00:06:15.380I was born in 83, so I'm an elder millennial.
00:06:17.840So in the mid-90s, the whole mental health thing wasn't a part of the cultural zeitgeist in the way that it is now, especially for young people.
00:07:38.300It's literally through just observation.
00:07:39.960So you just describe how you're feeling, you describe what you're doing, and then the psychiatrist and their subjective opinion, you know, runs through the kind of checklist that they've been trained to go through, you know, with the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
00:07:57.140So it's like, oh, five out of seven is this.
00:15:48.980So suicide felt like the only way out.
00:15:50.920So it sounds like you had some psychosis going on.
00:15:52.580I probably could have been given a psychosis, a diagnosis of like psychotic disorder, not otherwise specified or something. I mean, I definitely had, especially when I wasn't sleeping, I would have these very kind of expansive thoughts where I was like deconstructing reality and, you know, language is a social construction. So like the words I'm using to think these thoughts, it's all, I would just get totally swept up in all the postmodern stuff.
00:16:15.880Like I just got all swept up in that. And so I just that winter of as an 18 year old, I was just desperate for help. And to go back to this whole, you know, DSM diagnosis thing, that desperation drove me to just want to, of my own volition, go back to psychiatry and just tell me what is wrong with me. I need your help. I need to understand why I feel this way. And I need relief.
00:16:40.100and I and I just I always try to like pause on that whenever I'm talking about my story because
00:16:46.520there's I don't know if you felt the same when you were first diagnosed with whatever your
00:16:52.620diagnosis is I can't wait to dive in more into it but I felt such relief like I'm not a bad person
00:16:57.980I'm not a fuck up I'm not lazy I'm sick and now I have a treatment that's gonna help me get better
00:17:04.360like hallelujah like that's how it felt oh yeah I um yeah I can relate to being like okay something
00:17:11.640is going to come and help me finally there's help is on the way yep I can certainly relate to that
00:17:16.200and we'll talk about some of my experience after after a little bit but um I want to hear more
00:17:20.120okay so you get this diagnosis and this feels helpful it feels so helpful I feel such relief
00:17:25.740like immediate relief you know I don't have to fight anymore I don't have to keep desperately
00:17:29.640searching for answers and to figure myself out. Like this doctor knows what's wrong with me and
00:17:35.740he has the solution. Like I'm good to go. And so of course the kind of perfectionist type A person
00:17:42.080that I was, I immediately applied that to being a patient. So I was just like so diligent about
00:17:47.080going to therapy and tracking my, how I was feeling and reporting symptoms. And I just,
00:17:53.320it became very quickly like the void of of meaning and purpose that my life had previously held
00:18:00.720was filled with a new purpose like treatment like you're a patient and your purpose is to get
00:18:08.000treatment and so I you know was put back on meds and then you know quickly two became three and
00:18:18.120you know I would be going in every week sometimes twice a week to do therapy I was going to
00:18:23.080McLean Hospital, which is, like, a 20-minute bus ride from Harvard, and it's, like, one of the
00:18:27.800oldest, you know, most established institutions in the country. It's where Sylvia Plath went.
00:18:32.900Oh, I can imagine. It's prestigious if it's there because the best doctors are right next door.
00:18:36.820Exactly, and so I think that's, with my background coming from, you know, a family with socioeconomic
00:18:42.860means, I always had, like, the best of the best care, which is an important part of my story that
00:18:51.040we'll come back to you um so yeah I just had this new sense of purpose and momentum and I was like
00:18:57.660you know we're gonna figure this out together my psychiatrist and me but with the you know with
00:19:02.560the passage of time inevitably you know I'd like not like I'd be on some med and then I'd have you
00:19:08.960know sleep problems or like panicky feelings and then I'd get on another med or they'd up the dose
00:19:14.340or they'd switch and just before I knew it I was on a handful of meds but at the time this felt like
00:19:22.240a really good thing because progress yeah because like more meds is better like the more they're
00:19:29.600caring for me and the more they're giving me like the better it's gonna be like it's just
00:19:35.980and so yeah if you're if you're bleeding profusely you would think that having more
00:19:41.220bandages would be helpful. That's such a good analogy. This is exactly it. And, and what was
00:19:45.760really this, you know, what was insidious about that too. And, and now if you look at our culture
00:19:52.660of like how girls and young women, you know, in this kind of like therapeuticized culture that
00:19:58.080we're in, like at the time, what started to happen for me is I began to feel like the more meds I was
00:20:06.200on like the more special I was and like the more people would understand how much pain I was in
00:20:12.060like the debutante of like diazepam or something gosh yes I love that totally I'm up on this stage
00:20:19.120look at me I'm so sick I have my baggie of five pill bottles and now I don't only have bipolar
00:20:27.360disorder I also have social anxiety disorder and eating disorder is that eventually came
00:21:00.060And so that was really just taken off back in like the early 2000s.
00:21:03.860And I – it was very much a part of my kind of – my journey through my teens and 20s with all this stuff was like how much of an identity it gave me.
00:21:16.720Yeah, you were like Amelia Earhart out there.
00:21:18.280You were just out there flying through the –
00:21:27.460And so, of course, like as I'm this good patient doing everything my doctor is telling me, reporting my symptoms, you know, we're up in the meds, this, that, my life isn't actually getting better.
00:21:38.600It's actually falling more and more apart.
00:21:41.660And I did manage to graduate college, but by the time I did, I had to take a year off.
00:25:45.820And I mean, it gets right to the heart of what I think the real crisis is that we're in here as a culture, which is we have forgotten what it means to be alive.
00:26:01.020And I think it's a lot of this has been fueled by the mental health industry, but it's more broadly just like consumer culture where we're just bombarded all the time with, do you feel uncomfortable?
00:26:10.880like buy this eat this do this you know it's just we've been so inculcated into thinking that
00:26:17.720discomfort and pain is a problem to fix and and we don't even realize that it's happened to us
00:26:23.600yes and and then when you have these like I do think crying is almost like a a political it's
00:26:29.800like a it's like political activism it feels to me because when it is such a powerful experience
00:26:36.620to feel a room of people like energetically unsettled when I'm crying with them because
00:26:43.620they they also feel me in my power like I am I am crying and like incredibly centered in myself
00:26:50.920and integrated and they're almost like I don't understand this I don't understand and I think
00:26:57.880more of us who are in touch with tears the sweat the sweat of grief and rage and all of it yeah
00:27:06.860confusion totally oh and alienation and loneliness and dude i'm if i saw my brain somewhere on the
00:27:12.960side of the road it would be sitting there it would probably be smoking i'm gonna be honest
00:27:17.320with you it wouldn't it be it wouldn't chain smoke but it would be having one and it would
00:27:20.840be like slumped over no i it would be still hopeful okay but it would be i think and it
00:27:26.400He would probably be eating some peanuts or something.
00:27:28.060He would have a little pocket full of peanuts.
00:28:28.920There are 4 million kids on psych meds.
00:28:31.780And this is like age 5 and up, like tiny children.
00:28:35.920Have we gotten lazy in how we try to solve psychiatric problems?
00:28:41.800I think I wouldn't call it our laziness as much as I would say that modern society, like modern industrialized consumer society, this like overly individualistic, you know, it's you on your own.
00:29:00.060you're meant to succeed and perform it's the this evolution of our modern culture itself that has
00:29:06.980actually made it impossible for us to to like really um deeply understand suffering in the way
00:29:16.400that you know in the grand scheme of human history we used to understand it and and so i don't think
00:29:23.380it's about laziness as much as it is like there's been a collective forgetting of what it means to
00:29:29.960suffer and how to bear suffering and how to make sense of suffering. But, but the world we live in
00:29:34.460also makes it impossible for so many people who might actually want to, you know, explore what
00:29:41.420they're going through in, in a deeper way. It makes it impossible because like, you got to pay
00:29:46.000the bills, nine to five job. Like you have mouths to feed, you have rent to pay. Right. We've made
00:29:51.900this society that's so demanding of you to do that you don't even have time to be or to self-reflect
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00:31:19.740This was a video by James Lee the other day, and he investigates a lot of this sort of thing, just what's going on in society.
00:31:27.480If you can't see this chart at home, it's just showing that since 1985, on average, rent prices have gone up 140 percent, whereas income has only gone up, it looks like about 38 to 40 percent.
00:31:43.700Yeah, I mean, and if – I'm so glad you pulled this up because this encapsulates the whole problem here.
00:31:51.260If you're struggling to make ends meet and there's significant consequences to not being able to make ends meet, of course you're going to feel depressed.
00:32:04.940Of course you're going to feel anxious.
00:32:06.800But what happens right now, the way our mental health industry has unfolded is if you go sit down in front of a diagnosing mental health professional, you're going to be told you have an illness in your brain that needs pills.
00:32:18.700when in fact you're actually having a healthy, logical, commonsensical,
00:32:24.420like natural response to what is the actually sick situation,
00:33:17.500By challenging this idea that all suffering is just like faulty brain chemistry, you're actually validating the reality of the suffering and the madness and the breakdowns that people are going through because you're saying like you're having a very real response that may be, you know, completely derailing your life, but it's a response.
00:33:41.940it's not it's not pathology that's it's not you that you need to fix what needs to be fixed is
00:33:48.320the situation and the culture and and and I'm so glad you brought up the medication thing too
00:33:54.620because people often you know hear me share my story or they read my book or whatever and they're
00:33:58.400like oh she's anti-medication she's shaming people who take medication she's telling people to stop
00:34:02.800like you just said like this is not about being against these medications I know tons of people
00:34:08.560who've been greatly benefited by taking these drugs.
00:34:35.520which also includes information about not just the medications, but also alternatives to them.
00:34:41.440Like a lot of people don't even have options like because they can't afford them because they're
00:34:46.240trying to pay their crazy rent, you know, and they wish they had other options, but a lot of
00:34:51.840people don't have them. And like, I completely get why meds have become the first line choice
00:34:56.680for so many people because they haven't been given anything else. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot
00:35:00.280of functional medicine options out there these days. I'm not saying that those are as good or
00:35:04.700not. I'm just starting to experiment with some of those myself, but I know that there are
00:35:08.620functional medicine options out there. Um, and also the, I believe that there's bigger,
00:35:14.800darker entities at play that are happy. If we are ill there, it's easier to subjugate.
00:35:21.080What does subjugate mean? Am I using it right? Yeah. To, to control, to dominate, to, to control.
00:35:26.220Yeah. Yeah. It's easier to subjugate. Um, if we're a little bit passive, if you're chasing
00:35:31.860the carrot the whole time you know it's easier and it's interesting because we've come across
00:35:36.800some very like huge things that have happened in society recently and you don't see a lot of um
00:35:42.240a lot of people outrage yes you don't protest you don't see much you see some but i think
00:35:49.640all of us are kind of shocked at like you know yeah with epstein files with choices that our
00:35:56.340government's making when do people you know when is there something that gets us to stand up
00:36:01.380and has that thing inside of us that makes us want to stand up has that been compromised at some level
00:36:07.060that we weren't even aware it was such a lullaby that we've been within yeah well everyone's taking
00:36:12.140their outrage to their therapist instead of to the streets instead of to their local you know
00:36:17.140politicians and to to the voting like it's or everybody's putting a pill in their outrage
00:36:22.960oh yeah that's what i want to you know it's like sometimes it's like yeah i just didn't know how
00:36:27.880how do i just like what am i are these even some of my feelings that i'm feeling like i just didn't
00:36:34.720know i haven't known sometimes when i'm on medicine and um i didn't know how i felt about
00:36:39.440so many things in some ways i didn't know what was being compromised inside of me at times like
00:36:44.000how i if it was affecting how i felt about uh family how i felt about myself if i could feel
00:36:50.560about myself i i've questioned even if antidepressants affect my relationship with my higher
00:36:55.300power too. And it's all kind of, um, yeah. So then when you take on the ideas that these
00:37:01.980antidepressants are, could be doing that, that makes, that's scarier than the, the reason why
00:37:09.540I got on them 20 years earlier was just cause I was getting out of a relationship and it was like
00:37:13.220kind of heartbreaking kind of stuff. So, um, okay, let's, let's get back into your story.
00:37:19.100You've gone through the debutante era. Um, where do you go from there?
00:37:22.780Yeah. Well, once I, you know, as I was saying, like after I had that total collapse, like around that time, then I went back willingly to the mental health system and I was basically just tell me what's wrong with me and give me whatever you think I need to fix it.
00:37:39.300And so that was when I clicked into this new, like I said, this new sense of purpose and meaning.
00:37:45.120Like this is what my life is about, just getting treatment so that I can finally one day feel okay in my skin.
00:37:52.360And so I really internalized this medicalized sense of myself, by which I mean this idea that I had a medical problem in my brain that had a medical solution, these prescriptions.
00:38:05.200and that just became like the kind of organizing principle of my life like I have a medical
00:38:11.200condition that I'm treating and that's my number one priority everything else comes after it
00:38:16.720and so the more kind of the the I became this good patient and the more treatment I sought and
00:38:22.320the more therapy more pills my life is falling more and more apart I'm getting physically sick
00:38:29.160weight gain, you know, digestive issues, skin issues, my hair's falling out,
00:38:34.700sleep problems. I'm getting more and more dysfunctional in my social relationships,
00:38:39.560just like really toxic situations with guys. I'm like losing friendships because I just can't
00:38:46.500stay connected and I can't feel bonded and I don't feel, I can't feel intimacy and my
00:38:52.340creativity's falling apart. Like everything's falling apart more and more as I move through
00:38:56.640my 20s being the good psychiatric patient on all these meds that are accumulating and you know
00:39:03.760hospitalizations start and I'm taking myself into the hospital I'm just like so desperate to lock me
00:39:09.080away from myself because I just feel I like I can't live anymore it gets to the to those points
00:39:15.700so it was feeling like that oh yeah totally so like you know multiple hospitalizations
00:39:20.920And by the time I was 25, I, you know, I'd managed to graduate from college years earlier, but ever since like hadn't been able to hold down a job had been dependent on my family. And like, because I was born into a family who could take care of me, like, thank goodness, like they kind of insulated me from what would have otherwise been, I don't even know what like a group home, like long term institution, I don't even know what.
00:39:45.780And by age 25, there I was like totally disabled, almost 200 pounds, no friends.
00:39:53.160I'm like constantly like achy and getting sick all the time.
00:39:56.720I'm constantly thinking about like how meaningless this life is.
00:40:01.220And my psychiatrist says like, you know, unfortunately, Laura, your bipolar disorder has progressed and you now have treatment resistant bipolar disorder.
00:40:10.660which was to me the most hopeless message i could possibly receive because i had literally spent all
00:40:17.520of those years leading up to it focused on treatment because i believed it would one day
00:40:21.780help me and i've been told like you have this brain disease like this is the only thing you
00:40:26.500that's really going to help you and now you're telling me it's not going to fucking help me like
00:40:29.920what and it was at that point that i that i overdosed like i i you know it was not it was
00:40:37.900i've been suicidal for years but in many ways thinking about
00:40:42.140killing myself like similar to booze when i was a total booze bag
00:40:46.440thinking about killing myself ironically kept me going longer
00:40:50.500like whether it was like at least i could get like why between alcohol and
00:40:54.500suicide it was like at least i can get shit face tonight
00:40:56.780so i don't care about what a mess my life is and with suicide it was
00:41:01.400i always have that power to end it so i can go another day
00:41:06.320so it was like these these these two dark companions on my shoulders that had ironically
00:41:12.320like kept me going and you know eventually it flipped and I was like it's time I have poured
00:41:20.060my heart into getting help like all these meds all these hospitals all these professionals look
00:41:27.000what I've put my family through I'm a total mess I can't work I can't support myself and I if all
00:41:33.880this is all that's in store for me for the rest of my life because I have this incurable brain
00:41:37.640disease like this isn't a life worth living and and when I oh you know I like you know flatline
00:41:43.760a medevac and really my oh yeah my parents were told like sign a do not resuscitate should be a
00:41:49.060vegetable it was like god I mean this was a god thing and had you taken a lot of medicine that
00:41:54.340day oh yeah yeah purpose I took a month's supply with a bottle of wine what kind of wine was it
00:47:24.800No, because she never talked to any of us afterwards.
00:47:29.540And it was, you know, and I have tons of friends who I wasn't locked up with, but who I know from my work who've been restrained, put in four-point restraints specifically.
00:47:39.240So, you know, I'm thinking of one guy I know, this big hulking guy.
00:47:44.040He'd been put on meds in college because one of his best friends died of an overdose, like an accidental overdose.
00:47:51.440And he was super spun out about it, as anyone would be.
00:47:55.300And so he wasn't able to focus and he started taking stimulants and then he stopped sleeping.
00:48:00.640And any human being who stops sleeping is eventually going to get psychotic because that's literally what happens to any human brain.
00:48:07.160So he ended up getting sucked into the mental health system that way and got a bipolar diagnosis and eventually a schizophrenia diagnosis.
00:48:16.360And he was just put on all these meds and he would take them for long periods of time.
00:48:20.660And then he'd stop them abruptly because he didn't know about withdrawal.
00:48:23.980and we're going to come back to that, I'm sure.
00:50:08.520But I've also dated some women who have – who kind of like – yeah, are a little bit – have a lot more Eeyore in them than Tigger, I guess you would say.
00:50:41.580And to this day, I have deep respect for that choice I made because given the story I had been taught to believe about myself, that I had this treatment-resistant, incurable brain disease that I would never be able to manage, like it was the logical choice to me.
00:50:55.460Right. So that's something that I think as listeners that we got to understand a little bit more is that, or I'm not telling anybody to understand it, but this is something I would suggest because I'm realizing this more now, is that you're in this idea that there's no way out.
00:51:09.460So you're just kind of managing something and it's getting worse. So at a certain point, you've kind of medicated yourself into a corner. And it's like, what do you do then if there is no solution as far as you've known?
00:51:20.680Yeah, exactly. You've been told there's no other solution. And that's the thing is that I didn't realize at the time that that was a story I had been told that wasn't actually true. And I think, too, the urge to die, because I was suicidal for years. It was like I was saying, it was like a companion. It was part of my life.
00:51:38.560and I realize now my urge to die was always actually a profound urge to live just in an
00:51:46.240entirely different way from everything I knew and so death felt like I thought that meant death
00:51:52.200but it actually meant really like a more um symbolic death of of the life that I was living
00:52:00.140not literal death so you're saying I want this this this version of life that I'm living I don't
00:52:07.580want to live anymore yeah and so you think like that means i have to kill myself but i see now
00:52:13.200like i just didn't know how else what else it could mean and and of course all these years later
00:52:18.240like this is another place where i'll get teary-eyed you know this that was 18 years ago
00:52:22.800and i had you told me in that and that at age 27 after my overdose like my life would look the way
00:52:31.080it looks now never would have believed you like no way like no way in hell is it like it's not
00:52:38.380possible um and so i i you know it took another two years after my overdose for my turning point
00:52:46.040to happen for for me to actually kind of wake up from from all of this and um oh yeah sorry my
00:52:52.620suicide attempt was 25 27 was when i woke up uh so yeah i was 27 my the the previous two years
00:53:00.180after my overdose were like more of the same.
00:53:02.120I was still a mess, living with family, like totally disabled.
00:53:06.680Did you try and get any pets or what modalities did you get?
00:54:04.960And that, you know, of course, brings me back to just how some, you know, it's not a coincidence that we have 65 million Americans on these meds because you can only bear suffering for so long before you need relief.
00:54:19.420And, you know, that kind of like that sound of those pills and that capsule, it can really just, it brings so much promise until it doesn't, you know.
00:54:30.600And so for me, that turning point happened in 2010.
00:56:03.780Well, a lot of a lot of people who've been on long term psych meds end up becoming total booze bags like like I did.
00:56:11.020And they they're told, oh, you have alcoholism.
00:56:14.800But when they eventually come off their meds and this was my experience, too, like I eventually realized, like, actually, the combination was like kind of leading me to act in these crazy ways.
00:56:29.500Like, now that I've been off these meds for so long and I'm, like, in my body and I am in touch with my body's signals and needs, like, I couldn't imagine ever drinking the way that I did back then.
00:56:44.420Like, sometimes I would drink, like, two bottles of wine in a night and I'd be totally blacked out.
00:56:49.360But apparently no one ever could tell.
00:56:52.040I would, like, act normal until the very end and then, like, crazy shit would happen.
00:56:58.080And ambulances would get called on me, and I'd wake up with, like, charcoal on my shirt in the emergency room.
00:57:23.780Yeah, well, I would have been, like, with them, like, out all night, but I think the combination of all the meds and the alcohol was, like, definitely, I don't know how it interfered with metabolism, but it made me able to drink a lot more and blackout.
00:57:41.820As you say that, I remember when I first got prescribed antidepressants, I got them to Zoloft, and I could drink.
00:58:12.100Like I was like Jimmy Buffett's god nephew or whatever.
00:58:14.960I don't know what is happening in the body to enable that.
00:58:17.620But I think this ends up happening for a lot of people.
00:58:20.020But so in 2010, I eventually did make the decision to stop drinking, thinking that if I remove alcohol, maybe this treatment-resistant bipolar won't be treatment-resistant anymore.
00:58:33.200And my meds will finally help me because I've been self-medicating with alcohol.
00:58:36.940And that's why the meds haven't helped.
00:58:39.780So I quit drinking. And within a month or two, I'd had enough, I'd gotten enough clarity of mind from not being like blackout every night to realize like, holy cow, I've been on these meds since I was a kid. Like, I don't know who I am.
00:58:58.540Like everything you talk about so powerfully, like, what do I really care about? Like, what does my body, what would my body actually look like? Would I actually be in this like 200 pound body? Would I actually feel connected to people? I just started asking these questions because I felt such a difference from just not drinking anymore.
00:59:16.800um and that was when i began to bring it up with my doctor like maybe maybe i could come off
00:59:24.440some of these five meds i'm on like i was literally on five meds prescribed by one
00:59:29.000doctor at literally the top psychiatric hospital in the country like the best of the best care
00:59:33.980and the doctor didn't want to do it you know like we don't want to rock the boat
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01:03:54.860especially people who have a treatment-resistant depression diagnosis,
01:03:57.780that's when you start getting told about electroconvulsive therapy,
01:04:02.320electroshock or transcranial magnetic stimulation, TMS. Like that's when you get into the medical
01:04:08.580device realm and they're like, oh, all these pills didn't work. So now let's put this giant
01:04:14.120magnet on your head and shoot powerful current, powerful magnetic pulses through your brain. Or
01:04:19.260like, let's put electrodes on your skull and shoot electric currents through you.
01:04:24.940You have investigated those things before.
01:04:27.700Yeah, I go into ECT in my book and some of the other, like, medical devices in it because it's the treatment for treatment resistance.
01:04:39.220I never – no one ever suggested those to me, and it just speaks to the, like, kind of illogical nature of a lot of this.
01:04:48.840But, yeah, and had they offered ECT to me, I probably would have said yes.
01:04:54.920but actually like the conventional kind of like protocol for people with a bipolar diagnosis is
01:05:03.480that ECT can induce mania. I doubt there's any like actual evidence base for that, but that's
01:05:07.860probably why they didn't. Okay. Got it. How do you start to put the medicine in the rear view
01:05:13.240mirror? So I began bringing it up with my doctor. Like I want to see what my baseline would be
01:05:20.720off of these meds I've been on since I was a kid. And he said no for a few months. And then,
01:05:26.660and then this was May 2010. Then I stumbled upon a book that had this old phrenology head on the
01:05:36.520covers, you know, like those old, like early 20th century drawings where they're like different
01:05:40.320compartments in the skull and, and it had in each different compartment, a different psychiatric
01:05:44.200drug name. And so the cover pulled me and I was like, Whoa, I've been on that. I've been on that.
01:05:48.180I'm on that now. And I was like, what's this book? And it was called Anatomy of an Epidemic.
01:05:52.820And I just felt compelled to buy it. So I bought it and I started reading it
01:05:56.760and it blew my mind. And so basically, yeah, there it is. So in a nutshell, this journalist
01:06:04.760sets out to answer the question of like, why, why, when you look at long-term outcomes of
01:06:12.380psychiatric medication use for schizophrenia? Do people in developing countries, quote-unquote,
01:06:20.740where they don't have all these, you know, medications, do better than in the U.S. and
01:06:24.820other developed countries, quote-unquote? And he ends up discovering, like, if you actually look at
01:06:29.880what evidence base does exist for long-term medication use, it makes a pretty compelling
01:06:35.660case that on the whole these drugs long term are making us sicker physically more disabled
01:06:43.400and so there I was on long term as five of them through you know all these years my life falling
01:06:50.800apart and it all clicked and I was like oh my god what if it's not treatment resistant mental
01:06:55.760illness like what if it's the treatment oh yeah and it and then once that was removed for like
01:07:01.560I couldn't unsee that realization and it like haunted me and of course I first went through
01:07:08.000this state of like shock it can't be true like it can't be true that all this medicine
01:07:13.380maybe has been hurting me because I just had never it never occurred to me and so that was
01:07:21.280what gave me the confidence to go back to my doctor and be like I don't really care if you
01:07:25.180don't want me to do this I'm gonna do it are you gonna help me or not and he was totally
01:07:30.400unsupportive and basically, you know, made me feel like this was the biggest mistake.
01:07:35.260But he was like, I'll, you know, I'll allow it. Like he just, you know, he, he was willing to
01:07:40.760bring me off. And was this the same doctor that put you on them?
01:07:44.260Yeah. I mean, I saw so many doctors over the years, but it was the one I was
01:07:47.500seeing with the five med regimen. Okay. Got it. And this gets us to, you know, the topic that I,
01:07:54.080I'm like so excited to connect with you more about here is when I made the decision to come
01:08:00.780off my meds, I had no idea how hard it would be to get off them. No one told me. My doctor
01:08:08.260certainly had no idea. I had no idea that using these medications, which are psychoactive chemicals
01:08:15.400that work by altering how your central nervous system works. Like if you use them for months,
01:08:22.480especially years your whole body is going to adapt to them is that true that some of them
01:08:29.280alter how your central nervous system works all of them all antidepressants mood stabilizers benzos
01:08:34.760they they cause it's it's basically they create physical dependence which is different from
01:08:42.100addiction in that when you're addicted to something you have cravings for it you like
01:08:47.020seek it out even though you know it's causing problems physical dependence is a purely
01:08:52.800physiological state where your body changes itself to accommodate the presence of this drug
01:08:59.060such that when you remove it it's destabilized oh yeah and so no one told me no one told you
01:09:04.240either i'm assuming well i'm just shocked that like i'm shocked that there was never an exit
01:09:09.280strategy like when you get on the drugs like i've been hitchhiking or whatever to see this girl that
01:09:14.240i was in love with or whatever but she didn't like me and like my i was like kind of heartbroken or
01:09:19.020whatever and then um so i went to a doctor in town because i wasn't doing that good like i was
01:09:25.800sneaking in people's yards at night and petting their animals and shit i wasn't doing great
01:09:29.920and so this so anyway the doctor put me on this medication because i was like
01:09:35.600pretty heartbroken i think a lot of it was other childhood stuff that i'd attach to this
01:09:40.200relationship um unknowingly and so I was pretty heartbroken um but I was heartbroken in a bigger
01:09:48.360realm kind of than just this specific thing but this was the epicenter of it sort of this had
01:09:52.640like launched it this was the match really and so I get uh I get on these meds and then everything's
01:09:59.940kind of fine but there was never like a check up later I ended up leaving South Carolina like a
01:10:04.880a few months after that. And, um, and there was never like a check in back really to like figure
01:10:10.120out if you stay on them. And so I was just on them for a long time. Was it a psychiatrist you
01:10:13.760prescribed them or a general, like your primary care doctor? Do you remember? I can't remember.
01:10:17.780I can't remember if I, I think it was a psychiatrist. So I think I'd went to someone
01:10:21.580who could actually prescribe medicine. So it was someone that at least knew what the medicines were.
01:10:27.380Uh, but then I got on it and, uh, and then I've just been on it for years and there's times where
01:10:32.160I've gotten off to try and, like, I tried plant medicine a few times, got off to do plant medicine
01:10:39.220experiences. And some of that helped a lot, like doing ayahuasca helped a lot. But the thing that
01:10:46.220I didn't realize was I wasn't getting off of them correctly. Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing that
01:10:51.060I most recently when I tried to get off, I didn't get off of them correctly. And I was talking with
01:10:56.120this guy, Dr. Mark Horowitz is his name. Oh, you've talked about, yeah, Mark's a close friend. I was
01:11:00.920just talking with him earlier today oh were you really yeah we're very close we've worked together
01:11:04.780on a lot of this and he's like out of the blue um one of my friends recommended him to come and
01:11:11.420podcast sometime and so i've kind of just been emailing with him but i've been emailing with him
01:11:14.740um in some mild consultation about medicine great and he and i i got off and i thought i'd titrated
01:11:22.180down well because i went from like 10 milligrams to five and then to nothing oh theo oh my goodness
01:11:28.400which in which is this was this lexapro that you're on this was escitalopram then the generic
01:11:32.400lexapro i think and when i tell you i hit this thing that was like i didn't care about really
01:11:38.680anything and i started sleeping in and i started um things that i cared about became like i didn't
01:11:45.740even i didn't know if i cared about them and so i just kind of didn't care about them i started
01:11:51.260envisioning futures for myself that were kind of um careless sort of or mundane maybe
01:11:57.540um not even like peaceful when just like nonchalant about everything and that gave that got a little
01:12:05.540bit spooky uh because i i knew that that wasn't real or how i really felt it and it was too much
01:12:12.080and just the sleeping in i hadn't slept in since i was like really in my 20s really it was like so
01:12:17.420what am i doing and so he said that the titration has to be different so i'm still in consultation
01:12:22.200with him but i recently had to get back on i've been off for about six months and i really had
01:12:26.580tried my best. And was 10 the dose that you had been at for a while or had you been at a higher
01:12:31.740dose? I've been at 20 before that for a while. Yeah. And then at 10 for probably a year or two.
01:12:36.720Yeah. But in the end, it's like 25 years, you know, 20 something years. So it's like, anyway,
01:12:41.740there's a lot more to it. And I still I'm going to try again at some point, but not without better
01:12:46.000consultation. But let's get back. So that's what's been going on with me about it. Yeah. But let's
01:12:51.060get back into your story. So, um, what was the toughest parts about getting off of these, uh,
01:12:56.460for you? Yeah. I mean, because my doctor had no idea what he was doing and I didn't know anything
01:13:01.280about physical dependence and withdrawal. And what year was this? This was 2010. I was 27.
01:13:06.400Nobody knows. And so I came off five drugs in six months, which is cold turkey. Like you're
01:13:13.260like the Jesse Owens of getting off drugs, like a triathlete. Well, and, and this again, bring
01:13:18.920And like, I can't not mention class here.
01:13:22.280Like the fact that I had the socioeconomic resources to be completely disabled for years, like years, the coming off five meds in six months blew up my life for years.
01:13:35.040And but I had a family who could take care of me.
01:14:14.420i would get you quit cold turkey five in six months five men but five meds so it's basically
01:14:20.120cold turkey like that's so fast i just want maybe warm turkey i go back in like just to paint a
01:14:26.620picture and you know mark mark's work you reference like he we've worked close closely
01:14:32.840he's a close colleague of mine and so i come from the layperson world like the ex-patient world and
01:14:37.940he comes from both that world because he himself was on this stuff and he's also a psychiatrist
01:14:42.320The protocols that he, you know, writes about and uses like came from the layperson community because it was a layperson layperson means a non-doctor, a non-medical expert patients like just a blue collar pill taker.
01:14:58.800Totally. Just like, you know, bottom of the social hierarchy, the medical hierarchy, like the patient, we patients ourselves who basically had to, and I didn't, I didn't do it the right, I did it the wrong way, because I didn't know. But it's been over decades that patients have had to figure out how to do it the right way, just through trial and error and figuring it out.
01:15:19.300and Mark's tapering guidelines and the very, very few number of other practitioners who know how to
01:15:26.140taper safely all come from the ex-patient community. Because what we realized is to get
01:15:32.520off these meds successfully, if you go to your average doctor, they'll say, A, they'll say,
01:15:38.760oh yeah, you can do this in two weeks or four weeks or eight weeks. And B, they'll say, and you
01:15:43.340just cut it, you know, cut it in half and then cut it in half again and then stop. And then
01:15:49.440they'll just like do a kind of linear thing where you're on 100, now drop to 90, 80, 70, 60. But
01:15:57.200what people figured out just through what it felt like is, my gosh, you know, at this higher dose,
01:16:02.580I can come down like that. But the lower the dose gets, the harder this feels. I've got to make
01:16:09.840smaller reductions in my dose and maybe space it out a little longer. So it ends up looking like
01:16:15.280this hyperbolic curve for anyone listening. It's like a ramp, almost like a skater's ramp.
01:16:21.080Yeah, exactly. That's more like a bowl, you know, inside of a nice salad bowl, just
01:16:24.720so you're not making a straight line, a straight, you know, diagonal line.
01:26:14.960And just to contextualize this, so my organization, Intercompass Initiative, we helped organize a summit on mental health and over-medicalization in D.C. on May 4th that Bobby Kennedy came and spoke at, and he made these big policy announcements about deprescribing at the event.
01:26:32.840and this panel was about deprescribing deprescribing yep about helping all these
01:26:38.000guidelines that don't exist that you know mark horowitz's work and our work that don't exist
01:26:42.560in the in the government in the public health system um under secretary kennedy's leadership
01:26:49.540you know they want to focus on that and actually get good guidelines in and and train doctors and
01:26:54.120all that so this was a panel of young people and her clip well i'm going to talk about another time
01:26:59.420i'm gonna cry but you gotta listen to this yeah let's watch this and i remember joe rogan sent
01:27:03.100me this one night he sends me this stuff to kind of keep me updated on um some of the awareness
01:27:08.820about this stuff let's go ahead and watch it gssd is not just a loss of sexual function but a loss
01:27:15.600for some people of emotional function as well that has been the case for me um before this
01:27:20.640i was a super emotional uh empathetic loving caring like sylvia plath reading and resonating
01:27:28.400girl. And the day I woke up with this injury, I quite literally felt my soul leave my body. Like,
01:27:34.660I'm so serious. It was the most unbelievable, inorganic thing I've ever experienced. And
01:27:40.580it's a common symptom of people who have this condition. To this day, it's been years for me.
01:27:46.240I'm 23 now. I can't feel love for my own mother, which is the hardest thing on earth.
01:27:51.460I can't feel connection or love for my friends
01:38:24.380there can be like you can have you can have a brain tumor that's making you hallucinate and
01:38:29.320like you can have an actual physiological problem but you would go to a neurologist
01:38:33.140and get the tumor treated you wouldn't be told you have an incurable mental illness right and
01:38:38.080some people may have some severe mental illnesses i'm not talking about that you know i'm saying if
01:38:42.480you're out there fucking eating radio parts and shit like you might have something going on or
01:38:47.080if something really traumatic is happening you could have some ptsd i mean i'm not a doctor i'm
01:38:51.600saying any of that we're just saying that there's been an overabundance even if you look at the
01:38:56.500numbers there's been an overabundance of things that are normal human feelings that have now been
01:39:03.640medicinalized I want to to what you just said though I even in those cases that you think of
01:39:11.820as the most extreme like the guy who's talking to himself on the subway with his pants falling off
01:39:16.960Like I'm, I'm thinking about a guy I knew. He lived in a group home that I used to work in years ago. You know, he'd been living in group homes for decades. He was on tons of psych meds. He talked to himself all the time. He heard voices. He was, if you had, you know, he couldn't live independently. He was what any average person would call like a chronic mental patient. Like he wasn't allowed to be around knives, all that stuff.
01:39:41.740one day I was sitting with him on like stinky old fake leather sofa in this like ratty group home
01:39:48.540he lived in and I was like I don't want to say his name I'll make up a name it's like hey Bill
01:39:52.880I was like what how did you ever start medications like what was happening at the very beginning when
01:39:58.760you first went to a doctor and he was like oh I was I was 15 or 16 and I'd smoked some grass
01:40:06.960that got me really scared he was in his 50s when I was talking to him and and I I saw ants coming
01:40:14.600out of the television and I told my parents and they took me to Waltham State and Waltham State
01:40:21.560Hospital was a state hospital in Massachusetts they admitted this teenager on an adult ward
01:40:27.860loaded him up on antipsychotics and the rest is history decades later he looks to your you know
01:40:35.320if you saw him on the street he had crazy hair everywhere he was disheveled and I can't help but
01:40:41.120wonder if you actually go back to the beginning for every person you see on the subway on the
01:40:47.000street corner who you think in your mind like this person has severe mental illness quote unquote if
01:40:51.100you go back to the beginning of their story something happened to them at the very beginning
01:40:55.260and they either didn't get their needs met or they were given something that they shouldn't
01:40:59.520have had and then just systemic year after year after year of not getting what they actually
01:41:04.620needed and getting a lot of what they didn't need who wouldn't be that scary guy on the street
01:41:10.360corner you know yeah you'd be out there pleading in whatever words you have left inside of you
01:41:17.040whatever organizational abilities you have left you'd be out there trying to show people something
01:41:22.820is wrong here yep and it's like yeah so I think we have this this this view we have that seriously
01:41:30.940suffering people are sick quote unquote is a deeply ingrained story that is just one story
01:41:37.340there are multiple ways to see people who are in deep crisis yeah and that kid could have just
01:41:42.060been high and was telling his parents something that he thought when he was really high he literally
01:41:45.760was and the rest is history 40 years later he's a chronic mental patient who like talks to himself
01:41:51.860he wasn't talking to himself prior to smoking the bad grass and you know you might have a doctor say
01:41:57.060oh, that triggered an underlying mental illness.
01:41:59.560Like, or it was a bad reaction to pot.
01:46:24.640Depending on each person's individual physiology and all that, it's going to look different for everyone.
01:46:29.680But the basic underlying philosophy is what we've found in the layperson withdrawal community is that tapering between 5% to 10% per month of your dose.
01:46:42.520So let's say you're on 100 milligrams of Seroquel and you want to taper 10%.
01:46:48.540You want to see how that goes for you.
01:46:51.560So you would cut 10% of 100 in month one, which is 10 milligrams.
01:47:04.560In month three, you cut 8.1 milligrams.
01:47:08.180And you might be wondering, like, how the heck do you do 8.1?
01:47:11.260And that's where it gets tricky because drug companies aren't required by law to manufacture psych drugs in taper-friendly forms and formulations.
01:49:57.700And sometimes it's like I put like, sometimes I think I've just kind of put these feelings that I had 20 years ago that I just kicked them down the road 20 years, you know?
01:56:13.260Like understanding how these drugs change our brains and bodies, how to taper slowly and safely, understanding the evidence base that your drug was approved on the basis of.
01:56:24.700Like you need all this information to help you think clearly about what the next right step is.
01:59:54.380I really appreciate it. I've heard you mention a few times RFK Jr. during this chat, and I know that you were working with the Maha Institute, right? And that was this past May. What were you guys doing together? Take me through that and take me through what is he doing or what is his movement doing right now for mental health?
02:00:14.840Yeah, well, I mean, Secretary Kennedy has long been aware of and engaged with this crisis we've been talking about here. He's long seen that we have so many millions of people on long term meds with no off ramps and all of that.
02:00:32.580So when he was confirmed as HHS secretary and, you know, my husband Cooper and I, who we worked together at Intercompass Initiative, we saw him talking about it, you know, at his confirmation hearing.
02:00:46.400And around that time, we realized in this like very – it felt very surreal because we'd been operating under the assumption for me like for 15 years at the time, the government's never going to be a partner in this.
02:01:00.300Like, we just have to work on building stuff outside.
02:01:03.520I think, yeah, we're all realizing that on every facet, it feels like.
02:01:06.260Totally. So I've just been solely in that headspace through my career.
02:01:10.460And I still think that's, like, the most essential work to do is, like, building new things outside of the system, so to speak.
02:01:17.160But when Bobby came in, we realized like, wow, this is actually a surreal opportunity to partner with the federal government, to support them, to assist their efforts, to actually try to get policy changes around this over-medicalization crisis, as they're calling it, and how to help people who have decided for themselves that they want to taper off, how to help them do it safely.
02:01:43.260What policy changes would actually help?
02:01:45.140Well, what Kennedy announced on May 4th at this event that we organized with the Maha Institute, yeah, here it is right here. So he laid out this plan.
02:01:55.100The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on May 4th, 2026 announced efforts to curb psychiatric overprescribing at a Maha summit on mental health and overmedicalization. As the closing speaker, Secretary Kennedy Jr. laid out a new action plan to promote appropriate psychiatric prescribing and drive deprescribing when clinically indicated.
02:02:14.100Today, we take clear and decisive action to confront our nation's mental health crisis by addressing the overuse of psychiatric medications, especially among children.
02:02:22.680What is actually happening here, do you find?
02:02:30.640Well, he announced a few specific next steps that HHS has set out to undertake.
02:02:37.300Okay. We will support patient autonomy, require informed consent and shared decision making, and shift the standard of care toward prevention, transparency, and a more holistic approach to mental health.
02:02:48.200There should be more, I don't know if it's on another page, but there should be more, like an actual breakdown of, I mean, the announcements he made were around developing guidelines for SSRI tabering, training clinicians in how to do it safely,
02:03:08.640enabling through insurance the coverage of deprescribing
02:03:15.460so that doctors, prescribers can get paid to deprescribe
02:03:20.980And I think, you know, getting federally funded health centers
02:03:26.640equipped to support people in deprescribing.
02:03:29.960So there are tangible policy next steps that HHS has committed to work towards.
02:03:38.260And I think that, which really is surreal, like I never thought this would be a possibility that I think in combination with this cultural awakening, I think leaves me feeling really hopeful that substantive change can happen.
02:03:56.480And of course, his announcements led to all kinds of media headlines, you know, Kennedy's going to ban SSRIs and they're going to deny access and remove from the market and yada, yada, yada. None of that is true. None of what HHS has set out to do is about removing, banning, denying access. It's literally about creating more options.
02:04:18.120I mean, 90% of the media is owned by the same groups.
02:11:34.240What will it take for our society to begin questioning the collective assumption that the industries that have made trillions off our worsening pain, among them health, hospital, pharmaceutical, biotech, and tech, are the very ones we should trust to provide us resolution?
02:11:53.340Two things are undeniably true about our society today.
02:11:57.200We're growing ever more unwell in mind, body, and spirit, and the business of health is thriving.
02:12:03.840Industry has subjugated the natural world around us through commodification and profitization.
02:12:10.280What's left for it to conquer is the space between our ears.
02:12:14.660It is now a radical act in our medicalized, professionalized world to look in the mirror
02:12:19.960for answers and to turn to your neighbor in times of difficulty and to open your door
02:14:54.660What, uh, what suggestions do you offer to them?
02:14:58.080I mean, I think the most important one is never let someone with letters after their name convince you they know your kid better than you.
02:15:07.240Like, as a parent, no one knows your child better than you.
02:15:11.960Your parental instincts cannot and should not be violated.
02:15:15.380And I think that, I think it's what happened to my parents and to so many parents.
02:15:21.160Because when your kid is struggling and you're terrified and you're in so much pain watching them in pain and you're confused, you're at a very susceptible moment in your life as a parent and well-meaning.
02:15:38.880Because I want to be clear, these aren't like bad people.
02:15:41.120Mental health professionals are not bad people.
02:15:43.000They came to this world because they want to help.
02:15:45.940But I think parents often end up disconnecting from their instincts about their kids because they believe that expertise comes from the institution.
02:16:11.680But I think just keeping that in mind and never losing touch with that through whatever lies ahead is really important.
02:16:18.240I think another thing that parents often get kind of trained to do is to see their kid from this perspective of like something is wrong with my kid.
02:16:31.520Like my kid has a problem to fix as opposed to seeing their kid as from the question from the place of what is happening to my kid or what is happening around my kid in their environment or what is happening, you know, in my kid's body.
02:16:46.820what they're eating or like what they're watching on like the screen exposure whatever it might be
02:16:51.560so if parents can kind of stay connected to a kind of curiosity of like some there's a reason
02:16:58.940why my kid is having a hard time and it isn't because their brain is broken it's it it might
02:17:04.320not be clear what the reason is but to just be curious and to remember that they're having a
02:17:09.660response to the life they're in um i think that's really critical and then i think getting support
02:17:16.540from other parents i think in the same spirit that we were talking about before the 12-step
02:17:21.200world the mutual aid world of withdrawal parents finding one another in their own communities and
02:17:26.860supporting one another and like mentoring one another i think is a really um it used to be
02:17:32.400how it was we all lived in little villages together and yeah there was community totally
02:17:36.480community so important it's like if your grandmother's around watching your children
02:17:39.560if your families live close to each other then other family members are involved like human
02:20:14.580Did you have any other suggestions for parents?
02:20:17.600I think, you know, just taking all the time you can to get informed.
02:20:23.100You know, if you are taking your kid to a mental health professional of some kind
02:20:26.660and your kid is being given a diagnosis and or, you know,
02:20:31.620being put on a medication of some kind,
02:20:33.520And just knowing that you have – it's your right to take whatever time you need to look into what's being offered to you.
02:20:42.980Like just because the doctor is saying something and telling you to do something, you know, doesn't mean you shouldn't take whatever time you need to first get educated.
02:20:53.120You know, my parents were never told, we're giving your daughter this bipolar diagnosis despite the fact that this is totally, you know, subjective.
02:21:01.380It's just my opinion based on looking at her.
02:21:03.260It doesn't mean she has anything wrong in her brain.
02:21:06.700I'm going to put her on these meds, but just so you know, we've only studied them for a few weeks.