Welcome to Back from the Abyss. I'm Dr. Craig Hecock. Today's episode is an interview that I did recently on psychedelics today.

I was in my car, I guess, probably three or four weeks ago,

listening to psychedelics today, and they had a very interesting interview with a man named Will Hall, who is a therapist, an author, and podcaster.

And they introduced him as someone who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia,

had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals earlier in his life, and then had recovered. And

I was completely transfixed because I love a good healing story, as you all know. But as the

interview progressed, it became clear that Will was part of what we call the

psychiatry survivors or anti-psychiatry movement.

And he launched into a two-part, almost three-hour diatribe against psychiatry.

And so I wrote the host of Psychedelics Today and asked that there be some balance.

And so they invited me to do an interview,

which was published last week on their podcast.

And I asked if I could run it on this podcast,

and they happily agreed.

So on the two-part psychedelics today, interview with Will Hall, he argued that psychiatry's

broken, that it needs to be replaced. He argued against the medicalization of psychedelics.

He called into question the very existence of psychiatric illness,

wondering, for example, if psychotic breaks were actually, quote-unquote, spiritual emergencies.

He suggested that psychiatrists are in bed with the drug companies and don't actually

understand or even care about the risks of their treatments. He posited that mental illness is largely a way to label and control people,

especially lower income and non-white populations.

Will had many, many criticisms, but no meaningful vision for realistic change.

...