#810 Cults, Shootings & PTSD - Best Of - Matthew Walden#810 Cults, Shootings & PTSD - Best Of - Matthew Walden
Mental Illness Happy Hour
Matthew Walden shares a chaotic, darkly funny journey through childhood violence, rape, cults, shootings and PTSD with host Paul Gilmartin. Their candid chat spans medication struggles, compulsive behaviours, strained family ties and the small sources of comfort that keep them going.
2:04:55•24 Jul 2026
Cults, Shootings and PTSD: Matthew Walden’s Wild Ride Through Mental Illness
Episode Overview
- Childhood trauma can be minimised or mislabelled, especially in shaming religious environments, leaving deep unresolved wounds.
- PTSD often shows up later as flashbacks, hypervigilance and compulsive escape behaviours like porn, fantasy or violent games.
- Powerful drugs and cult-like settings can seriously destabilise perception and memory, especially for people with existing trauma.
- Honest communication and concrete actions of care can slowly repair damage in close relationships, even after serious mistakes.
- Humour, books, friendships and candid conversations offer meaningful relief alongside, not instead of, professional support.
“You can't think your way out of a thinking problem.”
Interested in the personal battles against addiction? This replay of Mental Illness Happy Hour brings back writer/producer Matthew Walden, whose darkly funny, jaw‑dropping story shows just how tangled trauma, mental health and compulsive behaviours can become. Growing up in Hawaii’s military housing, Matthew describes childhood that included gang shootouts, death threats, and being raped at five years old.
He talks about turning that terror inward, convinced he was “possessed by demons” rather than traumatised, and how a deeply religious, shaming family response blocked him from getting help. His line, “Congratulations on getting PTSD before pubes,” says a lot about the mix of gallows humour and pain running through this conversation. Matthew and host Paul Gilmartin swap brutally honest reflections on self‑hatred, numbness, and the lure of escape—through cults, drugs, porn, fantasy or even suicidal thinking.
Matthew details joining an ayahuasca‑using spiritual group run by ex‑CIA researchers as “research” and ending up genuinely brainwashed, losing his grip on reality and triggering a wave of childhood flashbacks. Later, he survives a mass shooting in Santa Monica and admits he first thought the gunman was his own father. You’ll hear about SSRI‑induced hypomania, emotional affairs born out of medication chaos, and the strange relief of violent video games and porn to someone with severe PTSD.
Yet there’s warmth here too: Matthew’s love for his wife, his brother, and books; Paul’s openness about his own depression; and their shared belief that connection, humour and honesty can make unbearable experiences slightly more bearable. For anyone dealing with trauma, compulsive behaviour, messy family dynamics or the exhausting hunt for a medication that actually helps, this episode offers raw recognition, a few laughs and the reminder that you really aren’t the only one hanging on by your fingernails.
What parts of your own story feel less lonely after hearing Matthew’s?
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.