Antipsychotic medications are increasingly being prescribed for sleep problems. Drugs originally developed for schizophrenia and severe psychosis are now commonly given for insomnia, anxiety at night, or difficulty “shutting the brain off.” This trend should raise...
One of the strangest contradictions in addiction treatment is this: people are told they are born with a broken brain, specifically a dopamine signaling problem, yet there is no clear proof this is true. Even more confusing, when addiction is framed as a dopamine...
Both the addiction community and the mental health community rely on the same core idea: that some people are born with a broken brain. This belief is often called the broken brain theory or chemical imbalance theory. It suggests that people develop addiction,...
Many people wonder how a therapist or psychologist can help someone come off psychiatric medications if they are not allowed to prescribe or stop medications themselves. The answer is simple. Getting off psych meds is not mainly about prescriptions. It is about...
This is a conversation that is not popular, but it is necessary. In the tapering and recovery coaching world, lived experience is powerful. It creates community, language, empathy, recognition, and the courage to leave what once harmed you. But lived experience, no...
Online tapering support groups can feel like home. At first, they often give people what the medical system did not. They offer validation, shared language, community, and the priceless moment of being believed. If you have ever tried to taper psychiatric medication,...
Ilia Malinin didn’t describe a physical mistake. He described sequence. “Right before I got into my starting position, all the negative thoughts just rushed into my head. All the negative, traumatic experiences. I’ve been through a lot. Being the Olympic gold hopeful...
The conversation around psych meds is finally shifting, but tapering conversations are still missing the most important framework: the psychology that determines what the brain predicts, fears, amplifies, or calms during medication exit. Most deprescribing models...
Most psych med deprescribing conversations start with taper math, timelines, and dosing increments, but the true missing piece is the psychological landscape the brain must traverse when it loses a chemical it was conditioned to depend on. Withdrawal is not simply the...
The missing piece in most psych med deprescribing conversations is psychology. Not therapy culture psychology, not mindset memes, but the deeper truth: the brain interprets withdrawal through expectation, past experience, identity, fear, relief, and meaning. Taper...
