Psychiatric medications can cause significant neurological changes and withdrawal symptoms that may be mistaken for relapse of the original mental health condition, leading to continued medication use; safe tapering requires hyperbolic (gradual) reduction over extended periods, and recovery involves not only addressing withdrawal symptoms but also reclaiming personal agency and understanding that emotional experiences are natural human experiences rather than necessarily requiring medical intervention.
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She Was on 5 Psychiatric Drugs at 27. The Pills Were the Problem All Along | Laura Delano EP 234Added:
I was promptly diagnosed with bipolar at the age of 14 and put on a couple meds within an hour. No treatments could help me, which was a totally hopeless message to get. Why should I even stay alive?
And then I eventually woke up from that false story. What if it's not treatment resistant mental illness? What if it's the treatment? Laura Delano, welcome to my podcast. It's good to be here. I am the founder of a nonprofit called Inner Compass Initiative that helps people make informed choices about taking and safely tapering off psychiatric medications. I am an intense person. I cry all the time. I have intense anger.
I don't think of any of this as an illness anymore. I also not afraid of it.
>> I got sicker and sicker mentally, too.
But I always thought, "Yeah, but if I wasn't on these medications, imagine what kind of monster I would be."
>> Yep. industry exploited a really important message which is we should be able to talk about our pain. They took that and they exploited it and perverted it and made it about Laura Delano. Welcome to my podcast.
>> Thanks. It's good to be here.
>> Yeah, I'm really excited to have this conversation. Um I think we touched base a couple years ago. You've written this book unshrunk. you had a horrifying experience uh with psych meds. So, we're going to get into a bunch that has to do with that. But before we get started, can you give a brief background about who you are and what it is you do?
>> Sure. So, I am the founder of a nonprofit called Inner Compass Initiative that helps people make informed choices about taking and safely tapering off psychiatric medications.
And I've spent a long time also outside of the nonprofit just helping people in a kind of consulting capacity navigate medication withdrawal because as you well know they had nowhere else to turn but those of us who've had to figure it out for ourselves. Um, and then I've just been trying in the past year to the best of my abilities to help inform um, policy in Washington DC since Secretary Kennedy came in because I think finally we have a real opportunity here to actually change the cultural conversation and and uh, health policy around safe medication tapering.
>> Yeah.
Faster than I thought it was going to come to be honest. So, can we can you give a I mean get into your background about what happened to you?
>> So, I I like to describe it as you know this 14-year relationship that was the most formative relationship of my life to the mental health industry. Uh it began when I was a kid. I was a smart, sensitive, um intense kid from a family with, you know, financial means. went to private school, had a lot of resources and opportunities, but also a lot of pressure and and um just the whole culture I grew up in had these really intense kind of performative expectations. So, I ended up having this breakdown as a 13-year-old girl.
Realized I didn't know who I was or, you know, how to get out of this performance game that I felt stuck in and I began um acting out at home and cutting myself and just despairing. I I just like didn't know how to, you know, communicate the pain I was in. And my my poor parents got really scared and sent me to a therapist. And then that therapist sent me to a psychiatrist. And I was promptly diagnosed with bipolar at the age of 14 and put on a couple meds within an hour. And that began that 14-year relationship basically that just like so many stories that you've heard and that you've been obviously you've been through yourself. The longer I was on these meds, the more meds I took, the more I came to rely on my doctors and therapists to kind of steer me through my life. The more diagnoses I accumulated, the more my life fell apart. And every step of the way, my parents and I were thinking this was my so-called illness progressing until eventually I was basically declared like so sick that I was treatment resistant. now. Uh, which basically meant no treatments could help me, which was a totally hopeless message to get. Um, and which also led me to try to kill myself literally because I was like, well, if all I have is mental health treatment and the treatment is not going to help me, why should I even stay alive? Um, and then I eventually woke up from that false story and unshrunk myself, you could say, and the rest is history.
>> Oh my gosh. Did you, as a 14-year-old, out of curiosity, when you were first put on the medications, did you notice anything? Like, did they relax you? Did you get any positive benefit initially that kept you on them?
>> That's a great question. I don't remember any benefit and it's hard to say because I between ages 14 and 18, I tried really hard to avoid taking them >> um because I hated the idea that I needed to take pills to change me. I just was very angry that this was happening. Um, but once I began taking them consistently at age 18, you know, I'd have like brief periods maybe at the start of a new drug where I felt more hopeful. But whether that was the effect of the drug or my belief that you know now this one is finally going to do something you know I don't I don't ever recall feeling like sustainably helped in a meaningful way where I was actually functioning better in my life feeling more connected feeling more at peace. it just year after year of dysfunction like to the point where it was just like my normal and I didn't even realize it could be anything else basically.
Yeah. I had a similar experience with I had like very severe I wasn't I didn't get to the point of cutting. I was 12 and I had severe mental problems too. Like but I was also very sick. I was living in what we now know was a moldy basement. And I honestly think I honestly think that was like 90% of what was making me crazy. Uh so it was a physical problem, but it was manifesting as like OCD tendencies. I was staying up really late reorganizing books in different ways, sharpening pencils. Um terrified at night like planning escape routes in case somebody came in to kill my family, like >> stress. uh and then was put on Lexapro.
And I remember I think what confused my family massively at the beginning was my dad was already on them for similar symptoms and it this I think what it was extreme mold sensitivity ran like ran in my family. So there was a lot of mental illness. But when I first started taking them, at least the first 3 days when I got really tired, I relaxed and it was like my whole body relaxed and I was like, "Oh, okay. Chemical imbalance. I can finally like stop being, you know, in this stress state and relax." But then like I was still depressed.
So, so it didn't solve it like solved initially the the angry panic >> but that didn't last but then adverse effect of like sedation basically.
>> It was sedation. Yeah. And then like throughout my my teenagehood was awful and things and I got sicker and sicker mentally too. Um but I always thought Yeah, but if I wasn't on these medications, imagine what kind of monster I would be.
>> Yeah. It's so interesting what you said about the mold situation leading you on and how what you were experiencing prior because it makes me think of my early childhood where so I had chronic ear infections as a baby like through the first few years of my life. So I was on antibiotics a lot. I mean who knows if we had mold in our house too. I have no idea. But I was also a very ob what would have been diagnosed as OCD kind of kid where I would make bets with myself and I did a lot of counting and I would think to myself you know if you don't make it to that door frame in 10 steps you're going to die just nonstop >> and and in retrospect I think you know how my my gut my microbiome you know how thrown off was it in those critical um I was also cesarian too so I didn't have the chance to like go through yeah to the through the birth canal and get all my mother's bacteria. And I think about that a lot, too, like how much did that kind of seed the the the physical foundations for my eventual kind of like mental and emotional breakdown.
>> Yeah, I've heard like I'd like to get your thoughts on this. I I see like there's some people online and I think the direction we're going online is amazing and I haven't expected this kind of change for who knows how long, but um I've seen some people talk about well mental illness as a whole isn't real. And I've been pushing back online being like, "Oh, no. I was like I was mentally ill, but the treatment didn't it it hurt me more than anything else." But the mental illness in the beginning was a symptom of something that was physically wrong and we didn't know what was wrong.
>> Yeah.
>> So, what what's your view on that?
That's such I'm so glad you're raising that because I think part of why we're often in this polarized um this this conversation gets so polarized is because of this this language issue where people are in the you know these kind of black and white camps like mental illness is real or mental illness doesn't exist and I think the way I' I' I'd uh approach it is well what do we mean when we say mental illness and and you know um how can we tease apart the words themselves that people use from what people actually mean. So, you know, I think for me, I I've long been a critic of medicalization more broadly, just taking very real um experiences, whether they're emotional, mental, even physical sometimes, and just automatically of translating them into the language of symptom and illness and disorder. But I also, like you said, think they're very real. People are really suffering.
People really get psychotic. People really have delusions. People really are in intense physical pain. Um, and but I think we need more nuance when we talk about this because this whole it's real.
No, it's not real. It just feels really silly because it's like kind of not I I think what matters is that that we we uh yeah, I think finding our way to nuance is like absolutely essential if we're going to have a ch make any kind of change here because I think we have more points of agreement than a lot of polarized people think. I would imagine a lot of the people who say mental illness isn't real just are speaking sloppily but actually think that the experiences are actually happening that get people diagnosed or you saying you actually encounter people who are like no one ever suffers there's no such thing >> imagine your favorite lecture dial that up on max put that on steroids and then add some cinematic elements to it that's the best way I could describe a Peterson Academy lecture >> there's always that one professor who's like oh and you know, you got to take this one professor. They're the best.
But at Peterson Academy, it's all of those that one professor.
>> I'm still paying off college from 10 years ago. And I'm also still questioning the value that I got out of college.
>> It's very common nowadays for students to be in thousands and thousands of dollars of debt. It breaks my heart the interest rates that are just going to keep on piling up on them for an education that doesn't entirely serve them.
>> You are stuck in the room. You have to do a particular set of courses and I have to convince myself to stay focused.
It's just pretty dry.
>> With Peterson Academy, it's a fraction of the cost and you get access to all these different topics.
>> Those anything from sciences, nutrition, why we get sick, all the way up to history, tons of courses, tons of really good lectures.
>> I'm always looking for high-quality educational content. Peterson Academy provides it all.
>> The instructors are amazing. They're so well known in their field that you just want to pay attention. The more I access, the more I listen, the more I learn, the more I want to learn. I just keep expanding and I just want more.
>> Traditional university can sometimes ground you down. Peterson Academy will be able to scratch that itch of you wanting to learn and continuing to grow as a person.
>> I can't wait to see where Peterson Academy goes. There's just so much potential and it's just the beginning.
>> I went to college because I had to. I go to Peterson Academy because I want to.
>> You just kind of have to focus on what's going to actually change your life. stop paying attention to what things are supposed to look like and actually aim for something and you might just stumble across something like Peterson Academy.
I think there's like a p a small percentage of people online probably that haven't actually experienced mental instability severely. So they think, well, I've been stressed out like I've had a family member die. like stuff like that that causes causes not mental illness just like normal human stress which is miserable and so they're going well a lot of people and I don't disagree entirely but that a lot of people are taking medications to cover normal human stress and I think that there is a percentage of the population that's prescribed psychiatric medications because they're in traumatizing relationships they have a sick family member like there are situational elements making them depressed and then they're medicated for normal human experience.
>> But there's a lot of people who are like like schizophrenia.
>> I I don't know if that's something stress can do. Like that seems like you you need some metabolic therapy or some sort of help for likely a physiological problem manifesting that way. And so I'm more concerned about those people. Like I know with me I was very and my dad we were very sick and we we think that that was mold exposure and s being sensitive to that manifesting a psychiatric issue.
So it's silly to say that that kind of thing >> isn't real cuz that's that like the type of depression my dad saw a lot in his clinical practice was like >> first he'd go through somebody's life like what are your relationships like?
What's your work like? Do you have friends? to go through all the things that maybe could contribute to depression in a person. But if none of that was wrong >> and you're still >> Yeah.
>> like kind of nuts, then what's going on?
>> And it's that camp that's like >> they need to figure they need to have physicians that are able to like dig deep into what's physically triggering these things.
>> Totally. Yeah. Well, and I think this is where the the chemical imbalance mythology, I think, becomes such an important part of this conversation because I I do think it's it's just scientifically unevid even something like extreme psychosis is just caused by some like faulty brain chemistry. It's but like you said, it's real. It's physiological. I mean, every emotion, every thought we have is rooted in our biology in some way. And of course, biology can go ary. You can have a brain tumor or latestage syphilis that makes you hallucinate. Like there's a real biological thing happening in you.
Um, but I think because the chemical imbalance narrative and just this broader narrative that has become so ubiquitous in our culture to explain mental and emotional distress and madness and whatever else we might call it, I think is misleading and and at best um lacking evidence and at worst like just not true. So, so I think part of why your work I think is so important is because you're bridging you're like you're you're you're helping people find a way to this more nuanced complex understanding where things are sometimes like purely biological like nothing to do with your environment and although in the sense of like what you eat and you know what you're exposed to is environmental that then becomes biological. So everything's environmental in that sense, but we need more conversations like this, I think, to help people get out of these polarized like there's no such thing as mental illness because chemical imbalances are fake and like everything is, you know, a real medical illness.
Like we need nuance. There's a middle ground here.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. It's complicated.
>> Yeah, it totally is. And people don't like complexity. People don't like nuance right now.
>> It's too complicated.
>> Yeah. which is why there's no actual well I mean there's emerging research into like ketogenic therapy which is extremely promising and obviously I talk a lot about that so there like there are emerging treatments but it's not surprising I feel bad I feel bad for all the people online who are like well they help me that's not going to help happen to me u because the message of psychiatric medications often especially long term can cause neurological changes that end up in injury is catastrophic given most people are on these long term. So you're telling a huge percentage of the population.
We don't know what percentage but like maybe 10 20% of the population about at least that's the stat I have is on one of these medications these psychiatric medications. Huge percentage of those are taking them long term and telling them hey this can end in neurological injury. It's a lot easier for them to go no than to like I get it like no that's probably what my reaction would have been when I before I like fully understood and had gone through protracted withdrawal or neurological injury too. Yeah. Like I get it.
>> Yeah. And because we're now we're in the kind of the early days of actually naming the reality that you know that long-term psychiatric drug use can lead to serious neurological injury.
All we have for the evidence really is our anecdotal experiences which to me is data and valid evidence. Of course, we get dismissed often as oh anecdotal is not doesn't count, which is absurd because it's valid.
>> Anecdotal to begin with, too.
>> Totally. Totally. And so, I think how do we with this this opportunity in our in our country right now to actually really address, you know, this overmedicalization crisis as as HHS is calling it. uh we have to we have to prioritize better understanding of what is actually happening structurally functionally in the body from long-term use of these meds but we also can't wait to help people who are injured until such time comes as we've done all the research so I think how you know we need to be taking action now to help those injured people and that's hard when you know there isn't evidence to to show that this is even a real thing in the first place how do we help our stories actually be taken seriously as enough evidence. We don't need to wait for more evidence to do something because right now like we see every day people reaching out to us, people have nowhere to turn for help. Um they can't go to hospitals for the most part because they'll just be put back on meds. What other respit can you turn to when you're navigating like an acaththesia crisis?
It doesn't exist right now. We need to urgently address this. Um, >> how did how was your experience? So, you were on like a variety of psychiatric medications for 14 years, you said?
>> Yeah. Third 13 years. Put on them at 14, got off them at 27, but the first few years luckily I was like not on them all the time. So, >> yeah.
>> 10 10 years consistently >> plus some extra.
>> And how did like by the time you got off of them, were you aware that they could cause withdrawal? How did you end up getting off of them? Such a such a good question. I am a story of how not to get off psych drugs. Yeah. So I had no idea about dependence and withdrawal. Um what I had connected. So it was 2010. I was 27 years old. I was on five meds.
>> My job was going to treatment at the psych hospital every day. It was like my whole world was this. and and then I stumbled on Robert Whitaker's anat anatomy of an epidemic >> which for anyone listening not familiar um with is basically a you know the thesis of the book is that if you actually look at the long-term evidence that we do have on psych drugs they tell a very different story than what we've been led to believe they can lead to worsening disability and worsening outcomes and when I read that book which was hard to do because I was so medicated Um, it all clicked and I realized, you know, looking back on these medicated years with my life falling apart more and more, like basically I had this like, holy shit, aha moment where I was like, what if it's not treatment resistant mental illness? What if it's the treatment? So, that's what catalyzed me to come off all of them. But I didn't know about withdrawal. I didn't know anything about tapering. I had no idea that there were any back at the time it was benzobuddies and surviving anti-depressants.
Um, Those are those are really popular blogs for anybody who don't know.
>> Yeah, thousands and thousands of people who shared their stories. I'm realizing I don't even know if surviving anti-depressants existed yet. It might not have existed when I came off, but I had nothing. So, I came off five meds and I was on lithium, lamedal, ailifi, effexer, and adavan >> all at once. And this was like, you know, I I remember the word sophisticated being used, a sophisticated regimen. Like I and I just thought of it as this for this and this for that. Totally.
>> Very carefully, scientifically.
>> Totally. Like I just took that all for granted. Um and I came off all of them in about half a year with thinking that was slow. Thinking I'm doing it, you know, like really slow and with no idea that that was I was basically cold turkeying myself off all this stuff. And I, you know, in retrospect, I'm grateful for how messed up I was on meds because I was really comfortable with being in agony. So, it like wasn't >> a new, you know what I mean?
>> I actually do know what you mean. Yeah, >> totally. So, I just it was the first year especially was, you know, taking a shower was a massive accomplishment.
literally like I'm I'm sure sure you can relate to those chapters where you're just like wow I am I had a really successful day like I brushed my teeth and I took a shower like that that was the first year basically um of withdrawal and and it was during that time that I started to piece it together and realize and started to realize like wow actually maybe this isn't just my baseline um maybe this is my body trying to figure itself out after years of being physically dependent on this stuff. I'd say by 3 years off cuz people often ask, "How long did it take for you to feel like you healed?" And I'm like, I don't even know what the word heal means cuz I'm like still healing. 16 years out. I I'm still healing in many ways. But I would say 3 years off was when I was actually I'd have I was actually like in myself and here and I felt like integrated.
I'd made some significant dietary shifts um like two years off. I removed gluten and dairy. I've never done full keto or full, you know, like full no carbs, but removing keto and dairy. Sorry. Removing gluten and dairy was a game changer.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Those were the biggest ones for me, too.
>> Holy moly.
>> And soy.
>> Oh, interesting. I I I mean I removed like pro I still would do soy sauce like organic soy sauce but I never fully removed it. That helped a lot to get that out for you. Oh my it was gluten was probably the worst. Dairy was causing such severe psych >> reactions once I had cut it and reintroduced it and was like >> wow >> okay no. Um and then soy might have been worse than dairy and I was eating that every day.
>> It's tasty.
>> Yeah. when and and you know I think about the first two years in withdrawal when I binge ate the shit excuse my language out of sugar every day you know I I was in so much pain that I just I needed temporary relief and even like five fleeting minutes of like a pint of ice cream um was was worth it to me and you know here I am so I I wonder I do wonder you know had I introduced it had I removed those you know groups of foods earlier would my prolonged suffering have been lessened I don't know maybe >> did you get like throughout that say threeyear period did say the first year and a half when it was really severe did your symptoms go like this at all or was it all bad >> things things caught yeah so if I if you let's think I mean I meant lump symptoms and like physical symptoms like mental and cognit nitive symptoms and emotional symptoms. I would say the the the cognitive the cognitive symptoms probably started like I would say kind of trended upward pretty steadily but like slowly in terms of memory function and you know the ability to actually retain words when I would read, the ability to articulate myself. You know, I just have these vivid memories like in year one off the meds where I'd have an idea in my head that I wanted to say and then I would start talking and be like, "What is coming out of my mouth? This isn't what I'm trying to say." So that the cognitive stuff I was I would say was like steadily slowly getting better. The emotional piece was definitely roller coaster kind of thing. And I think in retrospect probably that tied into like what was happening in my life like stressor wise because I think I was very still to this day I'm like sensitized to stress. It's much better than it used to be. Um so if you know if I was in like around the holidays and I'd have to be with family and I'd have to go to you know cocktail parties and with my family like those were you know big bumps big bumps in the road. Um, and physically the physical symptoms especially like the digestive I mean I had extreme I thought I had IBS for like 10 years on psych meds um because of how messed up my digestion was. I think probably by the SSRIs mostly, but in withdrawal I had just, you know, months where I would just be able to poop like deer pellets bar like little tiny pellets and then periods of time where diarrhea water it just was that was up and down a lot too.
So I think Yeah. What about for you?
Like if you were breaking if you were going to break down the healing trajectory, was it up and down? Was it steady? So I I stopped Lexapro over a period of two weeks. Um >> that's right. I remember you said >> which is no idea currently according to conventional psychiatry.
>> I know. I know. It's 2 to 4 weeks.
That's what happens if you go to a doctor and they're following guidelines >> which is insane. But it was two weeks and um I like in during that two week period I felt like better and better and better and better and then for a few days off of them I was like wo like clarity everything is amazing and then this is when I was really really low carb and I was trying to reintroduce foods and I binge ate a whole bunch of soy and I had a massive like basically allergic reaction and that was the first time I hallucinated.
>> Wow. And I was like, and I didn't know the entire time I went through anti-depressant withdrawal, I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know it was anti-depressant withdrawal. I thought it was because it was so correlated to my diet. Like, I could almost get rid of symptoms if I had this list. I had this list of like 17 foods, which was basically meat and greens, and I was like, if I just stick to that, I'm okay. So, it's like it didn't feel like a withdrawal, like um like a painkiller withdrawal or something, which you can't really do anything about. Um so, my symptoms definitely went up and down, but it always correlated with what I ate. So, I attributed it to diet. And then when I saw when dad got hit, I was like, "Oh, that's actually what happened." And that explains why my symptoms were so so severe cuz I had like the really severe one and there were a whole bunch of them was um visual like they call them visual disturbances but I was like hallucinating terrifying things. I remember being like just sitting being like don't panic like this isn't real. No idea why this is happening. And it wasn't like constant.
It would just be like a flash of something like when you're a kid and you see a monster in the dark. It was very similar to that.
>> Um >> but so yes, I had I had um symptoms like that, but it would be like I'd eat something, I'd have 24 days of hell and then I'd have a few days of like, "Oh, I'm calm." And then I'd try something again. That was brutal for the first year. For the second year, it was complicated because I got pregnant. And that that was like the entire time I didn't feel good. I couldn't handle the hormones at all. Y >> and then I started stabilizing 2 and 1/2 years after that thing, but I do think cutting everything out and going just to meat, I could feel that stabilizing me very quickly. And after about 5 months, I I was stable and my symptoms would come back if I tried to to vary it at all, a spice, anything. Um, so I do think that sped things up, >> but yeah, that was my experience. Do you think the pre postpartum do you >> having having been pregnant myself um uh and you know playing out what that might have been like an early withdrawal? I mean, holy moly. Do was there any >> did do you think it helped in any way in retrospect like postpartum? Did No, it was just it was only a disturbing facing factor you think.
>> Oh yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't tolerate it and I was terrified. Like the experience pregnant but also postpartum that I had with my first was so >> like a whole bunch of the withdrawal symptoms came back and it wasn't just like it wasn't a normal post. I know people can go pretty nuts postpartum and get pretty depressed, but this was like horrifying.
>> And I know that they can get like horrifying feelings, so it's hard to say, but mine were like completely intolerable. Like weeping >> with milk let down. I had a really bad I think reaction to prolactin. And I know that some of these medications can increase levels of prolactin like SSRIs.
And so I I think maybe it has something to do with that, but we don't have any research, so we don't know.
>> Um, but no, that was like traumatizing.
Um, I was terrified. I talked about it on the podcast actually. I was like, I might get a surrogate. I'm I'm really scared. Like, I was suicidal and I don't like that's not good. You can't put somebody in a suicidal state. But I think enough time had passed that actually I had like my 2-year-old George was a lot easier and I had some ups and downs postpartum, but like compared to in anti-depressant withdrawal, I was like, "Oh, I can be depressed during postpartum and like know that this is going to go away and just deal with the the suffering as long as I'm not suicidal."
>> Yeah. when and this to me gets to the informed choice piece especially for girls and women and the fact that none of us I mean I would wager that you know 0.01% 01% of the population if that women um are meaningfully informed about these risks. And and the thing is it has to start super young because >> as we've experienced firsthand the years that it can take to extricate yourself from these drugs and actually recover enough, you know, mind in mind, body, and spirit to be able to meaningfully raise a baby is it literally can be years and years and years for some of us. We don't we don't know how what percentage. And so we need to be told this as girls. We need to be told this as we're reaching childbearing years.
even even you know way out you know way years before we're even thinking about having kids because the planning required as a as a young woman or as a woman around taking psych meds if it is even a teeny possibility that you want to be a mother one day you know you have to take it really seriously and I and I I hear you know sometimes from women who say oh my gosh I just found out I was pregnant I've been on you know Zoloft since you know my bad breakup in high school I'm like 35 now. What do I do?
And you're way you're sitting here with you know which tradeoff is a small is a lesser trade-off to take the risk of potentially causing harm to your baby and or to you know through like in the birth experience or the withdrawal. It's like >> it's a catastrophe.
>> There's no good solution.
>> Yeah. Um there's this doctor online um I don't know Adam. Yeah, >> he's great.
>> Okay, I'm going to have him on and he's like publicizing the research which exists on like fetal harm when they're exposed to SSRIs.
>> And just knowing going through that withdrawal like that cannot be good if that's what a developing brain develops on. Like we have no idea what that does. We have a there's some studies coming out but like that can't be good. But then what do these poor people do?
>> Y >> go into acute withdrawal that might cause suicidality.
>> So yeah, they need to be told much younger. And then that brings me to like the birth control pill. I know >> Oh yeah.
>> can cause serious depression in young women while they're a teenager. So they don't even know what emotion they're supposed to be experiencing. So then you start with the birth control pill, which is supposed to be a safe pill. get depressed from that and then that starts you on the psych meds. Yeah. It's it's a really big problem. It's no wonder it's controversial.
>> Yep. I mean, I think I was on oral contraception for 16 years. I was put on it in high school. I was starving myself. Wasn't getting my period. And an endocrinologist like literally told me, you know, we're going to help restore restore your cycle. I had no idea at the time that the the bleeding that happens on the pill is a withdrawal bleed. It's not actual period. I had no freaking idea. And I was on it for 16 years. So, how old were you when you started it?
>> 14. So, I was already on psych meds at that point. But my mom was like, I'm poor mom. She was like, "That made me really depressed. I couldn't take that."
And I was like, "I'm already depressed."
You know, like, "Bring it."
>> Yeah. I I started it I think a couple years after I was first put on Psych meds too. And I think about the the profoundity of what that means that we How old were you when you got off the pill?
>> 23. I stopped taking everything at the same time.
>> Okay. So, yeah. I mean, I got off the pill. I think the pill was like 30, age 30 for me. And I look back in my early 30s. It was literally the first time in my entire life that I had been not pharmaceuticalized. I I had never been free from pharmaceuticals in adulthood until then. And you know when you grow when you grow up when you develop a sexual development like hormonal development you know in your teenage years with these synthetic hormones coursing through your body. I mean the consequences of that are so profound.
Similarly with you know central nervous system drugs like like psychiatric drugs and I just we have not until now had you know I think our culture hasn't been ready to really like pause and step back and be like what are we doing here but we are now. I mean I think we were talking before about how we both feel this momentum building fast around it. It's impacted too many people. Yeah.
>> And I like if you think about the statistics of like about 20% of the population being on these medications, >> I think it's higher. 23.8% was what the CDC >> had surveyed in 2022. So I think >> Oh my gosh. Okay. So that is >> Yeah, it's like basically one in four is what I would is what I would I would round up to. I bet it would be. We need like recent data. But yeah, >> that makes more. No, no, no. That makes more sense cuz I'd heard one in six about six years ago. Um, and it's definitely gone up. I've also the other thing not to that I've noticed. This is completely random, but um it's hard to get information out there on TikTok. I don't know if you've experienced this, but I've had a bunch of people reach out that they're like, "My I was talking about anti-depressant withdrawal and it was taken down for misinformation." And I know that the video I put out about my experience with like the severe symptoms like uh athesia and the hallucinations and things, it didn't get the views. I had one it didn't get the views by a lot that I was expecting it to and I was like well that was definitely suppressed. Then I had a bunch of people reach out that are like yeah they removed my experience of protracted withdrawal but what I see all over Tik Tok is like live love lexapro like >> blasted everywhere.
>> Yeah.
>> Um >> yeah. So that's not good.
>> I I have yet to go on t I on Tik Tok.
I'm embarrassed or maybe not embarrass.
I don't know.
>> But what do you think is I just don't know enough about the platform to know like um why why Tik Tok, you know, and not Facebook? Like why is the censoring happening there? Do you think?
>> I mean I think and this might be conspiratorial of me, but it's run by the Chinese Communist Party. So I think that they're pushing agendas that aren't great for Americans. So that's the more conspiratorial part of me like, but I truly do believe that. Otherwise, why censor this?
>> There's no reason to censor it and push >> these weird hashtags that are pro psychiatric medication use. It just that's what I think.
>> Yeah. Well, I definitely think Tik Tok culture, you know, as an elder millennial, I'm 43, growing up in the '9s, like I was the beginning of what has now become this ubiquitous phenomenon of Yeah. like of basically like romanticizing uh being psychiatized to put it you know that way where it for especially for for girls and women. I think it happens with men too but way more with us. I think young women grow up infused in this idea that the only way to feel seen and heard and special and validated and recognized as if >> you are, you know, sick, mentally ill, and take a bunch of meds. And >> I rem I was the beginning of that phenomenon. I mean, I remember really internalizing this idea of like I'm so proud that I have like four different diagnosis because like I'm really sick and look look at all my pill bottles.
See what this means. It shows how much pain I'm in. And I think it what to me it's a symptom of is not to use a medical word for it, but it's it's symptomatic really of this deeper like spiritual um void I think and this void of meaning for so many young people right now who grow up in this like performative virtual reality all the time where they just they want to like they're they're hungry for meaning and they're hungry for belonging and connection And all they really see now is like the mental health system this way. Like get a diagnosis, get on meds, go show it, you know, go post about it.
Now look, you're a part of something.
>> Yeah, I do think I know. Like my experience was I don't think I had that exactly like when I was diagnosed with arthritis, I didn't want to tell anybody for a while cuz it was like the that was in grade two and it was the old person disease. I was like I don't want to explain why I have like a disease that grandmas have. Um, so my brother, I remember my brother who's in grade one, like told one of his friends and I was really mad. Um, and then I kind of desensitized to it by the time I was in like grade seven and with anti-depressants. I was like, "Yeah, you know, I'm on an anti-depressant because depression runs in my family." Um, but but I think that shifted kind of like, well, it's funny because I think depression was definitely a real thing and there wasn't a a good treatment for it. So there was mental illness and then it was talked about as if you were just being weak. It's not real. Like you're just being weak. So then there was this societal push back by like no it's real.
We have to accept it. It's a chemical imbalance. It's a real thing. Um >> and then it just cycled into what like live love lexapro hashtags which is like oh no.
>> Yep. You're it's so it's it's so true that this what what the kind of anti-stigma mental health awareness campaigns that really began to they began in the '9s pharma funded and I think really began to take off in the last like 15 years. But >> were they pharma funded?
>> Oh yeah. Well, gosh, you know, National Alliance um for mental illness, um Mental Health America, a lot of these kind of consumer, very powerful, influential consumer advocacy organizations get a lot of funding from the pharmaceutical industry. And so what happened, you know, very cleverly, industry exploited a a really um important message, which is we should be able to talk about our pain. We should we shouldn't hide it. we should be able to say, you know, when we're like overwhelmed by despair or anxiety or panic or whatever it is, but they they took that and they exploited it and perverted it and made it about instead of like there's no shame in talking about your pain. There's no shame in getting treatment >> and and that be they kind of blended the two together >> and then like you said use the medicalized framework to like validate like I'm not just sad like I'm like sick. I'm I actually have a condition in my brain that makes me, you know, different. Um I think it just Yeah, like you said, it it this this like perfect storm of various factors um all incentivized to get people on meds and and here we are. Here we are. But we are I think waking up from it.
>> Yeah. Speaking of waking up from it, so what do you think about this rumor that RFK is taking away psychiatric medication?
>> It's about one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. How do you what how do you feel about it?
>> Well, I mean that obviously from what I've seen now, I didn't go to that. I really wanted to go to that event, but he's too pregnant so I was like I can't I can't do it. But um you were there, right? Was there anything about that?
>> Absolutely not. the there is HHS has zero intention of removing any medications of removing access to medications. Never once has that been uttered anywhere to what I from what I've seen. Uh and yet somehow the headlines all a lot a lot of them seem to to make that claim even though their articles themselves actually if you read them acknowledged there's they haven't actually talked about banning. We're just putting that in the title basically.
>> Yeah.
>> Um but yeah, people are struggling to separate >> these this so essentially Secretary Kennedy is saying we have all these millions of people on these medications.
Uh not everyone wants to take these medications long term. Those people right now don't have any safe way to get off of them. Doctors currently don't have any clinical training in safety prescribing. You might hear some of them say, "We've been doing it for a long time, but they don't actually have safe protocols." And he's just saying for that percentage of people who decide they don't want to take these medications anymore, we want to provide them with safe off-ramps. Essentially, people have somehow taken that and equated it with like everyone should come off these meds. No one should take them, which is simply not what he said or what any of the policies that they're working on are about. It's kind of the opposite. actually been trying it. But not that that's easily explainable, but like if you do go to a do a psychiatrist or a doctor at the moment that isn't aware of this and isn't aware of protractor withdrawal, they do say, "Well, just stop taking it. We'll do it in two to two to four weeks to be safe."
That's what he's trying to Yeah. That's what he's trying to stop.
>> Yep.
>> So, yeah, he's it's basically providing people with more options, not less. It's like you can go this unsafe way or now you're going to have all these hopefully all these opportunities and your doctor will too to actually do it safely. Yeah.
And I think but I I'm curious what your thoughts have been on the overall media reception. I do see the media response to to Secretary Kennedy's announcements um as overall more positive than other health issues that have, you know, in the past year that have been focused on What do you think?
>> I agree. I'm pretty well, we were just talking about this. I'm actually pretty hopeful. Like you have to expect with any type of news that you're going to get some clickbaity headline that's supposed to stir people up because people will press it more. Yeah. Which is so malevolent, but it's also a giant news corporation, so it's to be expected. But I've seen a lot of positive articles and I think there are a lot of psychiatrists too that have clued into this or have been leading the research on this or have been harmed themselves that are speaking up and being taken seriously being in like I know um the APA I don't remember meet there's some sort of meeting >> their annual conference conference and they had Dr. Chris Palmer, who I've had on, go speak at that about metabolic psychiatry.
>> I hear it was standing room only, packed his his talk.
>> Really?
>> Yep.
>> Oh my gosh. See, that's the kind of thing where it's like, yeah, there's going to be the doctors that are like, that's not true. Um, I've never seen it, which I think just means I've misdiagnosed it every single time I've seen it. But, uh, there's so many there's so many doctors that are cluing into this and going, "Oh my gosh, okay.
Oh, there are things we can do. Great."
trying to push it forward and it's impacting so many people that it's it's done. You know, it's it's going to go forward and at least people be will be aware that if they do try to taper and they start experiencing these like neurological symptoms that it's not necessarily a relapse. Do you have a way like to I had um a doctor reach out and they said okay if there's a overlap in symptoms between the original mental illness and the rel and the um protracted withdrawal how do you differentiate?
I personally don't think you really can.
I mean, if it's someone if it's been long-term exposure to the medication, how can you I know that I know that, you know, they are like clinical, you know, there I think Mark Horowitz's um work has some kind of methodology for disting, you know, distinguishing like an obvious thing is if it's if it's a symptom that you've never had before, yeah, like you can probably assume it's withdrawal, but like you said, if it mimics the struggles you were having previous to the medication. You know, to me, time is the best indicator and and not just a few weeks or months, like potentially years. It when I think about how many years it took for my body to kind of reestablish any sense of baseline, especially because I'd been medicated as a kid like you, so I never had a baseline.
um it isn't the kind of thing you can figure out quickly like what's me versus what's med effects versus what's withdrawal effects like can you ever even I'm not sure but I think we have a really unique moment right now um to go back to the APA conference and just how psychiatry is responding more broadly to whether it's metabolic approaches or deprescribing with the deprescribing piece I think we really do have an opportunity right now to build bridges and and and collaborate and by we I mean you know those of us former patients who've become the world's leading experts on safe tapering like literally and and the doctors who are you know leading the charge with hyperbolic tapering like Mark Horowitz and Yseph with Doring you know they learn from us they they admit this they say we we've figured a lot of this out from you know the patients who who figure this out. Um I think we have an opportunity to really come together and help. Like to me deprescribing should feel like an invitation to psychiatry, not a threat. Like this is not this should not be an us and them thing. This should not be a combative thing. At the end of the day, we all want people to feel good in their lives and we all share that. And if we can come together and figure out which tapering protocols, which I think are clearly hyperbolic tapering as described in the modsly deep prescribing guidelines, um you know, how we can get the safest possible tapering protocols to clinicians to be trained in to patients and families, it's a win-win for everyone. And so I think I'm really interested in like coming to the table and having conversations with psychiatry with with the guild organizations and you know the establishment so to speak to say like how can we work together and and how can we help you not feel like this is a a threat because it really isn't. We want to help you help your patients. Um we're all in this together.
>> Yeah. It's got to be frustrating too.
Like I I've had so much anger towards the medical system, but I've also talked to a lot of doctors that are like on the cutting edge and extremely helpful. So, it's dependent on the doctor, but it's got to be frustrating for a huge percentage of doctors and psychiatrists that have mentally ill people that are getting worse that they can't do any like that they're trying to do everything for by adding in more stabilizing medications because that's what they've been taught in medical school stabilizes.
And then there's this percentage of the population where like each medication their symptoms worse and trying to differentiate between protracted withdrawal. I told the the guy who reached out I said the what you said with like new symptoms if you went in with anxiety severe anxiety say and severe depression and then you stop the medication and you have um extreme agitation and insomnia.
Um it's really easy if you hallucinate or something like that and you're like that I didn't definitely didn't have that before. But like if you have these new symptoms and sensitivities I think from people I've tal talked to random sensitivities is a really big one where like I wasn't sensitive to this food and now I am or I can't tolerate light like I used to be.
>> New autoimmune condition that's just happened.
>> Yeah, those kind of things. Um, so new symptoms, that's a good way to do it.
>> Yeah. I want to go back to what you were saying earlier, this withdrawal versus relapse thing, because it is so important. Like I I I think the the distorting effect that that we've all been the spell really that we've been under, whether it's doctors themselves and therapists or us as patients and our family members. this idea that how you feel when you stop your medication is like your baseline, your illness, your untreated, it's it is simply not true.
And once we can help, you know, remove that distortion and people can see clearly like, whoa, let's not make any decisions on, you know, based on the fact that this person is having a really hard time off their meds that aren't about like, you know, reinstating and then tapering more slowly. Like, let's not give them new diagnoses. Let's not tell them this is why you need to be on medications forever. And then as you were also saying too, the other distorting factor is there's so there's withdrawal mistaken for relapse and then there's long-term adverse effects or even just adverse effects mistaken as worsening condition. Yeah.
>> Like these two distorting narratives I think are a big part of why we have by my calculations 65 million Americans on these meds right now. most of them long term because people are have been given have a misinterpretation of what's happening and I think this so this information problem I think is critical to address and uh and you know especially for the psychiatrists themselves who say like I don't see withdrawal ever in my practice it's like not been a phenomenon and then like like you were saying it's like yeah well because everything you see you're diagnosing is a relapse of the illness once that's not happening anymore things are going to look really different.
>> Yeah. I I think that's a that's a good point about worsening illness is if you if you go in from major depressive disorder and that's what I was diagnosed with and then four years later you have bipolar, which is what I was diagnosed with, then the medication, my opinion is it's not putting you in the direction that you want to go in cuz you should be getting better, not worse.
And I had that and then one horrible side effect that I attributed I was on so many medications that I thought it was part of my autoimmune disorder or something. It was so everything physical I was going through I thought that's the arthritis. Um >> and then once I went into withdrawal I was like oh those physical symptoms were the anti-depressant they weren't the arthritis. So one of them was like fibromyalgia like nerve pain.
>> Yeah.
>> And that I thought was the autoimmune disorder but it wasn't. It was a side effect. and unbelievably horrifying restless legs.
>> And I had that I think it really started badly when I was 18 and then started getting worse and worse. Um, and I started taking them when I was 12, so maybe 6 years on the medication. But the restless legs, I I remember like riding the bus to university in Montreal, hitting my legs on the bus, crying because I couldn't get and like looking at that from the outside. You'd be like, >> "Yeah, >> what is happening over there?" But like the restless I can still kind of like it was so bad. I can still kind of feel it if I talk about it. But like >> I thought that was the autoimmune disorder and no that was just a side effect of the medication I was on. And that that actually when I went into withdrawal and had all these other like pain got worse but the restless leg part went away pretty quickly.
>> Yeah.
>> Interesting. Yeah. The the I my only ex I'm really lucky in that I didn't have athesia and withdrawal but I had it on meds at one point. I was put on a really high dose of lamedal.
Um and I remember having this I was on like other meds too. Um and I remember having you know this like just as you know acthesia of course but for anyone not familiar with it you know it's this like unspeakable sensation of like and for me the way I would describe it is like I had this pulse this this pulsing um energy that I wanted to like get out of my body and I would like rip it my I would literally grab my flesh and like pull it and I would like scratch cuz I just wanted to like open it up to get it out and it was just and luckily I didn't have that in withdrawal. Um but I think about whether it's restless leg or athesia just like the energetic overactivation that's happening that we don't understand why we need research and national institute of mental health needs to be researching this. um how many people don't link it together and either get a new diagnosis for something else or kill themselves because they can't take it and they don't realize what's happening. It's um >> well and it looks it looks insane. Like when you see someone experiencing that that are like >> clawing at themselves or hitting themselves >> then you're like well that's like that needs >> that's a mentally ill medication like that's like psychosis that really needs to be treated when it's like I remember with the restless legs it's not like I wasn't there and it was just happening.
I I was just extremely physically uncomfortable to the point of weeping and being like, well, if I hit it, it like there's this relief when it like gets pre and I've I've talked to some people who go through anti-depressant withdrawal or psychmed withdrawal and heavy blankets seem to be one of those things that can help people because it the pressure for some reason relieves some of that crawling sensation.
>> But like, >> yeah, >> what a nightmare. I I a friend of mine, I haven't talked to her in years, but she used to talk about how in when she was in the thick of acia, her mother would have to lie on top of her on the couch.
>> Yeah.
>> Because it was that that weight was the only thing that helped her feel >> like safe. I don't that wouldn't be the word she would have used, but um yeah, it's the kind of experience if you haven't lived it yourself or witnessed it in someone you love, you just don't get it. You're like, what? You're just like fidgety.
>> Yeah, just stop. No, no, no.
>> It looks like you you could tell somebody to just stop. Just cut it out.
>> Yeah. Oh, totally. Yeah. And you and you you simply cannot. Um Yeah. Well, do you have um let's do do you have advice for people?
Not for people who are thinking about taking them because they can just listen to the podcast and then come to their own conclusions. But um what about these people? I'm worried for all the people who have been on them for more than like two, five years and are like, "Oh my gosh, you know, I'm having some of these side effects or I've tried coming off and then they told me I was relapsing."
Like, what do you tell people who are in that position?
first just knowing how far from alone you are and that there's so much support out there to navigate this uh and inner compass initiative the nonprofit I founded you know we have a community there we have lots of free information is because the next most important thing besides recognizing you're not alone is getting informed educating yourself learning about the drugs you're taking actually reading the drug labels themselves which sometimes can be you know 50 60 70 pages is long.
Um, Inner Compass has a guide that teaches you how to read your drug label because they're not always straightforward to read. Um, learn about physical dependence, what what it is and and and you know why hyperbolic tapering is so important. Uh, just take all the time you can to get properly informed before taking any action of any kind because information is power here. And what I often say to people is, you know, if if you've connected with this the fact that you don't want to take these medications anymore or you're like you're sensing that you might not want to um and and if you start to feel urgency around it, just the fastest way to get off and stay off these medications is to taper very very very slowly and hyperbolically. And by slow, I don't mean over weeks or months even. It might potentially need years depending on how long you've been on and all kinds of other factors that we don't even fully understand yet because it's wild how desperate people's experiences are. Um, and that tapering really slowly. Um, you know, sometimes people the thought of like you mean I have to be on this for like potentially another couple years or even like 3 years, four years, 5 years cuz some people need that long. To that, I would say, you know, when I think about what the withdrawal journey has been like for me, it it really at the end of the day wasn't even about the amount of drug in my system. It was about me like getting back into the driver's seat of my life and and kind of reclaiming my agency.
Um, and you know, my my right and my ability to make my own choices for myself after like growing up as a psych patient where I basically deferred my authority and agency to all the very well-meaning mental health professionals around me. And so I think just making finding peace with that like this the the taper and the withdrawal experience is not even about the drugs themselves as much as it is like you reclaiming yourself your life your agency. Um because it may take time. You don't the only way to know how fast you can do this is by going really slowly and figuring out bit by bit over time like what the maximum rate your body can handle.
is because everyone is different. For some people, it's 5% a month, you know, hyperbolically. So, calculated on whatever your previous month's dose was, so each month, your cut gets smaller.
Some people can do 10%. Some people can do more than 10%.
But you can't know upfront how fast you can go, and it's not worth the risk of starting out too fast and then potentially destabilizing yourself for who knows how long. Um so information is key, support is key and um and I think lifestyle like as much as you can optimize your body. So sleep um you know removing whatever stressors you can from your plate diet um like a lot of people find you know whether it's like for some people full on keto for others just removing gluten and dairy but removing inflammatory foods more generally a lot of people find really helpful brain friendly food fat you know you know you know your work like I think just helping people see that fat Yeah, our brains really like are made out of fat basically.
It's like this we need especially in withdrawal I think eating really healthy fat.
>> That was something that was interesting when I eventually switched over to just eating meat. I was eating ridiculous amounts of fat and enough that like my digestion wasn't happy about it, but I could tell and I didn't know it was withdrawal at this point, but I could tell like I need this. Something in me like needs this. And that went away really when kind of the the withdrawal symptoms lessened. I I didn't need this like and it was probably I needed to be I guess and the research is emerging but maybe I needed to hit a certain level of ketosis to get more relief. Um, but that that was something interesting that changed in the diet because I talked to you early about it, but like I don't going in and out of ketosis now even though I'm just eating meat doesn't seem to make a difference to my mental state, but early on I needed a lot of fat.
>> Mhm.
>> For Yeah. any type of relief.
>> Yeah. Yeah. when I began ramping up my fat too like three two three years in that I I saw huge changes especially in my um this like deep deep sense of feeling like grounded isn't the right word but like integrated I wasn't having the same kind of like unhinged unmed I wasn't buffeted about as much as I was prior to you know when I was eating lots of like processed sugar basically when I focus more on healthy fat and like leafy greens, bitter greens, I was able to handle fermented foods. A lot of people can't because of the histamine. Um then yeah, I just felt more steady.
I still had lots of hard stuff, but there was like a steadiness that I didn't have before, I think. Um when I ramped up fat. Yeah, that seems to be what happened to me. It did. It definitely didn't like cure the unstable nature of it. Like I still felt like stress was really hard.
Yeah.
>> Um and environmental things were hard, but uh it definitely did give me a level of stability that I I like I said, I attributed all my psych symptoms to food reintroductions for like two years, which seems so silly when I look back on it because I was literally like, "Yeah, soy made me hallucinate." And it was like, "No, anti-depressant withdrawal made you hallucinate." And soy just exacerbated some inflammatory response that like provoked that. But that's way more complicated than like you eat something and feel worse. Like what's going on?
>> They're like onion layers of awareness we have to peel back. It takes time. And um yeah, and I'm just I I remember when you were I can't remember what year it was that what what year was it that you guys pieced it together with your dad about the meds? I'm trying to remember.
>> Um well, I I pieced it together while he was experiencing athesia. So that would have been December 2019.
Um >> Yes. Okay.
>> But then we didn't >> Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of when we started started talking about it was I think January 2020 >> when I was like no it's a it's a you know it's a side effect and physically dependent we didn't know all this stuff.
>> If you guys hadn't pieced it together about your dad do you think you would have inevitably figured it out for yourself or do you feel like that really is what seeing it in him was like wait a minute for me too like >> Yeah because there's still lingering symptoms that I can't explain. So earlier this like pregnancy when I tried to reintroduce foods I didn't get arthritis and that was like the main obvious physical symptom that was triggered by almost everything I ate and that seems to have calmed down over the last 2 years that the arthritis didn't happen. I was like >> wow so the arthritis is gone. What's still here? And for me when I get stressed I get more sensitive to fragrances, light, sound. And these are all things that were really severe early on, but it's like why why am I still so sensitive to light and fragrance and like chemicals and sound, those weird like chemical sensitivities? Why do I have that? And why is my main symptom mood when I get hit? And I think one thing that would occlude me in is I cannot take B vitamins at all. I can't take B vitamins at all or I get insomnia, agitation, restlessness. And so it's those weird neurological symptoms even though the arthritis component has like much desensitized that I I think I would have clued in >> but unfortunately seeing it happened to dad was like oh you know unfortunately so it probably would have taken a little bit longer. I think I would have clued eventually. I don't know.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's a the aha moment that, you know, we each have and and how you can't force it because I'm sure you're surrounded by people just as I am who who who aren't yet putting two and two together. Um, and you can't force it, nor should it's that's not what this is even about. But what yeah there is a kind of inevitable mystery to what makes something click in someone like wait a minute maybe it's not you know for me it was like maybe it's not the treatment resistant mental illness maybe it's the treatment or you know for someone else like maybe this isn't relapse this is withdrawal uh I think it's about just and the more our culture starts to have this conversation and it starts to infuse dayto-day conversations in people's lives lives and it's just like more in the ether that will hopefully help catalyze more aha moments for people who haven't yet had them and who need them.
And not everyone needs them. Like you know, I'm sure you agree that there's a certain percentage of people out there who can take long-term psych meds without any like visible measurable tradeoffs that they seem aware of >> and like God bless them.
>> I know. Seriously, I like I've had people reach out and they're like, "Yeah, I took it for two years and stopped and nothing happened." And I was like, "Thank God." Honestly, that's great. I'm wondering, and we need more research into this, too. But I know that so for my families, the original reason for taking them, we think, stemmed from this like genetic predisposition to sensitivity towards mold, which can cause, and there's lots of studies on this, it can cause neurological damage.
So maybe a certain percentage of the people who are prescribed psych meds already have a level of neurological damage that they're treating with psych meds treating um and then when they stop it's just like all hell breaks loose.
But somebody who was prescribed them for a family member dying or some severe stress they can take them and get off of them and don't have these side effects as often as the people who had some sort of neurological problem to begin with.
But some research would be good because we don't know who it hits or what the pattern is yet.
>> We Yeah, totally. I that's such an a such a good point and you know it would be hard to conduct this research because you know there's so many variables to yeah >> consider and but it is essential and I do you know I know that HHS has access to tons of data and and you know for all my concerns about AI and what this means for our our civilization I do think that is where AI could be potentially really helpful is in analyzing like vast swaths of of obviously anonymized um health data to try to figure out um but of course I guess part of the problem is that a lot of people probably don't even know that they have these yeah they don't and so that's the first how do you actually like get people testing for those >> yeah there's some blood work now that can monitor that properly inflammatory responses to environmental things and that covers mold yeah the surge research is really interesting they've actually discovered a bunch of blood markers that aren't normally tested that really do correspond with mold exposure. So, that would be one way to rule out mold exposure or an environmental like toxin causing mental disorders. Um, but but like a lot has to change before people get to that. Something easier would probably be really intense health histories. So then you could at least identify the people that are that are depressed because of relationship or like toxic things happening in their life versus someone who goes, I don't understand. My job is good, my life is good, and I'm I'm miserable. And put them in different camps and monitor that and that maybe AI could be useful with that.
>> That's a that's a great idea. Yeah. And then and then the key thing too is for that first group who you know maybe like really doesn't need to start um or doesn't need to kind of pursue like more medical interventions, how do you then actually help them access um meaningful support to navigate those life challenges? Because I think the >> the you know therapy can be helpful for many people but for many other people it isn't helpful. And I think that's another piece of the convers when we talk about medicalization.
Um it isn't just you know turning all human experience into you know medicalized like lists of symptoms. It's also >> what it means for how we think about what help is and and this idea that you know you can only get help navigating you know your life challenge by going to see a mental health professional. Maybe but maybe not. Like maybe what you really need is to like be of service and get out of yourself and help someone else. Or maybe it's like deepening your friendships and having weekly, you know, coffee meetups with your best friends and and that's all you need to navigate it. I think people lose touch, lose sight of the fact that there's so much we can all do just as in our authentic relationships with each other to help each other get through hard times that so many people have just kind of assumed you can only get through if you get mental health interventions of some kind, which isn't always necessary. For some people it's helpful, but >> it would be good too for people to know like people can get depressed from life. Like life is there's some really awful aspects of it. Like seeing somebody you love in pain is going to cause you pain, you know, or seeing someone you know you love die or or caring for a sick person like or being in a really stressful relationship or the postpartum period like all these things can be so painful that you want to escape the situation. But it's also part of the that part is part of the like horrible human experience sometimes. And if it was as easy as taking a pill and it could just help you get through that period and nothing bad would happen, that would be one thing.
But now that we know about these neurological consequences, it's like the suffering that you experience by these like horrible human experiences could be significantly less suffering than you experience from the harm of taking these medications. And that's something people at least need to be aware of when they're making the decision to start them.
>> Yep.
>> Yeah.
>> Yep. Yeah. I know. And you're getting to the heart of what I think this so-called mental health crisis everyone says we're in is is all about, which is our relationship to emotional pain and to what it means to be human. And yeah, I mean, having spent the most formative years of my life convinced that my intense despair and angst and anger were like symptoms to get rid of. I now look back and see, you know, how much that um belief perpetuated my suffering, first of all, because of all the, you know, like you said, all the harms caused by these treatments, but also how much it it um disconnected me from like what it means to be alive and and when you think about now when I as people often assume like I don't have, you know, like so so you weren't ever bipolar like so are you everything's like fine now and it's just like balanced and things are good and happy. I'm like, "No, I am an intense person. I cry all the time. I have intense anger. I'm very very prone to anxiety and distrust, even paranoia, I would say. I don't think of any of this as as an illness anymore. Um, and I also not afraid of it. like and I know that sometimes my pain is a signal that I need to do something different like get off of my computer screen um get off the doom scrolling and other times it's like no I just need to feel this grief like at you know watching that parent whose kid is like desperate for him to look at him and it's just like lost in his phone like I want to cry about that you can call me emotionally labile and accuse me of being borderline or whatever like no that is to something to cry about and we should cry. Like I cry all the time. I love crying and I just like love making doing it in places where people are uncomfortable with it because I'm like we all need to be crying more.
>> I had my like I had a really hard time crying on anti-depressants. Like really hard time. And the years coming off of it when I was when I was starting to feel good. So this is years later. that I had periods where especially I was writing a lot of what happened to me down balling and it was like every single time I hadn't cried throughout the years of being medicated was stored in me somewhere and I know that sounds kind of hippie- dippy but I hadn't processed the emotion and had to like I cried so much um I don't cry like pregnancy is a different story I don't cry very much anymore >> unless like terrible things are happening so sometimes yes but um I think I had to process all the emotions I hadn't processed properly on anti-depressants cuz I'd think of the memory and I'd just cry and be like didn't cry at the time.
>> Yeah.
>> Did you have that?
>> Oh my. Well, I mean I had I definitely had many stretches of time when I was super numb and like would I felt like dissociated basically and like did felt completely disconnected from emotion for sure. And I and I did have other times where and you often this was when alcohol was involved. So I was, you know, on three, four, five psych meds and like getting ridiculously intoxicated every night at the same time. And those periods of time, you know, I'd have almost like synthetic emotion where it was so extreme and I felt like possessed. It was wild. And of course that would get pathized and I was just like extra borderline or whatever.
Um, but uh then I did have all kinds of numbness and actually I was curious. I can't remember. I'm sure you've probably talked about this, but I can't remember.
Did you have on anti-depressants? Was your sexuality impaired? Like your sexual function impaired?
>> Here's a funny story. Okay, so I started these medications when I was 12. Um, and one of my friends relatives came to visit when I was 21. And 21 was probably when I was peak sick. Um, I was eating really terribly. I was in university.
Um, they had swapped me to a fexer for a day.
Yo, yeah, I didn't I only took that for a day. I Yeah. Um but I I was like I am insane. Um I cut myself once in university and I'd never done that before, but I was doing really really badly. Anyway, one of my friends relatives came and she had just started taking Lexapro and she was like, "Yeah, it's great. The only problem is my vagina is numb." And I remember walking down St. on Toronto stopping being like, "What?"
And her being like, "Yeah, it's a side effect." And I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's been my entire life." And I didn't like I thought that was me. I didn't know what you were a problem, >> you know? I was just like, "That's what a vagina is." Um, but she said that and like I don't remember a lot from that period because I was really sick, but I remember being like, "Oh my gosh, I was one of the lucky people because I know so many people who have like permanent numbness from SSRI or like finasteride use or something like that." I don't know how I got lucky in that regard, but basically as soon as I stopped taking it, um I I completely normalized and I like thank God because I had those like horrible periods of withdrawal and now I have neurological sensitivities to like everything, >> but I don't have that. And it's like >> and my emotions are like normalized pretty quickly. I would say I'm I'm more prone if I get stressed I'm prone to like anger and I have a harder time calming down than I think if I wasn't having if I didn't have damage cuz I'm not a very emotional person but like if I get angry then I'm like great I'm going to this is going to take 2 hours to calm down. I have to go sit by myself in the room. I have to breathe and I'm and at least my husband's like this year has been hyper stressful so there's been more of that but my husband's used to it. I'm like you I have to get out. that I just have to sit here and wait because I got to the point where >> Yeah. Yeah. But you like it's totally navigable and I don't have any other than the like stress kind of intolerance. I don't have like long-term emotional numbness or anything that a lot of people do. So >> we It's so interesting how many parallels we have in our trajectories cuz same I had zero sexual function, numbness, didn't even know what I was missing because of course we were kids when we were started on it and through the whole time I was on meds and then was really lucky to regain my sexual function and when I got off everything in my late 20s. Um, and and yeah, and that I would say is also my chemical sensitivities, sensitivities more broadly, but especially chemical sensitivities and maybe mold. I need to figure it out. And then the the I mean, I've always been an angry person. Like my grand there's this story in my family of, you know, apparently one summer when we were visiting my grandmother. I was like five years old and she looked out the kitchen window and I was just standing in her driveway like this with my face clenched, my fist clenched and I was just staring into space like this and she came out. She's like, "Laura, dear, like what's going on?" And I was like, "I don't know, Grammy. I'm just so angry."
>> I was like 5 years old.
>> That's so sad.
>> But so I've always been an angry person.
But similar to what you're saying, you know, if I if I do um lose integration in myself, you could say >> that's a nice way of putting it.
>> Okay.
>> If our if our husbands were in here, they'd be like, >> "Yeah, >> like, okay, God bless them." Really? But yeah, I I can have a hard time bringing myself down, too. But at least, you know, maybe you feel the same way. I have that like meta awareness >> and I'm like, "Oh, I'm possessed again.
Here we go."
>> Yeah. Yeah. That kept me alive, honestly. Like when I first dipped into like pure protracted withdrawal insanity, I I remember like >> dipped in like that. I remember being like this is so bad it can't be me. And I had learned throughout teenagehood too kind of ignore some of the voices in my head. So the like angry recirculating thoughts that were just like over and over can't let this go. Can't let this go. Can't let this go. That was a big one of my symptoms was not being able to let go of something that I was angry about. And I kind of was like, I can feel what's me and I can feel that that is the crazy part and that's not me. And I think that helped a lot with protracted withdrawal cuz I was like, the sensations I'm feeling aren't me even though I was experiencing them. And like this anger or these cycling thoughts or panic isn't me. I just have to wait and it'll go away. And I don't know if that was God or what >> it was also extensive notetaking of like managing like watching patterns and things. Yeah.
>> But um >> it's such an important message that what you're saying and >> it's when you have that >> when you develop that capacity to have distance from your immediate experience so that it is no longer just you and your reality like then you're golden.
You can even you can be in what feels like unbearable pain, but if you have that distance to know like this is not me, um it helps you to you know it helps you hang in there and and not no longer and be free from it basically. And I think that whether certainly in the withdrawal stage if you can have that if you can develop that ability but even in just life I mean I'm at the point in my life now where the things that go through my head on any given day like if I said them all out loud people would run away from me but I also recognize a that's human being human we all have like really dark weird twisted thoughts all the time and b my thoughts are hallucinate like they're not real like I don't have to take them seriously I don't have to believe them. They're just just like noise in my head. And that I think has been far more helpful for me than like 14 years of like weekly twice weekly sometimes therapy and you know all the meds, all the hospitalizations, all the programs, everything else. If you add it all together, just this simple and realization that this isn't what happens in my head isn't real. Like this is real.
It it's been just it's like I feel so free and powerful in in my life on a day-to-day basis, especially when I'm going to dark places cuz I just I don't take it seriously in the way that I was taught to as a psych patient where you're just like in therapy every week and what are you feeling now and what are you thinking about and yeah, >> it just takes on so much significance.
You can become such a narcissist about it. It's like everything I feel and think is so important and I just like think about it all the time and talk about it all the time. Like no, actually I don't.
>> One one of the ways that I figured out mold was bothering me was because those voices and those things went away when I went on the carnivore diet.
>> I didn't have any of those things cuz I used to have intrusive thoughts and things like that um for my whole life and it went away and my like head was clear and when I moved back into mold I started having violent intrusive thoughts.
>> Wow. Within what period of time? like a day.
>> Oh, fast.
>> Wow.
>> Yeah. And I And then it's still because it's like it was so psychological. I at least had that period of like, no, I was fine. And now like why am I suddenly, you know, the things like >> I'm sure this isn't going to sound too crazy cuz I know people get this. I've talked to my friends about it. But like if there's a knife being like knife, you know, stuff like that. I don't get that at all ever >> unless I'm sensitized to something. if I get hit with like fragrances make me really angry.
Um and um mold exposure will give me intrusive thoughts again. So interesting. So do you think obviously we there's probably very little research on all this but is it just is it like an overactivation? Do you do what do you think the mechanism is that is it is is it the intr the intrusive you know um uh thing whether it's mold or food or whatever it just is it overactivation I think it's like something inflammatory I I have no idea I know with mold exposure and like the work that the people are doing you can monitor C4A which is a cytoine level and for people who are sensitive to it this doesn't happen to everybody but they can go into a building and their C4A will rise massively. And you can look up C4A.
>> Obviously, if you have skyrocketing levels of that, you're not going to feel good. So, my assumption is some of the psych symptoms that people get in mold where like >> in the mold community, there's something known as mold anger >> and that like and volatility and that that's a big one. Um, I think that that would be measurable with with lab work and then just manifesting as as uh psych symptoms because bodies don't like being ill.
>> Yeah.
>> But I would Yeah, that changed a lot for me for like uncomfortable thoughts. Now, that being said, like this year with sickness and and stress, then you can still have that kind of thing happen.
Like not maybe not a knife on a kitchen counter, but like recirculating thoughts or not letting things go. That can definitely happen with stress, too.
>> But for me, it happens whenever I get like hit with mold or >> get into an Uber that has a fragrance that >> Oh my gosh, don't get me started on Ubers. When when I actually get an Uber that doesn't have a fragrance, I like immediately I'm like five stars. I'm like tip like thank you.
>> The number of times I've been in Ubers, it's like raining and I have the window open and my my head is sticking out the window.
>> I think that's like the neurological like sensitivity that people are left with because it's crazy. I'm I'm like a crazy person with with fragrances.
>> Me too. Like it even I have to apologize to people when I'm like I can't I'm really sorry. I understand that this is an overreaction but like I don't know what it's doing but it makes me lividly angry for a while. It's crazy.
>> Yeah. It's for me it's like I I can get I get irritated but it's like a panic that >> Yeah. Me too.
>> And and it just happened the other night at this hotel and the really sweet people at the front desk and I was like super apologetic but I was like I I can't stay here. I'm so sorry. Can you please help me get a refund? And I was and yeah, you're the meta you is like, oh my gosh, Laura, this is >> Yeah, this is bad.
>> I wish it wasn't this way. But yeah, it's so visceral and immediate and totalizing when you're when you're at know. I feel like we'll know eventually cuz this this mold thing was really eye opening for me. And the fact that they have blood work linked to symptoms was huge because nothing I've ever done had any blood work that showed anything. So like mold exposure and inflammatory response to that that was huge. But I'll bet I'll bet that some of these maybe the C4A cytoine level maybe that shoots up in certain people when they're also exposed to certain smells. I have no idea. I feel like we'll know that eventually though >> cuz there's something about that. I hear that all the time from people who've been psych medication injured. Yeah.
>> It's like yeah can't do fragrances. My dad the other day he's never complained about fragrances. He used to wear this like even throughout this whole thing he would wear this essential oil. Him and my mom would wear it and I was just like eh.
>> Oh my god. Even essential oils you can't >> you can't Okay. Cuz I can generally if I have it's just a little bit.
>> It's better.
>> It doesn't give me like panic like the um laundry softener or something like that.
>> Yeah.
>> But um dad could do essential oil and he's very sensitive. Like he figured out a bunch of these sensitivities. Um, and then recent recently with like the worsening with the athesia, he's like, "Yeah, I finally I can't do any sense anymore." And I was like, "Yeah, >> me neither, but >> I don't know. We'll know one day. At least people are talking about it."
Okay.
>> Where do people go? Inner Compass is great.
Um but like give me websites and social media things that people could go to if they want to want support or want to learn more.
>> Uh you can yeah inner compass initiative is the intercompass.org and we have tons of free information including a free stepbystep self-directed tapering manual that we've had up for almost 10 years now that we don't promote enough because it's totally free. Walks you through hyperbolic tapering and all of it.
>> Amazing. Um, yeah, we have a community there of people at varying stages of the process of coming off these meds and healing from these meds. You can find me at lauradelano.com.
My book, Unshrunk, a story of psychiatric treatment resistance. I hope you'll read it. I'm proud of it. I I, you know, want it to be read especially by struggling girls and women and their parents and spouses and friends. Um, and you can find me on X at Laura Delano.
And I'm on Instagram and Facebook, too, but I don't even remember my handles.
And I'm so glad to be here with you.
This has been like we could have gone all day. I knew this would happen.
>> Yeah. Thank you. And thank you for all the work you've done and thanks for reaching out >> like years ago when we were going through some of this hell. Um, that was really nice. So, I'll link I'll link all the socials. I'll link your book. I'll link the websites. And I'll link the free tapering guide in this episode for anybody who's interested. Uh yeah, thank you very much for coming on. Thanks for having me.
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