What Antidepressant Withdrawal Is Really Like | EP 171 Brooke Siem

Intro

Brooke’s Experience With Medications And Withdrawal

Brooke Describes Intrusive Thoughts

I think I was 12. and um I had like a set personality on them and now it turns out after I started taking them when I was 23 I'm 30. so seven years not being on them I'm like no I'm pretty much like I was on them but much much less volatile and much less emotional so the emotional part of my personality is like got wiped out and I think part of that like that might even be a hyper response to how I was because like so now I'm in situations like this isn't stressful at all like maybe I should be feeling some stress that I'm not feeling because everything was so stressful for so long that now normal things that should be stressful don't feel stressful but anyway I I had that I had that for sure and I had it like actively that I was concerned about it so I stopped taking them and I was like am I a good person I remember I I had that I was like am I a good person like so yeah I think that's normal too and it was good person I was in like my emotions were all out of whack yeah like am I feel like do I feel guilt it turns out I do feel guilt but like there was a period of time where I was like I'm not sure if I feel guilt right it's like oh no the guilt is there and then it's like do I care about when you know when other people are hurt oh no no I still care but like that's really scary to go through yep especially if other people are involved like I know it's wreaked havoc on my personal relationships because I'm just kind of like like it's like they people look at me like okay you should probably react this way this is an appropriate way to react in this situation and I'm just like like sometimes I'm either completely shut down or I'm just bawling and either way it's like seems very inappropriate to the other person involved and it's just taken a long time to realize like okay there's there's an actual learning curve to this sort of uh emotional reaction here that I am now having to learn as a 30 year old adult not as you know a teenager which is when a lot of people learn this and um I I only think it's now I mean it's been six years since I've been off these drugs that I'm starting to feel pretty confident and okay like what is who who am I versus what have I had to learn and walking that line has just been really tricky that's super interesting I totally forgot that I went through that and but I attributed it this was before I knew I went through antidepressant withdrawal so what I thought was I started a diet diet helped my autoimmune disorder and then I got really sensitive to the foods I was eating for like a period of two and a half years then I finally went on the carnivore diet which is like geez just get rid of all the variables yeah and then about five months after that the lingering anxiety went away did you ever um and what I didn't attribute it to antidepressant withdrawal until my dad was like obviously reacting to the drugs he was on um did you experience a period of like elevated mood after you stopped taking them after the down kind of like a mini nipple Mania yeah or hypomania something like that you know I didn't get it in the sense that um I didn't get it in a way that like other people would have said oh she's talking really fast or something seems off but it was more just like and again I don't know if this I think I I definitely kind of over corrected but then it is since come in a sense normalized but I just I kind of just had this like really big burst of creativity and and focus in the sense that you know again I wasn't sleeping I went from sleeping like 12 hours a night and taking a three hour nap every day because that was how the drugs worked with me to like okay now I'm sleeping four or five hours I'm like what am I gonna do with all this extra time um so I just suddenly had this urge to paint and I would you know paint into the night and then I was I was I knew I was going to be on Chopped and I was having a meltdown over that because I was in withdrawal and I was like I'm gonna lose my shit on TV and this is gonna be bad so I just got obsessive about flash cards and studying and so I I really channeled that I did that you did like for school that's so funny yeah I was in um biomedical science and University I had a retarded number of flash cards that I had hand made I don't know how many flash got I think I had 400 of them like seriously to memorize you know biology terms which is like it's a way it works yeah that's weird so I yeah I I don't feel like because I channeled it so much it felt very productive I don't know what that might have looked like if I was like didn't have a way to channel it um but I definitely like ah it was just such a contrast between being down and being and being up I mean and like as even as I'm talking about it you can hear how it's so easily been given a bipolar diagnosis right using terms down and up and you know those sorts of things but um it's just like when I felt good I felt really good and I just thought maybe I was done and I felt smart and productive and clear and focused and then it would just turn and then it would be awful for days or weeks and just kind of never knew how it was going to go so it's just exhausting that's weird see yeah that's that's super strange I wonder what that I mean people don't know so there's not even that much of a use of talking about it but why would that why would that happen like for instance I I was put on oxycontin for my hip and ankle replacement when I was 17.

Mikhaila’s withdrawal symptoms

I took an insane amount of painkiller I was in an insane amount of pain for a whole year and then I had withdrawal I could feel it for about a year after that so it was like acute for six weeks and then I was like okay it's over but it wasn't my brains like every six months I was like oh I'm a bit better for a couple years but it was kind of linear it was like you know three weeks of really bad and then three weeks of kind of bad little bit of suicidality at the end there and then and then better and then six months better and antidepressant withdrawal which is why I correlated it with the autoimmune reactions I was having because I was definitely happening but they went crazy up and down like why would you feel fine in the middle of withdrawal for a while and then be back and like hell so strange I don't know it's a really good question I mean I would just kill for someone to do some very diligent brain scans wow someone's going through this I just I mean for all we know like stuff is turning off and on I mean we know that some of these um psychotropic drugs they they decrease great they do gray matter I think they they change they change brain size they they act a few parts of your brain I mean and then the brain has to over correct in other parts of the brain like take up and are overactive and so I don't know maybe it's just like literally the brain kind of going back and forth until it finally finds balance but we don't we don't know we don't have the research armchair hypothesis here yeah well it was wild when we went to so we couldn't get any help in the Western World to get Dad off of meds and and like dad's super smart so he'd get into the office and he'd like you know out talk The person but he was have like he wasn't able to stop moving and and he knew it was the the drugs too but going down on them made that worse it was like this is bad it exists on the drug and getting going lower makes it worse I was like I think they all have to go completely right and and we tried to go everywhere I kept calling you know hospitals and doctors and being like okay this is my dad he's having like an allergic reaction to the medication he's on plus mixed with withdrawal what would you do if we got there and they'd be like well it sounds like bipolar so we'd adjust his medication and I was just like we called 52 places and I was like okay so we went to Russia and they just got rid of the drugs which was so dangerous and so scary um but he felt way better in like a six-week period almost like it was bad but you know he didn't die in an asylum which was what was going to happen and and now he's like you know it took 2019 it took like three years for him to like recover from all that and now he's on tour and he's totally fine and he's not taking anything amazing right yeah but like this stuff it kills people I I wonder how many of the people walking around the streets that you see talking to themselves are on psychiatric medications and have been missing doses or going up and down or being switched yep and that's not even their mental disorder yeah yeah the uh Robert Whitaker goes into that a bit in the anatomy of an epidemic was one of the hypotheses because the so many of the bipolar drugs and the antipsychotics like create major uh brain changes over time that create the Tremors and all sorts of things I mean if they're getting okay hold off and start stop and left right and Center you know they okay so they create major brain changes yeah so that that's why so I started on that like the Russia topic because when we went there they did scans in my dad's brain and and they're like oh he has brain changes from the antidepressant use and I was like what the fuck like what are you doing you know everything changes that can't be good they didn't this they're speaking in Russian like getting information through a translator they're just like yeah antidepressant cause brain changes and I was like no that's not supposed to happen yeah I was like is that because then that would have happened to me it's like that's right that's not supposed to happen it's like yeah yeah it's long-term high-dose antidepressant use brain changes yeah oh brain changes sounds bad yeah I mean I think if we think of I I think that there's such a spectrum here right I think there there are you know there are people who can get all these drugs no problem um no issues at all there are people probably more like I think I'm probably on the far end of the spectrum where like I'm not sure I had actual brain damage but I had really severe withdrawal but then there are other people who seem to have like actual like brain damage that you could see in scans and I don't know if I had that because I you know was nowhere near that ability to get a scan but it's just it's it's like complex PTSD right it's not just PTSD it's an actual there's actual changes to the brain the brain the organ has been harmed and it makes sense that then you're having these you know biological physical symptoms that Cascade down the chain yep pretty unacceptable so you have it's I think you know this is gonna happen to a lot in more and more people it's just sorry go ahead no I just wanted to say like I just I think that you and your dad you saved a lot of lives by being going public with what was going on and it was pretty instrumental for this book to happen actually because I remember when you started doing all the updates for your dad when he was in Russia and the fact that that was happening that told me I was like this is this is about to be a really big deal because we have someone here who's pretty high profile going through this and this is going to get a lot of people's attention and that really told me that honestly they told me that I wasn't that I wasn't nuts and that the story really needed to be told and it gave me a lot of motivation to keep writing this book and get it out there and so I just like I think you guys have helped a lot of people indirectly and directly from sharing that experience just thank you for that ah like not not gonna cry thank you thank you I've been so angry I was so angry like I saw my dad just get toward I got tortured like hallucinating what the fuck is that I want to hallucinate demons that's scary like other than everything else but then what happened to dad with akathisia and then it was so bad it was every doctor we went to and it was like him too being like I'm done I'm done like I'm gonna die I'm done and then I was there being like no absolutely fucking not you're not gonna die like this is a drug thing and your brain can heal but like whoa did his brain have to heal akathisia is a terrifying thing and he doesn't have it anymore so thank God for that but I was like this is like I'm not gonna be able to stop talking about this because this almost killed my dad and like it didn't almost kill him it almost left him to be tortured every day from Psych Med effects in an asylum that's where it almost left him it almost left my mom like oh it got me but like when he was hospitalized for a while she was like bringing him food every day I've got like a touch of just a touch of PTSD from these like experiences but it was like fuck it was like two and a half years like that could have been my parents lives like my dad in a hospital actively being tortured from the side effects my mom bringing him food every day from medications he just needed to be taken off of so anyway I'm pissed off about it so that's why we started yeah we started to talk about it too it's like if there are other people going through this they just need to know that they have to wait they just have to get through it and they're going to be okay afterwards and then to also incorporate like this this needs to be enough up in the Zeitgeist that when people are considering starting these drugs they need to know that this is a possibility and not in just some like form that's four pages long of tiny print and you sign saying oh yeah I was informed of the side effects like this needs to be a serious conversation with your with doctors before these medications are started and especially for God's sake for kids like these drugs still I was on effexor and Wellbutrin like well they're still not prescribed they're still not approved for children why like why was I put on them I off label like it's just it's just I think we are such a fear-driven society in that especially like with all the you know awful suicides and everything that's happening with kids that it's just terrifying parents into trying to avoid the hard stuff and to avoid looking at their own role in their children's lives and what's happening to the child I mean you know I don't know what was going on with you or in fifth grade but like there had to have been something right like I don't know if this came out of blue or what and well I I I'd be curious to know but I don't you know it's obviously your story you don't have to answer it I mean it's pretty comp like if I could go back then I would you know obviously now knowing what I know I would say absolutely not but I mean I was very depressed so I'd been I'd been diagnosed with arthritis and I was on two different immune suppressants in grade two and so by grade five I was like I wasn't on anything other than two like injectable immune suppressants like Methotrexate and Enbrel they use Methotrexate for cancer like it's an intense drug but I was like I wasn't sleeping I was having really Vivid nightmares I was having suicidal thoughts I was really angry like punching walls angry I was just in grade five and that was from like honestly this is part of the reason I talk about my diet all the time is I I do think if I had even just gone gluten-free and dairy free and gotten rid of the processed foods I think that would have lowered all of those depressive symptoms but I can also understand like my parents my dad was also depressed at the time like looking at their kid and being like you don't want them to hurt like a grade five or grade six or whatever you don't want them to hurt themselves and it's like well they could take the medication I'm taking it helps me that's what my dad thought and it did help initially which just makes everything confusing it's like oh yeah Michaela's calmed down but then it was like years went by and I got like worse and worse and the depression got worse and worse and suicidal like impulses and violent thoughts got worse but if you think about it like I mean I just can't imagine what um the the stress the emotional stress on a second grader for all all of the physical stress and you know those those really heavy drugs and you know a young brain that can't rationalize any of this stuff I mean you know it's just the the I think the fear how much is that the fear and the depression seems like a natural reaction to a pretty terrible situation for what like a seven-year-old who can't express themselves very well and you know obviously like I know I don't I don't know how we would address that with a young child um but I just you can't put them on a drug that causes this kind of wood like this isn't the answer there's there's some something needs to be done but I don't know how much uh like part of the problem too is both my parents were also like ill so it's just like a family of Sickies luckily we're not a family of Sickies anymore but like so I can't I don't know what you would do like yeah I was definitely depressed I remember like not wanting people to at school to know my brother would go I was like don't say I have arthritis it's like an old person disease yeah so don't say that but I do think that the physical like the anger and stuff I don't I think that was Diet related I think a lot of that was Diet related given the fact that I can get my body to come well I know what my reaction to Foods is now yeah and I get angry so yeah yeah it's a cycle too right the anger is going to increase the inflammation and so the arthritis is gonna get worse and so on and so forth you know um yeah pretty crazy so what's your plan then yeah what what's your plan in the future yeah what's your goal here uh I mean I my goal is just to speak on this topic as much as possible I would love to see this book in medical schools and also in a psychiatric residency trainings um yes that book may cause side effects you know they use like the Bell jar as an example of depression in in some medical schools they use an on Quiet Mind for um bipolar issues not quite yeah or schizophrenia I can't remember there's some that's the thing there's so many memoirs about psychiatric illnesses that are used as part of curriculums because it helps practitioners understand what their patients are going through but there's nothing about withdrawal and so I think that like we need we need that we need that to be a part of the conversation so for me as just as much knowledge as I can get out there as possible um I would also really really love to see legislative legislative change and requiring pharmaceutical companies to provide more reasonable smaller jumps in their in their drugs so like it shouldn't be that you have to go from 75 milligrams of Effexor to 50 to 37.5 the jumps are too big you should be able to get much much smaller possibly even custom dosages you can get custom dosages through uh through compound pharmacies but not everybody has access to those so I would I would just really like to see ironically more availability um of lower dosages for these drugs and smaller dosages so people can help taper more effectively that's something we should probably mention too so one of the things we figured out um well one of the things I figured out that you could do to taper off these meds is use a compounding pharmacy so you can like search them if you're in cities it's a lot easier much easier but you can have your doctor fax specific prescriptions so if you're at like a hundred you can go to 91 and they'll compound the medication for you and give it to you so if you have access to a compounding pharmacy and you're trying to get off of medications you can go down 10 at a time or whatever your body can tolerate using a compounding pharmacy they're very helpful you do have to pay extra and there isn't really an alternative other than and and like slicing pills like that it means you're gonna go like up and down in doses which is going to make the withdrawal worse it's just yeah and you can't even slightly like not all pills can be cut because then you break the chemical chains so it's really important that you've got the knowledge of each specific drug I mean some can be dissolved in water some can't some you can cut some can't some you can count the beads out some you can't so it's just very important to have the Deep knowledge of that which I mean the information is out there on the internet I mean because it's had to be this has been very much a patient-led revolution and it's because enough people are starting to make noise that we're starting to sort of I think maybe see a little change very early on yeah I think so I think it's the same kind of thing like people kind of know processed foods aren't good in a in more of an in-depth way than they knew 10 years ago right like they knew what junk food was but they're like oh no it's more than that I think the same thing is probably going to happen with you know the more people talk about talk about this plus what is it you'd probably know this better than me but isn't it 20 of people are on psych meds it's like there's a bunch of different I think it's like one in five and so yeah that's two yeah twenty percent and then I mean it also it's really hard to get data in the us because we don't have a centralized system so you're not getting full reports so the reports we do get are like from like insurance companies and all those sorts of things there's more there's more data from other countries I mean even like I mean in let's see in 2019 43 million Americans were taking lexprozole after another SSRI that's just SSRI Lexapro that was the one that made me angry yeah yeah okay well Brooke um where can people find you online or find more information about your book so I'm I'm Brook seam everywhere that's b-r-o-o-k-e-s-i-e-m you can find me on my website on Instagram um I'm not particularly active on other forms of social media but I do exist there um I also have a newsletter called Happiness is a skill that talks a lot about these sort of things and that's just at learnhappy.substack.com wherever books are sold Amazon audible bookstores UK Australia Canada everywhere good good well thank you very much for coming on thanks for writing your book sorry you had to go through that but you may help a lot of people so maybe the suffering is worth it yeah in the end same for you guys thanks so much for sharing your story [Music]

Withdrawal Timeline

Why Doctors Are Not Talking About This

Recommendations For People Currently On Medications

Brooke’s Side Effects From Medications

We Don’t Really Know What SSRI’s Do

Research Around Violence And Psyche Meds

Percentage of People Who Have Bad Withdrawals

Emotional and Psychological Fall Out From Being On Psyche Meds

The Ups and Downs Of Getting Through Withdrawal

Jordan Peterson’s Withdrawal Experience

Mikhaila Recalls When and Why She Got Put On Psyche Meds

Brooke’s Book And Her Mission

Tapering Off Psych Meds