TBP 11 (Reglan Awareness 1): Amanda Smith

Thaddeus Blevins Audio

I recently shared a post about the changes in my personal mindset and the fitness transformation that followed. What I haven’t shared publicly is the catalyst for that. It’s hard to portray public vulnerability as a real estate agent. We're to be the calm ones that our clients rely on during times of change and upheaval in their own lives and it feels like that’s what we’re supposed to represent. I’m proud to say that none of my clients suffered from what I was going through, but still…it is with some hesitation that I share this. At the end of the day, sometimes the most important thing we can do is share our human experience. In 2021 I was given a prescription drug (for acid reflux) that totally wrecked my brain and nerves for about nine months. It’s not a stretch to say it was the chemical equivalent of a bomb went going off in my nervous system. I had anxiety, panic attacks (beyond ordinary panic….some fellow travelers have called it “chemical terror”), depressive attacks, insomnia, parkinsonism symptoms, inner tremors, agoraphobia, and what I can only describe as….feeling like I was being electrocuted for hours on end. I have lost loved ones and friends too young, and I have endured some really hard things in my life but my experience with the effects of this medication is by far the hardest thing I’ve had to endure. I met some other folks who have gone through the same thing and lost marriages, had to give up their children, or even taken their own life. Doctors were absolutely no help. The medical system put me in this position and then offered no help out of it. It wasn’t until I found a support group of hundreds of other people that had experienced some of the same things from the same drug that I was able to understand what was happening and develop a roadmap for recovery. Even then I didn’t really know what to do, I just knew other people had managed to get better and that gave me hope it was even possible. I decided to take a kindergarten approach: “do more good things for your brain and body and stop doing any and all unhealthy things.” So I made radical changes to my diet, started running, and got on a supplement regimen that seemed to make sense based on my research. Running was the thing that probably helped me reclaim my life more than anything else. That’s the biggest part of why I’ve been able to maintain consistency with it now, when I’ve never been able to before. I don’t have an interest in suing anyone or anything like that — I really don’t have a lot of hope for our legal system in fixing this. It has been tried before. What I am going to do is share some stories through my podcast of other victims of this drug, in hopes of raising awareness and reducing the number of Reglan/Metoclopramide prescriptions that are handed out. This is the first of those conversations. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thad-blevins/support