This passage on page 79 of Dianetics about the fish is what made everything click for me.

The human mind has a built-in protective mechanism called the reactive mind that stores painful incidents in an effort to ensure its survival.

"The reactive mind was provided to secure survival. It still pretends to act in this fashion. But its wild errors now lead only in the other direction." (p. 76)

For the fish who swims into the dangerous water, this mechanism works just fine. If he ever swims into brackish water again, he gets the hell outta there, and it keeps him alive.

But for humans, who have evolved language, complex societies, and are no longer animals, the reactive mind is not helpful anymore.

For example, let's say a woman gets into a car accident and gets injured. That injury gets stored in the reactive mind.

After she heals and recovers, she gets horrible anxiety whenever she's in a car, even if nothing dangerous is happening. The anxiety makes it hard for her to focus, her heart beats too fast, and it actually makes her an unsafe driver.

And yet, we need to be able to drive a car in order to live a normal, functional adult life!

Her reactive mind is not actually protecting her. It's giving her a neurosis and it's hindering her life.

This is what Dianetic auditing handles. It clears out these traumatic moments from the reactive mind so that the obsessive, uncontrollable thoughts stop happening.

I'm curious.

For me, I had horrible anxiety and nothing helped. I tried yoga, meditation, and eventually started self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Psychiatric drugs only made things worse.

Finally, someone asked me to read a book called Dianetics. I did, and it explained a LOT. So I signed up for Scientology auditing.

I need to explain the setup of auditing real quick. Basically you sit in a chair in a small private room, across from the auditor and a desk. The auditor uses an e-meter, which is a machine that can pick up on mental energy and stress. Just watch this video to see what I mean.

Anyway, in the first session I'm holding the e-meter cans and listening to the auditor. She reads me a list out loud, I just sit there listening. The list had things like injuries, losses, problems - different types of trauma. And as she's reading the list, she used the e-meter to pinpoint the specific items on the list that I had been stressed out about for a long time - a horrible breakup, the anxiety, work stress, and the loss of a friend.

So one by one, she asks me about the items on the list. I think the first thing I told her was about my bad breakup from a few months beforehand that I was still feeling depressed about. She didn't try to diagnose me with anything or tell me how I should feel. She just kept asking me these specific questions - and I realized that all these stressful moments were connected to each other in my mind. Before the breakup, there were all these fights. Before that, there was a betrayal. Before that, all this trauma from an earlier relationship.

She asked me questions that guided me earlier and earlier on this connected chain of traumatic moments. I just kept talking, just told her whatever came to mind. And then after maybe 45 minutes of this, after I finished telling her about something that happened in my childhood, I realized I just.... didn't care anymore? Not in an apathetic way, in a happy way! Like it was a feeling of relief, I realized why I had been stuck in all those moments from the past, and I felt like I got un-stuck.

Anyway, it was really interesting. So that was the first session. The next sessions were all like that - we kept uncovering these chains and bringing each one earlier and earlier until that feeling of relief kicked in.

Also, it wasn't like a temporary relief. These stressful feelings/thoughts I had been having for weeks/months didn't come back after that, they were permanently gone. That was the difference from anything I had tried before - yoga, meditation, anti-anxiety drugs.... They all provided temporarily relief but the feelings always came back. Auditing is the only thing that has permanently made them go away.

I kept getting auditing. I also read a bunch of books to understand how the mind works, and that helped too. After a few months, I felt lighter and happier than I had felt in probably 15 years. I felt like a kid again, just in the present moment, not dragging all this baggage around, I felt able to laugh and have fun and be carefree and enjoy life. And my anxiety is finally gone. No regrets!

What's your story? How did you find out about Scientology?

Please excuse the em dashes, I did use Claude to copy-edit this, but all ideas are my own.

Would love to know what you think.

---

Follow the Money: A Media Literacy Guide for the Age of Advertising-Driven "News"

Americans have stopped trusting mainstream media—and they've stopped watching it, too.

Trust in mass media has collapsed to a historic low of just 28%, according to a September 2025 Gallup poll—the first time confidence has dropped below 30% in the poll's 50-year history. That's down from 31% the year before, and a staggering decline from the 68-72% trust levels recorded in the 1970s.

The viewership numbers tell the same story. Fox News saw a 20% overall decline in viewership in 2023, while CNN dropped 19%. In the key 25-54 demographic, Fox lost 38% of its audience and CNN fell 27%. MSNBC's election night viewership plummeted from 7.3 million in 2020 to just 5.5 million in 2024. Only 38% of American adults say they closely follow the news—down from 51% in 2016.

So what changed?

The decline started in the 1970s after Watergate, when Americans began questioning institutional authority across the board. But trust remained above 50% until 2004, when it dropped to 44%.

It's never recovered.

The Real Problem

Here's what they don't want you to think about: who's paying their bills.

The pharmaceutical industry is the top advertiser in mainstream media outlets, spending $4.58 billion on TV ads in 2020 and nearly $14 billion on direct-to-consumer advertising in 2023. Drug companies accounted for 25% of evening news ad minutes in 2024, with almost 50% of pharma ads running on news broadcasters including MSNBC, CBS News, CNN and Fox News.

When one industry controls that much of your revenue, objectivity becomes expensive.

Let's look at how this plays out in practice.

Case Study: The Vioxx Scandal

The painkiller Vioxx killed an estimated 38,000 Americans and caused 88,000 heart attacks between its 1999 launch and 2004 withdrawal. At its peak, 20 million Americans were taking it. Annual sales topped $2.5 billion.

Manufacturer Merck knew about the cardiovascular risks early on. Internal documents revealed that before the drug was even approved, the FDA's medical officer noted cardiovascular concerns—patients taking Vioxx experienced cardiovascular events at three times the rate of placebo patients.

But Merck had a plan to control the narrative.

Massive advertising blitz. Merck spent $160 million advertising Vioxx in 2000 alone—more than Anheuser-Busch spent that year promoting Budweiser beer. They paid celebrities like Bruce Jenner and Dorothy Hamill for media interviews discussing Vioxx. Merck was spending more than $100 million per year in direct-to-consumer advertising—building Vioxx into a "blockbuster" drug before the risks were fully understood.

California's Attorney General later stated: "Merck's aggressive television advertising convinced hundreds of thousands of consumers to seek Vioxx prescriptions before the drug's risks were fully understood."

PR campaign to downplay risks. After the 2000 VIGOR study showed Vioxx increased heart attack risk 4-5 times compared to naproxen, Merck didn't issue warnings. Instead, they issued a press release titled "Merck Reconfirms Favorable Cardiovascular Safety of Vioxx" and sponsored countless medical "education" symposiums to debunk safety concerns.

The FDA sent Merck a warning letter in September 2001 stating that Merck was engaged in a promotional campaign that "minimizes the potentially serious cardiovascular findings" and "misrepresents the safety profile for Vioxx." The FDA called a May 2001 Merck press release claiming Vioxx had a "favorable cardiovascular safety profile" "simply incomprehensible."

Manipulated the science. Merck used "guest authorship and ghostwriting" to make research done by its employees appear to be the work of independent scientists at medical schools and universities. This gave the findings more credibility when published in medical journals. Internal documents showed that in 16 of 20 papers on Vioxx clinical trials, a Merck employee was initially listed as lead author; in published versions, an outside academic was listed as primary author.

Post-withdrawal PR damage control. When Merck finally withdrew Vioxx in 2004, they launched a PR campaign that included three full-page ads in seven prominent newspapers and multiple television appearances to "portray its pulling the drug in as positive a light as possible." According to Merck's media relations director, "the mantra has been openness, integrity and transparency."

Yet leaked emails and internal documents showed the company knew about the side effects long before withdrawal.

The result? Merck faced 60,000 lawsuits and paid $4.85 billion to settle claims, plus $950 million in criminal and civil penalties for illegally misbranding the drug and making false statements about its risks. Thirty states sued Merck for deceptive advertising, settling for $58 million.

But by then, 38,000 Americans were dead.

The pattern is clear: Merck didn't just manipulate medical journals—they used massive advertising spending and sophisticated PR campaigns to control mainstream media coverage and shape public perception while people died.

Case Study: Purdue Pharma's Media Playbook

The opioid crisis killed over 564,000 Americans between 1999 and 2020. At its center was Purdue Pharma and its drug OxyContin.

But for years, mainstream media coverage downplayed the crisis. How did that happen? Documents revealed in litigation show Purdue had a sophisticated media manipulation strategy.

Here's what Purdue did:

Funded think tanks that were tapped by media for "expert commentary"—without disclosing Purdue's role. For example, Purdue paid the American Enterprise Institute $50,000 annually. AEI's resident scholar, Sally Satel, appeared in major outlets including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Atlantic, Forbes, and Politico as an "expert" on the opioid crisis. She recently told The Washington Post, "We've entered a new era of opiophobia."

Facilitated publication of sympathetic articles in leading outlets where Purdue's role wasn't disclosed. In 2001, a New York Post opinion piece mocked concerns about OxyContin addiction and called it a "prescription wonder drug." That morning at 5:17 a.m., crisis management firm Dezenhall Resources sent an email to Purdue executives taking credit for the placement.

Deterred or challenged negative coverage. When the Orlando Sentinel ran a series connecting oxycodone to overdose deaths in Florida, Purdue's PR firm mounted a campaign that resulted in corrections. In a 2006 email with subject line "Success in Fighting Negative Coverage," they wrote: "Dezenhall's efforts resulted in a complete front-page retraction."

The pattern is clear: Purdue didn't just advertise to media outlets—they actively manipulated coverage while people died. And it worked. For years, the scope of the crisis was minimized in mainstream coverage while Purdue raked in billions.

These aren't isolated incidents. They're examples of a system where pharmaceutical advertising dollars buy more than ad space—they buy editorial influence. And they buy silence.

Who Gets Targeted?

So we've established the pattern: pharmaceutical companies manipulate media coverage to protect their profits. They fund "experts" who appear in major outlets without disclosure. They plant sympathetic stories. They suppress negative coverage.

Now here's the question: What happens to groups that directly threaten those profits?

The CCHR Case Study

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), co-founded by the Church of Scientology in 1969, has spent over five decades doing exactly what pharmaceutical companies don't want anyone doing—exposing psychiatric abuse and challenging the industry's most profitable narratives.

Their track record speaks for itself:

Black Box Warnings on Antidepressants:

In 1991, CCHR helped get FDA hearings on antidepressants and their involvement in suicidal and homicidal reactions in users. The FDA issued a stringent black box warning that these drugs can cause suicidal thoughts and actions in those 24 years of age and younger—directly threatening billions in pharmaceutical sales.

The American Psychiatric Association president later acknowledged that CCHR "influences our legislatures, our Food and Drug Administration, our schools, and our media as a moving force behind the unwarranted 'black box warnings'" on psychiatric drugs. Note the word "unwarranted"—the psychiatric industry considers warning parents that antidepressants could make their children suicidal to be "unwarranted."

Banning Forced Psychiatric Drugging in Schools:

In 2004, CCHR was among those that obtained a US Prohibition of Child Medication Safety law that banned schools from forcing schoolchildren to take prescription psychotropic drugs as a requisite for their schooling—cutting off a massive captive market for pharmaceutical companies.

Exposing the Chemical Imbalance Myth:

Since 1989, CCHR has been exposing the pharmaceutical industry's biggest marketing lie: that depression is caused by a "chemical imbalance" requiring drugs to correct it.

In 2022, a landmark study published in Molecular Psychiatry finally confirmed what CCHR had been saying all along—there is no scientific evidence for the chemical imbalance theory. The study reviewed 17 major studies over several decades and found no convincing evidence to support it.

The financial stakes? This fraudulent theory helped drive $15.6 billion in annual global antidepressant sales. Today, 45 million Americans take antidepressants, including 2.1 million children aged 0-17—all based on a lie.

Think about the financial threat CCHR represents to pharmaceutical companies. Black box warnings that reduce prescriptions. Laws that prevent forced drugging of children. Exposing the fraudulent science behind billions in drug sales.

Now ask yourself: when media outlets that are heavily funded by pharmaceutical advertising give platforms to anti-Scientology content, is this about journalism—or protecting their advertisers' bottom line?

The Broader Pattern

The same pattern repeats across industries:

• Defense contractors advertise heavily on news networks that cover foreign policy
• Energy companies sponsor coverage of climate and environmental policy
• Tech companies advertise on outlets that cover antitrust and regulation
• Financial institutions fund business news coverage of banking reform

In each case, ask yourself: when was the last time you saw truly hard-hitting investigative journalism that threatened the business model of a major advertiser?

If media is very one-sided toward a political candidate, check the advertisers and compare that against the candidate's donors. If media is smearing an individual or group—especially without doing fair journalism by consulting sources from both sides or the person themselves—ask why.

What message is this person or group championing that advertisers might not like?

The answer is usually about money.

The Takeaway

Journalistic integrity died a long time ago. Major media outlets are essentially advertising platforms that occasionally publish news between the ads. They're not going to bite the hand that feeds them.

Here's what you do:

1. Check who's advertising. Look at the advertisers, the corporate sponsors, the financial backers.
2. Be skeptical of one-sided narratives. If coverage seems universally positive or negative without nuance, someone's pushing an agenda.
3. Look for what's missing. Did they contact the person or group they're smearing? Did they present both sides?
4. Follow the money. When media pushes a story hard, ask: who profits from this narrative?
5. Think for yourself. Don't outsource your critical thinking to people who are literally paid by the subjects they're supposed to be covering objectively.

The pharmaceutical industry spends billions to influence what you see, read, and believe. So do tech companies, defense contractors, energy corporations, and financial institutions. They're not doing it out of civic duty—they're doing it to protect their bottom line.

The media you consume is brought to you by someone. Know who that someone is.

Want to see what happens when you question the official narrative? Watch L. Ron Hubbard's essay on the philosophy that launched a worldwide movement and the motives of the powerful forces that profit from distorting the truth:

Watch: The True Story of Scientology