Month: February 2017

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Memory submitted by Ferrell Varner

When did you meet Mickey?
1963

Where did you meet him?
Med School

Memory of Mickey
Mickey and I were in the same medical school class. When I met him it was obvious at first encounter that he was someone that I wanted to know well. He was funny, very bright, energetic and original. He was curious about everything and looked at the world differently. We studied together a lot, and he “got” the concepts quickly and then played with them while I struggled to memorize them. His humor came through in all of this. He was “cool” is the best sense of the word.

After medical school we intermittently wrote letters then emails. He went on to Infectious Disease then Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. I went into Emergency Medicine and then decided to go to art school in San Francisco. He wrote me and said that we both seemed to be looking for the same thing, our own form of enlightenment. I was flattered. While in medical school I had organized an evening of painting with wine. He never painted that I know of, but his contribution was the most original and complete of the group.

We lost touch for several years, and he started his blog. I came on late, but closely followed his efforts to expose the problems around big pharma, bad research, greed and intellectual dishonesty. He has been making his part of the world better for years, and doing it clearly without the excessive rhetoric that confuses most discussions.

We will miss his insight, energy, compassion and humor

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Memory submitted by Carol Gaines

When did you meet Mickey?

Where did you meet him?
1boringoldman

Memory of Mickey
He was my inspiration and my hero. I already miss him so very much. What a loss. We needed Mickey to write one more chapter.
My deepest sympathy.

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Memory submitted by truthman30

When did you meet Mickey?
2011

Where did you meet him?
Blog

Memory of Mickey
I never met Mickey, however I have been a big fan of his writing for years. His writing is well known and well respected in the mental health/anti-psychiatry blogosphere. Mickey has helped raise awareness of the misdeeds of psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry and his writing will be studied for years to come. RIP Mickey, and condolences to his family and friends. He will be missed.

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Memory submitted by Matthew Jansky, MA, LMFT

Where did you meet him?
1boringoldman

Memory of Mickey
During grad school and clinical training, I learned the joy and wonder of developing a network of younger friends and colleagues and benefiting from their restless energy and enthusiasm. However, it was through Dr. Nardo and his blog that I learned the satisfaction of listening to, and corresponding occasionally, with a diverse group of (mostly) older and far more experienced professionals.

I have benefited greatly from the wisdom of so many who visited 1BOM, and I’m grateful to all of them – Bernard Carroll, Dr. O’Brien, Dr. Hassman, Sandra Steingard, Joseph Arpaia, Steve Lucas, George Dawson, Berit, Gagan, and so many others. I was always treated with respect here, even during debates which sometimes became quite strident. If I posted intemperately– and I certainly have at times– I was sometimes criticized sharply, but never made to feel unwelcome.

1BOM wasn’t, and isn’t, an echo chamber where you can expect to hear your favorite ideas parroted endlessly. For me, it was more like some wild, endless seminar with an interactive syllabus and over a dozen different professors from all over the world.

It’s very rare to find communities like that online these days, and that’s because there’s no one like Dr. Nardo to lead them. I am very, very grateful. And I am very, very sad. My heartfelt condolences to Abby and the rest of Mickey’s family and friends; my grateful thanks for the pictures and memories.

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Memory submitted by Sherry Walls King

When did you meet Mickey?
1978

Where did you meet him?
Morningside neighbors

Memory of Mickey
I love Mickey and Sharon and missed them sorely when they moved to Jasper. A favorite memory happened near Christmas in about 1980. I was in law school, just had finished exams. We wanted to go out with M & S to celebrate but we were leaving for my Grannie’s in Mississippi the following morning and had all our preparation to do, including hiding all of it from our almost 7 year old. Remember, for months I had no social life! Mickey said, let’s go to eat and then we will come back to your house and help you wrap all the presents. I couldn’t believe it! There were tons to wrap. He gave us the opportunity to have fun First and continue the fun talking with them as the gifts were wrapped. Those sweet angels!! Thanks always Mickey and Sharon for just being you.

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Memory submitted by Jane Taylor

Where did you meet him?
1boringoldman

Memory of Mickey
I feel so sad ….. it was through my email contact with Mickey Nardo (at the very beginning of ‘my journey’ about psych drug harms) after a 1BOM blog came up in my google search on Seroquel, that I learnt about the existence of David Healy back here in UK and both 1BOM and DH’s blogs really were a life saver for me, because otherwise I may well still be following ‘doctors orders’ which were that I would need medication for life and thus would have faced, no doubt, a premature death.

(I was diagnosed with bi-polar 2 when it is so clear to me, knowing what I know now, that I suffered iatrogenic SSRI induced Akathisia which led to being prescribed even nastier antipsychotics)

So I feel I owe Mickey an awful lot and will be eternally grateful to him for signposting me to a whole new world of TRUTH about the horrific, corrupt story around prescribed meds.

I am now very well, meds free, happy and SO very grateful to Mickey, for letting the truth be known and for his very kind response to my email back in May 2015.

God Bless, Mickey and many condolences to his family …

PS. I can’t wait for the book based on 1boringoldman that Abby is promising

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Memory submitted by Elise

When did you meet Mickey?
2005

Where did you meet him?
I met Mickey in North Carolina after I became friends with Abby

Memory of Mickey
My story about Mickey isn’t about Mickey exactly. It’s how I first came to know Mickey. Listening to Abby talk about her dad. Abby’s love and respect for her father was clear through the stories and proud moments she shared about her father’s passions and life. That says a lot about the kind of man he was.

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Memory submitted by Anna Nardo

When did you meet Mickey?
1947

Where did you meet him?
I am Mickey’s younger sister. He was 5 years and 4 months old when I was born.

Memory of Mickey
All but a few of you knew Mickey as an adult, and you may not know much about his early life. So I want to share two memories from my youth that evidence the empathy and ability to read people that made Mickey a great therapist.

During summer vacations from U.T., he found a job selling suits, ties, and shirts at an exclusive men’s store called The Gentry Limited. The owner was a Jewish tailor with a German accent whose wife had escaped the Holocaust. There weren’t many Jews in Chattanooga, so the family was pretty isolated. Since the store was doing well, the German tailor decided to buy his wife a new house. But when moving day arrived, she completely freaked out. The tailor had no idea what to do, so Mickey simply took over, escorted her away from the chaotic scene where strange men were entering her house to haul off her belongings, and stayed with her until the move was completed. Although as yet untrained, Mickey intuitively recognized that the wife was experiencing a psychotic break because the confusion of moving had revived traumatic memories from the war years.

Thinking back, I see a second sign of Mickey’s future career success in his efforts to teach me to water ski. We always had a boat for Dad’s fishing excursions, and on summer weekends we sometimes joined him for trips to Chickamauga Lake. All the cool kids could water ski, and I wanted to be one of them. The way the process is supposed to work is that you get in the water, put on the skis, crouch with your knees pulled up to your chest, hold onto the rope, and let the force of the boat pull you upright. But the process didn’t work for me. While Dad drove the boat, Mickey stood in the stern, watching me fall over every time Dad gunned the motor. I was mortified and in tears, then he yelled to me, “Stop trying!” I had been trying to pull myself up instead of letting the boat’s force pull me upright. His advice worked like a charm, and I experienced the exhilaration of zooming across The lake with the other cool kids. In his early twenties, Mickey had intuited one of the major psychological cruxes of my life. When I get myself tied in knots, I try to remember that it once worked to “Stop trying!”

Goodnight, Mickey.

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Memory submitted by Barbara Dennis

When did you meet Mickey?
2004

Where did you meet him?
I knew him through Abby.

Memory of Mickey
There was a time when Abby was at Indiana University working on her doctorate. She was temporarily staying at my house. She was going through a challenging time. During this time, as I got to know Abby better, I also got to know about her parents and eventually also got introduced to them face to face.

During this time, Abby was writing down all the wise things her dad would say to her in conversation. She would often recant these wise insights with me and my children. It was wonderful to not only experience his engagement with her life and how close they were, but also to hear his perspectives. Wise. Centered. Thoughtful.

One day, I was experiencing a weird thing – blood was coming out of my ear. Gruesome , I know. Abby mentioned this to her dad. he had some concerns about it. She put him on the phone with me. This was the first time I had actually heard his voice. He was very helpful in terms of the immediate ear problem, but what really stayed with me was how powerful it was to hear the actual voice of the person whose “sayings” and “writings” and “insight” I was coming to love.

His voice harbored a resonance in my ear that was at once powerful and inviting.

I did not get to know Mickey except through Abby and very episodic moments during that brief time, but it was enough to respect him and appreciate that our paths crossed.

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Memory submitted by Renee Dooley

When did you meet Mickey?
1980

Where did you meet him?
He’s Abby’s Dad!

Memory of Mickey
I’ve known Abby since 4th grade. During elementary school we were pretty good friends and spent a lot of time at each other’s houses. So I spent a fair amount of time with her parents over the course of the years. Mickey was always “Dr. Nardo” to me. Whenever I was over, he mostly seemed to be doing something intellectual and “computer-y”. But he always had time to indulge whatever shenanigans Abby and I would get into as kids. I remember several times where Abby and I would concoct these strange “recipes” out of all kinds of various mysterious kitchen ingredients. Even if we made a mess, Dr. Nardo would never mind. He was always good-natured about it and would be our taste tester, which he probably regretted at some point. And one time he helped us make homemade pasta. We had noodles that went all the way down the hallway! At least that is how my 10 year old brain remembers it. Always a good time at the Nardos’.