Laura Delano, welcome to Real Talk with Zubi. How are you doing?

I'm doing okay. How about you?

I am always doing great. Laura, you are the founder of something called Inner Compass,

and you recently wrote and released a book called Unshrunk. What is that about?

Well, the book tells the story of my 14-year relationship with the mental health industry,

by which I mean, you know, my introduction to diagnoses as a young teenager and medications

and then basically everything that followed and how in my late 20s I eventually realized

that these diagnoses had shaped my entire sense of self

and all of these meds that I had been on through the most formative years of my life

had maybe caused me more harm than good and that I needed to basically break up with them

and leave behind this whole patient identity that I that was really

all I knew and figure out who I who I would be beyond it. And the book also weaves in the broader

story of how American psychiatry evolved over the past 70, 80 years to become this very

medicalized, pharmaceuticalized profession that it is today,

just to show that my story happened within a much broader story of industry and commodification

and, you know, regulatory capture because I quickly realized when I came off all the meds 15 years ago now

that my own story was about a lot more than just me and what my family went through.

And just quickly about Intercompos initiative, the mission of this organization is to help people

make informed choices about psychiatric diagnoses and medications and how to

safely taper off these medications. We're not anti-drug. We're about choice and true choice

and ensuring that people get all the information they need and all the options available to them

so that they can actually choose, whether that's to take the meds,

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