Tom Cruise: Please Go Away

Who knew that pseudo-actor Tom Cruise was a scholar? Mr. Cruise apparently has a lot of insight into psychiatric illness. He even has some strong advice for the unenlightened among us: Suffering from depression? Schizophrenia? Bi-polar disorder? Put down the Paxil and the psychotropic drugs. They are evil. A daily regimine of vitamins is all you need. Never mind all of the evidence that antidepressants have helped countless people who are victims of serious depression. As Mr. Cruise informed the hapless Matt Lauer on The Today Show, he “knows the history of psychiatry.”

Mr. Cruise stands on the convictions that his beloved Church of Scientology has fooled him into thinking (or not thinking). You see, Scientologists don’t believe in the merits of psychiatry, period. What the “Church” believes is that psychiatry was responsible for World War I and Stalin’s and Hitler’s reigns of terror. And that’s not all the goods that the Church claims to have on the stuff that makes the world go round. Take religion, for example. According to the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia.org, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard claimed that Islam was the “result of an extraterrestrial memory implant.” Wow! Muhammad may have been an alien! Who knew?

I have some personal experience with these nut cases. I worked as a news reporter for a number of years. On a regular basis, I received phone calls from a female Scientologist who aimed to spread the word about the evils of psychiatric medications. Sure, she had the right to believe this. But her persistent phone calls demanding interview time bordered on harassment. Furthermore, for months she did not identify herself as being linked with Scientology. When I finally confronted her on it, she exploded like a shaken soda can. She offered up no legitimate arguments or representative experts in her efforts to garner news time for her rants against psychiatry. All I got when I questioned her was hysteria.

Now people can believe whatever they want. If they want to believe in “space planes,” or past lives, so what? But when you have a powerful individual like Mr. Cruise using his celebrity to insult those who would dare reach out to traditional western medicine in hopes of finding relief from unbelievable suffering, well, he goes too far. Attempting to influence people away from seeking legitimate forms of treatment isn’t just misquided, it’s evil. Mr. Cruise certainly has a right to put his faith in Scientology. Forcing his beliefs down the public’s collective throat is something else entirely.

Tom, it may be time to put down your well-worn copy of Dianetics. With your money you could afford to go to any college or university in the country–or world. Why not get a true scientific education? Then if you still want to believe in the Operating Thetan levels of your mystery religion, at least yours will be an informed choice. In the meantime, I’ll bypass the repeat of Risky Business on TNT. I’ve got some Paxil to pop and a therapist to see.