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

Hi, this is James and welcome to the podcast. And this week we discuss a recent paper that considers the support provided by online support

groups when people seek help for psychiatric drug withdrawal.

The paper is entitled The Role of Facebook Groups in the Management and Raising of Awareness

of Antidepressant Withdrawal.

Is social media filling the void left by health services?

It was published in the journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology in January

2021, and I'm really pleased to be joined by all three authors. A little later, we will talk

with Professor John Reed and Dr. Ed White, but first, I got time to talk with Sherry Julo.

Sherry is the administrator of a large online FX-Or withdrawal group on Facebook, and she took time out to talk about what led her to start the group in 2013.

Sherry, thank you so much for chatting with me today for the podcast.

And I want to go on to ask a little bit about your thoughts as the moderator of a large

Facebook withdrawal support group. But before we get to that, I know that you've had

personal experience yourself of difficult withdrawal. So I wanted

to ask you if you could share a little bit about what you went through. Well, my doctor had

tapered me off too fast off of a fixer. They wouldn't listen to what I was enduring, my withdrawal symptoms, which at the time I did not even know they were withdrawals. I didn't even know you could have withdrawals from antidepressment.

My symptoms were so horrific that I was so desperate. I didn't know where to turn except my computer.

And when I decided I would try to do a Facebook group, and I actually had to have an admin from another group walked me through how to set it up

because I had no clue how to do it.

And this was, this was 2013, is that right?

Correct.

Next month will be eight years.

...