Anatomy of an Epidemic

The perspective that I have an issue with is this kind of conventional approach that is just going to jump straight to medications and act like that's the only solution and that that's always going to be a lifelong solution.

The book Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker is a really... really great book on this topic and it just highlights the long-term issues with these and goes into a lot of detail explaining how they can actually rewire the brain and that's where my concerns come from with long-term use and with not trying to get to to get to the root causes instead uh

yeah and um I know of an individual who switched antidepressants and wound up attempting suicide.

So not only does that to me reveal a danger in the care that needs to be had, extreme care when making decisions like switching medications.

And, and it had in each different compartment a different psychiatric drug name.

And so the cover pulled me in, I was like, "Whoa, I've been on that, I've been on that, I'm on that now." And I was like, "What's this book?" And it was called Anatomy of an Epidemic, and I just felt compelled to buy it.

So I bought it and I started reading it, and it blew my mind.

And so basically, yeah, there it is.

And so she recommended that I read a book, Anatomy of an Epidemic, a book that fundamentally changed how I thought about psychiatric drugs, long-term outcomes, and the stories we tell about mental illness.

My guest today is its author, Robert Whitaker, and this conversation gave me an opportunity to revisit those questions with the person whose work first opened me up to them.

Robert Whitaker is an investigative journalist and the author of five books, three examining the history of psychiatry.

His 2010 book, Anatomy of an Epidemic, Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness, won the U.S.

Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for Best Investigative Journalism.

Right? It becomes just another chemical.

And I think that will be a disaster.

I mean, you were talking about peyote earlier, and one of my favorite books is this book called Mescaline, A Global History of the First Psychedelic by Mike Jay.

I'll link it in show notes.

But suffice it to say that a book I read in twenty ten by Robert Whitaker called Anatomy of an Epidemic really set off a cascade of awakening bells, [chuckles] okay, for me, alarms for me, and prompted me because it was just the right time, it was the right messenger, it was the right personal moment because I had just put my Hashimoto's thyroiditis diagnosis into remission.

And you would think that I would have been so excited, but I was irate.

I was rageful that I was never told in my expensive, tedious, stressful, arguably even traumatic medical training that you could put a recidivistic illness into remission through, what? Lifestyle change.