Why We've Been Misled About Alcohol and Antidepressants!

What if the conventional wisdom about mixing alcohol and antidepressants is all wrong? With Dr. Terrellin and therapist Jen, we challenge the status quo and shed light on the complex relationship between alcohol use and antidepressant medication. Despite the warnings, many individuals continue to drink while on SSRIs, and we ask the tough questions about why this happens. Our conversation includes personal anecdotes and professional insights that underline the disconnect between medical advice and real-world behaviors. By questioning assumptions and advocating for transparency, we aim to empower individuals navigating this tricky landscape.

Throughout this episode, we explore how SSRIs might affect alcohol tolerance and the broader implications of prescribing these medications as a treatment for alcohol addiction. Dr. Terrellin shares a personal story about titrating off Lexapro and its surprising effect on alcohol tolerance, challenging the prevailing perceptions of how these substances interact. We also tackle the controversial topic of iatrogenic addiction and reevaluate what it means to be labeled with a substance use disorder. Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on the need for curiosity and a fresh perspective in understanding the interplay between psychiatric medications and substance use.

The Gaslit Truth Podcast will be live and in person at the Feed the Recovering Brain Conference in Dublin, Ohio

Join us with the top names in brain health, including Christina Veselak, Hyla Cass, and Julia Ross, author of The Mood Cure.

We’ll be bringing you interviews and behind-the-scenes content as we explore how nutrition transforms mental wellness.

Chapters

• 0:23 Alcohol Use and Antidepressants
• 13:16 The Impact of SSRIs and Alcohol
• 29:24 Drug Addiction and Psychiatric Medication Impact

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

So your alcohol use got worse when you started antidepressants, didn't it? We are your whistleblowing shrinks, dr Terrellin and therapist Jen, and you are tuned into the Gaslit Truth podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:37

Whoa what. This is going to be an interesting topic, only because of the amount of people that I know who both take an antidepressant and also drink alcohol. Yeah, and I think we have some personal shiz to bring in and some research as well, and also anecdotal research from you know people at large who are taking antidepressants. Yeah, like the subjective shit that actually matters from people at large who are taking antidepressants.

Speaker 1: 1:05

Yeah, like the subjective shit that actually matters.

Speaker 2: 1:08

Yeah, I think that matters more than the research often Agreed Uh-huh. So I wanted to start this off with the idea that we're told not to drink alcohol when you are prescribed any type of psychiatric medication, and I think people know that. I don't think this is a newsflash. Oh my gosh, we didn't know that. Everybody knows that. I think that's the only informed consent that we can say is probably consistent.

Speaker 1: 1:40

I was looking at my pill bottles yesterday when I was thinking about this episode. It's right on there, the stuff about you may have depression right, or extreme depression, more depression, suicidal ideation. That's not on there, but I am told to not drink and operate heavy machinery and that these two things are contraindicated. So that is on my bottle.

Speaker 2: 2:02

What is heavy machinery? Well, this is a family episode.

Speaker 1: 2:07

Let's, let's not go there. It's Harry Gosh.

Speaker 2: 2:10

I'm just like a vehicle and anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1: 2:14

So I I think it is, it's it's more common knowledge, it's stuff that's written on the bottles too. It really, at least it's on mine.

Speaker 2: 2:22

Yeah, and yet I can't think of a single person that I've met that has said that they don't drink because they're on an antidepressant.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Yes.

Speaker 2: 2:32

They'll drink a little.

Speaker 1: 2:34

Yeah, or they don't drink for other reasons or choose to not drink for other reasons. But I agree, whether it's personally or in practice, I have not had somebody say to me these two things I know in combination can be very dangerous for me. Or people have the awareness that when I started taking antidepressants I've yet to have somebody say that to me either I noticed a change in my alcohol consumption and that I couldn't. I'm so sensitive to it. Now we'll talk a little bit about that with what we have in some of the forums and what people say, but I haven't personally heard that, nor did I personally adopt that awareness at all.

Speaker 2: 3:16

Yeah, I think that's one of those things that we don't tie together, because when it says don't drink alcohol, it's never not because you might develop an alcohol problem, you know, it's always because your symptomology will be worse, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, it's not, yeah. So I, we were bringing that up because this research there were some parts of this research that we're going to talk about that I was laughing out loud about. The first one is even research gaslights us about drinking and taking antidepressants. Because they wrote in this article, since it's advised to avoid combining alcohol and antidepressants, most patients quitting alcohol discontinue antidepressant treatment when they relapse. So they're saying that when you relapse alcohol you have the wherewithal to be like, oh, I must back off and not take this antidepressant anymore and I'm like that is so not true.

Speaker 1: 4:18

I would love to hear somebody tell us that that is true for them that that's how it happened.

Speaker 2: 4:24

Yes, it is so false. And it's false for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that coming off of an antidepressant can be horrific for people, so they just can't even get off of it. Yeah, so I'm like, okay, we're starting off with that gaslit truth that people don't drink when they're on, and especially someone who has a substance use disorder, daily drinker, has the wherewithal to, you know, suddenly stop their antidepressant when they're going back on. As a matter of fact, we've seen people you know who go inpatient treatment and they're prescribed a shit ton of psychiatric medications because they're quote unquote sober at the time they leave and they're no longer sober and they're still on all these and they're still being prescribed over and over again. And this also has to do with, um, consumers being transparent with their prescribers too, because you know, we know, that people don't ever say yeah, the, especially when it comes to alcohol.

Speaker 1: 5:27

I was going to say something that has this quote unquote stigma around it.

Speaker 2: 5:31

Right, there's so much stigma around it that they keep some of those secrets hidden, even if they said the truth, like even if you go in and say yes, I do drink wine or whatever. Blah, blah, blah. I've never heard of what we're going to talk about being said well, you know, this could be the outcome. I've never heard that.

Speaker 1: 5:53

This. I'm excited to talk about this because I don't think a lot of people have awareness of this. It makes sense for me in my professional realm, it makes sense for me in the personal realm going through this, and so there's a little research.

Speaker 2: 6:06

It makes sense for me for clients that I see, or family members of clients who talk about their family members taking antidepressants and still drinking, or psychiatric and still drinking. It makes so much sense to me now.

Speaker 1: 6:22

I was kind of mind blown by this. It does, yeah, and I've got a couple. We'll bring in here a couple of things when we start talking about this idea. And there's questions like as a consultant, when we work with people and helping them deprescribe. This is actually extremely helpful for people who have been told repeatedly that they are an addict or they have a use disorder to have this extra piece of information in here, especially because of being on psychiatric meds. It is worth thinking about putting some timelines together, figuring out what personally makes sense for you. So, overall, what we're going to be talking about here is this idea and I'm going to read a very end of an article that, at the very end of the abstract, because it gives in one line, kind of gives what we're talking about, right, and the article talks about when you're like cessation of fluoxetine treatment okay, and how it increases-.

Speaker 2: 7:20

Quitting fluoxetine, which is an SSRI, so I think we can take that and not just to this one med, but this research is specific to that medication.

Speaker 1: 7:29

Yes, this one is specific to Fluxetine, but if we generalize this we generalize this Yep and we just talk about the SSRI categories, which, to be fair, there is some more articles, research out there too, that does generally SSRIs, but this one just intrigued us when we found this one. But to come off of that, treatment increases alcohol seeking during relapse and dysregulates certain parts of the signaling of the brain.

Speaker 1: 7:57

So what this article is that we're going to talk about today and with this idea, is that there is data out there that does suggest that administrating antidepressants during abstinence okay from substances yeah, from alcohol specifically dysregulates some of the signaling okay in the brain and in the receptor functioning in the amygdala and it's likely that it's going to facilitate more higher alcohol drinking behavior during relapse.

Speaker 2: 8:34

Which is really funny, because the answer to help someone with alcoholism is an SSRI Just about every time. And so if you take that with, I'm going to call it common knowledge of the addiction world that says relapse is part of recovery. How often do people relapse when they're trying to quit something? Now, I don't know what the stats are on that. I don't know what the stats are on that. Ask my husband, you know, and he'll say ask him what his sobriety date is. And he'll say I have no idea because I had so many, you know, which means like it was a constant starting, stopping, starting, stopping, starting, stopping. And I do remember that when he stopped drinking, the first thing that happened was he was prescribed an SSRI immediately. And and I remember he also stopped taking the SSRI and this is where it gets interesting for me he stopped, and I remember him having extreme urges to drink when he stopped, you know. So I was was reading this stuff. I'm like holy, oh, my Atlanta, oh my Lord.

Speaker 2: 9:50

Like this is so interesting to me. So, basically, research shows us that taking an SSRI with alcohol might also increase your tolerance. Yes, so it makes you want to drink more.

Speaker 1: 10:05

It makes you want to drink more or have the ability to drink more the ability to not know how much you're drinking because your tolerance is so high, the off switch isn't quite there, because the off switch requires that the brain sends signals to tell the body physiologically, through awareness, insight, that it's time to stop. You have feelings of cessation. You can feel that you are starting to experience those symptoms that go along with being full and drinking too much.

Speaker 1: 10:49

You can notice that you're starting to spin, you can notice that your words are starting to slur. You have awareness of the inhibitions and the way that that's changing. Okay, so what else we're going to talk about today is the idea that alcohol increases that tolerance level, thereby decreasing these neurons firing in the brain telling you hey, you're done, stop, stop. So your switch is not there, and that's how I view this when I'm trying to interpret this research. If that makes sense, right, so then you actually become a heavier drinker. Now, what we're not saying is the research is saying that you're drinking more often you could be. But what we're talking about is the research is saying that you're drinking more often you could be. But what we're talking about is the idea of tolerance.

Speaker 2: 11:41

Well, where we live, binge drinking.

Speaker 1: 11:46

We drink Wisconsinably, terry. We drink Wisconsinably, but we call it binge drinking.

Speaker 2: 11:53

We call it binge drinking. When you go out, you drink too much, you binge too much, you know, and so I think that might fall in line with some of this right now that we're talking about. So I just think it's really interesting because, again, we try so hard to figure out how to help people stop, but yet the interventions that we give people actually cause worse alcohol response. Okay, you know like can cause more people to have more problems, right? Especially if you're just the average I'll call it the average drinker who is not problematic, and that's also subjective. I mean, you know cause everybody thinks that they're not, but anyway, um, but if you're just that person, you might not be that person.

Speaker 2: 12:40

You might've noticed that when you're on SSRIs, that you're drinking got worse, or you drink more, um, or your tolerance is higher. You know things like that and and I think, jen, when we were off air, you had mentioned something um that you're some words, some words. If your friends are saying you can drink anyone under the table, if your friends are saying things like this and you're on an SSRI, you might just be thinking maybe it's because of that.

Speaker 1: 13:12

And these are the epiphanies that you have when you start to dig a little bit farther in this. And for me that was very personal. That was the running joke that I have had forever, up until recently when I have started to titrate off of Lexapro the whole other thing with alcohol. Curious about looking some of this research up truly, because I never, never, truly got super curious about the areas of the brain. I know the areas of the brain that are impacted by alcohol. I know the areas of the brain that are impacted by SSRIs, and yet it's not just one area, right? So traditionally when we learned about alcohol and doing alcohol treatment, we only talked about one, one neurotransmitter pathway.

Speaker 2: 13:57

So only fucking one, that only dopamine, and then, when you're on an, SSRI.

Speaker 1: 14:01

It's described to you by by a provider as only impacting one big area of the brain right, serotonin, right. Both of those things are extremely false, everybody. So that's not how it works. Fyi, our brain and body do not work in silos. That is a lie and a half Okay, but for me, the running joke I always had um with all my in my best friends. Today it was Jen can drink you under the table, and I'm not proud of this either. This next one I'm going to say but I could drink so much and still get behind a wheel. Because Jen is a she, she's always the one that can drive. Yeah, always, jen's always the one that could drive, because she could drink just as much of all is all of us and we're falling over.

Speaker 1: 14:45

Okay, and Jen never was I could out drink um grown men that are twice, some three times, the size of me. Um and this this is is very real and it has always been a part of the culture around my friends and talking about this because of how much I could have that gravely changed when I started to titrate off of Lexapro about over a year ago.

Speaker 2: 15:11

Really interesting.

Speaker 1: 15:13

But the other piece I can't compare it to is that I started SSRIs right when I was 18 years old or so 19. So heavy drinking for me, or more drinking, started in college right. So 20, 21, 22, 23, all the way up until like my mid thirties-ish like early to mid thirties is finally, when I started to slow it down a bit. So I don't have too much to compare it to. It's not? You know, I will in the future when I'm no longer on SSRIs.

Speaker 2: 15:36

Yeah, well, that's a very interesting conversation, though, because how many students enter college, how many teenagers basically enter college and are drinking? So there's two sides of this conversation that I want to bring up shortly as well, because you wouldn't know A lot of the stuff you talk about. You don't know any other way in adulthood, right? No no, this is just who you thought you were. You just thought you had a great alcohol tolerance.

Speaker 1: 16:03

I really did. I thought I had a fantastic tolerance for a hot second. I got real scared because some some shrink said to me well, you know that that's like a big precursor for alcoholism. You know what's interesting, and now I know how much bullshit this is Do you know what's really interesting?

Speaker 2: 16:23

Because my PhD in psychology I focused. I have an addiction studies focus added onto that.

Speaker 2: 16:32

Yes, you do, which means I studied addiction. I studied psychopharmacology related to addictions. I studied all of this stuff. Yes, you do help you to not drink, and I, that's still. I remember years ago I had I had a client that came into the office and suddenly was prescribed an SSRI because the doctor said it would help them not drink. And I'm like what the fuck? Like seriously, I'm like where did you get that research? And so now it's like this is competing research.

Speaker 2: 17:15

So again you're going to find other research that says the exact opposite. Right, like you need to be on this psych med. The same fucking rhetoric over and over and over again, versus something like this. It's like this shit makes you think, right.

Speaker 2: 17:32

So the very medication that's supposed to be helping you with depression could do a couple of things. It could cause you to become a big drinker. Like you know, your tolerance is heavier. You've got more drinking thoughts and drinking behaviors that when you didn't before. And, number two, if you already are a drinker, it could make sobriety harder for you. Yes, and I think that's important. I think that is important. So when you're getting prescribed an SSRI as a answer to sobriety, right, you might just want to back off just a little bit and get curious about is this really, will this really help me? What does the research say? Like what, and is there any research that says the opposite? And that's where this came in and I I thought it was interesting. Now you guys got to keep in mind and people hate this when we bring in rat studies, you know, um, it's a rat study and I'm like you realize that most everything about human behaviors is rat related.

Speaker 1: 18:33

it is we, yeah, we, that is, we are the closest to rats, so, unfortunately, that is. We are the closest to rats, so unfortunately Isn't that weird.

Speaker 2: 18:37

We are the closest to rats you know, behaviorally brain structure wise like we are close to rats, you know exactly.

Speaker 2: 18:48

And also you know nobody this, okay, peta, I'm sorry, nobody cares about rats, like you don't hear PETA out here banging drums about rats, you know. And researchers, they're cheap, they procreate fast, all the things, and they're the closest to humans. So this study they actually ended up euthanizing the rats and studying their brains, which I found to be really fantastic, you know. But they trained these rats how to push levers, which is what they do a lot with, especially in addiction research. They will train the rats to push the lever so they can self administer whatever drug choice it is.

Speaker 2: 19:26

Yep, whatever they want. And they did this with alcohol. They trained them before and then they could self administer alcohol. You know which is interesting, alcohol which is interesting, and what they found again. Okay, so this is the part that Jen was talking about with deprescribing, so when they took away the fluoxetine and I'm going to read it, because it's hard to explain Just read it yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:50

All right. So rats were taking fluoxetine, which is Prozac, for 14 days and given alcohol at the same time. Okay, so they were giving both these things at the same time. Researchers stopped the alcohol. This is the first part of it. Researchers stopped the alcohol, but kept them on the fluoxetine. Then the rats were given the opportunity to self-administer alcohol by pushing the levers while they're still on fluoxetine and let's just say they overindulged in the self-administration of alcohol for three weeks and then the study was cut off.

Speaker 2: 20:21

So, being on fluxatine, so starting and stopping alcohol when you're on, well, this is fluxatine. But I'm going to go as far as say SSRIs, SSRIs, yep yeah, SSRIs. Starting and stopping drinking while you're on this SSRI will likely make things worse for you. And now there's a lot of reasons why starting and stopping alcohol anyway would make things worse for you, but particularly on SSRIs, which is really fucking interesting to me. Even more shocking is the idea that when you quit your SSRI, research has shown that there is an uptick in drinking behaviors, alcohol-seeking and more frequent intoxication when you quit your SSRI. Like what?

Speaker 1: 21:11

Okay, that is that one hits home, Mm-hmm, that one hits home.

Speaker 2: 21:18

That one hits home for Jen. Hits home for any deprescriber out there, Anyone who's tapering medications. You know, tapering, titrating, deprescribing, whatever you want to say, that one hits home. I think for college students who have been medicated in high school, there's a fair amount that go to college and stop taking their antidepressants. Now, if you look up articles, blogs, whatever you know like, do not stop because it'll increase your you know your symptomology. It's so bad for you to stop. We know all of that because you know, because withdrawal is a sucky ass thing and so when you're in withdrawal, like lots of crazy shit can happen. However, tying that to, you're starting and you're stopping, because I'm gonna guess that a lot of college students will stop and restart or kind of dabble in their SSRI or not. You know, take, not take whatever, and then you're going to have an increased, or likely to have an increased, of alcohol consumption.

Speaker 1: 23:21

Right. Well, you've got to manage your symptoms, like when you think about the idea of what's happening in the brain when you are going off of an SSRI right, especially if it's something that's abrupt.

Speaker 2: 23:38

And going off alcohol at the same time.

Speaker 1: 23:40

Right, so when we're talking about withdrawal, people may not put this together, okay, but guys, it's very similar.

Speaker 2: 23:51

Well, if this is your first time here, when you stop an antidepressant or psychiatric medication and you have a quote unquote return of symptoms, that's not a return of symptoms, that is withdrawal. So if this is your first time here, that was your smidge little education.

Speaker 1: 24:08

So welcome aboard. I think about the idea of being in college taking an SSRI prior to college, getting to college, going off of that. Probably we're not hyperbolically tapering either.

Speaker 1: 24:26

We'll probably abruptly stop it. We'll get lucky if you cut it in half for a few days and then say so long, but then you go through withdrawal. Okay, so as you go through withdrawal, you're you're going to be more susceptible to wanting to also drink, because you've got to manage those fucking asshat symptoms that take away your life right, because your anxiety comes back. You have no energy anymore, you start to isolate yourself, your mood gets crappy.

Speaker 2: 24:59

It's the perfect storm. It's the perfect storm. The availability is there when you're 18 years old, 19, 20,. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 25:04

So actually this does create, depending upon what the drug is that you're taking.

Speaker 1: 25:08

I also think about the kindling effect, because you're just dumping another substance back into your body after you took the SSRI out right, which can be a very dangerous thing.

Speaker 1: 25:16

That can lead to, you know, a lot of neurological deficits in the body, which is what that is. So then you're more susceptible to drinking alcohol in that way, when you come off of medications in such a quick fashion, and then if you go back on them and you are on them and you have a history of drinking as well, or you're drinking in tandem, it's more likely then that your brain is never going to get itself back to a space of organic homeostasis and understanding what's happening. It's not going to, and these articles that we are talking about actually go into talking about the specific receptor sites and how they are impacted, but then you just you're it's two different evils and the body will will never catch up. And then, if your tolerance starts to increase because of SSRI use, your alcohol, alcohol use is going to increase, um, the amount that you're drinking is going to increase, and you are like the little rat that's just on the wheel.

Speaker 2: 26:19

Yes, and because now I'm just specifically honing in on college students they're not being regulated by parents to remind you to take your medication or remind you you know whatever to do these things right. And there's also a fair amount of people the majority that don't like especially kids. They don't like how they feel when they're on these things. Majority that don't like especially kids. They don't like how they feel when they're on these things, so they go off to school and that's their opportunity to feel life.

Speaker 2: 26:46

Yeah, to say, fuck it and feel life. And however much I'm in agreement with that, it's the tapering that you got to think about. Right, like there, you have to do this in a way that is productive and not harmful, right, but they don't know that. And so this is me traveling down a rabbit hole. And I understand correlation does not equal causation, but these are things that just make me go what? Okay, there's one in four students that are heading off to college that are on some type of psychiatric medication. That is 25%, 25% of students. Now, the dropout rate in the first year is about 25%. Up to 25% of the dropout is due to alcohol use. So what's with all this 25% bullshit going on? Like you know, I'm like 25, 25, like to me, I'm like, hmm, throw a number at it.

Speaker 2: 27:42

Throw a damn number at it, you get a car.

Speaker 1: 27:45

You get a car, you get a car, we all get a car.

Speaker 2: 27:47

Yes, I'd like to know how many people those kids that drop out are actually on, or were on, ssris to start college and they stopped it and they started drinking and they did all these things. I'd love to know that information. I stopped it and they started drinking and they did all these things. I'd love to know that information. I don't think I'm going to find it. I mean, maybe I'd have to spend a decade searching, but it just makes me wonder about all of that and the increased use of SSRIs in that age category is crazy to me. But I mean, that is the like. One of the biggest risk groups is people kids going off to college. So that's why I felt like it was important to bring that into this conversation, because if you're in college and even if you, I'm not saying that everybody who drinks quits college but how many college students leave college with a drinking issue or a heavy drinking issue, right, you know and then are put on SSRIs or whatever? Like, this whole conversation is a fucking rabbit hole, yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:55

That's why I just keep imagining the wheel with the rat in it. Oh my, God. You know, I think there's something very empowering from this. You know, I think there's something very empowering from this, for and I've brought this up with many of my deprescribing clients Okay, I think there's something very powerful to this message and this idea, especially for people who have been told and harmed by the traditional addiction world and how we are traditionally trained.

Speaker 2: 29:25

Some of those people on here not harmed, but the people in the addiction world. I think we need to start having conversation because that's another gaslit truth right there.

Speaker 1: 29:32

Yeah, yeah, we all, we got. We got some people dialing in coming to that are yep.

Speaker 1: 29:37

It's going to be fun to talk to them. Okay, can't give away, can't give away, can't give away the goat, all right, anyways, does that sound like a goat? I think that was a goat, all right, thank you, that was a good goat sound. What I wanted to say in terms of empowerment is when I meet with clients and we talk about specifically those I have a lot that I work with who really struggle with alcohol addiction and I'm going to air quote that for many of them we will go through a timeline, terry, and we will break down, you know, like this is why deprescribing is so much more than just here's the dose reduction go.

Speaker 2: 30:12

Oh my God, it is so much more than that.

Speaker 1: 30:16

And if it's sold to you, that bill of goods is sold to you. In that way, we're here. If you need us, you just come on over. It's okay, we won't judge you for trying to take the quick route.

Speaker 1: 30:28

It's okay, because I do that with lots of things. It's okay. No judgments here. Okay, but when I sit down and I talk with people about this, we will put a timeline together. Every single client that I've ever worked on deprescribing with also had some other relationship with either alcohol or drugs. Every single person I have Okay. And what we do is we look at that relationship and we look at the start of it and we look at how it has changed over time. And something that's super empowering for people is when I can say to them you realize that you are not an alcoholic, right, and they just look at me like I'm crazy because the entire world has told them for so long that they are.

Speaker 1: 31:08

That they are. And so the empowering piece behind this is when you can bring in research like this and get people to get curious about this idea. And then you put these timelines together and look at okay, tell me about when you started SSRIs, Tell me about what your alcohol use looked like between these periods of time in your life. Right, Tell me what happened within six months to a year of starting your SSRI and we will talk about that. And it's like this light dings on for people.

Speaker 2: 31:35

And they just pause. And this is the shit that is never brought up in traditional treatment and I feel like Jen and I can talk about this because I've ran traditional treatment programs. She has too.

Speaker 1: 31:46

I've written them, she's written them. I've written them and supervised them.

Speaker 2: 31:51

Yes, and we're not talking about this as a matter of fact. The answer is always psychiatric medication. That is the answer. You are drinking alcohol because you are depressed and you need an antidepressant to resolve that. Then nobody ever said, though, but your drinking might increase because you're on an antidepressant. Or make sure you don't relapse, because if you do, it's going to be worse than it was before because you're on an antidepressant. Because of that, than it was before because you're on an antidepressant because of that.

Speaker 1: 32:24

Nobody says that to anybody. It's not presented and I don't want to throw all the clinicians in the world under the bus right, Because we're all in the same space we really are. I'll throw them under. All right, you throw them under it, I'll throw them in front of it.

Speaker 2: 32:39

Well, I want to throw you know what?

Speaker 1: 32:44

I throw myself in front of it, I throw myself in front of that my two years ago, self in front of that bus 150%.

Speaker 2: 32:47

What I want to throw under the bus is the idea that our profession is not curious enough to look at any of this research or to be like what the fuck, but think?

Speaker 1: 34:00

about this when you are told for your whole life, or many, many, many years, that you are an alcoholic, that you have a problem with some sort of an addiction, right, and the idea that psychiatric medication in your history of use, what that looks like when it started, what types of medications you've taken, the idea that that is not that's negated, it's not even looked at. In fact, the only reason we talk about it is because of how much it's saving you within your struggle of sobriety. Okay, yeah. So everybody out there that's listening to this, take a second and look at this from a different lens, because it's so damn empowering when you can sit down and have a professional, someone who's an expert in this field, as we are, to be able to say to you what if you never had an addiction in the first place.

Speaker 2: 34:50

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:50

What if the basis of addiction? I know we've talked about the basis of addiction in terms of the brain and amino acid treatments and neurotransmitters and things like that we're going to throw another one at you. What if the basis of your addiction is actually it's been false and what you've been told is false and it actually? You never had an addiction in the first place. You started taking psychiatric medication and that made you so much more susceptible to being in this space.

Speaker 2: 35:14

What if the basis for your addiction was the intervention you were given? But there's another intervention. There's another one that people are all on board about, and that's gastric bypass surgery. Gastric bypass surgery and addiction are huge you know, after gastric bypass, not before, after. So that is another area. So so the idea of your addiction can be a result of the intervention is not completely out there. You guys Like it happens all the time.

Speaker 2: 35:45

And I go back to the word is iatrogenic, right, like that is iatrogenic. The other word is the episode that we just had, anosognosia, like that whole idea. You almost said it too. You could say it, I said it now. I know the whole idea that you have lack of awareness that these two things could say. It aligns to the time where you started taking psych meds. You didn't have these problems before then, because the psychiatric medication is the solution to all of your problems. God forbid. It creates more. You know, more issues you know. So it's just whole. I don't know like I.

Speaker 2: 36:37

I feel like this conversation is so big. I would love to get an MD addictionologist on here that thinks differently. I would love that, because I was even thinking about this last night. I was like why isn't there a psychiatrist out there who is like world-renowned psychiatrist that stands out, that's doing regular psychiatry, like traditional? Why is it? Can you think of anybody out there that is like the best world renowned psychiatrist that everybody leans on and everybody you know has studied this to the end? I can't think of a single person.

Speaker 2: 37:14

I can think of psychiatrists who are alternative, that are now standing out, but I cannot think of a single psychiatrist I could be wrong, be wrong that stands out. So I'm wondering if there's an addictionologist psychiatrist out there that stands out that says, yes, this has actually helped and not hurt. I don't think they exist. That's why I don't know. I don't think they exist because they're not. This is still the traditional care, even though it has been debunked over and over and over again. Anyway, hold on Rabbit hole, god damn it. I just jumped on the rabbit hole.

Speaker 1: 37:49

You went down the rabbit hole and I'll bring it back to some more.

Speaker 1: 37:55

There were some forums that you and I were talking about before we started recording right, and whether they're like the SSRI forums on Facebook or you can get yourself on Reddit and people are very, very honest on Reddit and we started reading some of this too which goes back to an original point that we made when we started is that subjective experience in all of this really, really truly can matter more than some of this research and the reason that we say that and we're not going to go too far in it.

Speaker 1: 38:23

But before we started, terry and I had found in this article that we are referencing and talking a little bit about and there was a couple other ones too that we were going back and forth down the rabbit hole on but it is worth everybody taking the time to look at who is funding the research that you read.

Speaker 1: 38:42

And I'm tying this into subjectivity because people will often say to me I mean, I have deprescribing clients that challenge me and I'm like, I love it, challenge me all day because I learned so much from them too, because they get me to think about things in a different way, right, but they will say, you know, let's challenge this for a second because you're constantly hinging on research and yet when you go through these big studies or these articles, a lot of it is funded by pharmaceutical companies and you need to look that up and understand that, and that is where I believe when I say subjectivity matters and people always like hanging their hat on the evidence based approach. Right, this gold fucking standard. When that gold standard is so convoluted, I'm going to go to forums like Reddit, I'm going to go to the Lexapro chats in Facebook that you and I were talking about before and the groups that are in there, because that subjective response matters.

Speaker 2: 39:43

There is pressure among researchers. When you get money to research something, there is pressure, oh sure to to have the conclusion, or to at least, because even in this rat study, I looked up who was a primary funder of the rat study and it was big pharma, of course. So when you read this rat, there are pieces in there that are like just on the edge, and then they pull it back and like but you know, ssris are still so good for people. Blah, yes, very cautious, very careful, and so you really have to read through that a little bit too, because you know where that's coming from. Kind of like the statement of people who drink will stop taking their meds when they drink because they know I'm like that's a fucking A yeah, because they know they shouldn't be drinking and taking meds Like that's like Really, really.

Speaker 1: 40:46

What.

Speaker 2: 40:46

Right, right, okay sure.

Speaker 1: 40:50

That's why they stopped. This is why they stopped it.

Speaker 2: 40:53

That's right, because they know these two things.

Speaker 1: 40:55

Should no, hell. No, they couldn't stop the meds because they couldn't get off the meds.

Speaker 2: 41:05

I felt like that was a PC statement that they had to put in there. There's a few of those statements in here, but at the end of that article, though, I found this little gold nugget and I want to share it. It says we report that the cessation, so quitting, fluxotine treatment administered during alcohol abstinence increases alcohol consumption when alcohol self-administration is resumed. Collectively, our results argue against the efficacy of fluxetine to reduce alcohol relapse and challenge the clinical relevance of this antidepressant to treat alcohol use disordered patients, which basically just validated the idea that they are using these things to treat alcohol use disordered patients, and they're doing it in a way that they shouldn't, because it actually makes people worse on many levels and it's not effective because when they start back up, it's worse, it's well worse when you start drinking again it is worse, the tolerance which goes back into this whole idea of the other article we were talking about with SSRIs and just tolerance, and what happens to tolerance when you start back up and taking these things again?

Speaker 1: 42:12

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:12

So this is so they did get there in the end.

Speaker 1: 42:15

They did yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:16

It was still pretty cautious. It was still a pretty cautious statement.

Speaker 1: 42:20

But this is where the subjective part, I do believe, does matter, and it's probably a good space to wrap things up is to talk about that idea of what you see in forums. Yes, it is going to. Of a sudden, I went from being the person that could drink and drink anyone under the table to starting to titrate off of my psychiatric medications and now, if I have one drink, I feel scared, I feel lost, I'm confused, like I don't feel safe. I'm like nope, jen, you've had one or two. You need to stop because it doesn't feel the same way anymore.

Speaker 2: 43:06

Listening to other people's experiences, the subjective experience in these forums who are going there for help and understanding, helps get you out of your own spellbinding right Like this is. That's the whole thing. We had the. We had a episode the last episode on how you're spellbound by these things, like you can't think outside, but when you start seeing other people cause. Most people aren't reading research articles, most people aren't doing that. They're going to forums. They're, they're looking for people who are feeling the same, they're getting curious about it, and that does get you out of the spellbinding that you might be. It does.

Speaker 1: 43:42

It does and it does matter.

Speaker 1: 43:44

It does matter, subjective experiences of others does matter, and we're not sitting here saying like you got to hang your hat on this and to not like pay attention to yourself or what other information you're being given, but I don't know why the hell we can't take all of it and make some informed decisions for ourselves based off of all of it.

Speaker 1: 44:04

I think that's probably the biggest message, because subjective experiences matter. And those subjective experience guys, those aren't the ones you're going to often see in research, because the funding for those outliers, you guys are fucking outliers. I hate to tell you, but you don't fit the model and you're an outlier, and so there isn't going to be a time of that in the research, depending on where it's funded from. So I guess that's another takeaway, too is your experience matters. So does subjective experience from other people, and that's where people like us and what we do and helping people deprescribe right. I will give way more stock to things that I read in memoirs, in people's books, in articles and blogs people write about their experiences of coming off of medications than I will in some research-driven funded study.

Speaker 2: 44:57

And also the lived experience of our own clients. Correct yes, all right. So just keep that in mind. When you're on SSRI and alcohol and there might be a relationship there that you need to become friends with you need to know, get a little curious about the fact that your alcohol use got worse because of your antidepressants. Or the idea, if you're already struggling with alcohol, that maybe antidepressants is not the answer for you.

Speaker 1: 45:22

Yeah, yeah, perhaps that intervention is the basis of your addiction. Oof.

Speaker 2: 45:28

Damn. All right, make sure you like comment, subscribe, do all the things and send us your Gaslit Truth stories at thegaslittruthpodcastgmailcom, and thanks for hanging out with us. Once again, thanks everyone.