The Gaslit Truth
Welcome to The Gaslit Truth Podcast – the mental health wake-up call you didn’t know you needed. Dr. Teralyn and Therapist Jenn are here to rip the bandaid off and drag you into the messy, uncomfortable, and brutally misunderstood world of the mind.
Think you’ve got it all figured out? Think again. Everything you thought you knew about mental health is about to be flipped on its head. From outdated diagnoses to the shady underbelly of Big Pharma, these truth-telling therapists are here to tear down the myths, expose the industry’s dirty secrets, and unpack the uncomfortable realities most people are too afraid to touch.
In a world drowning in misinformation, The Gaslit Truth Podcast cuts through the noise with raw, unfiltered conversations that break down walls and challenge the so-called experts. This isn’t your grandma’s therapy session – it's a relentless, no-holds-barred exploration of what’s really going on in the world of mental health.
Warning: This podcast isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s for those who are ready to question everything, confront the lies head-on, and dive deep into the truth you were never meant to find. Because real healing starts with facing the ugly, uncomfortable truths nobody wants to admit.
Welcome to The Gaslit Truth Podcast – where mental health gets real, the revelations are explosive, and nothing is off-limits. Tune in, open your mind, and prepare to unlearn everything you thought you knew.
The Gaslit Truth
Waking Up From A Decade of PolyPharmacy: From Klonopin Nightmare to Artistic Awakening! The story of Renee Schuls-Jacobson Author of Psychiatrized
What happens when the medication meant to help you spirals into a nightmare? Today, we share the courageous journey of Renee Schulz-Jacobson, who faced unimaginable challenges after ceasing Klonopin, a drug she was prescribed for seven years. Her story brings to light the invisible yet devastating symptoms of psychiatric withdrawal, from neuropathy to seizures, and underscores the importance of informed consent. Renee's road to recovery led her to explore art as therapy and become a certified peer recovery advocate, educating others on the perilous side effects of psychiatric drugs.
We then turn the clock back to the 1980s, a time when trauma was misunderstood and often dismissed. Renee shares the heartbreaking story of growing up in a religious Jewish family and the life-altering impact of being raped at summer camp in 1985. This poignant discussion illuminates the medical and emotional aftermath she faced, including pregnancy and AIDS testing, and the stark lack of psychological support available at the time. Renee's narrative is a powerful reminder of how societal expectations and inadequate trauma treatment have long-lasting effects on mental health and well-being.
Finally, we delve into the broader implications of early childhood sexual trauma. Renee opens up about the anxiety, depression, and avoidance behaviors that shaped her life choices, including academic overachievement as a coping mechanism and the complexities of relationships deeply affected by unresolved trauma. Her transformative journey through holistic health practices and artistic discovery provides a beacon of hope. Through her newfound talent in painting, Renee now raises awareness about the harms of psychiatric medication and inspires others to turn life's challenges into opportunities for healing and growth. Join us on the Gaslit Truth Podcast for an episode that promises to enlighten and empower.
In this compelling episode of the Gaslit Truth Podcast, listeners are taken on a profound journey of pain, resilience, and arti
Midlife is freaking hard. Let's flip the script.
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Dr. Teralyn:
Therapist Jenn:
Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Gaslit Truth Podcast. This is another consumer story that we're going to be talking about today, and I'm super pumped about it because I love bringing in consumers, actually people who've been around the block and have returned. Is the deal Made it back? They've made it back. So make sure that you like and follow us across all the social medias Instagram, youtube and all the things and you might want to head over to YouTube for this one, because I don't know. I don't know if we're showing anything on this one. Maybe not, I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's going to be good. I mean, if you're not on YouTube yet, you may as well be on YouTube.
Speaker 1:You shouldn't go there anyway.
Speaker 2:You could see what terry and I look like like you have to put a face with the voices.
Speaker 1:It's like those radio personalities that you just don't know what they look like until you get. You see them on a billboard. You're like that's not what I expected. Anywho, here we are and we are going to welcome our guest right now yeah, we're gonna welcome miss renee. Welcome to the show, renee jacobson earlier it was the shit show.
Speaker 2:welcome to the shit show it. Welcome to the show Shuls Jacobson.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you, Earlier. It was the shit show. Welcome to the shit show.
Speaker 2:It was a shit show we should have been recording from the beginning, because we are having a lot of problems. But then we brought in discussions about the water bra, so it turned out to be just fine.
Speaker 1:Yes, just fine.
Speaker 2:You know if that doesn't perk anybody up Good morning.
Speaker 3:I anybody up? Good morning, welcome to the shit show, renee. Yeah, all right, thanks. I can't say much about the boob situation.
Speaker 1:But she likes the shit show it's good.
Speaker 2:I'm here for it, all right. Well, everybody I want to read. I'm going to read off something because, of course, I can't memorize't memorize these things, but we want to tell the world a little bit about you, renee, before we get started. So, for everybody that is joining us, our guest today, renee Schultz-Jacobson, began a slow, medically supervised taper off a Klonopin which is, as we know, a commonly prescribed anti-anxiety med, and she had taken it exactly as prescribed for seven years. And then, shortly after that last bit, renee started to experience hundreds of terrifying physical, emotional, psychological, cognitive symptoms, endured neuropathy seizures, memory problems, emotional dysregulation, digestive issues none of which were present prior to taking that medication. And so for Renee, it was a piece of never thinking that you could heal, and so, disabled, for years, she started painting as a way to distract herself from the withdrawal symptoms that she was forced to endure. And then here we are, a decade later, rebuilding a life from the bottom up, integrating a new mindset, a new diet, a new worldview and an entirely new support system, which we're going to hear a little bit about today.
Speaker 2:Today, renee is an independent artist whose artwork lives in private collections all over the world, and it is really cool that's not in the bio, but I have looked at some of it. I think it's just so beautiful. The colors just are beyond vibrant. That's my little piece in there. In addition to offering in-person and online classes, renee is a certified peer recovery advocate. She supports people on all stages of their deep prescription journey. A published author, her memoir Psychiatrized waking up after a decade of bad medicine contemplates the cost of compliance and exposes the truth about the dangers associated with these psychiatric drugs, psychotropic drugs, including misunderstood and debilitating neurological dysfunction, which does affect thousands of men and women worldwide upon the cessation of psychiatric drugs. So it has become a part of Renee's life mission to educate the public the doctors especially about the dangers associated with psychiatric drugs, and she believes patients need to be fully informed of the risks involved before agreeing to take any drugs which might impact your brain chemistry. Renee, welcome to the Gaslit Truth.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Thank you for that nice intro and I'm really happy to be here. Actually, I love what you two are doing. It's good stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, I was watching your face as Jen is doing the intro and the only thing that I thought of was did that even feel like can't explain it?
Speaker 3:I just can't explain it, and I explain it as an invisible personal Holocaust because, you are stuck in a torture chamber and there's no escape.
Speaker 3:It never stops. You can't, most people can't sleep, and the symptoms are just so intense and and it and they're invisible. So it's invisible torture chamber during during other things, you know, people can see that there's a gun on you or that you're being zapped, or if you hear you know, or if you have cancer, people can see you sitting there and they're putting stuff inside of you. This you look, you look pretty fine and it's just invisible. It's really your own personal seventh circle of hell.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, Right, Well, and that's the harder part about damage from psychiatric interventions right, Because you can't see. I mean, for some people we have these outward signs that are shown and so for those cases it's almost like okay, well, I can see something is going on. But for somebody who is going through the chemical changes in the brain and the feelings that you go through, those symptoms that just can't be outwardly seen, it's really hard when you are even with providers, to be able to explain that in a way that they can understand, because they're not seeing a physical, oftentimes a physical manifestation of these symptoms. So it's one of those things that makes it even more difficult.
Speaker 3:It's like people don't believe you almost you know Right, and so that's why I have all different ways of explaining it. And you know, try to like it's like being invisibly chemically concussed. You know, like it is a brain injury and if you had, you know, an MRI of what a concussion is, you know the lights are too light, the sound is too loud, there's all different kinds of symptoms that go along with that. You know, if you have a like, you know someone shoots you through your brain, there's impairments, but you don't have the hole that you can actually see. So I do talk about it in that way and in fact, a lot of the modalities for healing are not, you know, unlike things that you would do for somebody who's coming through like actually brain.
Speaker 3:You know brain injury Like a TBI a TBI that helps, that helps providers, but it is. It is. I mean, I've certainly been in those situations to myself. It's maddening when someone tries to tell you there's just no way that you could still be experiencing this after all this time. It's just not possible and it's like yeah, but yet it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go to YouTube, you'll see what she just did on YouTube. I will join you. I had my fuck Lexapro cup in front of me.
Speaker 2:I was holding a few podcasts ago. That cause I. When you say that, renee, I the the world cannot seem unless you go through this. It's a very subjective experience, right? But yet so many people have it. When you just made the comment about sights and sounds and things like, I went through this myself a couple of weeks ago and was literally sitting outside feeling like the breeze was too breezy. The sensation of feeling wind on me was was so overwhelming and I'm looking at people and looking around me going. I must be fucking crazy because the rest of the of the world sitting at the baseball game with me is perfectly fine and I'm sitting here going. I need to go shelter myself because the sensation of touch right now coming from breeze is too much for me and I try to explain it to people and they're kind of just like oh boy, maybe you need to stop doing your med titration.
Speaker 1:Well, that's just it. That's just what Jen just said. You mention these things to people and they'll be like maybe you need to be on this medication.
Speaker 2:Maybe you need to stop your titration, like maybe that's, that's not okay. That's actually kind of like a psychotic symptom that's happening to you when you think. The breeze feels like too much.
Speaker 3:It's too breezy.
Speaker 2:And and so and so and I, so that's at least for me. When you say that, I can resonate with that. I think there's a lot of people that are listening to this podcast as well that can resonate with these just indescribable symptoms, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I would just add my, so not to throw my brother under the bus, but my brother's a doctor and when I was going through this, he's already under the bus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess he's in front of it.
Speaker 2:Sorry.
Speaker 3:No, I'm kidding, Sorry bro, when I was going through this, I called him, you know, and I told him what was going on and he said exactly what you said, which is I got to tell you, renee, this is evidence that you need more medication. See, it's just like.
Speaker 2:Oh guys, this gives me say that today.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:So we didn't talk for a long time after that. But in the years past he, with all the new information that's come out and all this, it's been a decade, now, 11 years, it it'll be and he actually wrote me. I'm getting up now, I'm getting choked up. He wrote me a beautiful letter apologizing and saying he was sorry. He this is nothing he was trained in, he's not a psychiatrist, he's you know, he's not.
Speaker 1:That's not what he does but he was like it's just nothing he had ever heard of.
Speaker 3:So not that I want to talk about your brother on here, but is he like a general practitioner, family practitioner or something else?
Speaker 1:He's a chief of staff and oh, can he come on the podcast? No, he won't do it. No, well, if he's listening, this is an open invitation we will put a bag on his head or something you know no. I get, I understand why he can't do that, but you know it's, it's very interesting I've asked him to, by the way, to do things like that.
Speaker 2:Oh, I believe yeah. I believe, yeah, we're, we're waiting for we're waiting for those people to come, which is kind of like our, like little plug to go.
Speaker 2:Hey okay, anybody listening that may be in a position like that Come on, because it is. You just said it too, renee. You just said, um, like not being educated in it or not on, like having that knowledge of it. And then you said you know he's not a psychiatrist and I would beg to to fire back with that and say you know, and even if he was, guess what Us three women right here probably know more about how to safely deprescribe. I haven't met a psychiatrist yet that has been able to actually meet me toe to toe and have that conversation with me.
Speaker 3:Luckily, I do know some, so I'm happy to name your way. After that, get them on here, because let's go.
Speaker 2:It would be great for the world to see that there are psychiatrists out there that are safe, that are fully safe. That can see the whole picture that you can actually talk to, that are going to, that have the understanding of guess what that wind hitting you the way it is.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, I believe that's a symptom of withdrawal.
Speaker 2:Here's what's happening in your brain.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and I also want to just add in there the majority of psychiatric medication is not prescribed by psychiatry, that's true. So you know there's, that is where also big disconnect in education it is.
Speaker 3:So that's big I guess all I was saying is he, he's not someone who has ever prescribed any of these medications, just not the type of medicine he practices. So you know he did his. He didn't pick psych as a specialty, it wasn't anything that he ever. You know he did his. He didn't pick psych as a specialty, it wasn't anything that he ever. You know, he's just like yeah, but most of these prescribers don't.
Speaker 1:Most of the prescribers nowadays do not pick psych as a specialty, but yet they still prescribe lots and lots of hardcore things to people. But I, Renee, can I just back your story up a little bit? I want to hear how you ended up getting on medication in the first place if you're willing to share. Yeah, how did that start?
Speaker 3:It's an ugly one.
Speaker 1:It always is ugly.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to go like every time I try to tell this story, I try to just keep it short but as you know, they have tentacles that go back into our childhood or whatever. So I would just say that you know, as a woman in the United States growing up in the 70s and 80s, boy did we get sold? A bad bill of goods.
Speaker 1:Yes, we did.
Speaker 3:The food that we were told is good for us isn't good for us. You know, Lucky Charms, they're magically delicious.
Speaker 1:Yes, they are magically delicious.
Speaker 3:Pure poison right, and all the Swanson's dinners that you know made it easier for our mothers and the McDonald's and like just the nutrition and you know was not there.
Speaker 3:And then just this idea that like better living through pharmaceuticals, like if I could tell you the number of times that people told me how lucky we are that we live in this country where we have access to medication. So that's a story that I grew up hearing. I will also confess, I grew up in a Jewish, you know, very religious family and you know there's that stereotype of like, oh, you'll marry a Jewish doctor one day, right? Oh, it's like that's the highest, that's the highest place that you could go is that you marry, you land a Jewish doctor. So that was a lot of religious dogma that I grew up with. That like I will be the wind beneath his wings I, you know that like Sounds so beautiful oh.
Speaker 2:Bette, Bette Midler, you sound great Bette, so you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was. I was supposed to repopulate, like I. It's very, very important to be chaste and a virgin, you know all those kinds of things, and this is not that long ago, you know.
Speaker 2:No, this is not the twenties, but the eighties.
Speaker 1:She's talking about the eighties.
Speaker 3:I was born in 67, but this was the spring, yes. So, um, what happened is I was went to a summer camp and I was raped in 1985, that summer, by somebody who was five years older than I was. Um, I was 17 and so I was not yet in college and he was graduated from college with very different expectations about what was happening with us. And I came home from so I, after that experience, I told my friends what had happened. They literally couldn't hear me. It was like they. Their responses were oh my friends, what had happened? They literally couldn't hear me. It was like they, they. Their responses were oh my God, you guys had sex. That's so cute. And I kept saying it wasn't. There was no word for that. Then there was no word because I knew him.
Speaker 3:I had thought rape was like with a gun or a knife, with a stranger in the alley. So everyone just kept telling me it was so cute that like I had done this and it was great. And I was like it wasn't great. You guys aren't hearing me, I didn't want to and it just so. Anyway, it wasn't like he stopped to use a condom or anything. So I went home. I was supposed to go to college. About two weeks later it was I went home. I did not get a period. It wasn't like he took care of that or anything. So, um, you know, there was not, that was not happening, it was not that dynamic.
Speaker 3:So, um, I had to tell my mother and I told my mother and her response was like it's so weird, like when you're asking if I can even believe this is my life, when I read about this I have so much indignation. But when it was my own mother, she shamed me. She was like why were you out? What were you wearing? You must have done something to give him the idea that you were interested in that. And then, of course, she said we have to tell your father and my dad and I are besties, like he is my best friend to this day. He is my bestie and I was.
Speaker 3:I knew he would think that I was, you know, a bad. I was worried he was going to think I was a bad girl, that I wasn't chased, that I was not a virgin anymore, that I was ruined the way my mother said I was ruined. And we went in the kitchen and I'll never forget it. He was doing a crossword puzzle and eating a tangerine, which is what he does every single night. And my mother said go ahead and tell him what happened. And I was crying and I told him and this is really like his response to me was so interesting because we didn't talk about it until decades later but what? The reason why he did this is totally the way, differently than the way I received it, but in the moment he heard me he put down his pen and he put his head down on the paper, like on the newspaper, so like he just put his head down. And how would you guys feel Like if your dad did that? What would? I'm just curious.
Speaker 1:He was disappointed in me.
Speaker 3:I internalized that as total disappointment. He couldn't even look at me.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Couldn't even look at me. That is not what he was feeling. By the way, he told me decade later, after I, you know, we discussed this as adults, many, you know, many years later, he, he, felt like he had failed me as a parent. Sure.
Speaker 3:He didn't protect me. He's the one that sent me to that summer camp and he felt horrible. So I did not register that at all anyway, and so I I told him I was sent to. So here's where we go.
Speaker 3:I was sent to the doctor the next day for pregnancy testing, for AIDS testing, because this was 1985, right in the middle. And so for me, what got sort of sticky for me is that you do something, something bad happens, you go to the doctor and then the doctor will check you and you may need some kind of treatment or medication and you need to trust your. You know you trust your doctor there. So I went to the doctor and it was like I was not pregnant. I had to be tested repeatedly for AIDS. For the first I went every six months to do these checks or whatever. I think it was even three months for the first six months. So it was like three months and then a year after everything was clear. And then I had this like sigh of relief of like, oh my God, like I'm okay. I felt like I was okay physically, never went and got therapy, never.
Speaker 1:I want to bring this up though, because I'm an eighties girl too, graduated in 87. And well, EMDR wasn't even a thing, I think, until 86, maybe later, but it wasn't a research thing. That's just when she, like, discovered it. But trauma treatment wasn't really a thing. I mean, we're talking our parents anyways. Mine Vietnam vet right, Like so era of war.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And my grandparents too. World War II vet. You know, like Korean War, world War II like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even those words weren't used, like this vernacular didn't exist. It did not, there was not.
Speaker 1:No there was not. And, by the way, I want to say, like the, the, your lived experience of um, your first sexual encounter like that is so familiar, so familiar to especially well, I mean, I'm sure, women of today too, but especially back in that time, like you know, it was very similar to my own and I didn't recognize that as a traumatic thing then either. You know, it was like your rite of passage and that's just how it goes down and you know you're just supposed to be like that. And it got me thinking about. Do you remember that movie by Jodie Foster, the Accused? That was the first movie about rape, about someone being raped. That I can recall bringing it into the mainstream as far as, like, it's not about what you wear, it's not about all those things, because as women, that's what we were told. Well, you must have, you deserved it in some way. And then, oh, you're medically cleared, Move on. You know it's now over, I don't want to hear about it anymore, you shouldn't talk about it anymore. And yeah, that's it, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so I know now because obviously I have as a sidebar this is an interesting one. So I've had almost 600 clients. Do you want to guess the number of people who report having sexual trauma?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm going to say it's like 90%.
Speaker 3:Everyone but three oh.
Speaker 1:I was close.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I should play the lottery today, everyone but three, and even those three they don't call it trauma, so you don't have to go by that, but they don't. But one of them, one of those people has, like, sexual identity issues, you know, like a. So there was some, there was some stuff going on there that it was making some imprinting. Anyway, that is fascinating to me, that that that early childhood experience, even just one time, it's a predictor of who may end up on these, you know, having a later situation where they end up prescribed. It's anti-anxiety, anti-depressants, it's like a predictor. So we have to get in there to help people lose the stigma, the shame around sexual trauma. And again, I will say this was one event for me. I think about women who have repeated events or grow up in situations, so it's like a single event can change your whole life. So anyway, the idea was you're fine, right, you're going to, you can go right to college, this we didn't have to stop the show and honestly, I was like ready, I went to college and I I did all the things in the order, I was a good student and I had made friends and I you know all that, I all that.
Speaker 3:But I and the backstory of it, I had a lot of fear. I didn't go to fraternity parties I didn't train ever because there was alcohol involved in that. Previous thing Not me, not by me, but he smelled like alcohol. So the smell of alcohol in a fraternity freaked me out. I didn't want to be around people that were drinking and so I became basically like a bookworm and a very you know and so that's kind of that early workaholism stuff. That, like my coping skill was study, be a good girl, get good grades, and that was my primary coping skill was that like, oh, I'm not doing that, I'm gonna go to the library and read. So I did that for a long time.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, that helped me to graduate with high honors and you know cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and and that brought me to the next place in my life where I went to graduate school and continued that same, that same trajectory of like, same trajectory of work hard, get good grades to get to the next place. Anyway, I ended up meeting a Jewish doctor.
Speaker 1:All your dreams came true.
Speaker 2:All my dreams were manifested, fixed.
Speaker 1:And then it's fixed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're fixed again, even more than you could have been fixed before.
Speaker 3:And, and he's a good person, and on paper it looked like we should have been the dream couple and, honestly, for a while we kind of were, you know, like we were both in school and so he was working hard and I was working hard and we traveled together. We knew a lot of the same people, you know. It was very interconnected and meshed Um and uh he. However, we didn't have I'm trying to tactfully say this we didn't have a great um, we didn't have chemistry. And now, when I look back at that, I understand it's because when this stuff happened with my first you know that early situation, none of that was addressed and so I picked someone that was never going to threaten me in that way. But that's all unconscious, completely unconscious way, but that's all unconscious, completely unconscious. So, um, so, yeah. So that was okay, you know, and I loved him and we still love each other. But we had very different drives. I'm very sensual sexual person, so, within the confines of marriage, I wanted to have stuff and he was like I'm busy, I'm a surgeon, I can't, I don't want to that kind of thing. So you can imagine then the dance at nighttime when we would go to bed. It would be like I was making a request, he was rejecting me, and it was night after night and I started to feel really bad about myself. My, you know, my self-esteem took a big hit. We're talking years and years. Anyway, that went on. Finally we got pregnant pretty quickly.
Speaker 3:After you know, when we decided to do that and my son, his delivery was a disaster. I mean, the whole pregnancy was just a wreck. I was one of those people who vomited up until the fifth month. Yeah, it was really bad, and then I had an abruption. So I wound up having to be on bed rest and then his delivery was very traumatic, was very traumatic. I lost I think they calculated like 80% of my blood I lost and I was rushed into the ER for an emergency hysterectomy and so my expectations around what birth was going to be like was like which I should add I did not have to have the hysterectomy because I had an amazing doctor, but that's what they were rushing me to do, cause I was bleeding out.
Speaker 1:No, but this is more like a more sexual trauma, like all that area right. Exactly None of this stuff had ever been addressed and I again.
Speaker 3:I didn't learn that years later, but anyway, um, same kind of thing repeating the pattern here. So it was like I woke up from this and everyone was like, oh my God, you're awake. And my first words were am I dead? And someone said, no, you're okay, and the baby wasn't with me, he had had to go to the NICU. And so it became this weird thing of like I wanted to tell somebody like how unwell I was. I did not feel good. I had had a near death experience. There was a lot that happened which I won't get into. It's all in my exciting book here. But I had a really crazy experience, very clear, like a death experience where I won't even get into everything. But I came out of that and I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to tell people I had seen the other side and I knew what was there and people were like honey, let that go, the baby's here you have, you know you're fine.
Speaker 1:You want to keep this baby alive now.
Speaker 3:Right, like you know, make sure you can nurse and let's make sure you know, and all that. And I was like, but I, I saw the other side, I saw the edge, like I know it's. I had some downloads, man, I had some downloads man and they were like shh, it's on the baby.
Speaker 1:It's the same thing. You had this big experience. You're like quiet Just quiet. Now you've got to do the thing that you're supposed to do now.
Speaker 3:Look at the cute outfit that you got Look at the blanket, and so I really learned it was again that silence Be quiet. Don't talk too much so I did. I never talked about it ever again. I was a good girl. I was trying to be the best mother I could be. I loved being a mother. I loved my. I love my son. He's going to be 25 soon, he's 26. He's amazing and but there's but it. But it began the sidelining of like what you feel does not matter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dismiss yourself over and over.
Speaker 3:Yep, so this whole idea of self-care when people started to like later, when people started to talk to me about that, I had no concept of self-care, Did not understand it. When even people talked about loving yourself, I was like what do you mean?
Speaker 1:I talk about this a lot. I'm like as a full-fledged Gen Xer myself. Along with you, we were sold this dream that we should and can do everything. Yeah, and we have trickled that down to our kids. And Jen, you're not Gen X, you're like on the.
Speaker 2:I'm right on the cusp, but I will tell you that that trickle, yeah, I mean that's, I'm, I'm in the same position.
Speaker 1:Um, that, I was taught to be that way to do those things, that's and, by the way, you get to go to college and you get to juggle all this stuff, like that was exciting. Like that that was an exciting time.
Speaker 2:I mean you make shit happen and that's all there is to it and you leave everything. I mean my God, my LLC is called Make Things Happen. I mean that's my LLC, mine's Rans to the Rescue.
Speaker 1:Mine's Inner Strength.
Speaker 2:Lame, okay, but for me, like that's the same. I was taught that that is what was my parents.
Speaker 3:I was.
Speaker 2:that was what was Holy crap. Three overachievers.
Speaker 1:Oh, one, two, three yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you may as well just just put the numbers right on there, because I may not be in that that same age group, but I, I am an old soul, 100%. I was born at the wrong time time. I was given a different set of values, shit, I do not my. I go back to the 70s for music.
Speaker 3:Like, give me the 70s all day long and I'll be happier than if you give me this 90s stuff, but anyways, but that is all very real so we just worked out then was that now I'm not only just holding this like complex sexual trauma from early in life, but now I've had this horrible delivery, same region and and I'm like I, no one wants to hear that either and so I just held it all together and, um, I was also went back to you know, it was like it was kind of boring, like I'm a, I'm a mover, we're movers and shakers Right.
Speaker 3:And so I was like, oh my God, the you know the dishes and the laundry and the diapers like I got to do something. And I asked my husband if he would be willing to like take a day off so that I could have something once a week. And he said no. He said like.
Speaker 2:no, I'm the primary breadwinner. How's that supposed to work?
Speaker 3:No, and you know there were days that he was taking half days off to go golfing, but he wasn't coming to, he wasn't to help, exactly, it wasn't to parent. So I did that for a long, long time and then round about, well, I mean it wasn't that long before I ended up getting Medicaid. So five years I did that. And then the insomnia. I just I, from the time my son was born, I never really got the sleep back. You know they're crying, you're nursing, blah, blah, blah, but then he was getting in and out of bed and and and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't stop.
Speaker 3:Oh right, and then he was and all that and and he was a good baby, like he was a good, he was an easy baby. So it wasn't like um, he was making all those demands, but I was awake and alert and all this anyway. And around the time he turned five I was just not sleeping and my ex my now ex-husband but my, my husband said you know, you got to go and talk, you got to see a psychiatrist because you're not sleeping. Maybe somebody can give you something.
Speaker 2:Or he didn't even say a psychiatrist. He said you gotta go see the doctor.
Speaker 3:So I went to my general practitioner. He's retired now, but he said I um, I will refer you to someone. So he referred me to a psychiatrist who within 15 minutes diagnosed me with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder.
Speaker 2:Oh what? That's the icing on the cake. Oh my.
Speaker 1:God Are you serious.
Speaker 2:Okay, that blows my mind Like more so. Okay, that is like a. That is a characterological feature of somebody that requires understanding their life, everything about everything about them to put a personality disorder on somebody 15 minutes. That is.
Speaker 3:I filled out a questionnaire.
Speaker 1:Can I just ask you? Well, number one did you believe it? Did you like, because you got these labels, did you then?
Speaker 3:believe the labels. So I was very, I wasn't sleeping, so I was very emotional, you know, and crying. I was anxious, for sure, I was anxious because I wasn't sleeping.
Speaker 1:I was going to say because you're not sleeping, For sure, I was anxious because I wasn't sleeping.
Speaker 3:I was going to say because you're not sleeping Right? And still, by the way, I had never changed a diaper before my child's own diaper. Like, as a babysitter I was like I like the older kids. Yeah, as a teacher in my previous incarnation, I had the high schoolers. Like I was not. You know, please don't give me those. So I didn't have experience. So I was an ang, I was an anxious, worried about everything. I was on bedrest for the last part of my pregnancy because of the you know stuff, and so I never even got like the classes that people get. So I had anxiety and then bipolar I was up and down, you know, and so I was like, oh my God, I don't know what this other one is. So all I can say to you is, when you hit on that, dr T, I remember going in the car and bawling my eyes out, holding these scripts.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's your story, Terry tiri vault.
Speaker 3:Really, yeah, how many scripts she had. I had lamictal, um, clonopin, prozac. They gave me three right out the gate and um. Actually that's not true. It was prozac and lamictal right out the gate, and then he gave me clonopin later when I failed. When I failed.
Speaker 1:You. Yes, I failed. I had a manic experience. Wait, you had a manic experience on that stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm a pro.
Speaker 1:That just means you mean more.
Speaker 3:That's all that means Of course I was twitching and I was like is my eye twitching? Do you guys see it?
Speaker 2:You didn't ride it out long enough.
Speaker 3:You're supposed to just let it go longer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it didn't take long enough ride it out long enough.
Speaker 3:You're supposed to just let it go longer. Yeah, it didn't take long enough. Maybe we need to try another. They shifted me to Zoloft and then I tried a third one, so it was. It was Prozac, zoloft, celexa, and then I went back to this doctor and he said you failed he literally used these words you failed SSRIs, so now we're going to give you a benzodiazepine, and I was like I wish we were, we had enough in us at these moments to be like no, your treatment failed me Like.
Speaker 3:I believed that I was ruined. I know I was ruined Back when I was 17, I was ruined. So this is clearly what it means to be ruined. This is what it is. This is now the now, there's words for it. Now there's a code for it. So when you asked if I believed it, I I had that experience of. That's the beginning of the gaslighting, right when it was like, oh, there is something wrong with me, but here's the pills to fix it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:This is going to change my life.
Speaker 2:So for you then, the, the Klonopin, is it for that? That one is one that you talk about a little bit more than the others, so others were like they tried they were on and off two weeks.
Speaker 3:But we now know that stuff it all has a cumulative effect to your brain, is like, okay, this is what she wants. And then you take it off and then you try something else and your brain's like, okay, this is what she wants. And so you get that kindling effect in your brain, that that you know like it has a cumulative effect. But the Klonopin is the one that I took for seven years and for most of that period that's the only thing you know. If I had a pill box, that's the only thing that was in there. So I really do attribute the damage to the benzodiazepines.
Speaker 2:So can you talk then a little bit about that? So I know in your bio, when I was reading it, there's, you know, some general information on symptomology. Can you share with us what it was that you experienced?
Speaker 3:So my journey is a little weird or maybe it's not weird because I've talked to so many people. It's not unusual. But I was fine on the benzos for a long time. In fact, I used to refer to them as a miracle drug, because within 15 minutes of popping that sucker I was out, and when you have insomnia it was like so relaxing to just know I'm going to take that and I'm going to get the effect that I want. But um, but now I think of that as like. So it gave me a bottle of vodka and said drink till you blackout. Yep.
Speaker 1:Pretty much, that's what it is.
Speaker 3:A different pill in pill form. So you know, and I would never have done that, I would have walked out of that office. Anyway, long story longer, I guess is that round about the seventh year I went to go see my doctor and there was a note on the door and it said you know, dr So-and-so has decided, you know, to take an early retirement. You need to go back to your primary care and there's a decided, you know, to take an early retirement.
Speaker 2:you need to go back to your primary care, and I know it on the door. What is the world? Okay, everybody. This is not 40, 50, 60 years ago, by the way, so the only thing I knew about this dog was that you an email?
Speaker 3:No, no email. They were so bad in the mail he was old and there was no, no, no, it was so many things he's lost, so anyway, I went to my primary care and I learned from him, my primary guy. He said oh renee, he lost his license due to improper prescription practice. And I said really, what was he prescribing? Klonopin? That was like my denial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really what was he giving to other people Because this was good for me? Damn lucky charms.
Speaker 3:God Did not register. So my doctor was like I hate to tell you this, but you're going to need an addiction specialist. And I was like what my doctor was like I hate to tell you this, but you're going to need an addiction specialist. And I was like what addiction specialist?
Speaker 2:I have never taken more than was prescribed, and he's like your body is dependent. And what a great doctor, though. Props, props to that that that doctor right there who used the word addiction too.
Speaker 3:He's retired now, but I will give him his name.
Speaker 1:Come on the podcast.
Speaker 3:His name is Dr John Andalina and he is in the book.
Speaker 2:He's in the book Nameless self-promotion. Right here, come on the podcast.
Speaker 3:He's retired and he was the one he apologized to me for sending me in the first place. He didn't know, but you know that's what happens. So anyway, I went to the addiction specialist. Her name is Dr Patricia Halligan. She's amazing and she there.
Speaker 3:But for the grace of God, she lived in Rochester and she knew how to taper. She was following the Ashton manual and knew that you can't just pull it off of it. She, so slow medically, like you referred to with my bio, slow, medically supervised, taper 10 months. The thing that we didn't get right was we didn't switch to a water titration or a liquid titration. At the end she crossed me over to Valium when I got down low enough on the. So Klonopin is about 15 to 20, you know it depends on your what I say between 15 and 20% times stronger. So Valium is, or Klonopin is, about 15 to 20 times stronger than Valium. So when I got down to that tiny tiny crumb of Klonopin now we know that you could either continue to do like a you know a continue on that medication or but we crossed over to Valium so that I could continue to taper. And then when I got down to as low as.
Speaker 3:I could go on the Valium, which was like 0.125, I thought we were done. She was out of town, I couldn't get a message to her and so I stopped it and I had a cascade of symptoms. It was real scary.
Speaker 1:It's crazy, it's always that last little bit and people think that it's the smooth sailing up front, like up top the big ones, and then that last little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and Mark Horowitz talks about that and I don't totally. It's hard for me to explain it, but it's that stuff on your receptors like the little yeah. So anyway, so yeah, so that last bit, it just exploded and so I couldn't. Initially I couldn't walk, I couldn't talk, I couldn't read, I couldn't write. I was rocking, like you see, autistic, like I was rocking, I think it was like trying to self-soothe.
Speaker 2:Like horrible akathisia. Oh, terrible akathisia.
Speaker 3:Tardive dyskinesia, which is the uncontrollable body movements of pacing. And then I had paranoia, like I. I looked around the house and I saw like there were outlets that had multiple plugs in them and I was like this house is going to burn down, we're going to, I'm going to die. The windows don't open. It was really, really strange. So you know, my story goes on and on with my book and people can obviously read it, but that was how it all fell apart.
Speaker 3:And then basically I was on my own. I did not have a support system for I did Google, like clonazepam and like like that withdrawal effects or something like that and I found a woman, um, and I I won't say her name because I don't think she is wanting to do this anymore, but she really helped me. She had been through this and, um, and she was the first person to help me. And then I mean I don't want to wreck my whole book, but like I was really depressed and going to kill myself because I I couldn't see a way out of this and like doctors were telling me that they've never seen this before, um, everyone was telling me that I need to take more medication, that this was evidence that I was completely wrecked and so I was contemplating on aliving myself.
Speaker 3:And I was sitting outside of a building and a woman came up to me and saw me crying and she said are you okay? And I said no, I am not. And I told her what was going on and she said do you want to come home with me? And you guys, I didn't even ask her name. I got up, I followed her like a puppy to her car and she brought me home with her, and it turns out she had been through this experience.
Speaker 3:And her name is Renee McLean. She runs a wellness center. It's called. Oh my God, I know it's like right.
Speaker 2:Talk about the universe giving you exactly what you needed, right.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and so she brought me home with her and yeah, we have the same name and all that, and anyway, she taught me about juicing supplement, that that these drugs deplete your magnesium and other things you know. So she taught me about how, like good diet, she taught me, oh my God. She taught you the missing pieces of all she taught me the missing pieces and she gave me community, her family.
Speaker 2:I lived with her family.
Speaker 3:Can you imagine? She brought me in and her children were there and they're like, oh, you're not the first stray mom's brought home. And her children were there and they're like, oh, you're not the first stray mom's brought home. It's awesome, amazing. And so she's. She actually does breath work. So somatic respiratory integration. She I was like living with my therapist for a year and by then I was so.
Speaker 3:Then when I went home and I sort of looked at my, my husband and his, the family system and all that, I was like I am not getting what I need here at all. And then I went to rehab, like I went to a rehab, and then I came home and I was like I got to get out of here. This is a toxic environment for me, because everyone was like, oh, you're doing a little bit better, back to cooking and cleaning and like taking care of it, and I was like I needed therapy, I needed a lot of work. And so I went and did my own healing journey, which involves, like you were saying, you know, emdr and CBT and DBT and and body work and um, you know, john Barnes, massage and like all different kinds and and you know, eft, tapping and like all you know, john Barnes, massage, and like all different kinds, and you know, eft tapping and, like all you know, moving.
Speaker 1:The self-care that you never learned about.
Speaker 3:And just allowing myself to feel and grieve for this younger girl who, like, did not get what she needed and so all that.
Speaker 3:And so now, you know, so, while I was going through that, I started having these visions like and hearing words, and I started painting, and so painting became, instead of that, like rush, rush, hurry up, like, get things done. I started painting and it's 10 years later and my artwork is hanging in like people's private collections all over the world, and that, to me, is a miracle. Like when you're talking about the universe and divine intervention, I mean, I was being asked to do something else, and so one of the things I do want to just sort of throw in here, because I know we're getting like to the time, but people who are going through this, you feel so helpless and hopeless. Helpless and hopeless and I know it's like a little bit of a you know maybe it's cliche now, but that idea that the universe is things aren't happening to you, they're happening for you, it's both Things are happening to you, but I never could have imagined that my former English teacher self would not be able to read or write.
Speaker 3:Like that was my, that was my modus operandi. And then, but during this healing, something else started to emerge, which is that, like I, actually I can paint and that people liked my paintings, and so now I really use my artwork as a, as a as a tool to really talk about psychiatric medication harm, because I never did this before my injury and it was.
Speaker 2:It was it wasn't like I came out of the.
Speaker 3:You know it wasn't like everything was like a beautiful picture at first, but it was like everything else. It was a re-education and a re-learning about myself. And you spend 10,000, right, that's that Malcolm Gladwell thing. You spend 10,000 hours doing something and you get good at it. Well, when you're in withdrawal and you're as sick as I was which not everybody is, but I was laid out for um from 20. So 2013 was gone, 2014 was gone. My first painting I put out uh was was, uh, april of 2014. And then slowly, slowly, I just kept painting and painting and painting. My first painting I put out was April of 2014. And then, slowly, slowly, I just kept painting and painting and painting, launched a website in 2017. So there was a lot of painting without anything happening for a long time. It was just my coping skill. It was a coping skill, not a business plan.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:But now it's like, oh my gosh, something was happening. I was getting a different kind of an education and that's spiritual thing, that's spiritual awakening, that like God, universe, Gaia, whatever you want to call it, all of this was like a cosmic correction. I call it a little cosmic ass kicking. I got off my path somewhere. I got off my path, got some bad advice, didn't get to know myself, just was sort of doing what people told me within the lines. And there's this whole other part of me that I just never had a chance to explore until I had to. And I really like who I am now and I love what I do and I love helping other people to figure this stuff out and I love helping other people to figure this stuff out.
Speaker 1:I just want to say, if you're watching this on YouTube or even listening to Renee talk right now, it's tough because we see this version of you, and so there's so many people out there that are like in the depths of darkness right now with this stuff, and so even the believability of the story now, from who you are to then is just interesting to me. So I want to caution people that when you see her now, this is because of healing. This is because of what she's done for herself and been an active participant in it.
Speaker 3:Because can I piggyback on that for a second? There is a perception out there and you guys correct me if I'm wrong that you just have to wait, that you just sit on the couch and it's going to go away.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's the perception for a lot of med tapering period that it's just this taper off and then we're done and I just sit. I believe that med tapering of any type of medication is an active um. You have to be an active participant in this and you have to change some things, um, whether it's you know, you know, working on your trauma or changing the food that you put in your mouth or your job or your marriage or lifestyle Lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Because most of the time that's the stuff that got you into this in the first place. Like you know, it would be interesting to figure out what was really happening, you know, with your sleep, to know like if somebody just would have done some sleep work with you probably would have changed the whole trajectory for you earlier. Not on meds, you know the way that they did. I feel like you're bursting to say something. Go ahead.
Speaker 3:It was just so connected because I, my parents, are so in love with each other. I grew up in a family where there's a lot of physical touch and there was just this absence of connection. So even if I had done the sleep work for me in my head, bed is not just for sleeping, it's for cuddling. I mean, if we called my parents right now at noon, they're in bed, they are doing stuff.
Speaker 3:They're doing stuff y'all. They're watching. They hang out the only thing they can do when they're asleep. But they're in bed. I grew up seeing that and not that I needed that, but I knew that-. You needed something, I needed that, and so for me, the insomnia I'm real clear was a need was not being met and the universe was trying to show me that something's not right. It's the warning system of your car saying something's not right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I overwrote it.
Speaker 3:I overwrote it with the medicine.
Speaker 2:Like the check engine light. Yeah, quit putting a piece of black tape over it so you don't have to look at it, right?
Speaker 3:Emergency, emergency at that point, and people take better care of their cars yeah, and they use their own body. They do, and their pets too, by the way. Clean washing that thing, waxing that thing, mcdonald's and crap and you know I gotta, I gotta bring this up.
Speaker 2:So you were talking about your painting, okay, and you were talking about all the work you know, like, this is the. So this is the front of your, your book that you wrote, and I know, you, you, you created the cover to this. I did. This is all you.
Speaker 3:I did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for anybody that is on YouTube and that's watching us on YouTube right now, I just wanted to show you what the publication that Renee has put out looks like, and once again-.
Speaker 3:That was my COVID project. I wrote it during the lockdown, because how much art can you make? I mean, I was doing a lot of classes online, but I needed to do something else, and by then, I also wanted to say I was writing it. You know I'm writing again. I'm my. You know this is so I started doing that and, um, I teach memoir writing classes, so it was like a natural that the time was that, and then it was published in November of 2021. And so it was just a natural progression of like, so many people wanted to know my story. I didn't want to say it over and over again, but but it is.
Speaker 1:It's the stifling of this creativity Just to real quickly. So we had Brooke see him on the show a couple episodes ago and it's really. It was interesting to me because she became a painter and her stuff is so cool too. She wrote a book, like all these things that I'm like God. If we would just maybe stop chemically restraining our creativity, imagine what kind of world we would live in, you know.
Speaker 3:Well, I believe it's. Yeah, I believe that's what's happening. It's by design, all the feelers, the artists, the you know creativity, whatever, all these spicy neuro brains out there that are now like taking ADD medication to make them. It's like we need those neuro spicy brains, we need these different ways of thinking. The connectors are being medicated, the emotional people who are the bridges. You know, I'm the one people always go to with their problems, but if I'm medicated, I can't help you help you.
Speaker 3:I'm going to tell you to take pills. So I do believe that we are in the middle of a huge paradigm shift right now, which is very exciting, and you guys are part of it. You're spearheading, oh yeah, we are.
Speaker 1:We're spearheaders, now we are spearheaders, You're pioneers spearheaders. Whatever Spearheaded tenacious, we're spearheaders now.
Speaker 2:We are spearheaders, we're spearheaders.
Speaker 1:Well, anyway, anyway to bring.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, any way to bring you know these messages forward and um to for our listeners to understand that there there is light and hope at the end of the tunnel here, but you do need to be an active participant in your life to get there. Um, and in your life to get there, and I think that's the message too. We were doing life right, especially Gen X. We were doing life, but I don't know that I could call myself a real active participant in my life. I was doing life, but I don't know that I was participating in my own life, yeah, so I think a lot of Gen Xers would relate to that.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't have seen it that way at the time.
Speaker 1:Right, oh gosh, no, I was just.
Speaker 2:I was doing what I should be doing, should be doing, but now it's pretty crazy when you, when you see it a different way, you can't unknow what you know now. Like there's just no other explanation for it, other than being able to see it differently now.
Speaker 3:And I will say I'm so blessed that my parents are both still alive and so they've seen me go into this hole and come out of it and they are. It has changed them. It has made our we've had the opportunity to work on our stuff that I got to go back and say to my mother you said some terrible things to me and she was just telling me what she was told you know all that.
Speaker 3:So we had a chance to really clear that and our relationship is better than ever. So healing isn't just like getting off the medication, like you're saying you know like it's it's, it's all the stuff that brought you there and and making amends and fixing it and and having those hard conversations, and then it's so much better. So they are proud of me now. I mean not that they weren't before, but they're proud of me.
Speaker 1:You know it now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and I know it too. Whether they're proud of me or not, I'm proud of me now.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 3:A blessing that I have them behind me too. They were always there, I just didn't know.
Speaker 2:Yes, Well this has been really. Thank you, renee, for giving us the time for you to share this story. Thank you, it's been fantastic and I think, as you were speaking, there was a couple of times where I was, on this end, like I started getting teary eyed because I can sit in so many things that you're saying and that's the beauty of this, too is we're a community that is brought together now by by the pain and all the bullshit that we've gone through, right Like there's this whole community that forms now, and I know people listening to this feel exactly the same exact thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is the. It is the real positive side to the internet. Right that, like I didn't get inside my house, uh, suffering, I mean, how could you make it? I had the internet to do that initial research, and then all this over the last 10,. I mean, this wasn't here when I was going through it 10 years ago right?
Speaker 1:No, it's not coalition surviving.
Speaker 3:I mean, this stuff wasn't there, but it's here now and it's gonna help so many people.
Speaker 1:So not alone. Well, thank you for being on the show, yes, and for anyone listening, make sure that you like, follow, share, subscribe and apparently now you can send us fan mail.
Speaker 2:Yes, we get fan mail. It's fantastic. We've gotten fan mail from all over the United States. Some of it is very intriguing, so please feel free to send us some fan mail if you want, and you can find us on. Anywhere that you're going to be listening to podcasts, you can hear us, or you can get us on all the socials. We are the Gaslit Truth Podcast and, for those of you that still use good old email, you can hit us at thegaslittruthpodcast at gmailcom. And thank you, renee, for being here today.
Speaker 3:Thanks, guys, we appreciate it.
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