Neuroplasticity: A Path for Healing from Protracted Withdrawal Symptoms

Mad in America presents a panel discussion on neuroplasticity and how it offers hope for healing from protracted psychiatric drug withdrawal symptoms. Neuroplasticity, a well-established scientific principle, highlights the brain’s remarkable ability to reorganize and form new synaptic connections, particularly in response to injury. While specific research on its application to psychiatric drug withdrawal is still forthcoming, a grassroots movement within the community is already leveraging these principles for healing.

Our panel features an inspiring group of individuals who have successfully used these concepts to recover from persistent drug withdrawal symptoms. They will share their stories and a diverse array of strategies, including brain retraining, mind-body techniques, and graded exposure, among others.

About the Guest Speakers

Ben Ahrens, CEO & Co-Founder of re-origin®, has consistently sought out new solutions and innovations to help humanity regain and optimize its health. Over the years, Ben’s path has led him through many areas of health including serving as a celebrity and professional athlete fitness consultant. During this period, Ben learned firsthand the incredible ability of the body to repair itself. Next, he took on the role of Executive Vice President at Innovative Medicine in New York, a provider of cutting-edge health therapies. While at Innovative Medicine, Ben dedicated himself to expanding education for clinical practitioners in advanced biological medicine with an emphasis on chronic illness recovery.
A soulful, insightful storyteller (see his TEDx talk), Ben powerfully distills complex ideas into compelling, succinct messages. In this talk, Ben speaks of his journey going from bedridden with severe chronic illness to full recovery. Shortly thereafter, he experienced protracted benzodiazepine and antidepressant medication withdrawal. He fully healed once again using neuroplasticity concepts.

Kay Loveland, PhD is a Clinical Psychologist in Asheville, NC. She attended undergraduate school at the University of North Carolina where she played varsity tennis, graduate school at the University of Massachusetts where she received her Masters and PhD in Clinical Psychology, interned at Georgia Mental Health Center and completed a postdoctoral internship at North Dekalb Family and Children's Center. She also worked as a Clinical Psychologist for the Women's Tennis Tour after having experience in college tennis and a brief foray into the world of professional tennis.
Dr. Loveland presently has a private practice in Asheville, NC where she specializes in working with people with chronic illness, antidepressant and benzodiazepine withdrawal and protracted withdrawal, and PTSD. She also was director of Camp Unleashed Asheville, a camp for people and their dogs, and was co-founder of Camp Hope Unleashed for veterans with severe PTSD and their service dogs. She is a certified Trauma Resiliency Trainerand developed a program using therapy dogs and teaching trauma resiliency skills to inmates in the prison system.

She is a frequent contributor to various psychology journals including Voices, a publication of the American Academy of Psychotherapists. Her recent publication was an article about becoming a mother, grandmother, and mother-in-law in one year after adopting a foster child that she met doing pet therapy with her goldendoodle, Misha.

She continues her pet therapy work at the hospital in Asheville and at Eliada Home, where she is also on the Board of Trustees. In her spare time she also enjoys photography, tennis, reading, and writing. She and her father wrote a book when he was ninety-eight titled The Last of the Rugged Individualists based on his 30 years of hiking and befriending hermits in the hollers of the Appalachian Mountains.

Gustav f. is a formerly psychiatrized person who resolved five years of protracted withdrawal sensations and chronic pain with a mindbody approach originated by Dr. John Sarno. He has since made a YouTube video A Mindbody Approach to Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal that shares his success story and proposes a possible model of protracted withdrawal as a neuroplastic syndrome driven by psychological stress. Gustav’s YouTube channel and free Substack are updated when he feels inspired to do so. He has particular interests in filmmaking, literature, hockey, and spending time with his family.

About the Host
Robert Whitaker is the author of four books, and coauthor of a fifth, three of which tell of the history of psychiatry. In 2010, his Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness won the U.S. Investigative Reporters and Editors book award for best investigative journalism. He is the founder of madinamerica.com, a website that features research news and blogs by an international group of writers interested in “rethinking psychiatry.”