The Gaslit Truth

Spellbinding: How Psychiatric Medication Distorts Our Reality

• Dr. Teralyn & Therapist Jenn • Season 1 • Episode 40

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Can psychiatric medications cloud our judgment and distort reality? Join Dr. Teralyn and therapist Jen on the Gaslit Truth Podcast as we challenge the conventional understanding of psychiatric drugs and their impact on mental health. By questioning the true effects of these medications, we explore the concept of anosognosia—where individuals unknowingly disregard the harmful mental consequences while overvaluing perceived benefits. With a vivid metaphor of navigating a hazard-filled hallway, we illuminate the dangers hidden behind the façade of wellness offered by these drugs. Listen in for insights that could reshape your perspective on mental health treatment, whether you're contemplating, currently taking, or questioning psychiatric medications.

We venture into the realm of cognitive disruptions caused by psychiatric medications and everyday substances like caffeine and alcohol. Are these drugs really enhancing mental clarity, or are they impairing it? Dr. Tara Lynn and Jen scrutinize the idea of informed consent, debating whether people are genuinely aware of the potential cognitive detriments. Highlighting voices of those who already feel their brains are compromised, we invite listeners to ponder the paradox of accepting further impairments from medication. By drawing parallels between these treatments and common substances, we shed light on their shared effects on emotional response and self-awareness, urging a critical reassessment of their broader implications for mental health and wellbeing.

Finally, we confront the potential emotional numbing and cognitive side effects of psychiatric drugs, particularly SSRIs, SNRIs, and stimulants, in therapeutic settings like EMDR. With personal anecdotes and research, we discuss "spellbinding"—a phenomenon where users may overlook significant side effects while overestimating benefits. Our conversation raises essential questions about informed consent and the

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Dr. Teralyn:

Therapist Jenn:





Speaker 1:

you've been spellbound by psychiatric medications. We are your whistleblowing shrinks, dr Tara Lynn and therapist Jen, and this is the Gaslit Truth Podcast. Yeah, it is, and this is such an interesting topic. Today. I am so excited to talk about this because I felt like I finally have some words to describe and we've talked about this too. The power of words and description is important, but when I ran across this book, I immediately shared it with Jen, and I think we've been in a rabbit hole together ever since.

Speaker 2:

We have, and this episode is for anybody who is considering taking a psychiatric medication, is taking a psychiatric medication and everything in between. This will answer things for you. It will. We like to not put labels on things, but we're going to talk about a very strong word today that Terry can say super well. That is going to talk about how spellbound you are in the idea of what these meds are doing.

Speaker 1:

Yes. So I'm going to have you say the word, because I'm just going to mess it up over and, over and over again.

Speaker 2:

So the word we're going to talk about this is I feel like it's the Sesame Street. The word of the day is anosognosia.

Speaker 1:

So we should turn ourselves. Remember when you turn yourself to each other and think anosognosia, you remember that, oh yeah. You're right. Yeah, I feel like we need to do a.

Speaker 2:

it's like a multi-syllabic thing here too, to clap our hands Anno.

Speaker 1:

Cygnosia? Yes, that is not how I've been pronouncing it all week, by the way.

Speaker 2:

Listen, I'm going to be completely transparent and tell you that Alexa told me that's how you say it.

Speaker 1:

So I could be wrong, I don't know.

Speaker 2:

I mean, she's not right on everything, so all right. So, anna Signosia, what is this? Uh, terry, let's tell people why there's a ball bomb by it.

Speaker 1:

All right. So I am just going to read this because I think I can't say it any other way. That's better. So it's the failure to recognize the harmful mental effects of psychoactive agents and the accompanying tendency to overestimate their positive mental effects. Holy shmoly, Holy shmoly. This episode goes out to every single social media follower that I have that has said these have saved my life and they've been saving my life for 20 years.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

You know this goes out to you and I'm hoping that you're listening, because to me it's like I'm trying to put it in layman's terms and understand it for myself too Like, like almost an amnesia, almost a, I don't know. I'm like, how do you, how do you describe this for yourself, jen?

Speaker 2:

Because I'm at like a fugue, like yeah, I, so I put a post out about this. Uh, and the timing is is very. It's very interesting because you, this word, this, this idea okay, that came from a publication that you had purchased that we both went into this rabbit hole on came for me at a spot of reviewing 400 pages of psychiatric and medical records within the deprescribing I don't know hell that I'm going through. I want to say journey, but I hate that word. I still haven't found what I like yet, so at some point what's some point when I get it?

Speaker 2:

I know it. Everybody's giving me feedback on it. Right Struggle, trial, right you know misery call it a shit show.

Speaker 1:

Dark night of the soul. Like dark night I.

Speaker 2:

I, I people have given me so many words for this. Okay, I'll digress for for a second but for me to describe this.

Speaker 2:

It's almost as if it's the idea of let's see, it's so hard, I know it's so hard For me. It was like I put a visual on things when I describe things. So it's like I am walking through a long hallway and in that hallway are harmful things that are right there. You've got a guy with a gun, you've got somebody with some arsenal, you've got a homemade weapon, you've got an A-bomb, you've got all these things and you're walking through the hall and all of those things. Okay, even though they are right in front of you. They're there. You know they can be dangerous. Okay, you just keep walking. That could harm you, it could come at you, but you feel you don't even notice that it's there.

Speaker 1:

Like a derealization. It's a very big derealization, yes, totally.

Speaker 2:

And then there's other people seeing you walk through that hallway, going, cheering you on. Yeah, yes, there's two groups of them. You've got those that cheer you on and are yes, you get to the end of that hallway and you're going to be fucking dialed in, jen. And then there's a whole nother group of people which is what we're talking about with this idea today who are going. Do you not see the gun that's pointed at you? Do you not see that right now, what are you looking at at the end of that hallway? That makes you not see all of this harm that is happening to you? Yeah, what a great visualization that is happening to you. Yeah, what a great visualization. That's what I did for me with this idea. So, this idea that you are failing to perceive something. You can almost be irrational. You don't see it right. It's not there. You fail to perceive the idea that all those things that hallway could actually, um, play a role, or a harmful role, like in in you trying to walk to the end of the hallway.

Speaker 1:

You know, um, the question is why would you even pick that hallway, Like you're in such a fugue to be in that hallway in the first place?

Speaker 2:

Because at the end of that hallway is something that you perceive is helping you, Even despite some inklings or intuitions that something just isn't right. But you perceive what's at that end of that hallway that's going to be changing your life and helping you.

Speaker 1:

Do you know what's interesting is? This makes me think about when I was on Effexor for two days. This is the one time that I tried a Fexer for two days and thank God it didn't go any further than two days. I felt so sick and I was like ugh. This makes me feel terrible. Now, go on, go on social media. And if I were to say I was on a Fexer for two days and, oh, I just feel awful, like I feel sick, I feel whatever. What do you think people would be telling me?

Speaker 2:

Terry, you didn't take it long enough.

Speaker 1:

Exactly.

Speaker 2:

Or you didn't take the right dose, or it's something about the medication.

Speaker 1:

You haven't got the therapeutic benefit. Your body needs to adjust, Like your body just hasn't adjusted yet. And I'm like, but what if I don't want my body to adjust to that? Right, you know your body hasn't adjusted to that. And so this leads me into well, Jen has it. I'm reading the screen because she wrote it all out, because this stuff is so. I just really wanted to sit here and do a dramatic reading of this chapter of this book that I had.

Speaker 2:

You need to get a shout out to this publication, Terry, that we keep referencing Because we have an article here, but the book that started this whole topic for us.

Speaker 1:

Well, I want to talk about the man that started the whole topic.

Speaker 2:

And the man, the man Peter.

Speaker 1:

Regan, who is a medical doctor, and he wrote a book and I don't have the name of the book in front of me Jen.

Speaker 2:

You called me out. I don't have it.

Speaker 1:

Oh I thought you did. No, no, I'm sorry, I don't mean to do that to you. Yeah, I have an excerpt from the Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry Volume Eight. It was published there.

Speaker 2:

This person has done multiple publications starting in the 90s, so you give him the name of his book is Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I should have.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's the name of it, so I'll just give it here. Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal.

Speaker 1:

So simple. He has published starting in the mid-90s, which tells you a lot, because it was also the mid nineties when the research started coming out about the chemical imbalance theory is a bunch of hokum, you know. And so then this guy's coming out and with this, and it's the brain disabling principle that got me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I want you to just read that, and then let's, we'll tell our, we'll tell all the listeners here. We'll break it down a little bit so they can understand what that is, because we can't say this better than how he wrote it.

Speaker 1:

No, absolutely. I have no way to say this stuff better than how he wrote it. The brain disabling principle states that all psychiatric treatments, all psychiatric treatments I'm going to punctuate that cause brain dysfunction, that brain disability is the primary therapeutic effect, and that cases are seen as successful when this impairment is interpreted as improvement. This principle applies to lobotomy, tms, ect, electroshock and all psychiatric medications. I want to just enforce this a minute. The therapeutic effect is brain dysfunction, yes, and when you have enough brain dysfunction, that's interpreted as an improved state of being, which is so fucked up. It is so fucked up. We've talked about, though, jen in some other episodes. I can't remember who it was who said the result that people want is to be numbed out. The result that they want is to not feel so. The intended result is impairment.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and that's okay. When we talk about the idea of informed consent, okay, yeah, why don't they say this? So, if we do know, right, if we truly which we know this already, I think it's the way he is saying this that is very impactful and powerful, because we've talked about this idea, right, like you go in without a brain injury, truly, and you come out with a synthetic brain injury and I've you know, we've done episodes on that.

Speaker 1:

I've talked about that for myself. Melissa is huge in that.

Speaker 2:

Melissa. She went in with a structural brain injury and came out with a synthetic brain injury. I think the principle, this idea of it we've talked about, but the way he words this makes me again wonder. If we were to sit in a space and a prescriber would say okay, this will cause a cognitive brain injury.

Speaker 1:

Are you okay with that?

Speaker 2:

Yes, are you in a space where you can sit in the idea that there will be a cognitive brain injury which is going to lead us, okay, right into some? So some of you are probably listening to this, okay Going. Yeah, I'm not quite buying this yet, right?

Speaker 1:

Or I'm pissed off by it.

Speaker 2:

I'm getting a little pissed, or I'm pissed off, right, like, yeah, you're going to go through some crazy ass stages when listening to this, especially if you are somebody who's taking psychiatric medication or trying to get off of it. Okay, but in and I'm sorry, terry, I'm like shifting topics just for a second, because you said the brain thing, the cognitive part of it. Okay, so the author of not only this book that we're referencing, but there's an article that he wrote that essentially he talks about the spellbounding effect of the psychiatric drugs, which he calls intoxication and a sygnosia, right, there is a whole spot in here where he explains that brain injury, the brain disabling, what he calls a brain disabling principle. Okay, and so he states for him and I'm going to read this that that principle states that all of those treatments that you just said cause brain dysfunction. Right, so one of the things that he breaks down 11 brain disabling principles in this article.

Speaker 2:

We're not going to go through all of them, but he talks about the biopsychiatric treatments and that their common mode of action to the brain is to disrupt normal brain function, not improve it. Normal brain function, not improve it. So when we just take that, so what you read, I take it, I summarize it in that one concept that these, these biopsychiatric treatments are actually not there to improve our functioning of our brain. That's actually not what they're doing and through science we already know that. We know this. That that's not a mystery. But how he says it is that it disrupts their normal brain functioning. That's the common mode of action of all of these treatments.

Speaker 1:

Well, and that would fall in line with pressure to take that, because people would say, well, that's exactly what I'm hoping for, because my brain is already broken and so I'm hoping for it to disrupt what it's doing and do something different.

Speaker 2:

And isn't that the truth, though, in our practices? I have had a couple clients recently. When we talk about deprescribing, they have said that exact thing to me. Talk about deprescribing, they have said that exact thing to me and that, well, my brain was already broken. So what the hell did it matter if I added on another med or polypharmacy myself? They would say, what does it even matter because it's already broken. So this acknowledgement of the fact that your brain is changed and there is a dysfunction to it and broken, and you're still willing to take the interventions that did that to your brain and add more of them, that is anosognosia.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So this concept applies to kind of bring it home. It applies to other substances, too, and this is where I think this is important for people to have an aha moment here, because it applies to people who drink alcohol, it applies to people who drink caffeine, it applies to people who smoke Doing these things that we know aren't good for us and yet we do them, don't realize the damage that's done until they have quit. And then you hear things like wow, I actually don't feel foggy anymore. Well, you don't realize that you feel these ways when you're in the throes of it. That's just your state of being right.

Speaker 2:

Right, not sleeping well is a state of being and you don't know. You're not sleeping well because you think that alcohol is helpful when in reality your REM sleep is totally fucked up, right. And so when you don't have it anymore, all of a sudden the impairments that you're having, they go away and you can say gosh, I can sleep again, I have more energy. It's strange, but my digestion is changing and I can actually digest food differently.

Speaker 1:

I'll even use caffeine. For me, when I was drinking large amounts of caffeine, large amounts, and I'd be like, well, something else, it must be stress. I would never chalk it up to the thing that I was doing, which was drinking like 10 cups of coffee a day.

Speaker 2:

So that's the impact on this type of treatment. Right, you're talking about caffeine right now and we're going to extend this across the board. Right? Caffeine, alcohol, other drugs, psychiatric medications, any kind of biopsychiatric treatment right, that effect though? Right, it has its therapeutic effect by essentially impairing these higher human functioning areas of the brain, which helps with emotional response, how social and sensitive we are, awareness, self-fucking, awareness.

Speaker 1:

Self-awareness goes out the window.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my gosh Insight. He references this idea even of self-determination and autonomy and all of these things that are impaired, which, by the way, everyone these are like higher human levels of functioning okay and of learning that gets impaired. So when that disruption that happens in normal functioning right might be interpreted in another way, you know your treatment that you're doing it must be successful, because it couldn't be from the caffeine, it can't be from the psychiatric meds, it can't be from the ECT. I did it can't.

Speaker 1:

Well, and I'm trying to think so, there's so many people on disability, right For depression, mental health disorders, and they're all medicated. And I'm going to say they are all medicated because in order to get on disability, you have to be doing all of the things for mental health. Disability for mental health, like you've had to trial multiple medications. Probably You've had to be seeing a therapist. You have to have a paper trail that is a million miles long and if you haven't seen a psychiatrist in that time, you're likely to not.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're likely to be denied until you go and check that box that you've done this.

Speaker 1:

Right. So I would argue that if psychiatric medication was actually helpful, we would have less people on disability for mental health issues. But go ahead.

Speaker 2:

I know my face Go to YouTube. I know you got to see my face. This is when you see Jen have like a ding brain moment. It literally happens that way to everybody. Okay, it's not like I sit here and I hold it back Like my face reads everything.

Speaker 2:

I had a crazy idea this morning when I was getting ready and I kept thinking cause I get these big ideas that I just think are totally doable at some point in my life, but they probably aren't. It was I would love to go back to the beginning, where we started, and go back into the prison system, and I would love to remove psychiatric medications as part of an intervention to taper off and deprescribe a big chunk of that population and then watch what happens when it comes to their improvement recidivism, their ability to function, higher order learning, less likely to be put in spaces where you come back to prison, which all of us taxpayers are paying for, by the way. So there's a huge incentive for this right.

Speaker 1:

But there's got to be a lot of inmates that leave prison and cold turkey off their psych meds and then go bananas. Well, they do.

Speaker 2:

I mean we were on the back end. We were on the back end of seeing some of those. I had several of them come back through and we had innocence projects picking up their cases because they would cold turkey off of their medications or they would be prescribed some of these cocktails of medications that are considered extremely dangerous. That when you put them together which ding ding in this publication and this article. He talks about this. He talks about the combination of benzodiazepines and SSRIs and how dangerous this can be. People who are going on a benzo just because you have so much anxiety about a new job and you turn around and you rob three banks and you're sitting there going. I don't understand what's wrong.

Speaker 1:

No, that's true. If you guys are listening to this, that is a true example. It's very true. Yes, he makes in here.

Speaker 2:

Yes, he does, he does, talks about it and you have no awareness of it and the guy comes off the meds Okay, and finally gets more clarity and realizes what he did.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and I think about this with kids, though, because there's so many kids that are put on. We'll start with a stimulant, right, and then their behavior gets out of control, and then they're put on a mood stabilizer and then, because of all these things, they can't sleep. So now they're on a sleep medication, but their behaviors are out of control. They might be self-injurious, they're scared about their kids, all these things, but nobody ever says this is the medication, and the kid can't say that because he doesn't know or she doesn't know.

Speaker 1:

No, they don't have the awareness, but behaviorally they're saying it and we are blatantly ignoring it. And so this guy, Bregan, talks about that too. Like the suicidality, when you are already suicidal and you get put on these, the likelihood of you being suicidal has increased.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it has.

Speaker 1:

But yet the response to that is more meds instead of less. All of these things are mind-blowing to me because they don't make logical sense. I'm having such a difficult time putting logically this together because it makes sense, but then it's like then why do we keep doing this? It's like insanity it's a definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and inspecting a new result. But how do we do this?

Speaker 1:

And as I was thinking through this because my story of psych meds was a six-year timeframe and I was put on it as a preventative and I always brush it off and I say, oh, I stayed on it because I just I couldn't get off of it, which was true, I couldn't by myself until I just did.

Speaker 1:

But after reading this, I was rolling back through my mind and I'm thinking like what was the harm that it did that I'm not recognizing as being the harm, or I had brushed off as being the harm, as being the harm, or I had brushed off as being the harm because I would say like I basically made it out of it, okay, you know, whatever.

Speaker 1:

And I'm like this guy also talks about the loss of memory and I'm like that's the one thing I've talked about a lot that I'm so pissed off about, that I don't have memories of certain big things that I should have memories of. And then I think about, like how it caused me to feel dead inside, you know, like that's the best way I could do it, like I didn't have a sexual relationship with my husband, much like all this stuff, like it literally took my soul and crushed it into a million pieces and made me still walk the earth without one, like that's what it felt, like you know, but there was no awareness of that for me and nobody else was guiding me on this. It was just a script, you know over and over again. You know this is all retrospective.

Speaker 2:

Well, when you, when you said something I'm thinking about every single person that's watching or listening, or even our experiences, right from SSRIs. And if you think about this idea, an SSRI, it's function right and is simply right to disrupt the serotonin neurotransmission right throughout the brain, okay, so it causes these mental effects. Okay, in humans, we see, like these, almost impairments I think he describes these as impairments right, so you can be blunted, right, or you can even be euphoric, or even what they say mania, right, but this idea of feeling euphoric and feeling high and feeling good, okay, all of which is interpreted as an improvement. Because when you went on the meds, right, you were opposite of that, right, you were very depressed, you were down, you were angry, you were irritable, right, and so you didn't have a lot of energy. And so now that's how you know the med has worked, because we interpret your energy levels or your euphoria as improvement.

Speaker 2:

So now, there is relief and it has done its job.

Speaker 1:

Alternatively, I don't know why I keep bringing up kids, Maybe because I feel like we need to stop with kids. You know stimulants right, so the desired result is compliance. I know Stimulants right, so the desired result is compliance. The desired result is for little Tommy to sit in the chair all day and not being a behavioral problem. The desired result is chemical restraint, and it does that?

Speaker 2:

Yep, it does exactly. So there's your desired effect, right? Yeah, there it is. So it has done what we needed to do, which is to get you to sit still, to get you to be able to be fit in the box, the compliance box, like all the other kids, um, at the cost of you said this off air. You said this off air. You're like we take those kids and we do this right, and then we put them in treatment or in therapy, or even in conversation, and ask them or expect them to explain how their emotions are and how they're feeling. So we take it, then put them with a therapist when they're medicated, or a counselor, school counselor, and ask them to spend all this time tapping into their emotional side of things, which we have now just chemically altered, destroyed.

Speaker 1:

Make it make sense. And they're supposed to be able to do that. Yeah, Now, I've been thinking about this too, because do you remember and maybe the research shows something different, but I don't know how that if you're on a benzodiazepine that you shouldn't do EMDR, Do you remember this?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I would argue at this point, it's probably in the book. I would argue at this point that even if you're on an SSRI or an SNRI or stimulant, that none of you are going to be able to access any of your emotions.

Speaker 2:

I don't want to go down that rabbit hole because I did about two weeks ago and started rethinking my entire EMDR practice and I spent too many hours of my life getting way too curious about it and actually started doing a bunch of research to see if there's research out there that shows people who are medicated versus not medicated and the effects of the outcomes Couldn't find a ton of stuff.

Speaker 1:

I smell a research article.

Speaker 2:

I know I reached out, of course, to a couple, but it makes sense to me now.

Speaker 1:

Why would it only be a benzodiazepine issue when we know that there is depersonalization, derealization, blunting of emotions and affect for every psychiatric medication that's out there?

Speaker 2:

Right, and we're trying to access memory networks that are altered.

Speaker 1:

Yes, Like even just regular therapy even just in regular therapy, jen, like without EMDR, like we're. We're trying to get people I mean, the goal of therapy one of them is to get people to actually understand and feel their emotions a little bit like not hide them, cover them up. Meanwhile they're sitting there chemically restrained and we're like you need to access your emotions and they're like I'm dead inside. Yeah, yeah, that must be the depression it's not, I don't, I don't.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this idea, I, I, I like it. Then now has given me something I can't unknow which makes it really hard like makes what I do like I'm okay. So part of the criteria is you have to be drug-free and psych medication-free before you do these interventions so that you actually can get the best benefit from them. And then I go down this rabbit hole. I got to stay on it, god damn rabbit hole.

Speaker 1:

Okay, all right, that rabbit hole is the worst. I want to say the definition for spellbinding here too, because you have that on here. The spellbinding effect defines a specific nuance of the brain disabling principle the tendency of individuals to respond to brain disabling effects by failing to perceive their existence or severity, by failing to link them to the drug and by overestimating the supposed benefits. The overestimating of the benefits happens all the time. This saved my life. That is the over. This saved my life. That is the overestimating of the benefit. In my opinion, my life. That is the overestimating of the benefit. In my opinion, that is a gross overestimating.

Speaker 1:

And failing to link to the drug that but I hear this too I don't have a sex drive anymore. Well, I don't care, because it saved my life. I'm like, okay, you don't care about your personal pleasure in life, because it's not just about sex, it's about pleasure. You don't care about that because it overestimated the benefit. It saved my life. I don't care that I can't sleep anymore. It saved my life. I don't care that I gained 50 pounds. It saved my life. I don't care that my relationships are shitty and we don't talk anymore, because I have a flat affect and I can't feel for shit, but it saved my life. Yes, I feel like a preacher right now. You do.

Speaker 1:

I was going to say I feel like you need to be standing on a really tall hill here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're getting all worked up. Yeah, but it just, it just yeah, I just feel bad.

Speaker 1:

I feel I feel bad for any person that has started this or is sort of recognizing what's going on Can't get off of it. I feel bad for them. I feel bad for my younger self. Uh, what I took away by saying yes to a medication, what I took away by saying yes to a medication. I feel really bad for her. I feel really bad for my family. I feel really bad.

Speaker 1:

But the thing is is that once you start this, there's like no way out of this, because it causes this chemical brain injury is the cause of why you felt all of that injury is the cause of why you felt all of that, or why you can't remember, or why you couldn't connect to the dots. It's the whole chemical. It's what it was designed to do. It did, but nobody told me that it was designed to do that. Nobody told me that I couldn't access parts of my brain while on this medication or while I was off for a long time until my brain began to heal. Nobody said that. We mentioned this earlier.

Speaker 1:

If someone would have given me full informed consent and said, hey, this is going to cause a cognitive brain injury that might last a lifetime, are you still on board? I would have said, what the fuck? Absolutely not. I'm not on board, like because you gotta understand. Like my brain is my biggest asset, like I'm like it's crazy. It's crazy to me how many people, I wonder, if people were to actually know that, how many people and you guys, if you're listening to this comment how many of you would actually say yes to the medication if you were to be told that it would cause a cognitive brain injury that may last a lifetime? How many of you would actually say yes to this? How many of you would say yes to this for your children, because you're making those decisions for them? Okay, your child, your five-year-old, is going to have a cognitive brain injury. Are you going to say yes to this medication or not? I would be willing to bet that that would completely stop people medicating their kids. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it's not as though there isn't enough information, research, to back that statement, because that statement we are not taking a word such as and we're not taking a word such as real, okay, um, we're not talked about earlier. Is that this idea, um, this, this word, this, this, um? The meaning behind this, again, is not something that's new. The individual who started in researching this this goes back to the 90s, right, um, yes, so well, it's not a new concept no, and and they've been used a lot with alcoholism particularly, or drug use, so we use them there.

Speaker 1:

People are going to be so pissed off that we're using the same concepts when it comes to psychiatric medication. It's the same concepts used in a different way, you know, and people don't like that. They don't like the comparison to those things at all. But again, how can you not see the comparison? How can you not see it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but when you're talking, that simple question is, when you look at these two things psychiatric medications, okay, or these types of interventions that we're talking about today there isn't as much like stigma and I'm going to use that word loosely because we've talked a lot about stigma here there isn't as much stigma with and I'm going to use that word loosely because we've talked a lot about stigma here there isn't as much stigma with that as hi, I'm taking Lexapro versus I've got an issue with alcohol. Okay, there isn't. And the way it's presented is very, very different in society, Right. So and I also think this idea is reinforced for anybody who's out there who has went you just told your story about starting a medication.

Speaker 2:

Within two days, you were feeling like shit. You had these crazy side effects, right. So when people start feeling worse after starting a psych drug, okay, they often are going to you, didn't? You got curious, but oftentimes people will just attribute it to my condition. It's declining, so I am starting to go down, and even after you start this medication and then, when the drug fails to work, people become a little bit desperate in this idea that I'm unfixable.

Speaker 1:

This isn't going to work.

Speaker 2:

My condition is getting worse, when in reality that drug is what declined your condition, not the idea that organically, your mental health condition is getting worse because you've started on a drug. So imagine if a prescriber would describe it that way to a patient and instead of saying we're going to need to sit in it longer, change the dose, add a booster. I'm so sick of hearing the word booster, by the way, I'm sorry to anybody that listens to this.

Speaker 2:

That was told that. But a booster med or the bridge? Okay About it. Your decline is not from your mental condition. Your decline is because of the drug that you put in your body. But that's not explained to you in that way.

Speaker 1:

No, and so that that also goes in line with the episode we did on iatrogenic care, when the very thing that's supposed to help you hurts you right? So these are all concepts that are greatly tied together. I want people to come out of the fog, I want you to come out of the fog, so I wrote down the desired outcome is essentially lack of awareness, so that we can keep you compliant, we can keep you where you are, we can keep you taking these medications and we can keep you from true healing.

Speaker 2:

It is a true state of amnesia. You said that word earlier when I was trying to describe the hallway of how I view anosognosia and what that is. Is it really a true state of memory loss, of derealization, right during this period that you are putting this into your body, which is what amnesia truly is? And that's the difference, what is described with this word. It's not as though there is a full sense of awareness that we have that this is happening because of the drug. Now, if this was introduced to us as that idea, as part of informed consent, that little seed would be planted for many people in that if I am not doing better or things get worse or I really improve, okay, it's actually because we're taking and putting a cognitive brain injury in you, right, but it's not presented in that way. It's presented in the way that it's going to save you and help you and so of these other facets of what it's doing, which truly is like a true level of almost amnesia, because there's no way it could be that thing.

Speaker 2:

I'm walking down that hallway and I may have inklings here or there that something's not right, but I've got arsenal coming at me, but I don't even see it. I'm just like and there's no way, because at the end of that is what's saving me anyway, which is very truly a lot like amnesia. And the thing about amnesia is when you come out of it, then you see it, just like for someone who goes through a true state of amnesia. They know they went through it because when they get to the other side of it then they can go oh yeah, this is what happened. I do remember this, or a photo, or a picture, a word, a person starts bringing that memory back. That's what happens when you get off of the intoxication.

Speaker 1:

That's what happens when you get off of the intoxication, I think, although I wish I could say that my memory came back of the certain things that I had, but it didn't. But that's probably from the brain injury you know like, or the inability to feel, like you have to have intense emotion to have a memory retained. And so when you are so unable to feel and so numbed out, that's when you cannot store memory. It doesn't pack the same punch, right. So memory has to be something really good or really terrible for you to recall it. And so when you are physically or physiologically restrained and numbed out and you don't have those emotions, you know so and that's, that's all we have in our life.

Speaker 2:

But you know it stunts your ability to do things. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean Terry. Think about the amount of.

Speaker 2:

I was. I was just going there. That's exactly where I was going. Think about, like, if we just take this from a very simplistic standpoint, for people, okay, using these drugs, okay, is going to impair frontal lobe functioning and he talks about this, right, so it does. So if anybody is sitting here thinking that, like, my frontal lobes are, like my central nervous system, my limbic system, that it can't be impacted, no, it actually is. That's why these work, that's why these drugs work. And when those areas are impacted, okay, and then I'll let you take over. What happens with this idea of creativity.

Speaker 1:

Then Okay, the spellbinding effect is part of a broader dysfunction that impairs the frontal lobe and limbic system, which is funny because all we talk about is it changes serotonin.

Speaker 2:

Okay, serotonin serotonin, serotonin, serotonin, Serotonin serotonin.

Speaker 1:

Yep, including creativity, self-awareness and social sensitivity, emotional control, judgment and planning. In effect, any degree of psychiatric drug toxicity is likely to diminish all the characteristically human qualities that we value. Individuals may think that they are more creative, more insightful or more loving than ever while under the influence of psychoactive agents, but the ultimate result is usually stereotyped and limited, since psychiatric drugs do not usually cause the perceptual distortions associated with psychedelics. Taking psychiatric drugs rarely even produces an illusion of creativity, and this also makes me think about the person on drugs. Right, they're like.

Speaker 2:

they think they are so insightful and deep and creative and all these things I keep going back to alcohol in my mind and all of the people in your lives that you maybe know. This is a very simple example, though. When they are drinking, and if you ask them about this and you may have experienced this, like I've experienced this before myself right, you think things of yourself, you think things of your reality that aren't actually accurate.

Speaker 1:

It is altered. I even think about people I'm so funny when I'm drinking, terri.

Speaker 2:

I'm so funny and I'm so social. I'm so social. The social anxiety that I have is gone when I'm drinking. I can have a business meeting and I can talk to people and I don't have physiological reactions, I don't get nervous.

Speaker 1:

People smoking weed. This reminds me of weed smokers too. The same thing I'm so chill and I'm so deep, I have deep thoughts and I don't have anxiety and all these things, and it's like wow, yeah, high cognitive brain injury.

Speaker 2:

This is what it's doing, though. So this is what it's doing. So I like how we could just break it down really simple, because okay like to go through. The whole neurochemistry of this is like I, when I don't want to, and you know, two, we can, that's for another, another day, but your frontal lobes? I was just saying, I was going to say three, I don't even want that knowledge, I don't even want it because I don't think we need it. We can actually make this pretty simplistic and state that there is impairment that happens in the frontal lobe, there's impairment in the limbic system, there's impairment in the central nervous system, and when that happens, these are all pieces that are synthetically altered and changed. So what you are experiencing you know drunk man's words are a sober man's thoughts. Yeah, that's fucking wrong. I hate to tell you.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, I hate to tell you.

Speaker 2:

I mean people aren't going to want that either.

Speaker 1:

So I'd like to end this episode by asking people this question Before you start your child on a psychiatric medication of any kind, before you start yourself, or if you've been on it for a long time or your kid has, but particularly before you start. The question is do you want to have a cognitive brain injury that may last the rest of your life or the rest of your child's life? And if the answer to that is yes, then move forward. If the answer to that is no, then think about some alternatives. And if you're taking medications now, ask yourself did I know that I have a cognitive brain injury and am I okay with continuing with that? And that is going to be a wrap.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's true If somebody would ask me that. I think the answer would have been a lot different. So, yes, yep, same. So if you've stuck it out with us so far, please like, comment, share, subscribe, do all the things, Give us all the stars that are available to have and make sure you send us your Gaslit Truth stories at thegaslittruthpodcast at gmailcom. And thanks for being here. Thanks everybody.

People on this episode

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Dr. Teralyn

Co-host
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Jennifer Schmitz

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