Dad vs. Joe Rogan

At breakfast on Sunday, my sons and I were at a hippie breakfast joint in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

It's a small Midwest town, with plans to build one of the largest Cannabis grow facilities in the state.

And thus the conversation with my twenty-somethings, of course, led to pot.

One son pointed to its medicinal uses, like treating anxiety and PTSD. I took that well; remembering articles about marijuana's evident ability to ease the symptoms of PTSD among veterans and other patients.

He informed us that Cannabis should be available to anyone, anywhere. That we should all be free to self-prescribe since it was harmless (and evidently multi-purpose). He was adamant that Cannabis could stack up against virtually anything Big Pharma might produce.

'Hmmm,' I thought. He must spend serious time on ResearchGate for that level of subject matter and pharmacological expertise. Or learned it all somewhere else. I think I knew where.

My other son disagreed. "Look, the only way to treat PTSD is through extensive one-on-one psychotherapy. Not drugs. Not if you want to completely cure it."

Here we go.

"And you heard that where?" I asked. Of course, I already knew the answer. Hint: he'd wear a Joe Rogan t-shirt, earbuds in, listening to his podcast constantly if his girlfriend would only allow it.

"Joe Rogan?" I offered.

"Well...yeah," he allowed. "He had a really well-known expert on PTSD on his show, a psychologist who said it's the only way to treat it successfully."

"So, this psychologist... He found that in peer-reviewed research studies... or in his practice?"

"Well, I think he said that's what he learned from his experience with patients. And he specializes in it." He added, "Dad, you can't always fix things with big pharma."

Oh, that again. Fair enough.

I actually like The Joe Rogan Experience. At times, it's incredibly informative. He's smart and disruptive and funny. He's the same guy who hosted the worm-eating reality TV show way back when. Rogan is a favorite UFC expert and color announcer at the big fights. He seems fair and intuitive in a bro-science way. And he's #7 on the top 10 most listened-to podcasts.


Obviously, the Joe Rogan Experience is captivating and informative. Beloved by millennials. But it's entertainment. Which means it's not research.

And at #7, millennials are listening and listening. Podcast demographics show that his audience is predominantly young men. Rogan reports that his 1-4 hour podcasts are downloaded 30 million times each month.

Back to breakfast.

I asked my boys, "So how do we help all the people, all the veterans, the first responders, the people in the community who can't - or won't - enroll in intensive one-on-one therapy? Would medications help them? Which meds? How do we address issues in the real world of PTSD and behavioral health? How do we slow the suicide rate of veterans?'

I asked them, "Have you thought about whether cannabis or therapy really is better? Or some other drug? It's an important question. A societal question. Because answers don't come from podcast guests."

"I'm just saying, drugs aren't always the answer." Fair enough.

I just want my sons to seek answers in literature. Science. In research studies. I want them to be their own critical thinkers. To reason for themselves. Not to just rationalize via download.

I don't know. Maybe you can't always fix things with pharma. But maybe you can't always help people with therapy. And maybe Cannabis isn't just medicinal.

But I do know this. You can't learn everything from a podcast.

Building a beautiful city

Out of the ruins and rubble
Out of the smoke
Out of our night of struggle
Can we see
a ray of hope
We can build 
A beautiful city
Yes we can 

Here I am, in Dayton, Ohio. One of my neighbors is a Baptist Church. The other is an elderly woman with a boat, a moldy motorhome, and a rusted, broken tractor and plow in her backyard. Across the street, there's a working farm.

This place is so alien, so far from where I've been over the past few years. Perhaps it's appropriate that there are actual aliens at the air force base just a few miles away.

It's a world away from the sun-streaked turquoise waters and blistering beaches of South Florida, where I used to walk in the baking sand, looking for seashells and hoping that I wouldn't get too sunburned. Where I rode my bicycle, alone, past the Dali Museum and the art deco hotels; pedaling past the volleyball games just beyond the Royal Palms that lined the beach.

Though I still have a few worrying freckles from the Florida sun, I wouldn't trade anything for my time spent there as a castaway. For that's how I felt. For a while, anyway.

In my castaway days, I loved the thunderstorms. They'd arrive in the afternoons as if they were a hurried response to urgent, sunburnt prayers. With blue-black skies and jagged lightning, they'd show up just before everything caught fire from the blazing tropical sun. Sometimes, I'd run across the street to the cafes, stand under the awnings, and listen to my playlist. Alone. And every song on it will forever smell like sunscreen and cocoanuts.

Dayton is also blessedly far from Chicago - a skyline of chaos embraced. Of protests, politics, and parking tickets. Where diversity is the adrenalin that fuels its hipsters and tourists like Adderall-laced energy drinks. It teeters forever on the edge of eruption; a high for the young, the brave, the cool - the ones who would gladly have three roommates just to be a part of its mesmerizing craziness and maybe take an Uber to Wrigley field once in a while.

Each place I've been, it's been so different. From watching the sun dip below the waves in the Gulf of Mexico every night to seeing it emerge from beneath the aquamarine edge of Lake Michigan every morning.

And just before Dayton, I'd lived as a castaway too, alone among 144 acres of cornstalks and soybeans. Near the river and the squirrels. I never tired of the whistle of the South Shore train as it raced past, carrying tourists to the station near The Stray Dog. It reminded me of my dad.

"You're moving where?"

My friends and colleagues were surprised. "Seriously?"

They'd wonder why I'd trade the ranch for Dayton. Just like they wondered why I'd moved from my condo high above the museum - overlooking the lake. Like they wondered why I'd ever left my castaway cabin just a few hundred feet from the beach. From my beloved thunderstorms.

I could never really explain why, though. Not in a way that they'd understand.

Because what I learned is that special places aren't special at all - without people you love. And each place, each city, eventually whispered that to me.

That you can be a castaway, even on the most beautiful beach, That, even in the tallest tower, you can't see far enough. That no matter how much corn grows around you, there is hunger.

Without a daughter's smile, a son's laugh - without family - there is no home. The scenery is only special to tourists. Beauty is built.

Maybe the lady next door will sell me her rusty tractor.

Citations:
Beautiful City - Godspell 2011 Revival
2011 Broadway 
Arranger: Mac Huff | Composer: Stephen Schwartz | Musical: Godspell