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

Hello, this is James and welcome to the podcast. This week, I am delighted and honored to get

chance to chat with Renee Schulz Jacobson.

Renee was a teacher for two decades, and she is now an author, artist, advocate and coach.

And in this interview, we discuss her book, Psychiatrised, Waking Up After a Decade of Bad Medicine,

which was released this year. The book is a beautifully

written account of Renee's experiences being prescribed the benzodiazepine clanasopam for seven years.

It talks of her experiences taking the drug as prescribed, but perhaps more importantly,

also tells of what happened to Renee as she made attempts to

withdraw. Renée, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today for the Madden America

podcast. And we're here to talk about you and your book Psychiatrised, waking up after a decade of

bad medicine published this year, I believe.

And the book describes vividly your experiences of ill-advised psychiatric drugging and polypharmacy

and so much more. And before we hear from you, I have to say in reading it, I was particularly

struck by how beautifully

you write about such awful experiences. So to kind of get us going, I think it was in 2004

that you were initially prescribed a succession of antidepressants for what was called anxiety-related

insomnia. And this was followed by benzodiazepine then. So

could you talk to us a little bit about what led to that initial prescription? Yeah. First, I just

want to say thank you for having me. You know, I really do appreciate that opportunity to share my

story. So when you're asking me about what what led to the initial

prescription, I feel like that's always kind of complicated. I mean, if you wanted me to be reductive,

...