This is the story of the Beach Boys Brian Wilson and his psychologist Dr. Eugene Landy.
Full Episode
So this guy, he really wants to be a celebrity. He likes the idea of fame and he just really wants to be around celebrities. Now his name is Dr. Landy and Dr. Landy is not a celebrity. He's a psychologist. And one day he gets an idea for a crazy and controversial new type of therapy treatment. But we'll get to that. First, we got to talk about the Beach Boys.
The band who's touring the world and topping the charts. Specifically, we gotta talk about the lead singer. This guy, Brian. Brian, he's kind of a musical genius. But unfortunately, he's got a lot of undiagnosed mental health issues. And at this time, he's touring around, he's soaking in the fame, and he's dealing with that rock and roll lifestyle. And it's a lot for the guy to handle.
So he does what a lot of rock stars do. He starts using drugs, heavily. And he gains a bunch of weight, and sometimes he has nervous breakdowns, and he's been hearing voices. And because of all this, he stops touring, and he stops recording with his band. Bro is just a mess. So one day, Brian's wife, who we'll just call wife, she gets worried about him, and she seeks out a psychologist to help.
The psychologist ends up being Dr. Landy. And Dr. Landy, the guy who wants nothing more than to be around celebrities, he agrees to help. So he starts to work with Brian and immediately he diagnoses him as a paranoid schizophrenic. And this diagnosis is important because it's the wrong diagnosis. But we'll get to that.
Regardless, Landy starts helping Brian and he puts him on this controversial new type of therapy treatment he came up with. It's an intensive 24-hour therapy program. where he hires assistants to watch over Brian constantly, and he has him start a fitness routine, and he gets him to start eating better, and he gets him on medication.
And for this experimental therapy program, he charges $10,000 monthly. which in today's dollars is about $58,000 a month. But after doing this treatment, Brian does slowly start to show signs of improvement. He gets more productive, his mood gets better, he starts socializing again.
But then, after about a year in this program, Dr. Landy decides to raise his rates from $10,000 monthly to $20,000 monthly. which in today's dollars is nearly $110,000 a month for therapy. And so the Beach Boys manager, he sees this and he's like, oh, well, this is bullshit. And he fires Dr. Landy, like done. And everyone just moves on. A few years later, Brian, he isn't doing so well again.
He's back to abusing drugs and alcohol. His weight gets up to over 300 pounds. His mental health just spirals out of control. And he and his wife, they end up getting divorced. And at one point he attacks a therapist and he gets committed to a mental health facility for a few months. Like it's going really bad for him.
And eventually Brian overdoses and his family and his management team, they don't know what to do. So they agreed to do the only thing that kind of worked for him in the past. They allow him to see Dr. Landy again. So they hit up Landy and they ask him to help. And Landy agrees to take Brian as a patient again in his 24-hour treatment program. But this time he wants two things.
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