From Rite of Passage to Psychotic Break: Ollie’s Journey
In the area of Bristol, England, where Ollie grew up, taking drugs was seen as a rite of passage, and unfortunately, he ended up falling prey to peer pressure. While he never experienced any mental health issues as a young man, all of that changed one night when a 16-year-old Ollie took 900 milligrams of LSD.
Accidentally taking ten times the usual dose, it would send him on a seven-year journey of psychotic breaks and hospitalizations. “It was just one time—one-time use of it— and it just completely fragmented my mind and made me lose connection with reality.”
A New Lease on Life: Ollie’s Transformation
After taking the drug, Ollie’s developing teenage brain went off the rails, and he experienced full-blown depersonalization. After several weeks of insomnia and increasingly bizarre behavior, his mom took him to the hospital, where Ollie was sedated and put on heavy medication to manage his condition.
As he desperately tried to manage his condition, Ollie would still need to be hospitalized every three years when he would inevitably experience another psychotic episode. When he felt another incident coming on this past summer, he started doing his own research in a bit to find an alternative solution that could help him gain control of his mind.
Managing Mental Disorders with the Carnivore Diet
After listening to several different content creators online, he came across our very own, Dr. Shawn Baker. Ollie was intrigued by the success stories of people who were able to heal all sorts of physiological conditions with diet and nutrition. He wondered if it would translate to successfully managing mental disorders as well.
So, in August of 2022, Ollie rolled his sleeves up and started the carnivore diet—cutting out heavy carbs and eating plenty of minced beef, ribeye steaks, pork belly, bacon, and eggs. He ate until he was satiated, and while his energy levels were low during the transition, the first thing he noticed after a week or two was a sharp improvement in his mood.
Overcoming Skepticism and Achieving Mental Clarity
The emotional roller coaster he was used to started leveling out, and he was no longer experiencing the regular and horrific sudden dips into depression. The people in his life started noticing he was happier and more extroverted. Still, that didn’t stop them from telling him to quit the diet, thinking Ollie was doomed to get scurvy. “I knew it was a load of BS, so I just kept going—because I knew how I felt.”
Now at 23 years old, Ollie is studying psychology at university and working part-time helping people with epilepsy and learning disabilities. He’s no longer on any medication, and as far as his studies go, he is consistently getting A levels in his classes. He has energy all day, easily puts on muscle at the gym, and his mental health has never been better.
Initially, Ollie started Carnivore as merely a way to avoid hospitalization. Ollie is now able to experience complete freedom from the mental health woes of his past. “Not being ill would have been great for me. Just feeling like I could say, ‘I feel fine.’ But it’s gone leaps and bounds over that. I feel great—that’s the amazing thing about it.”
