WEBVTT

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[music]

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All of Dave\'s old meds.

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As soon as he said he was suicidal,

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we took him to the hospital
and put them all in there.

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I didn\'t know what else to do.

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If he really wanted
to commit suicide,

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there was nothing I could do,
but I wasn\'t going to make it easy.

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To think I swallowed
that shit for years...

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[music]

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Any questions or comments
from the committee?

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This time we\'d like
to call David Cope.

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My name is Lieutenant Commander David
Cope, of the United States Navy.

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I\'m a 2007 graduate
of the Naval Academy at Annapolis

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and a 2012 graduate of MIT

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with dual master\'s degrees in mechanical
engineering and naval architecture.

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At 32, I\'m a disabled veteran,

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soon to be medically retired from the
Navy due to chronic health conditions

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resulting from the use of the
benzodiazepine Ativan,

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as prescribed over several years.

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The indisputable reality of short-term
usefulness and long-term risk

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demands that patients receive
explicit informed consent

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prior to benzodiazepine
prescription.

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I cannot roll back the clock.

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I will not regain my career
as a naval officer.

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I\'m not affiliated
with any organization.

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The Dave that I fell in love with
had so much energy.

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He was the happiest
person I\'d ever met.

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He would go sailing,
biking, or hiking,

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and he was kind and patient.

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We talked for hours
about all kinds of things.

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I miss that a lot.

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I was a waitress in New York City.

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A pretty normal girl, doing normal
things, nothing exceptional,

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nothing not exceptional,
just normal.

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My mind was clear.
I was happy.

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The only little issue
was I couldn\'t sleep.

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I would get out at two or three
in the morning.

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I knew that my sleep issues
were related to working at night.

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So, I went to my doctor,
my regular doctor.

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I saw him maybe twice a year.

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I asked him for
something for sleep.

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He always said to me,
I\'ll never forget,

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he hit me on my knee,
\"Just go to sleep.

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You\'re too young not to be
able to sleep.

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I don\'t write prescriptions
for sleeping pills.

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If you want that, you have
to get it from a psychiatrist.\"

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I then said,
\"Yes, sure. Why not?\"

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He gave me a referral.

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I took the referral, and I called
a bunch of psychiatrists.

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One doctor in Brooklyn said,
\"Yes, we\'re seeing patients.

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Come on in.\" He gave me
a prescription for lorazepam.

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He told me to take two
in the day and two at night.

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I then said, \"Why do I need to take
a sleeping pill during the day?

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I don\'t want to sleep
during the day.\"

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He said, \"That is how it works.\"
I said, \"Okay.\"

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That\'s me right before I was
put on Klonopin the first time.

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I just got back from Iraq.
These are my brothers and sisters.

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This sister is a waitress now.

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I used to drive her
daughter to school,

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and I had the worst thoughts,
like the school will blow up

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and all the kids will be dead.
That thought created adrenaline.

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When the adrenaline kicked in,
I thought, \"Oh my god,

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am I going be the
one who does it?\"

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Then I thought, \"Yes, Angie,
you\'re going to kill these kids.\"

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I\'m sitting here
looking at my niece,

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and my thoughts are so bad
that my teeth chatter:

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\"Oh my God, I\'m capable of that?
Are you kidding me?\"

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Then you get horrified:
\"Why am I thinking this stuff?

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This is not like me.

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I don\'t want to do
anything to anybody\'s kids.

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I love my niece.
This doesn\'t make sense.

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Why am I thinking this?\"
I don\'t know.

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It\'s like a chemical, mental torture.

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I was never like this.

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That\'s the scariest part, because
is this my new normal?

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Did Effexor do this to me?
Did Cymbalta do this to me?

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Or Geodon or Abilify?
Which one did it?

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I was a restless child.

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I was always thinking ahead,
about what comes next.

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My mom called me
the worrier of the house.

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I worried about the unknown,

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things beyond my control.
I would overthink them.

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My anxiety led me to be
very successful academically.

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I got accepted into the Naval
Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

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After Annapolis, I did a few years

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on a destroyer based out
of Mayport, Florida.

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Then when you\'re at sea,

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you\'re training to be the guy directing
the ship\'s navigation, where to go.

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It\'s great fun, but also
extremely high stress, but I loved it.

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I was pre-selected for
Satellite Systems Engineering.

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And for that I needed
to go to grad school.

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When I got the acceptance
letter from MIT,

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it was one of those moments
when you think,

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\"This is not happening.

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It must be a mistake.\" But the stars
had aligned and I was really happy.

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Fall semester went off
without a hitch.

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I had started a romantic
relationship earlier that summer.

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The early Spring is when
things started to fall apart.

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My romantic relationship
took a turn, became toxic.

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I was in distress.
I was overwhelmed.

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We were taking four to five
graduate-level courses a semester,

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so I sought out care from the mental
health clinic at MIT, the campus clinic.

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They diagnosed me with
generalized anxiety disorder.

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The presented solution
to my problems was

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a prescription for
the benzodiazepine Ativan,

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which I\'d never previously
known about or taken, and Zoloft.

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They work as advertised. I mean,
it is a very immediate effect.

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It\'s very calming, but from
the start I noticed changes,

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and I distinctly remember the
first time I was concerned.

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I was a teacher\'s assistant for a small
group of students doing ship design,

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and I was showing them a program that
I had used extensively for several years.

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It got to a point where
I had a cognitive block.

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There was a wall, a block.
I didn\'t know where to go next.

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I said, \"Doc,
this isn\'t working.

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I need something.
What else could help me?\"

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His solution was to diagnose me
with ADHD, put me on amphetamine,

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and then, for about six to eight
months, everything was grand.

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Dave told me on our
third or fourth date

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that he was on medication
for depression and ADHD.

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I have ADHD myself
and take medication for that.

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I had issues with depression

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and sought out help
and medication and counseling.

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It\'s fairly normal now.

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I met the girl of my dreams,
I got engaged during that period.

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Work was great. I loved it.

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I returned to what I thought
was my normal self.

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Somewhere at about eight months

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I started noticing emotional
flatness, some sexual dysfunction,

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difficulty remembering
what street we lived on.

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That whole period is just a blur.

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I was a zombie, and
had this big wedding planned.

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I can remember talking
to my mom then.

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I said, \"Mom, I feel nothing.
I feel emotionally void.\"

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That\'s when I went
to the psychiatrist and said,

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\"This stuff isn\'t for me.
I need to get off it.

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I think the drug is my problem.\"

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That\'s when the shit hit the fan.

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[music]

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It\'s going to be
opened and closed a lot.

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It\'s like the birth year,
or death year.

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- This long walk today will help.
- It will.

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I\'ve always been close with
my parents, even when I was a child.

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I love school. I like to be
with my friends a lot.

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I feel comforted
being around other people.

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When I was 11, I moved from
Nashville to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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We moved a lot
for my parents\' jobs,

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which is very hard in terms
of keeping lifelong friends.

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I would oftentimes
just sit in my room

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and listen to music and,
honestly, just mope around.

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I started having a lot of anxiety
about school and I was so anxious,

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I got stomachaches
and didn\'t want to eat.

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I wouldn\'t eat breakfast
because I had a stomachache.

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I wouldn\'t eat much lunch
because I had a stomachache.

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I noticed that she\'d gotten thin.

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I blurted out, \"Do you think
you might be anorexic?\"

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She got on the scale, and said,
\"I think I lost 20 pounds.\"

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I totally freaked out and got
an appointment the same day.

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Then toward the end, the therapist
asked me to come into the room.

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She said, \"I think what would
be best to kickstart this treatment

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is for her to get
on antidepressants.\"

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Wait a second, we came
here for talk therapy.

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We didn\'t come here
to kickstart it with medication.

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That\'s the whole point
of going to a therapist, I thought.

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Rebecka was prescribed
Zoloft for the first medication.

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She said it didn\'t
really make a difference.

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She didn\'t feel any better,

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but she also didn\'t
feel any worse at that time.

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When we saw her doctor again,
she switched her to Prozac.

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Shortly after,
I had a business trip.

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I got a phone call from
Rebecka and she said,

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\"I\'ve been seeing this little girl,\"

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and I said, \"What do you mean
you\'ve been seeing a little girl?\"

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\"She\'s not really there, but I can
see her and I named her Alice.\"

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I genuinely thought there were people in the
room who weren\'t there, who others couldn\'t see,

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but they were very real for me.

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In my head, I knew
they weren\'t there,

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but they were there
and I couldn\'t explain it.

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I asked Rebecka,
\"Does it scare you?\"

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She said, \"No, not really.
Alice doesn\'t seem to do much.\"

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It was a benign
hallucination at that time.

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We were alarmed, but we didn\'t
want to overreact.

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The real, not-real people
that I had been seeing

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interacted with me. That was
what kept me in check with reality.

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They\'re not saying anything
or doing anything.

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They can\'t touch you,
they\'re not there, it\'s fine.

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I went into my parents\'
room shaking, frightened,

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crying, and I told them
what had happened.

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She came into our bedroom
late at night and she was shaking.

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She said, \"The hallucination
touched me and asked me

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to come into the kitchen
so I could hurt myself.\"

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They said, \"Enough of this.
She needs help.\"

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[music]

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I didn\'t even know people
could have sleep issues

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because I\'d slept
normally all my life,

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so it was not something
I thought about.

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I had a feeling it was my job.

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I didn\'t think
I could quit my job.

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I thought I could get help for it.

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That\'s why I went
to a psychiatrist.

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He prescribed me this drug,
lorazepam.

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I took it for six years.

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Wait, you took lorazepam
for six years?

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Six-and-a-half years.

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Unfortunately, that\'s the problem that
most pharmacists see with lorazepam.

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Lorazepam, if the doctor takes time to
read the package insert, clearly states...

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Are they not reading?

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I don\'t know.
I can only tell you what I read.

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The package insert from
the manufacturer clearly states

00:14:06.799 --> 00:14:10.269
that lorazepam is
only for short-term use,

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maybe two to four weeks.

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Lorazepam hasn\'t been
studied for long-term therapy.

00:14:15.669 --> 00:14:18.848
I asked him,
\"Can I take this drug?

00:14:19.699 --> 00:14:23.103
Are you sure it\'s not dangerous?
I can stop it when I want?\"

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He said, \"Yes, yes, yes.\" It did help
me to sleep, I slept like a rock.

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The use of benzodiazepines has
increased tremendously over the years.

00:14:32.232 --> 00:14:34.606
Since they\'ve been
around for such a long time,

00:14:34.830 --> 00:14:37.790
a lot of doctors have forgotten
about the side effects

00:14:37.959 --> 00:14:40.214
and possible dangers
of these medications.

00:14:40.383 --> 00:14:42.597
None of them were ever
meant for long-term use,

00:14:42.766 --> 00:14:47.060
but everybody knows somebody who\'s
been taking benzodiazepines for years.

00:14:49.807 --> 00:14:53.034
[music]

00:15:10.997 --> 00:15:12.357
I went to the doctor too much.

00:15:12.525 --> 00:15:14.340
I started thinking,
\"When did this start?

00:15:14.508 --> 00:15:18.085
How did this start?
What led up to me falling apart?\"

00:15:18.751 --> 00:15:21.120
I was always the go-to person
in my unit.

00:15:21.762 --> 00:15:24.566
If they needed a job done right,
they asked me.

00:15:25.123 --> 00:15:27.209
I was physically fit, knew my job.

00:15:27.377 --> 00:15:28.901
I was promoted to sergeant.

00:15:29.802 --> 00:15:31.514
After work, I was a lot of fun.

00:15:31.683 --> 00:15:33.695
I liked to travel,
go to the beach, be spontaneous.

00:15:33.863 --> 00:15:36.309
I was the happy person,
the happy-go-lucky friend,

00:15:36.478 --> 00:15:39.507
\"Hey, let\'s go shopping.
Let\'s go to a bakery.\"

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Never had a second thought
about anything crazy.

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That\'s who I was before this.

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So when the war started,

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the problem for me was
stressful situations every day,

00:15:49.914 --> 00:15:54.092
like being shot at in convoys, driving
around in dangerous areas of Baghdad.

00:15:54.261 --> 00:15:57.365
My head was constantly
scanning for something dangerous.

00:15:57.987 --> 00:16:02.631
All the soldiers in my unit said, \"I have a letter
for my mom in the pocket of my flak jacket,\"

00:16:03.181 --> 00:16:05.543
or, \"I have a letter to
my dad in my helmet.

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If I die, please
give it to my parents.\"

00:16:08.282 --> 00:16:10.297
I said, \"I\'m not writing
a fucking letter,

00:16:10.465 --> 00:16:12.697
because I\'m not going
to die here, sorry.\"

00:16:12.903 --> 00:16:14.918
\"I\'m going to be
a strong sergeant.

00:16:15.299 --> 00:16:17.722
I don\'t take no shit.\"
That\'s just the way I was.

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The first two months I was in Baghdad,
I was really sick.

00:16:21.553 --> 00:16:23.991
I had nosebleeds,
fainting, dizziness.

00:16:24.280 --> 00:16:28.389
I lost 40 pounds.
So they medevacked me out of Iraq.

00:16:29.113 --> 00:16:31.819
Then my convoy got hit
the next day.

00:16:31.988 --> 00:16:34.526
I saw the kid come back in
and he was one of my soldiers,

00:16:34.694 --> 00:16:35.896
and I felt horrible.

00:16:36.064 --> 00:16:39.866
That was the day that I saw
psychiatry with the arrow,

00:16:40.035 --> 00:16:42.451
and I walked straight there
because that\'s what you do.

00:16:42.619 --> 00:16:44.353
And they put me on Klonopin.

00:16:44.521 --> 00:16:45.866
That\'s how this all started.

00:16:46.034 --> 00:16:49.155
They\'re trained while on active
duty, very systematically

00:16:49.223 --> 00:16:53.485
that if you come back and have problems,
you need to go to the doctor.

00:16:53.654 --> 00:16:55.806
A hundred years ago,
if they had this kind of trauma,

00:16:55.975 --> 00:16:58.440
they would talk to their fellow soldiers,
to their parents,

00:16:58.608 --> 00:17:00.063
to their friends,
to their pastor,

00:17:00.231 --> 00:17:03.518
and instead they\'re going to
their doctor and getting medicated.

00:17:03.744 --> 00:17:05.260
I saw the sign for psychiatry.

00:17:05.428 --> 00:17:06.780
I walked down the hall.

00:17:07.327 --> 00:17:09.112
I remember it was just
a really small office,

00:17:09.280 --> 00:17:13.485
and I was sitting in a chair.
He was a major, I remember that.

00:17:13.698 --> 00:17:18.063
I said, \"Sir, every time I hear a
door slam, it sounds like a gunshot.

00:17:18.263 --> 00:17:20.236
My mind is racing. I need help.\"

00:17:20.404 --> 00:17:22.097
Then he said, \"Oh,
just take this medicine.

00:17:22.265 --> 00:17:23.385
It\'ll make you feel better.\"

00:17:23.448 --> 00:17:25.753
I picked up the prescription
and started taking it.

00:17:26.240 --> 00:17:28.883
I think the Klonopin was
starting to make me worse,

00:17:29.133 --> 00:17:31.727
but they kept telling
me, \"That\'s what PTSD is.

00:17:31.895 --> 00:17:35.199
You have PTSD now.\" I remember
he looked at me and said,

00:17:35.829 --> 00:17:38.833
\"We\'re going to start the proceedings
for medical retirement.

00:17:39.319 --> 00:17:42.548
You are not able to be around
soldiers and no weapons.\"

00:17:42.717 --> 00:17:43.792
I remember feeling,

00:17:43.960 --> 00:17:47.444
\"How was I a super-soldier
and now I\'m disabled at 25?\"

00:17:47.870 --> 00:17:48.871
Are you kidding?

00:17:49.363 --> 00:17:52.216
There is a post-traumatic stress,
and it\'s a problem.

00:17:52.384 --> 00:17:54.301
We would never argue with
you that it\'s not a problem.

00:17:54.469 --> 00:17:55.469
It is a problem.

00:17:55.564 --> 00:17:57.996
It\'s a big problem, but
it\'s not a mental illness.

00:17:58.164 --> 00:18:00.099
I feel like I\'m waking up
from a nightmare, thinking,

00:18:00.127 --> 00:18:02.032
\"What the fuck
happened to my life?\"

00:18:02.200 --> 00:18:04.605
You lost years of your life.
You lost your career.

00:18:04.773 --> 00:18:08.108
There are so many things
that are losses here.

00:18:08.277 --> 00:18:12.335
That\'s part of the situation
we\'re in as a culture,

00:18:12.503 --> 00:18:14.706
that if you run to the doctor
and cry about this,

00:18:14.874 --> 00:18:16.419
they will say, \"Oh,
you have major depression,\"

00:18:16.587 --> 00:18:17.831
and they\'re going to stick
you on the next pill,

00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:19.334
instead of saying,
\"You know what?

00:18:19.502 --> 00:18:21.875
Suffering is the only
normal response.\"

00:18:22.044 --> 00:18:25.221
There\'s a grief process
you have to go through.

00:18:25.692 --> 00:18:26.737
Wow.

00:18:28.932 --> 00:18:30.990
Let me tell you a little
bit about myself.

00:18:31.158 --> 00:18:34.497
Actually, for the military people
here, this is my resume.

00:18:35.196 --> 00:18:37.492
This is what my children
love to point out.

00:18:37.660 --> 00:18:39.763
My daughters love to point out
to their boyfriends,

00:18:39.931 --> 00:18:41.972
\"Don\'t mess with me because
my mother won\'t miss.\"

00:18:42.141 --> 00:18:44.478
I\'m a board-certified
clinical psychologist.

00:18:44.646 --> 00:18:45.890
I\'m going to talk
to you about science,

00:18:46.059 --> 00:18:47.093
about reality,

00:18:47.261 --> 00:18:49.429
about the research.

00:18:49.597 --> 00:18:51.037
People come home
from war and they\'re

00:18:51.135 --> 00:18:55.060
frequently grieving
and suffering tremendously,

00:18:55.228 --> 00:18:57.320
but none of that\'s pathology,
it\'s grief.

00:18:57.917 --> 00:19:01.174
One thing that\'s happened
in our culture is that normal

00:19:01.343 --> 00:19:05.277
has been confused by marketers
with comfortable.

00:19:05.446 --> 00:19:08.673
If you\'re in a normal state, you\'re
supposed to be in a comfortable state,

00:19:08.841 --> 00:19:11.637
and if you\'re uncomfortable
in any way, there\'s something wrong,

00:19:11.806 --> 00:19:15.670
you\'re abnormal. Not one
thing in the DSM-5, this book,

00:19:15.839 --> 00:19:18.117
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,
the Fifth Edition,

00:19:18.286 --> 00:19:22.671
the bible of psychiatry, not one
thing is isolated by science.

00:19:22.839 --> 00:19:24.079
There are no physical findings.

00:19:24.104 --> 00:19:27.078
There\'s no PET scan, no MRI,
no blood test.

00:19:27.518 --> 00:19:30.864
There\'s just behavior
that has been described

00:19:31.033 --> 00:19:33.309
by psychiatry and labeled aberrant.

00:19:33.855 --> 00:19:36.121
They decide on what is considered
outside of the normal,

00:19:36.289 --> 00:19:39.201
and they set a cutoff and
they vote it into this book.

00:19:39.693 --> 00:19:44.760
How did we decide that the amount of time
for acute stress disorder was 3 to 28 days?

00:19:44.928 --> 00:19:48.455
A committee sat around and said,
\"What do you think?\"

00:19:48.623 --> 00:19:50.543
\"How many days should people
be in acute stress?\"

00:19:50.667 --> 00:19:53.774
They said, \"I don\'t know.
How about we say 28 days?\"

00:19:53.942 --> 00:19:55.904
Why 28 days? It\'s four weeks.

00:19:56.072 --> 00:19:59.088
It\'s four outpatient visits.
It\'s a beautiful billing cutoff.

00:19:59.257 --> 00:20:03.322
It seemed right.
\"All in favor?\" Bam.

00:20:03.490 --> 00:20:04.796
Those are the clinical criteria.

00:20:04.964 --> 00:20:08.711
I had the power as a
military psychologist to say,

00:20:08.880 --> 00:20:11.632
\"You are not normal.\"
I could destroy your career.

00:20:11.800 --> 00:20:12.955
I can send you home.

00:20:13.123 --> 00:20:16.427
I can label you with something
you can never overcome.

00:20:19.675 --> 00:20:20.950
My name is Allen Frances.

00:20:21.118 --> 00:20:25.538
I\'m a psychiatrist, former Chair
of Psychiatry at Duke University,

00:20:25.707 --> 00:20:28.710
and was the Chair
of the DSM-4 Task Force,

00:20:28.879 --> 00:20:34.182
which established the definitions for the
diagnoses of the various mental disorders.

00:20:34.698 --> 00:20:35.839
Normal is in danger.

00:20:37.135 --> 00:20:40.382
The definitions used in psychiatry,
and even more,

00:20:40.550 --> 00:20:41.768
the way they\'re applied,

00:20:41.936 --> 00:20:45.540
have become so wide that
a far too large percentage

00:20:45.716 --> 00:20:48.854
of the population would be
defined as having a mental disorder.

00:20:49.316 --> 00:20:52.450
Now we have patients come in,
and if they\'re anxious

00:20:52.460 --> 00:20:55.425
or can\'t sleep or have some
physical pain, we say,

00:20:55.458 --> 00:20:59.608
\"My gosh, let\'s get rid of that.\"
We have vilified pain.

00:20:59.776 --> 00:21:02.395
I\'m talking about emotional pain
and physical pain.

00:21:02.563 --> 00:21:08.180
It has now become the responsibility of the
doctor to eliminate all suffering, at all cost.

00:21:08.349 --> 00:21:11.138
Some patients require
the very closest

00:21:11.150 --> 00:21:14.865
in psychiatric and medical supervision,
very tough problems.

00:21:15.033 --> 00:21:19.065
Most people presenting
to their doctor for anxiety

00:21:19.537 --> 00:21:23.153
have a short-term stressor
that makes them feel terrible.

00:21:23.727 --> 00:21:29.154
Most symptoms will go away in most
people within a few weeks or a month.

00:21:29.322 --> 00:21:34.870
We shouldn\'t confuse normal sadness
and normal anxiety with mental disorder.

00:21:35.260 --> 00:21:37.547
That line has been terribly blurred.

00:21:38.134 --> 00:21:39.936
There is a cultural context,

00:21:40.298 --> 00:21:42.437
and the context really
goes back to the arrival

00:21:42.605 --> 00:21:46.807
of antibiotics in late 1940s
and then the polio vaccine.

00:21:46.975 --> 00:21:49.228
They really do change life.

00:21:49.550 --> 00:21:54.134
Bacterial infections are no longer a problem
and now we have a magic cure for polio.

00:21:54.709 --> 00:21:56.654
Now we believe in magic bullets.

00:21:56.822 --> 00:21:59.021
Pretty soon, we will
have magic bullets for everything.

00:22:33.558 --> 00:22:36.536
What you find in psychiatry
if you trace its history,

00:22:36.705 --> 00:22:40.439
is that in the 1970s, American
psychiatry was in competition

00:22:40.440 --> 00:22:44.004
with other therapists for talk therapy:
counselors, social workers.

00:22:44.172 --> 00:22:45.745
What do they say to themselves?

00:22:46.152 --> 00:22:49.890
They say, \"We need to present
ourselves as medical doctors.

00:22:50.058 --> 00:22:51.783
We need to put on a white coat.\"

00:22:51.952 --> 00:22:56.320
They adopt a disease model
for categorizing psychiatric disorders.

00:22:56.488 --> 00:22:58.991
We\'re going to say, \"These
are diseases of the brain,

00:22:59.160 --> 00:23:01.625
illnesses of the brain,
and our drugs, therefore,

00:23:01.793 --> 00:23:03.548
treat the symptoms
of those illnesses.\"

00:23:03.716 --> 00:23:06.831
It centers on the chemical
imbalance theory of mental disorders.

00:23:06.999 --> 00:23:10.733
I was taught in med school
that depression, for example,

00:23:10.901 --> 00:23:14.339
is a genetic, chemical
imbalance in the brain affecting

00:23:14.507 --> 00:23:16.833
serotonin and that
it is corrected with a pill.

00:23:17.500 --> 00:23:22.313
There is an understanding that
if you manifest with depression,

00:23:22.482 --> 00:23:26.026
that this is you, it\'s who you\'re
going to be. It\'s like a destiny.

00:23:26.194 --> 00:23:29.491
And that implies taking medication,
often for life.

00:23:29.927 --> 00:23:32.305
It hasn\'t been possible
to demonstrate

00:23:32.739 --> 00:23:37.432
that first you have a chemical
imbalance and then, because of that,

00:23:37.601 --> 00:23:39.818
you become depressed or psychotic.

00:23:39.986 --> 00:23:45.490
But we have shown that
the drugs create a chemical imbalance.

00:23:45.659 --> 00:23:51.756
Nobody has a clue what happens
when you push this system somewhere.

00:23:52.545 --> 00:23:54.978
You have all sorts
of reactions elsewhere.

00:23:55.152 --> 00:23:59.546
It\'s a very naive thought
that a psychiatric disorder

00:23:59.714 --> 00:24:05.215
is based on one single
thing, chemically, that went wrong

00:24:05.383 --> 00:24:10.459
and then we have a quick
fix for that. It\'s totally naive.

00:24:10.911 --> 00:24:12.306
While the cause is unknown,

00:24:12.474 --> 00:24:14.998
depression may be related to
an imbalance of natural chemicals

00:24:15.006 --> 00:24:17.241
between nerve cells in the brain.

00:24:17.409 --> 00:24:20.233
Prescription Zoloft
works to correct this imbalance.

00:24:20.401 --> 00:24:23.980
When you know more about what\'s
wrong, you can help make it right.

00:24:24.614 --> 00:24:28.945
In 1980, the American Psychiatric
Association adopted a disease model

00:24:29.114 --> 00:24:32.146
and began to tell that
story to the American public.

00:24:32.315 --> 00:24:34.226
Do you know who was
so happy with that story?

00:24:34.394 --> 00:24:35.368
The pharmaceutical industry.

00:24:35.537 --> 00:24:37.654
They were thrilled
with this story because

00:24:37.822 --> 00:24:41.277
now they could see markets
expanding... depression, anxiety.

00:24:41.445 --> 00:24:47.430
All these things that we used to think of
as normal fluctuations in human experience

00:24:47.445 --> 00:24:48.866
could now be seen as illnesses.

00:24:49.040 --> 00:24:51.400
Therefore, you could treat with
drugs, and they said, \"Wow.\"

00:24:53.614 --> 00:24:55.627
Is depression more than sadness?

00:24:59.639 --> 00:25:01.865
It\'s a tangle of multiple symptoms.

00:25:02.271 --> 00:25:05.695
It\'s basically reduced to the idea
that it must be a chemical problem.

00:25:06.016 --> 00:25:08.769
Since it\'s a chemical problem,
there\'s a pill to fix it.

00:25:09.430 --> 00:25:12.974
That has, of course, been a boon
for the pharmaceutical industry,

00:25:13.142 --> 00:25:16.085
which now wants to diseasify
every single experience

00:25:16.253 --> 00:25:18.748
because they want
to sell their pills to treat it.

00:25:19.262 --> 00:25:22.676
Binge eating disorder, or BED,
isn\'t just overeating,

00:25:22.845 --> 00:25:24.269
it\'s a real medical condition.

00:25:24.438 --> 00:25:26.753
Certain chemicals
in the brain may play a role.

00:25:26.922 --> 00:25:30.346
BED is also the most common
eating disorder in US adults.

00:25:41.434 --> 00:25:45.874
I never really thought that
the medication was a bad thing.

00:25:46.042 --> 00:25:48.937
I was like, \"Yes, if this is going
to make me feel better, awesome.

00:25:49.105 --> 00:25:51.386
Okay, if this other one will
make me feel better, awesome.

00:25:51.509 --> 00:25:54.305
Oh, if these four will
make me feel better, great.

00:25:54.473 --> 00:25:56.485
Let\'s do it. I will try anything.\"

00:25:56.836 --> 00:25:59.916
There was never any notion that

00:26:00.084 --> 00:26:02.243
the medication was
causing these symptoms.

00:26:02.411 --> 00:26:05.589
They acted instead like
the disease was developing.

00:26:05.757 --> 00:26:07.813
The only warning she gave,

00:26:07.981 --> 00:26:12.817
which she was very dismissive about,
was, \"You might hear, Mr. Green,

00:26:12.985 --> 00:26:16.655
that in some instances people
who are on antidepressants

00:26:16.823 --> 00:26:18.097
might have suicidal thoughts,

00:26:18.266 --> 00:26:21.072
but this isn\'t something you
should be overly concerned about.\"

00:26:21.240 --> 00:26:25.836
She said almost flippantly,
\"You might want to lock up your knives.\"

00:26:26.004 --> 00:26:30.355
We went out and bought a lockbox

00:26:30.792 --> 00:26:34.790
and put anything dangerous in there.

00:26:35.077 --> 00:26:39.623
That\'s really when it sunk in even
more: \"Wow, this is serious.\"

00:26:40.123 --> 00:26:44.650
I was hospitalized the
first time when I was 13.

00:26:44.993 --> 00:26:50.230
Over the course of the year, I think I was
hospitalized seven or eight times.

00:26:50.399 --> 00:26:51.834
Leaving her in the hospital,

00:26:52.003 --> 00:26:54.719
a psychiatric hospital,
this was not our life.

00:26:54.887 --> 00:26:56.521
This was not our daughter.
We knew our daughter.

00:26:56.689 --> 00:26:59.818
We knew that a few months
before she had been

00:27:00.709 --> 00:27:04.637
a little depressed and melancholic,
but this was a far leap from that.

00:27:04.974 --> 00:27:09.166
Once in the hospital,
they added an antipsychotic

00:27:09.334 --> 00:27:12.327
because she was now
experiencing psychotic behavior.

00:27:12.495 --> 00:27:15.632
In addition, they prescribed
another medication to take care

00:27:15.800 --> 00:27:19.278
of the known side effects
of the antipsychotic.

00:27:19.447 --> 00:27:22.223
We didn\'t really know what else
to do and we were in the system.

00:27:22.391 --> 00:27:27.738
We wanted to trust the experts,
so we went that route.

00:27:27.906 --> 00:27:30.720
The more medications they added,
I got side effects,

00:27:30.888 --> 00:27:34.092
then they would add
medication to cure the side effects.

00:27:34.260 --> 00:27:36.549
On and on it went,
and I think at one point,

00:27:36.717 --> 00:27:39.146
I was on six or seven at one time.

00:27:39.314 --> 00:27:43.174
I could not reach her.
She was in some other place,

00:27:43.342 --> 00:27:47.300
and that was probably
the scariest moment for us.

00:27:47.469 --> 00:27:49.263
She wouldn\'t
respond if we talked to her.

00:27:49.431 --> 00:27:51.085
She was clearly in another world.

00:27:51.253 --> 00:27:56.425
We kept thinking, \"Have we lost her?
Have we lost our daughter?\"

00:27:56.842 --> 00:28:00.493
For a while, we thought, \"She\'s
just going to be in our basement

00:28:00.668 --> 00:28:01.801
for the rest of her life.\"

00:28:01.970 --> 00:28:07.714
My mind was filled with
horrible thoughts about myself,

00:28:07.882 --> 00:28:10.789
how horrible I was
and how much I hated myself,

00:28:10.957 --> 00:28:14.177
and what is the point
of me even being here anymore?

00:28:15.847 --> 00:28:19.700
Many, many people are getting
an antidepressant, an antipsychotic,

00:28:19.868 --> 00:28:25.163
a benzodiazepine, and a sleep
medicine without any rhyme or reason.

00:28:25.581 --> 00:28:32.089
Instead of the beneficial effects of these
medicines adding up to something wonderful,

00:28:32.564 --> 00:28:36.371
very often their harmful effects
add up to something terrible.

00:28:36.829 --> 00:28:40.092
When I got out of the Army
and went to the VA system,

00:28:40.260 --> 00:28:42.104
it was like a whole
other ballgame.

00:28:42.278 --> 00:28:46.734
It turned into cocktails of
antipsychotic, antidepressant, benzo.

00:28:47.232 --> 00:28:50.952
I said to the clinician,
\"I don\'t have good feelings.

00:28:51.120 --> 00:28:53.999
All I feel is numb
or anxious or depressed.

00:28:54.168 --> 00:28:57.603
I don\'t ever feel happy
or grateful or loving.\"

00:28:57.968 --> 00:29:00.025
They said, \"We\'ll add
another medicine,

00:29:00.193 --> 00:29:01.393
maybe that one\'s not working.\"

00:29:01.452 --> 00:29:03.004
Then we\'ll switch
to a different one.

00:29:03.428 --> 00:29:07.400
Basically, my medication
history is just a succession of,

00:29:07.568 --> 00:29:10.790
\"This doesn\'t work, let\'s go up to
the highest dose and see what happens.

00:29:10.959 --> 00:29:12.824
Okay, it didn\'t work.
Come back down.

00:29:12.992 --> 00:29:15.070
Okay, that didn\'t work,
let\'s switch it and try another.\"

00:29:15.238 --> 00:29:19.068
It\'s like a hamster wheel
that I never got off until now.

00:29:19.655 --> 00:29:22.915
What happens to someone
like Angie is that when they get

00:29:23.084 --> 00:29:26.078
on these medications
and they begin to deteriorate,

00:29:26.247 --> 00:29:31.295
they attribute it to their
mental condition, not to the medication.

00:29:31.463 --> 00:29:33.558
When they go in, and they say,

00:29:33.585 --> 00:29:36.632
\"You gave me an antidepressant
and now I\'m really depressed,\"

00:29:36.801 --> 00:29:39.620
they reply, \"Well, I see
your depression is worsening,\"

00:29:39.788 --> 00:29:41.933
so they raise it,
or add a medication.

00:29:42.101 --> 00:29:43.993
Next they\'re
on uppers and downers.

00:29:44.161 --> 00:29:46.402
You see this pattern,
and every time they go in,

00:29:46.570 --> 00:29:48.938
they say it\'s their deteriorating
mental condition,

00:29:49.106 --> 00:29:52.104
not, \"Your drug may
be your problem.\"

00:30:08.322 --> 00:30:09.724
Hi, how are you?

00:30:09.892 --> 00:30:11.573
- Nice to see you.
- You too.

00:30:11.741 --> 00:30:13.341
- Nice to meet you.
- You too.

00:30:13.509 --> 00:30:14.764
Thank you for coming.

00:30:15.223 --> 00:30:16.631
It\'s awesome to be here.

00:30:16.799 --> 00:30:19.931
I\'m so nervous because I can\'t
talk like this at my own school.

00:30:20.100 --> 00:30:22.746
[laughter]

00:30:22.914 --> 00:30:26.358
I want to just run through my story
quickly and then we can talk

00:30:26.458 --> 00:30:28.941
because I\'m sure you have
really cool questions.

00:30:29.109 --> 00:30:31.500
I was on a cocktail of 17
medications at once,

00:30:31.668 --> 00:30:34.750
and then, basically,
from 2006 to 2016,

00:30:34.918 --> 00:30:37.304
it took me all that time
to get off all of them.

00:30:37.472 --> 00:30:41.358
Every time you went in and
you were prescribed these medications

00:30:41.458 --> 00:30:44.061
what were you told
about the side effects?

00:30:44.230 --> 00:30:46.182
How much information were you given

00:30:46.350 --> 00:30:48.064
before you were
prescribed this medicine?

00:30:48.233 --> 00:30:51.108
In the office, you have 10 minutes
with the psychiatrist, that\'s it.

00:30:51.276 --> 00:30:53.010
Then they say,
\"How are you feeling today?\"

00:30:53.178 --> 00:30:55.626
And then you say, \"Well,
I\'m still really anxious,

00:30:55.794 --> 00:30:57.121
and I didn\'t sleep last week.\"

00:30:57.289 --> 00:30:59.868
Then they say, \"Well,
I want you to take this little quiz.

00:31:00.036 --> 00:31:04.356
Do you feel jumpy in public?
Do you spend time with friends?\"

00:31:04.524 --> 00:31:07.218
It was one of those
psychological assessments.

00:31:07.386 --> 00:31:09.196
I fill out the little test,
and he takes the test.

00:31:09.364 --> 00:31:10.955
Then he pulls out the DSM
and says,

00:31:11.123 --> 00:31:14.328
\"Yes, you have generalized
anxiety disorder.\"

00:31:14.662 --> 00:31:17.508
I think, \"What is another
label going to do for me now?

00:31:17.765 --> 00:31:19.971
Really, another label?
Thank you.\"

00:31:20.139 --> 00:31:22.517
Now I have addict, PTSD,
generalized anxiety,

00:31:22.686 --> 00:31:26.359
panic disorder with agoraphobia,
major depression, for what?

00:31:26.599 --> 00:31:29.893
What do any of those
labels do for me? Nothing.

00:31:30.062 --> 00:31:32.912
I do everything that you tell
me to do, and I\'m not getting better.

00:31:33.989 --> 00:31:36.001
The most hurtful part
of all of this

00:31:36.007 --> 00:31:39.000
that I want you to listen to
is that I did all the therapy.

00:31:39.010 --> 00:31:42.250
I saw social workers, therapists,
psychiatrists, psychologists.

00:31:42.270 --> 00:31:48.350
Not once did somebody say, it could
be your meds. Not once in 13 years.

00:31:48.400 --> 00:31:52.958
That is what hurts me the most.
Now I\'m in social work school.

00:31:53.126 --> 00:31:54.243
I have all As.

00:31:54.977 --> 00:31:56.238
My brain is coming back.

00:31:56.406 --> 00:31:58.655
[laughs] [applause]

00:31:58.823 --> 00:32:02.376
I can write a mean APA paper.
[laughs]

00:32:03.899 --> 00:32:06.711
You were saying that a lot of these
meds that are being prescribed

00:32:06.880 --> 00:32:10.063
for four to six years should
only be taken for a few weeks.

00:32:10.258 --> 00:32:12.223
Do you think there\'s ever
a place for medications,

00:32:12.391 --> 00:32:15.071
or would you ever hold someone\'s
hand through that decision process?

00:32:15.590 --> 00:32:19.358
At the beginning I was anti-med.
I thought, \"No way, hell no,\"

00:32:19.439 --> 00:32:22.792
because I\'m lucky I didn\'t
kill myself or someone else.

00:32:23.154 --> 00:32:26.188
How could I say, \"Go ahead
and take those meds?\"

00:32:26.356 --> 00:32:29.995
There are times when some people,
and when I say some, I mean very few...

00:32:30.058 --> 00:32:33.872
So, I\'m not anti-med,
I\'m pro-informed consent.

00:32:34.688 --> 00:32:37.427
If you, as a social worker, want to talk
with them about informed consent,

00:32:37.505 --> 00:32:39.860
that is well within
your boundaries.

00:32:40.028 --> 00:32:42.518
We get it for surgery,
why not for meds?

00:32:42.686 --> 00:32:46.854
You shared that you\'re uncomfortable
with all the labels you\'ve been given.

00:32:47.023 --> 00:32:50.086
If you could change that label
to something, what would you say?

00:32:50.415 --> 00:32:53.324
I think I was just scared.

00:32:53.852 --> 00:32:56.364
I was a scared little
girl who was 24,

00:32:56.905 --> 00:33:00.313
and it didn\'t have
to be so complicated.

00:33:01.090 --> 00:33:02.113
You know?

00:33:04.454 --> 00:33:06.526
[music]

00:33:15.973 --> 00:33:20.238
I was first diagnosed
with ADHD when I was 15, I think.

00:33:20.642 --> 00:33:23.866
I remember feeling relief
to get the diagnosis.

00:33:24.035 --> 00:33:28.028
\"My gosh, that\'s why
everything is so hard.

00:33:28.196 --> 00:33:32.045
It\'s not that I\'m stupid.
It\'s not that I\'m lazy.\"

00:33:32.540 --> 00:33:35.062
I was pretty severely depressed.

00:33:35.231 --> 00:33:38.758
I couldn\'t go to school.
I just cried all the time.

00:33:39.465 --> 00:33:41.272
Yes, it was a mess.

00:33:42.132 --> 00:33:45.200
At that point,
I was put on Dexedrine.

00:33:45.903 --> 00:33:50.763
I felt much better and was able
to go to school on a regular basis.

00:33:50.931 --> 00:33:54.079
I felt some hope again.

00:33:54.678 --> 00:33:59.990
I hear anecdotes that vary, anecdotes
of the great effects of drugs,

00:34:00.159 --> 00:34:04.707
and I would say that\'s about 20% or
25% of anecdotes I hear,

00:34:04.875 --> 00:34:06.629
\"This has been great for me.

00:34:06.797 --> 00:34:09.269
This has helped me
through a very difficult time.\"

00:34:09.437 --> 00:34:13.132
About 40% say,
\"It may have helped some,

00:34:13.300 --> 00:34:16.084
it\'s hard to tell what
exactly it was doing.

00:34:16.253 --> 00:34:18.582
I can\'t say it hurt me,
I can\'t say it helped.

00:34:18.938 --> 00:34:21.474
I seem indifferent
to what it may have done.\"

00:34:21.915 --> 00:34:26.858
Then I get the other 30% or 35%,
saying, \"This hurt me. This damaged me.\"

00:34:26.958 --> 00:34:28.976
That\'s the anecdotes I\'ve heard.

00:34:29.145 --> 00:34:33.803
And I think that also details what
you find in the literature.

00:34:33.972 --> 00:34:36.739
When they come to see a doctor,
they want a pill

00:34:36.758 --> 00:34:42.741
that they hope will take care of
their problem thoroughly and rapidly.

00:34:42.909 --> 00:34:48.663
Most of these medications will
do that very well in the short term.

00:34:48.831 --> 00:34:50.829
That\'s the thing
that\'s so hard about it.

00:34:50.997 --> 00:34:52.662
In the short term, they really work.

00:34:52.830 --> 00:34:56.958
The reason I changed
the way I practice was

00:34:57.126 --> 00:35:00.253
the realization that I was
harming my patients.

00:35:00.422 --> 00:35:04.569
It is very clear that there
is a cohort of patients

00:35:04.737 --> 00:35:09.380
for whom getting off of these
drugs is exquisitely painful.

00:35:09.809 --> 00:35:11.861
[music]

00:35:15.836 --> 00:35:18.230
When Dave decided
to go off the meds,

00:35:18.398 --> 00:35:21.179
I think he didn\'t share it
with me because he knew

00:35:21.348 --> 00:35:24.717
that they worked for me
and were successful for me,

00:35:24.885 --> 00:35:26.514
but that wasn\'t the case for him.

00:35:26.831 --> 00:35:29.217
She knew something was different.

00:35:29.386 --> 00:35:30.871
She knew something was wrong.

00:35:31.040 --> 00:35:33.611
I was having a lot of irritability,
a lot of difficulties communicating,

00:35:33.779 --> 00:35:35.363
so it put a lot of stress
on our relationship

00:35:35.531 --> 00:35:37.391
and we just didn\'t
talk about it much.

00:35:37.559 --> 00:35:39.772
I thought I was
the worst wife in the world,

00:35:39.940 --> 00:35:42.456
and I didn\'t know what was going on.

00:35:42.637 --> 00:35:45.870
Every day driving home, I thought,
\"What can I do differently?\"

00:35:47.326 --> 00:35:53.611
About four weeks later, he shared with me
that he had taken himself off the medication.

00:35:55.161 --> 00:36:00.558
It was a huge relief to know,
\"Okay, it\'s not me.\"

00:36:00.658 --> 00:36:05.896
But he became short and irritable,
and he wasn\'t positive anymore.

00:36:06.064 --> 00:36:07.679
Everything was negative.

00:36:07.848 --> 00:36:13.962
I was totally dysfunctional
and began experiencing

00:36:14.130 --> 00:36:18.181
an irrational terror-like
level of anxiety

00:36:18.547 --> 00:36:21.023
that I had never
previously experienced.

00:36:21.191 --> 00:36:24.607
I\'d come home from work
and find him on the kitchen floor,

00:36:24.776 --> 00:36:28.170
curled up in a ball
just sobbing and rocking,

00:36:28.338 --> 00:36:33.354
didn\'t want anybody to touch him
or be anywhere near him.

00:36:34.857 --> 00:36:42.316
He would find a place to hide
in the house and sob uncontrollably.

00:36:42.727 --> 00:36:44.950
It was really hard to see.

00:36:45.050 --> 00:36:49.458
I got to a point where I completely
refused to consume any more drugs,

00:36:49.558 --> 00:36:52.269
and that came to a head
several months ago.

00:36:53.628 --> 00:36:55.838
That\'s why right
now we\'re separated.

00:36:56.574 --> 00:37:01.458
The breaking point in my decision
to move out involved a couple of things.

00:37:01.558 --> 00:37:05.394
He believes it\'s just going to take time
and there\'s nothing else you can do.

00:37:05.562 --> 00:37:08.153
I said, \"Here are the
options that I see.

00:37:08.321 --> 00:37:14.083
They\'re mostly medically-based,\"
and he absolutely refused.

00:37:14.710 --> 00:37:16.879
I explained my entire
background to my psychiatrist.

00:37:17.048 --> 00:37:19.344
I said, \"Look, I took pride
in being in the Navy,

00:37:19.512 --> 00:37:23.259
I took pride in surviving
and making it through MIT and

00:37:23.358 --> 00:37:27.084
I had high hopes to do good things
for the Navy and for the country,

00:37:27.252 --> 00:37:29.106
and now I don\'t know who I am.

00:37:29.274 --> 00:37:31.770
The only thing that\'s happened
between then and now is

00:37:31.858 --> 00:37:35.372
I\'ve been exposed to a series of very
strong psychiatric medications.

00:37:36.655 --> 00:37:38.273
The answer after 20 minutes was,

00:37:38.441 --> 00:37:40.644
\"I can give you a prescription
for Cymbalta.\"

00:37:48.358 --> 00:37:52.584
When I did move out, he called me
and said that he was standing

00:37:52.752 --> 00:37:56.735
in the basement next to a noose, and
I said, \"What\'s your safety plan?\"

00:37:58.685 --> 00:37:59.899
He said, \"To call you.\"

00:38:00.067 --> 00:38:03.497
I said, \"That\'s not a safety plan.
You need to hang up and call 911.\"

00:38:06.097 --> 00:38:08.547
I hate having to tell him that.

00:38:10.616 --> 00:38:12.282
It feels callous to me.

00:38:12.451 --> 00:38:14.971
When you\'re going through the
withdrawal from psychiatric drugs,

00:38:15.107 --> 00:38:18.892
the best thing is to
get back off that ledge

00:38:21.011 --> 00:38:24.375
and say, \"Dave,
just give yourself more time,

00:38:25.899 --> 00:38:27.203
give yourself more time,

00:38:28.080 --> 00:38:29.582
continue to fight for it.

00:38:31.047 --> 00:38:36.737
Someday you\'ll regain a sense
of normalcy in your day-to-day life.\"

00:38:47.475 --> 00:38:49.711
When it comes
to medication discontinuation,

00:38:49.879 --> 00:38:52.883
there\'s a silent epidemic
of people struggling with this.

00:38:53.051 --> 00:38:56.953
We have a cultural understanding that
illicit substances can be addictive.

00:38:57.121 --> 00:39:01.419
We understand this with
nicotine and with alcohol,

00:39:01.587 --> 00:39:03.853
with heroin, cocaine,
but for whatever reason,

00:39:04.021 --> 00:39:06.770
we don\'t think of psychiatric
medications as addictive.

00:39:06.938 --> 00:39:09.756
Taking that first pill,
it\'s not free.

00:39:09.924 --> 00:39:13.900
It comes with the potential
for physiologic dependence.

00:39:14.192 --> 00:39:17.422
People are jumping out of their skin,
feeling terrific anxiety,

00:39:17.590 --> 00:39:21.164
having all sorts of physiological
symptoms that are difficult to bear.

00:39:21.725 --> 00:39:26.131
People cannot stop this medicine except
in the slowest possible way

00:39:26.132 --> 00:39:28.867
with very gradual
reductions in dose.

00:39:34.256 --> 00:39:41.251
This is how I cut my pills.
Here I\'m doing a 10% taper.

00:39:42.120 --> 00:39:45.059
So, I take the pill.
I weigh it.

00:39:47.394 --> 00:39:54.172
A whole pill at two
milligrams weighs 0.15.

00:39:55.240 --> 00:39:56.944
Now I need 10% of that.

00:39:57.112 --> 00:40:01.417
You don\'t want to take off too much
because then you\'ll waste the pills.

00:40:02.653 --> 00:40:05.456
It\'s almost there actually.
That\'s 10%.

00:40:06.330 --> 00:40:09.725
The first time I tapered,
I didn\'t have my scale yet,

00:40:10.025 --> 00:40:13.883
so I was just eyeballing because
I was determined to get off.

00:40:14.051 --> 00:40:18.951
Your body will tell you if you\'re
handling the cuts, based on symptoms.

00:40:19.119 --> 00:40:21.868
It took me a while
to get from 2 to 1.6.

00:40:22.036 --> 00:40:25.010
It was 1.64.
That\'s as far as I could go.

00:40:27.072 --> 00:40:32.599
This group has almost 2,300 members.

00:40:33.721 --> 00:40:37.344
People just post stuff,
\"How\'s everyone doing today?\"

00:40:37.795 --> 00:40:40.345
Let\'s see,
\"I\'m in a strange window today.

00:40:40.513 --> 00:40:41.908
Up dose for almost two days.\"

00:40:42.076 --> 00:40:45.830
\'Up dose\' is when you\'re at a certain
dose and the symptoms get really bad,

00:40:45.998 --> 00:40:50.533
so you go back to the last dose
when you weren\'t feeling so bad.

00:40:50.702 --> 00:40:53.679
Everyone has their own unique
stuff running through them.

00:40:53.848 --> 00:40:55.027
No two persons are alike.

00:40:55.522 --> 00:40:57.072
I had brain zap.

00:40:57.240 --> 00:41:01.212
I had tremors.
I had severe night sweats.

00:41:01.380 --> 00:41:03.252
I have a symptom
where it feels like things

00:41:03.420 --> 00:41:06.169
are crawling inside my body,
just moving.

00:41:06.455 --> 00:41:08.840
I came across this image
and I was like, \"Wow.

00:41:09.008 --> 00:41:13.940
That\'s exactly how it is.\"
I found this image also.

00:41:14.608 --> 00:41:19.985
This picture shows exactly how it feels
inside my head when I say I have

00:41:20.493 --> 00:41:25.179
these burning sensations
all over my spine and my body.

00:41:25.662 --> 00:41:30.348
The image is so truthful
because I don\'t feel anything here.

00:41:30.882 --> 00:41:33.517
Right here is very normal.
It\'s just here.

00:41:33.685 --> 00:41:35.010
It\'s just everything here.

00:41:35.450 --> 00:41:36.805
That\'s exactly how it is.

00:41:37.949 --> 00:41:40.275
I found that support group
by chance.

00:41:40.444 --> 00:41:43.209
I typed in \"lorazepam\" [chuckles]

00:41:43.377 --> 00:41:47.780
and \"lorazepam withdrawal,\"
\"lorazepam dangers,\"

00:41:47.948 --> 00:41:48.949
And I thought, \"What?\"

00:41:49.432 --> 00:41:52.251
That\'s when I started reading, and I said,
\"I have to join a support group.\"

00:41:52.419 --> 00:41:58.768
Nobody understands this. If you don\'t
have support, you will lose yourself.

00:41:59.605 --> 00:42:02.880
I\'ve been part of these
groups since last August.

00:42:03.707 --> 00:42:11.600
Since last August, we\'ve lost three people
to suicide in my support groups, three.

00:42:12.688 --> 00:42:17.886
We lost a 50-something-year-old woman whose
doctor cold-turkeyed her off Klonopin.

00:42:18.586 --> 00:42:20.097
And she suffered.

00:42:21.238 --> 00:42:24.558
She has two little boys
and she walked in front of a train

00:42:24.658 --> 00:42:26.939
because she couldn\'t
deal with it anymore.

00:42:27.449 --> 00:42:30.663
About a month ago,
we lost a 40-something-year-old guy.

00:42:32.192 --> 00:42:37.628
He shot himself in the head,
blew his head off.

00:42:39.161 --> 00:42:42.241
So, we\'re losing people
in this fight.

00:42:42.675 --> 00:42:44.343
I think about it all the time.

00:42:45.174 --> 00:42:49.590
What if my symptoms get
to the point where I can\'t make it?

00:42:50.388 --> 00:42:51.877
What am I going to do?

00:42:52.379 --> 00:42:54.416
[music]

00:43:06.167 --> 00:43:08.012
I finally got off all the drugs.

00:43:08.854 --> 00:43:10.622
All the intrusive thoughts stopped.

00:43:10.790 --> 00:43:12.321
The suicidal thoughts stopped.

00:43:12.489 --> 00:43:15.358
I had to see my psychiatrist
for the last time on Friday

00:43:15.458 --> 00:43:19.224
and there was
a sense of closure for me.

00:43:20.115 --> 00:43:22.868
Two months left and then
I graduate with my bachelor\'s

00:43:23.036 --> 00:43:27.091
and then the grad program starts
in the fall and I\'ll be on my way.

00:43:29.228 --> 00:43:30.981
We\'re pretty close to the entrance.

00:43:39.674 --> 00:43:40.718
- Hi.
- Hi. I\'m Sierra.

00:43:40.900 --> 00:43:42.503
- I\'m Angie, nice to meet you.
- I\'m Dr. Vieten\'s daughter.

00:43:42.671 --> 00:43:44.889
- Cool. Awesome.
- Yes, you will be in the house.

00:43:45.057 --> 00:43:46.977
- Which one is the house?
- The one with the porch.

00:43:47.008 --> 00:43:48.008
Okay, perfect.

00:43:55.048 --> 00:43:56.070
Cool.

00:43:57.822 --> 00:43:58.877
That\'s pretty cool.

00:44:00.728 --> 00:44:02.692
I haven\'t seen
that name in a long time.

00:44:07.240 --> 00:44:09.234
Welcome. How are you?

00:44:09.402 --> 00:44:11.419
[crosstalk]

00:44:12.766 --> 00:44:15.361
- It\'s good to see you.
- Hello. How are you?

00:44:15.530 --> 00:44:17.684
Come on in. Just put
your gear there.

00:44:17.853 --> 00:44:19.213
No rain. We should be fine.

00:44:30.759 --> 00:44:34.147
Inevitably, the warfighters
that I work with are drugged

00:44:36.016 --> 00:44:38.155
and they all come back impacted.

00:44:38.323 --> 00:44:40.793
The trauma is pretty
much across the board.

00:44:41.550 --> 00:44:43.268
I\'m going to give you

00:44:45.598 --> 00:44:48.271
Dr. Vieten\'s version
of the suicide lecture.

00:44:48.679 --> 00:44:53.395
That black box warning that is
on your psychiatric medications,

00:44:53.563 --> 00:44:56.717
the Prozac, the Zoloft, the Abilify.

00:44:56.885 --> 00:44:59.575
That\'s not on there to lower
the drug company\'s liability.

00:44:59.744 --> 00:45:05.721
It\'s on there because the overwhelming
scientific evidence indicates

00:45:06.154 --> 00:45:09.771
that they are a danger and that
they cause people to commit suicide.

00:45:09.939 --> 00:45:12.863
They cause people to do
things that are disinhibited,

00:45:13.031 --> 00:45:16.814
engage in behaviors that they would
never engage in at other times.

00:45:17.234 --> 00:45:19.808
- Can I say something
about suicide? -Yes.

00:45:20.102 --> 00:45:23.375
I\'ve never been suicidal in my entire
life except for on medications.

00:45:23.543 --> 00:45:25.911
The first time was Klonopin.
The second time was Lyrica.

00:45:26.079 --> 00:45:27.359
And this time was Ativan.

00:45:28.421 --> 00:45:32.758
There\'s like a space in my mind:
\"Okay, I\'m having suicidal thoughts.

00:45:32.807 --> 00:45:35.540
That\'s alright,
but I\'m not going to do it.\"

00:45:35.861 --> 00:45:37.453
But then that space disappears.

00:45:37.706 --> 00:45:41.551
It\'s like something else takes over
your body because of the drugs,

00:45:42.206 --> 00:45:45.102
and you just do it.
If you struggle with those thoughts,

00:45:45.270 --> 00:45:46.657
you have to talk
to somebody about them.

00:45:46.825 --> 00:45:49.215
You can\'t just think,
\"I\'m better than this. I\'m strong.\"

00:45:49.383 --> 00:45:52.947
You have no idea how those
drugs can turn on you in a second,

00:45:53.115 --> 00:45:54.116
and you will die from it.

00:45:54.285 --> 00:45:56.002
I don\'t know if you guys
got the same briefs that I did,

00:45:56.170 --> 00:46:00.186
but when we went overseas, our brief said,
\"Don\'t get captured.

00:46:00.354 --> 00:46:03.499
If you get captured, they will cut
your head off on national television

00:46:03.667 --> 00:46:05.870
and show your parents
and this and that.\"

00:46:06.504 --> 00:46:10.168
Without saying it, they tell you,
\"Save a bullet for yourself.\"

00:46:10.957 --> 00:46:13.478
When you cross that line
and believe that,

00:46:14.353 --> 00:46:16.528
I think it\'s really hard to come
back over because,

00:46:16.696 --> 00:46:17.798
it\'s been hard for me.

00:46:17.966 --> 00:46:21.982
So, it\'s Trazodone for sleep.
Lamotrigine for a mood stabilizer,

00:46:22.719 --> 00:46:24.654
Risperidone is an antipsychotic.

00:46:24.823 --> 00:46:27.825
Buspar is an anti-anxiety.
Haldol is an antipsychotic.

00:46:27.994 --> 00:46:31.059
And I\'m taking a benzo with it
to keep from getting tics.

00:46:31.228 --> 00:46:34.004
And Valium, the Invega injection
that I get once a month,

00:46:34.172 --> 00:46:38.476
and then clonazepam, three
times a day, and then as needed.

00:46:38.644 --> 00:46:40.553
Is that two milligrams
three times a day?

00:46:40.721 --> 00:46:42.792
- Yes.
- That is an extremely a high dose.

00:46:42.960 --> 00:46:44.316
This is all from the same doctor?

00:46:44.484 --> 00:46:45.485
Yes.

00:46:45.968 --> 00:46:47.189
She\'s on two benzos,

00:46:48.427 --> 00:46:51.134
in addition to three
antipsychotics and an injection.

00:46:51.428 --> 00:46:56.769
- I should be a happy-go-lucky zombie.
- That\'s...

00:46:57.933 --> 00:47:00.343
That\'s amazing that
your respiratory system is...

00:47:00.518 --> 00:47:02.191
- Still working?
- Functioning, yes.

00:47:03.062 --> 00:47:05.088
What\'s scaring me
is once I\'m off this medicine,

00:47:05.256 --> 00:47:06.357
what am I going to do?

00:47:07.345 --> 00:47:11.670
For the better part
of 15 years, I\'ve been on medicine,

00:47:12.043 --> 00:47:13.626
and no one\'s told me
anything different.

00:47:13.795 --> 00:47:15.613
So, what I\'m hearing
here this week,

00:47:15.781 --> 00:47:17.444
it\'s almost
a brand new life for me.

00:47:17.612 --> 00:47:20.926
The main thing for me is hearing
what other veterans are saying,

00:47:21.095 --> 00:47:22.580
and it\'s the same thing
that I\'m going through.

00:47:22.748 --> 00:47:24.353
Which things are they saying?

00:47:24.521 --> 00:47:26.572
Number one,
why do I want to kill myself?

00:47:26.741 --> 00:47:27.805
I can\'t figure this out.

00:47:27.973 --> 00:47:30.780
I have two beautiful kids,
so why do I want to kill myself?

00:47:30.948 --> 00:47:32.186
There\'s no logical answer.

00:47:32.355 --> 00:47:34.455
- Were you ever suicidal
before the meds? -No.

00:47:35.056 --> 00:47:36.528
It is a long journey
to get off them,

00:47:36.696 --> 00:47:40.554
and you will experience some very,
very unpleasant symptoms.

00:47:40.722 --> 00:47:45.408
One of them for me was
extreme levels of irritability,

00:47:46.263 --> 00:47:48.602
and it destroyed
my relationship with my wife.

00:47:48.770 --> 00:47:50.451
We became separated over it.

00:47:51.358 --> 00:47:53.371
[music]

00:47:57.298 --> 00:48:00.958
How did I go from being
up on a mountain, climbing up,

00:48:00.980 --> 00:48:04.196
to being locked in a psych ward
banging my head against the wall.

00:48:04.365 --> 00:48:05.862
How did I get to this point?

00:48:06.300 --> 00:48:09.617
I feel I was asking for help.
Like, \"Hi, my soldier just got hit.\"

00:48:09.784 --> 00:48:10.259
Exactly.

00:48:10.426 --> 00:48:11.638
- I don\'t know how to handle that.
- Yes.

00:48:11.806 --> 00:48:13.766
- And their answer was,
\"Here\'s some drugs.\" -Yes.

00:48:13.827 --> 00:48:16.981
But I just needed them to tell
me, \"Thank God he\'s alive.\"

00:48:17.496 --> 00:48:19.461
Or, \"This is going to take
some time to grieve.\"

00:48:19.637 --> 00:48:22.924
Or, \"You\'re going to feel guilty
for a while because you weren\'t there.\"

00:48:23.091 --> 00:48:26.919
But all I got was, \"Shush, don\'t worry
about your feelings, here\'s pills.\"

00:48:27.086 --> 00:48:30.733
If I had just taken a couple of weeks
off school and recalibrated,

00:48:30.901 --> 00:48:32.866
- Life would have been totally different.
- I would have been totally fine.

00:48:33.033 --> 00:48:34.514
My whole life would
have continued on.

00:48:34.682 --> 00:48:37.312
I look back, I\'ve tried everything:
Effexor, Cymbalta.

00:48:37.479 --> 00:48:38.919
I\'ve been through all of them,
right?

00:48:39.080 --> 00:48:39.698
The list, yes.

00:48:39.866 --> 00:48:44.280
The list of them.
It\'s just this archaic

00:48:44.447 --> 00:48:48.094
trial and error
that only an alchemist,

00:48:48.262 --> 00:48:51.626
somebody who thinks they can make
gold out of nothing, would attempt.

00:48:52.145 --> 00:48:56.423
All those years, I would say,
\"I don\'t have relationships.

00:48:56.591 --> 00:48:58.226
I don\'t have friends.
I don\'t go out.

00:48:58.393 --> 00:49:01.491
I don\'t care about anything.\"
And they would say it was me.

00:49:04.632 --> 00:49:10.658
So now I say, \"It was not me,
it was their fucking drugs.\" [crying]

00:49:11.703 --> 00:49:18.229
The \'F-Bomb Aficionado\' is
presented to Sergeant Angie Peacock

00:49:21.690 --> 00:49:23.476
for repetitive use of the F-Bomb

00:49:23.643 --> 00:49:26.401
in keeping with the highest
traditions of the Marine Corps

00:49:26.569 --> 00:49:30.726
of the United States Naval Service.
[crosstalk] [laughter]

00:49:30.894 --> 00:49:32.637
Can you give us
any words of wisdom?

00:49:32.806 --> 00:49:36.406
Fuck yeah! [laughter]

00:49:37.383 --> 00:49:40.135
The gorilla in the room is
the pharmaceutical industry.

00:49:41.275 --> 00:49:47.474
Drug companies spend around $80 billion
a year on marketing and lobbying.

00:49:47.642 --> 00:49:49.595
They spend much,
much less on research.

00:49:49.866 --> 00:49:52.642
And most of the research they do
is really a tool of marketing,

00:49:52.810 --> 00:49:54.474
not on developing new products.

00:49:54.642 --> 00:49:58.785
Let\'s go back to the start
of this disease model in the 1980s.

00:49:58.953 --> 00:50:01.750
The first drug that
was tested in this new era

00:50:01.830 --> 00:50:04.600
was Xanax (alprazolam)
for panic disorder.

00:50:04.892 --> 00:50:06.681
And here was the study they conducted.

00:50:06.849 --> 00:50:10.858
They compared Xanax to a placebo
group, and the primary outcome measure

00:50:10.928 --> 00:50:14.573
was the average number of panic
attacks per week.

00:50:14.823 --> 00:50:19.238
After four weeks, Xanax was
doing better, fewer panic attacks.

00:50:19.724 --> 00:50:23.101
At eight weeks, the Xanax patients
were doing no better than placebo.

00:50:23.268 --> 00:50:26.944
And then at the end of 14 weeks,
the Xanax patients were

00:50:27.111 --> 00:50:29.358
doing worse than they had done
at the beginning,

00:50:29.458 --> 00:50:32.954
and much, much worse than
the placebo patients.

00:50:33.121 --> 00:50:35.266
The trial told of harm done.

00:50:35.434 --> 00:50:37.369
It told of people who
were going to get addicted.

00:50:37.536 --> 00:50:40.291
When they came off, they\'d have
all sorts of withdrawal symptoms

00:50:40.459 --> 00:50:42.261
and some people would be
unable to get off.

00:50:42.429 --> 00:50:44.965
That\'s what the study showed.
What did they report?

00:50:45.857 --> 00:50:47.281
They didn\'t report
the eight-week results.

00:50:47.449 --> 00:50:50.758
They focused on the four-week results
because that was the story

00:50:50.883 --> 00:50:53.929
that told of an effective
new treatment for panic disorder,

00:50:54.006 --> 00:50:57.391
and they completely
hid the 14-week results.

00:50:57.902 --> 00:51:00.663
Pretty soon, Xanax became one
of the bestselling drugs in the country.

00:51:00.815 --> 00:51:02.708
It is still prescribed
left and right.

00:51:03.420 --> 00:51:05.529
And what did we have
in the early \'80s?

00:51:05.697 --> 00:51:08.369
A story of science
that told of harm done.

00:51:08.537 --> 00:51:10.028
The longer you take a study out,

00:51:10.196 --> 00:51:12.529
the more likely you are
to see people not doing well

00:51:12.696 --> 00:51:16.270
on that drug or developing
side effects from that drug.

00:51:16.498 --> 00:51:20.368
So, the pharmaceutical industry
doesn\'t favor long-term studies

00:51:20.435 --> 00:51:23.072
for monetary reasons
and for outcome reasons.

00:51:23.240 --> 00:51:27.700
They don\'t want to show that
their drug actually doesn\'t do well.

00:51:27.933 --> 00:51:32.194
There\'s as much
marketing in the tests

00:51:32.361 --> 00:51:34.804
that are devised
to measure the outcomes,

00:51:34.984 --> 00:51:38.468
in the investigators that are
hired to conduct the study.

00:51:38.821 --> 00:51:40.841
All of that stuff is marketing,

00:51:41.171 --> 00:51:45.209
but it\'s presented and manufactured
and published as science.

00:51:45.377 --> 00:51:48.290
So, here\'s how it\'s done
and how it was done.

00:51:48.910 --> 00:51:51.848
They funneled all sorts of money
to what are called \'thought leaders\':

00:51:52.015 --> 00:51:56.473
academic psychiatrists at prestigious
American universities like Harvard,

00:51:56.641 --> 00:51:58.486
Stanford, Johns Hopkins.

00:51:58.653 --> 00:52:01.958
Those academic psychiatrists
began working for the drug companies

00:52:02.007 --> 00:52:05.322
as consultants serving as
their speakers, advisers, etc.

00:52:06.102 --> 00:52:08.428
You start with the
clinical study of the drug,

00:52:08.596 --> 00:52:11.222
but who\'s designing the study?
The pharmaceutical companies.

00:52:11.389 --> 00:52:13.822
They know how to design it
to make their drug look good.

00:52:13.989 --> 00:52:17.066
That\'s step one.
Who then analyzes the data?

00:52:17.234 --> 00:52:18.761
Well, their own people do it.

00:52:18.929 --> 00:52:21.065
It\'s done by the drug
companies themselves.

00:52:21.992 --> 00:52:24.005
Third then, who writes the papers?

00:52:24.237 --> 00:52:28.741
It\'s actually ghostwriters hired by the
drug companies to write up the study.

00:52:29.652 --> 00:52:32.128
They now present
the study to the people that

00:52:32.295 --> 00:52:34.998
they want to be the big
names of the study.

00:52:35.263 --> 00:52:38.996
Then those \'thought leaders\' basically
sign off on the ghostwritten papers

00:52:39.068 --> 00:52:42.543
and they become the \'authors\'
of the published paper.

00:52:43.529 --> 00:52:45.525
The former editors
of the medical journals like

00:52:45.692 --> 00:52:48.498
JAMA and the New England
Journal of Medicine and BMJ,

00:52:48.665 --> 00:52:50.441
the British Medical Journal,
they all said,

00:52:50.458 --> 00:52:54.222
\"Basically, we became vehicles
for story laundering.\"

00:52:54.613 --> 00:52:57.677
It was a corrupted creation
of an evidence-base.

00:53:00.560 --> 00:53:03.504
Now, imagine I\'m a practicing
doctor in some town.

00:53:03.765 --> 00:53:05.131
Who am I going to believe?

00:53:05.299 --> 00:53:12.017
I\'m going to believe Mr. Dr. Bigwig
at Harvard that this is the best science.

00:53:12.437 --> 00:53:16.338
So my obligation is to use
the very drug they say is so great.

00:53:16.738 --> 00:53:19.827
For example, Prozac. Prozac
didn\'t really work in the trials.

00:53:19.994 --> 00:53:22.130
Prozac had all sorts
of adverse effects.

00:53:22.298 --> 00:53:25.969
And those of us who are old enough to
remember when Prozac came to market,

00:53:26.137 --> 00:53:29.482
the drug itself was
on the cover of magazines.

00:53:29.650 --> 00:53:33.014
Our powers are such that we can now
give you whatever personality you want.

00:53:33.182 --> 00:53:35.583
That\'s how greatly our
knowledge is advancing.

00:53:35.751 --> 00:53:39.201
That was the story told.
What did science tell us?

00:53:39.369 --> 00:53:40.223
Do you know what they found?

00:53:40.390 --> 00:53:42.566
In the 1970s,
the very first studies.

00:53:42.733 --> 00:53:44.093
Done in Germany. What do they see?

00:53:44.235 --> 00:53:50.105
All sorts of psychotic events, worsening
depression, homicidal and suicidal impulses,

00:53:50.272 --> 00:53:53.735
so much so that the German authorities
said, \"This is a dangerous drug.

00:53:53.904 --> 00:53:55.173
We\'re not going to approve it.\"

00:53:55.341 --> 00:53:59.133
Now go read the studies that
were reported by the Americans.

00:54:00.011 --> 00:54:03.278
The psychosis is gone.
The homicidal problems are gone.

00:54:03.632 --> 00:54:04.763
Imagine you\'re a mother,

00:54:04.930 --> 00:54:08.698
and I know mothers who said
to their kid who got depressed

00:54:08.865 --> 00:54:12.073
over breaking up with
a girl or something like that...

00:54:12.242 --> 00:54:15.750
The doctor says, \"Oh, Prozac
doesn\'t increase suicide risk.\"

00:54:15.918 --> 00:54:19.371
Then a week later, that kid hangs
himself. That\'s in a real case.

00:54:20.045 --> 00:54:22.398
Can you think of any
worse corruption than that?

00:54:23.044 --> 00:54:25.190
It has been shown
that half of the deaths

00:54:25.357 --> 00:54:29.142
that occur in psychiatric drug trials
are never published.

00:54:29.382 --> 00:54:32.986
They disappear.
You have an expression in America,

00:54:33.497 --> 00:54:35.750
\"Torture your data
until they confess.\"

00:54:36.471 --> 00:54:38.346
This happens all the time.

00:54:38.513 --> 00:54:41.609
The difference between
an honest data analysis

00:54:41.777 --> 00:54:46.820
and one you have manipulated can be
worth billions on the world market.

00:54:46.988 --> 00:54:48.691
So what do you think they will do?

00:55:18.800 --> 00:55:20.854
[background conversation]

00:55:30.903 --> 00:55:33.349
I\'m still nowhere
near the person I was,

00:55:33.518 --> 00:55:34.815
but this is how
I explained it to my wife.

00:55:34.984 --> 00:55:37.700
I know I love her.
I know,

00:55:37.867 --> 00:55:41.875
I can recall the feelings
and the sensations of when we met,

00:55:42.042 --> 00:55:43.694
when we dated,
when we got married.

00:55:45.286 --> 00:55:47.372
But I don\'t feel love.
I don\'t feel love for her.

00:55:47.539 --> 00:55:50.593
I don\'t feel love for my dog.
I don\'t feel love or connection.

00:55:50.761 --> 00:55:52.728
It\'s almost like I don\'t feel

00:55:55.058 --> 00:55:59.704
for other people\'s concerns
or feelings or emotions.

00:56:00.387 --> 00:56:03.344
I think it\'s multifaceted.
I think it\'s partly the drugs,

00:56:03.519 --> 00:56:06.702
and partly the severe trauma
of going through the experience.

00:56:07.961 --> 00:56:09.024
I don\'t know.

00:56:10.091 --> 00:56:14.165
My family hasn\'t necessarily
understood why I\'ve chosen

00:56:14.333 --> 00:56:17.518
to come back and stay
in an abusive relationship.

00:56:17.927 --> 00:56:19.630
Why do they define it as abusive?

00:56:19.965 --> 00:56:22.065
I mean, I\'ve said
some hurtful things.

00:56:22.499 --> 00:56:27.190
Yes, and when you were
in the absolute depths of it,

00:56:27.357 --> 00:56:30.226
you were abusive.

00:56:30.395 --> 00:56:33.637
In what way? Verbally abusive?

00:56:33.805 --> 00:56:34.456
Yes.

00:56:34.623 --> 00:56:35.917
Okay, not physically abusive.

00:56:36.085 --> 00:56:38.405
Not physically, no,
but verbally abusive.

00:56:38.574 --> 00:56:41.147
I can recall telling you,
you\'ve just got to give me time.

00:56:41.315 --> 00:56:42.891
[chuckles] I was so mad at you.

00:56:43.351 --> 00:56:44.729
Why were you so mad?

00:56:44.898 --> 00:56:47.206
Well, because we had given it time

00:56:47.374 --> 00:56:51.845
and it wasn\'t really
getting any better, and...

00:56:52.293 --> 00:56:57.399
I didn\'t feel like that treatment
plan was necessarily working.

00:56:58.525 --> 00:57:00.724
And you said some
pretty horrible things.

00:57:00.892 --> 00:57:03.735
And it happened so quickly
after we got married.

00:57:03.903 --> 00:57:06.301
I felt it was like
a bait-and-switch deal.

00:57:06.469 --> 00:57:09.237
So, what do you think about trying
to get off the Vyvanse this summer?

00:57:12.409 --> 00:57:14.834
I would like to try.
I think it\'s going to be hard.

00:57:15.422 --> 00:57:17.856
Honestly, what I\'m most scared about,
honey, is that I haven\'t heard,

00:57:18.024 --> 00:57:20.116
\"I\'m here to support you
through this,

00:57:22.218 --> 00:57:24.564
regardless of what happens.\"

00:57:25.479 --> 00:57:26.511
That\'s...

00:57:28.156 --> 00:57:29.565
- Are you listening?
- I am.

00:57:29.740 --> 00:57:31.429
Okay. It doesn\'t feel like it.

00:57:32.708 --> 00:57:33.709
I\'m listening.

00:57:34.230 --> 00:57:37.958
I have been through hell
with you and have held you

00:57:38.128 --> 00:57:40.551
while you banged
your head against the wall.

00:57:41.256 --> 00:57:45.537
And this is my fear coming from the things
you said when you were in your depths,

00:57:45.704 --> 00:57:47.270
that you\'re going to say,

00:57:47.438 --> 00:57:50.751
\"Well, maybe this isn\'t
the right relationship for us.\"

00:57:51.050 --> 00:57:52.211
Yeah. I hear you.

00:57:53.624 --> 00:57:55.406
And I have put so much into it.

00:57:59.030 --> 00:58:00.035
Yeah.

00:58:02.800 --> 00:58:04.878
[music]

00:58:19.592 --> 00:58:22.129
There really is no research
on the long-term impact

00:58:22.296 --> 00:58:26.319
of stimulant use, but the longer
you\'re on them, the higher the dose,

00:58:26.787 --> 00:58:29.900
the more risks that
you incur over time,

00:58:30.068 --> 00:58:32.581
and the less actual benefit
you get from that drug.

00:58:33.903 --> 00:58:35.213
- Hello.
- Hi. How are you?

00:58:35.381 --> 00:58:36.738
- Good.
- Good.

00:58:36.966 --> 00:58:40.048
So, how\'s your focus been doing?

00:58:40.215 --> 00:58:42.098
Not as hot as I would like it.

00:58:44.816 --> 00:58:48.075
I feel like I\'ve
reached the tolerance.

00:58:49.030 --> 00:58:53.030
How long overall has it been that
you\'ve been on stimulants?

00:58:53.198 --> 00:58:54.998
Fifteen years, at least.

00:58:55.391 --> 00:58:58.250
Your dosage is as high
as I\'ve ever seen.

00:58:58.418 --> 00:59:02.778
If it\'s just not great,
then normally, we would try Adderall.

00:59:02.946 --> 00:59:07.389
Ok, but I\'m actually interested
in decreasing and getting off.

00:59:07.557 --> 00:59:10.430
Right. Well, I mean,
you always can.

00:59:11.016 --> 00:59:13.597
If I were you,
I wouldn\'t just abruptly stop.

00:59:13.765 --> 00:59:15.798
Well, no, I\'m not interested
in abruptly stopping.

00:59:15.967 --> 00:59:18.090
That\'s what my husband did,
and it was not pretty.

00:59:18.258 --> 00:59:21.808
Right. You could actually
open the capsule and gradually,

00:59:21.976 --> 00:59:24.797
day after day, just take out
a little bit more.

00:59:24.965 --> 00:59:26.260
Ok. At what rate?

00:59:26.429 --> 00:59:27.691
You could judge.

00:59:27.859 --> 00:59:33.251
You could remove a third
of the amount from one of them,

00:59:33.419 --> 00:59:37.258
wait for a few days, then take a third
out of the other one, and just wean off.

00:59:37.285 --> 00:59:44.162
But if you said, \"Definitely, it\'s better to
be on the medicine, but it\'s still not great,

00:59:44.330 --> 00:59:49.062
then I would recommend trying Adderall
because it has a little higher potency.

00:59:50.429 --> 00:59:51.747
Well, thank you.
I appreciate it.

00:59:51.915 --> 00:59:52.915
Sure. Anything else?

00:59:53.044 --> 00:59:55.083
I think that\'s it.
Thank you very much.

00:59:55.252 --> 00:59:57.171
- You\'re very welcome.
- I appreciate it.

00:59:58.259 --> 00:59:59.367
I\'m doing it for Dave.

00:59:59.535 --> 01:00:05.048
If he wasn\'t in the picture, then
I probably wouldn\'t be doing this.

01:00:05.971 --> 01:00:07.528
[phone ringing]

01:00:07.696 --> 01:00:08.898
Oh, look, there\'s Dave.

01:00:13.170 --> 01:00:14.171
Hi, honey.

01:00:15.026 --> 01:00:15.762
How did it go?

01:00:15.930 --> 01:00:16.932
It went good.

01:00:17.986 --> 01:00:20.752
He recommended if the Vyvanse
isn\'t meeting what I need,

01:00:20.919 --> 01:00:22.605
that I should move to Adderall.

01:00:23.595 --> 01:00:24.805
Oh, of course.

01:00:25.066 --> 01:00:27.963
[laughs] I think that\'s
what I\'m going to do.

01:00:30.120 --> 01:00:31.175
You\'re joking, right?

01:00:31.343 --> 01:00:34.406
[laughs] Yes, I am.

01:00:47.158 --> 01:00:48.516
Hi.

01:00:51.379 --> 01:00:54.749
I\'m going to take
the medicine out of the capsule.

01:00:55.211 --> 01:01:01.329
60-milligram capsule, put 6 ounces
of water in and dissolve it in that,

01:01:01.497 --> 01:01:04.305
and then drink, I guess, 5 ounces.

01:01:12.662 --> 01:01:13.677
That\'s it.

01:01:14.077 --> 01:01:15.136
All done.

01:01:15.304 --> 01:01:16.324
Good boy.

01:01:18.081 --> 01:01:22.839
Well, I guess it\'s the start of a
journey and we\'ll see what happens.

01:01:26.076 --> 01:01:27.946
[music]

01:01:28.114 --> 01:01:29.236
Oh, Brooklyn.

01:01:32.633 --> 01:01:34.708
Well, we\'re going to see the doctor.

01:01:34.884 --> 01:01:37.209
We\'re going to see that doctor
who put me on these drugs.

01:01:37.378 --> 01:01:39.130
There\'s a hidden camera right here,

01:01:39.883 --> 01:01:42.405
and I have some wires
underneath all this.

01:01:43.294 --> 01:01:47.319
Well, this is it.
There\'s the office right there.

01:01:49.226 --> 01:01:50.465
What do you know about benzos?

01:01:55.634 --> 01:01:56.634
They can\'t come off.

01:02:13.902 --> 01:02:16.635
Why do you think it\'s so hard
to get people off benzos?

01:02:23.775 --> 01:02:25.970
Do you know the kind
of pain and discomfort?

01:02:32.608 --> 01:02:37.358
Most people, when they say,
\"I can\'t get off benzos,\"

01:02:37.558 --> 01:02:41.447
I think most people mean, \"I didn\'t
know it would be this difficult.\"

01:02:41.616 --> 01:02:43.718
They thought it would
probably be easier to stop.

01:02:48.041 --> 01:02:49.077
You didn\'t tell me that.

01:02:49.245 --> 01:02:52.467
You said, \"You can stop
any time you want.\"

01:02:55.299 --> 01:02:57.509
Yes, but that\'s not
the impression that you gave.

01:02:57.678 --> 01:02:59.613
I didn\'t know I was going
to have withdrawal symptoms.

01:02:59.781 --> 01:03:02.034
If you had told me, \"By the way,

01:03:02.202 --> 01:03:04.588
this drug can give
you withdrawal symptoms,

01:03:04.756 --> 01:03:07.172
do you still want this drug?\"

01:03:08.143 --> 01:03:10.876
Then I would have
made my own decision.

01:03:11.044 --> 01:03:13.845
I based my decision
on taking this drug

01:03:14.873 --> 01:03:18.205
on you, because of
the trust that I had in you.

01:03:18.656 --> 01:03:23.675
If I was given a clear picture on
the profile of this drug,

01:03:23.843 --> 01:03:27.177
I would have said,
\"No freaking way.\"

01:03:27.503 --> 01:03:30.761
He\'s following the script.
He said, \"I went to medical school,

01:03:30.929 --> 01:03:33.916
and I\'m a board-certified
psychiatrist,

01:03:34.104 --> 01:03:37.726
and I follow everything
they say to diagnose people.\"

01:03:37.894 --> 01:03:40.646
So basically, he doesn\'t believe
he\'s doing anything wrong.

01:03:41.469 --> 01:03:45.958
Informed consent is so important
because the typical encounter might be

01:03:46.097 --> 01:03:50.989
someone going to their primary care doctor
and reporting symptoms of depression.

01:03:51.429 --> 01:03:54.658
And they might walk out with a
prescription for an antidepressant

01:03:54.692 --> 01:03:58.169
after maybe an
eight-minute conversation.

01:03:58.436 --> 01:04:02.265
That\'s barely enough time
to cover potential side effects,

01:04:02.432 --> 01:04:10.432
let alone the true story around efficacy
or alternatives to antidepressants.

01:04:11.603 --> 01:04:16.534
To me, when I\'m talking about
how should we manage your depression,

01:04:17.395 --> 01:04:20.693
the least I can do
is let someone know,

01:04:20.861 --> 01:04:24.117
\"This is a valid option,
but you deserve to know

01:04:24.285 --> 01:04:26.301
what you might be
getting yourself into.\"

01:04:27.440 --> 01:04:29.538
[music]

01:04:40.425 --> 01:04:41.426
Hi.

01:04:41.594 --> 01:04:42.446
Hi.

01:04:42.613 --> 01:04:44.992
I\'m Kristian Rasmussen.
That\'s concerning to me.

01:04:45.160 --> 01:04:48.572
It seems like a lot of medication
if your only question was,

01:04:48.740 --> 01:04:50.549
\"Do you have something
to help me sleep?\"

01:04:50.717 --> 01:04:53.528
Ultimately, you did stop
taking these medications, right?

01:04:53.696 --> 01:04:54.696
Yes.

01:04:54.775 --> 01:04:56.417
Did you have any of these
withdrawal symptoms?

01:04:56.586 --> 01:04:57.911
Did you experience
anything like that?

01:04:58.080 --> 01:05:00.008
I had about 10,000
withdrawal symptoms.

01:05:00.360 --> 01:05:02.871
Okay, so 10,000.
So 10,000 is a lot.

01:05:03.039 --> 01:05:05.082
I had a lot
of withdrawal symptoms.

01:05:05.250 --> 01:05:07.192
I had a myriad
of withdrawal symptoms.

01:05:07.360 --> 01:05:09.632
All right, let\'s talk about those.
So, no one said,

01:05:09.799 --> 01:05:12.555
\"Hey, these are the risks associated
with stopping this medication.\"

01:05:12.734 --> 01:05:14.672
No, I thought it was a safe drug.

01:05:14.840 --> 01:05:17.765
When I found out that it wasn\'t
a safe drug, I almost blew a lid.

01:05:17.933 --> 01:05:18.973
Right.

01:05:19.666 --> 01:05:21.462
There have been thousands,

01:05:21.630 --> 01:05:25.999
if not tens of thousands, of lawsuits
against various manufacturers.

01:05:26.168 --> 01:05:29.718
And these drug companies,
despite the lawsuits,

01:05:29.886 --> 01:05:32.694
they\'ve been investigated
by various attorneys general.

01:05:32.862 --> 01:05:36.011
They\'ve paid fines
to various regulatory bodies.

01:05:36.179 --> 01:05:38.993
They continued to promote their drugs

01:05:39.162 --> 01:05:45.488
and sell as much of the drug as they
possibly could before the patent expired.

01:05:45.874 --> 01:05:47.171
And then it goes generic.

01:05:47.339 --> 01:05:48.365
That\'s a problem.

01:05:48.533 --> 01:05:52.528
We cannot sue any
manufacturer of a generic drug,

01:05:52.812 --> 01:05:54.040
regardless of the risks.

01:05:54.585 --> 01:05:56.268
And even worse than that...

01:05:56.436 --> 01:06:00.219
Let\'s say there\'s a responsible CEO
of a generic manufacturer.

01:06:00.673 --> 01:06:04.582
He says, \"I\'d really like to put
a warning on this medication,

01:06:04.751 --> 01:06:08.383
Medication X,
because I really believe,

01:06:08.551 --> 01:06:10.316
based on the information I\'ve seen,

01:06:10.485 --> 01:06:14.954
that it\'s associated with a risk of,
let\'s call it suicide in your case.\"

01:06:15.997 --> 01:06:18.543
He\'s not even allowed
to change the drug label

01:06:18.711 --> 01:06:20.375
for the drug
that he manufactures.

01:06:20.543 --> 01:06:21.543
Really?

01:06:21.603 --> 01:06:23.643
That\'s what Congress says.
And that\'s a big problem.

01:06:24.146 --> 01:06:25.993
Unfortunately, what we see is this:

01:06:26.168 --> 01:06:28.585
I\'m not sure that we\'re going to be
able to make a recovery for you.

01:06:28.753 --> 01:06:30.911
In fact, my suspicion is no.

01:06:31.079 --> 01:06:33.776
If it\'s generic now,
I think it is generic now. Right?

01:06:33.944 --> 01:06:37.089
What I\'m telling you is, unfortunately,
you can\'t hold them accountable.

01:06:37.264 --> 01:06:39.126
- So, who do we hold accountable?
- Nobody.

01:06:39.295 --> 01:06:40.619
We can\'t hold anyone
accountable right now.

01:06:40.787 --> 01:06:44.999
- So, people die and your lives are
damaged, and that\'s it? -Yes.

01:06:45.167 --> 01:06:47.105
- That\'s just awful.
- It is awful.

01:06:48.449 --> 01:06:50.477
[music]

01:07:00.600 --> 01:07:03.508
We go into this field because
we want to help people,

01:07:03.676 --> 01:07:07.658
but it\'s very difficult
to know where to look

01:07:08.045 --> 01:07:12.083
for unbiased evidence
on these issues.

01:07:12.252 --> 01:07:18.689
The pharmaceutical industry has tremendous influence
over what doctors learn, how they learn it.

01:07:19.056 --> 01:07:24.125
General lack of knowledge
about the dangers of these drugs is

01:07:24.294 --> 01:07:28.214
one of the main reasons that
doctors continue to prescribe,

01:07:28.383 --> 01:07:31.990
even when they\'re inadvertently
causing their patients harm.

01:07:32.518 --> 01:07:37.496
I asked, \"Right before she went
on medication, she was just fine.

01:07:37.664 --> 01:07:41.137
She was a little depressed, but she
was not having psychotic episodes.

01:07:41.305 --> 01:07:44.475
She was not having body tics.
She was not hallucinating.

01:07:44.643 --> 01:07:48.081
Do you think the medication
is actually the cause of this?\"

01:07:49.022 --> 01:07:52.806
It was as if I was asking the most
irrelevant question in the world.

01:07:52.973 --> 01:07:54.376
I never got a real response.

01:07:54.544 --> 01:07:56.972
It was just not worthy
of their attention.

01:07:57.140 --> 01:08:01.967
We then said, \"This is who Rebecka is.
We know our daughter.

01:08:02.135 --> 01:08:05.031
We know this medication has
turned her into someone else.\"

01:08:05.198 --> 01:08:07.834
We said, \"We don\'t think she should

01:08:08.001 --> 01:08:10.189
be on medication and here\'s why.\"

01:08:10.357 --> 01:08:12.481
And we read off the list of symptoms.

01:08:12.649 --> 01:08:18.068
He basically said, \"I think this is
a really bad decision, a huge mistake.\"

01:08:18.235 --> 01:08:22.333
It was a reminder of
a year in which, by and large,

01:08:22.500 --> 01:08:26.391
whenever we asked,
\"Is this medication harmful?\"

01:08:26.825 --> 01:08:31.128
we got no support from the
psychiatrist. None.

01:08:31.296 --> 01:08:33.897
If it\'s not medication,
then you\'re not doing it right,

01:08:34.064 --> 01:08:36.420
but we stuck to our guns.
This sounds very dramatic,

01:08:36.588 --> 01:08:39.094
but I feel that decision
saved our daughter\'s life.

01:08:39.261 --> 01:08:42.871
I kept thinking when she first
told us she was feeling depressed,

01:08:43.040 --> 01:08:47.369
that I wouldn\'t even have had the
vocabulary to say that when I was her age.

01:08:47.688 --> 01:08:49.376
So, that tells you
a bit about how

01:08:49.545 --> 01:08:52.490
pervasive this has
become in our society.

01:08:52.658 --> 01:08:57.884
I see children who are acting out
or feeling distressed.

01:08:58.275 --> 01:09:01.081
They are like the canaries
in the coal mine,

01:09:01.687 --> 01:09:06.342
who are shouting out,
\"There is something wrong!\"

01:09:06.985 --> 01:09:10.139
But we quiet them.

01:09:15.540 --> 01:09:18.520
I got out of the hospital.
They took me off medication.

01:09:18.880 --> 01:09:22.798
Within a few months,
I was back to normal-not normal,

01:09:22.965 --> 01:09:25.862
but my hallucinations
were completely gone

01:09:26.030 --> 01:09:30.144
and what was left were
the issues I began with,

01:09:30.312 --> 01:09:32.577
the anxiety and the eating disorder.

01:09:32.902 --> 01:09:36.757
And then we could focus on those
because those were the problems.

01:09:39.057 --> 01:09:40.930
College was something
I never thought

01:09:40.959 --> 01:09:43.914
I would do during
that year, and even after.

01:09:44.082 --> 01:09:46.028
I thought, \"There\'s no way
I can go to college.

01:09:46.196 --> 01:09:49.419
I can\'t handle that.\"
But here I am handling it.

01:09:49.587 --> 01:09:52.763
It\'s paradise for someone who
loves school as much as I do.

01:09:52.932 --> 01:09:56.586
So, I\'m just being a normal
college student and having fun

01:09:56.898 --> 01:10:00.216
because that\'s what
I can actually do now.

01:10:01.565 --> 01:10:03.621
[singing]

01:10:13.040 --> 01:10:14.501
Why did you do this for me?

01:10:15.020 --> 01:10:18.557
I was as concerned as you were
about coming off the drugs,

01:10:18.725 --> 01:10:21.565
and I wanted to make
sure you were in charge.

01:10:21.733 --> 01:10:23.516
You could do what you felt was best,

01:10:23.684 --> 01:10:26.585
with the tools laid out for you.

01:10:26.753 --> 01:10:30.353
The best way is essentially
an exponential taper,

01:10:30.521 --> 01:10:32.139
and that\'s what we plotted out here.

01:10:32.308 --> 01:10:34.252
And what that leads to is this nice,

01:10:34.420 --> 01:10:40.172
slow decline over
an extended period of time.

01:10:40.341 --> 01:10:41.675
Do you think it was of any value?

01:10:41.844 --> 01:10:44.860
Well, yes, because
when I did it myself,

01:10:45.028 --> 01:10:49.456
I went down too quickly
and I felt horrible.

01:10:50.053 --> 01:10:53.746
This gave me a clear plan
with specific dates and numbers.

01:10:53.915 --> 01:10:55.135
It was very helpful.

01:10:56.295 --> 01:10:59.422
Math can be love. [laughter]

01:11:01.996 --> 01:11:05.668
I see glimmers of the old Dave

01:11:05.836 --> 01:11:10.843
much more often than
I have in several years.

01:11:12.031 --> 01:11:17.978
He\'s not there all the time,
but I want to come home now,

01:11:18.339 --> 01:11:20.592
whereas before,
I said to myself,

01:11:21.101 --> 01:11:28.024
\"Okay, take a couple deep breaths
and come home.\"

01:11:28.192 --> 01:11:32.486
But now I want to come home,
which is a good feeling.

01:11:32.788 --> 01:11:34.285
It\'s nice to feel that again.

01:11:35.764 --> 01:11:37.822
[music]

01:12:02.478 --> 01:12:06.144
He was killed in action a month
to the day after I was medevacked out.

01:12:06.313 --> 01:12:08.774
Now I\'m processing
this grief 13 years later,

01:12:08.942 --> 01:12:11.896
and most people would say,
\"You should be over it by now.\"

01:12:12.064 --> 01:12:14.394
I had to call one
of my soldiers, and ask,

01:12:14.562 --> 01:12:15.882
\"Can you tell me the story again?

01:12:15.921 --> 01:12:18.629
Because the last time I heard it,
I was on drugs. I didn\'t feel it.\"

01:12:19.836 --> 01:12:21.901
So now I need to sit
by him and think,

01:12:22.069 --> 01:12:24.395
\"Look what this war did to us,\"
and feel it.

01:12:26.369 --> 01:12:28.472
[music]