From Pharmacist to Healer: Why She Quit Dispensing Drugs

Choosing Pharmacy to Help Others 0:00

When I was looking at a career, I knew I wanted to help people, but I didn't exactly know how. And about the time that I getting toward that decision-making time in high school, my mom got disabled with her multiple sclerosis, and she also was very sick with Graves' disease. So I really saw how her interactions with doctors and the pharmacy was impacting her, basically gave us as the only hope to keep her out of a wheelchair is medicine. So my thought was better living through chemistry. I want to learn everything I can about, you know, pharmacology, biochemistry and be able to help people out in my mom.

so I went into pharmacy and I immediately got a job in a local community pharmacy, and went to pharmacy school. And when I got out a pharmacy I was so excited. because I learned all this cool stuff about medications and how they bypass things that go wrong in the body and they fix it and it was super interesting, amazing. I did really well with it. And I couldn't wait to apply what I learnt. So I actually initially wanted to specialize in psychiatric pharmacy and things I dealt with neurology because i thought what better way to help somebody than to their sanity and the nervous system function for medications.

But then I did an internship where I spent some time on the psych ward, and I decided that was not an avenue for me. It definitely seemed like a lot of experimentation as opposed to really hard science. And I didn't like the outcomes I saw. it seemed an area of hopelessness. So I said, forget that. That's not for you. I just want to work with average people in the community. So I got a job in a retail pharmacy in drug store, or rather in grocery store.

Disillusionment with Psychiatric Pharmacy 1:58

And I thought, okay, this is cool, I'm gonna help day-to-day people. But then I started noticing, wow, more than a quarter of the prescriptions we fill are psychiatric drugs. These aren't special watered down ones for the community, these are the same drugs that people are getting in the psych ward. We have general public taking loads of things like antipsychotics, anxiety medications. So that was a shock to me. But my real aha moment was I'd been practicing as the pharmacist for about close to three years.

And it was late evening at the pharmacy and this mom called me and I knew her. I saw her every month and she was crying. What is happening? And she says, my son, is crying and shaking and saying he's going to kill himself. And I don't know what to do. We're holding him down. This was a 15-year-old kid and I was looking through his chart and realized, oh my gosh, he actually is three days late for his refill on his ADHD medication. I believe it was Medidate. So I told her, Oh my Gosh, I think he is in withdrawal.

Because when you withdraw for those, They were very strong. So it's similar to amphetamine withdrawal from a street drug. And so I told her, you know, this is a very dangerous situation. You know if he has a reaction to missing a couple doses of that, the severe, it is problem. He needs to get off of it. But right now he's in crisis. We've got to give him to the emergency room. I went to emergency and they got him out of the situation and I called her. you know, talking to the doctor and getting him off the medication.

So I couldn't get ahold of her. And then a month later, she shows up at the pharmacy with the same prescription, with a same drug, at this same dose. I asked her, what about the plan? She said, well, he stabilized after they got him back on the medications. so I talked to doctor, and he just wants him to stay on it and just not miss any doses. and I did not find that acceptable. Because here's this kid that's on a drug that could potentially make him suicidal just by missing it for a couple of days.

And what is this doing to his nervous system long term? And I was in a situation where I feel the medication.

A Turning Point Toward Nutrition 4:34

If I don't feel it, he could kill himself. But if I do feel I, I'm playing a role in this long-term hamster wheel of being in potential danger for the rest of his life. But I had to fill it because that was my job and that's the law. So I filled the prescription. But then I decided in that moment, this is not what I wanted to do with my life. And this was not the kind of pharmacy I want to practice. I wanna help people get well. Well, I don't want them to maintain a level of disease on dangerous mind altering drugs.

All I can do is find solutions. so I decide to quit and I did.So I quit my jobs.I had no idea what i was going to I had no contacts, I have a mountain of student loan debt, and I just said forget it. I quit, i'll find a better way. So that's when probably about a month later I found out about the Nutritional Healing Center by chance. And I got a job here and decided I would follow the doctors around and see everything that they did. It wasn't long after that that I decided this is what I want to do.

So I've been a practitioner here ever since. I knew I wanted to do something different, and I do. There had to be better ways. So, I started researching nutrition, diet, supplements before I found out about the Nutrition Ambulance Center. But it wasn't really something I was married to until I got a job here. Just to observe,I figured I'll test the waters.I'll figure it out and see if this might be something that I could do, but I wasn' excited yet, really. So I was following Dr. Schmidt in one of his visits, and I remember there was this little old lady, And she had rheumatoid arthritis.

And her knuckle was THIS big. She was so excited to see Dr Schmidt, she said, yeah, I don't have any arthritis pain at all anymore. They don' hurt at ALL. I am standing there like, are you kidding me? Her knuckles this big! And in pharmacy school I learned that with rheuomatoide arthritis, All you can really do is put someone on immunomodulating drugs and pain medication,

Personal Healing Through Diet and Supplements 6:58

because that's forever. There's no solution. And then here she's saying, I'm not taking medicine, and I am not in pain anymore because I've not eaten sugar. That's when the light bulb went off, And I was like, oh my God, if someone can heal from that and not have pain, then anything is possible. and that is what I want to do. As someone who has been sick my whole life, it was a real turning point for me to do a program here. Because initially I thought, I just want to learn how to help other people.

And I didn't really think I could get that much better. At the time I quit pharmacy, i was actually wondering how long I was going to make it before I disabled. and I wasn't even 30 years old yet. So I had a horrible immune system, a lot of autoimmune symptoms that were never able to be diagnosed, arthritis, that was terrible since the time I was seven, and debilitating, migraine, headaches. The list actually goes on and on, I don't often talk about it because I feel like no one would believe me if they knew all the diagnoses I have had.

I started the program, and I didn't really have that high of hopes for myself. But it wasn't long after I start changing my diet and taking supplements that I realized these things that have plagued me my whole life and even taken me out of action or socializing or work were getting better. And I felt the best I've felt in my entire life. Here, it's been about 10 years since I starting here. I get better and better every year. I still have long-term health things I'm working on, but fundamentally I get stronger and healthier all the time.

And from someone who comes from a family with severe autoimmune disease, it's a miracle. As someone has had a lot to do with their own health, and also someone highly believed to the point that they got a career in better living through chemistry, I want to tell you that the answer is actually better live through biochemistry. There's limited amounts of solutions with conventional medicine. Anytime you take a drug to bypass the natural functions of your body, it's going to come packaged with other effects that are undesirable, or also known as side effects.

There is a price to pay for doing that. But when you go the national route and you actually give your the body the fuel it needs and the components it need to do all of the functions it means to, then it has an amazing ability to heal and repair. So instead of maintaining a level of disease, you can kill a repairable body.