Only a few months after Elon Musk appeared on a special Halloween episode of the Joe Rogan Experience — and agreed to let Rogan fire an arrow at his personal Tesla cybertruck (the experiment ended badly for Rogan) — the host has made a controversial mental health admission while talking to equally controversial guest Abigail Shrier.
Much of their conversation taps into the ongoing and increasingly polarised debate in the US around the gender-affirming medical establishment and its associated clinical practices, therapies, and surgeries. This is a very hot topic that we really don’t want to get into the weeds on; if that’s your bag, you can watch the pod below.
What did prick our ears up, however, was an interesting confession from Rogan regarding his own mental health and, more specifically, how he’s chosen to manage it over the years. After admitting, with a laugh, that “a lot of people I told me I should”, Rogan said…
“I have never been in therapy.”
Joe Rogan
This came as a shock to us; not because Rogan gives off the vibe that he should be in therapy by any means, but because given his very open and honest approach to talking about mental health and the range of ways to treat it — something, for the record, that we also pride ourselves on here at DMARGE — you might expect him to have at least tried therapy, even if he wasn’t a fully committed convert.
While this alone is pretty surprising given that the general attitude in developed nations appears to be very pro-therapy, what might shock some readers further were the anecdotal comments Rogan went on to make about his acquaintances who have been to therapy:
“They all are in therapy and it doesn’t seem to be helping… the people that I know that are in therapy regularly are the most fucked up and I don’t see improvement. It’s not all of them, but the ones that I find problematic are very self-indulgent.”
Joe Rogan
Rogan and Shrier go on to talk about alternative treatments to therapy and/or antidepressants, of which you’ll be unsurprised to hear that Rogan impost staunchly advocates for exercise, claiming that recent studies have shown it to be 25% more effective than antidepressants in some cases.
It’s also worth acknowledging that Shrier — though broadly agreeing with Rogan’s sentiment and suggesting that people going to therapy and “regularly discussing their problems” can actually do more harm than good — does admit that in severe cases, especially with chronic depression, therapy can be hugely beneficial, giving CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) her veritable sign-off.
How do you feel about this? Are you a big believer in therapy? Would you rather hit the gym? or do you have your own alternatives to managing your emotional health? Let us know.