Joe Rogan Experience #2373 - Dave Landau

Rogan and Landau describe Detroit as once being the “Paris of the Midwest,” then hollowed out by auto jobs going overseas, corrupt local politics, and overleveraged union contracts, leaving infrastructure for millions but only a fraction of residents and vast abandoned areas ripe for crime and strange gentrification experiments.

They connect the Sackler-driven OxyContin boom, Florida pill mills, and CIA/cartel involvement in heroin and cocaine with today’s fentanyl crisis, arguing prohibition creates black markets, contaminated supply (e.g., fake pills, fentanyl‑cut heroin), and far more deaths than a regulated, honest system likely would.

Landau shares his 10-year struggle on Zoloft, feeling more depressed, gaining weight, and experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms (“brain zaps,” nausea, cognitive issues) when he tried to quit cold turkey—highlighting how important gradual tapering and informed medical guidance are, and how little many patients feel truly heard.

Landau’s father was a Vietnam vet destroyed financially and physically by Agent Orange and VA denials; his mother was bipolar and died by suicide; he himself had 13 arrests, multiple DUIs, blackouts, institutionalization, and near-fatal drinking before finally quitting, illustrating how intertwined environment, heredity, and policy failures can be in one person’s spiral.

Rogan criticizes reintroducing wolves to ranching regions and proposals to bring back grizzlies where people live, noting ranchers’ losses, state compensation costs, and increased human–predator conflict; they compare this to failed ecological fixes like zebra mussels and carp and warn against feel-good policies divorced from on-the-ground realities.