Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin

00:26:49:20 - 00:26:52:23
Roger McFillin
Anders Sorensen welcome to the radically genuine podcast.

00:26:52:24 - 00:26:53:19
Anders Sorensen
Thank you.

00:26:53:21 - 00:27:17:01
Roger McFillin
So, is it safe to say. I mean, it's very difficult to find people who are, you know, authorities on this particular subject, which we'll get into. But it's safe to say right now, I think that you're one of the world's foremost authorities on the effect of psychiatric drugs and really how to safely taper off psychiatric drugs. I'm really curious because you're a clinical psychologist like me.

00:27:17:03 - 00:27:21:14
Roger McFillin
How do you go down this road? Yeah. How this becomes your area of expertise.

00:27:21:15 - 00:27:50:04
Anders Sorensen
Yeah. Long story short, it's in the book, too. I describe it because it's a funny because it is a funny hybrid. Being a clinical psychologist working with how to get people off psychiatric drugs. But, long story short, I had a hard time doing my job as a psychotherapist while my clients were taking psychiatric drugs. That's not to say that one is good and the other is bad, but there are some differences in what we're trying to achieve in in pharmacology and drug treatment.

00:27:50:04 - 00:28:15:09
Anders Sorensen
And psychotherapy on the very foundation of that. So I just find it hard to do my job like what I was trained in. It's tough to work with people's emotions and trauma reactions if they're not there or if they're numbed or altered in some way. So the things I wanted to do in therapy and that I was trained in doing, I found it hard to do while on, on these, my clients were on these psychiatric drugs, symptom reduction or not.

00:28:15:09 - 00:28:37:12
Anders Sorensen
That's a different question. It was difficult to do the job, so I, I and we're ten years back now. I quickly got a hold on to some patients who wanted to come off these drugs. And it was that at that point, I just simply observed in my clinic that coming off these drugs was way more difficult than we were just taught at university, and that they were taught told by their doctor.

00:28:37:14 - 00:28:56:14
Anders Sorensen
So it was really just an observation about something not being right here. The symptoms they experience, the severity of them. The timing, was just completely off compared to what we were told. So there was really that observation, and as I like to put it, I went with my clients experience instead of what was in the books and not.

00:28:56:14 - 00:28:59:05
Anders Sorensen
And that's really what got me down to this road.

00:28:59:07 - 00:29:25:10
Roger McFillin
So it's interesting because I think you and I have similar experiences in the fact that, there was an inherent conflict that I was experiencing between what I was told to be true and what I was actually observing in clinical practice. And then there was a conflict between what I was understanding of the literature on emotion regulation versus, you know, how my clients were being treated in the medical system.

00:29:25:10 - 00:29:44:00
Roger McFillin
So you make you bring up an important point. So in one aspect, one value of psychotherapy is that you're getting people to face experience and learn how to tolerate the intensity of internal experience, thoughts, emotions.

00:29:44:01 - 00:29:45:21
Anders Sorensen
Exactly. We need access to that.

00:29:45:21 - 00:30:10:09
Roger McFillin
And then how to cope effectively. Right. And then they were going out to their doctors and saying take this, to reduce this symptom. Right. So it was a conflict of ideas. Exactly. Because on one end I'm saying it's not a symptom, it's an experience, it's an emotion. It makes you human. Yeah. Is this kind of what you were referring to when you talk about that inherent skills?

00:30:10:14 - 00:30:32:13
Anders Sorensen
Like it's a conflict between those two schools, I would say, and obviously psychotherapy is not one thing that many different schools within that. But like, like the overall idea that we need access to it and that pain is not a symptom in any way. That's really where least damage and so, so another part of the story really was I, I quickly understood let me get back to that.

00:30:32:13 - 00:30:53:21
Anders Sorensen
But how are these psychiatric drugs work? And just from seeing the definition you mentioned emotion regulation to I'm trained in emotion regulation therapy and we can maybe get back to that. But just the idea of of seeing a psychiatric drug as an emotion regulation strategy, like a psychiatric drug, is something we take to alter or change the intensity of our emotion and how we express them.

00:30:53:21 - 00:31:24:12
Anders Sorensen
Like the very definition of emotion regulation in psychology fits with what psychiatric drugs do. As long as we understand them as drugs, like substances that alter the mind and the emotions. So it's really like a definition thing. And I still find that pretty funny, because I'm at least back in my home country. Denmark attacked quite a bit for entering the psychiatrist's field with a psychologist doing daring to say anything about psychiatric drugs, and I like to say it's the other way around, like they're entering.

00:31:24:12 - 00:31:47:19
Anders Sorensen
If you have to play that game. They're entering my field, our field, by medicating emotions, by numbing and suppressing them. So I think there's a really interesting debate to take there. And as soon as you understand how these drugs work, which is pretty simple, it's a drug that alters the psychoactive substance that alter how you feel and think and behave and your awareness, if you just accept that definition.

00:31:47:19 - 00:32:19:01
Anders Sorensen
Well, we are in the area of psychology and psychotherapy. It's just a medical way of regulating emotions. So the other part of the story, what made me go into this was this, this observation really combined with the withdrawal effects, what's the difference between what I would normally do helping people off, or helping people not regulate their emotions in a maladaptive or problematic way, be it cutting themselves, avoiding suppressing, staying busy all the time, or some other natural control strategy.

00:32:19:01 - 00:32:27:00
Anders Sorensen
What is the difference between that work and helping a person off a psychiatric drug? Way of doing it? I found it to be the exact same.

00:32:27:02 - 00:32:59:15
Roger McFillin
Yeah, it's it's confusing even to the client. Yeah. Where we're saying these strategies, whether it's turning to alcohol every night or, smoking weed or, you know, this escapism. Yeah. Experiential avoidance is problematic. But since it's written on a prescription pad and someone with a white coat is telling you to do it, like, completely alters, you know, their perception about what they're doing, like, somehow this is helping me because I have a legitimate medical condition.

00:32:59:15 - 00:33:09:22
Roger McFillin
Yes. Right. I want to throw some numbers at. Yeah, because I am interested in an outsider's perspective on US culture. And you can provide it.

00:33:09:23 - 00:33:10:05
Anders Sorensen
Yeah.

00:33:10:10 - 00:33:36:02
Roger McFillin
Okay. You know, so approximately and I think these are conservative numbers. 15% of U.S. adults have used an antidepressant in, in the United States in the past year. Okay. At least 1 in 5 Americans are now on psychiatric drugs. And that's a conservative number I've seen up to 1 in 4. Yeah. You know, which is scary, right? Yeah.

00:33:36:04 - 00:33:50:11
Roger McFillin
So in the United States, where 4% of the world's population. Yeah, but we consume 75% of the world's prescription drugs. Yes. Yeah. So why do you believe this to be the case?

00:33:50:13 - 00:34:13:10
Anders Sorensen
Well, it's obviously there are many stories in it. Well, first of all, it's the story of a lot of people, suffering obviously with for whatever reason. But there must be that that story behind these numbers, but also a story of how we as a society have come to understand this suffering and how it's an individual problem. It's within you.

00:34:13:12 - 00:34:34:00
Anders Sorensen
You got to intervene, not even at the you, but in your brain. So that's the other part of the story, which is it's it's a funny idea. I think it's a relatively new idea, actually. It's just normal now, but it's not. It's new and I don't like it. I don't like that story. I don't trust it.

00:34:34:02 - 00:34:54:07
Anders Sorensen
I don't see it. I've never seen a mental illness. I've been working clinically for ten years. I've never seen the the the experiences labeled as mental illness being being caused by a malfunction in that way. That's not to to glorify it and just say, oh, we should just be with it. Obviously emotional suffering is is a real thing.

00:34:54:07 - 00:35:19:05
Anders Sorensen
Depression, anxiety, psychosis, all that are real things. But I've never seen them stem from a a disorder in the way that calling an illness makes sense. Like the their reactions, their emotions. If you know just the first thing about how the body and the mind responds to adversity and trauma and the first thing about emotions as a thing like basic affective science, it makes sense.

00:35:19:05 - 00:35:25:15
Anders Sorensen
I've never seen a client not make sense and that way. And that's my argument against this idea.

00:35:25:17 - 00:35:47:12
Roger McFillin
Yeah. We had dinner last night, you know, and got into some of these subjects. And yeah, I think I love how you use the word story. Yeah. Because it is a narrative that's been created. Yeah. For a particular purpose. Yeah. And it deviates from how we as humans have understood, evolved and adapted over potentially millions of years. Right.

00:35:47:12 - 00:36:12:02
Roger McFillin
It's still questionable about when humans first inhabited the Earth, but there's an evolutionary adaptive process that exists in human nature. Right. And we are more disconnected from nature than probably at any other point in history. And that's at least partially, you know, partially understanding the chronic disease epidemic that exists in the United States.

00:36:12:04 - 00:36:40:02
Anders Sorensen
And at least having that is the first line of questions that you ask a person in suffering, like, like we're made for having certain inputs, nutritional and social and psychological and activity were made. The body is made to have those inputs. And, well, if we don't have that, obviously it, it, it reacts just like stupid example maybe. But hunger we all understand the, the it's not an emotion but the sensation of a feeling of hunger.

00:36:40:05 - 00:37:01:02
Anders Sorensen
It's pretty adaptive that that's unpleasant. Like the body cannot seek out nutrition on its own. It has to motivate us to do it. And in order for that motivation to work, it has to be unpleasant. Therefore hunger. So and our job is obviously not to suppress that symptom, whatever means we could do it. But we wouldn't. We wouldn't have decoded the body's signals enough.

00:37:01:02 - 00:37:21:02
Anders Sorensen
Now that's a physiological example. The exact same thing can be approached with any emotion. Like if we need longing or meaning, or autonomy or connectedness or whatever else that we have a psychological need for. Food is a physiological need. But do you have the psychological needs to our bodies can go out and seek it out on its own.

00:37:21:02 - 00:37:28:06
Anders Sorensen
It has to motivate us to do it by distress. It would be a stupid mechanism if it was pleasant.

00:37:28:08 - 00:37:28:13
Roger McFillin
Exactly.

00:37:28:17 - 00:37:32:24
Anders Sorensen
It has to be unpleasant. And that's where the emotion regulated aspect comes into it.

00:37:33:01 - 00:37:54:10
Roger McFillin
Yeah, the stories are interesting because right now, I'm drinking a latte from Starbucks that the producer was, you know, kind enough to to bring in here and to sell lattes or to sell coffee. You need to create a story on why it's going to improve your life. Yeah. Marketing. Yeah. And that's what the pharmaceutical companies have done.

00:37:54:10 - 00:38:24:20
Roger McFillin
And it's brilliant, actually. Right. If let's say this idea that, you know, clinical depression is real, right? Suffering is real. Being part of, the human experience, you're going to go through emotional pain, but throughout history, we've really done well. And there's a author, epidemiologist, Charlotte Silverman, who wrote a book like, in the 1950s, like The Epidemiology of Depression.

00:38:24:22 - 00:38:48:12
Roger McFillin
And you realize, like, dating back to the 30s or the 40s when they were, like, measuring this in a society that it was like less than 1% of the population would like, even identify themselves as being depressed. And those that did always attribute it to events that occurred in their life. So there was this relationship to I feel this way because these things are happening in my life.

00:38:48:12 - 00:39:03:13
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And, it's natural and I understand it. The story of the pharmaceutical companies has successfully disconnected us from our own emotional experience and viewed it as something foreign, like it's invading. Yeah.

00:39:03:15 - 00:39:26:18
Anders Sorensen
It took the context and the life story out of it. Said the idea that these were reactions. And then it happened pretty deliberately with DSM three, that they're pretty open about that shift. And that's really why this topic of there's so many questions why how to come off the drugs, how they work and what mental illness is.

00:39:26:18 - 00:39:49:10
Anders Sorensen
They kind of they connected all these questions, really, really connected. And it was really important for me to have that part of the book, chapter three, I think, you know, debunking this mental illness, not just the chemical imbalance, but all the different biological, ideas, let's say stories was really important for me because we don't just want to help people off the drugs, right.

00:39:49:12 - 00:40:11:07
Anders Sorensen
We also want them to prevent a relapse or emotional suffering again. And in that question, the idea that the suffering stems from an illness that you have, you have something and that thing you have, that entity can just flare up on its own a little bit here, a little bit there, like the idea that has a random element to it.

00:40:11:10 - 00:40:28:17
Anders Sorensen
That's part of the problem to avoiding true relapse, because obviously there will be, as you say, there will be a there will be a context around it. There will be a course leading up to your depressive episode, your panic attacks, your stress burnout, your psychosis. Even so, the idea of taking that out of the equation is part of the problem.

00:40:28:17 - 00:40:33:15
Anders Sorensen
That's why it was so important for me to have a whole section on that debunking that idea is completely.

00:40:33:17 - 00:41:01:10
Roger McFillin
Yeah, if you're a pharmaceutical industry, you know, your goal is to get more and more people identifying with mental illness so you can turn to their product and you can increase sales, right? Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. It's up for it's up to the kind of the rest of us, including physicians, to be able to see through that and there's ethical responsibilities, of course, and being able to accurately communicate to patients about what is happening and how this helps and what are the adverse consequences and so forth.

00:41:01:14 - 00:41:14:11
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And that's where I think from a medical ethics standpoint, we've gone horribly wrong in our society. Yeah. But I want you to predict the future for me. I know you're really good at that.

00:41:14:11 - 00:41:17:08
Anders Sorensen
Yeah. Thank you. I didn't know that.

00:41:17:10 - 00:41:43:12
Roger McFillin
Well, listen, if there's if there's, you know, one in every 4 or 5, us adults are taking some psychiatric drug and your your research, your your study, your expertise is on what these drugs due to the brain in the body and what happens to people. What do you expect is going to happen in the next five, ten years at this rate, with so many people on these drugs?

00:41:43:14 - 00:42:02:02
Anders Sorensen
I was about to say, I, I think we're going to have an epidemic of prescribed drug dependance on psychiatric drugs, but I think we already have it. I don't think it's is. It's just not as obvious yet to people. So I'm comparing it in the ending pages of my book. I'm comparing with the, the, the opioid crisis.

00:42:02:02 - 00:42:20:06
Anders Sorensen
Really. And that might sound a bit absurd for some because obviously there's differences. But the idea that the body adapts in a way that it reacts with withdrawal symptoms, if you stop to fast, there's no reason to believe why the mechanism would be any different for psychiatric drugs and opioids than nicotine or caffeine or street drugs. It's it.

00:42:20:08 - 00:42:47:16
Anders Sorensen
The body, as it turns out, doesn't really care what we call these drugs as long as it's something you introduce to the body long term, it adapts. It's a basic mechanism. So I think we already have the epidemic. It's just hidden in another way. Because if the withdrawal reactions from psychiatric drugs were only physical symptoms like sweating and nausea and dizziness and you lying on the floor, with symptoms, it would be easy pieces to to to spot it.

00:42:47:16 - 00:43:11:19
Anders Sorensen
That's a withdrawal reaction. It makes no sense. Then that's a relapse to your underlying condition, which is this problem in a nutshell. Right. When you stop a psychiatric drug and you deteriorate, how do you know if it's withdrawal or relapse. So but because the withdrawal symptoms of psychiatric drugs, all the psychiatric drugs are also emotional and psychological symptoms, the epidemic is kind of hidden in a way like you don't.

00:43:11:19 - 00:43:34:23
Anders Sorensen
It creates this illusion that when you get worse, when you stop the drug, it's because it's working and then back on. Right? And because withdrawal symptoms is really there. Communication like the hunger signal, it's just the other way around. It's your body trying to make it take a drug that was used to. So withdrawal reaction is really a transition between two doses where that step was too big for the body to keep up.

00:43:35:03 - 00:43:40:23
Anders Sorensen
That's communication. But the other way around really. So to get back to your question, and I know we'll get back to this withdrawal.

00:43:41:00 - 00:43:42:08
Roger McFillin
We'll get into the nitty gritty about.

00:43:42:08 - 00:44:03:11
Anders Sorensen
I think the epidemic is here, but it's hidden because the symptoms overlap so much with what you took the drug for. It creates the story about you still needing the drug. And I think what's going to happen is that that illusion will be kind of it will show itself. People will, will, will see it as that. And that will change things dramatically.

00:44:03:13 - 00:44:27:15
Roger McFillin
Yeah. It's interesting timing that you're here just yesterday. At the white House was, what's called the Maha Make America Healthy Again executive order. When President Trump took his first day in office, he signed this in to investigate into, you know, what are these contributing factors to the chronic disease epidemic here in the United States and the mental health crisis?

00:44:27:17 - 00:44:45:12
Roger McFillin
And I was just giving you some data earlier about adults. Let's talk about and this is why I'm really concerned about the future and support your idea that I believe we're facing a public health emergency. It's already happening. Yeah, but it's only going to get worse because the rates of prescribing are increasing. This is American children. Children?

00:44:45:12 - 00:44:46:21
Anders Sorensen
Yeah. It's the worst.

00:44:46:23 - 00:45:16:24
Roger McFillin
1 in 5 U.S children are estimated to have taken at least one prescription drug. Yeah. Ongoing use is most pronounced amongst adolescents. 27% of them are taking multiple psychiatric drugs, stimulant prescriptions, drugs used to treat quote unquote what we label as ADHD, doubled, from, to nearly 11% of children, like, in a ten year span.

00:45:16:24 - 00:45:52:16
Roger McFillin
It's like doubling, so we're just like, we're throwing out that diagnosis more and more antidepressant prescriptions, a 1,400% increase just between the time of 1987 to 2014. Imagine where we are now. Antipsychotic use in US kids rose 800% between 1995 and 2009. And of course, these are off label drugs. Yeah.

00:45:52:18 - 00:45:55:01
Anders Sorensen
It makes me angry. It is angry.

00:45:55:03 - 00:46:23:14
Roger McFillin
It should. I mean, if you're a, if you're a human being with compassion and empathy and you're in the helping profession if you're not angry about this. Yeah. You know, I'm I'm questioning, your morality and your ethics. And I often do that on the, on this podcast. Right. So, you and I are in this place about, you know, almost dumbfounded, because of, we know the science around efficacy and safety.

00:46:23:14 - 00:46:48:17
Roger McFillin
So we're going to get we're going to get into this, but we have to kind of build to it. Right? Because you alluded to this. Yeah. And I've had number of episodes on the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness being a story. It's justified these prescription rates. I've covered it extensively. I think the questions people now have initially, because it's even been brought into question in the mainstream media.

00:46:48:19 - 00:47:19:03
Roger McFillin
Joanna moncrieff. It's 2022, I think umbrella study was widely, you know, promoted across Western societies. And it was always interesting to see the, the answers back from mainstream psych psychiatry. But I guess the question is, am I get this off. And so if there's no like identified deficiency. Yeah. Or measurable or biological abnormality. What what are these drugs doing and why are they continuing to prescribe them.

00:47:19:05 - 00:47:36:00
Anders Sorensen
Well, there's still work as I don't think there is a debate of of what these much of a debate of what these drugs do in the brain. Now, they might do more than what we know, but we definitely know what the drugs do. I would say, like, it's not wrong that antidepressants, most of them increase serotonin, for example.

00:47:36:00 - 00:47:45:24
Anders Sorensen
But that's not the same as saying that if they work, then what they work on was caused by the opposite of what the drug was doing. That's really the how that story, emerged. Right?

00:47:45:24 - 00:48:06:21
Roger McFillin
So okay. But if, if you, if the drug is increasing the availability of serotonin in the nerve cell, right. And we say it's not that simple, our mood is not related to one neurochemical. There's no deficiency. There's no abnormality. No. Then what happens when you interfere with, I guess, what is a natural, normal process of brain? Yeah.

00:48:06:21 - 00:48:30:20
Anders Sorensen
Like functioning doesn't like that. The brain doesn't like that. We might like the effect that's really important to, to to to distinguish like we can we can certainly like the effect of a drug just as we can with alcohol or drugs or caffeine. We can find it appealing. I don't know if that's the right word. Attractive relieving while the drug sorry, the body underneath dislikes it.

00:48:30:20 - 00:48:47:16
Anders Sorensen
Those are two very, very different things. And regardless of how much or how little we like what the drug does to us, the body for sure does not like it and it adapts. So this is really where these two questions are connected, like how psychiatric drugs work and how to come off them because how to come off them.

00:48:47:18 - 00:49:09:12
Anders Sorensen
We have to understand what they're doing to the body at first. So if we are interfering by increasing or decreasing a biological system that is not out of balance, we introduce actually we disturb rather than fix and that what? That's what makes the body adapt to it. Exactly. Okay. So so the drugs work like they work in the sense that they have an effect.

00:49:09:12 - 00:49:19:11
Anders Sorensen
These are psychoactive substances. When we say when we put into question their their effect, it's not to say that they're inert substances. Obviously they do something right.

00:49:19:11 - 00:49:38:18
Roger McFillin
Yeah. So like if for example, let's say I have severe social anxiety. Yeah. You know, it's it's hard for me to hold a conversation with somebody and, being out in public kind of makes me a little bit jittery. And I, you know, I'm in my head a lot. Yeah, but give me a few vodka clubs. Yeah. And, you know, I flow in the conversation.

00:49:38:18 - 00:49:47:20
Roger McFillin
It's like a social lubricant. Right? Is that similar in comparison? Would we say that alcohol is an anti social anxiety. Say that medicine.

00:49:47:21 - 00:50:13:06
Anders Sorensen
It would say that if we had to use that same. Yeah. Okay. Sounds weird. At least the, the principle and the mechanism by which it works is the same. Yeah. Alcohol might actually be more effective than most antidepressants in that situation because it has an acute effect. Right. So yeah, you're not solving the problem. You're probably just numbing some of that can feel it makes sense.

00:50:13:08 - 00:50:35:23
Anders Sorensen
It's really important to tell that story. It makes sense. Social anxiety and depression and all these, sufferings are real experiences. And it is not rocket science that anything that numbs them or covers them up or just gives you a little bit of distance to those thoughts or emotions or sensations, it's not rocket science that that's can feel relieving, but that's not the same as saying is it permanent solution, is it?

00:50:36:03 - 00:50:38:01
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And I think language is powerful.

00:50:38:04 - 00:50:38:23
Anders Sorensen
It is really.

00:50:39:00 - 00:50:57:03
Roger McFillin
So when we, when we use the word medicine. Yeah, right. We're communicating something to the general public. We don't say alcohol is medicinal. No. Right. Why don't why don't we say, and, alcohol is medicinal if it helps with social anxiety. Yeah.

00:50:57:05 - 00:51:18:14
Anders Sorensen
Yeah. Well, we could or we could do it the other way around instead of putting those kind of substances into the medical category, we could do it the other way around. I would put the substances in the medication category into the drug category, saying there's no there's no there's no good argument to cross the line of saying, these are the substances and these are the the medications.

00:51:18:14 - 00:51:20:07
Anders Sorensen
It's one category.

00:51:20:12 - 00:51:30:14
Roger McFillin
And I think people associate the word medicine with medicinal. Like it's helpful. Like, yeah, it's healing. It has healing properties. Like it's good for our health. Yeah.

00:51:30:14 - 00:51:33:09
Anders Sorensen
And so it has positive connotations. Right.

00:51:33:09 - 00:51:49:11
Roger McFillin
And we know that alcohol is not really good for our health. Right. We might engage in it. Some people abuse it. Some people moderate it. But I don't think anyone argues like, hey, it's just really important for you to have that out. Keep doing that. Keep doing it. Right. Exactly. But when it comes to something like an SSRI.

00:51:49:11 - 00:52:06:03
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And we use that term medicine. Yeah. Or we say anti depressive drug or anti-anxiety drug. We're saying like we're communicating that you have something wrong with you. It's something medical. It's not your fault. Yeah. You know so we don't want a pill.

00:52:06:03 - 00:52:06:14
Anders Sorensen
Relieving.

00:52:06:14 - 00:52:25:03
Roger McFillin
Part. Yeah. We don't want it. We don't want a pill shame. Right. You're just you're you're just getting you're getting the help that you need. Yeah. Take your drug. And it's, it's medicine. And if you didn't have it then you'd be suffering for the rest of your life. Is that, is that story. Is that science.

00:52:25:05 - 00:52:59:20
Anders Sorensen
Is story story. But it's, it's, it's, it's presented with, with what appears to be science, with fancy brain scans and statistics and all sorts of stuff that's been just completely torn apart by research methodologies. But it is a story and it's a problematic story because it removes us from what we talked about before. It removes us from seeing it as reactions rather than symptoms and emotions rather than symptoms, and something that makes sense.

00:52:59:22 - 00:53:26:10
Anders Sorensen
And the way out of that, the way we help a person out of that, because obviously that is our goal as therapists to it's not just to say, oh, it's normal, just live with it. We are helping people out of that suffering. But those questions, those doors are locked or closed as soon as you talk about it as a medicine and you also remove yourself from potentially from the idea of just seeing it as a strategy, like an emotion regulation, strategy, medicine or strategy.

00:53:26:10 - 00:53:45:15
Anders Sorensen
Sometimes there are two different categories, and people want want to see what they're doing. Taking a psychiatric drug as a strategy, as something they do to regulate their emotions. And I think it's important, like language matters, really, because those are different questions that we'd ask from an emotion regulation perspective. What is it that feels so good not to feel?

00:53:45:19 - 00:53:55:23
Anders Sorensen
What is it that you think you can't manage or understand? There's a very different questions that are taking the correct drug and correct dose. And it's the diagnosis. Correct?

00:53:56:00 - 00:54:43:14
Roger McFillin
Yeah. You just provoke something that I think is important because I think I define depression. That concept, different than the average mental health professional in a way, is that popular culture probably doesn't define it. Because I think it's been co-opted and communicated to the public in order to present it from a specific lens. In order to bring a drug to market, because let's face it, like if, you can't bring a drug to market for setbacks in life, you know, you can't bring a drug to market for loss, grief, struggles, failures, uncertainties, right?

00:54:43:16 - 00:54:45:08
Roger McFillin
But you have to frame it as a medical to.

00:54:45:08 - 00:54:45:22
Anders Sorensen
Call it something.

00:54:45:22 - 00:54:56:07
Roger McFillin
Else. That's the only way you can get approval for it. It's got to become that disease. So how do you actually define let's use depression, for example, because it's the most common that people identify with. How do you define it?

00:54:56:07 - 00:55:19:24
Anders Sorensen
I have a very boring definition of these things, but it's very straight literal too, because all every diagnosis, if you have to play along with that game, has a like what is a duration criterion? Like what makes it a depression is how long it lasts. Part of the definition that has to be disturbing to and has to be different symptoms, but it's not the symptoms themselves that are the problem, it's that they persist.

00:55:19:24 - 00:55:23:13
Anders Sorensen
And last I think it's two weeks. We can be depressed now until it's a depression. Right.

00:55:23:13 - 00:55:25:23
Roger McFillin
And of course there's really good science that create that opportunity.

00:55:25:23 - 00:55:27:23
Anders Sorensen
And ready space.

00:55:28:00 - 00:55:31:14
Roger McFillin
God forbid you feel bad for two weeks, you know, something broken about you.

00:55:31:14 - 00:55:49:17
Anders Sorensen
And it was as far as I know, I think it was two months, some years ago, and there's two years and now it's two weeks. But let's play along, okay? Two weeks. So the problem is not your symptoms or behaviors. It's that they persist. So that's how I would define a depression. It's true that it is when it lasts.

00:55:49:17 - 00:56:18:09
Anders Sorensen
And we could debate. We could argue whether the two week mark is is okay. So the question then becomes what makes it last really what makes something not regulate. For some people the distress regulates. For some it doesn't. That's who fall in the category of, of of the mental illness. And a lot of things could do that. If you have some emotional, if you have some needs or some goals or some values that you don't meet, that you don't see, obviously your body will keep keep screaming.

00:56:18:09 - 00:56:28:03
Anders Sorensen
That's one way for it to last. As with the hunger example, for example, sometimes a depression is just it's unmet needs, it's emotions. You don't understand it, right?

00:56:28:07 - 00:56:40:23
Roger McFillin
Yeah. So we're throwing around the word regulate emotion regulation. And it's probably better for my audience if we, if we discuss that with more lay person. Yeah. Language. Yeah. How would you simplify it?

00:56:40:23 - 00:56:55:07
Anders Sorensen
It's what you do to change or modify your emotions. It's really the answer to the question when you meet or when distress arises inside you. An unpleasant emotion. Negative effect. Many words for this. What do you do.

00:56:55:09 - 00:56:56:00
Roger McFillin
To feel better.

00:56:56:00 - 00:56:59:22
Anders Sorensen
To feel better or to change it? Yeah. In anyway. So those. You mean.

00:56:59:22 - 00:57:01:04
Roger McFillin
You actually have power and doing.

00:57:01:04 - 00:57:01:15
Anders Sorensen
That you.

00:57:01:16 - 00:57:06:06
Roger McFillin
Oh yeah because I that's yeah. That's so for my story.

00:57:06:08 - 00:57:06:21
Anders Sorensen
Outside of.

00:57:06:21 - 00:57:07:10
Roger McFillin
Your control.

00:57:07:10 - 00:57:35:22
Anders Sorensen
Exactly. And it's not it can certainly feel that way. Yeah. And really that's that one other defining character of depression. Like it can feel completely out of your hands. Uncontrollable. That's where we enter as psychotherapist psychologist to to how to say that challenge, that idea. Is it true? Are there ways to be and understand your be with and understand your emotions where they're controllable and there are.

00:57:35:24 - 00:57:55:16
Anders Sorensen
Yeah of course. So emotion regulation is really most people wouldn't wouldn't I think they wouldn't resonate with with their behaviors or strategies. It sounds too deliberate sometimes. I'm going to use a strategy here to regulate my emotions, a lot of which has become habitual. Just something you you do, you distract, you turn to your phone, you take a drug, you drink alcohol.

00:57:55:17 - 00:58:17:15
Anders Sorensen
You call someone to seek assurance. You start overthinking. Like to introduce uncertainty to your situation. You ruminate to find answers. All of these are strategies. Now, you might not at first identify as someone using strategies here. And that's really part of what the therapeutic process is about understanding these behaviors not as symptoms, but as as as something you do.

00:58:17:15 - 00:58:21:01
Anders Sorensen
And that changes the conversation quite a bit.

00:58:21:03 - 00:58:32:05
Roger McFillin
Yeah. So just just curious, you know, personally for you being an expert in this area, you know, how do you approach your life to try to feel the best that you you can. Me? Yeah. Yeah.

00:58:32:07 - 00:58:56:17
Anders Sorensen
Oh, that's a good question. It's changing, obviously, how I approach my life to feel the best I can, I don't I think I use the classic of not, not seeking out happiness in that way. Like as a sole goal in itself, but meaning and desired outcome. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. If you go around, wake up and say, oh, how am I going to be happy today?

00:58:56:22 - 00:59:12:16
Anders Sorensen
Let's find some happiness. There's a problem with that goal because it's like it can be negative thoughts or feelings. Now I can feel bad. It's a problematic goal to have to, to want to and to seek it directly. So I would use the classic of seeking meaning.

00:59:12:18 - 00:59:13:01
Roger McFillin
Love it.

00:59:13:04 - 00:59:19:15
Anders Sorensen
Yeah, value and then happiness. If we were to talk about that, which is a very fleeting thing.

00:59:19:17 - 00:59:20:21
Roger McFillin
It comes in and goes has to.

00:59:20:21 - 00:59:39:17
Anders Sorensen
Come as a byproduct of that, and it does. The less you seek it in that way. In science. Ironic. But meaning and value and connectedness is and progression to in like a sense of progressing and what you like doing and your goals are much more tangible goals to have.

00:59:39:19 - 00:59:54:15
Roger McFillin
Yeah. There's like a paradoxical effect when it comes to our emotional states, right? Like the more we fight with, and desire to change what's going on internally. Yeah, it seems to have the opposite effect. Yeah. The struggle in itself creates more. Yeah.

00:59:54:16 - 01:00:20:16
Anders Sorensen
The stress because your life becomes a problem to solve. And that's not a very good recipe for your body to respond with with positive emotion. There's a lot of paradoxical effects that are both ways. All the strategies aimed at controlling us, suppressing emotions have a paradoxical effect to it. That's what makes it last. That's why when you just go through, you could go through the diagnostic, the diagnostic criteria of almost any, diagnosis.

01:00:20:16 - 01:00:49:08
Anders Sorensen
And you'll find what two things, ways of having it like feelings and behaviors. And those behaviors are not symptoms, those strategies. And they would fall into the category of strategies that work oftentimes here and now. They work fast. But you have to keep doing them. Distracting, overthinking, drinking for them to work so they don't really work depending on what you mean, they don't have a lasting effect, but you become kind of I don't know if you could use the word, but addicted to them in a sense.

01:00:49:08 - 01:00:51:15
Anders Sorensen
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense using that word.

01:00:51:15 - 01:00:55:20
Roger McFillin
Yeah it is. Yeah, I think it is that kind of it's addiction to kind of short term. Yeah.

01:00:55:21 - 01:01:13:21
Anders Sorensen
Exactly. And and that's what creates these, these as we talked about for the duration. Quite and can be explained by this because you kind of fall in from prey to your own emotion. You're trapped in your own emotion regulation. Because no one has help you yet to introduce the adaptive long term strategies.

01:01:13:23 - 01:01:37:16
Roger McFillin
Well, you know, I ask you that question because I want my audience to understand how nefarious this whole, modern day notion of seeking out a pill to change how you feel is. Yeah. So anyone who is philosophical, anyone who studies history, anyone who's scientific will know that exact process, that craving, not desiring their seeking of something externally to you.

01:01:37:17 - 01:01:59:10
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Not to mention all the harmful effects that we're going to get into of these psychiatric drugs, but the actual desire in itself to externalize it and seek it outside of you is going to keep you trapped in that cycle. And that is what makes customers for life. Yes. And that's why we see the customers for life. Right.

01:01:59:12 - 01:02:14:05
Roger McFillin
If you speak to the average psychiatrist, at least here in the United States, you would assume that the administration of these drugs requires an extremely high level of expertise and to.

01:02:14:05 - 01:02:15:24
Anders Sorensen
Prescribe them or to to.

01:02:15:24 - 01:02:45:03
Roger McFillin
Prescribe them, to understand them. The mixing and matching to find the right dose. Like it must be extremely complex that no average person could ever even begin to understand what is happening by taking these drugs. And what I loved about your book. And I can't wait till it's out there. Is how you were able to communicate simply.

01:02:45:03 - 01:02:48:13
Roger McFillin
Yeah. What is actually going on? Is it that complex?

01:02:48:18 - 01:03:07:05
Anders Sorensen
I don't think it is. I think it's easier to make it look complex, and I can see why a professional would want or need to actually to justify their own existence in that way, to make it something really difficult, almost like an enigma to understand. We don't really know how these drugs work, and it really takes an expert to figure it out.

01:03:07:08 - 01:03:26:09
Anders Sorensen
I haven't seen that story, like digging into it. I can't find it, but it depends on what you think these drugs are doing. Really, if you see them as a substance that, that, that turns up and down different chemicals in the brain and obviously, yes, there's some expertise for that. I even have a model in my, in my book about it, just with pluses and minuses.

01:03:26:09 - 01:03:46:12
Anders Sorensen
Instead of all these numbers, I've literally just mapped out the different drugs, psychiatric drugs and the different main, neurotransmitters they affect. And then the plus, if it goes up in a minus, if it goes down and as, as soon as you have that general understanding of it really is. Sounds weird, but I know I can say that to you here in your audience.

01:03:46:12 - 01:03:53:00
Anders Sorensen
It's one principle you gotta understand, really. It's not very technical.

01:03:53:02 - 01:03:53:12
Roger McFillin
Okay?

01:03:53:12 - 01:03:56:09
Anders Sorensen
It's not very complex. They like it to be that.

01:03:56:11 - 01:04:21:16
Roger McFillin
Well, let's discuss that. That principle. Yeah. In in more detail. Yeah. But what goes along with that question is you'll hear patients say they were told that they're they need to continue to increase their drugs to get to what's called a therapeutic dose. Yeah, right. At like one level of taking the drug with certain milligrams, it's not going to I guess, cure that imbalance.

01:04:21:16 - 01:04:27:00
Roger McFillin
Right. You need more of the of the drug and then you get to a therapeutic range. What does that mean.

01:04:27:00 - 01:04:49:09
Anders Sorensen
Yeah I don't I think they're, they're obviously too little of a drug of any drug. There's a limit how low you can go for it to have an effect. So it needs a certain dose but it's not very high. Like as we'll get back to a lay, there's no there's no real difference between moderate and high doses. There's not even a big difference between low and high doses, because the receptors that are occupied are pretty low, the saturated or pretty low dose.

01:04:49:11 - 01:05:07:13
Anders Sorensen
So I can see the story working just as a narrative, like, okay, of course the drug hasn't worked yet because you haven't gotten enough and then you're up it. But that that really gives away what you think about these drugs, how they work and whether it's a strategy or not. Right.

01:05:07:15 - 01:05:22:20
Roger McFillin
Okay. So what is what is the the average psychiatrist, the average physician in the United States who's going to be prescribing these drugs? How are they going to be communicating it to patients?

01:05:22:22 - 01:05:41:24
Anders Sorensen
I think they're trained in, I wouldn't see any reason for it to be different here than back in, in Denmark. I think it's the same overall biological model, but I think they're trained in viewing them as medicines. Medications as anti this and anti that. And that is really important to find the right a drug and the right dose.

01:05:41:24 - 01:05:45:24
Anders Sorensen
I think they're trained in that way of using it not to see it as a strategy okay.

01:05:46:02 - 01:05:55:15
Roger McFillin
So if they're doing that and I just before I got here, I was telling you I was listening to a podcast of two psychiatrist and they keep using the same word sick. Illness. Yeah.

01:05:55:17 - 01:05:57:20
Anders Sorensen
So we don't like we don't like those words here.

01:05:57:21 - 01:06:34:15
Roger McFillin
No, I mean, you and I would dispute that. Of course. And it doesn't really fit human history or science or anything. That would make any reasonable sense to, you know, us and understanding what the process of being a human being is. But if they're referring to the person being ill or sick and they're prescribing medicines, then they're still believing that there is some underlying biological mechanism that is in a disease based stance without the chemical imbalance theory, with that being debunked, what is the new way of thinking about how these medicines actually could work?

01:06:34:19 - 01:07:00:11
Anders Sorensen
So I think this has changed historically. Many times it'll keep keep changing until the whole biological idea is abandoned. So they they'll you can find most psychiatry said okay, the serotonin was missed. That was a bummer. We know that's not true. And then they'll replace it with some other fancy sounding chemical or gene or abnormality or whatever. So the story will be the same.

01:07:00:11 - 01:07:20:01
Anders Sorensen
It's just changed the expression. Now it's not serotonin. No, it's something else. And that's happened every time. Almost every time a new drug comes to market, it appears to work on symptoms. They all kind of, you know, do the opposite. Like, okay, because this drug works on those symptoms. And it works in this way in the brain. Those symptoms and what it does in the brain must be connected.

01:07:20:01 - 01:07:32:14
Anders Sorensen
It's the same story every time. Yeah. So this will keep repeating is my prediction. You ask me that before, until the whole idea of it being biological in origin will be abandoned.

01:07:32:16 - 01:07:48:24
Roger McFillin
Yeah. So alcohol impacts certain receptors on the brain that alter brain chemicals that change physiology. Yeah. Okay. And so if I'm hearing your simplified way of thinking about this is that drugs.

01:07:49:01 - 01:07:49:08
Anders Sorensen
Is a.

01:07:49:08 - 01:07:54:06
Roger McFillin
Drug, all drugs are going to disturb normal processes. Yeah.

01:07:54:08 - 01:07:59:07
Anders Sorensen
That's what makes it a drug that that's what defines it as a drug. It, it it it's.

01:07:59:07 - 01:08:00:21
Roger McFillin
It's a it's.

01:08:00:21 - 01:08:27:13
Anders Sorensen
Designed to cross the blood brain barrier and interfere with different chemicals. And we happen to experience that change in neurochemistry as well, what we would call a psychoactive effect. Now psychoactive. Some people associated with with psychedelics and street drugs. It's a very broad definition, something psycho active. It's just something that when you take it affects emotions, feelings, thoughts, awareness.

01:08:27:15 - 01:08:32:17
Anders Sorensen
It's really broad. It's impossible to define a psychiatric drug outside of that.

01:08:32:22 - 01:08:35:00
Roger McFillin
So it alters a state of consciousness. Right.

01:08:35:00 - 01:08:38:11
Anders Sorensen
But can some of them okay. Yeah okay. So awareness. Yeah.

01:08:38:13 - 01:09:01:13
Roger McFillin
One thing with the alternative viewpoint here. And what I, what I mean by alternative maybe disputes my, belief about what it means to achieve optimal state of, like, being, in our lifetime and how to live well and feel. Well. They'll say, well, throughout human history, we've sought. Yeah, the use of substances to try to alter a state of consciousness.

01:09:01:15 - 01:09:08:23
Roger McFillin
Why would like an SSRI or a benzodiazepine be any different as a way to cope with the pain of life?

01:09:09:00 - 01:09:27:03
Anders Sorensen
It's not, I wouldn't say. And that's part of the problem that we've we've started talking about these substances as medicines, as not drugs. It's fair to have psychiatric drugs. It's fair to have something to alter your state of mind or emotions. When you're in a situation where you can't change it right now, you really need something to relief.

01:09:27:03 - 01:09:51:10
Anders Sorensen
That's fair. That's not what this is about. But we shouldn't talk about these drugs. Something else. So if we could just get the discussion back on track, let's say these are just modern Western civilizations. Idea of a substance that helps, that would change the narrative completely. Like, okay, we're honest. And it's, it's the it's the original way of talking about it.

01:09:51:15 - 01:10:13:08
Roger McFillin
Yes. So is is it fair, though then to say, you know, heroin, heroin does the same thing. You know, you can choose to take heroin, alter your state of consciousness, change how you're feeling and thinking and being. Yes. And you can take a Xanax. The same thing can happen. You can take an SSRI. You can take alcohol.

01:10:13:08 - 01:10:32:02
Roger McFillin
You can smoke weed. Right. All these are going to perturb normal brain functioning, alter a state of consciousness. So when I ask you the question though, like is it fair to put these all in one category and we've been doing it throughout the course of time. Doesn't it come down to like a question of consequence.

01:10:32:04 - 01:10:33:04
Anders Sorensen
In terms of.

01:10:33:06 - 01:10:58:16
Roger McFillin
What will be the effect short term, potentially long term. To our bodies, to, to our health because, you know, you might say, hey, you're feeling really, you know, really anxious if, if you, if you snort cocaine or you or you do a hit of heroin, it can change that experience for you. But people would say, why would I want to develop that type of problem?

01:10:58:16 - 01:11:21:05
Roger McFillin
It's got great consequence to it. But when you go into the primary care physician and in the United States and they write you a prescription for one of these drugs, that conversation isn't happening. No, they're not talking about the consequences of making that decision with fundamentally mislead people into believing they're doing something that does not have any consequence.

01:11:21:05 - 01:11:22:00
Anders Sorensen
That's what this is about.

01:11:22:00 - 01:11:23:13
Roger McFillin
Let's get into the consequences.

01:11:23:16 - 01:11:26:12
Anders Sorensen
The consequences. I think what makes.

01:11:26:14 - 01:11:28:18
Roger McFillin
Harm.

01:11:28:20 - 01:11:32:06
Anders Sorensen
The consequences of long term use of psychiatric drugs is that it?

01:11:32:08 - 01:11:40:24
Roger McFillin
No. I mean, consequence can be short term as well. Like what does the science inform us about what can happen to people when they start, when they make that choice to take these drugs.

01:11:41:01 - 01:11:49:14
Anders Sorensen
So I think there's both like a psychological and like biological level. Obviously the range of possible adverse effects.

01:11:49:16 - 01:11:50:19
Roger McFillin
Is long.

01:11:50:21 - 01:12:18:17
Anders Sorensen
Described. Some might be maybe we don't even know it because the long term studies are so, so poor. But like these these drugs enter the whole body. That's why the range of adverse effects of side effects, as I would call it, is all long. But also like just the not just but the psychological aspects of having numbed your emotions for long is, for me, the most important one to talk about.

01:12:18:17 - 01:12:20:20
Roger McFillin
All right, well, let me stop you there. You said numbing.

01:12:20:20 - 01:12:21:07
Anders Sorensen
Numbing.

01:12:21:08 - 01:12:24:08
Roger McFillin
Is that a consequence of these drugs is the second time you've used that word.

01:12:24:08 - 01:12:49:02
Anders Sorensen
That's what they do to varying degrees. Well, they suppress, alter, change, put a lid on, suppressed a lot of different words for what they do. I use the analogy of a, and I know it's not in terms of how they work, but the idea of, of of painkillers like numbing pain. You can take a substance that makes it possible for you to, to, to, to be in pain for whatever reason, you can't feel it because the drug has blocked it.

01:12:49:02 - 01:13:10:15
Anders Sorensen
It's the exact same way psychiatric drugs do. It's just for emotions a bit more fluffy, tangible concept, of course. So really the, the, the adverse effect I see most from my point of view is when helping people off of these drugs is that they've had their emotion numbed for so long, they've been out of touch with themselves because that was that's what the drug does.

01:13:10:17 - 01:13:36:09
Anders Sorensen
That's what makes it feels can make it feel so good when you're a very low state, very anxious, very depressed, very psychotic, whatever. It can feel attractive to not feel it. That's the emotional numbing effect doing its thing. But if you continue to do that, well, if numb your compass, you've numb your signals. They're telling you about what you want in life, what you need and what you value, goals, values and needs.

01:13:36:09 - 01:13:50:15
Anders Sorensen
That's what that compass and imagine living without that for this and that many years, and then returning to feeling that again. That's the the biggest adverse effect I would see with drugs. So I that makes sense.

01:13:50:15 - 01:14:02:01
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And I certainly agree with you on two perspectives. So one is I think that's the most frequent reported consequence of taking that like an emotional detachment, like a numbing.

01:14:02:01 - 01:14:04:19
Anders Sorensen
Yeah. On apathy or an indifference and in a lot of words for.

01:14:04:21 - 01:14:24:15
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And I think it's important to let the listeners know that, that it can be aversive for many people like that is we seem like, well, it's logical to say, well, if someone is experiencing intense emotional distress, to not feel that anymore is somehow like a valued way to like go about life. But that is not necessarily the case.

01:14:24:15 - 01:14:32:12
Roger McFillin
That creates a lot of distress for people, because it's not only that high distress that gets numbed, it's all these other positive emotions.

01:14:32:12 - 01:14:33:03
Anders Sorensen
Exactly.

01:14:33:05 - 01:14:49:03
Roger McFillin
So I saw a I read a paper which is with self-report of people who took drugs, and emotional numbness was the highest. So but that was only about 65% of the people reported emotional numbness. Yeah. Some people experienced the exact opposite. Yeah. What's happening?

01:14:49:03 - 01:15:08:07
Anders Sorensen
Well, they can have paradoxical effects. That's actually an element. Back to a question before of there being some kind of expertise in that. There isn't always an individual aspect of this. Like some people have a paradox effect. Some have that of benzos too, like some can get more agitated and anxious and restlessness from a benzo, which is supposed to do the opposite.

01:15:08:13 - 01:15:35:15
Anders Sorensen
So I guess it's not new. The drugs can have different effects on different people. In fact, that's the first sentence in the book they can have that. But still, and this is really an important thing to maybe to, to spell out a bit like it's not that these drugs, however much we choose to call them anti-depressants or antipsychotics, it's not that they enter the brain of the psyche with surgical precision to just remove the depression or the anxiety or the psychosis.

01:15:35:17 - 01:15:47:17
Anders Sorensen
They know all sorts of things. Also things you don't want numbed or altered. Your motivation and your drive, your happiness, your joy, all these things, your creativity, spirituality. It numbs all sorts of things.

01:15:47:19 - 01:15:50:03
Roger McFillin
Everything that makes you human. Yeah.

01:15:50:05 - 01:16:09:07
Anders Sorensen
And that can feel incredibly appealing and relieving in the short term. If alternative is a deep, deep depression or an anxious state or what it is. But that's not the same as saying that's a it's a long term strategy. And it's not to say that we've now fixed the problem because we've cut the cord to the to the reactions.

01:16:09:09 - 01:16:35:19
Roger McFillin
So I know, I know the question that maybe a lot of people might have now listening to this, if if these drugs are like numbing, they're detaching you from the intensity of the experience. What is happening when there's these known risks of inducing suicide? We have a black box warning here in the United States. I don't think a black box warning is enough.

01:16:35:19 - 01:17:02:16
Roger McFillin
It's the it's the one step before you pull drug from the market. They say it's about a double risk for it. For under the age of 25. It's ridiculous to say that that has a different effect. It for over 25. But when I go into the clinical research and talk to experts on my podcast, it's almost when it comes to studies of young people, it's usually somewhere between a four fold to six fold.

01:17:02:16 - 01:17:10:10
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Risk in the actual data. Yeah. So what is happening there that's inducing somebody to want to end their life?

01:17:10:12 - 01:17:32:20
Anders Sorensen
I think I haven't I'm not an expert on that part of the literature, but I have ideas. I think there is a there must be some direct way that that drug just induces that thought, that idea, that sensation. I think there's a direct way, as there is with weight gain, for example. Stupid example, maybe, but there is definitely a direct way for an antipsychotic to cause weight gain.

01:17:32:20 - 01:17:40:08
Anders Sorensen
And there's an indirect way meaning that you crave more and eat more, but there's certainly people who gain on weight without even eating more. So I think there is a direct way like.

01:17:40:08 - 01:17:40:24
Roger McFillin
Metabolic.

01:17:41:00 - 01:18:09:10
Anders Sorensen
Metabolic weight. Exactly. And for some reason, I'm not an expert on how that would work. There must be one and such for suicide. Yeah, attempts and thoughts and ideation. But I also think there is an indirect way if, if you if you've had presented psychiatric drugs, if that was presented to you as the ultimate treatment, the best one we've got, and that turns out to not work well, that there's not far from that.

01:18:09:12 - 01:18:34:03
Anders Sorensen
And suicide like obviously if you if I'm presenting this, this is the gold standard of treatment. If you keep hearing that narrative and it doesn't work for you as it doesn't for most at least antidepressants, well, what's left then? That's really a recipe for the hopelessness that we know that suicide is a strategy used to solve, like suicide is the ultimate strategy to get out of something, really.

01:18:34:04 - 01:18:55:06
Anders Sorensen
And actually, it can feel pretty relieving for someone in the moment when they're really distressed that the idea of having to take their own life, so that can come into the category of strategies to. And that strategy obviously makes more sense. The more you think it's hopeless and the more you've had drugs presented to you as the best thing we have and that not working, if that makes sense.

01:18:55:06 - 01:19:00:05
Anders Sorensen
Like there's kind of an indirect psychological way to that, which is really, really sad.

01:19:00:07 - 01:19:16:20
Roger McFillin
Yeah. I mean, that's such a great point. Because you're actually inducing hopelessness. Yeah. So when you sell the narrative that this drug is antidepressant. Yeah. And it doesn't have that effect and the overwhelming amount of people. Yeah, yeah. And you are inducing a hopelessness. Yeah.

01:19:16:20 - 01:19:31:16
Anders Sorensen
So you're selling hope first. Hope hope hope. Yes. This going to work. And then that the the contrast to the hopelessness that enters when it doesn't work is so massive that it just takes one second, one minute for it to, to lead to the, the ultimate solution.

01:19:31:18 - 01:19:42:13
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Yeah. There's a darkness. Yes. Right. Yes. You know, so I think there's physiological effects that induce suicide. And I do think there's psychological ones.

01:19:42:14 - 01:19:50:05
Anders Sorensen
That's what I sometimes my English is not like with direct and indirect ways. I think there's a direct biological, pharmacological and a psychological.

01:19:50:11 - 01:20:14:12
Roger McFillin
Because some there's a percentage of people where an SSRI, for example, induce mania. Yeah. And a rumination. Yeah. And like these intrusive thoughts, like, I spoke with one woman who took an SSRI, never suicidal previously, but she got hooked on this thought over and over again that she had to take her own life like a loud voice in her head.

01:20:14:14 - 01:20:26:05
Roger McFillin
I've seen this with other drugs too, and just not SSRI eyes. I saw another person who, described being in, like a dreamlike state. Yeah.

01:20:26:07 - 01:20:29:07
Anders Sorensen
Psychoactive. Like, it's really. Yeah. Like to put on this.

01:20:29:07 - 01:20:54:06
Roger McFillin
Detached from reality, maybe. And so, you know, what we have to employ as human beings for like, discernment and judgment is being connected to reality, right? There are consequence to our actions. And it's like that became blurred when they were taking the drug. Yeah. Others. And that's why I brought up this discussion about how one defines depression.

01:20:54:08 - 01:21:19:21
Roger McFillin
It the depression can always be defined by an intensity of an emotion. Depression can be experienced by the lack of emotional states. Right. Not being able to experience joy. Not feeling motivated, motivated. This, I think, inward kind of reflection into your own mind and.

01:21:19:24 - 01:21:20:22
Anders Sorensen
Excessively like.

01:21:20:22 - 01:21:21:16
Roger McFillin
Excessive too.

01:21:21:16 - 01:21:24:02
Anders Sorensen
Much. That's part of the recipe. Yeah, yeah.

01:21:24:04 - 01:21:50:21
Roger McFillin
Like replaying the worst events of your life over and over again and coming to the conclusion you're just horrible. Yeah. And then you take this drug and it, like, depresses you more. You know, like depression, meaning the suppression of anything that could be even positive. Like, food doesn't even taste good anymore. Right? And now you are really reinforcing the idea that there is something broken about.

01:21:50:21 - 01:22:13:21
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Of course. Right. Yeah. And I think people have to be aware of all of those consequences. Right. And you can move out of the discussion of simply saying some things. Medicine can be helpful for some and not for others. Talk about the risk, blah, blah, blah. Know get into more of a nuanced discussion about what this is actually doing, what it's not doing, how it can affect you.

01:22:13:22 - 01:22:38:10
Roger McFillin
Nobody gets that. You can't get that in a 15 minute no. You know, meeting with your primary care doctor, right? That can only take place through extended yeah, extended time. And the unfortunate thing about this, I'm sure you've had this experience experiences what gets them in to see the drug dealer in the first place and get caught up in their cycle of, like viewing this through a lens of mental illness is usually typical life events.

01:22:38:10 - 01:22:44:01
Roger McFillin
Yeah, it could be a breakup. Yeah. Some fear, loss of a job, struggling to figure out who you are.

01:22:44:01 - 01:22:44:22
Anders Sorensen
Something happened.

01:22:45:00 - 01:23:10:18
Roger McFillin
Something happened in your life. And it's very it's it's an even if nobody intervened, like, no intervention, no medical intervention, no psychological intervention, it would probably resolve itself on its own. Instead, were intervening or intervening quickly. And now we're creating a lifelong problems. Yeah. My question for you is, do you think we're conducting, like, maybe what could be one of the largest uncontrolled experiments on human population?

01:23:10:18 - 01:23:25:19
Anders Sorensen
Definitely. It definitely. In terms of the, the, the long term aspect, because most drug trials are 8 to 12 weeks, right. So it should be beyond dispute that those trials cannot answer the question of long term effects. We're only seeing them now.

01:23:25:21 - 01:23:26:17
Roger McFillin
Yeah.

01:23:26:19 - 01:23:35:24
Anders Sorensen
If we're seeing them, maybe we're not seeing them because they're covered, because we don't put two and two together and say this is related to a long term use of a drug. So maybe we're not seeing it, but it's definitely there.

01:23:36:01 - 01:23:53:23
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Let's talk let's talk about kind of the results of this uncontrolled experiment. Okay. If 1 in 4, one and five of every people I'm going to come into contact with in the general American population, how does that affect the way we relate to each other potentially.

01:23:54:00 - 01:24:10:09
Anders Sorensen
Or it could vary. But it's definitely how to put that not authentic. Can't be if it's not your true emotional reactions it can't be authentic whatever that means.

01:24:10:11 - 01:24:34:20
Roger McFillin
Which is cut off which is fascinating. I was I was telling you a little bit about a podcast I was watching with Zach Bush, Doctor Zach Bush and we can actually, we can measure electric, fields, biomedical fields, resonance. Right. Like these things can be measured. So it's outside of the, five senses. Right.

01:24:35:01 - 01:24:58:01
Roger McFillin
But like our phone, for example, emits a frequency. Right. And he was talking about these studies that are going on. This is kind of science that's kind of suppressed from mainstream literature. And we can talk about why that might be. You know, he communicates us to be energetic beings, right? Like, obviously, if you look at Western society and the way that we view the body, it's almost like a collection of parts that don't even work together.

01:24:58:01 - 01:25:19:00
Roger McFillin
You know, you go to the neurologist or psychiatrist for supposedly a brain. You go to your internist for something that's going on in your stomach, gastro, things like that. You got your PCP, you got your orthopedic, you got all these specialties right, and you're sent all these people as if the body does not work. Yeah, you know, in concert with each other.

01:25:19:00 - 01:25:37:01
Roger McFillin
And then that one specialist can do something for that one condition, which is a huge failure. Right. It's a huge failure on our, evolution, you know, of human species and doing what is best and healthy for the body. We're experiencing the consequences of it. But this idea about viewing us as, you know, energetic beings, and we all feel this, right?

01:25:37:01 - 01:25:40:14
Roger McFillin
Like you have a vibe when you walk around somebody you connect with, someone.

01:25:40:14 - 01:25:41:10
Anders Sorensen
You use for those. Yeah.

01:25:41:11 - 01:26:11:15
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And love, compassion, things like that were and had been, like the highest frequency that could be emitted. Right. Measured in human beings. And how how do you measure that? I'm not sure of the actual technology we're picking up on those fields, but you have somebody, like, imagining somebody that they love. And, you're trying to create the experience of compassion, caring.

01:26:11:15 - 01:26:46:11
Roger McFillin
And so you can measure, like the shift in this bio field that's created by the human being. But he said, like he said on this podcast, that they've discovered that there's a higher frequency that can be emitted, greater than love. And he used the word that you used authenticity. Oh, right. And I think he was saying, like to achieve an experience of love, which is more than you know, the Hollywood version of love, you know, the energy that can be created amongst each other to care about each other, to think about each other, forgiveness, doing things for others, serving others purpose and all that.

01:26:46:13 - 01:27:05:07
Roger McFillin
Certainly, you know that people were creating it in their mind. But when you're not thinking, when you're just being, you know, he says, I think it's you're you're aligned with your soul's purpose and that level of authenticity is seen in a lightness around you and your laughter and, your interest in others. You're just being free. You're in a flow.

01:27:05:07 - 01:27:25:15
Roger McFillin
You're connected to nature. You're not a thought. You're not playing the character. You know that many of us have been conditioned to have the play, right. We were talking about this yesterday at, at dinner, that we kind of create these characters for ourselves. Part of it are socially conditioned because we have to respond in a certain way to get the things that we we want, but that can feel very, very inauthentic.

01:27:25:15 - 01:27:40:16
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And your book does a great job of this because you're talking about the authenticity, the experience of emotions as very valid indicators of picking up on things in our life that we have to face. We have to just so we have to use it, but we also use it to bond and connect with each other. Yes, yes.

01:27:40:16 - 01:27:41:02
Roger McFillin
Right.

01:27:41:04 - 01:27:47:24
Anders Sorensen
So that's why we have mirror neurons to put empathy. Like they wouldn't be there if they weren't important.

01:27:48:01 - 01:27:53:02
Roger McFillin
So there's real social implications of this kind of detachment that's connected.

01:27:53:04 - 01:28:13:03
Anders Sorensen
Sure. If that's numbed to if that's cut off causing problems and worst of all, without seeing it, we might not attribute problems to, to to a drug doing that. It's it's emotions are strong stuff. They're supposed to be because they, they they're trying to motivate us to do something.

01:28:13:03 - 01:28:17:02
Roger McFillin
We need want.

01:28:17:04 - 01:28:18:11
Anders Sorensen
They have to be strong. Yeah.

01:28:18:11 - 01:28:29:05
Roger McFillin
So let me put it this way. Like all right. What would you say? Like some of the most common reasons why people feel empty, you know, depressed and struggle in life where some of the common reasons.

01:28:29:07 - 01:28:46:16
Anders Sorensen
Well, it could be I'm sorry to put everything in the category of, of strategies, but that's really. And you could use whatever would you want. It's just a way of talking about behaviors is having a function. They do something and becoming apathetic. How do you say apathetic?

01:28:46:16 - 01:28:47:05
Roger McFillin
Apathetic?

01:28:47:07 - 01:28:55:08
Anders Sorensen
Yeah. Becoming that or shutting down is a strategy to serious adversity, like just shutting down and becoming becoming indifferent towards.

01:28:55:10 - 01:28:55:17
Roger McFillin

01:28:55:23 - 01:29:20:05
Anders Sorensen
Everything is definitely a an automatic one strategy to having endured severe negative effect adversity. It's a strategy for the body. You just shut down everything. But in order to shut down the really tough things, it has to shut down the positive ones too. It's not selective. So a lot of of what we're fine with, how to say if that was what you meant, like the naturally occurring indifference, not drug induced.

01:29:20:07 - 01:29:27:21
Anders Sorensen
That comes as a consequence to some context or situation in your life that was unbearable. But that's why that strategy came into place.

01:29:27:21 - 01:29:54:12
Roger McFillin
And what I was getting to was the overwhelming amount of people that are suffering in front of me. That context is relational. Yeah, yeah, it has to do in some regard to, something that is happening either the lack of love, connection, purpose, meaning or the fear. Yeah, that is presented of other people, the judgment. It's almost entirely relational.

01:29:54:12 - 01:30:13:22
Anders Sorensen
Yeah. Right. Because we're social creatures. Like, we might not see that living in these big, stupid cities and people all around, but that's new to our human experience, right? We're social creatures. So you can be absolute sure that our basic mechanism really our ancestors, only survived by standing together in groups and being there for each other. It's not that long ago.

01:30:13:22 - 01:30:39:17
Anders Sorensen
Evolution is speaking. So it's in you and me. It's in everyone still. Yeah. You have to recognize that it's it's being isolated or ostracized. They're not part of the group is dangerous. Yes. As dangerous as the poison and as the, you know, directly things you categorize as dangerous physically to to you, to your life, that is, to at least our bodies respond in that way.

01:30:39:19 - 01:31:08:06
Roger McFillin
Yeah. So, let's let's consider this then. If the drugs that they're mass prescribing, for any sort of emotional upset and distress will ultimately create a detachment from each other, then the consequence, the long term predictable consequence is that we will be more distant, detached from each other ourselves, which in itself will create more mental health problems.

01:31:08:06 - 01:31:09:05
Roger McFillin
Yeah.

01:31:09:07 - 01:31:10:03
Anders Sorensen
Because your.

01:31:10:07 - 01:31:12:04
Roger McFillin
Your.

01:31:12:06 - 01:31:33:22
Anders Sorensen
If what, what ends up happening is you're cutting yourself off from the natural signal. You would have to go seek out. Yeah. Connectedness and belonging and being nice to people. And if that's cut off well how can you do it. You'd have to do it like rationally put a lot of effort into doing it anyway. If you don't have that signal, if that's cut off, obviously, how can we be motivated to do it?

01:31:33:24 - 01:31:39:09
Anders Sorensen
So why would you do it? Yeah, emotions are the reason why we do stuff, both the positive and negative ones.

01:31:39:11 - 01:31:57:00
Roger McFillin
Yeah, the older the older I get, the more spiritually connected I get. And I can't help but see this as, a spiritual war. I mean, there's a level of darkness and evil to that. It is so predictable and so common sense when you think about it. Yeah. I don't know how you see it any other way.

01:31:57:01 - 01:32:26:15
Roger McFillin
No. Right. Like detaching ourselves from nature, from each other, from ourselves. Purposely very similar to putting on masks. Yeah. The the provocation of of of Covid. Yeah. The the constant fear porn that exists through government, media and social media. Yeah. It is trying to create a, a distance, between each other because, you know, people love connecting feeling for each other.

01:32:26:17 - 01:32:51:24
Roger McFillin
Courage. You're not easily controllable. No, you know, people are not easily controlled who, you know, are connected to something much greater than them people. The people who are controlled are the ones in a state of fear. Yeah, right. So I don't know. I mean, I see psychiatric drugs as part of a mechanism for population control.

01:32:52:01 - 01:33:14:03
Anders Sorensen
And. So the question is, at what level is that the story that the person prescribing with them thinks that way? I think maybe at the top level it is, but I think the individual doctor or a psychiatrist or whatever person prescribing them has genuinely bought into the idea of these being diseases that they treat.

01:33:14:05 - 01:33:15:20
Roger McFillin
I think I think they're brainwashed and.

01:33:15:20 - 01:33:33:18
Anders Sorensen
That for me is actually a to some degree, a worse story, that it's led, that they've succeeded in really presenting this narrative in a way that they genuinely believe that I'm helping you by reducing symptoms of something standing in the book. Yeah, that to me is the worst story.

01:33:33:18 - 01:33:44:22
Roger McFillin
As as a psychologist, don't you see part of the psychological operation of mass manipulation that's been used to create this expert class? Of course. And the it's brilliant work.

01:33:44:22 - 01:33:48:07
Anders Sorensen
It's really it's it's.

01:33:48:09 - 01:34:10:11
Roger McFillin
It's interesting. Like, I had a gentleman contact me, and I'm gonna actually have him on the podcast in a few weeks. Will be sitting right here in this new studio. Because he is a physician, and I recently wrote an article about, you know, how your, how your primary care doc became, you know, a vaccine, pusher and the drug pusher, you know, really, they're like, part of a greater complex.

01:34:10:11 - 01:34:34:15
Roger McFillin
You know, we're not really talking about risks and benefits anymore. We're not evaluating science. You don't have independent doctors. They're just pushing through protocols. And I wrote an article, kind of trying to break down the psychology of this, and I remember, like, working in schools, for example. And what happens in public schools in this country is that it really does train obedience, you know, obedience to authority.

01:34:34:17 - 01:34:57:24
Roger McFillin
You follow the rules. It's it's a lot. It's not a lot of critical analysis. You're not taught critical analysis, but those who succeed, especially in, like, math and science, they're really, really good. They have strong working memory, right? They have this ability to remember things that are told to them. And they regurgitate it back verbatim. Yeah, to the authority figures.

01:34:57:24 - 01:35:27:20
Roger McFillin
So they do very well on tests. They're going to do well on standardized tests. Right. And we see that we, we, we see this in psychiatry and we see this with, with psychiatrists because they're, they've been through the system. They went to medical school. They've passed medical school. Although there are there are some aspects of psychiatry which, you know, I've seen this where people were struggling in medical school and that medical school pushed them into that residency, because they were lower performing.

01:35:27:20 - 01:35:52:18
Roger McFillin
But I don't want to say that as a general rule. But there's something about the way that they're taught, right, that, it's it's really conditioned into them. Yeah. The this is the gold standard science. This is the best available evidence. You see, this conditioning in the United States is the pinnacle of scientific and medical supremacy.

01:35:52:20 - 01:36:15:15
Roger McFillin
It's a propaganda machine that's been pushed over and over and over and over again on us all. There's this illusion of freedom. There's this illusion of independent critical thought. And you see, it is like when you get into these conversations, they say the same thing. They'll say things like, well, the data supports. Yeah. Or the research supports the classics.

01:36:15:16 - 01:36:36:24
Roger McFillin
Yeah. You go into specifics, right. You want them to talk about the designs you want them to cite, like not the study, not something that was just published in a major journal. Know you want to get them into the actual specifics of the design. Yeah. How it was developed. And what are the problems with that design? And it's nothing.

01:36:36:24 - 01:36:44:09
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Like they can't even communicate it all that good. That is regurgitating the expert viewpoint.

01:36:44:15 - 01:37:06:20
Anders Sorensen
Yeah, exactly. Based on an assumption that it must be true because it's in the fancy journal and it's published by this in that author. And that's really the interesting point in itself, that a lot of psychiatry critics overall are first and foremost methodology nerds in some way. They know how to tell apart good and bad science. That's what we were trained at.

01:37:06:20 - 01:37:42:15
Anders Sorensen
I did my PhD in the Concrete Institute in Denmark. Like, that's what we're trained to do, to do Cochrane review systematic reviews, not just replicating the the results, but asking the questions of how did how did they arrive at these results to look at that method section. That's the most important one. And I find like sorry to say, but unless you're a psychiatrist who have been deliberately seeking out that knowledge of methods like it's in your interest, psychiatrists generally the easiest to debate that because of that exact mechanism, you just say they're just trained in replicating because they have to believe that it's it's true.

01:37:42:15 - 01:38:07:05
Anders Sorensen
And it's a in a clinical setting. When I just heard you describe that, it really sounds like the opposite of the thing that I'm using most, most as a clinician, like curiosity about what your as my client patient are saying about how you feel and what you've been through and how you behave and how you had to do something that harmed you in the long way.

01:38:07:05 - 01:38:26:05
Anders Sorensen
Some strategies that ended up being harmful, but they were meaningful and functional in the situation like that. Curiosity is the word I constantly return. True, I have to be, as a clinician, curious, more than knowledgeable of all sorts of facts, if that makes sense. And that sounds to me that that is taking out of the equation.

01:38:26:07 - 01:38:54:01
Roger McFillin
It sure is this way. Yeah. And there's there's this inherent conflict that exists now, this is where modern psychiatry has evolved to, unfortunately, their sole purpose in the entire medical system is to write those prescription drugs. There's nothing else, nothing else. Which is sad. I mean, it's really sad because I think there's a real place for physicians.

01:38:54:03 - 01:39:22:24
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And being able to intervene with the health of our nation, one of those aspects is understanding the role of, of various medical conditions in chronic disease on mental and emotional functioning. We're starting to see this with the metabolic revolution and how certain, medical conditions can induce what we label as psychiatric symptoms, because that's where they're going.

01:39:22:24 - 01:39:53:00
Roger McFillin
They're going into the psychiatric specialty. Yeah, but they're just drugs. They're not dealing with the root cause. So you take away them identifying this as a discrete medical condition that requires a psychiatric drug that alters, brain functioning. They don't exist. They're done. And they have no place in the medical system. Yeah. Can you understand how right there.

01:39:53:00 - 01:40:19:01
Roger McFillin
It's such an inherent conflict. No one is going that most people aren't going to act against their own self-interest. No. Right. So the smart ones are the ones who see the tea leaves. Yeah. Who understand the shifts and what's coming. Yeah. And they're doing they're going to different areas metabolic psychiatry, nutritional psychiatry, drug tapering. Yeah. Exactly. That's the only.

01:40:19:03 - 01:40:34:00
Anders Sorensen
Spaces for that specialty to really have an existence that makes sense. Sounds weird, but that doesn't mean we're not supposed to use psychiatric drugs at all like a benzo is. It can be an incredibly strong, long, short term to do some sleep.

01:40:34:02 - 01:40:35:00
Roger McFillin
Yep.

01:40:35:02 - 01:40:48:06
Anders Sorensen
Really hammer down some anxiety. It's not the same as saying it's solution, but there definitely is a role for that. But not in the way it's used now. Not with that specialty. Right. Expertise in that sense behind it.

01:40:48:06 - 01:40:57:12
Roger McFillin
Emergency medicine. Yeah. Right. It's it's it's used as a tool in emergency medicine in crisis situations. But that would decrease the market so dramatically.

01:40:57:14 - 01:40:59:06
Anders Sorensen
That story is never going to come from that.

01:40:59:08 - 01:41:00:15
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Do stablish it. Never.

01:41:00:15 - 01:41:01:20
Anders Sorensen
Well thank you.

01:41:01:22 - 01:41:20:03
Roger McFillin
Which leads us to your area of specialization. Right. Oh, yeah. And we're going to kind of get into some of the nitty gritty about this, because I really do believe we are in the midst of an epidemic. Yeah. And it's only going to get worse. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there who just perceive what they're going through on these drugs as their mental illness.

01:41:20:03 - 01:41:55:09
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And, once people wake up and everyone's slowly waking up. Yeah. Because of podcasts like this, conversations like this, it's expanding. They're going to want to know how to get out of the trap. They feel trapped. They they're going to want expert, guidance and support. We might increase hopelessness or we might increase, hope because people believe there is, a way to break through this cycle of drug dependance and numbness and detachment and the loss of quality of life that so many people exist.

01:41:55:11 - 01:42:17:01
Roger McFillin
Let's start with this. You do describe, dependance. Withdrawal. Yeah. As a science in and of itself. Right. So just tell us what happens when somebody stops or reduces a psychiatric drug that they've been taking for some extended period of time.

01:42:17:03 - 01:42:48:18
Anders Sorensen
So if you just stop, you make you shock the system. You make two dramatic. It changed in whatever neurotransmitters the drug has been affecting for the body to keep up. So the body is lazy in some way. It tries to figure out what we're doing to us, and then it adapts its definition of something adapting right. So you disrupt that balance that the drug that sorry, that the body has been had to find on the drug if you just stop.

01:42:48:18 - 01:43:06:06
Anders Sorensen
So you're messing with the chemicals too much for the body to to keep up. And that's the definition of withdrawal state, really. That's why we want to taper off the drug. We want to introduce a series of smaller tasks for the body that it knows how to fix. That's really the basic premise behind tapering.

01:43:06:06 - 01:43:10:12
Roger McFillin
Can you describe some of the withdrawal? Some like what would be predictable that someone makes a list?

01:43:10:15 - 01:43:32:12
Anders Sorensen
It's a long list. And withdrawal symptoms are communication from the body in the sense that, you've perturbed. It's it's at the balance it had to find on the drug. It's a very long list. It could be physical, like nausea, headaches, dizziness, numbness. I don't know what to call those in English. I can't remember the word like.

01:43:32:14 - 01:43:53:02
Anders Sorensen
Like having ants, crawling anesthesia. I can see, I could see CO2 is a big one there, which is Greek for cannot sit still like it's an extreme and of of inner restlessness and anxiety. You would call it anxiety. Some people would call anxiety if they didn't know how to, how to. But but it did. But but it's like a level above that accusations.

01:43:53:02 - 01:44:13:16
Anders Sorensen
Worst. Inner restlessness, difficulty concentrating. Obviously a low mood, like depressed apathy, indifference. All the anxiety is a big one to a lot of people tend to have vivid dreams that really tops the list for many people. Sometimes they're nightmares.

01:44:13:18 - 01:44:15:19
Anders Sorensen
Suicidal ideation.

01:44:15:21 - 01:44:19:09
Roger McFillin
In some respects, it's worse. A lot worse than what they were in.

01:44:19:14 - 01:44:44:07
Anders Sorensen
For many people is worse. Yeah, of course. And that's really what it if you if the average doctor or clinician just spent 1 or 2 minutes examining what these symptoms are compared to what the person was taking the drug for, they would see obviously there's an overlap. That's where the whole problem comes in. There's an overlap, but there are certainly also new symptoms that have absolutely nothing to do with, with with emotional suffering.

01:44:44:09 - 01:45:03:02
Anders Sorensen
So you just spent 1 or 2 minutes, you would see that this cannot be a relapse to your underlying conditions, withdrawal. And that's really what this science is about. Obviously, it's about how to taper in a way, how to remove the drug from the body in a way that the body can, can adjust during the way. And that's why it sometimes can take a long time.

01:45:03:07 - 01:45:24:09
Anders Sorensen
If you don't do that, if you taper too fast or just stop, that's where we have this in academic terms, a confound like, you have no idea whether you're accessing your true underlying state and how you feel or withdrawal reaction on top. And the reason those two things are so this distinction is so important is they call for different things.

01:45:24:09 - 01:45:45:11
Anders Sorensen
So withdrawal reaction calls for for time for the body to adapt and smaller reductions. So in its severe state it definitely it's your body trying to make you take the drug again and then taper slower. So withdrawal reaction calls for that. Whereas a relapse or I would just call it reconnection to how you feeling that call for something else.

01:45:45:11 - 01:45:51:12
Anders Sorensen
Figuring out what that is, helping a person through that. That's why this distinction is so crucial to make.

01:45:51:14 - 01:46:12:15
Roger McFillin
Okay. We're going to use specific examples. Yes, please. And I'd really be interested to know how you would approach the case. Right. Obviously very complicated what's happening here over the United States. Let's, let's talk about one rather simple example. I think people go into their primary care doctors for a life event, prescribe the drug like Zoloft or Prozac and SSRI.

01:46:12:15 - 01:46:35:17
Roger McFillin
Yeah, right. And they're just on it for like a decade. Yeah. Okay. They're not waking up, you know, they're following the podcast. They're listening. They're understanding that, you know, it's not great for their health. They want to get off this drug. They're on it for a decade. Let's say they're on the max dose of, like, a Zoloft or Prozac.

01:46:35:19 - 01:46:38:22
Roger McFillin
Talk us through. Yeah. What the process is going to look like.

01:46:38:24 - 01:47:02:24
Anders Sorensen
So both of those drugs you mentioned, they increase serotonin. That's right. It doesn't mean there is an imbalance, but that's what they do. So in the drug increases serotonin, the body decreases its sensitivity to serotonin. That's that's called the downregulation. It's just a fancy term for adaptation. The body adapts to whatever you're doing to it. And it's basically principal biological mechanism.

01:47:03:00 - 01:47:26:23
Anders Sorensen
Mechanism called homo stasis is the body's attempt to restore balance. So and as long as you just take the drug over the years, you have the effects and the side effects that that causes, but you won't feel withdrawal. That just how to say it lies dormant underneath your regular daily dose. So as long as you keep taking the drug, the body is in imbalance, right?

01:47:26:23 - 01:47:49:01
Anders Sorensen
And homeostasis, it gets what it wants. And that's the mechanism you disrupt. Once you lower the dose beyond a certain point, because now enters withdrawal, because now you, you, you're you're as you lower the dose, you lower the serotonin levels. But the body will keep expected the amount of drug that you've put into it over that decade in a way that it reacts to it absence.

01:47:49:01 - 01:48:05:17
Anders Sorensen
And that's the withdrawal effect. So as long as you reduce the dose in small enough amounts, which I'm sure we'll get back to in the end is very, very, very small. Also smaller than you can get the tablets by and then you won't feel withdrawal or will be minimized.

01:48:05:19 - 01:48:12:09
Roger McFillin
Okay. Yeah. All right. Let's get into specifics about that. What does it look like? How much of a dose reduction over what amount of time.

01:48:12:09 - 01:48:39:08
Anders Sorensen
So the so, so to reduce so tablets. So the very annoying answer to that question is that we cannot set up. And there are lots of chapters on this in the book explaining why we cannot just say we'll never be able to. We cannot just say reduced by this and that amount and this and every week or other, like we can just say reduce that many percentage that time because it's so individual and it depends on your dose.

01:48:39:08 - 01:49:00:04
Anders Sorensen
So if you're on a very high dose and these are these occupancy curves, we always show if you've seen those and it's not a linear like the way the drug works is that it's actually it's not that it's stronger at lower doses. Obviously it's stronger at higher doses. But the majority of the effect of the drug is in a very tiny portion of the dose.

01:49:00:06 - 01:49:30:10
Anders Sorensen
So that's a long way to say that the amount you can decrease with the dose. And this is where the art thing comes into it depends on what dose you're at. So say you're on 200mg of Zoloft. For example. In nine out of ten cases there will be absolutely no rationale and tapering with these 5 to 10 percentages that we talk about in that dose range, there's no need to go from 200 to 1, 90 to 1, like, because usually that part of the dose as well, crazy as it sound, has no effect.

01:49:30:10 - 01:49:47:09
Anders Sorensen
So you can remove it pretty fast. And that's where we get these very characteristic hyperbolic tapering schemes where if you're on a high dose, you can remove more in the beginning and then there will be a point where your reductions need to be smaller and small. I'm sorry this is such a long answer, but that's because it is complicated in that sense.

01:49:47:09 - 01:50:08:07
Anders Sorensen
So coming off of psychiatric drugs is it's very predictable and very unpredictable. There's an unpredictable element to it because we don't know exactly at what dose the body will suddenly react with withdrawal symptoms. So say for an example that you are on 100mg of Zoloft, let's say that as an example, you taper ten milligrams every time. Don't do that.

01:50:08:07 - 01:50:20:07
Anders Sorensen
But just as an example, 98 or 70, 60, 50, all the way, you have to understand that the next reduction, the next ten you remove is in fact a bigger reduction than the previous one, even though both were ten.

01:50:20:07 - 01:50:20:22
Roger McFillin
Percent and to.

01:50:20:22 - 01:50:21:19
Anders Sorensen
A percentage right.

01:50:21:19 - 01:50:22:08
Roger McFillin
It's wrong.

01:50:22:14 - 01:50:47:10
Anders Sorensen
Yeah, it's it's definitely percentage wise, like going from 20 to 10 is half. Going from 100 to 90 is a 10th. But it's worse than that too, because those ten milligrams in the and the end or towards sera will have a bigger effect. And that has to do with how the drugs work. So the difference between taking nothing and taking ten milligram is massive, and the difference between taking ten and 20 is substantial, but not as much as.

01:50:47:15 - 01:51:08:04
Anders Sorensen
And for each ten you add, this is just an example, just converted to whatever dose range your drug comes in. The difference is less. And when we taper we go the other way like we go towards zero. And that means that each reduction will have a bigger effect. So what happens ten out of ten times is that there will be a reduction, even though it wasn't bigger than the previous one.

01:51:08:04 - 01:51:13:13
Anders Sorensen
In terms of milligram, it hits harder. That's when you've gone below that, that saturation point.

01:51:13:15 - 01:51:27:12
Roger McFillin
And I think what you're speaking to is the biological diversity that exists in all people. We're all individualized. Their reactions can vary greatly from people who've been taking these drugs, and we don't know when it's going to hit that curve.

01:51:27:12 - 01:52:01:12
Anders Sorensen
Because it's individual. Yeah, we can say it with some. And I have that in the book too. Like arrange what usually happens. Okay. So we could say that for Zoloft for example, it's usually between. 25 and 50 I would say meaning some people can get all the way down to 25 milligram ish before withdrawal starts to hit. And the, the the the both motivating and demotivating part of the story is that you're not halfway at all, even at 25, even if you came from 200, that's what we got to understand.

01:52:01:14 - 01:52:23:02
Anders Sorensen
Like 100 isn't half of 250 isn't half of 100, and so on and so forth. So whereas some people will definitely react with withdrawal symptoms at 50 milligram and some people also higher. And that's where the element of it varies comes in. And we cannot we don't know how to say in advance you're going to react at 25 and you're going to react at 100 and you're going 50.

01:52:23:07 - 01:52:48:06
Roger McFillin
And I think some of the things that we're seeing where there's crisis events, we're seeing, under these conditions where somebody abruptly stops their drug. Yeah. Dose increases, dose decreases. Right. Those changes, those shifts in do have induced crisis events in our country. And I think they're, they're factors associated to suicide and violence. Yeah. Among other, psychiatric hospitalizations.

01:52:48:08 - 01:53:15:12
Roger McFillin
So it's really important for people to know. And I want to, really emphasize this is for the overwhelming majority of people who are getting off the drugs with the standard physician or nurse practitioner. They're following these protocols that were provided to them. Yeah. And those protocols can be like going from 80mg of Prozac to 40mg of Prozac, to 20mg of Prozac to taking it every other day.

01:53:15:12 - 01:53:22:03
Roger McFillin
Yeah, right. What is I know everyone's different, but yeah, what is that going to do to the average person?

01:53:22:05 - 01:53:42:08
Anders Sorensen
Was the average person would be able to go from 80 to 40 with no problem, because that part of the dose has no effect, because the receptors are saturated already. So you can't just keep on adding well, you can keep on adding the drug. There's no limit to that. But it doesn't have any effect because whatever it's doing that in the in the brain, it's already saturated at a lower dose.

01:53:42:08 - 01:54:04:19
Anders Sorensen
So the average person would definitely be able. This is not medical advice. Obviously, blah blah blah. But most people will be able to go from 80 to 40. Some people will be able to go from 40 to 22 without, because that part of the drug still has no effect. It's no difference. But from 20 to 0, you can be absolutely sure there's a massive dramatic decrease in whatever the drug's doing.

01:54:04:19 - 01:54:16:13
Anders Sorensen
And that's what causing the body to scream at you with with withdrawal. Really just asking you to to take it again, not because it needs it or likes it because, but because you've introduced too big a change in for to keep up.

01:54:16:15 - 01:54:23:10
Roger McFillin
And so we induce that withdrawal then go back to the doctor. Yeah. And then the doctor says this is why you need to be on Prozac.

01:54:23:10 - 01:54:35:03
Anders Sorensen
Yeah. So that that withdrawal reaction is then taken as proof that the drug is works is still necessary, that you're not yet ready to come off it, which can be a profoundly demotivating.

01:54:35:05 - 01:54:35:22
Roger McFillin
And it's bullshit.

01:54:36:03 - 01:54:58:01
Anders Sorensen
And it's bullshit is wrong and it's and it's it is and it's demotivating because maybe that person has just been through a lot of therapy, made some changes in their life, really gotten into a place where, say, I'm ready to come off of this drug. I believe in it. I have the support system like that's a really hopeful for most people, a hopeful part of their life.

01:54:58:03 - 01:55:25:09
Anders Sorensen
And then that's just completely demolished with withdrawal reactions that are misinterpreted as as relapse. Because the definition of relapse sorry, withdrawal symptoms haven't been updated in the stupid guidelines for for for years. Yeah. So it still defines it as this. And the majority of guidelines still differences this mild and self-limiting symptoms. And then they measure maybe three maybe five maybe seven symptoms and not the 80 symptoms that are on the list.

01:55:25:09 - 01:55:44:24
Anders Sorensen
So obviously if you trust in your documents as a doctor, the official paper saying what the withdrawal reaction is, you kind of have to follow that, right? So it really comes down to changing those guidelines. Two of the papers from my PhD was on guidelines, where I really just compared the evidence with what's in the guidelines. That's just showed a huge, huge gap.

01:55:45:00 - 01:55:55:05
Anders Sorensen
So yeah, this is the problem or the story that I kept seeing, like people coming off the drug too fast because the guidelines say you have to do it too fast.

01:55:55:11 - 01:55:56:03
Roger McFillin
Yep.

01:55:56:05 - 01:56:20:20
Anders Sorensen
Deteriorating massively. And then had this story just ingrained in them, built both in themselves and from their clinician, maybe their their loved ones that they still needed. And that's what causes this. And what usually happens is that I would say the typical client in my clinic, nine out of ten, has had this story. And when we just taper slower and this way, the hyperbolic way, nothing happens.

01:56:20:20 - 01:56:41:22
Anders Sorensen
Well, they get withdrawal sometimes, but nothing near the experience they'd had before. And as we talked about before, our DNA, that's a funny illness that reacted to that way. It's a funny that it reacts like some underlying illness. That idea of something being there wouldn't care how we reach a lower dose. So the fact that it doesn't appear when we go slower enough and slower really should more be called gradual.

01:56:41:22 - 01:57:02:20
Anders Sorensen
It's not the time in itself that makes the taper correct. Like you could wait half a year on a dose and then make too big a reduction and still be an incorrect taper. So the thing that makes these sometimes year long tapers is not the time in itself, is that we could limited when you reach that don't have them here at that steep end of the curve.

01:57:02:22 - 01:57:22:18
Anders Sorensen
We have to understand that the body can detect very small reductions. It's the difference between the doses that the body reacts to it when it has to adapt. So when you reach the lower, lower doses but they're not lower, they're pretty potent. You're limited as far as how much you can reduce those. And that's makes that's what makes it take so long.

01:57:22:18 - 01:57:31:21
Anders Sorensen
Because because the body can detect very small dose reductions. So we really should call it more gradually instead of more slowly to come off.

01:57:31:23 - 01:57:54:22
Roger McFillin
So eventually the person will get down to nothing at all. Right. They're not taking the zero. Yeah. The absolute zero. Right. And then there are people then who enter into somewhat like, a more severe withdrawal at that point. They're vulnerable to what's called protracted withdrawal. Can you explain what that means?

01:57:54:24 - 01:58:11:13
Anders Sorensen
I don't know why these things are all that we're trying to do. The same as causing them all sorts of fancy things. It's really just an incorrect taper, like you introduce. Too big a difference. It's a big a change for the body to keep up. That's what causing withdrawal. And the protracted element really is just that it keeps on going.

01:58:11:15 - 01:58:24:02
Anders Sorensen
Really. So if you're in protracted withdrawal, I would say it's not that complicated. You made too big a shock for the body to keep out. And if you stay in that too long, that's where it gets really so sorry.

01:58:24:04 - 01:58:28:14
Roger McFillin
Yeah. So do you then, reinstate the drug.

01:58:28:14 - 01:58:48:06
Anders Sorensen
Question because there seems to be a window of reinstatement. We don't know how long it is, and obviously it varies, but it appears that there is a limit as to how long you can stay in withdrawal. And the body's still accepting that you take the drug again. That's really the tough part of it. I have a lot of clients coming.

01:58:48:10 - 01:59:11:12
Anders Sorensen
They only contact me after they've tapered incorrectly and just been waiting, waiting, waiting for the symptoms to resolve. They didn't. The big question is, okay, will the body two, three, four months whatever into being withdrawn? Will it accept taking the drug again? And sometimes it will, sometimes it won't, and sometimes it gets worse. Like because you've kindled your nervous system now, so now it reacts to the drug again.

01:59:11:17 - 01:59:36:08
Anders Sorensen
It's a very unfortunate situation. So just to say that the the solution to severe withdrawal, if you happen to make a reduction that really causes you to go into withdrawal, is reinstating. That's what the body's screaming for. That's what those signals are. Therefore it's trying to make you take the drug again and then it stops. So withdrawal symptoms severe definitely call for reinstating.

01:59:36:08 - 01:59:41:03
Anders Sorensen
But if you stay in it for too long it appears that you can kind of like the damage has been done.

01:59:41:05 - 01:59:42:18
Roger McFillin
Is this damage permanent?

01:59:42:20 - 02:00:03:12
Anders Sorensen
I don't think it's permanent. I think way more people than not heal from it. But the time frame can be incredibly, incredibly long and we don't know a lot about how to do it. I think we're limited in how we can interfere with that system, because it's really a nervous system that really just is absolutely sure that there's danger ahead.

02:00:03:14 - 02:00:06:21
Anders Sorensen
That's why it keeps sending symptoms.

02:00:06:21 - 02:00:08:13
Roger McFillin
Oh yeah.

02:00:08:15 - 02:00:31:11
Anders Sorensen
So I don't know how long it is that window of reinstatement. In fact, I think nobody knows. But there's definitely a an expert element in that because it would say there are three ways it can go. Either it works, you assume the drug just disappears or it doesn't work, or it makes it worse. But this is I should say, this is not when we taper correctly.

02:00:31:11 - 02:01:08:22
Anders Sorensen
And the withdrawal symptoms you get even in a hyperbolic taper and following the principles most people still go into withdrawal, but it's tolerable. It's minimized to a level that you can use your psychological strategies and your attention to, to kind of make it step into the background. These symptoms are too severe for you to do that. So just the difference part of coming off these psychiatric drugs is obviously trying to taper in a rate that makes the body not go into withdrawal, but because of how the drugs work at the lower dose, there is almost always an element of managing withdrawal, too, without reinstating.

02:01:08:24 - 02:01:13:01
Anders Sorensen
Obviously protracted withdrawal is different. A very severe withdrawal is different.

02:01:13:03 - 02:01:33:03
Roger McFillin
Okay. Thank you for that thorough answer. That's actually the easiest question I can throw at you. We're we're a situation where a person has been placed on one SSRI and on that drug for a prolonged period of time, upwards of decades or more. The problem that we're seeing, though, in American culture is, what's termed polypharmacy. Yeah.

02:01:33:05 - 02:01:37:18
Roger McFillin
And, by the way, did you end up seeing any American drug commercials last night?

02:01:37:19 - 02:01:51:17
Anders Sorensen
No, I didn't I didn't come any on. But I saw a lot of news which are very like danger, danger, danger, fear, fear. This sucks. That sucks. That's awesome. Yeah, that's a problem. That's a problem. You're a problem. Yeah. That's really. That's different than Danish TV, for sure.

02:01:51:18 - 02:02:14:08
Roger McFillin
Oh, and it has an impact on us, I think. Of course, when we're talking about our collective, you know, psychological states as a nation that fear provocation is powerful. Yeah. And it's intentional. There's no doubt that that's intentional. But we're one of two countries that have direct to consumer advertising. So we're bombarded with pharmaceuticals as medicine over and over and over again.

02:02:14:10 - 02:02:34:20
Roger McFillin
And so we're, we're a drugged out country, and we're not just on one drug. And what you'll see on these commercials is they'll have the new antidepressant, or the booster, you know, it's like an antipsychotic to boost. Yeah, yeah. Like, if you're, you know, if you're not getting the your benefit from your initial, SSRI, try Abilify.

02:02:34:21 - 02:03:01:12
Roger McFillin
You know, like those things, like, like it boosts the effect. It's all. It's all lies. Of course. Yeah. So we're seeing Poly Pharm. Yeah. Pharm drugging. So, typically speaking, we'll see an SSRI. We'll see that combined with a stimulant. Yeah. For the most part. Adderall. Yeah. Unfortunate cases. We see people who are, dependent on the benzodiazepine.

02:03:01:14 - 02:03:24:17
Roger McFillin
And an additional would be something, potentially, an antipsychotic or what they, what they labels mood stabilizer. Okay. Yeah. So when someone is on this large cocktail. Yeah. Of drugs, which is way, way too frequent and unfortunately common. And it's getting worse. Yeah. How do they go about successfully tapering with all those different drugs?

02:03:24:17 - 02:03:47:13
Anders Sorensen
I think there's a section of that in the book. There's obviously there's no science on how to like we haven't studied if there is like an objectively best way to do that. But they're definitely science to go by. Like usually I would I would return to the to the point before that most of these drugs would be used in a to higher dose.

02:03:47:13 - 02:04:11:23
Anders Sorensen
So the question is should we just remove one and then the next and the like taper one of these not remove but taper it. Or should we go like in parallel. And the first thing I would always do is like map the doses and the average occupancy of that dose, and then see if there are some low hanging fruit in terms of of first reducing some of the drugs down to that plateau, that saturation point, if that makes sense.

02:04:11:23 - 02:04:29:15
Anders Sorensen
Instead of removing one and then having a two large dose of some antipsychotics, that would actually make you better not to stop, but to reduce because the side effects follow down right? So that would be my first go to figure out if you're overmedicated. And almost always people are because the doses are too high, because that's a low hanging fruit.

02:04:29:15 - 02:04:52:04
Anders Sorensen
And then the question is obviously what what to remove first and last. And that's obviously not my job or anyone's job as an expert to tell. That's a conversation you have with the but the person obviously, sometimes it's very obvious if you've taking one for shorter time than the other, that makes sense to to prioritize that first. In terms of side effects, is it one of the drugs helping you sleep?

02:04:52:08 - 02:05:03:07
Anders Sorensen
You could say with absolute certainty, this helps me sleep and remove that last. So there are different questions to ask. But there's no like, to my mind, no objective way of doing. And it makes it more complicated.

02:05:03:07 - 02:05:25:11
Roger McFillin
Really. And this is sort of the, the mix of the art in the science. Right, exactly. I mean, it's a collaborative process where you're consistently getting feedback. Yeah. You're working together in tandem with other strategies. Yes, exactly. And so it's interesting how we started this podcast, because you were referring to psychiatry crossing the line into our work on the motion regulation.

02:05:25:11 - 02:05:27:00
Roger McFillin
Yeah, right. And we can't ignore it.

02:05:27:00 - 02:05:48:17
Anders Sorensen
No. How dare they? They think we talk about psychiatry and drugs without having, you know, their credentials to do that. Well, they do it all the time. They medicate our traumas in our emotions, in our thought. Yeah. Sorry. It's just really just one important thing. It's important debate to have because it's usually the other way around. We could make the exact same case stronger.

02:05:48:19 - 02:06:10:18
Roger McFillin
Yeah, the other way around. We're certainly like we're interfering with the natural process of emotion regulation. We're so resilient. Yeah. As a human species. And for the first time in the history of the world, this massive experiment, we're now introducing dangerous pharmaceuticals that are blocking that natural process. I've clear I thought it's spiritual. I think it's evil.

02:06:10:18 - 02:06:34:24
Roger McFillin
I think there's more complicated aspects to this. How can it not be? It's so obvious. But we're not we're forced to deal with in our sessions. Right. Somebody who has been systematically cut off from their own emotions and sometimes thoughts. Right. And I was listening to, friend of both of ours, Laura Delano, who just, you know, it's published an amazing book.

02:06:34:24 - 02:07:03:18
Roger McFillin
I read it, had her on the podcast. Now she's doing the circuit. She's on some big ones. And, the most recent one, she talks about how she was taught to be afraid of her emotions. Of course. Yeah. So now the person who either has successfully gotten off the drugs or is in the process of that, there is a return to baseline experience right where they now have to now learn how to deal with, you know, thoughts, emotions.

02:07:03:18 - 02:07:07:00
Roger McFillin
The challenge is something that they've been conditioned to be so afraid of.

02:07:07:02 - 02:07:25:11
Anders Sorensen
So that's why the books and two actually in three patch. But the two major parts how to actually come, how the body wants us to rid the body of the drug, the tapering section, the hyperbolic ones, how to do it and how to do it small enough. All the technicalities of how to reach these stupid small doses. They're not made.

02:07:25:11 - 02:08:02:08
Anders Sorensen
We have to create them ourselves. So that whole thing, how to come off without going into severe withdrawal is one thing, okay? How to manage life without drugs as a strategy. Whatever that drug did. It's a completely different question really, where the therapy comes in and I find myself definitely a lot of times in my therapy chair talking about some pretty basics, about what an emotion is, what it's not, what it signals that it signals something, just the basic idea what an emotion is, how to regulate it, and that I hope that's what I can contribute with to this community in debate too.

02:08:02:14 - 02:08:24:15
Anders Sorensen
Besides the tapering things, which was my what my PhD was about, but also that other element, if you've been used to numbing or altering your emotions and they return even just a normal emotional life can be strong. Like think about your own emotions as strong forces. Imagine having been away from them and then returning without them even being pathological or or just a normal emotional life.

02:08:24:17 - 02:08:39:07
Anders Sorensen
That transition in itself is a therapeutic, can be a therapeutic process, really. And that's not withdrawal. And it's not a relapse either. It's just your emotions returning and you having to navigate it without being overwhelmed.

02:08:39:09 - 02:09:00:04
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Give me great examples I love stories I the first time I ever went on like a deep sea fishing trip, which I was in my early 20s with some friends. We got caught up in a storm. And so we're out there, we're fishing, caught up in a storm. The seas were rough. The entire boat got seasick, including myself.

02:09:00:06 - 02:09:17:20
Roger McFillin
It was windy. People were vomiting at the front of the boat and it was hitting you in the back of the boat. It was a miserable experience. Right. So nauseous. And I remember getting off that boat onto land and saying, I'm never doing that again.

02:09:18:01 - 02:09:19:03
Anders Sorensen
It's a trauma, right?

02:09:19:03 - 02:09:39:13
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Never doing that. Okay. But the truth of the matter is like being out in nature like that, going fishing is something that, that could really enhance one's life. Yeah. Right. And I just got back from a vacation in the Florida Keys, and I realized, like, I didn't expose my kids to those things because of my own fears.

02:09:39:13 - 02:10:00:09
Roger McFillin
Right? So I decided to book a charter to go fishing for, like, mahi mahi and then, go around the reef and, be able to fish for where they have schools of, like, snapper and other things. Right. So it's just five of us. Yeah. On, on a charter and we start going out into the, out into the seas and it gets a little rough.

02:10:00:09 - 02:10:07:17
Roger McFillin
You're going like 20 miles an hour. You're really moving. You're up and down. And so what do I notice? Yeah. My heart starts racing.

02:10:07:19 - 02:10:15:11
Anders Sorensen
Your body. Remember that? This situation. I've been here before and it turned out not good. So start sending you the signal.

02:10:15:12 - 02:10:18:01
Roger McFillin
The memory starts to be permanent.

02:10:18:01 - 02:10:18:21
Anders Sorensen
Trauma reaction.

02:10:18:21 - 02:10:45:03
Roger McFillin
I get nauseous. Yeah, like I am seasick. Yeah. Right now I'm trained, trained, professional in exposure, emotion regulation strategies. It's an area of expertise. So I had to get myself into a mental state. Yeah, right. Start with breathing. Connecting to the now, allowing and accepting that process to be there, understanding that it's related to a previous event in my life.

02:10:45:05 - 02:11:10:13
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And in some regards I used my faith and spirituality to surrender. Right? Yeah. Surrender to the flow and not even care about the outcome. No. If I, if I, if I get seasick, I get seasick. It's not the end of the world. Yeah, right. I don't have to ruin anyone else's experience. Yeah. And then like, around that moment, you know, we hit a school of mahi mahi, and I get right on to the pole, the fishing pole, and try to reel that thing in.

02:11:10:19 - 02:11:26:00
Roger McFillin
And now my attention is shifted. Yeah. Now I'm focusing on the fishing. Yeah. Learning how to do it the right way is talking to the first mate that that's there, and the captain getting other people involved. My mind is no longer fixated.

02:11:26:00 - 02:11:27:24
Anders Sorensen
What happened on the emotional? Where did it.

02:11:27:24 - 02:11:55:08
Roger McFillin
Go? I'm no longer nauseous. The anxiety is not there anymore. It completely shifts my state of being. I start experiencing joy and adrenaline. The excitement kind. Yeah, right. I get the fish. Yeah. Right now I take the picture of this big mahi mahi. Everyone's excited. Yeah, I don't think one second about being seasick. No. And so my body doesn't feel that's.

02:11:55:11 - 02:12:20:13
Anders Sorensen
The way it did. Right? By attention, emotion regulation and attention. I think attention is one of the words besides withdrawal. I use most of the book. They're deeply connected. That's the way we regulate emotions psychologically, like purely naturally, without external interference is using our attention. It may sound fluffy at first from people, but it's an incredibly strong skill to master like emotion.

02:12:20:15 - 02:12:46:19
Anders Sorensen
Sorry. Attention is a way of regulating emotions, and it really cuts into the core of what emotion regulation is. And this is one of the most strongest things for me to understand. Our job when we are regulating emotions is not to to make it go away. It's not to down regulated. Our job is to not feed it like it's the other way around our job, like our conscious, the the part of us that's talking now, the conscious part.

02:12:46:21 - 02:13:11:11
Anders Sorensen
Our job is not to to make it go away. It's to not uphold it. It's not maintain it. And that's something completely different. It changes the game totally. Because emotion regulation really is more about what not to do and what to do. And it comes back to what do we think the natural course of an emotion is? Is it for the emotion to rise and escalate and overwhelm us if we don't do something to interfere it or the other way around?

02:13:11:13 - 02:13:41:03
Anders Sorensen
And that's really where attention comes in. And the leaving something alone, leaving something be part attention is a gatekeeper for stimuli, both internal and external. For example, it feels a certain way for us sitting on these chairs now, and it feels this very characteristic way inside our mouths all the time. You and I and all the listeners, I dare you that you did not focus on these two sensations before I said it right.

02:13:41:07 - 02:14:11:22
Anders Sorensen
What changed? One thing? Attention. Because some idiot was sitting here and making you you draw attention. That's why it felt. And then the second minute it'll be gone again. That's attention working. And this is really a long way of saying that mechanism that does that can be trained. It's not it's not a trade. It's a skill that we can learn and we can learn how to use that attention, as you did in the moment of severe deep distress, in a way that makes numbing that emotion less attractive when we're really frightened.

02:14:12:01 - 02:14:26:23
Anders Sorensen
Now, in your situation, something happened that drew you towards that attention, like something happened in the situation that just naturally, intrinsically drew your attention to what that that's why it happened, but it was still you doing it. You were directing the attention.

02:14:27:00 - 02:14:29:20
Roger McFillin
I could I could have said, I can it right now. I have to.

02:14:29:20 - 02:14:53:02
Anders Sorensen
To deal with this project that I'm trying to manage. In fact, you're just feeding it attention. So attention is the nutrition of emotion that what makes it last. That's why worry and rumination doesn't work. Like in our experience, the worry and the rumination is part of the solution we're trying to solve or fix or be ahead of something or understand something.

02:14:53:03 - 02:15:05:14
Anders Sorensen
Really what we're doing is, is feeding it. A whole chapter is about that, how to break these cycles. And it all comes down to the attention. But it's not. People would call it distractions. Sometimes you're just distracted from the right you really felt. Yeah, it's the other way around.

02:15:05:14 - 02:15:07:13
Roger McFillin
As if life is a distraction. Exactly.

02:15:07:13 - 02:15:29:05
Anders Sorensen
It has to. We have to change these to like, but controlling attention. Like, just as we can control our gaze. Like we're pretty free to look at whatever we want in here. We could do that with attention to. I could focus on the sounds coming from behind me, or the sensation in my feet or inside or whatever. Are you you can't see it's not visible to you where I direct my attention.

02:15:29:08 - 02:15:41:18
Anders Sorensen
And the idea that that's kind of a muscle, you can train strong stuff when it comes to managing life without psychiatric drugs, I would say it is a must. Some degree of attentional training, no doubt.

02:15:41:18 - 02:15:54:20
Roger McFillin
And this is my problem with modern therapy culture. Yeah, I tell my clients often you can't solve a thinking problem with more thinking, but they want to go in with their with their therapist. Yeah, they want to ruminate. They want to analyze.

02:15:54:22 - 02:15:55:20
Anders Sorensen
Ruminate co.

02:15:55:21 - 02:16:09:12
Roger McFillin
Ruminate. Yeah. And they want to analyze. And they and it feels better because they're getting some like temporary reassurance from a so-called expert. Right. And then they go out and the same thing happens in return. They do the same thing over and again.

02:16:09:14 - 02:16:13:17
Anders Sorensen
But they've maintained the strategy like they've maintained the problem.

02:16:13:17 - 02:16:15:03
Roger McFillin
Yes, they've fixed it.

02:16:15:05 - 02:16:23:02
Anders Sorensen
There's no difference between doing that and taking a substance that gives relief right now. But but reinforces the underlying problem. No difference.

02:16:23:02 - 02:16:50:20
Roger McFillin
So just like being on the boat and the rocky, you know, waters was like the stimuli that provoked all that for me. People who have been on these drugs for so long and start to feel again the emotions himself as a stimuli. Yeah, right. And so that in itself becomes scary to them and fear creates more fear. And so yes, it's almost a relearning about what to do when you experience things that are uncomfortable for you.

02:16:50:24 - 02:17:13:06
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And that's why this whole process has to be integrated. Yeah. It can't be in isolation. It can't be with your doctor in 15 minutes, with a, with a prescription where you go home and you do it yourself and you start, tapering down often too fast. Yeah. It's got to be a comprehensive care. Right. And so we've created this problem.

02:17:13:08 - 02:17:39:02
Roger McFillin
Modern medicine, modern mental health, industrial complex has created this fundamentally huge problem that as a society, we're going to have to deal with. I think it's a public health problem. It's too normal. Now, the fact that 20 to 25% of everyone's on a drug makes it already. It's like this is something that people are experiencing and they're communicating it to the general public through social media and other ways that they're experiencing this mental illness.

02:17:39:02 - 02:18:02:03
Roger McFillin
And they're identifying with these mental illnesses. Right. They don't even begin to conceptualize the idea that they interfered with a natural process. They're drug dependent. And everything they're interpreting from happening, from taking these drugs is through the lens that they're mentally ill. Yeah. And so now we've got ourselves in this huge problem and we have to now be able to address it.

02:18:02:07 - 02:18:20:04
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Through our field. And I love the fact that I'm having this conversation with you because, everyone who's listening right now, right now, you're it's like we're in a time warp to some respect. You're listening to the areas of expertise ten years before everyone else gets it. I hope it doesn't take ten years.

02:18:20:04 - 02:18:24:05
Anders Sorensen
No, I mean, you do everything we can to make it happen faster. But but.

02:18:24:05 - 02:18:25:19
Roger McFillin
But progress is slow.

02:18:25:19 - 02:18:26:07
Anders Sorensen
It's slow.

02:18:26:07 - 02:18:58:17
Roger McFillin
Science is very slow. I, you know, some of the, statistics I hear is that, like, even, like, medical students today and what they're provided, the information they're provided will be obsolete by the time they start the practice. We got stuck in an era, where science was, used as a weapon to develop industries. Yeah. So, it's going to take conversations like this, but at some point, I am convinced there are no SSRI drugs.

02:18:58:17 - 02:19:02:05
Roger McFillin
Of course they're done. They're off the market. Nobody uses them.

02:19:02:06 - 02:19:07:03
Anders Sorensen
They'll be benzos all the way because they're really strong short term. But antidepressants for sure. Yeah.

02:19:07:05 - 02:19:25:15
Roger McFillin
In the meantime, we're going to go through this horrible transition, especially with all the young people that we fucked up. Yeah. And I don't wanna say weak because I'm not doing it. No, I don't want to be put in that camp. But this expertise that you experience right now is going to have to be widely disseminated.

02:19:25:17 - 02:19:28:00
Anders Sorensen
It will. And there are a lot of signs for that.

02:19:28:02 - 02:19:55:09
Roger McFillin
Yes. It has to be widely disseminated. And I would say that as in the entire mental health field and health care field, we're talking about .000 1% of people have access to this knowledge right now. And this podcast right now, you're hearing it for the first time. You know, most people who are listening to this, they don't even understand the degree of specialty it requires for people to get off these drugs.

02:19:55:11 - 02:20:18:05
Anders Sorensen
Because it involves both. For most people, it involves the technicalities of tapering without going into withdrawal that is then misclassified this as relapse. That's one thing that's a specialty and the therapeutic element okay. So part of what you feel when you come off the drug is not withdrawal. That would be just as, as reductionistic and big a mistake to label everything withdrawal.

02:20:18:05 - 02:20:40:06
Anders Sorensen
Obviously some of it is just your emotions returning because you've been putting the lid on with a drug. How to navigate that. That's really the therapeutic element. And I find as we talked about before, it would be much easier to, add the knowledge of tapering onto a therapist than to add the knowledge and expertise of being a therapist on top of a pharmacologist or a psychiatrist, I would say.

02:20:40:08 - 02:21:05:18
Anders Sorensen
So, yeah, it takes both, but there are many, many signs towards that. For example, the metacognitive, the Bible, the Bible of metacognitive therapy by Adrian Wells, I think it's just called metacognitive therapy for depression and anxiety is a very manual, way of doing therapy. And one of the questions we have to ask is, is we have to explore with our patients has a belief about their depression as being biological in origin.

02:21:05:18 - 02:21:31:02
Anders Sorensen
And if the answer to that is yes, it's part of the manual to challenge that. That's just to tell the audience how deep that is. It's not even a question anymore. In fact, it's within the model. What we have to do when people say that, and obviously a lot of people say that because it takes away the agency, it takes away everything that we've just talked about before with depression or anxiety, having a it's a reaction to something and you have agency in it.

02:21:31:02 - 02:21:48:15
Anders Sorensen
If you don't feel like you have agency, that's what the therapist is there to show. For example, with the attentional thing, it's such a big thing. Stephen Hayes from accepts commit and said people without saying in a podcast years ago that he wants to kill the DSM, the World Health Organization and the UN. I don't know. I know you don't listen too much to them over here.

02:21:48:15 - 02:21:51:10
Anders Sorensen
Now, the World Health Organization as a country, but.

02:21:51:10 - 02:21:51:21
Roger McFillin
No, we don't.

02:21:51:22 - 02:22:14:01
Anders Sorensen
They had they had guidelines out two years ago and a month ago saying that it's outdated. The biomed, they deliberately black and white right on the papers that the biomedical model of mental illness has done wrong. Yeah. And we have to abandon it like it looks like something you and I could have written, but it's an official guideline.

02:22:14:07 - 02:22:16:24
Anders Sorensen
It's just and there are numerous examples of this.

02:22:17:01 - 02:22:41:01
Roger McFillin
So the reason why I think it's going to be a slow shift and a slow change is because of the perverse financial incentives. There are too many industries that have monetized. Yeah. Sickness. Right. So there's no benefit fit to get you. Well, no. If you die, that's not good for their bottom line. And if you're healthy, it's not good for their bottom line.

02:22:41:03 - 02:22:52:24
Roger McFillin
So it we need to be kept in a perpetual state of confusion and anxiety and internal, self-examination of our own distress. That's what keeps us there.

02:22:53:01 - 02:22:58:12
Anders Sorensen
And do you think the the the ordinary individual doctor would think like that? Or is it like on a higher level.

02:22:58:13 - 02:23:02:07
Roger McFillin
The individual doctor or. I don't think consciously thinking.

02:23:02:08 - 02:23:22:03
Anders Sorensen
So that's the scary part that would be in a better when a bad story to. But the fact that this narrative is like on the top level somewhere or deeper, but they've succeeded in transforming that into a story of care is, to me, worse that the individual doctor and also other professions have bought into that idea.

02:23:22:05 - 02:23:42:15
Roger McFillin
Yeah, it comes full circle, right? This conversation comes full circle. You know, it's the power of that story. It's the power of that narrative. I'm a big believer that we don't know what we don't know. You know? And I think if you're doing life the right way, you always look back at your own previous ignorance with a bit of shame.

02:23:42:17 - 02:23:58:24
Roger McFillin
But you forgive yourself and you continue on the process of evolution and learning and growing. But a lot of people stop in that process because of their ego. Yeah. You know, they don't want to be able to face the fact that they made decisions that hurt people. No, it's.

02:23:58:24 - 02:24:15:21
Anders Sorensen
Too much mechanism. Too much is unbearable. It's too much for some. It's like it's not their fault. It's psychologically unbearable emotionally. That's why we have to really support all of us in this community, the psychiatrist and the doctors that are open and do want to discuss it and enter this field.

02:24:15:23 - 02:24:17:00
Roger McFillin
Yeah, it's interesting I.

02:24:17:00 - 02:24:18:14
Anders Sorensen
Get any help to those.

02:24:18:16 - 02:24:47:16
Roger McFillin
Because of my platform and the things that I'm doing. I'll get these whistleblower emails. Yeah. Often from psychiatry residents who are either following me on social media. I've heard this podcast and they'll say, I agree with you. Right. And I'll ask for, I'll ask for like a zoom call or something. Sometimes people will, you know, jump on a zoom call with me and I encourage them to do something about it.

02:24:47:18 - 02:25:14:07
Roger McFillin
Right. If, if this is violating your ethics. And then morally it feels like you are doing harm and, and therefore like what's the Hippocratic oath. Right. I mean first do no harm. Yeah. I inquire about you know, what is stopping you. That's a good thing from getting from being able to do that. Yeah. 100% of the time I've invested too much into this.

02:25:14:07 - 02:25:16:06
Anders Sorensen
Education personally too, like.

02:25:16:08 - 02:25:37:00
Roger McFillin
It's personally and financially. So like when you're a few hundred thousand dollars in debt as a med student, yeah, you're hoping for a lucrative career to be able to pay off that debt. You also have to complete that education. Yeah, right. So you either comply and follow the rules or you're in a huge amount of debt.

02:25:37:00 - 02:25:38:02
Anders Sorensen
Yeah.

02:25:38:04 - 02:26:03:19
Roger McFillin
And so we do have to ask ourselves, should we have understanding for that? Should we have a degree of compassion and just shrug our shoulders and say, yeah, that's the way it is. Once you get out of your residency and you can practice independently, then you do the right thing. Well, that doesn't happen either, because the same perverse financial incentives exist.

02:26:03:19 - 02:26:26:23
Roger McFillin
You're still in the same debt. And how do you maximize your income? You maximize your income by seeing as many patients as you can in a particular hour. That's the way the insurance industry works. Yeah. And that's the way that you practice so-called medicine. So then what do you say then you're delaying it until you're no longer in debt.

02:26:27:02 - 02:26:36:16
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Okay. And then you've paid your medical debt and oh now you have kids, now you have a mortgage, and now you have a lifestyle that keeps going, changing.

02:26:36:17 - 02:26:51:03
Anders Sorensen
That's where the push has to come from. Outside psychiatry, sadly, and from the few revolutionary critical minded on, there are more and more of those. And we have to, you know, help them in any way possible. But the real push has to come from the outside. I'm sure.

02:26:51:05 - 02:26:53:04
Roger McFillin
Yeah, I totally agree.

02:26:53:06 - 02:27:23:19
Anders Sorensen
And talking about drugs, psychiatric drugs the way we did it today and about tapering, but also my diagnosis, we haven't gotten into that that like the, the, the tiny value of diagnosis in general, like because of the trans diagnostics that actually the different diagnosis, most of them by far, most of them are just different expressions of the same underlying mechanism that completely takes the idea of of it being so important to diagnose something being PTSD or borderline or schizophrenia before, because it really comes down to the same mechanism.

02:27:23:19 - 02:27:35:05
Anders Sorensen
So that two is a great, great, great, danger, harm, danger for psychiatry. So anything we can do in that field would kind of do the trick to, you.

02:27:35:07 - 02:27:41:17
Roger McFillin
Know, it's one of the most valuable emotion, regular liberation strategies for me personally. Memento mori.

02:27:41:19 - 02:27:42:19
Anders Sorensen
Was that momentum.

02:27:42:23 - 02:27:46:06
Roger McFillin
Momentum Mori. It's Latin for remember, you will die.

02:27:46:08 - 02:27:52:14
Anders Sorensen
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So use that in a in a in an uplifting way and not a destructive way.

02:27:52:14 - 02:28:15:12
Roger McFillin
Yes, yes. So let's say I see my life, on a spiritual path, and in that I'm going to be faced with moral dilemmas. And I'm going to try to, to, to stay on the path towards my soul's ultimate purpose, which I think is to achieve a state of love, and in service and to achieve a growth.

02:28:15:15 - 02:28:47:16
Roger McFillin
Right. So who is your ultimate authority? So this is my problem with with the detachment of faith and spirituality. In a culture, that, that is secular and then, that targets, religion and the experience of God. So I think it is meaningful that in the United States that during Covid, they shut down churches and kept open liquor stores, you know, that's something about, you know, what do what do you what do you value?

02:28:47:16 - 02:29:02:22
Roger McFillin
Yeah. If my ultimate authority is that of God, and I believe I have to face my life at one point, and the decisions I made and I remember that I will die, then everything I do is in service of that, the highest moral and ethical standard.

02:29:03:00 - 02:29:14:20
Anders Sorensen
So you can use that to regulate the stuff you do and the impulses you have and what feels best in this moment compared to what feels best in the grand scheme of things. You're able to use that.

02:29:14:22 - 02:29:37:22
Roger McFillin
If I, if I worship at the altar of money. Right. And then there's fear that I won't have enough. The implications of that are to cross violate that moral and ethical standard and that's what we're seeing. But if your moral and ethical standard is to that higher purpose, then that's what discernment allows you to make decisions.

02:29:37:24 - 02:29:57:16
Roger McFillin
So you can say, fuck you. I'm not going to do that. And I remember I was like, I remember the story of my first job in the mental health field was 22 years old. I was working at Children's Psychiatric Hospital, and there I was on a children's unit. Most of the kids were like between the ages of five and eight.

02:29:57:18 - 02:30:27:02
Roger McFillin
Almost all of them were exposed to, like horrific violence, trauma, drug addicted parents, neglect and so forth. So you saw the predictable behaviors of a child in that type of environment. So my first exposure to psychiatry, drugging those kids, as a way of mental health treatment. So I saw all the adverse effects of the drugs. But I also saw the kids acting out physically, and we were taught to put them in these psychiatric holds.

02:30:27:04 - 02:30:27:18
Roger McFillin

02:30:27:20 - 02:30:29:05
Anders Sorensen
That's the solution.

02:30:29:07 - 02:30:39:21
Roger McFillin
So imagine us to hold a 5 or 6 year old who's been abused by an adult. Yeah. Until they calm down. Yeah. As a way to manage a psychiatric unit.

02:30:39:23 - 02:30:40:22
Anders Sorensen
Or tune out.

02:30:40:22 - 02:31:01:13
Roger McFillin
Or. Yes. So I'm 22 years old. Good shape. No eight year old was going to hurt me. They could punch me in the face and it didn't and wouldn't hurt me. Yeah. So that was I was faced with a moral dilemma. Do I do I follow along with what they're telling me to do? And I did in the beginning until I realized what was happening.

02:31:01:13 - 02:31:21:05
Roger McFillin
I was still young. So I'm realizing this is a traumatized kid, and I just fucking wouldn't do it. And I would tell the kids, I'm not going to hurt you. They would always settle down, of course, and then I would be able to actually have greater control of the unit because they would listen to what I was saying, like there was safety there, right.

02:31:21:07 - 02:31:28:15
Roger McFillin
But there's a social worker would make would write me up and make these threats that I wasn't following protocol them.

02:31:28:16 - 02:31:28:20
Anders Sorensen
Yeah.

02:31:28:20 - 02:31:48:18
Roger McFillin
Not right. And so I would just say I'm not I'm not doing it. You're going to have to fire me. But I had such issues with authority even. Right. What I, what I view as illegitimate authority. If you have legitimate authority and you act in the best interest of people I follow, I will follow you. I'll see you as a leader, a mentor.

02:31:48:21 - 02:32:10:08
Roger McFillin
But when there's illegitimate authority, then I feel a moral obligation to fight that. And so I said, you can you can fire me. I didn't have any resources to do this, but I'd say I'm coming after you. I'll come after you. Yeah, right. That you made me, you know, you were. You were saying I had to put my hands on abused kids when I had a better way.

02:32:10:08 - 02:32:29:04
Roger McFillin
Yeah. Of being. And so she just would continue with the threat, continue writing up, but there would be no consequence. Yeah, right. And then I realized, I think at that young age. And that was a blessing that you go up against. It's fear that keeps us controlled. You go up against the authority, you do what's right and right wins.

02:32:29:06 - 02:32:51:24
Roger McFillin
Right will win. And that's the that's what we're facing. I think, this moral dilemma for everyone who's working. I feel there's way too many therapists out there that are sending their clients to psychiatrists, right? Because they're told they have to. And there's and and it's the fear that they could lose their license. It's just fear. Folks, listen to me.

02:32:52:01 - 02:33:05:24
Roger McFillin
You're not going to lose your license because you don't send clients off to drug themselves. So there's way too much science. There's experts that can come support you. I'm going to try to develop an organization that raises money to be able to do that. Yeah.

02:33:06:00 - 02:33:11:05
Anders Sorensen
And there's a community as a whole community around this, like it's grown. Come here. Come join. Yeah.

02:33:11:07 - 02:33:37:07
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And so I think the final way to kind of wrap this discussion up and, you know, what I do is I come across great people who are doing different things in this movement. Right. Some are really good at pathologizing the brainwashing. They are the harms patients in the community. Laura Delano is, you know, an example has the ability to articulate what happened to me.

02:33:37:07 - 02:34:09:13
Roger McFillin
Yeah. And how I got better when I escaped it. Right. And there's people who recognize that we're misrepresenting real, legitimate, like metabolic and medical conditions as psychiatric. There's people throwing themselves into the harms of psychiatric drugs and the corruption in the trials. And there's people who are adapting like yourself and saying, how can I best now support and help people who've been victimized by this system?

02:34:09:15 - 02:34:38:01
Roger McFillin
And you're the only one. I think you're the only one who is talking about it from both ends. How can I support somebody? The science that exists and how to safely get somebody off the drugs and let people know to understand what happened to them? And then using your training as a clinical psychologist to support them, to develop the skills and the strategies to deal with what is going to happen to them.

02:34:38:01 - 02:34:41:24
Roger McFillin
Yeah. As they reintegrate back into a world of these drugs exactly.

02:34:41:24 - 02:34:46:24
Anders Sorensen
Coming off and staying off to different things. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you say that.

02:34:47:01 - 02:35:03:00
Roger McFillin
I'm so grateful that, you know, I've gotten to meet you and had the opportunity for you to come to the United States and join me in this new discussion. I think our listeners probably can feel the difference between an in-person discussion, and that's.

02:35:03:00 - 02:35:28:21
Anders Sorensen
Why I really wanted to. I was in the neighborhood. I note of, I know it's really better, and we could go on and hopefully we will again to talk about our because there's so many different things to, to, to to dive into, like the technicalities of tapering. But it's all this describes how to manage withdrawal really the other part of it, like there's a huge overlap between the what comes after medication, how to manage withdrawal like the attention thing like withdrawal symptoms.

02:35:28:21 - 02:35:45:11
Anders Sorensen
Once they're minimized to a tolerable level, they all behave in the same way as your boat trip emotions did. Like if you learn to control and stay active and do stuff and steer your attention withdrawal symptoms, you tend to step into the back. That's a whole chapter two. Yeah, but we'll talk hopefully again.

02:35:45:13 - 02:35:56:01
Roger McFillin
So this is the this is the first. Yeah meeting of because obviously what we need to do is we need to create these modules to be able to disseminate this information, spread awareness.

02:35:56:01 - 02:35:56:04
Anders Sorensen
We have.

02:35:56:04 - 02:35:56:14
Roger McFillin
To spread.

02:35:56:15 - 02:36:11:03
Anders Sorensen
Why I read the book. That's why I decided to write a like a down to us user friendly version of the book, instead of writing more academic papers to stack on top of the that's never going to used. That's really my main mission right now. It's spreading this.

02:36:11:05 - 02:36:37:13
Roger McFillin
There are people right now who are getting their LPC training to become counselors. They're training to be therapists, psychologists, social workers, nurse practitioners. They have no idea what they're walking into, and they're being trained on a model, of hope in 40 years that existed 40 years ago on a story to try to grow a portion of that pharmaceutical company's business.

02:36:37:13 - 02:36:42:05
Roger McFillin
Right. And they're still in the story. Yeah. And, it's over.

02:36:42:07 - 02:36:43:03
Anders Sorensen
Yeah.

02:36:43:05 - 02:37:00:16
Roger McFillin
You got to adapt. You got to wake up. It's time to move on. Yeah. It's coming. And so we're going to, you know, center for Integrative Behavioral Health, the Conscious Clinician Collective, the radically genuine podcast. We're going to be on the forefront of that. Yeah, because it's what we have to do. And it's moral and it's ethical.

02:37:00:18 - 02:37:01:17
Anders Sorensen
Love to be part of it.

02:37:01:17 - 02:37:07:14
Roger McFillin
Okay. Under Sorensen, I want to thank you very much for a radically genuine conversation.

02:37:07:15 - 02:37:12:04
Anders Sorensen
Thanks for having me.

02:37:12:06 - 02:37:13:24
Roger McFillin
All right.

02:37:14:01 - 02:37:15:01
Anders Sorensen
Does it.

02:37:15:03 - 02:37:16:24
Roger McFillin
Yeah. I was over two hours.

02:37:17:01 - 02:37:18:21
Anders Sorensen
Over two hours, over two hours.

02:37:18:23 - 02:37:29:15
Roger McFillin
Good conversation. Really, really good. Yeah. So let me check in with no great, great love that I can't see. Can't with response.

02:37:29:18 - 02:37:33:18
Speaker 3
With.

02:37:33:20 - 02:37:38:15
Speaker 3
Dee dee dee dee dee dee.

02:37:38:17 - 02:38:05:05
Speaker 3
Feel a little over to the text. Okay. Keep going. But we might have to turn off equipment. Right. I think, yeah, I don't know. We'll give you guys a key, but it is right over there. Or is it already. Yeah, it's a multiple. It's a multi. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah.