290: May Cause Side Effects—Life After Antidepressant Withdrawal with Brooke Siem

Close your eyes, exhale.

Feel your body relax and let go.

Of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.

And breathe.

Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.

Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.

1-800-Contacts.

I have to make sure people know that you can recover from antidepressant withdrawal. You can recover from long time antidepressant use, you can cover from long term chronic depression. And you can recover after huge trauma and grief. And it is all possible. And your brain and your body are primed to be in a state of healing. But you have to help it. You have to do the work. You have to believe that hope is possible. But if you do that and you can find people on your team, whether or not that is family, friends, priests, counselors, a coach, whatever it is, it is possible to heal and recover and thrive. And that message is bizarrely not out there. And I don't get it.

What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot podcast and author of the only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com.

If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello friends. I am so excited to have returning guest Brooke Seam back with us on the show today. She is the author of the brand new book May Cause Side Effects, a memoir in which she reveals the messy reality of antidepressants and withdrawals. She's also an award winning chef, Food Network Chopped Champion, spoiler alert. And co author of the cookbook Prohibition Bakery. We had a conversation almost four years ago to this day, back in July of 2018, episode 107, unmedicating grief, recovering feeling after decades on antidepressants. And I highly encourage you to listen to that conversation first if you're interested in this topic. I was just listening back today to prepare for this and I started so admire and always have Brooke's courage in all that she's navigated. Having been put on prescription drugs at 15 and then coming off of them 15 years later and her vulnerability in sharing. So it's really exciting that we're celebrating your much Awaited book. Brooke, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Jenny. I didn't realize it was almost exactly four years ago. How serendipitous.

I know. Welcome back. I should say one of the things we talked about very briefly in that previous conversation was the shift in stigma that at one point it was stigmatized to say that you were on prescription drugs, especially for mental health, and to talk about mental health. And then over the years the stigma shifted to talk about coming off of them. And then now in the last four years, things have shifted even further where we're in such a fraught place in society, where it is so hypersensitive to talk about these topics at all without judgment or fear of retribution or getting canceled. And you're the one writing and publishing a book on it. So I'm just curious how you're navigating, talking about what can be a very triggering subject for some people or people could be very vocal in either direction and how you're staying kind of calm and grounded through a kind of dicey topic. It's even nerve wracking in some ways to talk about it just for a podcast and you're the one living it.

Yeah, it definitely has shifted a little bit in the past four years. And I guess what I noticed, both on kind of a macro level and a global level and also in my little tiny world, is just how much wider the bell curve has gotten. So for all of the really wonderful things that are happening in the world, globally and also in my own life, being able to, for example, talk about antidepressant withdrawal and have people not think I'm nuts because it's a real thing and not have professionals think I'm nuts or researchers, psychiatrists. It's starting to come so much into the lexicon and that is such a positive because this affects so many people and there's still such a huge portion of the population who doesn't realize if you make a change in your psychiatric drugs that the side effects, there's a strong chance it's not your mental illness returning or a new mental illness. It's actually just these withdrawal symptoms that are being caused by these powerful drugs. So the fact that I can talk about that openly and have conversations with people that are at a high level and that people are interested is such a huge positive shift. On the other hand, there's the equal and opposite reaction in which people get very angry, very, very reactive. There's so much misinformation out there with these websites like Verywell Health constantly gets this wrong with their mental health articles that they churn out a few every day, and the information is just wrong. And so they are giving so many people the wrong message, and it just causes more problems. So that's a little frustrating.

What do you consider the wrong message?

Well, for example, this started way back in the early 2000s. I think many of us, especially kind of millennials, probably remember that commercial for Zoloft with the little egg. There was a sad egg plopping along the line drawing. It's very basic, but it basically says, this is what you're like when you're sad and depressed and the egg is sad. And then when you take Zoloft, the egg gets happy. And it says, due to a chemical imbalance in the brain, Zoloft rebalances this chemical imbalance that causes your depression. And it's in a very calming voice. And all you have to do is go to your doctor and get this little pill. But the thing is, the chemical imbalance theory of depression and all mental illness has been debunked dozens of times by some of the best researchers and scientists in the world. We know it's complete farce that there's no way to measure chemical imbalances in the brain. You can't go to your local lab corps and have a blood test that tells you whether or not you have an imbalance of serotonin. We don't know. There's no way to measure that in real time. So we can't know that from the start. Beyond that, they don't even know how antidepressants actually work. They have hypotheses of things that it might be doing. But antidepressants affect the entire system of the whole body. So if you don't actually know how they work, you can't know whether or not they're bringing something back in balance quotes when you didn't know if there was a chemical imbalance in the first place, because that theory has never been substantiated and is completely bunk. Meanwhile, if you read any old article on any sort of women's magazine or some sort of clickbaity ish media article, which is most of them these days, you're gonna have some fluff in there about how your depression is caused by a chemical imbalance. It's not your fault. And that puts a whole generation, a whole group of people into this idea that what's happening to them is out of their control. And the reality is, it's not that you're a bad person if something happens to you and depression is A result, or even if you feel like you have depression and you don't have a triggering event. But a lot of this stuff is in your control. I mean, all the research talks about how talk therapy is just as effective or more effective than antidepressants. Placebos are just as effective, or in some studies, just slightly less effective. But we're talking, like within rounding errors of each other as antidepressants. And none of those things come with huge side effects. But you don't hear any of that from Instagram influencers or websites like Very well Health, which particularly kind of irks me because they're a constant offender.

It's also wild how some countries don't allow prescription drugs to be advertised on television. And I haven't had cable since 2010. But when I go visit family, it's never ending. It's incessant. Every commercial now, or it seems like such a big majority of them. And I had a similar experience to you. It's also shocking how. And again, I don't know. I'm sure, of course, there are so many valid. It feels like always with this conversation, you have to say there's so many valid, important, good uses for all of this. Yes, but I had such a similar experience to you. When I was 15, I developed an OCD disorder that I share about in free time for the first time. The first time I ever said it publicly was really in the last year of this book coming out.

And.

And my mom didn't know what to do with me. I was pulling my hair out, and so she sent me to a psychiatrist. She asked me a few questions, tell me about the divorce of when I was five. And she kind of built no rapport, and then wrote me a prescription for Prozac, and I was 15 as well. And when the adults tell you to do something or this is gonna fix this problem that you have, it makes sense to just listen. Oh, take a pill. Not to mention birth control, which, by the way, doctors just say, here, take this now for the rest of your life. This is the solution to everything. And there's no ed education. I didn't know what my cycles were like until I was in my mid-30s. I thought you could get pregnant 30 days out of the month. I had no clue what was going on in my body in that regard because that was another example of just automatically doing something. And so over the years, I researched. And so long story short, with the Prozac, something about it made me very angry and I stopped taking it. And let me say, still Struggle off and on with the OCD disorders. So who knows, Maybe if I had gone on, you've talked about your parallel careers and parallel selves, but something about it just made me so angry that I could have been on Prozac for the rest of my life with no inquiry into the stress or perfectionism or pressure I was putting on myself or any of the things that initiated that in the first place.

Right. We never asked why. It's just, here's a way to cope or cover it up. There's never any inquiry into the reasons behind these things. And that's a huge societal problem. It's a cultural problem, it's a familial problem, it's a resources problem. It's a thousand things. But I just really see almost no effort to change this. Despite the fact that the consequences of shilling out these drugs are obvious, we're seeing it all around our society.

You were so vulnerable in this new book about sharing your experience of going off. And in a way that seems to me like even more vulnerable and detailed than when we spoke last, you actually described the rage, the murderous rage that set in.

Which is not an exaggeration.

Yeah, well, exactly, because you picture it as. At first I was wondering, is she describing a dream sequence? I didn't know because it was abrupt, but you put the reader through the experience of how abrupt it was and walking down the streets of New York and just imagining all kinds of stuff. And what you say is that for some people when they're going off, you were lucky to have some people in your life that said it's okay. The fact that you're even worried about these visualizations means you're going to be okay. But that a lot of people get re medicated and re diagnosed during that transition off as psychotic, bipolar, schizophrenic, all these things. And it just seems like you've learned so much more about that moment in your life. And I'm curious if you could share more because there's such a risk of a whole new slew of diagnoses for what could be a temporary condition. Again, while acknowledging this is all very sensitive and should be supervised by a doctor that cares, not one that's just running a pill mill.

Yes. I mean, I'm not a doctor and I'm not a researcher and I don't claim to give medical advice, but I do have lived experience and spending many years now researching this stuff and talking to other people and learning that what happened to me was not a one off. And it's very common. And I just hope that by explaining what happened to me, people will just have a little bit more knowledge. In this case, knowledge is definitely power. Because if you say you're taking an antidepressant, in my case I was taking Effexor XR that caused this set of symbols or this set of side effects I had, it was on another one as well, but it was the Effexor that was kind of the big gnarly one. And these drugs have different half lives. So half life is how long it stays in your body for your body to process half the amount of a drug. So for Effexor, it's very short. You've got roughly maximum about 36 hours of this drug staying in your system. And so what happens when your brain and your body has been so used to having this steady chemical in your system for so long and then one day you take it away, which is what I was told to do. I was on the lowest dose available in the market at this point, and my psychiatrist said, well, I can't give you anything else, so just stop it. So I was off cold turkey, which is a terrible advice. And there are other solutions for that that I know now that I didn't know then. But basically your mind and body just kind of go into haywire because what the drugs do is actually create a chemical imbalance in the mind because they are blocking receptors or creating more, depending on the drug. But so you have actually created a chemical imbalance by taking them drugs. Then your brain compensates for the drug. And so you're quote, unquote imbalance. But then when you take it away, suddenly you're now out of balance and you have to adjust. And that can take a very long time, which is why all these symptoms and side effects can happen. And these symptoms and side effects, they range from physical side effects. For example, for me, I had physically, all sorts of things went funky. My eyesight actually got better, it started to sharpen. My hearing got extremely sensitive. I developed a stress induced autoimmune disorder called nodular vasculitis from just the stress of my body, which meant that my blood vessels became inflamed. I struggled with skin sensitivity to wear clothes. Even the things I like to eat changed because my taste receptors seemed like they changed. So there were tons of physical symptoms and then there were emotional symptoms because I had extreme mood swings. It was very much like a volatile puberty in a way, where I'd be really grumpy and grouchy one minute and okay, the next, maybe I'd be laughing for a while and then I'd be sobbing. And you just kind of didn't know what you were getting from one moment to the next. And then there were the psychological side effects. So for me, for a while I had these really intense intrusive thoughts that were very violent in nature about harming myself or other people that were the most debilitating thing I've ever experienced because I'd never not been in control on some level of my own mind to that level. And all of those combined make for a very destabilizing experience. And I was lucky that I was living alone at the time because I think if I had been living with anybody else, they would have looked at what was happening and said, take me to the mental hospital. And I'm not exaggerating.

We'll be right back just after this.

This episode is brought to you by. Oops. I've got a box of Cheez It Crackers staring at me and I just wanted that irresistible Cheesy crunch. Sorry, that was a total snackcident.

Mmm.

What was I supposed to be talking about? So salty, so crunchy. So cheesy. Whoops. Lost my train of thought. I've heard of brain freeze, but brain cheese? Mmm. I'll just have one more cheesy cracker and then I'll get back to it.

In Walmart Zuluville, time was ticking away. Only a few nights left till the big holiday. But last minute gifters had no need to worry. Walmart Express Delivery got their gifts in a hurry. From Nintendo to Nespresso and Lego flowers, they could check off their lists in as fast as an hour. All of who, Newville, East, west, south and north could order gifts up until 5 on December 24th. So this holiday, just do as the who's do with gift delivery this fast. They all gasped from Walmart. Who knew, subject to availability, terms and fees apply.

Well, and that was the big risk of telling even the lame doctor that you had, because I know she just sounds like so many interactions I've had as well. Especially in New York, where there's no trust, there's no psychological safety with these kinds of doctors. They literally are just moving you in and out and couldn't care less. And if you mention any of this to the supposed professionals who are supposed to help you, you were saying she would have committed you immediately.

I would have been put on an involuntary psychiatric hold, which is a 72 hour hold in which they take away all your rights, you end up in a hospital or a mental hospital. They can drug you with whatever they want. This happens to people all the time. So here they are, they're in withdrawal from these drugs that they thought were harmless or that were very easy to get on. So you don't expect them to be difficult to get off. Then they start having these physical, emotional, psychological symptoms which look like a psychiatric break. They look like the onset of schizophrenia. They can look like bipolar disorder. They can look like all of these things. Then you're committed by your family or your doctor and locked up for 72 hours, where they put you on stronger drugs that are now throwing everything even into more chaos. And then you're released with a prescription. You're basically told that you are filled with mental illness and you're screwed, right? And then you've got these other drugs to get on, you start to get off, then those have side effects too. And people just end up in these awful, awful horror story cycles. And it happens absolutely all the time. I'm not trying to scare anyone here, but I do think that some information is really power. And just to make it abundantly clear how common this is, so recent research on the studies or on antidepressant withdrawal is saying that roughly 50% of people who are on antidepressants have no problem getting off of them. The other 50%, so half of all people experience withdrawal symptoms. And of those 50%, roughly half of those are considered severe and possibly debilitating. So that's a huge, huge chunk of people. Given that there are tens of millions of people, maybe even hundreds of millions of people on antidepressants all over the world.

It's so wild, and it's unfortunate because it's such a profit center. I think that's what bothers me is that the pharmaceutical companies, big pharma, they're so powerful, even watching all the Sackler family stuff unfold. And that McKinsey, these consulting companies are totally tied up in the dirty work of prescribing. Just watching the opioid crisis, and I actually, I'll link to it in the show notes. I remember interviewing a forensic pathologist who was just mortified by how many opioid deaths were coming in in his New Hampshire town. And again, I know that sometimes these solutions are really helpful and some people really benefit, but it's so scary to me how much profit is involved and how much the incentives seem so misaligned sometimes. So I guess I'm just inherently quite skeptical of all this. Do you get a lot of pushback in talking about this? From people who say, how dare you question. Sometimes I'll hear people who are neutral. They say, whatever you need to take, whatever. Do you. Some people are like, don't you dare question that I take anything at all. It's so helpful. It's so important. It saved my life. It must be kind of hard to navigate. Everyone has such strong opinions because this is life and death we're talking about, and it's your spirit, not just your actual are you alive or are you dead, or are you having really negative thoughts about that kind of stuff? But also just your day to day is at stake.

It's interesting because if we kind of look at a lot of the research out there, these are some broad numbers. It's not quite exact, but roughly 30% of people put on antidepressants say, they're great, they helped, awesome. Another 30% kind of say, meh, they neither helped nor didn't help. And another 30% actively say, these made things worse or there's been a problem with them. The numbers aren't quite that even, but for our sake, that's fine. But that's more or less about the same distribution of comments that I get where, especially if you look at articles I've written, if you read through the comments, which I don't do, I've also just figured out how to curate things. So when I wrote an article for the Washington Post right before the pandemic and I made my boyfriend go through the hundreds of comments and read through the useful ones, whether or not that was something constructive, that maybe had some concerns, I wanted to hear that. As long as it was constructive or good, I wanted to hear that too. I really wasn't interested in someone who was just being a keyboard warrior over whatever their opinion was. So that's helped just kind of very much curating what comes into me through the help of other people or online filters or never signing into Twitter, that's a huge help.

I love that you had your boyfriend read the comments. I'll link to that article in the notes. You also said something to me before we hit record. You're like, I'm starting to not care as much. I'm curious about that piece too, of actually finding the courage to not tiptoe quite as much whilst still being empathetic. What's your journey around that?

Well, so back when we spoke in 2008, I think I was a lot more sensitive to the noise and much more. I don't want to say careful, because I'm very careful in what I say because I understand the weight of this topic. And again, I'm not a doctor, so there's a whole aspect of this that is really not my responsibility. But I get to share my story and I get to share my experience and what I've learned in however way I see fitness, not my responsibility to edit my story for the sake of somebody else's feelings. Like, that's just not a world I am willing to live in at all. And my opinion of this is, if you have a problem with it, then that's something you need to look at within yourself, is the fact that I'm suggesting that maybe long term use of antidepressants does more harm than good. If that brings something up in you, then you might need to reevaluate your relationship with your antidepressants. Because if I'm basically attacking your identity, that means your identity is wrapped up in something outside of you, which means you're not whole within yourself. Like, no one wants to hear that when you're in an emotional tailspin. I get that. I've been there. That's the thing too. I've been this person. I was the person for 15 years who thought that the antidepressants were saving my life and that anyone who suggested I get off them or that they were causing some of my issues didn't get it and didn't get me and didn't understand. This was something that I had no control over. And I was a great victim in my own mind and heart for a long time. And it was very effective in making sure I didn't have to take full responsibility for all the shit that was going wrong in my life. Right? But now I've been through it. I got to a point where I was either going to commit suicide or get off these drugs. Those were my options. And so I decided to get off these drugs. My whole life blew up because of it. I dealt with these withdrawal effects for years. And then once I got out of it, I started to look around and I realized how much of a role I had in this situation from the very beginning. Despite the fact that yes, there was one incompetent doctor after one incompetent doctor prescribing me these extremely powerful drugs with no thought, despite the fact that I had believed that this was the right thing for me, still made choices every single day that made my situation worse. And it took a crisis for me to start understanding that and to start working my way out of it. And now I can see that. And I'm still dealing with the Consequences. I mean, for 15 years, I didn't want a future. I didn't plan for one. And so I'm extremely behind financially. I don't have nearly as much security as I should given an educated professional woman in the time that I'm living. Right. Like, I should have a lot more of that. So I'm still making up for that. I feel very much like a child in some ways. I had my first unmedicated relationship within about a year after I started getting off these drugs. And I can tell you that there are parts of my personality and parts of my ability to interact with other people that are stunted and baffling to me because I never learned these fundamentals because I was so shut down emotionally.

What would be an example of one of those skills?

Pushing my boyfriend on as a guest. And let him tell you, I guess this is the best example is I struggle to understand if the frustrations I have with my current partner are fundamental things that are not right for me because he is not right for me, or if it's because all relationships I would have that issue with, or if it's something that can grow or I can learn. It's a little difficult. I struggle sometimes to live with other people. And a big part of that is because I'm so, so sensitive and so kind of like my tuning forks are always on. And this was not the case when I was medicated. I feel like in some ways, my system overcorrected. So I really struggle with other people being in my space, other people being in the house, being touched all the time. And I don't know if this is something that is him. Like, if it was a different person, if I would get extremely worked up over this stuff because he's objectively very easy to live with and very kind and very gentle, or if this is something that I maybe will never be able to experience with someone because it's just not part of me. And I have no frame of reference. Even though I had three or four major relationships, I was medicated during all of them. So it's almost like everything that happened didn't kind of encode in my body. And I don't know, up and down. It's a little difficult to explain, give concrete examples.

You mentioned being sensitive. And before you even said that, I was gonna say a lot of what you're saying reminds me a lot about navigating the world as a highly sensitive person. And I used to feel, when I was young, all the time I had the thought, I'm too Sensitive for my own life. Like, I am uncomfortable in my skin. I'm unable to deal with the amount of sensitivity that I have. And the good side of it is intuition and empathy and being insightful about your own experience. To write a memoir, you feel really deeply. Like you said, the tuning fork. And yet the highly sensitive qualities, even aside from the before and after of the medication. I think about this all the time. It's hard not to focus on the disadvantages of it sometimes. It's so annoying being so sensitive. And I can relate to so much of what you said. Sometimes I get so overloaded by people. I struggle with it so much. And it's hard for me as an entrepreneur. I know that in my business, it would be good if I loved people and I loved networking and connecting. And I'm like, what's wrong with me? It's just a lot of times. But I get so overwhelmed, overloaded, overstimulated. Just living at home with someone, let alone the whole outside world. Yeah. It's hard sometimes not to see it as an obstacle to be overcome.

I agree. It's exactly how I feel. One of the big things I wonder, though, is if that I hadn't been medicated at such a formidable age, at a time when I was forming the foundation of my identity and learning all this stuff about me. I kind of feel like I always described myself when I was medicated as being, like, really sarcastic and tough and cold. And I was, but it's because I was shut down. And so I just kind of felt like I was tossed from a cold lake to a hot tub so fast. And I just still have no idea. Okay. Like, what is me? What is other people? What might have happened had I gradually learned this as opposed to just suddenly getting thrown into the hot tub? And it's been five, six years since I've been off these drugs, and I'm still slowly getting those answers. And sometimes it's just maddening to be like, why do I have to do this at 36? I should have been doing this at 24 with my first boyfriend.

What temperature do I even like the water? I have no clue.

Exactly. Don't know.

Throw it from one to the other. And then you're like. It's that thing of asking, what kind of water do you want? What water do you like? Because I have no freaking clue.

Yeah. And you can't learn that stuff.

Yes.

Without being by yourself. And like I said, this feels like a second puberty.

We'll be right back, just after this.

This episode is brought to you by Nespresso Gift Magical mornings with Nespresso Vertuo Pop Compact and stylish, Vertuop is made to meet every morning coffee craving. From espresso to coffee, hot or iced at the click of a button and celebrate the season with Nespresso's limited edition coffee flavors Sweet almond and hibiscus, cinnamon and candied tamarind and festive double espresso. Magic in the Making Shop the Holiday Gift collection exclusively@nespresso.com with a mustache, a.

Taco in one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back. Nice get up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card. From takeout to ride shares, entertainment and more, pick a bundle with your go tos and start earning cash back at those brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply. Max $100 cash back per month. See terms at Venmo Me Stashterms.

There's this one part that I would love to read out loud if it's okay with you, because I have a tactical question about writing a memoir. So let me read this first. But my question is how you remember this level of detail. Brooke is talking about leaving the aforementioned lame doctor in New York, leaving the office, and on the way out she notices a plant that's dying, and so she says to the receptionist, could you water the plant? It needs water. And Brooke writes, the plant won't be there in a month. It will shrivel and brown and turn from plump to brittle until someone finally notices it and throws it in the dumpster. I want to steal it away from the fluorescent lighting and take it the few blocks back to my apartment and place it in the morning sun, watering it gently at first so as not to flood its parched roots. Watering it slowly until it understands it is safe and it can drink as much as it needs. Watering it until it knows the water will always come and each morning the sun will rise on its leaves until after a lifetime lived under artificial light, it will finally have the chance to bloom. That is just so exquisite. It even relates to what we were just saying with the hot tub and the ice bath of taking this plant and that you have such a vivid memory, or maybe you journaled a lot during that time. But how do you pull these details out and just your level of observation to even write a memoir of this whole time because you were Going through so much. And I'm just wondering, even in a practical sense, how you get this level of detail, because I don't. I would never remember this kind of stuff.

Well, there's a couple things that are kind of fascinating about that question. And the first is that these antidepressants over time had a very negative effect on some of my cognitive stuff, mostly memories. So this wasn't something that happened immediately, but over time, my mother in particular, and then my business partner at the time started to point out that I wasn't remembering things. And as the person who's not remembering them, you don't realize what you don't remember. So it was just getting to the point where I'd be having a conversation with my mom and she'd be like, do you remember this major event that happened when you were 12? And I'm like, no, it's gone, there's nothing there. And my business partner would say, she told me something yesterday or two days ago, and then I never did it. And after we thought about it, we realized somehow I wasn't recalling stuff. So my book was actually a huge struggle to write because I was working with an editor, a developmental editor. And she kept saying how she didn't have enough background, like, why are you this way? We need more of this. And there is nothing there in my brain because these drugs really started to have a do a number on my memory centers. But as I started to get off of them, my memory started coming back almost instantly. So I have these very salient pictures in my mind of certain things and especially of kind of the bizarro experiences that started happening during that time. Because that whole period of my life was one of change and also just uncertainty. And I think that when you get into a place when you're not in your day to day routine, our day to day routine is what makes time flash by. Because we know what every house on our commute looks like and we know what our home feels like when we're working. And so there's so much that the mind filters out. But as soon as you start changing your physical environment or your day to day life, you start to pick up things that you wouldn't normally pick up before. And I just have a memory. I remember just this office because of how bizarre and incompetent the experience was with this particular doctor. And the whole thing I just remember so vividly. I remember that plant and I remember going back a month later and the plant wasn't there. So that's part of it too. Right. Something that may not have been a memory. And the first half of me noticing the plant was there and talking about that it needed to be watered. I'm not sure if that would have stuck with me had I not come back a month later and saw that the plant was gone and had it validated like it was the repeat that made it stick with me on the.

Day you came back. And so then you noticed and it stuck out even more. Did you capture that? Were you journaling at the time? You were even describing food you were eating when you were traveling around the world in your remote year? Like, how do people remember the types of tacos you were eating and what the shop looked like?

There's a lot of things, especially in this day and age, that were very helpful for me in putting this time together. While I was traveling, I journaled every day. I told myself I had to write 500 words a day, and if I missed a day, had to write a thousand. So there was no editing. It was all stream of consciousness. Like, and then we went and had tacos and then we saw a pyramid and, oh, it's really hot and this person's irritating me and I'm tired and like, a lot of it is completely useless. But there's details trickled in. So that's where a lot of the details from that time come. I also have photos. I mean, with our smartphones, got over 10,000 photos of mostly uses stuff on my phone, so there's a lot of memories packed up there. I went back through emails at the time because Gmail has stored everything. I went back through so many emails between me and my mom where I told her stuff that I didn't really think was anything of use at the time. Just a standard email you send to your mom because you like each other. And so there's a lot of details in there. I talk to friends. There are text messages. I also, for the plant thing, I love plants, so I have a tendency to rescue plants from bad situations. So I actually kind of thought about taking that plant. When I went back and looked at it, it was gone. So there's lots that's missing. But when you're writing memoir, I think that you need to have trust in, call it your consciousness or subconsciousness or the universe or the creative muse, whatever it is. Have trust that when you get a piece of information in your head, that there's something about that that's relevant. And I, as I was writing the book, got a lot of kind of mind, eye, visual stuff. So. So if I Was kind of sitting there staring in space, wondering what I was going to write about and kind of knew maybe I had to. Okay, obviously this interaction with the psychiatrist is important for the story. How can I make this scene seem alive? And then what's dropped into my head is this image talking to this receptionist and the damn plant. And you just kind of write it, and then later you figure out if it's something that's useful. So there's a whole other book and stuff that's been just rejected. Really?

Like a whole other book that you wrote or a whole book's worth of stuff?

A whole book's worth nothing that ever needs to be published because it got cut for a reason. But just the amount of stuff that made it in versus that ultimately doesn't is kind of constant work and progress and a fluid living being in itself.

I know they do. They have a life of their own. You have navigated so much through the publishing process with the pandemic as well and shifting timelines. Where are you at with it now? Like, we're recording this. We may release it closer to the launch day. But how has it been navigating the publishing process?

Oh, man. I mean, again, I think that having this take so long has been a huge positive in the sense that it's gotten to the point where I'm just kind of like, I don't know. If the book comes out, it comes out. If it does well, if it does well. If people love it, great. If they hate it, if they send me death threats on Twitter, whatever. People have endured worse. Like, it has been through so much. I mean, first you have to find an agent, and that's hell. And once you get one, then we started trying to sell this In April of 2020, it got rejected 36 times. It was on the 37th one we got. And the biggest reasons why it was rejected from the bigger houses. One of the biggest pieces of feedback we got was like, they didn't want to take the risk on. Some people straight up said, legally, we don't want to take the risk. Other people said, eh, we don't know how we can market this. And it didn't matter whether or not an editor loved it or the quality of the writing. It ended up being all about whether or not they thought they could sell it. It's a difficult topic to sell. And then people just not wanting to take the legal risk since I wasn't a doctor, which was quite irritating. But we did finally find a fabulous publisher who sees the value in it, and they're great, and they've been wonderful to work with. And then once we got the deal, now we've been running into paper supply chain issues, been delayed three times because of printing stuff, and finally we're just like, all right, we're just gonna move it to fall and see what happens. So at this point, it's been as fun as the process has been, and it's nice to see it come to life. I feel in some ways I've had to move on and find work and do these other things. So sometimes it just feels like this weird little side thing that I do, despite the fact that it's been effectively in my life work for six years and I hope will continue to have a big influence on my life's work.

And because you love calculating everything you actually calculate, you actually calculated. You even have a spreadsheet for not only your death day based on actuarial tables, which you've written about as well, but for the book, how long it took you. So could you share some of your stats with us?

So this is the really fun thing. I have been waiting to do this for years because I thought about it. When I got my advance, the advance wasn't particularly high. Pretty much what a memoirist who does not have 100,000 followers on Instagram can anticipate getting. I was happy to get anything.

Exactly. It's actually having done now independent publishing as well. The cost of printing the books and storing them and shipping them and media copies actually adds up. So I feel like a small advance. There's so much more that they do pay for now, having the pain of being the one paying for all that. And it's easier to earn out for advance. So just a little interjection there.

Yeah. People think that in advance is like a signing bonus. Here's free money because we like you, but it's not. It's an advance on your royalties. So I'm happy to take a lower advance because, I mean, you start seeing royalties faster. There are people who get $100,000 advances who will never see a penny from their book for the rest of their lives because it never earns it out. And hopefully their publisher doesn't require them to pay them back. But sometimes some publishers actually do require that you pay back advances that you don't make up, which is brutal. But yes, I went ahead and calculated the cost of what this book actually cost to write. So it was six years worth of work. I included everything from the developmental editors I had to hire in early days because I had no Idea how to write a book and was very confused to. I rented an apartment in Seattle for two months because I needed to get out of my living situation to focus. There's little things like getting subscriptions to Publishers Marketplace. You can see what kind of books are getting picked up and names of agents. There's submission fees for going into smaller publishers. There's Typeform, which is just a little form website if you want an easy way to gather information from people. Also out of pocket expenses that are easily measurable. That was $13,723.23 over six years, which actually was lower than I thought. But the thing was, is then I also started to incorporate opportunity cost because I also quit my jobs. I was writing full time, I was working under the table, I was hustling when I needed to. And so I calculated the opportunity cost of the four years I spent writing. And once you factored all that in, the book cost approximately $107,000 to write and approximately 15 hours worked a week for six years. My hourly was 54 cents an hour.

That's amazing. Yes. At this current moment, it's 54 cents an hour. Then once the 20k speaking gigs start rolling in, or 25 or 30. Yeah. I'm always having the magical thinking like, oh, my hourly rate might be 50 cents right now, but when this book becomes a mega bestseller.

Right.

But you never know. You don't know what opportunities it's going to bring. I guess that's what keeps it exciting.

I mean, it's the best 54 cents an hour I've ever made.

That's so true.

It was well worth it. I love that you said that.

The best 54 cents an hour I've ever made. That is so sweet. That gives you a big smile.

It's like we employed ourselves at 50 cents an hour.

Yeah. Special thanks to my mom's basement. Yeah, for sure.

Oh, my gosh, Brooke. Well, I am just so grateful for you and sharing all that you have with us here on the podcast, but also your legacy. I'm forgetting the name. What was your brilliant talk? I'll put it in the show notes. Legacy show.

Oh, yes, yes.

So good. Just your generosity and sharing your story. And again, as you said, it's your story, so it's not with judgment for anyone else. But you being so open and honest gives other people a chance to do the same. Is there anything you want to leave listeners with? Even an inquiry, Some mantra or inquiry that was most helpful for you? Even these last few years of navigating all the turbulence.

The thing that kind of really lit the fire under me to write this book and make sure that I didn't just shut up and move on with my life is the fact that I have been extremely disappointed and struck by the fact that we do not frame depression and anxiety and I think all mental struggles, especially depression and anxiety, as a temporary human experience. We have this bizarre tendency for people who have cancer. There's hashtag fuck cancer, there are cancer walks, there are constant articles and books about people who were diagnosed with something terrible and overcame it. There are so many sources for hope and such a focus on recovery in that community. And yet when you look at anything that happens with our psychological or emotional health, it's always just like, oh, wow, some doctor diagnosed you with ADHD or depression, anxiety when 15. Well, yes, you're screwed. You're going to have to live with that your entire life. Here, take this pill. It is bizarre to me that we do not have any real models for hope or recovery when it is absolutely possible. There are people who do it. But if you don't have that model for recovery and hope, why would you ever think that you are capable of healing? Especially when your doctors are telling you that this is a lifelong chemical imbalance, Right? So I wrote the book that I needed when I was going through this process because I have to make sure people know that you can recover from antidepressant withdrawal, you can recover from long time antidepressant use, you can recover from long term chronic depression, and you can recover after huge trauma and grief. And it is all possible in your body. Brain and your body are primed to be in a state of healing. But you have to help it. You have to do the work, you have to believe that hope is possible. But if you do that and you can find people on your team, whether or not that is family, friends, priests, counselors, a coach, whatever it is, it is possible to heal and recover and thrive. And that message is bizarrely not out there. And I don't get it. And so that's just what I hope people take from this, is that no matter what your circumstances, it does not have to be part of who you are for the rest of your life. It is possible to release this stuff and to really have a beautiful life. And I didn't believe that for so long. So I know where you're at, if that's where you're at. But just know that that is what it means to be alive, that it is what it means to be human. And that is the work that you need to do. So just keep looking until you find that person or that helpful resource because it's out there.

That is so beautifully said.

Thank you.

Brooke, where do you want to send people if they want to keep in touch? In addition to grabbing a copy of May Cause Side Effects, yes, please grab.

A copy of May Cause Side Effects. It's available wherever books are sold. It's also available in Canada through Indigo, all booksellers in the uk and through Booktopia in Australia. And you can find me at my website, brooksim.com I've got a contact there and I'm a little bit of a recluse on social media these days because I feel like it's people yelling at me all day long. I don't like it. So I will see stuff on Instagram, not so much on the other ones, but probably just my website is your best bet to get a hold of me.

Absolutely. Yep. Well, you're in good company. They know I'm a social media curmudgeon.

So it's so much better.

Oh yeah, it really. I can't handle it either. So here we are. And I know, I'm like, if friends want to know what I'm up to, we just have to, let's just interview them on the podcast. That's how we're keeping in touch.

Call me.

I know well and way to navigate knowledge of the big booksellers in all the countries. I'm very impressed. Way to go.

This is a global enough topic that I get people who want it and so maybe one day we'll get hopefully get fancy enough to have translations.

But for now, English speaking good things are coming. I know it.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Brooke.

Thank you so much, Jenny.

Thank you everybody for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivotlist, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile. Mobile's Unlimited Wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try at mintmobile. Com.

Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only.

Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy. Taxes and fees extra.

See mintmobile.

Com.