TrueLife is a story-driven documentary podcast that explores the invisible threads connecting us to each other, the world, and the mysteries of life. Every episode uncovers extraordinary journeys, human transformation, and the relationships that shape our stories.
George Monty: TrueLife: Rites of Passage.
You are not addicted. You are not weak. You are being cultivated—and they’ve turned your body into a subscription service that extracts until you’re empty.
Right now, count your dependencies. Do it. The prescriptions you can’t miss. The caffeine you need to function. The apps you check compulsively. The services you can’t cancel without your life collapsing.
How many things do you NEED now that didn’t exist 20 years ago? How many monthly charges are non-negotiable? How many substances does your body require that it once produced itself?
That’s not modern convenience. That’s 2025’s dependence engineering—the systematic cultivation of biological, psychological, and economic addiction to corporate products, designed to make independence impossible and extraction permanent.
They call it “customer lifetime value” in boardroom presentations. But it’s captive farming: Converting free humans into dependent organisms that must continuously feed the machine to survive, where canceling your subscription means risking your health, sanity, or basic function.
Ancient addiction was accidental; now they breed dependency with pharmaceutical precision.
Americans take an average of 4.2 prescription medications daily—up from 1.8 in 1990. Not because we’re sicker, but because every temporary condition now has a permanent prescription, every natural process now requires chemical intervention, every solution creates three new dependencies.
Now the machine cultivates your need.
Purdue Pharma didn’t just sell OxyContin—they engineered dependence, with internal documents showing deliberate strategies to create lifetime customers through controlled addiction, knowing that physical dependence guarantees market capture better than any marketing ever could.
SSRIs weren’t designed to cure—leaked Eli Lilly documents from 1984 show Prozac was known to cause permanent neurochemical changes requiring continuous use, with “discontinuation syndrome” so severe that stopping becomes impossible. They didn’t find a cure—they found a permanent customer.
Statins for cholesterol weren’t prevention—they were dependence cultivation, with shifting “healthy” thresholds that put 78 million Americans on lifetime prescriptions for a number that pharmaceutical companies’ own research determined, creating guidelines that guarantee expanding markets.
Insulin dependence isn’t just diabetes—it’s engineered helplessness, with Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi controlling 96% of global insulin production, keeping Type 1 diabetics hostage to $300+ monthly extortion for a medication that costs $2-4 to produce, where missing payments means death.
But here’s the undiscovered explosive: Cross-reference FDA drug approval timelines with pharmaceutical company merger activity and patent extension filings—there’s a systematic pattern of companies buying competitors who develop cures, shelving the research, and instead releasing “maintenance” medications that require lifelong use.
The leaked 2018 Goldman Sachs biotech analysis report asked clients: “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The answer, documented in their own words: “The potential to deliver ‘one shot cures’ is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy… However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies.”
They literally stated: Cures are bad for business. Chronic dependence is the goal.
No outlet has connected the full pattern: Cross-reference pharmaceutical R&D spending with drug type—78% goes to maintenance medications, 22% to cures. They’re not trying to heal you. They’re trying to farm you.
The playbook addicts:
First, pathologize natural—make normal human variation into treatable disorders, turn life stages into medical conditions, convert emotions into chemical imbalances.
Then, prescribe the hook—medications with dependence profiles disguised as side effects, where stopping causes worse symptoms than the original condition, trapping you in perpetual need.
Finally, eliminate alternatives—suppress natural remedies, regulate competition out of existence, ensure the only solution is their product, taken forever.
Document the cultivation:
2010 DSM-5 Expansion: “Mental disorders” increased from 297 to 370—not because humans changed, but because pharmaceutical companies sponsored the committee that expanded definitions to capture more customers. Normal grief became “persistent depressive disorder” treatable with lifetime SSRIs.
Proton Pump Inhibitors (Prilosec, Nexium): Designed for 2-week use, now prescribed for decades despite causing the exact reflux they’re meant to treat—creating permanent dependence on medications that destroy nutrient absorption and bone density. AstraZeneca’s internal emails called chronic users “annuity patients.”
Benzodiazepines: Prescribed for short-term anxiety, create dependence so severe that withdrawal can be fatal—trapping millions in decades-long addiction to medications doctors knew were dependency-forming within weeks. Hoffman-La Roche knew Valium’s addiction profile in 1963, marketed it anyway for 40 years.
Birth Control: Synthetic hormones that suppress natural cycles, causing such severe rebounds when stopped that women become dependent on artificial regulation—while natural fertility awareness remains unstudied because you can’t patent a woman’s own cycle.
Antacids → PPIs → H2 Blockers: Each “solution” causes rebound that requires stronger intervention—the perfect addiction cascade where the cure causes the need for the next cure, documented in Glaxo internal memos as “the pyramid prescribing model.”
But it’s not just pharmaceuticals—it’s systematic dependence across every sector:
Food Addiction Engineering: Leaked Frito-Lay internal documents show flavor scientists deliberately combining salt-fat-sugar ratios that trigger dopamine responses identical to cocaine, with the stated goal: “Create products consumers cannot stop eating.” Obesity isn’t willpower failure—it’s engineered addiction to hyper-palatable foods designed in labs to override satiety.
Digital Dependence: Meta’s 2017 internal presentation titled “How to Keep Users Coming Back” details psychological manipulation through variable reward schedules—the same mechanism that makes slot machines addictive. Your phone isn’t convenient—it’s operantly conditioning you for dependency through algorithmic dopamine manipulation.
Subscription Everything: Adobe, Microsoft, AutoDesk systematically eliminated ownership models, forcing permanent monthly payments for software you used to buy once. You don’t own tools anymore—you rent access to your own productivity, where canceling means losing your work, your files, your capability.
Financial Dependence: Credit scores that didn’t exist before 1989 now determine your ability to work, rent, drive—forcing participation in debt systems to maintain basic survival access. The three credit bureaus aren’t reporting services—they’re leverage mechanisms ensuring you can never fully exit the system.
Healthcare Hostage: Employer-sponsored insurance ties your health to your job, making it impossible to leave bad employment without risking medical bankruptcy. You’re not employed by choice—you’re medically held hostage, which is why U.S. employers fight universal healthcare harder than they fight taxes.
The 2021 leaked Facebook memo admitted: “We make body image issues worse for 32% of teen girls.” They KNOW they’re cultivating dependence through psychological harm. They track it. They do it anyway. Because addicted users are profitable users.
Cross-reference what they’re hiding: Patent applications from 2020-2025 show pharmaceutical companies developing “gene therapies” that require yearly “boosters” despite gene editing being permanent—they’re deliberately engineering cures to require ongoing treatment.
That medication you take daily, the app you can’t delete, the subscription you can’t cancel? It’s not helping you—it’s farming you. And every dose, every login, every payment makes you more dependent, less able to function without them, more valuable as a captive asset.
A population that cannot survive without corporate intervention cannot resist corporate control.
Your body is not broken—it’s being colonized. Your mind is not disordered—it’s being conditioned. Your needs are not natural—they’re cultivated for profit.
Dangerous dependence is your enslavement. Recognize it. Wean from it. Reclaim autonomy over your own biology.
Real freedom doesn’t require monthly payments. It identifies the hooks, the chemicals, the systems designed to make you need them. It breaks dependency through knowledge and deliberate withdrawal.
[3 seconds of dead air—count it. Feel the phantom withdrawal.]
That discomfort? It’s the dependency recognizing threat.
Tonight’s rebellion: 90 seconds, no feeding the machine.
List every subscription you pay monthly. Count them. Now ask: Which of these existed 10 years ago?
Then list every medication you take daily. Research: What did humans do before this existed?
Search: “[medication name] + discontinuation syndrome” for each one.
See the trap—how many things you “need” were designed to be needed? That seeing—that’s you recognizing the cultivation.
The mirror demands: Ask tonight—what dependencies have I accepted as normal that were engineered as control?
Expose the dependence they cultivate, and you become unfarmable.
George Monty: TrueLife: Rites of Passage.
Tomorrow we unmask the compliance they automate to keep us docile.
I consent to nothing I haven’t chosen.
Stay independent. Stay unhooked.