Depresh Mode with John Moe13 Okt 2025

P.E. Moskowitz on Whether Your Mind is Broken or the World Is

During the violent Charlottesville protests of 2017, journalist and author P.E. Moskowitz was only a few feet away when Heather Heyer was killed by an attacking motorist. 16 years earlier, P.E. was in middle school Spanish class a couple blocks from the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks. The trauma contributed to panic attacks and, finally, a mental breakdown. As they got their life back together, P.E. began to question a lot of conventional wisdom. Were they mentally ill to have such a breakdown or were they responding appropriately to enormous trauma in a difficult world? Are we looking at potential cures when we should be looking at coping or better yet coming up with ways to stop the horrors from ever taking place? They also questioned the role of drugs in mental health treatment. In the book Breaking Awake: A Reporter's Search for a New Life, and a New World, Through Drugs and in this intriguing interview, P.E. explains how they look at drugs - both the prescription and street varieties - as tools that can be used positively or negatively, to help or harm. And that patients are owed a lot more options than a shortcut to SSRIs or Adderall in their quest to feel better.

Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.

Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!

Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.

Depresh Mode is on BlueSky, Instagram, Substack, and you can join our Preshies Facebook group.

Help is available right away.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALK

Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.

International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joindepresh

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(310)

Gabrielle Moss On Midlife Plot Twists and Just Not Talking To Your Mom Anymore

Midlife doesn’t need to be a point of crisis, says author Gabrielle Moss. You don’t need to make dangerous choices, blow things up, take a spiritual trek through Nepal, or buy a red convertible. Her n...

28 Sep 48min

Mental Illness Before and After Pregnancy with Dr. Kara Zivin, Who Has Been There

There has been a great deal of press coverage of the Lindsay Clancy case lately. What the world needs more of is first-hand experiences of severe mental health problems both before and after a baby is...

21 Sep 48min

Singer Nicole Atkins Doesn’t Recommend Insomnia, Alcoholism, Falling Down Sinkholes

The acclaimed singer and songwriter Nicole Atkins is pretty adept at reading clues that something is wrong. After she’d fall asleep on a Saturday and wake up on Monday, she knew it was time to get mor...

14 Sep 47min

AI Chatbots Destroyed His Reality. Dr. Jeremy Heffner Explains Why He Believed Them.

Dr. Jeremy Heffner was a highly educated, high achieving surgeon. Not the kind of person one would expect to slide down an AI chatbot-generated rabbit hole, lose touch with reality, and give credence ...

7 Sep 1h 3min

Best of Depresh Mode: Cameron Esposito on Comedy, Rehab, and Bipolar Disorder

Cameron Esposito has many titles: hugely successful standup comedian, actor in television and film, writer, podcast host. After a recent rehab stay led to a mental health diagnosis, she has realized t...

31 Aug 44min

Cat Grief is Real. So is Human Grief. We’re Underestimating and Misunderstanding Both.

Bay Area journalist s.e. smith thinks the high school goths were right: we should be talking about death all the time. It’s underdiscussed for something that will literally affect us all. And in that ...

24 Aug 1h 4min

Oh, It’s Autism, Mary H.K. Choi Learned at 43. Okay, She Thought, That Explains a Lot.

Mary H.K. Choi compares living with her brain to just not understanding the operating system on a computer. She didn’t know if this was a result of trauma and neglect in her childhood, the experience ...

17 Aug 1h 7min

Margaret Glaspy Ends Her Instagram Addiction and Sings From Her Original Thought

Margaret Glaspy compares the experience she was having on Instagram to being lightly punched in the gut, over and over, for a very long time. Like it’s not like being hit hard, just a little tap of so...

10 Aug 1h 2min