Betsy McKay

these drugs can have serious side effects but there is a whole part of the mental health universe that is talking only about very serious side effects you want to know what absolutely nobody told me not even my psychiatrist how bad it is to wean off an antidepressant i feel crazy

Is America over-medicated?

These drugs are so popular and they've been on the market so long now that grandparents, parents, and children in the same family now take them.

When we become anxious, it's basically we're overstimulated.

And so neurons release this chemical, GABA, and it's meant to sort of quiet everything in your brain.

So they basically mimic the calming effect of that substance, GABA.

I'm curious, like, how effective are they at doing what they're supposed to do?

Well, the people we spoke to were, you know, seriously, anything between two weeks and like 20 plus years.

Years.

There's plenty of people out there who

start taking these medications and then, you know, for good reason, feel they continue to need them and they just stay on them and doctors continue to prescribe them.

That's terrifying.

Usually they're told minimal side effects.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

So the side effects and the problems that we've documented are really from lived real world experience.

And one of the problems is that they're not being studied enough.

After our story about benzos ran, I mean, we had got a deluge of responses from readers.

And many, many, many of the people who wrote in said, I've had the same experience with antidepressants.

That's next.