep it in the space of not doing really major studies...

that can have big problems later.

So for now, you know, it's Jordan doing medical studies,

and I'm going to school in January and getting a job.

This is what happens when you grow up, I guess.

That's perfect.

Somebody did the weather for everybody,

'cause you couldn't get a more beautiful day than today.

Pleased to meet you, sir.

Oh, my goodness. What in--

I call that authentic body piercing.

Everyone is always waiting for that one person...

who makes their lives complete.

You are hands-down the most amazing person...

I have ever met in my entire life.

I love you.

I was awake for hours trying to write the perfect vows.

Perfect vows to express how quickly I fell in love with you,

how glad I am about who you've helped me become as a person.

And how crazy in love I am with you...

and will be for the rest of our lives.

You're fine.

Hi.

What I do as a historian is...

look into the way the poorer people...

have been exploited and brutalized and abused...

by the people in power...

and the people with money.

This includes these people who are on the margins.

And it includes human guinea pigs.

This is a history that hasn't been told thoroughly enough.

And there are lot of stories that are important...

that haven't been brought to light...

and that haven't been explored.

It's an act of solidarity with those who have come before you...

and with those who come after you.

You light a torch, and then you pass it on to another person.

At the end of the day, somebody has light in their mind...

that they might not have had if it weren't for you yourself...

passing the torch.

I'm proud of it.

Fuck.

Many people that are in psychiatric distress...

can especially benefit from the acute use of psychiatric medication.

I don't think we need to question that.

But you also have this whole other part of society...

that is using/abusing psychiatric medication,

and you can put the medical field in there, too,

because they're the enablers.

In the '90s, if you told a family practice doctor,

"In ten years, you will write a ton of prescriptions every month...

for atypical antipsychotics," they might laugh at you.

Now primary care are writing atypicals...

for add-on therapy for depression,

anger management, O.D.D., anxiety disorders.

They're just being used for everything.

The market is being saturated with them,

but most importantly by primary care.

That's-- I think that's the most important thing that pharma has figured out.

I'm tracking a case about a psychiatrist...

who claims that a major part of her job now is detox.

She has patients who come in on a cocktail of medications...

from one primary care doctor who thinks he's an expert on bipolar disorder.

She gets the patient, and she says...

they're on all the wrong medications.

They're not bipolar. They're depressed.

And then her job is to titrate the patient off these medications,

get them on perhaps one medication for depression.

This is a future of psychiatry we could think about,

which is, psychiatry is detox.

Psychiatry more and more,

they're dealing with the polypharmacy generated by primary care,

and in this case, they ask the question,

"Why are primary care doctors writing all these atypical antipsychotics?"

We have millions of people that are being prescribed psychiatric medications...

sometimes appropriate use,

but a large part of that population is being prescribed psychiatric medication...

where it may not be warranted or indicated.

But it's in demand.

I think how the V.A. system is set up right now,

you don't have to be going to therapy to get the drugs.

They'll prescribe you the medication.

If you want therapy, they film the entire session,

which is extremely uncomfortable,

and they have a set program for P.T.S.D....

that just simply... doesn't work.

There's really no continuity to your care,

because a lot of these guys are residents,

and you might see them once or twice.

And so they don't know what you've even been on half the time,

so they try to give you the same drugs that have already failed for you.

P.T.S.D. is not a new thing. It's been around forever.

And I think they should be a little slower to just hand you drugs,

say, "I hope these work for you,"

send you out the door...

than pursue even, like, alternate therapy treatments that could work for people.

It's hard to let go of the military.

- It's still hard to let go of the military for me.

I mean, I miss my friends. I miss my buddies.

I miss helping people out as a medic.

But now I have the support of soldiers that are for peace.

- I get the support here from Veterans for Peace...

and Iraq Veterans against the War that I don't get at the V.A.

People seem to truly care about me.

It's anxiety-inducing, but at the same time,

it's also very rewarding to finally be able to open up more...

than I would to any psychologist or anything.

They're there for me.

If I go into a panic-attack type state,

you know, I have a supportive environment.

I don't need to turn to benzodiazepine.

You know, I don't have to take a Xanax.

I don't have to pop a Klonopin to calm myself down.

I have someone that's right there next to me...

that has been where I've been, dealt with the same problems,

often times dealt with them longer,

and knows exactly what to do and to say...

to try to pull me back in and get back to myself.

It's too easy to sit in your house...

and pop pills and drink alcohol.

It's much harder to step out in the real world...

and try to right the wrongs that I feel I've done to people.

I guess I kind of started getting tattoos...

because it was, like, something nobody could take away from me, you know?

Go through a little pain getting some nice tattoos...

and release a little pain at the same time, I guess.

A lot of people who do studies seem to like to gamble.

I mean, I'm playing for the one chance that I might hit it big.

Just a money issue.

Either I don't have the money or I don't have enough.

In the past I've had a lot more issues with gambling...

where I would not pay my bills that I should be paying.

But I didn't have any support from my parents,

and I really didn't have any support from anywhere else,

so I basically dropped out there into the world...

and made a lot of mistakes.

I lost a really good job. I was a bus driver for a while.

- That kind of snowballed into not paying my rent...

and not making car payments.

So eventually, I ended up homeless.

I mean, it was not a good time in my life.

So that's, like, one of those dirty things,

like, once I--

once you've experienced homelessness,

you just never really get over it.

- It has been an issue, like, in the last few years...

where I'd rather go to Vegas and piss away some money...

just knowing that I can survive till the next study on the street.

If that were to ever dissipate, I'm not really sure where I'd end up.

Been a downhill spiral.

But... it's money I can afford to lose.

Tomorrow I'm gonna go back to Austin.

I'm looking for my next study, but--

Just slim pickings at the moment.

Sometimes when I go home from Vegas, it's--

I know what I'm going home to--

the streets.

Did you hear it?

Do you hear the cricket?

It's been over seven years, and I don't know where the years went.

I don't think there is a minute that goes by that I don't think of him.

I have his ashes.

Yeah, I have some in here.

Yes, he is right by my heart.

Sometimes I almost feel as though he should talk to me.

And tell me where you are.

Wherever Dan is, I know that he is well...

and it is a place for him of peace.

And sometimes I think that no human being...

will ever have total peace.

I mean, every life has problems.

But I think after we're gone on, we've gone on to another place.

I think all these worries dissolve.

And it's like at that point, we don't have an age.

We're just who we are...

and who we were meant to be.

Holmesburg was a-- a mean experience, you know? I was lost.

And that's when I first found Islam.

It changed my life.

Dr. Kligman-- just recently passed away.

God rest his soul if he can,

'cause all the corrupt things he did-- his sins is on him.

If he has forgiveness coming to him, he's gonna get it.

You know, that's-- that's it. That's the way forgiveness go.

Allah's the one who's got to forgive him.

You know? Yeah.

I mean, I feel hurt that he coerced us...

to believe that those tests was safe.

You see, I feel hurt that he did that for the sake of money.

But, uh, Allah heals wounds.

Allah heals wounds, you know?

You need that.

Everybody need a shot of Islam,

not a shot of alcohol or a shot of drugs.

You see what I'm saying?

You have the rope of Allah to hold on to.

I do pray for health,

and I do pray over the medicine so that it's doing its job,

and I can get away with less and less.

Hello?

Bill collector.

It's a good thing I'm not depressed...

or I would have a hell of a weaponry pile right here.

And that's the way it's done...

every day.

I wish I wasn't mentally ill. I mean, it's the pits.

God's grace is amazing.

And His grace never ends.

We're constantly being drenched in it.

I love my Lord so much.