20 Years Ago Tom Cruise Had the Memorable Interview with Matt Lauer Discussing Psychotropic Drugs

I saw something interesting the other day. Remember Tom Cruise? Like, he did the Oprah, you know, jumping on Oprah's couch. And then he had that interview with Matt Lauer. I don't want to play the whole thing, Steve, but just to refresh people, this is 20 years ago. Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that? The difference is, this was not against your will, though. But this wasn't against your will. Matt, I'm asking you a question. Matt, I'm asking you a question. I understand there's abuse of all of these things. No, you see, here's the problem. You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do. All it does is mask the problem. OK, so do you guys know that that whole thing started with me? Matt Lauer would never have gotten into psychiatric, psychotropic drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, you know, Ritalin, Adderall, all the drugs that kids are taking. He never, ever would have gotten into that if I didn't write a letter to Tom Cruise two months before saying, you know, every time I'm with you, we ask about, you know, who are you dating? Who are this? You don't really ever talk about it. It's kind of you always kind of allude to Scientology and always read about you and Scientology. So I said, listen, I've convinced the people that run Access Hollywood to get me to give me a half an hour, give me the whole show and let me do a special on you and everything that you're interested in. And he was like, oh, my God, his people contact me. And they say, you've got to go and visit every one of the Scientology centers in Los Angeles, of which there are four, one dedicated to human rights, one is education, the others, you know, drugs and and and detox and the others, the celebrity center where they gather everybody. So I go and I, you know, it's it's it's a it's a it's got a vibe this place. I complete the research. And then Tom Cruise and I sit down and we do an interview that ends up being a half an hour special. And then two days later, Matt Lauer has that interview. But that's we talked about these drugs and specifically Brooke Shields taking them. Do you remember that? I'm the one that said, well, wait a minute. The first movie you did, Endless Love with Brooke Shields. I assume you're still friends. And, you know, she says the drug Paxil helped her through postpartum. Is she wrong? Then he said what he said about Brooke Shields and it went off anyway. Matt Lauer follows up on that. That whole thing began. That was 20 years ago. I'll never forget that letter from Matt Lauer from from Tom Cruise to me. Billy, what an upstanding man you are. What a great journalist. I didn't know. Oh, my God. What a man. And that thing just went, whoa, blew up. But that was 20 years ago. Somebody just posted that and said the other day, you know what, 20 years later, Tom Cruise is right. Let that sit. Is he riddling the Adderall Jesus? Our kids are on everything but roller skates. Was he a little before his time? I don't know. Interesting.