#678 - Psych Med Withdrawal Expert Laura Delano

0:00Today's guest is an author and founder of the Inter Compass Initiative. She wrote, Unshrunk, a story of psychiatric treatment resistance. We talk about mental health, getting on to medicines, and then how to get off of them if you want to or need to. I had a fascinating conversation and I'm thankful for her time. Today's guest is Miss Laura Delano. I'm going to find a strong, I was thinking about the system. Laura Delano. Yep. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. Yep. Excellent. Thank you for joining us today. You wrote a book called Unshrunk, a story of psychiatric treatment resistance. I want to talk about that today. I want to talk about my own journey with antidepressants and with trying to get off of the medications and what that's been like for me or I want to discuss that with you.

1:06I also want to iterate that one in six Americans right now are taking mental health drugs. Yep. And that's even higher amongst college students. And I want to talk about how to properly get off medication, what that's like for people in that journey. But first, I want to hear about your story. You've had kind of a like so far lifelong journey with mental health and medication. Is that fair to say? Yeah, going back to childhood. Okay. And is it okay if we start there? Just so our listeners are like kind of clued in on how you got here. Sure. Yeah. So I grew up in Connecticut in an affluent town. I was in a born to a family who had a lot of resources. So you know, private school, all my material needs met like on paper. I just had this really wonderful life. And I was always quote unquote good at school. Like I could just sit down and do wrote tasks like well, it never bothered me or I never got bored with it.

2:08And so I just kind of what's one of these girls who had had had it all together. Good student. I was a good athlete. What sport did you play? Well, squash was my main sport through college. But you know, when I was younger like tennis, field hockey, basically all the like textbook prepster. Oh rich sports. Waspies. Yes. Yeah. Like picture the most stereotypical New England waspie prepster and like that's right here. Literally down to like all whites on the tennis court. That's me. That's got it. So yeah. So I just like had it all together. And then when I was 13, you know, there was I was president of the middle school. I had straight A's. I was a nationally ranked squash player. I had it all together. And I was looking in the mirror when I brushing my teeth and I just started looking deeper and deeper into my eyes. And then I just slowly everything around me started to go black. And I left space and time. And I was just like floating in like what felt like outer space looking at this girl in the mirror. And I was like, who is she?

3:10Who is she? Who is she? And then I realized this is a stranger. And when I came to, I was like terrified by this out of body experience. I didn't know what to make of it. And the only conclusion I could draw was like, I must not have a real self. I must be a robot programmed to perform well. But like, who am I? What do I care about? What really matters to me? And I realized I didn't know the answer. And I felt immediately like my whole life had changed. And I was just aware suddenly that I was imprisoned by these adults around me and I just freaked out. And didn't know what to do. New I couldn't tell anyone about this experience. And so I just pretended it hadn't happened. And I just tried to like continue on being the good girl. But that compartmentalization wasn't sustainable. And so I eventually began spinning out. I started cutting myself. I was like fantasizing about death. I started acting out at home, like hitting my mom and screaming. And cursing and my parents were just like, what has happened?

4:12Did you think you were realizing something like? So I'm, I love that you're asking that because in retrospect, I'm like, holy cow, I was having an ego death. Like a perf, what could have been this profoundly liberating? Like I'm so much more than the self, you know, like it could have gone that way. But I think because I grew up in this, in this particular environment, like we, no one was reading philosophy and like, it was in psychedelics. I had no frame of reference to head that way. So instead, I concluded I don't have a real self. And so I just, I couldn't bear that what felt like my reality for very long. And I did end up like really spinning out at home. I kept everything together outside of the home. But at home, I would fall apart. And my poor parents just didn't know what to do. They were terrified. They were exhausted. And so they eventually, you know, realized like we need to take her to a professional. And this was in the mid 90s. I was born in 83, so I'm an elder millennial. So in the mid 90s, not the whole mental health thing wasn't a part of the cultural zeitgeist

5:16in the way that it is now, especially for young people. So it was this very private thing. We weren't meant to talk about it. You know, that I was going to this therapist. Oh, yeah, it was such taboo then. Yeah. And, and you know, my parents, you know, God bless them. Like because they didn't see anyone else having problems around them, they're like, oh my gosh, we're the only people in our town who has a daughter who's going through this. Of course, in retrospect, I'm like, we were all pretty messed up in this intense town that we were all in. But it felt like kind of a microcosm over there. Yeah, it was a very like, steford wives kind of place. For sure. And so they sent me to a therapist. The therapist sent me to a psychiatrist. I was 14 by that time. And in one hour, this psychiatrist told me, you know, all this anger and these outbursts and this irritability you're having, these are symptoms of mania. And the fact that you're cutting yourself and you're depressed, these are symptoms of depression. You have a lifelong brain illness called bipolar disorder, but don't worry,

6:17they're medications you can take, you can live a good life. I should see me for one hour. I was 14 years old. And she put me on depocode and prosak. How do they diagnose that just so I know? Good question. It's literally through this observation. So 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 with the DSM, the diagnostic and statistical manual. So it's like, go five out of seven is this for it. You know, the, and said the DS, what is it? The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. It's copyrighted by the American Psychiatric Association. There's a lot of industry influence behind it. You know, they get a lot of funding from drug companies. And it's literally, it's called the like the Bible of psychiatry. And it's what, you know, these diagnoses from the, diagnoses from the DSM are what open doors for people to get treatment, you know,

7:19for billing. It's a very powerful book. Okay. But it's completely subjective. Like this is not a scientific text. It's literally the opinions of psychiatrists. Like that's what these diagnoses are made on the basis of. Does that make it somewhat scientific, though, that it's at least psycho? It's not like, I'm just a random person guessing. Yeah, well, for the DSM to be scientific, it would need to be both reliable and valid. So basically the categories themselves would need to be a real meaningful, like measurable categories. And the same person would need to be getting the same diagnosis from multiple clinicians. Like if those two factors were in place, like you could say that this was a scientifically valid and reliable text, but it's not. They don't. Like if you look at, you know, clinicians will give all kinds of different diagnoses to the same person. You know, bipolar disorder, as an example, like there's no measurable pathology in your brain.

8:25There's no abnormal blood tests. There's no. It's just based purely on observation. Were there like any like biological tests or medical tests that they ran to to determine if you had bipolar disorder? And there aren't any. For any of these diagnoses. No, there weren't. No. Wow. To this day, there aren't. Even for something like schizophrenia, like none of these diagnoses have any valid, replicable, you know, like there's nothing, there's no test of any kind, medical test of any kind. Yeah, it says right here, bipolar disorder cannot be measured with a single physical test, like a blood test or an MRI. Instead, doctors and mental health professionals measure and diagnose it through a comprehensive clinical evaluation. And you're saying after only one hour, they had determined this. Yeah. And a lot of people get a diagnosis in 15 minutes. And what's amazing about it is that because we have all come to believe in these diagnoses as these lifelong, incurable things, like you can manage them.

9:27But once you have this diagnosis, you have it forever. Like if you pause and think about that for a minute, like to tell a 14-year-old girl who you just met an hour ago, you have a lifelong incurable disease in your brain. Like it's a pretty potent thing to say to someone. Yeah, especially at 14. She's got enough going on. It's here. And it isn't adult. I mean, in retrospect, I see like adolescence is literally when we we have a crisis of self. Like who the fuck am I? Like how do I fit into this world? Like how do I socialize? What do I care about? Yeah, what do I listen to? Who am I? Yeah, how do I dress? Like how do I find out what's going on inside of me? All of that stuff. Yeah. And I think because the crisis I was going through was this deep, existential, spiritual crisis of self, I was especially susceptible to being told who I was. Understood. Because I was, and I think a lot of us are, I don't know if you, if you relate to this too, but when I first, when I first got the bipolar diagnosis, I rejected it. As that 14-year-old girl, like I knew intuitively, this is makes no sense.

10:28Like I'm having a healthy response to this like really intense social environment I'm in. But a few years later, because I was put on those meds, but depacote and pro-zack, so-called mood stabilizer, depacotes actually an anti-convulsant that's not even to this day approved for psychiatric use in kids. But I was put on it back then and it's a very widely prescribed psych med in kids today. And then pro-zack at the time was not approved for use in kids. So I just put right on it. And for the following years, I managed to like not really take them regularly. I went away to boarding school. I kind of ran away from, I tried to run away from what that psychiatrist told me. But by 18, I, you know, was still playing the game. The performance game and I'd gotten into Harvard. I was in place, Quash at Harvard. Like literally, it's almost like cringe-worthy. Like how just this, you know, type A perfectionist, New England girl, like I just was like I was so trapped in this.

11:29Like I knew it was all bullshit, but I didn't know how to get out. And so there I was at Harvard and hoping like by then I'd maybe I'd have figured it all out and I'd be okay. And of course I wasn't. And so it was at that point that I was just so desperate for relief. Because I was like doing tons of coke and exesying. I was in sleeping and I was like so spun out. Freshman fall of college. I was a total mess. And I was like, what is wrong with me? Like I can't, I want to die. I can't live this way anymore. So something was wrong? Oh yeah, I mean I was really struggling. Like this wasn't like oh she was just having a little bump in there. I was like completely a mess. And were you still taking the medicines, the depacote and the... No, when I spun out that first fall of college, I was not on any meds. Okay. But I was definitely like drinking a lot, doing a lot of drugs. Just overall not taking care of myself. What things were shown up in your life that were like okay now this is things are getting too rough. I mean, I think a lot of it was just I wasn't sleeping.

12:32I was really reckless in my behaviors. Just like, you know, I'd be like super coaxed up and I'd like climb to the top of building and I'd be like stuck on a roof and I'd be like what? And it'd be three in the morning. You know, like just these ridiculous things. And I'd hang out, you know, with like the the bumps in the square where, you know, it's in Harvard Square and like smoke with them and just I just like wasn't I felt so far away from my peers. And I was I couldn't stop thinking about dying. Like I just couldn't see a way through it. I just was so overwhelmed by this like deep sense that I was this fraud who would never fit in to the world around her. And my mind wouldn't shut off. And you know, just paranoid thoughts like everyone hates you. They're just pretending to like you like your piece of shit. You just. That was a good nightmare. Yeah. And you'll get a kick out of this. My breaking point was I came out as a debutante.

13:36The winter of my first year at Harvard. And I was like on a wedding dress on stage at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. And you know, the whole thing is so absurd. Like the tradition of it is like. What's tradition? Yeah, but it's like a meat market. Like historically it was like your daughter is now ready to be, you know, married off or whatever. And you know, you have to cut seed. It's like wild spins. Oh yeah, I'll go to like sometimes they'll have those in the south. They've had them over the years. And have you been to them? I've been to in matches. Mississippi, my little nephew was in one for a bit. And so I go over there and watch him. Was he like an escort of one of the girls? Yeah, he was like, he had a sword or whatever. Whoa, you had swords down there? Oh, we didn't have swords. That's cool. We we they we have weapons that the ones in the south. So it gets a little bit different. Of course you did. I love it. Um, okay. So you're a Debbie time. You have all this going on in the outside. Looks one way, but you feel a total different way on the inside. And like that was the guy sitting on the cake. Like I'm literally on a stage doing curtsies. Like what? This is a practical joke.

14:37Like is this how is this my life? And like how do I get out of it? So suicide felt like the only way out. Sounds like it's some psychosis going on. I probably could have been given a psych 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. Yeah. You know, language is the social constructions. Like the words I'm using to think these thoughts, it's all, I would just get totally swept up. And all the postmodern stuff, like I just got all swept up in that. And so I just that winter of was 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. And I just I always try to like pause on that whenever I'm talking about my story because

15:39there's, I don't know if you felt the same when you were first diagnosed with whatever your diagnosis is, I can't wait to dive in more into it, but I felt such relief. Like I'm not a bad person, I'm not a fuck up, I'm not lazy, I'm sick. And now I have a treatment that's going to help me get better. Like, hallelujah. Like that's how it felt. Oh, yeah, I, um, yeah, I can relate to being like, okay, something is going to come and help me. Finally, there's help is on the way. Yep. I can certainly relate to that. And we'll talk about some of my experience after a little bit, but I want to hear more, okay? So you get this diagnosis and this feels helpful. It feels so helpful. I feel such relief, like immediate relief. Like, I don't have to fight anymore. I don't have to keep desperately searching for answers and to figure myself out. Like this doctor knows what's wrong with me and he has the solution. Like, I'm good to go. And so of course, the kind of perfectionist type A person that I was, I immediately applied that to being a patient. So I was just like so diligent about going to therapy and tracking my how I was feeling

16:42and reporting symptoms. And I just, it became very quickly, like the void of, of meaning and purpose that my life had previously held, was filled with a new purpose, like treatment. Like, you're a patient and your purpose is to get treatment. And so I, you know, was put back on meds. And then, you know, quickly, two became three. And, you know, I would be going in every week, sometimes twice a week to do therapy. I was going to McLean Hospital, which is like a 20-minute bus ride from Harvard. And it's like one of the oldest, you know, most established institutions in the country. It's where Sylvia Plath went. Oh, I can imagine it's prestigious if it's there. Because the best doctors are right next door. Exactly. And so I think that's with my background coming from, you know, a family with socioeconomic means, I always had like the best of the best care. And which is an important part of my story that will come back to you.

17:45So yeah, I just had this new sense of purpose and momentum. And I was like, you know, we're going to figure this out together. My psychiatrist and me. But with the, you know, with the passage of time and inevitably, you know, I'd like, not like, I'd be on some med and then I'd have, you know, sleep problems or like, panicky feelings. And then I'd get on another med or they'd up the dose or they'd switch. And just before I knew it, I was on a handful of meds. But at the time, this felt like a really good thing because, yeah, because like more meds is better. Like the more they're caring for me and the more they're giving me, like the better it's going to be. Like it's just, and so yeah, if you're, if you're bleeding profusely, you would think that having more bandages would be helpful. That's such a good analogy. This is exactly it. And what was really this, you know, what was insidious about that too. And, and now if you look at our culture of like how girls and young women,

18:47you know, in this kind of like therapeuticized culture that we're in, like at the time what started to happen for me is, I began to feel like the more meds I was on, like the more special I was and like the more people would understand how much pain I was in. Like the debut on of like, Daya's a pam or something. Oh my gosh. Yes. I love to totally, I'm up on this stage. Look at me. I'm so sick. I have my baggie of five pill bottles. And now I don't only have bipolar disorder, I also have social anxiety disorder and eating disorder. Is that eventually? You seem Elizabeth Taylor. Yes. Like I am so important. I mean, and that's, I think now you're seeing with, because this was again back in the mid late 90s, early 2000s. Now it's like, this is how girls and young women grow up finding a sense of self and belonging and purpose and meaning, like especially on TikTok. Oh, it's like a character now. Yes. Totally. Here's my list of diagnoses. Here's my list of meds.

19:47It's like, oh, now I know how to slot in and where I belong and who my tribe is. And so that was really just taking off back in like the early 2000s. And I, it was very much a part of my kind of, my journeys through my, my teens and 20s with all, with all this stuff was like how much of an identity it gave me. Yeah. Yeah, you look like a million air hard out there. You just have to fly in through the, just like, fly through the cyclones. And landing who knows where they still haven't found it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. 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, up in the meds, this that, my life isn't actually getting better. It's actually falling more and more apart. And I did manage to graduate college, but by the time I did, I had to take a year off. I'd been hospitalized. I was like super suicidal. But because this like slow creep of meds and, you know, this like prescription cascade

20:49is the term that a lot of people use. It's just like slow unfolding of it. I didn't even really realize it was happening. And just because my journey with psychiatry started when I was a kid, like I had no reference point. I had no like baseline sense of who I was as a person prior to meds. Because of course, like, you were just developing. Yeah. And like I was having an identity crisis begin with it got me on all of it. And so through my 20s, I just like kept falling more and more apart. And I like gained, you know, literally like 70 pounds over over, but by the time I was in my mid 20s. And was that a tribute to medication, you think? Well, the first, I mean, certainly the anti-psychotics that I was eventually on, I mean, those are well documented to cause all kinds of kinds of metabolic issues. And in tons of people on long term anti-psychotics and getting diabetes. But I think what the meds also did is they, and I didn't realize this at the time, but they disconnected me from my body's like signals.

21:50So yeah, and I just, I didn't, am I hungry right now? Am I satiated? Like, I don't even know. But like this tastes good and I'm kind of numbed out. So I'm going to eat more of it. So I was definitely binge eating. It wasn't like the weight just came on and I wasn't changing, you know, what I was eating. But your sensory system gets kind of hijacked in a lot of ways I find by medication. Yeah. You know, for years I couldn't tell sometimes how I felt about things, which is one of the main reasons I've tried to get off so many times is because I want to know how I feel. Like if I'm going to choose like, you know, or if I'm going to get married or like, you know, I don't want to, you know, partner with my wife and then when I get off meds and I'm like, this, I don't even like this, but you know, it's like, you get scared. For me, I get scared of the choices I'm going to make because I don't know if they're fully mine. Yeah. Oh my God. I feel I cry all the time by the way. So if I get teary, you know, I had a feeling I would because I've heard you speak about that. Yeah, I can't cry anymore in the internet or it's going to, someone is going to come and get me. So I have to take it easy, but I'm here for you if you do.

22:54It's, I mean, to me, crying is such an essential. I actually think that when I authentically feel this like urge to cry, I'm like, do it sister. I like say it to myself because people are so uncomfortable with crying and as you just said, like people freak the fuck out. And they're like, what can't compute what is happening? And sometimes I'll be like, give me a talk to a big room of, you know, psychiatrist and people and if I feel myself getting teary, I'm like, oh yeah, let it rip. Because I know it's going to make them like so uncomfortable. And that's part of our problem. Like that is part of why we're in this crisis as a society is that we are so disconnected from like, what do we inspe human, which is you emote and you cry sometimes. Yeah. Oh, I was crying this morning at a Bible study, you know. How you removed, moved to tears or was it like was it? Yeah, what was people were sharing different people sharing different stuff or me talking about something just to mix up things. You know, and sometimes it's like, it's not really crying. Sometimes it's sweat, I feel like from the heavy shit I got in here.

23:56It's like, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm holding up some heavy shit in here and sometimes you got to sweat out of your eyes. Oh, yeah. You know, it's like, this isn't tears. This is sweat from like just me, like just from like, how heavy some of this shit is sometimes. And I'm not even complaining about it. Like sometimes it's like, yes, part of it is like this feeling that you have to look away if you're tearing up or something. It's like, I don't know how some of that became such a shame thing. You know, now if you're just being a cry baby about something, that's kind of different. But I think if you're just like feeling something, you know, that seems pretty normal to me. Yeah. And sometimes feelings are heavy and so your eyes got to sweat. Oh my gosh, that's poetry. And 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. And I think it's a lot of this has been fueled by the mental health industry.

24:57But it's more broadly just like consumer culture where we're just bombarded all the time with, do you feel uncomfortable? Like, buy this, eat this, do this. You know, it's just we've been so inculcated into thinking that discomfort and pain is a problem to fix. And we don't even realize that it's happened to us. Yes. And then when you have these, like, I do think crying is almost like a political, it's like a, it's like political activism. It feels to me because when it's such a powerful experience to feel a room of people, like energetically unsettled when I'm crying with them, because they also feel me in my power. Like, I am crying and like incredibly centered in myself and integrated. And they're almost like, I don't understand this. I don't understand. And I think more of us who are in touch with tears, the sweat, the sweat of grief and rage and

25:58all of it. Yeah, confusion. Totally. Oh, an alienation and loneliness and dude, if I saw my brain somewhere on the side of the road, it would be sitting there. It would probably be smoking. I'm going to be honest with you. It wouldn't be, it wouldn't change smoke, but it would be having one. And it would be like slumped over. No, no. I it would be still hopeful. Okay. Okay. It would be, I think, and it would probably be in some peanuts or something. It would have a little pocket full of peanuts. No seed oils on the peanuts, I hope. No, no, not at all. These are ones that he just picked out of a field. Try roasted. They naturally grew dry roasted. Those ones, gods, gods nuts and the end. Hot nuts. And then he might be tearing up a little. That's fair. That makes me tear up to think about your little brain on the side of the road. He looks. He's hitchhiking. He's headed somewhere. Oh, and he is going to get picked up by a really cute old man and a pickup truck. Who's like, I'm going 20 miles south. And he says, your brain's going to say, that's my direction and get on it, kid. That's romantic. I like that a little bit. Oh, my gosh, here I am with the tears in my eyes.

26:58But I think, you know, I just, because I was put on meds as a teenager and so many people are right now, like you said, at the start, 30% of college kids have been on psych meds. We have 8% of two, 8.2% of kids collectively on some kind of psych med. That's unbelievable when you think about it. It's wild. It's four, they're four million kids on psych meds. And this is like age five and up, like tiny children. Have we gotten lazy in how we try to solve psychiatric problems? I 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, you're meant to succeed and perform. It's this evolution of our modern culture itself that has actually made it impossible for us to,

28:02to like really deeply understand suffering. In the way that, you know, in the grand scheme of human history, we use to understand it. And so I don't think it's about laziness as much as it is. There's been a collective forgetting of what it means to suffer and how to bear suffering and how to make sense of suffering. But the world we live in also makes it impossible for so many people who might actually want to explore what they're going through in a deeper way. It makes it impossible because you've got to pay the bills, nine to five jobs. You have mouse to feed, you have rent to pay. Right, we've made this society that's so demanding. Of you to do that you don't even have time to be or to self reflect or to have a relationship with yourself or sometimes with other people. You know what's hard dealing with a website?

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30:09They don't f around. This 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. If you can't see this chart at home, it's just showing that since 1985, on average rent prices have gone up 140%, whereas income has only gone up, it looks like about 38 to 40%. I'm so glad you pulled this up because this encapsulates the whole problem here. If 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, of course you're going to feel anxious. But 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.

31:11When in fact you're actually having a healthy, logical, common-sensical, natural response to what is the actually sick situation if you're going to use that word. Right. It's more like that our society is sick, or that our environment has an illness, that we then get diagnosed with by looking at our society, and feeling how we feel within that society. I'm not saying that some people do not have real diagnoses. I'm not saying that some people don't have real issues, and I'm not denouncing anybody that's on medication. We're just taking a look at things. That's all we're doing here, and we're using our own journeys to do that. Of course, yeah. I think people often get confused when you're critiquing the diagnostic paradigm. People sometimes think you're saying that people aren't really struggling, losing it, going crazy, having breakdowns, and it's actually the opposite. By challenging this idea that all suffering is just like faulty brain chemistry,

32:15you're actually validating the reality of the suffering and the madness and the breakdowns that people are going through, because you're having a very real response that maybe completely derailing your life, but it's a response. It's not pathology. It's not you that you need to fix. What needs to be fixed is the situation and the culture. I'm so glad you brought up the medication thing, too, because people often hear me share my story, or they read my book, or whatever, and they're like, oh, she's anti-medication. She's shaming people who take medication. She's telling people to stop, like you just said. This is not about being against these medications. I know tons of people who've been greatly benefited by taking these drugs. I am trying to do in my work is get people to step back and question the information they've been given about the diagnoses and about the meds. I believe that this is a problem of informed

33:20choice. We haven't been given all the information we need. For people to make true choices for themselves, they need that information, which also includes information about not just the medications, but also alternatives to them. A lot of people don't even have options, because they can't afford them, because they're trying to pay their crazy rent, and they wish they had other options, but a lot of people don't have them. I completely get why meds have become the first line choice for so many people, because they haven't been given anything else. Yeah. There's a lot of functional medicine options out there these days. I'm not saying that those are as good or not. I'm just starting to experiment with some of those myself, but I know that there are functional medicine options out there. Also, I believe that there's bigger, darker entities at play that are happy if we are ill. It's easier to subjugate. What does subjugate mean? Am I using it right? To control, to dominate, to control. Yeah. Yeah. It's easier to subjugate if we're a little bit

34:22passive, if you're chasing the care at the whole time. It's easier. It's interesting, because we've come across some very huge things that have happened in society recently, and you don't see a lot of a lot of people saying, yes, you don't see much. You see some, but I think all of us are kind of shocked at like, with the Epstein files, with choices that our government's making, when do people, when is there something that gets us to stand up, and has that thing inside of us that makes us want to stand up, has that been compromised at some level that we weren't even aware? It was such a lullaby that we've been within. Yeah. Well, everyone's taken their outrage to their therapist, instead of to the streets, instead of to their local politicians, to the voting, like it's... Or everybody's putting a pill in their outrage. Oh, yeah. That's what I want. You know, it's like, sometimes it's like, yeah, I just didn't know how to, I just like, what am I, are these even some of my feelings that I'm feeling? Like, I just didn't know. I haven't

35:27known sometimes when I'm on medicine. And I didn't know how I felt about so many things in some ways. I didn't know what was being compromised inside of me at times, like, how I, if it was affecting how I felt about family, how I thought about myself. If I could feel about myself, I've questioned even if antidepressants affect my relationship with my higher power, too. And it's all kind of, yeah. So then when you take on the ideas that these antidepressants could be doing that, that makes... That's scarier than the reason why I got on them 20 years earlier, was just because I was getting out of a relationship and it was like kind of heartbreaking kind of stuff. So, okay, let's get back into your story. You've gone through the Debbie-Ton era. Where do you go from there? Yeah, 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 telling me what's wrong with me and giving me whatever you think I need

36:30to fix it. And so that was when I clicked into this, like I said, this new sense of purpose, and meaning, like, this is what my life is about. Just getting treatments so that I can finally, one day, feel okay in my skin. And 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, and that just became like the kind of organizing principle of my life. Like, I have a medical condition that I'm treating, and that's my number one priority. Everything else comes after it. And so the more kind of, the, I became this good patient, and the more treatment I saw it, and the more therapy, more pills, my life is falling more and more apart. I'm getting physically sick, weight gain, you know, digestive issues, skin issues, my hair's falling out, sleep problems. I'm getting more and more dysfunctional, and my social

37:31relationships, just like really toxic situations with guys. I'm like losing friendships, because I just can't stay connected, and I can't feel bonded, and I don't feel, I can't feel intimacy, and my creativity's falling apart, like everything's falling apart more and more, as I move through my twenties, being the good psychiatric patient on all these meds that are accumulating, and, you know, hospitalization start, and I'm taking myself into the hospital. I'm just like so desperate to lock me away from myself, because I just feel, I, like I can't live anymore. It gets to the, to those points. So it feels like that. Oh yeah, totally. So I like, you know, multiple hospitalizations, and 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, you think, think goodness, like they kind of insulated me from what would have otherwise been, I don't even know

38:33what, like a group home, like long-term institution, I don't even know what. And by age 25, there I was, like, totally disabled, almost 200 pounds, no friends. I'm like constantly, like, achy and getting sick all the time. I'm constantly thinking about, like, how meaningless this life is. And my psychiatrist says, like, you know, unfortunately, Laura, your bipolar disorder has progressed, and you now have treatment resistant bipolar disorder, which was, to me, the most hopeless message I could possibly receive, because I had literally spent all of those years leading up to it, focused on treatment, because I believed it would one day help me. And I'd been told, like, you have the spray disease, like, this is the only thing you, that's really going to help you, and now you're telling me it's not going to fucking help me, like, what? And it was at that point that I, that I overdozed, like, I, you know, it was not, it was, I'd been suicidal for years, but in many ways, thinking about killing myself, like, similar to booze when I was a told a booze

39:38bag, thinking about killing myself, ironically, kept me going longer, like, whether it was, like, at least I could get, like, what? Between alcohol and suicide, it was like, at least I can get shit face tonight, so that I don't care about what a mess my life is. And with suicide, it was, I always have that power to end it, so I can go another day. So it was like these, these, these two dark companions on my shoulders that had, ironically, like, kept me going, and, you know, eventually, it flipped, and I was like, it's time. I have poured my heart into getting help, like, all these meds, all these hospitals, all these professionals, look what I've put my family through. I'm a told a mess, I can't work, I can't support myself, and I, if all, this is all this in store for me, for the rest of my life, because I have this incurable brain disease, like, this isn't a life worth living. And when I, you know, I like, you know, flatline and metavec and my, oh, yeah, my parents were told, like,

40:39sign a do not resuscitate, it should be a vegetable. It was like, God, I mean, this was a God thing. And did you take in a lot of medicine that day? Oh, yeah, yeah. On purpose. I took a month's supply with a bottle of wine. What kind of wine was it, do you remember? It was red wine. I don't know what kind. It was just like, how nice if you were rich, I bet. No, but weirdly, my, my, like something that came off a pirate ship or whatever. Oh, that would be cool. No, it, it was like, you know, probably barefoot, you know, that one. Oh, those were good for a while. That was, that, that was the era. This is 2008 when I tried to go myself. Yeah, barefoot was popped. Yeah, yeah. And here you were barefoot probably taking pills, too. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. You were down a shoelace, dude. I don't even think, let it light you. Keep your shoes because they have shoe strings in them. Oh, yeah. If you're locked up in a psych ward, that's like, definitely they take any laces that you have. Did you go to a psych ward? Four times. No way. Yeah, yeah. Can you take me in and just what that's like a little bit? I just laugh because people have this, if you haven't spent time yourself on a psych ward or visiting

41:44someone on a psych ward, you have this like, oh, it's like this spa. Like go away and get some rest. People are going to take care of you. You're literally all, you know, any possession you have that could be, you know, that they perceive as a potential weapon is gone. You're on this thin plastic mattress. And by the way, I should clarify all my psych ward experiences were in fancy private hospitals. Wow. So I'm not, I've been on in in state public institutions, visiting people. I can talk about those in a minute, but my experience was the spot the the the nicer sought the nicer stuff. The top of the line. And, you know, just the thin. It sounds nice. Okay. Well, if you let me walk you through the day. So you you wake up in the morning on your like stiff plastic e mattress. And do you have a cell. You're not. Um, is a cell. A roommate, a roommate, a cell. Like CEL. L. Y. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. So sometimes you'll have a private room. Like I had one hospital. I was in you had your own private room, but at McLean, I had a roommate and, you know,

42:48glaring fluorescent lights overhead. When you first get in, they check on you every 15 minutes. Like through the whole night, they shine a flashlight in your face to make sure you're still alive. And you're like, really? Dude, I was just in your 15 minutes ago. Um, but you wake up in the morning, and, you know, you kind of like stumble down to the nurse's station to get your morning meds, go into the dining room. And you get like even at a fancy place like McLean, like it's not nice food. It's like, you know, dried out French toast and cereal boxes and that kind of thing. And then you basically just spend your day being coerced into going to these like super cheesy groups like emotion regulation and anxiety management and, you know, family skills. And you're sitting there with like 22 year old, like very bubbly young women for the most part who were like, here's the mood chart. Can you point the out of which one you resonate with most this morning? And then

43:49you pick the like sad face or the anxiety face. Yeah, or the vape face. That's what I wonder if they have vape faces on because I haven't been locked up in so long. Like, vapes didn't even exist. A vape face. What would it look like? It just be a regular face. Just kind of nosh a lot or smiley shalant. Just hitting a vape. Oh, I think anyway, I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud, but that's the one I'd probably pick loose at the time. But I'd be aiming probably for the joyful face. Okay. So you have. So you're in there and is any of it like you're doing like family of origin work? Like is there some more depth like in there about it? There's no depth happening there. It's all these like, you know, it's it's all very superficial. Like, you know, my, you know, my mom and I are getting into fights because there's a whole group of patients with you and it's like a, you know, 30 minute. So there's no deep work. There's no meaningful like exploratory. And is anybody chained up or anything like that in there? People do get restrained if they

44:51are naughty. Who's naughty in there? Was anybody? Well, one of the curves in there. Oh, I thank goodness. There were definitely some some per I mean, I cross paths with some strange guys and some of my psych ward experiences. But but one one restraint story I talk about it in my book. It she was this young woman who was a student at MIT. I can't remember what part of Asia she was from, but she was from summer in Asia. She was really quiet. She'd gotten admitted because she was, I didn't even know why she'd gotten admitted at the time, but she was admitted and we all she didn't talk to anyone. She was just very quiet. And then one day someone delivered her flowers and the nurse, you know, they obviously will like check to make sure there's no, you know, there's nothing fair for me. Yeah, paraphernalia. That was the word I was looking for. They gave her the flowers and she read the card and then she just threw them across the hallway and started screaming. Blood curling screams and she wouldn't stop and the staff tried to get her to

45:54stop and just screaming screaming screaming and then eventually staff literally like physically picked her up and carried her and put her in the quiet room and she got quiet, which probably means she was injected with a tranquilizer. Dang, I hit her with that dart, huh? Yeah. The, the, were you able to find out what was in the card? Like what, what was so upsetting? No, I never, because she never talked to any of us afterwards. And 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. So, you know, I'm thinking of one guy I know, this big hulking guy. He'd been put on meds in college because one of his best friends died of an overdose, like an accidental overdose. And he was super spun out about it as anyone would be. And so he wasn't able to focus and he started taking stimulants and then he stopped sleeping and any human being who stopped sleeping is eventually going to get psychotic because that's literally what happens

46:58to any human brain. So he ended up getting sucked into the mental health system that way and got a bipolar diagnosis and eventually a schizophrenia diagnosis. And he was just put on all these meds and take them for long periods of time and then he'd stop them abruptly because he didn't know about withdrawal and we're going to come back to that. I'm sure. And so he'd get all messed up and then police would get involved and then he'd be put in what will happen sometimes to patients on wards. This will get put in four point restraints. So your wrists are restrained and your ankles are restrained and they pin you down on your stomach and they pull your pants down and they inject you with a so-called medicine in your butt cheek and just like knock you out and they leave him, he would tell me like they'd leave me for hours. I'd piss myself like that kind of thing happens. So sometimes if things got severe they would medicate people right on the spot. Yeah, against their will. Yeah. And that never happened to me because I was always so compliant and I always did what I was told. And so after my overdose when I was like in a comb, it was like

48:04a wild thing. I was like intubated. Yeah, I was crazy catheter, everything. And I woke up. I go into all of it in my book. I really want you to read my book, Theo, because I feel like we have just from hearing what you've shared online about. I just yeah. Okay. It's it's I love my book. I'm so proud of my book and I wrote it to help people and but check back in with me in two months, give me two months to read it. Will you? Totally. Is that a fair amount of time? I also did the audible recording. It's my voice. So if you like to listen to stuff when you're working out, but it's it's heavy and dark. And I go into this. I've dated some heavy dark women. We heavy dark women. We're the way to where the way to go. I think you know, we're intense, we're a little you know, it takes a lot of energy to to be with us like if my husband was here, he'd be like, but we know and I didn't mean like that. I'm in updated some heavier darker women. That's what I meant. But I've also dated some women who have who kind of like yeah,

49:05or a little bit have a lot more e-or in them than you know, than then Tiger. I guess you would say. But anyway, we got to move on. Anyway, back to this. Back to the psych ward. But so so you know, there I was on the psych ward after my overdose like waking up from a coma and death. That choice I made to kill myself. I hold it. So it was an active choice to take your life. Oh yeah. And 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. Right. So that's something that I think as a as listeners that we 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. Yep. So you're just kind of managing something and it's getting worse. So at certain point you've kind of medicated

50:07yourself into a corner and it's like, what do you do then? If there is no solution as far as you've known. Well, you're being yeah, exactly. You've been told there's no other solution. And that's 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 to 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. And I realized now my urge to die was always actually a profound urge to live just in an entirely different way from everything I knew. And so death felt like I thought that meant death, but it actually meant really like a more symbolic death of the life that I was living, not literal death. So you're saying I want this this this version of life that I'm living. I don't want to live anymore. Yeah. And so you think like that means I have to kill myself. But I see now like I just didn't know how else what else

51:07it could mean. And of course, all these years later, like this is another place where I'll get teary-eyed. You know, this that was 18 years ago. And I had you told me in that and that at age 27, after my overdose, like my life would look the way it looks now. Never would have believed you like no way, like no way in hell is it like it's not possible. And so I you know, it took another two years after my overdose for my turning point to happen for for me to actually kind of wake up from from all of this. And oh, yeah, sorry, my suicide attempt was 25. 27 was when I woke up. So yeah, I was 27 my the previous two years after my overdose were like more of the same. I was still a mess living with family like totally disabled. Did you try and get any pets or what modalities did you get? I couldn't have handled a pet. I wouldn't have been able to. Really? Yeah. Not even a little gerbil or something like that. Oh, gerbil. Would you say gerbil down here? We say gerbil up there.

52:10No. Gerbil. Yeah. I like gerbil way better. Oh, yeah, gerbil. Gerbil. It doesn't sound as nice as gerbil. Yeah, gerbil sounds like it's from the streets or something. It sounds like it's like he's from Memphis, you know what I'm saying? No, but I picture him with little spectacles on and like a cup of tea. Oh, yeah. Mr. Gerbil. Yeah. But anyways, I know I couldn't have had a gerbil. I couldn't have had a plant. I was like taking a shower once a week was a really big deal. And yeah. Oh, I've been that depressed before a long time ago, but I've been that depressed at us every moment feels so heavy. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a war. You're literally fighting a battle every day. And when you put your head on the pillow and you haven't died, you're like, I did it. I won the battle today. It's and it's it's not sustainable. And I want 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.

53:11And and you know, that kind of like that sound of those pills in that capsule, like can really just it brings so much promise until until it doesn't, you know, and and and so for me that turning point happened in 2010. I was 27. I was just gotten out of my last hospitalization. My second to last hospitalization, I quit drinking because by then, like I said earlier, booze became like a, you know, my go-to way of not killing myself was like getting drunk every night. So you were on all these meds and drinking. Oh yeah, five meds, including three milligrams of clonipin. I was on two mood stabilizers and any psychotic and an any depressant plus plus the benzo drinking like for some reason I loved Harpoon IPA. Do you guys even have that down here? It's like a new England IPA beer. This was like before the whole microbury thing happened. I'd either drink, you know, like a six. I love how you're on all these pills and you're like, and also I'm going to have a

54:13Harpoon IPA. Six of them. Like I mean, I was I was a miss. I don't know if you with with any depressants if you're tolerance for alcohol. You're like Ric Flair, dude. I don't know who that is. You're like sick flare. We tell me who he is. Ric Flair was like is is is is how I'm saying was Ric Flair is this famous wrestler. He's actually never I've interviewed him and he's actually Oh him. He's actually yeah. And he's also actually never taken drugs. But he's a psych. But he has a robust spot. Yeah. Yeah. He's a blonde. He's a blonde. And he likes to drink. That's an amazing outfit. Yeah. And he loves he loves alcohol being a part of his lifestyle. It's always been a part of his lifestyle. That's why I'm saying that. Yeah. I love you, Ric. Well, 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 and they they're told oh you have alcoholism. But when they eventually come off their meds and this was my experience too, like I I eventually realized like actually

55:16the combination was like kind of leading me to to act in these crazy ways like 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 in the way that I did back then like sometimes I would drink like two bottles of wine in a night and I'd be totally blacked out. But apparently I know whenever it could tell I would like act normal until the very end and then like crazy shit would happen. And ambulances like I called on me and I'd wake up with like charcoal on my shirt and the emergency room. My stomach would be pumped like oh yeah you're like John daily it sounds like at a barbecue. I don't know who he is either. Oh he's a famous golfer who likes to party. Okay. There he is. Oh he's cute. Yeah he is cute. Look at that outfit. Yeah he's handsome I mean. But he has a bar. He has a bar down. He has a bar here in town. He likes to. He likes to party. Oh he looks awesome. He used to live in a hooters. But yeah he likes to party dude. Yeah well that

56:16I would have been like with them like out all night people and but I think the combination of all the meds and the alcohol was like definitely definitely it I don't know how it interfered with metabolism but it made it made me able to drink a lot more and black as you say that I remember when I first got prescribed the antipresas I've got them to zooloft and I could drink suddenly I could go out to drink. I didn't ever even really like to drink. Interesting. But I was living in Charleston South Carolina at the time with some people I had met in the ocean or whatever and in the ocean. Yeah I met some folks in the ocean and they let me stay over with them and then but anyway suddenly I could drink and I was drinking gin and tonics or whatever dude like yeah It's interesting like I was like Jimmy Buffett's godness you or whatever. I know what is happening in the body to enable that but I think this this ends up happening for a lot of people but so so in 2010 like I eventually did make the decision to stop drinking thinking that if I remove alcohol

57:21maybe this treatment resistant bipolar won't be treatment resistant anymore and my meds will finally help me and because I've been self-medicating without alcohol and that's why the meds haven't helped so like that was the headspace I was in so I quit drinking and within a month or two and I'd have I'd had enough I'd gotten enough clarity of mind from not being like black out every night to to realize like holy cow I've been on these meds since I was a kid like I don't know who I am like everything you talk about so powerfully like what do I really care about like what does my bot what would my body actually look like what I actually be in this like 200 pound body would I actually feel connected to pee I just started asking these questions because I felt such a difference from just not drinking anymore um and that was when I began to bring it up with my doctor like maybe maybe I could come off some of these five meds I'm on like it was literally on five meds prescribed by one doctor at literally the top psychiatric hospital in the country like the best of the best care

58:27and the doctor didn't want to do it you know like we don't want to rock the boat blah blah blah the boat is ship like the boat is the Andrea Gale like what are we even fucking talking about the boat just started a perfect storm with Mark Wahlberg the boat ain't doing well and best but it was so tragic about it is that because the boat was like me showering more often and like not being in the psych ward it felt like the Queen Elizabeth on her first voyage okay so we feel like the boats doing better it felt like I am rocking it like I'm not on the psych ward I'm alive I showered twice this week let's go and I didn't like bingey two boxes of cereal yeah with your hand I'm doing great yeah oh yeah when you hand finish a box of cereal dude the hand and you got your elbow up and you're just and then the you get the powder rich thing that's like having pinkies up when you drink like a martini or whatever like if you eat a box of cereal elbow up with your hand you just get in there you put your dang head in there like a

59:28man oh I see you're going like this well you just do whatever no I don't know if you even cut it open from the side need it from the side whatever you have to do but you get in there is pornography causing a problem in your life do you find yourself watching porn oh for longer periods of time and having trouble stopping is porn affecting your relationship or dating life well you're certainly not alone watching pornography has become so common place today and oftentimes menus porn to numb the pain of loneliness boredom anxiety and depression shame and stigma prevent men from talking about these issues and getting help for them I want to introduce you to my friend Steve Steve is the founder of Valor Recovery a program to help men overcome porn abuse and sexual compulsivity Steve is a long term sexual recovery member and has personally overcame the emotional and spiritual despair of abusing pornography and has

1:00:29dedicated his life to empowering men to do the same Steve is an amazing person and he is a close friend of mine I mean that Valor Recovery helps men to develop the tools necessary to have a healthier sex life their coaches are in long term recovery and will be your partner mentor and spiritual guide to transcend these problematic behaviors to learn more about Valor Recovery please visit them at www.valorrecoverycoaching.com or email them at admin at valorrecoverycoaching.com thank you um so wait you get diagnosed with treatment resistant bipolar but they keep you on on medicines well for me they did but what is so wild about the whole treatment resistant thing and it's wise in the subtitle of my book because to me this is like a the kind of one of the core

1:01:31problems is that there's a whole industry of treating treatment resistance so for a lot of people especially people who have a treatment resistant depression diagnosis that's when you start getting told about electroconvulsive therapy electro shock or trans cranial magnetic simulation TMS like that's when you get into the medical device realm and they're like oh all these pills didn't work so now let's put this giant magnet on your head and shoot powerful current powerful magnetic pulses through your brain or like let's put electrodes on your skull and shoot electric currency so they're investigated those those those things before yeah I go into ect in my book and some of the other like medical devices in it because it is the treatment for treatment resistance I never no one ever suggested those to me and it just speaks to the like kind of illogical illogical nature of a lot of this but yeah and and had they offered ect to me I probably would have

1:02:38said yes but but actually like the conventional kind of like protocol for people with a bipolar diagnosis is that ect can induce mania I doubt there's any like actual evidence base for that but that's probably why they didn't okay got it how do you start to put the medicine in the rearview mirror hmm so I began bringing it up with my doctor like I want to see what my baseline would be off of these meds I've been on since I was a kid and he said no for a few months and then and then this was made 2010 then I stumbled upon a book that had this old phonology head on the covers you know like those old like early 20th century drawings where they're like different compartments in the skull and and it had any different compartment a different psychiatric drug name and so the cover pulled me and I was like whoa I've been on that I've been on that I'm on that now and I was like what's this book and it was called anatomy of an epidemic and I just felt compelled

1:03:38to buy it so I bought it and I started reading it and it blew my mind and so basically yeah there it is so in a nutshell this journalist sets out to answer the question of like why why when you look at long-term outcomes of psychiatric medication use for schizophrenia do people in developing countries quote unquote whether I don't have all these you know medications do better than in the US and other developed countries quote unquote and he ends up discovering like if you actually look at the what evidence base does exist for long-term medication use it makes a pretty compelling case that on the whole these drugs long-term are making us sicker physically more disabled and so there I was on long-term as five of them through you know all these years my life falling apart and it all clicked and I was like oh my god what if it's not treatment resistant mental illness like what if

1:04:41it's the treatment oh yeah and and once that was removed from like I couldn't un-unsee that realization and it like haunted me and of course I first went through this state of like shock it can't be true like it can't be true that all this medicine maybe has been hurting me because I just had never it never occurred to me and so that was the what gave me the confidence to go back to my doctor and be like I don't really care if you don't want me to do this I'm gonna do it we are you gonna help me or not and he was totally unsupportive and basically you know made me feel like this was the biggest mistake but he was like I'll you know all allow it like he just you know he he was willing to bring me off and was this the same doctor that put you on them yeah I mean I saw so many doctors over the years but it was the one I was seeing with the five-mad regimen okay got it and this gets us to you know the topic that I I'm like so excited to connect with you more about

1:05:41here is when I made the decision to come off my meds I had no idea how hard it would be to get off them no one told me my doctor certainly had no idea I had no idea that using these medications which are psychoactive chemicals that work by altering how your central nervous system works like if you use them for months especially years your whole body is going to adapt to them is that true that some of them alter how your central nervous system works all of them all antidepressants mood stabilizers benzos they they call it's it's basically they create physical dependence which is different from addiction in that when you're addicted to something you have cravings for it you like seek it out even though you know it's causing problems physical dependence is a purely physiological state where your body changes itself to accommodate the presence of

1:06:43this drug such that when you remove it it's destabilized oh yeah and so no one told me no one told you either I'm assuming well I'm just shocked that like I'm shocked that there was never an exit strategy like when you get on the drugs like I've been hitchhiking or whatever to see this girl that I was in love with or whatever but she didn't like me and like I was like kind of heartbroken or whatever and then someone to a doctor in town because I wasn't doing that good like I was sneaking in people's yards at night and petting their animals and shit I wasn't doing great and so this so anyway the doctor put me on this medication because I was like pretty heartbroken I think a lot of it was other childhood stuff that I'd attached to this relationship unknowingly and so I was pretty heartbroken but I was heartbroken in a bigger realm kind of than just this specific thing but this was the epicenter of it sort of this had like launched it this was the match really and so I get I get on these meds and then everything's kind of fine

1:07:45but there was never like a check up later I ended up leaving South Carolina like a few months after that and and there was never like a check in back really to like figure out if you stay on them and so I was just on them for a long time. Is this a psychiatrist you prescribe them or general like a your primary care doctor do you remember? I can't remember I can't remember if I I think it was a psychiatrist so I think I'd went to someone who could actually prescribe medicine so it was someone that at least knew of what the medicines were but then I got on it and and then I've just been on it for years and there's times where I've gotten off to try and like I tried plant medicine a few times which got off to I did it do plant medicine experiences and some of that helped a lot like doing Iowaska helped a lot but the thing that I didn't realize was I wasn't getting off with them correctly. Yeah yeah and that's the thing that I most recently when I tried to get off I didn't get off of them correctly and I was talking with this guy Dr. Mark Horowitz is it? You've talked yeah Mark said close friend and Clive was just talking with him earlier today. Oh were

1:08:47you really? Yeah we're very close we've worked together on a lot of this. And he's like out of the blue one of my friends recommended him to come and podcast sometime and so I've kind of just been emailing with him but I've been emailing with him in some mild consultation about medicine. Great and he and I got off and I thought I'd tie traded down well because I went from like 10 milligrams to five and then to nothing. Oh Theo oh my goodness which one which is this love is this like soprano that you're always yeah. This was estetala pram then is a generic lexapro I think and when I tell you I hit this thing that was like I didn't care about really anything and I started sleeping in and I started um things that I cared about but came like I didn't even I didn't know if I cared about them and so I just kind of didn't care about them. I started an envisioning future for myself that were kind of um careless sort of a mundane maybe um not even like peaceful when just like non-chalant about everything and that gave that got a

1:09:49little bit spooky because I knew that that wasn't real or how I really felt it and it was too much and just the sleeping in I didn't slept in since I was like really in my 20 really I was like so what am I doing and so he said that the titration has to be different so I'm still in consultation with him but I recently had to get back on I've been off for about six months and I really had tried my best and it was 10 the dose that you had been at for a while or had you been at a higher dose I've been at 20 before that for a while yeah um and then at 10 for probably a year or two yeah but in the end it's like 25 years so I'm about you know 20 something year so it's like anyway there's a lot more to it and I still I'm gonna try again at some point but not without better consultation but um let's get back so that's what's been going on with me about it yeah but let's get back into your story so um what was the toughest parts about getting off of these for you yeah I mean because my doctor had no idea what he was doing and I didn't know anything about physical dependence and withdrawal and what year was this this was 2010 I was 27 nobody knew

1:10:51what and so I came off five drugs in six months which is cold turkey like you're like the Jesse Owens of getting off drugs like a triathlete and and this again bring bring like I can't not mention class here like the fact that I had the socio economic resources to be completely disabled for years like years the coming off five meds in six months blew up my life for years and but I had a family who could take care of me and and so many people don't have that and and so it was just to describe a little bit about what it was like I mean things were bad on the meds like I had all kinds of health problems and like super you know emotional instability and a cognitive issues and all of that but that all went on overdrive like I couldn't talk I'd I'd you know we'd be sitting down wanting to have a conversation and I'd have an idea in my head that I'd want to speak out to you but the words wouldn't come out or they'd come out and they'd sound really weird I just like

1:11:54I couldn't translate thought to speaking I couldn't absorb words I would get you quit cold turkey five in six months five med but five meds so it's basically cold turkey like that's so fast I just want yeah many warm turkey I go back in like just to paint a picture and you know Mark Mark's work you reference like he we've worked close closely because a close call you mine and so I come from the layperson world like the ex-patient world and he comes from both that world because he himself was on this stuff and he's also a psychiatrist the protocols that he you know writes about and 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 totally just like you know bottom of the social hierarchy or the medical hierarchy like the patient we patients ourselves who basically had to and I didn't I didn't do it the right way I did the wrong way because I didn't

1:12:56know 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 and and Mark's tapering guidelines and the very very few number of other practitioners who know how to taper safely all come from the ex-patient because what we realized is to get off these meds successfully if you go to your average doctor they'll they'll say a they'll say oh yeah you can do this in two weeks or four weeks or eight weeks and b they'll say and you just cut it you know cut it in half and then cut it in half again and then stop and then they'll they'll just like do a kind of linear thing where you're on a 100 now dropped to 90 80 70 60 but what people figured out just through what it felt like is my gosh you know at this higher dose I can come down like that but the lower the dose gets the harder this feels I've got a I've got to make smaller reductions in my dose and maybe space it out a little

1:13:57longer so it ends up looking like this hyperbolic curve for anyone listening it's like a ramp almost like a skater's ramp exactly exactly that's or like a bowl you know inside of an ice salad bowl just so you're not making a straight line a straight you know diagonal line or like a staircase yeah it's not like that it's more of a gentle curve and the lower that you get in the overall dose the smaller the reductions you make and this is literally the opposite of what most doctors tell their patients they're like oh you're on a low dose you can just hop off and the reason why this is the case is now research is verifying what patients figured out through experience is that the the effect that these drugs have on the central nervous system is not directly correlated with the dosage size so like if you go from 10 to 20 of lexapro you're not you're not doubling the effect that the the drug is having on your brain going from 0 to 10 it has a significant a significant effect on

1:15:03your central nervous system it disrupts your central nervous system in a much more significant way than you know going from 10 to 20 or 20 to 40 or so the higher the dose the the less disruption is happening to your central nervous system I see but that last 10 or whatever that's a severe yes the lower the dose you get when you're coming off the more of an effect the changes are having which is why like you you experience going from 10 to 5 to 0 like like blue blue you know just melancholy everything was a melancholy thing and it was very bizarre I almost cannot even explain and I tried to fight through it and like I was taking different doing different things in the morning trying different modalities it was just too much and it just became too much and so I just said you know I'm a live to fight another day so I'm going to get back on my meds how long did it take for you to make that choice like how long were you off for well for the first like six weeks everything was kind of okay it felt like and then it got like it was just manageable a little bit of

1:16:03like depression here and there but it was stuff that I'd done before that felt manageable and then and then it just got too bizarre just melancholy was a little too much but you knew it what like you said earlier like this doesn't feel this feels like otherworldly this feels like this is not me right it's right I knew it wasn't me yeah I knew it was something I knew it was me experiencing something because of something that was going on yeah met medicinally and so I thought it would go away and and I was emailing with Dr. Horowitz and he's like no it could stay around for a long time and at a certain point I said I just can't battle this anymore it was have it was causing me some troubles even with my like sobriety sobriety like just being able to like with my just being in recovery and stuff like that it was causing me just a lot of confusion yeah so anyway so I'm back on but okay let's get back into where you were talking about yeah I knew none of what we just talked about when I came off so I came off really fast and then you know just intense magnification of all these cognitive problems and emotional upheaval and digestive issues

1:17:07and like weird you know boils on my skin weird smells coming out of my body like it was just it was crazy and like back then I couldn't have been under these lights these these bright lights would have set off like a panic attack so I remember you know going to the grocery store which was a big deal to go to the grocery store and you know all the sounds and the movement and the colors yeah I'd be like I'm uh it would my body it was like my body thought I was being eaten by a tiger just just like being in a grocery store so my whole my fight or flight response was just completely on it on it yeah and of course you know most people who come off their meds fast because there's no you know until Bobby Kennedy you know our country hasn't really paid much attention to this so like most people when they feel that way off their meds think they're having a relapse quote unquote they think like oh my gosh my illness is coming back

1:18:07like this is this is a sign I need my meds and and everyone's telling them that too the doctors telling them that their loved ones are telling them that like you feel horrible off your med this means you need it go back on it and then they go back on it and they feel better quote unquote because they're not like having a panic attack in the grocery store anymore so then they think oh wow this medication's really helping me yeah but I didn't feel it's so funny you say that because I didn't think exactly I didn't feel like oh man that girl broke up with me again it's not like I went back to that feeling it was just I just feel like I'm off this thing that I can't that I need to have now so I just felt addicted it's amazing that you had that that you had that sense so strongly I think some some people definitely do they they know like this is not me this is these these drugs a lot of people don't have that like they I think they they are so disconnected from their instincts like and this was definitely the case for me too I just

1:19:07was so disconnected from my own you know intuition about stuff that I just like couldn't like it's when I you describe how you felt those six weeks in when you were like something's wrong like this is not this is not me this is not my like usual down down stuff like that's was your into that was your instinct like you know ringing the bell a lot of people don't have that and so then they go back on and they stay on for another 10 20 whatever years because they're like I don't want to feel that way again because they just don't know if you did it slower it might look very different right yeah and that's what I'm hopeful for in the future what about were you able to maintain a relationship during any of this what was that like for you all those I mean I basically dated guys who were as lost and and destabilized as I was so like not a pretty picture um and you know very we were all just seeking relief not all it wasn't like multiple of them at a time but in each

1:20:09each of those dark relationships we were basically just like running away from pain together and did medicines cause like intimacy issues kind of did you have like because I know a lot of like a lot of guys are fear with guys if I get on an impressive it's like it can affect my like and it can call it can maybe a cause that intimacy disorder can you look look that up trevon well yeah definitely causes sexual uh oh this says right here it says um yes mental health medications can absolutely cause intimacy and sexual issues this is a very common side effect particularly with antidepressants and anti psychotics it often happens because these drugs affect the brain chemicals that control mood desire and physical arousal does it does this similar stuff happen with women kind of in it if it's too personal we can take it out oh no oh my if I I will bear it all like I took it to me the more you know vulnerable we are in the stories you know in our stories it's the more it's the more helpful it is so no yeah I I had my first orgasm at the age of 27

1:21:12I had zero sexual function on psych drugs and I didn't even realize what I was missing because I've been put on them so young so I I just assumed and was being told that my like inability to feel bonded to got you know bonded intimate you know aroused all those things was my illness my quote unquote my mental illness so I never put it together and thank god when I got off I regained my sexual function and I talk about it in my book like of all the betrayals of all the loss of all the you know the the disconnection that I experienced as from being on long long term psych meds it was the the taking of my sexuality um especially in my teenage in 20-something years that was the hardest to make peace with because sexuality is about so much more than just sex it's you know like how you are in the world your vibrancy your vitality it's like how you create art it's how you appreciate

1:22:12beauty and music it's like all tied into sexuality and that does get suppressed and disconnected for a lot of people and I just want to name too that for a certain percentage of people and we need more research to better understand this when they come off anti-depressants they lose sexual function so they don't even necessarily have sexual problems on meds when they stop it goes away and it's called PSSD post SSRI sexual dysfunction and it's devastating and there are a lot of like actually can I can I call out a clip to look up for sure Google PSSD Lauren Friedman PSSD is a condition where sexual side effects such as genital numbness low sex drive and weak orgasms persist for months years or even decades after completely stopping selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or related antidepressant medications I will say this I did notice that um

1:23:13my orgasms was different mm-hmm they was different man they was just I mean it just they was different man they was not they was they was just different you know they were just like like the PSI on them was low that's I just felt like the PSI on them was low and when you were off for those months did it change oh when I was when I got off them that's what I'm talking about oh oh oh yeah when I got off the end of the process that was when it yeah there was just like it was just like yeah it was just it wasn't it was just not it was just barely just it was not much it was just it was low it was low man is there time it's a short clip is there time yeah there that Lauren Friedman this just to contextualize this so so I we my organization intercompass initiative we helped organize a summit on mental health and over medicalization in DC on May 4th that Bobby Kennedy came and spoke at and he made these big policy announcements about

1:24:15deep prescribing at the event and this panel about deep prescribing deep prescribing yep about helping all these guidelines that don't exist that you know Mark Horowitz's work and our work that don't exist in the in the government in the public health system um under secretary of Kennedy's leadership you know they want to focus on that and actually get good guidelines in and and train doctors and all that so this was a panel of the young people and her clip well I'm going to talk about another time I'm going to cry but you got to listen to this yeah let's watch this and I remember Joe Rogan sent me this one night he sends me this stuff to kind of keep me updated on some of the awareness about this stuff let's go ahead and watch it yes this D is not just a loss of sexual function but a loss for some people of emotional function as well that has been the case for me before this I was a super emotional empathetic loving caring like Soviet plath reading and resonating girl and the day I woke up with this injury I quite literally

1:25:17felt my soul leave my body like I'm so serious it was the most unbelievable and organic thing I've ever experienced and it's a common symptom of people who have this condition um to this day it's been years for me I'm 23 now I can't feel love for my own mother which is the hardest thing on earth I can't feel connection or love for my friends or even pleasure and music which was the pain of my existence I was a songwriter since I was a child it was my outlet um and it's been completely neurologically severed from these medications um and I just like to say there's a reason that you know every song in the radio every movie on your television every piece of art since the beginning of humanity centers on sex and love and not just romantic love but but tonic familiar love and that is because these are the most central intoxicating worthwhile and fulfilling parts of the human experience these aren't luxuries and to remove someone's ability to participate

1:26:21not just physically through sex which is completely horrific on its own but to remove someone's ability to emotionally connect with another human being is a crime against humanity and I say crime against humanity because there is evidence that you they lily who created the first assisted eye pro-zac knew their drugs could cause permanent sexual dysfunction and emotional nummies in children especially and they withheld this from the public because they knew it would be a threat to the bottom line I mean I'm hope I'm not the only one who believes that there's nothing more criminal or dystopian to withhold from patients and parents and patients that your medication can permanently chemically castrate and emotionally non-mits user for the rest of their life wow is that true that Eli Lilly was hiding information I didn't know that until she's she's shared that but it would not surprise me because drug companies have known all along as well about withdrawal and they suppress that so they they it would not surprise me I mean we we know especially in the last six years that pharmaceutical companies are happy to not give us the full story I don't

1:27:23believe any any of these drug companies can be trusted anymore I don't know how you could I don't know how any of us can trust them I think it does why there's so much outside medicine and internal work like outside medicine like functional medicine natural choices um homeopathic or homeopathic and then um and just internal work that people are trying to do now to steer clear of drug companies yeah and and I think just one thing that I didn't know when I started my journey on these meds nor did my parents is that if you if you actually read the drug labels themselves that are right on you know dot gov website like it's called the orange book if you google FDA orange book you can look up any FDA approved drug and look at the drug approval package I mean they were dacked a lot of stuff but even looking at the complete drug label if you actually read the whole thing which is not easy some of these are 50 pages this is not like the little pamphlet you get at the drugstore but the actual comprehensive drug label you're you'll be shocked by what you

1:28:29read like as an example if you were going to guess how long a psychiatric drug is studied for in in humans like in in the drug trials that get them approved as safe and effective how long would you guess that a psychiatric drug is studied for I would guess 10 years six to eight weeks sometimes 10 sometimes 12 weeks well it's heartbreaking um it's brave of her to just like speak exactly what she's feeling um like that it's so rare that we're hearing sort of this voice I guess that's what's kind of surprising to me um I think until recently it was rare to hear someone like this speaking out but I've been doing this work for 16 years and I feel something profound shifting in our culture people are waking up especially young people like Lauren who are waking up and realizing the betrayal and and I want to be clear like this isn't about bad doctors or mean doctors or evil

1:29:32doctors this is about a massive information problem that is affecting us patients and our families and the doctors themselves this is about prescribers who have not been given comprehensive information either like I bet if you asked your average psychiatrist how long they thought the evidence base was for the safety and effectiveness of your average antidepressant and they wouldn't even realize it's six to eight weeks or 12 weeks like unbelievable we have an information crisis that has made it impossible to be properly informed on the patient side and on the doctor side and I think it's a big part of why we are now in a situation where we have more suffering than ever before rates of suicide or sky or have shot up especially in young people um in veterans suicide crisis we have you know it's 23.1 percent of Americans have a psychiatric diagnosis of some kind and so we have this mental health

1:30:35and everyone concludes like oh my gosh people must not be getting enough treatment they're not getting treatment but if you actually look at the numbers more people are getting more treatment than ever before. So what is the real problem do you think do you feel like it's like that there's compromised institutions that are flooding us with pills that are trying to get us all hooked do you feel like it's a big pharma pressure from the top and like compromised um like studies and documentation do you feel like it's uh that we've all been convinced that there's something wrong with us um what do you kind of what what what what if you learned from looking at this like what is the real crisis and it I guess the crisis is that we're on the medication the crisis isn't that there's a crisis. I think the the list you gave is a great starting point I mean it's so I wouldn't pretend to have all the answers like at all it's such a big there's so many reasons why people are suffering right now so you know certainly socioeconomic reasons political reasons

1:31:43of course like reasons about tied into the food we're eating the screens we're sitting in front of the you know rigid kind of conventional schooling systems that young children are sent into every day through the most critical years of their lives they're just being you know satin seats and under fluorescent lights expected to think about it all it's crazy I was even thinking about this the other day I was at we're on a road trip when we stopped at a gas station a lot of the things in the gas station like especially the candies they're more like plastic than they are like a food well like if say if you were to take like real food and then you were to take like a piece of plastic something that was made with plastic if you put like some candy in between them the candy is way more like the plastic and just the fact that we haven't even really thought about like we've just thought that all of this is okay like if you had a handful of plastic will you just eat that well we are eating micro plastics all day every day I mean no but it's just it's almost shocking to me that visually and some of the stuff even looks the same and we're still like I like people would

1:32:45buy gummy worms right and I like gummy worms sometimes but it's also the same thing I'm using to fish with pretty much when I'm fishing which is a plastic lure right yeah but when you think that that's how it's like I don't know some of it's just baffling to me when I think about it yeah well and that your average kid you you know give them the choice between this like glaring shiny plastic piece of candy and like a beautiful apple grown on the neighbor's tree like which kid is going to pick the apple I think it speaks to how I mean this has been unfolding for for all of modernity really through for all of industrialized society this isn't like oh a few years ago things got bad I mean we've been slowly and slowly and slowly over decades losing connection with our bodies with each other with neighborhoods with communities with meaning with purpose with spirituality with God as our culture becomes increasingly individualized mechanized systematized

1:33:46you know industrialized institutionalized and it's been this like frog and slow boiling water where we haven't even realized what's been happening to us because it's unfolded over so much time and so I think the reason we're in this so-called mental health crisis is vast and I'm not going to pretend to have an answer to that but when it comes to the role that the mental health industry plays in it there are three there are three critical misunderstandings that our whole culture right now is having one is we are medicalizing problems that aren't medical like that heartbreak you felt like I'm going to get tearied the heartbreak you felt it's like a young 20 something guy you were in love I don't even know the details I don't even need to know to have your heart broken to feel that pain that grief that you know terror of like what is my future going to hold to call that a medical problem no it's it's a social problem or a relationship yeah I mean it's half a chapter of Romeo and Juliet I mean imagine it's like people in shape not the end chapter not

1:34:49the end chapter but you know imagine people in shakes in shakes period times we're like going to doctors we wouldn't have shakes period if they had medicine if that added a presence we would not even have shakes period that is it right there we wouldn't have Van Gogh shakes peer we wouldn't have we have wouldn't have beautiful art music we we wouldn't have creative human expression yeah he'd been like give me liberty or give me uh lithium yeah oh man I was on lithium that that out of all the drugs oh yeah so it totally messed up my thyroid I I reversed it when I got off everything but but to so we're medicalizing so this this three-part misunderstanding that our culture is having and this is what Bobby Kennedy is addressing an HHS right now and which is really exciting to me and this is what I think our culture is waking up to we're medicalizing problems that aren't medical we are we say wait who do you mean though your average teenage girl who's like convinced she has

1:35:50an incurable brain disease you know because she's feels insecure and she's you know no right just because you're having adolescent feelings are things that are part of just adolescence and of being human we've we've taken just things that are part of being human and made them into uh quote unquote symptoms just treat symptoms to be treated okay and don't get me wrong there can be like you can have you can have a brain tumor that's making you hallucinate and like you can have an actual physiological problem but you would go to a neurologist and get the tumor treated you wouldn't be told you have an incurable mental illness right and some people may have some some severe mental illnesses i'm not talking about that you know i'm saying if you're out there fucking eating radio parts and shit like you might have something going on or if something really traumatic has happened you could have some PTSD for I mean I'm not a doctor I'm not saying any of that we're just saying that there's been an over abundance even if you look at the numbers there's been an over abundance of things that are normal human feelings that have now been medicinalized I want to but to what you just said though I even in those cases that you think of as the most

1:36:56extreme like the guy who's talking to himself on the subway with his pants falling off like I'm I'm thinking about a guy I knew he lived in a group home that I used to work in years ago um 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 a 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 one day I was sitting with him on like stinky old fake leather sofa in this like ratty group home he lived in and I was like I don't want to say his name all to make up a name it's like hey bill i was like what how did you ever start medications like what was happening at the very beginning when you first went to a doctor and he was like oh I was I was 15 or 16 and I'd smoked some grass that got me really scared he was in his 50s when I was talking to him and and I I saw ants coming out of the television and I told my parents and they

1:38:02took me to Wal-Tham State and Wal-Tham State Hospital it was a state hospital in Massachusetts they admitted this teenager on an adult ward loaded him up on any psychotics and the rest is history decades later he looks to and you know if you saw him on the street he had crazy hair everywhere he was dishevelled and I can't help but wonder if you actually go back to the beginning for every person you see on the subway on the street corner who you think in your mind like this person has severe mental illness quote unquote if you go back to the beginning of their story something happened to them at the very beginning and they either didn't get their needs met or they were given something that they shouldn't have had and then just systemic year after year after year of not getting what they actually needed and getting a lot of what they didn't need who wouldn't be oh that scary guy on the street corner you know yeah you'd be out there pleading in whatever words you have left inside of you and whatever organizational abilities you have left you be out there

1:39:05trying to show people something is wrong here yep and it's like yeah so I think we have this this this view we have that seriously suffering people are sick quote unquote is a deeply ingrained story that is just one story there are multiple ways to see people who are in deep crisis yeah and that kid could have just been high and was telling his parents something that he thought when he was really high he literally was and the rest is history 40 years later he's a chronic mental patient who like talks to himself he wasn't talking to himself prior to smoking the backrest and you know you might have a doctor say oh that triggered an underlying mental illness like or it was a bad reaction to pot yeah which we've been there yeah oh yeah and so he I locked my coworker in the freezer and called the police on him once yeah what did you think he was gonna like what what what was happening in your head that made you do that I thought uh where we had smoked some weed together and we were working at a gas station together and I thought that he had aww set me up and was gonna do something bad to me I always got paranoid when I smoked pot so I

1:40:10tricked him to go in there and then I called the police on him was he was he so cold when they came yeah he was cold but whatever he was fine he looked at the hibi I he's still all right shot out Andrew shot out Andrew or my bad bro my bad still still my bad but but so so we have this crisis where we're medicalizing problems that aren't medical okay that's number one number two I think what's also creating this massive misunderstanding is that long term use of these medications is not actually evidence based if you actually look at what evidence does exist and you factor in how corrupt the evidence base is so we are oftentimes confusing adverse effects of medications for a worsening of the condition so the very thing that happened to me I kept getting worse and worse and worse and everyone saw that as your illness is progressing now you have treatment resistant mental illness no one ever said maybe these five meds you're on or fucking you up a bit like no one ever

1:41:12said that so that's number two we are oftentimes misunderstanding that the worsening that people have on meds might actually be the meds not an illness and the number three well we are mistaking what happens when you stop your meds for relapse when it's actually withdrawal like we were talking about before so you get off your med you feel horrible you you are told you need to get back on see how horrible you feel you get back on you feel better you think oh wow my medication is helping me I'm gonna stay on it forever you don't realize now actually I was in withdrawal and then I got out of withdrawal when I went back on it so I think that part of this crisis that we're in I truly think is tied into these three misunderstandings but that's changing like I really think we're waking up to the realization that this isn't working here this mental health industry isn't helping us in the way that we want it to and it wants to and maybe it's because we're looking at this in a in a distorted

1:42:17misunderstood way so yeah and the work of inter compass initiative which is the non-profit I started a number of years back is all about we're not anti-medication we're not telling people to stop their meds we're not shaming people for whom meds are helpful what we provide is comprehensive information and resources so that people can make true choices for themselves especially around tapering off safely if that's what they decide to do yeah it's got you have to have some support in it you know I thought even that I had a good strategy a good plan I was taking good medicines along with it like some functional health choices but I just wasn't I didn't do yeah I didn't I didn't do it well enough well you did the best you could with the information you had just like I did just like millions and millions of people who try to get off their meds due because you you didn't have of course you made the choice that you made to come off in the way that you did because no one gave you information otherwise and that's what we're we're working hard to change and

1:43:18I think it is changing and what's beautiful about tapering is that it's open source like we have a free step-by-step tapering manual on our website you do oh yeah that I we published it eight years ago been sitting for free on the internet we don't market it well which is not great but it's basically the protocol that psychiatrists like Mark Horowitz are now incredibly like getting into the cult into the clinical world what is the practice for tapering off of antidepressants or off of psychiatric meds yeah well so the number one most important you know piece of it is that and this is not doctor's advice also what you know we're not and we're not telling people to do this but the key the key thing is that it should be based on how you're feeling so everyone's different there's not like oh this is the protocol go follow it good luck depending on each person's individual physiology and all that it's going to look different for everyone but the the basic underlying philosophy is what we've we've found in the lay person withdrawal community is that tapering

1:44:22between five to 10 percent per month of your dose so let's say you're on 100 milligrams of seraquel and you want a taper 10 percent you want to see how that goes for you you cut so you would cut 10 percent of 100 in month one which is 10 milligrams so you cut to 90 for the first month then in month two you cut 10 percent of 90 so you cut nine milligrams so now you're down to 81 in months three you cut 8.1 milligrams and you might be wondering like how the heck do you do 8.1 and that's where it gets tricky because drug companies aren't required by law to manufacture psych drugs and taper friendly forms and formulations no and I that may change under secretary of kennedy I hope it does but it right now people have no choice but to like make their own liquid mixtures and use slip tips syringes and do this wacky stuff at home because they can't unless you go to a compounding pharmacy which is expensive and you need a psychiatrist who agrees

1:45:25to do it it's there's no way to make make 8.1 yeah well I'm I'm even splitting my pills just like this like any labor I have to just splitting it with my thumbs it putting my thumbs in the middle of the pill both thumbs the thumbnails oh my gosh Theo I want to like nerd out with you on this because that's that's not a reliable way to me I know it isn't trust me so so you're on you're on a 10 is that right I'm on a 10 milligram and it's that little white round tablet I remember well I was on it for a long time so someone in your situation has a few options you could either go to a compounding pharmacy and have them you know make a if you were going to cut one milligram make you nine milligram tablet which you could do but you know then you have to keep getting new prescriptions all the time each month but you could do that you could get the liquid from the manufacturer which does come as a liquid okay and let me let me just say really quick that I wasn't aware that when you're getting off-handed a presence that some of them you can get them

1:46:28in a liquid form so that when you're titrating off you have the access to be able to measure kind of smaller and smaller amounts okay just wanted to say that yeah but it's not some people have a hard time switching and they're all kinds of weird fillers and preservatives what a lot of people in a situation like yours do is they and this is not me telling people to do this this just describing the reality of what people do like hundreds of thousands of people around the world are doing this they have no choice but to do this they put their tablet in a measured glass of water so you kind of figure out the ratio of putting 10 milligrams of my tablet into X number of milliliters of water they break it down in the water they start up and make it a suspension and then they remove 10% of the water and then they drink it and that's how they start to tie trade down that's and and it shouldn't have to be this way but that's how it has had to be

1:47:32for the for decades right because the medical industry is not offering a solution yeah they're not incentivized to get you off their products yeah which is kind of crazy and 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 kept ticked them down the road 20 years you know oh my gosh so that's one of the craziest things too it's sometimes like why do I still have these old feelings it's just because I keep just duck taping them down with these antidepressants now that's not scientific that's just me sharing how I feel and we're not off we're not saying that we're just we're stating that that's what the state of medicine is right now is that people are having to figure shit out for themselves because it's gotten so confusing out there and so unhelpful out there for people that want to be away from some of these which feels a lot of times like a sentence it totally does it's the perfect way to put it and I think what you just said is so powerful and like it doesn't need to be scientific for it to

1:48:33be valid and true and and meaningful like this idea this gets back to the medicalization crisis that we're in we live in this world where if it isn't scientific and medical it's not legitimate like if it isn't you know clinical research it's useless data I can tell you right now that there tens upon tens if not hundreds of thousands of data points out there in the layperson i.e. the patient and ex-patient community online of data points of like very valid information about how to safely taper we are it's all out there for free on the internet and until now the medical industry hasn't considered it legitimate because it's not research but I think returning to there's so many other knowledge comes from all kinds of sources and and can be valid from all kinds of sources this idea that anecdotal information is invalid is preposterous to me like your

1:49:34experience is is is the most important thing for you like my what I went through no one knows me better than I know myself no one I don't care how many degrees they have after their name no one could possibly understand what's happening inside of me better than me yeah I'm a fucking researcher dude totally people like oh we're not a scientist but it's so much of science is so compromised so many things are so compromised there's it's like the last it's like you need somebody just to wander in the woods and come out and tell you what they saw right and I'm not saying I'm that guy I'm saying we're all that person for ourselves for sure and then and then individually we all have to be that person more than ever these days as information gets owned and compromised and surveilled and surveilled and yes for sure altered oh totally it's like the last thing we have is our voices the voice of someone who's had an experience and then you trust for yourself do you believe their experience do you not and that's like that's what we have that's all we've really

1:50:38ever had in a lot of ways but yeah I think that I think a lot of people are like a lot of people that want to get off medication they don't know what to do and a lot of a lot of times we just say we throw our hands up at it I've tried like four times oh my gosh well if I can if I can be like a buddy to you in this because you need you need friends who who and fellows who've walked the path that's all gonna ask you it's like the 12 step world like having mutual aid having so part of our nonprofit besides providing all kinds of information and resources we have a community to where people who've been through it themselves are all they're supporting one another they're there is a community there oh yeah totally because what where you find in that community just online or not well our nonprofit has one but they're all over Facebook they're especially now I mean back in 2010 I was I was like one of three people on the internet who was talking about getting off psych drugs like no one was talking about this back then but in forums like kind of weird reddety kinds of secret forums tons of people were messaging each other but it wasn't like

1:51:42visible on the internet now there are hundreds of Facebook groups people helping each other for each specific drug like you could totally google escatala pram withdrawal support and you would probably find like five groups with 10,000 people each in them yeah I think part of me I tried a little bit too much to just do it myself I think yeah you need that you need but you definitely because having friends who've been through it not only helps you like get information that maybe you didn't have before but it also helps you stay connected to hope like when you're in a really bad patch if that ends up happening in the withdrawal process so it's like having someone who's been there done that they're five years down the road the nude be like I see you you've got this like you will there is a through here like just keep putting one foot in front of the next like you need that hope and you also need the validation of like oh gosh I wish you know I'd been able to be there for you like in that when you were in six weeks in and suddenly things got really weird and wacky and you're like what's happening to me to have people who were like I've seen that

1:52:471500 times what you're describing is not unusual this is totally six weeks in changes the way you've changed your perspective it helps your perspective yeah so what's suggesting will you give somebody who right now who's thinking that I would like to try to get off of vanity presence and again we're not doctors so I'm not a doctor I'm not a doctor I'm I'm an ex-patient that's my resume yeah totally I'm a I'm a someone who's tried to get off vanity presence a lot of five times but hasn't been successful yet yeah yeah totally and if if you're I mean what I would say is this is only each person him or herself is the only person who should make this decision like I sometimes people really think I'm telling them to come off because I'm talking about withdrawal I'm like I have no idea what's best for you you're the only person who knows what's best for you but if you are someone who in your heart of hearts your instinct is telling you I need to give to see what life is like off the stuff like I don't like this adverse effect or I want to have a baby in a few years or whatever it is it starts with getting informed check out our

1:53:50website intercom the intercompice.org there's tons of information all over the internet on physical dependence like understanding how these drugs change our our brains and bodies how to tape or slowly and safely understanding the evidence base that these drug your drug was approved on the basis of like you need all this information to help you think clearly about what the next right step is so get informed once you're informed take a look at your life circumstances is this the right time or do I have too much stress going on am I in a divorce am I about to move do I have a lot of work stress going on like if you can find a time where as many stressors as possible are removed number three communicate with your doctor ideally if you can get them on board that's great a lot of people don't have the support of their doctors unfortunately I hope that changes but if you can help your doctor feel confident in supporting you by showing them you're prepared and you know what you're talking about here with how to tape or safely having having their support and

1:54:55partnership you know as you're especially because you need your prescriptions written differently when you're tapering that's really important building out a support system family friends fellow withdrawal people mutual aid as much support as you can build are you with drawer years some people call those stories love that that's so great yeah I just made that up I don't know if it's great or not it sees it's a little crazy but it's also it is you need you are like every single person who's is a warrior who's this shit was wild bro I'll say the last time I done it it was it was I was surprised but I remember I remember can we can I ask you about that yeah I know I remember I don't know if it's I remember it was last was it last fall you had and you talked about how hard it was how you went back on the previous time that I went back on so this was just reason I just got back on like two weeks ago oh it was that recently okay um and and since you've gone back on does it feel do you feel I feel safer yeah I just feel like you know like you're playing freeze tag or whatever

1:55:57and you're off a base you can get tagged yeah but it's like I feel like I got back a back on base so it's like I feel like I have my foot on like a base you know so it's like but I'll get back out there you know what I'm saying oh you totally will you'll know when the time is right and yeah all those things I said are important and then also just the lifestyle piece like it's it's you know it sounds yeah obvious but just the food you're putting in your body is gonna shape how this experience goes for you and ensuring you're eating you know healthy fat and gut friendly food because maybe you already knew this but 95% of our serotonin receptors are in the gut so like we have this idea that you know lexapros like just targeting serotonin receptors in our brain no it's like it's influencing the entire body especially the gut yeah I had started buying um they got a little deal over here on the corner what are selling um you know previously used cabbage or whatever is called what is it called oh you can't sour crowd sour crowd that's what you're talking about or

1:56:57whatever it is we fermented cabbage yeah I like what I like to call it somebody else's cabbage that's what it seems like but yeah I was eating that I had a I had a good basket you know a couple good jars at that so I had like a strategy but it just I didn't have the right strategy so next time I'll get a different one well the taper speed really is everything like how you're actually making the reductions is everything and that's the beautiful thing is that that's all for free online right now you don't need some special medical expert to tell you how to do it you can figure it out for yourself online um hey man um Laura thanks so much for joining us today in chat oh I'm so happy to be here I really appreciate it I uh I've heard you mentioned a few times uh RFK junior during this chat um 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 what is he doing or what is his movement doing right now for uh mental health yeah well I mean secretary again he's

1:58:02long been aware of and engaged with this crisis we've been talking about here he he's long seen that we have so many millions of people on long-term meds with no off ramps and all of that so when he was confirmed as a ch s secretary and you know my husband Cooper and I who we work together in our compass initiative we we saw him talking about it you know it is he at his confirmation hearing and and around that time we realized in this like very it was it felt very surreal because we'd been operating under the assumption for for me like for six 15 years at the time the government's never gonna be a partner in this like we just have to work on building stuff outside and like yeah we're all realizing that on every facet of totally so I just been solely in that headspace through my career and I still think that's like at the most essential work to do is like building new things outside of the system so to speak but when when Bobby came in you know we realized like wow

1:59:05this is actually a surreal opportunity to 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 like how to help people who have decided for themselves that they want to taper off how to help them do it safely what policy changes would actually help well what Kennedy announced on May 4th at this event that we organized with the maha institute yeah here it is right here so he he laid out this plan the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the May 4th 2026 announced efforts to curb psychiatric over prescribing at a maha summit on mental health and over medicalization as the closing speaker secretary Kennedy Jr laid out a new action plan to promote appropriate psychiatric prescribing and drive deep prescribing when clinically indicated today we take clear in a decisive action to confront our nation's mental health crisis by addressing the overuse of psychiatric medications especially among children what is actually happening

2:00:08here do you find yes or is it just like is it just talk is it just rhetoric no well he announced a few specific um next steps at hhs it has set out to undertake okay 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 there 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 um developing guidelines for for um SSRI taboring uh training clinicians and how to do it safely um enabling through insurance that deep the coverage of deep prescribing so that doctors prescribers can get paid to deep prescribed through billing codes and all that um and I think you know getting federally funded health centers equipped to support

2:01:12people in deep prescribing so he there are tangible um policy next steps at hhs is is is i mean towards has committed to work work towards and 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 um I think leaves me feeling really hopeful that substantive change can happen and of course his announcements led to all kinds of media headlines you know Kennedy's gonna ban SSRIs and they're gonna 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 I mean 90% of the media is owned by the same groups so I'm not surprised probably I'm not surprised that bear bear monsanto doesn't own half of the media or you

2:02:13know it's all it's all a shell game um right here it says the changes new training reimbursement mechanisms and clinical guidelines nudge clinicians to help patients getting off medications and to consider non pharmaceutical interventions like therapy nutrition and exercise psychiatric medications have a rolling care but we will no longer treat them as the default we will treat them as one option to be used when appropriate with full transparency and with a clear path off when they're no longer needed amen to that man I've known Bobby for while I've always believed that his heart is in the best spot and I don't know what it's like when you take your heart into a fucking din of spiders but I um but I love this idea because uh oh it says let me be clear if you're taking the psychiatric medication we are not telling you to stop mr. Kennedy said we are making sure you in your clinician have the information and support to make the right decision for you exactly because here's the thing imagine you get on to a on an on ramp on an on a highway and you can

2:03:13never get off of it and here's the option you do have you can pull your car over in park and get out and walk you're still on the fucking highway though and now you just don't know the vehicle you were in that's what it feels like a lot of times you don't only option people have now is to open their door and jump out while their car is going 80 miles an hour aka cold turkey withdrawal like I mean but that's it but so yes there should be a way to get off of these I mean I applaud that um you guys are doing this work and the fact that it has to come from just a layperson trying to figure it out you know that it's come from like it's a conspiracy theory almost to try and get off your medicine yeah um what is your life in like now uh what is your medical regimen like now and um how do you how are you feeling these days um well I don't have a medical regimen really oh yeah I mean I have it's been a while since I've been to a doctor and for me and when it comes I don't blame you first of all I just find for for me you know god bless the emergency room if I

2:04:19break a bone or I have some kind of you know horrible medical crisis of some kind but I you know I grew up just thinking that the best way to care for myself was to see doctors like and I think a lot of especially the generations above us like I'm elder millennial you're like a young a young and Gen X or right so I think we you're the more semi-nabers yeah totally so the generation above us especially you know this idea that I'm taking care of myself I'm going on my checkups and wellness visits this that and people just have this idea that like that's how you take care of yourself there for some people sure that may be true but there's so many other ways to care for oneself and for me my own philosophy for how I care for my body is how did my hunter gatherer ancestors live and how can I get as close to that as possible in this modern industrial era that I'm in because we haven't evolved for we haven't evolved for all this bright lights all these screens all this factory food I got bodies have not evolved for this and so yeah and

2:05:26the timeline of history if you were to look at history as like a 24 hour clock human beings I guess have been here for like since 11.59 pm oh my gosh you see I'm sure something like that if the 13.8 billion year age of the universe were condensed into a single 24 hour day humanity has been around for less than the final two seconds before midnight and then I wonder if can you is there a way to count to calculate in the scale of human as long as humans have existed how much on the clock would like industrial the kind of industrial era be if the entire existence of modern humans were condensed into a single 24 hour day the industrial era would be less than two minutes at the very end of the night wow which which is profound when you think about it like we have not evolved for the the world that we live in it has escalated so rapidly yeah we were so quickly ago we were basically reckoned totally totally mom women were birthing at rivers riversides and then bushes and now it's

2:06:26going to happen again just because our health care system so bad so oddly enough we are making our way back because of corporate greed unbelievable full circle full circle but I think I keep that in my mind like and oh yeah you know people often ask me like so now everything's great is that is that right like you you don't have you never had you don't have bipolar you never have everything's happy you're good now and I always have to say like no no I'm still the same me I'm still the same dark comp you know kind of complex slightly paranoid me that I've always been just because of the up you know the way I grew up and I'm not happy and balanced and I put together and high functioning all the time the main differences that I'm not afraid of my emotional pain anymore I don't view it as a problem to fix I view it as a signal and a message to listen to like what is my anxiety telling me about my life what is my despair telling me about my life and sometimes it's as obvious as

2:07:26like I literally haven't been outside today I've been on my computer I like need sunlight and to get off this screen that's messing up my body but sometimes like there isn't a clear reason it's just like thinking about how many potentially millions of people out there have stories like yours in mind where we were sensitive like alive vital young people who had things happen in our lives that left us hurting and here we are here you are 20 plus years later you know here I am dig after digging myself out of this like near death like experience yeah you fucking win how many millions of people are having a similar experience and don't even realize it you know oh yeah I I mean I also I noticed this for sure about myself I was hyper sensitive for sure so being hyper sensitive and hyper aware I mean you're basically I'm you know you're a mouse I'm a rat

2:08:30but you're a mouse you know I'm not like a rat like in prison like a snitch or whatever but I'm just a rat rats are very smart and cute when I lived in in Boston I used to go in the back alley and save the baby blind rats that were wandering around you were doing you're on dope I wasn't a lot of meds but I actually still would do the same thing I love animals but but we're all we're yeah our whole group is we're all rats I think all human beings are born this way like I think we are born a sensitive like can I can I read you and then maybe this is a way to tie it all together can I read you the lat this is it's like a paragraph sure I have to see if I can find it in my book here it just it ties in so this is towards the end of my book it's just a paragraph okay take your time with it what 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

2:09:31biotech and tech are the very ones we should trust to provide us resolution two things are undeniably true about our society today we're growing ever more unwell in mind body and spirit and the business of health is thriving industry has subjugated the natural world around us through commodification and profitization what's left for it to conquer is the space between our ears it is now a radical act in our medicalized professionalized world to look in the mirror for answers and to turn to your neighbor in times of difficulty and to open your door to them in return or if you don't yet know the person who's living life next to you to bring a pot of homemade soup over and introduce yourself for thousands of years we wrote poems and plays and made music and comedy and art out of our suffering that we shared with one another in community today we take it to a doctor and the pharmacy under the false premise that it can and must be obliterated

2:10:37yeah i think one day a smile will be in like a museum somewhere you know and people like can you believe that people's used to the edges of their mouths used to turn up when they used to feel something oh that was all the people cared about bless for me thank you Lord that's beautiful and thank you for um yeah thanks for caring thanks for sharing with your journeys been like um thank you thank you also for sharing your journey with some like the more we share our own stories especially like the vulnerable parts of what we go through i think the more it helps other people realize that the struggles they've had are not meaningless or wasted or you know that they have value like i i often say to me the suffering that i went through when i realized it was actually medicine for someone else and like this gets to the 12 step you know the whole ethos of the 12 step world like you take your own pain and you get out of yourself and you use

2:11:38it in service to other people um i mean i think we've so many people don't grow up with that opportunity and it's free and it's available to all of us at all times it's not easy to be with your pain and to share it with with people um but it's medicine it really is yeah my friend James but share always says we are the keys to each other's locks that's what he says that's beautiful it's a nice statement um that's beautiful and he he's like a damn janitor man he is like just he's a key chain of keys that god he really is amazing um for a suggestion for parents who have a child that was like you right like what suggestion you give to parents who have a child that um is going through some things that seem like uh mental that seem emotional um that they're that they're saying okay let's take them to talk with someone what uh with a therapist or with a psychiatrist or with a um L L H C license mental health counselor yes or someone like that what uh what suggestions do you

2:12:41offer to them i 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 like as a parent no one knows your child better than you your parental instincts cannot and should not be violated and i think that i think it's what happened to my my parents and to so many parents when you're 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 you know in in in your life as as a parent and and well-meaning because i want to be clear these aren't like bad people in doctor mental health professional are not bad people they came to this work because they want to help so i want to be clear about that but i think parents often end up disconnecting from their instincts about their kids because they believe that expertise comes from the institution

2:13:43like i'm i'm not a trained professional i don't know what to do here as a parent you have deep deep wisdom that doesn't mean you can just figure it out alone of course support is is necessary but i think just keeping that in mind and not never losing touch with that through whatever lies ahead is is really important i think another thing that parents often get um i have trained to to do is to see their kid from this perspective of like something is wrong with my kid like my kid has a problem to fix as opposed to seeing their kid as it 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 what they're eating or like what they're watching on like the screen exposure whatever it might be so if parents can kind of stay connected to a kind of curiosity of like some there's a reason why my kid is having a hard time and it isn't because their brain is broken

2:14:47it's it might not be clear what the reason is but to just be curious and to remember that they're having a response to the life they're in um i think that's really critical and then i think getting support from other parents i think in the same spirit that we were talking about before the 12-step world the mutual aid world of withdrawal parents finding one another in their own communities and supporting one another and like mentoring one another i think is a really um it used to be how it was so we all lived in little villages together and yeah there was community totally community so important it's like if your grandmother's around watching your children or if your families live close to each other then other family members are involved like human beings evolved that way like we said until two minutes ago and the homo sapiens history like that was how we lived and so just keeping here we are in this outlier we're we're like an astronaut right now seriously so far away from uh what we're supposed to be like the umbilical cord is stretched yo do you know that i when i gave birth at home uh we my

2:15:51husband i we waited hours before we separated the umbilical cord from my placenta i'm going to go there with you right now and we burned it we didn't cut it did you'll smoke it no but we did freeze my placenta but my husband i asked him to chop it up into pieces because this is like a whole in the kind of home birth world oh yes sent a lot of women will be like because mammals female mammals will often eat their own placenta after they give birth there's a lot of some of them are also perverts as well probably dolphins are probably but go on but yeah Cooper chopped up my placenta for me because i was thinking maybe if i want to do this down the line i'll put it in a smoothie or something but then he put all the pieces in a big mass in our freezer it's almost six years later it's still in there no it's still in there and then when we try to get all by a couple grams of it when we tried to burn the umbilical cord like our son was you know breastfeeding like the placenta is in a st stainless steel bowl that Cooper's holding we have this candle we're trying to burn it and we didn't think about we would know that it's smoky it got smoky and we were like oh please

2:16:55fire alarm don't go off yet you look it's like grilling kind of a meat sort of this tripe kind of or something that's what it is dude people you have people like pig intestine it's what pig intestine kind of well let me yeah people act like it's kind of like a magical deal now i think if you chop it up and smoke a little bowl of it with your husband or with your step that or whatever that shit it's kind of that's just wow i bet you've never talked about this on your pod before no i haven't dude that's it's fucking bizarre i'm just trying to pretend like it's normal shit but this is what life is about just being your authentic full cell dude if i had like seven pounds of placenta right now i would definitely dry one out and smoke it with my boys or whatever i don't think that counts as a real act of it for something oh you could trade it right now to one of our politicians for something good probably for a favor um what uh i did want to ask any who yeah

2:17:56okay so that is the first one um did you have any other uh suggestions for parents i think you know just taking all the time you can to get informed you know if you are taking your kid to a mental health professional of some kind and your kid is being given a diagnosis and or you know being put on a medication of some kind just knowing that you have it's your right to take whatever time you need to look into what's being offered to you like the the just because the doctor is saying something and telling you to do something you know it doesn't mean you shouldn't take whatever time you need to first get educated you know my parents were never told we're giving your daughter the bipolar diagnosis despite the fact that this is totally you know subjective it's just my opinion based on looking at her it doesn't mean she has anything wrong in her brain i'm going to put her on these meds but just you know we've only studied them for a few weeks they weren't told

2:18:56that so and the chances are your doctor isn't going to tell you those things so take whatever time you need to inform yourself our our website has a lot but there's plenty other resources out there too and you can find more resources at our website too and the website is the inner compass dot org the inner compass dot org do you do you hold uh did you hold a resentment against your parents oh gosh no i mean if i was in there she was i would have done the same thing they were they were terrified like i was slicing my arms up and you know screaming and freaking out and they saw no other option they saw no other option i completely understand why they made the choices that i made i mean i wouldn't change a minute of anything that happened to me i don't know if you feel the same way but i feel like every every painful experience i went through brought me to my purpose in life which my this work my writing and this nonprofit and just doing what i can to help inform policy

2:20:02life what i've realized is that the objective to living isn't the absence of pain its purpose it's yeah finding meaning is connection to yourself to your body and your instincts to people around you to nature to god to to art like yeah i mean i can't i can i can all i find i'm stand up comedy to me is such uh i can't imagine the courage it takes but i can i can imagine like if you're tapped into your flow like the gift that you have in this world to like take your life experiences and turn them into art for people and and to use your art to draw attention to the world around us like what a fucking gift and i imagine if you hadn't had that horrible relationship and whatever other painful experiences you've been through in your life like you wouldn't be the comedian that you are like i feel the way about my that way about my writing pain is what makes

2:21:03us fully human i agree with that i think it's like yeah having some fuel it's kind of so dark to to like think that those types of things are fuel but it's also a blessing to know that they're that they can turn around and be a fuel like that you know yeah that a worm can turn into a um bird or whatever know that what is it butterfly uh caterpillar caterpillar caterpillar maybe there are some worms that turn into stuff though i don't know but yeah i doubt it but thanks for trying to help me and the and the whole analogy like the phoenix and the lotus like the lotus these symbols that have these ancient meanings and cultures around the world it's the it's the the burning of the bird and they ride it rises out of the ash it's the mud and the muck that this beautiful flower grows out of like this is not me being romantic and like polyanna-ish or or being like everything happens for a reason it's all great is it's just naming what it is to be alive in this like crazy fucked up world where

2:22:08fucked up things happen all the time and we've gotten so used to them and this isn't how it's supposed to be and this is this is not how it's supposed to be we all feel that this is not how it's supposed to be and we're all mildly kind of pretending like this is how it's supposed to be but i think we're just sick of pretending yeah um and that yeah the pain that we think is a symptom of illness so much of it it's like we're the canaries and those of us who get labeled mentally ill often are the canaries in the cool mind like we're feeling we're sensed we are sensing like this is not okay people. Yeah you're an astronaut you're like if you were the in 2010 if you were thinking about this stuff I can talk about it you were like an astronaut you were like feel Armstrong you were out there like just like an emotional person like out in outer space trying to like have some idea of what's going on like you know and we need the we need people to be out there to be like the Paul Reveers of something and I think more than ever in our world we need Paul Reveers and Paulette Reveers you

2:23:12know um but I want to say thank you so much unshrunk that's the book you give me two months to read it I love this very sense and sensibility type of cover on the pride and prejudice energy up front like that a lot thank you thank you or what is that book called little women it is a very little women energy on the front I like that um unshrunk a story of psychiatric treatment and resistance uh can I keep this copy yeah I want to write your message yeah thank you that's very sweet of you Laura Delano yes yeah and Cooper Delano that your husband Cooper Davis he changed his name he's he's untraditional he kept his name he kept his name okay type shit cool um tell him we said what's up oh I will for sure the inter compass initiative you can find them out at the inter compass dot org uh helping you make more informed choices about all things mental health diagnoses drugs and drug withdrawal um do you remember the day that

2:24:16you felt you were free from medicine was there one day or one thing that happened that made you be like I wouldn't say it was when I felt free from medicine but it was when I felt free I was I was probably two years off meds still really struggling and I remember sitting on my couch just so overwhelmed by like physical and mental agitation um it felt excruciating and I just wanted to like rip my skin off or like binge eat or just do something to get relief to to fix the problem and something came over me as I was sitting there and I realized they still own me this this industry of mental health that you know trains us to think that discomfort is a problem to fix it still owns me even though I've been off the meds for a couple years now and I said I said freedom is is in this is where freedom is it's not in getting off the meds it's in how am I with this pain so I just decided to sit there and I just sat there for like at first it was just 10

2:25:21minutes and I just sat I guess you could call it meditation at the time I wasn't like I'm going to meditate I was just like out of almost outrage like I need to be with this because I've spent my entire life thinking I can't and shouldn't be with it and I just sat there and I did it and 10 minutes later I felt more centered in myself the pain wasn't gone but I was like I fucking did it I'm powerful and I just kept doing it more and more until eventually I was sitting for like an hour and I would just sit and my mind's going all kinds of crazy places paranoid stuff I'm it's not like this isn't like peaceful relaxing time that was when I realized I'm free hmm hey men yeah we we we were one of the most powerful things that you know like that God created and we outsource our power all the time I do it all the time I outsource my power it's why that we I named the nonprofit inner compass initiative because to me it's about taking that back reclaiming it the the orientation you need to get you through your life is in here and who is

2:26:25untrunk for who wouldn't someone who's thinking about getting off a medicine someone who's just curious about your experience anyone who is who is themselves engaged with the mental hall system in some way like in therapy on meds or if if you have someone you love who is and it was a big number but really I mean no that's it that's not that huge that's specific but it's like 60 to 75 million people anyone if your life has been touched by you know mental health mental illness it's a story to read yeah Laura Delano thank you so much for your time today I really appreciate it oh Theo it's so meaningful to be here I'm so glad to to do this yeah it's nice I um yeah I'm hopeful that I'll get off of off of any depressions at some point I just have to it's almost like you went out on the battlefield and you came back yeah you just you're just you're re-stocking your supplies replenishing your reserves and I'm here if I can help you I really mean it like I

2:27:28nerd out on this stuff like I'm glad that anytime I'm glad that I met you I'm glad that uh I'm gonna just continue just kind of share whatever's going on as I kind of navigate this and I'll see if I can't do it even a better job of it for listeners that are curious about it or other people that are curious about it even my friends you know um and yeah I I'm like yeah I'm just happy that we got to speak today and thank you so much for spending time with us me too thanks thanks for having me you bet now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone but when I reach that ground I'll share this piece of my life I can feel it in my bones but it's gonna take