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Speaker 2- Today's guest is an author and founder of the Inner Compass Initiative. She wrote Unshrunk, a story of psychiatric treatment resistance. We talk about mental health, getting onto 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 Ms. Laura Delano. ♪ Shine on me ♪
Speaker 3♪ And I will find a song ♪ ♪ I've been singing since the dawn ♪
Speaker 2- Laura Delano.
Speaker 4- Yep, that's it.
Speaker 2- Am I saying that correctly? - Yep. - Excellent. - Delano, yeah. - 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 through it. Trying to get off of the medications, and what that's been like for me, or I want to discuss that with you. I 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 like so far lifelong, journey with mental health and medication. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 4- Yeah, going back to childhood.
Speaker 2- Okay. And is it okay if we start there just so our listeners are like kind of clued in on how you got here?
Speaker 4- Sure, yeah. So I grew up in Connecticut in an affluent town. I was 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. I was quote unquote good at school. Like I could just sit down and do rote tasks like well. It never bothered me or I never got bored with it. And so I just, I kind of was one of these girls who had had it all together. Good student, I was a good athlete.
Speaker 2- What sport did you play?
Speaker 4- 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. - Waspy. - Yeah. So picture the most stereotypical New England waspy prepster and like that's right here. Literally down to like all whites on the tennis court. That's me. - That's good. - So yeah, so I just like had it all together. And then when I was 13, you know, there I 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 one night 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? Who is she? Who is she? And then I realized this is a stranger. And I, 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. Knew 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, you know, that compartmentalization like 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?
Speaker 2- Did you think you were realizing something like?
Speaker 4- 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 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, like I grew up in this particular environment, like we, no one was reading philosophy and like into 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 nineties. I was born in '83, so I'm an elder millennial. So then in the mid nineties, not, the whole mental health thing wasn't a part of the cultural zeitgeist in 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.
Speaker 2- Oh yeah, it was such taboo then.
Speaker 4- 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-
Speaker 2- It sounds like kind of a microcosm over there.
Speaker 4- Yeah, it was a, it was a very like Stepford 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, the 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, you know, depressed, these are symptoms of depression. You have a lifelong brain illness called bipolar disorder, but don't worry. There are medications you can take. You can live a good life. She'd see me for one hour. I was 14 years old and she put me on Depakote and Prozac.
Speaker 2- How did they diagnose that? So I know.
Speaker 4- Good question. It's literally through just 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, you know, with the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. So it's like, oh, five out of seven is this. Four, you know, and-
Speaker 2- You said the DSM, what is it?
Speaker 4- The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. - Okay. - 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 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, for billing. It's a very powerful book, 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.
Speaker 2- Does that make it somewhat scientific though, that it's at least, it's not like just a random person guessing?
Speaker 4- 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 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. - Yeah. - Yeah. - There's no pathology in your brain. There's no abnormal blood tests. There's no, it's just based purely on observation.
Speaker 2- Were there like any like biological tests or medical tests that they ran to determine if you had bipolar disorder?
Speaker 4- 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, like there's nothing, there's no test of any kind, medical tests of any kind.
Speaker 2- 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.
Speaker 4- 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, but 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
Speaker 2thing to say to someone yeah especially at 14 she's got enough going on and it isn't adult i
Speaker 4mean 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
Speaker 2about what do i listen to who am i you know how do i dress like how do i find out what's going on
Speaker 4inside 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 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 like i'm having a healthy response to this like really intense social environment i'm in but a few years later because because i was put on those meds but depakote and prozac so the so-called mood stabilizer depakote's actually an anticonvulsant that's not even to this day approved for psychiatric use in kids but i was put on it back then and and it's a very widely prescribed um psych med in kids today and then prozac at the time was not approved for use in kids uh 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 um but by 18 i you know was still playing the game the performance game and i'd gotten into harvard and i was gonna play squash at harvard like literally the 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 like 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 maybe i'd 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 ecstasy and i wasn't 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 depa code in the no when i spun out that first fall of college i was not on any meds okay um but i was definitely like drinking a lot doing a lot of drugs just overall like not taking care of myself what things were showing up in your life that were like
Speaker 2okay now this is things are getting too
Speaker 4too rough i mean um i mean i think a lot of it was just i wasn't sleeping um i was really reckless in my behaviors just like you know i'd be like super coked up and i'd like climb to the top of a building and i'd be like stuck on a roof and i'd be like what and it'd be at three in the morning you know like just these ridiculous things and i'd hang out you know with like the the bums in the square where you know in in harvard square and 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 you're a piece of shit you just yeah and you'll get a kick out of this my breaking point was I came out as a debutante the winter of my first year at Harvard and I was like in 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 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 curtsy it's like wild spins
Speaker 2oh yeah I'll go to like sometimes they'll have those in the south they've had them over the years have you been to them? I've been to in Natchez Mississippi my little nephew was in one for a bit and so I'd go over there and watch him
Speaker 4was he like an escort of one of the girls?
Speaker 2yeah he was like he had a sword or whatever
Speaker 4whoa you had swords down there? oh we didn't have swords that's cool
Speaker 2they wield weapons at the ones in the south so it gets a little bit different
Speaker 4of course you did I love it
Speaker 2okay so you're a debutante you have all this going on on the outside looks one way but you feel a total different way on the inside
Speaker 4yeah and like that was the icing on the cake like I'm literally on a stage doing curtsies like what this is a practical joke like how is this my life and like how do I get out of it so suicide felt like the only way out
Speaker 2so it sounds like you had some psychosis going on
Speaker 4I probably could have been given a diagnosis of like psychotic disorder not otherwise specified or something I mean I definitely had especially when I wasn't sleeping I would have been given a diagnosis of like psychotic disorder I would have these very kind of expansive thoughts where I was like deconstructing reality you know language is a social construction so like the words I'm using to think these thoughts it's all I would just get totally swept up and all the post-modern stuff like I just got all swept up in that and so I just that winter as an 18 year old I was just desperate for help and to go back to this whole you know DSM diagnosis thing that desperation drove me to just want to of my own volition go back to this whole you know DSM diagnosis thing and go back to psychiatry and just be like 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 there'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'm like now I have a treatment that's going to help me get better like hallelujah like that's how it felt
Speaker 2oh yeah I 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
Speaker 4it feels so helpful I feel such relief like immediate relief like you know I don't have to fight anymore I don't have to keep desperately searching for answers and the things that I need to do 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 how I was feeling and reporting symptoms and I just it became very quickly like the void 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
Speaker 2oh I can imagine it's prestigious if it's there because the best doctors are right next door
Speaker 4exactly 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 we'll come back to so 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 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 like progress 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
Speaker 2if you're bleeding profusely you would think that having more bandages would be helpful
Speaker 4that's such a good analogy this is exactly it and what was really this you know what was insidious about that too and now if you look at our culture of like how girls and young women you 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
Speaker 2like the debutante of like diazepam or something
Speaker 4oh my gosh yes I love that totally or something like that 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 that eventually came
Speaker 2Elizabeth Taylor yes
Speaker 4like 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 it'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 taken off back in like the early 2000s and I it was very much a part of my kind of my journey through my my teens and 20s with all with all this stuff was like how much of a an identity
Speaker 2it gave me yeah yeah you're like Amelia Earhart out there you're just out there flying through just through the psych wards and landing who knows where they still haven't found her oh yeah
Speaker 4Oh, yeah. And so, of course, like, as I'm this good patient doing everything my doctor's telling me, reporting my symptoms, you know, we're 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 is the term that a lot of people use. It's just this, 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—
Speaker 2You were just developing.
Speaker 4Yeah. And, like, I was having an identity crisis to begin with that 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—by the time I was in my mid-20s.
Speaker 2And was that attributed to medication, you think?
Speaker 4Well, I mean, certainly the antipsychotics that I was eventually on, I mean, those are well-documented to cause all kinds of metabolic issues. And, you know, tons of people on long-term antipsychotics end up 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.
Speaker 2Your instincts.
Speaker 4Yeah. 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.
Speaker 2Well, your sensory system gets kind of hijacked in a lot of ways. 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 one day I get off meds and I'm like, 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.
Speaker 4I get teary. You know, I had a feeling I would because I've heard you speak about that.
Speaker 2Yeah, I can't cry anymore on the internet or it's going to—somebody's going to come and get me. So I have to take it easy. But I'm here for you if you do.
Speaker 4It'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. They're like, I can't compute. What is happening? And sometimes I'll be, like, giving a talk to a big room of, you know, psychiatrists 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 it means to be human, which is you emote and you cry sometimes.
Speaker 2Yeah. Oh, I was crying this morning at a Bible study, you know.
Speaker 4Oh, wow. So you were moved to tears or what? Or was it, like, was it, yeah, what was?
Speaker 2People were sharing, different people sharing different stuff or me talking about something, just a mix of things. You know, and sometimes it, like, it's not really crying. Sometimes it's sweat, I feel like, from the heavy shit I got in here. It'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. 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 crybaby 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.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 2You know, and sometimes feelings are heavy and so your eyes got to sweat.
Speaker 4Oh, 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. I agree. And I think it's a lot of this has been fueled by the mental health industry, but it's more broadly just like consumer culture where we're just bombarded all the time with, do you feel uncomfortable? 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. Right. 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 is 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, I am crying and, like... I am 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 all of it.
Speaker 2Yeah, confusion. Totally. Oh, and alienation and loneliness and...
Speaker 4And it would be, like, slumped over.
Speaker 2Oh, no, I, it would be still hopeful.
Speaker 4Okay, okay.
Speaker 2But it would be, I think, and it would probably be eating some peanuts or something. It would have a little pocket full of peanuts.
Speaker 4No seed oils on the peanuts, I hope.
Speaker 2No, no, not at all. These are ones that he just picked out of a field.
Speaker 4Dry roasted.
Speaker 2They naturally grew dry roasted, those ones. Gods. God's nuts. And then...
Speaker 4God's nuts.
Speaker 2And then he might be tearing up a little. That's fair.
Speaker 4That makes me tear up to think about your little brain on the side of the road.
Speaker 2Hey, look. He's hitchhiking. He's heading... He's headed somewhere.
Speaker 4Oh, and he is going to get picked up by a really cute old man in 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. Get on in, kid.
Speaker 2That's romantic. I like that a little bit.
Speaker 4Oh, my gosh. Here I am with the tears in my eyes. But 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.
Speaker 2That's unbelievable when you think about it.
Speaker 4It's wild. It's, it's four, there are four million kids on psych meds. And this is like age five and up, like tiny children.
Speaker 2Have we gotten lazy in how we try to solve psychiatric problems?
Speaker 4I think, I wouldn't call it our laziness as much as I would say that modern... 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 the, this evolution of our modern culture itself that has actually made it impossible for us to, to like really deeply understand suffering in the way that, you know, in the grand scheme of human history. We used to understand it and, and so I don't think it's about laziness as much as it is like 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, but the world we live in also makes it impossible for so many people who might actually want to, you know, explore what they're going through in, in a deeper way. It makes it impossible because like you got to pay the bills, nine to five job, like you have mouths to feed. You have rent to pay. Right.
Speaker 2We'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, the amount of time and effort it takes to do it right is ridiculous. That's why I'm so grateful for Modify. My team has handled my websites for over a decade now, they do it for us and they've done well and they're the real deal, Louisiana based, super easy to work with and they just can't stop making websites they've launched over a thousand of them, always improving on quality. efficiency, and user experience. Modify Designs builds and manages high-performing web flow websites for small businesses and organizations that want to look professional online without the headache. They offer on-demand web design from a top gun team of experts, a dedicated designer from day one, and fast response times backed by unmatched support. If you're ready for the last website you'll ever need, head to modify.com slash Theo for 50% off your build-out cost. That's M-O-D-I-P-H-Y dot com slash Theo. They 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. They've gone up 140%, whereas income has only gone up, it looks like about 38 to 40%.
Speaker 4Yeah, I mean, and if, I'm so glad you pulled this up because this encapsulates the whole problem here. If you're struggling to make ends meet, and like you have, there's like a, there's significant, 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. When in fact, you're actually having a healthy, logical, commonsensical, like natural response to what is the actually sick situation, if you're going to use that word.
Speaker 2Right. Yeah. It's, it's more like that our society is sick, or that our environment has, that our environment has an illness that we then get diagnosed with by looking at our society. Yeah. Yeah. And feeling how we feel within that society. And 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. Of course. We're just taking a look at things. That's all we're doing here. And we're using our own journeys to kind of to do that. Right. Of course.
Speaker 4Of course. Yeah. I think people often get confused when, 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, by, by challenging this idea that all suffering is just like faulty brain chemistry, you're actually validating the reality of the suffering that people, and the madness and the breakdowns that people are going through. Because you're saying, like, you're having a very real response that may be, you know, completely derailing your life, but it's a response. It's not, it's not pathology. That's, it's not you that you need to fix. What needs to be fixed is the situation and the culture. And, and, and I'm so glad you brought up the medication thing too, because people often, you know, 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, like, this is not about being against these medications. I know tons of people who've been greatly benefited by taking these drugs. But what, what I am trying to do in, in my work is get people to step back and, and, and question the, the information they've been given about the diagnoses and about the meds. And because I believe that this is a problem of informed choice, we haven't been given all the information we need. And 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. Like a lot of people don't even have options, like, because they can't afford them because they're trying to pay their crazy rent, you know, and, and they wish they had other options, but a lot of people don't have them. And like, I completely get why meds have become the first line choice for so many people because they haven't been given anything else.
Speaker 2Yeah. 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. And also I believe that there's bigger, darker entities at play that are happy. If we are ill there, it's easier to subjugate. What does subjugate mean? Am I using it right? Yeah. To, to control, to dominate, to, to control. Yeah. Yeah. It's easier to subjugate. If we're a little bit passive, if you're chasing time, you know, it's easier. And it's interesting because we've come across some very like huge things that have happened in society recently. And you don't see a lot of, um, a lot of people stand. Yes. You don't protest. You don't see much. You see some, but I think all of us are kind of shocked at like, you know, with Epstein files, with choices that our government's making, when do people, you know, 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 taking their
Speaker 4outrage to their therapist instead of to the streets, instead of to their local, you know, politicians instead to, to the voting, like it's. Or everybody's putting a pill in their outrage.
Speaker 2Oh yeah. That's what I want to, you know, it's like, sometimes it's like, yeah, I just didn't know how, 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 known sometimes when I'm on medicine and, um, 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 a family, how I felt 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, um, yeah. So then when you could be doing that, that makes, that's scarier than the, the reason why I got on them 20 years earlier was just cause I was getting out of a relationship and it was like kind of heartbreaking kind of stuff. So, um, okay. Let's, let's get back into your story. You've gone through the
Speaker 4debutante era. Um, where do you go from there? Yeah. Well, once I, you know, as, as I was saying, like after I had that total collapse, like around that time, then I went back willing, to the mental health system. And I was basically just tell me what's wrong with me and give me whatever you think I need to fix it. And so that was when I clicked into this new, like I said, this new sense of purpose and meaning, like, this is what my life is about. Just getting treatment so that I can finally one day feel okay in my skin. Um, 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, 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 in my social relationships, just like really toxic situations with, 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 is 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 there. And, you know, hospitalizations 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, I like, I can't live anymore. It gets to the, to those points. So it was feeling like that. Oh yeah, totally. So 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, thank, thank goodness. Like they kind of insulated me from what would have otherwise been, I don't even know what, like a group home, like long-term institution. I don't even know what. 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 this brain 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 overdosed. Like I, I, you know, it was not, it, it, it was It was, I'd been suicidal for years, but in many ways thinking about killing myself, like similar to booze, when I was a total booze bag, thinking about killing myself ironically kept me going longer. Like whether it was like, at least I could get between alcohol and suicide. It was like, at least I can get shit faced 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 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 total mess. I can't work. I can't support myself. And I, if all, this is all that's in store for me for the rest of my life. Yeah. Because I have this incurable brain disease. Like this isn't a life worth living. And, and when I, you know, I like, you know, flatline and medevac and my, oh yeah, my parents were told like sign a do not resuscitate. She'll be a vegetable. It was like, God, I mean, this was a God thing.
Speaker 2And did you take in a lot of medicine that day? Oh yeah. On purpose?
Speaker 4I took a month's supply with a bottle of wine.
Speaker 2What kind of wine was it? Do you remember?
Speaker 4It was red wine. I don't know what kind. It was just like.
Speaker 2Probably something nice if y'all were rich. I bet.
Speaker 4No, but weirdly my.
Speaker 2Like something that came off a pirate ship or whatever.
Speaker 4Oh, that would be cool. No, it was like, you know, probably barefoot. You know that one? Oh, those were good for a while. That was not, that was the era. This was 2008 when I tried to kill myself.
Speaker 2Yeah. Barefoot was popping. Yeah. Yeah. And here you were barefoot, probably taking pills too.
Speaker 4Oh yeah. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2You were down as shoeless, dude. I don't even think they let you keep your shoes because they have shoe strings in them.
Speaker 4Oh, oh yeah. If you're locked up in a psych ward, that's like definitely. They take any laces that you have.
Speaker 2Did you go to a psych ward?
Speaker 4Four times.
Speaker 2No way. Yeah, yeah. Can you take me into just what that's like a little bit?
Speaker 4Oh, I just laugh because people have this. If you haven't spent time yourself on a psych ward or visiting someone on a psych ward, you have this like, oh, it's like the 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 state public institutions visiting people. I can talk about those in a minute. But my experience was the spa, the.
Speaker 2The nicer, the nicer style.
Speaker 4The top of the line. And, you know, just a thin. It sounds nice. Okay. Well, if you want, let me walk you through the day. So you, you, you wake up in the morning on your like stiff plastic-y mattress.
Speaker 2And do you have a celly or not?
Speaker 4Um, is a celly, a. Roommate. Oh, roommate, a celly. Like C-E-L-L-Y.
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 4Basically. Yeah. So it, it, 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, glaring 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 here 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, uh, 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 are like, here's the mood chart. Can you point the out of which one you resonate with most this morning? And then you pick the like sad face or the anxiety face or the vape face.
Speaker 2That's all.
Speaker 4I wonder if they have vape faces on because I haven't been locked up in so long. Like, yeah. Vapes didn't even exist. A vape face. What would it look like?
Speaker 2It'd just be a regular face, just kind of nonchalant or mildly chalant, just hitting a vape.
Speaker 5Oh, no.
Speaker 2I think anyway. I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud, but that's the one I'd probably pick most of the time. But I'd be aiming probably for the, 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?
Speaker 4There's no depth happening there. It's all these like, you know, it's, it's all. It's all very superficial. Like, you know, my, you know, my, my mom and I are getting into fights because there's a whole group of patients with you and, and it's like a, you know, 30 minute. So there's no deep work. There's no meaningful, like exploratory.
Speaker 2And is anybody chained up or anything like that in there?
Speaker 4People do get restrained if they are naughty.
Speaker 2Who's naughty in there? Was anybody? Any pervs in there?
Speaker 4Oh, thank goodness. There were definitely some, some per, I mean, I cross paths with some strange guys in some of my psych ward experiences, but, but one, one restraint story, I talk about it in my book is 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 somewhere 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, no, you know, there's nothing bad in there. 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 curdling screams, and she wouldn't stop. And the staff tried to get her to stop and just screaming, screaming, screaming, and then eventually. 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.
Speaker 2Dang. I hit her with that dart, huh?
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 2Were you able to find out what was in the card? Like what, what was so upsetting?
Speaker 4No, I never, cause she never talked to any of us afterwards and it, and it was, you know, and I, I have tons of friends who I wasn't locked up with, but who I know from my work, who've been, you know, I've been talking to them for a long time. 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 stops sleeping is eventually going to get psychotic because that's literally what happens to 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 he would 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 the police would get involved and then he'd be put in what will happen sometimes to patients. Um, on wards is they'll get put in four point restraints. So your, 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'd leave him. He would tell me like, they'd leave me for hours. I'd piss myself. Like that's that kind of thing happens. Um, so, 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. I always did what I was told. And, and so, you know, after my overdose, uh, when I, I was like in a comb, it was like a wild thing. I was like intubated. Yeah. It was crazy catheter, everything. And I woke up, I go into all of it in my, in my, 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.
Speaker 2Check back in with me in two months. Give me two months to read it. Will you?
Speaker 4Totally. 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, and I go in to this.
Speaker 2I've dated some heavy, dark women.
Speaker 4Well, we heavy, dark women, we're the way to, we're 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, um, but we.
Speaker 2No. And I didn't mean it like that. I meant I've dated some heavier, darker women. That's what I meant. But I've also dated some women who have, uh, who kind of like, yeah, or a little bit, have a lot more Eeyore in them than, you know, than, than Tigger, I guess you would say. So, um, but anyway, we got to move on. Anyway, back to the, back to the psych ward.
Speaker 4No, but, but so, 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 i hold 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
Speaker 2the logical choice to me right so that's something that i think 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 a certain point you've kind of medicated yourself into a corner and it's like what do you do then if there is no solution as far as you've known well you're being yeah exactly you've been
Speaker 4told 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 like i was saying it was like a companion it was part of my life and i realize 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 um symbolic death of of the life that i was living
Speaker 2not literal death so you're saying i i want this this this version of life that i'm living
Speaker 4i 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 it could mean and 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 oh i can't even imagine 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 like it's not possible wow um and so i 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 um oh yeah sorry my suicide attempt was 25 27 was when i woke up uh so yeah i was 27 my the the previous two years after my overdose were like more of the same i was still a mess living with family like totally disabled
Speaker 2did you try and get any pets or what modalities did oh 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 wait do
Speaker 4you say gerbil down here we say gerbil up there gerbil yeah i like gerbil way better oh yeah gerbil it doesn't sound as nice as gerbil yeah gerbil sounds like it's from the streets or
Speaker 2something it sounds like it's like he's from memphis you know i'm saying no but i picture
Speaker 4him 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
Speaker 2a really big deal and yeah oh i've been that depressed before a long time ago but i've been that depressed for at this every moment feels so heavy yeah yeah it's like a war you were you're
Speaker 4literally 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 i i won the battle today it's and it's it's not sustainable and i that you know of course brings me back to just how some you know there 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 and and you know that kind of like that sound of those pills in that capsule it can really just it brings so much promise until until it doesn't you know and and so for me that turning point happened in 2010 i was 27 and i was like i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i was just gotten out of my last hospitalization my second to last hospitalization i'd quit drinking because by then like i'd said earlier booze became like a you know my go-to way of not killing myself
Speaker 2was like getting drunk every night so you were on all these meds and drinking oh yeah five meds
Speaker 4including three milligrams of clonopin i was on two mood stabilizers an antipsychotic and an antidepressant plus plus the benzo drinking and i was like i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die 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 microbrewery thing happened i'd either drink you
Speaker 2know like a six i love how you're on all these pills and then you're like and also i'm gonna
Speaker 4have a harpoon ipa six of them like i mean i it was i was a machine i don't know if you if with with antidepressants if your tolerance for alcohol you're like rick flair dude i don't know who that
Speaker 2is you're like sick flair we tell me who he is rick flair was like is is sorry i'm saying was rick flair is this famous um uh wrestler he's actually never i've interviewed him and he's actually oh him uh he's actually yeah and he's also actually never taken drugs but he just likes but he has a robust spot yeah he has 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 and stuff it's always been a part of his lifestyle that's why i'm saying that yeah i love you rick well a lot of a lot of people don't drink alcohol
Speaker 4who'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 um but when they eventually come off their meds and this is was my experience too like I I eventually realized like actually um the 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 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 no one ever could tell I would like act normal until the very end and then like crazy shit would happen and ambulances would get called on me and I'd wake up with like charcoal on my shirt in the emergency room my stomach would be
Speaker 2like oh yeah you're like John Daly it sounds like at a barbecue darn it I don't know who he is either oh he's a famous golfer who likes to party okay there he is oh 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 but he likes he likes oh he looks awesome he used to live at a Hooters but yeah he likes to
Speaker 4party dude yeah well that I 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. I don't know how it interfered with metabolism, but it made me able to drink a lot more and blackout.
Speaker 2As you say that, I remember when I first got prescribed antidepressants, I got them to Zoloft and I could drink. Suddenly I could go out to drink. I never even really liked drinking. But I was living in Charleston, South Carolina at the time with some people I'd met in the ocean or whatever.
Speaker 4In the ocean?
Speaker 2Yeah. I met some folks in the ocean and they let me stay over with them. But anyway, suddenly I could drink and I was drinking gin and tonics or whatever.
Speaker 4It's interesting.
Speaker 2Like I was Jimmy Buffett's god-nephew or whatever.
Speaker 4I don't know what is happening in the body to enable that, but I think this ends up happening for a lot of people. So in 2010, I eventually did make the decision to stop drinking, thinking that if I remove alcohol, maybe this treatment-resistant bipolar won't be treatment-resistant anymore. And my meds will finally help me because I've been self-medicating with alcohol and that's why the meds haven't helped. So that was the headspace I was in. So I quit drinking. And within a month or two, I'd gotten enough clarity of mind from not being blackout every night to realize, holy cow, I've been on these meds since I was a kid. I don't know who I am. Everything you talk about so powerfully, what do I really care about? What? What would my body actually look like? Would I actually be in this 200-pound body? Would I actually feel connected to people? I just started asking these questions because I felt such a difference from just not drinking anymore. And that was when I began to bring it up with my doctor. Like maybe I could come off some of these five meds I'm on. Like I 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. And the doctor didn't want to do it. You know, like we don't want to rock the boat, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2The boat is shipwrecked. 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.
Speaker 4But what's 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— It felt like the Queen Elizabeth on her first voyage. Okay, so we feel like the boat's doing better. It felt like I am rocking it. Like I'm not in the psych ward. I'm alive. I showered twice this week.
Speaker 2Let's go.
Speaker 4And I didn't like binge eat two boxes of cereal.
Speaker 2Yeah. With your hand.
Speaker 4I'm doing great. Yeah.
Speaker 2Oh, yeah. When you hand finish a box of cereal, dude.
Speaker 4The hand and you got your elbow up and you're just— And then you even get the powder.
Speaker 2Oh, elbow up is a 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.
Speaker 4How else do you get to the bottom? Huh?
Speaker 2You just get in there. You put your dang head in there like a man, like a woman. Oh, I see.
Speaker 4You're going like—
Speaker 2like this well you just do whatever no i don't know if you even cut it open from the side and
Speaker 1eat it from the side whatever you have to do but you get in there endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upside down face off with the front man play leveled up arcade games shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed food and drinks beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at netflix house at galleria dallas bring your crew and safe get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house
Speaker 2is pornography causing a problem in your life do you find yourself watching porno 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 commonplace today and oftentimes men use 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 dedicated 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.valor recovery coaching.com or email them at admin at valor recovery coaching.com thank you um so 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
Speaker 4whole treatment resistant thing and it's why it's in the subtitle of my book because to me this is like a the kind of one of the core problems 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 electroshock or transcranial magnetic stimulation 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 currents through you so they have investigated those uh those uh those things before yeah i i go into ect in my book and some of the other like medical devices in it um because it is the it's the treatment for treatment resistance i'm 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 had they offered ect to me i probably would have said yes but but actually um like the conventional kind of like uh 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
Speaker 2got it um how do you start to put the medicine in the rearview mirror
Speaker 4so 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 may 2010 then i stumbled upon a book that had this old phrenology head on the cover so you know like those old like early 20th century drawings where they're like different compartments in the skull and and it had in each 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 to buy it so i bought it and i started reading it and it blew my mind and so basically yeah there it is so um 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 where they don't have all these you know medications do better than in the u.s 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 meds 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 it's the treatment oh yeah and it and then once that was removed from like i couldn't unsee that realization and it like haunted me and of course i first went through this state of like shock and i was like oh my god 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 had 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 wait 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 i'll you know i'll allow it like
Speaker 2you know he he was willing to bring me off and was this the same doctor that put you on them
Speaker 4yeah i mean i saw so many doctors over the years but it was the one i was seeing with the five med regimen okay got it um and this gets us to you know the topic that i i'm like so excited to connect with you more about here is when i made the decision to come off my meds i had no idea how hard it would be to get off them amen no one told me my doctor certainly had no idea how hard it would be to get off them i had no idea how hard it would be to get off them i had no idea how hard it would be to get off them i had no idea how hard it would be to get off them i had no idea how hard it would be to get off them i had no idea um 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
Speaker 2to adapt to them is that true that some of them alter how your central nervous system works all
Speaker 4of them all antidepressants mood stabilizers benzos they they cause 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 this drug such that when you remove it it's destabilized oh yeah and so no
Speaker 2one 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 egg in the egg 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 my i was like kind of heartbroken or whatever and then um so i went 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 childhoods stuff that i'd attached to this relationship um unknowingly and so i was pretty heartbroken um 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 uh i get on these meds and then everything's kind of fine but there was never like a checkup later i've ended up leaving south carolina like a few months after that and um and there was never like a check in or anything like that and i was like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh i'm getting back really to like figure out if you stay on them and so i was just on them for a long
Speaker 4time was a psychiatrist you prescribed them or a general like your primary care doctor do you
Speaker 2remember 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 what the medicines were uh but then i got on it and uh and then i've just been on it for years and there's times where i've gotten off to try and um like i tried plant medicine a few times got off to do medicine experiences um and some of that helped a lot like uh doing ayahuasca helped a lot but uh the thing that i didn't realize was i wasn't getting off of 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 uh dr mark horowitz is his name you've talked about yeah
Speaker 4mark's a close friend and i was just talking with him earlier today oh were you really yeah we're very close we've worked together on a lot of this and he's like out of the blue um
Speaker 2one 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 um And some mild consultation about medicine. Great. And he, and I, I got off and I thought I'd titrated down well because I went from like 10 milligrams to five and then to nothing.
Speaker 4Oh, Theo. Oh my goodness. Which, and which is this, was this Lexapro that you were on?
Speaker 2This was Eschatalopram, then the 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 became 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 envisioning futures for myself that were kind of, um, careless sort of, or mundane, maybe, um, not even like peaceful when just like nonchalant about everything. And that gave, that got a little bit spooky, uh, because I, I knew that that wasn't real. Um, or how I really felt it. And it was too much. And just the sleeping in, I hadn't slept in since I was like really in my twenties, really. It 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.
Speaker 4And it was 10, the dose that you had been at for a while, or had you been at a higher dose?
Speaker 2I'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've been, you know, 20 something years. So it's like, anyway, there's a lot more to it. And I still, I'm going to 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, uh, for you?
Speaker 4Yeah. I mean, because my doctor had no idea what he was doing and I didn't know anything about physical dependence and withdrawal.
Speaker 2And what year was this?
Speaker 4This was 2010. I was 27. Nobody knows. What? And so I came off. I came off five drugs in six months, which is cold turkey.
Speaker 2Like you're like the Jesse Owens of getting off drugs, like a triathlete.
Speaker 4Well, and, and this again, bring like, I can't not mention class here. Like the fact that I had the socioeconomic resources to be completely disabled for years, like years, the coming off five meds in six months blew up my life for years. 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, 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, I couldn't translate thought to speaking. I couldn't absorb words. I would get.
Speaker 2And then you quit cold turkey?
Speaker 4Five, in six months, five meds, but five meds. So it's basically cold turkey. Like that's so fast. I just want to, maybe before I go back in, like just to paint a picture and you know, Mark, Mark's work, you referenced like he, we've worked close, closely. He's a close colleague of mine. And so I come from the lay person 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 uses like came from the lay person community because it was.
Speaker 2What does the lay person mean?
Speaker 4Lay person means a non-doctor, a non-medical expert, patients like.
Speaker 2Just a blue collar pill taker.
Speaker 4Totally. 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 it the wrong way because I didn't know, but it's been over decades that patients have had to figure out how to do it the right way, just through trial and error and figuring it out. 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 community 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 hundred now drop 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 to, I've got to make smaller reductions in my dose and maybe space it out a little longer. So it ends up looking like this hyperbolic curve for anyone listening.
Speaker 2It's like a ramp, almost like a skater's ramp.
Speaker 4Yeah, exactly. That's more like a bowl, you know, inside of a nice salad bowl. Just so you're not making a straight line, a straight, you know, diagonal line or like
Speaker 2a staircase.
Speaker 4Yeah. 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. 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 pop off. And the reason why this is the case is now research is verifying what patients figured out through experience is that the, 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 zero to 10, it's has a significant, a significant effect on your 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.
Speaker 2I see. But that last 10 or whatever, that's a severe.
Speaker 4Yeah. So 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 experienced going from 10 to five to zero, like, like blue, blue, you know, just melancholy.
Speaker 2Everything was a melancholy thing and it was very bizarre. I almost cannot even explain it. I tried to fight through it and like I was taking different, um, 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 gonna live to fight another day. So I'm going to get back on my meds.
Speaker 4Uh, how long did it take for you to make that choice? Like how long were you off for?
Speaker 2Well, 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 like depression here and there, but it was stuff that I'd done before that felt manageable. And then, um, and then it just got too bizarre. Just the melancholy was a little too much.
Speaker 4But 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.
Speaker 2Right. I knew it wasn't me. I knew it was something, I knew it was me experiencing something because of something that was going on medicinally. And so I thought it would go away. And, uh, and I was emailing with Dr. Horowitz and he's like, no, it, it, it could stay around for a long time. And at a certain point I said, I just can't battle this anymore. It was causing me some troubles even with my like sobriety, sobriety, like just being able to like with my, um, just being in recovery and stuff like that. It was causing me just a lot of confusion. Uh, so anyway, um, so I'm back on, but, uh, okay, let's go. Let's get back into where you were talking about.
Speaker 4So, 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 and 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 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, on, 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. Like this is, this is a sign I need my meds and, and everyone's telling them that too. The doctor's 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 is really helping me.
Speaker 2Yeah. 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.
Speaker 4It'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 was so disconnected from my own you know intuition about stuff that I just like couldn't like it's when you describe how you felt those six weeks in when you were like something's wrong like this is not no this is not me this is not my like usual 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 yeah and that's
Speaker 2what I'm hopeful for in the future um what about were you able to maintain a relationship during
Speaker 4any of this what was that like for you all those poor I mean I basically dated guys who were as lost and and uh 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 each of those dark relationships we were basically just like running away from pain together and did medicines cause
Speaker 2like intimacy issues kind of did you have like because I know a lot of like a lot of guys there's fear with guys if I get on antidepressants it's like it can affect my like and it can call it can maybe it'll cause that intimacy disorder can you
Speaker 4look look that up Trevin well yeah it definitely causes sexual uh oh this says right here it says
Speaker 2um yes mental health medications can absolutely cause intimacy and sexual issues this is a very common side effect particularly with antidepressants and antipsychotics 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 and if it's too personal we can take it out oh no oh my
Speaker 4god I I will bear it all like I took because 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 I had zero sexual function on psych drugs and I didn't even realize what I was missing because I'd been put on them so young so I I just assumed and was being told that my like inability to feel bonded to God you know bonded in a way that I didn't know I didn't know 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 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 sex 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 beauty 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 off antidepressants 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
Speaker 2for sure google PSSD Lauren Friedman PSSD is a condition where sexual side effects such as genital numbness low sex drive and low sex drive and low sex drive and low sex drive and low sex 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 my orgasms was different 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 antidepressants 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
Speaker 4it was low man is there a time it's a short clip is there a time it's a short clip is there a time is there a time yeah there that Lauren Friedman this just to contextualize this so so I we my organization Intercompass Initiative we helped organize um 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 deprescribing at the event and this panel was about deprescribing deprescribing yep about helping all these guidelines that don't exist that you know Mark Horowitz's work and our in the in the government in the public health system um under Secretary 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 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
Speaker 2sent me this one night he sends me this stuff to kind of keep me updated on um some of the awareness about this stuff let's go ahead and watch it
Speaker 6yes SD 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 um before this I was a super emotional uh empathetic loving caring like Sylvia Plath reading and resonating girl and the day I woke up with this injury I quite literally felt my soul leave my body like I'm so serious it was the most unbelievable inorganic 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 um I can't feel connection or love for my friends um or even pleasure music which was the bane 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 on 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 platonic familial 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 not just physically through sex which is completely horrific on its own but to remove someone's ability to emotionally reconnect with another human being is a crime against humanity and I say crime against humanity because there is evidence that Eli Lilly who created the first SSRI Prozac knew their drugs could cause permanent sexual dysfunction and emotional numbness 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 of patients that your medication can permanently chemically castrate and emotionally numb its user for the rest of their life wow is that true that Eli Lilly
Speaker 4was hiding information I didn't know that until she's she 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 believe that any of these
Speaker 2uh 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 um 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
Speaker 4do now to steer clear of uh 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.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 redact 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 drug store but the actual comprehensive drug label you're you'll be shocked by what you read 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
Speaker 2years six to eight weeks sometimes 10 sometimes 12 weeks wow that's heartbreaking um it's brave of her and just like speak exactly what she's feeling. 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.
Speaker 4I 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 I want to be clear, like, this isn't about bad doctors or mean doctors or evil doctors. 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.
Speaker 2It's unbelievable.
Speaker 4We 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 have shot up, especially in young people. In veterans, suicide crisis. We have, you know, 23.1% of Americans have a psychiatric diagnosis of some kind. And so we have this mental health crisis. And 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.
Speaker 2So 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 that's the real problem? Do you feel like it's a big pharma pressure from the top and, like, compromised, like, studies and documentation? Do you feel like it's that we've all been convinced that there's something wrong with us? What do you kind of what have you learned from looking at this? Like, what is the real crisis? And I guess the crisis is that we're on the medication. The crisis isn't that there's a crisis.
Speaker 4I think the list you gave is a great. It's 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, of course, like reasons about it 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 are just being, you know, sat in seats under fluorescent lights.
Speaker 2When you think about it all, it's crazy. I was even thinking about this the other day. I was on a road trip and 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. 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 OK. Like if you had a handful of plastic, would you just eat that?
Speaker 4But we are eating microplastics all day, every day.
Speaker 2I know, but it's just it's almost shocking to me that visually some of the stuff even looks the same. And we're still like like people would buy 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.
Speaker 4Yeah. Well, and that your average kid, you know, give them the choice between this like glaring, shiny, plasticky piece of candy and like a beautiful apple grown on a 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, 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, you know, industrialized, institutionalized. And it's been this like frog in 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 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 teary eyed. The heartbreak you felt is like a young twin. Twenty 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 relational.
Speaker 2I mean, it's half a chapter of Romeo and Juliet.
Speaker 4I mean, imagine if like people in Shakespeare's chapter, not the end chapter. But, you know, imagine people in Shakespeare in Shakespearean times were like going to doctorates.
Speaker 2We wouldn't even have Shakespeare if they had medicine. If they had antidepressants, we would not even have Shakespeare.
Speaker 4That is it right there. We wouldn't have Van Gogh, Shakespeare. We wouldn't have we wouldn't have beautiful art music. We wouldn't have creative human expression.
Speaker 2Yeah. He'd have been like, give me liberty or give me lithium. Yeah.
Speaker 4Oh, man, I was on lithium that that out of all the drugs. Oh, yeah. So it totally messed up my thyroid. I reversed it when I got off everything. But. But we're medicalizing. So this this three part misunderstanding that our culture is having. And this is what Bobby Kennedy is addressing in 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.
Speaker 2When we say we, who do you mean, though?
Speaker 4Your average teenage girl who's like convinced she has an incurable brain disease, you know, because she's feels insecure and she's, you know. Right.
Speaker 2Just 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, quote unquote, symptoms to treat symptoms to be treated.
Speaker 4And don't get me wrong. There can be like you. Sure. 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.
Speaker 2And some people may have some severe mental illnesses. I'm not talking about. 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. I mean, I'm not a doctor. I'm not saying any of that. We're just saying that there's been an overabundance. Even if you look at the numbers, there's been an overabundance of things that are normal human feelings that have now been medicinalized.
Speaker 4I want to what you just said, though, I even in those cases that you. Think of as the most extreme, 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. You know, he'd been living in group homes for decades. He was on tons of psych meds. He talked to himself all the time. He heard voices. He was if you had, you know, he couldn't live independently. He was what any average person would call like a chronic mental patient. Like he wasn't allowed to be around knives, all that. Stuff 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. I'll make up a name like, hey, Bill, I was like, 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 1516 and I'd smoked some grass that got me really scared. He was in his fifties. When I was talking to him and and I saw ants coming out of the television and I told my parents and they took me to Waltham State and Waltham State Hospital was a state hospital in Massachusetts. They admitted this teenager on an adult ward, loaded him up on antipsychotics and the rest is history. Decades later, he looks to your, you know, if you saw him on the street, he had crazy hair everywhere. He was disheveled 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 that scary guy on the street corner, you know?
Speaker 2- Yeah, you'd be out there pleading in whatever way words you have left inside of you and whatever organizational abilities you have left, you'd be out there trying to show people something is wrong here. And it's like, yeah. So I think we have this,
Speaker 4this, 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
Speaker 2crisis. Yeah. And that kid could have just have been high and was telling his parents something
Speaker 4that 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 bad grass. 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. Um, which we've been
Speaker 2there. Yeah. Oh yeah. And so he, oh, I locked my coworker in the freezer and called the police on
Speaker 4him once. You did? Yeah. What did you think he was going to do? Like what, what, what was happening in your head?
Speaker 2What made you do that? I thought, uh, well, we had smoked some weed together and we were working at a gas station together and I thought that he had, uh, set me up and it was going to do something
Speaker 4bad to me. I always got paranoid when I smoked pot too. So I tricked 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.
Speaker 2He was fine. He looked thick, but he'd be all right. He's still all right. Shout out Andrew. Shout out Andrew. All right. My bad, bro. My bad. Still, still my bad. But, but so, so we have,
Speaker 4we 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 are fucking you up a bit. Like no one ever said 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 then number three, 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 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 going to stay on it forever. You don't realize, no, 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, misunderstood way. So yeah. And that, and the work of, of Inner Compass Initiative, which is the nonprofit I started a number of years back is all about, we're not anti-medication. Yeah. We're not shaming 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.
Speaker 2Yeah. 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.
Speaker 4Well, 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 do 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 I 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.
Speaker 2What is the practice for tapering off of antidepressants or off of psychiatric meds?
Speaker 4Yeah. Well, so the number one, most important, you know, piece of it is that.
Speaker 2And this is not doctor's advice. Also. I want you to know.
Speaker 4We'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 of 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 between five to 10% per month of your dose. So let's say you're on a hundred milligrams of Seroquel and you want to taper 10%. I want to see how that goes for you. You cut. So you would cut 10% of a hundred and month one, which is 10 milligrams. So you cut to 90 for the first month. Then in month two, you cut 10% of 90. So you cut nine milligrams. So now you're down to 81 in month 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. They're not. No. And I, and I, that may change under secretary Kennedy. I hope it does. Um, but it right now people have no choice, but to like make their own liquid mixtures and use slip tip 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 to do it. It's,
Speaker 2there's no way to make, make 8.1. Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm even splitting my pill just like this, like any lay person. I have to just splitting it with my thumbs, 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
Speaker 4this because that's, that's not a reliable way to make. I know it isn't trust me. So, so you're on,
Speaker 2you're on a 10. Is that right? I'm on a 10 milligram. And it's that little white round
Speaker 4tablet. I remember it well, I was on it for a long time. Um, so. Someone in your situation has a few options. You could either go to a compounding pharmacy and have them, um, you know, make a, if, if you were going to cut one milligram, make you a 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,
Speaker 2which does come as a liquid. Okay. And let me, let me just say really quick, um, that I wasn't aware that when you're getting off antidepressants, that some of them, uh, you can get them in a liquid form so that when you're titrating off, um, you have the access to, uh, be able to measure kind of smaller and smaller amounts. Um, okay. Just wanted to say
Speaker 4that. Yeah, but it's not, um, 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. 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, I'm 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.
Speaker 2Ah, and that's how they,
Speaker 4you have started to titrate down. That's and, and it shouldn't have to be this way, but that's how it has had to be for the, for decades, right? Because the medical industry is not offering a solution. Yeah. They're not incentivized to get you off their products.
Speaker 2Yeah. 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 kicked them down the road 20 years, you know? Oh my gosh. So that's one of the craziest things too. It's sometimes I'm like, why do I still have these old feelings? It's just because I keep just duct tape, keeping them down with these antidepressants. Now that's not scientific. That's just me sharing how I feel. Um, 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, uh, it's gotten so, uh, confusing out there and so unhelpful out there for people that want to, um, be away from some of these, uh, which feels a lot of times like a sentence.
Speaker 4It totally does. Uh, 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 be 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. If it isn't, you know, clinical research, it's useless data. I can tell you right now that there are tens upon tens, if not hundreds of thousands of data points out there in the lay person, 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 can be valid from all kinds of sources. This idea that anecdotal information is invalid is preposterous to me. Like your experience 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,
Speaker 2dude. Totally. People are like, oh, well, you're not a scientist, whatever, 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 censored and altered Oh, totally. It's like the last thing we have is our voice is 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 ever had in a lot of ways. Um, but yeah, I think that, I think a lot of people are like, uh, 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. Um, I've tried like four times. Oh my gosh. Well, I, if I can,
Speaker 4if I can be like a buddy to you in this, because, you need, you need friends who've, who've, and fellows who've walked the path.
Speaker 2That's all I was going to ask you.
Speaker 4It'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 too, 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. Cause what, what,
Speaker 2where are you finding that community just online?
Speaker 4Are not, well, our nonprofit has one, but they're all over Facebook. Um, 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 reddity kinds of secret forums, tons of people were messaging each other, but it wasn't like visible on the internet. Now there are hundreds of Facebook groups, people helping each other for each specific drug. Like you could totally Google eschatolopram withdrawal support, and you would probably find like five groups with 10,000 people each in them.
Speaker 2Yeah. I think part of me, I tried a little bit too much to just do it myself. I think, uh,
Speaker 4yeah, 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, it's like having someone who's been there, done that they're five years down the road, then you'd 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. You're like, what's happening to me to have people who are like, I've seen that 1500 times. What you're describing is not unusual. This is totally six weeks.
Speaker 2Right. It changes the way you've changed your perspective. It helps your perspective. Yeah. So what, what suggestion would you give somebody who right now who's thinking that I would like to try to get off of antidepressants? Um, and again, we're not doctors, so I'm not a doctor.
Speaker 4I'm not a doctor. I'm, I'm an ex patient. That's my resume. There you go. Totally.
Speaker 2I'm a, I'm a, someone who's tried to get off antidepressants a lot or five times, but hasn't been successful yet.
Speaker 4Yeah. 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 this 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 website, intercomp, theintercompass.org. There's tons of information all over. 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 taper 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 taper safely, having, having their support. And partnership, 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.
Speaker 2Or your withdrawers. Some people call them withdrawers.
Speaker 4I love that. That's so great. Yeah. I just made that up.
Speaker 2I don't know if it's great or not. It seems, uh, it's a little cringy, but it's also. It is.
Speaker 4You need, you are like every single person who's, is a warrior. Who's.
Speaker 2This shit was wild, bro. I'll say the last time I'd done it, it was, it was, I was surprised.
Speaker 4Well, I remember, I remember. Can, 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 and how you went back on.
Speaker 2That was probably the previous time that I went back on. So this was just recent. I just got back on like two weeks ago.
Speaker 4Oh, it was that recently. Okay. Um, and, and since you've gone back on, does it feel, do you feel.
Speaker 2I feel safer. Yeah. I just feel like. I feel like, uh, you know, like you're, you're playing freeze tag or whatever, and you're off a base, you can get tagged, but it's like, I feel like I got back, 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?
Speaker 4Oh, you totally will. You'll know when the time is right. And yeah, all those things I, I said are important. And then also just the lifestyle piece. Like it's, it's, you know, it sounds obvious, but just the food you're putting in your body is going to 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, Lexapro is like just targeting serotonin receptors in our brain. No, it's like, it's influencing the entire body, especially the gut.
Speaker 2Yeah. I had started buying, um, they got a little deal over here on the corner where they're selling, um, you know, previously used cabbage or whatever it's called. What is it called?
Speaker 4Oh, you can't. Sauerkraut. Sauerkraut.
Speaker 2That's what I'm talking about. Or whatever it is.
Speaker 4PUCs. Fermented cabbage. Yeah. Nice. I love sauerkraut.
Speaker 2I 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, uh, you know, a couple of good jars of 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.
Speaker 4Well, 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.
Speaker 2Amen. Um, Laura, thanks so much for joining us today and chatting.
Speaker 4Oh, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 2I 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? What is he doing or what is his movement doing right now for, uh, mental health?
Speaker 4Yeah, well, I mean, Secretary Kennedy has long been aware of and, and engaged with this crisis we've been talking about here. He, 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 HHS secretary and, you know, my husband Cooper and I, who we worked together in our compass initiative, we, we saw him talking about it, you know, at his, 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 going to be a partner in this. Like we just have to work on building stuff outside.
Speaker 2And like, yeah, we're all realizing that on every facet. It feels totally.
Speaker 4So I just been solely in that headspace through my career. And I still think that's like a, the most essential work to do is like building new things outside. of the system, so to speak. But when Bobby came in, you know, we realized like, wow, this is actually a surreal opportunity to partner with the federal government to support them, to assist their efforts, to actually try to get policy changes around this over-medicalization crisis, as they're calling it, and 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 laid out this plan.
Speaker 2The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on 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 de-prescribing when clinically indicated. Today, we take clear and 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 here, do you find? Yes. Or is this just like, is this just talk? Is this just rhetoric? No,
Speaker 4well, he announced a few specific next steps that HHS has set out to undertake. Okay. We will support
Speaker 2patient autonomy, require informed consent and shared decision-making and shift the standard of intervention, transparency, and a more holistic approach to mental health. There should be more,
Speaker 4I don't know if it's on another page, but there should be more, like an actual breakdown of, I mean, the announcements he made were around developing guidelines for SSRI tapering, training clinicians in how to do it safely, enabling through insurance that the coverage of deep prescribing so that doctors, prescribers can get paid to de-prescribe through billing codes and all that. And I think, you know, getting federally funded health centers equipped to support people in de-prescribing. So he, there are tangible policy next steps that HHS is, is aiming 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 is a possibility. And I think that is a possibility. And I think in combination with this cultural awakening, 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 going to ban SSRIs and they're going to deny access and remove from the market and yada, yada, yada. None of that is true. None of what HHS has set out to do is about removing, denying access. It's literally about creating more options.
Speaker 2I mean, 90% of the media is owned by the same groups. So I'm not surprised, probably. I'm probably, I'm not surprised that Bear Monsanto doesn't own half of the media or, you know, it's all, it's all a shell game. 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 medication have a role in care, but we will no longer treat them as the default. We will treat them as one option to be used when appropriate, both full transparency and with a clear path off when they're no longer needed. Amen to that, man. I've known Bobby for a 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 den of spiders, but I, um, but I love this idea because, uh, oh, it says, let me be clear. If you take your heart into a pediatric medication, we are not telling you to stop. Mr. Kennedy said, we are making sure you and your clinician have the information and support to make the right decision for you. Exactly. Agreed. Because here's the thing. Imagine you get onto a, on an on-ramp, onto an, onto a highway and you can never get off of it. Yep. And here's the option you do have. You can pull your car over and park and get out and walk. You're still on the fucking highway though. Yeah. And now you just don't have the vehicle you were in. That's what it feels like a lot of times.
Speaker 4Well, it's even worse. It's the only option people have now is to open their door and jump out while their car's going 80 miles an hour, AKA cold Turkey withdrawal. Like, I mean, but that's it.
Speaker 2But 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 lay person trying to figure it out, you know, that it's come from like, it's a conspiracy theory almost to trying to get off of your medicine. Yeah. Um, what is your life like now? Uh, what is your medical regimen like now?
Speaker 4How are you feeling these days? Um, well, I don't have a medical regimen. Um, yeah, I mean, I haven't, it's been a while since I've been to a doctor and, 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 break 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 Xer, right? So I think we, we're semi neighbors or whatever. Yeah, totally. So the generation above us, especially, you know, this idea that I'm taking good care of myself. I'm going to all 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, like our bodies have not evolved for this. And so. Oh yeah. And the timeline of
Speaker 2history, if you were to look at history as like a 24 hour clock, um, human beings, I guess, have been here for like, since 11:59 PM. Oh my gosh. Is that right? I'm sure it's something like that. If, 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. I wonder if, can you,
Speaker 4is there a way to cal to calculate in the scale of human, as long as humans have existed, how much on a clock would like industrial, the kind of industrial era be, um, if the entire existence of
Speaker 2modern humans were condensed into a single 24 hour day, the industrial era would be less than two
Speaker 4minutes 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
Speaker 2were so quickly ago. We were basically raccoons. Totally. Totally. Women were birthing at rivers, riversides and then bushes. And now it's going to happen again, just cause our healthcare system's so bad. So oddly enough, we are making our way back because of corporate greed. Unbelievable.
Speaker 4Full circle, full circle. But I think I keep that in my mind. Like, and, and, oh yeah. You know, people often ask me like, so now everything's great. Is that, is that right? Like, so 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, no, 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, you know, the way I grew up and I'm not happy and balanced and high put together and high functioning all the time. The main difference is 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 like, 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 and mine, where we were sensitive, like alive, vital young people who had, 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.
Speaker 2Yeah. You fucking went through it.
Speaker 4How many millions of people are having a similar experience and don't even realize it, you know?
Speaker 2Oh yeah. I, I, I mean, I also, I noticed this for sure about myself. I was hypersensitive, for sure. So being hypersensitive and hyper aware, I mean, you're basically, you know, you're a mouse. I'm a rat, but you're a mouse, you know, I'm not like a rat, like in prison,
Speaker 4like 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.
Speaker 2But that's because you were doing, you were on dope. I was on a lot of meds, but I actually
Speaker 4still would do the same thing. I love animals, but, but no, I think we're all mad. Well, yeah,
Speaker 2our whole group is, we're all rats.
Speaker 4I think all human beings are born this way. Like, I think we are born a sensitive, like, can I, read you, maybe this is a way to tie it all together. Can I read you the last, this is, it's like a paragraph, two paragraphs. 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, biotech, 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.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think one day a smile will be in like a museum somewhere. You know, people are like, can you believe that people's used, the edges of their mouths used to turn up when they used to feel something?
Speaker 4That was all the people cared about.
Speaker 2Blasphemy. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Laura. That's beautiful. And thank you for, yeah, thanks for caring. Thanks for sharing what your journey has been like. Thank you.
Speaker 4Thank 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 often say, to me, the suffering, the pain, the suffering, the pain, 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 it in service to other people.
Speaker 2Amen.
Speaker 4I 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 people. Um, but it's medicine. It really is.
Speaker 2Yeah. My friend James Boucher always says, we are the keys to each other's locks. That's what he says.
Speaker 4That's beautiful.
Speaker 2It's a nice statement.
Speaker 4That's beautiful.
Speaker 2And he, he's like a damn janitor, man. He is like, he's a key chain of keys, that guy. He really is.
Speaker 4Amazing.
Speaker 2Um, for a suggestion for parents who have a child that was like you, right? Like, what suggestion do 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, uh, um, L...
Speaker 4LMHC? Licensed Mental Health Counselor? Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 2Or someone like that. What, uh, what suggestions do you offer to them?
Speaker 4I 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, you're a 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 things. They're not bad people. Mental health professionals 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. Like, I'm, I'm not a trained professional. I don't know what to do here. As a parent, you have deep, deep wisdom. Um, that doesn't mean you can just figure it out alone. Of course, you can figure it out. You can 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, kind of 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 from the question, from the place of, you know, 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. It's, it, 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. We all lived in little villages together and yeah, there was community, totally community. So important. It's like if your grandmother's
Speaker 2around watching your children, families live close to each other, then other family members are involved like human beings
Speaker 4evolved that way. Like we said until two minutes ago in 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
Speaker 2an astronaut right now. Seriously. So far away from, uh, what we're supposed to be like
Speaker 4the umbilical cord is stretched. Yo, do you know that I, when I gave birth at home, uh, 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 y'all smoke it? No, but we did freeze my placenta, but my husband, I asked him to chop it up into pieces. Cause this is like a hole in the kind of home birth world. A lot of women will be like, cause mammals, female mammals will often eat their own placenta after they give birth. There's a lot of them are also perverts as well. Probably dolphins are probably, but go on. But yeah, Cooper, I don't know. He chopped up my placenta for me cause 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.
Speaker 2And then when we tried, I'll buy a couple of grams of it. When we tried to burn the
Speaker 4umbilical cord, like our son was, you know, breastfeeding, like the placenta is in a 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 fire alarm. Don't go off.
Speaker 2Yeah. Cause you're like, it's like grilling kind of a meat sort of it's tripe kind of
Speaker 4or something. That's what it is.
Speaker 2Dude. People, we have people like intestine, pig intestine kind of, well, I mean, 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 stepdad or whatever, that shit's kind of, that shit's wild.
Speaker 4I bet you've never talked about this on your pod before.
Speaker 2No, I haven't dude. That's it's fucking bizarre. I'm just trying to pretend like it's normal shit.
Speaker 4But this is what life is about. Just being your authentic full self. Oh dude.
Speaker 2If 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 relapse either.
Speaker 4I could probably sell it for something.
Speaker 2Oh, 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. Um, okay. So that is the first one. Um, did you have any other, uh, suggestions for parents?
Speaker 4I 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. Yeah. Look into what's being offered to you. Like the, 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 this 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 so you know, we've only studied them. For a few weeks, they weren't told that. So, and the chances are your doctor isn't going to tell you this. things. So take whatever time you need to inform yourself. Our website has a lot, but there's plenty other resources out there too. And you can find more resources at our website too.
Speaker 2And the website is?
Speaker 4Theinnercompass.org.
Speaker 2Theinnercompass.org. Do you, do you hold, did you hold a resentment against your parents?
Speaker 4Oh gosh, no. I mean, if I was in their shoes, 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 is, my, this work, my writing and this nonprofit and just doing what I can to help inform policy. Life, what I've realized is that the objective to living isn't the absence of pain. It's purpose. It's finding meaning. It's connection to yourself, to your body and your instincts, to people around you, to nature, to God, to, to art. Like, I mean, I can't, I can, I find I'm standup comedy to me. 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 us fully human.
Speaker 2I 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, that a worm can turn into a bird or
Speaker 4whatever. 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 of 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 rise, 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 Pollyanna-ish or, or being like, everything happens for a reason. It's all great. It's just naming what it is to be alive in this like crazy fucked up world where fucked up things happen all the time.
Speaker 2And 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, it's how it's supposed to be. But I think we're just sick of pretending.
Speaker 4Yep. And yeah, the pain that we think is a symptom of illness, so much of it is, it's like we're the canaries and those of us who get labeled mentally ill often are the canaries in the coal mine. Like we're feeling, we're sensed, we are sensing like this is not okay.
Speaker 2Well, yeah, you're an astronaut. You're like, if you were in 2010, if you were thinking about this stuff, like in talking about it, you were like an astronaut. You were like feel Armstrong. You were out there. 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 Revere's of something. And I think more than ever in our world, we need Paul Revere's and Paulette Revere's, you know? But I want to say thank you so much. Unshrunk. That's the book. You gave me, you gave me two months to read it. I love this very sense and sensibility type, of cover on it. Pride and Prejudice, Energy Up Front. I like that a lot.
Speaker 4Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 2Or what is that book called? Little Women. It is a very little women energy on the front. I like that. Unshrunk, A Story of Psychiatric Treatment and Resistance. Can I keep this copy?
Speaker 4Yeah. I want to write you a message.
Speaker 2Yeah. Thank you. That's very sweet of you, Laura. Delano.
Speaker 4Yes.
Speaker 2Yep. And Cooper Delano, that's your husband. Davis. Cooper Davis. He changed his name?
Speaker 4He's untraditional. He kept his name.
Speaker 2He kept his name. Okay. Type shit. Cool. Tell him we said what's up.
Speaker 4Oh, I will for sure.
Speaker 2The Inner Compass Initiative. You can find them out at theinnercompass.org, helping you make more informed choices about all things mental health, diagnoses, drugs, and drug withdrawal. Do you remember the day that you felt you were free from medicine? Was there one day or one thing that happened that made you be like,
Speaker 4I wouldn't say it was when I felt free from medicine, but it was when I felt free. I was probably two years off meds, still really struggling. And I remember sitting on my couch, just so overwhelmed by physical and mental agitation. It felt excruciating. And I just wanted to rip my skin off or binge eat or just do something to get relief, 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 of 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 minutes. And I just sat there and I was like, 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 was like, this is crazy places, paranoid stuff. I'm, it's not like this is, this isn't like peaceful, relaxing time. That was when I realized I'm free. Amen. Yeah. We, we, we were one of the most
Speaker 2powerful things that, you know, like that God created and we outsource our power all the time.
Speaker 4I do it all the time. I outsource my power. It's why 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 on trunk for who would, is someone who's
Speaker 2thinking about getting off of medicine? Someone who's just curious about your experience? Anyone
Speaker 4who is, who is themselves engaged with the mental health system in some way, like in therapy, on meds, or if, if you have someone you love who is, and so it's a big number, but really,
Speaker 2I mean, no, that's a, that's a, that's not that huge. That's specific, but it's like 60 to 70
Speaker 45 million people, anyone, if your life has been touched by, you know, mental health, mental
Speaker 2illness, it's a story to read. Yeah. Laura Delano. Thank you so much for your time today. I really
Speaker 4appreciate it. Oh, it's so meaningful to be here. I'm so glad to, to do this. Yeah. It's nice. I,
Speaker 2um, yeah, I'm hopeful that I'll get off of, off antidepressants at some point. I just have to, it's almost like you went out on the battlefield and you came back and so you gotta just figure it
Speaker 4your supplies, replenishing your reserves. And I'm here if I can help you. I really mean it. Like I nerd out on this stuff. Like I'm glad that anytime I'm glad that I met you. I'm glad that,
Speaker 2uh, I'm going to just continue to 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
Speaker 4spending time with us. Me too. Thanks. Thanks for having me. You bet.
Speaker 1You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. You bet. Travel the worlds of Netflix IRL. Inspired by fan favorites like Stranger Things and Squid Game. Brave the upside down. Face off with the front man. Play leveled up arcade games. Shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed food and drinks. Beat the heat. Play, eat, and shop on repeat at Netflix House at Galleria Dallas. Bring your crew and save. Get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house.
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