Latest / Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News / Patients take back their lives from psychiatric drugs
Transcript
- 0:17Hello, our wonderful, wonderful audience.
- 0:20Here we are again.
- 0:21It's the Breggins, Dr.
- 0:23Peter Breg, Dr.
- 0:24Peter Bregon.
- 0:25And Ginger Bregan.
- 0:26Hi, folks.
- 0:27This is the Breagan hour.
- 0:28And I'm Peter Breggan, recovering stroke victim.
- 0:33And I want to tell people I'm doing better and better and better.
- 0:38And that the Aviv Clinic, hyperbaric oxygen.
- 0:43Hyperbaric Oxygen Clinic was ginger fields just turned a corner for me from a guy who was barely speaking to my real self who was here today.
- 0:57My real self is here today, thanks to Ginger taking me down there.
- 1:03And uh I think my real self, though, came out not as certain about the hyperbaric as I am about what all the efforts ginger was going to.
- 1:15When you see the love of your life expending herself as I did, first to save my life and then to save the quality of my life, the motivation of loving her just made me decide I wasn't going down with this stroke.
- 1:35I was coming back from it.
- 1:38And I deeply believe we are more than our brains.
- 1:42And I'm learning it firsthand now that I am more than my brain.
- 1:47I can't tell you exactly what it is.
- 1:49People have puzzled about who we are, our spirits, our souls.
- 1:54But I believe we're beings made in God's image.
- 1:57And one of the conclusions I'm coming to more and more that I'll share with you today is a little extra something.
- 2:05We have a great guest, and um, I'll tell you about her right now.
- 2:11Uh and then I'll tell you a little bit about what I've been thinking about.
- 2:15It's like a little hors d'oeuvre.
- 2:19Um you want to take a minute and do the love, and then we'll come back.
- 2:23Come back to our guest and we'll show our guests.
- 2:26Yeah, let me do that.
- 2:27All right, good.
- 2:28Because I've had a lot to think about lately with love coming through the stroke, and um going through recovery now, and uh having such such a blessing in Ginger Breggan's loving me and supporting me, and um one of the things that I kept puzzling over was how hard it was for me to describe love.
- 3:01I mean, most descriptions of love come out of poetry, or old songs, or songs, another kind of poetry, yeah.
- 3:10Songs, old songs, new songs, but to just sort of talk about it, and I thought, well, that start with that.
- 3:18That's a major character of love, is that it's ineffable, ineffable meaning uh difficult to express in language, and I think that what makes love ineffable is that love of any kind for artwork, for looking at the moon and the stars at night, or sitting in the woods, or standing on a mountain and just seeing it, or bird watching for me, watching the birds come and go from my bird feeder, and sometimes a flock of goldfinches, or maybe three families of cardinals, just amazing to see that that's kind of ineffable for me too, and I think it's because love is a direct connection with God, that God wants us to love one another, he wants us to love creation.
- 4:19The new testament talks about I'm Jewish, that's why I call it the New Testament, and to uh distinguish it from my old one.
- 4:29The New Testament um is very, very clear about what Jesus has to say, and that is what he's come to say, and he's come really to kind of stand out for love the way no one and no place in the old testament does, and comes to say, I'm giving you a new commandment to love one another as I love you, and that love you have for one another will be your page of who you are, and um I think that the reason why love is ineffable is it participates in God, which for all of us is ineffable.
- 5:17I think that it is what God wants us to do, to love one another, and when we do it, God's gets close to us and is present in our lives, and um, I think it goes hand in hand.
- 5:31Ginger's being close to me and loving me and helping me through the stroke in ways that she just made a first priority.
- 5:41It's one of the first things I heard as I came out of uh I got dreadfully confused at the end of the stroke because A, I didn't know I was having a stroke, I thought I was having seizures, and the doctors thought you were having seizures seizures, and um they overdosed me with a drug to give us seizures right on top of the stroke, and I just had went into a state of confusion, and as I came out of it, I had to literally identify Ginger for who she was, it was very confusing to me.
- 6:18Who was this person taking such amazing care of me?
- 6:21I didn't know where to categorize her or understand her.
- 6:26I'd never had such an experience.
- 6:28I think that uh for me more than what I whenever I've told the story of a meeting ginger, I talk about everybody who knows me well, has heard this story.
- 6:42I've talked about how I just fell so in love with her, it scared me to death, and I avoided her for approximately 10 years until fate, which I think is God's hand.
- 6:55One of my ex-girlfriends told Ginger when I was that uh she knew me, and they got to talking about me.
- 7:06And um she was very private, she never disclosed she'd been your girlfriend.
- 7:11She just said you were a great reference for her as a journalist.
- 7:15And then she told you I was coming out to Los Angeles to do a TV show.
- 7:19Yeah, when you were out in Los Angeles, yeah.
- 7:22And that's how I met up with Ginger again.
- 7:25I called her because I got her number from this girl old girlfriend, quite recent, the old girlfriend, a lovely lady, and um I spent about two days with Ginger, but on the first day, I asked her to marry me.
- 7:45Said, I don't want to do lose you again, and I'm just feeling all the love I felt for you before.
- 7:51And um you said yes after you got over it.
- 7:56No, I said yes right away.
- 7:58Believe me, I wasn't gonna let that pass me by.
- 8:02Then it was all logistics after that, sweetie.
- 8:06And uh, we've been together now 40 years.
- 8:09What a 42 years.
- 8:10That was 1983.
- 8:12No, 88.
- 8:13Yeah, no, it was 1983, and then you came east, and we at the end of 83.
- 8:19And then we agreed to get married, and we did in 84.
- 8:25And uh July 4th, 1984.
- 8:29Monumental kind of a date from the book and from Liberty of America, July 4th, 1980.
- 8:41And um been together ever since.
- 8:46I made this great discovery though, that when I came out of the confusion surrounding my stroke, and I tried to figure out who you were, and I realized that what made you seem unfamiliar to me was how loving you were and how just generally focused on me you were, and you had made a decision that you were your whole life was going to be about making sure I survived and that I got maximum recovery, which meant you were taking over my mental medical care, basically and my mental care.
- 9:31And um I realized that what probably scared me into not seeing you for 10 years until God put us together again.
- 9:42Um of the things was that actually I probably sensed that you loved me in a way that I was totally unfamiliar with and unprepared to deal with.
- 9:53It wasn't that I was so loving of you, it was that you were so loving of me, but it was not in my category.
- 10:00Of things to explore.
- 10:01A woman who is as loving of me as I was of her.
- 10:05When you were just so to me, such an amazing.
- 10:08Well, we got married, and there was a lot going on, everything.
- 10:11So our lives were just full of your reform work and our kids and you know, learning to never got to deal with all learning to live together, and you know, who was gonna get the closet that was in the bedroom, and I gave it to you.
- 10:28I needed a bigger one.
- 10:30I don't think I have a news issue.
- 10:32No, it wasn't.
- 10:33So it's radio show.
- 10:34I just decided you're getting the closet in the bedroom.
- 10:38You were very sweet.
- 10:39You cleared it out for me.
- 10:41No, I I just tried to set the house up for you.
- 10:44You really did.
- 10:45And uh I think you forgot a lot of that right after the stroke.
- 10:50So I uh in addition to looking after how you were being treated and working on just reconnecting personally so much.
- 11:00Uh, I became your historian for your personal history while you while your brain knitted itself back together.
- 11:09So those first three months we spent just your resting and beginning to heal before we heard about the Aviv clinic.
- 11:19That was by the way, that's a feminine metaphor.
- 11:23My brain is not knitting itself together, it's hammering itself to bed.
- 11:30Okay.
- 11:31I can practically hear the clanking in my evil.
- 11:35Well, anyway, I think that I think that those first three months were really helping you to reconnect with your own history.
- 11:45I gave you the conscience of psychiatry, which is the book that our nonprofit published that we published with our nonprofit.
- 11:54Um under my direction, and the conscience of psychiatry really documented your reform work.
- 12:01It was very valuable.
- 12:03Wonderful people saying wonderful things about me.
- 12:07You know what?
- 12:08We have another wonderful person with us today.
- 12:10Oh my god, yes.
- 12:11And I want to be yes, I want to bring her in, okay.
- 12:15Go ahead and introduce her.
- 12:17Okay, it says right at the top of the page.
- 12:20Meet Jen Schmitz, therapist and holistic mental health pioneer.
- 12:28What interests me so much about Jen.
- 12:32And despite ignoring her, um, which is hard to do because she's very beautiful, right?
- 12:39Very bright looking.
- 12:42She uh is a holistic describing deep prescriber.
- 12:51Deprescriber consultant.
- 12:53She does what I do.
- 12:55She takes people off psych drugs.
- 12:58That's a very brave thing to do if you're not a physician or if you are.
- 13:02But if you're not a physician, you get attacked for doing it by psychiatry and by other non-physicians who don't want to take responsibility for changing the world.
- 13:14When they one patient at a time.
- 13:16And when they yeah, that's that's really true.
- 13:18I think a lot of it is doing it one patient at a time.
- 13:23That's it.
- 13:24Because that's what you're doing, Jen.
- 13:25And uh, God bless you for.
- 13:27Thank you.
- 13:28Thank you.
- 13:29It's I told Jen that many years ago.
- 13:32When speaking to an audience of therapists, I said that if any of them got in trouble as non-medical therapists for taking people off drugs.
- 13:42And uh, I would without charge become an expert on that bad.
- 13:47And I think only one person has ever called me and said, Hey, I'm in trouble.
- 13:52Yeah.
- 13:53Um so I think the non-prescribers are doing, I mean.
- 13:59Non deprescribers.
- 14:02This is my brain hammering while I'm trying to talk folks.
- 14:06Uh my brain's been hammering, yeah, for two and a half years with the psych drug withdrawal I've gone through.
- 14:11So I'm listening to you talk, and I'm thinking, uh, yeah, I the symptomology that you experienced after your stroke is so very similar to not only the things that my patients go through when they're trying to deprescribe for medications, but myself as someone who has been trying to get off of an SSRI after 25 years of use.
- 14:32And the cognitive decline is just it's it's unsurmountable.
- 14:39I can't even describe um you said the word historian before ginger, and I'm sitting here thinking, I wish I had one of those in my life too.
- 14:49Not only recently in the last couple years of trying to titrate off medication, but one of the biggest issues that I have is such a little memory.
- 14:59I don't remember my wedding day.
- 15:02I don't remember the births of my children.
- 15:04Oh dear.
- 15:05I, you know, I don't, I it's so difficult.
- 15:08I don't remember big vacations where I went somewhere tropical, and you're there a whole week.
- 15:13It's like these memories never imprinted on really big things in my life.
- 15:18And that goes back to the city.
- 15:19That's very interesting that you think it didn't imprint to begin with in the the long memory.
- 15:24Yeah.
- 15:25That's what it is, I think.
- 15:26Yeah, we don't get when we're on these drugs, we don't engage.
- 15:29We don't recall vividly.
- 15:32We don't.
- 15:32And and I I can't re have those vivid recollections.
- 15:35And now I have to put so much intention into a moment just so that I can try to remember it longer.
- 15:48This is the effects of the withdrawal.
- 15:50Right, right.
- 15:51Still recover from that.
- 15:52That's yeah, she's gonna be a gradual recover.
- 15:56I've learned that I have to learned I have to do that.
- 16:00Um but going back historically, being on a psychiatric medication, um, being like LexaPro since I was, I think I was about 17.
- 16:10My medical records say I was about 17.
- 16:13Um, I can go back and that past all that past memory.
- 16:18It's just not there.
- 16:20Um, it's I can't pull it.
- 16:21I can't look at photos and go, oh yeah.
- 16:24Um it's like a lot of it is lost on me.
- 16:28You know, that sounds like it's the same as some of my acquaintances from high school that I've been in touch with from time to time, some of whom got involved with not psych drugs, but street drugs.
- 16:43Sure.
- 16:43Back at that point in time over their youthful adulthood.
- 16:48And they have lost memory too for all that period of time.
- 16:53Yeah.
- 16:54I think that's pretty some memories from being laid down, the drugs.
- 16:58Uh just interferes with the whole process of engagement and recollection.
- 17:05Right, right.
- 17:06And how we store things.
- 17:07I mean, it it's hard to really store a memory and to really have that again imprint when you're not actually present.
- 17:15You're there.
- 17:16I mean, you're there physically.
- 17:18I was there at my children's births trust.
- 17:20Yes, I was going to say no, like I and I can remember a few things, right?
- 17:24From from that day, um, and those those days.
- 17:27So I mean, I know I was there, but if you asked me to go back in a and just recount um the the times my children, what time they came into the world.
- 17:39I couldn't tell you.
- 17:40I I couldn't tell you what was happening around me.
- 17:43I couldn't, I couldn't tell you the smells.
- 17:45I couldn't describe to you what my husband was doing.
- 17:49Um all things that you would think you could.
- 17:52We're at a break, so we'll be right back in just a couple of minutes.
- 17:57This is Dr.
- 17:58Peter McCullough.
- 17:59You know me from America Out Loud Pulse and the McCullough report.
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- 19:53And we're back with Dr.
- 19:55Peter Bregan and Ginger Bregan for the break an hour on America Out Loud.
- 20:00News where you can go and hear us live when the show first airs on Saturdays and then again on Sundays at 4 p.m.
- 20:09Eastern time.
- 20:11Jen, you want to continue?
- 20:13Well, let me just finish a little bit more on that.
- 20:17And then the show goes out everywhere.
- 20:19Their shows go pretty much.
- 20:21Yes, they do.
- 20:22It goes to podcast on Monday.
- 20:24And so just go to your you go to your favorite podcast platform.
- 20:28And look up the Breggan Hour.
- 20:30Yes.
- 20:31And you'll find it.
- 20:33And that's us.
- 20:34That's us.
- 20:34And um what is this?
- 20:39Um Spotify.
- 20:41Spotify.
- 20:42Spotify carries us and uh now and the interviews, the radio show, the Brigham Hour is also carried on our page on uh America Out Loud.news.
- 20:55So you can find back issue back uh episodes there.
- 20:59And I bring the show out each week on our substack, and then our substacks are archived in our substack page, Ginger Briggan.
- 21:10Is that which is probably where most people hear us are I think most people actually Malcolm said he got uh thousands and thousands of listeners live on Saturday and Sunday.
- 21:22So we have people listening live there, and then people listen to the show also if they don't go in on Saturday and Sunday, they can hear us on Spotify when I release the show on Spotify, which usually comes a week later.
- 21:36Spotify carries every Dr.
- 21:39Breggan hour.
- 21:40Oh, I'm sorry, Substack going on yeah, you can hear it on Spotify too, but also in Substack.
- 21:46All right, let's go on and have Jen Jen pick up again.
- 21:50And I also want to mention that another reason we wanted to have her on is because she works closely with uh Dr.
- 21:58Terra Lynn, who is yes, on the gaslight truth, gaslit truth podcast.
- 22:06Yes, and boy, these ladies are these wonderful professionals are really dynamic and interesting and exciting to listen to.
- 22:16Uh uh and their websites have a great deal of information.
- 22:22And a lot of people and a lot of people follow these two women.
- 22:26Yeah, yeah, it's pretty neat.
- 22:29Uh what's what started between Terry and I as um calling on the phone for hours talking about psych med harm, um, talking about how I could get through withdrawal, um, talking about references, like just getting into these deep, almost philosophical conversations about our profession as therapists and the harm we've perpetuated over the years because we didn't know what we didn't know, right?
- 23:05Western education gave us one heck of a siloed view on psychiatric medication and how great it is.
- 23:13Um, and so we'd spend hours talking, and finally her and I were like, we need to put this, we need to put this into a show.
- 23:20We we've we've got to do a podcast on this, and we didn't know where it was gonna go.
- 23:25We didn't know what what was gonna happen, and here we are now um, you know, over a hundred and ten episodes later and a following growing of people who want to hear what we've got to say.
- 23:38Um, so it's it's pretty cool.
- 23:40Yeah, it's wonderful.
- 23:42Yeah.
- 23:43Welcome to the Breggan hour.
- 23:45Hey, it is so it's so great to be here.
- 23:48I mean, I so Peter, your book psychiatric drug withdrawal, not only as like a as a therapist who's understand what is trying to understand every single thing I possibly can about psychiatric medication, but to set that aside as a consumer who has trying to go off of psychiatric meds, your book was the very first book I ever read.
- 24:09And every single concept in that book blew my mind because I'm like, why did nobody teach me this?
- 24:17Like two degrees, a licensure later, all these practicums, and I knew none of this, and it was an awakening for me.
- 24:28So to have the conscience of psychiatry sitting in front of me is pretty damn cool.
- 24:34So thank you, Peter.
- 24:35It's really that's a pleasure to be talking with you too.
- 24:38It's really cool to be here.
- 24:40So you'll recover all this stuff with time that you were talking about.
- 24:44Yeah, to reassure you about that.
- 24:46Yeah, and it's slowly coming.
- 24:48People seem to really get over their drugs when they get off.
- 24:52Yeah, unless there's some really particular illness they got from them that was very damaging.
- 25:00And I think the hardest part of this too, when I look back is, you know, I was 40 years old when I finally had some in information on drug harm.
- 25:11Okay, I'm I'm 43 now.
- 25:12I was 40 years old when I decided to dive down the rabbit hole of well, what if psychiatric drugs aren't the gold standard of treatment like I've been taught?
- 25:21And the hardest part to rectify with this is as I learned more, and I've now been two and a half years in the tapering off of an SSRI.
- 25:29I look back to that 16 or 17-year-old self and just go, gosh, how is it that in all 25 years?
- 25:39No one ever said to me, Hey, maybe it's time you don't need this anymore.
- 25:45Or remember that issue you had that you went on when you were a teenager when you went on that drug.
- 25:50Do you still have that problem in your life anymore?
- 25:53Because if you don't, why are why why are you still taking this, right?
- 25:57And that's the part of this that I I think I have to keep grappling with.
- 26:02Um, I didn't get curious enough.
- 26:04I didn't get curious enough sooner.
- 26:06It took 25 years and two degrees in a field, and to finally just at some point something dropped in my lap where I went, Yeah, why am I still on this?
- 26:15That's one of the harder parts.
- 26:17Um, and that's something that I I talk a lot with my clients about when I work with them is you know, how did this start for you?
- 26:27And are those still the same issues you have now?
- 26:30Because it's very rare I meet with people like myself.
- 26:32We've been on psychiatric drugs for years, not months, not the four to six weeks for the drug trial.
- 26:40Years and years, and what's happened over those years?
- 26:45Um, and the the damage that can be done, and you know, the irreversible effects and all the medical issues I've had in my life, and uh you know you just look back and go, this all could have been because of that, but nobody ever no one ever told me.
- 27:03I just went with what was being told, which is oh, does it seem to be helping?
- 27:07Sure, you're not depressed.
- 27:09Okay, well, good.
- 27:10Let's just keep you on it.
- 27:12Well, what kind of mom are you gonna be if you go off those drugs, Jen?
- 27:15Like, remember you started them because you were depressed.
- 27:18Okay, well, we got to be careful with that now that you're gonna be having kids.
- 27:21The manipulative language around this that was said to me, and that I hear every day with my my clients, and how to get people to get curious about that.
- 27:32There maybe is another side to this.
- 27:35That's the challenge I I try to take on.
- 27:38And I want to tell people, you know, but I want you to get curious about it because that's where change starts to happen is when you start to really get curious about stuff that you never quite thought could be a thing.
- 27:49That's so important, and you know, it's no accident that you weren't asked that question, and the and that uh patients who are have been prescribed psychiatric drugs are never asked that question because I mean the question of uh the question of you still have that same problem.
- 28:09How could you do without them?
- 28:10And do you still have that same problem?
- 28:13And have you considered ever tapering down on your drugs and coming off of them that the whole system is designed to suppress any inquiry that has to do with stopping psychiatric drugs over a long period of time or whatever.
- 28:30Um, and that's because the drug and the drug company influence is so overwhelmingly uh present in medicine and as well as psychology and psychiatry, and through media through social media and through the legacy media, you know, the newspapers we used to read and the magazines, and in addition to that, those drug companies have in this country uh permission from the FDA to advert advertise directly to consumers.
- 29:06And uh I'm sorry, I lost track.
- 29:13Yeah, I distracted you.
- 29:15I wasn't sure if um that noise was no, it's Bella, and I don't think it's going to get picked up.
- 29:21Bella is sitting under my desk and uh on a little pad that's like a pad for her to lie on, and she's busily trying to dig a hole to China, which she does to it.
- 29:34It's the action of a sweet little mammal trying to create a nest when there are no leaves.
- 29:41So that's I don't think the mic picks it up.
- 29:44And I think I can't hear it, guys.
- 29:47I can't hear it on my end.
- 29:48And I'm sure our listeners will be very tolerant.
- 29:51So anyway, all I was saying was here in this country, the big drug companies spend a vast majority of their
- 30:00Of their promotional funds, uh, advertising directly through radio, TV, social media, et cetera.
- 30:09And and that in itself puts a clamp on any legacy media being interested in interviewing someone like you, Jen, or like Dr.
- 30:20Bragan.
- 30:20Yep.
- 30:21The other thing is that they uh the the censorship industry, and it's become an industry now.
- 30:29Those PRs and those content managers and so forth, that all the big tech social media has massively expanded during COVID, so that you've got people looking over all of our shoulders, and you've got uh algorithms and computerized programs searching for key words that uh then alert sensors to come in and tell you, Jen, or tell us here at home that you absolutely must not talk about deprescribing.
- 31:09You can't talk about coming off of the drugs.
- 31:12You certainly can't talk about the mRNA vaccine and so forth and so on.
- 31:18Right.
- 31:18Well, and even coming from someone who's not a medical provider, as you had said, Peter, you know, I don't have a medical doctor.
- 31:24I am a licensed professional counselor.
- 31:26All right.
- 31:27That is that is the my license.
- 31:29I am told repeatedly that by talking about risks, benefits, and alternatives of psychiatric medication, which is what informed consent is, right?
- 31:39I am told that I am grossly out of the scope of my practice.
- 31:43Um, and that this is such a problem.
- 31:46And I get shut down so frequently for that.
- 31:50Um to your point, ginger, yes.
- 31:53That is that, and that's an algorithm that's pushed that there is a there's a social dialogue around this that is you know that that continues to be filtered.
- 32:03Yes, I mean, it's like um climbing up a mountain forever, and I just to get the word out.
- 32:10Yeah, I'm never gonna hit the top, right?
- 32:11I'll get a few steps in, and maybe somebody will go, hey, I can see you, and I'll go, okay, great.
- 32:16One person saw me while the other 10,000 can't see, you know.
- 32:19I want you to know, Jen, that uh Peter's been doing this kind of education for the public about the damaging effects of psychiatric drugs and other biological psychiatric interventions, any kind of attempt to harm healthy tissue, which is what happens treatment, shock treatment, psychosurgery, lobotomy.
- 32:39Yep.
- 32:40Electrical stimulation on the brain.
- 32:42Right.
- 32:42And any of those.
- 32:44Gosh, I lost my track again.
- 32:47I interrupted you in your look.
- 32:49I think so.
- 32:50They've you're probably gonna say this has all been met with resistance since.
- 32:53Well, yes, it started this.
- 32:55We've been experiencing this at one point or another all along.
- 32:59And yet what happens again and again, and this is the good part is we don't hear about the numbers of people we've reached through Peter's books through our own podcasts and our own radio shows through our website, except sometimes 10, 20, 30 years, 40 years after the person has received a message that Peter sent out into the world, we get an email or a comment in our substack or something else.
- 33:30Someone will say, I heard from Dr.
- 33:32Bregan 25 years ago, or I read toxic psychiatry back then 1990, or etc.
- 33:40etc.
- 33:41Or I heard him in 1980 at a conference that he presented at.
- 33:46And they inevitably have amazing stories to tell about how that redirected a portion of their lives to enable them to, for instance, refuse Ritalin for their child in school, stand up against the school wanting to just drug their little boy as he came in because he was rambunctious, or helped them themselves in understanding what was going on, and then working out themselves how to do withdrawal.
- 34:17Um, so your words mean so much more and reach so many more people than you'll ever know.
- 34:25It's it's truly it's a miracle every time it happens, and you're part of that.
- 34:31You're part of people healing in their lives every day when you and Dr.
- 34:38Terrellyn do your podcast and through your work.
- 34:41Yeah, we're we're we're there to ruffle feathers.
- 34:45We are there to whistleblow.
- 34:48We are there to do all of the things that seem seem out of context and crazy, and yet they really aren't the things we're talking about.
- 34:57Like the world has painted these as so controversial.
- 35:01But yeah, they've really aren't.
- 35:03You know, there's an extra for the brain, folks.
- 35:06Yeah, like not very controversial.
- 35:08It it really isn't.
- 35:09Like when you when you boil this down to just basic, basic, like how I would talk to my son, my 12-year-old son, I would say what you're doing right now, what you're eating, here's how it's impacting your brain.
- 35:28Here's what happens to your amygdala in your hippocampus when you do insert, whatever it is.
- 35:35Anything that goes into the mouth and that goes into the body, because I do a lot of nutrition work with people, right?
- 35:41Anything that goes in that mouth hole, if you think for a second it's not going to impact your brain, you're you're actually grossly inaccurate, right?
- 35:49And that includes psychiatric medications as well.
- 35:51Um, anything that's gonna change how your brain organically wants to function, then we're gonna have an issue.
- 35:59You can't get something for nothing, right?
- 36:01The output is gonna change.
- 36:02And if you just look at that from the most basic, how you say it to us, sixth grader science, like they're like, oh, yeah.
- 36:12And as long as we view something as a treatment and not a drug, it is always going to be viewed as a treatment.
- 36:17And that's where it gets really messed up because that's how it's viewed is as a treatment, and it's not.
- 36:22When I talk to my clients about psychiatric drugs, I talk about the mechanism of action, and I will compare it to another drug that's a stimulant or to caffeine, or to think like I will lay it all out there and I will talk about that with them, and they'll kind of sit there kind of dumbfounded.
- 36:36And I'm like, the same thing's happening in the brain, but you've been taught that this one thing is a treatment and it's helpful, but the mechanism of action is the same.
- 36:46And they kind of just sit there and they're like, huh.
- 36:50I've I've never thought about it that way.
- 36:52And I'm like, well, no, because you've never been given informed information in that way either, right?
- 36:57And so it opens these discussions about viewing things in a way that they need to be viewed in a drug to be viewed as a drug.
- 37:05Um, because that's what it is.
- 37:06It's altering the state of the brain.
- 37:09So it's like a talk.
- 37:11I talk about it simply, very simply.
- 37:14Like we don't have to get crazy in the science.
- 37:16I'm not, you know, simple.
- 37:18That's wonderful.
- 37:20We are out of time again.
- 37:22This is our second set set uh segment, and we will be right back with part three.
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- 39:06Peter, just so you don't run out of time at the end.
- 39:11I'd love for you to be able to comment at this point because I know at the very end, we have to we we are compelled to stop because we can't air longer than the time we're allotted by the radio station.
- 39:25So why don't you share anything else you'd like to make?
- 39:28You're what folks, you're watching me, ginger gently try to deal with a major conflict that often happens at the end of the show.
- 39:39And which is I cut him off.
- 39:43Oh and um well, we work through it.
- 39:48She's gonna get little signs to put up in front of me.
- 39:52So I there'd be like an authority there's making the statement hard.
- 39:58Two minutes left.
- 40:00That kind of thing.
- 40:01But um, thank you, Jinj.
- 40:03I think it's really good.
- 40:05Because otherwise I would have waited longer to comment.
- 40:08Yeah, I think it's good for you to have this opportunity.
- 40:10Thank you for this positive way of handling it.
- 40:12You're welcome.
- 40:13So like saying, hey, here's some time.
- 40:15See, I learned Peter, you missed Mr.
- 40:18Spot.
- 40:19See, I learned from you every day still.
- 40:22Go ahead.
- 40:23That's wonderful.
- 40:24Yeah, it is my blessing.
- 40:25Thank you, honey.
- 40:26So go ahead.
- 40:30I'm often working with couples because I like to have a person involve somebody that's close to them when they're coming off the meds in case they they get very angry and upset.
- 40:45They need somebody there to tell them.
- 40:47Hey, it's maybe the drug withdrawal, or they become very depressed and self injurious and thinking about hurting themselves or something.
- 40:58They have somebody right there to say, I don't think it's your life.
- 41:02Everything's gone pretty good right now.
- 41:05This is the drugs doing it, do you?
- 41:07Remember, you would doctor warned us about that.
- 41:11Um it's so interesting.
- 41:15Because what I specialize in is helping people love each other again.
- 41:22Because they a woman who's been 25 years on a drug has very likely lost her some of her affection for her dogs or children or life or work or something else.
- 41:37And um I've seen some wonderful things go on where women when they realize this, they start talking to their children about it.
- 41:47And the children are so happy to hear mom recognizing how she wasn't quite this fully there in childhood.
- 41:57They can talk about it and make up for adults.
- 42:07And people as they come off the drugs, they they do kind of remember as you were describing that they don't remember.
- 42:17And um those are things they can revisit with loved ones and start remembering more of and being told more about and re-learning.
- 42:30There's a lot of positive things that can happen.
- 42:34Um and they can start to love again.
- 42:38And um once people are loving each other again, then they they probably don't need me anymore.
- 42:47Maybe just a few directions on how to talk to talk to your wife, like you actually do love her or to your husband.
- 42:57People learn need to learn to do that in our culture.
- 43:00They're shy about um putting a very high priority on the love between them.
- 43:08And that's one of the worst things about psych drugs, they're anti-love drugs.
- 43:15But it's a tough subject to sell to anybody.
- 43:18I had a book that I thought would be grabbed up and made it best sell right away.
- 43:22Called anti-love drugs.
- 43:24I loved the title, anti-love drugs.
- 43:26A little subhead about what your psychiatric drugs might have done to you in your marriage.
- 43:32And um, but we've never been able to sell it.
- 43:36I've had top agents try.
- 43:39I've had it turned on by always without explanation by top publishers who got to read it.
- 43:47Um I think it um I think they're also anti-God.
- 43:56The drugs, they um the they're like, you know, they provide this kind of generalized cognitive dysfunction.
- 44:07And despite what atheists and leftists and communists tell us, believing God's a higher function, not a lower function, and requires a very spiritual attitude toward life.
- 44:22Um requires a sophisticated way of thinking that evolved slowly over you in your met within humanity, going through all kinds of stages along the way from worshiping rocks and stones, and it's all in the Bible and um getting able to actually love one another.
- 44:50And um I I think that uh when you withdraw from psychiatric drugs, the one of the things you'll experience is your ability to love increases, and with it all the turmoil that goes along with that.
- 45:07So it's good to have a psychotherapist like you are, a psychotherapist, helping people withdraw, you'll do a much better job than a non-psychotherapist.
- 45:17Because when people come off the psych drugs, they start just having all their feelings become available.
- 45:23That's that that's exactly it.
- 45:25Um the drugs take away the bad, but they take away all the good as well.
- 45:31They just reduce the human being.
- 45:34Yes, and myself, I've ex experienced that.
- 45:38Um I was explaining to somebody the other day.
- 45:42Um the stuff you said about marriage hits hits real hard, and I, you know, I I don't know if we have time to talk too much about it, but you've got 11 minutes.
- 45:50I okay, we have 11 minutes.
- 45:52Okay.
- 45:52Before we get into that, I want to talk about it.
- 45:54I think it's really important to talk about.
- 45:56I think I think it's imperative, and in fact, on the Gaslit Truth podcast, we have now had multiple guests come on and talk about that exact thing.
- 46:04Um, Facebook groups like antidepressants ruin marriages, we've had guests come on from that group, they follow us, they're fantastic, and we all talk about this idea of really truly not being able to feel connection to somebody.
- 46:24Um, and to feel that closeness and to try truly feel love.
- 46:29Like at the beginning of the show, when you were talking about your definition of love, I'm thinking, well, if somebody asked me that, it'd be like, well, it's a noun.
- 46:34It means to be fond of a strong attachment.
- 46:36I'd give you the logical Webster's dictionary answer.
- 46:40Because that's all I'm able to muster up, but I I know it's there, and I can slowly feel different levels of it coming back as I'm titrating off of my my medication.
- 46:53But it's a very interesting space because it almost takes away a a piece of who you are.
- 46:59I can't feel certain emotion.
- 47:02Um, I still can't.
- 47:03Um, I can't feel pride if my life depended on it.
- 47:07Um, I have tried to feel it, I've tried to sit in it, I've tried to manifest that, I've tried to meditate around this for years.
- 47:13I still can't.
- 47:14It'll come, I know it will, but something as simple as that.
- 47:18When you can't feel these emotion states, these deeper emotions, you can't make a connection like that in your marriage with somebody.
- 47:26Um there's implications to that over time.
- 47:30And I don't think people recognize how that can happen.
- 47:34And in fact, right, they don't know what's happening when they're in it, right?
- 47:36They're spellbound, as as you know, right?
- 47:38That's it's a thing.
- 47:39I didn't know it.
- 47:40I would blame every issue in my marriage on my husband.
- 47:43And when in reality, um, I I couldn't even understand myself and my role in everything, because I I can't get to that level of self-understanding.
- 47:55Um yeah, you you can't get there.
- 47:58You think you can, you think you're there, but but but you can't.
- 48:02And so how that implicates itself within relationships within your marriage.
- 48:07Um, how going through um PSSD, for example, um, can impact you know, your inability to have a sexual experience.
- 48:17What's PSSD with with your spouse?
- 48:20So post-SSRI sexual dysfunction.
- 48:22Oh, there you go.
- 48:23Yeah, and that's huge.
- 48:25Yeah, and and for you know, for some people, they're oh, Jen, you haven't gone through that, you're still on a med.
- 48:29No, actually, I've been on this med on it, off it, on it, off it.
- 48:34I would increase it, decrease it.
- 48:36The seasons would change, I'd go from 20 to 5.
- 48:39My prescriber would say, Jen, you know how you get in the summer, go down on it in the winter, go back up.
- 48:45So talk about like the ability of protracted withdrawal, um, to just continue to harm itself repeatedly over 25 years for me.
- 48:54So I have gone on and off, up and down, right?
- 48:57Um, and what that's done to me and what that does when it comes to sexual dysfunction, when it comes to the inability to connect with someone on that level.
- 49:10Um, no, it it becomes news weather in sports, it's a task, it's not something that I can feel a deeper connection in.
- 49:17Um those are the issues that that can come and they're implicated within marriages and within relationships when you are on a psychiatric drug.
- 49:27I was never told that.
- 49:29That wasn't a thing.
- 49:30I was told, well, Jen, I think you might need a sex therapist if that's what's happening in your marriage.
- 49:35That's what I was told by my prescribers.
- 49:37Um, and so of course, what did I do?
- 49:39I went look for sex therapist, right?
- 49:41I'm like, I guess I need to find somebody, right?
- 49:43Like, I have no sexual drive anymore.
- 49:45I'm not that I don't, I can't feel that for my spouse.
- 49:48Um, and when you start a psychiatric medication when you're a teenager and your your entire your whole body isn't even developed yet, right?
- 49:56You're your your immune system is still trying to figure out what to do.
- 50:00Metabolic structures have, I mean, my goodness, none of that's developed.
- 50:02Not to mention hormones.
- 50:04Yeah, into your mid-20s, right?
- 50:05Like, like none of that has happened for me.
- 50:08I was stunted so early.
- 50:11I was stunted at such an early age.
- 50:13And so it's not.
- 50:15Thank you for being so brave is to share all the time.
- 50:18Yeah, that's really true.
- 50:19This is so great.
- 50:21Put women on their loved one, their loving husbands to understand.
- 50:26You're welcome.
- 50:27And I think what you said, Peter, is so important when I work with people, and even my husband will attest to this.
- 50:33Having somebody who understands drug withdrawal is that's the battle.
- 50:40Dosing down is the easy part.
- 50:43Like that part is easy.
- 50:45You have withdrawal, we'll dose back up.
- 50:47You understand your symptomology, you play around with that.
- 50:50That's the easy part.
- 50:51It's figuring out who you are and having somebody that can be by your side to understand what's happening and support that, I think is probably the bigger task to this.
- 51:05Um, the science behind deprescribing is easy.
- 51:08The psychology behind it is the difficult part.
- 51:13That's the hardest part when you're trying to discover who you are and you don't know because you have been so numbed out for so many years.
- 51:21Um, you sit in front of your spouse and you're like, I don't even know who I am.
- 51:25You feel an emotion, and you're like, I don't know what that is.
- 51:29I've never experienced like true loss.
- 51:32And so now you got to go back through and understand and feel all the loss that you couldn't process before because you didn't know how.
- 51:40So to have somebody next to you who understands that is huge.
- 51:45And I'd like to add just very briefly that uh the sexual dysfunction also frequently accompanies uh taking SSRIs and other psych drugs from men and and young men.
- 52:01And again, if a young man is in his late teens and he's started on an SSRI and he starts to have erectile dysfunction, he doesn't have a clue.
- 52:12And the next thing you know, he's gonna go online to the HIMS website and talk to a teledoc and get a prescription for ED, erectile dysfunction medication.
- 52:25And then he's taking two things.
- 52:27The second thing because the first thing is injuring him without him understanding that it's the psychiatric.
- 52:34Protect ourselves legally, I'm not aware of any such information about Hems in particular.
- 52:39Oh, yeah, sorry.
- 52:40But I used that as an example of the multiple numbers of online ED resources that are there that you don't know what they're saying that people can can well they offer ED medication with teledocs.
- 52:56Pretty easily accessible.
- 52:58It's very easy accessible.
- 52:59I myself have gone to the HERS website and put in all kinds of symptomology that I could be having, and boy, it's pretty darn easy to get a prescription sent to my home.
- 53:08And I'm not criticizing that because these human beings who need to, any of us human beings who need to get that kind of help, they deserve all the help they can get.
- 53:21But uh they're they aren't fully informed, as you're saying.
- 53:26That's what they deserve.
- 53:27Yeah, they had and they they that's the part I think that people are missing.
- 53:32Um, is the risks, the benefits, the alternatives, like a conversation around what in what really truly makes you informed before you start that drug, so that you can make the best decision for someone to say to him, actually, this is very common.
- 53:48Um, 50 to 60 percent of of men that go on an SSRI uh do have PSSD.
- 53:55And here's what it is it can be emotional numbness, it can be genital numbness, it can be erectile dysfunction, it can be all these things, right?
- 54:02And it's it could be that the drug is doing this.
- 54:05I don't know.
- 54:05I'm not in here.
- 54:08Right.
- 54:08It could be, yes.
- 54:10If your love feelings are suppressed, so maybe your sexual feelings because it's all one package, guys.
- 54:17Right.
- 54:18And you're or could be your hormones aren't being altered.
- 54:21How easily it is that when we change the structure of the brain and how the neurochemistry is happening, we're gonna alter hormones.
- 54:28And so that could be leading to what's occurring, all these different possibilities.
- 54:32But that's what an informed conversation should be.
- 54:36That that's what should be given to patients.
- 54:39Um, and unfortunately, it's not.
- 54:41And so I just feel like that's kind of where I come in.
- 54:45Um, and even in my therapy practice, people get very inquisitive about the medications and the drugs.
- 54:51And I will have informed conversations with them.
- 54:54I I'll have people ask me, I'm taking a bunch of meds.
- 54:57How effective is EMDR going to be for me, Jen, if I can't process emotion.
- 55:02Um, or how effective is psychotherapy or even cognitive behavior behavioral therapy going to be for me.
- 55:08Um, and I will have a conversation about that.
- 55:12And those are all very smart questions.
- 55:14They're valid.
- 55:15It's valid.
- 55:16Absolutely valid.
- 55:18Um, we have one minute and 45 seconds left, Jen.
- 55:22Would you let people know how they can reach you?
- 55:24Sure.
- 55:24Yeah.
- 55:25Either for your both for your podcast with Dr.
- 55:27Tara Lynn and those who can reach out to you as a therapist.
- 55:33Sure.
- 55:33So if you're looking for therapy services or you're looking for um some coaching on deprescribing, you can find me on my website, which is Jen Schmidt's.com.
- 55:43Jen with two ends, genshmidz.com.
- 55:45Very simple.
- 55:46And if you're looking for the Gaslit Truth Podcast, you can find it on my website, or you can go to the gaslitruth podcast at gmail.com.
- 55:54Um, and that's got all things gaslight on there.
- 55:56So pretty easy to find me or to find the show.
- 55:59Great.
- 56:00Peter, we've got one minute.
- 56:02I think you're wonderful.
- 56:05Thank you.
- 56:07Um, Jen, I think you're doing really good work.
- 56:11Um we should we should come back again and talk about love and marriage.
- 56:18That's something that I'm thinking about doing in my next book on.
- 56:23Is uh how do you relate to people in a loving way for a whole bunch of years?
- 56:28How long have we been together a lot?
- 56:2942 years, honey.
- 56:31How did that happen?
- 56:32It just we it just rolled right along, and then it happened.
- 56:36And God bless you and God bless us.
- 56:39We're very fortunate.
- 56:40And Jen, thank you so much.
- 56:42And for having me on, yes, and God bless you too.
- 56:47We'll be in touch again soon.
- 56:49Thank you.