My name is Deb, and I live in Illinois. During my second pregnancy, I experienced lower abdominal and back pain that radiated down my legs. I told my OBGYN it was adding to my existing overwhelming stress. She replied that I would be fine and that she manages with all her kids. She wasn’t understanding my intense pain and stress intolerance. As I sank further into depression, I was barely functioning.

After work, I’d pick up my daughter from daycare, make dinner, and then collapse on the sofa, literally unable to move. When my husband yelled to get up because I had a daughter who needed me, I couldn’t endure any more stress. Every ounce of me felt heavy. Out of desperation, I discussed terminating the pregnancy with my OBGYN. She gave me a prescription for Prozac. I questioned taking Prozac during my pregnancy, and she assured me of its safety. She also gave me the name of a psychologist and a clinic if I chose to abort.

Seeking relief, I filled the prescription. Almost immediately after starting the Prozac, I imploded. Delusional thoughts surfaced. Barely holding on emotionally, I met with the recommended psychologist, who offered no comforting words, nor was there any discussion of potential regret if I chose abortion.

The emotionless and dull side effects that progressed from the Prozac led me to resort to a single time of cutting, to ease the emotional pain I had no control over. Aware and scared, I reached out to a psychiatrist for help. Rather than acknowledging I was in severe depression, he scolded me for cutting myself, telling me I could have gotten a staph infection.

The Prozac continued to distort and catastrophize my reality, so I scheduled an abortion. As I sat zombie-like from the drug in the waiting room, my husband said, “Are you sure YOU want to do this?” I wasn’t sure of anything other than I was void of a hug or any external verbal comfort, and felt alone, making a decision I had no business making in my state of mind.

After the abortion, I had flashbacks and night terrors, reliving the pain of the termination over and over. I sought out a new psychiatrist, who said the prescribed Prozac was too high a dosage and changed my prescription to a different drug.

The following seven years, as I attempted to get help for the PTSD caused by the trauma, doctors prescribed varying dosages of pharmaceuticals, including Effexor, Klonopin, Wellbutrin, Alprazolam, Clonazepam, Adderall, Zoloft, and Lexapro. I was miserable on these drugs, feeling numb.

With a lack of self-worth, I cried myself to sleep every night as I lived with so much shame and guilt. In an attempt to distract myself from how awful I felt, I threw myself into my career. However, all those prescribed pharmaceuticals cognitively impaired my once strong mental functioning. It wasn’t long before embarrassment and even anger led me to give up the career I had worked so hard to cultivate.

Then one day I said, enough! I couldn’t take it anymore. The drugs were doing little to nothing for my depression and worsened my anxiety. I had a racing mind and panic attacks, while, at the same time, I felt drained and numbed with side effects of weight gain and brain fog.

So with determination, I took my health into my own hands and went off the prescribed pharmaceuticals. For months after stopping the drugs, I experienced agitation and tingling from the withdrawal while trying to manage to be somewhat normal because of my love for my daughter. That was the only thing that got me through those years.

Later, when I started hormone replacement drugs with estrogen for menopause symptoms, depression raised its ugly head with brain fog. Not wanting to go back on antidepressants, I found doctors who treat depression and anxiety naturally with targeted nutrients.

It was the first time doctors ordered lab tests. They discovered that I am estrogen-dominant and have a dysfunction where my body doesn’t metabolize copper properly. The postpartum depression with my first pregnancy was a result of copper coming in to support my pregnancy on top of prenatal vitamins with estrogen. When I became pregnant the second time, the copper from my first pregnancy was still there, and the new copper layered on top of it, causing a build-up. The addition of Prozac influenced my estrogen levels, and with nowhere to go, the excess copper overflowed into my brain, disrupting my neurotransmitters.

The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive because dangerously high copper levels have been known to cause women to kill themselves and/or their babies. I cried, remembering how unrecognizable I was when I imploded after taking Prozac.

I researched copper toxicity, gathered my journal notes, and authored a book, I Cu Copper, about my journey with copper toxicity to provide hope to other women who may be suffering unnecessarily. I relayed how stress increases estrogen and can cause copper to rise and be retained in the body.

The immense physical pain and environmental stress kept me in a constant fight-or-flight state. My OBGYN was unaware that I was stress intolerant because of a dysfunctional chemistry, because she didn’t test my estrogen or copper levels. So, when she prescribed Prozac, it was a recipe for disaster.

As the targeted nutrients removed the heavy metal from my body, and I consumed a low-copper diet while practicing stress-reducing meditation and breathing, I gained clarity and energy. I realized that suffering from copper toxicity was easy compared to the regret of the loss of my baby from the prescribed Prozac, and the loss of my career from the prescribed psychiatric drugs to treat the PTSD from the abortion.

What I learned is that things are not always as they appear. There was nothing wrong with my brain. I had a simple biochemical imbalance that was misdiagnosed as mental illness.