Transcription
You know, if I was taking a drug as prescribed, you know, and then all of a sudden people are starting to say, "Oh, you need to go to 12-step," and, and, and, you know, and this and that, and you need to kind of acknowledge that you have a problem, you're like, "Well, hang on a second." You know, you know, my doctor put me on Klonopin for IBS or something like that. You know, this, this does not fit with me. You know, um, well, and support is so important when you are coming off of psychiatric drugs. You need friends around you. You need your family behind you. You need people advocating for you. You need your doctors to continue to prescribe the medication so that you can come off in a, you know, slow way.
And if everyone's confused and thinks that you are addicted to something, think about how people, family systems are trained to treat true addicts, right? They say, like, "Stop enabling them. Don't, you know, help them. Get them out of the house." And so, you know, raise their bottom and make their life, you know, essentially fall apart so that they have to get help. Well, apply that to somebody who's truly physically dependent and they need support. They're in horrible, you know, benzodiazepine withdrawal. And your family is telling you, like, "You can't stay here if you don't stop taking the medicine right away." Or the doctor who thinks you're addicted when you're physically dependent, they are not going to keep writing you for Valium to do a taper if they think you're addicted or, you know, abusing the medication.
Totally. Yeah, I'm really glad that you went there because it, you know, this is something that I've also heard a lot. Is, is, you know, a patient will have a, you know, they'll start to develop their inner dose withdrawal or they'll have problems with the drug. And then they'll go to the detox center because, you know, when things get that bad, you know, family members think, "I don't know what to do. You know, detox center. We need to get you off this. That sounds right to me. Like, let's go talk to the experts." And then it's almost, you know, they get given the wrong information, just like you said. And then it drives a massive wedge into the family where I want to repeat it, kind of just like you said, you know, it separates them. They start saying those same things that are very bad, you know, "You have addiction problems. You know, I'm not going to help you go and, you know, find additional medication to do this taper. You just need to stop. You know, you'll be better soon." Just, you know, and, and you're just kind of left there suffering. And it's hugely traumatic for, for the person who is suffering and then has their support system abandon them. Um, and, you know, not just kind of abandon them, but it's like, kind of, and I'm calling them and, you know, saying, "You're an addict. You know, have these problems. And just can't you see?" Um, it's, it's awful.