Permanent Sedation: Drugs, Alcohol, and Antidepressants.

[Music]
it's hard to make friends as an adult it's hard to remain sober as an adult these two things are linked if you are sober as an adult you don't want to go to bars you don't want to meet up with people at a nightclub and for this reason it's not as easy to make friends and for this reason it's not as easy to maintain friendships however at a certain point you have to make an ethical commitment you have to decide am i going to live my life drunk am i going to live my life high or am i going to live my life sober do i value the clarity of mind that comes with living sober living without drugs living without alcohol if not why not why is it so hard to have a clarity of mind why is it so hard to live with your brain as it is why do you want to inflict brain damage on yourself maybe you in the audience right now you're doing drugs maybe you're in the audience have the experience of doing drugs in the past and you're trying to stay sober maybe you know somebody who has done drugs in the past maybe you know somebody who's doing drugs now and you see this happen before your eyes you see that they don't have clarity of mind you might have known them before you might have known them as a different person you might have seen them as an ambitious person you might have seen them as somebody who could get things done and fundamentally because of their drug addiction because of their alcohol use they can't get things done they aren't growing they aren't making an effort to be the best that they can when you decide that you don't value the clarity of mind that you have when you're sober when you want to be drunk when you want to forget things when you want your life to be a blur you've given up you've given up on life you've decided life is too hard life is too hard sober i just can't do it when i was in high school i had ambition i wanted to go to university and i wanted a good career i wanted a future for myself i wanted to contribute to society i felt that i could contribute to society i had made the decision in high school to be sober if i wanted to get into university i knew that i needed to stay sober and i needed to perform well i studied really hard performed well in my classes i stayed busy with choir i stayed busy with orchestra i really did value the clarity of mine that i had sober i applied to schools and i got accepted to the university of michigan this was such a big accomplishment for me and i was really proud i was proud that the hard work that i'd put into my studies had paid off once i got to university though once i was out of the structure of the home life once i was out of my parents house and living in a dorm room with three other girls my perspective changed pretty quickly everybody around me was drinking everybody around me was going to parties i wanted friendship i wanted love freshman year of college is when i first got into a romantic relationship i fell for a guy who wasn't at my university he was in my hometown he had a lot of experience with drugs he had a lot of experience with alcohol he was older than me and more experienced than me the company you keep changes who you are although i had been so committed to being sober in high school because i surrounded myself with people who weren't sober this commitment this stance of mine fell by the wayside i wasn't drinking every weekend i wasn't smoking weed every weekend at first it's a slippery slope once you first start doing these things you either make the decision that you will only do it infrequently or it becomes a habit it becomes habitual when you're first getting into adulthood when you're out on your own for the first time it's not so easy to be alone and it's not so easy to not have friends to talk to and it's not so easy to feel like you don't fit in i wanted to fit in and i did i drank and i smoked weed starting my freshman year of college now i knew marijuana wasn't good i was so opposed to it for so many years it was offered to me at parties and i refused i felt committed to staying sober and i said no i wanted to drive home sober i didn't want to be high i drank alcohol in college like most people and for me it was not enjoyable i almost always got sick and people got really worried for me when i was sick people did take care of me but sometimes i was so sick and everybody else was drunk there was nobody to take care of me i had to take care of myself i decided i still wanted to be able to party with friends i still wanted to attend these social gatherings and i didn't want to be sober i didn't want to be the one person sober at these events and so marijuana became more and more a part of my life marijuana didn't make me feel sick and also i didn't notice a hangover the next day i didn't feel bad the next day at least the effects of marijuana the next day were subtle enough that i didn't notice them i thought that it was good that i could socialize with friends and i could have this in common with some people while also being under the influence of some drug being under the influence of something when i'm at these parties where everybody else is under the influence of alcohol or marijuana or a combination of those two or some other drugs definitely there were other drugs offered to me at parties and i refused those other drugs i never did harder drugs than marijuana it was just marijuana and alcohol for quite a few years for me in college and for a couple years after college nobody seemed concerned about this in fact my boyfriend at the time encouraged me to smoke marijuana he saw that i sometimes experienced stress because of school and he would encourage me to smoke marijuana that it would relax me and i wouldn't be so worried about my schooling that i wouldn't be so worried about my education sadly i took his advice i smoked marijuana when i felt stressed out about school instead of taking that valuable time to worry about my future to worry about my education to worry about my career to join social clubs and try to focus as much as i possibly could on developing into a functional adult who didn't need drugs in order to cope with the difficult emotions that can happen when you're feeling stressed out about classes when you're feeling stressed out about passing exams instead of being able to cope with that instead of building up coping mechanisms that involves being self-disciplined instead of learning healthy ways to cope with stress and anxiety i turned to drugs one semester i was taking a lot of difficult classes i took physics neurobiology and organic chemistry unfortunately i failed organic chemistry and i did very poorly in those other two science classes now at that point my parents were concerned that i had been put on academic probation and because i had performed so poorly in those science classes i gave up i gave up on the idea of majoring in biology i gave up on the idea of becoming a medical doctor i gave up on applying to medical school at that point i decided you know what these classes are too difficult for me i don't think i can do them my parents were concerned about my academic performance but they didn't know about the drug use they didn't know that i was smoking marijuana regularly and they didn't know that i was drinking alcohol regularly my boyfriend did and one of my roommates did you might have thought i would have learned this lesson that doing drugs can impair friendships but sadly i didn't learn that lesson i smoked weed when i lived in an apartment with one of my good friends from high school and middle school we were living together and she herself didn't smoke marijuana but i did at the time and this came in between us and she didn't like living in an apartment where she could smell marijuana to this day i really regret that i played a negative part in her life that in that situation i was the bad roommate i was the bad roommate that was smoking marijuana and making her life worse it was really selfish of me i was just thinking about my own problems i was thinking about my own stress i wasn't thinking about her stress and i wasn't sharing with her i wasn't talking with her about some of these stresses that was the problem i didn't want to talk to people about the stress i didn't want to talk about the anxiety i didn't want to talk about how i was becoming dependent on using marijuana to cope with these things i only talked to my boyfriend about it and he himself used drugs to cope with stress he himself used alcohol drink alcohol in order to cope with stress i was learning from somebody who was an addict himself to become an addict to become dependent on a drug instead of learning to cope with stress instead of learning to cope with these difficulties instead of learning to cope with failing a class but then trying again i didn't try again i decided this is too difficult for me i gave up i quit trying with science classes i quit trying to go to medical school i gave up i gave up on the idea of becoming a medical doctor something that had for many years been a part of my career planning looking back on it now i don't think it was the best career path for me but i do regret the kind of ambition that i lost even if i hadn't become a medical doctor i did lose the ambition to become a real professional ultimately what i decided at that time was i would get my degree in english i knew that i was pretty good at writing and i knew that i could pass my english classes and graduate after graduating from college i continued to smoke marijuana and you might think that because smoking marijuana relieves stress because it makes you feel better that i might have been happy at that time but the truth was i was not happy i didn't know where i was going with my career i had graduated with a degree in english and it wasn't really clear what career path i was going to pursue after that i got a part-time job working for a psychologist while i continued taking classes in speech-language pathology i was considering for quite a few years going into speech-language pathology although i wasn't going to become a medical doctor i thought this can still help people i can still help people who need help with speaking who need help with their disorders my oldest brother struggled with a stutter so from personal experience i knew how important it was to have good speech pathologists i knew how crucial speech therapists could be in the lives of others and i wanted to help other people and i'll never know if i would have continued on that path if i would have just gotten committed would i have been more ambitious would i have gotten on that career path or would i have found another career path would i have kept searching would i have found something eventually if i had had that ambition if i was really trying if i wasn't fogging my mind with marijuana at that time if i had stopped if i had decided no this is such an important time in my life i need to figure out what i'm doing with my career if at that time i hadn't been smoking marijuana what kind of progress could i have made i didn't have that clarity of mind that you need when you're trying to figure out what you're doing with your life it's so hard as it is finding the right career path for you when you're sober if you resort to drugs to cope with the stress you are ignoring the fundamental problem you're pushing the problem to the side when you should be worrying about it when you should be making that your primary focus and i was deeply unhappy i was deeply unhappy with my situation i was lost i felt hopeless i had such negative thoughts i went to a doctor and i asked him what i can take to feel better and i was prescribed lexapro this is an antidepressant drug so smoking marijuana didn't make me happy smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol didn't make me happy what else can i do to feel happy i had some misgivings before i started that medication i had taken two psychology classes in my university and i learned about antidepressants i had learned about prozac the psychiatric establishment is in favor of prescribing antidepressants to people who feel depressed i never got a diagnosis i never saw a psychiatrist i never saw a psychologist i never even saw a counselor the doctor my primary care physician dispensed an antidepressant to me i read the warning label i read what the side effects were and it was scary i didn't know for sure if i should take this i sat down at the kitchen table with my parents and i told them i've really been feeling so bad lately i've been having so many arguments with my boyfriend i'm not doing well i want to do better they said your doctor wouldn't prescribe this to you if it was unsafe they put so many warning labels on all these drugs just try it see what happens so not only was i smoking marijuana not only was i drinking alcohol i also was on an antidepressant did i feel happy i basically felt more flat than i had before i felt like the extreme highs and extreme lows were evened out so that i didn't really have the same level of emotions that i had before there wasn't much in my life that i felt passionate about but i did feel really passionately about veganism once i became vegan i was looking online for people who were also vegan i was looking for others who shared the same passion and i found izamazard who is also known by his youtube channel named abella yell it's scary to admit to yourself that every time you drink alcohol you are causing brain damage to yourself and you should be scared i notice that we seem to have an easier time ethically thinking about these things when they impact others it doesn't seem to be difficult to convince people that they should drink zero alcohol during pregnancy because drinking alcohol during pregnancy every dose every drink even one beer even more glasswine every drink causes brain damage to the unborn baby um it seems to be much more difficult to convince people that they should not drink alcohol because every drink causes brain damage to you the person deciding to drink it now again to me what's interesting here is that alcohol is wrapped up in all these cultural values and those are very hard for people to question it may be that you've grown up in the happiest times of your life are all associated with alcohol and you have to look at the simple grim reality of alcohol causing brain damage again to reiterate my earlier point this is totally unrelated to the checklist of does it cause cancer what are the impacts on my liver what are the impacts on my blood circulation cancer is deadly serious but in another sense brain damage even very minor brain damage is also serious now i quit drinking alcohol at a very young age i basically quit drinking alcohol when it became legal for me in canada as a teenager but i for instance i know that i have brain damage caused by using anti-malarial drugs drugs that prevent you from getting malaria i didn't use them very long i didn't use very much but yes it is a very strange thing to live your life and know that at a specific point you took a drug even a legitimate pharmaceutical medical drug that has a real medical benefit and it caused you brain damage and changed the way you think and feel forever in the case of marijuana and alcohol you're talking about brain damage which is not associated with any legitimate medical benefit so my advice to anyone would be to get familiar with those facts and to make the choice not to drink less alcohol but to drink absolutely zero alcohol for those reasons it blew my mind not because i didn't know that alcohol causes brain damage that's one of the first things i learned about alcohol in the drug classes that they gave to our schools the presentations dare that's what they told us they said that alcohol kills brain cells but it seemed to be this fact that people ignored i didn't ignore it in high school i didn't drink alcohol because i didn't want to be stupid i didn't want it to make me stupider but in the adult world when i got into adulthood when i was surrounded by people in college who were drinking alcohol i drank alcohol when i was in a relationship with somebody who drank alcohol i drank alcohol it was something that i had pushed to the side that i knew was true but i didn't want to face up to it i lived my life pretending like it wasn't happening when it was so when i saw his video i thought this is the first person that i've seen without fear without hesitation just being confident in his decision to not drink alcohol as an adult it changed me it made me feel more confident in my decision to stop drinking alcohol i'd always struggled with feeling sick from alcohol i mostly smoked marijuana but when i did drink alcohol i often got sick so this is what pushed me over the edge to decide that i was going to stop drinking alcohol seeing isil's video talking about this gave me the kind of confidence gave me the kind of reassurance that i could stop drinking alcohol too so i stopped and i actually stopped smoking marijuana for a while too i was finally starting to feel a little bit more clarity ezelmazard had such a huge influence on me had such a big influence on how i was thinking about my future and seeing isil talk so eloquently about so many different topics on his youtube channel inspired me his videos had made such an impact on my life that i wanted to know him and i wanted to express how much his videos meant to me and over time i became more and more passionate i became more and more interested in isil and i reached out to him and i decided i really want to meet this guy i made the extremely difficult decision to end my relationship of six years i started to see what a negative influence that relationship had on my life i had been with somebody who was always going to do drugs somebody who was always going to drink somebody who wasn't committed to the same ethical ideals that i was later on when i explained this history to my parents that i had smoked marijuana and that this had played a role in my relationship they didn't seem that concerned about it they didn't think it was that bad what they wanted was for me to be happy and they thought that if smoking marijuana made me happy then i should keep doing it and this was surprising to me i really thought that they would be against marijuana and when i talked to more people about it i got to see the different reactions some people just take more of an attitude of whatever it takes to make you happy ultimately there has only been one person in my life who's cared enough about my well-being to tell me that i shouldn't use these drugs that i shouldn't be on an antidepressant somebody who's done the research who knows that marijuana causes brain damage now when i got together with isil it wasn't really easy for me to cope it really wasn't easy to stop smoking marijuana it wasn't easy to stop taking an antidepressant and it wasn't easy to stop drinking alcohol he had done a lot of research on anti-depressants and he really cared about my well-being he didn't want me to be taking antidepressants and he's the only person in my life who has cared enough about my well-being to be honest with me to tell me honestly to be straight with me to be real and say melissa antidepressants cause brain damage melissa marijuana causes brain damage somebody who's cared enough about me to do this research to compile this research to make videos talking about this research to be talking about how marijuana causes brain damage how antidepressants cause brain damage this has been so helpful in my life it's changed how i see my mental health how i view life how i view struggles with life isil's motivation his ambition his joy de vivre his just enjoyment of the struggle his decision to embrace some of the difficulties in life and to learn from those difficulties in life getting through life coping with mental health problems coping with stress coping with anxiety it's not about sedating yourself it's not about constantly living your life in a blur it's about remembering it's about learning from the things that you've gone through the experiences the suffering it's about learning how to cope it's about getting better and over time you will get better if you just try if you try to get better if you fundamentally have a positive outlook on going through difficulties in your life because everybody goes through difficulties there's nobody on this earth who doesn't have anything to be angry about who doesn't have anything to be sad about nobody has had a perfect life everybody has struggles everybody deals with things nobody is perfect everybody has to learn to go through these things and be a better person for what they've been through it's so broken that in our society people are told to take drugs people don't care enough about the other people in their lives to be honest with them when they start using drugs when they start taking a psychiatric medication and this is all too human where they start making excuses for taking drugs when they start making excuses for taking psychiatric medications because they've been given a diagnosis or because they just feel sad you want the people in your life to be happy but it's so hard to say to them look i've done the research i've learned about these drugs these drugs are bad these drugs are not going to help the problems that you have are not going to be solved by sedating yourself my doctor didn't care enough about me to say you know melissa you're just starting out your adult life you're just starting out in your career maybe you're going through some of these stresses maybe you're going through some of these difficulties and you shouldn't start taking this medication it was so normal for him to prescribe these medications to his patients that he didn't say anything otherwise he didn't say maybe you should talk to somebody first he gave these medications to me just because i said i feel sad i feel stressed i feel worried well i had reasons to feel sad i had reasons to feel stressed and worried those things were not going to go away by taking a drug and they didn't life can't be about pushing all those things that you're stressed out about to the side fundamentally it's learning to cope with these difficulties learning to cope with the stresses in healthy ways and say i'm so glad i'm alive i love being alive even if it means that i suffer that's what isomazard believes that's how he really lives his life he lives his life every day motivated to get things done motivated to be creative he is a wonderful man he really really cares about people in his life he really cares enough to be honest with them to fundamentally tell them hey you're making a mistake this could be really serious i'm worried about you we might think it's better we might think it's normal that if somebody starts taking a drug and they say that they've started this medication because they're dealing with struggles in their life if they say that they're struggling with life they don't want to live they want to give up but they can't give up and so they're starting this medication it might seem like the right thing to do to say good for you you know you're doing something about it but really if you look into the medications if you look into the research if you read a book i have a book here anatomy of an epidemic this is about antidepressants this is about psychiatric medications and how the research shows that they are debunked they don't help people they don't they harm people but people are still prescribed them doctors still prescribe them they should be required reading but it's not we can't expect schools to teach these things we can't expect schools to talk about mental health people in their lives in their children's lives in their parents lives and their uncles aunts grandparents grandchildren's lives they have to care about these things the onus is on you to do this research the onus is on you to learn about these things the schools won't tell you your teachers won't tell you you have to do this research for yourself and it's not going to matter by hearing somebody else tell it to you what is going to matter is you doing the research by you examining it and you can decide maybe this research is all [ __ ] you know i'm going to take the drugs anyway i'm going to drink alcohol anyway that's your decision but if you fundamentally don't care what does that say about you if you want to live a life where you're totally living your life in a blur when you're not paying attention when you can't pay attention because you can't cope with life without a drug without being sedated you can't get through the week without being focused on how you're going to drink alcohol on the weekend or you can't get through the day without thinking about how you're going to be smoking marijuana that evening how you're going to relax watch some tv and smoke marijuana you know maybe you can instead of viewing life as just a struggle before you go home and smoke marijuana maybe you can see life instead as something that is worth it because of that struggle it's not that you get through your job in order to go smoke marijuana and that's the meaning of life this happiness that you get from a drug this happiness that you get from drinking alcohol that that's what life's about the other 40 hours a week where you're at work or when you have children when your time is taken up with child care and you think i can't wait to have a drink what kind of influence are you having on your children that it's okay to drink it's okay if you feel stressed out about work if you feel stressed out about your family life that you're going to drink alcohol that's what you're teaching your children and that's why we live in a society where you can't have friends when you're in your 20s unless you drink alcohol and do drugs or you have to really really make an effort to find people who are also of the same mindset and build that community yourself otherwise you won't find it otherwise you'll be alone i have isil we're together he's totally changed my perspective on life and i'm so glad that he's in my life i am so glad that i went and met him i'm so glad that i have this opportunity i have a wonderful life and even if there are struggles even if there are sadness even if we've had so many difficulties in our relationship i love him i love him so much he's helped me so much sorry to be crying sorry to be tearing up about this but really he has fundamentally made me a better person the onus is on you to make the lives of those around you better even if it's hard even if you have to have conflict with people even if it's difficult to know what the right answer is you have to try and you have to care if you really love someone if you really care for someone who's struggling with suicidal thoughts if you're struggling with somebody who's feeling hopeless about their lives if you know somebody whose lives are so difficult that they don't want to continue them that they fundamentally have to change something encourage them to do something with their lives to make a change in their lives that doesn't include mind-altering drugs that doesn't include brain damage brain damage is not going to solve their problems instead what can really help what can really change is philosophically how you feel life what the point of life is figuring out what your purpose is on this planet making a purpose for yourself and yes it's going to involve failure maybe something that you try doesn't work out and you have to decide to do something else but that's not the end of the world you can change careers you can change your lifestyle you can change your home life you can change fundamental things about your life to improve your life you can change your mind you can change your mindset a cheesy phrase that i heard growing up was attitude is everything and sadly it's taken me 28 years of my life to really believe that it may be hard to have friendships as an adult it may be difficult to have conflict with others it may be difficult to be honest it may be difficult to live with ethical and moral commitments and still have people in your life but it is worth it it is worth it to find those people who are also interested in living a morally and ethically aligned life i wish i would have stayed sober after high school i wish i would have maintained the stance that i had against drugs and alcohol but i didn't sadly i fell into peer pressure i fell into typical american university life and i will never know how i would have turned out differently had i not smoked marijuana had i not drank alcohol had i not started an antidepressant i can't change what happened in the past but every day i can decide that even if there are difficulties in life i'm going to take a positive attitude toward them i'm not going to let it ruin my day and i'm not going to let difficulties ruin anyone else's day that this is fundamentally what life is about that these struggles it's not something to be avoided it's not that you want to sedate yourself in order to not deal with struggles in your life that this is life and i'm so glad that i've gone through what i have with eisenmazard i am so glad that fundamentally my mindset has changed because otherwise i don't know where i would have ended up i really don't i was using marijuana and i was on an anti-depressant before i met him and who knows what kind of person i would be otherwise but i'm so glad that i get to know the person that i am today and i'm so glad that i get to live my life with isil and i get to live my life with somebody who's committed to an ethical lifestyle i'm so glad i got out of the lifestyle that i was in i'm so glad that i'm with somebody who has helped me grow as a person i'm so glad that i have somebody who's given me so many chances i can't even count at this point i'm so glad i found somebody who really loves me who really cares for me who really is concerned about my well-being somebody who doesn't want me to live in ignorance somebody who doesn't want me to live sedated somebody who wants me to experience all that life has to offer sober that i get to live with somebody who is sober and i don't feel the pressure to do drugs i don't feel the pressure to drink alcohol somebody who wakes up and feels motivated somebody who wants to read somebody who wants to research somebody who wants to create somebody who wants to educate somebody who wants to help others i know that he will always be somebody who's creative i know that he will always recover from anything in his life and he will get back on his feet and he will enjoy life he loves life people don't have this zest for life people don't have this joy for life anymore and i really think that's what's missing in a lot of mental health a lot of discussions about mental health is just about making excuses for struggles that people have in life that ultimately are self-inflicted it's better to feel proud that you did the best you could that you helped people in your life that you tried even if they weren't willing to accept your help that you tried i think this is something really lacking in discussions about mental health discussions about how to cope with difficulties in life without resorting to drugs how to learn to enjoy the struggle how to learn to embrace the difficulties in your life and learn from them and not let it negatively impact the lives of those around you if you're stressed out about something don't hurt those around you if you feel a lack of purpose in your life that's so common everybody has to deal with it at some point in their lives where they feel directionless where they don't know what they're doing but you have to try you have to do research you can't just disappear going through these struggles building up yourself dealing with difficulties in your life that's what life is all about that's what it's like to become a better person that's what it's like to help other people to try really hard and care about the people in your life even if it's difficult to really care this is what life is about helping others building a community and you know what the kind of friendships that you get from drinking alcohol the kind of friendships that you get from doing drugs that's not what this is that's not what i'm talking about what i'm talking about is really caring for other people's well-being being concerned about them and trying your best doing what you can helping people when you can if there's only one other person if there's only my boyfriend who we fundamentally agree on living life in an ethical way on not drinking alcohol and not doing drugs and not sedating yourself struggling through things and learning and embracing the difficulties in life and finding happiness and joy in these difficulties if it's just he and i that's okay if it's just me that's what i've learned that's what isil has taught me he's struggled so hard to try to teach this to me i was not the most receptive learner to this very thing if you fundamentally wake up and feel motivated to learn motivated to teach motivated to love motivated to make friendships if you wake up feeling ambitious and getting through the day because you know that you're doing your best living a life that's aligned with what you feel is the right thing to do living your life ethically this is the solution to people's mental health problems part of the struggles that i've been through were because i lost the ambition that i used to have because i struggled in college because i had difficulties because i failed and instead of embracing that failure and learning from that failure i was told to do drugs i was told to not feel stressed out i was told to relax no that's not what i should have done i needed someone who really cared about me somebody who was really concerned about my well-being and wanted to teach me this fundamental fact and i'm so glad that i finally did find somebody who really cares about me who really loves me who really has done his best to teach me this lesson