UNSHRUNK

Finding herself—off of meds.

At 13, Delano was put on her first too-potent psychiatric drug because she was experiencing what was (to her, in hindsight) mere teen angst. What followed were decades of psychiatric drugs that were given to counteract effects of other drugs, which were given to counteract effects of still other drugs: the classic “cascade of prescriptions.” She quickly became one of the 80% of 59 million Americans on psychiatric meds long-term. Only after years of brain-fogging drugs-upon-drugs, punctuated by years of hospitalizations, did she stumble into an Alcoholics Anonymous group, which focused on taking responsibility for one’s own life. That simple notion, along with the common fellowship of people helping each other without professionals—and without pharmaceuticals—led her to wonder if her worsening mental health was due not to her lack of response to drugs, but to the drugs themselves. Against advice, she began tapering off all of them. As she did, she researched. She read Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, John L. McKnight’s The Careless Society, and Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry. “The words of these men ignited a fire in me to feel, to just sit and feel, for how beautifully they articulated the art of leaning into the darkness of being alive.” She also began mentoring others. Off all drugs, she had a “holy shit” realization: Her problem really was “the meds” all along. She founded a nonprofit organization and now runs a psychiatric drug withdrawal consultancy. She concludes: “I don’t need to ‘figure myself out,’ to force a change in my day-to-day reality. I trust fully in my own process—in this intelligence within me, within each and every one of us…that sits deeper than thought, that knows where to take us each from here….We’re built for tribes and villages and neighborhoods and potluck dinners. We’re meant to feel it all, and bear it all, together.”

A courageous, insightful, beautifully written book challenging major tenets of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry.