What happens when a 14-year-old girl is told she has a “chemical imbalance” and will need SSRI medication for life? And what happens twelve years later, when she tries to come off it, exactly as instructed by her doctor?*
This is Lauren’s story.
It’s one of the clearest examples I’ve ever heard of what modern psychiatry gets wrong, and what a trauma-informed lens can make clear.
In this conversation, filmed in Copenhagen, Lauren and I talk through her journey:
– the chaos of her childhood
– the diagnosis that replaced her story and context with chemistry
– twelve years of emotional numbness
– the severe antidepressant withdrawal that hit when she tapered the way she was told
– and the moment her life finally began making sense again.
Her story is not rare. It’s happening to hundreds of thousands of people right now.
If you or someone you love has ever struggled on antidepressants, wondered about withdrawal and hyperbolic tapering, or questioned the “chemical imbalance” narrative – this dialogue is for you.