This Past Weekend - #678 - Psych Med Withdrawal Expert Laura Delano

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Laura Delano is the founder of the Inner Compass Initiative and author of “Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance.” Laura joins Theo to talk about how her own journey with psychiatric treatment led her to investigate big pharma, what the process of safely tapering off medication looks like, and the deeper social issues that could be fueling a mental health crisis. Laura Delano: https://x.com/LauraDelano  ------------------------------------------------- Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ  Modiphy: Get 50% off the last website you’ll ever need at https://modiphy.com/THEO Valor Recovery: To learn more about Valor Recovery please visit them at https://valorrecoverycoaching.com/  or email them at [e-mail] Perplexity AI: Ask anything at https://pplx.ai/theo  ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [e-mail] Hit the Hotline: [phone] Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Mail stuff to:  ATTN: TPW PO BOX 40137 Nashville TN 37204 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend X: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/  Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Andrew https://www.instagram.com/bleachmediaofficial/  Producer: Halston https://www.instagram.com/halstonrays/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 on to medicines, and then how to get off of them if you want to or need to. I had a fascinating conversation, and I'm thankful for her time. Today's guest is Ms. Laura Delano. Laura Delano. Yeah. I'm saying that correctly?

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 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 a like so far lifelong journey with mental health and medication. Is that fair to say? Yeah, going back to childhood.

Okay. And is it okay if we start there? Just so our listeners are like kind of clued in on how you got here. Sure, yeah. So I grew up in Connecticut in an affluent town. I was born to a family who had a lot of resources. So, you know, private school. All my material needs met.

Like on paper, I just had this really wonderful life. And I was always, quote, unquote, good at school. Like, I could just sit down and do road tasks, like, well. It never bothered me or I never got bored with it. And so I just kind of was one of these girls who had had, had it all together. Good student. I was a good athlete. What sport did you play? Well, Squash was my main sport through college, but, you know, when I was younger, like tennis, field hockey, basically all the, like, textbook prepster. Oh, rich sports. Waspy. Yeah. Like, picture the most

stereotypical New England Waspy prepster and like, that's right here. Like, literally, down to like, all whites on the tennis court. That's me. 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? Who is she? Who is she?

sheet. 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, 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? Did you think you were realizing something? So 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, 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 couldn't bear that what felt like my reality for very long.

And I did end up like really spinning out at home. I kept everything together outside of the home, but at home I would fall apart. And my poor parents just didn't know what to do. They were terrified. They were exhausted. And so they eventually, you know, realized like we need to take her to a professional. And this was in the mid-90s. I was born in 83.

So I'm an elder millennial. So in the mid-90s not, the whole mental health thing wasn't a part of the cultural zeitguise 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. Oh, yeah, it was such taboo then. Yeah. And, you know, my parents, you know, God bless them.

Like, because I 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 it sounds like a microcosm over there. Yeah, it was a, it was a very like Stafford 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 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 Depakotin Prozac. How do they diagnose that just so I know? 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 for, you know, and- What is it?

The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. So 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. Okay.

But it's completely subjective. Like this is not a scientific text. It's literally the opinions of psychiatrists. Like that's what these diagnoses are made on the basis of. Does that make it somewhat scientific, though, that it's at least psychic—it's not like just a random person guessing? Yeah, well, for the DSM to be scientific, it would need to be both reliable and valid. So basically, the categories themselves would need to be real, meaningful, like measurable categories. And the same person would need to be getting the same diagnosis from multiple clinicians.

Like if those two factors were in place, like you could say that this was a scientifically valid and reliable text, but it's not. They don't. Like if you look at, you know, clinicians will give all kinds of different diagnoses to the same person. You know, bipolar disorder, as an example, like there's no measurable pathology in your brain. There's no abnormal blood tests. There's no, it's just based purely on observation. Were there like any like biological tests or medical tests that they ran to to determine if you had bipolar disorder? And there aren't any for any of these diagnoses?

No, there weren't? No. Wow. To this day there aren't. Even for something like schizophrenia. Like none of these diagnoses have any valid, replicable, you know, like there's nothing, there's no test of any kind, medical tests of any kind. Yeah, it says right here, bipolar disorder. it cannot be measured with a single physical test, like a blood test or an MRI.

Instead, doctors and mental health professionals measure and diagnose it through a comprehensive clinical evaluation. And you're saying after only one hour, they had determined this. Yeah. And a lot of people get a diagnosis in 15 minutes. And what's amazing about it is that because we have all come to believe in these diagnoses as these lifelong incurable things, like you can manage them, 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 and curable disease in your brain. Like, it's a pretty potent thing to say to someone. Yeah, especially at 14.

She's got enough going on. And it isn't adult. I mean, in retrospect, I see like adolescence is literally when we have a crisis of self. Like, who the fuck am I? Like, how do I fit into this world? Like, how do I socialize? What do I care about? Yeah, what do I listen to?

Who am I? How do I dress? Like, how do I find out what's going on inside of me? All of that stuff. Yeah. And I think because the crisis I was going through was this deep existential, spiritual crisis of self, I was especially susceptible to being told who I was. Understood.

Because I was, and I think a lot of us are, I don't know if you, if you relate to this too, but when I first, when I first got the bipolar diagnosis, I rejected it. As that 14-year-old girl, like I knew intuitively this is, makes no sense. Like I'm having a healthy response to this like really intense social environment I'm in. But a few years later, because I was put on those meds, but Deppocote and Prozac, so the so-called mood stabilizer, Deppacote's actually an anti-convulsant that's not even to this day approved for psychiatric use in kids, but I was put on it back then. And it's a very widely prescribed psych med in kids today.

And then Prozac at the time was not approved for use in kids. So I just put right on it. And for the following years, I managed to, like, not really take them regularly. I went away to boarding school. I kind of ran away from – I tried to run away from what that psychiatrist told me. But by 18, I, you know, was still playing the game, the performance game, and I'd gotten into Harvard, and I was going to play squash at Harvard. Like, literally, it's almost, like, cringe-worthy, like, how just this, you know, type A perfectionist, New England.

girl. Like I just was, like, I was so trapped in this. 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 have figured it all out and I'd be okay. And of course I wasn't. And so it was at that point that I was just so desperate for relief because I was, like, doing tons of Coke and ecstasy and I was 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 the, I was, like, completely a mess. And were you still taking the medicines, the depocode in the? No, when I spun out that first fall of college, I was not on any meds. Okay. But I was definitely, like, drinking a lot, doing a lot of drugs, just overall, like, not taking care of myself. What things were showing up in your life that were like,

okay, now this is, things are getting too, too rough. I mean, I mean, I think a lot of it was just I wasn't sleeping. 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 bums and the square where, you know, in Harvard Square and like smoke with them and just I just like wasn't I felt so far away from my

peers and I was I couldn't stop thinking about dying like I just couldn't see a way through it I just was so overwhelmed by this like deep sense that I was this fraud who would never fit in to the world around her and my mind wouldn't shut up. and, you know, just paranoid thoughts. Like, everyone hates you. They're just pretending like you. Like, you're a piece of shit. You just...

Sounds like a nightmare. 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, on a wedding dress, on stage at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. And, you know, the whole thing is so absurd. Like, the tradition of it is like...

Well, it's tradition. Yeah. But it's like a meat market. Like, historically, it was like your daughter. is now ready to be, you know, married off or whatever. And, you know, you have to curtsy. He's like wild spins. Oh, yeah.

I'll go to, like, sometimes they'll have those in the South. They've had him 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. Was he, like, an escort of one of the girls? Yeah, he was like, he had a sword or whatever. Whoa, you had swords down there?

Oh, we didn't have swords. That's cool. They wield weapons at the ones in the South. So it gets a little bit different. Of course, you did. I love it. Okay, 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. 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.

So it sounds like you had some psychosis going on. I 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 these very kind of expansive thoughts where I was like deconstructing reality. You know, language is the 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 postmodern stuff, like I just got all swept up in that.

And so I just, that winter of as an 18 year old, I was just desperate for help. And to go back to this whole, you know, DSM diagnosis thing, that desperation drove me to just want to, of my own volition, go back to psychiatry and just tell me what is wrong with me. I need your help. I need to understand why I feel this way and I need relief. 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. crazy, I'm sick. And now I have a treatment that's going to help me get better. Like,

hallelujah. Like, that's how it felt. Oh, yeah. I, um, yeah, I can relate to being like, okay, something is going to come and help me. Finally, there's help is on the way. Yep. I can certainly relate to that. And we'll talk about some of my experience after, after a little bit, but, um, I want to hear more. Okay. So you get this diagnosis and this feels helpful. It feels so helpful. I feel such relief, like immediate relief. Like, you know, I don't have to fight anymore. I don't have to keep desperately searching. for answers and to figure myself out. Like, this doctor knows what's wrong with me,

and he has the solution, like, I'm good to go. And so, of course, the kind of perfectionist type A person that I was, I immediately applied that to being a patient. So I was just, like, so diligent about going to therapy and tracking 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. Oh, I can imagine. It's prestigious if it's there because the best doctors are right next door. Exactly. And so I think that's with my background coming from, you know, a family with socioeconomic means, I always had like the best of the best care, and which is an important part of my story that will come back to you. So, yeah, I just had this new sense of purpose and momentum. And I, 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 because. Like progress? Yeah, because 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. For sure. And so, yeah.

If you're bleeding profusely, you would think that having more bandages would be helpful. That's such a good analogy. This is exactly it. And what was really this, you know, what was insidious about that too. And now if you look at our culture of like how girls and young women, you know, in the kind of, you know, in the kind of. this kind of like therapeuticized culture that we're in. Like at the time, what started to happen for me is I began to feel like the more meds I was on, like the more special I was.

And like the more people would understand how much pain I was in. Like the debutante of like diazepam or something. Oh my gosh. Yes. I love that totally. I'm up on this stage. Look at me. I'm so sick.

I have my baggie of five pill bottles. and now I don't only have bipolar disorder. I also have social anxiety disorder and eating disorder. That eventually came. I'm Elizabeth Taylor. 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 men. And 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 taking off back in like the early 2000s.

And it was very much a part of my kind of my journey through my teens and 20s with all this stuff was like how much of an identity it gave me. Yeah. Yeah, you're like Amelia Earhart out there. You're just out there flying through the. Flying through the psych wards. And landing who knows where. They still haven't found her. Oh, yeah.

Oh, 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. just developing. Yeah. 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, over, but by the time I was in my mid-20s.

And was that attributed to medication, you think? Well, for, I mean, certainly the antipsychotics that I was eventually on, I mean, those are well documented to cause all kinds of kinds of metabolic issues. and 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 signals. Your instincts. Yeah, and I just, 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. Well, your sensory system gets kind of hijacked in a lot of ways I find by medication. Yeah.

You know, for years, I couldn't tell sometimes how I felt about things, which is one of the main reasons I've tried to get off so many times is because I want to know how I feel. Like if I'm going to choose, like, you know, or if I'm going to get married or like, you know, I don't want to, you know, partner with my wife. And then 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, for me, I get scared of the choices I'm going to make because I don't know if they're fully mine. Yeah. Oh my God. I feel I cry all the time, by the way. So if I get teary, you know, I had a feeling I would because I've heard you speak about

that. Yeah, I can't cry anymore 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. It's, I mean, to me, crying is such an essential. I actually think that when I authentically feel this like urge to cry, I'm like, do it, sister. I like say it to myself because people are so uncomfortable. with crying and as you just said like people freak the fuck out and they're like 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 tear 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 Yeah. Oh, I was crying this morning at a Bible study. Oh, so you were moved, moved to tears? Or was it, like, was it, yeah, what was. People were sharing, different people sharing different stuff or me talking about something, just 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, I'm, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm holding up some heavy shit in here, and sometimes you got a sweat out of your eyes. Oh, yeah. You know, it's like, this isn't tears. This is sweat from, like, you know, like, this is sweat from, like, like just me like just from like how heavy some of this shit is sometimes and I'm not even complaining about it like sometimes it's like yes part of it is like this feeling that you have to look away if you're tearing up or something it's like I don't know how some of that became

such a shame thing you know now if you're just being a cry baby about something that's kind of different but I think if you're just like feeling something you know that seems pretty normal to me. Yeah. And sometimes feelings are heavy, and so your eyes got to sweat. Oh my gosh, that's poetry. And I mean,

it gets right to the heart of what I think the real crisis is that we're in here as a culture, which is we have forgotten what it means to be alive. And I think it's,

a lot of this has been fueled by the mental health industry, 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 to fix. And we don't even realize that it's happened to us. Yes. And then when you have these, like, I do think crying is almost like a political, it's like a, it's like political activism, it feels to me because when it is such a powerful experience to feel 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, 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. Yeah, confusion. Totally. Oh, an alienation and loneliness and... Dude, if I saw my brain somewhere on the side of the road, it would be sitting there. It would probably be smoking. I'm going to be honest with you. It wouldn't chain smoke, but it would be having one.

And it would be like slumped over. No, it would be still hopeful. Okay. Okay. But it would be, I think, and it would probably be eating some peanuts or something. It would have a little pocket full of peanuts. No, no, not at all. These are ones that he just picked out of a field.

Dry roasted. They naturally grew dry roast. roasted those ones, gods, God's nuts. And then he might be tearing up a little. That's fair. That makes me tear up to think about your little brain on the side of the road. Hey, look, he's hitchiking, he's headed somewhere. 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 it says your brain is going to say, that's my direction. Get on it, kid. That's romantic. I like that a little bit. Oh, my gosh, here I am with the tears in my eyes. 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 8.2% of kids collectively on some kind of psych med.

That's unbelievable when you think about it. It's wild. It's four, there are four million kids on psych meds. And this is like age five and up, like tiny children. Have we gotten lazy in how we try to solve psychiatric problems? I think I wouldn't call it our laziness as much as I would say that modern society, like modern industrialized consumer society, this like overly individualistic, you know, it's you on your own, you're meant to succeed and perform.

it's this evolution of our modern culture itself that has actually made it impossible for us to really deeply understand suffering in the way that, you know, in the grand scheme of human history, we used to understand it. 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 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 a deeper way. It makes it impossible because, like, you've got to pay the bills, nine to five job.

Like, you have mouths to feed. You have rent to pay. Right. We've made this society that's so demanding of you to do that you don't even have time to be or to self-reflect. or to have a relationship with yourself, or sometimes with other people.

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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 buildout cost. That's M-O-D-I-P-H-Y.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 1980s. on average, rent prices have gone up 140%, whereas income has only gone up, it looks like, about 38 to 40%. Yeah, 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. Right. Yeah. 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, yeah. I think people often get confused. When you're critiquing the diagnostic paradigm, people sometimes think you're saying that people aren't really struggling, losing it, going crazy, having breakdowns. And it's actually the opposite. By challenging this idea that all suffering is just like faulty brain chemistry, you're

actually validating the reality of the suffering and the madness and the breakdowns that people are going through because you're saying like you're having a very real response that maybe, you know, completely derailing your life, but it's a response. It's not, it's not pathology. It's not you that you need to fix. What needs to be fixed is the situation and the culture. 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 medications. 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 I am trying to do in my work is get people to step back and question the information they've been given about the diagnoses and about the meds. 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 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. Yeah. 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.

It's easier to subjugate. What does subjugate mean? Am I using it right? Yeah, to control, to dominate, to control, yeah. Yeah, it's easier to subjugate if we're, we're a little bit passive. Yeah. If you're chasing the carrot the whole 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. Outrage. Yes. You don't, 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 outrage to their therapist instead of to the streets, instead of to their local, you know, politicians instead to the voting, like it's... Or everybody's putting a pill in their outrage. Oh, 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 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, yeah, so then when you take on the ideas that these antidepressants could be doing that, that makes, that's scarier than the reason why I got on them 20 years earlier was just because I was getting out of a relationship and it was like kind of heartbreaking

kind of stuff. So, okay, let's get back into your story. You've gone through the debutante era. where do you go from there? Yeah, well, once I, you know, as I was saying, like, after I had that total collapse, like, around that time, then I went back willingly to the mental health system and I was basically just 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. And so I really internalized this medicalized sense of myself, by which I mean this idea

that I had a medical problem in my brain that had a medical solution, these prescriptions. And that just became like the kind of organizing principle of my life. Like I have a medical condition that I'm treating. And that's my number one priority. Everything else comes after it. And so the more kind of the, I became this good patient and the more treatment I saw it and the more therapy, more pills, my life is falling more and more apart. I'm getting physically sick, weight gain, you know, digestive issues, skin issues, my hair's falling out, sleep problems. I'm getting more and more dysfunctional in my social relationships, just like really toxic situations with guys. I'm like losing friendships because I just can't stay connected and I can't feel bonded and I don't feel I can't feel intimacy and my creativity's falling apart. Like everything's falling apart more and more as I move through my 20s being the good psychiatric patient on all these meds that are accumulating.

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 like I can't live anymore. It gets 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, you think, 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 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, you know, it was not, it was, it was, I've 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... Like why? 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 because I have this incurable brain disease like this isn't a life worth living And when I, you know, I like, you know, flatline a medevac. Really?

Oh, yeah. My parents were told, like, Stein to do not resuscitate. She'll be a vegetable. It was like, God. I mean, this was a God thing. And did you take in a lot of medicine that day? Oh, yeah. On purpose?

I took a month's supply with a bottle of wine. What kind of wine was it? Do you remember? It was red wine. I don't know what kind. It was just like. Probably something nice if y'all were rich, I bet. No, but weirdly my.

Like something that came off a pirate. chip or whatever. Oh, 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 the era. This was 2008 when I tried to get myself. Yeah, barefoot was popping. Yeah, yeah. And here you were barefoot probably taking pills, too. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. You were down a shoeless, dude. I don't even think they let you keep your shoes because they have shoe strings in them. Oh, oh, yeah. If you're locked up in a psych ward, that's like, definitely they take any laces that you have. Did you go to a psych ward? Four times.

No way. Yeah, yeah. Can you take me into just what that's like a little bit? Oh. 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've been on in state public institutions visiting people. I can talk about those in a minute. But my experience was the spot, the nicer style.

The top of the line. And, you know, just a thin. It sounds nice. Okay. Well, let me walk you through the day. So you wake up in the morning on your like stiff, plasticy mattress. And do you have a. Selly or not?

Is a Selly? Roommate. A roommate? A cellie. Like C-E-L-L-Y. Basically, yeah. 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. minutes ago. But you wake up in the morning and, you know, you kind of like stumble down to the nurse's station to get your morning meds, go into the dining room, and you get, like, even at a fancy place, like McLean, like it's not nice food. It's, like, you know, dried out French toast and

cereal boxes and that kind of thing. And then you basically just spend your day being coerced into going to these like super cheesy groups, like emotion regulation. and anxiety management and, you know, family skills. And you're sitting there with, like, 22-year-old, like very bubbly young women for the most part who 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.

Yeah, or the vape face. That's one I would pick. Oh, I wonder if they have vape faces on, because I haven't been locked up in so long. Like, vapes didn't even exist. A vape. face. What would it look like? It just be a regular face, just kind of nonchalant

or mildly shalant, just hitting a vape. Oh, no. I 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 joyful face. Okay, so you have, so you're in there.

And is any of it, like, you're doing like family of origin work? Like, is there some more depth, like in there about it? There's no depth happening there. It's all these, like, you know, it's 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 patience with you, and it's like a, you know, 30 minute.

So there's no deep work, there's no meaningful, like, exploratory. And is anybody chained up or anything like that in there? People do get restrained if they are naughty. Yeah, who's naughty in there? Was anybody? Well, one, I, any perves in there? Oh, thank goodness. there were definitely some, I mean, I cross paths with some strange guys in some of my psychboard experiences.

But 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 she didn't talk to anyone. She was just very quiet. And then one day someone delivered her flowers. And the nurse, you know, they obviously will, like, check to make sure there's no, you know, there's nothing.

Paraphernalia. 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 staff

literally, like physically picked her up and carried her and put her in the quiet room, and she got quiet. Which probably means she was injected with a tranquilizer. Dang, you hit her with that dart, huh? Yeah. Were you able to find out what was in the card? Like what was so upsetting? No, I never, because she never talked to any of us afterwards.

And it was, you know, and I have tons of friends who I wasn't locked up with, but who I know from my work who've been restrained, put in four-point restraints specifically. So, you know, I'm thinking of one guy I know this big hulking guy. He'd been put on meds in college because one of his best friends died of an overdose, like an accidental overdose. And he was super spun out about it as anyone would be. And so he wasn't able to focus. And he started taking stimulants.

And then he stopped sleeping. And any human being who 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 police would get involved. And then he'd be put in what will happen sometimes to patients. on wards is they'll get put in four-point restraints. So your wrists are restrained and your ankles are restrained. And they pin you down on your stomach. And they pull your pants down and they inject you with a so-called medicine in your butt cheek. And just like knock you out.

And they'd leave him. He would tell me like they'd leave me for hours. I'd piss myself. Like that kind of thing happens. So sometimes if things got severe, they would medicate people right on the spot. Yeah, against their will. Yeah. And that never happened to me because I was always so compliant.

and I always did what I was told. And so, you know, after my overdose, when I was like in a comb, it was like a wild thing. Really? Like intubated. Yeah, it was crazy catheter, everything. And I woke out, I go into all of it in my book. I really want you to read my book, Theo, because I feel like we have, just from hearing what you've shared online about, I just, yeah. Okay.

It's, it's, I love my book. I'm so proud of my book. And I wrote it to help people. and but check back in with me in two months give me two months to read it will you totally is that a fair amount of time i also did the audible recording it's my voice so if you like to listen to stuff when you're working out but it's it's heavy and dark and i go into this i've dated some heavy dark women we'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 be with us like if my husband was here he'd be like um but We, no, 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,

who kind of like, yeah, or a little bit, have a lot more eore in them than, you know, than Tigger, I guess you would say. So, but anyway, we got to move on. Anyway, back to the, back to the psych ward. No, but so, so, you know, there I was on the psych ward after my overdose. like waking up from a coma and death, that choice I made to kill myself, I hold it.

So it was an active choice to take your life. Oh yeah. And to this day, I have deep respect for that choice I made because given the story I had been taught to believe about myself that I had this treatment resistant, incurable brain disease that I would never be able to manage. Like, it was the logical choice to me. Right. So that's something that I think as listeners that we got to understand a little bit more is that, or I'm not telling anybody to understand it, but this is something I would suggest because I'm realizing this more now,

is that you're in this idea that there's no way out. 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 told there's no other solution. And that's the thing is that I didn't realize at the time that that was a story I had been told that wasn't actually true. And I think to the urge to die, because I was suicidal for years, it was like I was saying, it was like a companion. It was part of my life.

And I 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 symbolic death of the life that I was living, not literal death. So you're saying, I want this, this version of life that I'm living, I don't want to live anymore. Yeah. And so you think, like, that means I have to kill myself.

But I see now, like, I just didn't know how else, what else it could mean. And, and, of course, all these years later, like, this is another place where I'll get teary-eyed, you know, 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 it, like, it's not possible. Wow. And so I, you know, it took another two years after my overdose for my turning point to happen, for me to actually kind of wake up from all of this. And, oh, yeah, sorry, my suicide attempt was 25. 27 was when I woke up. So, yeah, I was 27. The previous two years after my overdose were, like, more of the same.

I was still a mess, living with family, like, totally disabled. Did you try and get any pets or what modalities did you get? Oh, I couldn't have handled a pet. I wouldn't have been able to. Really? Yeah, yeah. Not even a little gerbil or something like that? Oh, gerbil.

Wait, do you say gerbil down here? We say gerbil up there. N-uh. Gerbil. Yeah. I like gerbil way better. Oh, yeah, gerbil. It doesn't sound as not.

as gerbil. Yeah, gerbil sounds like it's from the streets or something. It sounds like he's from Memphis. You know what I'm saying? No, but I picture him with little spectacles on and like a cup of tea. Oh, yeah. Mr. Gerbil. Yeah.

But anyways, I couldn't have had a gerbil. I couldn't have had a plant. I was like taking a shower once a week was a really big deal. And, yeah. I've been that depressed before a long time ago, but I've been that depressed where every moment feels so heavy. Yeah. Yeah.

Like a war, you were, you're literally fighting a battle every day. And when you put your head on the pillow and you haven't died, you're like, I did it. I won the battle today. And it's not sustainable. And that, you know, of course, brings me back to just how some, you know, it's not a coincidence that we have 65 million Americans on these meds because you can only bear suffering for so long before you need relief. And, you know, that kind of like that sound of those pills and that.

that capsule, it can really just, it brings so much promise until it doesn't. And so for me, that turning point happened in 2010. I was 27. I was just gotten out of my last hospitalization, my second to last hospitalization. I'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 was like getting drunk every night. So you were on all these meds and drinking. Oh, yeah. Five meds, including three milligrams of clonapin. I was on two mood stabilizers, an antipsychotic, and an antidepressant, plus the benz-o, drinking, like, for some reason I loved Harpoon IPA. Do you guys even have that down here? It's like a New England IPA beer. This was like before the whole microbrewery thing happened.

I'd either drink, you know, like a six-pack. I love how you're on all these pills, and then you're like, And also, I'm going to have a harpoon IPA. Six of them. Like, I mean, I was, I was a machine, I don't know if you, if with, with antidepressants, if your tolerance for alcohol increase. Oh, you're like Rick Flair, dude. I don't know who that is, but. You're like, sick Flair.

We tell me who he is. Rick Flair was like, 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 a, oh, him. He's actually a great guy. And he's also actually never taken drugs. but he just likes to drink. But he has a robust bot.

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 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 people who've been on long-term psych meds end up becoming total booze bags like like I did. And they're told, oh, you have alcoholism. But when they eventually come off their meds, and this was my experience, too, like, 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 no one ever could tell. I would, like, act normal until the very end. And then, like, crazy shit would happen. And ambulance is like, like, I'd get called on me and I'd wake up with, like, charcoal on my shirt and the emergency room.

My stomach would be pumped. Oh, yeah. You're like John Daly, it sounds like, at a barbecue. Darned, I don't know who he is either. Oh, he's a famous golfer who likes to party. Okay. There he is. Oh, he's cute.

Yeah, he is cute. Look at that outfit. Yeah, he's handsome, I mean. But he has a bar. He has a bar down. He has a bar here in town. He likes to party. Oh, he looks awesome.

He used to live at a hooters. But yeah, he likes to party, dude. Yeah, well, I would have been, like, with them, like, out all night. But I think the combination of all the meds and the alcohol was, like, definitely, I don't know how it interfered with metabolism, but it made me able to drink a lot more. And blackout. As 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.

Interesting. But I was living in Charleston, South Carolina at the time with some people I'd met in the ocean or whatever. In the ocean? Yeah. I met some folks in the ocean and they let me stay over with them. And then, but anyway, suddenly I could drink and I was drinking gin and tonics or whatever.

Dude, like, yeah. It's interesting. Like I was like Jimmy Buffett's god nephew or whatever. I don't know what is happening in the body to enable that. but I think this ends up happening for a lot of people. But 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, like, that was the headspace I was in. So I quit drinking. And within a month or two, I'd have, I'd had enough, I'd gotten enough clarifying. of mind from not being like blackout every night to to realize like holy cow i've been on these meds since i was a kid like i don't know who i am like everything you talk about so powerfully like what do i really care about like what does my what would my body actually look like would i actually be in this like 200 pound body would i actually feel connected to people i just started asking these

questions because i felt such a difference from just not drinking anymore 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. Ba, blah, blah.

The boat is shipwreck. The boat is the Andrea Gale. Like, what are we even fucking talking about? That's true. The boat just started a perfect storm with Mark Wahlberg. The boat ain't doing well. And 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 the queen Elizabeth on her first voyage. Okay.

So we feel like the boat's doing better. It felt like I am rocketed. Like I'm not on the psych ward. I'm alive. I showered twice this week. Let's go. And I didn't like binge eat two boxes of cereal. Yeah, with your hand.

I'm doing great. Oh, yeah. When you hand finish a box of cereal, dude. The hand, and you got your elbow up, and you just, and then you even get the powder. Oh, 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 with your hand. But how else do you get to the bottom?

Huh? You just get in there. You put your dang head in there like a man, like a woman. You're going like this. Well, you just do whatever. No, I don't know if you even cut it open from the side and eat it from the side, whatever you have to do, but you get in there. Is pornography. a problem in your life? Do you find yourself watching porno for longer periods of time and having

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ValorRecoverycoaching.com or email them at admin at valor recoverycoaching.com. Thank you. So you get diagnosed with treatment resistant bipolar, but they keep you on medicines. Well, for me they did. But what is so wild about the whole treatment resistant thing, and it's why it's in the subtitle of my book, because to me this is like 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 there is- You've investigated those things before. Yeah, I go into ECT in my book and some of the other, like, medical devices in it.

Because it's the treatment for treatment resistance. 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 actually, like the conventional kind of like protocol for people with a bipolar diagnosis is that ECT can induce mania. I doubt there's any, like, actual evidence based for that, but that's probably why they didn't.

Okay, got it. How do you start to put the medicine in the rearview mirror? So I began bringing it up with my doctor. like I want to see what my baseline would be off of these meds I've been on since I was a kid. And he said no for a few months. And then 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 it had in each different compartment a different psychiatric drug name. And so the cover pulled me in. 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 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 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-based 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 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 then once that was removed, like, I couldn't unsee that realization. And it, like, haunted me. And, of course, I first went through this state of, like, shock. It can't be true. like it can't be true that all this medicine maybe has been hurting me because I just had never 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 going to do it. Are you going to help me or not? And he was totally unsupportive and basically you know made me feel like this was the biggest mistake but he was like I'll you know I'll allow it like you just you know he was willing to bring me off. And was this the same doctor that it put you on them? Yeah, I mean, I saw so many doctors over the years, but it was the one I was seeing with the five med regimen. Okay, got it.

And this gets us to, you know, the topic that I, I'm like so excited to connect with you more about 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. I had no idea that using these medications, which are psychoactive chemicals, that work by altering how your central nervous system works. Like if you use them for months, especially years, your whole body is going to adapt to them. Is that true that some of them alter how your central nervous system works?

All of them. All antidepressants, mood stabilizers, benzos. those they cause, 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 one told me. No one told you either. I'm assuming. Well, I'm just shocked that, like, I'm shocked that there was never an exit strategy, like, when you get on the drugs. Like, I'd been hitchhiking or whatever to see this girl that I was in love with or whatever, but she didn't like me. And, like, I was, like, kind of heartbroken or whatever.

And then, 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 childhood stuff that I'd attach to this relationship unknowingly. And so I was pretty heartbroken.

But I was heartbroken in a bigger realm kind of than just this specific thing. But this was the epicenter of it. This had like launched it. This was the match really. And so I get on these meds and then everything's kind of fine. But there was never like a checkup later.

I ended up leaving South Carolina. like a few months after that. And there was never like a check-in back really to like figure out if you stay on them. And so I was just on them for a long time. Was it a psychiatrist you prescribed them or a general, like your primary care doctor? Do you remember? I can't remember. I can't remember if I, I think it was a psychiatrist.

So I think I'd went to someone who could actually prescribe medicine. So it was someone that at least knew what the medicines were. But then I got on it and then I've 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, which got off to do plant medicine experiences. And some of that helped a lot. Like doing ayahuasca helped a lot. But the thing that I didn't realize was I wasn't getting off of them correctly.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing that most recently when I tried to get off, I didn't get off of them correctly. And I was talking with this guy, Dr. Mark Horowitz, is his name? Oh, you've talked to me? Yeah, Mark's a close friend and call. I was just talking with them 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. One of my friends recommended him to come in a podcast sometime. And so I've kind of just been emailing with him, but I've been emailing with him in some mild consultation about medicine. Great. And he and I got off and I thought I'd titrated down well

because I went from like 10 milligrams to 5 and then to nothing. Oh, Theo. Oh, my goodness. And which is this, was this lexopro that you're on? This was eschatalopram then is a generic lexopro, 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 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 careless sort of or mundane maybe. Not even like peaceful when just like nonchalant about everything. And that got a little bit spooky because I knew that that wasn't real or how I really felt it. And it was too much. And just the sleeping in, I hadn't slept in since I was like, really in my 20s, 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. And was 10 the dose that you had been at for a while or had you been at a higher dose? I've been at 20 before that for a while. Yeah. And then at 10 for probably a year or two. Yeah. But in the end, it's like 25 years, something, but 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 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 what was the toughest parts about getting off of these for you? Yeah, I mean, because my doctor had no idea what he was doing. And I didn't know anything about physical dependence and withdrawal.

And what year was this? This was 2010. I was 27. Nobody knows. No, yeah. And so I came off five drugs in six months, which is cold turkey. You're like the Jesse Owens of getting off drugs, like a triathlete. Well, 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. Coming off five meds in six months blew up my life for. years. But I had a family who could take care of me. And so many people don't have that. 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 cognitive issues and all of that. But that all went on overdrive. Like I couldn't talk. I'd, you know, we'd be sitting down, wanting to have a conversation and I'd have an idea in my head. 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. And did you quit cold turkey? In six months, five men, but five meds. So it's basically cold turkey.

Like, that's so fast. I just want to maybe for I go back in, like, just to paint a picture. And, you know, Mark's work, you reference, like he, we've worked closely, he's a close colleague of mine. And so I come from the layperson world, like the ex-patient world.

And he comes from both that world, because he himself was on this stuff, and he's also a psychiatrist. The protocols that he, you know, writes about and uses, like came from the layperson community because it was... What was the layperson? Layperson means a non-doctor, a non-medical expert, patients. Like...

Just a blue-collar pill taker. Totally. Just like, you know, bottom of the social hierarchy, 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 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 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 just, like, do a kind of linear thing where you're on 100, 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 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.

It's like a ramp almost like a skater's ramp. Yeah, exactly. Or like a bowl, you know, inside of a nice salad bowl. So you're not making a straight line, a straight, you know, diagonal line. Or like a staircase. Yeah, it's not like that. It's more of a gentle curve. And the lower that you get in the overall dose, the smaller the reductions you make. And this is literally the opposite of what most doctors tell their patients. They're like, oh, you're on a low dose.

You can just pop off. And the reason why this is the case is now research is verifying what patients figured out through experience is that 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 doubling the effect that the drug is having on your brain. Going from zero to 10,

it 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 less disruption is happening to your central nervous system i see but that last 10 or whatever that's a severe yeah 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 experience going from 10 to 5 to 0 like

like blue blue you know just melancholy everything was a melancholy thing and it was very bizarre i almost cannot even explain it. I tried to fight through it and, like, I was taking different, doing different things in the morning, trying different modalities. It was just too much. And it just became too much. And so I just said, you know, I'm going to live to fight another day. So I'm going to get back on my meds.

How long did it take for you to make that choice? Like, how long were you off for? Well, for the first, like, six weeks, everything was kind of okay, it felt like. And then it got, like, it was just manageable, a little bit of, like, depression here and there. But it was stuff that I'd done before that felt manageable. and then it just got too bizarre. Just the melancholy was a little too much. But you knew it what, like you said earlier,

like this doesn't feel, this feels like otherworldly. This feels like this is not me. Right, I knew it wasn't me. Yeah. I knew it was something, I knew it was me experiencing something because of something that was going on. Yeah. Medicinally.

And so I thought it would go away. And I was emailing with Dr. Horwiton. He's like, no, it could stay around for a long time. And at a certain point, I said, I just can't battle this anymore. It was causing me some troubles even with my like sobriety, sobriety, like just being able to like with my, just being in recovery and stuff like that, it was causing me just a lot of confusion. Yeah.

So anyway, so I'm back on. But, okay, let's get back into where you were talking about. So, 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 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. my whole, my fight or flight response was just completely on overall. 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 a sign I need my meds. 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. Yeah, but I didn't feel. It's so funny you say that because I didn't think exactly.

I didn't feel like, oh, man, that girl broke up with me again. It's not like I went back to that feeling. It was just, I just feel like I'm off this thing that I can't, that I need to have now. So I just felt addicted. It's amazing that you had that, that you had that sense so strongly. I think some, some people definitely do. They know, like, this is not me. This is these, these drugs.

A lot of people don't have that. I think 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, this is not me. This is not my, like, usual down stuff. Like, that's 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, 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 what I'm hopeful for in the future. What about, were you able to maintain a relationship during any of this? What was that like for you? All those poor, I mean, I basically dated guys who were as lost and destabilized as I was. So like, not a pretty picture.

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 of those dark relationships, we were basically just like running away from pain together. And did medicines cause like intimacy issues kind of? Did you have like, because I know a lot of like a lot of guys, there's fear with guys if if I get on antidepressants,

it's like it can affect my like, it can maybe a cause intimacy disorder. Can you look that up, Trevin? Well, yeah, it definitely causes sexual. Oh, this says right here. It says, 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 this similar stuff happen with women, kind of? And if it's too personal, we can take it out. Oh, no. Oh, my. I will bear it all.

Because to me, the more vulnerable we are in our stories, in our stories, the more helpful it is. So, no, yeah, 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 just assumed and was being told that my, like, inability to feel bonded to guy,

bonded intimate, you know, aroused, all those things, was my illness, my quote-unquote, my mental illness. So I never put it together. And thank God when I got off, I regained my sexual function. And I talk about it in my book, like, of all the betrayals, of all the loss, of all the, you know, the disconnection that I experienced from being on long-term psych meds, it was the taking of my sexuality, especially in my teenage in 20-something years, that was the hardest to make peace with. because sexuality is about so much more than just sex. It's, you know, like how you are in the world, your vibrancy, your vitality. It's like how you create art.

It's how you appreciate 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 certain percentage of people, and we need more research to better understand this, when they come 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-S-S-R-I sexual dysfunction, and is devastating. And there are a lot of, like, actually, can I call out a clip to look up? For sure. Google PSSD Lauren Friedman.

PSSD is a condition where sexual side effects such as genital numbness, low sex drive, and weak orgasms persist for months, years, or even decades after completely stopping selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors or related antidepressant medications. I will say this. I did notice that 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. 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 oh Yeah, when I got off the end of the depressants That was when it Yeah There was just like It was just like Yeah, it was just

It was just not It was just barely just It was not much It was just It was low, man Is there time It's a short clip Is there time?

Yeah there it That Lauren Friedman And this, just to contextualize this, so I, we, my organization Intercomposed initiative, we helped organize a summit on mental health and over-medicalization in D.C. on May 4th that Bobby Kennedy came and spoke at, and he made these big policy announcements about deprescribing at the event. 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 work that don't exist in the, in the government.

in the public health system under Secretary Kennedy's leadership, they want to focus on that and actually get good guidelines in 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've got to listen to this. Yeah, let's watch this. And I remember Joe Rogan sent me this one night.

He sends me this stuff to kind of keep me updated on some of the awareness about this stuff. But let's go ahead and watch it. GSSD is not just a loss of sexual function, but a loss for some people of emotional function as well. That has been the case for me. Before this, I was a super emotional, empathetic, loving, caring, like 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. To this day, it's been years from me. I'm 23 now. I can't feel love for my own mother, which is the hardest thing on earth. I can't feel a connection or love for my friends, or even pleasure music, which was the bane of my existence.

I was a songwriter since I was a child. It was my outlet. And it's been completely neurologically severed from these medications. And I'd just like to say there's a reason. that, you know, every song of the radio, every movie on your television, every piece of arts as a beginning of humanity centers on sex and love, and not just romantic love, but tonic, 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, which removes someone's ability to emotionally connect with another human being is a crime against humanity. And I say crime against humanity because there is evidence that Ila Li, who created the first SSRI Prozac, knew their drugs could cause permanent sexual dysfunction and emotional numbness in children especially. And they would have this from the public because they knew it would be a threat to the bottom line. I mean, I 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 was hiding information? I didn't know that until 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 it would not surprise me. I mean, 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 the. 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 that's why there's so much outside medicine and internal work, like outside medicine, like functional medicine, natural choices, homeopathic or homeopathic, and then just internal work that people are trying to do now to steer clear of drug companies. Yeah, 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 actually read the drug labels themselves that are right on, you know, dot-gov website, 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 drugstore. But the actual, actual comprehensive drug label, 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 humans, like in the drug trials that get them approved as safe and effective, how long would you guess that a psychiatric drug is studied for? I would guess 10 years. Six to eight weeks, sometimes 10, sometimes 12 weeks.

Wow, that's heartbreaking. It's brave of her to 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. I think until recently it was rare to hear someone like this speaking out. But I've been doing this work for 16 years and I feel something profound shifting in our culture. People are waking up, especially young people like Lauren, who are waking up and realizing the betrayal. And 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. It's unbelievable. We have an information crisis that has made it impossible to be properly informed on the patient side and on the doctor's side. And I think it's a big part of why we are now in a situation where we have more suffering than ever before.

Rates of suicide or sky 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. So what is the real problem, do you think? Do you feel like it's like that there's compromised institutions that are flooding us with pills that are trying to get us all hooked? Do you feel like it's a big pharma pressure from the top and 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. I think the list you gave is a great starting point.

I mean, it's so, I wouldn't pretend to have all the answers, like, at all. It's such a big, there's so many reasons why people are suffering right now. So, you know, certainly socioeconomic. reasons, political reasons. Of course, like reasons tied into the food we're eating, the screens we're sitting in front of, the, you know, rigid kind of conventional schooling systems that young children are sent into every day through the most critical years of their lives. They're just being, you know, sat in seats under fluorescent lights. Oh, when you think about it all that'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. Say if you were to take like real food and then you were to take like a piece of plastic, something that was made with plastic, if you put like some candy in between them,

the candy is way more like the plastic. And just the fact that we haven't even really thought about like we've just thought that all of this is okay. Like if you had a handful of plastic, would you just eat that? But we are eating microplastics all day every day. I know, but it's almost shocking to me that visually, some of the stuff even looks the same,

and we're still, 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. Yeah, well, and that your average kid,

you know, give them the choice between this, like, glaring, shiny, plastic-y 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 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 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, 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 20-something guy, you were in love. I don't even know the details. I don't even need to know. To have your heartbroken, 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 a social problem or relational.

I mean, it's half a chapter of Romeo and Juliet. Totally. I mean, imagine if people in Shakespeare's... Not the end chapter, not the end chapter. But imagine people in Shakespearean times were like going to doctors. We wouldn't even have Shakespeare if they had medicine. If they had antidepressants, we would not even have Shakespeare. That is it, right there.

We wouldn't have Van Gogh, Shakespeare. We wouldn't have beautiful arts. art music, we wouldn't have creative human expression. Yeah, he'd have been like, give me liberty or give me... Lithium? Yeah. Oh, man, I was on lithium. That out of all the drugs.

Were you? Oh, yeah. So it totally messed up my thyroid. I reversed it when I got off everything. But to... We're medicalizing. So this three-part misunderstanding that our culture is having. And this is what Bobby Kennedy is addressing in HHS right now, which is really

exciting to me. And this is what I think our culture is waking up to you. We're medicalizing problems that aren't medical. We are. When we say we, who do you mean, though? Your average teenage girl who's like convinced she has an incurable brain disease, you know, because she feels insecure and she's, you know, nerve. Right. Just because you're having adolescent feelings are things that are part of just adolescence and of being human. We've, we've taken just things that are part of being human and made them into, uh, quote unquote symptoms to treat. symptoms to be treated. And don't get me wrong, there can be, like, you can have, you can have a brain tumor that's

making you hallucinate. And, like, you can have an actual physiological problem, but you would go to a neurologist and get the tumor treated. You wouldn't be told you have an incurable mental illness. Right. And some people may have some severe mental illnesses. I'm not talking about that. You know what 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. I want to, to what you just said, though, even in those cases that you think of as the most extreme, like the guy who was talking to himself on the subway with his pants falling off. Like, 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 a, you know, he couldn't live independently. He was what any average person would call, like, a chronic mental patient. Like, he wasn't allowed to be around knives, all that stuff. One day I was sitting with him on this, like, stinky old fake leather sofa

and 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. It's 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 15 or 16, and I'd smoked some grass that got me really scared. He was in his 50s when I was talking to him. And I saw ants coming out of the television.

and I told my parents and they took me to Waltham State. In Waltham State Hospital, it 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,

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? Yeah, you'd be out there pleading in whatever. 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. Yep. And it's like, yeah. So I think we have this, this view we have that seriously suffering people are sick, quote unquote, is a deeply

ingrained story that it's just one story. There are multiple ways to see people who are in deep crisis. Yeah, and that kid could have just have been high and was telling his parents something that he thought when he was really high. He literally was. And the rest is history. Forty 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. Which we've been there, yeah. Oh, yeah. And so he, as a- Oh, I locked my coworker in the freezer and called the police on him once. You did? Yeah. What did you think he was going to do? Like, what, what was happening in your

had that made you do that? I thought, well, we had smoked some weed together, and we were working at a gas station together, and I thought that he had set me up and was going to do something bad 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 so cold when they came? Yeah, he was cold, but whatever. He was fine.

He was a little thick, but he'll be all right. He's still all right. Shout out to Andrew. Shout out Andrew. Shout out, Andrew. My bad, bro. My bad. Still, still my bad.

But so we have this crisis where we're medicalizing problems that aren't medical. Okay, that's number one. Number two, I think what's also creating this massive misunderstanding is that long-term use of these medications is not actually evidence-based if you actually look at what evidence does exist and you factor in how corrupt the evidence base is. So we are oftentimes confusing adverse effects of medications for a worsening of the condition. So the very thing that happened to me, I kept getting worse and worse and worse, and everyone saw that as your illness is progressing. Now you have treatment resistant mental illness. No one ever said, maybe these five meds you're on 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 distorted, misunderstood way. So, yeah, and the work of Intercompos Initiative, which is the nonprofit I started a number of years back, is all about we're not anti-medication.

We're not telling people to stop their meds. We're not shaming people for whom meds are helpful. What we provide is comprehensive information and resources so that people can make true choices for themselves, especially around tapering off safely if that's what they decide to do. Yeah, 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 it well enough. Well, you did the best you could with the information you had, just like I did, just like millions and millions of people who tried to get off their men's due because 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 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. We published it eight years ago. I've 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 clinical world. What is the practice for tapering off of antidepressants or off of psychiatric meds? Yeah. Well, so the number one most important, you know, piece of it is that. And this is not doctor's advice. Also want you to know.

And we're not telling people to do this. But the key thing is that it should be based on how you're feeling. So everyone's different. There's not like, oh, this is the protocol. Go follow it. Good luck. Depending on each person's individual physiology and all that, it's going to look different for everyone.

But the basic underlying philosophy is what we've found in the layperson withdrawal community is that tapering between 5 to 10% per month of your dose. So let's say you're on 100 milligrams of Seraquel and you want to taper 10%. I want to see how that goes for you. You cut, so you would cut 10% of 100 in month one, which is 10 milligrams. So you cut to 90 for the first month. then in month two you cut 10% of 90. So you cut 9 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 in taper-friendly forms and formulation. They're not? No. And that may change under Secretary Kennedy. I hope it does.

But 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 there's no way to make make 8.1. Yeah. Well, I'm even splitting my pill just like this. Like any lay person at a, 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 this because that's, that's not a reliable way to make. I know it isn't. Trust me. So, so you're on, you're on a 10. Is that right? I'm on a 10 milligram. And it's that little white, round tablet. I remember it well. I was on it for a long time. So someone in your situation has a few options. You could either go to a compounding pharmacy and have them, you know, make a, if you were going to cut one milligram, make you a nine milligram tablet, which you could do. But, you know, then you have to, you have to, you. keep getting new prescriptions all the time each month, but you could do that. You could get the liquid from the manufacturer, which does come as a liquid. Okay, and let me just say really quick that I wasn't aware that when you're getting off antidepressants, that some of them, you can get them in a liquid form so that when you're titrating

off, you have the access to be able to measure kind of smaller and smaller amounts. Okay, just wanted to say that. But it's not, some people have a hard time switching and they're all kinds of weird fillers and preservatives. What a lot of people in a situation like yours do is they, and this is not me telling people to do this, this is just describing the reality of what people do. Like hundreds of thousands of people around the world are doing this. They have no choice but to do this. They put their tablet in a measured glass of water so you kind of figure out the ratio of putting 10 milligrams of my tablet into. X number of milliliters of water.

They break it down in the water. They start up and make it a suspension. And then they remove 10% of the water, and then they drink it. And that's how they start to titrate down. And it shouldn't have to be this way. But that's how it has had to be for decades. Right, because the medical industry is not offering a solution. Yeah, they're not incentivized to get you off their products.

Yeah, which is kind of crazy. And sometimes it's like I put like, sometimes I think I've just kind of put these feelings that I had 20 years ago that I just 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 taping them down with these antidepressants. Now, that's not scientific.

That's just me sharing how I feel. And we're not off. We're not saying that we're just, we're stating that that's what the state of medicine is right now, is that people are having to figure shit out for themselves because it's gotten so confusing out there and so unhelpful out there for people that want to be away from some of these, which feels a lot of times like a sentence. It totally does.

It's a 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 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 layperson, i.e., the patient and ex-patient community online,

of data points of like very valid information about how to safely taper. We are, it's all out there for free on the internet. And until now, the medical industry hasn't considered it legitimate because it's not research. But I think returning to, there's so many other knowledge comes from all kinds of sources and 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, dude.

Totally. People are like, oh, we're not a scientist, whatever, but it's so much of science is so compromised. So many things are so compromised. 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, um, 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. But yeah, I think that I think a lot of people are like a lot of people that want to get off medication, they don't know what to do. And a lot of times we just say we throw our hands up at it. I've tried like four times.

Oh my gosh. Well, if I can be like a buddy to you in this because you need, you need friends who've, and fellows who've walked the path. That's all I was going to ask you. It's like the 12 step world. Like having mutual aid, having, so part of our nonprofit, besides providing all kinds of information and resources we have a community too, where people who've been through it themselves are all supporting one another.

There is a community there? Oh, yeah, totally. Because what... Where are you finding that community, just online? Well, our nonprofit has one, but they're all over... Facebook, 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 rediddy kind of... 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 Eschatalopram withdrawal support and you would probably find like five groups with 10,000 people each in them. Yeah, I think part of me I tried a little bit too much to just do it myself, I think. Yeah, you need that you need, but you definitely, because having friends who've been through it not only helps you, like, get information that maybe you didn't have before, but it also helps you stay connected to hope. Like, when you're in a really bad patch, if that ends up happening in the withdrawal process, it's like having someone who's been there, done that, they're five years down the road than 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, like,

like, oh gosh, I wish, you know, I'd been able to be there for you, like, in that, when you were in six weeks in and suddenly things got really weird and wacky and you're like, what's happening to me, to have people who are like, I've seen that 1,500 times. What you're describing is not unusual. This is totally six weeks in. Right, it changes the way you, changes your perspective. It helps your perspective. Yeah. So what's suggesting would you give somebody who right now who's thinking that I would like to try to get off of antidepressants? And again, we're not doctors.

So I'm not a doctor. I'm not a doctor. I'm an ex-patient. That's my resume. There you go. Totally. I'm a, I'm a, someone who's tried to get off antidepressants a lot, five times, but hasn't been successful yet.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And 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, 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 see what life is like off this stuff. 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, theintercompass.org. There's tons of information all over the internet on physical dependence, like understanding how these drugs change our brains and bodies, how to taper slowly and safely, understanding the evidence base that your drug was approved on the basis of. 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 their support and partnership, you know, 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. Or you're withdrawers. Some people call them withdrawers. Oh, I love that. That's so great. Yeah. I just made that up. I don't know if it's great or not. It seems, uh, it's a little crindy, but it's also carry on. It is. You need, you are, like every single person who's, is a warrior who's. This shit was wild, bro. I'll say the last time I'd done it, it was, it was, I was surprised. I remember, can I ask you about that? Yeah.

I know, 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. That was probably the previous time that I went back on. So this was just recent, I just got back on like two weeks ago. Oh, it was that recently. Okay. And since you've gone back on, does it feel, do you feel? I feel safer.

Yeah. I just feel like, you know, like you're playing freeze tag or whatever and you're off a base you can get tagged. Yeah. But it's like, I feel like I got back on, back on base. So it's like,

I feel like I have my foot on like a base, you know? Yeah. So it's like, but I'll get back out there, you know what I'm saying. Oh, you totally will. You'll know when the time is right.

And yeah, all those things I said are important. And then also just the lifestyle piece. Like it's, it's, you know, it sounds 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. maybe you already knew this, but 95% of our serotonin receptors are in the gut. So, like, we have this idea that, you know, Lexapros, like, just targeting serotonin receptors in our brain. No, it's, like, it's influencing the entire body, especially the gut. Yeah, I had started buying, they got a little deal over here on the corner where they're selling, you know, previously used cabbage or whatever is it called.

What is it called? Oh, you can't sourcrow? Sourcrow. That's what I'm talking about. Or whatever it is. Fermented cabbage. Yeah. Nice.

I love sourcrap. I like to call it somebody else's cabbage. That's what it seems like. But yeah, I was eating that. I had a good basket, you know, a couple good jars at that. So I had like a strategy, but it just, I didn't have the right strategy. So next time I'll get a different one. Well, the taper speed really is everything.

Like how you're actually making the reductions is everything. And that's the beautiful thing is that that's all for free on. 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. Amen. Laura, thanks so much for joining us today in chat. Oh, I'm so happy to be here. I really appreciate it. I've heard you mention a few times RFK Jr. during this chat. And I know that you were working with the Maha Institute, right? And that was this past May. What were you guys doing together? take me through that and take me through what is he doing or what is his movement doing right now for mental health? Yeah, well, I mean, Secretary Kennedy has long been aware of and engaged with this crisis we've been talking about here.

He's long seen that we have so many millions of people on long-term meds with no off-ramps and all of that. 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 saw him talking about it. You know, at his confirmation hearing 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 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. I think, yeah, we're all realizing that on every facet. Totally. So I've just been solely in that headspace through my career. And I still think that's like 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 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.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on May 4th, 2026, that announced efforts to curb psychiatric overprescribing 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 deprescribing when clinically indicated. Today we take clear in a decisive action to confront our nation's mental health crisis by addressing the overuse of psychiatric medications, especially among children. What is actually happening here do you find? Yes.

Or is this just like, is it just talk? Is it just rhetoric? No, well, he announced a few specific next steps that HHS has set out to undertake. Okay. We will support patient autonomy, require informed consent and shared decision making and shift the standard of care toward prevention, transparency, and a more holistic approach to mental health. There should be more, I don't know if it's on another page,

but there should be more, like an actual breakdown of, I mean, the announcements he made were around developing guidelines for SSRI tabering, training clinicians in how to do it safely, enabling through insurance the coverage of deprescribing so that doctors, prescribers can get paid to deprescribe through billing codes and all that. Amen. And I think, you know, getting federally funded health centers equipped to support people in deprescribing. So he, there are tangible policy next steps that HHS is, is, is, is committed to work towards. And I think that, which really is surreal.

Like, I never thought this would be a possibility. That, I think, in combination with this cultural awakening, 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, banning, denying access. It's literally about creating more options.

I mean, 90% of the media is owned by the same groups. So I'm not surprised probably, I'm probably, I'm not surprised that Bear, if 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 medications have a role in care, but we will no longer treat them as the default. will treat them as one option to be used when appropriate, with full transparency, and with a clear path off when they're no longer needed. Amen to that, man. I've known Bobby for 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're taking a psychiatric medication, we are not telling you to stop. Mr. Kennedy said. We are making. 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 on a on a ramp, on 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. And now you just don't have the vehicle you were in.

That's what it feels like a lot of times. Well, it's even worse. The only option people have now is to open their door and jump out while their car is going 80 miles an hour, aka cold turkey withdrawal. I mean, but that's it. But so, yes, there should be a way to get off of these. I mean, I applaud that 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.

What is your life like now? What is your medical regiment like now? And how are you feeling these days? Well, I don't have a medical regimen. Really? Yeah. I mean, it's been a while since I've been to a doctor. And for me, and when it comes...

I don't blame you, first of all. I just find for 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, 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're the family 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 history, if you were to look at history as like a 20-point... hour clock, human beings, I guess, have been here for like since 11.59 p.m. Oh, my gosh. Is that right? Look that up for me. I'm sure it's something like that. If the 13.8 billion year age of the universe were condensed into a single 24 hour a day, humanity has been around for less than the final two seconds before midnight. And then, I wonder, if can you, is there a way to calculate in the scale of human, as long as humans have existed, how much on the clock would like industrial, the kind of industrial era be.

If the entire existence to modern humans were condensed into a single 24-hour day, the industrial era would be less than two minutes at the very end of the night.

Wow. Which is profound when you think about it. Like we have not evolved for the world that we live in. It has escalated so rapidly. Right.

Yeah. We were so quickly ago we were basically raccoons. Totally. Totally. Women were birthing at

rivers sides and then bushes. And now it's going to happen again just because our health care system so bad. So oddly enough, we are making our way back because of corporate greed. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Full circle. Full circle. But I think I keep that in my mind. And, you know, people often

ask me like, so now everything's great. Is that right? Like, 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. I'm still the same me. I'm still the same dark, you know, kind of complex slightly paranoid me that I've always been just because of the way I grew up and I'm not happy and balanced and put together in 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 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 things happen in our lives that left us hurting. and here you are 20 plus years later, you know, here I am,

after digging myself out of this like near death, like, experience. Yeah, you fucking went through it. How many millions of people are having a similar experience and don't even realize it, you know? Oh, yeah. I mean, I also, I noticed this for sure about myself. I was hypersensitive for sure. So being hyper sensitive and hyper aware.

Yep. I mean, you're basically. 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, like a snitch or whatever, but I'm just a rat. Rats are very smart and cute. When I lived in Boston, I used to go in the back alley and save the baby blind rats that were wandering around. But that's because you were doing, you were on dope.

So it must be honest with each other. But I actually still would do the same thing. I love animals. But no, I think. But we're all, well, yeah, our whole group is we're all rats. And I think all human beings are born this way. Like, I think we are born a sensitive. like can I can I read you and maybe this is a way to tie it all together can I read you the

this is it's like a paragraph sure paragraphs um I have to see if I can find it in my book here um it just it ties in so it is 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 prophetization. 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. 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.

Yeah, I think one day a smile will be in like a museum somewhere. You know, and people are like, can you believe that people's used to the edges of their mouths used to turn up when they used to feel something? That was all the people cared about. Blasphemy. Thank you, Lord. That's beautiful. And thank you for, yeah, thanks for caring.

Thanks for sharing what your journey has been like. Thank you. Thank you also for sharing your journey with some, like, people, 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 that I went through when I realized it was actually medicine for someone else. And like this gets to the 12th step, you know, the whole ethos of the 12th step world.

Like you take your own pain and you get out of yourself and you use it in service to other people. Amen. I think we've so many people don't grow up with that opportunity. And it's free and it's available to all of us at all times. It's not easy to be with your pain and to share it with people. But it's medicine. It really is. Yeah, my friend James Boucher, always says,

we are the keys to each other's locks. That's what he says. That's beautiful. It's a nice statement. That's beautiful. And he's like a damn janitor, man. He is like just like he's a key chain of keys. That guy.

He really is. Amazing. For a suggestion for parents who have a child that was like you, right? Like what suggestion do you give to parents you have a child that is going through some things that seem like mental, that seem emotional, that they're saying, okay, let's take them to talk with someone. What with a therapist or with a psychiatrist or with a LMHC, licensed mental health counselor? Yes.

Yeah. Or someone like that. What suggestions do you offer to them? I mean, I think the most important one is never let someone with letters after their name convince you they know your kid better than you. Like as a parent, no one knows your child better than you. Your parental instincts cannot and should not be violated. And I think that, I think it's what happened to my parents and to so many parents when your, 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 your life as a parent and well-meaning, because I want to be clear, these aren't like 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 not a trained professional. I don't know what to do here.

As a parent, you have deep, deep wisdom. That doesn't mean you can just figure it out alone. Of course, support is necessary. But I think just keeping that in mind and never losing touch with that through whatever lies ahead is really important. I think another thing that parents often get I have trained 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 place of what is happening to my kid or what is happening around my kid in their environment or what is happening, you know, in my kid's body, what they're eating or like what they're watching on like the screen exposure, whatever. it might be. So if parents can kind of stay connected to a kind of curiosity of like some, there's a reason why my kid is having a hard time and it isn't because their brain is broken. It's, it might not be clear what the reason is, but to just be curious and to remember that they're having a response to the life they're in. 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 mentoring one another, I think, is a really, it used to be how it was. We all lived in little villages together. Yeah, there was community. Totally. Community is so important. It's like if your grandmother's around watching your children or if your families live close to each other,

then other family members are involved. Like human beings evolved that way. Like we said until two minutes ago in the Homo sapiens history, Like, that was how we lived. And so just keeping... And here we are in this outlier. We're like an astronaut right now. Seriously.

So far away from what we're supposed to be. Like, the umbilical cord is stretched, yo. Do you know that I, when I gave birth at home, we, my husband and I, we waited hours before we separated the umbilical cord from my placenta. I'm going to go there with you right now. And we burned it. We didn't cut it. Did you all smoke it?

No, but we did freeze my pletitis. placenta. But my husband, I asked him to chop it up into pieces, because this is like a whole in the kind of home birth world. A lot of women will be like, because mammals, female mammals will often eat their own placenta after they give birth. There's a lot of nutrition. Some of them are also perverts as well. Probably. Dolphins are. Probably. But go on. But yeah, Cooper chopped up my placenta for me because I was thinking, maybe if I want to do this down the line, I'll put it in a smoothie or something, but then he put all the pieces in a big mass in our freezer. It's almost six years later. It's still in there. No, it's still in there. And then when we tried to-

I'll buy a couple grams of it. When we tried to burn the umbilical cord, like our son was, you know, breastfeeding, like the placenta's 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. Yeah, because it's like grilling kind of a meat sort of. It's tripe kind of or something. Yes, that's what it is. Dude, people we have people act like... It's like pig intestine.

Which what? 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. I bet you've never talked about this on your pod before. No, I haven't, dude. That's, it's fucking bizarre.

I'm just trying to pretend like it's normal shit. But this is what life is about. Just being your authentic, Full self. Oh, dude. If I had like seven pounds of placenta right now, I would definitely dry one out and smoke it with my boys or whatever. I don't think that counts as a relapse either.

I could probably sell it for something. Oh, you could trade it right now to one of our politicians for something good. Probably for a favor. What? I did want to ask. Anywho. Anywho. Okay.

So that is the first one. Did you have any other suggestions for parents? I think, you know, just taking all the time you can to get informed. You know, if you are taking your kid to a mental health professional of some kind and your kid is being given a diagnosis and or, you know, being put on a medication of some kind, just knowing that you have, it's your right to take whatever time you need to look into what's being offered to you. Like the, just because the doctor is saying something and telling you to do something, you know, doesn't mean you shouldn't take whatever time you need to first get educated. 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, you know, we've only studied them for a few weeks. they weren't told that. And the chances are your doctor isn't going to tell you those 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.

And the website is? Theintercompass.org. The inner compass.org. Do you hold a resentment against your parents? Oh, gosh, no. I mean, if I was in their shoes, I would have done the same thing. 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 painful experience I went through brought me to my purpose in life, which is 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 art. Like, I mean, I can't, I can, I find, I'm stand-up comedy to me. is such, I can't imagine the courage it takes, but 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 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. I agree with that. I think it's like, yeah, having some fuel. It's kind of so dark 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? Yep. That a worm can turn into a bird or whatever.

No, what is it, butterfly? Caterpillar. Caterpillar. Maybe there are some worms that turn into stuff, though. I don't know, but. I doubt it, but thanks for trying to help me. 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 burning of the bird and 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, polyana-ish 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. And we've gotten so used to them. And this isn't how it's supposed to be. And this is not how it's supposed to be. We all feel that this is not how it's supposed to be. And we're all mildly kind of pretending like this is how it's supposed to be. like this is how it's supposed to be. But I think we're just sick of pretending.

Yep. 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 are sensing, like, this is not okay people. Well, yeah, you're an astronaut.

You're like, 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 like just like an emotional person like out in outer space trying to like have some idea of what's going on. Like, you know, and we need the we need people to be out there to be like the Paul 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 two months to read it. I love this very sense and sense. type of cover on it, pride and prejudice, energy up front. I like that a lot. Thank you, thank you. Or what is that book called Little Women? It is a very little women energy on the front.

I like that. Unshrunk, a story of psychiatric treatment and resistance. Can I keep this copy? Yeah, I want to write your message. Yeah, thank you. That's very sweet of you, Laura. Delano. Yes.

And Cooper Delanoe, that's your husband. Davis. Cooper Davis, he changed his name? What happened? He's untraditional. He kept his name. He kept his name. Okay.

Type shit. Cool. Tell him we said, what's up? Oh, I will for sure. The Intercompass Initiative. You can find them out at the inner compass.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? I 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 like physical and mental agitation. It felt excruciating and I just wanted to like rip my skin off or like binge you 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 industry of mental health that, you know, trains us to think that discomfort is a problem to fix. It still owns me, even though I've been off the meds for a couple years now.

And I said, I said, freedom is 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. first it was just 10 minutes and I just sat. I guess you could call it meditation. At the time I wasn't like, I'm going to meditate. I was just like out of almost outrage. Like I need to be with this because I've spent my entire life thinking I can't and shouldn't be with it. And I just sat there and I did it.

And 10 minutes later, I felt more centered in myself. The pain wasn't gone. But I was like, I fucking did it. I'm powerful. And I just kept doing it more and more until eventually I was sitting for like an hour and I would just sit. And my mind's going to all kinds of crazy places, paranoid stuff. It's not like this isn't like peaceful, relaxing time. That was when I realized I'm free. Amen. Yeah, we were one of the most powerful things that, you know, like that God created and we outsource our power all the time. I do it all the time. I outsource my power. It's why I named the nonprofit Intercompass Initiative because to me it's about taking that back, reclaiming it. The, the, the, the, orientation you need to get you through your life is in here.

And who is untrunk for? Who would, is someone who's thinking about getting off of medicine? Someone who's just curious about your experience? Anyone who is, who is themselves engaged with the mental health system in some way, like in therapy, on meds, or if you have someone you love who is.

And so it's a big number. But really, I mean, no, that's a, that's not that huge. That's specific. But it's like, 60 to 75 million people.

Anyone, if your life has been touched by, you know, mental health, mental illness, it's a story to read. Yeah. Laura Delano, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Oh, Theo, it's so meaningful to be here. I'm so glad to do this. Yeah, it's nice. I, yeah, I'm hopeful that I'll get off of end of depressants at some point.

I just have to, it's almost like you went out on the battlefield and you came back. Yeah. And so you got to just, you're restocking your 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, help. I'm glad that.

Anytime. I'm glad that I met you. I'm glad that I'm going to just continue to just kind of share whatever is 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. And yeah, I'm like, yeah. I'm just happy that we got to speak today, and thank you so much for spending time with us. Me too. Thanks. Thanks for having me. You bet.