Is America on Too Many Psychiatric Drugs?

Summary

Episode Summary: "Is America on Too Many Psychiatric Drugs?"

Podcast: The Journal.
Hosts: Jessica Mendoza & Ryan Knutson
Guests/reporters: Betsy McKay, Shalini Ramachandran
Date: December 3, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode explores America’s growing dependence on psychiatric medications—specifically antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs (benzodiazepines). Through interviews, firsthand testimonials, and investigative reporting, Jessica Mendoza, along with Wall Street Journal reporters Betsy McKay and Shalini Ramachandran, investigates the widespread use (and overuse) of these drugs, the lack of long-term studies, significant withdrawal and side effects, as well as the cultural normalization of psychiatric drug use. The episode asks: Is the U.S. “overmedicated,” and what are the true costs—personal and societal—of prolonged psychiatric drug use?

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. The Social Media "Antidepressant Boom"

• Antidepressants in Pop Culture: On platforms like TikTok, there are thriving communities destigmatizing, normalizing, and even celebrating psychiatric medication use through hashtags (e.g. #lexaprogirly, #lexahoe).
  • [00:18] Lexapro User playfully rallies "Lexapro baddies" and "Prozac girlies."
• Positive Testimonials: Young users share how drugs like Lexapro and Zoloft have transformed their lives:
  • Quote: “One thing that Lexapro has, like, indirectly done for me is allow me to see a different perspective of, like, life isn’t just all pain.” – Lexapro User [01:27]
  • Quote: “When I tell you my brain is quiet, it is quiet.” – Lexapro User [01:49]
• Growing Popularity: Hashtag #antidepressants has over 1.3 billion views on TikTok.
  • Implication: Antidepressant use is not only commonplace but culturally embraced among many demographics, especially youth.

2. Investigating the "Dark Side" of Psych Meds

• Overlooked Risks: Despite online positivity, prolonged use can have serious side effects, a reality often omitted from public discussion.
  • Quote: “If you were just to look at the most glamorous videos, the most positive ones, you really wouldn’t come away thinking these drugs can have serious side effects.” – Betsy McKay [02:09]
• Withdrawal Challenges: Users report extreme difficulties when stopping medication, with little prior warning from providers.
  • Quote: “Absolutely nobody told me, not even my psychiatrist, how bad it is to wean off an antidepressant. I feel crazy.” – Shalini Ramachandran [02:32]

3. Benzodiazepines: The Hidden Epidemic

• Roots of the Investigation: The team’s reporting began with benzodiazepines (benzos) like Ativan and Xanax, not just antidepressants.
  • Benzo withdrawal can be life-derailing; one executive's personal story prompted deeper inquiry. [04:56]
    • Quote: “The worst years of my life was when I was on benzodiazepine withdrawal.” – Executive testimonial relayed by Shalini [04:56]
• Medical Guidelines vs. Reality:
  • Guideline: Benzos should typically be used for “no more than two to four weeks.” – Shalini [07:33]
  • Reality: “Anything between two weeks and like 20+ years.” – Betsy [07:43]
• Side Effects & Mismanagement:
  • Chronic use linked to akathisia (restlessness), agoraphobia, memory loss, panic, and severe withdrawal.
  • Doctors often respond to side effects by increasing doses rather than reassessing use.
    • Quote: “Often they would go to the doctor and describe their symptoms and their doctor would say, you sound more anxious, you probably need a higher dose.” – Shalini [08:40]
• Withdrawal Hell:
  • Some users experience “chemical anxiety," "brain zaps," and even suicidality while tapering.
  • Shalini recounts a patient whose withdrawal experience drove her to the brink:
    • Quote: “She wrote her daughter a note because she thought she might die amid her journey to get off the drug.” – Shalini [10:11]
  • Suicide linked with enduring post-withdrawal symptoms.
    • Read from a victim’s suicide note: “My body has been completely destroyed. I would never leave my family and beautiful daughter if I had another option.” [10:32]
• Understudied Issues and Lack of Awareness:
  • Most users “had no idea” about long-term risks; minimal to no warnings from their healthcare providers. [11:17]
  • Quote: “The side effects and the problems that, you know, we’ve documented are really from lived real world experience... they’re not being studied enough.” – Betsy McKay [11:36]
• Advocacy & Regulatory Response:
  • Recent FDA warnings (since 2020) now acknowledge withdrawal and dependence but prescriptions remain sky-high—over 86 million written annually in the U.S. [12:23]

4. Antidepressants: America's Living Experiment

• Massive Numbers: 347 million antidepressant prescriptions in the U.S. in the last year; polypharmacy is common. [15:59]
• Telehealth’s Role: Prescription access is easier and more frictionless thanks to virtual clinics (ex: Hims & Hers), per company statement. [15:59]
• Duration Problem: Most antidepressant studies run ~8 weeks, but Americans average 5 years on these drugs. [16:34]
  • Quote: “Nobody really knows. We’re kind of a living experiment in that sense.” – Betsy [16:53]
• Social Media Pushback: After initial destigmatization, more users are posting about negative long-term effects:
  • Quote: “Zoloft has completely removed me from my identity.” – Testimonial [17:47]
  • Quote: “My Lexapro, girlies, do we have a sex drive? Because I don’t.” – Lexapro User [17:52]
  • Withdrawal can be intense—even after tapering, users report emotional volatility and other hardships.
• Cycle of Prescription:
  • Side effects or withdrawal often lead to dose increases or new/additional drugs—“a pill for every ill” mentality.
    • “With antidepressants, patients experience side effects. So their doctor raises their dose or switches to a new pill or layers on more meds...” [18:42]
  • Quote: "So after going viral for weaning off my Lexapro, guess whose doctors told them they need to go back on it? Me." – Lexapro User [19:02]

5. Knowledge Gaps, Informed Consent, and a Pill-First Culture

• Lack of Long-Term Data: The extended impact of years-long antidepressant/benzo use is still largely unknown.
• Inadequate Patient Education:
  • Patients often aren’t informed about addiction risk, withdrawal, or alternative treatments.
    • Quote: “One thing that a lot of people talk about is informed consent, which is making sure that when a prescriber is about to prescribe you a benzodiazepine or antidepressant, they tell you, hey, like, these kind of things could happen…” – Shalini [19:32]
• Cultural Forces:
  • Psychiatry is now deeply woven into U.S. culture—across all generations and socioeconomic groups.
  • Quote: “...these meds are embedded in American culture and that the US has yet to reckon with what it means to use these drugs for far longer than intended or ever studied.” – Jessica [20:14]
• System Critique & Reflective Closing:
  • "There are too few guardrails around these medications, which do help a lot of people. And it’s been sort of this underrecognized, untalked about problem for many years.” – Betsy [20:38]
  • “We live in a pill-first culture and it’s one that’s really deeply baked into our medical system. There are other ways to address the problems that we all struggle with…that doesn’t always have to be in the form of a pill.” – Shalini [20:57]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (w/ Timestamps)

• "When I tell you my brain is quiet, it is quiet." – Lexapro User [01:49]
• "Absolutely nobody told me, not even my psychiatrist, how bad it is to wean off an antidepressant. I feel crazy." – Shalini Ramachandran [02:32]
• "The worst years of my life was when I was on benzodiazepine withdrawal." – Paraphrased, Shalini reports [04:56]
• "No more than like two to four weeks." – Shalini (on benzo prescribing guidelines) [07:33]
• "Often...their doctor would say, you sound more anxious, you probably need a higher dose." – Shalini [08:40]
• "She wrote her daughter...a note because she thought she might die amid her journey to get off the drug." – Shalini [10:11]
• “My body has been completely destroyed....” – From a suicide note, read by Jessica [10:32]
• “It’s a similar picture to benzos. Most antidepressants have not been studied for long...average time is five years.” – Betsy [16:34]
• “We’re kind of a living experiment, in that sense.” – Betsy [16:53]
• “Zoloft has completely removed me from my identity.” – TikTok testimonial [17:47]
• “My Lexapro, girlies, do we have a sex drive? Because I don’t.” – Lexapro User [17:52]
• “So after going viral for weaning off my Lexapro, guess whose doctors told them they need to go back on it? Me.” – Lexapro User [19:02]
• “There are too few guardrails around these medications.” – Betsy [20:38]
• “We live in a pill-first culture and it’s really baked into our medical system.” – Shalini [20:57]

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:00–01:59 — Social media and cultural embrace of antidepressants
• 02:00–03:14 — The hidden downsides and the question of overmedication
• 04:46–12:23 — Benzodiazepines: history, danger, and the underreported withdrawal crisis
• 12:23–13:34 — Regulatory responses and continued high prescription rates
• 13:34–16:53 — The antidepressant boom; comparison with benzos
• 16:53–20:14 — Living experiment, social media shifting narratives, and withdrawal struggles
• 20:14–21:33 — Reflections on U.S. pill culture, missing guardrails, and policy implications

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Takeaways

• America’s relationship with psychiatric medications is at a crossroads—driven by cultural acceptance, ease of access, and lack of long-term research, millions are prescribed drugs never studied for years-long use.
• Benzos and antidepressants can be life-saving, but carry real risks, especially with chronic use; users and even doctors often lack full risk awareness.
• Withdrawal syndromes are intense, under-discussed, and can be life-threatening, with a significant minority experiencing lasting aftereffects.
• As the U.S. continues to embrace a “pill-first” approach, experts warn of a need for more education, informed consent, robust long-term studies, and non-pharmaceutical strategies in treating mental health disorders.

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For those who may be struggling, the podcast reminds listeners of the suicide and crisis lifeline: dial or text 988.

Transcript

[Lexapro User]

I started taking this little happy pill about, I think, a little over four.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

Months ago, and I was giving on.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Social media, especially TikTok. There's a growing community of young people talking about their antidepressants.

[Lexapro User]

This video is for all of the Lexapro baddies out there, like my little, like, Prozac girlies, my wellbutrin girlies, my.

[Jessica Mendoza]

My Zoloft homies.

[Betsy McKay]

I started diving down and pretty quickly came across hashtags like lexaprogirly and lexa ho. Oh, TikTok. Yeah. It was just huge.

I'm Betsy McKay. I'm a senior writer covering health and medicine for the Wall Street Journal.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

And I'm Shalini Ramachandran. I'm an investigative reporter at the Wall Street Journal.

[Jessica Mendoza]

For over a year now, Betsy and Shalini have been on an investigative journey into some of the most commonly prescribed medications out there. Psychiatric drugs.

[Betsy McKay]

I mean, we've talked to hundreds of people at this point. We've talked to patients, we've talked to doctors, we've talked to researchers as they.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Dug into psychiatric drugs. They found that corner of the Internet where thousands of people are sharing their positive experiences. On TikTok alone, the hashtag antidepressants has more than 1.3 billion views.

[Lexapro User]

I feel like one thing that Lexbro has, like, indirectly done for me is allow me to see a different perspective of, like, life isn't just all pain.

[Medication User/Testimonial Speaker]

There were a lot of times before I was on medication that I just was not okay, felt hopeless, depressed. So Zoloft is doing what it's supposed to be doing.

[Lexapro User]

When I tell you my brain is quiet, it is quiet. Are you also having this experience with this drug?

[Jessica Mendoza]

But over the course of their reporting, Betsy and Shalini found that there's also a dark side to these drugs, especially for some people who've been on them for a long time.

[Betsy McKay]

In general, if you were just to look at the most glamorous videos, the most positive ones, you really wouldn't come away thinking these drugs can have serious side effects. But there is a whole part of the mental health universe that is talking only about very serious side effects.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

You want to know what? Absolutely nobody told me, not even my psychiatrist, how bad it is to wean off an antidepressant. I feel feel crazy.

[Jessica Mendoza]

As they kept looking into psychiatric medications, not just antidepressants, but also antianxiety drugs and others, one big question popped up. Is America overmedicated?

[Betsy McKay]

These drugs are so popular and they've been on the market so long now that grandparents, parents and children in the same family. Now take them.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

And now there are people who've been on them for decades and are experiencing the repercussions.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Wednesday, December 3rd.

Coming up on the show, the over prescription of psychiatric drugs in America.

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[Jessica Mendoza]

Betsy and Shalini's investigation didn't actually start with antidepressants. It began with another kind of psych medication entirely. When Shalini heard something that caught her attention.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

There was actually an executive who I spoke to who was telling me, well, you know, the worst years of my life was when I was on bed benzodiazepine withdrawal.

And I said, what's that? I had never heard of the stink. And he said, well, I was just routinely prescribed Ativan because I had insomnia. And that started the worst years of my life.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Ativan is the brand name for lorazepam, a popular anxiety medication. It's one of several in a class of drugs called benzodiazepines, and it's commonly prescribed to help people with sleep issues.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

We all know somebody who's taken it, and I didn't realize that there are these potentially really debilitating effects.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The executive told Shalini that after being on benzos for his insomnia, he actually started feeling extremely anxious. And when he tried to get off the drugs, he experienced intense withdrawal symptoms.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

He even went to one of these very swanky rehab facilities and they weren't able to help him. And he said he could barely function. He was calling his wife, saying he couldn't serve.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The executive spent more than $100,000 on treatment for benzo withdrawal. Eventually, he found help at another treatment center. By the time he was telling all of this to Shalini, the executive said his recovery was complete.

But his Story was about to send Shalini on a new reporting track and straight to Betsy's desk.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

You know, I went to Betsy and I was like, betsy, have you heard about these? She was like, yeah, I was looking into these a few years ago too. So that's kind of how it all started.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Benzodiazepines work inside the brain to calm the nervous system. Here's Betsy again.

[Betsy McKay]

When we become anxious, it's basically we're overstimulated. And so neurons release this chemical gaba, and it's meant to sort of quiet everything in your brain. So they basically mimic the calming effect.

Of that substance, gaba.

[Jessica Mendoza]

I'm curious, like, how effective are they at doing what they're supposed to do?

[Shalini Ramachandran]

They are highly effective at calming you down, which is why they are so prescribed. And they're highly effective at preventing sort of life threatening seizures or alcohol withdrawal. And even for certain chronic anxiety disorders, they're considered to be effective.

[Jessica Mendoza]

I guess one thing I want to understand. According to medical guidelines, how long should patients be on benzos to.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

No more than like two to four weeks. Really?

[Jessica Mendoza]

Two to four weeks. And typically, how long does someone stay on this drug, at least based on the conversations you had with people?

[Betsy McKay]

Well, the people we spoke to were, you know, seriously, anything between two weeks and like 20 plus years.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Years.

[Betsy McKay]

There's plenty of people out there who.

Start taking these medications and then, you know, for good reason, feel they continue to need them and they just stay on them and doctors continue to prescribe them.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In other words, even though benzos aren't meant to be taken long term, a lot of people do. And as Betsy and Shalini talked to more patients and they began to hear about the problems that emerged from that extended use.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

Some of them suffer from something called akathisia, which is the inability to stop moving. Others have agoraphobia. I guess the fear of just going out, going outside the house and being around people.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And what happens when people tell their doctors about this?

[Shalini Ramachandran]

Often I found that, you know, it was often they would go to the doctor and describe their symptoms and their doctor would say, you sound more anxious, you probably need a higher dose. And so many of the people we talked to were put on dose after dose, sometimes switched to another benzo as people thought that their anxiety was just rising and they needed more medication.

[Jessica Mendoza]

It was ironic. The answer that some patients were getting to help with the side effects from the drugs they were taking was more drugs.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

And it's only after coming off the medication do they realize that as there's some of their symptoms got better afterwards, and they realized, oh, it could have been, it was that.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And just like with that executive that Shalini spoke to, some people who tried to get themselves off benzos were hit with even more problems, painful withdrawal symptoms, because their brains had become so used to the effects of the drugs.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

So that's why many people who experience benzodiazepine withdrawal when they stop taking the drug, they're suddenly in these states of intense agit, and they call it a chemical anxiety that wracks their body.

[Jessica Mendoza]

These symptoms could become extreme. One woman Shalini talked to, a mother of five, was prescribed another common benzo, Xanax, for mild insomnia. The mom said that after two years of taking the drug, she'd started having memory loss and panic attacks like never before. So she tried to quit and she.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

Was hit with these brain zaps like electric shocks, and she couldn't even shower. Like she would have these hours long panic attacks attacks because of how the shower water felt on her skin. She would sort of writhe in pain. And she wrote her daughter, you know, a note because she thought she might die amid her journey to get off the drug.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Studies show that somewhere between 15 and 44% of chronic benzo users experience moderate to severe withdrawal symptoms, and about 10 to 15% have symptoms that continue long after they taper off the drugs. For some, the pain is so bad that they take their own lives. Shalini reported on one woman, a doctor who spent more than three years trying to stop taking Xanax and later Valium. In March 2024, she killed herself. Her husband later found a note on her phone that read, quote, my body has been completely destroyed. I would never leave my family and beautiful daughter if I had another option.

How much did the patients you spoke to typically know about this going in?

[Shalini Ramachandran]

Most of them had no idea, were never warned whether it was primary care doctors or psychiatrists. They were not warned that there could be this potential for long term risk.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's terrifying.

[Betsy McKay]

Yeah, usually they're told, you know, minimal side effects.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Oh boy.

[Betsy McKay]

So the side effects and the problems that, you know, we've documented are really from lived real world experience. And one of the problems is that they're not being studied enough.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

But what seems to be the gap we're seeing now is that long term use was never studied. And now there's these advocacy groups and things that are trying to get the word out that there's a subset of people for whom there is potential for long term neurological damage. So in the last, like, probably seven, eight years there's been more people who've experienced this banding together, saying holy crap, this is terrible. And like lobbying the FDA and raising the awareness about this to researchers. So that's kind of where some of the data is coming from now.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In 2020, the FDA required drug makers to add a warning on benzodiazepines about the serious risks of abuse, dependence and withdrawals. It also called for proper guidelines for doctors to help patients taper off the drugs. Still, more than 86 million benzo prescriptions were written just last year in the U.S. globally, benzos are a multi billion dollar industry. North America is its largest market.

Shalini and Betsy put their findings about long term benzo use in a story that they published earlier this year.

[Betsy McKay]

That was the plan was to publish one story, but there was a whole.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Other class of widely prescribed psych drugs that they hadn't even begun to look into.

[Betsy McKay]

After our story about benzos ran, I mean, we had got a deluge of responses from readers and many, many, many of the people who wrote in said, I've had the same experience with antidepressants.

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[Jessica Mendoza]

Benzodiazepines and antidepressants are some of the most prescribed psychiatric medications in America. They're so common that they've made a mark on American culture and become household names.

It started in the 60s and 70s with one of the earliest benzo drugs to hit the market, Valium.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

Valium was very well known and heavily marketed by pharmaceutical companies.

[Betsy McKay]

When excessive anxiety and tension are interfering.

[Medication User/Testimonial Speaker]

With rehabilitative efforts, Valium diazepam can help.

[Betsy McKay]

The transition back to work.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

I mean, we've all heard of the Xanax It's a in pop culture like it's in Gossip Girl. It's in, you know, the White Lotus. You should have taken my Lorazepam. I slept like a corpse.

[Jessica Mendoza]

After benzos, another class of drugs came on the scene. SSRIs, a type of antidepressant that affects serotonin levels in the brain.

[Betsy McKay]

Prozac was introduced in 1987 and it was a revolution. Prozac nation and so forth.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Then came other popular antidepressants like Zoloft and Lexapro.

[Betsy McKay]

And prescriptions for benzodiazepines have been going down. There's a lot more concern about them now. But prescriptions for antidepressants are going up.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Last year there were 347 million antidepressant prescriptions written in the US alone, though a lot of people tend to be on multiple medications at the same time. And Betsy says these prescriptions are easier to access than ever, as telehealth clinics like Hims and Hers are able to prescribe them virtually these days. In a statement, a Hims and hers spokesperson said, quote, we're proud that these efforts have helped people connect with qualified clinicians and get the care they need. But Shalini, you were saying earlier that benzos are not meant for long term use. Betsy, is that the same for antidepressants?

[Betsy McKay]

Yep, it's very interesting. I mean, again, it's a similar picture to benzos. Most antidepressants have not been studied for long. The average study was about eight weeks long. But the average time an American is on an antidepressant is five years.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's a huge gap.

[Betsy McKay]

So nobody really knows. We're kind of a living experiment in that sense.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Betsy found that in the last couple years, more Americans are taking antidepressants than ever, especially young women. And in this living experiment, there isn't a lot of data about long term use. What there is is a lot of chatter on social media.

[Betsy McKay]

So it started kind of in a good place of you're all lonely. We already have so much anxiety in our lives.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Which sounds like a good thing, right? Like that's destigmatizing.

[Betsy McKay]

It is. It's very destigmatizing. And I think that's destigmatizing being open, realizing that you're not alone.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Only creators that Betsy and Shalini spoke to said that after extended use of antidepressants, they started experiencing downsides. And now there are TikTok testimonials trending with a very different tone.

[Medication User/Testimonial Speaker]

Zoloft has completely removed me from my identity.

[Lexapro User]

Well, my Lexapro, girlies, do we have a sex drive? Because I don't. No one told me that stopping my Lexapro, even after weaning myself off it, that I was going to be crying ten times a day. And one of the reasons why it took me so long to get off of it and why I didn't do it sooner was because the withdrawal symptoms are just not a fun time.

[Jessica Mendoza]

A recent study found that moderate or severe withdrawal symptoms showed up in nearly two thirds of patients who'd been on antidepressants for more than two years.

[Betsy McKay]

So there are. There are side effects while taking benzodiazepines, There are side effects while taking antidepressants. And some of them are similar and same with withdrawal. It's a very. It can be a very similar picture.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

And we haven't figured out how when we think one pill stops working, what to do next, it ends up being a different or more pills.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Shalini and Betsy found that just like with benzos, people can get trapped in a cycle of prescriptions. With antidepressants, patients experience side effects. So their doctor raises their dose or switches to a new pill or layers on more meds. And if they try to get off the drugs, they experience withdrawal symptoms.

[Betsy McKay]

Yep.

[Lexapro User]

So after going viral for weaning off my Lexapro, guess whose doctors told them.

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They need to go back on it?

[Medication User/Testimonial Speaker]

Me.

[Lexapro User]

I know there are a lot of people who are probably in the same situation that I was where they've been on SSRIs or meds like this long term and want to come off of them, and it's really hard to do, and it can be really scary.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So it sounds like there's still a lot that's not known about these drugs, how effective they are just on their own, and what kind of impact they have on folks long term.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

Yeah, I mean, one thing that a lot of people talk about is informed consent, which is making sure that when a prescriber is about to prescribe you a benzodiazepine or antidepressant, they tell you, hey, like, these kind of things could happen. We don't know if you're one of the people who might experience some of these really adverse side effects. But, you know, it's something that we'd like to let you know and, like, there's all kinds of, like, different things you can do to improve your mental health and life that doesn't always have to be in the form of a pill. And I think that that's a discussion that maybe often you're not having when you're in the doctor's office.

[Jessica Mendoza]

I just want to say again, many Americans have been helped by psych meds over the years. But the more that Shalini and Betsy looked at these drugs and the hundreds of millions of prescriptions that are filled every year, the more apparent it became to them that these meds are embedded in American culture and that the US has yet to reckon with what it means to use these drugs for far longer than intended or ever studied.

[Betsy McKay]

The biggest thing I've learned is that there are too few guardrails around these medications, which do help a lot of people. And it's been sort of this under recognized, untalked about problem for many years.

[Shalini Ramachandran]

I think it's just that, you know, we live in a pill first culture and it's one that's really deeply baked into our medical system. There are other ways to address the problems that we all struggle with, you know, depression, anxiety. And often we expect something that will help us immediately. That's helped make this pill first culture a reality for us.

[Jessica Mendoza]

If you or anyone you know is struggling, you can reach the suicide and crisis lifeline by dialing or texting. 988. That's 9, 8, 8.

That's all for today. Wednesday, December 3rd. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by John West.

Thanks for listening. See you, Tom.