Maybe you are in the process of tapering off of a psychiatric medication, maybe you have already come off and are struggling, or maybe you are dealing with a drug injury caused by an immediate adverse reaction.
Whatever your personal circumstances, anything you do or don’t do comes down to this one decision: Keep messing with your brain, or stop messing with your brain.
When we are experiencing uncomfortable, disruptive, and frightening symptoms as a result of taking or stopping psychiatric drugs, there is a very strong and understandable temptation to try and alleviate them. We are desperate to feel better! We don’t know how we will carry on without some relief. Plus, both the mental health system, and the medical system at large, have taught us that symptoms equal problems to be solved as quickly as possible.
We may find ourselves adjusting our current drug(s), trying new drugs whether prescription or over the counter, exploring the world of psychoactive plant medicines, or turning to supplements of all kinds that can impact the brain either directly or indirectly.
Messing with your brain is how you got here
Any efforts to alleviate symptoms as quickly as possible usually involve making more changes, not less. But messing with your brain in the first place is how you got here. Is continuing to mess with your brain really going to help you move forward and find healing in a lasting way?
To be clear, what I mean by ‘messing with your brain’ is unnecessarily altering your current drug dose, switching/adding other drugs whether prescription or over the counter, or switching/adding new herbs or supplements–especially those that act on the brain or the nervous system in some way.
I messed with my brain a lot while I was tapering and healing. I didn’t have the experience or knowledge back then to stop and consider why this might not be in my best interest longer term. I was extremely uncomfortable, scared, unable to function the way I wanted or needed to in my life, and I was focused almost entirely on feeling better right now. I was still in the mindset of chasing symptoms, ie: manipulating my brain out of the experience it ultimately needed to have in order to find balance again.
My perspective on symptoms and on healing has changed almost entirely since those early days of my own journey. Now I know that when we manipulate our bodies with drugs and certain supplements, those symptoms we want to be rid of don’t really go away. We might feel some temporary relief from them, but only because they are covered up or suppressed. What are the downstream effects of that? How much harder are we making things on ourselves longer term? And of course there is also the possibility that we respond poorly to whatever drug or supplement we tried and feel immediately worse.
You can trust your body
Our bodies know how to heal, and today I view the symptoms themselves as healing in action. Our brains are desperately working to figure out which way is up, and the symptoms we experience are part of the necessary process the brain goes through as it’s finding balance again. The more you do to your brain during that process in the form of throwing substances at it, the more your brain has to adjust and adapt when it is already overwhelmed. Often the best thing you can do is get out of the way and let your body do the only thing it knows how to do: HEAL.
I now believe that much of my use of additional medications, psychoactive herbs, and supplements during my taper and beyond most likely hindered my healing process, giving my brain even more to have to contend with and heal from. I will never know what might have been, but I think that I would have ultimately felt better faster if I had stopped messing with my brain, and instead focused more on building the supports and the life necessary to endure the totality of the healing process.
This is a sentiment I hear echoed so often in my work… I hear people expressing deep regret at having continued to do things with substances in an attempt to feel better, that ultimately created more chaos for their brains and bodies. They wish they had stopped doing things, and gotten out of the way sooner.
When messing with your brain is inevitable
If you are currently tapering, then there is some degree of continuing to mess with your brain that is inevitable if your goal is to come completely off of what you’re taking. Similarly if you are preparing for a taper that you have yet to begin, then you are preparing to mess with your brain. Hopefully both scenarios are approached in a strategic way that includes asking yourself questions like: “What are the least disruptive things I can do here?” And “how can I minimize any substance-related changes and still end up where I want to be?”
So very often, less really is more in the long run.
Sometimes symptom expressions are severe enough that it is necessary to try adding something, or otherwise making a significant change. Keep in mind that there is a continuum here. I am not talking about discomfort, or even massive disruption in your life. I am not talking about the fear that you cannot continue to carry on. I am talking about symptoms that are genuinely threatening to your safety in an immediate way.
From focusing on symptoms, to focusing on supports
The way out is through and it takes what it takes. The solutions are always within you and your life, not your drugs and supplements. Until you see this, you’ll likely just keep circling the drain.
The same approach that got you here–chasing symptoms–is not going to get you out of here. Full stop. The way forward–instead of in circles–requires something completely different.
A great deal of the work I do with my clients revolves around figuring out what something completely different means for them. It involves shifting the focus away from trying to ‘solve the problem’ of symptoms, and shifting it towards building the supports and the lives necessary to endure, and even to thrive through the healing process, no matter what it asks of them.
Not messing with your brain looks like doing less instead of more. It looks like holding steady in moments of desperation instead of adding something new. It looks like letting go of the search for an external fix or solution–especially in the form of a substance, a program, or anything selling the false promise of ‘fixing’ the way you feel. It looks like shifting the focus away from trying to figure out exactly why symptoms are happening, what they mean, and how to counteract them, and towards meeting the deeper needs your symptoms are trying to communicate to you. It looks like considering what it means to live well even when things feel unbearably and unfathomably hard.
This is the real work, not just of a withdrawal and drug healing journey, but of building a rich life that feels worth living on the other side.
Reminder: Nothing written in this article is medical or personal advice.