Earlier this fall, Panic World producer Grant Irving’s older brother died by suicide, after years lost in the murky world of the spiritual wellness industry and alternative medicine. In today’s Garbage Day, Grant writes about how it feels to watch someone close to you lose touch with reality, egged on by grifters and algorithms.

I’m in awe of Grant’s bravery and profoundly honored that he wanted to publish this here in Garbage Day. His piece is an unflinching look at the disinformation and conspiratorial thinking that defined the last decade of American life and taken so many of our loved ones from us.

We also have a podcast episode up about this. You can find it on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And if you’d like to hear an extended, ad-free version of today’s episode, you can find that on Panic World’s Patreon. Click the button below to find out more.

—by Grant Irving

On Sunday, October 18th, around 11 AM, I was putting toothpaste on my toothbrush when I received two calls in a row from a West Palm Beach number. My mom’s mental health is — how do I put this — suboptimal. I braced myself. I called back. 

My mom was, at least for the moment, fine. The missed calls were from a detective telling me that my semi-estranged brother, Drew "LA" Shprintz, a successful, woo-woo life coach, had killed himself. This was shocking, but not surprising.

Hours later I brushed my teeth and I got ready to fly out, knowing I'd have to be the one to tell my mom that her first born son was dead. This would not be the first difficult conversation we had about my brother. 

For years, I tried — and failed — to explain to my mom that Drew was a victim of a radicalizing culture that was running rampant in this country (world?). He went down the pipeline from self-help books like Think Rich, to antivax content, to Qanon-esque conspiracy theories. I tried to explain to her that this shit all swims in the same fluoride-free water. From making Garbage Media's podcast, Panic World, I know that pretty much every family has someone suffering from this affliction. It just varies by degree. Some parents put onions in their socks, others have some questions about the Holocaust. On every phone in America, there’s a cult trying to recruit the most vulnerable people we know. Validating their pain. Telling them to run from anything complex or conflicting. Promising that life doesn’t have to feel lifelike. And my brother, Drew, was the perfect mark.

Roughly 11 years ago, my father shot and killed himself. He did it in the guest bathroom of what had been a fairly nice condo, filled with expensive appliances that couldn’t turn on because the power had been shut off. No longer able to run from his mountain of debt, with the door barricaded to prevent the cops from getting in to evict him, he pulled the trigger. 

He used my brother's gun and blamed Drew in the suicide note. He also left Drew little insults around the apartment for us to discover as we cleaned up the aftermath. All of which is to say, my brother had a very good reason to be a mess. 

I believe my father’s exit was the last straw, but the disaster that was my brother's life started well before. As a kid, he was bullied. I learned that at a camp we both attended the other kids jerked off into his shampoo. The list goes on. My mom loved me more. And my dad groomed Drew. I don’t mean sexually — I don’t think. But my brother was my dad’s sidekick in grievance and animosity. It was them against everyone else. First against my mom, then feminists, then liberals, blah blah blah, you know the drill. 

My dad and Drew didn't have a proper falling out until Drew’s early 30s, when my brother met the woman who would become his ex-wife and his loyalties finally shifted. Let’s call her Typhoid or Typh for short. 

While Drew was falling in love, my dad’s life was falling apart, so dad moved in with Drew and Typh. Shortly after, however, dad got kicked out. He failed to take their dog for a walk after being asked to. He was, also, trying to sleep with Typh.

This should have devastated Drew. And I would argue it did. But, at least superficially, an ideology was there to rescue him from despair. You see, Typh was a positive thinker. An overachieving, go get 'em, think and grow rich person, with a marble house and word art to prove that the secret to life was The Secret. 

After meeting her, Drew went from an outwardly angry person to being pathologically positive. The two made vision boards and wouldn’t fight, not even bicker. So when my dad died, right after Drew kicked him out, my brother said he was “only sad for the rest of us.” He had "processed." This was weird. But I was 24 and my dad just killed himself. I did not push back. 

And here I’d like to insert a montage: Drew throwing out sunscreen bottles (sunscreen causes cancer); Drew’s heavy fat mixed with fasting diets; Drew, with his capped overly white teeth, switching to Dr. Bronner’s Soap and outfitting his phone and outlets with anti-EMP devices. But he was also a lot nicer. He asked more questions and ranted a bit less. Then came the angel. 

Drew had been trying to launch a liquor business, but Typh had taken up with some life coaches who believed that healing the elite would have a positive trickle down effect on the rest of the world. The coaches were self-appointed experts in something sort of like The Secret, the Oprah-endorsed bestseller by Rhonda Byrne that taught people how to think positively in an obsessive way. But they also claimed they had meditation powers that could heal trauma and they wanted to help Drew discover how to channel a metaphysical angel to help him with all his problems. It worked. Suddenly, the gurus were out. Drew, who was now convinced he could conjure and communicate with an angel he named LA, decided he was the expert. And he was, also, very much open for business.

Drew, thanks to his imaginary friend, started making real money. Judging by his half-million-dollar house and his extensive collection of crystals, the life coach business was the most successful thing he’d ever do. But now talking to my brother felt like speaking to a stranger.

He would often answer the phone in a higher register, claiming to be this angel, LA. “Hello, Grant! Drew and I are deep in a session, please call him later. We both love you!” 

As far as I can tell, the angel’s advice to clients largely boiled down to cutting out all the negative forces in one's life, which just so happened to also isolate them from any friends or family who may try and intervene. Which was, ironically enough, also what was happening to my brother. 

With LA around, Drew was always “fantastic.” If he wasn’t, then something must need healing. Another dragon to be slayed in order to reach a state of purity or whatever. A stomach virus? The expelling of trauma the body was holding. Not contracting a cold or Covid? A sign of his superior spiritual health. 

Throughout Drew's life of ostracization, he soothed himself by saying we’d all be grovelling when he was a multimillionaire. The only justification for his pain was to become exceptional. Superiority would be his. It’s 2026, the world is run by these types of guys. But what of the ones who are losers? For Drew, the self-help world let him create a little super power. He didn’t need a successful business to prove he was special. A divine entity chose him as a vessel. 

Now he could instruct people how to think positively, encourage them to stop speaking to anyone holding them back, and shine a healing light and breathe out some early life trauma the body was holding onto, I guess. Middle-aged sunbaked Florida women paid him for his attentiveness. It was brilliant. Except…  

Can you imagine not being able to accept that you’re grumpy? That being hungry, or tired and having a mean little thought was a sign of something black and corrosive within you? As a deeply moody person, I know I’d go mad in days. What happens when you have to deal with annoying, petty, underfed, achey, traffic-filled, sweaty base reality and you’re supposed to feel fucking great all the time? Well, you need to start finding other reasons to explain why you're upset.

Drew, with the help of LA, his angel, started recovering repressed memories. He became convinced that my dad tried to drown him as a baby. I pointed out that it’s quite easy to drown a baby. I did not point out that, according to credentialed psychologists, this is just not how memory seems to work. But that didn't stop him. There were calls to my mom and grandmother to help him figure out what happened in his childhood. So he and LA could heal it once and for all. Then, in 2021, Drew and his angel nearly killed my mom. 

Drew, channeling LA, had apparently been counseling my mom and the positive thinking mandate wasn’t working on her. My mom, despite a heroic effort throughout her life, was in a period of despondency. In what I guess, from Drew’s perspective, was an act of "tough love," Drew and the angel wrote my mom a letter. He wrote that no one needed her and that I just pitied her, apparently. That she talked all the time about how she wanted to die, but she never actually did anything about it. Blah blah blah. My mom very earnestly tried to kill herself. I mostly cut off contact with Drew after that.

His need for attention was mostly deprived of any oxygen but he was still on fire and getting increasingly desperate. Drew began sending letters to my mom, my grandmother, anyone alive who he could still blame. The letters kept coming, and the accusations got worse. He believed that my parents had sex parties when Drew was a child and that Drew was present for them. This I know is untrue. My parents are incredibly lame, didn’t have many friends, and lacked the organizational skills to host such an event.

As years went by, the emails devolved into full-blown Satanic Panic, generational conspiracies of abuse and child sexual abuse material. His paranoia had become background noise in my life. Though the accusations made sense to me. It made his suffering dramatic and supported the hero's journey he was convinced he was on.

The last time I talked to my brother I asked him to take care of my mom’s tiny dog for a few days because she was having an emergency. He acted like it was a friendly chat. Like we had talked days ago rather than years. Dealing with the severity of the situation was beyond him after years isolating in a fantasy. 

And in an ecosystem where any sort of licensed expertise is not to be trusted, all you’re left with are incentives encouraging the most elaborate fantasies. If you really believe the angel you channel should cure all your ills, but you still feel shitty then surely that means that there is just a skeleton key yet to be discovered. Something darker, something to ensure you are in fact special, that you are the main character. I’m sure it was very impressive to his clients that he could be so enlightened after living such a nightmare. But it rotted his brain. 

I can’t imagine the damage Drew and his imaginary angel did to his clients. How many families became estranged for "being negative?" How many clients went digging around in their subconscious for repressed memories that weren't there? How much worse are people’s mental and financial health because they gave Drew money instead of a licensed therapist? 

But the first and last person Drew grifted was himself. Every action he took, in this omnipresent cult that is the wellness industrial complex, everything was pushing him to this end. And this disease is spreading. 

While sorting out the details, trying to figure out if we would be able to receive my brother’s ashes, the detective in charge told me that my brother had "amethyst crystals in his house so he was a spiritual person.” Before I could stop myself, I said, “Recovered memories are false,” and she told me, “They are in fact real.” During couples counseling her ex-husband uncovered deeply buried abuse he suffered. 

Days after his death I went to his house which still reeked of incense. It looked eerily unlived in and undecorated besides for his crystal collection. I try to imagine constantly hunting for the next rock, the one that’s going to be the answer. I try to imagine being so enclosed in a world of wellness gibberish, so committed to having all the answers, that conventional help isn’t even considered. Calling your brother isn’t even considered. Leaving you in a place where you are convinced the only option is exiting reality for good.

***

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255). You can also reach out to the Crisis Text Line, a free, 24/7 confidential text messaging service that provides support to people in crisis when they text 741741. Find other international suicide helplines at Befrienders Worldwide (befrienders.org).