The Gaslit Truth

The Face of MALpractice: From Amateur Athlete to Benzo & Psych Rx Injury Survivor. The Malissa Pistillo Story

• Dr. Teralyn & Therapist Jenn • Season 1 • Episode 19

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🎙️🆕 The Face of MALpractice: From Amateur Athlete to Benzo & Psych Rx Injury Survivor. The Malissa Pistillo Story

Have you ever suffered a medical condition only to find that psychiatric interventions are being offered as the fix?đź’Ą From a structural brain injury to a synthetic brain injury, leaving her 98% disabled and fighting for her life - that’s the Malissa Pistillo story. Once an amateur boxer embodying peak physical and mental health, now a victim of polypharmacy-induced disability. 

Who is Malissa Pistillo now? A symbol of resilience and strength in the fight against psych med and Benzo injuries! đź’ŞA woman whose voice will never be hushed and a symbol of reverence that will forever remain in the minds of those who caused her harm.

Join your Whistle-Blowing shrinks at The Gaslit Truth Podcast as we humbly offer the mike to Malissa and allow her TRUTH to be told. Doctors overlooked her pleas, and ignorance overshadowed real discussions on informed consent. It's time to hear her powerful story. 🌟

Discover the gripping story of Malissa Pistillo, a passionate benzo and psych drug awareness advocate, who visits the Gaslit Truth Podcast to share her life-altering journey with psychiatric medications. As an accomplished amateur Muay Thai boxer, Malissa had no prior mental health issues until a traumatic brain injury in 2018 led her to an unexpected and perilous encounter with SSRIs and SNRIs and then Benzodiazepines prescribed by her doctors. Despite her athletic background and high serotonin levels, the lack of proper medical guidance plunged her into a struggle for recovery that she candidly recounts in this powerful episode.

We pull back the curtain on the alarming ease of obtaining psychiatric medications online, revealing the troubling absence of proper oversight and patient safety. Through personal stories and expert insights, we expose the hazards of both online and in-person mental health care systems. From initial prescriptions to the arduous process of discontinuation, we emphasize the essential need for thorough medical evaluations and guidance. Malissa’s courageous disclosure of her experiences sheds light on the emotional and physical toll of psychiatric drugs, serving as a crucial reminder of the importance of self-education and advocacy.

Malissa shares startling video evidence from her TikTok, vividly contrasting her life before and

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Dr. Teralyn:

Therapist Jenn:





Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, welcome to the Gaslit Truth Podcast. I am your host, therapist Jen, here with my co-host, dr Tara Lynn, dr T.

Speaker 2:

Right here, mrs T. I have really good hair today. My hair is amazing, she does have good hair.

Speaker 1:

Let's do this whole hair talk. I know you did, so. I hope your camera doesn't go fuzzy on us today.

Speaker 2:

Me too. Everybody should look at it at YouTube, everybody that's on.

Speaker 1:

YouTube, get your ass. If you're not on YouTube, get your ass on YouTube. And you subscribe to the Gaslit Truth podcast and you can see Terry's hair today which is very nice.

Speaker 1:

I was going for this like braid thing that I don't know what's going on with that, but this is what's happening. So we're here today. We're not talking about hair. We are talking about a special guest that we have brought onto our podcast today. And before we introduce our guest, terry and I just want to remind everybody that the fans are the heartbeat of the Gaslit Truth podcast.

Speaker 1:

We can't do it without you guys. We are a mom and pop startup. We are two chicks that are super passionate about how we are gaslit and multiple things in this world, and so we couldn't be doing this without you guys. And so if you can like and you can subscribe and you can share us with your friends, I mean, please do that. We are on all the socials. You can hit us on the Facebook and on the Instagram and on the YouTuber and all these things, right? Um, and then if, even if you wanted to, you can DM us, send us a message, or we also have an email, a good old, traditional email at the gaspodcast, at gmailcom. Please give us your feedback and give us your support. Go ahead, click those stars, tell us what you think. We don't want bad feedback, because life's too short for that kind of shit.

Speaker 2:

If you give us some bad controversial feedback.

Speaker 1:

We're going to use it.

Speaker 2:

We're going to talk about it and get curious about it.

Speaker 1:

Without further ado, I am going to pass this over to Dr T, so she can introduce our guest today.

Speaker 2:

All right. So we have a special guest and she is a consumer advocate. Her name is Melissa Pistillo and I should have asked did I get that right?

Speaker 3:

Yes, you did.

Speaker 2:

Okay, good, I even said before I'm like John. I need to ask how to pronounce her name exactly, and I didn't. I even said before I'm like John.

Speaker 2:

I need to ask how to pronounce her name exactly and I didn't. I know you've forgotten. Yes, all right, I'm going to introduce you here. Melissa Pistillo is a benzo Whoops, my mic is doing that thing again Is a benzo and psych drug awareness advocate and works in cloud computing and cybersecurity as her day job. Melissa has experience with SSRI, snri and benzodiazepine protracted injury and is still currently healing from benzoin injury, formerly known as BIND bind. Melissa is currently working on a book, yay, that talks through her experience with psych drugs and how they nearly killed her and her journey to healing herself. The book is expected to be published at the end of 2025 or early 2026, and I'll probably be one of your first purchases, just so you know. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 3:

Yes, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so when I saw you on TikTok, originally quite some time ago, I thought it was just benzo withdrawal. So until I read your intro I did not realize you've been on all the classifications of psych meds basically, and that started the whole thing. So I think today, what I would like to get out of today is just your story, your legitimate story. How did all this start for you?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thank you so much. So, yeah, my journey started back in 2018. At that point, I was a Muay Thai boxer. I was an amateur boxer. Best shape of my life probably in those photos you could maybe see best shape health. I had never experienced any mental health issues depression, panic attacks. I hardly knew what anxiety was. I mean, I was someone skydived, bungee jumped, flip quads like I was the face of not anxiety, right. So that was my history.

Speaker 3:

Before that moment in time, and in 2018, a couple months after my wedding, I had suffered a traumatic brain injury, a concussion, and four months into my concussion, I actually started doing a lot better and, under the agreement of my doctor, I had decided to start a new job. Well, at that point, I had started a new job and I think the stress of the job had actually caused some type of relapse, and I think the stress of the job had actually caused some type of relapse, a vestibular relapse. So I started to see distortion and so I didn't know what was happening. I didn't really understand setbacks. I didn't really understand the brain injury. I was so uneducated what was happening to me that it just put me into a full fight or flight response, like I went into a full sympathetic response and which I did not understand. The nervous system. At that point I stopped sleeping, so I had no insomnia for the first four months of my brain injury. So clearly it's not associated to that. But I go to my neurologist and tell her what's going on and instead of educating me on, melissa, this is what's happening. This is how the nervous system works. Education would have been efficient there. However, she decided to prescribe me an SSRI Lexapro and an SNRI Trazodone.

Speaker 3:

Again, I was an athlete as well, so my serotonin is out of the roof, right. That is not a place I have troubles with, but when you go through a brain injury and you have no history with the medical system, you don't really know what to do. We just know okay, at this point, just trust the doctor. I don't understand the brain. I'm just like I have no other choice than to trust this doctor. I'm just going to do it. So I take those two drugs together, okay, and within a couple of weeks, I start experiencing severe anxiety, and when I say severe anxiety, I mean imagine Eminem in your mind spitting 120 miles an hour Like this is how fast this is happening, and I'm I could not understand what was happening. I started having chemical uh depression, so it almost felt like someone clicked a button on me. Again, I have no history of depression, so it's like someone came clicked a button and, boom, depression was on, and that's as fast as it would go. I started having, I started developing OCD symptoms and I started developing serotonin poisoning.

Speaker 2:

I was going to say did you have serotonin syndrome? Like that was the first thing that went to my head.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and so I'm also having heart failure. So I'm, I'm, I develop POTS, I'm starting to have heart failure. Um, and I go to my doctor. Um, that same doctor that prescribed that day on the relapse. That same day she told me go find another doctor. That is what she told me. So I left that doctor's office with two psych drugs. She told me to go find a TBI specialist because she didn't know what to do with me. I'm sitting there crying because I don't know what's happening. I haven't slept in days. I don't know what's happening and she told me to go find a new doctor.

Speaker 2:

So now, I found you.

Speaker 3:

Exactly. And so I go find this new doctor, part of one of the best rehabs in New York City. I'm thinking I'm in great hands, right, and he saw me. Now I'm two weeks onto these drugs and that's when he started to see me. But I started to have symptoms third, fourth week, fifth, sixth, right. So he has seen me already at this point, not having these impacts, and I go to him and I come in and the day that I had that doctor's appointment with him was the day I started fainting in the shower.

Speaker 3:

I woke up that morning and I could literally hear the ants crawling on the floor. That's how sensitive I was. I felt like I was just being poisoned throughout my body. So when I got to his office and I told him, like hey, I fainted this morning. This is what's going on His first question to me was have you ever fainted before? And I go? Well, a decade ago, when I lived in Cyprus and I put a nose piercer, like I was taking out my nose piercing, and I passed out then. And immediately he says pre-existing condition and writes it on his notes. I kid you not?

Speaker 2:

Hasn't everyone fainted a time or two in their life?

Speaker 3:

I mean, Do you believe that? And first off, fainting and me being feeling like I'm being poisoned to death psychosis, ocd, anxiety I'm sorry, this is a cluster of symptoms that never existed in Melissa. So he continued on the conversation and I'm so weak I mean, I'm literally I'm going through serotonin poisoning. I have no idea what is happening to me. I could hardly speak so I can't fight this man. At the end of that appointment, the nurse came in and did my vitals, so she's used to doing it in the beginning. In this case she did it at the end. When they test my vitals, yeah, my heart rate was 39. I mean, 3940 is what my heart rate was. And they're like we can't let you leave Melissa. She goes, gets the doctor, he comes back into the room and he goes. What's going on? And I'm like I don't, what's this? Did I not just tell you what was going on? And he goes-.

Speaker 2:

I hope you guys knew, because that's what I'm here.

Speaker 1:

Weren't you listening?

Speaker 2:

Weren't you listening?

Speaker 1:

Pre-existing condition Exactly.

Speaker 3:

Do you know what? The first thing he says to me was did you eat breakfast? Oh, that was his comment to me Did you eat breakfast? And I looked at him and I'm like I don't eat breakfast ever. And that's not what's going on.

Speaker 3:

Then the second comment was oh my God, I think you have serotonin poisoning and so we got there, but he, he failed to realize he's the one that needs to adjust my meds, not the hospital that he go. He continued to tell me go to the hospital, melissa. If this happens again, is his words. Serotonin syndrome doesn't work like that, like if you have serotonin syndrome, you have serotonin syndrome, this is going to be the next day, the following day, and so on. Right, yes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's not acute. You don't go there for a bandaid or a stitch. It's a, it's a chronic condition.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, exactly, and also, it's not the hospital. The hospital's not going to tell me to taper off my drug. They're not going to educate me.

Speaker 3:

That's not their role. Their role is to keep you alive, and so. But when I did, I ended up in the hospital many times because I didn't know where else to go at this point, and every single doctor in the hospital was like Melissa, these drugs don't cause these symptoms, outside the fact that it's highlighted on the drug insert. Like they said, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to read the drug insert, which at that time I'm guilty of not doing. As a patient, you trust this doctor, right?

Speaker 2:

Our society has taught us to trust these doctors. So but hold on. I also want to say, when you're in your most vulnerable time, reading a leaflet like when you can barely function and you're supposed to read a scientific leaflet and understand it for yourself is quite challenging, right, if not?

Speaker 3:

impossible. You know A hundred percent right. I cannot agree with you more and I try to take as much accountability as possible. But a doctor's lack of education is a whole different topic. Like I try to take my part in it, but a doctor's lack of education is a whole two different topics.

Speaker 1:

These are two different topics they are, and you've touched on, and you have touched on what informed consent is in your videos and like that's exactly what is supposed to be happening. Right, if you are going to be able to prescribe, you need to also be able to talk about those risks and the benefits and the alternatives, right. And so to tell a patient to go read and review a leaflet? I've actually gotten into like this with people on TikTok before who have said to me where's your responsibility?

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

And just recently this just happened and I said you know, there is actually a much more heightened level of responsibility that is not on the patient but on the doctor to assess. Here's where my patient is at right now.

Speaker 2:

Actually a legal and ethical responsibility.

Speaker 1:

Actually is right, like it's, so it's such an asinine statement. So when you just said responsibility, I'm like, yes, there is a responsibility that you have, but your responsibility is to yourself and you did what you needed to do, which was to get yourself to the experts. Correct, you are asking for help.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3:

So, okay, what is Hippocratic oath? What is the Hippocratic oath that was taken? This is just for this, and they do this brief summary of like responsibility and whatever.

Speaker 2:

Do you want to see it? Do you want to see the pamphlet? Or just sign here? And I'm like what am I really signing? Actually I'm, I'm really signing what? Like just to get in to see the doctor, I have to sign my name three times on this thing and you give me a brief synopsis. I bet you that thing is this long, or pages long that I'm signing.

Speaker 1:

What did it say?

Speaker 2:

And I'm sure, you should go get it, I should go get it. I would like that now. I would like that now, I want to see it now. But I'm sure there's risks and all that stuff in what you're signing and you don't even realize it. So they can say well, she signed it, she signed it. So we did our due diligence here, so-.

Speaker 3:

Well, that's what makes medical malpractice lawsuits so difficult. Right, we are seeing them. People are winning. I am seeing people win. We have EGG scans, we have the drug inserts, the FDA black box warning, and we do have psychiatric experts that are now finally speaking up, but that are now finally speaking up. So, but that's, you know, a very small percentage.

Speaker 2:

But it's a step in the right direction, you know, and well, so I just did a video because we went on that, or I went on and Jen did too, but I followed through to the bitter, bitter end.

Speaker 1:

She did. I was not going to put my credit card information in. Terry did I did.

Speaker 2:

I went to him's her's website to see just how easy it was to get prescribed psychiatric medication and literally it was a checklist which was the PHQ-9. That was it checklist. And then I got an email that said and it asked me what med I wanted to be on. And I said there's a huge list like checkbox licks, and I was like I'm going to pick one that I know is really hard to get off of. Lexapro is one that I was, that I picked, or I was going to pick a fixer, but you know cause that's hard to anyway. So I picked Lexapro and, um, I got an email in 12 hours from the prescriber. That's it, no other interactions. It says congratulations, we've prescribed you FlexiPro. If you have any, you know, unaliving thoughts, that here's the number for you to call. Otherwise, we will check in on you in four weeks to see how it's going and this is all. Then there's like a text thing that you can do.

Speaker 2:

And then I said, well, okay, what I want to know is how do I get off of this and how do I know when I'm ready to get off of this? Like I didn't want to be on it but anyway, how do I know when I'm ready to get off of it and it said that's all in your treatment plan, click here. So I clicked there and in the treatment plan was nothing. It said do not go cold turkey, contact your prescriber. And I was like that was helpful, that was super helpful and I'm like so this is how easy. And it makes me wonder. And there's also a spot in their little app that you could go in and request an increase of dose, like I want more.

Speaker 1:

So that would have been mailed. If you would have followed through to the end of it, you would have had a dose of Lexapro showing up in your mail.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like literally, it was in progress and I said I want to cancel my order, I don't want to take this, and they said okay. Thankfully I was shocked they did say okay and they canceled the whole thing and they refunded my credit card.

Speaker 3:

But yeah, I would have got a three-month supply, just like that, just like that, yeah, that is so devastating I don't even know where to begin on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, when you're, yeah, when you're ever ready to look up, look that up, it's pretty, it's pretty, it's actually it's. It's super disheartening when you start to go through the process, even online. I was doing the same thing with Terry the same time. We're texting each other and I'm like, okay, let's get on the HIMSS and HERS websites and see if we can both get prescriptions.

Speaker 2:

This is real.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, to our house, because we didn't know that this really truly was a thing here in the States, and it was actually Dr Yosef on TikTok who introduced me to this and I called her and I was like just been sent to the house. So it's a crazy thing that we have also now removed the ability to even put eyes on people. But what's very interesting is that even when eyes are on people, there is still a ridiculous amount of malpractice that's occurring. So that's the thing that I kind of get curious about. It's like both sides to the coin, right, because in your case, even right in the case of even myself, there was definitely some malpractice in myself as well, and I'm 22 years on Lexapro trying to get off of it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, we were seen face to face, we did have appointments, multiple providers involved. In your case, there was even significant medical events that were occurring. So you had everybody from the psychs to the neurologist, and yet that it took how long right before it was recognized as first as serotonin syndrome and what was happening to you, right, and you paused your story right there. So I'm curious to know then, after those pieces fell into play then, what was the? What was next for you, melissa, like what was the next piece then.

Speaker 3:

So at that point now, you know hospitals telling me this is me and I'm like, like when you're altered by the drugs, you start to believe it. Then there's the debate, you're, there's this dichotomy between what your gut is saying and then your mind. Right, society tells us. We're so used to believing what we hear with our mind, but my gut was telling me from day one there was something wrong with these drugs. Like, fully, if I had just listened to my gut, right. But at that point I then, because my doctor for the brain injury is not listening to me, he's not suggesting to come off, he's not trying to offer me suggestions I go find a, an under. I explained to him I'm going to find a psychiatrist that understands these drugs well. And I went to a very well, a well-known institution in New York and which I paid $500 for each session. And she went on to convince me Melissa, what you're explaining are mental health conditions and my advice is that you increase the dose.

Speaker 2:

I knew that was coming. I just I was waiting for increase or let's add this Cause you know you're polypharmacy on track right now.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, I was waiting for that. Increase the dose.

Speaker 3:

The first two appointments I rejected and I kept coming in. I mean, I am full blown passing out, I'm passing out in the shower, I'm passing out on the street, my husband's taking me to the hot. I mean, this is literally what my life is and I'm trying to manage a job from home. Thankfully I was able to work from home. But, um, so the third appointment, I walked in and I just kind of surrendered. I was like, okay, maybe she's right, nothing is helping me. I was told you can't you know you need to give these drugs six weeks. I'm a little. I'm over that period by now. Give it time, give it time. Right, they're like you have to stay on, melissa, yeah, and so I listened to her and I had increased the dose of Lexapro. Um, you're familiar with Lexapro.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 3:

And so, yeah, that didn't go so well. So long story short to get me to the benzos is that didn't go well. Symptoms only increased and it's like I'm still having insomnia issues. I went on these drugs for insomnia, yet I'm still not sleeping, and so I decide to go start the CBTI cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia protocol, which is a super effective protocol, and that doctor that was doing it told me you cannot come off the drugs while you're doing this protocol. So I stuck out with serotonin poisoning.

Speaker 2:

Why?

Speaker 3:

Because coming off these drugs do affect insomnia, and their whole point is that they need to prove that the protocol works, so it's about them. They need to have the evidence that this is successful.

Speaker 2:

So if you tweak, anything about you, correct, they're not going to have the evidence that this is successful. So if you tweak anything about you, correct, they're not going to have that evidence.

Speaker 1:

That's funny. Too many variables. There's some confounding variables in there. If you decide to change something with yourself then we know that what we've added on is not working. Okay, all right.

Speaker 3:

Fine. I continued dying through this protocol. I remember staying up to like two o'clock in the morning as part of this protocol, literally hallucinating I thought my apartment was on fire at this point between the drugs insomnia following this protocol. But the protocol was super effective. Like that should be the frontline treatment for insomnia and diet Like this is what we should be looking at.

Speaker 3:

But anyway, finished the protocol and then I chose on my own to start tapering the drug I had informed. At this point I gave up on the psychiatrist. I'm like there's something wrong, you're a dud, we need to move on back to the other dud.

Speaker 2:

Dud A and dud.

Speaker 3:

B. Here we go, and so he did help me. He questioned why I wanted to come off and I'm like you're delusional, there was something wrong. So I start tapering. It took me six months in total to come off both the drugs. I started with Lexapro and then Trazodone and you have to keep in mind I was on these drugs for six months in total and now I'm tapering six months. Okay, and as I got to that last pill, things were doing much better. Did I struggle through those six months? Absolutely Like psychosis, ocd. I mean, if I touched the window I was not sleeping. I mean, if you look back at the person I was before this moment in time, these are two different people.

Speaker 2:

I just can't hold on. I just cannot believe. You're only I shouldn't use the word only, I don't know what else to use on these medications for six months and it caused this amount of damage To me. That is crazy, that is mind-blowing. Most people talk about it after years and years and things like that, but this is a six-month timeframe. During that timeframe, you were made to believe that you were crazy-er, right? Yeah, because you weren't on enough of them, right?

Speaker 3:

Correct, I was having a paradoxical reaction. Right, there are definitely a group of people that have these symptoms. Start when they come on, they kind of stick through and sometimes it gets better or not. I happened to fall under that group. That was like hardcore symptoms, and the medical system continued to convince me it was me, even though these, none of these symptoms exist. I mean, that is.

Speaker 1:

That is the and you actually used in your. You know, before people come on the show, we asked them to just give us a little bit of information. You know, and one of the words you used in there was being gaslit by the providers into thinking things that were not true and not real. I love that. You said I had to write this down because I'm like this is going on a deliverable. I just said, okay.

Speaker 1:

I said the dichotomy between the gut and the mind, where your gut is telling you something isn't right.

Speaker 1:

I know something isn't right, I'm putting all of my eggs into something Right, but we are our mind and what we are given information, wise, right, that's fed to us is very one sided and we you kind of just like you, fall into. It's like I need to believe, I need to put faith and trust into these, the people that are the experts. I, you know I need to. I need to just kind of bow down to that because you get so fucking tired and your fight. It's like like you can't fight anymore, um, and so you're in such a low space. So when you're not given informed consent, even in a low space, by the way, people can still understand risks and benefits and other options. They truly can. But in that space you kind of just fall to. Okay, I'm going to just surrender. My gut might be telling me something else, but it puts you in a really compromised position. So that dichotomy between the gut and the mind, I think that is such a powerful statement.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's such a powerful statement. When you know your truth, correct, gosh my microphone. I'm so sorry. When you know your truth but someone else is telling you that that's not the truth, right, but it is for me, it does feel like it's the truth for me. But then you're like, well, maybe it's not. You question your truth, right? Like, yeah, I am pretty sick right now, so maybe I should just, you know, follow along and follow in line. I've got a.

Speaker 1:

I've got a video. If you're okay with me showing this, melissa, if you're okay with me showing this, melissa, I've got a couple of videos and we'll see how well it works here. For those of you that are on YouTube and you're able to watch this. Some of these have some words to them and some don't. So, melissa, we can have you talk a little bit about what I'm showing. I'm going to start with one of them. We'll see how it goes. I'm going to jump into it and then we'll come back out here.

Speaker 1:

So these are off of your TikTok. You have put these out on social and what's crazy to me is it took me a while of following you, melissa, after I started reading your stuff. I was telling Terry this before we started. I didn't realize that the person in your videos was you, that the person in your videos was you, and if people have not followed Melissa on TikTok yet, her picture that she represents herself of on TikTok is two faces and it's the face of you currently, or more currently and recently, and it's your face split in half, and the face of you years ago, before all of this injury.

Speaker 2:

Well, not even that long ago. How long ago was it?

Speaker 3:

Well, a little more than five years ago, five.

Speaker 2:

I mean, that's not that long.

Speaker 1:

It's crazy. So if you haven't checked that out, you have to check that out too, and we will obviously link all the information in the show notes, but I want to. Okay, I know the first one might be a little hard to see because it was it was very large, but can you, can you talk about those two videos of you, melissa, and what you were showing the world?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3:

So in those videos, um, that was my life before psych drugs and that's my life specifically after benzodiazepines. Um. So after I got off the SSRIs, nine months later, I was put on benzos due to protraction withdrawal, which I was not educated about. I was on benzos for a total of six months. Um I my I was having interdose intolerance was put on. Um was going through interdose intolerance. My doctor suggested ketamine, and ketamine and benzos is what led me to over sedation and having to jump off the benzo 50%. And then I tapered seven months.

Speaker 3:

Um, I have been left with a severe uh brain injury, a synthetic brain injury due to neuroadaptation, due to the drugs. Um, and in those videos my intention is to show what my life looked like after. Those videos are, two years after, after I jumped off of the drug, I was 98% disabled. The only thing I had access to was my hands and my forearms. Um, I experienced over 200 symptoms simultaneously. I was bedridden, my husband had to feed me for the first six months and I still don't walk more than 15, 20 minutes a day. So these videos are to show what my life looked like, and I didn't look exactly like that after the SSRIs. I also had physical impact to my body because of them, but there is a huge difference what benzos had done to my body.

Speaker 2:

I would argue that it was probably an accumulation of both things and everything that your body went through from the beginning of this whole thing. Yeah, the brain and the brain, yeah, all of it, all of yeah, that you know the brain, I mean in the brain.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, all of it.

Speaker 2:

all of it, you know, and it's funny because I yeah, I was reading some of your comments on your tick tocks and people are some people just suck guys. Like I'm going to say some people really are not kind. That's not you, this is you know all this stuff. And I'm like, if you don't believe a story, just say I don't believe your story. You know what I mean, like, but that doesn't mean that it's not your story just because someone else you know, just because you can't wrap your mind around the damage that this causes.

Speaker 2:

And you know I get the same thing on my TikToks. Like you know, these drugs save lives. They save lives and all this stuff. And I'm like they also take lives and yeah, and it doesn't even have to be a life that's taken, you know, by death. But your life was stripped from you. You know your life as you knew it is probably never going to be the same. Life as you knew it is probably never going to be the same. You know Melissa as you knew her in good ways and bad ways, probably too, like Melissa will never be the same because she knows too much now. You know, like she knows way too much now, but she, she also has lots of struggles to continue to heal and work through, I would imagine from this small amount of time.

Speaker 2:

On these big medications, you know that were prescribed relatively in my opinion, flippantly. You know there's after I went through this whole thing with the online, you know prescription and all that stuff, I'm like you know, for a field that wants to be so damn scientific, the prescribing is anything but scientific and I feel like there needs to be a gap that's bridged there or just let's just scrap this whole thing and start from the bottom again. Let's forget about all these psych beds for a hot second. And when you said you were 98% disabled, it makes me think about the rates of disability going up in this country due to mental health problems and the majority of people who are disabled in this country due to mental health problems it's. You can't just go to disability and say I have mental health problems, you have to have meds, you have to have psychiatrists, you have to have psychology, you are-.

Speaker 1:

You've got to give away your firstborn child to Exactly you are going through it.

Speaker 2:

You can't just be like so I'm a little depressed and I think I need some help with disability. Are you on meds? No, and I've never been to therapy and I've never done these. That's not going to happen. You guys like it is people that are meds stacked, you know. It is people that have been through the system and have been failed by the system, and that's where they're here. It's people that have trusted the system.

Speaker 2:

I guess you know on levels and and I'm not saying every person within the mental health system is untrustworthy, cause I think you can find some. But you know, the more and more people that I talk to, the more weary I am, you know. So I don't know it's, it's so, it's so hard, especially when I think about the disabled factor in there and the rates of disability, even though the rates of prescribing is sky high, like so many people are on prescriptions and the rates of disability are just as high. And I'm like does nobody see the problem here? Yes, exactly, like I've said this before, I'm like you know if, if psychiatric medication worked in the way that people want it to work, like we want it to work, depression, anxiety, adhd, sleep problems would be eradicated. But instead they are through the roof, they're skyrocketed and, I think, worsened, often for the majority of people who are taking things.

Speaker 3:

Anyway, my soapbox. Look at our nursing homes.

Speaker 2:

I can guarantee most of the people in our nursing homes. It was started in the nursing home Between statins and benzodiazepines that cause pseudo dementia.

Speaker 3:

I mean, it is so devastating to see the reality. I mean, what one in three are on psych drugs, the fact that doctors miss.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my computer just went, Hopefully you can still see me, I can hear you. You're good, yep.

Speaker 3:

Great Um. Like there's a lack of understanding about how the brain works. Like they, there's a lack of understanding around neuroadaptation, that nothing in the brain works in isolation. Like when you start to look and start doing the research, as you ladies have done as well. Like you start to realize how obvious this is. It's like the writing is on the wall outside of it, even being mentioned on the drug insert. Now, like most of this protracted injury syndromes, psychosis, suicide, ideation this is listed on the drug insert which the doctors deny to your face, unless you bring that to them and show it. Like I don't understand how we got here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's nuts, and I think even about marketing, right. So when they have those flowery things like you might want to try this matter, this matter, do, do, do, do it, and it may cause death and all underneath the do do do happy visualizations and audio and all the stuff, but yet we still go. Oh yes, I think I would like to try that, and so it's just a marketing machine is what it is.

Speaker 1:

I want you, melissa, can you talk about? You just touched on it when you were talking about the brain, so you put a video out there that I thought was just fantastic and it was an instructional video. I actually sent it to Terry.

Speaker 2:

She goes this sounds just like you and I was like oh, my God, it's you, it's me, it's us.

Speaker 1:

And you had your whiteboard and you went through and you talked about the GABA receptor. You went into all of it. Okay, and so this is for Terry and I. That speaks home to us, because we've built that into our practices.

Speaker 1:

Um the neural health aspect of this um, doing assessments of it, actually like offering. I mean, terry and I do have some amino acid work with people and she was the pioneer of this for me and of course, when I saw this happening I jumped on board with it because I'm like finally fucking something that isn't us talking about Freud and putting somebody in a chair staring at the ceiling and giving a meds, like something different, right, and you put this video out. Then you had your pointer and I'm just listening and I, I, her and I, we said to each other we said this is the. It's a silver lining, right, but it's a product of such devastating injury where somebody took knowledge into their own hands and can speak more about what is happening in her fucking brain than any neuroscientist, any scan that has ever been done, any psychiatrist, any medical doctor, and it was very empowering.

Speaker 2:

Melissa. Well, just the idea now, knowing your story and knowing that you're still in this healing process, that you were able to gain that type of knowledge is phenomenal, unbelievable.

Speaker 2:

Like how could you tap into that when you were so injured? Is beyond amazing to me. To me it's not that different than a cancer patient or families of a cancer patient who now can speak cancer lingo and beyond because they're going through something. And I wish more consumers would get curious the way that you did and really dive in, because I think we don't do that in the mental health space Like well, I'm depressed or well, I've got anxiety and it stops there.

Speaker 1:

Like it stops there, melissa. You dove in to a holistic, non-traditional side of the brain, like that's the part that's really cool, because what you were showing are things that people were not educated on that.

Speaker 2:

Consumers aren't educated on that, the providers aren't educated on that, and yet this is happening, and so I just Wait all those people are not educated on that and Melissa happened to dig in, I'm going to guess to research, to any resources.

Speaker 1:

It's not hard to find.

Speaker 2:

It's like right there. You Google Exactly, it's like hand delivered to you. So this is the mind blowing piece of all of this is that it's right there, prescribers. It's right there. All this information is at your fingertips. You don't even have to go to the library, like I did, and have to put dimes in a copy machine to get it out of journals. You know, we don't have to do that anymore, guys. Oh, that's okay.

Speaker 3:

That's the crazy thing. It's like when they. It's like when, in the case of benzos, right, we know that they work on the GABA receptor, but like the GABA receptor, this is a main nerve, a principal neurotransmitter in the brain and body. Right, this is all through your gut, through your nervous system, through your brain. It's like what do you think happens when you put a drug, you take a drug that causes over sedation in the brain and then the neurons start to shut down, Like this happens throughout the body? You want to know why I have 200 symptoms Like let's look at the other receptors. When you talk, like when I talk about this cause, I end up in the. I go to the hospital often just for scans. Like I tell them you are no good to me, You're no more than good to me for the skin. That is it. I'm not here for your opinion. I'm not here to have a conversation.

Speaker 2:

Give me the scan, damn it, I got to go.

Speaker 3:

I like mop the room with their body. These people hate me and they have nothing. When you educate them, you know what they do. They shut down, their balls, drop to the floor, they walk out and their nurses come in. I will never see them for the rest of the. And then, when it's time to give me my feedback, they stand at the door and they like look down or they look at my husband they are so damn intimidated by you Like you are an empowered patient and there's the shit out of them.

Speaker 3:

I should have never have had to. I've never should have had to have to do all this research. I should have never had to have to go through this, but now I'm my greatest resource and you can't convince me otherwise.

Speaker 2:

But it's so, and you are a lot of followers and people's great resources as well, like there's so many people that can learn from you as a consumer, because I think the best part is is that you're not a healthcare professional, right, like you are a consumer who is extremely educated. I want to circle back on this idea that you said you know your GABA receptors. People think that your neurotransmitters are just in your brain.

Speaker 2:

I mean your brain is connected to your whole body, everybody. Your body loves homeostasis, your body loves balance. These neurotransmitters are everywhere. So when you put a pill in, it doesn't just go to the ones that are in your brain, like it goes. It's not like oh, not you, I'm not you arm, not you heart, I'm going to go to the brain, straight, straight to the brain. But it's like no, you're going to go all the places. It's going to impact your entire body. And even when people talk about serotonin, like well, it's, it's all in the gut, it's made in the gut. I'm like, well, sure, but it's still everywhere else, like you know, it's, it's all the places right.

Speaker 2:

So, and medication is not heat seeking missiles, and this isn't just psych med, this is all meds. Like you, I, my husband, I think I just need, I need a, I need a deliverable or merch for this. You can't get something for nothing. He always says and I'm like all the time, you can't get something for nothing. And I'm like that is particularly true when it comes to psych medications. You can't get something for nothing. But as consumers, we're also led to believe these manipulative things like well, if you want to feel mentally better, you're going to accept the side effects of no libido confusion, weight gain, akathisia. You're going to accept all of these things if you want to feel mentally better, and I'm like well, all of that shit makes me feel mentally worse. So I don't understand this weird trade-off that we try to tell people. The manipulation and that's also what you're talking about is the manipulation, the gaslighting and manipulation, manipulative language that you hear.

Speaker 1:

Well, you need more you haven't been on it quite long enough. You haven't been on it long enough. You said that earlier and I was like oh, God, oh man. We need to just write a whole book about that Manipulative language.

Speaker 3:

Can I just say doctors prescribe these drugs within a 15-minute appointment, but they don't realize that that 15-minute appointment goes on to destroy generations of family. I haven't spoken to my family in years. I'm too busy fighting for my life and just trying to survive. My father and my siblings lost a daughter and a sibling just trying to survive. My father and my siblings lost a daughter and a sibling. My husband hasn't spoken to his family because we're again. We're just focused on my healing.

Speaker 2:

You're in fight or flight here in your own little home, yeah.

Speaker 3:

When we're talking about not being able to feed yourself and experiencing 200 symptoms, you're not worrying about what your dad's doing on the weekend. Let's just say that You're trying to survive. You're trying to figure out how to make money to pay for your insurance, for your mortgage, for your life insurance in case you commit suicide. Because that's the reality that I have to face. I have to face the reality that I need to make sure I somehow figure out how to work to pay for my insurance and my life insurance policies in case, because there was such a large probability that I wasn't going to make it. But I'm now. I'm in my childbearing years. I'm losing those years. I may never have children because of a decision a doctor made in 15 minutes. They destroyed generations of a family just like that.

Speaker 1:

Gosh.

Speaker 2:

I just want to pause, I don't even have any words. After all that, that was so powerful and so sad and it just makes me wonder all the people that don't have voices out there, you know that are going through the same thing or get shut down, or shut down by other people when they share their voices. So this is so important and powerful.

Speaker 1:

Melissa, do you have, have you experienced anybody that's close to you and I'm not talking like in the online communities, right, people that you only know just virtually, but people that are close to you that it has really greatly changed the relationships that you have with them because of going through this, even like for the positive or for the negative, you know, are there family, friends that have Are there? Family friends that have.

Speaker 3:

I have lost all my friends through this journey. I have lost all of my family outside of my husband. My mother comes down from New York to Florida to help. That's the only time I'll talk to her. I don't communicate through messaging because, yes, I come off really presentable, right Like you ladies, see this presentable person. You can't fathom the physical pain sitting up. I can only sit up for two hours max a day, otherwise I'm bedridden. I have five cups of ice water to help regulate my temperature. I have an ice pack behind my back pillows. I have this thing for my arm. You don't see, you get to see this functional, melissa, but unfortunately that happened.

Speaker 3:

Well, fortunate and fortunate Again. I had to work through this journey Like and so there's a part of this cognitive function that I happen to have more than others, and that was because we would have lost everything. I have two mortgages. I would have lost everything. So me worrying about my family back in New York, and I have a Greek family, my husband's a Greek family. These are big families and we haven't spoken to anyone in over three years.

Speaker 2:

I want to say the two things can coexist. Everybody, you can be debilitated and still quote, unquote, function and think Like those two things can exist in the same moments. And I think we forget about that. And because all of this is not for us visible, like you're not wearing a cast or you know something that we can see, so I think there's a lot of judgment around that Well, you can't be that bad because you're doing this podcast, and so it was actually the first thing.

Speaker 2:

I think you had said this in emails, like hopefully I'll be okay that day. So there was half of me that was like you know, if she cancels is because she's not okay, she's not well, and I also wanted to be mindful of that having this conversation with you, because I know that you're still in your healing process and I mean to me that's important, that's just as important in self-advocacy as finding the answers. Right Is is having the, the ability to advocate for yourself when you're not well, you know. So, yeah, the two things to me can coexist in the same same moments, you know. So I want, I want people to know that.

Speaker 3:

Both can be true and I feel like they see this person. But it's like why don't you ask me why my hair isn't braids? I have such severe neuropathy that I have to distribute the weight of my hair Otherwise it is excruciating pain. Right, like they see this functional person. I do a really good job of being able to put a smile on right. This is. I've had to do that to survive for work and I'm able to do that now. But the the benzo is damaged. So much of your emotional regulation. You can see that I'm smiling throughout this conversation. I don't feel that inside. I'm still not able to feel positive emotion. But I'm able to do it on the outside to present myself as functional. Again, I have to try to manage a job I need to have bring some type of income.

Speaker 2:

Do you know what I mean.

Speaker 3:

Like it's part of survival.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they both can be true, and I think you do a really good job on your Tik TOK of showing that other side.

Speaker 1:

Yes, that's the biggest piece to this is people to actually see.

Speaker 3:

The vulnerable side.

Speaker 1:

It's very raw, it's very vulnerable you do a great job of. Some people might say she's showing these extremes, right, here's her in this gorgeous wedding outgown. Right, say she's showing these extremes. Here's her in this gorgeous wedding outgown and she's in these fancy magazines. Then here's a picture of her in a bed, unable to move, covered in. You can see the packs, you can see the blankets over you, or the one of your husband that he's trying to feed you. People will view that as like one of your husband that's he's trying to feed you, and people will view that as like this is not. This is so extreme. That extreme, though, is fucking your reality. Like I, I can't even like like um, there's again. People are assholes online and they'll talk. They view it as such like a polarizing thing, but that polarizing piece is your life, like that is. So that is true reality for you, and you show it. You show that vulnerability really in a very raw way. Melissa.

Speaker 3:

I knew that my calling was to start speaking out. I mean, what communicates to me now is the universe, not anyone else. So it's me and the universe at this point, and I knew that it was part of my calling. And it was devastating to show to like, come to the point of having to show myself and show what my photos look like before I knew no one was going to believe it. I knew that people couldn't comprehend and those photos and videos of what my journey looks like.

Speaker 3:

Now, that's at least a year after, I don't have any evidence of what that first year looked like and it is devastating. It is devastating what I had endured, what any Benzo warrior endures. But I think at one point I was like I need to show both, regardless if I'm so embarrassed. I need to show both dichotomies. I need to show both worlds of my reality, despite if someone doesn't believe it, and that is why I named my channels the face of my reality, despite if someone doesn't believe it, and that is why I named my channels, the face of malpractice, it just suited my reality yes.

Speaker 2:

I love that.

Speaker 3:

Well is there anything else you would like for people to know? I think, yes, I think there's a few things. So I think one, trust your gut and know that doctors do not have all the answers. Unfortunately, most doctors are uneducated I would probably say 95% of doctors are uneducated, realistically, and I think it's important to do your due diligence. You could go to daily med. It's a um, it's just Google. Daily med, it's a government site to search your drug insert. Take back reverence. We need to stop handing it to the man in the coat, because what happened to me is not odd 50 to 80% of people will experience benzo withdrawal.

Speaker 3:

One in six will be left with protracted injury. Bind a benzo injury. That is not a side effect, that is an effect of the drug. We need to stop mistaking the two. So it's take back reverence, do your due diligence. And there are other natural ways of healing cognitive behavior therapy, cognitive processing therapy for PTSD, cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia, somatic healing. There's so many working with educated therapists. There's just so many other places doing a ketogenic or carnivore diet. There are first places we should be addressing looking at a vitamin deficiency. How many people are deficient in vitamins and that could be the cause of their depression. There are other places to start first. That would be my recommendation I love it.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for taking the time and the emotional energy and physical energy to be here today.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, for you to be here and to be able to do that. It's amazing. It truly is. You're changing the world with your story. Melissa, here's the deal you go in for a brain injury and you come out with a brain injury story, Melissa.

Speaker 3:

Here's the deal you go in for a brain injury and you come out with a brain injury.

Speaker 1:

This is what I said to my doctor. That's what is on my sheet of paper. This whole time you're talking, I'm like the one thing you went in for you came out with along with a billion other things, but a billion times worse.

Speaker 3:

And those are the words that I said in the last appointment. Before I broke things off my dog, I ripped him a new one. This man was so red you can't imagine how I left this man. But I told him I walked into your office with a structural brain injury and I walked out with a synthetic brain injury, a billion times worse. And I want you to remember that. Go to sleep with that, dream about it. I want you to remember that I want you to dream about me. I'll taunt you.

Speaker 2:

All right. Well, that wraps up another episode of the Gaslit Truth Podcast. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your story. And what was your handle? One more time on TikTok.

Speaker 3:

The face of Mal.

Speaker 2:

The face of Mal M-A-L, m-a-l. So follow her, follow her story, follow her journey and make sure you like and follow us at the same time. Send us your Gaslit Truth stories at thegaslittruthpodcast at gmailcom. And that is a wrap.

People on this episode

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Dr. Teralyn

Co-host
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Jennifer Schmitz

Co-host