What I Told My Doctor

I'm going to do something different this time. I'm going to share with you a letter that I wrote to my doctor, and this is a big deal for me, because I have not gone back to the doctor, any doctor, for years since my medication injury.

Specifically, this doctor is the one who oversaw my medication for ten years, and who prescribed my reinstatement, which was the most horrible, agonizing experience of my life.

And since then, I had never gone back. I, thank God, was able to connect with a friend in the midst of that who helped me understand what was happening to me and connected me with the withdrawal healing community, and that has been my pathway to healing and recovering from my medication injury ever since.

Why I Stayed Away

So anyway, I just completely avoided all medical interaction, as much as possible. I might get a small infection in my toe and just be like, "I'm going to put lots of triple antibiotic on it and pray. I don't want to. I'm not going to the doctor for that infection." That said, I do need to overcome that at some point.

But I was not ready to see a doctor in the midst of all my withdrawals who may invalidate what I was going through, and gaslight, and try to persuade me to get on more medication. Some of you were honest from the get-go with your doctors, and I admire you. You guys are amazing.

So this is my step in being honest with my doctor, and the reason I took it is because I, years later, started getting phone calls to have a follow-up wellness checkup. Ever since that reinstatement, I never got a follow-up and I just never went back. And then years later, I started getting phone calls to come for my wellness checkup. And after the third one, I was like, "You know, I think I need to be honest."

So I'm going to share with you my real deal email to my doctor about my experience and my perspective now, because I am finally ready.

The Letter

I recently am getting calls from your office that I am overdue for a physical. The truth is I have not seen you since two and a half years ago when you reinstated me on 20mg of fluoxatine. That reinstatement was the most hellish agony of my life. I went through years of protracted withdrawal related to the medications I was prescribed in your office.

It is true I tapered on my own before the reinstatement. But that is because I was not supported to taper in your office, but only to stay on them. I followed a similar taper to the one you provided when I first wanted to get off. But the reinstatement sent me to a whole new level of pain and agony.

I was in great suffering when first medicated, and the reinstatement injury suffering was greater than the first by an extreme degree. I could not have imagined this kind of suffering existed outside hell before I endured it myself.

I am asking you to reconsider your approach to psychiatric drug prescribing. I realize that often cases like mine are dismissed and blamed on the patient. Rather than disregard my honest feedback, I ask that you take it seriously for the sake for all those who come to you for guidance regarding any psychiatric diagnoses.

These medications numb. They do not heal. They synthetically simulate a version of normal brain chemistry that is mediated by the medications. Emotions are related more to the pill than the embodied person in their direct lived experience. These medications often create lifelong dependence, with increasing side effects, psychiatric symptoms, and tremendous health risks.

Instead of healing naturally in time from postpartum depression, I was put on a medication that created an increase of psychiatric issues and a hamster wheel of diagnosis and prescriptions, making me a chronic patient.

What I needed was sleep. After three weeks of meds is the highest risk of suicidality. This is when I was hospitalized. How many others are medicated during hard life transitions instead of guided to normal human means of resilience? How many others also experience an increase of symptoms at a critical period making their situation worse? Before the Prozac push in the 1980s, the percent of people diagnosable for intervention was 1%. And this is people who were surviving war, economic crises, diseases, and all kinds of tribulations, not to mention postpartum depressions and other age/stage-related adjustment challenges. The literature shows this 1% swelled to an enormous 20%, and those going through what would once have been considered normal life stress and recoverable are now medicated and dependent.

The truth is that these medications increase mental health problems over the long term. The psychiatric establishment carefully hides this evidence and dismisses these concerns by using diagnostic terms to explain symptoms. I am a trained therapist; I know how the DSM works. These psychiatric diagnosis are constructs and not something verifiable by any concrete scientific provable measure. It is a smokescreen to get patients on medications and then to keep them there or on more. It is an exploitation of the trust patients have in the medical system.

The patient is reassured they can get off later and that side effects are no big deal. Then when they try to get off and their symptoms come back with vengeance, often with all new symptoms, they are told it is the recurrence of their original illness. They have a chemical imbalance that needs corrected by meds, and they need these meds for life.

This chemical imbalance metaphor has never been scientifically proven. After all these years, many people are taking these medications based on a farce that has never been verified. Who benefits from this myth? Pharmaceutical companies get a patient for life.

Every single psychiatric medication change makes a person more vulnerable to protracted withdrawal syndrome. This is an extreme suffering with both mental and physical symptoms that many who have experience did not survive. It is an extremely high risk, because the very medical system that caused the harm has only medications to offer, which at that point only cause more harm. The nervous system has to heal without more major medication changes. Therapist and doctors often wrongly attribute these cases, missing their true nature and causing more harm to the patient.

My husband worked for a decade helping people get free from street drugs. We had no idea that my withdrawal from prescribed medications could meet and even surpass the agony of street drug withdrawal. This process took years.

I do not plan to return to your practice. I do humbly ask that you reconsider how you treat your patients with any psychiatric diagnosis. I ask that you look deeper than the mainstream medical literature to find the truth. I invite you to become a healer in this area and to extend your knowledge further than what your previous training has provided. This may save lives.

All other possible options for healing should be used before resorting to psychiatric medications. In cases of extreme risk, when medication appears to be the best life-saving option, the patient must be informed about the risks involved of medication side effects, health risks, risks of protracted withdrawal, and lifelong dependency.
This is informed consent and should be basic protocol.

When a patient wants to come off their medication, they need to be warned of the risks of withdrawal symptoms, medication reinstatement injury risk, and protracted withdrawal risk. They should be provided with the information and resources for safe tapering and deprescribing.

The safest way off psychiatric medication is a hyperbolic micro-taper using liquid form. Any reinstatement should be a micro-dose of the original to prevent kindling (which is great increase of symptoms from sensitization). All changes should be minimal to avoid risks of increased symptoms from sensitization.

Here are some resources I ask you to consider: Mark Horowitz is the leading researcher in this area of safe deprescribing. He has resources for Doctors to refer patients to but also to use to guide their own practice in this area. Here is his website. Here is his manual for safe deprescribing. And here is an interview with him explaining key concepts.

I trust that all of the guidance over my case over the years through your practice has been with absolute good intention and good will for my best health. I believe that the medical literature itself is incomplete and even misleading when it comes to diagnosis and prescriptions for mental health related suffering. All harm that came to me through these diagnosis and prescriptions I completely accept and forgive. I trust that God ordained each day of medication disillusionment, numbing, and each suffering for my good and His glory.

God has brought tremendous mercy and great victory, and for over a year I have no symptoms of any psychiatric nature. I have experienced life fully and joyfully completely unmedicated and healed from this injury. Many cases do not resolve completely within this amount of time so I consider myself blessed with this recovery. I now provide support for people who also suffer from medication-related injury. God in His faithfulness is using my suffering to bring healing and save lives. Life unmedicated is so much richer and fuller and I am no longer under a dark cloud of vague unresolving symptoms. I praise God for what He has done!

❤️‍🩹Joanna