Psych Meds Took My Son's Life: A Mother's Tribute to Tre | The Gaslit Truth Podcast with Dr. Teralyn Sell & Therapist Jenn Schmitz

The moment you think you’re doing the right thing for your child’s mental health can be the moment everything turns. Sheila joins us to tell Tre’s story—a 25‑year‑old nurse, athlete, and gentle soul whose life unraveled in a matter of months after a cascade of psychiatric prescriptions, missed medical workups, and a system that documented his suicidality yet never built a safety plan.

We start where too few clinicians do: the biology. Tre’s persistently low testosterone never received proper endocrine evaluation. Instead, treatment pivoted to antidepressants and mood stabilizers. Rage appeared within days of the first medication, then the list grew: Cymbalta, Effexor, lamotrigine, Ativan, buspirone, Vyvanse—paired with a doubling of testosterone. The result was a storm of side effects: personality changes, violent outbursts he couldn’t recall, intense restlessness that looked like akathisia, and sexual dysfunction consistent with PSSD. Records show he repeatedly reported feeling suicidal. What’s missing is even louder: no safety planning, no calls to the person he lived with, and telehealth check-ins so short they could never capt

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💊 Ready to Deprescribe Your Psych Meds?

Psych meds have harmed us—and we’re not just survivors, we’re deeply educated in psychopharmacology, psychology, and nutrition. As hosts of The Gaslit Truth Podcast, we guide people safely off psychiatric medications with strategies grounded in science and brain health

🔥 You’ve been harmed. You’ve been dismissed. It’s time to take your brain back—with guidance from people who’ve been there and know their stuff.

Chapters

• 0:02 Opening, Disclaimers, And CTAs
• 0:24 Coffee Promo And Brain Health
• 1:45 Meet Sheila And Trey’s Story
• 2:52 Low Testosterone Overlooked
• 4:22 First Antidepressants And Rage
• 5:14 Polypharmacy Escalates Fast
• 6:05 Misdiagnosis In A Single Hour
• 7:12 Documented Suicidality Without Safety Plan
• 9:18 Possible Abrupt Stopping And Spiral
• 12:49 The Day Of His Death
• 15:59 Hallucinations, Akathisia, And Red Flags
• 18:57 Scope Of Practice And Oversight Failures
• 21:42 Retroactive Sign‑Off And Board Complaints
• 24:42 Labels That Ruin Futures
• 26:34 A Mother’s Warning And Advocacy
• 28:52 Closing Reflections And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:02

You try to do the right thing for your child's mental health, but without informed consent, that choice can turn catastrophically wrong. We are your whistleblowing shrinks, Dr. Tarylyn and Therapist Jen, and this is a Gaslit Truth podcast. Before we crack this wide open, we want you to hit like. You need to smash, subscribe. And if you're on YouTube, ring the bell so you're not missing a thing for when we're putting shows out. And before we get started, I have to do a quick plug here because in front of me is something fantastic. So Terry and I have started to do a little bit of promos for some products here. And we have a coffee product that we're promoting. It's called Savarista Coffee. And I wanted to talk about this for a hot second because I'm not a huge coffee snob, but I think I might become one after trying this. So for any of the coffee drinkers that are out there, Terry and I do a lot of brain health stuff, and we really believe in the power of like, don't fill your body full of caffeine because it really might screw you. Oh, chill is kind of I know. So these, so what we love about this product is half calf. There we go. It does half calf and decaf. And this one that I just had is called Panorama. It's blue, like blackberries and apple and pecans last night. I was telling Terry I made myself a cup of this like a little later at night. Made my little froth, put a little ginger, a little cinnamon, a little nut. I've barista the shit out of this the other night. And it was fantastic. So give it a try. Our show, you'll hear the promos for it. See what you guys think.

SPEAKER_02: 1:33

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SPEAKER_03: 1:38

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SPEAKER_02: 1:42

Erin Jen's favorite things.

unknown: 1:43

It is.

SPEAKER_02: 1:44

All right. Well, today we're welcoming Sheila Stansel, mother of William Trevor Layton Crawford, lovingly known as Trey, a young man whose life was destroyed in just three months after being polyprescribed psych drugs by a nurse practitioner with no psychiatric training. We need to talk about that. The meds changed his mind, erased his personality, and ultimately drove him to take his own life. Sheila is here as Trey's voice and the voice of countless others speaking out to raise awareness, demand accountability, and push for real change to protect people from harm. Welcome to the show, Sheila. Hi, how are you? I'm good. But first of all, you got to show us because you've got a special shirt on that I think everyone uses. Yes, please.

SPEAKER_03: 2:30

Y'all gotta get it on YouTube.

SPEAKER_02: 2:32

There's Trey.

SPEAKER_03: 2:33

He's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02: 2:34

Yes, he is. Thanks for bringing Trey in today. Yes. So we're gonna hear the story. And yeah, where would you like to begin?

SPEAKER_00: 2:45

Well, okay, I guess I could start from when I found out he was on the drugs. What happened happened prior to that? For me to even go into his room and start digging and searching. Was I noticed prior to him going to this nurse practitioner, he his he had been telling me for three or four years that his testosterone was extremely low and he was concerned about it. And the doctor put him on testosterone shots, and they never got leveled out. His number, his numbers got never never leveled out, and he was never referred to an endocrinologist. Is that how you say it? And which to me he should have been. Something was seriously going on with his glands. He was 20 at that time, he was 21 years old. Working out, playing football, playing ultimate frisbee. His testosterone should have been way above 200, and it was below. So he was not sleeping good. He was anxious and everything. He went to his doctor, and the doctor decided to try well butrin. That was the first one he tried. He didn't like it at all, so I don't even think he was on it just a couple of days. But immediately the raging started as soon as he pulled himself off of it. It wasn't, it was just like within it wasn't that long. The pharmacy records I've gotten, it wouldn't, he never even had it refilled. Then some things happened. He was going through a breakup. Uh he was in school to be an R E N, he and he was a traveling LPN, and just holding two jobs as a bartender, you know, he was just uh overwhelmed, I guess. Went back to his doctor, his doctor decided to keep him on the testosterone, and they tried Cymbalta. Cymbalta, I at this time I was not aware he was on it. The only reason I know it now is because I have his phone and I've got his all his records. But I can look at his phone and tell, and I remember those times through the cycle of Cymbalta. He would rage, just rage, not sleep, disrespectful person. This guy worked in a hospital as an LPN. He never cussed and he never attacked anybody, he's never been in a fight. Then he decides he doesn't like this doctor that's not doing anything about his testosterone. So he decides to go to this nurse practitioner, thinking she's going to refer him too. He goes to her, he tells her his symptoms, and she decides to put him on limoxrogen. And through those three months, he went back and forth between limotrogen, efexer, then deloxetine. He was adding Deloxetine, Advan, Busprone, he was on Bibance, and there was one other, was it one other one? Did I say Adiban? I did. Okay. And the testosterone shot. She doubled his testosterone shots at this point because my research tells me that when you take that many kinds of drugs, it's going to affect your testosterone anyway. So she doubled it instead of saying, okay, your blood work is showing this, let's deal with this. And then if that doesn't work, we'll talk about something else. Refer you to a special specialist. She did refer him one time to a specialist, a psych nurse, and she in an hour diagnosed him with four mental illnesses. She diagnosed him with BPD, GAD, MVD, and cannabis dependence because he was trying to get off the Ana van. So he wanted to go to cannabis. He got a card from a card a medical marijuana specialist. And so he was trying, so she diagnosed him all that. She put him on Limotragene. She's the one that did that. Isn't that right? Yes. And so he goes back to his other doctor. And in April, he tells her that, you know, by April, he has broke his dad's arm. He's thrown me across the house. He's beat his dog that is blind, that has been his dog for 12 years. He beat his girlfriend's dog. He was screaming and cussing constantly. He never cussed. And I have videos of this. He kicked our doors in, he hit holes in the wall. He was really out of control. And at this time, again, I didn't know he was on these meds. He wasn't even on this concoction that she had put him on. So I asked his girlfriend. His girlfriend basically told me that it wasn't my business, it was an invasion of Trey's privacy. So when he left, they went to school. I went into his room and I went through everything. And when I found it, I panicked. And I confronted him with it through a text. We had a big, long, ugly fight because I graduated college with this with psychology and special education. So I know a little bit about it. But at that time, that was 1991. I didn't know anything about these new diagnoses they've come up with. Or drugs, all these drugs either. No, I didn't know anything about it. So I immediately, this was towards the end of March. I immediately did what I always do go to research. I started researching the drugs, and the more I researched them, the scareder I got. And he and I had a big fight about it because he didn't feel like what I was saying was correct. He wanted to trust his nurse practitioner. And I kept telling him she's just a nurse practitioner. She's not even a specialist. As time went on and he seen more of what was going on with him, he admitted to me about a week and a half before he took his life that he knew the drugs were making him worse. He had an appointment with his nurse practitioner that day. This was the second time he told her he was suicidal. And I did I wasn't aware of this until I got her papers.

SPEAKER_02: 8:50

What did she do? Let me just ask you a question. So it was documented that he said he was suicidal. And what was her response to that when he would say that? What was the response?

SPEAKER_00: 9:02

There's no there's she doesn't have a response.

SPEAKER_02: 9:04

There was no response. So there was no resource development, there was no contacting loved ones, there was no safety planning, there was no nothing. It was just documented.

SPEAKER_00: 9:13

It's documented that he said he was severely suicidal and that his mentally he was spiraling. He'd been asked to leave medical school. He broke his hand, he broke his dad's arm. I mean, he was in and and through all of this, when he would come out of the rage, he wouldn't remember any of it. And he would cry and tell me, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know why I'm doing this. And I would cry with him, you know, and and I didn't know until until I went to his room. And that's when I confirmed we had the big fight first because one, I went to his room. He said, I'm 25 years old. And I said, Yes, but nobody's telling me anything, and I see something and it's killing me, and I've got to figure out what's going on. So then he started coming around to my way of thinking. The day he went to see her the last time, he went with the mindset that he was going to go into a hospital for me to wean off all these drugs slowly, where somebody could watch him. I already found the hospital. I talked to a psychiatrist. She gave me her list who she'd use with her children. She's the one that told me that Trey's nurse practitioner had no business writing these meds, that she was well out of her scope. And so I talked to him and go in the hospital. He agreed. He told me at that time he didn't think he was probably sterile because he'd been on testosterone for three years. He didn't know if he could ever have children, which he wanted to. He left the house feeling kind of gloomy, but he was going to tell her, and it's documented, he did tell her, he did not want her managing his medication anymore. He goes in there, and whatever she said to him, he came home in this best mood and said she just wants me to give it two more weeks. And he said she doubled everything. She thinks that's the problem. And he said, and and my I he was happy. He thought this was the answer. He's 25. I can't tell him what to do. But my heart fell to the floor. And I said, Trey, if she's telling you that she's going to send you to a specialist in two weeks, she should be doing it today, not in two weeks. But he followed what she said to do. But I'm beginning to think, with some of the records I've gotten back from the corner, that I think he quit.

SPEAKER_02: 12:15

Do you know? I I Jen, what do you call it when they have that epiphany moment? It sounds like when he came back that he had that moment of clarity that maybe he knew he was going to be taking his own life. Do you follow what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_03: 12:29

Yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_02: 12:30

Yeah. Do you even know what that's called? I can't think of it right now. There's that there's that pivotal moment of clarity with the city.

SPEAKER_03: 12:35

Yeah, where you come to come full peace. You come to full peace with knowing like there's a way out of this, and you accept it yourself almost.

SPEAKER_02: 12:43

And it just makes me wonder if that's what that was. I don't know. I we'll never know. But it's not a good thing.

SPEAKER_03: 12:48

Sheila, what you're saying is based off of the what the coroner was was giving the results of this. So you're thinking that he actually stopped all just stopped.

SPEAKER_00: 12:59

He I think the reason I think that, and I've just started thinking this, is there's no documentation whatsoever that says that she discussed with him that you can't just come off these meds. And he told her at the visit, the last visit, that he wanted off the meds in three weeks. Especially that event. He said he wanted off all of it. Well, I don't at that point it's not documented, so I sat him down and talked to him and you know, and told him you can't just quit these or anything. I think he came home and he might have tried it for about a week, and he didn't like the upping of the dosages. And he had already come to the realization that him and his girlfriend were never going to work things out. And then suddenly he just spiraled on me, like his head was upside down, inside out. Nothing I made sense to him that morning. I reached out to he was playing Ultimate Frisbee as his first game that night, and his ex-girlfriend had joined the team, which I don't understand to this day why. She broke, she was, she had ghosted him for two weeks. So why would you expect him in his mental state of mind in these days? And she knows that he's going to be able to show up at this game and be okay that his ex-girlfriend, the one that he knows he feels like he ruined the relationship. He was feeling a lot of guilt, a lot of remorse. He was crying so much at this time. In fact, he lost one of his jaws because he couldn't quit crying. So he but he was getting, it seemed like the last week he was getting better. We went to Mount Pinnacle to get and he climbed. But that's when I'm wondering if he quit. My therapist wonders if he was manic because he quit the meds.

SPEAKER_03: 14:49

Well, it's it's very common that when people completely stop psychiatric medication, there is a period of time where they feel amazing, right? Very quickly for a very short period of time. And so your theory that you're discussing, right? There there definitely is some science that backs that. And you do a quick wash for some people, right? Depending on the half-life of the drugs and the body and everything going on, he may have really felt really great for a week or so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 15:16

He hadn't he wasn't drinking alcohol, he had he drinks a lot of water. Yeah. So and I just lost him. I left that day to go check on a dog and a cat, and because that's what I do, I'm a dog sitter. And I've talked to him four times on the phone, and he could not understand how to go play this game with his ex-girlfriend there. He just couldn't get it. I reached out to her twice. I saw her the second time and told her how scared I was. And she said, she wasn't, she didn't take it seriously. She said, I'll just see him at the game tonight. I said, He ain't you haven't talked to him in two weeks. He doesn't know what to do, he doesn't know what to expect. Can you just send him a message? Something as simple as, I'll see you at the game tonight. She said, No, I'll just talk to him then. And he was gone. And and let me tell you how fast it happened. I was talking to him on the phone. He immediately said, I have to go. And he hung up the phone. And I have cameras outside my house. So I watched him leave and I watched him come back. When he came back, he came, he came back in and he called me and he went to Don Pepe's and got lunch. We talked for a minute, then he talked to his best friend Connor, who lives in Oklahoma. Connor told him that he had a couple hours. You have a couple hours for your game. Let's get online and play some games. Trey said yes. Connor told him, he said, I'll be right back. I've got to go to the restroom. So he goes to the restroom, he comes back, he said, I'm on. Trey says, I'll be right there. He never finished his lunch. He took his life.

SPEAKER_02: 16:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 16:59

And at this point, I was taking care of the cat and the dog. And then a couple hours later, I just I I don't know. I had a feeling. I looked at my house, the camera, the car was still here, and I was and I was thinking, why is the car still there? He should be gone to the game. And so I had a business at the time. My roommate, Keith Jones, he he run he was running it for me because I was so scared to leave trade during these days. Nobody told me he was suicidal. I just I was just scared. And it'd be nice if the nurse practitioner reached out and told me that. Because I would have never left him. I would have made him get up and go with me to the dog sitting. But anyway, so I got I started getting scared. I text Keith and I said, lock the store up, go home. He got here before I did. And so he found Trey. And it was his lunch was still un halfway uneaten. His game was still on. That's just how spontaneous it was. It was so fast. His uniform was laying out on the bed, like he was going to get ready to go to his game. And he just did it. I don't know what he was thinking. I don't know. I mean, he did tell me at the end that he was hearing voices.

unknown: 18:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 18:29

Um that when he prayed, the devil talked to him. Uh he called me one night to come get him. He had got got out to uh go to McDonald's to get something to eat. He was playing late with his friends. He called me about three o'clock and asked me to come get him. I went and got him. He he said he was hearing voices that was telling him to drive into the traffic. And he was scared he was going to hurt somebody. He didn't drive much after that. After that, he locked himself in his room and he stayed in there a lot. He cried a lot. One night I woke up about 2:30. It sounded like a tornado was going through my house. I ran down the hallway. And at this point, already knew Trey's medication he was on, so I didn't like come tearing down the hallway screaming. I just came down the hallway and I stopped and I just said, Trey, in a real normal voice. And he immediately stopped what he's doing. He came out of his room, he shut the door, and I said, What are you doing? And he said, I don't know. I said, Well, what are you upset about? And he said, I don't know. And he was very calm, very Trey, very calm. And I said, Let's sit down and talk. So we sat down at the table and we talked. And that's the night he told me he heard voices. That's when I went to my well, when I when I found out about the drugs, I went to my doctor and I said, tell me about these drugs. She's a nurse practitioner as well. And she looked at him, she said, I can't. I said, What do you mean you can't? She said, I don't diagnose these kind of drugs. She said, I don't have enough education to be diagnosing these kind of drugs. She said, I would have to, she said, are you wanting to take these drugs? And I said, No, this is what I found in my son's room. And she had the saddest look on her face. She said, I can't tell you about these drugs. And that's when I went into research mode. I started digging everything I could. I got on Facebook, started reading Mana from California, or Mana. I started talking to her about because she she had a lawsuit against the loxetine or cymbalta at one point, and she won the suit. Um, we don't see the cymbal to commercials anymore, and but she wouldn't take money for it because she wouldn't sign an NDA. So she's like my besides the functional nurse and Dr. Terrellyn and Dr. Yosef, that's who I listened to. That's who and Jen. Since I started this journey of looking it up, and then when I lost him, I I really I got uh court order to get all her papers, and I started going through them and I said, Why are all his blood work showing his testosterone is so bad? They that would have made him anxious. I mean, testosterone to a man is an estrogen to a woman, and they make fun of us when we go through menopause, you know. So I'm not trying to make fun of a man with low testosterone, I'm just saying, why wasn't that ever dealt with?

SPEAKER_03: 21:35

Well, the the aggressive behavior that that started to slowly uh show itself, which started with you were talking about just more rage and more irritability, which interestingly enough started after just a couple days of taking well butrin. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 22:27

And upping doubling the testosterone, I think, too, right? Or was that even more? It was later though.

SPEAKER_03: 22:33

The first time you said rage, Sheila was really like with just the well butrin, and you said he only took it a little bit, didn't even review, like didn't renew the prescription. Yeah. So you saw a taste of it already there, which was different than uh prior to that, even though we already had the low testosterone thing going on, the behavior was not escalated to something like that.

SPEAKER_00: 22:57

And when he got off of it, he he leveled out.

SPEAKER_03: 23:01

Yes. Which which, when we look at these drugs, we've had a couple guests on that have talked about some of the research behind these. And there's some big players in this list of cocktails of drugs that he's on that are directly correlated to aggressive behavior, violent behavior, homicidal and suicidal behavior, homicidal and suicidal behavior, and that is your that's your effects, your well butrons, your butrents, your my gosh, vivants, lymotrogen. It's like all of it. It's it's the top ones, yeah. So an estrogen blocker at one time. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02: 23:37

And then his age, then you add his age in there, and it's the so when you went through all the records, his behavior was it documented in the records too? Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 23:49

All along he was getting more and more aggressive that he had ruined, he'd been asked to leave school, he'd lost two jobs, he had he got in a physical fight with his best friend. All this is documented. She could see, he told her, I am mentally sparling. Her answer was here's more. I yeah, here's more. I'll upgrade.

SPEAKER_03: 24:10

You gotta double it, up it. Yeah, here's more, here's something different.

SPEAKER_00: 24:13

She swapped it once overnight, and we really saw some craziness that night.

SPEAKER_02: 24:20

So he had he had two nurse practitioners, right? Like the the first one started it, then he went to a different one.

SPEAKER_00: 24:27

He was he was referred to her. She's the psych. Psych MP. Yeah, but he only saw her one time.

SPEAKER_03: 24:35

So, and she's to clarify, she the second one, she's the one that was the G diagnosed him with a whole bunch of stuff. MDD, cannabis dependence, that one. And then also, she said she had put him on limotragen, though, as well.

SPEAKER_00: 24:47

But he was not diagnosed with bipolar, yeah. And from what my research is, and I learned this even back when I was in college and studying psychology, limotrogen is used for epilepsy. My my husband was epileptic, and I divorced him because of his violent behavior. That was in '93. I'm sitting here looking at Trace drugs, and it hits me. That's what Gary Don was on, because he he was epileptic, and he would just get violent for no reason, absolutely no reason, and then he would come out of it. But I had two little children, and I said, I have to get my children away from this. So I married him twice, thinking that that they changed his drugs and it's going to help. No, he he just was he would just come unglue for no reason, absolutely no reason, and would choke me for no reason. Here's my children watching. So and and then I'm looking at Trey's drugs, and I went, that is what Gary Dawn was on in 1991 to 93. Well, I I was married, it was a six-long relationship. I've married him twice. Second time didn't last long. Second time I was I was new. I just but I didn't put the connection to the medication till now.

unknown: 26:04

Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 26:04

Now I'm looking at how Trey acted and how Gary Dawn acted, and they were on the same drug. It's how long have they known this?

SPEAKER_03: 26:16

What's what's interesting to me is that the psych NP maybe didn't take a little bit different of a view of this. I know she only had right had her eyes on your on your son once, but it's very interesting to me that she didn't look at that and kind of go, okay, so you've tried the Sympaltrra, we've tried the Limotogene, we've tried the Wellbutrin, we've tried all these things, you're progressively getting worse. Your regular, you know, your your NP is sending you my way. And the response to that was let's put a bunch of labels on you and stick the Limotogene on you. And he never went back to her.

SPEAKER_02: 26:55

I want to be clear to our listeners here that that is exactly what you're not supposed to do. This this is after you start psychiatric medication, you don't then get new diagnoses suddenly. That's part of the DSM that everyone uh doesn't look at. Jen and I Jen and I've talked about this before. It's it's written in there. If after you start a psychiatric medication or any other substance, you don't get a bunch of diagnoses while you're under the influence of those things. And psyched is one, yes. So she misstepped a lot, in my opinion, as a nurse practitioner. And number one, diagnosing some pretty hardcore mental health diagnoses in one session. I mean, I realize we have to diagnose to get reimbursed, but damn, that was a lot. Number two, not taking into consider. Well, not taking into consideration that all this happened after he has been polypharmed, right? That's what Jen was getting at, right? And then also that he got worse after being polypharmed. So the answer is let's diagnose him with some serious mental health disorders and re-medicate him.

SPEAKER_03: 28:05

We're gonna people might not want to hear this, okay? But I I just want to say this. We get so stuck on, I've got to go see a certain type of specialist. Like in this case, you're doing what we are taught to do. Like I'm seeing a regular NP. That NP does not have the knowledge, right, of like the the psychiatric medications. Okay. So I'm gonna go see someone who is an expert, truly, who has additional training, someone who does a little extra in the background to understand psychiatric medication, which is why they are our psychiatric nurse practitioner. And yet when we do this, we can still be put in a position where that individual is is no more competent than the individual who started, who started this. And I just think it's important to hear because we oftentimes and we hear this a lot, is I have to go to someone who is an expert in psych drugs. And the reality is both of those individuals were indoctrinated educationally in the same thing. Maybe that psych NP had a maybe extra long weekend of learning about these drugs. But if you look at what occurred with your son, he went and saw the expert. And the expert made it worse.

SPEAKER_00: 29:23

Yeah, I I my therapist, I'm in grief therapy. And she said that there was absolutely no way that trait that that she would diagnose anybody with BPD. Okay that quickly.

SPEAKER_02: 29:40

Wait, when you say BPD, are you talking about borderline personality disorder? Okay, yeah, because because the interchangeably with bipolar, yes. So you're talking about borderline. Either one you would not want to diagnose in one 30-minute session with the nurse practitioner. No, no, absolutely not, especially borderline personality disorder, because that is a supposed to be a pervasive, almost developmental disorder. So yeah, that is a no. That's a he came on and cried and cried and cried about that.

SPEAKER_03: 30:14

Oh yeah, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00: 30:17

And and and let me point out too, there's a new, you know, I'm seeing a lot of this going on. The PSSD. Trey told me he he couldn't. When he told me, he said, I'm probably sterile because I've been on testosterone too long. And he said, and only that, he said, Mom, I have no feeling whatsoever in my in that area. Yep, that's he said no feeling. It's he said, I don't I don't know that I I could right. You know what that does a 25-year-old man mentally, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 30:47

Yeah, who by the way was on doing well who I I remember what I was doing when I was 25, but who also was on testosterone, which should have made his sex drive higher, very much higher. Yes, and so but being able to not perform and not feel and have zero pleasure, like yeah, that's and even if he was up, it made me think about this too, like you said. He was up walking around like you could hear him up walk. I'm wondering if he had a little acadhasia.

SPEAKER_00: 31:20

I'm wondering too. I think he did. When he when he handed me things, he would shake like an old man. And I remember saying something to him about it one time. And he said, Yeah, I don't know what's going on. And he would sit still beside me for on the couch, and then all of a sudden he would just jump up, like somebody lector cuted him or something. He would jump up and he would start walking around. He'd run in his room and shut the door. Then he'd come back out. And and just and then he would sit with and his knee was constantly jerking. The shaking is what really made me feel bad, really bad. That was the first thing I noticed about any kind of symptom. I noticed that, and I was thinking, I mean, Trey, Trey, Trey was a weight lifter and he competed. And at one time with during his rages, I accused him of being on steroids. Oh, sure. Because he was great, but it was like he was Hawk. Because I mean, he he was a big boy. And I don't know if you've seen any of the videos on my page, but he he was a big boy. He was a weight competitor. And he he walked, he was a nurse, he walked the line, he didn't do any drugs. And to, you know, and one of the things that I I pointed out to him, you've been on testosterone a long time. With the shots, it's still not working. There was something else wrong.

SPEAKER_03: 32:33

Yeah, so something was going on even from the beginning, right? Because that's where it kind of started, right? You said he was 21 years old, and there's something medically, something medically going on with him. And his levels were just not yet. So right away, there's something hormonally occurring with him, which also guys goes hand in hand with mental health symptomology for for sure. So from the start, there was something kind of underlying medically, which makes sense as to why you were kind of saying it would have made like to go see an endocrinologist or go see someone who is more of a hormonal expert to figure out what's going on. Because that was kind of the start of it.

SPEAKER_00: 33:08

Yeah. Why and and and as a and Trey's doctor was a male doctor. Why would you keep him on something that you know can make him sterile? You know, it's not working, he's been on it three years. So there's a problem with the pituitary or the hypothalamus or thyroid. There's a problem. And instead of just, oh, we're just gonna keep you on, you know, you're not 40, 50 years old, you're 21. And and so during that time I noticed some aggression, but I thought it was steroids. And he kept telling me he would get angry with me. I'm not on steroids. They test me when I work out or when I compete, they test me. Never did find any steroids in his room. I was wrong. It was the medication. I never seen a change. Trey's always lived at home, even in college. He's always lived at home, he's always been around me. The changes that I saw were scary. I was scared. I was scared. I tell when I filed my complaint, I even said in my complaint, at the end of the day, we're just lucky Trey didn't take somebody's life. Because he'd already jumped on a 66-year-old man twice. That wasn't Trey. Trey was very yes, sir, no, sir, well-mannered. And during this time, the F word was being said a lot, GD was being said a lot, lots of language that I'd never heard threatening my life. You know, went to his dad's and threw him across the room and broke his arm. That was not Trey. That was I I had never seen that behavior. And Keith Jones lives with us. He's lived with us off and on for 10 years. He's known Trey since he was probably seven or eight, maybe. Maybe even give or take a younger. He's never seen this kind of behavior out of Trey. Never.

SPEAKER_03: 35:07

Well, and what's kind of interesting about this, and maybe you can speak to this a little, Sheila, is so your son was a traveling nurse. Okay. So he's had the education, a little understanding of of drugs and of the body. You know, did he ever talk with you about that at all? Because it sounds it sounds like you were the one that kind of gave him his first dose of informed consent. Like the risk part. Like he didn't know that together himself.

SPEAKER_00: 35:39

He did know the risk. Okay. So in I have his phone now, and I went through his phone like any mother would, and I've read everything. He didn't want on the medication. His dad suggested it because his dad is bipolar. So he thought you should take Cymbalta. Then he had a girlfriend at the time that was giving him an ultimatum. I'll support you if you go to therapy, but you need to get on medication. And in these texts, Trey was telling her. So he knew he was telling her, I don't want to get on these drugs. I'm scared to get on these drugs. He said at least four different texts. I'm scared to do this. I know it's going to change me, and I think it's going to make things worse. I'm scared to do this. And he did.

SPEAKER_02: 36:29

I just have such trouble with people who you need to be on meds. Like just the regular person saying to somebody else, you need to be on medication is very troublesome to me. But it happens all the time. It happens in relationships all the time. You need to get on medication. You need to, and it's like we make it worse. We fling around get on medication as if it's the solution to somebody's life.

SPEAKER_03: 36:58

Or as if we actually are an expert in understanding medication. Right. So almost like that, that has just become something that people can just flippantly say as an accepted kind of thing, because it's a treatment, it's a solution. You know, that's how it's viewed.

SPEAKER_02: 37:14

Holding somebody hostage to your relationship because you told them you wanted them on medication. But unfortunately, it's not it happens all the time. And I also want to point out like I'm grossly generalizing today with a lot of things, but nurses, right? Nurses in schools, having a nurse in my family. I think I can speak to some of this. I mean, they get one psycho farm class, not psycho farm, sorry, pharmacology. So it's not even just psycho farm, okay? It's all the medication stuff. And then they do some clinicals with that too. But there, I've had many a nurse as a client as well. And it's funny because they often are very flippant about psychiatric medications in particular, as if they're it they're also taught about the chemical imbalance theory, like all of these things. Nurse practitioners are huge in the chemical imbalance theory, is the theory of the day, and it's still alive and well. I think they're the last to know, like honestly. And I do, and I'm sorry, nurse practitioners, especially psych ones. There are some really good ones out there. There are some really good NPs out there. But I do think that psych NPs often just throw around that prescription pad too easily. And I don't know why that is, because they have so many opportunities to do so many different things, ordering labs, getting, you know, really digging into somebody's life, like they can do all those things, but they don't. I I feel like I don't know. I just I just feel like they need a lot more education in this area, especially when it comes to withdrawal side effects, uh that age group. Here's another thing like there's these all these things have black box warnings. He was right in the the that time frame of the black box warning, young adult. And we're just gonna like, well, let's just not worry about that, you know. But it was documented everywhere that this person was suicidal. So I don't know. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket science to be like, well, he's suicidal. Black box warnings probably shouldn't be on these medications because it does this to him. Like, how hard is that? I don't I don't understand how hard that is, you know, and why do we continually go to more diagnostics, more diagnostics, even though this kid didn't come in with all this stuff, but he exited his life with these huge diagnostics, which were improperly diagnosed and improperly prescribed, like in my opinion, anyway. My humble, humble hope. I believe that too. I believe that too. I don't understand it. I I get riled up, riled up about it because I I just think I don't know. I I expect more from a psych NP, I guess. I expect more.

SPEAKER_00: 40:09

I I wasn't aware, and I mean, and he was see also seeing a therapist.

SPEAKER_02: 40:14

So was his therapist saying meds, meds, meds, meds, meds?

SPEAKER_00: 40:18

No, his therapist didn't write nothing down. Is this his file? Look at this file. This is his therapist's file. Nothing is wrote, nothing, nothing. It was eight pages to each thing, and nothing is written down, and except one sentence or a couple sentences at the end, and they all say the same thing. In fact, after Trey died, he wrote a letter. I mean, he wrote in in and this was done way after I collected papers. I had to go back and get this part of it. But he wrote that uh Trey's diagnosis was progressing, he was doing good, and that he was dismissing it. Not that Trey had committed suicide, not that, I mean, there's no way Trey was doing good. There was no way. Trey had bite marks all over himself where he was biting himself. And I'm thinking, how does your doctor decide that that to up your meds when you're biting yourself? And then the therapist didn't see that, the but the nurse practitioner could had to have, because I was sitting on the couch with him before he left. And I said, What happened? And he said, I'd rather hurt myself than somebody. Well, see, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was just and and I hadn't he said he would go in the hospital. He said, Find me one. I said, I've already got one, I'm ready. You're like, I'm five steps ahead of you already. I'm just waiting for you to say, let's go. Yeah, right. And so he went to see her. Whatever she said to him made him happy. I it gaslit him. I mean, she I he said he walked in the door with his medication and he said, she said, just give it two more weeks, and she doubled everything. And if that don't work, then she's gonna send me to a real specialist.

SPEAKER_02: 42:03

Isn't she a real specialist? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 42:08

I mean she is what is it? Ron, uh Ron, she's some she's she's a a throat specialist. That's her specialty as a nurse practitioner. Oh okay. Nose and nasal.

SPEAKER_03: 42:23

That's her specialty. She's the ENT, ENT kind of yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 42:28

So my daughter's gonna be a nurse practitioner. She's she's like this close to graduating. And we were talking yesterday about, I think we're talking about this episode coming up. And she goes, she goes, as a nurse practitioner, all I have to say is know what your limitations of practice are. And that's what she said. And she goes, Never ever, ever would I continue with somebody. She goes, or refer out or seek supervision. She was saying all the right things, and I was so grateful. I was like, That's right. Hopefully, you know, but she's she's very pragmatic. But I think that was the whole thing. Like, this is the message to everybody is know what your limitations are of practice, know what you're good at. This is that what do they call it? Inside your scope, outside your scope of practice, things like that. And it's just it's okay to reach out for help and consult. As a matter of fact, nurse practitioners, I don't know about in your state, but in our state, no, they just passed a new law that nurse practitioners can practice alone without the without a doctor signing off anymore. But you have to, I think you have to have like 10 years of practice in or something like that first. But there's a lot of states that you can independently practice. There's a lot of states that you cannot, and so I don't know if you're in that state or not, you cannot practice independently, but I'm thinking like the reason for not practicing independently is so that you have an MD that actually will supervise you, like it's like supposed to be under supervision.

SPEAKER_00: 43:59

So did your she was supposed to be. She she hasn't her doctor did not sign off on Trey's medication until Trey was already gone for four months. Like he died in May. He signed off in September.

SPEAKER_02: 44:12

Retroactively, it his meds were signed off on after he had already passed away. Yes, yes, I have a copy of it.

SPEAKER_00: 44:21

What the fuck is that? I don't know. Like that's that's when when the nurse, his own nurse told me this, she said, we have a paper that he signed off because I said I want that sign-off paper. She said, We have it, but he didn't sign off of it until September 9th. And I said, Is that legal? I have no idea what the time limits are. Yeah. She said, I don't know. Well, many doctors that I've talked to here in Arkansas, they're supposed to do it in 24 hours.

SPEAKER_02: 44:49

Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 44:51

That's what doctors I have.

SPEAKER_02: 44:52

Well, I would think four months is a little excessive.

SPEAKER_00: 44:55

Yeah. And then she didn't even sign off on the last upping. He signed off on the first upping in September. So he's not saying, I guess he's just ignoring the others. There's she only saw him three times.

SPEAKER_02: 45:11

I'm perplexed.

SPEAKER_03: 45:12

So all okay, this whole time that's she saw your son three times. That was it?

SPEAKER_00: 45:18

Yes, she had two telehealth, one with seven minutes and one with ten minutes. What? Yes. Yes. I filed a complaint with the medical board, and I feel like they're trying to push me aside, thinking that I'm not I'm just going to go away. But I'm not. I've seen, I mean, her file is all over the United States. I've sent it to anybody and everybody that I thought would want to look at it. Psychology Board, the National Psychology Board, RFK Junior's office. And not only with these packets that I send her records, I have also sent the psychology papers. How can you diagnose somebody in an hour with four four mental diseases? I've sent off, I've copied so many testimonies off the internet. Of course, I'll wipe out the name and everything. But people's horror stories of how just trying to get off these drugs or what happened to them while they were on the drugs, why they're divorced now, why they they haven't seen their children. The children have been taken away. You know, horror stories of people losing their children. They're 14 years old, they committed suicide. The the one common denavor denominator of it all is they were all on side trucks.

SPEAKER_01: 46:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 46:28

So why are we ignoring this? And then the FDA had it, they responded back to me and they wanted me to look at their dockets and say, which docket will go with your case. Well, actually, there was five of them. And one of them, I sent a letter, I mean, I mailed it in and I said, You pulled Deloxetine or Cymbalta back last year because it was contaminated with a cancerous gene. But when I look up the ingredients of Deloxetine or Cymbalta, there's already three in there that they know for a fact and have known since 2004 that these cause rapid growth of brain tumors. And you know this. So you're worried about a little contamination? I mean, you've been giving people cancer since 2004. So I've questioned them on that. I haven't heard back from them. I'm shocked.

SPEAKER_02: 47:23

I'm shocked why you wouldn't hear back from them.

SPEAKER_03: 47:25

I'm still I'm still still in the camp of there were four total, four total appointments. Three with one NP, one with the other. And in four appointments, there was well butrin, subalto, lamoto gene effects or Atavan, vivants, multiple diagnoses. They're throwing a dart at a freaking dartboard. That's all that there were. There were four appointments. Like I I was under the impression that there was a lot more monitoring that was occurring. Even if it was a short appointment. Okay, it's been three weeks. How are you doing? Okay, it's been a couple more weeks, how are you doing? Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 48:03

And he was sharing how bad he was doing. Yes, that he was suicidal. Like he was sharing. Very honest. That's the part that bothers me the most is that he was sharing that he was suicidal. It was documented that he was suicidal, but there was no follow-up. There weren't any resources given, there weren't any calls made, there wasn't anything you know done about it. Because by the way, he lived with you. To me, to me, you're you're not violating confidentiality when someone is suicidal and you call the person they fucking live with. Like you're not violating anything when you do that. As a matter of fact, you might just be saving someone's life. That's not a violation of confidentiality, people, in case you didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00: 48:48

I would have never let this stop.

SPEAKER_02: 48:51

Well, that's why you would call the person he lives with, especially a parent, right? That lives with him to and to guarantee some type of safety, right? Or at least a conversation together, like everyone. Every patient.

SPEAKER_00: 49:05

You know, if she could have just asked me, Well, what are you seeing at home? And I'd tell her, Well, he's tearing up our house, he's thrown me across the house, he's beat his dog to she's now brain damaged for the rest of her life. Uh, she's she was blind to begin with, so you know, and I have a video of her just walking by him and he just started way laying on her. No reason. He just walked by her. This is in the backyard.

SPEAKER_03: 49:30

I'm just I know there's Sheila. I there aren't words for this. Like I there are not there are not words. I I don't even know. I mean, how is it that you are how are you managing? How are you getting well I have my days?

SPEAKER_00: 49:46

I mean, I have some days that I just want to, you know, walk in her office and scream bloody murder and just walk out, you know. Yeah, yeah. You know, I I I've thought about sending her a Christmas card and say, From Trey, I hope I hope you haven't forgotten about me. I mean, you know, there are things that I I have my days where I just want to show my butt a little bit, but but at the same time, my son would not want that. And I'm not going to jail for these people, even though, even though it there are days that I feel like maybe I'm even a little mental from this. I'm traumatized. I'm I'm I've lost my family. I I've lost my grandchild, you know. And and this kid wasn't like this all his life. Now, and doing during puberty, he had some moments where he might break up with a girl and have depression, but he would bounce right back or play football, whatever, play ultimate frisbee, hung out with lots of friends, but never like this. He I've never seen him aggressive. Never, ever, ever have I seen him aggressive. And I and I've even told, you know, I've even said at the end of the day, we're very lucky he didn't kill somebody. I was worried about him being a nurse, honestly. He did though.

SPEAKER_02: 50:54

He did kill somebody. He killed himself. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 50:58

Right. But at least he's not in jail where he shouldn't be. Yeah. Who should be in jail are the people that think they're God and write these medications and give out these diagnoses like, oh, you have strep throat, you've got gonorrhea, you've got, you know, just throw a bunch of stuff out there. You can't I mean, I graduated in 91. A lot of this stuff wasn't taught to us. We in 91, when I graduated from special ed with special education psychology, it was more about birth defects. And we were just heavier. Yeah, we was just now hearing more about the red colored dye, the blue colored dye, ADHD. That was just starting to come about. And then when my my middle boy started school, he was just he went to class with me at UCA and they called him WC for wild child. He was just a wild child. And and so when he got in school, they you know immediately, oh, he needs to be on ADHD medicine. I said, No, put him on the playground and make him run. He's got to run that track 10 times, and then he'll come in and sit down. I promise you. And and that's the way it always was. You know, they they would say, Well, we think he, you know, maybe no, he needs to play sports. And the year that he didn't make good grades, it didn't have to play sports, they called me. I said, Hey, that's on y'all. You should have told him he had to take summer school. Now you gotta deal with this.

SPEAKER_02: 52:21

Well, wild child is different than homicidal, suicidal child.

SPEAKER_00: 52:25

That definitely. And Brady was just always full of energy. He still is, he's he's a bodybuilder. He still is. He went through rough patch after Trey. Thought I was gonna lose him. Thought I was gonna lose my other child. I mean, it's just been rough on all of us. We all have our guilt, you know. What what could we have done? If I'd have known when they first started experimenting with him with these drugs, I I I would have stepped in then. But I didn't know until the end of March, and then he got he was gone May 21st. And by then, I mean, what do you do?

SPEAKER_03: 53:05

If there's a message, Sheila, that you could give to the people that are listening here, what would that be? What do people need to know?

SPEAKER_00: 53:13

It doesn't matter if your kids are adults, watch what they're taking. I mean, if you go visit them in their meds or in a cabinet, just open the door and look at them. And your friends, it's not just it's not just my brother. It was my husband at one time. I've got friends that are on it, and they don't know anything about these drugs. They're just on it because the doctor says, Oh, your mom died, you're depressed. And one of my girlfriends called me from her doctor's office. She said, There was a medicine you told me not to take. What was it? And I told her it was, I said, SSRIs or SNRIs, just be very careful because you're on gabapatin too. And she I was on speakerphone. I said, She said, Well, she wants to be taken. I said, Hell no. And she said, Well, you're on speakerphone. I was like, No, no, don't take that. Don't take that.

SPEAKER_02: 54:00

Did they offer you medication in your grief?

SPEAKER_00: 54:03

No, because my therapist one of my knew better, they knew better. And not only that, my biggest saying, and anybody knows me. I heard a professor say one time when in college, if you if if you're on a drug and it hasn't been on the market at least seven to ten years, your research. And he said, if man-made drugs are evil, and then I just kind of added that to everything. Everything man-made's evil. Money, they're overbuilding, they're running the animals out of their habitats, you know, man's just not real smart.

SPEAKER_02: 54:40

I mean, I think we can all agree with that statement, Sheila. There's a lot of agreement. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 54:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 54:46

I, you know, I'm not sure if you're not alarm. We're not God. We do have a lot to learn. And actually, I think we have a lot of data that supports learning now. What we need to do is open our eyes and our ears and be curious about the data that we have and not be so dismissive, right? Because we've got you said 1991. I remember 1991. Medications weren't a giant thing, they were starting to become a thing with uh Prozac thing is Prozac with women ADHD medicines. ADHD was starting, right? But what happened was you said, Well, I don't know what happened. Well, big pharma happened, and big pharma marketing happened, and everybody relied on a pill to get the job done of life. So I think we have enough data. We really do. Do we really need to learn more? I think we need to learn how to actually read research. We need to learn how to push buttons more, we need to learn how to push on agendas, we need to learn how to push back, we need to learn that research isn't always research. You know, we we need to learn, we need to listen to people's lived experiences. And I I keep pushing for qualitative data more about people's lived experience than than worrying about numbers in quantitative data. I think it's all about the lived human experience. We need to start freaking listening to that because we are not, we are pushing that away. Oh, we're especially when it comes to young kids, we're so fear-based that you know a kid is gonna take their life. Guess what? They're taking their lives after.

SPEAKER_00: 56:19

And and and I don't think I've I mean, I'm 64 years old. I don't believe for one minute that children, even when I was growing up, that you know, we had depression. Uh some of us didn't have the perfect childhood life, but I don't think suicide was such a big deal like it is now. Now it's every day there's a suicide, every day there's a homicide. And and you know, they just came out that the kid at the the Columbine shooting, he that he had just been turned away from the military because he was on an SSRI.

unknown: 56:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 56:57

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02: 56:58

I I knew about the SSRI. I think he had been taking it and not taking it and taking at least one of the I think Klebold. It was Clebold, but yeah, so I didn't know he had been rejected from the military because of it.

SPEAKER_00: 57:08

Yeah, the Marines wouldn't take him. And I also have a girlfriend that just told me this, and this is kind of sad. You know, she said that you know, if you've ever been on these drugs, even as a child, then you're still not on them, and you grow up and want to get a pilot's license, you can't. So these labels, these these drugs that they're putting people on is is ruining their future.

SPEAKER_02: 57:32

Yeah, we've we've experienced that in practice. Yeah, terrible. Yeah, that's terrible. Yeah, I think as a mom, we need to move against guilt and shame. And you know, we're a bad mom if we don't medicate our kids, you know, the medication is the only way for them to have a good future. It's not, it often takes away their future in profound ways, especially the way you know Trey ended his life as well. So, yes. Yeah. Well, if you've stuck around this far, thank you so much for sharing your story and Trey's story too. Hopefully, this will help memorialize him and give people some other messages that they do need to hear about polydrugging or not even polydrugging, just you know, using psychiatric medications or misusing them. And make sure you hit that like and follow, subscribe, comment, all the things. And yeah, thank you for being here, Sheila.

SPEAKER_00: 58:28

Well, I would like to say one more other thing. I'm legislating a lot. Good luck. I am sending packets out that are this thick to everybody at least once a month. And next month I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna start following through because I've already done it three times. I'm gonna start calling these people. You got my package. I have the tracking number. I know you got it. Have you read it? What do you think about it? And I'm not just just just with the medical boards, I'm with the CDC, FDA. You know, I want these drugs. If they think they have to have these drugs, they need to be reclassified where nurse practitioners cannot write them. There needs to be more monitoring, tighter boundaries on these drugs because they are dangerous. They're not just dangerous to the person taking them, they're dangerous to people around them.

SPEAKER_02: 59:18

That's right.

SPEAKER_00: 59:18

And they're ruining every relationship you have.

SPEAKER_02: 59:22

So, did we just hear we're going to be hearing a lot more about Sheila Stancil in the coming months and years? I'm thinking we are.

SPEAKER_03: 59:28

So we're on our phones and little CNN app flag pops up and there's Sheila.

SPEAKER_00: 59:34

Sheila. I want to be loud. I want to be loud. Not just for Trey, this is for every mother. You know, if they see a change in your child, man, go check out their medications. Yes, yes. You know, it may not be that they're on meth, it may not be that they're doing opioids, it may be something simple that a doctor gave them.

SPEAKER_03: 59:53

That's right. Perfect. That's a great, great ending statement for wrapping up, Sheila. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you.