The film The Exorcism of Emily Rose is loosely inspired by the 1976 real-life case of Anneliese Michel, a German woman who died of malnutrition and dehydration after undergoing 67 exorcism sessions over 10 months.

Witnesses in Anneliese’s case said she spoke Latin, Greek, French, even some old dialects—stuff she never learned.

She claimed six demons were in her—Lucifer, Cain, Judas, Nero, Hitler, and even a medieval woman named Fleur de Lys. The priests had her name each one during sessions, and she even mimicked their ‘voices’.

Priests noted her quoting scripture flawlessly too. No one could explain how. And days before she died, she wrote in her diary: ‘I’m so tired. I wish it would end.’

A devout Catholic girl from rural Germany suddenly channeling languages she had zero exposure to? You’d have to be pretty arrogant to just write that off without a second glance. And this is someone who’d been in and out of hospitals, who knew her doctors and her meds by heart—she wasn’t making stuff up.

Michel had been diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy and possible psychosis/depression, and she was prescribed several medications (including anti-convulsants like Dilantin and Tegretol, as well as the antipsychotic Aolept) that failed to alleviate her symptoms.

This led her devoutly Catholic family and two priests to believe she was possessed by demons, prompting the exorcisms.

The priests and her parents were later convicted of negligent homicide in a 1978 trial, where medical experts testified that Michel’s condition was psychiatric and neurological—not supernatural—and that religious indoctrination exacerbated her refusal of treatment, contributing to her death.

Anneliese’s case gets pretty wild when you dig into it—she reportedly spoke in Latin, Greek, and other languages she never studied, quoted Bible verses from memory, and showed aversion to sacred objects like crucifixes and holy water.

Doctors thought it stemmed from her epilepsy and mental health issues, but her family and priests insisted on possession because no meds worked long-term.

The film is an adaptation, compressing months into courtroom flashbacks. Still, those real, unexplained elements offer a powerful argument against science being able to explain, or fix everything.

Shohreh Aghdashloo’s character, Dr. Sadira Adani (an anthropologist and psychiatrist), is a fictionalized expert witness for the defense, modeled in part on real-life anthropologist Felicitas Goodman, who studied Michel’s case and wrote a 1981 book (The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel) defending the possession theory.

In the film, Dr. Adani testifies that Emily Rose was a “hypersensitive” prone to supernatural invasion and that the fictional drug Gambutrol (an anti-epileptic with antipsychotic properties, not explicitly an antidepressant but with an “intoxicating effect” on the brain) interfered with the exorcism by locking Emily in a possessed state, making her immune to the ritual’s “psycho-spiritual shock” and contributing to her death.

This aspect of Dr. Adani’s testimony draws from real arguments raised in Goodman’s book and during Michel’s trial: Medications were blamed for suppressing epilepsy symptoms without addressing the alleged possession, and some post-trial analyses (like Goodman’s) claimed the drugs altered brain activity in ways that hindered exorcism rituals from inducing the necessary trance or dissociative state to expel demons.

However, no such expert witness testified in Michel’s actual trial—the film’s courtroom drama amplifies and fictionalizes these elements for narrative purposes, blending medical testimony from the real case with anthropological theories on possession from various cultures.

The prosecution in the real trial focused on expert psychiatric evidence that Michel suffered from mental illness, not demonic forces. 

But here’s what the film—and her life—shows: the pill didn’t fail because it was weak. It failed because it wasn’t made for the fight.

The medicine was not helping, several intelligent people with experience treating mental health who really cared witnessed the drugs making things worse over a long consistent period of use. 

Anneliese herself, her family, the priests who loved her—they all saw it making things worse. And when multiple people who actually knew her said the same thing over months, that’s not anecdote. That’s pattern.

And it’s not just her. History’s littered with ‘cures’ that turned into malpractice—like lobotomies, mercury fillings, cocaine for pain. Science evolves. What we swear by tomorrow is tomorrow’s poison.

Dependence on drugs for relief isn’t help—it’s trade. You swap raw feeling for numbness. You sell your rage, your grief, your clarity. And yeah, maybe you don’t cry for three days. But you don’t love for real either.

Is that a life? Or just… maintenance?

I am not saying they can’t be helpful, but that there could be other options, remedies or life choices that offer real health improvements, growth and a better quality of life.

Distorting reality through medicine for relief might lead to a life without feedback to valuable insight and learning.

Is it a better life to live numb to reality or incapable of basic (yet profoundly valuable) human experiences like raw and real feeling, expression, thought, mood, sex etc?

We know objectively that many people have bad reactions to psychological medications and antidepressants, leading to addiction, dependence, or even worsening symptoms. 

And while relief might feel immediate, the trade-off is often a muted existence—like living as a numb individual or vegetable, void of the deep emotions and instincts that make us human. 

Uncomfortability is part of life; it’s essential for feedback, discovery, and growth. Life isn’t just about feeling good—hard truths and realities push us toward important insights and progress. 

Yet, there could be false motivations behind pushing these drugs, keeping people hooked in ways that hinder their natural healing or self-awareness.

This isn’t just personal—it’s societal. When you’re numb, it ripples out: It affects how you respond to loved ones, distorts your relationships, empathy, and what you put up with. 

You might not speak up against injustice, or your ethics get compromised—misplaced empathy for those who don’t deserve it, an inability to distinguish right from wrong, or true justice from distortion. 

Perceptions blur, making you weaker toward real wrongs, turning empathy into a weapon against yourself. Numb people don’t fight; they nod along, allowing things to happen because their psyche is altered, trapped in delusion or illusion, unable to progress into new phases of life. 

Even laws and systems suffer—without vigilant, rational discernment, enforcement becomes blind force, negating the defense and justice we’ve built as a society. 

The whole world starts sliding into a medicated haze, where people turn into quiet ghosts, and society crumbles not from conflict, but from apathy about who gets hurt.

Point is, science evolves. What we swear by today, tomorrow it’ll be malpractice. There’s no silver bullet. The arrogance is in pretending there is. Better to stay open… skeptical but open.
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