Oct. 29, 2025 - Epoch Times
03:45
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Let's say you've been on an antidepressant or something like Xanax or clonopin for several years. | |
| You know, that's a lot of Americans. | |
| Quite a large group of them can actually stop these drugs pretty quickly. | |
| Within a couple of months, they have really nasty withdrawal, but then they kind of pull through it and things normalize for them. | |
| They move on with their life and withdrawal is never really a big issue for them. | |
| I would say that they have very healthy elastic brains. | |
| There's something just about them that allowed them to adapt to coming off that drug really quickly, readapt. | |
| Now, what I focus on in my work is a smaller piece of that pie. | |
| There is a group of people that when you bring them off that medication over two months, that's what I would say is a fast taper, and that's really common for a lot of family doctors and psychiatrists. | |
| They will actually develop very severe withdrawal symptoms that do not get better. | |
| Well, they'll develop very serious withdrawal symptoms that don't get better in that timeframe. | |
| Now, there's two really important things that most people need to be aware of here. | |
| The first thing is that if that happens to you and you don't have one of these very elastic brains that can readapt quickly and you get through it, your doctor will tell you sometimes that, well, this is unexpected. | |
| I've been taught that you can taper people in two months, that the withdrawal is mild, that it's going to go away. | |
| And because that hasn't happened with you, this is proof that your underlying condition is coming back. | |
| And this means that you need the drug. | |
| And so they'll put the patient back on the drug. | |
| And this person essentially ends up on an unwanted medication potentially indefinitely, afraid that they're unable to come off. | |
| And so that's happening with a lot of people. | |
| Now the other area, which is even less common, but it's very important, is that some patients, when you pull them off the medications too quickly, particularly antidepressants and benzos, they develop a condition called protracted withdrawal. | |
| And probably the best way to describe this is just to tell you what it's like for a patient. | |
| So you go in and see your doctor and you're coming off Xanax or clonopin. | |
| These are really common sedatives. | |
| Your doctor pulls you off pretty quickly or maybe you do it yourself and you end up with a lot of withdrawal. | |
| You're anxious, you can't sleep, your ears are ringing, all pretty normal stuff. | |
| One month goes by, two months go by and you're still feeling unwell and you're white knuckling it. | |
| You say, you know, if I just hang on long enough, I'm going to get through this and I don't want to give up. | |
| Three months goes by, it's still there. | |
| And then you say, you know what, this is too much. | |
| I want to get back on the drug. | |
| I can't deal with this. | |
| I'm going to figure out another way off. | |
| They get back on the drug, but the symptoms don't go away. | |
| And so then you have a person who essentially has severe anxiety, brain fog, earring, kind of a whole host of neurological problems. | |
| That person has actually experienced a form of brain damage. | |
| And that's really what I focus on in my practice, is this small group of people who come off whose nervous systems become incredibly sensitized. | |
| And for them, it usually takes them about 18 months to two years to recover. | |
| Sometimes it's even years after. | |
| It's like you've had a concussion. | |
| And that has been really important for me because it's actually changed the way I practice. | |
| I now recommend to anyone that I talk about, that I talk to, that you have to come off these medications in a controlled way. |
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