Greg Lukianoff

But they still would never forgive me for defending someone on the right.

And I remember saying at one point, I'm like, listen, I'm like, I'm a true believer in this stuff.

I'm willing to defend Nazis.

I'm certainly willing to defend Republicans.

And she actually said, I think Republicans might be worse.

And that didn't – that relationship didn't go very well.

And then I nearly got in fistfights a couple of times with people on the right because they found out I defended people who cracked jokes about 9-11.

Like this happened more than once.

By that time in my 20s, I'm not fistfighting again.

But, yeah, it was always like that.

You see how hypocritical people can be.

You can see how friends can turn on you if they don't like your politics.

So I got an early preview of this, of what the culture we were heading into by being the president of FIRE, and it was exhausting.

Yeah.

And that was one of the main things that led me to be, you know, suicidally depressed.

At the Belmont Center, if you told me that that would be the beginning of a new and better life for me, I would have laughed if I could have.

But I would, you know, I don't, you can tell I'm okay if I'm still laughing.

And I wasn't laughing at that point.

So I got a doctor, and I started doing cognitive behavioral therapy.

I started having all these voices in my head that were catastrophizing and, you know, giving overgeneralization and fortune-telling, you know, mind-reading, all of these things that they teach you not to do.