alternative to meds center redefining holistic mental health and providing guided psychiatric and pain medication withdrawal for sixteen years in sedona, arizona. open excellence benzodiazepine information coalition educating about the risks of benzodiazepines taken as prescribed. medshadow health journalism balancing the risks & benefits of medicines. non-profit. independent. no politics. inner compass initiative helping people make informed choices about taking and coming off psychiatric medications. wjw mental health legal fund

inner fire offering the choice to reclaim your life with minimal mind altering medications. or none at all. all of dave's old meds. as soon as he said he was suicidal, we took him to the hospital and put them all in there. if he really wanted to commit suicide, there was nothing i could do about it, but i wasn't going to make it easy. this all started off with a bad relationship

and some test anxiety and stress in grad school and now i am a totally dysfunctional, highly suicidal individual. the only thing that's happened between then and now is i've been exposed to a series of very strong psychiatric medications. right now, medicines are given like candy. patients are seeing doctors for five minutes and they're given a pill. it's my belief that many of the medications that doctors are giving to patients today are more harmful than helpful to those patients. they want a pill that they hope will take care of their problem thoroughly and rapidly and most of these medications will actually do that very well in the short term. in the short term, they really work. the problem is in the long term they're mostly disastrous. i'm not sick, there's nothing wrong with me. this is just damage to my nervous system caused by a properly taken prescribed drug

that a doctor told me was safe. there's nothing safe about this drug. this is crazy. it's very clear to me after having studied the science, that the way we use psychiatric drugs does vastly more harm than good. i remember driving my niece to school and i was like, "all the kids are going to be murdered." then that thought created adrenaline. when the adrenaline kicked in, i was like, "my god, am i going to be the one who does it?" and then it's like, "yes, angie, you're going to kill these kids. i'm sitting here looking at my niece, and my thoughts are so bad that my teeth chatter: "oh my god, i'm capable of that? are you kidding me?" i was never like this. that's the scariest part, because is this my new normal? did effexor do this to me? did cymbalta do this to me? did geodon? abilify? which one? which one did it? [music]

i was very successful academically. i got accepted into the naval academy in annapolis, maryland. after annapolis, i did a few years on a destroyer based out of mayport, florida. then when you're at sea, you're training to be the guy directing the ship where to navigate, where to go.

it's great fun, but also extremely high stress, but i loved it. i was pre-selected for satellite systems engineering. part of that was going to grad school. when i got the acceptance letter from mit, it was one of those moments where you're just like, "this is not happening. it must be a mistake." but the stars had aligned and i was really happy. fall semester went off without a hitch. i had started a romantic relationship earlier that summer. the early spring is when things started to fall apart. my romantic relationship took a turn, became toxic. i was in distress, i was overwhelmed. we were taking upwards of four to five graduate-level courses a semester, so i sought out care from the mental health clinic at mit, the campus clinic. the presented solution to my problems was a prescription for the benzodiazepine ativan, which i'd never previously known about or taken, and zoloft.

they work as advertised. it's a very immediate effect. it's very calming. dave told me on our third or fourth date that he was on medication for depression and adhd. i have adhd myself and take medication for that. i had issues with depression and sought out help and medication and counseling. it's fairly normal now. i met the girl of my dreams. we got engaged in that period. work was great. i loved it. i returned to what i thought was my normal self. somewhere at about eight months, i started noticing emotional flatness, some sexual dysfunction, difficulty remembering what street we lived on. that whole period is just a blur. i was a zombie. i had this big wedding planned. i can remember talking to my mom then. i said, "mom, i feel nothing. i feel emotionally void of anything."

that's when i went to the psychiatrist and said, "this stuff isn't for me. i need to get off it. i think the drug is my problem." that's really when the s### hit the fan. [music] i've always been very close with my parents, even when i was a child. i love school. i like to be with my friends a lot. i feel very comforted being around other people. when i was 11 years old, i moved from nashville to milwaukee, wisconsin. we moved a lot for my parents' jobs, which is very hard in terms of keeping lifelong friends. i would oftentimes just sit in my room and listen to music and, honestly, just mope around. i started having a lot of anxiety about school, and i was so anxious, i got stomachaches and didn't want to eat. i wouldn't eat breakfast because i had a stomachache.

i wouldn't eat much lunch because of a stomachache. i noticed that she'd gotten thin. i blurted out, "do you think you might be anorexic?" she got on the scale, and said, "i think i lost 20 pounds." i totally freaked out and got an appointment the same day. then toward the end, the therapist asked me to come into the room. she said, "i think what would be best to kickstart this treatment is for her to get on antidepressants." wait a second, we came here for talk therapy. we didn't come here to kickstart it with medication. that's the whole point of going to a therapist, i thought. rebecka was prescribed zoloft for the first medication. she said it didn't really make a difference. she didn't feel any better, but she also didn't feel any worse at that time. when we saw her doctor again, she switched her to prozac. shortly after, i had a business trip. i got a phone call from rebecka and she said,

"i've been seeing this little girl." and i'm like, "what do you mean you've been seeing a little girl?" "she's not really there, but i can see her and i named her alice." i genuinely thought there were people in the room who weren't there, that people could also see. but... they were very real for me. she came into our bedroom late at night and she was shaking. she said, "the hallucination touched me and asked me to come into the kitchen so i could hurt myself." they said, "enough of this. she needs help." [music] i was a waitress in new york city.

a pretty normal girl doing normal things, nothing exceptional, nothing not exceptional, just normal. my mind was clear. i was happy. the only little issue was i couldn't sleep. i get out at two or three in the morning. i knew that my sleep issues were related to working at night. so i went to my doctor, my regular doctor. i saw him maybe twice a year. i asked him for something for sleep. he gave me a referral. i took the referral and i called a bunch of psychiatrists. one doctor in brooklyn said, "yes, we're seeing patients. come on in." he gave me a prescription for lorazepam. he told me to take two in the day and two at night. i then said, "why do i need to take a sleeping pill during the day? i don't want to sleep during the day." he said, "that is how it works." i said, "okay." i didn't even know people could have sleep issues because i was sleeping normal all my life, so it was not something i thought about. i had a feeling it was my job.

i just didn't think i could quit my job. i thought i could get help for it. that's why i went to a psychiatrist and he prescribed me this drug, lorazepam. i took it for six years. - wait, you took lorazepam for six years? - six-and-a-half years. unfortunately, that's the problem that most pharmacists see with lorazepam. lorazepam... if the doctor takes time to read the package insert, it clearly states... are they not reading? that i don't know. i can only tell you what i read. the use of benzodiazepines has increased tremendously over the years. since they've been around for such a long time, a lot of doctors have forgotten about the side effects and possible dangers of these medications. none of them were ever meant for long-term use, but everybody knows somebody who's been taking benzodiazepines for years. [music]

i started thinking, "when did this start? how did this start? what led up to me falling apart?" i was always the go-to person in my unit always. if they needed a job done right,they asked me. i was physically fit, knew my job. i got promoted to sergeant. after work, i was a lot of fun. i liked to travel, go to the beach, be spontaneous. i was the happy person, the happy-go-lucky friend, "hey, let's go shopping. let's go to a bakery." never had a second thought about anything crazy. that's who i was before this. so when the war started, i think most of it was stressful situations every day, like being shot at in convoys, driving around in dangerous areas of baghdad. my head was constantly scanning for something dangerous. i'm going to be a strong sergeant. i don't take no s###. that's just the way i was. but the first two months i was in baghdad, i was really, really sick. i had nosebleeds, fainting, dizziness. i lost 40 pounds. they medevacked me out of iraq.

then my convoy got hit the day after i got medevacked. i saw the kid come back in and he was one of my soldiers, and i felt horrible. that was the day that i saw psychiatry with the arrow, and i walked straight there, because that's what you do. they put me on klonopin. that's how this all started. they're trained while on active duty, very systematically that if you come back and have problems, you need to go to the doctor. a hundred years ago, if they had this kind of trauma, they would talk to their fellow soldiers, to their parents, to their friends, to their pastor. instead, they're going to their doctor and getting medicated. i think the klonopin was starting to make me worse, but they kept telling me, "that's what ptsd is. you have ptsd now." i remember he looked at me and said, "we're going to start the proceedings for medical retirement. you are not able to be around soldiers and no weapons." i remember feeling, "how was i a super-soldier and now i'm disabled at 25?" are you kidding? there is a post-traumatic stress, and it's a problem.

we would never argue with you that it's not a problem. it is a problem. it's a big problem, for you it's not a mental illness. i feel like i'm waking up from a nightmare, "like, what the f### happened to my life?" you lost years of your life. you lost your career. there are so many things that are losses here. that's part of the situation we're in as a culture, that if you run to the doctor and cry about this, they will say, "oh, you have major depression," and stick you on the next pill, instead of saying, "hey, you know what? suffering is the only normal response. there's a grief process you have to go through. wow. normal is in danger. the definitions used in psychiatry, and even more, the way they're applied have become so wide that a far too large percentage of the population would be defined as having a mental disorder. now we have patients come in, and if they're anxious or can't sleep or have some physical pain, we say, "my gosh, let's get rid of that."

we have vilified pain, and i'm talking about emotional pain and physical pain. it has now become the responsibility of the doctor to eliminate all suffering, at all cost. there is a cultural context, and that context goes back to the arrival of antibiotics in late 1940s, and then the polio vaccine. they really do change life. bacterial infections are no longer a problem. now we have a magic cure for polio. now we believe in magic bullets. pretty soon, we will have magic bullets for everything. [music]

what you find in psychiatry, if you trace its history, is that in the 1970s, american psychiatry was in competition with other therapists for talk therapy: counselors, social workers. what do they say to themselves? they say, "we need to present ourselves as medical doctors. we need to put on a white coat." they adopt a disease model for categorizing psychiatric disorder. we're going to say, "these are diseases of the brain, illnesses of the brain, and our drugs, therefore, treat the symptoms of those illnesses." it centers on the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders. while the cause is unknown, depression may be related to an imbalance of natural chemicals between nerve cells in the brain. prescription zoloft works to correct this imbalance. when you know more about what's wrong, you can help make it right. it hasn't been possible to demonstrate that first you have a chemical imbalance, and then, because of that, you become depressed or psychotic.

but we have shown that the drugs create a chemical imbalance. nobody has a clue what happens when you push this system somewhere. you have all sorts of reactions elsewhere. it's a very naive thought that a psychiatric disorder is based on one single thing, chemically, that went wrong, and then we have a quick fix for that. it's totally, totally naive. in 1980, the american psychiatric association adopted a disease model and began to tell that story to the american public. do you know who was so happy with that story? the pharmaceutical industry. they were thrilled with this story because now they could see markets expanding-- depression, anxiety. all these things we used to think of as normal fluctuations in human experience could now be seen as illnesses.

therefore, you could treat with drugs, and they said, "wow." [music] binge eating disorder, or bed, isn't just overeating, it's a real medical condition. certain chemicals in the brain may play a role. bed is also the most common eating disorder in us adults. [music] i never really thought that the medication was a bad thing. i was like, "yes, if this is going to make me feel better, awesome. okay, if this other one will make me feel better, awesome. oh, if these four will make me feel better, great, let's do it. i will try anything." there was never any notion that the medication was causing these symptoms. it was more like the disease was developing. the only warning she gave, which she was very dismissive about, was, "you might hear, mr. green, that in some instances, people who are on antidepressants might

have suicidal thoughts, but this really isn't something you should be overly concerned about." she said, almost flippantly, "you might want to lock up your knives." so we went out and bought a lock box and put anything dangerous in there. that's really when it sunk in even more. like, "wow, this is serious." i was hospitalized the first time when i was 13. over the course of the year, i think i was hospitalized seven or eight times. leaving her in a hospital, a psychiatric hospital, this was not our life. this was not our daughter. we knew our daughter. we knew a few months before that she had been a little depressed and melancholic, but this was a far leap from that. once in the hospital, they added an antipsychotic because she was now experiencing psychotic behavior. in addition, they prescribed another medication to take care of the known side effects of the antipsychotic.

we didn't really know what else to do and we were in the system. we wanted to trust the experts, so we went that route. my mind was filled with horrible thoughts about me, and about how horrible i was, and how much i hated myself. what is the point of me even being here anymore? many, many people are getting an antidepressant, an antipsychotic, a benzodiazepine, and a sleep medicine without any rhyme or reason. instead of the beneficial effects of these different medicines adding up to something wonderful, very often, their harmful effects add up to something terrible. when i got out of the army and went to the va system, it was like a whole other ballgame. it turned into cocktails of antipsychotic, antidepressant, benzo. i would say to the clinician, "i don't have good feelings.

all i feel is numb or anxious or depressed. i don't ever feel happy or grateful or loving." they said, "we'll add another medicine, maybe that one's not working." then we'll switch to a different one. basically, my medication history is just a succession of, "this doesn't work, let's go up to the highest dose and see what happens. okay, it didn't work. come back down. okay, that didn't work, let's switch it and try another." it's like a hamster wheel that i never got off until now. what happens to someone like angie is that when they get on these medications and they begin to deteriorate, they attribute it to their mental condition, as opposed to the medication. when they go in and they say, "you gave me an antidepressant and now i'm really depressed," they reply, "well, i see your depression is worsening," so they raise it, or add a medication. next they're on uppers and downers. you see this pattern, and every time they go in, they say it's their deteriorating mental condition, not, "your drug may be your problem."

[music] - hi. how are you? - nice to see you. - nice to meet you. - you too. thank you for coming. it's awesome to be here. i'm so nervous because i can't talk like this at my own school. [laughter] i want to just run through my story quickly and then we can talk because i'm sure you have really cool questions. i was on a cocktail of 17 medications at once, and then, basically, from 2006 to 2016, it took me all that time to get off all of them. every time you went in and you were prescribed these medications what were you told about the side effects? how much information were you given before you were prescribed this medication? in the office, you have 10 minutes

with the psychiatrist, that's it. then they say, "how are you feeling today?" and then you say, "well, i'm still really anxious, and i didn't sleep last week." then they say, "well, i want you to take this little quiz. do you feel jumpy in public? do you spend time with friends?" it was one of those psychological assessments. i fill out the little test, and he takes the test. then he pulls out the dsm and says, "yes, you have generalized anxiety disorder." i think, "what is another label going to do for me now? really, another label? thank you." now i have addict, ptsd, generalized anxiety, panic disorder with agoraphobia, major depression, for what? what do any of those labels do for me? nothing. i do everything that you tell me to do, and i'm not getting better. the most hurtful part of all of this that i want you to listen to is that i did all the therapy. i saw social workers, therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists. not once did somebody say, "it could be your meds." not once in 13 years. that is what hurts me the most.

now, i'm in social work school. i have all as. my brain is coming back. [applause] i can write a mean apa paper. [laughter] you were saying that a lot of these meds that are being prescribed for four to six years should only be taken for a few weeks. do you think there's ever a place for medications or would you ever hold someone's hand through that decision process? at the beginning i was anti-med. i thought, "no way," hell no," because i'm lucky i didn't kill myself or someone else. how could i say, "go ahead and take those meds?" there are times when some people, and when i say some, i mean very few... so, i'm not anti-med, i'm pro-informed consent. if you, as a social worker, want to talk with them about informed consent, that is well within your boundaries. we get it for surgery, why not for meds? you shared that you're uncomfortable with all the labels you've been given. if you could change that label to something, what would you say?

i think i was just scared. i was a scared little girl who was 24, and it didn't have to be so complicated. ...you know? [music] i was first diagnosed with adhd when i was 15, i think. i remember feeling relief to get the diagnosis. "my gosh, that's why everything is so hard. it's not that i'm stupid. it's not that i'm lazy." i was pretty severely depressed. i couldn't go to school. i just cried all the time. yes, it was kind of a mess. at that point, i was put on dexedrine. i felt much better and was able to go to school

on a regular basis. i felt some hope again. i hear anecdotes that vary, anecdotes of the great effects of drugs, and i would say that's about 20% or 25% of anecdotes i hear, "this has been great for me. this has helped me through a very difficult time." about 40% say, "it may have helped some, it's hard to tell what exactly it was doing. i can't say it hurt me. i can't say it helped me. i seem indifferent to what it may have done." then i get the other 30% or 35%, saying, "this hurt me. this damaged me." that's the anecdotes i've been hearing. i think that details what you find in literature out there. the reason i changed the way i practice was the realization that i was harming my patients. it is very clear that there is a cohort of patients for whom getting off of these drugs is exquisitely painful.

[music] when dave decided to go off the meds, i think he didn't share it with me because he knew that they worked for me and were successful for me, but that wasn't the case for him. she knew something was different. she knew something was wrong. i was having a lot of irritability, a lot of difficulty communicating. it put a lot of stress on our relationship and we just didn't talk about it much. i thought i was the worst wife in the world and i didn't know what was going on. every day driving home, i thought, "what can i do differently?" about four weeks later, he shared with me that he had taken himself off the medication. that was a huge relief to me, "okay, it's not me." but he became short and irritable, and he wasn't positive anymore. everything was negative. i was totally dysfunctional and began experiencing

this... what i'll call this irrational, terror-like level of anxiety that i had never previously experienced. i'd come home from work and find him on the kitchen floor, curled up in a ball just sobbing and rocking. he didn't want anybody to touch him or be anywhere near him. he'd go find a place to hide in the house and just sob uncontrollably. it was really hard to see. i got to a point where i completely refused to consume any more drugs, and that came to a head several months ago. that's why right now we're separated. the breaking point in my decision to move out involved a couple of things. he is of the mindset that it's just going to take time and there's nothing that you can do. i said, "here are the options that i see, they're mostly medically-based,"

and he absolutely refused. i explained my entire background to my psychiatrist. i said, "look, i took pride in being in the navy. i took pride in surviving and making it through mit and i had high hopes to do good things for the navy and for the country. now, i don't know who i am. and the only thing that's happened between then and now is i've been exposed to a series of very strong psychiatric medications." the answer after 20 minutes was, "well, i can give you a prescription for cymbalta." [sprinkler] when i did move out, he called me and said he was standing in the basement next to a noose. i said, "what's your safety plan?" he said, "to call you." i said, "that's not a safety plan. you need to hang up and call 911." i hate having to tell him that.

it feels callous to me. when you're going through the withdrawal from psychiatric drugs, the best thing is to get back off that ledge and just say, "dave, give yourself more time, give yourself more time, continue to fight for it. someday you'll regain a sense of normalcy in your day-to-day life." [thunder] typically, we find that the withdrawal phenomenon is the opposite of whatever the drug does. if the intention of the drug is to help somebody be more relaxed or help them fall asleep, then when they're experiencing withdrawal, they will experience is anxiety and restlessness and insomnia. this may even get so bad that they are profoundly depressed and consider suicide. the withdrawal symptoms can often be much worse