Off Label (2012) - full transcript

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.

* The splendor of the King

* Clothed in majesty

* Let all the earth rejoice

* Let all the earth rejoice

* How great is our God

* Sing with me

How great is our God *

* All will see how great

* How great is our God

* How great is our God

* Sing with me

How great is our God *

* All will see how great

* How great *