Mike Adams, Sociopath aka the Health Ranger

 

Martha Stout author of, The Sociopath Next Door, states that, “about one in twenty five individuals are sociopathic, meaning, essentially, that they do not have a conscious.”[1] Most people associate the word sociopath with criminals and serial killers.  While all serial killers are sociopaths not all sociopaths are serial killers.

Sociopaths live right under our noses.  They are pastors, ceo’s, politicians etcetera.  When a person has been intimately involved with a sociopath there is a phase in the healing process in which everywhere you turn you are seeing a sociopath.   After that phase passes it  is like having a radar for sociopaths.  It could be a look, a diva-like behavior, the written word or the spoken word that will trigger that radar.  Being a person of conscience we often justify or explain away these red flags in an attempt to make logical the illogical.

The Symptoms of this disorder, as defined by the DSM-IV-TR can be found on this blog post, https://ivonnemontijo.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/the-face-of-narcissism/ .

What does occur is that our radar does become honed. Those past experiences serve as shining lights spotlighting the sociopath/narcissist that is currently in front of us.

One such person is Mike Adams, the self-proclaimed, health ranger, activist-turned-scientist and owner of Natural News website.   I receive weekly e-mails with links to the website.  I decided to explore the web-site beyond the normal links to articles. I went to his biography page, http://www.healthranger.com/Health-Ranger-Biography.html and that is when the alarms, sirens and red lights started going off in my brain.

The verbage he used was so strikingly similar to the ex-sociopath that I was involved with (refer to the face of narcissism link above).

Does anyone really need to know what he scored on his college entrance exams and then that he chose not to go to MIT?

 “In college entrance exams and graduate school entrance exams, Adams scored in the 99.9th percentile across all U.S. students. He aced the English, Mathematics and Science sections of college entrance exams, scoring 100% on 3 out of 4 sections earning numerous offers of scholarships from various universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (which he chose not to attend)”. [2]

Below are some more of the red flags.

Adams chose not to attend graduate school but was offered numerous scholarships to do so. Instead, he decided to launch his own software company in 1993. That software company went on to become a multi-million-dollar entity that provided email technology solutions to many Fortune 500 firms and specialized in email alert technologies for universities and government offices.

Adams sold the software company in 2003 and launched Natural News (then NewsTarget.com). Natural News went on to become the internet’s most trafficked natural health news website, reaching millions of unique readers each month.

Mike Adams lived in Taiwan for two years and is nearly fluent in spoken Mandarin. Adams was also a resident of Ecuador for two years, from 2008 – 2010, where he built a 20-acre food forest containing over a hundred food-producing trees. He speaks conversational Spanish.

Adams has no criminal record and has never been arrested. How much do you want to bet that most likely he has a criminal record?

That whole biography page was just screaming out at me—sociopath –sociopath.  I did not want to be under the influence of the, ” I see dead people” syndrome so I referred to a trusted friend and colleague Paula of  http://paularenee.wordpress.com/ and sent her the links and asked her opinion as I consider her an expert in sociopaths.

Her response to me were the following links:

http://mike-adams-scam-artist.blogspot.com/

http://healthwyze.org/index.php/component/content/article/616-special-report-the-legend-of-mike-adams-and-the-reality.html

 

One of the sociopathic traits of someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder is the smear campaign.  The attempt to make someone else look bad by misdirecting the light of truth towards somebody else and away from the sociopath.

And here in lies the irony because Mike Adams, health ranger/guru (sociopath) has two articles on his website:

“Warning Consumers About Fake Gurus and Sociopaths

• Natural News editor Mike Adams is the author behind the world’s most popular article on “how to spot a sociopath,” currently featured in the top five search results on Google for the search term “sociopath.” (http://www.naturalnews.com/036112_sociopaths_cults_influence.html) This story has been viewed by millions of readers and continues to help people avoid being exploited by others with sociopathic tendancies .
• Mike Adams (the Health Ranger) is also known for posting video parodies of “new age gurus,” making fun of their language and their repeated asking for donations for projects that never seem to come to fruition. His YouTube video called “Fake Gurus Exposed” depicts a guru named “Moonbeam Karma” asking for donations for a project involving magical twigs. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXoaC9fhXyc).”

So I went ahead and googled “sociopath” and lo and behold Mike Adams article did not appear in the top five search results of google.

What better way to deflect that you are a sociopath than by posting an article on sociopaths. The sociopath checklist that he posts should be read side by side with his biography page.

I am sure you are asking yourself, why is Ivonne writing about this?

Well I am going to tell you why. I am on many missions and one of those missions is to expose the faces of narcissists and sociopaths.

I have a Facebook page dedicated to this project, https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Faces-of-Narcissism-and-Sociopaths/1520998668119419?ref=bookmarks

There are too many of them on the planet and they make life a living hell for those around them. They are a plague to society and need to be exposed.

I am concluding that Mike Adams is one of these such sociopaths. I have unsubscribed from his newsletter as I do not want to support sociopaths.

 

[1] Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door page 9

[2] http://www.healthranger.com/Health-Ranger-Biography.html

How do you fight Depession?

Since Robin Williams suicide I have seen many articles,fb posts and blogs about suicide and depression.  The truth is unless one had been there so hard to understand why anyone would commit suicide.  But you don’t just wake up one day and go, Hey I think I’ll off myself today.

Before suicide is depression and swimming in the dark abyss.  Are we doomed,those of us who struggle with depression? I hope not.  I don’ t think there is any one way to deal with depression.  I think those of us who suffer from it must have an arsenal of tools available to us.

My wordpress friend, the pink agendist wrote this great blog on depression.  I found it to be very helpful and with his permission I have duplicated it here since his blog is currently set to private.

His advice is practical and logical.  Enjoy.

How do you fight depression?

by pinkagendist

My experience with treatment was a bumpy ride. Four different doctors, a number of different diagnoses and an equal amount of medications to treat them.

The first few years were very much a waste of time. Just talking and answering poignant questions didn’t do much for me. Some medications did ease the accompanying tension and anxiety, but not enough to account for any significant change.

The thing that did it for me was CBT (offered by the NHS in case you’re interested. Otherwise a session costs anything from $50 to $500). The backbone of CBT is how to confront and alter your life to minimize the effects of whatever destructive thought patterns you might have- from depression to OCD to phobias.

In a practical sense it works by identifying your stressors and triggers. You learn to recognize the factors that set off your depressive process/cycle. For some people that could be the weather, for another it could be the holidays. It’s not necessarily significant. I know someone whose process is related to parties, even parties she enjoys. In the week following a party she’s invariably overtaken by thoughts on existentialism, whether life is worth living. So we can say that although parties aren’t the deep causal factor in her depression (existentialism is)- the parties are the factor that set off the switch.

If you don’t know what your triggers are off-hand, keeping a diary is very helpful. I’ve met people with all sorts of triggers. A certain tone of voice, seeing the sunrise, being in the presence of a fight. Think of it in the way adrenaline or dopamine work. Action triggers chemical, chemical triggers sensation. Cycle ensues. In the case of anxiety or depression the pattern always involves a very specific index (and style) of thoughts. The depressed individual’s mind goes round and round, lingering on the same topics and re-interpreting life from what is many times an entirely irrational (and negative) perspective. Here’s a simplified example of a depressive cycle, note how they interact and bolster each other:

(In case you’re thinking that if the person in question is overweight, then the depressive thoughts are simply a rational reaction, you’re wrong. The issue being the “style” of the reaction. Someone accustomed to these thought patterns will apply them to all aspects of their life.)

You’re suddenly not a guy doing your best, you’re a bad guy. Your work isn’t respectable, it’s pathetic. You look in the mirror and you only see what’s “wrong”. CBT says: STOP. Turn away from the thoughts. Move in another direction. It sounds simple enough, but requires an inordinate amount of discipline, especially because most of us have been repeating the same patterns since adolescence. At first I wore a rubber-band on my wrist and snapped it every time I had an irrational negative thought. For it to be effective, you do have to regard it as a daily job.  You also have to be prepared to make significant changes and confront things that could have a major impact on your life. Your trigger could be your partner or sibling. It could be the weather in the part of the world you live in. It could be your boss or your job itself. Obviously, it can also be in the realm of the nots. Not doing exercise, not writing, not looking for a different line of work.

I’ve spent years re-structuring my entire existence. It’s a work in progress and always susceptible to change. My biggest realization is how my state of mind is mostlydependent on my own decisions. I can’t control the world around me, but there’s a whole lot I can do to give myself the best possible experience. We may not be able to control the world around us but we are fully able to control our own reactions.

Take the example of the kettle and nespresso machine breaking within days of each other. Many years ago something as insignificant as that would have made me extremely angry and would most probably have set me off on a depressive cycle.  the thoughts would be: Nothing works, nothing lasts, people just rob you. How much will I have spent replacing appliances until the end of my life? I probably don’t make enough. Bad things seem to happen more often to me than to other people. My behaviour would have been: They’ll just break anyway,  so there’s no point buying new machines. I’ll just boil water in a pot and have instant coffee from now on. The result would be a persistent dissatisfaction every time I wanted coffee or tea.

Even after all these years of practice, my first reaction to the breakages was intense negative emotion. Which would have been followed by the negative associative process- but I can stop it in its tracks (most of the time). I stop whatever it is I’m doing. I go sit in another room, and then I decide what can be done for me to move forward. Don’t overreact, how much is a new machine, I can order it without leaving the house. Life goes on.