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Did Mike Mentzer Have Mental Health Issues?

The fitness world knows Mike Mentzer as a bodybuilding legend who etched his name in history with his revolutionary Heavy Duty training system. However, beyond the ironclad physique and the accolades, there's a narrative that has been persistently linked to Mentzer - the speculation of his battle with mental health issues.

There are some who say that Mike Mentzer suffered from mental illness, that he had depression, ADHD, etc., they seem to feel that if only he had gotten the correct diagnosis and put on the right medication he would have been better. Well, the truth is Mike Mentzer's problems stemmed from drug use and the solution was not more or different drugs.

The Problems of Psychiatry

Mike Mentzer at one point in his early life wanted to be a psychiatrist, but after a lot of study and observation he found that - psychiatry had no actual workable therapies and that all of the people teaching or practicing in the field were themselves severely neurotic or psychotic.

Psychiatry is supposed to be branch of medicine that studies and treats mental illness.

But it actually starts with the false premises that mental or emotional issues are caused by physical or chemical issues, and because of that they have failed to successfully handle the very issues that they are supposedly experts in.

There are no physical markers such as those found on a blood test, X-Ray, MRI, etc. that can show mental illness or a chemical imbalance. In fact the chemical imbalance theory was really a marketing campaign that did nothing more than sell a lot of drugs, which never cured anyone and even had some serious side effects such as worsened depression, anxiety, psychosis, violent behavior and even suicide.

Mental or emotional issues are not actually illnesses like colds, flu, diabetes, cancer, etc. all of which can be physically tested for and found and treated.

The truth is psychiatry fully admits they don't know the cause mental or emotional issues and have never actually cured any patients. And their treatments such as drugs, electroshock and brain surgery all cause more harm than good.

So much for psychiatry and so called mental illness.

Why Mike Mentzer's Problems Steamed From Drug Use

LDS

At least one author claimed that Mike Mentzer used LSD multiple times as teenager. LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is a strong hallucinogenic drug that changes a person's perception of reality, thoughts, emotions, and sensory experiences. LSD can also cause flashbacks where people can re-experience hallucinations, even years after they first took the drug.

Steroids

Anabolic steroid use, especially high doses and/or prolonged periods, has been linked to a range of mental side effects. Mike Mentzer in an interview stated that he was worried that his use of steroids may have effected him mentally.

Amphetamines

It is well known that Mike Mentzer used amphetamine to help him to deal with his heavy workload, he would sometimes would not sleep for days at a time to make a writing deadline. Amphetamines are highly addictive and chronic use of amphetamine are known to cause paranoia and hallucination.

What Actually Happened To Mike Mentzer

Before the mid 1980's Mike Mentzer never showed signs of any out of the ordinary mental or emotional issues, the truth is all of us at times feel sad, anxious, etc. that doesn't make us mentally ill - it makes us human, but then he started to use amphetamines chronically staying up for days, and I'm sure also not eating enough, that along with the loss of his job as the editor of a magazine and the death of his father caused his to act irrationally.

So the solution wasn't to label him get him on different drugs, it was to get him off all the drugs which are well known to cause irrational behavior, which is exactly what he did when he made a comeback of sorts and started his successful personal training business. When I met him and trained with him in the late 1990's he was quite sane and brilliant in his conversations with me.

Any repeated irrational behavior or strange communications after that were undoubtedly caused by him once again using amphetamines, alcohol, or other drugs.

If you have any questions about Mike Mentzer, Heavy Duty, High Intensity Training, Diet, etc. email us and we'll get back to you with an answer as soon as we can.

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