Jacob Melton

Joe Rogan just took time out of his podcast to express genuine concern for his friend Theo Von. He admitted that some of Von’s recent behavior after getting on SSRIs “freaks me out” — especially his comments about suicide. ROGAN: “Theo Von’s going through the exact same thing and last time he was on the podcast he was explaining it to me.” “It freaks me out because I know Theo has had conversations before...like even publicly.” “He had a Netflix taping and it didn’t go well. It was like they actually never...they shelved it. They never used it.” “And you know there was all these stories from people that were there saying he bombed. I think he just had a kind of a breakdown.” “And when he was talking to the crowd and there’s a video of it, he said, you know, the people were saying, hey, we still love you.” “He goes, thank you. Look, I’m just I’m trying not to take my own life.” “And like you hear stuff like that and you just go like, oh, Jesus Christ.” “I’ve known too many people that I didn’t think were going to kill themselves and then did.” “And then he goes down these spirals where he starts talking about world events and freaking out. I’m like, oh, Jesus Christ! Like, I got to help this dude.”

Alcohol consumption among U.S. adults has fallen to the lowest level recorded in Gallup’s nearly 90-year history.

Thank you for sharing your personal story. I am truly sorry you had to go through that experience, and I am glad you received appropriate help that ultimately benefited you. That is exactly what people need to understand. SSRIs help millions, if not billions, of people worldwide suffering from Major Depression, Anxiety Disorders, OCD, PTSD, Panic Disorder, Eating Disorders, and many other psychiatric illnesses. Like every medication in medicine, they can have side effects and withdrawal symptoms, which is why a responsible psychiatrist must carefully discuss risks, benefits, alternatives, and monitoring with patients so they can make an informed decision. If someone experiences severe or debilitating withdrawal symptoms, we should never dismiss or invalidate their experience. But using individual experiences to claim that SSRIs do not help anyone, or making exaggerated comparisons like “worse than heroin withdrawal,” is also scientifically inaccurate and deeply irresponsible. People also need to understand that many anti-psychiatry influencers carry zero responsibility for actual patient care. They do not manage suicidal patients at 3 AM, treat severe OCD, stabilize psychosis, or help patients recover from debilitating depression and anxiety disorders. Many are building personal brands and businesses around fear. Some run expensive “deprescribing clinics” charging thousands of dollars out of pocket, often not covered by insurance. Others sell unregulated supplements, online courses, or books. Patients deserve balanced, evidence based information, not fear mongering driven by anecdotes, ideology, or financial incentives.

Peter thiel asked a room of stanford students one question that made most of them quietly stop typing. He asked them what important truth do very few people agree with you on. Then he said the reason most of them could not answer it was the same reason their careers would be average. His name is Peter Thiel, and he has funded more zero to one companies than almost anyone alive. Here is what he said, and why it changes how you should be thinking about your work right now. He said the most valuable thing a person can own in the next decade is not a skill, not a network, and not capital. It is a real contrarian belief that turns out to be true. For most of history, being right about things everyone else was also right about was enough to build a good career. In the world that is arriving, consensus knowledge is free. Anyone can ask a model and get the answer the smart people would have given. The only thing that compounds is being correctly early on something the room thinks is wrong. His framework for testing your contrarian belief is brutally simple. He calls it the three layer test. The first layer is whether your belief is actually contrarian. Most people fail here instantly. They think they have a contrarian view, but when they say it out loud, half the room nods. If your belief is one a smart person at a dinner party would agree with after thinking for ten seconds, it is not contrarian. It is just slightly under the surface consensus. The second layer is whether your belief is specific enough to act on. Saying education is broken is not contrarian, it is a t-shirt. Saying a specific category of credential will collapse in a specific industry within a specific window is something you can build a company around. Most people stop at the t-shirt and wonder why they never compound. The third layer is the one almost everyone skips. Are you actually willing to look stupid for it. Thiel said the number one predictor of which of his students went on to build something important was not intelligence. It was tolerance for being publicly wrong-sounding for years before being right. He said the students who held their contrarian belief privately, waiting for it to be socially safe to say, almost always watched someone else build the thing they had quietly believed in for a decade. The people who are actually winning right now are not the ones with the most knowledge. They are the ones who picked one uncomfortable truth, said it out loud before it was safe, and stayed there long enough for the world to catch up.