Gaslit Into Taking My Own Medical Advice with Nicole Lamberson: A Medical Professional's Journey Through Medication Harm

What happens when a medical professional becomes the victim of the very medications they once prescribed? Nicole Lamberson, physician assistant and medical director for the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, takes us through her harrowing journey from stressed PA student to polypharmacy casualty to powerful advocate for medication safety.

Nicole's story begins with work-related anxiety during PA school that led to a prescription for Xanax. What followed was a five-year nightmare of escalating medications – six psychiatric drugs simultaneously, including multiple benzodiazepines, stimulants, and antipsychotics. As her health deteriorated, Nicole found herself unable to function, agoraphobic, and eventually suicidal. When she attempted to discontinue these medications, she encountered a medical system utterly unprepared to help patients safely taper off psychiatric drugs.

The podcast explores the profound gaps in medical education around deprescribing, with Nicole revealing that her professional training included "absolutely zero" instruction on safely discontinuing medications. This knowledge vacuum creates dangerous situations where withdrawal symptoms are misdiagnosed as worsening mental illness or drug-seeking behavior. Even when patients report severe adverse effects, they're often dismissed as "outliers" or told their experiences are "rare."

Through her recovery journey, Nicole became a vital voice in medication safety. She now contributes to deprescribing guidelines, works with the Withdrawal Project, distributes the documentary "Medicating Normal," and coaches individuals through psychiatric medication discontinuation. Her work balances scientific rigor with deep compassion born from lived experience.

This eye-opening conversation challenges listeners to question the narratives around psychiatric medications, advocate for themselves in medical settings, and recognize that healing

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

• 0:42 Welcome to Gaslit Truth Podcast
• 1:25 Nicole Lamberson's Background and Advocacy
• 4:53 Medical Training and Gaslighting in Healthcare
• 11:14 Challenging the FDA and Medical Institutions
• 19:10 Nicole's Personal Medication Nightmare
• 32:59 The Reality of Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal
• 44:54 Medical Trauma and Finding Agency
• 54:41 Acknowledging Iatrogenic Harm and Moving Forward

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:22

What if you've been gaslit into taking your own medical advice? We are your whistleblowing shrinks, Dr Tara Lynn and therapist Jen, and this is the gaslit truth podcast. Welcome everybody. Yes, all right Jen who do we have?

Speaker 2: 0:41

Bring her in you, slide her in Everybody today we have. Nicole Lambertson on the show. Lambertson, we got her. Is she in the middle? I'm going to fix that. There she is.

Speaker 3: 0:50

Hi Nicole, Did you put a T in?

Speaker 2: 0:51

there.

Speaker 1: 0:51

Yeah, she's in the middle now.

Speaker 2: 0:52

I did, but I undid the T.

Speaker 3: 0:58

Why does it sound good with a T? Do other people do? Pretty straightforward last name, but it's Butcher Constance.

Speaker 2: 1:03

Yeah, okay, all right, let's try this again.

Speaker 2: 1:06

We have Nicole Lamberson Look at that, I do it right, okay, and Nicole is a physician assistant everyone she's based in Virginia who has personally overcome the challenges of polypharmacy with prescribed psychiatric meds, leading to a severe and prolonged withdrawal syndrome. She currently serves as the medical director for the nonprofit organization Benzodiazepine Information Coalition. Nicole Cole founded the Withdrawal Project of the Intercompass Initiative and she plays a key role in marketing, distribution and outreach for the documentary Medicating Normal. She is also recognized for her contributions to the Moudsley Deprescribing Guidelines, a comprehensive resource for the safe reduction or discontinuation.

Speaker 1: 1:45

Oh, shoot, I don't have mine nearby.

Speaker 3: 1:47

You have a copy with all kinds of notes.

Speaker 2: 1:49

Oh girl, I'm a deprescriber. I live off of this manual. I don't sleep with it quite yet, but I got damn close. Here's mine.

Speaker 3: 1:56

Oh, you do. Look at you. There you go. Look at you. Yes, I love it. Mark Horowitz would be so proud.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Oh gosh, Jen's got better tabs than I do on this thing. I tab.

Speaker 2: 2:05

Everything it's fine, it's okay, it's not crazy. All right, mollet's Leaves Guideline. This is our resource guys for safe reduction of discontinuation of antidepressants benzos, gabapentinoids, z drugs your Bible for those of us that are deprescribers or working with people who are going through withdrawal. I'm going to add that right in there. Okay, nicole recently contributed to the American Society of Addictions Medicines People with Lived Experience panel. She helped develop the US benzodiazepine deprescribing guidelines, which was a project funded by the FDA, and additionally she works as a coach for individuals navigating the process of discontinuing psychiatric medication. She does that through the Taper Clinic with Dr Yosef. Shout out to Dr Dr J. We love you. Welcome to the show, nicole. I just ad-libbed a lot of that bio, so I hope it's okay.

Speaker 3: 2:51

Yeah, totally Okay, you did great Do you sleep? I want to know I was saying I need to quit some stuff.

Speaker 2: 2:57

I think, yeah, you got to. She's like I had to quit some shit.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Like, yeah, there's a lot of shit on there, I don't know, if you sleep, I don't think you get any sleep, because this is a lot of advocacy here, a lot of advocacy and mental tasking. And, by the way, I just want to say thank you for everything you're doing, for this really hurt community, because I also know that you're part of it and Jen and I are too. So, and I also really want to say thank you for this. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3: 3:30

Yeah, well, that's all, mark, really.

Speaker 1: 3:34

Yeah, oh yeah, but you're part of it.

Speaker 2: 3:36

You're in it girl.

Speaker 1: 3:37

Yeah, so thank you for being part of that wonderful, necessary uh book that we all need in this community.

Speaker 3: 3:45

So thank you so much Well, and thanks to you guys too, for, you know, getting the book wanting to, you know, be on the right side of history, really, so yeah, I like that.

Speaker 1: 3:56

Because I do, Because we've been on the wrong side of history for a long time and also being part of history for a long time. With that being said, we started this whole episode off with have you been gaslit by your own medical advice? And I think that is a very strong place to begin with your history. So would you mind sharing with us how you were gaslit by your own medical advice?

Speaker 3: 4:25

Yeah. So I mean, before I took psychiatric medications I went to PA school. I was training to be a PA and when I started taking psychiatric medications I was in PA school and moving into graduating and starting to seeing patients and, I think, being trained as any medical professional. I think it's just kind of baked into your education. Before we came on I looked up the definition of gaslit because I want to be careful Like I don't think I try to think back about when I was practicing and seeing patients. Did I ever have some motivation to be? Well, if we look at the definition of gaslight making someone dependent on the perpetrator or grossly misleading someone for your own advantage I don't think it's that so much with physicians and PAs and nurse practitioners and medical providers, as much as it is just how we're taught and like ignorance.

Speaker 3: 5:34

And when I say how we're taught I mean, like you know, in our training it's like, well, look out to see if your patient is a malingerer, you know, look out to see if your patient is maybe using more than they're supposed to of their medication or if they're lying to you, you know. So you're you're kind of like trained to be suspicious of your patients and I think that comes out in how providers then go into practice and treat people. Also, though, you know you're trained into using these medications. Psychiatric drugs is what we're really talking about today, but other medications do, and there was a ton of focus on how safe and effective they are and you know what they treat, but not a lot of criticism or looking at like the downsides of medicine or how do we get people off of them when they're harming people or not working. There was very little, if any, focus on that, so I wanted.

Speaker 2: 6:36

That's what I wanted to. I wanted to ask you about that. You're the first, like PA, that we've had here on the show, and we've had other individuals that have talked a little bit about this same kind of idea. So this is not something that formally education-wise for you. You received or was there any awareness on here's how you put them on, but here's what you have to know to get them off, and I'm not talking like the traditional let's do every other day for a couple of weeks or you know, let's, let's remove one and we'll add another one, Like all of the things that are typical, like was there any formal education you received on? Here is how you safely get someone off of these.

Speaker 3: 7:21

No, absolutely zero. Yeah, none. You know there's the typical standard like side effects and you know, look out for side effects. But again I think that I mean we can be gaslit by language, like you know oh, it's so just this little thing over here on the side, you know where.

Speaker 3: 7:43

The term I think we should be using is adverse effects, things that are, you know, bad or but it's not this like little thing on the side. Sometimes adverse effects are really bad for patients, you know. So it was kind of like this minimized thing. Oh well, it might cause some side effects, but you know no big discussion on like how medications can go horribly bad for people sometimes, how to get them off safely, what withdrawal symptoms could happen. I mean, you know, you know that benzos, if you abruptly discontinue them, can cause seizures. But that was kind of the extent of you know the training. Really.

Speaker 1: 8:24

Yeah, benzos are like the only one, the only classification that we talk about in those terms, your standard SSRI, snri is not really it's like don't go cold Turkey, but it's because it might be bad for you, not because you might have a seizure and die. So there's. You know, the benzodiazepine has that, at least has that huge warning, you know, whereas other classes don't have those huge warnings.

Speaker 2: 8:51

It's not like the SSRI say you could have akathisia and then unaliving thoughts and end your life, which is very reality, but that's not part of it, right?

Speaker 3: 8:58

That's not something that you see on the SSRI, like withdrawal yeah Well, there's even you know professionals in this space who I work with, who mean well, who you know are totally a hundred percent in on the benzo issue. You know, they know that they're causing physical dependence and withdrawal and severe suffering, but they you can't get them to come in. On the antidepressant thing they're like, oh you know, so we switched them to an antidepressant and I'm like, no, you know, how can you not? But you know, some people just kind of like, meet you halfway and that's as far as they're willing to come and it's I don't think it's again like some deep. You know they're trying to keep people stuck under their care, but they just don't know. You know they're trying to keep people stuck under their care, but they just don't know.

Speaker 1: 9:47

You know, I want to say I don't. I don't think that. I don't believe that, jen, and I think that either. Um, what I think is is that a lot of people are left in slumber, um, and they, when they see the iatrogenic harm that's caused, like they dismiss it or they're not looking at it as that because they're trained to think like a pill is going to fix this thing. So I'm going to find the best one for this patient.

Speaker 1: 10:15

I can't say a hundred percent of the time that you know, but, but Jen and I have talked a lot about manipulative language and things like that. That that we've said and done in our practices and along the way, and I think that happens a lot. And again, the intention isn't to harm. The outcome could be harm, but I don't know that the intent. I don't think. I know that I did not intentionally go in to cause anybody harm. I know that I did not intentionally go in to cause anybody harm. I would say things to make sure they were compliant, because those are words that we used in the space as compliance and things like that.

Speaker 3: 10:54

Yeah or oh, that patient is non-compliant.

Speaker 1: 10:57

Non-compliant, yeah, non-compliant.

Speaker 3: 11:01

As if you're like the overlord of their decisions and care Overlord.

Speaker 1: 11:06

I like that.

Speaker 2: 11:11

Well, here's the thing, nicole, and I'm curious to know your opinion on this. So, all right, we've hit a space within this where, okay, there is research that is out there. It's been there for quite some time. Okay, it's not like this is a brand new thing. There are enough people speaking out. There is enough information out there. The part, I think, about this that bothers me the most, and I'm not sure what? I agree Terry and I are not sitting here going. All physicians or prescribers are are bad people and are going in this with like to to harm their patients.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Right, we know that that's not happening, right, okay, but there's a lot of ego driven in the some of this there's there's a shit.

Speaker 2: 11:57

there's a shit ton of ego Okay.

Speaker 3: 11:59

There's specialties were surgeons. Yes, yes, sorry, sorry Sorry, but but they're better with the ego.

Speaker 2: 12:07

My issue is here's the biggest problem that I have is, if you're, the basis of what you do is so there's so much academia behind it, there's so much research behind it. There's I mean, y'all didn't get into this field and wake up one day and go, oh okay, I've got advanced degrees. Get into this field and wake up one day and go, oh okay, I've got advanced degrees and I spent a shit ton of time doing that, okay. So how is it that, with the information that we have now, you're not even in a space, or people are not even in a space to get curious, just get used where?

Speaker 2: 12:41

What happened to being inquisitive within some of this process, because that's how you got to where you were in the first place the basis of what you do, what happened to being inquisitive within some of this process, because that's how you got to where you were in the first place the basis of what you do is heavily rooted in academia and in research. So now all of this is there, but that is easily dismissed. That's the part that I can't wrap my brain around is the idea that I'm a physician, I'm a prescriber and I can't go just a little farther to read about this, to actually pick up a manual that has 19,400 references in it of things that are research-based, a good chunk of them that are rooted in academia. But I can't, I won't even look at that. That ignorance, that level of ignorance, is where, then? I believe that, to me, is iatrogenic.

Speaker 3: 13:32

Yeah, I say all the time like it's. It's forgivable to have not known, because the system is set up for people not to know, right Like the training isn't there, although I do meet some younger psychiatrists now who were like, oh yeah, this was in my program, so it may some things may be changing since I went to school, but it's understandable if you were trained to not know or you weren't given the information. But it's really unforgivable for your for you to deny when your patient comes in and says this is happening to me and here's this information, here's this book, here's this, you know all these articles and et cetera, and for you to still dig in your heels and like so huge why, why?

Speaker 3: 14:16

not get curious, right? Well, if you know what it's like and this is going to sound like an excuse and I don't want it to, because there is no excuse when patients are being harmed but like to work in, you know corporate medicine and you have 10 minutes and they're sending you bulletins once a month saying if you don't speed up your time and be more efficient and see more patients and oh, by the way, your dictations are 72 words too long. You know, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. It's not a good system to be able to have a ton of extra time to sit, and I mean this is a problem that takes like I don't think I became a so-called expert in it until I sat down and really like, studied and learned and devoted my life to it and you saw the size of that purple textbook.

Speaker 3: 15:18

Like most physicians and medical people who are learning things are doing it selfishly because they need CMEs, right, so they're going to pick something that has something attached to it that gets their CME credits met, and so one thing maybe we can do is try to get CME or something assigned to these topics so that maybe people will choose, you know, to learn about this because there's something in it for them. I also think that there's cognitive dissonance at play, like we're asking people to accept that they've been practicing in a way that's harmful and that's really hard to do for anybody. You know, with any topic, to say like you were wrong, you have to admit that and also you may have been harming people, you know.

Speaker 1: 16:11

I think because that there's an assumption of intentionality there. You know, like I have not, I have not been harming people because we're defending the intention, right, like I am not a harmful person, I haven't done it, instead of saying you know what.

Speaker 3: 16:28

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:24

Unintentionally, maybe I did you know, and then getting really curious about that. That's what Jen and I have talked about. Like unintentionally, we've harmed people, yes, you know. And now there's no forgiveness if we keep doing it. That's the thing. Yeah, once you know, you can't.

Speaker 3: 17:44

Yeah, and so you know, sometimes also, people are like burnout and I'm already, like you know, strapped for time and all these patients and their problems, and now you want me to like learn something new and change everything. And it's just like you know, I think't. Why aren't providers curious? And I think some of it is just well. Like I said, we don't, they don't have the time to be.

Speaker 3: 18:17

But also a lot of people and myself included in this, when I went to school, like I was really good at memorizing things and I was super book smart and I wasn't, I wasn't critical or somebody who like questioned, and so people who are by nature, I always try to ask them, like how did you become so? Like, look behind the curtain, is that just how you've always been? Because I just studied, read, regurgitated and did well and was naive and believed what I was being taught. Maybe because I grew up in a medical family and, like you know daughters and their dads. So I thought, oh, my dad is a doctor and he helps people, and so my sense of medical care was doctors always help, they never harm.

Speaker 3: 19:11

And so I just naturally trusted and thought all these doctors are training me, they're giving me the right information. I had no freaking idea that there was like this dark side to really much of anything. I mean, when I got harmed, this is what I said to my dad I'm going to go to the FDA and tell them and the drug companies and he just like cackled in my face like what you know like. But that's how naive I was. I really thought that these institutions would like give a shit that this was happening. You know, this was happening.

Speaker 1: 19:47

That's interesting because you're talking to fellow rule followers. Anyways, me, I don't know about Jen, but it's kind of the same thing Give me the information and I take the information. It wasn't until the last I don't know, maybe 10 years that I started getting really interested in this, but I do remember in undergrad, which was a long time ago for me, we had to take a class called critical thinking. It was a class we had to take and now that's not there anymore and I'm like bring it back. Please bring that class back. We need to have access to that instead of some of these other things that you're required to take.

Speaker 1: 20:25

But when you were describing it, I used to play the flute. Okay, I played the flute for eight years, all right, but I played the notes, right, I played the notes as they were on the sheet, right? Exactly like that. And I would always look at the people that could just sight, read or or play by ear or do all these things, and wonder how, how can you do that? Because I'm so rigid in the way that I play and the way that I think you know and I'm. To me, that was the example of like, like, yeah, it's like somebody who can play life by ear and can pick up on things that other people can't pick up on, who are just book smart. Not just because that's a big deal, too, to be book smart, but just reading the sheet music, reading the notes, playing the notes as they're written and not deviating from that at all is a difficult thing to do for academics.

Speaker 3: 21:25

Well, especially I mean some of it is probably like genetics or how you were raised. If you raised in a house that you were like everything is classic.

Speaker 1: 21:33

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 21:35

But you know, I think we can all. We can change how we were, especially when you have a big learning experience. You know, my grandmother used to always say mother experience teaches a valuable lesson.

Speaker 3: 21:48

My grandmother used to always say mother experience teaches a valuable lesson, but she charges a hefty fee you know it's so true, I like that, but you get experience and then you can do and be different. Like I am so much more critically thinking and curious now, and one of the people that I interviewed on Medicating Normal's YouTube channel her name's Margaret Heffernan. She has a brilliant TED Talk about a concept called willful blindness, where people are willfully blind to things. You know, terrible things came from people being willfully blind and when I asked her in the interview, like how do we not be that way? And she was like well, everyone is and you're gonna be, and like because it's just human. But you can start listening more to friends or people in your circle who are questioners like, who are talking about things away from the norm, and instead of just automatically dismissing them, like start getting curious and looking into what they're saying because they might be onto something.

Speaker 1: 22:59

Yeah, or away from your norm, right Like just talking differently about the same subject, right Like really listening to understand that person deeply? You don't have to agree with them.

Speaker 3: 23:12

Yeah. And some of them, I mean they still may be tinfoil hat weirdos at the end of the day.

Speaker 1: 23:17

I still want to know why like why?

Speaker 2: 23:20

why are you wearing a tinfoil hat? So, nicole, you you mentioned the comment about your dad and how, when you came to some realizations that were happening for yourself from the psychiatric harm, that was done right. It was like, well, I'm going to go to the FDA and I'm going to like, like, don't you people know?

Speaker 3: 23:37

a little bit off of that. I was going to call Pfizer and be like hell, yeah, you're fucking people up. Right. Don't you know that this drug is dangerous, yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:46

I mean, okay. So in your, when I was reading your bio, one of the first things that I have to ask her about is and then you mentioned this right. So when I see the FDA, not only as a consumer, okay and as someone who has been harmed by psych meds, but also helps people get through deprescribing, off of psych meds, right, I see those three letters and I get real pissed off. Okay, lots and lots and lots of things anger me when I see that. Now I'm curious about the fact that you are working on a project that was funded by the FDA, the US Benzodeprescribing Right Project, correct?

Speaker 3: 24:33

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:34

Okay, tell us a little bit about that and whether or not what you're willing to share with that and, if there was some hesitation to do that, if it was something that you know, just based off of the harm that's happened to you, how do you trust those three letters and work hand in hand with them, doing a project with them?

Speaker 3: 24:53

Yeah. So they I mean the FDA wasn't anyone that we actually met with, although they were involved. You know they put up the money, but I didn't ever hesitate to do the project. I mean, I just felt like going in, I had measured expectations, I knew, okay, this is a mainstream medical society, the American Society of Addiction Medicine, who got the grant. They are only going to move, but so much, you know.

Speaker 3: 25:23

But if I can show up with all these other patients and they are nice enough to have this panel, you know I was skeptical. Like are they just checking the box? Like we had a patient panel and they're not going to listen to us, you know. And on some things they didn't, but they did listen, quite a bit actually, and they took feedback from us and they changed lots of things to where the guidance was way better than it would have been had we not attended. And also shout out to all the people who filled out the public commentary portion when the guidelines were up for public comment. I think that helped quite a bit as well.

Speaker 3: 26:05

So are the guidelines perfect? No, maudsley is much better. So if anybody asked me, I'd say just buy the purple book, you know, yeah. So are the guidelines perfect. No, maudsley is much better. So if anybody asked me, I'd say just buy the purple book, you know. But there's, you know, there's stuff in the ASAM guidance paid for by the FDA that makes me want to rip out my hair, you know. Like try antidepressants instead, because they're safer. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I went back and forth with them because they're safer.

Speaker 1: 26:29

I mean.

Speaker 2: 26:30

I can't tell you how many times I went back and forth with them.

Speaker 3: 26:34

Yeah, I said please define safer. What do you mean by this? You know I fought and fought, I tried to get them. But again it's like you have to kind of accept and know who you're working with but also know that if you can just make it better and move the needle a bit like it's still good and somebody now can take this document and say here's this document by the ASAM. It's endorsed by 10 or nine or eight other medical societies in the US. It says right here that you're not supposed to cut me off my benzo, you're supposed to let me taper at% to 10% a month. It's still going to get people what they need eventually, which I think is support in the United States for coming off benzos slowly.

Speaker 1: 27:18

So yeah, I think from a consumer level, though, there's such mistrust now when you've been harmed. There's such mistrust in the FDA, in big pharma, in your prescribers, like any insight on how to bridge that, to kind of get what you need regardless of that mistrust. Because if you're just living in mistrust, then you're not moving your own needle at all either, and there's so much mistrust and anger and fear and all of that in this resentment and all the things in this group.

Speaker 2: 27:52

Resentment's a bitch. It is. I'm in it right now. It's horrible because, then you can't. Even even when you try to take advice, even if it's just general medical advice or anything, right, there's such a twist to it that you're just like, nope, I can't, I can't. So then you actually stop discontinuing other things or ideas that might actually be relevant and applicable and helpful to you.

Speaker 3: 28:14

Right, Because of who it's coming from yeah, you have to constantly be checking yourself. I think anybody who's been harmed in the way that I have has medical trauma. That's normal. You're going to be traumatized by what's happened to you, you know, especially if you had this horrible health crisis and everybody you met with told you it wasn't real, it wasn't happening, you know, and you had nowhere to turn. That's the most awful position to be in. But you know, I kind of laugh now because when I go into new medical providers, like it says on my chart occupation physician assistant. So I think when I come in they think like I'm going to be one of them or whatever, and then they realize like oh, here's this difficult, noncompliant person here.

Speaker 2: 29:04

Tinfoil hat wearing PA yeah it's got that tinfoil hat on. I'm like surprise.

Speaker 3: 29:10

Yeah, but I'm not what they expect and a lot of them don't like me, you know, and I don't care, Because through what's happened to me I realized like I am a consumer of medicine, I can spend my money in finding care that is collaborative and that you know meets my needs. And if you're going to be that overlord person in our relationship, I don't want it, you know I'll leave, You're fired and I'll find somebody better. So I think you have to kind of know that that's the landscape of medicine, at least in the United States. You know we don't have like the NHS where you have to deal with government. So that's one of the upsides of the US health care system, which is totally not that great, you know. But still you get to pick who you see, and I think you can also do your own research, Like you're responsible for your own health care, and I know that's hard for people because they want to just be able to like.

Speaker 2: 30:19

As therapists, we say that to our clients all the time they're like what do? You mean we're responsible, that's why we're seeing you. No, actually you're responsible.

Speaker 3: 30:28

Yeah, I mean you know your own self best. You're the one living in your body. Yep, you have to take ownership. And I know that sucks, because, yeah, I used to be somebody who wanted to just walk in and say, here you go, fix it, you know, but that's how I got. Injured is just by blindly trusting and trying to hand over my agency to somebody else and let them do whatever they thought was right.

Speaker 2: 30:50

So that's the buzzword of the show agency.

Speaker 3: 30:53

Almost every study go search and see if there's a support group for the thing that your doctor's trying to get you to take. If there is, what are these people complaining of? Then make a risk benefit assessment for yourself. Is what I have bad enough that I'm willing to risk this, that and the other? All of medicine is risk benefit.

Speaker 2: 31:19

Everything can harm, nicole tell us a little bit about what happened to you in the psychiatric community. Give us a little bit of that story.

Speaker 3: 31:31

You mean, like when I got prescribed and how I was treated.

Speaker 2: 31:34

Yeah, you started to talk about it. And then we do what Terry and I do best and we derail and just jump in, but you started your story about being in school as a PA, and that was your introduction to psych meds.

Speaker 3: 31:45

Yeah, so the first psych med med I took although I didn't realize it was a psych med was zyban, which was for smoking, but it's really well buterin repackaged, you know, um, because I wanted to quit smoking. I figured, oh, if I'm gonna be a PA, like, I've got to leave behind this college cigarette thing that I started, you know, um, and I don't remember any harm from that one, although, you know, at the time I was so naive it could have changed my mood or done something and I didn't pick up on it, but I wasn't on it long. And then, when I graduated PA school, I think what a lot of people experience is kind of imposter syndrome. Like I'm 20 something years old, I have these people's lives in my hands. I just went to school, but I don't have a ton of like experience other than my clinical rotations. And now I just have to, like go out there and do this, like start practicing medicine, you know.

Speaker 3: 32:42

And so I had anxiety at work and, you know, stress from starting. That I also think, if I'm being totally honest looking back, I was still 20-something, so not taking the best care of myself, you know. And you know staying up too late and having beers on the weekends with friends and stuff like that. So I wound up on Xanax and it was prescribed to me by one of my colleagues, actually at the clinic that I was working at, just very casual, nonchalant, like take it as needed. You know, it's great for anxiety. What you have is anxiety, and I think it turned on me quickly, as short-term benzos often do, where people start to get more anxious. So having something called intradose withdrawal, where the drug's wearing off and you're becoming super anxious but you don't attribute it to the medication, you just think like what's wrong with me? I'm becoming like this neurotic, you know I can't relax. And that's when I entered psychiatry.

Speaker 3: 33:47

Xanax made me suicidal thinking sometimes, and so that scared me and I was like depressed, and so I was like, oh, I better see a psychiatrist. You know, I thought I was helping myself, because that's how we frame mental health I don't even like that word in, you know, in our societies like get help. You know, going into these institutions is helping yourself, it's healthy. And so that's what I thought and I I entered into psychiatry and for the next five years I became a victim of polypharmacy. I was drugged nearly to death. I was drugged nearly to death six psych meds at once. Two of them were benzos and one was the Z drug sleeping pill, all of which work, you know, nearly the same. So I was on three of the same drugs, basically Adderall, which also makes no sense when you're giving somebody all these downers and now you're giving them speed.

Speaker 2: 34:49

My brain was Well sure it does you need it for the symptoms caused by the other ones? Yeah, it makes total sense.

Speaker 1: 34:56

And then you need to sleep aid because of the stimulant and all the other shit that you're on.

Speaker 3: 35:00

Yeah, and then, remeron, because I lost tons of weight on Adderall, and then I parked in front of the fridge and was eating cold chicken bones and jello at three in the morning in bed. You know that whole side effect thing, Seroquel for sleep, which you shouldn't be prescribing antipsychotics to people for sleep Off label, Nicole, it's fine yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:24

All the time. That is all the time. And kids, kids get Seroquel for sleep all the time.

Speaker 2: 35:28

I cannot tell you how many clients I have that. That is the exact trajectory of how Seroquel was entered into their treatment plan.

Speaker 3: 35:38

So here I am on all these meds. I'm sicker than ever and I started to not be able to function at work anymore. To not be able to function at work anymore, I was agoraphobic because I was so tolerant and introduced to the benzos that I started being unable to like leave my house. My neighbor would ring the doorbell and I would run upstairs and hide from fear and had no idea why I was doing that, like I was just driven by fear because these drugs had stopped working and I was getting rebound. You know terror and anxiety.

Speaker 3: 36:11

And my dad, bless him read an article in Outside Magazine by Matt Samet, who's a famous climber who had benzoinjury, and he wrote his story in a mainstream magazine. And my dad just happened to be a subscriber to Outside and he gave me the story and I read it and at first I was like you know I'm tired, you know I don't want to be told that. I kind of I rejected it at first, like here's somebody who doesn't understand my mental illness. You know, because I was bought into that Every time I would go to the doctor and complain of these things, the messaging I was getting was your mental illness is getting worse, you have treatment resistant, this You're going to have to manage your mental health for the rest of your life, et cetera. A very terrible message, a hopeless message, really.

Speaker 3: 37:06

But then eventually I sat with that more and I'm like this guy like speaks my language. He described everything I'm feeling and then it just like instantly switched. I was like I'm being fucking poisoned and I need to get off of this shit. Like holy crap, you know. And then I went into a detox center, which was the second stupidest mistake I ever made, because more medical advice told me oh, you're on benzos, you got to go to a rehab, because most medical providers don't understand the difference between physical dependence and addiction. So when I asked for help with being on all these psych meds because benzos and Adderall were in the picture they just assumed that I was an addict. And I remember questioning at the time and maybe this is a lesson for people when you're talking about, like, how to navigate healthcare I had a gut feeling and I ignored it. And the gut feeling was how does this make any sense? Every single person who sees a psychiatrist has to go to rehab. Like that is something's not adding up, you know.

Speaker 1: 38:20

But I was scared of having a seizure and I thought oh, I need somebody to oversee my care, so I'll just go there and whatever. It'll take 30 days, I think that's what we're told about it. Sometimes more than like you're an addict because you're on benzodiazepine, it's more of you need a medically supervised detox thing, which still is too fast.

Speaker 3: 39:41

It's too fast. It's so fast, they do it in a week and then send you home.

Speaker 2: 39:45

I was going to say, were you there a year, nicole?

Speaker 3: 39:48

No, and the amount of shit I was on, it would have been way longer than a year. Oh sure. If.

Speaker 2: 39:53

I would have done it properly, oh sure.

Speaker 3: 39:55

But no, no, and I was gaslit all to hell in that place too.

Speaker 2: 40:01

So all of the psych meds that you were on were discontinued within a week no they kept the ones that, or just.

Speaker 3: 40:09

Yeah, so the ones they put in the bad addictive category, they rip you off of the ones that are in the good medicine category, like Seroquel, they'll keep you on. Remeron, they keep you on, okay.

Speaker 2: 40:25

Yeah, but they don't understand. That's what I mean. It was the Benzo. These also cause physical dependence and withdrawal Right.

Speaker 3: 40:31

And then they added more Gabapentin.

Speaker 2: 40:34

When I was in there, they added huge doses of gabapentin, yeah, so the benzo is what you were taken off of the benzo and the stimulant yeah.

Speaker 3: 40:44

Two benzos, ambien and Adderall all got essentially cold turkey in a week, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1: 40:52

Well, you said I was gaslit all to hell during that time. Oh my gosh. Yeah, explain that, if you would. Oh yeah.

Speaker 3: 41:00

You know I'm pacing up and down the halls and my feet are bleeding. And from akathisia, and they had given me a little Dixie cup, as they do in those places of effects or, you know, because that's the treatment. Oh, you're anxious. So now you need an SNRI instead of it's withdrawal. And I took that one dose of it and it like imploded my nervous system. I had vertigo, that was I can't even put words to the vertigo that I had. It felt like somebody put my bed up on a stilt and just spun it in a circle. You know, put my bed up on a stilt and just spun it in a circle, you know. And I was had akathisia. I was pacing, my skin was burning and I was saying like, help me, you know I can. Something horrible is happening. And the next day they came back to my room with another little cup of Effexor again and said you're not being compliant with your care. You're never going to get better if you don't take your medicine. You know you don't want to get better.

Speaker 1: 41:56

Oh, that that you don't want to get better yeah.

Speaker 3: 41:59

And and also those places are very 12 step. You know, that's their model. Everybody has to read the big book and all of this, which was totally irrelevant to my. I wanted off of all of that crap badly, I didn't want to take it at all. And all these other people around me had, you know, true addiction problems where they were really struggling with, you know, avoiding use of a substance. And they would say to me like you know, read chapter four in the big book. You're struggling with surrendering or whatever. And I would just be like what is this place? How did I wind up in this place? They're going to kill me. And so I wound up calling a friend and was like get me out of here before I die. Essentially, yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:51

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1: 42:53

That's because there are no detoxes and long-term really rehabs and things like that for this type of issue.

Speaker 3: 43:00

Um, yeah, I mean, we found one actually in florida that does an outpatient benzo taper program associated with their rehab. I don't know if they're still open, but yeah, I mean that mean that's the state of affairs, One that we've come across. That knows, you know. But maybe things with this new guidance from the ASAM will change. I don't know. I don't know how the rehab industry is regulated as far as you know, can they not? Well can they get in trouble for now, if the standard of care is tapering, you know?

Speaker 3: 43:39

but that was give the grim statistics that like only 5% of people succeed in those places or something and they cost, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. But that actually was one of the complaints of the patient panel for the ASAM benzo guidance was. There's a chapter in there that says if the person, if the patient's withdrawal is difficult or extreme, you know, send them to an inpatient unit and we're like they're not going to help, they're not going to know what to do and they're just going to rip them off. And maybe the reason why the withdrawal is difficult for that patient is because the provider they're seeing has been going too fast. So in that case you don't just go to rehab and rip them off. And we know providers are going to want to take that exit like, oh, you're difficult, Go to rehab because they don't want to have to deal with it.

Speaker 3: 44:46

You know, instead of you probably need to up dose, you know, get stable and then taper slower and use one of these other techniques. So that, yeah, we complained a lot about it, but it's still in there.

Speaker 2: 44:58

So when you got out, your friend came got you. At that point the benzos, the stimulants were out of your body and you were on what SSRIs? Snris at that point, yeah.

Speaker 3: 45:12

I was still on Remeron Gabapentin, and then they had added.

Speaker 2: 45:20

Trazodone as well. Okay, oh, help you with sleeping that night, or what?

Speaker 3: 45:23

Yeah, that was the intention. It wasn't working. So what'd you?

Speaker 2: 45:27

do. What happened then, nicole? Tell us about how you got your way through this, to the end of getting off of these drugs, about how you got your way through this to the end of getting off of these drugs.

Speaker 3: 45:39

Yeah, so I moved in with my elderly grandmother, who had no business trying to take care of somebody in akathisia. But we were all in my family frantically trying to help me. We had no idea this could happen. When I went into the place we all thought, oh, I mean, I had told my job, like, I'll be back in a couple weeks, that was my plan. So that's how naive I was to what was about to happen to me. I never made it back to that job. My dad had to, you know, go down and pack up my apartment and move everything home. So I had to move home. So I had to move home. And for four months I stayed in that state of severe withdrawal, thinking it's got, you know, it's got to go away soon, not knowing, oh, you know, protracted withdrawal is real and it can last for years, you know.

Speaker 1: 46:27

Kind of another way, you probably didn't even have those words then.

Speaker 3: 46:30

Yeah, I was still. Yeah, you probably didn't have those words, yeah you probably didn't have those words thinking in the medical mindset. Like an admission I can make is I went to to benzo buddies and I read some of these people who were having symptoms at five and six years and I was like these are psych meds, they're probably mental patients. Like I don't know if that's real, like how could the you know? And so apologies, because protracted withdrawal is real and it does happen and it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3: 47:02

I mean, you know what? What is mental patient? Anyways, one in five people are on these meds in the U? S, so we're all mental patients at this point, Apparently. Yeah, um. But so I hung on for four months and it was so severe that I had a suicide attempt, like I was, like I can't do this anymore. I wound up in the ICU and luckily survived, so I'm happy that I'm alive. To anybody who's thinking about ending their life over psych med withdrawal, you know, please don't. It's. Once you start healing it's worth it to be here.

Speaker 3: 47:38

I reinstated some benzodiazepine and that was enough to kind of keep me hanging on. It didn't fix the injury that my nervous system had sustained, but I was. I was able to continue to carry on and then I tapered over like 18 months to get off the small amount of benzo that I added back to, you know, put some of the fire out of the rebound withdrawal that they had initiated Until my nervous system slowly, slowly, slowly started to recover from what had happened to me and stayed busy. You know, I feel like a huge part of healing is having purpose and helping other people and getting out of your own head, so like I needed distraction all the time, which is what my bio is about. I signed up for so many things just to like survive, you know, yeah. And so now I'm here and I still have some symptoms left over from the injury, but it's, you know, massively better from what it was.

Speaker 1: 48:50

I'm curious, and you may not know this question what did your dad learn from all of this In the beginning?

Speaker 3: 48:57

he was very typical MD, you know, and to his credit, he did say like I need to be your dad like and not your doctor, you know. But I was looking to him to like. Please fix me, help me.

Speaker 1: 49:10

You both.

Speaker 3: 49:11

Yeah, at one point I even said like put me to sleep Because he's an anesthesiologist. I was just suffering so bad I didn't care. Yeah, Like can't you put me in a coma, you know. But he would. You know, in the beginning he gaslit me a bunch too. He'd be like this doesn't make any sense. You keep saying it's getting worse, but the longer you're off it should get better. You know.

Speaker 3: 49:38

And when you study withdrawal, you see that it can get worse before it gets better for lots of people. You know, he would say things I think in like a very tough love type of way to try to get me to kind of snap out of it, like, oh, if you would just get off your ass and try harder, you know, would just get off your ass and try harder, you know, but that was really the first year. And then he got way more educated and apologized and just said, like I didn't realize how sick you were, you know, and I thought to myself, well, I don't know how you couldn't realize like I was threatening suicide 50 times a day. But it was more about, I think, think that he just didn't want to accept or, you know, believe that this was possible. But after that, like, we healed and he has been like my biggest support and you know I would be dead if I didn't have him in my withdrawal.

Speaker 1: 50:29

So yeah, yeah, I think he didn't see it because your arm wasn't broken. Yeah, it's an invisible you know you didn't see a broken limb or a broken. You know what I mean. So when you don't see that and you just see somebody laying around or whatever, like how long are you going to be sick already?

Speaker 3: 50:48

Yeah, I mean my stepmom was like we're not going to handle you with kid gloves and I was like barely're not going to handle you with kid gloves and I was like barely alive, like I don't know if I can do this for another second. So people said like obnoxious shit, like that to me all the time. Or I'd be like listing off symptoms and they'd be like I get that, you know. And I'm like no, you don't. Like I'm disabled, you know I can't function, I'm going to die, you know I'm not sure I can survive this. So you don't get this, you know.

Speaker 3: 51:15

But even people within the community kind of gaslight each other too, like because there's varying levels of withdrawal. So I noticed that people who had more mild symptoms would say things to me and I was. I mean, at one point I was so ill I had bed sores and like dreadlocks in my hair from not being able to get out of bed, you know. And there was people who would say like just push harder. If you put on headphones, you should be able to fly on an airplane, you know stupid things like that where it's like maybe that's your experience, but some people are really severely ill in this and that's not going to work Like I think there's this. Sometimes it's like think about what you say first, and this goes for people practicing medicine and people supporting people in withdrawal. Like people aren't stupid. If I could have put on headphones, you know, you think I wouldn't have just done that.

Speaker 3: 52:11

Like we're gone for a walk in the sun, like I'm not dumb, I'm injured, I'm extremely sick, and so it's like we could all pause and think about, like, what's about to come out of my mouth, you know, and how's that going to affect the other person? It doesn't even make any sense, you know. It's that whole thing about listening to hear instead of to respond, and so many people just want to like say something instead of think about what they're about to say to somebody else.

Speaker 1: 52:43

And I think, looking at people as if they're not an outlier, because I feel like so much of the med harm community communities looked at. You know, jen says her story she's an outlier, your story that's an outlier, you know. And I'm like, well, if all these outliers exist, how do we have these big platforms out here of people who are injured? You know, so I that's another gaslighting thing is like it's your experience. That's not all the experience you know, or most people don't have that experience. Well, maybe not. Maybe maybe there's a lot of hidden injury that we don't know about yet because people aren't talking about it the way we are you know, and well to that.

Speaker 3: 53:25

I say like, well, if it's not in your differential, you know, you guys know what differential diagnosis means you have when, when you're a clinician, you start to make a list of what it could potentially be when you're trying to diagnose somebody. If you don't even put it on the list, you're never going to accurately diagnose it. So, yeah, maybe you've never seen it before because it's not even on your list of things that you're looking for. But that doesn't mean it's not there. And even if this is, quote unquote rare, like by whatever percentage we define rare, so many people are on these medications that you know 15% of people taking them is a pretty big number. You know it is.

Speaker 1: 54:08

I always look at big pharma advertising Whenever they start advertising a new medication for something like right now it's Tardive Dyskinesia is being advertised. That used to be very rare with an antipsychotic. That used to be what it was. I'm like either there's not that many people on antipsychotics or there's more people on antipsychotics or other classifications of medications are also causing these things, and akathisia, I think, is often misdiagnosed. Tardive dyskinesia and akathisia, I think, are you know they're close cousins.

Speaker 1: 54:43

Yeah, and there's a confusion between the two of them. So I'm thinking that some of that tardive dyskinesia stuff is really akathisia that you're seeing more and more of in other classifications. So I'm like watching intently where big pharma is putting their money, because wherever they're putting their money, is the medication or the side effect that's coming out bigger now than ever before. So I don't know. It's just interesting if you just sit back and listen and you'll know that it's not outliers, it's not rare, it's not.

Speaker 3: 55:16

If big pharma is putting money into marketing this thing, it's not rare, and now there's a pill to treat the injury from previous pills. The rare injury, the rare yeah.

Speaker 1: 55:26

It's not rare if big pharma is soaking tons of money into it. You know what I mean. Like it's not rare. Well, there was a recent, you know.

Speaker 3: 55:32

Wall Street Journal article about benzo harm and the journalist told me well, we had more response to this article than all articles and she's like that tells me there's a massive problem, that we've had hundreds and hundreds of people writing in. We don't get that response. She says you know from most things that we put out, so something's here. But she said, yeah, some of the responses were physicians saying well, this is so rare, you know, you've made it seem like it's a regular occurrence. And she's like well then, why are some like, why do we get?

Speaker 3: 56:09

massive response from people you know.

Speaker 1: 56:14

It's funny because even on social media I'll have, you know, the random physician or nurse or whatever, come on and be like you're, you're causing these things. Don't do that to people, whatever. I just go read the comments. There's 300 comments of people on here and I'm like, and that's on my small little platform, you know.

Speaker 3: 56:31

So, like, if you just read, you know and pay attention. Like you're saying, these people still deserve to treatment Like it's iatrogenic. Even if it's a small population of people who are having this really severe adverse reaction like we have to help them. You have to be able to accurately diagnose it and help them.

Speaker 1: 56:51

Right, you don't just write people off. Well, if a certain type of cancer were rare, people would bend over backwards trying to figure out how to solve this rare, rare, rare cancer. But in the psychiatric world, if it's rare, well it's just rare. We're just going to let you be over here in the not, you know, in the not med harm community, but the um. I can't think of what it is a resistant community, you know, you're just resistant. You know your body's resistant. We're just going to stick you over there. You know there's. There's no call to help the rare side effect. There's no call out.

Speaker 2: 57:27

It's just like, well, or it's cat, it's categorized as just part of like the mental illness as well, right yeah.

Speaker 1: 57:33

You know it's categorized.

Speaker 2: 57:35

As part of that. We just had Angie Peacock on from Medicating Normal and she talked about that. She's like, if I end my life right now, this is what it's going to be, is I'm just going to be that harmed PTSD, harmed vet, right, and that's what will-.

Speaker 1: 57:51

The mentally ill person that took their own life.

Speaker 2: 57:53

The mentally ill person who couldn't make it, when in reality that's really not what it was about. But that's what those rare conditions end up being. We blame it on the mental illness, when in reality that's not what is causing all of this right. It has nothing to do with the mental illness. Nicole, you weren't somebody who was a mentally ill patient.

Speaker 3: 58:17

Yeah, I just had stress at work.

Speaker 1: 58:20

Yes, yeah, the origin story is fascinating.

Speaker 2: 58:24

It is and that's not what it was. For you right and as you look at all those years and what went on, it wasn't somebody who was severely mentally ill. It was a product, a byproduct of psych harm, med harm.

Speaker 3: 58:38

Yeah, yeah. And I guess then it comes back to how you define mental illness. If we're casting the net so wide that we catch everybody, then sure I was quote unquote mentally ill by DSM standards, because everybody is.

Speaker 1: 58:53

Everybody is everybody is. I say that a lot. You know, we cast a larger net, we catch more fish, and we catch a lot of fish that shouldn't be in the net in the first place, you know so yes, you're, you're 100% correct.

Speaker 3: 59:05

A lot of what medicine does, that's a, that's part partly responsible for this is like that, that old saying if everything, if you, if all you have is a hammer, everything's a nail Right. So when I went back to my psychiatrist and I'm in severe withdrawal, she was like, of course, you feel terrible, you're mentally ill, you need your psychiatric medications, you've stopped treating your mental illness. And then I went to the rehab place and said I'm suffering all these symptoms so, so bad. And they say well, you're a drug addict, you're wanting, you know, to take more medication, you're just craving and all this. And so it's like everybody's walking around with these hammers and I'm like these are all medical professionals in the same exact system, but they're all diagnosing me with different stuff just based on what their you know specialty is, and no one's listening to what I'm telling them, which is I'm in withdrawal from this stuff, you know.

Speaker 2: 1:00:02

Yeah, well, that was it. As we wrap up here, nicole, is there anything that you want our listeners to know or anything that you haven't talked about? That is important, especially for those that are going through this.

Speaker 3: 1:00:17

I think, just you know, for anybody who's on these medications, you know, I would say get curious, you know, read about them, learn about them, and maybe they're still for you, you know. Maybe you come to that conclusion and that's okay. But I think we can all, instead of like like when people are saying something bad happened to me. You know one thing, one sort of example I like to use is when Toyota sends me a recall notice in the mail for my car, right, I'm grateful, I'm like oh crap, something's wrong, the airbag or whatever. I better look into this and believe it and fix it. But why, when somebody says medication harmed me, are we so like? I don't want to hear that story. And so get curious about like. Why is that your response initially, especially if you're somebody taking it? You know like both things can exist at the same time, I think, where people feel helped by something and people are very harmed too.

Speaker 3: 1:01:17

So we just need to have more open communication and conversations about this, without being so polarized, I think.

Speaker 1: 1:01:28

Great Agree, all right, if you've hung out with us so far, please make sure you like, comment, share. Give us all the stars. That's all that's necessary, all the stars. Send us your Gaslit Truth at thegaslittruthpodcast at gmailcom. And thank you, nicole Lamberson, for hanging out with us.

Speaker 3: 1:01:44

Thanks for having me.