Publisher's Synopsis
When a trusted physician tells Renée Schuls-Jacobson that he has the solution for her chronic insomnia -- a "tried and true medication without any side effects," she believes him. For seven years, she takes her medication exactly as prescribed until, one day, she learns that her doctor is wrong: long-term benzodiazepine use causes all kinds of problems including physical dependence, withdrawal reactions as well as changes in memory and cognition.
With the help of an addiction specialist, Renée embarks on a slow, medically supervised taper, only to find herself cognitively scrambled and stuck in the nightmare of benzodiazepine withdrawal. For nearly four years, she endures hundreds of terrifying physical, emotional and psychological symptoms - none of which were present before taking the medication. While healing from an iatrogenic brain injury that is not widely recognized by doctors, Renée leaves everything familiar behind and goes on a journey, meeting scientists and sages, healers and hucksters, who all teach her the same hard lesson: to stop seeking the help of experts and to trust her intuition. In PSYCHIATRIZED: Waking Up After a Decade of Bad Medicine, Renée Schuls-Jacobson contemplates the cost of compliance and exposes the truth about the dangers of psychiatric drugs as well as a discontinuation syndrome, which affects thousands of men and women worldwide.
