I was prescribed an antidepressant in month five of my pregnancy, not because I had been diagnosed with a depressive disorder, but because my OBGYN asked if I had postpartum depression in my first pregnancy. I answered with uncertainty, “I think so.” That uncertainty became the justification for a prescription framed as prevention, a rationale that I later realized is not a real clinical intervention. I was told the SSRI was safe during pregnancy. It was not. And what I received along with that prescription was zero informed consent. No conversation about how psychiatric medications change the brain through neurochemical adaptation. No conversation about how it might impact my unborn child. No warning that the body adjusts to the drug. No acknowledgment that stopping it later could lead to withdrawal effects that are routinely misread and blamed on patients rather than understood as biology doing what biology does when it is trying to regain balance.
The medication didn’t balance me. It disconnected me. For six years, I lived inside a physiological dependency that slowly eroded my sense of self. I lost myself. My emotions were flattened. My worldview felt permanently negative and threatening, not because hope was gone, but because the medication became the filter. My memory declined. My ability to connect emotionally to my husband went offline. My libido was not simply low, it was taken. I almost lost my marriage not because love was missing, but because my capacity to feel connection, desire, and intimacy had been chemically muted by a medication that no one warned me could do that. At my lowest point, I didn’t care if I lived or died. I didn’t want to die. I just couldn’t access myself inside the life I was living anymore.
I desperately wanted off the medication for years, but every time I mentioned stopping it, the answer was always the same: increase the dose. No discussion of tapering, no acknowledgment of dependence, no curiosity about withdrawal. I would try to quit on my own, determined to be done, only to end up in a familiar cycle. About 48 hours in, the withdrawal would hit so hard that I would find myself running back to the pharmacy to refill the prescription, not because the medication was helping me, but because I couldn’t endure what stopping it was doing to me. The symptoms weren’t subtle. My brain felt like it was short-circuiting. My body felt electrified with panic, dread, and physiological chaos. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t emotionally connect. I couldn’t tolerate food or rest. I couldn’t endure the grief of losing myself while being told it was proof I needed more medication. Every time I tried to stop, I would collapse back into refilling the prescription just to make the withdrawal stop. The cycle continued for six years, and each attempt to come off the medication was reframed as illness instead of biology fighting to regain balance. It wasn wasn’t until I moved away and no longer had access to that prescriber that the cycle finally broke because I went cold turkey out of desperation, not strategy.
At the same time, that same move also sent me into a job that focused on exercise and employee wellness. I didn’t yet understand how much it would change me, or that it would become the bridge that carried me through the withdrawal I was still living. But I started jogging anyway. Then 5Ks. Then 10Ks. Then half marathons. I dialed in my nutrition not because I knew the science yet, but because my body was giving me no other choice. What I later came to understand clinically was that my metabolism and endocrine system were collapsing under the weight of a medication my brain never needed, and the system never tested for. But before I could explain it professionally, I had to live it biologically. I went through withdrawal. I survived it. I rebuilt myself through movement, nutrition, metabolic repair, and nervous system regulation long before I knew to call it nutritional psychiatry or brain-health-first healing. I got myself back not by increasing the medication, but by finally being free from it, rebuilding the parts of me it nearly stole, and discovering that psychology and biology were not betraying me, they were rescuing me.
About 5 years after finally being off all psych meds, I sought answers for persistent fatigue. I went to an endocrinologist expecting testing. Instead, I was offered antidepressants, a sleep medication, and a stimulant for symptoms that should have triggered labs, not prescriptions. I laughed in the office and walked out, not from disrespect, but from recognition. When I pulled my labs later, the truth was clear. My thyroid was in bad shape. My metabolism was under stress. I was pre-diabetic. The medications offered could never have helped the cause of my fatigue because they weren’t addressing the cause at all. That appointment was the moment my clinical training and lived experience fused into one purpose. A system that prescribes before it tests, that normalizes medication as prevention when prevention isn’t even the mechanism, that interprets withdrawal as symptom relapse, and that leaves patients to shoulder side effects they were never warned about is not practicing informed care. It is practicing reactionary care. And people are getting worse, not better, inside of it.
What social media gave me that the system didn’t was community. I found massive Facebook groups filled with tens of thousands of people talking openly about being psych-med harmed, dismissed, blamed, and gaslit. Thousands of people describing withdrawal being mislabeled as relapse, side effects being blamed on character or coping, and biology being interpreted as psychiatric necessity. Tens of thousands of voices saying the same thing: we are overmedicated, under-informed, and harmed. This wasn’t fringe. This was collective experience finally spoken without shame. I built my own social media presence with a half a million people. It was clear, people are injured, they want a voice, they need answers. I kept going, not for me, but for them.
In 2023 the Gaslit Truth Podcast was born. Two clinicians, one flaming microphone, one mission. I partnered with Therapist Jenn Schmitz, and we built a podcast for consumers and clinicians who deserved to hear truth spoken plainly. The flaming microphone became our symbol because the truth about psychiatric care, medication harm, tapering, withdrawal, and informed consent failure is not lukewarm. It is burning. Our audience became the Truth Seekers because they were already asking better questions than the system had answers for. Every Tuesday, we drop new conversations that bridge research and real human experience, that call withdrawal withdrawal instead of disorder, that blame biology on biology instead of blaming the patient, and that expand care back toward the human it was supposed to serve in the first place.
And this work eventually led to my book, Your Best Brain, written for the consumer who knows something is off but hasn’t been told why. It translates brain science into human language and explains the intersections between mood, metabolism, thyroid health, nervous system stress, intimacy, memory, libido, and identity loss caused by medication adaptation, not patient failure. It gives consumers a framework for reclaiming their mind, their agency, and their connection to life without being told to override their biology to stay on a drug they never needed. The book explains that the psychology of coming off medication is just as important as the mechanics of a safe taper plan. You need both. Because healing begins not with being told what is wrong with you, but finally understanding what happened to you, what the medication cost you, and how to get yourself back in a way that honors your biology instead of fighting it.
I didn’t become passionate about this work because I wanted a platform. I became passionate because I needed one, and it turned out hundreds of thousands of others did too. Nearly half a million followers later, my voice isn’t louder because it’s dramatic, it’s louder because it’s familiar. Because the real crisis in mental healthcare is not that emotions exist, it’s that every emotion is treated like evidence of disorder, every biological consequence of withdrawal is reframed as relapse, and every patient who worsens inside of treatment is blamed instead of informed. We are living in a prescribing culture that medicates first, tests last, barely informs, and quietly harms. My mission now is to change that conversation, clinically and publicly, so no one ever has to unlearn the silence, rebuild themselves, or reconnect to their life, their libido, or their marriage alone again.
Your brain deserves more than coping. It deserves care that nourishes, restores, and empowers. If you want help dialing in your brain health, nervous system resilience, and the psychology of letting go of what harmed you, book an appointment now and take the next step toward your strongest, sharpest, most connected self.
Medically reviewed for accuracy. Clinical perspective by Dr. Teralyn Sell, PhD, LPC. Content reflects lived experience, research-informed interpretation, and the psychology-biology intersection, not medical advice.