When a “Master” You Admire Goes off the Rails

I used to admire Dr. Kelly Brogan. Now I see her as a dangerous nutcase.

Sawubona.

Goop seems to attract its fair share of mucous brains, IMHO.

I used to admire Gwynth Paltrow. Not any more. See:

And I used to admire Dr. Kelly Brogan. Not any more. See:

Here’s what troubles me so deeply: both these (rich white) women, each of whom enters the fray with very different credentials (albeit Paltrow’s are that she happens to be famous), are using that fame to potentially do untold damage.

Paltrow seems to think that simply because some of her earlier ideas have become mainstream, that validates them. Not necessarily. Keto is not necessarily a good idea for many of those who are fans. To me, that means that vast numbers of people are making poor decisions without doing their homework. Sales are not necessarily an indication of a good idea, good medicine or good anything else. But this is America. Money rules. Money seems to validate any idea, good or bad. Or dangerous, even.

A lot of celebs have proven themselves to be downright stupid. Educated, but still monumentally stupid.

Brogan is different, in that she has a scientific background. That in and of itself guarantees nothing, as she has proven.

Dr. Brogan has a long resume. She received psychiatric training at NYU Medical after graduating from Cornell University Medical College. She also has a degree from MIT in Systems Neurosciences and has authored a New York Times bestseller.

Impressive credentials, and that’s not all she has to recommend her. Sure convinced me.

Let me back up a sec here.

Back in 2017, I decided to back off my psychiatric meds, for they were causing me far more harm than good. I had created a chart that listed some 35 deeply troubling symptoms. Symptoms that an athlete with my activity level and eating habits shouldn’t be experiencing. I researched the meds that the VA had me on and was able to draw either a direct or dotted causal relationship between the known side effects and each of those symptoms, ranging from suicidal thoughts to memory loss to light sensitivity.

One of my guides for that transition was Dr. Kelly Brogan’s book, A Mind of Her Own, The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives. Brogan seemed to be just the ticket. I inhaled her book, applied those parts that suited me. I worked with my healthcare providers, slowly got myself off my meds.

Not surprisingly, every single one of my symptoms went away.

That experience, of course, caused me to be something of a fan of Brogan’s book. In subsequent writings on Medium, once I joined two years ago today, I wholeheartedly endorsed her book and regularly recommended Brogan to others who were, as I had been, struggling more with the meds than the actual diagnosis.

Meanwhile, apparently, and this is purely my personal opinion, Brogan began to allow her visibility to go to her very attractive head. Fame does that sometimes.

I didn’t know Brogan had aligned herself with Goop, for which I have no respect whatsoever. Not in the slightest. I don’t follow Influencers, and I don’t read Twitter feeds. I don’t bother to follow anyone for that matter other than on Medium. So, isolated from Brogan’s more recent alignments, I continued to recommend her book.

Imagine my surprise, then, when Brogan shows up being righteously and reasonably publicly castigated for having said unbelievably foolish things about our Conditions, comments that could well cause many of her followers to take very dangerous actions.

Actions that could well not only endanger themselves but also others. To me this is a terrible abuse of power.

For my part, I now formally retract my support for Dr. Kelly Brogan, her book, and anything she puts out over social media or anywhere else. She has, to my mind, formally entered the Nutcase Hall of Fame, along with Alex Jones.

Interestingly, my Medium buddy Gillian Sisley recently wrote a heartfelt article about Influencer Rachel Hollis, for much the same kind of reasoning, albeit not having to do with our Conditions.

Hollis has been exposed to have ripped off other speakers for her book, which is not only illegal as hell but also an horrific example for other so-called Influencers to feel free to simply commit theft in order to bolster their own image. Here is her piece:

Not surprising, after she posted this, Gillian was roundly attacked by Hollis’s followers. The feedback was ugly. She wrote this in response:

Gillian and I have both been duped and disappointed by women we admired and respected. While each of us expressed that regard in different ways, each of us, and I would imagine many, many others, have been horrified that women (people, actors, whoever) to whom we gave our wholehearted support have turned out to be not only a deep disappointment, but a terrible embarrassment in how they have been behaving, or for laws they’ve broken in order to rip their followers off.

One of my lanes is the health and fitness sphere. I love to link to great gals (and guys, including Brad Stulberg) who have intelligent things to say. I feel very strongly about supporting my professional sisters whose work has the potential to heal, uplift, guide, challenge and move us all forward.

But I will not, cannot countenance rank stupidity and dangerous ego-based, unsubstantiated claims that can serve to cause death and illness among those who are easily swayed by fame or credentials or both.

This goes for male Influencers as well.

To wit: I used to have respect for Dr. Joseph Mercola. Not anymore. See:

I feel precisely the same way about Dr. Mehmet Oz.

I have long been a fan of Louise Hay’s work. But as with all things that wander into the woo-woo sphere, there is a point past which hugging a handful of crystals and singing Kumbayaa are not going to save our asses. My dear acupuncturist Barbara is squarely in this community. However, Barbara absolutely, positively respects all the social distancing. She no longer visits the nursing homes which make up a big part of her income, and she is diligent about all the protections.

Why? Because before she was an acupuncturist, she was a biologist. A trained scientist. The two can and do function in harmony. She can and does straddle both spheres. I think there’s a solid argument for both approaches.

OR nurse Ann Litts is also squarely in the Goddess-Witch-Spiritual sphere. Kindly, ask Ann how she feels about the science behind our current Conditions? My guess is that Ann might suggest that we respect the science. Period. Full stop. There is a time and a place for both, or people suffer and die needlessly. She is the middle of it daily. We’re losing our medical people in part because of mindless advice from folks who have too much sway over the public.

Losing people we can’t afford to lose.

Including nurses just like Ann, and the doctors they support.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that our Conditions are allowing us to pull back the great veils that Influencers hide behind like the Wizard of Oz. When their greed for money, for power, for public influence outweighs the public good, it’s time to call crap on their claims. This of course is my opinion only.

However like Gillian, and I love her dearly for saying this as a woman in her thirties, she isn’t the slightest bit jealous of Rachel Hollis. I am not the slightest bit jealous of Paltrow or Brogan. I do not in any way want fame, the intrusion into my private life that fame would engender, nor the money that fame might bring. No amount of money is going to improve what I already have: a deep and abiding sense of self-respect and self-worth and respect for others. To that, a good friend recently asked me if I’d like my own TV show about my epic adventures. She could well have made that happen.

No. Not on your life. She was surprised.

The terrific Sixties spiritual leader Ram Dass was famous for telling his followers who called him guru, that he was not their guru. He was emphatic that the sacred lies within. To find that guru within ourselves. Put another way, that the Kingdom of Heaven lies within each of us. That of course is a fundamental spiritual teaching. It appears as humans we still don’t seem to understand the difference between being inspired by someone and gluing ourselves to every single comment about the shape of an Influencer’s bowel moments, looking for magical portents.

Doesn’t everyone want fame, fortune, money? Don’t all of us want every single ridiculously mundane detail of our lives to be considered an Oracle for the Rest of the World?

NO. Not on your life. I fear great cost to my self-respect, self-worth and respect for others.

The kind of self-respect and respect for others that Holly, Brogan, Mercola and Oz don’t seem to have. Again, that’s just my opinion.

But that opinion is likely to keep me alive.