Mental Illness Isn’t Chaos — It’s Too Much Order (with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris)
Fascinating insights from my podcast with pioneering neuroscientist Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris. Watch the 6 minute clip now.
In today’s cultural and clinical understanding, mental illness is often associated with chaos. Disordered moods, unstable thoughts, erratic behaviors — the language we use reflects a presumption that illness is fundamentally a breakdown of order. But what if we’ve misunderstood the nature of that “disorder”? What if, in many cases, mental illness is actually the result of too much order — a mind locked into patterns so fixed they become a prison?
This was the core insight in my conversation with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris (whose work I became fascinated with when I saw him on Jordan Peterson's podcast), one of the world’s leading psychedelic neuroscientists and originator of the entropic brain hypothesis — a model that has fundamentally reshaped how we understand the therapeutic potential of psychedelics.
In his view, certain psychiatric conditions — including depression, OCD, addiction, PTSD, and anorexia — are not marked by randomness or chaos, but by mental rigidity. Over time, we fall into entrenched cognitive and emotional loops. These loops are often rooted in overweighted beliefs that become central to our identity:
— “I’m unlovable.”
— “I’ll never get better.”
— “I need to be thin to have value.”
Dr. Carhart-Harris explained how these beliefs become neurologically “canalized” — like water flowing through deep, narrow channels in the mind. The deeper the channel, the harder it is for the water (our thoughts and feelings) to move freely. This metaphor captures the experience many patients report: being stuck in a narrative they know is hurting them, but unable to escape.
Enter psychedelics.
Compounds like psilocybin and MDMA appear to increase brain entropy — not in the chaotic sense, but in the technical sense of enhancing flexibility, openness, and unpredictability. For those locked into rigid ways of thinking, this temporary state of loosened cognition can be profoundly healing. Suddenly, there’s space to question beliefs that once felt absolute. New connections — both neurological and emotional — can form.
Carhart-Harris shared a striking example: in clinical trials with individuals suffering from anorexia, participants often rated the belief “My anorexia gives me worth” as near 100 out of 100 before treatment. After a single dose of psilocybin, that same belief often plummeted. Some participants were stunned. “Why did I ever believe that?” they’d ask, with a kind of astonished clarity that years of talk therapy had never accessed.
This therapeutic potential — the power to unfreeze our inner narratives — resonates with my own experience. In MDMA-assisted therapy, I saw long-held self-stories I’d carried since childhood begin to unravel. The tight grip of “I am unworthy” loosened, and I glimpsed the possibility of a different story. One not built on shame, but curiosity and care.
But as Dr. Carhart-Harris notes, this is not a universal solution — and here lies a crucial caveat.
While many disorders involve too much mental order, others, such as psychosis and schizophrenia, lie on the opposite end of the spectrum. These conditions are characterized by excessive entropy — too much looseness, too much fluidity. The sense of self becomes unstable. Thought patterns lose coherence. In these cases, introducing more entropy through psychedelics can exacerbate disorganization, potentially triggering harmful effects. That’s why modern psychedelic research protocols exclude individuals with personal or family histories of psychosis or bipolar I disorder.
This nuance is vital. Psychedelics aren’t a cure-all. They are tools — powerful ones — that, when applied carefully, can recalibrate the mind’s internal structure. For some, they soften hardened beliefs. For others, they could unravel what little structure remains. Context is everything.
Ultimately, Carhart-Harris’s model invites us to rethink what healing actually looks like. Not as a simple return to “normalcy,” but as a restoration of flexibility — the ability to think new thoughts, feel new feelings, and choose new behaviors. To step out of the canal and into open water.
Listen to the full clip [here].
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The full conversation with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris is available now on The Illusion of Consensus, wherever you get your podcasts:
SUPER interesting. Thank you.
First, understand this TRUTH: Psychiatry is a fraudulent pseudoscience, a drug racket, and a social control mechanism. It's 21st Century Phrenology, with potent neuro-toxins. Psychiatry has done, and continues to do, FAR MORE HARM than good. The DSM-5 is best seen as a catalog of billing codes. EVERYTHING in it was either invented or created, NOTHING in it was discovered. The distinction is crucial to understanding. So-called "mental illnesses" are exactly as "real" as presents from Santa Claus, but NOT more real.
OK, fine, but how else do you explain the total absence of ANY OBJECTIVE lab, chemical, blood, etc., tests for any so-called "mental illness"?.....
So-called "the brain" is NOT a distinct, unique organ such as the liver or kidneys, - rather, it's simply that part of the 4 human nervous systems contained in the skull to support the sensorium....