Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.

Welcome to the Mad in America podcast. My name is Brooks A.m. And I am the author of the award-winning memoir, May Cause Side Effects.

Today, I'm with Jorgon Kiyono, whose stage name is Dex Carrington.

He is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and former travel show host.

He gained international recognition as the host of Dexpedition, which aired on MTV in over 30 countries.

Today, he is the host of the Truth Train podcast, still doing stand-up and based in Oslo, Norway. Thanks so much for being here. I'm so

excited. Absolutely pleasure, Rook. All right, first question. Who is Dex Carrington as opposed to Jorgian?

Quickly summarized, I was born in Norway, very Norwegian. My name is actually pronounced

Juergen, Schoelma. It's like the most Norwegian name of all time, and I come from extremely

Norwegian background. Grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong and Canada, I went to American schools

my entire life, and English became my first language. Then, when I started doing stand-up, I needed a stage name.

I couldn't have such a freaking Norwegian name and be doing American stand-up. And so it just became

that way when I got sponsored by a company called DC, the clothing brand DC that does skateboarding, snowboarding, all that kind of stuff. And they wanted a lifestyle representative back in 2009. And then I had to pick a name that began with D and ended with C. And that became Dex Carrington. So Dex Carrington is me. It's just me speaking English, which ironically enough is my first language. So there really is

no difference. That's the short answer. Your stage name and all your comedy and whatnot is under

Dex Carrington. That's it. Yeah. Okay. So, well, this is not a comedy podcast, although maybe we are

going to try and make it a little bit of one today. Let's find a little humor in the tragedy here.

But you and I connected over Instagram because of the psychiatric drug withdrawal world.

And you have had a very, I think a very common experience with this in a lot of ways. So if you could walk us through a little bit

through your psychiatric drug history, and then we'll go from there. Yeah, quickly summarized,

I mean, throughout college and high school, you know, it was a little bit of beer, a little bit of pot,

nothing major. My big focus was getting good grades, and I was just a really like upstanding citizen, if you will. Then after university, I went into adult life and the transition

was a bit too much for me. I got benzos from my doctor and I thought, well, this is brilliant.

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