00:04:52.280That'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. Because I hated the idea that I needed to take pills to change me. I just was very angry that this was happening.
00:05:12.060Um, but once I began taking them consistently at age 18, you know, I'd have like brief periods,
00:05:20.200maybe at the start of a new drug where I felt more hopeful, but whether that was the effect
00:05:28.360of the drug or my belief that, you know, now this one is finally going to do something.
00:05:32.880You know, I don't, I don't ever recall feeling like sustainably helped in a meaningful way where
00:05:41.240I was actually functioning better in my life, feeling more connected, feeling more at peace.
00:05:49.300It just year after year of dysfunction, like to the point where it was just like my normal and I
00:05:55.780didn't even realize it could be anything else basically. Yeah. I had a similar experience with,
00:06:02.300I had like very severe, I wasn't, I didn't get to the point of cutting. I was 12 and I had severe
00:06:09.940mental problems too. Like, but I was also very sick. I was living in what we now know was a
00:06:15.500moldy basement. And I honestly think, I honestly think that was like 90% of what was making me
00:06:20.580crazy. So it was a physical problem, but it was manifesting as like OCD tendencies. I was staying
00:06:26.980up really late, reorganizing books in different ways, sharpening pencils, terrified at night,
00:06:34.520like planning escape routes in case somebody came in to kill my family like
00:06:38.980stress uh and then was put on lexapro and i remember i think what confused my family
00:06:48.200massively at the beginning was my dad was already on them for similar symptoms and this
00:06:54.420i think what it was extreme mold sensitivity runs like ran in my family so there was a lot
00:07:00.200of mental illness but when I first started taking them at least the first three days when I got
00:07:05.840really tired I relaxed and it was like my whole body relaxed and I was like oh okay chemical
00:07:11.140imbalance I can finally like stop being you know in this stress state and relax but then like I was
00:07:20.440still depressed so so it didn't solve it like solved initially the the angry panic but that
00:07:29.380didn't last but then we had adverse effects of like sedation basically it was sedation yeah and
00:07:35.060then like throughout my teenagehood was awful and things and i got sicker and sicker mentally too
00:07:40.900um but i always thought yeah but if i wasn't on these medications imagine what kind of monster i
00:07:47.140would be yeah it's so interesting what you said about the mold situation leading you on and how
00:07:53.400what you were experiencing prior is it makes me think of my early childhood where so i had
00:07:58.060chronic ear infections as a baby, like through the first few years of my life. So I was on
00:08:02.520antibiotics a lot. I mean, who knows if we had mold in our house too, I have no idea. But
00:08:06.700I was also a very, what would have been diagnosed as OCD kind of kid where I would make bets with
00:08:13.620myself and I did a lot of counting. And I would think to myself, you know, if you don't make it
00:08:18.640to that doorframe in 10 steps, you're going to die just nonstop. And in retrospect, I think,
00:08:24.940you know how my my gut my microbiome you know how thrown off was it in those critical
00:08:30.480um I was also cesarean too so I didn't have the chance like yeah to the through the birth canal
00:08:35.760and get all my mother's bacteria and I think about that a lot too like how much did that kind
00:08:40.540of seed the the the physical foundations for my eventual kind of like mental and emotional
00:08:47.800breakdown yeah I've heard like I'd like to get your thoughts on this I've I see
00:08:52.080like there's some people online and i think the direction we're going online is amazing and i
00:08:59.200haven't expected this kind of change for who knows how long but um i've seen some people talk about
00:09:06.560well mental illness as a whole isn't real and i've been pushing back online being like oh no i was
00:09:12.600like i was mentally ill but the treatment didn't it it hurt me more than anything else
00:09:20.740but the mental illness in the beginning was a symptom of something that was physically wrong
00:09:26.120and we didn't know what was wrong yeah so what what's your view on that that's such i'm so glad
00:09:31.100you're raising that because i think part of why we're often in this polarized um this this
00:09:37.600conversation gets so polarized is because of this this language issue where people are in the you
00:09:43.200know these kind of black and white camps like mental illness is real or mental illness doesn't
00:09:46.860exist. And I think the way I, I, I, uh, approach it is, well, what do we mean when we say mental
00:09:52.540illness and, and, you know, um, how can we tease apart the words themselves that people
00:09:59.700use from what people actually mean? So, you know, I think for me, I, I've long been a critic of
00:10:08.200medicalization more broadly, just taking very real, um, experiences, whether they're emotional,
00:10:15.420mental, even physical sometimes, and just automatically translating them into the
00:10:21.180language of symptom and illness and disorder. But I also, like you said, think they're very real.
00:10:28.000People are really suffering. People really get psychotic. People really have delusions.
00:10:32.720People really are in intense physical pain. But I think we need more nuance when we talk about this
00:10:39.920because this whole it's real. No, it's not real. It just feels really silly because it's like kind
00:10:45.820of not. I think what matters is that that we we. Yeah, I think finding our way to nuance is like
00:10:55.380absolutely essential if we're going to have a change, make any kind of change here, because
00:10:59.040I think we have more points of agreement than a lot of polarized people think. I would imagine
00:11:05.800a lot of the people who say mental illness isn't real just are speaking sloppily but actually think
00:11:10.720that the experiences are actually happening that get people diagnosed. Are you saying you actually
00:11:16.540encounter people who are like, no one ever suffers? There's no such thing. Imagine your
00:11:21.360favorite lecture. Dial that on one max, put that on steroids, and then add some cinematic elements
00:11:27.780to it. That's the best way I could describe a Peterson Academy lecture. There's always that
00:11:32.760One professor who's like, oh man, you know, you got to take this one professor, they're the best.
00:11:37.320But at Peterson Academy, it's all of those, that one professor.
00:11:42.900I'm still paying off college from 10 years ago, and I'm also still questioning the value that I got out of college.
00:11:48.520It's very common nowadays for students to be in thousands and thousands of dollars of debt.
00:11:54.120It 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.
00:40:23.320And I think what to me, it's a symptom of is not to use a medical word for it, but it's
00:40:30.860symptomatic really of this deeper, like spiritual void, I think, and this void of meaning for
00:40:37.160so many young people right now who grow up in this like performative virtual reality all the
00:40:43.180time where they just they want to like they're they're hungry for meaning and they're hungry
00:40:50.800for belonging and connection and all they really see now is like the mental health system this way
00:40:57.020like get a diagnosis get on meds go show it you know go post about it and now look you're a part
00:41:03.680of something yeah I do think I know like my experience was I don't think I had that exactly
00:41:10.580like when I was diagnosed with arthritis I didn't want to tell anybody for a while because it was
00:41:14.600like the that was in grade two and it was the old person disease I was like I don't want to explain
00:41:18.760why I have like a disease that grandmas have um so my brother I remember my brother who's in grade
00:41:24.860one like told one of his friends and I was really mad um and then I kind of desensitized to it by
00:41:31.900the time i was in like grade seven and with antidepressants i was like yeah you know i'm
00:41:36.980on an antidepressant because depression runs in my family um but but i think that shifted kind of
00:41:43.400like well it's funny because i think depression was definitely a real thing and there wasn't a
00:41:48.900a good treatment for it so there was mental illness and then it was talked about as if
00:41:56.480you were just being weak it's not real like you're just being weak so then there was this
00:42:03.040societal pushback by like no it's real we have to accept it it's a chemical imbalance it's a real
00:42:10.040thing um and then it just cycled into what like live love lexapro hashtags which is like oh no
00:42:18.880yep you're it's it's so true that this what what the kind of anti-stigma mental health awareness
00:42:25.240campaigns that really began to they began in the 90s pharma funded and i think really began to take
00:42:32.500off in the last like 15 years but were they pharma funded oh yeah well oh my gosh you know
00:42:37.780national alliance um for mental illness um mental health america a lot of these kind of consumer
00:42:43.900very powerful influential consumer advocacy organizations get a lot of funding from the
00:42:49.860pharmaceutical industry. And so what happened, you know, very cleverly, industry exploited a really
00:42:57.220important message, which is we should be able to talk about our pain. We shouldn't hide it. We
00:43:04.940should be able to say, you know, when we're like overwhelmed by despair or anxiety or panic or
00:43:09.820whatever it is. But they took that and they exploited it and perverted it and made it about
00:43:15.280instead of like, there's no shame in talking about your pain. There's no shame in getting
00:43:19.380treatment and and that they kind of blended the two together yes and then like you said use the
00:43:25.700medicalized framework to like validate like i'm not just sad like i'm like sick i'm i actually
00:43:32.660have a condition in my brain that makes me you know different um i think it just yeah like you
00:43:40.760said, this like perfect storm of various factors, all incentivized to get people on meds. And here
00:43:52.020we are. Here we are. But we are, I think, waking up from it. Yeah. Speaking of waking up from it,
00:43:58.580so what do you think about this rumor that RFK is taking away psychiatric medication?
00:44:04.360It's about one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. How do you feel about it?
00:44:08.960Well, 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 I was too pregnant. So I was like, I can't, I can't do it. But you were there, right? Was there anything about that?
00:44:22.280Absolutely not. HHS has zero intention of removing any medications, removing access to medications. Never once has that been uttered anywhere from what I've seen. And yet somehow the headlines, a lot of them seem to make that claim, even though the articles themselves, actually, if you read them, acknowledge they haven't actually talked about banning.
00:44:51.380We're just putting that in the title, basically. But yeah, people are struggling to separate
00:44:57.480these. So essentially, Secretary Kennedy is saying we have all these millions of people
00:45:04.580on these medications. Not everyone wants to take these medications long term.
00:45:10.820Those people right now don't have any safe way to get off of them. Doctors currently don't have
00:45:16.000any clinical training in safety prescribing. You might hear some of them say we've been doing it
00:45:20.800for a long time but they don't actually have safe protocols and he's just saying for that
00:45:26.720percentage of people who decide they don't want to take these medications anymore we want to provide
00:45:31.040them with safe off-ramps essentially people have somehow taken that and equated it with like
00:45:36.720everyone should come off these meds no one should take them which is simply not what he said or what
00:45:43.200any of the policies that they're working on are about it's kind of the opposite actually i've been
00:45:48.480trying to not that that's easily explainable but like if you do go to a doctor a psychiatrist or
00:45:54.080a doctor at the moment that isn't aware of this and isn't aware of protracted withdrawal they do
00:45:59.740say well just stop taking it we'll do it in two to two to four weeks to be safe that's what he's
00:46:05.020trying to yeah that's what he's trying to stop yep so yeah he's it's basically providing people
00:46:13.000with more options, not less. It's like you can go this unsafe way or now you're going to have all
00:46:20.600these, hopefully all these opportunities and your doctor will too, to actually do it safely. Yeah.
00:46:26.520But I'm curious what your thoughts have been on the overall media reception. I do see the media
00:46:34.080response to to secretary kennedy's announcements um as overall more positive than other health
00:46:44.100issues that have you know in the past year that have been focused on what do you think i agree
00:46:48.300i'm pretty well we were just talking about this i'm actually pretty hopeful like you have to expect
00:46:53.500with any type of news that you're going to get some clickbaity headline that's supposed to stir
00:46:57.880people up because people will press it more which is so malevolent but it's also a giant news
00:47:04.460corporation so it's to be expected but i've seen a lot of positive articles and i think there are a
00:47:10.200lot of psychiatrists too that have clued into this or have been leading the research on this or have
00:47:15.580been harmed themselves that are speaking up and being taken seriously being like i know um the
00:47:22.100APA. I don't remember. There's some sort of meeting. Their annual conference. Their annual
00:47:27.720conference. And they had Dr. Chris Palmer, who I've had on, go speak at that about metabolic
00:47:33.760psychiatry. And here it was standing room only, packed, is his talk. Really? Yep. Oh my gosh.
00:47:39.600See, that's the kind of thing where it's like, yeah, there's going to be the doctors that are
00:47:42.620like, that's not true. I've never seen it, which I think just means I've misdiagnosed it every
00:47:49.780single time i've seen it but uh there's so many there's so many doctors that are cluing into this
00:47:55.140and going oh my gosh okay oh there are things we can do great trying to push it forward and
00:48:00.320it's impacting so many people that it's it's done you know it's it's gonna go forward and at least
00:48:07.640people will be aware that if they do try to taper and they start experiencing these like
00:48:13.780neurological symptoms that it's not necessarily a relapse. Do you have a way like to, I had a
00:48:22.200doctor reach out and they said, okay, if there's a overlap in symptoms between the original mental
00:48:27.240illness and the relapse and the protracted withdrawal, how do you differentiate?
00:48:32.440I personally don't think you really can. I mean, if it's somebody, if it's been long-term exposure
00:48:38.700to the medication how can you i know that i know that you know they are like clinical you know
00:48:45.220they're i think mark horowitz's um work has some kind of methodology for distinct you know
00:48:53.200distinguishing like an obvious thing is if it's if it's a symptom that you've never had before
00:48:58.300yeah like you can probably assume it's withdrawal but like you said if it mimics the struggles you
00:49:04.120were having previous to the medication. You know, to me, time is the best indicator and not just a
00:49:11.140few weeks or months, like potentially years. When I think about how many years it took for my body
00:49:18.740to kind of reestablish any sense of baseline, especially because I'd been medicated as a kid
00:49:25.160like you. So I never had a baseline. It isn't the kind of thing you can figure out quickly,
00:49:31.740What's me versus what's med effects versus what's withdrawal effects? Can you ever even? I'm not sure. But I think we have a really unique moment right now to go back to the APA conference and just how psychiatry is responding more broadly to whether it's metabolic approaches or deprescribing.
00:49:52.100With the deep prescribing piece, I think we really do have an opportunity right now to build bridges 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, literally, and the doctors who are, you know, leading the charge with hyperbolic tapering, like Mark Horowitz and Yosef Wit-Doring, you know, they learn from us.
00:50:19.320they admit this. They say, we figured a lot of this out from the patients who figured this out.
00:50:28.160I think we have an opportunity to really come together and help. To me, deprescribing should
00:50:34.740feel like an invitation to psychiatry, not a threat. This should not be an us and them thing.
00:50:40.500This should not be a combative thing. At the end of the day, we all want people to feel good in
00:50:46.540their lives. And we all share that. And if we can come together and figure out which tapering
00:50:52.960protocols, which I think are clearly hyperbolic tapering as described in the Maudsley deprescribing
00:50:58.020guidelines, you know, how we can get the safest possible tapering protocols to clinicians to be
00:51:04.660trained in, to patients and families. It's a win-win for everyone. And so I think I'm really
00:51:10.860interested in like coming to the table and having conversations with psychiatry, with the guild
00:51:17.300organizations and, you know, the establishment, so to speak, to say like, how can we work together
00:51:23.780and how can we help you not feel like this is a threat? Because it really isn't. We want to help
00:51:30.560you help your patients. We're all in this together. Yeah. It's got to be frustrating too.
00:51:36.900Like I've had so much anger towards the medical system, but I've also talked to a lot of doctors
00:51:40.840that are like on the cutting edge and extremely helpful so it's dependent on the doctor but
00:51:45.200it's got to be frustrating for a huge percentage of doctors and psychiatrists
00:51:49.000that have mentally ill people that are getting worse that they can't do any like
00:51:52.900that they're trying to do everything for by adding in more stabilizing medications because that's
00:51:59.220what they've been taught in medical school stabilizes and then there's this percentage
00:52:03.860of the population where like each medication their symptoms worse and trying to differentiate
00:52:08.940between protracted withdrawal i told the guy who reached out i said the what you said with like
00:52:15.240new symptoms if you went in with anxiety severe anxiety say and severe depression and then you
00:52:22.140stop the medication and you have um extreme agitation and insomnia um it's really easy if
00:52:30.820you hallucinate or something like that and you're like that i did definitely didn't have that before
00:52:35.720but like if you have these new symptoms and sensitivities i think from people i've talked
00:52:42.320talked to random sensitivities is a really big one where like i wasn't sensitive to this food
00:52:48.040and now i am yeah or i can't tolerate light like i used to be able to immune condition that's just
00:52:53.760happened yeah those kind of things um so new symptoms that's a good way to do it yeah i want
00:53:00.060to go back to what you were saying earlier this withdrawal versus relapse thing because it is
00:53:04.300so important like i i i think the the distorting effect that that we've all been the spell really
00:53:16.180that we've been under whether it's doctors themselves and therapists or us as patients
00:53:21.500and our family members this idea that how you feel when you stop your medication is like your
00:53:27.300baseline your illness you're untreated it's it is simply not true and once we can help
00:53:33.440you know remove that distortion and people can see clearly like whoa let's not make any
00:53:40.820decisions on you know based on the fact that this person is having a really hard time off their meds
00:53:48.480that aren't about like you know reinstating and then tapering more slowly like let's not give
00:53:53.780them new diagnoses let's not tell them this is why you need to be on medications forever
00:53:58.280and then as you were also saying too the other distorting factor is there's so there's withdrawal
00:54:05.340mistaken for relapse and then there's long-term adverse effects or even just adverse effects
00:54:11.100mistaken as worsening condition yeah like these two distorting narratives i think are a big part
00:54:20.160of why we have, by my calculation, 65 million Americans on these meds right now, most of them
00:54:25.920long term, because people have been given, have a misinterpretation of what's happening. And I
00:54:32.240think this information problem, I think is critical to address. And, you know, especially
00:54:40.040for the psychiatrists themselves who say, like, I don't see withdrawal ever in my practice. It's
00:54:45.980like not been a phenomenon and then like like you were saying it's like yeah well because
00:54:49.640everything you see you're diagnosing is a relapse of the illness once that's not happening anymore
00:54:54.540the things are going to look really different yeah I think that's a that's a good point about
00:54:59.720worsening illness is if you if you go in for major depressive disorder and that's what I was
00:55:04.400diagnosed with and then four years later you have bipolar which is what I was diagnosed with
00:55:09.660then the medication my opinion is it's not putting you in the direction that you want to go in
00:55:16.780because you should be getting better not worse and i had that and then one horrible side effect
00:55:23.340that i attributed i was on so many medications that i thought it was part of my autoimmune
00:55:27.560disorder or something was so everything physical i was going through i thought that's the arthritis
00:55:33.020yep um and then once i went into withdrawal i was like oh those physical symptoms were the
00:55:38.780antidepressant they weren't the arthritis so one of them was like fibromyalgia like nerve pain yeah
00:55:44.560and that i thought was the autoimmune disorder but it wasn't it was a side effect and unbelievably
00:55:50.360horrifying restless legs and i had that i think it really started badly when i was 18 and then
00:55:59.200started getting worse and worse um and i started taking them when i was 12 so maybe six years on
00:56:04.340the medication but the restless legs i i remember like riding the bus to university in montreal
00:56:10.400hitting my legs on the bus crying because i couldn't get and like looking at that from the
00:56:16.620outside you'd be like yeah what is happening over there but like the restless i can still kind of
00:56:22.680like it was so bad i can still kind of feel it if i talk about it but like i thought that was
00:56:28.420the autoimmune disorder and no that was just a side effect of the medication i was on yeah and
00:56:32.960that that actually when i went into withdrawal and had all these other like pain got worse but
00:56:40.800the restless leg part went away pretty quickly yeah interesting yeah the the i my only i'm really
00:56:49.400lucky in that i didn't have akathisia in withdrawal but i had it on meds at one point i was put on a
00:56:56.400really high dose of Lamictal. Um, and I remember having this, I was on like other meds too. Um,
00:57:05.060and I remember having, you know, this, like just as you know, akathisia, of course, but for anyone
00:57:10.780not familiar with it, you know, it's this like unspeakable sensation of like, for me, the way
00:57:18.060I would describe it is like, I had this pulse, this, this pulsing, um, energy that I wanted to
00:57:25.260like get out of my body and I would like rip it my, I would literally grab my flesh and like
00:57:30.360pull it. And I would like scratch because I just wanted to like open it up, like get it out. And
00:57:35.100it was just, and luckily I didn't have that in withdrawal. But I think about whether it's
00:57:41.780restless leg or akathisia, just like the energetic over activation that's happening that we don't
00:57:48.360understand why we need research at National Institute of Mental Health needs to be researching
00:57:52.500this um how many people don't link it together and either get a new diagnosis for something else
00:57:59.800or kill themselves because they can't take it and they don't realize what's happening it's um
00:58:05.060well it looks it looks insane yeah like when you see someone experiencing that they're like
00:58:10.100clawing at themselves or hitting themselves then you're like well that's like that needs
00:58:16.920yeah that's a mentally ill person medication like that's like psychosis that really needs to be
00:58:22.380treated when it's like i remember with the restless legs it's not like i wasn't there and it was just
00:58:27.040happening i i was just extremely physically uncomfortable to the point of weeping and being
00:58:33.600like well if i hit it it like there's this relief when it like gets and i've i've talked to some
00:58:40.740people who go through antidepressant withdrawal or psych med withdrawal and heavy blankets seem
00:58:45.500to be one of those things that can help people because it the pressure for some reason relieves
00:58:49.660some of that crawling sensation yeah but like yeah what a nightmare i i a friend of mine i
00:58:56.600haven't talked to her in years but she used to talk about how and when she was in the thick of
00:59:01.480akathisia her mother would have to lie on top of her on the couch yeah because it was that that
00:59:06.760weight was the only thing that helped her feel like safe i don't that wouldn't be the word she
00:59:13.000would have used but um yeah it's the kind of experience if you haven't lived it yourself
00:59:17.460or witnessed it in someone you love you just don't get it you're like what you're just like
00:59:20.780fidgety yeah just stop no no it looks like you could tell somebody just just stop just cut it
00:59:26.580out yeah oh totally yeah and you and you you simply cannot um yeah well do you have um let's
00:59:36.820Do you have advice for people? Not for people who are thinking about taking them because they can
00:59:43.760just listen to the podcast and then come to their own conclusions. But what about these people?
00:59:49.060I'm worried for all the people who have been on them for more than like two, five years and are
00:59:53.640like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm having some of these side effects or I've tried coming off and
00:59:59.060then they told me I was relapsing. Like, what do you tell people who are in that position?
01:00:06.380First, just knowing how far from alone you are and that there's so much support out there
01:00:16.660And in our compass initiative, the nonprofit I founded, you know, we have a community there.
01:00:20.420We have lots of free information because the next most important thing besides recognizing
01:00:25.360you're not alone is getting informed, educating yourself, learning about the drugs you're
01:00:29.620taking, actually reading the drug labels themselves, which sometimes can be, you know,
01:00:34.32050, 60, 70 pages long. Intercompass has a guide that teaches you how to read your drug label
01:00:40.940because they're not always straightforward to read. Learn about physical dependence,
01:00:48.080what it is and, you know, why hyperbolic tapering is so important. Just take all the time you can
01:00:56.940to get properly informed before taking any action of any kind because information is
01:01:04.020power here. And what I often say to people is, you know, if you've connected with the fact that
01:01:10.820you don't want to take these medications anymore, or you're like, you're sensing that you might not
01:01:15.500want to. And if you start to feel urgency around it, just the fastest way to get off and stay off
01:01:24.600these medications is to taper very, very, very slowly and hyperbolically. And by slow, I don't
01:01:32.680mean over weeks or months even. It might potentially need years depending on how long
01:01:37.360you've been on and all kinds of other factors that we don't even fully understand yet because
01:01:42.220it's wild how disparate people's experiences are. And that tapering really slowly, you know,
01:01:51.040sometimes people, the thought of like, you mean I have to be on this for like potentially another
01:01:55.440couple years or even like three years, four years, five years, because some people need that long.
01:02:00.700So to that, I would say, you know, when I think about what the withdrawal journey has been like for me, it really, at the end of the day, wasn't even about the amount of drug in my system.
01:02:12.700It was about me, like, getting back into the driver's seat of my life and kind of reclaiming my agency and, you know, 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.
01:02:39.260So I think just making finding peace with that, like this, 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, because it may take time.
01:02:56.220you don't the only way to know how fast you can do this is by going really slowly and figuring out
01:03:03.220bit by bit over time like what the maximum rate your body can handle is because everyone is
01:03:10.860different for some people it's five percent a month you know hyperbolically so calculated on
01:03:17.060whatever your previous month's dose was so each month your cut gets smaller some people can do
01:03:21.70010%. Some people can do more than 10%, but you can't know up front how fast you can go. And it's
01:03:28.300not worth the risk of starting out too fast and then potentially destabilizing yourself for who
01:03:36.260knows how long. So information is key. Support is key. And I think lifestyle, like as much as you
01:03:45.160can optimize your body. So sleep, you know, removing whatever stressors you can from your
01:03:51.940plate, diet, like a lot of people find, you know, whether it's like, for some people full on keto,
01:04:00.260for others, just removing gluten and dairy, but removing inflammatory foods more generally,
01:04:05.920a lot of people find really helpful brain friendly food, fat, you know, you know,
01:04:10.220you know your work like I think just helping people see that fat our brains
01:04:18.320really like are made out of fat basically yeah it's like this we need especially in withdrawal
01:04:25.520I think yeah healthy fat that was something that was interesting when I eventually switched over
01:04:30.360to just eating meat I was eating ridiculous amounts of fat and enough that like my digestion
01:04:35.540wasn't happy about it but I could tell and I didn't know it was withdrawal at this point but
01:04:39.940I could tell like I need this something in me like needs this and that went away really when
01:04:46.280kind of the the withdrawal symptoms lessened I I didn't need this like and it was probably I
01:04:53.000needed to be I guess and the research is emerging but maybe I needed to hit a certain level of
01:04:57.840ketosis to get more relief um but that that was something interesting that changed in the diet
01:05:03.820because I talked to you early about it but like I don't going in and out of ketosis now even though
01:05:08.820I'm just eating meat doesn't seem to make a difference to my mental state. But early on,
01:05:14.240I needed a lot of fat for any type of relief. Yeah. Yeah. When I began ramping up my fat to
01:05:20.600like three, two, three years in that I saw huge changes, especially in my this like deep, deep
01:05:30.720sense of feeling like grounded isn't the right word, but like integrated. I wasn't having
01:05:36.940the same kind of like unhinged unmoored I wasn't buffeted about as much as I was prior to you know
01:05:46.160but I was eating lots of like processed sugar basically when I focused more on healthy fat
01:05:50.040and like leafy greens bitter greens I was able to handle fermented foods a lot of people can't
01:05:56.900because of the histamine um then yeah I just felt more steady I still had lots of hard stuff but
01:06:03.580there was like a steadiness that i didn't have before i think um when i ramped up fat yeah
01:06:10.220that seems to be what happened to me it definitely didn't like
01:06:13.740cure the unstable nature of it like i still felt like stress was really hard yeah um and
01:06:24.020environmental things were hard but uh it definitely did give me a level of stability that i
01:06:29.080I like I said I attributed all my psych symptoms to food reintroductions for like two years
01:06:34.880which seems so silly when I look back on it because I was literally like yeah soy made
01:06:39.880me hallucinate and it was like no antidepressant withdrawal made you hallucinate and soy just
01:06:46.380exacerbated some inflammatory response that like provoked that but that's way more complicated than
01:06:51.820like you eat something and feel worse yeah totally what's going on they're like onion layers of
01:06:56.040awareness we have to peel back it takes time and um yeah and i'm just i i remember when you
01:07:03.040were i can't remember what year it was that like what what year was it that you guys pieced it
01:07:08.620together with your dad about the meds i'm trying to remember um well i i pieced it together while
01:07:15.260he was experiencing akathisia so that would have been december 2019 um yes okay but then we didn't
01:07:22.600yeah and that's kind of when we started started talking about it was i think january 2020
01:07:28.200yeah i was like no it's just it's a you know it's a side effect and physically dependent we didn't
01:07:36.160know all this stuff if you guys hadn't pieced it together about your dad do you think you would
01:07:41.140have inevitably figured it out for yourself or do you feel like that really is what you're seeing
01:07:45.880it in him was like wait a minute for me too like but yeah because there's still lingering symptoms
01:07:51.380that I can't explain so earlier this like pregnancy when I tried to reintroduce foods
01:07:56.900I didn't get arthritis and that was like the main obvious physical symptom that was triggered by
01:08:03.400almost everything I ate and that seems to have calmed down over the last two years that the
01:08:07.760arthritis didn't happen I was like wow so the arthritis is gone what's still here and for me
01:08:13.660when I get stressed, I get more sensitive to fragrances, light, sound. And these are all
01:08:21.580things that were really severe early on, but it was like, why, why am I still so sensitive to
01:08:27.200light and fragrance and like chemicals and sound those weird, like chemical sensitivities? Why do
01:08:32.920I have that? And why is my main symptom mood when I get hit? And I think one thing that would
01:08:40.560have clued me in is i cannot take b vitamins at all i can't take b vitamins at all or i get
01:08:46.640insomnia agitation restlessness and so it's those weird neurological symptoms even though the
01:08:53.240arthritis component has like much desensitized that i i think i would have clued in but
01:08:59.780unfortunately seeing it happen to dad was like oh you know unfortunately so it probably would
01:09:09.380have taken a little bit longer. I think I would include it eventually. I don't know.
01:09:13.060Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the aha moment that, you know, we each have and how you can't force it
01:09:22.700because I'm sure you're surrounded by people just as I am who aren't yet putting two and two
01:09:29.960together. And you can't force it, nor should it's that's not what this is even about. But what
01:09:37.540yeah there is a kind of inevitable mystery to what makes something click in someone like wait a
01:09:46.220minute maybe it's not you know for me it was like maybe it's not the treatment resistant mental
01:09:50.420illness maybe it's the treatment or you know for someone else like maybe this isn't relapse this
01:09:54.840is withdrawal uh I think it's about just and the more our culture starts to have this conversation
01:10:01.560and it starts to infuse day-to-day conversations in people's lives and it's just like more in the
01:10:08.220ether that will hopefully help catalyze more aha moments for people who haven't yet had them and
01:10:14.860who need them not everyone needs them like you know i'm sure you agree that there's a certain
01:10:19.460percentage of people out there who can take long-term psych meds without any like visible
01:10:24.280measurable trade-offs that they seem aware of like god bless them i know seriously i like
01:10:31.080i've had people reach out and they're like yeah i took it for two years and stopped and nothing
01:10:34.700happened and i was like thank god honestly that's great i'm wondering and we need more research into
01:10:40.560this too but i know that so for my families the original reason for taking them we think stemmed
01:10:46.300from this like genetic predisposition to sensitivity towards mold which can cause and
01:10:52.200there's lots of studies on this it can cause neurological damage so maybe a certain percentage
01:10:57.560of the people who are prescribed psych meds already have a level of neurological damage
01:11:01.520that they're treating with psych meds treating um and then when they stop it's just like all
01:11:07.300hell breaks loose but somebody who was prescribed them for a family member dying or some severe
01:11:13.080stress they can take them and get off of them and don't have these side effects as often as
01:11:17.980the people who had some sort of neurological problem to begin with yeah but some research
01:11:22.100would be good because we don't know who it hits or what the pattern is yet we yeah totally i that's
01:11:26.820such a good point. And it would be hard to conduct this research because there's so many variables
01:11:34.820to consider, but it is essential. And I know that HHS has access to tons of data and for all my
01:11:45.120concerns about AI and what this means for our civilization, I do think that is where AI could
01:11:52.320be potentially really helpful is in analyzing like vast swaths of obviously anonymized health
01:12:00.140data to try to figure out. But of course, I guess part of the problem is that a lot of people
01:12:06.180probably don't even know that they have these. Yeah. And so that's the first step. How do you
01:12:10.780actually like get people testing for those? Yeah. There's some blood work now that can monitor
01:12:16.440that properly inflammatory responses to environmental things. And that covers mold.
01:12:20.820interesting mold yeah the surs research is really interesting they've actually discovered a bunch of
01:12:25.240blood markers that aren't normally tested that really do correspond with mold exposure so that
01:12:29.980would be one way to rule out mold exposure or an environmental like toxin causing mental disorders
01:12:36.900um but but like a lot has to change before people get to that something easier would probably be
01:12:44.540really intense health histories so then you could at least identify the people that are that are
01:12:49.560depressed because of relationship or like toxic things happening in their life versus someone who
01:12:56.280goes I don't understand my job is good my life is good and I'm I'm miserable and put them in
01:13:03.900different camps and monitor that yeah maybe AI could be useful with that that's a that's a great
01:13:08.600idea yeah and then and then the key thing too is for that first group who you know maybe like really
01:13:15.380doesn't need to start or doesn't need to kind of pursue like more medical interventions,
01:13:21.660how do you then actually help them access meaningful support to navigate those life
01:13:28.060challenges? Because I think the, you know, therapy can be helpful for many people, but for many other
01:13:36.060people, it isn't helpful. And I think that's another piece of the conversation that when we
01:13:40.280talk about medicalization um it isn't just you know turning all human experience into you know
01:13:48.800medicalized like lists of symptoms it's also what it means for how we think about what help is
01:13:54.640and and this idea that you know you can only get help navigating you know your life challenge by
01:14:00.280going to see a mental health professional maybe but maybe not like maybe what you really need is
01:14:05.740to like be of service and get out of yourself and help someone else or maybe it's like deepening
01:14:11.340your friendships and having weekly you know coffee meetups with your best friends and that's all you
01:14:17.440need to navigate it I think people lose touch lose sight of the fact that there's so much we can all
01:14:22.420do just as in our authentic relationships with each other to help each other get through hard
01:14:28.780times that so many people have just kind of assumed you can only get through if you get mental health
01:14:33.680interventions of some kind which isn't always necessary for some people it's helpful but
01:14:40.060it would be good too for people to know like
01:14:43.320people can get depressed from life like life is there's some really awful aspects of it like
01:14:52.240seeing somebody you love in pain is gonna cause you pain you know or seeing someone you know
01:14:58.900you love die or or caring for a sick person like or being in a really stressful relationship
01:15:05.800or the postpartum period like all these things can be so painful that you want to escape the
01:15:13.520situation but it's also part of the that part is part of the like horrible human experience
01:15:21.040sometimes and if it was as easy as taking a pill and it could just help you get through that period
01:15:27.480and nothing bad would happen. That would be one thing. But now that we know about these
01:15:31.360neurological consequences, it's like the suffering that you experienced by these like horrible human
01:15:38.580experiences could be significantly less suffering than you experienced from the harm of taking these
01:15:44.840medications. And that's something people at least need to be aware of when they're making the
01:15:48.880decision to start them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. And you're getting to the heart of what I think this
01:15:57.400so-called mental health crisis everyone says we're in is all about, which is our relationship
01:16:03.800to emotional pain and to what it means to be human. And yeah, I mean, having spent the most
01:16:10.140formative years of my life convinced that my intense despair and angst and anger were like
01:16:17.720symptoms to get rid of, I now look back and see, you know, how much that belief perpetuated my
01:16:26.220suffering first of all because of all the you know like you said all the harms caused by these
01:16:31.400treatments but also how much it it um disconnected me from like what it means to be alive and and
01:16:39.200when you think about now when i because people often assume like i don't have you know like so
01:16:46.800so you weren't ever bipolar like so are you just everything's like fine now and it's just like
01:16:52.140balanced and things are good and happy i'm like no i am an intense person i cry all the time
01:16:57.360i have intense anger i'm very very prone to anxiety and distrust even paranoia i would say
01:17:05.280i don't think of any of this as as an illness anymore um and i also am not afraid of it like
01:17:12.940and i know that sometimes my pain is a signal that i need to do something different like get
01:17:18.900off of my computer screen, get off the doom scrolling. And other times it's like, no, I just
01:17:25.380need to feel this grief like, you know, watching that parent whose kid is like desperate for him
01:17:32.540to look at him and it's just like lost in his phone. Like, I want to cry about that. You can
01:17:37.360call me emotionally labile and accuse me of being borderline or whatever. Like, no, that is something
01:17:43.320to cry about and we should cry like I cry all the time I love crying and I just like love making
01:17:51.880doing it in places where people are uncomfortable with it because I'm like we all need to be crying
01:17:56.060more I had my like I had a really hard time crying on antidepressants like a really hard time and the
01:18:03.440years coming off of it when I was when I was starting to feel good so this is years later
01:18:08.620but I had periods where especially I was writing a lot of what happened to me down
01:18:13.740bawling and it was like every single time I hadn't cried throughout the years of being medicated
01:18:20.340was stored in me somewhere and I know that sounds kind of hippy dippy but I hadn't processed the
01:18:25.460emotion and had to like I cried so much um I don't cry like pregnancy is a different story I don't
01:18:32.020cry very much anymore unless like terrible things are happening so sometimes yes but um I think I
01:18:38.420had to process all the emotions i hadn't processed properly on antidepressants because i think of the
01:18:43.820memory and i just cry and be like didn't cry at the time yeah did you have that oh my well i mean
01:18:49.380i had i definitely had many stretches of time when i was super numb and like would i felt like
01:18:57.160dissociated basically and like did felt completely disconnected from emotion for sure and i and i did
01:19:03.020have other times where and often this was when alcohol was involved i was you know on three four
01:19:08.360or five psych meds and like getting ridiculously intoxicated every night at the same time.
01:19:13.760And those periods of time, you know, I'd have almost like synthetic emotion where it was