Do about it but I wasn’t going to make it easy I think that I swallowed that [ __ ] for you know years and Years Any questions or comments from the committee this time we’d like to call David cope my name is Lieutenant Commander David cop of The United States Navy I’m a 2007 graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis and a 2012 graduate of the MIT with dual master’s degrees in mechanical
Engineering and Naval architecture at 32 I’m a disabled veteran soon to be be medically retired from the Navy due to Chronic health conditions resulting from the use of the benzo diazine Adavan as prescribed over several years the indisputable reality of short-term usefulness and long-term risk demands patients receive explicit informed
Consent prior to bzo aspine prescription I cannot roll back the clock I will not regain my career as a naval officer I not affiliated with any organization the Dave that I fell in love with was um he had so much energy he was the happiest person I’d ever met
He would go sailing biking or hiking and he was kind and he was patient I mean we talked for hours on end about all kinds of things and I miss I miss that a lot I was a waitress in New York City pretty normal girl doing normal things nothing exceptional nothing not
Exceptional just normal my mind was clear I was happy the only little issue I had was I couldn’t sleep I get out at 2: 3 in the morning so I knew that my sleep issues were related to working nighttime so I went to my doctor just my regular
Doctor I would see him maybe twice a year um and I asked him for something for sleep and he would always say to me I’ll never forget you always hit me on my knee just go to sleep you’re too young to not be able to sleep just go to
Sleep I don’t write prescriptions for sleeping pills if you want that you have to get it from a psychiatrist I then said yeah sure why not he gave me a referral I took the referral and I called a bunch of psychiatrist and this one doctor in Brooklyn said yeah we’re
Seen patients come on in he gave me a prescription for lorazapam he told me to take two in the day and two at night I then said why would I need to take a sleeping pill during the day I don’t want to sleep during the day and he said that is how it
Works I said okay that’s me right before I was putting on clopin the first time I just got back from Iraq that’s all my brothers and sisters and this sister is a waitress now I used to drive her daughter to school and I just had like the worst thoughts like the school is
Going to blow up all the kids would be dead and then like that thought created adrenaline so then when the adrenaline kicked I was like oh my God am I going to be the one that does it and then it’s like yeah Angie you’re going to kill these kids and then I’m
Like I’m like sitting here looking at my niece like I can’t and the thoughts are so bad that like your like Teeth chatter like oh my God I’m capable of that are you kidding me and then you get horrified because like you’re like why am I thinking this stuff this is not
Like me I don’t want to do anything to anybody’s kids I love my niece this doesn’t make sense why am I thinking this I don’t know it’s like chemical mental torture I was never like this that’s the scariest part because I don’t know is this my normal like did
Affer do this to me did simala do this to me did Geodon Abilify which one which one did it I was a Restless child I was always thinking ahead thinking what comes next my mom I think she would call me the worrier of the house I worried about the unknown you know things that weren’t in my control and I would overthink them my anxiety led me to be 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 mport Florida and 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 it’s 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 him I it was one of those moments where you’re just like this is not happening you know it
Must be a mistake but then you know stars have aligned and I was really Happy fall semester went off you know without a hitch I had started a romantic relationship earlier that summer the early spring is when things started to fall apart uh my romantic relationship kind of uh took a turn you know became toxic you know I was in distress I was overwhelmed
We were taking upwards of four to five graduate level courses a semester and so I sought out care from the mental health clinic at MIT the campus Clinic they diagnosed me with general anxiety disorder the presented solution to my problems was a prescription for the benzo diazene Adavan which I never
Previously known about or taken um and zolof they work as advertis I mean it’s it’s very immediate effect it’s very calming and all along the way I was noticing changes and I can remember distinctly the first time I was concerned about it I was a teacher assistant for a small group of students
That was doing Shi design and I was running them through a program that I had used extensively for the last several years and I just got to a point where like I just there was just a cognitive block there was just a wall just a block like I didn’t know where to
Go next I said doc this really isn’t working you know I need something that like what else could help me um and the solution was diagnos me with ADHD put me on amphetamine and from that point on it’s about 6 to8 months beyond that everything was
Grand Dave told me probably on our third or fourth date that he was on medication for depression and um ADHD I have ADHD myself um and take medication for that I had issues with depression and S help and medication and counseling and it’s kind of Fairly normal now I met the girl
In my dreams I got engaged during that period work was great loved it you know back to my normal what I thought was my normal self somewhere in the 8mon time range I started having I started noticing emotional flatness some sexual dysfunction difficulty remembering what street we lived on that whole period is
Just a blur like I was a zombie had this big wedding planned I can remember remember talking to my mom prior to it I was Mom I I just I feel nothing I feel emotionally void of anything and that’s when I went to the psychiatrist and said
You know this is this stuff isn’t for me you know uh I need to get off it I think the drug is my problem that that’s really when [ __ ] hit the Fan it’s going to be open and closed a lot location it’s like the birth year or death year this long day will help that will 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 just being around other people when I was 11 years old I moved from Nashville to Milwaukee Wisconsin we moved a lot for my parents various jobs which is very hard in terms of keeping like lifelong friends I would often times just like
Sit in my room and listen to music and just like honestly just kind of mope mope around I started having a lot of anxiety about school and I was so anxious I got these stomach aches where I didn’t want to eat I wouldn’t eat breakfast cuz I had a stomach ache I
Wouldn’t eat much lunch cuz I had a stomach ache I noticed how the she’d gotten kind of thin I just kind of blurred it out you know do you think you might be anorexic she went and got on the scale and she said you I think I’ve
Lost 20 lbs and so I just totally freaked out and got an appointment the same day and then toward the end the therapist asks me to come into the room she said I think what would really be best to Kickstart this treatment is for her to get on anti-depressants wait a
Second we came here uh for the talk therapy right we didn’t come here to Kickstart it with medication that’s the whole point of going to a therapist I thought Rebecca was prescribed zolof um for the first medication she said it didn’t really make a difference uh she
Didn’t feel any better but she also didn’t really feel any worse at that time um so when we saw her um doctor again the doctor switched her to Prozac shortly after I had a business trip and I got a phone call from Rebecca and she said you know I’ve been I’ve been seeing
This little girl and I’m like what do you mean you’ve been seeing a little girl yeah like like you know she’s not really there but like I can see her and I named her Alice like I genuinely thought that there were people here in the room that weren’t there that people
Could also see but but they were very real for me like in my head I knew I knew that they weren’t there but they were there and I couldn’t explain that away and I said to Rebecca well does it scare you and she’s like no not really
Alice doesn’t seem to to do much you know so it was a benign hallucination at that time at that time uh and so we were alarmed but we we didn’t want to overreact either one of the the people that I had the real not real people that
I had been seeing um sort of interacted with me that was always what kind of kept me in check with reality they’re not saying anything they’re not doing anything they can’t touch you they’re not there it’s fine so I went into my parents par room just like sh yeah
Shaking frightened crying and I told I told them what it just happened she came into our bedroom uh late at night and um she was shaking she said you know the hall the hallucination touched me and asked me to come into the kitchen so I could hurt myself and they
Said you know enough of this she needs she needs help I didn’t even know people could have sleep issues cuz I was sleeping normal all my life so it’s not something I thought about so but 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 how come I went to a psychiatrist and he prescribed me this drug lorazapam I took it for six years and wait you took lorazapam for six years six and six and a half years unfortunately that’s the problem that most pharmacists see with lorasa Pam uh
Lorasa Pam again if they if the doctor takes a time out to read the the package insert it clearly St are they not reading that I don’t know I can only tell you what I read the package insert from the manufacturer clearly states that lopine is only for short-term use
Uh maybe two to 4 weeks the lpam hasn’t been studied for long-term therapy I asked him I said can I take this drug are you sure it’s not dangerous you sure I can stop when I want and he said yes yes yes and it did help me to sleep I
Slept like a rock the use of Benso dipine 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 the possible dangers of these medications none of them were ever meant for long-term use
But everybody knows somebody uh who’s been taking Benso aspine for Years independent because I went to the doctor too much I started thinking like okay when did this start how did this start what led up to like me falling apart like I was the go-to person in my unit always if they needed a job done and
They needed it done right they would ask me I was physically fit knew my job I got promoted to Sergeant after work I was like a lot of fun I like to travel go to the beach spontaneous I was just like like the happy person like the happy go-lucky
Friend like hey let’s go shopping let’s go to a bakery let’s you know 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 on convoys just driving
Around in dangerous areas of Baghdad your head was like constantly like scanning for something dangerous all the soldiers in my unit would say I have a letter for my mom it’s in my pocket of my FL jacket or I have a letter to my
Dad D it’s in my helmet so if I die please give it to my parents and then I said I’m not writing a [ __ ] letter cuz I’m not going to die in this sorry like I’m going to be a strong Sergeant I don’t take no [ __ ] that’s just the way I
Was but like the first two months I was in Baghdad like I’m really really sick I had nose beds fainting dizziness I lost like 40 lbs so they medevaced me out of Iraq then my conv booy got hit the day after I got Medevac and so I saw the kid
Come back in and he was one of my soul soers and I felt horrible and like that was the day that I saw Psychiatry with the arrow and I walked straight there cuz that’s what you do I don’t know and they put me on clownin right that’s how
This all started they’re trained while they’re on active duty very very systematically that if you come back and you have problems you need to go to the doctor a 100 years ago if they had this kind of a trauma would talk to their fellow soldiers talk to their parents
Talk to their friends talk to their pastor and instead they’re going to their doctor and getting medicated I saw the sign for Psychiatry I walked down the hall I remember it was just like a really small office and I was sitting in a chair and I told it was a major I
Remember that and I said um sir every time I hear a door slam it sounds like a gunshot my mind is racing like I need help and then he said oh just take this medicine it’ll make you feel better and I just picked up the prescription and
Started taking it and I think the clopin was starting to make me worse but they just kept telling me that’s what PTSD is you have PTSD now and then I remember he looked at me and he said we’re going to start the proceedings for medical retirement you are not able to be around
Soldiers and no weapons and I remember feeling like how was I like super soldier and now I’m disabled at 25 are you kidding there is a a post-traumatic stress and it’s a problem so we would never argue with you that it’s not a problem it is a problem it’s a big
Problem but for you it’s not a mental illness like I’m feel like I’m waking up from a nightmare like what the [ __ ] just happened to my life you lost years of your life you lost your care career there’s just so many things that that are losses in here that’s part of the
The situation that we’re in right now as a culture is that if you run to the doctor and cry about this they’re going to say oh you have major depression and you’re going to stick you on the next pill instead of saying hey you know what suffering is the only normal response
There’s a grief process yeah I’m yeah that you have to go through yes wow let me tell you a little bit about myself actually what I’ll do is for the military in here there’s my resume this is this is what my children love to point out to I have daughters and they
Love to point out to their boyfriends like don’t mess with me cuz my mother’s not going to miss I a board certified clinical psychologist so I’m going to talk to you about science I’m going to talk to you about reality I’m going to talk to you about the the research
People come home from war and they’re frequently grieving um and suffering um tremendously but none of that’s pathology it’s grief one of the things that’s happened in our culture is that normal has been confused by marketers of all kinds with with comfortable okay so if you’re in a normal State you must
Also be in a comfortable State and if you’re uncomfortable in any way there’s something wrong it’s you’re abnormal not one thing in the dsm5 this book the diagnostic and statistics manual the fifth edition the Bible of Psychiatry not one thing in there is isolated by science there’s no physical findings
There’s no pet scan there’s no MRI there’s no blood test there’s just behavior that has been described by Psychiatry and labeled a barent it’s outside of the normal what we consider normal and they set a cut off and then they voted into this book okay how did
We decide that how long you could have acute stress disorder was 3 to 28 days a committee sat around and said what do you think how many days should people be in acute stress and they said I don’t know how about let’s go with 28 days why
28 days it’s four weeks it’s four outpatient visits it’s a beautiful billing cut off it seemed right all in favor bam those are the clinical criteria the power that I had as a military psychologist to say you’re not normal I could destroy your career I can
Send you home I can I can label you with something that you can never overcome my name’s Alan Francis I’m a psychiatrist uh former chair of Psychiatry at Duke University and was the chair of the DSM for taskforce which established the definitions for the diagnosis of the various mental disorders
Normals in danger um the definitions used in Psychiatry and even more the way they’re applied have become so wide that um a far too large percentage of the population would be defined as having a mental disorder you know now we have patients come in and if there’re you
Know they’re anxious or they can’t sleep or they have some kind of physical pain it’s like oh my gosh you know let’s get rid of that we have really vilified pain I mean I’m talking emotional pain physical pain like it has now become the respon responsibility of the doctor to
Eliminate all suffering at all cost some patients require the very closest in psychiatric and medical supervision very very tough problems but most people presenting to a GP for anxiety have a short-term stressor that’s making them feel terrible most of the symptoms will go away in most people within a few
Weeks or a month we shouldn’t confuse normal sadness and normal anxiety with mental disorder and that line has been terribly blurred there is a cultural context and the context really goes back to the arrival of antibiotics in N late 1940s and then the polio vaccine they really do change life bacterial
Infections are no longer a problem and now we have this magic cure for polio so now we believe in magic bullets pretty soon we’re going to be having Magic Bullets for everything e what you find in Psychiatry if you trace its history that is 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 doctors 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 that are drugs therefore treat the symptoms of those illnesses it centers on this chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders what I was taught in med school was that depression for example is a genetic chemical imbalance in the brain affecting serotonin and that it’s
Corrected with a pill and there is this understanding that if you’re manifesting with depression that this is you it’s who you’re going to be it’s like a Destiny and that implies taking medication often for life 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 what we have shown is 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 one single
Thing chemically that went wrong and then we have a quick fix for that it’s totally naive while the cause is unknown depression may be related to an imbalance of natural chemicals between nerve cells in the brain prescription zolof Works to correct this imbalance when you know more about what’s wrong
You can help make it right in 1980 American Psychiatric association adopted a disease model and began to tell that story to the American public 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 that we used to think of as sort of normal fluctuations in in Human Experience could now be seen as illnesses therefore you could treat with drugs and they said wow is depression more than sadness it’s a tangle of multiple symptoms is basically reduced down to
Must be a chemical problem and since it’s a chemical problem there’s a pill to fix it that has of course been a boon for the pharmaceutical industry which now wants to diseas ify every single experience because they want to sell their pills to treat it 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 I never really thought that the medication was a bad thing I was like yeah this is going to make me feel better awesome okay if this other one’s
Going to make me feel better awesome oh if these four are going to 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 the disease was developing the only warning
She sort of gave but she was very dismissive about it was you might hear uh Mr Green that in some instances uh people who are on anti-depressants might have Suicidal Thoughts but this really isn’t something you should be overly concerned about she said kind of almost flippantly like oh you might want to
Lock up your knives so we went out and bought we did uh lock box and put anything you know dangerous um in there and that’s really when it kind of sunk in even more like wow this is serious so I was hospitalized that first time when
I was 13 but over the course of a year I think I was hospitalized seven seven times 78 times you know leaving in in a hospital a psychiatric hospital I mean this is just you know this was not our life this was not our daughter we knew
Our daughter we knew I mean you know a few months before she had been sort of a you know a little depressed Melancholy but this was was a far leap from that and once in the hospital there they added an antis psychotic because she was now experiencing psychotic behaviors in
Addition they had to prescribe another medication to take care of the known side effects of the antipsychotic we didn’t really know what else to do when we were in the system we wanted to trust the experts um so you know we went that route the more medications they added I
Got side effects and then they would ADD medication to cure the side effects and on and on it went and I think at one point I was on six or seven at one time I could not reach her she was in some other place and that was probably the
Scariest moment for us yeah she wouldn’t respond if we talked to her she was clearly in another world we kept thinking have we lost her you know have we lost our daughter and I mean for a while we’re like she’s just going to be in our basement for the rest of her life
My mind was just filled with horrible thoughts like about me and about how horrible I was and how much I hated myself and what is even the point of me being here anymore many many people are getting an anti-depressant an antipsychotic a benzo de aspine and a sleep medicine without
Any Rhyme or Reason and instead of the beneficial effects of these different medicines adding up to something wonderful very often they’re harmful effects add up to something terrible when I got out of the Army and went into the VA system it was like a whole another ball game it turned into like
Cocktails of antipsychotic anti-depressant benzo I would say to the clinician like um I don’t have good feelings all I just feel is numb or anxious or depressed I don’t ever feel happy or grateful or like loving and then oh we we’ll just add another medicine maybe that one’s not working so
Then we’ll switch to a different one so basically my medication history is just a succession of oh this doesn’t work let’s go all the way up to the highest dose and see what happens okay it didn’t work okay come back down okay that didn’t work so let’s switch it and try
Another one it’s like a hamster wheel that I never got off of until now what happens to someone like Angie is that when they get on these medications and they begin to to deteriorate the attribution is to their mental condition as opposed to to the medication and so
When they go in and they say um well you gave me an anti-depressant and now I’m really depressed then they say well see your depression is worsening um and so they up it or add a medication next thing you’re on they’re on uppers and downers and I mean you just see this
Pattern and every time they go in it’s their deteriorating mental condition um instead of somebody saying your drug may be your Problem Hi how are you just to see 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 so um I want to just like run through my story quickly and then just talk because I’m sure you have like
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 like get off of everything else so every time you went in and you were prescribed some of 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 so then they’re like so how are you feeling today and then you’re like um well I’m still really anxious and I didn’t sleep last week and and then
They’re like well I want you to take this little quiz you know do you feel um jumpy in public you know do you spend time with friends like it was just one of those psychological assessments right so I’m just filling out the little test and then he takes the test and then I
See him pull out the DSM and then he’s like oh yep you have generalized anxiety disorder and I’m like what is another label going to do for me now like really another label thank you now I have addict PTSD generalized anxiety panic disorder with agrobio major depression
Like for what what is any of those labels do for me nothing I’m doing everything that you tell me to do and I’m not getting better so 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
Therapist psychiatrist psychologist not once did somebody say it could be your meds not once in 13 years that is what hurts me the most and um now I’m in social work school I have all A’s my brain is coming back I can write a mean AA paper yeah you’re talking about you know
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 like
Anti-ed like no way hell no because I’m lucky that I didn’t kill myself or someone else so like how can I like say oh go ahead take those meds you know and like there is times when some people and when I say some I mean like very few so
I’m not anti-ed I’m pro-in formed consent so if you as a social worker want to talk to them about informed consent that is like well within our boundaries we get it for a surgery why aren’t we getting it for meds you shared that you’re very uncomfortable with all
The labels you’ve been given if you could change that label to something what would you I just think I was in like I was just scared like I was just a scared little girl that was 24 and like it didn’t have to be so complicated yeah you know So I was first diagnosed with ADHD when I was 15 I think I remember it being a relief to get the diagnosis oh my gosh okay that’s that’s why everything’s so hard it’s not that I’m stupid it’s not that I’m lazy it’s I was pretty severely
Depressed I mean I couldn’t go to school I don’t know I just cried all the time and yeah just kind of a mess um at that point then I was put on uh dexadrin I felt a ton 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 25% of anecdotes I hear this has really been great for me this has helped me through a very difficult time about 40% saying it may have helped some it’s hard to
Tell what exactly it was doing I can’t say it hurt me can’t say it helped me I seem kind of indifferent to what it may have done and then I get the other 30% to 35% saying this hurt me this damaged me that’s the anecdotes I’ve been
Hearing and I think that details a little bit what you find in the literature out there you know when they come to see a doctor they want that 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 so that’s that’s the other thing that’s so hard about it in the short term they really work the reason that I kind of changed the way I practiced was the realization that I was actually harming my patients it is very clear that there
Is a cohort of patients for whom getting off of these drugs is exquisitly Painful when Dave decided to go off the meds I think he probably didn’t share it with me because he knew that they they worked for me and they were successful for me um but that wasn’t the case for him she knew something was was different she knew something was wrong I was
Having a lot of a lot of difficulty communicating so it put a lot of stress on our relationship and we just didn’t talk about it much you know I thought I was the worst wife in the world and um I didn’t know what was going on and every
Day driving home I was like okay what you know what can I do differently um and about I’d say four weeks later he shared with me that um he had taken himself off the medication um and that was a huge relief to me to okay it’s not me but
Um yeah he was he just just he became short and irritable and he wasn’t positive anymore everything was uh 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 come home from work and I found him uh
On the kitchen floor U curled up in a ball um just sobbing and rocking didn’t want anybody to touch him be anywhere near him um he go you find a place to go hide in the house and just um so uncontrollably was really really hard to
See I got to a point where I wholesale refused to consume any more drugs and that kind of came to a head several months ago um and that’s why right now we’re separated the breaking point for me deciding to move out there was there was
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 and I said you know here’s what the options that I see they’re mostly uh medical based and he absolutely refused I explained my entire background my
Psychiatrist I said I look I took pride in being in the Navy I took pride in in surviving and making it through MIT and had high hopes to to do good things uh for the Navy and for the country and and 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 and the answer after 20 minutes was well I can give you a prescription for some BTA when I did move out um he called me and said that he was standing in the
Basement next to a noose and I said and what’s your safety plan um and he said to call you and I said that’s not a safety plan you need to hang up been call 911 um and he having to tell him that um it feels callous to me when you’re
Going through withdrawal psychiatric drugs the best thing is kind of get back off that ledge and just say Dave just give your give yourself more time give yourself more time continue to fight for it um you know and someday you know you’ll regain a sense of normaly in your day-to-day
Life when it comes to medication discontinuation there’s a silent epidemic of people struggling with this we have a cultural understanding that elicit substances can be addictive we understand this with nicotine and with alcohol with Heroin and cocaine but for whatever reason we don’t think of psychiatric medications as addictive
Taking that first pill um it’s not free it comes with the potential for physiologic dependence people are jumping out of their skin feeling terrific anxiety having all sorts of physiological symptoms that are difficult to Bear people cannot stop this medicine except in the slowest possible way with very gradual reductions in dose
So this is how I cut my pills so I’m doing here a a 10% taper so I take the pill I weigh it so whole pill at 2 mgram weighs 0.15 now I need 10% of that you don’t want to take off too much cuz you’re going to waste the pills
So it’s almost there actually that’s 10% yeah the first time I tapered I didn’t have my scale as yet so I was just eyeballing cuz I was determined to get off well your body will tell you if you’re handling the cuts based on symptoms so it took me a while to get
From 2 to 1.6 it was 1.64 that’s all I could go so this group has um almost 2,300 members and people just post stuff how’s everyone doing today let’s see I’m in a strange window today up doose for almost 2 days up doose is when you’re at a
Certain dose and the symptoms get really bad so you go back to the original dose where you weren’t feeling so bad everyone has a unique stuff running through you no two persons are alike I had brain zap I had Tremors I had severe night sweats I have symptom where it
Feels like things are crawling inside my body just just moving and I came across this image and I was like wow that’s exactly how that’s exactly how it is I found this image also this picture says exactly how it feels inside my head when I say I have these Burning Sensations
That are just all over my spine and my body the image is so truthful because I don’t feel anything here right here is very normal it’s just here just everything here that’s exactly how it is I found that support group just by chance I typed in loresa Pam and loresa
Pam withdrawal loresa Pam dangers all these I’m like what and that’s when I started reading I said I have to join a support group nobody understands this and if you don’t have support you will lose yourself I’ve been a part of these groups since August of
Last year and since August of last year we lost three people to suicide in my support groups three we lost a 50-some year old woman whose doctor coold turkeyed her off of clonin and she suffered and she has two little boys and she walked in front of a train because
She couldn’t deal with it anymore about a month ago we lost a 40s something year old guy he shot himself in the head blew his blew his head off so we’re losing people in this fight I think about it all the time what if my symptoms get to the point where I can’t
Make it what am I going to Do I finally got off all the drugs all the intrusive thoughts stopped the Suicidal Thoughts stopped I had to see my psychiatrist for the last time on Friday and there was like a sense of closure for me probably 2 months left and then I graduate with my bachelors’s
And then the grad program starts in the fall and I’ll be on my way uh we’re pretty close to the entrance Hi I’m s I’m Angie I’m Dr fen’s daughter cool awesome yeah I see you’re going to be in the in the house which one’s the house the one with the porch okay perfect Co that’s pretty cool I haven’t seen that name in a long time welcome welcome how are
You all right it’s good to see you oh my God it’s great to see come on in just put your on the no rain we should be good inevitably the war Fighters that I work with are drugged and they all come back impacted the trauma is pretty much across the
Board so I’m going to give you um Dr fen’s version of the suicide lecture that blackbox warning that is on your psychiatric medications the proac The Zoloft the Abilify that’s not on there to lower the drug company’s liability it’s on there because the over overwhelming scientific evidence
Indicates that they are a danger and that they cause people to commit suicide they cause people to do things that are disinhibited engage in behaviors that they would never engage in at other times can I say something about suicide yes I’ve never been suicidal in my entire life and except for medications
The first time was clopin the second time was Li and this time was Adavan there’s like a space in there okay I’m having suicidal thought thoughts okay that’s all right but I’m not going to do it but then that space disappears like something else takes over your body because of those drugs
And like you just do it so if you struggle with those thoughts like you have to talk to somebody about them you can’t just like oh I’m I’m better than this I’m strong you have no idea how that those drugs can like turn on you in
A second and you will die from it I don’t know if you guys got the same brief I did but when we went overseas you know you get the brief of don’t get captured if you get captured they’re going to cut your head off on national television and show your parents and all
This and that so they without saying it they tell you save a bullet for yourself when you cross that line and actually believe that I think it’s really hard to come back over cuz it’s I mean it’s been hard for me um so it’s trazodone for sleep lrene for mood stabilizer resp
Peridone is anticho Boost bar is an anti-anxiety how doll is an antis psychotic and I’m taking a benzo with it to keep from getting ticks um Valium the in Vega injection that I get once a month and then Clen aapam three times a day and then as
Needed is that g three times a day yeah that is an extremely eye do this is all from the same doctor yes she’s on two benzos in addition to three antis psychotics and an injection I I should be a happy that’s uh go lucky zombie that’s amazing that your
Respiratory system is still working yeah yeah what’s really scaring me is once I’m off this medicine what am I going to do because for the better part of 15 years I’ve been on medicine and no one’s told me anything different so this what I’m hearing here this week it’s like
Almost a brand new life for me the main thing for me is hearing what other veterans are saying and it’s the same thing that I’m going through what like which things are they say well like number one why do I want to kill myself I can’t figure this out I have two
Beautiful kids so why do I want to kill myself there’s no l answer were you ever suicidal before the meds no it is a long journey getting off of them and you will experience some very very unpleasant symptoms and one of them for me was this extreme levels of
Irritability and it destroyed my relationship with my wife and we you know became separated over It how did I get from I was up on this mountain climbing my way up to lock it in a psych wward banging my head against the wall right how did I get to this point I feel like I was asking for help like hi my Soldier just got hit I don’t
Know how to handle that and their answer was here’s some drugs but it’s like I just needed you to tell me thank God he’s alive or this is going to take some time to grieve this or you’re going to feel guilty for a little while because you weren’t there or something like that
It was like shut don’t worry about your feelings here’s pills if I had just taken a couple weeks off of school and recalibrated totally different I would have been totally fine my whole life would have continued on yeah I look back you know I’ve tried every AER sbal I
Mean I’ve been through all of them right the list of them and it’s it it’s just this kind of like archaic trial and error that only only an alchemist right someone who thinks they can make gold out of nothing would would attempt like all those years I I would say like I
Don’t have relationships I don’t have friends I don’t go out I don’t care about anything and they would say it was me and so now I’m like it was not me it was there [ __ ] drugs the f bomb afficianado is presented to Sergeant Angie [Applause] peacock for repetitive use of the f bomb
In keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps in the United States naal [Applause] Service give us any words of wisdom [ __ ] yeah the gorilla in the room is the pharmaceutical industry uh the drug companies spend something like 80 billion dollar a year on marketing and lobbying they spend
Much much less on research and most of the research they do is really a tool of marketing not developing new products let’s go back to the start of this disease model in the 1980s okay now the first drug that was tested in this new era was Xanax Alprazolam for panic
Disorder and here was the study they conducted they compared Xanax versus a placebo group and the primary outcome measure was the number of panic attacks on average per week and after four weeks Xanax was doing better fewer panic attacks at 8 weeks the Xanax patients were doing no better than Placebo and
Then at the end of 14 weeks the Xanax patients were doing worse than they were at the beginning and much much worse than than the placebo patients the trial told of harm done it told that people who were going to get addicted when they came off they’d have all sorts of
Withdraw symptoms and some people unable to get off okay that’s what the study showed what did they report they didn’t report the eight-week results they focused on the four-week results because that was a story that told of an effective new treatment for panic disorder and completely hid the 14 week
Results pretty soon aanus became one of the bestselling drugs in the country it is still still prescribed left and right and what did we have in the early ‘ 80s a story of science that to of harm done the longer you take a study out the more
Likely you are to see people not doing well on that drug right or developing side effects from that drug so the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t favor long-term studies for monetary reasons and for outcome reasons they they don’t want to show that their drug actually doesn’t do well there’s a as as much
Marketing in in the tests that are devised to measure the outcomes in the investigators that are hired to conduct a study all of that stuff is marketing but it’s presented and manufactured and published as science so here’s how it’s done and how it was done they funneled
All sorts of money to what are called thought leaders academic psychiatrists at prestigious American universities Harvard Stanford Johns Hopkins and those academic psychiatrists began working for the drug companies as consultants serving as their speakers advisers Etc you would start with a clinical study of the drug but who designing the study the
Pharmaceutical companies they know how to design it to make their drug look good that’s step one who then analyzes the data well their own people do it it’s done by the drug companies themselves third then who writes the papers it’s actually ghost writers hired by the drug companies to write up the
Study they now present this study to the people that they want to be the big names of the study and then those thought leaders basically sign off on the ghostwritten papers and they become quote the authors of the published paper the former editors of the medical journals like jamama and New England
Journal of Medicine and bmj British medical journal they’ve all said that like basically we became vehicles for story laundering it was a corrupted creation of an Evidence base now I’m a practicing doctor in some Town what am I going to believe well I’m going to believe you know Mr Dr bigwig
At Harvard University that this is the best science so my obligation is to use the very drug they say is so great so for example Prozac Prozac didn’t really work in the trials Prozac had all sorts of adverse effects and those of us who are old enough to remember when Prozac
Came to Market it was the drug itself was on the cover of magazines our powers are such now that we can give you whatever personality you want that’s how great our knowledge is advancing that was the story told what did science tell us did you know what they found in the
1970s very first studies done in Germany what do they see all sorts of psychotic events worsening of depression homicidal suicidal impulses so much that the German authori said This Is A Dangerous Drug we’re not going to approve it and now go read the the studies that were reported by the
Americans The psychosis is gone the homicidal problems are gone imagine you’re a mother and I know mothers who said to their kid who got depressed over breaking up with a a girl or something like that the doctor says oh Prozak doesn’t increase suicide risk and then a
Week later that kid hangs himself that’s in a real case can you think of any worse Corruption of that it has been shown that half of the deaths that occur in psychiatric drug trials they’re never published they disappear you have an expression in America torture your data
Until they confess and this happens all the time the difference between an honest data analysis and one you have manipulated can be worth billions on the World Market so what do you think they’ll Do Don’t worry be happy don’t worry be Happy uhuh Mar not you want just start on this side still nowhere near the person that was but this is how I explain it to my wife like I know I love her I know I can remember I can recall the feelings and the sensations of when we met when we dated
When we got married um but I don’t feel love I don’t feel love for her I don’t feel love for my dog I don’t feel love or connection I mean it’s almost like I don’t feel for other people’s concerns or feelings or emotions um and I think that
Multifaceted I think it’s partly the drugs I think it’s partly brought on by the severe trauma of going through the experience I don’t know but my family hasn’t necessarily understood why chosen to come back and stay in an abusive relationship why do they Define it as abusive um I me I’ve said some
Hurtful things yes and when you were in the absolute depths of it you were abusive in what way verbally abusive yes okay not physically abusive not physically no but verbally abusive I can recall telling you you just got to give me time I’m so mad at
You why were you so mad well because we had given it time and it wasn’t getting really any better and I didn’t feel like that treatment plan was necessarily working and you said some pretty horrible things and and it happened so quickly after we got married I felt like
It was like a bait and switch kind of deal so what do you think about you trying to get off the viance the summer I would like to try yeah I think it’s going to be hard honestly what I’m most scared about honey is that I haven’t heard I’m here to support you
Through this mhm regardless of what happens and that’s are you listening I am okay it doesn’t feel like it mhm list I have been through hell with you and have held you well you’ve banged your head against the wall and this is my fear coming from
The things that were said when you were in your depths and that’s that you’re going to say well maybe this isn’t the right relationship for us yeah I hear you and I’ve put so much into it yeah There really is no research on the long-term impact of stimulant use but the longer you’re on them the higher the dose the the more risks that you incur over time and the less actual benefit you get from that drug hello Hi how are you good good so
Um how’s your focus been doing not as hot as I would like it um it’s I kind of feel like I’ve reached the tolerance um how long overall has it been that you’ve been on stimulant in total 15 years at least okay your dosage is as high as
I’ve ever seen for myself but if if it’s just not great uh then normally we would Tri ater all okay and I’m actually interested in decreasing and getting off right yeah well I mean you always can uh if I were you myself I wouldn’t just abruptly stop well no I’m not interested
In abruptly stopping that’s what my husband did and that was not you could actually open the capsule and gradually day after day just take out a little bit more okay what at what rate you could kind of Judge you you could uh maybe drop a third
The amount out one of them wait for a few days take a third out of the other one you know and just kind of wean off if on the other hand you said definitely it’s better to be on the medicine but it’s still not great uh then I would
Recommend trying out aoll just cuz it’s got a little bit of higher potency yeah yeah well thank you I appreciate your oh yeah sure anything else I think that’s it all right thank you very much I appreciate it doing it for Dave he wasn’t in the picture then I probably wouldn’t be doing
This oh look there’s Dave hi honey how’d it go it went good okay and he recommended if the viance isn’t meeting what I need that I should move to Aderall oh of course yeah so I think that’s what I’m going to do right you’re joking right yes I am hi
Hi so I’m going to take the medicine out of the capsule 60 milligram capsule put 6 o of water in and dissolve it in that and then drink I guess 5 oz all done good boy well I guess it’s the start of a journey and see what happens there oh Brooklyn
Well we’re going to see um the doctor we’re going to see that doctor that put me on these drugs there’s a hidden camera right here and I got some wires underneath all this well this is it there’s the office right there what do you know about benzo listen unfortunately a lot of people
Take benzo these days they don’t want to come off come off B they can’t come off no no they can it’s just a lot of people cannot work up their determination it’s not about benza it’s about your determination that’s how people stop smoking that’s how people stop haing
Coke whatever I’ve seeing this all the time it’s never chemical it’s never chemical that controls you why do you think it’s so hard to get people off benzo because it’s their fault they don’t want to go through any little pain discomfort and suffering yeah but do you
Know the kind of pain and discomfort when you hear that crap that you cannot get off B’s total crap they pain we service I don’t think most people meet when they say I can’t get off benzos I think most people mean I didn’t know it was going to be this difficult they
Thought it was probably being easier to stop I always tell people it’s never a you didn’t tell me that you said you can stop anytime you want there will be no problem to stop can stop yes but that’s not the impression that you gave I didn’t know I was going to have
Withdrawal symptoms if you had told told me by the way this drug can give you withdrawal symptoms so do you still want this drug then I would have made my own decision I based my decision in taking this drug because of you because of the
Trust that I had in you if I was given the clear picture as to what the profile of this drug was I would have said no freaking way he’s following the script he said I went to medical school and I’m a board certified uh psychiatrist and I follow everything
That they say to diagnose people so basically he doesn’t believe that he’s doing anything wrong informed consent I think is so important here because the typical encounter might look like someone going into their Primary Care doctor’s office and Reporting symptoms of depression and they might walk out of there with a
Prescription for an anti-depressant after maybe an 8 minute conversation that’s not enough time to cover potential side effects let alone um the true story around efficacy or um alternatives to anti-depressants to me when I’m talking about this choice of how should we manage your depression um
That’s the least I can do is let someone know um this is a valid option but you deserve to know what you might be getting yourself into Hey I’m Christian rason that’s just concerning to me that seems like a lot of medication if your only question was do you have something that can help me sleep yeah ultimately you did stop taking these medications right did you have any of these withdrawal symptoms you experi anything 10,000 withdrawal
Symptoms Okay so talked to so 10,000 so 10,000 is a lot had a lot of seems like a lot to me but had a of withdraw all right let’s talk about those so no when said hey these are the risks associated with stopping this medication no I
Thought it was a safe drug when I found out that it wasn’t a safe drug I almost blew a lid right you know um there have been thousands if not tens of thousands of lawsuits against various manufacturers and these drug companies despite the lawsuits they’ve been investigated by various Attorneys
General they’ve paid fines to various regulatory bodies they continued to promote their drugs and sell as much of the drug as they possibly could before the patent expired and then it goes generic that’s a problem we cannot Sue any manufacturer of a generic drug regardless of the risks and even worse
Than that let’s say there’s a responsible CEO of a generic manufacturer and he he said I’d really like to put a warning on this medication whatever medication X because I really believe based on the information I’ve seen that it’s associated with the risk of’s let’s call it suicide in your case
He’s not even allowed to change the drug label for the drug that he manufactures really and that’s what Congress says and that’s a big problem so unfortunately what we see is this I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to make a recovery for you in fact my suspicion is
No if it’s generic now I think it is generic now right what I’m telling you is unfortunately you can’t hold them accountable so who who then we hold accountable we can’t hold anyone accountable right now everyone just people die and your lives are damaged and that’s it that’s just awful it is Awful we go into this field because we want to help people but it’s very difficult to know where to turn for unbiased evidence on these issues the pharmaceutical industry has tremendous influence over what doctors learn how they learn it so General lack of knowledge about the
Dangers of these drugs is one of the main reasons that doctors continue to prescribe even when they’re in advertently causing their patients harm I asked you know right before she went on medication she was just fine she was a little little depressed but she was not having psychotic episodes she was
Not having body ticks she was not hallucinating do you think that the medication is actually the cause of this it was as if uh I was asking the most irrelevant question in the world I never got a really response it was it was just not worthy of their attention the more
That we were talking about this is who we Becca is we know our daughter we know this medication has turned her into someone else we said you know we don’t think she should be on medication and here’s why and we read off the list of symptoms he basically said you know I
Think this this is a really bad decision a huge mistake it was a reminder of a year in which by and large whenever we went down this path of is medication harmful we got no support from the the psychiatrist that we saw none if it’s not medication then you’re
Not doing it right but we stuck to our guns this sounds very dramatic but I feel that decision saved our daughter’s life I kept thinking when she was first telling us that she was feeling depressed that I wouldn’t even have had the vocabulary to say that when I was
Her age so that just tells you a little bit about how pervasive this has become in our society I see children who are acting out or um feeling distressed they are like the canaries and the coal mine you know that are basically shouting out like there is something wrong but you
Know we we quiet them I got out of the hospital they took me off medication within a few months I was I was back to normal not normal but I was my hallucinations were completely gone and what was left was the issues to begin with the anxiety and the eating
Disorder and then we could move to focus on those because those were the problems College was something that I never thought that I would do during that year and even afterwards I was like there’s no way I can go to college I can’t handle that but here I am handling
It and it’s Paradise for someone who loves school as much as I do so I’m just kind of being a normal college student and having fun because that’s what I can actually do now [Applause] so why did you do this for me I was just as concerned as you were about coming
Off the drugs and I wanted to make sure that you were in charge right you did what you felt was best but you also had the tools laid out for you the best way is essentially an exponential taper and that’s what we plotted out here and what that leads to is this nice
Slow um decline over an extended period of time do you think it was of any value well yeah cuz when I did it myself I went down to quickly and it felt horrible and this gave me a clear plan with specific dates and numbers it was very helpful math Can Be Love
Oh I see glimmers of the old Dave much more often than um I have in several years um that’s not he’s not there all the time but um I I want to come home now whereas before it was okay you know take a couple deep breasts
And come home um but now I want to come home which is it’s a good feeling um it’s nice to feel that Again so he got killed in action a month to the day after I was medevaced out so now I’m processing this grief 13 years later which most people would say you should be over written by now but you know I I just had to call my one of my soldiers
And be like can you tell me the story again because last time I heard it I was on drugs and I didn’t feel it so now I need to sit by him and think like look what this war did to us and feel It Only one only one Get a yay w
