The Billion-Dollar Sleep Industry: What Really Works

The Gaslit Truth Podcast, hosted by Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz, explores mental health, psychiatric medication withdrawal, therapy culture, and informed consent. In their live 100th episode, they take on the billion-dollar sleep industry—including melatonin, sleep aids, and prescription sleep drugs.

These Whistle-Blowing Shrinks break down why many popular sleep solutions focus on symptom management instead of addressing root causes. Rather than “buying sleep,” they explain how to restore natural rest by aligning hormones, respecting circadian and ultradian rhythms, and building routines your nervous system can trust.

The episode challenges common sleep myths, such as relying on nightly melatonin, believing five hours of sleep is enough, or trying to catch up on weekends. Listeners learn how cortisol and melatonin work together, and how modern habits—like screens, caffeine, and shift work—disrupt the body’s internal clock.

They also discuss growing concerns about long-term melatonin use, dependency risks, and the hidden costs of Z-drugs like Ambien and Lunesta.

🎧 Sleep: The Billion Dollar Business is available now. Tune in for clear, practical steps to restore deep, natural sleep—without the hype.

The Gaslit Truth Podcast, hosted by Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz, examines critical issues in mental health, psychiatric medication harm, therapy culture, informed consent, and brain-based healing. In this episode, they’re joined by Ryan Rogers, author and clinician, for a candid discussion on political bias in therapy and how “therapy as activism” has become normalized within the mental health field.

The conversation traces how graduate programs, professional culture, and social media have shifted training away from evidence-based modalities toward ideological messaging—often leaving clients without the skills needed for real recovery. The hosts and Rogers explore how politics in the therapy room can narrow access to care, inflate labels like trauma and gaslighting, and weaponize ethical “safety” language.

Ryan shares personal experiences of being gaslit in clinical training, where therapist neutrality was dismissed and advocacy was framed as treatment. In contrast, the episode highlights the realities of working with addiction, suicidality, and severe mental illness, emphasizing practical interventions such as motivational interviewing, ACT values work, behavioral activation, risk assessment, and careful deprescribing.

The episode also addresses how intersectionality hierarchies can encourage unequal treatment and how online therapy culture increasingly pushes clients to choose therapists based on political alignment rather than clinical skill. This conversation challenges the field to return to ethical, effective, and truly client-centered care.

The Gaslit Truth Podcast is hosted by Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz, where they examine mental health myths, psychiatric medication harm, and informed consent.

In this episode, Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz explain blind tapering, the psychology of psychiatric medication withdrawal, and the role of therapy in tapering safely.

What if knowing your dose cut is coming makes you feel worse? We dig into blind tapering—masking dose reductions during psychiatric medication withdrawal—to explore how anticipation, nocebo, and hypervigilance can drive symptoms. Drawing on research from benzodiazepines, hypnotics, and even methadone programs, we unpack why combining taper protocols with behavioral therapy often improves short‑term discontinuation and reduces withdrawal complaints. More importantly, we translate those findings into practical strategies for antidepressants and antipsychotics, where data are thinner but psychology still matters.

What If Psychiatry Meant Medicine for the Soul Again is a thought-provoking episode of The Gaslit Truth Podcast with Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz that challenges the way modern psychiatry often dismisses lived experience. The conversation begins with an uncomfortable reality: gaslighting in mental health care is common—and it can cause people to doubt their own pain rather than heal it.

Psychiatrist Dr. Hector introduces a different approach he calls medicine for the soul, grounded in the White Butterfly ethos and inspired by Greek mythology. Using tools like SPECT imaging, he explains how recognizable brain patterns can reflect trauma and chronic stress without reducing individuals to diagnostic labels. The discussion explores how prolonged gaslighting and long-term stress can impact the brain as deeply as a single traumatic event—and why validation is often the first step toward real change.

The episode then turns practical, highlighting the importance of collaborative psychiatry, where psychiatrists, therapists, and medical providers work together to support deeper healing modalities like EMDR. Dr. Hector also discusses targeted supports such as GABA and tyrosine to regulate arousal and motivation without numbing emotions therapy needs to access.

At its core, this episode reframes psychiatry as relational, human, and integrative. By emphasizing connection as a clinical tool, shared humanity, and safety in the therapeutic relationship, The Gaslit Truth Podcast asks a vital question: what if psychiatry truly became medicine for the soul again?

Psych Meds Took My Son’s Life: A Mother’s Tribute to Tre is a deeply moving episode of The Gaslit Truth Podcast with Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz. Sheila shares the story of her son Tre, a 25-year-old nurse and athlete whose health rapidly declined after a series of psychiatric medications were prescribed without adequate medical evaluation or safety planning.

Despite persistently low testosterone, Tre never received a full endocrine workup. Instead, treatment focused on antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and stimulants. Soon after starting psych meds, Tre experienced severe personality changes, agitation, and emotional instability. These symptoms were documented, including repeated reports of suicidal thoughts, yet critical safeguards were missing.

This episode highlights serious concerns around psych med risks, lack of informed consent, brief telehealth care, and the absence of coordinated patient safety planning. Sheila’s tribute to Tre is both a mother’s testimony and a call for accountability, proper medical investigation, and safer mental health care practices.

What if the hardest part of coming off an antidepressant isn’t the first cut, but the last few milligrams? On this week’s episode of The Gaslit Truth Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Mark Horowitz, clinician, researcher, and someone who’s lived withdrawal himself.

He shares how his first carefully planned taper off Lexapro still collapsed into panic and derealization—and how that experience led him to hyperbolic tapering, survivingantidepressants.org, and ultimately co-authoring the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines.

We unpack why the brain reacts so strongly at low doses, why tiny reductions can make a big difference, and why standard advice often fails. We also talk about the everyday gaslighting many patients face when they report feeling worse and are told it’s “their disorder,” not a drug effect.

And here’s the unsettling part: most psychiatric drug studies last 4–8 weeks, yet millions stay on these medications for years. That gap leaves huge questions about long-term effects and withdrawal—questions Dr. Horowitz is helping bring to light.

For decades, we’ve heard the same reassuring story: Depression is a chemical imbalance—and antidepressants fix it. But Professor Joanna Moncrieff says the evidence simply doesn’t back that up.

In our conversation, she breaks down why the serotonin myth exploded, what her 2022 review actually found, and why a drug-centered view of antidepressants changes the whole picture.

The shocker? Antidepressants aren’t “correcting” anything—they’re psychoactive drugs that alter mood and consciousness, sometimes helpful short term, often numbing.

Large studies have failed to link serotonin to depression, while the most consistent SSRI effect is… sexual side effects. Mood benefits? Inconsistent at best.

Marketing turned human suffering into a “brain defect,” overshadowing the real drivers: trauma, grief, values, and life events.

If you think you know what causes depression, this may shake everything loose.

Electricity doesn’t care about intent—and when it reaches the human brain, the stakes are high.
In this episode, we speak with rehabilitation counselor and former professor Sarah Price Hancock, whose injuries following electroconvulsive shock treatment (ECT) turned her into an outspoken advocate. Her story reveals how misdiagnosis, catatonia, and “maintenance ECT” can unfold inside a system with minimal dosing guidelines, limited specialist training, and consent processes that often falter when patients are at their most vulnerable.

Sarah breaks down, in her own words, how high-intensity electrical pulses can disrupt cellular barriers and trigger dramatic shifts in the brain’s environment. She connects these mechanisms to what she experienced firsthand—rapid changes in blood flow, the intense metabolic demands of induced seizures, and the disorienting silence that can follow.

From there, she describes a spectrum of cognitive, sensory, motor, and autonomic challenges that may show up immediately or surface gradually over time.

Her story is both a cautionary look at a little-examined medical practice and a call for deeper transparency, training, and patient-centered consent.

In this episode, garden coach Rachel Reynolds shares her raw, decade-long ride through antidepressants—teen scripts, tricyclics, stacked meds, and a brutal side effect no one claimed: urinary retention that hijacked daily life.

She exposes the medication merry-go-round—Prozac lifts, amitriptyline dips, endless add-ons—and how side effects get mislabeled as “new symptoms.” We touch on the overlooked clash between acne meds like spironolactone and psychiatric drugs, and how quick fixes often skip over deeper drivers like inflammation and gut stress.

When Rachel tried tapering on her own, withdrawal hit hard. But beneath the nausea and emotional shutdown, something real emerged: sharper boundaries, clearer instincts, and work that finally matched who she was.

Her pivot? A terrain-based approach that helped her trust her body’s signals again—rather than silence them.

Most headlines shrug and say, “we may never know why.” We don’t buy that. In this episode, clinical psychologist Dr. Toby Watson—board member of KnowMoreAboutDrugs.org—joins us to unpack the hidden links between common psychiatric medications and spikes in suicidality, aggression, and violence, especially during dose changes.

Watson exposes how a handful of drugs account for most severe reactions, how warnings came years late, and how data were often buried. He challenges what passes for informed consent, explaining how placebo effects, emotional numbing, and “spellbinding” distort both perception and therapy. We also dig into stimulant-induced mania, withdrawal harm, and lasting brain changes—revealing why real transparency about psychiatric meds is long overdue.

In this candid interview, physical therapist Daniel West argues that “slow and safe” rehab often traps patients in stagnation. Instead, he champions honest feedback and early, focused movement as the real path to recovery. Drawing on his own car accident and years in hospitals—including the tragic case of a young patient lost to over-cautious bedrest—West says true informed consent means explaining the dangers of immobility, not offering false reassurance.

He challenges the rehab culture that limits people with labels like “complete injury,” sharing stories of patients who regained function in days. Rejecting flashy gadgets, West relies on precise load, leverage, and intent, keeping a small caseload to protect outcomes. His blunt, results-first model also exposes a tough truth: when recovery comes fast, profit slows—and the system resists change.

The spark didn’t just fade—it was blunted. On this episode of The Gaslit Truth Podcast, Cliff Yates, a 35-year LA County Sheriff veteran and stand-up comic, shares how SSRIs can silently reshape intimacy, memory, judgment, and the stories couples tell. From a cruise turned into isolation to affection replaced by aggression, Cliff traces these shifts alongside medication changes and withdrawal challenges.

We explore the clinical and social traps—mania misdiagnosed as bipolar, emotional numbing that blocks grief, and a culture that treats pain as pathology while ignoring side effects that fracture connection. Cliff offers insight on staying grounded through documentation, routines, humor, and creative outlets, while we provide guidance on deprescribing, slow tapers, and protecting partners’ health, dignity, and voice.

Is Mental Illness Really a Chemical Imbalance—or a Metabolic Crisis? 🧠🔥

In this eye-opening episode of The Gaslit Truth Podcast, board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Ruth Dottin challenges everything we’ve been told about mental health.

After years in traditional psychiatry, Dr. Dottin noticed a disturbing pattern: patients weren’t getting better, and some were even getting worse on medication. Her search for real answers led her to metabolic psychiatry—a groundbreaking approach that looks at how the body’s ability to produce energy affects the brain.

💥 From poor diet and nutrient deficiencies to chronic stress and environmental toxins, Dr. Dottin explains how mitochondrial dysfunction could be fueling depression, anxiety, and more. She also drops a bombshell: despite finishing psychiatric training just four years ago, she was still taught the outdated "chemical imbalance" myth—a narrative shaped more by pharma than by science.

This episode is a must-watch for anyone who feels failed by the system and wants to understand the real root causes of mental distress.

What If Bipolar Disorder Isn’t a Life Sentence? 💥

On this powerful episode of The Gaslit Truth Podcast, Michelle Reittinger shares the story psychiatry said was impossible: full recovery from bipolar disorder.

After her diagnosis in 1998, Michelle spent over a decade navigating med failures, 4 hospitalizations, 12 rounds of ECT, and multiple suicide attempts — all while being told she'd be medicated for life.

But everything changed the day she saw her young daughter playing — and realized her life had to mean more.

Now off seven psychiatric medications, Michelle shares how she reclaimed her life using tools she built herself, including her Mood Cycle Survival Guide — a practical system for managing symptoms without shame and returning to stability.

What if the very system meant to protect our kids is actually harming them?

Minister Fred Shaw Jr. — former sheriff’s deputy, NAACP president, and fierce child advocate — exposes psychiatry’s shocking grip on minority communities. It all started when his son was labeled with dyslexia and pushed toward psychiatric meds. Shaw said no — and his son thrived without them.

Now, he’s calling out a system that puts 6.1 million American kids on psychiatric drugs, many chemically similar to cocaine and meth. In foster care and juvenile justice, he reveals, medication is often used as chemical control, not care.

“They’re not treating trauma. They’re sedating it.”

Through raw stories and decades of frontline experience, Shaw demands a rethink: kids don’t need more pills — they need support, belief, and real solutions.

Katinka Blackford Newman took one antidepressant — and woke up in a nightmare. Within hours, she was hallucinating, suicidal, and later diagnosed with "psychotic depression" and bipolar disorder. But the real cause? A violent reaction to the very medication meant to help her.

Instead of recognizing the drug-induced akathisia and psychosis, doctors doubled down — piling on more meds and ignoring her pleas. For a year, she was a shell of herself, unable to care for her kids, her life slipping away under the weight of prescriptions.

The twist? When her insurance ran out and the drugs were forcibly stopped, she woke up — completely sane. The diagnosis? Wrong. The drugs? Nearly fatal.

Her story exposes a terrifying truth: psychiatry often mislabels drug reactions as mental illness — and then treats the side effects with more drugs. How many lives are being lost to treatments that were never needed in the first place?

Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democracy — but what happens when expressing your views gets you vilified, even in death?

The tragic passing of Charlie Kirk has exposed a chilling crisis in the mental health profession: therapists publicly celebrating his death simply for his political beliefs. Your Whistle-Blowing Shrinks Dr. Teralyn and Therapist Jenn are former prison therapists who treated violent offenders with neutrality and compassion. When clinicians can sit with murderers without judgment but mock someone for their ideology, something is deeply broken.

Kirk wasn’t a violent extremist — he was a young man committed to civil discourse. Whether you agreed with him or not, his death deserves dignity. This moment transcends politics: it’s a test of our values, our ethics, and our humanity.

Psychiatry’s darkest patterns know no borders — and Safa Asgari’s harrowing experience in Iran proves it. What began as a simple OCD diagnosis spiraled into a chemical nightmare: ten psychiatric drugs, each prescribed to treat side effects misread as new disorders.

After severe reactions to Prozac, doctors piled on labels — bipolar, ADHD, schizoaffective — instead of acknowledging harm. When Safa questioned the treatment, his resistance was pathologized. Refuse the meds? They threatened electroshock.

His story reveals psychiatry’s global gaslighting — where drug-induced suffering is spun into lifelong illness, and withdrawal is denied by the very system that caused it.

Mental health is increasingly weaponized in divorce and custody battles—often turning private struggles into legal liabilities. In this powerful conversation with family law attorney McKenna Zimmerman, we explore how diagnoses, therapy records, and even casual accusations can reshape family court outcomes. Zimmerman sheds light on the often misunderstood role of guardians ad litem and how their access to personal mental health information can dramatically influence custody decisions.

This episode dives into critical issues like domestic violence, the risks of submitting therapy records, and the pitfalls of court-ordered treatment. Most importantly, it reframes the narrative: mental health challenges don’t make someone an unfit parent—how those challenges are addressed does.

In this powerful episode of The Gaslit Truth Podcast, veteran critical care nurse Luanne Wall shares her shocking journey into benzodiazepine dependency after being prescribed Ativan in 2021. Despite taking it exactly as directed, Luanne faced severe withdrawal, misdiagnosis, and lasting health damage—while doctors insisted she couldn’t be addicted.

Her story exposes the dangerous myths surrounding prescribed psychiatric drugs and challenges the belief that following medical advice ensures safety. After a grueling seven-month taper, Luanne is benzo-free but lives with permanent side effects—and a mission to break the silence.