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Brooke Siem is a writer, speaker, and passionate advocate for the crucial practice of safe de-prescribing for psychiatric drugs. Her debut memoir, titled "MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS," reveals the challenging journey of antidepressant withdrawal. Through her experiences, Brooke has become a devoted proponent of antidepressant withdrawal education, mental health healing, and the pursuit of happiness.
Not only is Brooke deeply involved in the field of mental health, but she is also an accomplished and award-winning chef, boasting over fifteen years of experience in the culinary industry. In 2017, she even earned the prestigious title of Food Network's "Chopped" Champion. This is part 1 of a 2 part episode
If you are in a crisis or think you have an emergency, call your doctor or 911. If you're
considering suicide, call 1-800-273-TALK to speak with a skilled trained counselor.
RADICALLY GENUINE PODCAST
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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
3:00 - A Multicenter Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial of Escitalopram in Children and Adolescents with Generalized Anxiety Disorder
9:30 - Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin | 55. Post antidepressant sexual dysfunction
31:00 - Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin | 31. Grief. You have 180 days to get over it.
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What is Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin?
Radically Genuine satisfies the hunger for authenticity and truth that’s gripping the world. Through daringly candid interviews, unfiltered discussions, and meticulous research, it boldly explores scientific narratives, mental health landscapes, and the cultural trajectory of western societies. No topic is off-limits as the Radically Genuine Podcast exposes the harms of the psychiatric system and reveals how industries distort health-related scientific findings. It fearlessly challenges the pharmaceutical industry, cultural conditioning, and the commodification of well-being. Dr. Roger McFillin is a Clinical Psychologist and Board Certified in Behavioral and Cognitive Psychology.
Kel (00:01.252)
Welcome to the radically genuine podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin. First of all, I want to thank our listening audience. Past few weeks we were in the top 10. Kel on the Apple charts. I know that's awesome. Yeah. Um, health and fitness. We were in the top 10 and we went to as high as number two on the mental health charts. Yesterday we were trending on the global charts, debuting at number 14.
Amazing. I can't believe it. We're we are on the Apple charts in like the UK, South Korea, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Malaysia, Jamaica, Peru. You're global now. We're going to have to definitely do a tour over there. Try telling my wife that. It's probably not going to happen. It speaks though to I think a lot of what is what is happening. I think there's a global awakening on a fairly large scale around the pharmaceutical companies and I think
This is occurring, this growth impartially due to the willingness of our listeners to subscribe to our podcast and share the episodes. So I encourage everyone who is a fan, please rate the podcast with five stars and comment. This really does help improve the circulation of our podcast. We're still relatively young in the podcast world, but I believe this is part of a global movement.
There's a lot of time that's put into this. And I think we do provide really valuable research based information to, to just inform the general public and our guests have been amazing. I mean, today we have a fascinating, fascinating story and incredible guests. But unfortunately I need to open up with a little bit of disheartening news that I've been fairly open about on, on social media, and this is the first time I'm getting behind the microphone.
The FDA just approved the drug Lexapro. I think it's Acetylarylpram or something like that. That's the brand name, yeah. For children as young as seven for anxiety. Oh, great. Okay, so but- Here we go again. Yeah, but I want to let you get some insight into the clinical trial that led to it being approved. Astonishingly, 9.5% of the kids who-
took the drug became suicidal. And that's in comparison to only 1.5% in the placebo group. That's a six-fold increase. A six-fold increase in suicidality. And this is for children as young as seven. And do you know what the conclusion drawn by the academics who were without a doubt, paid by the pharmaceutical companies? This is the conclusions.
Lexapro is well tolerated in pediatric patients with generalized anxiety disorder. The authors also misrepresented the data in their conclusions because none of the six secondary outcomes were statistically significant compared to placebo. The primary outcome measure was so small, negligible between the placebo group and the drug group.
which basically means this, that children and adolescents exposed to Lexapro are more likely to become suicidal than to experience an improvement in anxiety. So I pontificated on this in my most recent Substack newsletter. You can subscribe for free at DrMcPhillan.substack.com or you can go to our website, DrMcPhillan.com. We cannot consent unless we're informed in that.
brings me to our guest. Who I feel like I'm an expert on, Brooke Seam. I just got through a two week deep dive on everything Brooke. Yeah, I must have watched like four hours of video, just all over the place. In fact, I feel her mom is like related to me and I wanna ask about mom who's just named.
Brooke Siem (03:59.192)
Thanks for watching!
Brooke Siem (04:14.915)
Oh my God, I was thinking of my mom on the podcast. I wonder if she'd do that.
Kel (04:20.176)
Rukhsine, she's an award winning chef and writer. The book that we're going to be talking about today is May Cause Side Effects. It's powerful. It's artfully constructed memoir on her experience with antidepressant withdrawal. You may know her as Food Network Chopped champion. I know you're a big fan of Chopped. I love cooking. You are a great chef. And we watched it for the first time the episode.
Brooke Siem (04:22.915)
Thanks for watching!
Kel (04:50.864)
So I was reading the book and I'm sitting on my couch and she drops the crab. I was just going to say, that's the one thing I would have never done. I wouldn't have dropped the soft shell crab. She drops the soft shell crab and I'm reading the book and I go, oh no, Brooke. Even though I know the outcome that she won. And so then I went and downloaded the episode and watched the whole thing. So you might know her from Chopped. That's an awesome show.
Brooke Siem (05:02.827)
Say you wouldn't have.
Kel (05:19.284)
She was also named one of Zagat's 30 under 30 in 2014. I personally find her to be courageous and knowledgeable, an advocate against over-pathologizing and prescribing of psychiatric drugs, and honestly has obtained more knowledge than many of the docs I know regarding anti-depressant withdrawal and how to safely deprescribe. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post,
Kel (05:48.488)
The Rumpus, New York Post, Fast Company and more. I also love her Substack, which I definitely wanna get into. Happiness is a skill. You have to check her out. Bruxine, welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast.
Brooke Siem (06:03.211)
Hello, hello, thank you for having me.
Kel (06:06.96)
Well, you know, I was saying before you came on that I feel like I know you because you read someone's memoir. It's like you're brought into their world. Um, that's gotta be kind of strange for you after you put yourself out there so vulnerably and then like strangers can come up to you and like, feel like they're connected to you in some way.
Brooke Siem (06:25.891)
it, you know, it's become normal for me. And it's almost more confusing to me when I realize other people are not that open. Because when you share the most difficult aspects of your life publicly in the way I have, kind of just don't care about really, like, honestly, what else is there? Like, I don't know, ask me any question you want. Somebody asked me today, like,
know, I don't have kids at this point. Someone asked me if I wanted to have kids and then they were like, Oh my god, I'm sorry, that's so personal. And I was just like, you've literally read my book, who cares? Right? It doesn't matter. And so I Yeah, I actually struggle more on the opposite side, I feel like because I'm like, well, where's your memoir? Why don't I get to understand this thing that really makes you tick because I want to know. And it's cheating that you get to know it. I don't.
Kel (07:00.308)
Ha ha
Kel (07:17.774)
You don't want to read Roger's memoir, it's dark. I'll sit with my clients sometimes when I meet them for the first time in an evaluation. I'm like, any questions you have for me professionally, personally, I'm an open book. Then I realize, Brooke, you really are an open book. I'm not really an open book.
Brooke Siem (07:20.98)
It's so fun.
Brooke Siem (07:35.359)
Yeah, literally. I mean, it's so much easier in so many ways. I think that, you know, there are actually a few aspects of it's interesting because the book took me five years to write. So I was writing, I would write really hard for a couple months, put it away, write hard for a couple months. And then there was, it felt like years of the art of it, of the craft and editing. And so there were things that were pulled out.
things that I didn't have in there, things that at the time I didn't, you know, maybe I didn't feel comfortable sharing or things that I didn't feel I knew enough about to really be able to back up. And now I've learned so much more about it. I've kind of worked through so much of the emotion on my own end that I'm a lot more comfortable talking about that. And one of the things I've seen that's come up a lot is, you know, the PSSD aspect. I didn't talk about that at all in my book, but it's definitely something that's affected my life.
I'm at the point now where I'm like, all right, I'm ready to start talking about this a little bit too. That's kind of for me been the really the last, you know, frontier, the post SSRI sexual dysfunction aspect of this, because that is where like women go to die in shame. Right? So that's the one thing that I feel like I haven't talked about a lot. But other than that, I mean, it's just everything I put out there is what happened. It's what happened to me. And I am lucky that I have had the support.
both from professionals and from my friends and family to work through it in a way where I can talk about it from the scar and not the wound.
Kel (09:05.468)
And these stories are powerful. They're a powerful way to learn. And I think when we consider the general medical landscape, we're not getting this information from our prescribers. So these stories are powerful. You're doing amazing work. I first want to get your thoughts on Lexapro. I did open up with that and you were prescribed these drugs at a very vulnerable and young age, age 15. This is being prescribed for seven-year-olds with anxiety. Just want to get your quick thoughts.
Brooke Siem (09:29.507)
Hmm.
Brooke Siem (09:37.275)
I said this in a comment on Instagram the other day. I wasn't seven and it wasn't Lexapro. I was 15 and it was a Fexer and Wilbutrin and it still fucked up my development on a range of issues that I couldn't predict very, very much. So I was 15. I mean, like I didn't have agency in the situation and I did, right? I mean, I was in a position where there was a conversation, you know?
What do you feel like you would want to go on antidepressants? And I was 15, it was 2001. There was far fewer resources and information than there is now. But at some point, no one was pulling my mouth open every morning and pouring these drugs down my throat. Like I was on some level a willing participant.
Granted, I was influenced from the doctors, the professionals that were giving me information, and my father had just died, so there was grief involved, and my mother was grieving, and she didn't know any better either, and I wanted to, you know, I was taught to listen to doctors and respect institutions, so why wouldn't I do what they say, right? But when you're seven,
Like, someone is more or less literally putting this stuff down your throat. I mean, we are literally opening up these capsules and mixing it into Apple Slice for kids. So we have-
They have so much less agency and there's no long-term studies on this for adults, let alone children. The lexplo-kynical trial was eight weeks and it doesn't look good. I just, it's already bad enough that it was approved for 12-year-olds to then just back that up and say, okay, a seven-year-old. And I just, I mean, like I am, it's making me emotional because we are just.
Brooke Siem (11:27.979)
We are disabling a generation, and it might not look like we are. It might not because, you know, they're able to sit in class and they're able to, you know, get a B on their test or do whatever thing we want them to do, but we have no idea what we are doing to their hearts and their spirits and their souls and their future, mental, physiological, spiritual health by screwing with them that early. And it pisses me off.
Kel (11:58.596)
If you're willing, I'd like to go back to that time when you were prescribed these drugs, if you can kind of paint the picture for our audience, the context of, you know, what your life was like at that time.
Brooke Siem (12:10.423)
Sure. So I grew up in Reno, Nevada. So we were in Reno when this all happened and my father suddenly died. He was kind of there one minute and gone the next. And my mom and I were abroad at the time we were visiting some family. And so we got a call in the middle of well, it was the afternoon at that point. It was like five o'clock and my grandfather said, you have to come home. So we went, you know, we had to get from Italy to
Reno and you know on whatever flight would have us and then we showed up we got to the hospital he was he was um unresponsive you know in a coma and that was just it and then a few days later he died and that was on July 3rd uh 2001 and I was between my freshman and sophomore year of high school and is that right yeah and um so you know I was
I was a very serious ballet dancer. I was used to following the rules, doing what the adults told me to do, striving for perfection and ease and making everything look effortless. And I was extremely stoic. And so I knew how to deal with pain. I mean, I didn't have any toenails from ballet. That wasn't the issue, right? So I stuffed everything. I wanted to know if I stuffed everything. It was just, in retrospect, I think I was in shock.
And that lasted for long enough to be concerning to the adults around me. And so I was kind of, at some point, the idea that we needed to go see a child psychologist was floated. And I know I really didn't wanna go. I fought that one. And I went to her and she broke my trust in the very first meeting. And I refused to talk to her from that point on. I had shared something with her and she basically told me what I was feeling wasn't real.
And I just said, you know, I knew it was like, well, this is bullshit. And so I just didn't respond. And eventually after, you know, a handful of sessions, she called my mom and said, you're wasting your time with a psychologist, what she really needs is a psychiatrist. I'm diagnosing an anxiety and depressive disorder and recommending medication.
And so then my mom did what she thought was the right thing. And she took me to the psychiatrist that was recommended. And I sat with him for 10, 15 minutes. He said, looks like you're having a hard time. Let's see if we can help with that. And he started trying different psychiatric drugs. Now this was again, 2001, the landscape of what drugs are available to children was different than, um, I'm quite sure we, uh, tried Prozac.
and because that was the only one I think that was approved for children at the time. And then the other one might have been Zoloft. I know we tried at least two that I had obvious physical reactions to and so we kind of just ditched those right away and so I ended up on a combination of effects or XR and mobile XL which did not produce immediate physical side effects. Interestingly, neither one of those still is approved for use in children today, but or teens, but we did that.
And then I stayed on those drugs and we added on some other ones as the years went by because I developed physical symptoms. I had a thyroid problem. I developed something called bile reflux disease, which is sort of like gastric reflux but deeper down in your system. So we just started piling on other drugs. So by the time I was old enough to vote, I was on about six different prescription drugs. And then I stayed on that same cocktail of drugs for the next, until I was 30.
and they were generally unquestioned and unmonitored by every doctor I went to in that period of time.
Kel (16:03.856)
So your father died suddenly. I think what I read was that he was going to have surgery for an ulcer possibly and found out that he had pancreatic cancer.
Brooke Siem (16:16.287)
Yes, exactly. So he had, we didn't, well, we think he didn't know that he had pancreatic cancer. There's a bit of a question there that maybe he had known something. He did a couple things that were a little odd for someone who didn't think they might die. But as far as we knew, he knew nothing. And he just had some pain in his stomach and he went through all the ulcer tests. And finally they said, we're just going to go in there and, you know, fix it. And when they got in there, there was a grapefruit.
size mass of pancreatic cancer that he never came out of the hospital from.
Kel (16:51.464)
So just context, when did you go see the child psychologist? Because listen, your memoir is so beautifully written that I wanna be careful here that it doesn't come across as being sensationalized, right? This is a human life. This is your vulnerable raw experience. And it's way too familiar for me as a clinical psychologist. So...
Context-wise, when did you end up seeing the psychologist?
Brooke Siem (17:24.775)
It was within a year of my dad's death. The timeline exactly is fuzzy in everyone's memory and their medical records have long since been destroyed. But I remember, I wanna say it was probably within four to six months of him dying because I distinctly remember that there were no branches or there are no leaves on the branches. So my dad died in July. And if we were into winter time, then it would have been about four to six months based on the seasons in Reno.
Kel (17:55.58)
Which is really important because you're experiencing expected grief. You're an only child. Your mom is grieving. There's, I can only imagine we lost our fathers around this, around the same time. I was just nine years older than you. So it's different how generationally speaking, and I lost my dad young and suddenly didn't expect it. So generationally, there's like some differences here because of
Brooke Siem (18:05.798)
Mm-hmm.
Kel (18:23.612)
where you were as a 15 year old in this drug era. But when I was in 15, I was in the early 90s, we didn't yet really enter into it. So I would have never viewed what I was feeling, which is probably similar to what you were experiencing. There was a detachment and numbness and grief for more than a year that never really goes away. It just evolves, it changes, because you lose your father, you lose somebody close to you. That's always something that's gonna be missing.
Brooke Siem (18:31.691)
Mm-hmm.
Brooke Siem (18:47.341)
Mm-hmm.
Kel (18:53.212)
when you're at the vulnerable age of 15, there are heroes and there are villains in this memoir, right, because it kind of reads that way. And you're the first villain for me, and honestly, I had to put it down and walk away because I am a psychologist. And that first villain, is it Dr. Sanders? Was that her name? A child psychologist, I believe. She immediately...
Brooke Siem (19:10.275)
Mm-hmm.
Kel (19:23.428)
invalidated your experience. Like, I don't even, I can't even begin to fathom sitting across a young girl who just lost her father and then invalidating you right away, you shut down. And her interpretation of that is that what you're going through is so serious or severe that you require medical intervention. Go see a psychiatrist.
Brooke Siem (19:25.26)
Mm-hmm.
Brooke Siem (19:31.789)
Mm-hmm.
Brooke Siem (19:35.092)
Mm-hmm.
Brooke Siem (19:44.811)
Yep. Yeah. And let's get, we have time. So let's do details here. So what had happened was that, again, the context of this is that I was a very serious ballet dancer and the body is your paintbrush. And so I wanted to manipulate my body so it would do what I wanted it to do and look the way I wanted it to look. And that was manifesting in eating disorder tendencies. To this day,
I am not convinced that had this gone unchecked, it would have devolved into something dangerous. Like I, especially now knowing myself, I've spent my whole life in athletics and I've been in, I'd say three or four different bodies and I use food as the, the food is the paint, if you will. It is how I manipulate the tool.
to do what I wanted to do, whether or not I needed to be bigger, smaller, longer, leaner, whatever it is, like it starts with food. But I was also 15 and there was control issues there. My father literally just died. So what started happening is that I dropped a little bit of weight in order to look the way I wanted to for the art form I was trying to create. That became concerning to my mother, understandably. She's already in a place of grief and fear.
She had said to me, I've already lost one person in my family. I can't bear to lose two. And so she took me to the child psychiatrist in part because of the eating disorder tendencies. And when I got there, again, I'm a people pleaser, I had also done enough research, literally gone to a bookstore because remember those, and sat down with the DSM in a big fat book on a chair in Borders Books, which is...
dating my age. I sat there and I read everything about eating disorders and all of these things. And I kind of knew I was like, I don't really meet this criteria, but like, okay, fine. And so I went and I sat there and I said, look, you know, I can see that I might have some eating disorder tendencies. These are all the things that I do. I was open about it. I told her and she said to me, I have another client who only eats white things, white rice.
white potatoes, white bread. That's a real eating disorder. And that was it. That was the moment I was like, you and I are done. And then I just sat there and glared at her for the next, I don't know, six sessions. And ironically, what happened is that because of that, me being competitive and intense and in a state of like, you know,
nothing matters because people die at 15. I was like, I'll show you. And that's when the eating disorder developed into something real. So that's what happened there.
Kel (22:45.148)
Yeah, and, and it certainly, it makes sense for everything you're going through. You know, as you well know, an eating disorder can at least allow you to feel like you have some control over your life and so much control was taken away from you. So we would certainly see that as maybe an expected coping reaction for somebody who was really struggling in the way that you were struggling. So the way that was kind of misinterpreted, misrepresented and communicated. It's almost like she's the major villain in my mind because.
Brooke Siem (22:52.835)
Mm-hmm. Mm.
Kel (23:14.48)
If she responded differently to you, it could have changed the whole trajectory. And this is what I unfortunately see way too often in clinical practice is the worst of my profession, the least educated, the least talented, the least empathic, drive the most people down this route with drug because they don't understand the human condition. They don't understand the experience. It almost feels, Brooke, like we've lost our collective, like empathy and...
Brooke Siem (23:33.571)
Mm-hmm.
Brooke Siem (23:36.855)
Mm-hmm.
Kel (23:43.784)
connection to understanding what is normal, to just be in a body and to live this life. Life is painful. And the lack of empathy that she communicated for such a vulnerable young age for someone who lost her father is just, I think it's heartbreaking. But I think it's representative of some of the lessons we have to learn from this era in mental health.
Brooke Siem (23:50.891)
Yeah.
Kel (24:10.932)
is pushing people to some idea of a quick fix and communicating that they are broken. So that leads to my next question is how did you then interpret what you were going through? And I know this is going back to being a teenager, but you're now you're pushed into the medical side of this or something that I just feel is quite normal. What you were experiencing. How did how did that shift for you about how you were viewing what was going on within you?
Brooke Siem (24:28.909)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Brooke Siem (24:40.811)
I think the fact that I was a teenager is very important. And it also hearkens back to, you know, the seven-year-olds on LexPro, right? Because when you're seven, you are the, you are the makeup of everyone around you and everything you're learning from the people around you. When you're 15, you are all of those things you were at seven. So you're all the things that other people.
have made you to be and imparted on you. And at the same time, you're at the point where you're starting to question those things and say, okay, well, who am I? What is my personality? And then you're also right in the middle of puberty. So it's just, it's not a great time anyway. But when I was given these labels, when I was told that I had depression and anxiety and that they were...
no different from a diabetic who needs insulin, and it was not my fault, and all of these stop the stigma things. What that actually did was tell me that I did not have the power, agency, or innate ability to change my situation and to therefore change the world around me because
Well, it's not your fault if you're born with type one diabetes. So if it's the same thing here, if there's a, you know, if it's genetic or a chemical imbalance or any of these things that I get told and everybody gets told, well, then why try to change it? Because I'm already immediately going to be working against nature. And you know, what power do I have there? That was the message that was said both through words and through actions. Now you take that even a step further and
Okay, the seven year old, well, they're just gonna internalize that immediately, right? So now they're just, they have something wrong with them and their whole world is through that lens, right? As a 15 year old, when you're also dealing with puberty and you're dealing with the rebelliousness that comes from being that age, well, at that point, it almost felt kind of good, right? There was almost this like, you know, there was a, there was this feeling of
I am so fucked up that there's a medical term for it. And I deserve that. And I want like, it made me feel special. And it made me feel like I had an excuse to be morose and dark and to, you know, listen to obnoxious music because I was, I was really so fucked up a doctor said I was right. And that was.
Such an insidious thought process to have put into me that went on like well into my twenties and really didn't, really I think frankly didn't really lift until I finally got off all these drugs and started to have to retrain myself and learn a new story. But it was just, it was so beneficial. God, nothing was my fault. I didn't have to care about anything if you know.
If my job wasn't going the way I wanted or my experience, I didn't like it. Well, whatever. It wasn't my fault. It was somebody else's fault. I had there was no reason for me to have personal responsibility or agency at all. But that was something that developed over time. And it's just that the seed was planted early on.
Kel (28:03.588)
I mean, one of the key points and what I loved when I was watching everything about you is the idea of agency. You bring it up so often and I'm a teacher and I, I do my best to get these kids to understand that is the single most important thing that you have to embrace. You do not want to net self-reliance, you know, rely on yourself. It's okay. But one of the key points you discuss, um, with adolescents, particularly adolescents, how many things they actually go through, particularly to gain success in.
this current education system, get A's, get all this stuff. So when I teach, I see this all the time. And I can tell you the moment any of these teens experiences, any kind of grief or any kind of negative emotion, an immediate reaction from everyone is, well, maybe they're depressed. Maybe they might have a problem. You should go see a doctor. And so again, everybody just listens. And most of these kids though, they actually don't want to discuss what's going on. They just kind of want to live their lives and be left alone. And.
Brooke Siem (28:51.659)
Mm-hmm.
Brooke Siem (28:58.369)
No.
Kel (29:01.032)
They want to try to figure things out. They want to learn how to cope with it. But we cut that off. They need time. And instead we don't allow time. We tell them, oh, you have a problem. How did we get to this point where human emotions are so pathologized and there's such a vigilance towards like your emotions as something is really wrong with you?
Brooke Siem (29:03.479)
Hmm?
Brooke Siem (29:21.526)
marketing.
Kel (29:23.365)
money.
The pharmaceutical companies really have been powerful in this regard in shaping generations because that's we we're one of only, I think, two countries that receive direct to consumer advertising. And that's the power of the, some of these messaging, like that chemical imbalance. Idea. Were you told that you had a chemical imbalance out of curiosity? Yeah. Which is, which is insane because it's clear that
Brooke Siem (29:46.459)
The other is New Zealand.
Brooke Siem (29:50.947)
Absolutely.
Kel (29:55.712)
you were grieving at that particular time. So, I mean, that's just a level of insanity that's unable for me to grasp.
Brooke Siem (30:02.083)
I mean, I had a conversation with a psychiatrist about two months ago who told me that depression and grief are not connected.
And like, he said, they're different. And I asked him how, I said, how do you measure it? Well, he couldn't answer that. And then he's like, because, you know, depression is persistent. It happens after, you know, it starts after a specific period of time. And I just, I was like, are you seriously telling me that like, if you lose your father or a partner, that you're done grieving after, I mean, I think the DSM just completely eliminated the grief, you know, the grief clause, but.
For at one point, I think when I was medicated, it was two weeks. If you are depressed because your dad died for more than two weeks, then well, you're clinically depressed. It's different than your grief. One is a pathological disorder. The other one is just, I don't know, normal, which if you look at the history of grief practices and bereavement, I mean, not that long ago, we were wearing black for a year.
Kel (31:12.316)
Yeah, it's such arbitrary bullshit. And you know, we'd have to be able to call them out on this nonsense. And that's what's concerning to me over the past 30 years is we've continued to give the medical authority more and more power where they feel like they have to have all the answers in psychiatry. They just make shit up. Like I spend my entire adult life trying to be able to understand the human experience in context and understand history and what does it mean to be human. And I interact in our medical system and they just
Brooke Siem (31:29.091)
Yeah.
Kel (31:42.292)
make shit up. Like, I could never just make shut up. Like, so they don't understand that the DSM, the Bible in which they're using, they don't understand, listen, these aren't illnesses. These are some construct that were made by people sitting around a table. There's no science behind it. It's a scientific nightmare. So they, they use this DSM, you know, as if it's legitimate, and they slap the label on you. It didn't seem like anyone really understood you at that time.
Brooke Siem (31:43.36)
Mm-hmm.
Kel (32:11.324)
Was there a plan to get you off the drug? Because there's a period that I didn't get from the book. I know you so well because I read your book, but then there's a whole period of your life that I just don't, I guess it's like college years. I guess it's the college years, yeah, because you take us to going through the withdrawal, the hell that you were going through, and that's our next transition point. But I am interested to know the period from when you provided these drugs
Brooke Siem (32:22.874)
Which chunk? Yeah.
Brooke Siem (32:34.092)
Mm-hmm.
Kel (32:41.936)
make the decision to get off them, what life is like for you then?
Brooke Siem (32:46.579)
It's interesting you say that because one of my big creative choices was... One of the big creative choices when you're doing any sort of writing is what do you leave in and what do you take out? And in earlier drafts, there was much more robust... context of what college was like or my early 20s. But at the end of the day, it really didn't matter because...
I kind of in a lot of ways it felt like the way it's read and it's written in the book because I think within the first 30 pages, I think you get my entire backstory in the first 30 pages and then we're like, okay, we are here on the day that we are getting off the antidepressants after 15 years. And that's kind of how it felt to me. It was like in my mind, there is before antidepressants and after antidepressants and everything in there is one literally very fuzzy and in some ways very gone.
because I was having memory problems that were associated with the long-term use of these drugs, plus the memory problems that occurred because of the trauma of losing my dad. So it's like, I really struggled with traditional talk therapy, which I did try a little bit of, because it was so rooted in like, let's go back to this memory, or what's the logic of it all? And I'm just like, I can't remember. It's not, it's literally not in my body. I mean, by the time I got off these drugs, I couldn't remember conversations I was having with my business partner the day before.
that was causing a lot of strife in our relationship. So let alone like, I don't know what I was feeling in the two weeks after my dad died. It's like there's a chemical wall that was put up and I couldn't get through it. So the answer is like, I don't really know. I wasn't home. I did all the things I was supposed to do. I went to college, I got a degree, I drank too much beer. I...
I would see a psychiatrist once a year who would say, how you doing? And I'd say, fine. And then she'd just give me more drugs. Like, but there was no, I never took stock of the situation. I never looked around and said, am I thriving? Because I thought I was doing the best I could because in my view, from what I had been told and I understood, if I was as depressed as I was on antidepressants,
then I sure as hell was probably going to be super depressed if I wasn't on them, right? It's in the name. I was taking antidepressants and I was still depressed, so I must be worse if I wasn't on them. So I kind of was just living the best life I thought I could. The fact that it wasn't great and I certainly wasn't thriving was something that never occurred to me because I was under the impression that I had been telling myself and because of the actions that had been told to me that I was limited in my ability to thrive.
because I had a chemical imbalance. So, that's what I believed. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it was about coping, not curing.
Kel (35:35.94)
Yeah, as if you had this disease and you had to manage this disease for the rest of your life. And you didn't, yeah. Now, I can only imagine that taking these drugs, because I know what you were experiencing before you went off them, created some degree of emotional numbing or blunting in your life, right? And because you started them so early, I think it's questionable whether you even knew the difference.
Brooke Siem (35:57.911)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Kel (36:06.18)
because that's just all you know, right? So what was life like on those drugs? Did you identify yourself just as a depressed person that required this? And what was your emotional experience like in those years?
Brooke Siem (36:06.423)
Nope. Yeah.
Brooke Siem (36:21.748)
Okay, so there is interesting you asked this so there's a numbers are running theme in my book right and one of the one of the early exercises that I had done to kind of just I liked quantum I still like quantifying things that feel unquantifiable because it makes me feel like I understand them more. So in about 2014, which was to two years.
before I got off the antidepressants, I had calculated the day of my own death. Like I literally sat down one day and the general thought process was, I, like life sucks and then you die. That was my theme. You could have put it on a pillow. That's the way I felt. And so I said, all right, well, when might I die? When might this be over? And so I took.
half, you know, a dozen life expectancy tests, and I literally would take them from actuary tables and life insurance websites. And I went, I got the ones that were as deep as you could. I mean, they were asking me how many times a week I ate grilled meat, right? This wasn't some BuzzFeed test. And then I took all the results. So I had, you know, a smattering of results over a smattering of different dates, and I averaged them and then came up with a final
date of, according to all of these data tables, what would be my date of death. And that was November 6, 2069, approximately, oh God, 83 years, I think 86 years, 83, I think. And so I had this number and somehow someone from Fast Company got wind that I did this and they interviewed me about it. And it's still on the internet, you can find it. And one of the first things they asked me was how I defined myself because I never really said I was a pessimist.
but I deeply identified being a realist. And for me, through the lens that I was viewing the world, there was no way to be a realist without looking at the world and just saying like, well, this is shit. So I thought I was being balanced and like hanging out right in the middle, but what I didn't understand is that balance is dependent on where you sit on the scale. And I was very much sitting on the side of life sucks and then you die. So from my perspective, I was extremely balanced, you know?
Ice cream was delicious, but look at all the poverty. How can we be excited about the ice cream, right? That's kind of sort of how I viewed the world. And that was it. But I also couldn't feel true joy. I couldn't feel gratitude or, you know, I thought I had moments of happiness even while deeply medicated and I realize now I didn't at all. But I was able to feel outrage and I could feel boredom. And that was mostly it.
Kel (39:07.508)
So very restricted range of emotions. And.
Brooke Siem (39:10.143)
Yeah, it doesn't lead to good things, doesn't motivate you.
Kel (39:12.804)
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that we know about these drugs is that there's this emotional blunting or numbing effect that is experienced in the majority of people that take them. And if you communicate that as anti-depressant, right? Like words are powerful, language is powerful. Anti-depressant means like anti-feeling, right? And to communicate it that way in our culture, you can see why there's some people who will still make claims like, Oh, I need this drug to function or
Brooke Siem (39:22.115)
Mm-hmm.
Brooke Siem (39:25.675)
Mm-hmm.
See ya.
Brooke Siem (39:41.2)
Mm-hmm.
Kel (39:42.284)
You know, he's done even make statements that well, it saved my life and I don't ever want to discount somebody who says something like this Because if you believe the drug saved your life, I'm pretty sure that you've probably manifested that into your reality I mean if you say Jesus saved your life or you say love saved your life or if you say this dog saved your life Like I think that's what happens. Like that's what you believe that becomes your reality. My concern is Communicating that as if it was the drug effect and that's kind of the issue
Brooke Siem (39:59.139)
Mm-hmm. The dog, yeah. Yep.
Kel (40:12.032)
I mentioned like the first villain before, Dr. Sanders, unfortunately. There's some other villains in this story, but there are heroes. I first want to bring up your mom. She comes across as very endearing in the book, but also with this wisdom about her that seems to be connected spiritually.
Brooke Siem (40:22.816)
I'm sorry.
Brooke Siem (40:28.081)
Yeah.
Brooke Siem (40:40.236)
Mm-hmm.
Kel (40:40.5)
You're like almost a higher plane of consciousness as if she was perfectly placed in your life to be able to do this work. I feel like she saved your life in some ways because of the way that she communicated to you in your most difficult moments and had the subtle way or not so subtle way of like completely shifting your reality
Brooke Siem (40:42.897)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Brooke Siem (41:01.667)
Mm-hmm.
Brooke Siem (41:09.475)
Mm-hmm.
Kel (41:10.172)
some of what sounded like and felt like the most painful and hellish moments on earth.
Brooke Siem (41:18.015)
Yeah, yeah, that's a very good description of pretty much exactly what happened. And, you know, it's a, it's so interesting because, you know, I was a minor when these drugs were prescribed to me. So my mom had to sign off on it. She was part of this decision making process to put me on these drugs as well. And, you know, she and I have had hundreds of conversations about it at this point. And we both come to the conclusion that, you know, we did the best we could with the information we had at the time.
And had we known better, we would have done better. We didn't, we knew what we knew. And so I have no resentment or ill will or frustrations or anger towards the fact that she had to be involved in this because this was, our whole relationship is a joint effort and most of that, I mean, I imagine we would have had a really good relationship if my dad didn't die, but a big part of it was that he did and it was just us. And so...
there was this unspoken kind of bond between us, even beyond just mother and daughter. Literally we were in the San Francisco airport trying to get home before my dad died. And she said, it's just you and me, baby. And like, I felt that ever since. Oh, she's my favorite person. And so everything we've done together since has been a joint effort. And we've always been able to talk. And we've always been able to...
support each other and I'm sure it's unbalanced because I get, mom supports the kids more than kids supports the mom, but I try. And so she, over the course of the year, started to question the antidepressants. Whereas I thought, if I'm still this depressed on these antidepressants, then I would be so depressed and like, unfunctional without them. She thought, if these antidepressants were working, you wouldn't be feeling like you are.
And that's a very different way to think about this. And so she started to question it, especially when the memory problems were coming in and I was visibly going downhill. I mean, when, you know, when the suicidal ideation was coming in and just feeling so normal to me, that's when I was when she noticed. And she was like, I think this is contributing to the problem. But it took me many years to actually. Be open to the idea that.
the drug I thought I was taking to combat my problem was actually potentially causing the problem. And it wasn't until I had other reasons to make that choice for myself and get off the drugs that I started being open to the idea of getting off of them. But she started questioning it many years before. And then when I went into withdrawal, she picked up the phone every time I called and like that.
I, if all parents got that, if that is all you do for your kid, I think that is 80% of the battle, especially adult children who still need their mommy, right? We still need that. And if you have your kid and your parents are still around, and just, God, please pick up the phone for them. Let them know you can, they can talk to you. Because that is what made the difference for me.
Kel (44:34.044)
Brooke, I really do think you're saving lives with your story. So I do want to take it to some of the most darkest moments because that's some of the more compelling aspects of the book, which is your life. It's so weird because it's read like a novel, but it is your life, and you're in front of me. And I want to honor that. What you've experienced, I think, if others can hear it and they can understand that.
Brooke Siem (45:00.532)
Mm-hmm.
Kel (45:02.908)
what you're going through is a side effect of adverse reaction to drugs and not necessarily a experience of their own mental illness which like they're told. Are you able to just kind of communicate to us what you were experiencing at the time? What stands out to me is you just at your window.
Brooke Siem (45:15.075)
Mm-hmm.
Brooke Siem (45:23.515)
Okay, at the window as opposed to withdrawal. All right, so my whole book and the whole story really starts I was just turned 30 about to turn 30 and because I'd calculated the day of my own death I also calculated all sorts of other numbers and one day I lived on the 30th floor of Manhattan apartment building and one day I was just I had pushed my Screen the screen that was you know, the bug screen. I pushed it out and I was holding it
And I stuck my whole body out and I could see the patterns in the sidewalk and I could feel the wind come by and take the screen. And, you know, I just decided, like, all right, how long would it take to fall? And so I calculated that. 5.58 seconds, I knew exactly how long if I just decided to push myself out, it would take to fall. And I did. There was no fear in that knowledge. In some ways, it felt comfortable that I had that option. I didn't.
It didn't occur to me to call the suicide hotline. It was not an alarm. It was something that had become so normal to me, this idea that I could kill myself at any time in a thousand different ways, and I just thought about it all the time. And because it was so insidious in the way it began, it never felt like an emergency. And so,
That's one of the things that I find really frustrating about the whole conversation around suicide is there's so much fear around the idea of like, oh my God, someone's going to hurt themselves, that no one can talk about it in a way that's like, you know, again, what is the range of normal here? I would say normal is everyone's thought about it one way or another at some point in their life. I mean, the thing people talk about all the time. I see articles written about this as if it's as if it's like an aside, you know, as if it's a weird thing, right? There was an article in my
college magazine of all things about someone who was describing this great mental health crisis they had that started with the idea that they were driving on the highway and wondered what would happen if they drove off. I mean, to me, this is the most normal thing in the world. Who hasn't had that thought when you're going 80 miles an hour in a 2000 pound bullet and you're in full control? Like, is there anyone who's ever driven a car who hasn't thought that? Right? And yet we're not allowed to say it out loud.
Because if we do, we might be put on an involuntary psychiatric hold, or we're worried that there's something mentally wrong with us. I mean, like, I like to rock climb. Sometimes I get to the top and think, oh my God, I could let go right now, and that would be it. It's the same thing. It's just a huge amount of fear. It's you're putting your body in a place that's not supposed to be there. We're not really supposed to be moving at 80 miles an hour in a 2000 pound bullet. We're also not supposed to be hanging out, you know, 60 feet high, right? Like...
Our lizard brain's just like, hello, things are happening. And yet, God forbid you say it out loud. And so, I say this stuff out loud all the time now. And when I was in withdrawal, these thoughts got real bad and they got real scary in a way that I was like, this is terrifying. I hear a lot of women with postpartum.
intrusive thoughts that are very violent and very scary and bring so much shame that they don't feel like they could say it. And then their OB gives them an antidepressant, right? Like I just don't think this is pathological. I think it's something coming up from inside you that's trying to make you alert to the situation that something's not quite right or you have to face a fear or deal with it. So that's what was happening to me when I was standing at my window. But I pulled myself in and I was like, well, that I just kind of just dawned on me that was an interesting thought. And that maybe
someone who's on this mini antidepressants shouldn't be thinking like this. So then I started to get curious about that.