The Tucker Carlson Show - Laura Delano： The Dark Truth About Antidepressants, SSRIs, and the Psychiatrists Lying for Profit

00:00:00.000 If you're being told, you know, you have a chemical imbalance, Tucker, here's some Prozac,

00:00:04.200 it's going to help adjust the chemicals. That's a lie.

00:00:07.340 If something's an imbalance, what's balance? Is there any science behind that at all?

00:00:11.440 No.

00:00:13.440 It has never been proven. Most people believe that mental illness, you know,

00:00:19.540 that depression, all these things are caused by chemical imbalances.

00:00:22.340 66 million Americans total on these.

00:00:24.180 According to the CDC in 2022. So those numbers could well be higher.

00:00:28.040 That's craziness.

00:00:29.880 There's this condition called PSSD, post-SSRI sexual dysfunction.

00:00:34.820 Oh, come on. 0.87

00:00:35.460 There's a whole movement, they're incredibly well organized on X,

00:00:39.200 doing really important public awareness work around how many people

00:00:43.000 either never regain sexual function when they come off.

00:00:46.100 What?

00:00:46.680 Some people haven't regained it for years.

00:00:49.420 So they're just dead?

00:00:51.000 Yep.

00:00:51.760 Okay. Really? And no one's gone to jail for this?

00:00:58.040 So I read this piece in the New York Times about you that's like actually kind of hostile.

00:01:20.180 And the story seems to be that you were on psych meds for a lot of your young life and then you got off them.

00:01:27.260 And that's bad.

00:01:29.600 That's bad.

00:01:30.960 You might lead people to do the same.

00:01:33.980 You might lead them astray.

00:01:35.240 Off psychiatric medication, out of therapy and into like independent happy life.

00:01:40.540 Why would anyone be mad at you for getting off psych drugs?

00:01:45.560 It's a good question.

00:01:46.940 Well, yeah!

00:01:47.320 I mean, I think really there's just so much fear and greed and disconnection from emotional pain

00:02:06.080 that people hear a story of someone who's decided to let go of dependence on professionals and pills and institutions

00:02:15.920 and they just can't fathom trying it for themselves because they've built their whole lives around this idea of being sick

00:02:23.740 and needing treatment and needing medical expertise and institutional authorities to guide them.

00:02:29.940 So to hear a story of someone who said, I'm not going to do that anymore, is to basically call into question their entire existence,

00:02:39.240 their entire identity, their entire sense of self and purpose in the world.

00:02:42.680 And it makes me feel sad.

00:02:45.080 I feel sad about it because I'm just sharing my story.

00:02:49.020 I'm not telling anyone what to do.

00:02:50.780 I'm just talking about what I did.

00:02:52.380 And yet somehow a lot of people out there think I'm insulting them or attacking them.

00:02:58.280 It baffles me.

00:03:00.220 It's just, it's in, and I understand everything that you've said.

00:03:04.080 I mean, I think you've got a lot of detail on this, but the country's pretty much addicted to these drugs,

00:03:09.740 like a huge percentage of the population takes them, can't get off them, unclear if they're benefiting from them.

00:03:14.780 So I understand that you're poking at something that people rarely mention in public and that goes deep.

00:03:21.100 On the other hand, I thought the goal was health and independence and joy and connection between people and productivity and creativity.

00:03:32.120 And it doesn't even seem like those are considered virtuous goals by the New York Times, which does kind of give me the creeps a little bit.

00:03:39.340 Yeah, it's fascinating.

00:03:41.440 Well, it is.

00:03:42.320 It's dark.

00:03:43.360 Yeah.

00:03:43.840 And I don't know if you looked at the comments on that New York Times article or if you heard about the kerfuffle, you know,

00:03:51.180 that article caused the readership of the New York Times.

00:03:54.540 But they had to shut the comments down after 1300 just poured right in within a day of the article being out

00:04:02.040 because people were just so outraged at how, basically what a fascist I am for, you know,

00:04:11.720 entertaining the idea that, you know, you can take your body and your well-being and your identity back

00:04:18.720 from a very powerful industry that profits off of us being afraid of our suffering.

00:04:25.020 And I'm literally a fascist now.

00:04:27.000 I've been called—

00:04:27.680 Because you live quietly with your family in New England, not wanting to bother anybody or tell anyone what to do,

00:04:33.540 but you're for nature and peace and independence and that makes you a fascist.

00:04:37.600 Basically.

00:04:39.360 So amazing.

00:04:40.940 Okay.

00:04:41.560 I just wanted to set the stage for your story.

00:04:46.780 Um, so you're from Connecticut.

00:04:50.280 Uh, you come from an attack family.

00:04:52.280 We had dinner last night.

00:04:52.820 I heard all of this.

00:04:53.780 It's an amazing story.

00:04:54.920 And, um, but you wound up on psychiatric medications and it began this whole odyssey.

00:05:01.920 Can you just tell us what happened to you?

00:05:04.620 Sure.

00:05:04.920 So I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, which is, you know, you picture the most stereotypical

00:05:10.300 kind of upper middle-class affluent New England town and it's Greenwich.

00:05:16.240 And, uh, I was the kind of kid who was good at school.

00:05:19.960 So I happened to know how to get A's on tests and memorize and regurgitate information well

00:05:26.500 and, and follow, follow the, the instructions of, of adult authority figures.

00:05:32.560 So I was good at school.

00:05:33.700 I was a good athlete, you know, on paper.

00:05:36.920 I, I had it all together, you could say.

00:05:39.540 Uh, but when I, when I was 13, I ended up having this profound experience one night in

00:05:45.680 front of the bathroom mirror as I was brushing my teeth.

00:05:48.280 And I had been elected president of the middle school at my all girls private school.

00:05:53.020 And the next day I was going to lead assembly with the headmistress.

00:05:56.380 And I started looking deeper and deeper into my eyes as I was thinking about all that I

00:06:00.720 had on my plate.

00:06:01.440 And I ended up having this profound out-of-body experience where I lost touch with, with space

00:06:08.960 and time and everything went black around me.

00:06:10.960 And I was just staring at this girl in the mirror until suddenly a stranger was looking

00:06:15.200 back at me.

00:06:15.880 And I was like, who is she?

00:06:17.400 Who is she? 0.99

00:06:18.580 What is this girl doing looking at me? 1.00

00:06:20.740 I just was totally out of reality.

00:06:23.380 And when I came to the only conclusion I could draw, um, you know, about what this meant

00:06:29.700 was that I didn't have a real self.

00:06:31.360 I was just this programmed robot who'd been raised to perform well and, and have it all

00:06:38.240 together.

00:06:38.560 But who was I really?

00:06:39.760 What did I really care about?

00:06:41.020 What did I want to do with my life?

00:06:43.860 I didn't know the answer to that.

00:06:45.120 And that terrified me.

00:06:46.920 And so I ended up trying to repress what had happened and pretend it hadn't happened.

00:06:50.980 I didn't tell anyone about this out-of-body experience I'd had.

00:06:54.960 And I just continued on performing well.

00:06:57.800 But at home, eventually I began to just, I couldn't hold it all in anymore.

00:07:03.080 So I began to act out and scream and curse.

00:07:05.600 And I started to get physical and I'd push my mother.

00:07:09.180 I'd terrify my sisters. 0.99

00:07:10.700 I started slicing up my arms.

00:07:12.400 I started thinking about death because, you know, what was the point to this game that

00:07:16.780 I had no agency in?

00:07:17.900 And my poor parents were just shocked and stunned at, you know, what had happened to

00:07:23.880 their eldest daughter seemingly overnight. 0.55

00:07:25.920 She was this, you know, maniac, basically. 1.00

00:07:29.300 And so they did what so many loving American parents are taught to do when their child is

00:07:35.380 struggling.

00:07:35.940 They took me to a professional because they internalized this story that they didn't have,

00:07:42.700 they didn't have what they needed to help me.

00:07:46.240 They needed to pay someone who'd studied about kids like me to help.

00:07:51.080 So they sent me to a therapist.

00:07:52.740 Your parents are, I identify with the parent in this, you know, they love you.

00:07:58.780 They think everything's going great.

00:08:00.020 You're killing it in school.

00:08:01.820 You're staying within the boundaries.

00:08:04.340 And then, like, they don't have any idea what to do, basically.

00:08:08.820 Yep.

00:08:09.220 But they're motivated by love.

00:08:11.200 Is that fair?

00:08:12.080 Very much so.

00:08:12.980 They did what they thought would be the most helpful for me.

00:08:17.480 They're the opposite of negligent.

00:08:18.620 I guess that's what I want to say.

00:08:19.540 Like, they're engaged.

00:08:20.980 Yeah.

00:08:21.520 They were, they were, they did the best they could with the information that they had at

00:08:27.000 their disposal, which was, you know, really all they saw as a resource was the mental health

00:08:32.060 system.

00:08:32.920 There weren't any visible, you know, support groups for parents of struggling teens.

00:08:38.120 No one was talking about, my gosh, is your daughter also slicing up her arms too? 0.99

00:08:42.500 No, there was, no one talked about this then.

00:08:45.560 And so the only visible source they saw was a mental health professional.

00:08:51.600 And so, and this woman was, this therapist was a very kind woman.

00:08:55.200 She had the best of intentions, but when I was sent to see her each week, to me at the

00:09:02.300 time, I experienced it as this profound violation of, of my very being.

00:09:09.500 I interpreted this as a sign that everyone around me thought I was defective.

00:09:13.180 I was the problem.

00:09:14.420 And I knew in my heart that the anger I felt and the despair I felt were actually really

00:09:19.360 meaningful responses to the environment that I was growing up in, this like really high

00:09:24.180 pressured, intense environment where, you know, it's just in the air itself that, that if

00:09:29.700 you want to feel good about yourself, you have to excel.

00:09:32.020 And I knew that that was the problem, not me.

00:09:35.020 But of course, I was 13.

00:09:36.340 I didn't have the language to articulate this.

00:09:39.280 I didn't have the sense of self yet to stand up for myself.

00:09:43.220 So, so I ended up, you know, doing what I, being sent to therapy each week.

00:09:49.420 I felt humiliated.

00:09:50.560 I felt ashamed.

00:09:52.420 My poor parents didn't mean to, you know, cause that in me, but I just, I experienced

00:09:58.280 therapy as basically a statement that I wasn't good enough as I was.

00:10:02.740 And so it wasn't a long, it wasn't that long before the therapist ended up recommending

00:10:07.720 to my parents that they send me to a psychiatrist because I was, you know, pretty extreme.

00:10:14.020 My, my difficulties were, you know, not, it wasn't enough to just see a therapist.

00:10:19.140 And so my parents took me to a psychiatrist.

00:10:23.100 My mom took me to my first appointment.

00:10:25.260 And in that first session, I was 14 by this time, in that first session, after sitting

00:10:32.160 down with this woman, the stranger who I'd never met before, I think she'd been given

00:10:36.380 some information about me by my parents and that therapist, but I'd never met her.

00:10:41.720 I, I poured out all my pain to her.

00:10:44.620 And at the end of that session, she said, have you heard of, of something called bipolar

00:10:49.640 disorder?

00:10:51.320 And I was like, what?

00:10:54.520 And she said, well, this anger that you feel, this irritability, these rages you're

00:10:59.680 getting into, these are symptoms of something we call mania and the despair and the injuring

00:11:06.060 you're doing to yourself.

00:11:07.900 These are symptoms of depression.

00:11:09.380 And this is a condition that you'll have for the rest of your life, but don't worry,

00:11:13.820 they're medications that will help you manage this.

00:11:16.280 At 14, she told you you're stuck with this for life?

00:11:18.640 For life.

00:11:20.520 For life.

00:11:21.920 That's how it always is.

00:11:23.180 Anytime you're given a diagnosis by a psychiatrist, you know, the baseline operating assumption

00:11:28.560 is that this thing we call mental illness is an incurable condition that you treat and

00:11:34.840 you manage.

00:11:35.480 But that, that's, that forms the premise of the entire business model of the psychiatric

00:11:40.960 industry is that these are incurable conditions that require treatment indefinitely.

00:11:46.420 And there, there I was hearing this message as a 14 year old girl.

00:11:49.960 I'm like, excuse my language. 0.99

00:11:51.320 I'm like, who the fuck does this woman think she is telling me this? 0.98

00:11:54.320 But that, that defiance that I felt, you know, I, I had no one, I knew I couldn't resist that. 0.99

00:12:04.360 If I resisted, that would be used against me.

00:12:07.360 So I just kind of went along with it.

00:12:09.780 If I resisted, that would be, it's like you've been taken in by the Bulgarian border

00:12:14.260 police in 1975.

00:12:16.220 Resistance is futile.

00:12:18.100 Well, it totally is.

00:12:19.320 And interestingly, just to like pan out for a moment to this whole broader mental health

00:12:24.160 industry, uh, you know, at scale, that is when you, many people who resist their diagnosis

00:12:31.340 or who tell their doctors, I don't think I'm sick, or that's actually is used literally

00:12:36.440 to reinforce just how sick you are. 0.68

00:12:38.360 You lack insight, quote unquote, into your condition. 0.99

00:12:42.840 This is so Soviet. 0.93

00:12:44.400 I mean, so like listening to the patient is, that's been taken out of the process.

00:12:50.480 It has.

00:12:51.400 Well, in the sense that, of course, the psychiatrist is listening for signs of symptoms, you know,

00:12:57.000 okay, I'm, I'm listening past what they're saying so I can determine if this person is

00:13:01.800 entering a hypomanic episode or her depression is worsening, but they're not listening to the

00:13:07.400 patient, I'll speak for myself, my whole very well-meaning therapists and doctors over the

00:13:13.000 years were not actually listening to me from a premise of, of me having, having, um, of

00:13:22.740 me knowing myself better than them, of me, of me having wisdom, of me have, you know, they,

00:13:29.940 they lacked a respect for my own ability to, to kind of, um, define for myself what my reality

00:13:38.840 meant.

00:13:39.660 So it sounds like they went into the, in, to the sessions knowing what you were sick with

00:13:45.420 and everything that you said was confirmation of what they already knew.

00:13:49.040 Exactly.

00:13:49.320 It's all filtered through this clinical lens of translating your, your, you know, deep human

00:13:57.140 experiences into this clinicalized language of symptom, illness, disease.

00:14:03.080 And so they're just, they're trained to, to do that.

00:14:06.440 And what ended up happening to me when I eventually bought into all of this by the time I was 18

00:14:11.460 is I learned how to do that to myself.

00:14:13.420 And I just came to translate every single thought, emotion, behavior, decision through

00:14:21.260 this medicalized lens of me having this sickness that was incurable and that these were all

00:14:29.140 symptoms of it basically.

00:14:30.720 Okay.

00:14:31.000 So you're 14 that can imagine telling a 14 year old, you have a lifelong illness from which

00:14:36.620 you will never recover that will define you going forward at 14.

00:14:40.220 You're telling somebody that on the basis of what evidence?

00:14:43.280 It's like, where did you catch this illness?

00:14:44.900 Like in the ladies room in an airport?

00:14:47.120 Like where did, did they explain where you got this illness?

00:14:49.740 It's a very good question, Tucker.

00:14:51.620 And it's a question that we should be asking all the time about literally every single psychiatric

00:14:57.040 diagnosis that is ever given to any human being, because the entire model is built on

00:15:04.280 subjectivity.

00:15:05.240 It's built on the subjective observations of the diagnosing clinician, which of course means

00:15:11.940 it will be infused by their own personality.

00:15:15.280 Like whether they had a bad night's sleep, they just had a fight with their spouse an

00:15:18.700 hour earlier and they're grumpy, you know, it's going to infuse how they see their patients.

00:15:23.820 There are no objective biological tests.

00:15:26.240 There are no brain scans, lab tests that you can do to say, oh, this is proof that you have

00:15:33.100 this, you know, chemical imbalance in your brain or this, you know, faulty biomarker.

00:15:38.300 There's no, there's no objective measurable pathology of any kind in, in any of these conditions,

00:15:45.760 literally all of them, including the so-called serious ones like bipolar and schizophrenia.

00:15:51.180 It is completely based on observation.

00:15:54.760 But is there any explanation for, so if, so they're telling you they're looking forward in

00:15:59.400 to the next 70 years of your life and saying this is going to be with you forever, kind of

00:16:04.220 incumbent on them to explain where you got this thing, its nature, like what exactly are they

00:16:09.540 talking about?

00:16:10.140 Did anybody ever explain any of that?

00:16:12.460 No, and in large part because I never asked.

00:16:15.460 I mean, of course I didn't ask as a kid.

00:16:18.020 I, I, I was just so flummoxed by the whole, and disoriented by this whole experience that

00:16:24.380 it didn't even occur to me to be like, can you prove that I have an incurable brain disease?

00:16:29.780 It didn't, but honestly, Tucker.

00:16:31.400 I'm sorry, Laura, to say you have terminal cancer.

00:16:33.280 We can keep you alive for decades, but it's terminal.

00:16:36.620 I mean, that's like so nuts to say that to a child on the base of no evidence, like.

00:16:41.860 And, but the entire paradigm is that, for every single person who has ever been given

00:16:47.900 a psychiatric diagnosis in the history of psychiatric diagnosis, it's always that.

00:16:51.860 It's always just the opinion of the clinician based on his or her, you know, personal orientation.

00:17:00.840 It's, it's the entire thing.

00:17:02.200 And I did not realize this because it never occurred to me to step back and ask these questions.

00:17:08.160 And I think most, maybe I shouldn't, I shouldn't presume most, but many people don't either

00:17:14.700 because the, the, you know, when I ended up eventually buying into all of this a few years

00:17:20.820 after that first psychiatrist, as an 18 year old, you know, and I'd, I'd continued through 0.83

00:17:27.760 high school playing the performance game, knowing it was bullshit, but not knowing how to get 0.98

00:17:31.820 out of it. 0.97

00:17:32.240 So I ended up getting into Harvard and trying to tell myself, you know, maybe I'm wrong

00:17:37.180 and I will actually feel okay in my skin once I get to Harvard.

00:17:42.060 And I'll just be able to say to myself, like, you were crazy thinking this performance thing 0.99

00:17:47.460 is bullshit. 1.00

00:17:48.360 Harvard is amazing. 1.00

00:17:49.260 And now you're happy.

00:17:50.440 So of course I didn't feel that way when I got there.

00:17:52.620 And I was, I instantly spun out.

00:17:57.320 I, I started, you know, getting drunk and doing Coke and ecstasy and just running away

00:18:03.460 from the reality that I still had no idea who I was.

00:18:08.080 I still didn't feel like I had an authentic self.

00:18:10.240 I still felt trapped in this performance game.

00:18:12.940 So now what I, what do I do?

00:18:14.560 Because I'd been hoping Harvard would save me and it hasn't.

00:18:19.060 And, and that pain, you just won like the number one merit badge in the world too.

00:18:23.860 You get into, plus you're playing at the highest level in sports.

00:18:26.460 Yep.

00:18:26.860 Yeah.

00:18:27.120 I was playing on the squash team.

00:18:29.560 I had on paper, I'd made it, I'd arrived, you know, the, the, the pinnacle of what you

00:18:35.740 strive for as a young person within the kind of elite education industry.

00:18:39.200 Like I won the jackpot and yet I wanted to kill myself basically every day and saw no point

00:18:45.780 to any of it.

00:18:46.620 And, and so as I spun out with each, you know, through the fall week after week after week,

00:18:53.060 and I really lost, lost my, any footing I might've had, I just, I just lost it all.

00:18:58.900 And I was, I was just a mess and getting myself into all kinds of dangerous, impulsive, you

00:19:05.000 know, really dark situations.

00:19:07.460 And I eventually by winter time was just so desperate for relief from this pain that that

00:19:13.520 little voice of that psychiatrist all those years earlier is saying, oh, you have this

00:19:18.880 illness called bipolar disorder.

00:19:20.740 I was like, maybe she's right.

00:19:22.000 Like, why do I feel this way? 0.98

00:19:23.500 Why can't I get my shit together? 0.97

00:19:25.220 Why am I such a mess? 0.99

00:19:27.200 Maybe I really am sick.

00:19:28.440 And so it was at that point that I willingly voluntarily went back to psychiatry.

00:19:36.600 I found a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital, which of course, you know, is considered the,

00:19:41.680 the kind of the goal, the, the golden psychiatric institution.

00:19:45.980 And one of the oldest in the country, this, this is.

00:19:48.400 Most famous, most famous.

00:19:50.240 Yep.

00:19:50.400 Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton.

00:19:52.200 Exactly.

00:19:52.840 Ray Charles.

00:19:53.280 Robert Lowell.

00:19:54.060 Oh yeah.

00:19:54.460 They all wrote poems and fiction about their experiences there.

00:19:58.740 And, and so here I was now so privileged and blessed to be entering this hallowed psychiatric

00:20:06.340 ground.

00:20:07.420 I was just so excited.

00:20:09.180 Did it work for Sylvia Plath or Robert Lowell?

00:20:13.020 I mean, we all know, but like it, and, and a lot of people say that.

00:20:18.400 You know, from what I recall, and someone should, you know, confirm my facts, but from what

00:20:24.080 I remember, um, years ago reading about Sylvia, I guess she eventually ended up getting electroshock,

00:20:31.420 which by the way, is still alive and well, a hundred thousand people a year get electroshock

00:20:36.700 in the U S McLean hospital on its website a couple of years ago, it was like bragging

00:20:40.900 about how great its ECT center is.

00:20:43.880 And I, I think Sylvia, you know, what ECT did to her brain and her creativity.

00:20:52.920 I've heard that that played a part in why she eventually just couldn't be alive anymore

00:20:58.980 because of, of the adverse effects of psychiatric treatment.

00:21:02.300 And so I knew none of this, then I was just desperate for relief.

00:21:06.480 And I think that desperation is a really important piece of this broader conversation, because

00:21:12.420 as human beings, we can only withstand so much suffering before we need help.

00:21:17.720 We need relief.

00:21:18.500 And, and that desperation drives you to just accept whatever promises is offered to you

00:21:26.040 because you just, you're too tired of trying anymore yourself.

00:21:29.500 Just someone take over here. 1.00

00:21:31.020 Someone fix me.

00:21:32.140 Someone take this pain away.

00:21:33.520 And that's the place that I got to that freshman year.

00:21:37.500 And I think because of that, it, it impaired any critical thinking capacities that I might have

00:21:44.620 otherwise had to ask those questions of like, how do you know I have an incurable brain disease?

00:21:49.660 Or can you give, can you tell a little bit more, you know, about the evidence base for this drug

00:21:54.900 you're putting me on?

00:21:56.080 None of those questions occurred to me because I didn't care.

00:21:58.640 I didn't care about any of it.

00:22:00.240 I just wanted the pain to stop.

00:22:01.280 I get it.

00:22:01.720 Yes.

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00:24:45.920 So, but at the same time, you're going to class at Harvard, you're playing on the squash team,

00:24:52.560 like you're continuing to achieve.

00:24:55.000 Kind of.

00:24:55.620 I mean, I skipped a lot of classes freshman year.

00:24:58.660 I was sick a lot.

00:24:59.980 And so I missed a lot of practices.

00:25:01.440 That first year, I definitely fell off the, you know, upper echelons of performance that I'd been used to leading up to then,

00:25:12.360 which I think also was part of why I was just so desperate for help.

00:25:16.440 When did they start putting you on drugs at McLean?

00:25:18.380 Right in that first appointment with my new doctor.

00:25:22.560 And I was put, well, I had actually been put on psych drugs a week or two prior to that meeting my new psychiatrist at McLean

00:25:32.780 because I had come out as a debutante in a couple of debutante balls around Christmas time,

00:25:38.800 which the good wasp girl that I was, like, wasn't an option to not do.

00:25:44.400 And I had actually, on winter vacation, you know, in this literal wedding dress, this fancy white wedding dress,

00:25:52.500 there I was up on stage, like, coked out of my mind, completely trashed because I had to be to survive doing such a thing.

00:25:59.420 Also, to be fair, everybody is at those things.

00:26:01.260 Basically.

00:26:02.820 Sorry, excuse me.

00:26:04.160 And, you know, in my long white gloves, and I'm up on stage, and I'm like, I'm literally a robot performing.

00:26:10.600 I just, that was my breaking point on Christmas vacation where I just was like, I either need to kill myself right now or get help.

00:26:20.480 And so that was, I went to my parents.

00:26:23.920 I said, please help me.

00:26:25.080 I hadn't asked for this kind of help from them in years because of how betrayed I had felt by them sending me to the therapist years earlier.

00:26:33.540 But now I was at a breaking point.

00:26:35.220 And so that was, I was put on a couple meds on vacation.

00:26:40.700 And then when I went back to school and started seeing the psychiatrist at McLean, he continued me on those, and he began to add new ones.

00:26:49.200 And that began what ended up being a decade of just the polypharmacy highway, you could say.

00:26:57.660 And I became basically a professional psychiatric patient.

00:27:02.140 So what did they put you on?

00:27:02.980 Um, so I, I was, from the beginning, I was always on an antidepressant of some kind, a mood stabilizer.

00:27:11.520 Um, and then with the passage of time, um, antipsychotics were added in, benzos were added in.

00:27:18.800 I was on Ambien for a long time too.

00:27:21.820 But, um, it was, it was the kind of typical bipolar regimen, as they call it, where it's literally a handful of different prescriptions.

00:27:31.700 And the way it was explained to me, you know, it was, it almost felt like the, I had this impression that, that my psychiatrist was very skilled and sophisticated.

00:27:43.560 Oh, this for a little, you know, a little bit of this for that issue, a little bit of this for that issue.

00:27:48.340 I, I, the more meds I was on, the more cared for I felt.

00:27:53.620 And then, and, and it felt like the, the more serious, you know, my, my doctor was taking me and it just steadily beginning that freshman year at Harvard, um, on, you know, I, I just, my, the more treatment I got, um, and the more compliant I was and the more deferential I was to psychiatric authority, the more my life fell apart.

00:28:18.660 During the, so you said you got meds in your first, your first appointment.

00:28:23.620 Did anyone ever say to you, you know, you, you obviously feel deeply unsettled and unhappy at times suicidal.

00:28:31.860 Maybe you're not living the right way.

00:28:34.720 Maybe you shouldn't be at Harvard.

00:28:35.860 Maybe you shouldn't be on the varsity squash team.

00:28:38.400 Maybe you should be, I don't know, tending to horses on a farm or painting or working in a bank or I don't know, doing something else.

00:28:44.480 I don't know, like, it does seem just intuitive that if someone has pain, it's worth thinking about the cause of the pain.

00:28:53.440 If I put my hand on a stove and it hurts, I don't take meds for that.

00:28:57.340 I'm like, take my hand off the freaking stove.

00:28:59.440 Did anyone ever address it in that way? 0.63

00:29:02.200 Well, they, they, they can't really, because this is the, the bind of this medical model that the mental health industry is built on.

00:29:11.000 So, so you're told you have a mental illness, quote unquote, and that it's in your brain that, that there's some kind of, usually you're, it's the chemical imbalance story, which by the way.

00:29:21.300 I just want to ask you to stop.

00:29:22.500 Chemical imbalance.

00:29:23.260 So this is a phrase that I first heard maybe 30 years ago when I, the first person I knew started taking an SSRI, Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel.

00:29:34.100 It was this whole like Time Magazine promoted idea that depression, mental illness of all kinds was caused by a quote chemical imbalance in the brain.

00:29:42.520 And the question I always had is, well, okay, if something's an imbalance, what's balance?

00:29:47.240 Is there a baseline?

00:29:48.280 Is there a way to measure various chemicals in your brain?

00:29:52.780 Do we know what the right levels of those chemicals is?

00:29:57.860 I mean, I don't under, like, is there any science behind that at all?

00:30:02.520 No.

00:30:06.000 It's a chemical imbalance in your brain.

00:30:08.040 Okay.

00:30:08.840 Where should, so like, if I'm low on oil, I throw the dipstick at the top of the engine. 0.95

00:30:13.620 And I'm like, oh, shit, it's two, you know, two inches down. 0.96

00:30:16.000 I got to pour another cord in. 0.99

00:30:18.040 Is there anything like that with psychiatric assessment?

00:30:22.440 No.

00:30:22.680 Okay.

00:30:22.960 Nothing.

00:30:23.580 And you are one of the lucky few who somehow miraculously saw right through it.

00:30:32.200 Because most people, to this day, despite the fact that the chemical imbalance theory has long been debunked, and there was an umbrella review published in Molecular Psychiatry two years ago that just kind of put the final nail in the coffin on it.

00:30:47.500 It has been, it has never been proven, and that's been known all along.

00:30:55.260 And yet, if you survey American, and surveys that have been done of Americans, most people believe that mental illness, you know, that depression, all these things, are caused by chemical imbalances to this day.

00:31:06.480 So.

00:31:07.640 But that's like utterly fake.

00:31:10.060 Utterly fake.

00:31:10.560 Because we can't define balance.

00:31:13.120 Therefore, we can't define imbalance.

00:31:15.280 Correct?

00:31:15.620 Exactly.

00:31:16.960 And even if, you know, this medicalized framework that we use to think about ourselves, you know, which has such a monopoly on how we make sense of what it means to be human now.

00:31:30.280 I mean, suffering, anxiety, madness of all kinds.

00:31:36.160 I mean, most people view that as illness, quote unquote.

00:31:40.560 Like that medical framework is so ubiquitous.

00:31:43.340 And what it does to return to your question about, like, did anyone ever ask me about the circumstances of my life?

00:31:50.660 Like, you can't because you either have this unfortunate bad luck with your brain chemistry and you're just, oh, it's too bad.

00:32:00.600 You had the bad, you know, genetic card and you have this chemical imbalance.

00:32:04.120 Or your struggle is a response to your life.

00:32:09.740 It can't be both.

00:32:10.640 You can't have this unfortunate disease and also be having a meaningful response to your circumstances.

00:32:16.880 It's like it's one or the other.

00:32:18.140 And so the experiences that I had in the decade and a half that I was a psych patient and I think the experiences of so many of the more than 60 million adults who are on these drugs right now and more than 6 million children is that.

00:32:36.600 Wait, there's 60 million American adults and 66 million Americans total on these drugs.

00:32:42.980 According to the CDC in 2022.

00:32:45.300 So those numbers could well be higher by now.

00:32:47.460 That's craziness.

00:32:48.920 And we are told that we're having a mental health crisis because so many rates of suicide are through the roof.

00:32:57.320 Anxiety disorder diagnoses, young people struggling, young girls struggling.

00:33:02.320 We're told, you know, this is this terrible crisis.

00:33:05.580 And most people think, oh, we must not be getting enough mental health treatment.

00:33:09.280 But no, if you look at the numbers, you're like, basically everyone is almost, you know, this huge percentage of our population more than ever before is getting mental health treatment.

00:33:19.500 So the problem isn't not enough mental health treatment.

00:33:22.160 The problem perhaps is is the mental health.

00:33:25.180 So I'm just, I can't, I'm fixated on this and to continue the metaphor, want to beat it to death.

00:33:30.700 If you come in with a burnt hand and I don't ask you how you burned it, you're not really treating it.

00:33:37.020 I'm just giving like a palliative.

00:33:39.480 So I give you painkiller because you've got a burn on your hand.

00:33:41.300 But if I never say, how'd you burn your hand?

00:33:42.780 Well, I put it on the stove.

00:33:43.540 I do it every morning.

00:33:44.720 So I think a clinician who cared about the patient would say, how about don't put your hand on the stove?

00:33:50.100 Like there was no effort to understand why you felt bad about your life.

00:33:54.220 I mean, in therapy, I would, of course, talk about my life and the circumstances of my life, but it was all the baseline operating assumption was that I was just, I had this brain disease that I was at the mercy of that the only thing I could do to manage, you know, to manage it was take pills.

00:34:12.060 And so any conversations that I had with therapists about my life, to me, and I think to a lot of them, just felt kind of secondary, like, oh, you know, you're having, you have a lot of stress or you're in this dysfunctional relationship or this kind of hard thing happened to you.

00:34:30.020 We would talk about those things, but not because we thought that was working through those would be what helped me resolve my challenges.

00:34:40.840 It was the meds that were going to do that.

00:34:42.660 That was, you know, what I learned to believe.

00:34:45.240 And I think that's the insidious, that's the insidious nature of this medicalized paradigm is that it basically teaches you to let go of any sense of responsibility or agency over your life because you're just at the mercy of faulty brain chemistry.

00:35:04.120 And so, like, what's the point in trying to change the circumstances of my life?

00:35:07.420 Because I'm still going to have this brain disease.

00:35:10.000 So, like, why does it really matter?

00:35:11.220 A disease that they can't define whose origin they don't even ask about.

00:35:16.440 A brain disease that's, like, in no scientific sense a disease.

00:35:21.580 Literally.

00:35:22.400 Right?

00:35:23.300 Is it contagious?

00:35:25.520 Wow, that's, wow, that's even crazier than I, speaking of crazy, that's even crazier than I realized.

00:35:30.180 Yeah.

00:35:30.400 So, okay, so can we just go, if you don't mind.

00:35:32.480 Please, yeah.

00:35:32.920 Since there are 66 million Americans taking these drugs, can you just go through and order what those drugs are generally and what the effects on a person are?

00:35:42.500 So, the different drug classes are antidepressants, of course.

00:35:47.640 So, you have the, you know, Prozac, Effexor, Cymbalta, Celexa, Lexapro, the mood stabilizers, which many of which are actually anticonvulsants used for epilepsy.

00:35:59.000 But they've, you know, over the decades, when they were studying them, they noticed that the, you know, the animals became kind of apathetic when they were testing them for these other conditions.

00:36:11.940 They're like, oh, maybe we can use this on psychiatric patients.

00:36:16.140 So, most mood stabilizers are actually anticonvulsants.

00:36:19.960 So, those would be, you know, Lamictal, Depakote.

00:36:23.580 Lithium is classed as a mood stabilizer.

00:36:25.380 It's literally a neurotoxin that, you know, it was banned in the United States until the early 70s.

00:36:35.580 It didn't get approved until the early 70s for psychiatric uses and had been banned prior.

00:36:41.080 So, that's the other, you know, that's considered the so-called gold standard mood stabilizer.

00:36:47.380 And I could talk a lot about lithium.

00:36:48.820 I have a whole chapter on it in my book because of all the drugs that I was on.

00:36:52.940 Lithium salts, it used to be called, I think.

00:36:55.560 Yeah, I think that's one of the ways it's been described.

00:37:00.020 That's an old, old drug.

00:37:01.500 It's been around for a long time and it started to be used for psychiatric purposes first in Australia and I can't, in the first half of the 20th century.

00:37:13.540 That's what I mean.

00:37:14.000 Yeah, it's been on a long time.

00:37:15.300 Yeah, and if you actually, I do a deep dive in the chapter on it in my book because the story to this very day that most people are given about lithium is that it is the most, you know, it's been around the longest.

00:37:31.220 It has this really reliable evidence base because of how long it's been in use for.

00:37:36.480 It's a gold standard.

00:37:38.580 If you actually look at the studies that got it approved decades ago, I mean, they are the most shoddy, unscientific, completely flimsy, subjective studies that you could possibly imagine.

00:37:55.840 You're just shocked.

00:37:56.680 And this is the case for every single psychiatric drug that is currently on the market.

00:38:03.060 If you actually look at the drug label on the FDA website, so don't take my word for it, go to the FDA website, look up any psychiatric drug, go to the clinical studies section to see what trials the approval was based on.

00:38:20.040 Usually, it's maybe two studies, and of course, they can do as many studies as they want, and they just throw out the ones that they don't like the outcomes of.

00:38:29.940 Guess how long your average psychiatric drug trial lasts to determine safety and efficacy?

00:38:35.940 I don't know.

00:38:36.560 Ten years?

00:38:37.620 Six to eight weeks.

00:38:39.640 Wow.

00:38:40.120 Some of them last a week.

00:38:42.340 Some of them last a day.

00:38:44.920 Maybe two studies.

00:38:46.820 So these are not longitudinal, as we say.

00:38:49.060 There is zero evidence base for long-term safety and efficacy of these drugs.

00:38:54.100 Zero.

00:38:55.140 And there is also zero evidence base for polypharmacy.

00:38:58.500 These drugs have never been studied in combination with each other, and yet most of us go on to take multiple of them for years.

00:39:06.580 Nor is the mechanism of their effectiveness understood, right?

00:39:11.640 So you said, for example, mood stabilizers were used on animals to stop convulsions, and they noticed that the animals became compliant.

00:39:22.520 But that doesn't mean that they know how that drug acts on the brain, correct?

00:39:26.420 Yeah.

00:39:26.660 Usually, you'll see a line like that in the drug.

00:39:29.180 Like, the mechanism of action is not yet understood or something.

00:39:32.940 And it's—I mean, it is such a—

00:39:37.140 This is so reckless.

00:39:38.280 It's—we are all guinea pigs in a massive experiment here.

00:39:42.460 And this, unfortunately, is the case outside of the psychiatric drug context, too.

00:39:46.440 Oh, I'm aware.

00:39:47.120 And, you know, when you think about the hubris and the—you know, we know so little about the human brain already as it is.

00:39:58.760 It's so mysterious to us how it works.

00:40:02.440 And to think that, you know, we're just—we're going to put in this psychoactive—this synthetic psychoactive chemical.

00:40:10.040 We're going to put it into your body.

00:40:11.540 It's going to course through your bloodstream, potentially for the rest of your life.

00:40:15.620 To be so disregarding of what the long-term consequences of that might be, especially when you're putting a kid on this, it's—it's, you know, it's—it's one of the most horrible crises of our time, I think.

00:40:35.100 It's—it—because to return to your question, you know, besides the antidepressants and the mood stabilizers, there are the antipsychotics, you know, Risperdal, Seroquel, Zipraxa, Geodon.

00:40:47.140 There are, of course, the anti-anxiety drugs, the benzodiazepines, Klonopin, Valium, Ativan.

00:40:53.700 And there are the stimulants, the so-called ADHD drugs like Ritalin, Adderall, and then the sleep aids like Ambien and Lunesta.

00:41:03.300 So those are the—all the—that's the family, the psychiatric drug family.

00:41:09.060 Can we go—okay, so can we start at the beginning, if you don't mind?

00:41:12.400 So the antidepressants.

00:41:15.080 So that would include SSRIs, correct?

00:41:17.380 Okay.

00:41:17.920 So you were put on that immediately.

00:41:19.880 What is the effect of that on you?

00:41:22.720 Well, it's such a tricky—it's such a complicated question to answer because in hindsight, I can see all the effects.

00:41:29.920 But at the time, when I was on them, I didn't notice the effects.

00:41:35.260 I didn't—it was so—it was subtle.

00:41:36.940 It was, in some cases, gradual.

00:41:39.160 So when I look back now at how my life, the different path that psychiatric drugs set me down, I can see that they, you know, they altered my body physically.

00:41:56.000 So—and not just antidepressant.

00:41:57.820 I mean, I couldn't answer what antidepressants specifically did.

00:42:01.120 So for me, what the drugs did generally, whichever ones did what, I couldn't say, but they interfered with my basic bodily functions.

00:42:12.380 So I pretty quickly began to have digestive issues.

00:42:16.820 You know, you don't get told that it's like 90 to 95 percent of your serotonin receptors are in your gut.

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00:46:15.940 The point of these drugs is to regulate or affect or disrupt but change your serotonin levels.

00:46:25.320 That's the crude way that we understand them so far.

00:46:31.100 So they obviously act.

00:46:32.680 So an SSRI, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor.

00:46:36.100 So it's named as a serotonergic drug so that it primarily acts on the serotonin system.

00:46:43.640 It acts on many other systems too because it's all interconnected.

00:46:47.440 The human body cannot be compartmentalized.

00:46:49.440 But the serotonin system, besides being, you know, largely responsible for how your gut functions, it also, you know, muscle function.

00:47:00.620 I mean, they're like basic primal.

00:47:03.080 If I'm remembering correctly, I think it's the serotonin system that regulates like temperature, vomiting reflex.

00:47:13.220 Like, it's really primal.

00:47:16.340 It's not just about happy chemicals.

00:47:19.180 And so when you're taking an SSRI or an SNRI, any of these serotonergic drugs, you're not just – it's not just acting on the brain.

00:47:29.880 It's acting on the whole body.

00:47:31.060 And so a lot of people, myself included, will get diagnoses of irritable bowel syndrome or, you know, they'll have other kinds of digestive issues while they're on these drugs.

00:47:42.740 You know, sometimes it starts quickly.

00:47:44.240 Sometimes it takes a while.

00:47:45.700 But it doesn't occur to you because we're not wired – we're not programmed to question medical treatments generally.

00:47:57.720 At least I wasn't.

00:47:58.560 And so as my physical issues accumulated, I just assumed I was just – you know, because I'm so mentally ill, I'm not taking good care of myself. 0.94

00:48:07.920 I'm eating shitty food. 0.97

00:48:10.420 It's your fault. 0.99

00:48:11.320 Exactly.

00:48:12.040 Exactly.

00:48:12.460 And besides digestive issues, you know, the antipsychotics and mood stabilizers cause serious weight gain.

00:48:23.080 My weight fluctuated 70 pounds during my mental patient career.

00:48:27.640 I mean, it's just – I literally looked like a different person.

00:48:33.520 I should have brought an old picture of me.

00:48:35.460 I mean, you wouldn't have recognized me during my peak psych patient era.

00:48:40.780 They caused – you know, I had chronic aches and pains and my – you know, I had skin issues and my nails would flake off.

00:48:50.120 My hair would fall out.

00:48:51.920 All those – all these subtle changes that just grew over time, I never linked it to the drugs.

00:49:01.440 And then in terms of their effects on me, you know, emotionally and mentally, a lot of people talk about antidepressants especially as having a numbing effect.

00:49:15.260 And which, by the way, can be helpful.

00:49:18.500 I mean, it's important to make clear here, my orientation to this is not anti-psych drug.

00:49:24.780 I think, you know, we've been altering ourselves as human beings since the dawn of time with psychoactive substances.

00:49:31.860 Right.

00:49:31.900 So, you know, who am I to tell someone, you know, you shouldn't take a psych drug?

00:49:36.920 For me, it's about the stories that were told about what they are and what they do.

00:49:42.920 And if you're being told, you know, you have a chemical imbalance, Tucker.

00:49:47.140 That's why you feel down in the dumps.

00:49:49.720 Here's some Prozac.

00:49:50.820 It's going to help adjust the chemicals, which will help you feel happier.

00:49:54.380 Like, that's a lie.

00:49:55.140 And you agreeing to take the pill is not a choice.

00:49:58.480 You are not making you are you have been coerced into taking this drug through basically propaganda.

00:50:04.980 But if you're told, you know, Tucker, we really don't know that much about what these drugs do.

00:50:10.920 They're based.

00:50:11.980 They're approved on the basis of very short term trials.

00:50:15.380 Long term outcomes are quite poor.

00:50:17.540 If you actually look at the data that does exist, your serotonin system, you know, controls a lot of really.

00:50:25.140 Important functions.

00:50:26.560 You know, if you walk them through, if you are walked through all of that and then you still decide, you know what, I kind of want to numb myself out right now.

00:50:35.840 Like, I can't I don't have support system.

00:50:38.560 I'm too stressed.

00:50:39.580 I have too much on my plate.

00:50:40.600 Like, I am aware of the risks.

00:50:42.640 I still want to take this.

00:50:44.580 And, you know, I know it's not fixing a pathology in me.

00:50:48.560 Then I'm like, all for it.

00:50:50.060 Like, good for you.

00:50:51.320 That's informed consent is what you're describing.

00:50:53.040 Exactly.

00:50:53.660 And that is not if you are being told this is an antidepressant medication, you're not making an informed choice because that is marketing language.

00:51:01.900 This is not a drug that's acting against depression, like targeting.

00:51:07.020 Oh, let's get in there.

00:51:08.040 And there's where the depression lives.

00:51:09.380 And now we're going to target it. 1.00

00:51:11.020 That's bullshit. 0.99

00:51:11.640 So the language itself makes or breaks whether you can make a true choice. 0.99

00:51:18.040 And so until we change how we talk about these drugs, I don't think anyone is making a truly informed choice.

00:51:23.700 So my sense of SSRIs is that in some people they offer relief, which is not always good.

00:51:31.640 I felt that way by vodka, you know, and it turns out it was causing a lot of problems that I thought it was solving.

00:51:36.980 I think anyone who drank too much has a similar experience, but drugs are similar.

00:51:40.740 But it does offer, at least in the short term, like, oh, I feel less crazy, like I'm calmer now.

00:51:46.300 Does it?

00:51:47.540 I think it can, especially short term use.

00:51:50.360 I mean, for example, if you are someone who hates to fly in airplanes and you get panicky, like you take a Vanax.

00:51:56.500 Oh, man.

00:51:57.120 It's going to help you a lot or might help you a lot.

00:51:59.040 And so when used in acute situations or for a short period of time, I do think they can feel really helpful to many people.

00:52:12.520 I think a lot of this is around the long term use of them, which they were never designed for.

00:52:18.680 Well, so, but that's, I mean, that's a marker for addiction.

00:52:22.660 Anything that, and that's why smoking is, cigarette smoking is so compelling.

00:52:26.020 Crack smoking is so compelling.

00:52:27.460 Because anything you pull into your lungs immediately goes to your bloodstream.

00:52:31.960 It has an immediate effect.

00:52:33.180 And every study shows the faster the effect, the more profound the relief, the more addictive it is.

00:52:39.140 And that's one of the reasons benzos are so terrifying.

00:52:42.060 But I guess my question is, like, does it, you get the feeling that people on some of the antidepressants, the SSRIs, like, seem kind of, like, dead inside.

00:52:54.500 Did you feel that?

00:52:55.340 I totally did, but I attributed it to how sick I was.

00:52:59.020 Oh.

00:52:59.900 I felt dead.

00:53:00.820 I felt disconnected.

00:53:01.960 I felt, I felt, I felt like I was trapped in this kind of sludgy morass of, of, that was separating me from, from the world around me.

00:53:16.960 I just, and I really, truly believed that that was me and my own faulty biology.

00:53:25.160 And so, it's so insidious.

00:53:28.160 Like, you, I think it's, it's, a psychiatrist named Peter Bragan calls it medication spellbinding, which I think is a really compelling phrase because the, the very parts of you that are required to step back and think critically about what's happening to you are impaired by the drugs.

00:53:47.400 And so, you're in this, for me, like, decade and a half, almost like intoxication state.

00:53:54.140 Right.

00:53:54.340 And, and then you're getting all these messages from all these well-meaning therapists and psychiatrists saying, oh, you're not feeling helped.

00:54:00.920 Oh, you're feeling worse.

00:54:02.100 Well, your sickness is progressing.

00:54:03.340 Like, let's try this new drug or let's up your dose or let's switch you to that.

00:54:07.800 But it's never like, let's all just pause for a moment here and step back and wonder if maybe this whole thing is, is wrong and you don't need any of this.

00:54:18.600 No one is doing that, of course.

00:54:19.860 And so, as I went deeper into psychiatric patienthood and those physical issues worsened, my cognitive function worsened, you know, memory, oh, my gosh, when you were, I mean, I don't know which drugs were the biggest culprits, probably the benzos and the antipsychotics.

00:54:38.220 But my capacity to remember things, to read, to absorb information and actually comprehend information, I just dissipated over the years and which was really hard for me as someone who had, you know, so much of my sense of self, however fake it felt, was rooted in my intellect.

00:54:59.300 And so, here I was just feeling like this mushy, you know, just totally incapacitated mind that couldn't engage with the world anymore and let alone like feel creative and curious and I was just, I was just like a zombie basically.

00:55:20.400 Just killing your life force, it sounds like.

00:55:22.300 It totally was.

00:55:23.380 And that idea of a life force, like to me, this whole thing at the heart of this crisis that we are in, because it is a crisis, it's just not a mental health crisis, it's a crisis of psychiatric iatrogenesis is what I call it.

00:55:39.840 The word iatrogenic means treatment-induced or doctor-induced harm.

00:55:44.020 I believe that this huge, these huge numbers of people who, who are in so much pain, a huge driving force of it is the fact that this entire paradigm is actually leading to more, more suffering and it does.

00:56:00.300 And more violence.

00:56:01.200 More violence, more disconnect, more polarization.

00:56:03.800 When you're under the influence of these drugs for years and years and years, like you said, you do, I won't speak for everyone, I'll speak for myself and the thousands of fellows whom I have known over all these years.

00:56:17.260 You lose touch with your human spirit, with, you know, your sense of aliveness in the world, your ability to feel connected to the sunlight on your cheek, to the, you know, the sweet child on the sidewalk, to God, to serenity.

00:56:37.700 You lose the ability to feel connected to any of that and you're thinking the whole time it's you and you're just getting sicker.

00:56:45.320 And when you, when you scale that out and think about the consequences on our society of that with so many, especially young people on these drugs without even realizing that this is happening to them because of this medication spellbinding phenomenon.

00:57:03.720 I mean, to me, it's like, no wonder our country is more polarized than it's ever been.

00:57:08.980 It's obviously much more complicated.

00:57:10.420 I'm not trying to say it's all psych drugs, but I think it's a big piece here.

00:57:15.320 Of, of why we're all so disconnected.

00:57:17.620 Well, it's, I mean, the main takeaway just listening to this is that it changes something essential about people.

00:57:23.920 This is not on the margins.

00:57:26.240 This is like the deepest thing in you changes.

00:57:28.700 So the measure, if you think the measure of happiness is your relationships, which I think is fair.

00:57:35.660 How, how are your relationships?

00:57:37.680 Relationships.

00:57:39.980 Oh my gosh.

00:57:40.820 I mean, I chuckle because I'm like, first of all, I'm like, well, what relationships really?

00:57:44.980 But then of course I, I did have, I had boyfriends.

00:57:48.520 I had, you know, people I would socialize with, but it was all, by the time I, I graduated, which, you know, I had to take a year off at Harvard because I was so suicidal.

00:58:02.460 I had my first admission to a psych ward while I was at Harvard.

00:58:07.120 The fact that I made it through to this day, I don't really remember anything I learned there.

00:58:12.980 I just was so foggy from it all.

00:58:17.080 But by the time I left, I had no friends.

00:58:20.840 I, I had a tendency to be in, I was a serial monogamist, you could say, just relationship with a guy and then we'd break up and then I'd get right into another relationship with a guy.

00:58:30.720 And it was just, I dated guys who were as lost as I was.

00:58:34.540 So suffice to say, it didn't look pretty.

00:58:36.600 I, um, that was my, when, when I would sometimes, you know, muster the energy to go out and socialize, like I'd had to, I'd have to do drugs and get trash because that was the only way that I felt alive.

00:58:52.040 And of course it was synthetic.

00:58:54.400 So, and my family, you know, they were, my family hung in there with me through the whole, the whole, that whole thing, that whole thing.

00:59:05.480 Um, but of course they didn't have access to the real me and because I was under the influence of all of these drugs.

00:59:13.420 And so they were there for me, but I wasn't connected to them emotionally.

00:59:18.060 I would rely on them and I would come home and, and they would take care of me and provide for me as I, you know, bumbled along through my twenties, like a total mess.

00:59:29.220 Like I could barely hold down.

00:59:30.460 They sound like really kind to people.

00:59:31.760 They, the patience and the persistence that they all had, you know, my, my younger sisters and my parents, you know, it was not easy for them and it was not always pretty in our family system.

00:59:46.580 You know, we, our whole family evolved around me as the designated problem, you know, me as a designated patient.

00:59:53.620 So, so understandably that created all kinds of challenges, but they never gave up on me.

01:00:01.480 And I would just, I'd come home whenever I couldn't function anymore.

01:00:06.540 And, but I didn't feel, I didn't feel connected to them, to myself, to anything.

01:00:14.140 And again, I believed it was me.

01:00:16.640 Wow, that's so, that's like hell.

01:00:18.380 You're describing hell.

01:00:20.780 Disassociated from everybody, everything, and from God.

01:00:24.240 Do you think it's possible to have a relationship with God while on psych meds?

01:00:28.520 It wasn't for me.

01:00:30.560 I mean, I, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that in a sweeping generalization.

01:00:36.900 But it wasn't for you.

01:00:37.560 It wasn't for me, for sure, for sure.

01:00:39.900 And I think the other piece of this that is so important, especially because of how many of us are psychiatrists as kids, is that I had no, I had no sexuality.

01:00:53.040 I had no kind of like erotic life force in me that animates you as an artist, as a writer, as a friend, as a appreciator of beauty.

01:01:06.600 I had none of that.

01:01:07.920 And I, of course, didn't realize what I was missing because I'd been psychiatrists basically at the onset of puberty.

01:01:15.580 And when you don't have access to that facet of who you are, it, it makes for a very lonely, alienating existence.

01:01:28.260 And, you know, I'm, I'm so glad that when I got myself out of this mess years later, I regained my sexuality because a lot of people, like, there's a whole movement now of, it's called, there's this condition called PSSD, post-SSRI sexual dysfunction.

01:01:47.960 Oh, come on. 0.87

01:01:48.560 There's a whole movement.

01:01:51.100 They're incredibly well organized on X, doing really important public awareness work around how many people either never regain sexual function when they come off.

01:02:01.600 What?

01:02:01.980 Or some people lose it.

01:02:03.240 Some people had it on.

01:02:04.940 And then when they come off the antidepressant, they lose it.

01:02:08.200 Some people haven't regained it for years.

01:02:10.620 And so they're just dead.

01:02:13.360 Yep.

01:02:15.080 Okay.

01:02:15.800 Really?

01:02:16.200 And no one's gone to jail for this?

01:02:20.300 No, because this is the, it's the lack of accountability.

01:02:24.540 And of course, this is the whole pharmaceutical industry, not just psychiatry.

01:02:29.980 It's designed in such a way that no one, the most that they're held accountable is, you know, the occasional $3 billion fine for criminal activity.

01:02:38.800 So I guess we could say, but at least the suicide rate's going down and people are happier.

01:02:42.020 I mean, you would think, but as of 2022, one person killed him or herself every 11 minutes.

01:02:52.260 I think it was 50,000 people killed themselves.

01:02:54.300 So like, that's kind of the bottom line.

01:02:55.980 I don't, I don't need to have a medical degree to say that if the number of people, the absolute number and the percentage of people taking these drugs rises and the suicide rate rises, you know, we can argue about cause and effect, but they're not working.

01:03:11.960 I mean, can't, I mean, in what sense are they working if more people are killing themselves?

01:03:16.520 And what's wild, Tucker?

01:03:17.800 Am I missing something?

01:03:18.600 I don't, I don't want to be a Philistine here. 1.00

01:03:19.860 I want to be like sensitive to the science.

01:03:22.220 You're seeing it clear as day.

01:03:24.280 Okay.

01:03:24.580 And what's wild is that in these drug labels for many, many years in the adverse effects section, you will see antidepressants have been documented to increase rates or increase suicidal and homicidal ideation even in some of the drug labels.

01:03:41.160 So this isn't like we're just realizing that these drugs can actually make people worse.

01:03:47.040 It's been in the drug labels the whole time.

01:03:49.500 Well, I know from firsthand experience, so I knew nothing about this. 0.99

01:03:52.220 I don't take any of that crap. 0.99

01:03:53.340 I've always hated shrinks my whole life. 1.00

01:03:56.060 Never been.

01:03:57.400 But no one I know who's been to one has gotten better.

01:04:00.800 So that's why I don't like them.

01:04:01.560 But anyway, these mass shootings and the calls for gun control and to take my shotguns away and all this stuff got me involved in like what is causing all these shootings because there are a lot of shootings, right?

01:04:13.160 And in every case you look at, the person's just full of psychiatric meds.

01:04:21.120 And so I brought this up a couple of times in public and whoa, you get attacked for even raising the question like is there a connection between SSRIs and mass shootings?

01:04:31.080 Why is that a crazy question?

01:04:31.860 Even the question.

01:04:33.000 What is that?

01:04:34.220 You would think that people would, of course, want to have that question asked and answered.

01:04:43.720 And if they had true faith in their products, they would be like, let's look at it.

01:04:50.300 Let's be transparent about this.

01:04:51.980 Let's have open access to the data.

01:04:55.820 Let's do whatever we need to do to show you all that our products don't cause violence.

01:05:01.520 But, of course, it's the opposite.

01:05:03.040 And I know a friend of mine who's a professor at one point tried to FOIA the medical records of various mass shooters and couldn't get access.

01:05:19.520 You're not allowed to know.

01:05:21.640 Yeah.

01:05:22.020 And, you know, I can't remember when Columbine, was it like 98?

01:05:28.980 It was 97, I think.

01:05:31.160 And as you said, the 90s were – so Prozac came to market in the late 80s.

01:05:36.760 The 90s were declared the decade of the brain by our U.S. government.

01:05:41.200 And the 90s began basically the ubiquitization of psychiatric drugs, the normalization of them, the kind of infusion of them into every facet of our lives.

01:05:53.360 And this, of course, was fueled by industry funding.

01:05:57.740 So all the kind of anti-stigma, mental health awareness campaigns that you now – you know, Mental Health Awareness Month.

01:06:04.320 We're in May.

01:06:04.900 Actually, Tucker, we're in May.

01:06:06.160 May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

01:06:07.500 These are all industry-funded efforts to basically infuse the cultural discourse around emotional pain with this message that – with this actually very just, righteous message that you should never feel alone with your suffering.

01:06:24.380 You should feel like you can talk about your troubles.

01:06:27.400 That is a really important message that –

01:06:31.400 But that has been exploited by powerful corporations to basically now mean there's no shame in getting mental health treatment.

01:06:39.560 And so they've taken this important message and perverted it to basically link anyone who is calling into question psychiatric drugs with someone who doesn't care about suffering.

01:06:55.000 I mean, it's amazing the number of times that I share my story and I'm literally just talking about my story.

01:07:02.700 I'm not saying anything about anyone else.

01:07:04.660 You know, the story of how I eventually left this all behind, people hear that as me denying the reality of suffering.

01:07:14.360 I mean, you're – you know, this woman doesn't think people are struggling out there.

01:07:18.480 I'm like, where did I ever say that?

01:07:20.380 It's actually the opposite.

01:07:22.480 I think there's – I am – first of all, I struggle a lot in my life.

01:07:28.260 You know, I'm by no means a happy, put-together, mentally healthy person all the time.

01:07:32.960 But how are you conflating me questioning the psychiatric drug paradigm with me questioning the reality of people suffering?

01:07:42.020 Like, if you think about it, it's just these industries have been so effective in conflating care with treatment.

01:07:51.220 So if you question treatment, people assume you're questioning the need that people have for help.

01:07:56.580 It's like there are other ways to get help, people.

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01:10:10.220 Does anyone doubt, I mean, just being honest, that if you get rid of all drugs, legal and

01:10:15.180 illegal, licit and illicit, that the mental health crisis would basically disappear?

01:10:23.080 I mean, I'm sure it's, you know, it's, I do.

01:10:26.860 If people stayed sober, I haven't had any serious mental health problems since I got sober 23 years ago.

01:10:34.180 I can just speak for myself, like, that's just what I know, and I know a lot of people in that exact position.

01:10:40.000 Once you just, like, stop addling yourself with crap, you return to equilibrium.

01:10:46.380 I don't know. 0.92

01:10:46.940 Yeah.

01:10:47.060 Well, I think, I think you, the way I would think about it for myself, at least, is that when I let go of this medicalized way of understanding myself, you know, translating all my struggles into symptoms to take to a doctor, et cetera, et cetera.

01:11:02.020 And when I came off the drugs and when I also then began to educate myself about, like, the broader issues with just our whole medical industry and how we compartmentalize the body in all these problematic ways.

01:11:16.820 And so I just kind of reconceptualized how I think about well-being and the things I put in my body or don't put in my body.

01:11:25.800 I, I, to your point, I definitely have found my way to an equal, a kind of equilibrium that equips me to face life's challenges, which are inevitable.

01:11:36.680 I mean, it's, I think it's a part of the human condition to suffer, to struggle, to, to have dark nights of the soul.

01:11:43.380 And I think historically, these were episodic experiences that, that would, you know, some, something hard happened in your life or even something not visible, but you just are in a tough chapter.

01:12:00.740 You, you kind of, you just find your way through it.

01:12:06.100 Maybe it takes a week, maybe it takes a month, maybe it takes a year, but you move through it.

01:12:10.760 I think that used to be prior to the rise of this medicalized mental health industry, that used to be the baseline operating assumption.

01:12:20.100 And then since the rise of psychiatric drugs and since the rise of the chemical imbalance story and this incurable brain disease story,

01:12:29.240 we've just forgotten that the struggles that emerge in life are responses to life and not permanent.

01:12:37.980 If, if you, if you orient yourself to them in that way and actually, um, and actually believe and tell yourself, like, this is a hard chapter that I'm in, but it's a chapter.

01:12:50.140 It's not my whole story.

01:12:51.860 And that's what I was taught by psychiatry is that my whole story, the rest of the story of my life is that I'm just so-called mentally ill needing treatment.

01:13:00.900 And that's all I have.

01:13:02.620 They do that with alcohol too. 0.62

01:13:04.920 Um, I can just, I can speak from personal experience.

01:13:06.980 Well, you're not, I will always be an alcoholic.

01:13:08.700 No, I'm not an alcoholic.

01:13:09.760 I drank too much alcoholic, I guess, but I don't drink anymore.

01:13:13.440 So like, it's not the center of my life anymore.

01:13:15.640 That's so, I, I have, I don't-

01:13:17.160 I mean, I think that's a fair, look, I'm not judging anybody.

01:13:19.460 I, I love AA.

01:13:20.400 I don't go, but I love it. 0.99

01:13:22.060 I don't want to be judgmental, but like telling people they're weak and pathetic and will always be dependent on you. 0.98

01:13:27.620 So it's like, it's a red flag for me. 0.99

01:13:30.460 I'm so, I'm so with you.

01:13:31.640 I, I, in my book, I talk about the chapter in my life when I quit drinking, which I did eventually do because drinking one to two bottles of wine a night before you take your five med regimen,

01:13:46.020 including like horse tranquilizer doses of Klonopin is not a recipe for, for functioning.

01:13:51.580 And so I did eventually decide to quit drinking and was really active in the 12-step world for a few years.

01:13:58.980 And I hold a soft spot for it in my heart, but I came to the same conclusion for myself is, you know, I had spent the most formative years of my life letting psychiatry define who I was.

01:14:13.120 And then I moved into the 12-step world and I took on a new label, alcoholic, and I began to defer my authority to, you know, a higher power.

01:14:27.060 And I do believe in God and I do, I am connected to, to this kind of like broader oneness of, of, of life around me.

01:14:36.860 But I eventually realized that I have to stop turning it over.

01:14:40.860 I have to stop seeking outside guidance, authority, expertise, answers, and I need to start looking within myself and actually take responsibility for my life and my decisions and my relationships.

01:14:58.400 And I, I, I realized like, I have to stop labeling myself as anything really, and, and kind of buying into any ideology of any kind that tells me I have a problem, it has the solution for.

01:15:11.380 Now I'm like, you know, I, and even in the wellness alternative health world, you, you, there are a lot of problems that you get sold into thinking you have that their products can help you solve.

01:15:27.600 And I'm at the point where I'm like, I, I don't want to look out there anymore for answers to, to anything, anything internal to me.

01:15:37.680 That's just me.

01:15:39.340 So what was the experience of therapy like?

01:15:41.980 So you're, you're on all these drugs.

01:15:44.120 How many drugs were you on?

01:15:45.800 At the peak, five.

01:15:47.220 That's unbelievable.

01:15:48.840 Um, but concurrently, you're, you're sitting through therapy a lot.

01:15:54.720 How often?

01:15:56.000 Twice a week, usually.

01:15:56.980 Whoa.

01:15:57.600 Yeah.

01:15:57.840 For how long?

01:15:58.880 An hour each time.

01:15:59.900 No, but for over what period?

01:16:01.180 Oh, for how many years?

01:16:01.680 Um, the whole, the, I mean, the whole time I was from 18 to 27, but consistently in therapy.

01:16:09.600 Sometimes I would enroll in, you know, programs too.

01:16:13.200 If I was, I was, I was, I ended up hospitalizing, going into the hospital four times during those years.

01:16:21.380 And then afterwards, you know, you, when you're discharged from a psych ward, you're enrolled in some kind of like step down program, you know, an intensive outpatient program for, you know, where every day from nine to five for like a few weeks, you go to the psych hospital and then you go home.

01:16:39.200 And then you downgrade to, you know, a lesser intensive program where you go to a few groups a week.

01:16:45.420 So in my twenties, I was, I was always in individual therapy and then very often in group programs.

01:16:53.160 And that's a lot of therapy.

01:16:54.100 Obviously, I guess I can skip to the end, to the punchline.

01:16:56.940 It didn't work because you're hospitalized four times.

01:16:59.320 So it's like not working, but what that's nine years of therapy, you know, consistently full time, almost like, what was that like?

01:17:07.960 What do you talk about?

01:17:10.240 Oh, well, that's, that's the, I, I, I won't speak for all therapists or the therapy industry as a whole.

01:17:18.940 You know, some of my good friends are therapists and they, they work with people in very different ways than how I was in therapy.

01:17:25.300 So, but in my experience, and I do think in the experience of a lot of people, because, because our society has lost so many, because you, there's so few spaces where you can turn to other human beings, to neighbors, to friends, to colleagues, to talk about how hard it is to be alive.

01:17:51.740 Sometimes therapy becomes like the one place you have to feel seen and heard and understood.

01:18:01.120 And so what happened to, for me is that because I had no other place to, where I felt like I could be open, I, I kind of, I developed this like dependence, you could say, on my weekly therapy sessions.

01:18:17.180 And, and this, you know, I, I just, I kind of came to see my therapist as really like my substitute friends, sometimes my substitute mother or something, you know, they, they kind of replaced what would have been authentic relationships had I not grown up in therapy.

01:18:34.880 And so, of course, if this is the only place you have to go to talk about your problems, you need to have a lot of problems to talk about, because otherwise you don't need to go anymore.

01:18:44.120 That's just, that's just fascinating what you just said.

01:18:45.860 So, um, you're basically paying people to be in relationship with you, but because you were doing that, and you were steered there, I mean, this wasn't like a choice that you initially made, obviously, but because you did that, you actually neglected your real relationships.

01:18:58.660 Is that what?

01:18:59.800 Exactly.

01:19:00.480 Okay.

01:19:00.760 And what's, what's so really nefarious about the whole thing is that you don't only neglect what could have been authentic relationships.

01:19:11.140 You actually, for me at least, I actually came to dismiss the idea of like just a friendship.

01:19:17.740 Like they don't understand mental illness.

01:19:20.100 Like I need doctors, you know, how could a friend help me?

01:19:24.200 Like I have a brain disease, you know, it, it.

01:19:26.600 That's so dark.

01:19:27.500 It's like really, I don't know if that happened.

01:19:30.360 I don't know what percentage of psych patients that happens to, but it happened to me and I saw it in, you know, the culture of the psych ward, the culture of these, all these programs that I was in.

01:19:40.720 We were the only people we hung out with fellow patients.

01:19:43.520 Like we had a whole, you know, you go to lunch together in the hospital cafeteria and like you're at your little patient table in the corner and you're looking at all the psychologists and social workers and doctors walking around with their badges. 0.97

01:19:56.360 And, and you're kind of over in the corner, like we're the crazy, like fucked up patients over here. 0.98

01:20:01.000 Like we're not like them. 0.97

01:20:02.160 I mean, there's this whole twisted, almost like romanticized culture of psych patienthood.

01:20:10.140 Heroin addicts are like this too.

01:20:12.260 It's, it's so, gosh, it, it, I feel grief about it because we truly were like the real world out there.

01:20:19.040 They wouldn't get us.

01:20:20.220 Like we're so messed up.

01:20:21.380 Like we can never, we don't belong there.

01:20:24.620 Like we belong here on the, on the hospital grounds.

01:20:27.940 It's like, I, I used to feel really proud of like how crazy I was.

01:20:34.280 I believe that.

01:20:34.860 It's so, I mean, I chuckle about it now, but I, you know, it's, of course I, I grieve too, that that was my pride.

01:20:42.760 My source of pride was what a good, successful psych patient I was.

01:20:48.500 It's so deep and so sick.

01:20:51.100 You see it with homeless drug addicts.

01:20:52.920 There's a kind of pride, like there's a, there's a tribe.

01:20:55.700 We support each other.

01:20:56.860 We're, you know, we're sharing our misery, but there's a kind of feeling like we're in the elite, you know, we're junkies.

01:21:02.680 And it's the same, it's the same kind of death worship.

01:21:06.880 Yeah.

01:21:07.040 And like it, it, that word tribal, I mean, it, because it exploits this like deep primal instinct that we have as tribal beings.

01:21:16.660 It exploits that.

01:21:18.420 Whereas, you know, once in our pre-modern, pre-industrialized age, your tribe would have been your village, your local community.

01:21:26.680 And of course, people in that community, individuals would have had crises and struggles, but you all banded together and you had multi-generations of families.

01:21:35.460 So, you know, grandparents had important roles.

01:21:38.280 Yes.

01:21:38.620 Grandchildren and the home, the home was a place where the man and the woman had a kind of symbiosis and, and mutual interdependence.

01:21:49.840 And, and I'm not trying to romanticize.

01:21:51.860 I literally have a family like that.

01:21:53.800 So I, that's real.

01:21:54.920 I mean, I live like that.

01:21:56.020 And I think, not bragging, but I mean, that's just, that's the way you're supposed to live.

01:22:00.980 Yeah.

01:22:01.440 And, and I think our, our modern world does make it really hard.

01:22:07.240 I think, you know, this isn't for me about individuals or, you know, particular families being, you know, weak or lazy or bad.

01:22:18.560 I think just, we're in this toxic stew of, of a culture in which we're, you know, the, from the food we're, so many of us put into our bodies, to the screens that we're in front of all day, to the just gross kind of consumerist messaging that's just buffeting us all day.

01:22:40.600 It makes it really hard to stay in touch with yourself enough to actually have the capacity to grow of, you know, develop your own tribe, whether it's your family or your neighborhood. 0.98

01:22:53.640 Like, I think it's really important to say, like, this is not about individuals, like, fucking up.

01:22:59.680 It, this is about our social order having evolved in such a way that it makes it feel, like, impossible to have the family that you have for so many people.

01:23:11.080 And economics play a role, too, I think.

01:23:13.140 For sure.

01:23:14.160 For sure.

01:23:14.920 So, a big role.

01:23:16.080 So, no, I couldn't agree with you more.

01:23:18.100 So, I keep stepping on your story.

01:23:19.440 Sorry.

01:23:19.940 No, not at all.

01:23:20.500 So, you're, because it's an amazing story.

01:23:22.580 But the question of, like, what do you talk about in therapy for nine years?

01:23:25.760 I'm sorry, I didn't let you answer.

01:23:26.820 You know, I talked about whatever poor guy I was in a dysfunctional relationship with.

01:23:33.620 I talked about my family and our conflicts.

01:23:36.900 I talked about, you know, how I, whatever job I was trying to hold down, which I never could, you know, how hard it was.

01:23:44.780 And I talked about how suicidal I was.

01:23:48.120 So, I was just, suicide was, like, a constant companion of mine through my 20s until I did eventually, actually, it's an important thing.

01:23:56.820 Part of my story to bring up, like, the therapy, the meds.

01:24:04.600 You know, by the time I was 25, all I had was my relationship to my, to the mental health professionals in my life.

01:24:12.340 To the people being paid to be there for me.

01:24:16.000 And the pills that I would pick up at the pharmacy every month.

01:24:18.780 That was all I had.

01:24:20.400 And I, life had deteriorated to such a degree that I couldn't take care of myself.

01:24:27.040 I couldn't work.

01:24:28.380 I had no friends.

01:24:29.200 And I, I was told, like, the message that I received was, you know, unfortunately, your bipolar disorder has progressed to such a degree that you're now treatment resistant.

01:24:44.280 Come on, come on. 0.99

01:24:47.620 Yep.

01:24:48.700 Yep.

01:24:48.980 So, you spend millions of dollars on these people, take all of their drugs, you get worse, and they're like, unfortunately, Laura, you're treatment resistant.

01:24:59.940 Literally.

01:25:01.300 Literally.

01:25:02.100 And, and so, you know, this, this, this phrase treatment resistance.

01:25:06.460 It's like the craziest story I've ever heard.

01:25:08.760 It's crazy, but it's a brilliant, it's a brilliant business model, because, of course, you know, if you feel, if you feel better after starting a psych drug, the credit goes to the drug, of course.

01:25:19.100 See, it's helped you.

01:25:21.000 If you don't feel better, or if you feel worse, yes, it's never the drug, it's, it's you and just how, how extra defective you are.

01:25:30.140 And what has now happened, and Tucker, you're not going to believe this.

01:25:33.360 It's like.

01:25:33.720 I'm sorry to laugh.

01:25:34.960 This is just so bonkers.

01:25:36.000 It's bonkers, it's totally bonkers, and what I, what I would predict, and because I'm seeing from my book, I, I, I did a lot of, I woven a lot of research into my book, and I, I, way more than I originally intended, and my editor kept wanting more, which, which is great.

01:25:51.040 And I went down this rabbit hole of looking at the current landscape of psychiatry, and like, where is it heading?

01:25:59.020 Because, obviously, these, this drug-based paradigm is failing, so like, what's next for them?

01:26:05.380 Because, you know, the drug companies are not making, are not focusing relatively much at all on, on psych drugs anymore.

01:26:14.440 They've kind of moved on.

01:26:15.480 They've recognized this isn't where the big bucks are.

01:26:20.020 And so I was just curious.

01:26:21.320 I was like, so where is it heading?

01:26:22.180 And what this new unfolding chapter of psychiatry is literally exploiting is this treatment resistance concept.

01:26:31.560 It's building a new, a new chapter of medical devices, literally inserting electrodes into the brain that are wired to, it's called deep brain stimulation, where you, you, if you have treatment-resistant depression because your meds haven't helped you, don't worry, Tucker.

01:26:49.860 However, now you just go in for a simple procedure.

01:26:53.040 We're just going to open up your chest cavity, insert a pacemaker-like device there, and run some wires up into your brain, and then your doctor can press a remote control button to send electrical stimulation, which we believe is going to help target the particular areas of your brain that are involved.

01:27:13.840 Is this you making this up, or is this real?

01:27:15.980 This is literal, literally happening.

01:27:18.960 Besides deep brain stimulation, there's-

01:27:21.360 Do you think there's anybody who would allow a doctor to implant something in his brain?

01:27:26.360 Oh, it's happening.

01:27:28.080 It's, and it, DBS is not, um, wide, under wide spread use yet.

01:27:33.340 But it's by remote control, so you're giving somebody else the power to control your, physically control your brain.

01:27:39.460 Yep, with electricity.

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01:28:47.180 And I've read a few horror stories of anecdotal experiences of people who've had these procedures, and then afterwards, like, the battery dies, and you can't get the device out because it's, like, too complicated to remove it.

01:29:06.580 So, there's just, like, a dead, you know, matchbox-sized thing that's, like, protruding from your chest under your skin.

01:29:13.240 I mean, it's—DBS is probably the least common one right now.

01:29:19.280 The big push right now is for what's called TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is also for treatment-resistant depression.

01:29:27.160 So, you know, there's a wide array of options for people.

01:29:30.020 Don't despair.

01:29:32.380 And you basically sit under this device that shoots, like, very powerful magnetic, you know, currents, whatever you call it, energy, through your skull.

01:29:44.620 And it's being marketed as a non-drug, you know, safe alternative because it's just magnets.

01:29:51.360 And don't forget ECT, electroshock, which is alive and well, and that's long been a treatment-resistant depression treatment.

01:30:01.380 Yeah, I had a relative who did it and then committed suicide.

01:30:03.720 So, yeah, it's been around for a long time.

01:30:06.420 Yep.

01:30:09.140 And I just want to restate what you said so eloquently, which is people subject themselves to these horrors because they are in such pain, because they are so desperate.

01:30:19.740 They will accept any treatment, treatment, because they're panicked and they're dying.

01:30:26.460 So, I get it.

01:30:27.040 And they see no other options.

01:30:28.400 A hundred percent.

01:30:29.160 I'm not judging anybody who submits to shock treatments or deep brain, like, whatever the hell that was.

01:30:37.100 But this is just, but does anybody ever say, you know, you really need to go outside more often, get a dog, make a date to sleep with your spouse every other day, get on your knees and pray to God.

01:30:50.020 Let's just start there.

01:30:51.320 Like, maybe take your shoes off on the lawn occasionally.

01:30:54.400 Does anybody, because that would be my program, just saying, and I think that works.

01:31:00.700 Did anybody ever say that to you?

01:31:02.740 No. 1.00

01:31:03.100 And if, like, if you had met me 16 years ago and said that to me, I would have been like, fuck you, Tux. 1.00

01:31:10.960 How dare you insult me? 1.00

01:31:13.640 Do you not understand how seriously sick I am?

01:31:17.800 You're telling me to get some sunlight?

01:31:20.000 And I think a lot of people feel that way.

01:31:25.000 It's like, it's invalidating.

01:31:26.820 It feels invalidating.

01:31:27.240 Wait, they're going to really go after you.

01:31:28.840 I just had this insight because you're too articulate.

01:31:31.560 Your story is too great because you actually recovered from these tortures.

01:31:38.320 And you're a real threat.

01:31:41.020 I just want to say that.

01:31:42.060 I just want to be on the record saying that.

01:31:43.780 So, it's just a fact.

01:31:45.340 Like, that New York Times story that I thought kind of slammed you in a subtle way.

01:31:49.920 That's just the beginning.

01:31:51.320 Yeah.

01:31:51.580 Did you, there was a Washington Post book review of my book that was wild.

01:31:56.720 I mean, she was so, I feel for her.

01:32:00.240 I feel for all the people who are just outraged by my story because I know that at the heart, they're afraid.

01:32:08.280 I know it's fear.

01:32:09.660 And so, I don't mean this in a, you know,

01:32:12.240 I mean it from a heartfelt place.

01:32:16.420 She was so, so set off by my story.

01:32:19.440 And her review, I mean, she was just, I can't remember the exact phrases, but just wild how vitriolic it was.

01:32:27.580 It was an attack on my character, really.

01:32:30.000 It wasn't even really about my book, this book review.

01:32:34.120 And, you know, I was ready.

01:32:36.300 I've been ready.

01:32:36.840 I take it as a sign that I'm doing something right, that these large corporate media outlets are really pissed at me.

01:32:45.960 That you got better?

01:32:47.640 You got better?

01:32:49.060 They hate that.

01:32:50.100 And to be clear, because people, when I, I do feel better, but by better, I don't mean I'm like happy and put together.

01:33:00.640 Like people often assume that I'm so-called mentally healthy now.

01:33:05.240 Like I, you can ask my husband, like, do not catch me on a day where I have, you know, I'm sleep deprived and have been in front of my screen too much and I'm about to get my period and I feel really stressed.

01:33:19.600 Like I-

01:33:20.180 You've got yelling children in the background.

01:33:21.340 Oh yeah, I mean, I definitely, I've been off of these drugs for 15 years now, but I can tell my central nervous system is still quite sensitized to stress.

01:33:34.500 So, and I've always been a big feeler from, you know, I was a little girl, like I have this vivid memory of one day I was outside in the sun in the summer and I saw this worm, this dead, dried out worm, like shiny, that had been dehydrated by the sun.

01:33:50.440 And I just remember crouching down and looking at it and holding it and just crying, this life that had been taken and I buried it in my garden, my mother's garden and I just, I couldn't handle facing the, the death of this little, I mean, I've always been that kind of intense feeling person.

01:34:09.780 And so I'm often angry, I'm often very angsty, I can get panicky.

01:34:16.640 I feel a lot of grief about a lot of things.

01:34:20.280 Like I could feel myself right now, like I could start crying just thinking about all the kids right now who are getting sent to their first psychiatrist.

01:34:27.820 Psychiatrists, like you, if I sat down right now in front of a psychiatrist, they'd be like, oh gosh, Laura, you're a little emotionally labile.

01:34:35.720 Maybe, you know, we might want to consider some, you know, Cymbalta or whatever.

01:34:40.660 Like they wouldn't be able to compute, like crying is actually a sign of being alive and being in touch with life.

01:34:48.960 It's not a sign of pathology.

01:34:50.700 And so I'm, I often find myself in this interesting position where I'm like defending how crazy I still am a lot of the time because people are like, you're so happy now and everything's great. 0.86

01:35:00.540 I'm like, I am a dark, twisted, fucked up person basically on a daily basis, but you know what? 0.93

01:35:06.700 I'm not afraid of it anymore. 0.99

01:35:08.580 Like that's the big difference.

01:35:10.560 Psychiatry and the mental health industry taught me to be terrified of my pain and my mind.

01:35:16.520 And that's been the most liberating thing.

01:35:18.420 But what's interesting is how terrified they are of healing.

01:35:21.280 I mean, there's this amazing scene in the New Testament, it's in Luke or John, where Jesus heals a man who's been blind for his whole life since birth.

01:35:30.320 And he's like, Jesus, heal me.

01:35:31.980 And Jesus goes, okay.

01:35:32.740 And he puts mud on his eyes and washes it off in a pool.

01:35:35.040 And he's, he can see.

01:35:36.100 I mean, amazing.

01:35:37.440 Talk about healing.

01:35:38.980 And the religious authorities, the Pharisees show up immediately and they're like, who did this?

01:35:42.940 Wow.

01:35:43.420 And they start interrogating him.

01:35:44.720 Then they interrogate his parents.

01:35:46.020 And their only interest is not, they were infuriated by the fact he was healed.

01:35:50.620 Infuriated. 0.99

01:35:51.560 And they're trying to find Jesus to kill him. 1.00

01:35:53.580 Wow. 0.98

01:35:54.260 And I'm like, that's like the most burnt, screwed up thing I've ever read in my life.

01:35:58.680 But it doesn't seem so different from the response that you're getting.

01:36:02.880 It's like, I don't know, Laura Delano maybe has emotional days, but like happily married kids.

01:36:08.580 Like functional, like enjoying life, loving life, loving people.

01:36:12.780 That's like such a massive win.

01:36:14.700 You know what I mean?

01:36:15.600 But they're like mad about it.

01:36:17.540 I don't know.

01:36:18.100 Yeah.

01:36:18.500 No.

01:36:18.700 And I think when you realize that the objective to living is not happiness, it's meaning and

01:36:25.080 purpose and finding your calling in the world and the way that you are meant to be of service

01:36:32.740 to the world.

01:36:33.240 I mean, when you find access, when you find your way to those states, then you don't care about being

01:36:42.240 happy all the time anymore.

01:36:44.180 You don't care about the next quick fix because that's just like you just, you know, like that's

01:36:51.200 not the point to being here.

01:36:52.960 And I think that message is such a threat, not just to the mental health industry, but

01:36:57.500 to so many, so much of consumerism more broadly.

01:37:01.760 If, you know, once you realize, A, the answers and, you know, expertise that I'm seeking don't

01:37:12.220 lie out there in all these so-called experts or products or pills or services.

01:37:17.920 It's, it's, if, if I look inwards and I just trust that if I do the next right thing, I find

01:37:26.420 ways to get out of self.

01:37:27.680 I mean, that's like my go-to when I'm getting a little too occupied with myself, which a

01:37:32.180 long career as a therapy patient primes you to, to be, I'm like, okay, what's the fastest

01:37:37.940 way I can forget myself?

01:37:39.660 Usually it's like playing with my stepson or my son, um, or it's, you know, reaching back

01:37:45.720 out to someone who's called me in, in, in a struggle and, you know, a tough spot.

01:37:50.860 When you realize like, you can do that anytime you want, like get out of yourself.

01:37:56.280 Then you're like, why would I go pay, pay all these professionals to like, listen to 0.98

01:38:02.080 me ramble on about myself every week for fucking 10 years. 0.96

01:38:04.720 So that was the thing that I was really struck by almost five hour dinner last night. 0.97

01:38:08.140 And I asked you all about your life and your story and your family and all this stuff.

01:38:11.500 And so we talked about your life, but a lot, but you did not talk about yourself in a way

01:38:17.200 you were at all.

01:38:18.960 It was like, and that was really striking to me because I do think the hallmark of a therapy

01:38:25.840 person is narcissism.

01:38:29.700 I'm sorry to say that.

01:38:30.740 I think they're really hurting people, including people I love who go to therapy, whatever.

01:38:34.360 But, um, so I don't want to be mean at all, but I do think that narcissism is death and

01:38:39.780 I feel like it encourages it.

01:38:41.940 Do you think that?

01:38:43.180 I think a lot of, I mean, there are some modalities that I've never tried myself that are like,

01:38:50.020 for example, one is called somatic experiencing therapy.

01:38:53.920 I think, um, to my understanding, it's actually about getting you out of your mind and into your

01:39:00.200 body.

01:39:00.700 So when you talk about, I'm anxious, they're like, what does that feel like in your body?

01:39:05.680 It's like yoga kind of.

01:39:06.720 Yeah.

01:39:07.020 And so I think there are some modalities.

01:39:09.060 I'm sure there are a million great kinds of therapy with the traditional, like, let's

01:39:12.100 talk about your mother kind of thing.

01:39:13.900 I totally agree with you.

01:39:14.920 It teaches you to navel gaze. 1.00

01:39:17.240 It teaches you that whatever like fleeting emotion or thought is in your head.

01:39:23.000 It's like so important, most important thing in the world, nothing else matters, but your

01:39:29.360 own upset.

01:39:30.780 And if you think about it, if you scale outwards and imagine that at scale, it's like, what

01:39:36.720 do you get?

01:39:37.260 You get the social order that we have right now where everyone is driven, not I'm being

01:39:41.600 a little sensational here, but where so many people are driven by their outrage, driven

01:39:46.680 by their fear.

01:39:49.380 And I, my, you know, unscientific theory that I just based on my own experience and what

01:39:55.660 I've seen in so many people is like, I can't help but wonder how much of that is because

01:40:00.620 a lot of these people grew up therapeuticized and taught to prioritize and privilege how they

01:40:07.380 feel all the time and then like decide what should happen next based on that.

01:40:11.960 Like, I am outraged, like you hurt my feelings, like now let's cancel you or, you know, I

01:40:19.760 think the therapeutic element here is potentially a significant piece.

01:40:25.100 Well, it's the same, it's the same people, you know, a hundred percent of the people who've

01:40:29.300 ever yelled at me in public are from the demographic that you're describing.

01:40:33.440 And I don't want to be more precise because I don't want to make race or class part of it,

01:40:37.440 but it, it, it's very noticeable.

01:40:39.200 You know, it's people in expensive therapy programs who are mad at their husbands and 0.96

01:40:44.260 like talking a lot about themselves.

01:40:46.460 Those are the ones who scream at me.

01:40:47.640 I've just noticed that.

01:40:48.700 Yeah.

01:40:48.820 Yeah.

01:40:48.880 I'm not surprised.

01:40:50.040 I'm not surprised.

01:40:50.880 Yeah.

01:40:50.980 And it's so, when you, to, to me, the, one of the great tragedies of this is that when

01:40:57.440 you, you know, the, because there are so few visible spaces in our culture right now where

01:41:04.120 you can get help that isn't a paid service, you know, people just, they, they just don't

01:41:11.100 even realize that's an option in the first place.

01:41:13.300 They're so, we've been so disempowered by all these helping industries that have billions

01:41:19.740 and billions of dollars to make off of us thinking we need them, um, that, that people

01:41:24.300 don't even realize the power and capacity they have to, to be with someone in great distress.

01:41:29.640 Like, you know, because of the work that I do and the work that my husband does, like

01:41:34.860 we are, we are often like our home, for example, we have a spare bedroom and the way we live

01:41:41.040 our lives is like, we have a spare bedroom.

01:41:42.880 Like if you are in a crisis, you're feeling lost and, you know, like we know you and we

01:41:48.980 trust you, like come, come stay and eat dinner with us and, you know, hang out with our yelling,

01:41:56.260 we are yelling children and just be with us in our lives.

01:42:02.200 And, you know, you're making me emotional.

01:42:05.540 That's like such a, and you know, of course we are in a position where we have a house

01:42:09.420 with an extra room.

01:42:10.760 Like I'm, I'm mindful that so much of my story, and I try to talk about this all the

01:42:14.960 time, like class economic factors are a huge, are a huge factor here.

01:42:22.400 So I acknowledge that not everyone can do this if they wanted to, but just as an example,

01:42:27.880 there's someone we know in our neighborhood who just all, all anonymize the descriptors

01:42:34.820 just to protect them.

01:42:36.080 They're young.

01:42:37.320 They got psychiatrized as a teen.

01:42:40.980 Bad things had happened to them.

01:42:42.400 They ended up, instead of those bad things being addressed, they ended up getting sent to

01:42:46.660 a psychiatrist and diagnosed and medicated.

01:42:49.300 Now they're in their early twenties and they really haven't yet figured out how to be an

01:42:55.500 adult in the world because they're just emerging from the psychiatric nightmare, so to speak.

01:43:01.400 So this person called me up a couple months ago and I have to stop saying that she was on

01:43:09.760 her way. 0.74

01:43:10.400 She was on her way to the hospital.

01:43:11.820 She's like, I love your commitment to good grammar.

01:43:13.760 I just love that.

01:43:15.160 That is one benefit of the high school and college you went to.

01:43:18.720 It's like, it pains you to use a plural pronoun for a single.

01:43:25.500 I'm like, it's still anonymous.

01:43:26.820 I love that.

01:43:28.160 Thank you.

01:43:28.640 I hate the word they, not just because of the trans thing, but just.

01:43:31.740 Yeah, I couldn't do it.

01:43:33.040 And I think it's still, it's still, it's still anonymous enough.

01:43:35.860 There are a lot of women in my neighborhood. 1.00

01:43:38.420 51% of the population.

01:43:39.180 And she was like, I'm on my way to the hospital.

01:43:40.880 I think, I think I'm going to die.

01:43:42.220 I think I'm having a heart attack.

01:43:43.360 And so I instantly was like, I think she's having a panic attack.

01:43:46.820 And I was like, well, I was like, so what, what is it that you're wanting by going to

01:43:52.520 the ER?

01:43:52.980 And she's like, I don't know.

01:43:53.920 I don't know.

01:43:55.060 And then she started thinking it through and she's like, and I know what's going to

01:43:58.120 happen.

01:43:58.540 They're just going to admit me.

01:43:59.580 And I was like, and then, yeah, and then you'll be inpatient.

01:44:02.160 And then, and I just walked her through just to help her remember like how this goes.

01:44:06.380 Like you don't just go into the ER and then someone makes you a cup of tea and comforts

01:44:10.660 you and then sends you on your way.

01:44:11.880 You're like boarding sometimes for days on a psych ward with a security guard watching

01:44:16.820 you.

01:44:17.120 And then you're carted off to some psych ward and who knows how long you'll be there.

01:44:21.500 And then, you know, it just disrupts like potentially months of your life.

01:44:24.960 So, so I was like, why didn't you just, we're about to have dinner.

01:44:27.340 Cooper's almost done cooking.

01:44:28.960 Just come over and have dinner with us.

01:44:31.680 And she came over and she's just like the loveliest young woman who I see, I get so

01:44:37.800 emotional.

01:44:38.100 I see so much of me in her and she's like super lost right now.

01:44:42.380 She's just trying to emerge from this dark, dark experience of being a psych patient.

01:44:50.480 And so she comes into her house and the first thing she says is like, do you ever have thoughts

01:44:54.500 of killing yourself?

01:44:55.120 I'm like, girl, I'm like, me, of course we have, of course I have.

01:45:01.720 I mean, I don't think about that anymore, but literally every day for like a decade,

01:45:05.660 I was like, should I kill myself today?

01:45:08.200 And so what I think, and I could feel in her instantly like a shift and her poor parent 0.91

01:45:14.880 was out in the driveway, had been driving her.

01:45:17.220 And he was like a deer in headlights.

01:45:18.700 I was like, we're good.

01:45:20.980 You go on.

01:45:22.000 Like, we're good.

01:45:22.600 I'll touch base with you later.

01:45:23.560 And what she felt in me was that I wasn't afraid.

01:45:27.480 And instantly she, I could feel her be like, oh, and I was like, come on, let's go eat.

01:45:32.820 And we just sat down at the table, our yelling children are like, you know, being wild men.

01:45:39.340 And we didn't, we didn't over dramatize what she was in.

01:45:44.460 We just like had a regular dinner together.

01:45:46.300 And I could just feel her energetically, like settling in, opening up.

01:45:53.360 And she ended up staying with us for a week, staying, sleeping in our room.

01:45:56.460 Like we hadn't planned on it.

01:45:57.860 And just in that period of time, like all we did was offer her a space where she could be,

01:46:04.280 fully be herself in all of her darkness.

01:46:07.060 We weren't afraid of it.

01:46:08.140 But we, we, we, we didn't make a huge deal out of it.

01:46:13.200 We just like kind of brought her into our life and went on walks and we talked about stuff.

01:46:18.860 And she didn't need to talk a lot about stuff.

01:46:21.000 There was stuff to work through, but it was that simple.

01:46:24.900 And when I, you know, I, I recognize this might sound a bit romantic, you know, just,

01:46:31.860 and how, and how infeasible this kind of thing is for so many people to do.

01:46:35.700 What, human connection, love?

01:46:37.580 Yeah.

01:46:38.260 No, it's very possible.

01:46:40.900 I mean, I'm with you.

01:46:41.840 It's the most possible thing.

01:46:42.360 It's possible, but, but again, like our social order is set up in such a way where it feels

01:46:46.820 impossible for so many people.

01:46:48.440 Well, then commit the revolutionary act of loving someone one-on-one, non-judgmentally.

01:46:53.000 You bring them into your home, have dinner with them, make them sit there while your

01:46:56.500 kids cry.

01:46:56.960 Like that is the answer to everything, actually.

01:46:59.200 Yeah.

01:46:59.300 And it costs no money.

01:47:00.360 Yeah.

01:47:01.060 It, it pays the college, um, the college tuition of no children.

01:47:08.980 It's like just built on empathy.

01:47:11.280 It's, it's support built on empathy, not profit.

01:47:15.240 And that's, I think part of why a lot of people are pissed at me right now is that the, the nonprofit

01:47:21.960 that I started Intercompass Initiative that my husband Cooper now runs, um, our mission

01:47:28.980 is to help people make more informed choices about all of this stuff.

01:47:33.240 So like everything that you weren't told by your doctor, we have it available for free

01:47:36.960 on our website.

01:47:38.440 We teach you how to read a drug label.

01:47:40.120 We walk you through like how these drugs are researched and brought to market, the history

01:47:46.120 of the DSM, you know, psychiatry's so-called Bible of disorders, how unscientific it is.

01:47:51.980 Like it's literally based on voting.

01:47:53.820 You vote disorders in and out based on, you know, the opinions of these, the committee members,

01:48:00.640 most, many of whom have drug company money.

01:48:03.320 So we, we provide all of that for free, but really the most radical, which of course is

01:48:09.540 like not radical thing we do is we help people help each other.

01:48:13.780 So like mutual aid in the, in the most pure sense of the word, like AA, like that, that,

01:48:19.180 that support that you offer and receive from fellow humans who've been where you've been.

01:48:26.680 And it's, it's driven not by the desire to make money, but because of love and, and,

01:48:33.400 and service.

01:48:34.880 And to me, that's the biggest threat to the mental health industry is when enough people

01:48:39.480 realize I have the power and the people, you know, in my neighborhood, of course, many

01:48:46.000 people don't even know their neighbors.

01:48:47.100 And that's a problem when you, when you band together and you realize like we can help each

01:48:52.140 other through dark nights of the soul, like think about how much, how, how many services

01:48:59.380 and prescriptions and facilities will be no longer needed.

01:49:08.900 And yeah, the fact that that's a radical concept and a dangerous one, you're not a doctor.

01:49:14.160 I mean, the number of times you're like, you should be sued.

01:49:16.860 You're practicing medical advice.

01:49:19.060 I'm like, how is speaking about my own experiences, practicing unsolicited medical advice or whatever

01:49:28.140 it is, they say.

01:49:29.300 It's just, it's wild how dehumanized we've all been by these industries that, that convince

01:49:39.640 us we don't have the power to be with our pain, to be with each other in pain.

01:49:46.340 So I was really moved by that.

01:49:47.660 I will say like emotionally moved by that.

01:49:49.560 And I, a couple wise people in my life have convinced me of something in the last year

01:49:55.200 or so, which is stop being shocked by evil that you see in the world.

01:49:58.980 That's the status quo.

01:50:00.140 It's always been that way.

01:50:01.260 If every time you see something horrible, hear your story about how kids are being put

01:50:05.620 on life destroying drugs, I can't believe that.

01:50:07.960 It's like, no, that's the way it is.

01:50:10.960 What we should be shocked by are acts of love and altruism and self-sacrifice.

01:50:16.200 And that's unnatural.

01:50:18.280 That's like supernatural.

01:50:19.860 That's what we should be thrilled by.

01:50:21.820 So I believe that.

01:50:23.260 I've come to believe that.

01:50:24.240 And I was just, I was absolutely thrilled and moved by the love that you showed to the,

01:50:29.400 your neighbor who's having a panic attack.

01:50:31.360 It's like, if everybody did that once a week, like we would, we'd be like living in the kingdom

01:50:36.260 of God.

01:50:36.860 I mean, that's like, anyway, that's my view.

01:50:38.400 Um, so, but I just want to, you've been very nice about psychiatrists and you gave him,

01:50:44.980 uh, the benefit of the doubt that these are people of goodwill.

01:50:47.280 And I love to hear you do that and give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

01:50:51.500 However, I, I, maybe I think you're being a little generous.

01:50:55.060 Like how can they keep doing something that's not working?

01:51:00.340 And why is it that I'm sure they're a great psychiatrist, but I've known a number of psychiatrists 0.97

01:51:04.640 and they're the craziest people I've ever met in my life with the most screwed up personal 0.93

01:51:08.120 lives. 0.99

01:51:08.520 Like they have no standing to give other people life advice.

01:51:12.900 Like what?

01:51:14.640 So I don't know.

01:51:15.320 Am I being too mean?

01:51:16.880 I mean, I think you're asking an important question. 0.79

01:51:19.300 And I think, you know, to the question of why, why do screwed up people become psychiatrists? 0.90

01:51:27.620 I think, you know, speaking for myself as a screwed up person, you know, you're on a, on a quest 0.90

01:51:33.380 to understand yourself and, and because the only visible place where, not the only, but the

01:51:40.760 primary visible place in our culture where you go to do that is psychiatry or psychology.

01:51:47.740 When you yourself are screwed up and then you think about what you want to do with your life,

01:51:52.780 whether you're conscious of this or not, I do think maybe that's why you're pulled to

01:51:56.980 this field.

01:51:59.040 I get it.

01:51:59.560 Okay.

01:52:00.100 That's not a bad reason.

01:52:01.140 And it's not, it's not a justification or an excuse for them, but I do think a lot of

01:52:06.660 people come to this profession from a place of true, originally at least, like true curiosity

01:52:13.520 and, and openness.

01:52:16.120 And desire to help.

01:52:17.000 Exactly.

01:52:17.720 Exactly.

01:52:18.220 I had problems.

01:52:18.560 I want to help other people.

01:52:19.240 I think that's, well, you clearly feel that way in your own life.

01:52:22.360 So that's a good thing.

01:52:23.860 I guess what I'm saying is you want wise people, compassionate, empathetic people who really

01:52:29.700 are putting others at the center of their lives.

01:52:31.920 That's the profile of the, of the healer.

01:52:34.600 And I, there are some exceptions.

01:52:36.520 Anna Lemke at Stanford is a wonderful person, psychiatrist, but.

01:52:41.080 Yeah.

01:52:41.280 She is right there on the cover.

01:52:42.840 Oh, see, really?

01:52:43.580 There on the bottom.

01:52:45.100 She's, she is a huge exception to everything I'm saying.

01:52:48.660 But, but in general, like you don't feel a lot of wisdom coming off these people.

01:52:52.440 And my, what I think is part of why that ends up happening is that the, the indoctrination

01:53:02.300 that young medical students, because I think this, this goes beyond just psychiatry to much

01:53:08.040 of kind of allopathic medicine where, where doctor, young doctors or, you know, young medical

01:53:14.480 school students are, you know, in, in year one, for example, I think to my understanding

01:53:20.800 at the beginning, at least pre COVID, maybe things have changed with COVID, but the beginning

01:53:25.640 of your first year, you're given your cadaver.

01:53:29.600 And I can't remember who, where I read this, but I read it many years ago from, from someone

01:53:36.240 who was writing critically about the medical enterprise and basically saying that it's very

01:53:41.340 deliberate. You enter into medical school because you want to help, you want to help heal. And

01:53:46.760 then the first thing that you are thrown into is basically this experience of having this object

01:53:51.800 in front of you who once was your fellow brother or sister, and is now just an object that you're

01:53:57.020 going to cut apart. I think that's a, it's really like a degradation ritual that, that you are put

01:54:05.740 through so that you can separate yourself from this fellow human, and it becomes a specimen.

01:54:11.080 It becomes an object, an it. And so I think this phenomenon happens across medicine where,

01:54:18.960 you know, you have an issue with your thyroid or whatever body part, part of you, and you sit in

01:54:27.680 front of a specialist who is trained to just see you as, you know, they are trained to not emote.

01:54:34.120 They are trained, you are actually, as a doctor, not meant to feel too much because how could you

01:54:40.080 sustainably do this for decades if you're just emoting all the time and, and opening yourself

01:54:44.960 up and being vulnerable? Like, you're meant to be closed off.

01:54:48.880 Who came up with that idea?

01:54:50.940 I don't know. I mean, I don't know enough about-

01:54:52.340 You weep over your children. You laugh with your children. Like, you're so emotionally engaged with

01:54:57.000 your children at all times if you're a good parent, and that's the way to parent them. That's the way to

01:55:02.020 heal them. I don't, I don't get it.

01:55:05.400 Yeah. I mean, I don't think you could survive. I don't, because I don't think it, it's feasible to

01:55:11.460 cross. So let's go back to psychiatry. You know, if you're, as a psychiatrist, let's say you work for

01:55:16.680 40 years, so you cross paths with thousands and thousands of people, you don't have the bandwidth

01:55:20.900 to fully emote and, and be open and be vulnerable. You have to, to survive that. I mean, my view is

01:55:28.680 that, and, and knowing many mental health professionals, like, you either, if you are,

01:55:33.800 if you stay in touch, like, you can't stay in touch with your heart and your humanity and last

01:55:40.880 for decades in this. You either have to numb out and, and disconnect and, and come to view your

01:55:47.180 patients as these other, like, you have to other them and just see them as lists of symptoms to

01:55:53.180 write scripts for, like, or you, like, quit or have a breakdown or, like, you, it's, I have to imagine

01:56:00.340 that it is not possible to be fully in touch with your own humanity for decades, immersed in the

01:56:08.840 suffering and struggle of, like, thousands of people. So I, I almost, like, I feel for the spot that.

01:56:16.100 I do too. I just, but there's an irreconcilable problem at the core of it, which is you can't

01:56:22.060 heal people without loving them, period. You can't actually make the best decision for somebody 1.00

01:56:28.520 else unless you love that person. So, um, and in the absence of love, you wind up with a system

01:56:34.380 like the one you're describing where we're destroying people. And like, there's a lot of

01:56:38.300 evidence that we're destroying people and we're continuing to do it. So like, what does that tell

01:56:41.840 you? They don't love those people. You're raising, I mean, this is the fundamental, like,

01:56:46.120 kind of philosophical, spiritual dilemma of the modern mental health industry is that

01:56:51.920 when, yeah, when you commodify care and you turn it into a service, you can't love because

01:56:59.660 you can't, they're in Congress with each other. And so if what you're saying is true, which,

01:57:06.080 which I believe, you know, what does that mean for the legitimacy of the kind of foundations

01:57:13.080 of this massive, like mega billion dollar industry that, you know, cause it's so many, it's obviously

01:57:20.160 drug companies, the hospital industry, managed care, it's psychiatry, psychology, social work,

01:57:24.980 it's medical device companies. It's, you know, just all the industries that supply hospitals

01:57:31.280 with food. And I mean, when you think about how much money is made off of commodifying the

01:57:36.440 care of suffering people and medicalizing that suffering, you know, it's, we're in quite

01:57:43.800 a dilemma here. And this isn't me saying like, blow up the mental health industry. Like it's

01:57:49.060 obviously, it exists. It's not going away tomorrow. But I do think like my view is what I want to

01:57:55.760 spend the rest of my life doing is helping people who in their heart feel that this isn't right for

01:58:02.280 them. Like if you feel helped by your meds, you love your psychiatrist, all the power to you. Like

01:58:08.120 that's, I'm truly happy for you. But if something in you is like, is this my answer? Like, is this

01:58:14.120 really helping me? Is there something different, something more? Like if something in you is calling

01:58:21.660 you to that question, like those are the people who, who I want to, who I want to reach, who I

01:58:28.600 want to connect with. And I think slowly over time, the more of us, the more of us asking these

01:58:36.180 questions and forging different paths, like slowly over time, the demand for this industry will

01:58:41.980 lessen. And I mean, this is probably going to be multi-generation evolution here. It's not going

01:58:49.700 to change overnight. But when enough people with each passing decade, we actually meet their

01:58:55.740 neighbors, like go literally knock on the doors of their neighbors with a pot of soup, saying like,

01:59:00.580 hi, we've lived next to each other for five years. Like, I'm just, let's just finally meet each other.

01:59:06.160 You know, like when enough people do that, and then band together for potluck dinners, for crisis

01:59:12.340 networks, like imagine one of my fantasies is that it's a three streets. So we live on a,

01:59:18.580 and a grid and the street next to us on either side. Like, you know, I've thought often about

01:59:24.200 making a flyer, putting it in the mailbox of every single person and being like, let's all get

01:59:29.000 together and meet. Let's all share our stories with each other, figure out who has what tools that we

01:59:35.640 can exchange and borrow, figure out who has extra bedrooms in case, you know, if your kid is in a

01:59:41.820 crisis and you need a break, come on over here, you know, to really get that grassroots about it.

01:59:46.760 Like this might sound crazy to you, but I'm like, imagine if every town and every city across the

01:59:53.860 country, like enough people realize how much power they have.

01:59:57.380 Lived normal lives like people have always lived.

01:59:59.320 Like how we used to, pre-industrial revolution.

02:00:02.120 Right. So, um, I think most people, I'm definitely in the category would trade life expectancy for

02:00:06.740 that. It's like, oh, it's been, modernity has been such a huge win. Antibiotics. I'm not against

02:00:11.480 antibiotics. I'm against, you know, I'm for long life expectancy, but like you also have to

02:00:16.740 acknowledge what was lost.

02:00:18.000 Well, I know life expectancy is dropping.

02:00:19.960 Well, I'm aware. I'm highly aware.

02:00:22.120 You don't even have that.

02:00:23.740 Okay. So I've got two more big questions for you. The first is how did you go from being like

02:00:29.940 damage to the point of attempting suicide repeatedly, like the most damage you can be and still

02:00:35.020 be alive to being someone with, I can say, having interviewed thousands of people, a person

02:00:40.600 of unusual wisdom, but truly unusual wisdom. How, how did that happen? Like, what was the

02:00:46.480 moment where you set upon the path of liberation?

02:00:52.480 Well, I think, I think, so my, my turning point, when I realized like this, this industry doesn't

02:01:02.220 have my answers, um, happened when I was 27, it was 2010. Um, I was, I, you know, just months of

02:01:14.640 just unfolding dysfunction and craziness. And, um, and I found myself in a substance abuse

02:01:24.280 day program because I had decided to quit drinking specifically because I had been convinced that 0.98

02:01:32.640 maybe the reason why all these meds weren't helping me was because I was getting shit faced 0.98

02:01:36.420 every night. And if I, 0.97

02:01:37.360 I mean, so the booze is getting in the way of the pills.

02:01:41.680 Yeah. I mean, they were making rather than, I mean, which was true. Yes, this is true. The

02:01:48.220 booze was complicating things, but of course the booze was also what was keeping me alive. Like

02:01:52.820 ironically getting drunk was the one thing that kept me from killing myself for literally years

02:01:58.560 because at least I didn't care how messed up my life was. So, so I had been very resistant to

02:02:04.740 quitting drinking for that reason. And then, you know, on my, what ended up being my second to

02:02:10.720 last hospitalization, just for whatever reason I heard, I heard this message from a mental health

02:02:17.760 worker about maybe try not drinking. And, and I think because I was still holding onto hope that

02:02:24.100 maybe the meds would one day help me. I was like, okay, okay. Because maybe he's right. If I stopped

02:02:29.480 drinking my super treatment resistant bipolar disorder, like maybe now it will be treated.

02:02:35.640 So I was in this substance abuse day program. I was living with my aunt and uncle who had generously

02:02:42.800 offered up their home to me. And the psychopharmacologist on my like, you know, five person

02:02:51.040 treatment team, um, kind of caught wind that I was like having a hard time and maybe becoming suicidal,

02:02:59.140 which, which I was. And he, he was like, you know what, Laurel, why don't you get a, take a break?

02:03:05.500 Like, why don't you go over to the short term unit and just, you know, so you can feel safe. And I was

02:03:11.280 like, you're right. I wanted to go. I loved, I was so afraid of myself that I loved going onto psych

02:03:18.660 words because it was the only place where I felt safe for myself. So I, I was like into it. I loved it.

02:03:25.440 So I was like, great idea. I just want to go home first. Let me get my belongings.

02:03:30.540 It's just not fun going onto a locked ward without anything, like any of your comforting

02:03:35.860 possessions. And he's like, oh, I can't let you do that. I was like, what do you mean? He's like,

02:03:41.060 well, you're suicidal right now. So I have to take you directly there. I can't let you leave.

02:03:47.140 And I was like, I just told you I want to go. Like I'm coming back. I really mean it. And I meant that

02:03:51.160 I was. He's like, I'm sorry. And I, something in me, it kind of like really outrage ignited in me.

02:03:58.800 And I was like, this isn't fair. Like I'm coming back. And I started to raise my voice and I started

02:04:03.480 to get more angry. He ended up calling security and a couple of security guards came on by and

02:04:11.900 they escorted me over to this unit and they gave me the so-called choice of going voluntarily or

02:04:17.800 involuntarily. Well, this progressed quickly, didn't it? Oh my gosh. In a matter of, you know,

02:04:24.020 15 minutes and never in my wildest dreams had I ever considered that I might once be faced with

02:04:31.580 this kind of situation because I had been this good little mental patient for so many years doing

02:04:37.340 everything my doctor said, always saying yes, taking my meds as prescribed. It's like so diligent and

02:04:44.440 good at what I was doing as a patient. And now here I was non-compliant. And that recognition that

02:04:54.180 my psychiatrist had the power to strip me of my civil liberties and incarcerate me on a unit,

02:05:01.960 stripping me of my right to fresh air and freedom, dislodged this like deep, deep faith that I had always

02:05:09.160 had, not all, I mean, not at the very beginning, but from age 18 on that I had had in this system.

02:05:16.000 And I had two more experiences like that where I was, you know, made to take a drug that I didn't

02:05:21.240 want to take. And then after I had been discharged from that, what would be my last hospitalization?

02:05:28.940 I slept through a therapy appointment because I was so tranquilized by that drug.

02:05:32.840 And my therapist called the cops to do a wellness check on me, which I talk about in the book.

02:05:41.400 Those three experiences with basically the power that psychiatry has to force you to do things you

02:05:50.640 don't want to do made me step back and just start questioning all of it. And it was in that

02:05:58.060 questioning space that, and the fact that I had quit drinking, I hadn't yet found AA. So I was like

02:06:05.380 really fucking miserable because I just like, just stopped. I removed the one thing that I had 0.91

02:06:09.600 for relief without doing any work on myself. So I was really, really miserable. But in that space

02:06:16.880 opened up this new curiosity, like, who would I be off of these meds? I've been on these meds since

02:06:25.740 I was a kid. Like, I've never known myself as an adult off meds. Like, what would my baseline

02:06:31.360 look like? What would my personality be like? How would I think? What would I care about? What

02:06:38.280 would my body look like? Like, I just suddenly started wondering these things. And because I was

02:06:43.600 questioning the power, the psychiatric power, basically, I just, like, I just opened up to

02:06:51.220 the possibility that not all was as it seemed. And then it was in that space that I found a book

02:06:59.720 by a medical journalist named Robert Whitaker. The book is called Anatomy of an Epidemic. And

02:07:06.300 in a nutshell, he was curious about the fact that outcome, long-term outcomes for people diagnosed

02:07:15.000 with schizophrenia, are much better in the, you know, so-called third world. And countries where

02:07:21.500 we don't have, where they don't have these sophisticated medicines. And he was, like,

02:07:26.100 intrigued by that. Like, why are outcomes better in poor countries that don't have a lot of drugs?

02:07:31.840 Because he had been under the assumption that these drugs are these great, amazing things. And so he

02:07:36.540 did this deep dive investigation and basically posits this very compelling, makes this very

02:07:46.140 compelling case that if you look at long-term data on psych drugs, on the whole, they're making us

02:07:52.680 sicker, more disabled. And there I was on five psych drugs, previous 10 years of my life that I'd been 0.97

02:08:00.660 this compliant patient, like, progressively falling apart every month, month after month after month.

02:08:06.540 I was physically sick, all these chronic health issues, no friends, couldn't work, suicidal all 0.99

02:08:12.440 the time, totally financially dependent on my family, like a fucking mess. And in that beautiful, 0.99

02:08:19.980 terrifying moment of, like, starting this book, I realized, like, holy shit, what if it's not 0.99

02:08:25.320 treatment-resistant mental illness? What if it's the treatment? 0.99

02:08:30.220 It's coming from inside the house!

02:08:32.240 That's, like, really, wow.

02:08:39.700 And that was, like, the beginning of, that set me on this path that I've been on ever since,

02:08:46.500 where I just knew I had to find out who I would be off of these drugs. Like, I had to find out.

02:08:54.140 And in the beginning, when I was still, like I said, I, you know, I still believed I had bipolar

02:08:59.780 disorder. I still believed in the chemical imbalance theory. Like, I wasn't even questioning

02:09:03.340 any of that stuff yet. But I was just like, I want to find out what my untreated bipolar state is.

02:09:09.060 Like, at least let me see. Maybe I could manage it, you know, without meds or, you know, so I started

02:09:14.040 there. But I quickly began to educate myself about the DSM, you know, this textbook that the entire

02:09:23.500 psychiatric enterprise is built around, you know, oh, you have four out of seven of these symptoms,

02:09:28.520 it means you have this. Oh, you have three out of five of them, it means you have that. And of

02:09:31.900 course, our insurance system is built around it for billing codes. It's what the whole entire

02:09:37.320 psychiatric research enterprise has been built around. Like, it, this textbook that I had just

02:09:43.700 assumed for all these years was this, like, rigorously researched, like, scientific text.

02:09:49.320 I quickly realized it's, like, completely subjective, completely unscientific. And even

02:09:55.220 the NIMH, you know, itself and, like, all of these kind of key opinion leaders in psychiatry admit

02:10:01.780 this. This is not controversial to say. I learned that very quickly. And that was just the first,

02:10:06.800 like, onion layer of self-education that I basically just kept going deeper into. And I realized,

02:10:13.600 like, every single fucking thing that I believed about myself, like, through the most formative years of 0.97

02:10:18.700 my life, about my suffering, about my mind, about everything, was, was, like, a marketing 0.99

02:10:26.800 trick. Like, everything I thought I knew. And it was terrifying to face this. Like, my whole world

02:10:34.280 fell apart. I had no idea who, who I was, because all that I had been for so long was so-called mentally

02:10:40.860 ill. And so, but I just was so determined to, like, figure it out. And then, God, I had been born

02:10:48.040 into a family who could provide for me and, like, literally put a roof over my head while I did.

02:10:54.240 Because I, when I then came off of these drugs, way too fast. And I want to make sure we, like,

02:11:00.760 talk about this. Because I had no idea that all of these drugs I'd been on for all of these years had

02:11:08.460 completely changed my central nervous system. And, and that my brain was physically dependent on

02:11:14.980 them. You had no idea? No idea. So, the physicians who prescribed them never told you that?

02:11:20.040 Never told me. Never told me. They should be arrested. That's what I think. Well, what's wild,

02:11:24.240 Tucker, is that it is not even, you know, in certain, certain drug labels acknowledge dependence,

02:11:30.300 like benzodiazepines. Those drug labels will acknowledge dependence. Yeah, because you can die

02:11:35.160 getting off them. Yeah, you can have seizures if you stop them abruptly. But a lot of drug labels say

02:11:42.340 nothing about this. And the establishment, you know, authorities often do not acknowledge this,

02:11:51.920 at least not for, like, all of the psych drugs. Benzos, maybe they do. But antidepressants,

02:11:56.880 mood stabilizers, you know, obviously the sleep aids, which are very similar chemically to

02:12:02.640 benzos, um, stimulants. All of them are psychoactive chemicals that, you know, when you take them

02:12:09.820 regularly for years, like, are, you are going to become dependent on them. And so, because I didn't

02:12:16.560 know that, I didn't know that I needed to taper off really slowly. And by slow, I don't mean like a few

02:12:26.100 weeks or a few months. Like, people who've been on these drugs for any length of time, especially like

02:12:32.020 a decade or longer, often need years of tapering. Years. I'm not even kidding you, Tucker, because the

02:12:39.460 withdrawal symptoms can be so debilitating if, if they try going faster. And the, and, and, uh, I feel

02:12:46.560 like I've said the word insidious like 30 times in this interview, but so much of it is insidious.

02:12:51.140 The insidious thing is that because our public does not understand how dependence forming these

02:12:57.900 drugs are, and because doctors don't realize it, and are certainly not telling their patients this, 0.93

02:13:03.620 when people come off their psych meds too quickly, and they feel like shit, intense anxiety, insomnia,

02:13:10.520 despair, panic, you know, paranoia, whatever ends up happening, they're told, oh, you're having a relapse 0.98

02:13:17.320 of your illness. Like, see, this is why you need to stay on your meds. So it keeps people in this

02:13:23.320 vicious cycle for literally decades, because when they try to stop, they feel horrible, and then they

02:13:29.680 use that as a reason to go back on. Yeah, he's off his meds. I mean. Exactly. He's off his meds.

02:13:36.560 Exactly. And to return to the mass shooter thing for a minute, like, you know, this is just total

02:13:42.360 speculation on my part, but obviously, like, the narrative is often like, oh, these were mentally

02:13:49.120 ill people who were untreated. That's why they committed these, this violence. I can't help but

02:13:55.580 wonder, I mean, I think in the case of James Holmes, I know in his journals, I can't, if I'm-

02:14:01.360 He complained about being on psych meds.

02:14:02.680 And how weird they made him feel. So it's like, did he stop them cold turkey? Because he was like,

02:14:08.220 I don't like how I feel. I mean, I'm just speculating. I'm just, I'm truly asking that

02:14:12.920 question from a place of curiosity. But people assume if you're off your meds, like, that's your

02:14:19.460 illness. Whatever you're doing is because you're mentally ill. It's never like, oh, because you're 0.99

02:14:23.120 in acute withdrawal. And I think my hope is that, especially now with the growing awareness,

02:14:30.820 just more broadly in our society about the ways we've been betrayed by medical authorities,

02:14:36.960 you know, I think more and more people, you know, the 66 million people on these drugs,

02:14:43.020 more of them are going to realize they might want to pursue a different path for themselves. And my

02:14:48.880 fear is that they won't know about dependence and how important it is to taper slowly. They'll come off

02:14:56.280 too fast. And it will be like, talk about a crisis. I mean, I have friends who, who's came off like

02:15:04.480 antidepressants, for example, basically in a couple of weeks, because that's what they were told to do.

02:15:10.540 They were bedridden. Like one friend I'm thinking of in particular, she had been on an antidepressant

02:15:15.180 and a benzo, always taken as prescribed for work-related anxiety. She went to a detox facility

02:15:21.920 because she wanted to come off of them. They ripped her off in two weeks. And she was bedridden

02:15:27.780 for like two years because every time she stood up, she would have vertigo and she'd like fall over.

02:15:33.240 She couldn't stand, let alone walk to her car, let alone drive for like two years. She had to move

02:15:39.680 in with her. She was like 40 years old. She was like moving with her parents. That's just one of like

02:15:44.780 hundreds of thousands. Maybe that's like at least a hundred thousand stories online of people who

02:15:51.080 didn't have this information from their doctors, came off too fast, often at their doctor's

02:15:58.600 instruction because the doctors have no idea. You are taught how to put people on these drugs,

02:16:03.780 not how to get them off. And so people often only figure this out after the fact, when they're

02:16:10.540 already destabilized and withdrawal, not knowing what the hell is happening to them, freaking out.

02:16:15.260 And then they start Googling. And then they find this online community of like, at this point,

02:16:21.200 like thousands of Facebook groups and online forums. They find our nonprofit, Intercompass Initiative.

02:16:26.820 They start to learn about what they just did. And they're like, oh my God, I had no idea.

02:16:33.160 Sometimes people recover from withdrawal within weeks or months. Sometimes it takes years.

02:16:38.660 It took years for me, really. And because I had a family, again, who could provide for me,

02:16:44.600 like I made it through. But I often think about how many people don't have the resources that I had

02:16:50.140 access to. I'm like, I wouldn't have survived this if I didn't have a family who could literally

02:16:56.800 provide for me because I could not function. And 66 million people are on this stuff. Like,

02:17:04.240 this is a real crisis. That's, this is the real crisis here that we need to be talking about.

02:17:12.180 Oh, that's a, it's a horrifying story.

02:17:17.240 Um, how long did it take you to recover?

02:17:20.860 The first year I would say was like every day was hell. Like showering was a success. Like if I took

02:17:29.060 a shower, I'm like, I had a really good day. Um, I was living with my, I ended up living with my

02:17:35.340 aunt and uncle for almost a year. They opened their home to me as I went on this journey. And, you know,

02:17:42.540 everyone was scared because everyone in my family believed I had this serious brain disease and like

02:17:48.240 someone with diabetes needs insulin, you know, I need to be like that whole thing. Like she could

02:17:52.020 die. Like, you know, but my God bless my aunt and uncle. They just let me be a mess.

02:18:01.760 You have a very nice family. Just nice. They sound like nice people.

02:18:05.620 I'm, I'm really, really lucky. I mean, so many people who want, who would want the same things

02:18:15.020 that I wanted, you know, with, with getting off these drugs, like do not have

02:18:18.540 anything like a supportive family. I'm so lucky. I would, I really would not be here. I would

02:18:25.420 literally, I would literally be dead. And so I lived with them for basically a year and I was super active

02:18:31.400 in, in AA at that time because I had quit drinking and thank God for AA. I mean, I went to meeting every

02:18:38.780 morning and every night and I didn't even realize at the time that like most of my struggles were because

02:18:44.760 I was in cold Turkey withdrawal because I came off five drugs in six months, which is like cold

02:18:50.220 Turkey. Like I didn't know, I thought that was, I had, that would have shocked me if you've told me

02:18:56.480 that was cold Turkey. I'm like, what do you mean? I took half a year. And so I would just go to AA

02:19:01.560 meetings because I was like so messed up. I was so paranoid and insecure and like, I couldn't talk.

02:19:08.840 I felt like I couldn't articulate myself. And I just had, I was such a mess, but I had a meeting

02:19:16.600 every morning and every night. And like, I didn't even realize it was withdrawal for a while. It

02:19:21.120 didn't matter. Like just being able to talk to other people about the most vulnerable, painful parts of

02:19:29.120 my daily reality. Like what a gift. I'm so grateful for AA. I would say around a year off, I started to

02:19:37.540 feel less shitty. Like I kind of like between years one and three, I, I like progressively

02:19:46.780 felt better, you know, physically, especially cognitively, emotionally. And by year three,

02:19:57.960 I was, I, I, when I look back, I'm like, that was the year when I kind of like came alive again.

02:20:03.400 And I would actually have these, like, these are my fingers. Like I'm real. Like I'm here. Oh my God,

02:20:11.820 that's the sun. That's the sun. It feels warm on my cheek. Like literally that, that level of like,

02:20:16.240 I exist. Like, it was like so profound. And I, and I hadn't realized that I hadn't been exist. Like,

02:20:24.580 I didn't know what I had been missing. You know what I mean? It's like,

02:20:27.600 because my whole adult life I'd been on under the influence of these drugs. So it took me a long

02:20:34.540 time. And what I will say is that very early on, I found my purpose though. So like, even though I

02:20:41.440 was super fucked up in withdrawal, I started blogging about my experiences basically right after I, 0.73

02:20:51.140 right at the end of finishing coming off the drugs, because I had reached out that author, 0.53

02:20:55.940 that journalist who wrote that, Robert Whitaker, who wrote that book that had sparked my aha moment,

02:21:02.260 I had reached out to him and had asked if I could write for his website. Because I was like, you know,

02:21:08.640 I, I grew up psychiatrists. I have no idea who I am. Can I write about what this whole thing has been

02:21:15.600 like? And he said, sure. So I started blogging very early about what I was going through and began

02:21:24.060 hearing from people like all over the world. This was 2010. So this was like, not a commonly talked

02:21:30.300 about thing online. Like most people then were like, I love my meds. I've embraced my diagnoses.

02:21:36.980 And like, here I was being like, I'm an ex-mental patient. Like what the fuck just happened back 0.99

02:21:41.580 there? And so I just realized so early on and caught him so grateful. Like what I went through 0.99

02:21:49.020 actually has value. And, and if I take, it's not, it wasn't wasted time. Wasn't fruitless suffering,

02:21:59.400 meaningless suffering. Like this meant something, this means something. And if I, if I put myself

02:22:07.000 out there in the world and the more open I am about it, like the, the more, um, the more of a chance

02:22:16.540 I'll have it like actually helping others. And so I, even though I was super fucked up in withdrawal 0.96

02:22:21.400 for a while, like I, I was a lot, I was living, I was, I was like connecting. Um, and it was like, 0.66

02:22:30.380 what a gift. I mean, at this point now it's like thousands and thousands of people have either

02:22:34.780 emailed me or if like, I've met them at conferences or, you know, to me that if, you know, like the one

02:22:43.520 takeaway from my book, from my story that I want like every struggling person to leave with,

02:22:49.540 if I could leave them with one thing is like, you're suffering means something. Like it is so

02:22:53.600 much more than just faulty brain pathology, which is bullshit. First of all, like not even true, but 0.99

02:22:58.860 it's not wasted time. All is not lost. Like what you've been through might actually be the medicine

02:23:04.760 that another person needs. And like, I just, I'm, I'm so grateful for all of it. I wouldn't change

02:23:13.920 a minute of any of it because I'm just, this is my purpose. Like, this is what I'm, makes me cry.

02:23:20.000 Like, this is what I'm here to do is just literally just talk about how hard it is to be alive. And,

02:23:27.500 and, and, and just, you know, the power of store, the stories that we tell ourselves about what it

02:23:34.600 means to be human. Cause like, that's really all I've done. I've just changed the story. I let go

02:23:40.400 of this bullshit, medicalized, pharmaceuticalized story that I grew up believing in. And, um, and I'm 1.00

02:23:49.560 like, uh, kind of, I've found my way to an actually like human one. Like life is hard. Pain isn't

02:23:57.760 something to run away from. The best way to find your way to peace of mind is to get out of yourself.

02:24:05.640 Um, and, and like mutual aid and, and like the fellowship of other human beings is

02:24:15.560 so simple and oftentimes like so powerful, like to, to help you kind of find your way through

02:24:21.880 other people are the greatest gift. Let me ask you one final question. So I think any person listening

02:24:29.160 to this would conclude, you know, this is what it means to recover. This is victory. Like, you know,

02:24:35.920 once was lost, now I'm found. I mean, this is like the greatest story arc. How many of your

02:24:41.480 professional psychiatric caregivers have called you to say, congratulations? I'm so glad you're well.

02:24:47.620 None of them.

02:24:48.800 Okay. So that, um, we're going to end on that, Laura Delano, cause that just kind of tells the

02:24:52.900 whole story right there because it's not like you're in hiding and any, you know, you have an

02:24:58.000 unusual name. Anyone who treated you is probably aware of how you are now. And anyone who's not

02:25:03.780 thrilled by that is like serving darkness. That's my view, but I'm thrilled by it. So thank you so much

02:25:09.980 for doing this. Thanks for having me, Tucker. Oh my gosh. The best.

02:25:17.300 We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day. We know the people

02:25:21.700 who run it, good people. While you're here, do us a favor, hit follow and tap the bell so you never

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02:25:37.980 Thanks for watching.

The Tucker Carlson Show - June 06, 2025

Laura Delano： The Dark Truth About Antidepressants, SSRIs, and the Psychiatrists Lying for Profit

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