A Morning of Reflection and Doubt
On a recent Friday morning, Daniel, a lawyer in his early 40s, found himself in a Zoom counseling session, recounting his experience of gradually discontinuing lithium.
Earlier that week, he had been jolted awake by racing thoughts, a wave of anxiety washing over him so intense that it left him unable to even read. As he lay there, he counted the hours until dawn.
In these moments of uncertainty, Daniel questioned his decision to gradually stop taking the complex mix of psychiatric medications that had been a fixture in his life since his senior year of high school, when he was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
He pondered whether his symptoms were merely his body adjusting to the reduced dosage, a side effect of the taco seasoning he consumed the night before, or, as his psychiatrist might suggest, a potential relapse.
“I still find myself wondering — what if the doctors were right?” Daniel confessed.
Support from a Kindred Spirit
On his computer screen, Laura Delano listened intently, nodding in understanding.
Ms. Delano is not a medical doctor; rather, her primary qualification is derived from her own experience as a self-described “professional psychiatric patient” from the ages of 13 to 27. During those years, while attending Harvard and being a nationally ranked squash player, she was prescribed a total of 19 psychiatric medications, often in combinations of three or four at a time.
Eventually, Ms. Delano chose to leave psychiatric care entirely, a journey she has chronicled in her new memoir, Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance. Fourteen years after taking her last psychotropic drug, Ms. Delano exudes a vibrant good health, which she presents as living evidence that her psychiatrists had been mistaken all along.
