 So earlier this year with all the hubbub that was going on with the Boeing 737, we ended up finding out that the FAA actually allows jet makers to self-regulate and do their own safety checks, which is actually mind-blowing. But what's interesting is the FDA actually allowed big pharma to do the same thing when it comes to the anti-depression medications that we put in our body. And I don't know about you, but I like knowing when I'm being manipulated. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health, and this week I am focusing on anti-depression medications. So if you're into that stuff, if you would like to know the truth, if you are a truth seeker, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And in case you missed it, yesterday I did my first video of this little mini series about anti-depression medications. It'll be linked up in the info card and down in the description and all that other stuff. All right. So yeah, let's talk. Let's talk about the FDA. All right. So the FDA is the Food and Drug Administration. All right. So all of these wonderful pills and everything that get prescribed to us, before they are allowed to be prescribed to us, they got to go through a little bit of a process. All right. So they don't just like make a pill and say, here you go. They got to go through some rigorous testing. All right. They want to make sure that it's safe. They want to know about the side effects. And they also want to know that these pills actually work. All right. So if you're like me, when you hear of the FDA, this federal organization, when you hear about all these tests, you would think that a drug company submits their pills to the FDA. The FDA has their own little team and they do all these different tests before these pills actually go to market. Well, it turns out that that's not the case at all. All right. So big pharma, these pharmaceutical companies, the multi-billion dollar industry, when they create a new medication, they are actually the ones running the studies. All right. So when they do these studies, they get their groups, you know, their control groups and the groups that try the medications and everything like that. They have their own team of scientists and they collect all of this data and they submit it to the FDA. All right. I want you to think about that for a second. I want you to just think about that for a second. All right. When we talk about bias and conflict of interest, if you are a multi-billion dollar company doing tests on your own medications and you're trying to get a new medication out to market, how honest do you think this data is going to be? All right. Now, don't get me wrong. They do have to make sure that the data is real, all right? Because if they get, you know, checked and everything like that and it's false, they could be in a lot, a lot of trouble. But here's the thing. Here's where it gets tricky. They don't have to publish all of their data, all right? So let's say they try out a new depression medication and 50% of their studies, they did, let's say they did 10 studies, all right? And five of those studies show great improvement for depression. Now, the other five studies show that there's little to no improvement for depression. Well, they get to submit whichever studies they want to be published. So if you were a company, all right, if this was the medication lining your pockets, would you submit the five tests that show that there's really no effect for these medications or would you just submit the good ones? It's a pretty easy answer. You would only submit the good ones, all right? So with many of the medications out there floating around, there are actually boat loads of studies that have never been published that show that these medications are not as effective as they make them seem, all right? Here's the other thing. One of their studies and what they're doing is they compare their medication to other medications on the market, all right? Now listen to this, okay? On average, on average, when a drug company compares their depression medication to another depression medication, their medication 75% of the time is much better than their competitors. Now isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting, okay? But they've actually done some research where outside organizations did these tests comparing medications and it's not nearly the case. A lot of them are exactly the same, okay? So a great book that I suggest a lot of you check out, he's a professor at, I believe, Duke University now. He used to be a professor at MIT. His name is Dr. Dan Ariely and he talks a lot about human irrationality. This book is called The Honest Truth About Dishonesty and there's a lot of studies they've done in there where given the opportunity, given the opportunity, no matter how great of a person you think you are, given the opportunity, a lot of people will cheat by just a little bit, just a little bit, not a ton, just a little bit, all right? So it's a little bit insane if you ask me, all right, and correct me if I'm wrong. It's a little bit insane that the FDA allows these drug companies to do their own tests and only submit a certain amount of data. Now, what's the solution to this? What is the solution to this? Well, there is a beautiful thing called the Freedom of Information Act, all right? So because of the Freedom of Information Act, this is really cool. You could use the Freedom of Information Act if you want to. If you're an American, do your thing, baby, all right? But basically, you can request all of the data, all right? So you can request the data that has been unpublished and that's actually a lot of the data that Irving Kersh used for his book, The Emperor's New Drugs, that I've been recommending where it talks a lot about all this stuff. So you can find that information and see how those studies actually went and get a full view of this, all right? So let's go back through this process real quick. FDA, Food and Drug Administration, you got to submit your results to them in order to get your drugs to market, all right? But we now know that the drug companies don't got to give all their data and they can only give the best data, all right? So the FDA is like, all right, that looks good and they approve it. So then the drug companies have their representatives go to your doctor's office, all right? And present at different conferences, they have their little booths, they hand out free samples and they tell your doctor, hey, the FDA approved our medications and our studies show that our medication is better than the competitors. Our medication is better than all this. So then your doctor hears about that medication and they also get little gifts like little pens and notepads and sometimes they bring them food, you know, for lunch and all that stuff. And then your doctor is prescribing you these medications. So the doctors, our primary care doctors, our psychiatrists, whoever's giving us these antidepressant medications, they can also invoke the Freedom of Information Act. But I want you to think about that for a second. Do you think doctors have the time to not only submit to get all the data on the medications that they're prescribing, but also go through it all and double check all that stuff? Now they don't. So a lot of times, once it just gets approved by the FDA, they just start prescribing it because they don't have the time to go through all this data. So the whole system is vastly screwed up. All right? So the last thing I want to talk about is kind of what I talked about yesterday. All right? When we're putting these medications in our body and they do help people, they absolutely do help people. I am on an antidepressant. The reason I make these videos is just I want you to know the truth. I want you to be informed so you can make decisions on what medications you're putting in your body. But one of the biggest issues is that there are a lot of different substances out there that are trying to get through FDA approval who have far less side effects. All right? Marijuana. Marijuana has been proven to help with so many different things. All right? People use it for cancer treatment when they're going through chemo. Right? People are using it as a pain medication alternative and as a recovering opioid addict, that is huge. All right? And also when it comes to addiction, there are a lot of people who use marijuana to get off of highly addictive substances such as opioids, such as alcohol and all those other types of substances. But marijuana is not yet approved on a federal level, all right? And we also have the CBD industry, all right? And CBD, it's like marijuana, but you can get CBD without the THC, the psychoactive stuff in there. But the CBD industry is actually having a massive problem getting FDA approval. And again, far less side effects. Then there is an herb called St. John's wort. I'm going to do a more in-depth video on this, but there are certain countries that actually have this approved as an antidepressant medication. And it's purely, purely just an herb, right? It's a plant. You know what I mean? So I think it's important that we know about this, but I don't want, you know, my whole channel is not going to be like just exposing big pharma and all this other stuff. Like, I think it's important to know the truth about these medications because there are so, so many other ways to treat our depression. One of the best ways is therapy, right? Having a good support group. I'm going to do a video about exercise and studies around all these other things. There are way more legitimate studies around ways to treat your depression that do not involve these chemicals that we put in our body. All right? But anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell, because all this week I'm going to be exposing the truth about antidepressant medications. And I want to send out a huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on Patreon, as well as everybody who buys my mental health books at therewiredsoul.com or get yourself some mental health merch. All that stuff helps me do what I love, which is making videos about mental health. All right? Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.