Jay Shifman

For much of my early life, I was told that I was living with a debilitating issue of Mental Health. As my condition worsened, I was prescribed more drugs at ever higher doses until, in my early 20s, I was daily taking more than the estimated lethal dosage of one drug and abusing many others while living with a full-blown Substance Misuse Disorder thanks to prescription pills. At 23, after two suicide attempts, an overdose, and time spent in an inpatient hospital and a rehab facility, I decided enough was enough and pledged myself to withdraw from all of my prescriptions. My symptoms disappeared almost immediately.