When Eight Medications Is the Answer, Something Is Wrong

A funny thing about being a psychiatrist is that strangers feel surprisingly comfortable telling you their diagnoses—and their medication lists.

One story in particular has stayed with me.

While buying a new cell phone, our young salesman learned what my husband and I do for work. Almost immediately, he began listing his psychiatric diagnoses and the medications he takes. He was polite, thoughtful, clearly intelligent. Full of life.

And it broke my heart.

What struck me wasn’t just the length of the list—it was what that list meant.

Here was a young person who now believed he was profoundly broken. So broken, in fact, that he needed one of nearly every category of psychiatric medication just to function. Eight drugs. Eight attempts. Eight signals that something wasn’t working.

In my professional opinion, no one should be on eight psychiatric medications.

When that happens, it’s not evidence of a uniquely defective patient. It’s evidence that we are failing them.

Instead of acknowledging that failure, the system quietly shifts blame. The patient is labeled “treatment-resistant.” The solution becomes more medications, more combinations, more experiments—rarely more reflection.

To the outside world, this young man looked like a regular, capable human being. But internally, he had absorbed a very different story: there is something deeply wrong with me, and even modern medicine can’t fix it.

Imagine how that belief shapes his sense of possibility—his future, his confidence, his identity.

When I see a long medication list, I don’t see sophistication or progress. I see risk.

I see side effects that accumulate slowly and quietly.
I see drug-drug interactions no one is tracking closely.
I see withdrawal syndromes waiting in the future.

These consequences often take on a life of their own, gradually exerting more control over a person’s mind and body—without their full consent or understanding.

Here is the uncomfortable reality: our psychiatric medications do not work very well.

None of them cure anything. The clinical trial data used for FDA approval is often mediocre at best, short-term, and optimized for regulatory success—not real-world recovery.

So if you find yourself on multiple psychiatric medications, this is not proof that you are unusually ill. More often, it’s proof that something is wrong with our treatments.

The ultimate goal of psychiatric treatment should be to no longer need treatment.

However you define it—better, recovered, well—the aim should be independence. No medications. No constant appointments. A life lived fully, without ongoing medical management.

Yet this goal is rarely reflected in everyday practice.

Patients are often conditioned to expect lifelong medication without being told why improvement has plateaued. Doctors, constrained by time, insurance, and training, may fall into a revolving door of medication switching and stacking—without pausing to question whether the approach itself is flawed.

Both sides quietly lower their expectations.

I believe we can do better. But it requires patients to ask harder questions.

Question the labels placed on you.
Question why medications keep being added without meaningful improvement.
Question whether there might be other ways to understand and address your symptoms.

Do not settle for a long medication list as the default outcome.

There are other approaches to diagnosis and healing—but they are rarely found in rushed, insurance-driven clinics.

That is why UnScripted exists.

My hope is to help you see the system more clearly, think more critically about your care, and reclaim a sense of agency over your mental health. You deserve more than symptom management. You deserve a real path forward.

Dr. Marissa Witt-Doerring is a board-certified psychiatrist and co-founder of TaperClinic, specializing in psychiatric withdrawal and safe, individualized tapering.