Amanda Burnett had spent years as a nurse, confident in the medical knowledge she had been trained in—until she experienced firsthand the devastating effects of psych drug withdrawal. When she sought help for anxiety, she was prescribed medication without any warning of potential long-term harm. Years later, as she attempted to taper off, she was met with debilitating withdrawal symptoms that shattered her trust in the system she had once worked in. Now an advocate for informed consent and better patient education, Amanda shares her journey from medical professional to activist. In this episode, she discusses the urgent need for transparency, the flaws in medical training regarding psych drugs, and how she is working to prevent others from suffering the same fate.

You can find out more about Amanda here:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thatfunctionalnurse/
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thatfunctionalnurse

Transcript (AI generated)

00:00:01    uh I could go to work and be that Carefree nurse that was taking care of the sickest patients and I wasn't anxious um my co-workers were even telling me that I seemed less anxious I was the Superwoman at this point and I feel like this happens to other people too and then they're like this this medication saved my life how dare you talk about this and my response usually is okay that I'm so happy for you but this medication destroyed my life [Music] okay hello I'm Daniel from inner Compass initiative welcome to ICI stories where

00:00:41    we let people take back ownership of their own stories many of us when we were go through psych psychz end up often without realizing it handing over control of our stories to the mental health industry we let them Define what is happening to us and why we take on their language and their Concepts and in incorporate them into our identity for some of us at some point we start to feel that something is wrong that the story we are being told about ourselves doesn't quite fit with the reality we're experiencing bit by

00:01:12    bit we start to question and probe that emerging sense of ourselves as narrators of our own lives until eventually we are ready to tell our own story there are many many stories like this and this is one so today um I'm here to talk to Amanda about her story through the mental health industry and Beyond so just to start off with Amanda can you just tell uh tell tell us all a bit about your background who you are where you're from okay hello my name is Amanda I'm a nurse and I'm originally from Illinois

00:01:48    in the US um I went through a bunch of kind of traumatic situations as a kid and just in family I had my brother passed away like when I was in in college I was 2021 um which kind of provoked my anxiety I was experiencing and what started all of this um but I used to be a travel nurse and now I work from home uh dealing with withdrawal from one SSRI currently so that's where I'm at right now I see and um how would you describe so you talked a bit about your background but how would you describe

00:02:28    your life before you first took that first pill how how was your life um I think I had a really good life uh I was a very social person I am somebody who can always talk to anybody people have told me uh you've never met a stranger is what they say um but I feel like I I definitely started having increased anxiety when I was like 19 20 years years old like right when I started college um but I didn't know I know now a lot of that had to do with my diet uh I was drinking alcohol at the time and a bunch of other things that I

00:03:11    never really paid attention to until obviously now I don't do any of that um like I couldn't sleep in my own room for a long time and thankfully my mom took me to counseling instead of putting me on medication or anything like that but and I was able to get over that fear that I had through counseling um so I I I guess anxiety has always kind of been in my life um but I I it wasn't like it was just I feel like everybody kind of has a little bit of anxiety Baseline that's just kind of normal so absolutely

00:03:46    and what was the the turning point when you um so you said you didn't take any medication and you had um counseling when you were younger but what was the The Catalyst for you um going on medication in the first place uh when I was 20 it was like a year or two before I graduated college my brother he had a stroke when I was in first grade he was several years older than me um was in and out of nursing homes his whole life so that was like stressful on me and my family to begin with but then he kind of

00:04:17    he abruptly passed away um when I right before I turned 21 and so I think that was just like a traumatic incidence in my life and then I kind of just tried to push through it um it really messed up my mom obviously her son passed away so that kind of put a bunch of pressure on our family and so then I started a career in nursing when I when I graduated and I kind of carried that with me the whole time uh and then I entered my career thinking I was going to be okay and I I actually had a panic attack I started in the ICU and it was

00:04:55    cardiac ICU so it was like one of the hardest places you can start as a new grad nurse and I I had a panic attack one day and I had never experienced anything like it my heart rate was like pounding um I stopped hearing like I couldn't hear the doctor speaking behind me and my peers around me noticed that something happened and I did not know what this was and I actually went the next day to a new primary care physician that I had never spoken to in my life and I left with Lexapro in like 5 minutes

00:05:30    interesting and just so when you because this is quite an interesting thing because PE there's often this debate about um you know going to to that first appointment and and what happens there and but in some ways people talk about actually the decision about whether or not to take medication happen often happens way before that first appointment often people go in expecting a medication or alternatively it could be that the the practitioner themselves is the one pushing the medication so what was the

00:06:03    case for you were you sort of like okay medication I've heard that this helps a lot right this is enough is enough I want to get medication or was it like I'm going with an open mind and the clinician was the one one suggesting this I honestly think I went into that wanting a medication um but I had also been talking to a friend of mine from college who had been on medication and I talk about this a lot um with like my peers I'm like just because a medication worked for somebody else and they didn't

00:06:37    have problems that does not mean it's going to be the case for you and I wish I had done like my own research about this but I instead I just listened to my friend who was like this saved me this helped um so I I kind of was just like I needed something that was going to allow me to be able to keep my job and I needed something quick That was cuz that's what I did when I was younger in my young my early 20s I just wanted quick fixes which I feel like is what so many people want these days um and I was

00:07:09    obviously she did not tell me any of the warnings or anything I did not know about withdrawal um and she actually said something to me that I will never forget the doctor she said I think you've been an anxious for so long that it's developed into depression that's really interesting yeah because you know so often you hear about this where the the the prescribers or the clinicians they fit you into a box rather than treating you as an individual so they're like okay well you've got X well in that case you must

00:07:43    have y as well you know so what happened how was how was the treatment for you how how was uh how was it taking Lexa Pro was it beneficial for you did you see any changes positive and negative I almost wish I had a negative reaction so that I could have been like take me off of this but I didn't it actually really helped me uh I could go to work and be that Carefree nurse that was taking care of the sickest patients and I wasn't anxious um my co-workers were even telling me that I seemed less anxious I

00:08:16    was the Superwoman at this point um and then my problems with it didn't really start until I was on it for like three or four years it for when I took the medication for me it I felt it was beneficial for me as well and what I notice in our community is it's like once you go through a bad experience like you flip completely and it has to be all bad and so so in order to kind of validate the negative experiences people have they also want to deny the the fact that it helped them as well and you get this kind of you

00:08:53    people go the opposite way so I think it's particularly interesting that it did help you at first as well so what were these problems that were starting starting to develop with a treatment I was impulse spending on things that like I tell people this example all the time is I would order from Amazon and then it would come in a box and I would not open it for 3 months and I would forget what I ordered and then I it would be time for me to want to return it and I couldn't because it was past the return

00:09:23    Mark so that's one example just kind of not talking to friends and family like following up with them just kind of it almost seemed like I didn't care about anything interesting just my empathy like and then I went through the co pandemic and saw so many people in horrible situations cuz I was working in the ICU and I feel like I should have cried and I did not have the ability to cry now I cry all the time but I could not cry at when I was on my full dose of medication another thing was my memory I

00:09:57    started having memory problems um um I was working night shift at the time so a lot of times I was blaming it I was like is it cuz I'm working night shift or cuz I'm stressed about Co but it it just kept going past all that and I was like something is not right um I would be giving report cuz we give report uh about our patients to the next person and I couldn't even remember my patient's name like and then I would try to say a word and I couldn't find the word that I was trying to say um so definitely a affecting my brain in

00:10:30    multiple ways the last thing was aggression and just anger I was always angry and I I again I thought it was just me I was like maybe I just need therapy but it was like an anger that is not normal like I would get in my car and just like scream for no reason I was so stressed all the time I was never happy and so I ended up getting like a workup done by this particular Clinic I went to they did a specific specific brain scan on me um and it basically was showing impulse control judgment everything a bunch of areas in my brain

00:11:10    were impaired and for some reason they kept bringing up the lexipro they weren't saying that it was because of that but they were saying this can cause this to to be this way sometimes um and at first I was like oh there's no way like my lexpro can be doing all this and I almost stayed on it but I'm so thankful that I ended up working with a psychiatrist from that clinic and I was like can we just try try to like taper off of this and see what's going on if this could be it and oh this sorry I keep going all over

00:11:46    the place but another one was ADHD that was a big one that I developed I never had it as a kid and and then I could not focus on anything um and then I actually ended up getting diagnosed with ADHD and then they put me on Aderall but that just made all my symptoms so much worse so then I ended up stopping the adol started tapering off my lexipro which I am still doing and I don't have those symptoms anymore like the aggression is gone um I'm able to remember to do all these things and it's it's crazy the differences that I'm

00:12:23    feeling now it's yeah it's it's it resonates with my own story and many other stories I've heard it sounds like at the beginning you felt pretty good right so so how quickly did you start develop problems I feel like it was probably around the threeyear mark where I started like questioning things but again I had no idea it was the drug I thought it was just me it was like I started my taper at like 5 years on it so that just shows how how long it took me to get to that point okay so you so you went to this clinic but obviously

00:13:01    there must have been some sort of realization before getting to that clinic I mean the fact the fact the fact that you're going somewhere elsewhere outside of the mainstream mental health industry already shows that you're sort of questioning things a bit so so can you just talk struggling yeah yeah can you talk us through the steps um to that initial kind of Suspicion to blaming it on the Lexa Pro and then moving to going to going to the clinic I was having gut issues too um I was having menstrual cycle problems

00:13:35    which I now know that Lexa Pro people on Lexapro have a bunch of those issues as well um so I went there because not 100% knowing that something was wrong with my brain but like listening to my body saying seeing these outbursts that I was having knowing it wasn't me knowing it wasn't normal which is why I tell my peers and people who are following me is to always listen to your body because I had basically tried everything on my own first and nothing was helping like even when I got supplements from this Clinic

00:14:09    it was not helping the only thing that helped was when I started to taper off the medication and and what what made you lose Faith with because you know you you plac your faith in in this uh GP initially that gave you the medication What stopped you then you you want you want ad roll at the same time now as well as Lexapro so you got you got a prescription Cascade going on there so what made you go okay I'm done with going to psychiatrist or GPS to solve my problems I want to go elsewhere what what was it that made

00:14:47    you uh give up on on that sort of conventional treatment path I think it's just the poly drugging that I was lucky on honestly and I always talk about this as well is someone's fate in all this situation all these situations is honestly dependent on who they go to um and the advice they get from like if their practitioner wants to listen to actually what's going on versus oh that's just anxiety which you know in the withdrawal Community that's all we ever hear um they can end up on 10 different medications and then

00:15:25    No One Ever Knows what's causing what and I'm so thank that I listened in my body and I was like this Aderall is making me 10 times worse um but honestly the psychiatrist that I went to I'm still going to him to this day and he at least kind of gets the tapering situation but a lot of them don't um and the stories I'm hearing from people and I'm sure you guys Hear Too is so many doctors are just taking people off these meds just cold turkey and it's sad because I work in this this like well I used to work in

00:16:02    conventional medicine and I gave patients these medications and so that was like a big wakeup call for me as a nurse and that's why I'm speak I'm trying to speak out about it now so when you when you went to see your your um your practitioner and you said you wanted to come off what what did they say to you were they supportive were they they resistant what what did they talk you through yes so he was actually supportive because by that point we kind of were questioning if that was causing my problems um so he told me to he did

00:16:45    not tell me to cold turkey which I'm so thankful for he told me to go down but he still it was too fast the the way he told me I think it was 10 to 7.5 to 5 to 2.5 to off um over the course of like a month or two um but I was so thankful he prescribed me the liquid and I I feel like that's a key in somebody's taper situation if they do have liquid available in their medication because I was trying to cut those pills and every single time I was giving myself a different dose which I think made the

00:17:19    beginning a lot harder so then once I got that and he he willingly ordered that for me which I know so many doctors don't um but anyone who talks to me about this I tell them just like go in and say that you need it don't even ask just say I need this and then if they don't prescribe the liquid for you go somewhere else I think we all know in the W draw community and you've alluded to it that despite the um the claims of uh medical professionals mental health professional psychiatrist GPS that they know how to

00:17:54    deprescribe that is not the experience of the vast majority of people who in the wood draw Community doesn't matter what country you're you're living in UK US Canada Europe whatever it's a pretty similar experience and so you have this kind of role reversal situation almost where where the person coming to see the doctor actually through their own research uh knows more about how to come off these drugs than the actual person who prescribes them and you get this kind of um yes this this sort of tension

00:18:32    so you you were having these problems and you were realizing that the drugs were the problem had you already started to engage with the withdrawal community and and sort of um educate yourself about tapering and and how to do it before you engag with uh your doctor or was that something that came later so no I actually started and then once I realized how awful I felt that's when I started to reach out to the Facebook groups and surviving anti-depressants and you guys and all that um but I I feel like I don't know if I was

00:19:09    taught it in nursing school that you have to taper these meds I I really don't think we did not go into depth if we did get taught but I don't know if I heard it when I was in nursing school somehow I knew that it had to be tapered okay yeah go it um I think I think something else that is difficult and one of the reasons why doctors miss it is obviously the people in the withdraw Community were the people that had problems coming off right but but there are people that can come off even after a long period of

00:19:44    time even cold turkey I think or like very quick tapers they can come off and be completely fine whereas other people will be absolutely devastated so that does create a lot of confusion I think for doctors because they're like wow I took someone off last week took them off in two months and they were fine why are you why are you having problems now this must be this must be on you this can't be because of the medication you get get this kind of thing so you you you followed the taper that your doctor had

00:20:14    recommended and and I'm I'm gathering from what you said this this was problematic for you can can you talk a bit more about that yes um I had this really bad depersonalization as a lot of us have um where I just felt like I was floating outside of my body whenever I would go do something this is where withdrawal can be mixed with like people think they're getting diagnosed with something else because I feel like if I went to the doctor they would have done a million tests and they wouldn't have

00:20:47    figured out what was wrong cuz it's just so many symptoms that happen all at once um but basically I could not leave my bed one day and I had like a stabbing pain in my back it was just such random symptoms um and I was sweat like I would go to work I was sweating non-stop I started craving like I remember I was still working at the hospital at this time and I would pick up a pizza on my way home every single night I had severe carb Cravings um severe fatigue but that stuff was was manageable for me cuz that

00:21:21    was at the higher doses for some reason 4 Mig was my happy spot so I stayed there on the liquid 4 Mig s for a whole year because that's when I ended up leaving bedside nursing I quit drinking I had a bunch of like really good positive changes in my life and I just I started it took me a while to get somewhat normal after that I was having dizzy spells when I was waking up and getting out of bed in the morning I had a rash that developed all over my face I did a bunch of gut health stuff and I pretty much like healed after a year of

00:21:59    staying on that dose and then once I tried to go down from four this past July is when I like I started having the worst symptoms I've ever had yeah yeah so so tell tell us a bit about your experience when you were like when you when you went back to your doctor or when you mentioned to other other people within the profession or within the medical industry uh you were you know I'm suffering these horrific uh symptoms what was their reaction to that so my doctor was actually supportive I don't think he realized how bad it really was

00:22:38    uh a lot of doctors I feel like they think it's like flu like symptoms for a couple of days and that's it um but I think he definitely started questioning it a little bit more when this last time when I tried to go down from the 4 milligrams and then the symptoms I was having it just completely set my body off into disautonomia and um a bunch of physical like really bad symptoms that can honestly really hurt or almost kill a person if they go through it I could just tell he was so shocked that this

00:23:09    was happening to me um and he actually tried to give me some tips to kind of help my Vagas nerve and my my because it really is V vagal nerve disautonomia um so he was helpful but I will say when I first started having these symptoms I made a personal Facebook post to about it and this was like when I first started so going down from 10 Mig and I I made a vague post about it and some nurses that I've previously worked with commented on it and they said you shouldn't scare people these Li these drugs are life saving and

00:23:48    that's something I hear cuz I have a Tik Tok account and people comment that all the time and I understand they are like they can be life- saving but we always say you don't understand until you've been through it and there's so many people who have been through it so like you said the validation of having these communities has been amazing for me because my own mom doesn't believe what's happening to me and she kind of gaslit me too so it's like when your own mom doesn't believe you do like do you

00:24:17    really think a doctor is going to believe you I mean mine did and I'm I'm one of the few where my doctor believed me but there I know almost every person I talk to their doctor does not believe them how did it affect your perception about medicine about your role in medicine about um your relationship with medicine how what was the impact of this experience for you I always say I have to be dying on my death bed to like make somebody give me a medication again even just things you get over the counter I don't want to

00:24:51    take anymore which I don't know I get there's a time and a place for them if somebody is actively dying but I there is no way I could work at a hospital and give these medications to people knowing like what they can do so it's changed it totally for me okay and and um I I think it was interesting what you were saying because I've I've had this this fear-mongering argument from people uh trying to shut you down when you talk about your experiences I've experienced that a lot myself um I find it very curious

00:25:29    because we're told to open up about mental health we're encouraged to talk about mental health we're encourag to destigmatize um um people with mental health problems we we're encouraged for people to share and be open about their emotions and we're encouraged to be compassionate towards those people who have suffered why is it then that when people with our experience go out and tell their story that they are negated and asked asked to kind of keep their mouth shut what what do you think that is and and how do you feel about that

00:26:08    you know Daniel I ask myself this question every day I really do and it's the biggest problem that I'm seeing right now and I think one day it's not going to be this way because enough people are going to be talking about it but I think it's just it's something that is new well it's not new but it's new in the way that it's coming so many people are coming out experiencing this and also I think so many stories about this go unreported because people they're not understanding what's happening to them um my twin sister I

00:26:41    have a twin she called turkey off Lexapro I did not know she did that uh she had to live with my parents for a whole year she developed all the symptoms I have but worse um she was almost diagnosed with Ms because the doctors thought that she had Ms like that's how much it can completely get misdiagnosed so now we get on to the good part right the so we talked about you've you've uh we've talked about your journey from you know siging off having anxiety becoming medicated um taking on that kind of

00:27:16    diagnostic label uh having initial positive results and then slowly kind of creeping negative results uh prescription cascad slowly starting to question it going through tapering getting hit by the tapering and then sort of starting to question question the whole Paradigm um so what so where are you now now now that you've um you I I know you're still tapering but where are you in terms of how you define your story so if if we think about the story that you you you um that was was given to you that you

00:28:00    have this kind of brain condition of general anxiety disorder um and uh you need to take this medication to correct this what do you see your story now how do you define your story in and what kind of language do you use to define who you are and and and and where you're going uh in relation to the medical industry and how it defined you before that's a great question um I'm kind of still trying to figure that out but I know that I it does not define me anxiety depression which I did not have but they said that I had does not define

00:28:40    me um I think there were things from my childhood that I needed to work through and no one really ever gave me a chance to even try that first um they kind of just we went to medication and that was it um and now I know that quick fixes are not always the answer uh and a lot can come from trying to have a quick fix and that obviously to research anytime in the future if I ever do want to go on something again which I do not think I ever will but to just be more aware of what you're putting into your body before starting

00:29:20    and also things you can do naturally to help anxiety like giving up alcohol which I have and giving up caffeine and a bunch of other things that can cause anxiety to get worse excellent um and if you could go back uh looking at your journey how how would you have done things differently so you know from that that first panic attack that you had what would you have done differently knowing all the things you that you do now I honestly don't know if I like in that moment that's what I needed and I I

00:29:54    kind of give myself Grace for that cuz I thought that I really needed a quick fix in that moment and it did help me in the beginning but obviously now knowing the harm that it has caused me I can't even exercise anymore because I have so many problems with my heart and other things um I used to weightlift every day I would have never taken it I'm just going to say that I see so um you know obviously you worked as a nurse you worked in the medical system how do you interact with that you so you you you no longer work

00:30:28    work in that system but how how do you how do you feel how do you interact with them do you have friends still with still in that profession and how do you talk about the the issues that you have with those people so yes I have a lot of friends that are still in it um and I've kind of learned to not really talk about it with people that don't understand uh I don't know if that's healthy or not but just the reactions I got from the few friends in family that I did talk about it with it's almost like you're not I don't want to say

00:31:05    talking to a brick wall but pretty much because if somebody hasn't felt these things then they have absolutely no idea so I I kind of try to stick with um people that have are going through it or have gone through it if I ever really need to talk to people about things um and then I I do have the friends that they don't understand what I'm going through but they're still supportive and I talk to them um but as for people that I was acquaintances with um but the people that commented negatively on that

00:31:37    one post that I made I I almost let that stop me from talking about it and I'm glad that it didn't um because I feel like the more symptoms I develop and the harder it gets the more I just want to keep talking about it and sharing my story and I tell other people too who tell me they're like I should start talking about it this happened to me I'm like please start talking about it because we need more people to to talk about this we i' I have the same ex the same thing I I I have friends where um you

00:32:12    know I was suffering extremely from withdrawal and I I told them the reasons why why it there was a medication and they just kept on going speak to a professional speak to a professional and I was like the professional don't know what they're doing they they don't have any clue that's the dangerous thing to do yes yeah I I was like I can't go to the professionals all they'll do is offer me more drugs and and say that it's my underlying condition whatever that is um and so then you get in this situation

00:32:45    where your friends think you've lost the plot that you've like just gone down some kind of rabbit hole also you mentioned your sister you said your sister had went through it so just does she recognize that it's withdrawn now or does she still believe it wasn't she she knows now but it took a long time because I didn't even know what she was going through at the time because her situation happened before mine did okay she went to so many different Specialists and that's like another Rabbit Hole somebody can go down

00:33:21    is you go to one doctor they send you to another doctor then you end up on a bunch of meds that you don't even need why is it that people react so strongly to uh you just telling your story because that's literally all you're doing what why why are people so aggressive and so I mean frankly can be quite callous and and un unempathetic Often by people who consider themselves to be very empathetic caring people can suddenly turn into very callous people when confronted by people talking about medication harm why do you think there's

00:34:03    that strong reaction I almost feel like the word withdrawal is there's just so much like negativity around it that whenever I say that word to people who don't know they almost think I I don't know if they're thinking about alcohol and drug withdrawal when I say it and they like don't want to talk about it because it's uncomfortable but that's almost the the vibe that I get when when that happens yeah exactly like you like you're kind of shaming them I I do agree I think it's really interesting because it's it's it's

00:34:37    almost like divide and conquer that you get the people that are having good experience here with the drugs and people that have bad like end up being at each other's throats and and I do feel like sometimes PE U people in our community we kind of make the same mistake if some we we can't expect other people to believe our stories about um the harm that medication causes and then at the same time disbelieve other people that have had good experiences you know we we've got it we got it and and I I

00:35:09    feel like that's the Trap that some of us fall into we're like no it's you're just feeling Placebo or it's spellbinding and maybe it is maybe may maybe it they are just oblivious to the um you know to the to the bad effects over time but it could also be that they are just genuinely doing okay and it's not it's not really our place to to question that um and and I think the analogy I use as well is kind of similar to what you said is I feel like telling people who are on a particular psych medication uh that it

00:35:41    can really be incredibly harmful and damaging is is a bit like calling someone up on a plane and going hey I I heard that that plane that you're on and that Airline like they crash all the time like they they they you know they've crashed like four times this year year did you know about that what do you think about that I mean how is someone who's on a who's on that a plane with that Airline being told that that airline has a lot of planes crashing going to react they're not they're not going to be too they're not going to be

00:36:09    like oh thank you for telling me that while I'm in the middle of a flight I really appreciate that information um uh you you know you you've really helped me there they're going to push back right um and uh and I feel like something similar happens um um with the psych with the psych things do do you do you have any um any thoughts about how we can engage with those people besides just you know accepting their point of view or that was a good comparison you made with the flight I've never thought about it like

00:36:43    that that's that's good um but I think maybe like the way I do I try to just share my story and then if people relate to it they relate to it I'm not telling people ever to not take these medications cuz like you said PE some people do totally fine and that's fine um but I as well as so many people have had negative experiences and I feel like our voices deserve to be heard too not just the people that have good experiences absolutely our our stories matter just as much as anyone else's and I noticed you know um you describe

00:37:17    yourself as that functional nurse so tell tell me a bit about functional medicine and and how it's helped you on your journey and and and yeah how it's now part of your story I guess yeah so that functional nurse that's what I made my Instagram and my Tik Tok account name because when I was on like I talked about when I was on that 4 milligrams and I had a year to kind of recover um I had developed that rash all over my face I noticed that it got worse when I ate certain things um if I drank alcohol if I drank caffeine so I I kind

00:37:50    of had like this 3-month period where I did an Elimination Diet I cut out gluten dairy caffeine alcohol Paul and I just I saw so many improvements in my body and then I ended up seeing a functional medicine doctor who he did what's called a GI map which looks at my gut and things like that which gut issues can cause anxiety and depression too so that's really important to make sure you don't have parasites and things like that um but I will say I've had to take a break from it because I'm in such it

00:38:22    doesn't look like it right now but I'm in pretty bad withdrawal normally right now um and so I haven't been able to a lot of functional medicine is supplements and I've had to cut pretty much all of those out because they make my symptoms worse but I do think that functional medicine getting to the root cause of anxiety and depression and just health issues in general can make so much of a difference I have started acupuncture and I I mean some people hate it but it's really helped me with some of my

00:38:52    symptoms interesting um and what sort of uh yeah because I think this is another thing another debate and reflects like the polarization we're seeing as well that we can get caught up in is there's this you know there's this kind of debate uh about there's increasing skepticism about uh you know conventional medicine and conventional practices and and on the one side you've got the kind of people that are sort of trust the science um you know like trust what the conventional scientif Authority say and

00:39:29    then on the other side you've got like no uh we can't trust them they're too corrupted you know too captured uh we want to do do this other stuff and then then the trust of science people like like you're a bunch of woo Woos for example I I know people that have definitely benefited from acupuncture but there are some people that say oh well you know it's it's it's it's unscientific it's it's just part of the wellness industry Etc what would you say to people that said that well I would say that we have billions

00:40:02    and billions of dollars in conventional medicine for all this research and there is research in conventional medicine but I am seeing constantly every single year when I was in the hospital I was in the hospital for 7 years working I saw patients getting sicker and sicker and sicker and we weren't really doing we were not helping anybody so I would say how do you explain that and how do you explain how I have not been SI like physically sick I used to get sick all the time like sinus infection strep

00:40:33    throw everything when I was on birth control and my full dose of my SSRI and since I came off birth control tapered off started to taper off my SSRI I have not been sick once and I don't think that's a coincidence I feel like we've kind of spun out of control in the conventional medicine world and we are not helping people anymore but then you see people go and they get functional medicine they get acupuncture there might not be enough research on that but I don't think they're funded by Pharma

00:41:03    like the researches for conventional medicine yeah interesting what I'm I'm getting a few things out out there so one is like um the con let's look at the conventional um the conventional medicine results are they good but there's also something in about specialization right um and you know I think one of the ways that you've claimed your narrative is you're looking at the whole picture right you know you you're you're looking at you're looking at your uh your diet your lifestyle um that that holistic approach

00:41:41    to everything rather than this kind of very narrow specialized just let's sort this thing out because quite quite quickly that's how you can get this um Cascade of problems right because the you you can you can take the psychiatric medication that can cause a g gut problem so you go to a gut specialist they give you a medication for that then that causes sleep problems it's not like there's they all get together as a team and go okay this is what's happening with Amanda let's put our heads together and

00:42:10    like work out a plan no one ever does that right um exactly exactly and there's a lot of times no followup and it can just it can lead to really dangerous things with with your health and people like myself don't realize that it's the medication that's doing these things yeah you yeah you've you've moved away and taken taken back control of your own story um how do you think once you've completely got off the the medication um and you know you're back you're back to full health how do you see your life

00:42:46    then how how how are you going to live your life differently from from the way you were living it on medication and what do you think are going to be some of the the the POS positives and and maybe negatives as well potentially how how how do you how do you envisage your life once you're completely off and and how are you going to live it um just definitely more thankful and grateful for life um and being able to function correctly I like dream about that day but it's going to probably take me two more years to taper off fully but

00:43:22    um definitely just just being able to have like the simple things and actually be able to tolerate it like right now I can't even drink a cup of coffee in the morning anymore because it sets off my nervous system so much so I feel like I'm just going to like right now I'll go on walks and I like see colors brighter than they were before and so I'm already so much more grateful for the the trees and things like that that I like never used to care about when I was younger um and also it had me like I've talked

00:43:53    about several times give up alcohol which is a huge change and that's a whole journey in itself but also I feel like this all has allowed me to kind of dive deep into important issues and hopefully I hope to one day help people with going through what I've been through and I don't I don't know what that looks like yet but I hope to one day help people with that uh as for dealing with my anxiety I don't really haven't really thought about that yet but I'm kind of finding natural ways to deal with it excellent um and just just

00:44:28    to wrap up is do you have any kind of final thoughts in terms of uh this experience and um something you'd like to share with with people watching uh about your experiencing and you know if they have similar experiences anything you could share about your experience that might inform theirs so first make sure you have a doctor that you can trust that's going to listen to you I always say if you have one that gaslights you says what you're feeling is anxiety which it might be but if you're having a bunch of other symptoms

00:45:01    it's not just anxiety and to listen to your body like you did not have these symptoms before you were on the medication you're coming off you're having them just like kind I don't know just listen your body is what I always tell people um and you know it better than any doctor so just because the doctor is saying you have this you need to take this like question it a little bit before going on it um and also just do research if you're thinking about going on these meds do full research before doing it um and

00:45:35    also know that there are people who have been through this and are going through this and that can help you um there's several resources I'm obviously not going to list them now but inner Compass is great they have a bunch of resources um and yeah good luck if you're going through your taper and you'll make it through even though it's probably going to take a long time excellent thank you Amanda thank you so much for um sharing your story and giving us your insights it's been a pleasure having you thank you for having

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