what is up everybody this is Chris from the rewired soul where we talk about the
problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel my channel is
all about mental health so if you're somebody like me who is regularly trying
to improve your mental and emotional well-being make sure you subscribe and
ring that notification bell and we are about to go on a little journey I'm
going to discuss my history with mental health medication specifically
anti-anxiety antidepressant medications and I know I know that you check that
disclaimer at the beginning of this video but just to reiterate do not do
anything with your medications without talking to a doctor okay it is unsafe
and you don't want to do that alright I will share a little bit about the one
time I made that dumb mistake anyways before I get to why I am no longer
taking my anti-anxiety / antidepressant medications let me explain why I got on
him in the first place so some of you know I'm a recovering drug addict and
alcoholic I got clean on June 23rd 2012 that was my 27th birthday and I didn't
know anything about mental health or mental illness or anything like that but
throughout my life I just knew that my brain was acting different than
everybody else right specifically when it came to
anxiety that is like my primary disorder I've struggled with depression as well
but I started self-medicating with drugs and alcohol that was how I was getting
through it but as many of you know substance abuse only makes things worse
so anyways when I got sober in 2012 I was having a panic attack
alright and I was telling my mom about and my mom is a psychologist and I was
telling her like what was going on I was confused I had no idea what was
happening it was in the early stages of my recovery and she's like it sounds
like you're having a panic attack she's like you should go see your doctor and I
was like okay so I went down and I saw my primary care doctor and yeah after
some appointments and everything like I was diagnosed with a generalized
anxiety disorder as well as depression so she put me on the medication lexapro
lexapro is an antidepressant but it also helps with anxiety because I am a
recovering drug addict I can't take potentially addictive medications so I
can't take things like xanax or valium those medications act a little bit
quicker right they go straight to the amygdala and the brain where the fight
flight or freeze response is going off it helps calm that sucker down but as
some of you know those medications can become addictive so I was put on lexapro
and I stayed on that and it managed my anxiety for a very long time um I got to
a point where this is something that I don't know if anybody else struggles
with this who was a recovering pill addict but I was about a year or two
into my recovery after being on the meds and I just I didn't want to be on any
medications like my primary drug of choice was prescription painkillers and
I didn't like how pills were holding holding me hostage like that's what my
brain told me and I don't want to be on any medication so one day I made the
very dumb decision that once I run out of my medication I'm just gonna I'm
gonna stop right and I I ran out I stopped taking them for a day or two it
was fine and then I was at work and I started having a panic attack
and I was freaking out and was on a Friday and my doctor's office was closed
so I couldn't get a refill and this is one of the many reasons why you don't do
this and I couldn't get a refill until Monday so it's like my dumb decision led
to me having to deal with my anxiety all weekend long until I was able to get
that refill but anyway it's getting off your medications without supervision
from a doctor it's dangerous some of these medications have very very
terrible side effects like some of them make you even more depressed some of
them give you ideation to take your own life and
things like never ever ever ever get off your meds
cases without a doctor's supervision so I got back all my medications and
eventually I realized that my lexapro wasn't doing as much as it was before I
got tolerant right so I went to my doctor I got my dosage up I think this
was years ago so don't quote me on this I think I was at ten milligrams and she
upped it to twenty milligrams and about three months later I got that tolerance
again and I told her and she was like well I can't really do much like this is
the maximum dosage I can give you and that's actually when I found meditation
those of you who watched my interview with dr. Judson Brewer the other day
talking about you know I explained I got into meditation because my my
medications were only working so much and mindfulness meditation kind of
filled that gap of what the medications were no longer doing for me but later I
I started you know recognizing the the side effects right like I had doubled
the side effects for a while there's a wide range of them I won't go into all
the details the most predominant one was like that that feeling of numbness like
just not feeling any emotions so I talked with my doctor I was like hey I
would like to get off these medications I've been doing a lot of like self-care
when it comes to meditation when it comes to 12-step meetings and journals
and everything like that so she gradually helped me taper off and I
stayed off for a while I actually did this a couple times but eventually my
anxiety would kick back in primarily because of life circumstances like one
of the times my anxiety came back was when I started dating this this woman
like way before my beautiful girlfriend Tristan and it was a toxic relationship
and my anxiety flared up so I got back on the meds but anyways the side effects
were there again so I talked to her and she switched me to Prozac and this was
about a year year and a half ago so I started taking Prozac and it was all
good I took it for a long time not as many side effects there were
periods when I started feeling that miss again but it was more rare than it
was on the lexapro and around Christmas time I think it was December I discussed
emotional regulation in recent videos that I've done on borderline personality
disorder and dialectical behavioral therapy but emotional regulation is
something that I've struggled with most of my life I'm not diagnosed with BPD
but some people do struggle with emotional regulation and for a few years
now my mom's recommended getting on a mood stabilizer so I went to my doctor
and I was like hey what do you think about me getting off of my
antidepressants and me getting on a mood stabilizer lamictal
that's the one my mom recommends she she's been on it for a while now and my
doctor was like yeah sure like you know we could try it you know so yeah in
December I tapered off of the Prozac I started taking lamictal and it's been
it's been three months that I've been off my anti depression anti-anxiety
medications so yeah like my experience my experience with it it's been it's
been good like in the last three months even in the current state of you know
what's going on in the world uh my anxiety hasn't been bad hasn't been
terrible I've had a couple flare-ups in the last three months but I've been
turning to the other tools that I have right I've been trying to meditate every
single morning for at least five to ten minutes I have an awesome therapist who
I try to talk to at least once a week I use the better help online therapy app
there's an affiliate link down in the description if you want to check it out
but I try to do like an appointment with her every week but if not we do like
little check-ins because you can like message on the app and everything but
she gives me exercises and things like that too I'm a huge fan of rational
emotive behavioral therapy for me that is one of the the best therapies for my
type of anxiety my anxiety is very rational all right I get into these
these thought loops and ruminations and everything that are completely
irrational so rational emotive behavioral therapy they have like that
ABCs right like the activating event event the belief the consequences and
you kind of look at it and you start to retrain how your mind is thinking about
these things right I also do a little bit of cognitive behavioral therapy that
is similar it's catching these certain thoughts or the behaviors that we have
associated with those thoughts that aren't really helping us and oftentimes
they're hurting us you know so there's a lot of different therapies that I use to
manage my anxiety when it comes to my depression I have a video coming out
with dr. Alex Corp it's actually a podcast episode too but anyways I
recently reread his book upward spiral it's about the neuroscience behind
depression and there's so many little things that you can do to start boosting
your serotonin and endorphins and dopamine and oxytocin and all these
other things so I try to do those things if I start to feel down and depress one
of the best things - one of the best things is a gratitude list alright just
five things five things that you're grateful for it helps your brain get out
of this tunnel vision on the negative and it forces you to look at the
positive there's a lot of studies a lot of research around this
I don't always write it down sometimes I just go through a list of my head aside
from just like typical mindfulness meditation I practice loving-kindness
meditation like for me when I look at my mental health issues a lot of it is very
self centered right I'm thinking about me me me me me me me loving kindness
medication not medication loving-kindness meditation is sending
sending kind thoughts and well wishes to other people right I think I did a video
bringing people through that meditation a while back but that's very helpful for
me like I started out sending these thoughts and well-wishes to the people
closest to me and then I kind of brought in that that feeling of love and
compassion to others right you know it expands kind
of like everybody you know I hope that you're happy and healthy and loved you
know and all that kind of stuff but yeah it's been it's been good and like for me
it's just I want I want people to know that they are there are options people
don't like when I talk about it but but yeah we are we are kind of trained to
believe that medications are the the end-all be-all like you take this pill
it will fix you and from my experience as well as the experience of many others
who have spoken to over the years like that's not the case
medications are not a silver bullet and that's why I feel is so important for
all of us to not only take our medications but we have to do other
things as well like something some of you might know of
if you've been in a psychology class is the biopsychosocial model right they use
this for mental illness that uses for addiction but not only is that the
biological factors right like the chemical imbalances the the genetics
right but also your thought patterns the psyche the psychological part the social
part like what are things happening in your life right
by constantly being stressed about money or family or whatever it is like the
situation we're all in right now where we have to quarantine these things can
affect your mental health as well so if we just focus on the biological aspect
we're neglecting all these other things and a lot of us start to wonder why am I
not doing better yet why right so regardless of what you took away from
this video if you are on medications and you're still not feeling as good as you
would like to start thinking about that a little bit so thinking about what else
you can do in your life to improve your mental health like it's more than just
taking a pill every single morning or at night or whatever it is start looking at
your thought patterns and you know different forms of therapy if you can't
afford therapy like I'm telling you there are so many worksheets online
there are so many books on different forms of thier
and everything like that there are so many things that you can do even if you
cannot afford therapy some of the smartest people in the world who created
these therapies have put that knowledge and that wisdom into books and you can
educate yourself about them and start doing those practices I love therapy
because it's like a check-in where they let you know like hey are you still on
the right path but sometimes we have to work with what we have and if we don't
have the money to afford therapy we got to do other things and meditation is
totally free my entire meditation practice started off with free
smartphone apps you know what I mean but anyways I would love to hear from all of
you about your experience with anti-anxiety medications antidepressants
how if they affected you have you ever come off of them just share your
experience down in the comments below because I'm just one guy I'm just one
guy and I like to hear about the experiences from others alright anyway
so that's all I got for this video if you liked this video please give it a
thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification
bell and a huge huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on
patreon Souls everybody who supports the channel by buying my mental health books
of the rewired soul comm as well as the merch from the merch store alright
thanks again for watching I'll see you next time