“What if your life has fallen apart not despite psychiatric medications, but because of them?”

I began asking myself this question in 2010. I was twenty seven and after actively pursuing more and better mental health care through my teens and twenties, my life had only fallen increasingly apart.

The more diagnoses I’d been given, and the more meds I’d been started on— among them, antidepressants, benzodiazepines, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and Z-drugs— the more disabled, dysfunctional, and hopeless I’d become.

I now wondered: What if the explanation for my progressive decline wasn’t so-called “treatment-resistance mental illness,” as I’d been led to believe— but the treatment, itself?

To find the answer, I decided to leave behind everything I’d come to believe about myself: who I was, what my struggles meant, and what I needed to do about them.

I began to educate myself about what’s known (and not known) about psychiatry’s standard of care— and I learned about all the other ways to make sense of and navigate the difficulties that come with being human.

I am passionate about passing on all that I’ve learned to others. This isn’t about being “pro” or “anti” psychiatric drug; it’s about being meaningfully informed.