Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. This is Heidi St. John. Today, I'm going to dive into something

that's been quietly destroying lives for literally decades, but almost nobody wants to talk

about it openly. It's a very real, often devastating occurrence in lots of people's lives,

and that is the dangers of benzodiazepines and

SSRIs. You guys know their names, Xanax, Adavan, Clonopin, Vali, and Prozac. Zoloft, Lexapro,

affects there, millions of people are prescribed these every single year. For anxiety, depression, insomnia, you name it. And for some, they feel like a

lifeline, at least at first. But what happens later is what I want to talk about today. What happens when

that lifeline starts to tighten? What happens when the very drugs that are meant to help you end up creating new and far worse

problems? We're talking about a physical dependence that can set in within weeks, brutal withdrawal

symptoms that can last for months and sometimes even years, neurological damage, acethesia,

relentless, the relentless inner torment that makes people feel like they're kind of crawling

out of their own skin.

Some of you guys may have heard about it, talked about in terms of things like restless

leg syndrome.

And in some cases, injuries that flare up long after the last pill is gone.

I have lived this myself.

If you guys have read any of the books I have written or

listened to my podcast at all in the last 10 years, then you know that this is part of my story.

And today, I'm going to share some more of my personal story, parts of it that maybe I've never

told on the show before. And I'm also going to reference some powerful recent discussions.

One in particular that I listened to just a few days ago from Michaela Peterson. This, of course,

is Jordan Peterson's daughter talking about what's going on with her dad and also what she's been

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