[precaryous]

I found an article from Oct, 2015 about one of my previous psychiatrists in California. He had very loose boundaries, but he wasn't an admitted criminal at the time I saw him. He was convicted of drug violations, selling prescriptions. Information I have read indicates one or two of his patients may have died from over-dosing, though he was not convicted for that- as far as I know. His defense is that he had some sort of medical issue..which caused lapses of judgement and a personality change..Knowing him makes me wonder if that might be part of his issue.
He is not the psychiatrist who physically sexually exploited me..

I was thinking of posting the article but I'm not sure if I am allowed? I don't live near there anymore. I am still working through my feelings for him. I think the article would show how far a psychiatrist can fall...from mansions to federal prison...if he makes poor choices for his patients and himself.

Maybe the mods can advise me. I wouldnt make any unsubstantiated accusations.

I am not against psychiatry or psychology as a profession. I have had the worst...and I have had the best. Just saying I don't have a secret agenda.

Would anyone want to read the article...maybe comment on it?

Adding: I'm not trying to cause the guy any more trouble...he's already a 70 something y/o in federal prison. :/

I'll read it if you want to pm me a link or something. I'm sorry for what you've been through with these psychiatrists.

[precaryous]

PM sent.

[junkDNA]

i would do it, why not? i wish i could post the news stories about my former T, but i cant. legally. which is BS!!!

do it!!!!!

[precaryous]

I guess I could do it and the mods could delete it if they find a problem with it...

[precaryous]

https://story.californiasunday.com/j...l-psychiatrist

[eclogite]

What's your motivation for posting it?

[precaryous]

Hi eclogite,
I wrote previously that I'm working through the ambivalent feelings I have for him. I also said, "I think the article will show how far a psychiatrist can fall... from mansions to federal prison....if he makes poor choices for his patients and himself."

[junkDNA]

Originally Posted by precaryous

Hi eclogite,
I wrote previously that I'm working through the ambivalent feelings I have for him. I also said, "I think the article will show how far a psychiatrist can fall... from mansions to federal prison....if he makes poor choices for his patients and himself."

Did he try to prescribe you narcotics?

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[precaryous]

That's what is strange...no.

The doc I remember was unconventional, fearless, upbeat, charismatic, seemed to care, bright, brilliant in many ways....and I wasn't aware of him pushing drugs on anyone. He also had very loose boundaries which confused me. I thought this is just how California doctors acted.. Some of the things he did still bother me. I have written about some of his boundary issues in past posts.

I still feel very confused by the doc I knew vs. the doc I am reading about..

[unaluna]

The link keeps blowing up. I got to the part where it says he had some kind of dementia.

[precaryous]

Originally Posted by unaluna

The link keeps blowing up. I got to the part where it says he had some kind of dementia.

I PM'd you the last part..when he saw Dr. Amen for testing. Hope it helps?

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by precaryous

I PM'd you the last part..when he saw Dr. Amen for testing. Hope it helps?

Thanks!

[missbella]

Precarious, I have nothing profound to say except I can imagine how jaw-dropping it would be to find that article. I have been disillusioned about disappointed by "charismatic" people from time to time. People with a great deal of darkness put a great deal of effort in their cover stories.

I think the dark side of the profession is that practitioners largely are unchecked and they can start believing their own guru do-no-wrong publicity. But this is extreme. It would take a large paradigm shift for me to absorb this if he were in my life.

[precaryous]

missbella,

To find the article, is unbelievable, really. I feel bad for him...but I also feel if I was the sibling or mother of one of his patients who OD'd and died using his careless or greedy prescribing practices, I would probably hate him.

I am torn wondering whether he really had a brain issue and/or dementia....or whether he was desperate for money...and to be "liked." I'll never know, I guess.

[vonmoxie]

What an interesting turn of events, how a prescriber's ultimate change in personality could have altered the trajectory of so many patients. It reminds me of a situation I once had with a psychiatrist who prescribed me a lot of high dose hypnotics and benzodiazepenes even though it seemed counter-intuitive to me in terms of any reasonable goal of bringing me to a state of improved mental health, and I did wonder if it was an odd invitation to me, that if I was compelled to take myself out, of either life or reality, I should go ahead and get on with it. I didn't and eventually disposed of hundreds of unused pills that had only ever cost me minimal co-pays, but still wondered if there wasn't at least in part some more sinister motivation on her part as the overprescribing I perceived it to be didn't seem to have much positive merit. More than likely it was the simple result of badly self-monitored cognitive biases resulting from things like perhaps her client base being overtly made up of persons who may have really needed the types and quantities of medication she was shilling out to me.

Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (But, don't rule out malice.)

Precaryous, if you are comfortable saying, did you find him to be a thoughtful practitioner at the time you saw him? It sounds as though he may have at first developed a double life of sorts, between patients who were inherently drug-seeking and those who were not, one life satisfying his relationship with power and money and the other life, if there was one, of still ministering to the needful whether as spiritual satisfaction or merely as a front for his other life.

[missbella]

My therapists were milder examples, but they all were illustrations of magical thinking and self-assigned supernatural powers. Minus checks and balances, it seems easy for some practitioners to get swept away with whatever flies into their brains, partly because clients can collude with them. One of my "saner" ex-therapists is on the internet officially in charlatan-land, though with nothing permanently maiming.

I can imagine seeing this situation with Janus-like ambivalence.

Originally Posted by precaryous

missbella,

To find the article, is unbelievable, really. I feel bad for him...but I also feel if I was the sibling or mother of one of his patients who OD'd and died using his careless or greedy prescribing practices, I would probably hate him.

I am torn wondering whether he really had a brain issue and/or dementia....or whether he was desperate for money...and to be "liked." I'll never know, I guess.

[precaryous]

Originally Posted by vonmoxie

What an interesting turn of events, how a prescriber's personality change could have altered the trajectory of so many patients.
Precaryous, if you are comfortable saying, did you find him to be a thoughtful practitioner at the time you saw him? It sounds as though he may have developed a double life of sorts, between patients who were inherently drug-seeking and those who were not, one life satisfying his relationship with power and money and the other life, if there was one, of still ministering to the needful whether as spiritual satisfaction or merely as a front for his other life.

I found him caring and wanting to be helpful. He was charismatic and radiant. Just being in his presence helped my depression go away. He made me feel special...I was listened to...he took me seriously.

But now, looking back, I see that he was careless in many ways. He wasn't always great at keeping the clients needs ahead of his own needs. He was a maverick- he had a great deal of authority of his own being an MD but often liked to challenge authority.

Without going into unsubstantiated detail, his boundaries were very very loose.
I didn't know much of anything about boundaries, ethics, and psychotherapy at the time. Subsequent therapists have stated that his loose boundaries unintentially likely set me up to be exploited by AbusivPDoc...because I thought that's how California PDocs operated.

I was around him often the years I knew him. He hospitalized me once...I never saw him pandering to drug seeking clients. I saw him detox clients. Of course, he could have been writing scripts at his gym at the time. I was with him outside of therapy on a few occasions ...and I never noticed anything related to drugs.

[precaryous]

If he truly had/has frontotemporal dementia, his colleagues, the medical licensing board...or someone should have protected his patients...and him. They should have intervened earlier than they did. I don't know if it was possible. His family said they saw the changes. Someone should have helped him.

It makes me wonder what safeguards are out there for impaired medical professionals...do their colleagues just refer around them until they self-destruct?