The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #232 - Melissa Bond

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon:
Friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I'm about to have. I've just been looking forward to this for so long ever since reading this incredible book.

Melanie Avalon:
So here is the backstory on today's conversation. I got pitched by the publisher for a book called Blood Orange Night by Melissa Bond. And it's a memoir and the topic of interest in the book in addition to Melissa's life, of course, is the topic of benzodiazepines and their role in being prescribed in society and what they can potentially do to people in society.

Melanie Avalon:
So I realized, well, A, it just looks completely riveting and fascinating. And I realized that I didn't really know anything about that topic, but I'm sure we'll talk about this in today's show. But I feel like people talk more and more about the opioid crisis, but people aren't really talking about benzos.

Melanie Avalon:
And I know I'll probably talk about this in the interview as well. I mean, I've had a very casual relationship with benzos. Like I've been prescribed Xanax and Valium for, I think after like surgeries or something and didn't really take them or would take them, when I say casually, like I would take them as like just a helper for like a photo shoot or something.

Melanie Avalon:
So I didn't have much awareness surrounding all this. So I was completely excited to read the book. I read the book. Oh my goodness, friends, I cannot recommend enough that everybody get a copy of this.

Melanie Avalon:
It was riveting. It's haunting. It's a beautiful piece of work, a real page turner. And not only is it about just benzos, but Melissa has so many things that she talks about as far as being a mom and pregnancy and insomnia.

Melanie Avalon:
And she has a child with Down syndrome and marriage issues and tension and job and the career and all the things. So so many people will relate on so many levels. So I can't recommend it enough for that.

Melanie Avalon:
And then on top of that, I know this is getting like a long intro, but on top of that, after reading it, I actually had a conversation with a friend who I had no idea experienced something really, really, really similar to Melissa.

Melanie Avalon:
It just made me realize how pervasive I think this is. And I just had no idea. So, Melissa, thank you so much for all that you're doing. Thank you for your beautiful book and the awareness that you're driving.

Melanie Avalon:
And thank you so much for being here.

Melissa Bond:
Oh my gosh, that was a fantastic intro. So thank you and yeah, I'm super thrilled to talk with you.

Melanie Avalon:
I've been looking forward to this for so long and I have so many questions and so many directions that I want to go. But, well, it's funny. So the first question that I usually ask every guest is tell listeners a little bit about their personal story, but that sort of is the topic of today's episode.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm curious, when did you decide to write this book? What made you decide to write it and what were you hoping to accomplish in writing it?

Melissa Bond:
Oh my gosh. So it's always such a great question because, you know, it's not like a, it wasn't a fun thing to write. It was a cathartic thing to write because it's about the most vulnerable, kind of awful time of my life.

Melissa Bond:
But I'd been a writer. I'm one of those people that, I've heard the term, writing isn't a vocation, it's a condition. And I feel like I have that condition. I've been a writer since, you know, I was a little kid.

Melissa Bond:
I would, my mom has this joke that I would pull back the sheets on my mattress and I would write on the mattress. So it became, from very early on, like this way that I sort of kept in touch with the things that were the deepest and most meaningful things inside of me.

Melissa Bond:
And so I've been a poet and a journalist and really love fiction, but it was never, it was like, you know, why would I ever write a memoir? There's so many other things that are more interesting to write about.

Melissa Bond:
But then like my life just hit this, you know, the personal, what I call, I joke about it being my personal Fukushima, you know, kind of referencing the like earthquake and the tidal wave and then the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima.

Melissa Bond:
And so, you know, and those three things I sort of say are like the birth of my son with Down syndrome, insomnia with my second, and then the Benzo crisis may being prescribed them not knowing anything, like you were saying, and getting what I called like a punitive addiction.

Melissa Bond:
It wasn't an addiction of craving. It was something that like I was taking per my doctor's prescriptions and then all of the sudden my body's falling apart. So after, I am getting to answer your question.

Melanie Avalon:
No, I love it.

Melissa Bond:
But after, you know, like I'm finally healthy and I can like, like walk across a room without falling over and I got a divorce and I was like, you know, I got to get a job. And the magazine industry had imploded and I just kept feeling like I have got to write this story.

Melissa Bond:
Like this is the most horrific thing. And I, you know, all the doctors that I had talked with had really not known anything. And I thought there have got to be thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people that are going through something similar.

Melissa Bond:
And if I don't write about it, because I was looking to see if there were any books and there were a few like really small or self published, but I thought if I can sit, like if I can help one person not go through the kind of suffering I went through, then it will be worth it.

Melissa Bond:
And, you know, and it was also cathartic because I was like, what just happened? Like I just was brought to my knees in a way that I think happens maybe once in everyone's lifetime. And when you are there, it's incredible to think that you can ever get back up.

Melissa Bond:
So, so in answer to your question, I was just impelled to write it. And I had no job, like I had divorced. I was living in a friend's house with my two kids, no job, and was like, well, I'll start a Kickstarter and I'll fund, I'll like, you know, live on a shoestring and fund the writing of this book.

Melissa Bond:
And that's, and that's what I did. And it worked.

Melanie Avalon:
That is incredible. Well, to the comment about helping one person, I know you have at least helped one person because I mentioned my friend. It was crazy. I didn't realize that he, like I said, that he had gone through a really similar situation as you, because I ended up telling him all about your book and what had happened with you.

Melanie Avalon:
And he was like, Oh, that's what happened with me. And that's what I was prescribed. And, and what's crazy is when I was talking to him, it's when he, and I'm sure we'll, we'll talk more about this, but it's when he was trying to, was he actually on at a van?

Melanie Avalon:
Might be at a van, but he's been on it for years and like 10 years, I think. And he'll every now and then try to go off and instead we'll turn to alcohol. And it's just, it means just a complete wreck.

Melanie Avalon:
It's a wreck. So I was literally on the phone with him being like, you can't just go off. I was like, you have to take, you have to take the pill. Like, don't, I was like, don't drink the drink, take the pill and we'll find somebody who can help you titrate off, you know, correctly.

Melanie Avalon:
So I just had no idea that this whole world was existed and was happening to people and people aren't talking about it. Like I said, there's so many TV shows right now about the opioid crisis, but I don't see anything about Benzodiazepines.

Melanie Avalon:
I mean, do you?

Melissa Bond:
No, I mean, it's getting better. This all happened to me back in 2010. And back then there was like no discussion whatsoever, even though like almost all of the overdoses that you would like hear about in the media, you know, like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Prince and even like Whitney Houston, all of them in toxicology reports have benzos in there.

Melissa Bond:
You know, and so there's a lot of overdose rates are just rising exponentially with like kind of poly drug using because people don't realize that, you know, it's like, and for your listeners, so Benzodiazepine's like, it's a big, it took me forever to like get that word down, but it's like,

Melanie Avalon:
Right before this, I was like, benzodiazepine, benzodiazepine.

Melissa Bond:
It's such a good word. They're basically, they're in a family of drugs called sedative hypnotics. And they're like, everybody jokes about like Xanax the chill pill, you know, and I would see these like Pinterest, you know, pictures of like this happy, you know, it's the original mom is little helper like of this fifties mom and it would say like Xanax and coffee, breakfast of champions.

Melissa Bond:
And so everybody thinks that they're really like not a big deal. And I think part of that, like what I call that is sort of our cultural lexicon around drugs, you know, because we'll sort of joke about, oh, I'm taking my chill pill, you know, I'm going to take it when I go on an airplane flight.

Melissa Bond:
But remarkably, people are prescribed them long term all the time. And doctors will say, oh, just take it when you need it. And they are so intensely addictive in 2020, the FDA finally was like, okay, let's put a black box warning on them saying these suckers are addictive within the course of a couple of weeks.

Melissa Bond:
Like, and when they say addictive, what they mean is you will have such severe withdrawals when you go off, you could either die, you can have a fatal seizure, or you can go psychotic, or you just feel like you've been hit by a bus and like you want to just cry and roll up into a ball and have someone take you out.

Melissa Bond:
Like the withdrawals are extremely severe. And, and I think Melanie, like my, my take on why there's not as much in the news about it. And this is, I talk about this in my book, opioids are like this fire in the house, like people, you take them and it's very immediate.

Melissa Bond:
They overdose and they stop breathing and it's a respiratory, it depresses the respiration. Benzos are super stealth because they attach in regions of the brain that affect so much of the body. People start having all of these weird side effects, you know, and they think like, oh my gosh, I think I have multiple sclerosis or I have like some weird GI issue.

Melissa Bond:
And so they start going to all these other doctors and their anxiety, either if they haven't had anxiety, anxiety shows up or it increases, insomnia increases, but it's this kind of stealth because you don't realize it's connected with the medication.

Melissa Bond:
And so people end up like getting other medications from doctors to treat the effects of the benzos. And so I think, you know, I just call it the stealth epidemic because it's just like covering making people incredibly sick and or disabled and they don't realize it's the drugs.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh my goodness. Okay. So many things from that. One, yeah. One thing I was thinking about was, this is kind of morbid, but I don't know where I came across this, but it was something about how if there was like a zombie apocalypse or something happened where people no longer had access to society and medication and stuff.

Melanie Avalon:
Sorry, this is so morbid, but it was like who would die first by not having access to their medication. And it was saying that people who need insulin would die first. But it made me think about how I don't think anybody realizes this with benzos that can die.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm sure that would be somewhere in that list of people who would die.

Melissa Bond:
Totally. You would die in apocalypse.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, from not having, you know, the men.

Melissa Bond:
Yeah, I mean, this is the thing that was so scary to me. So I was prescribed two milligrams of Adavan from the get go, which is a really high dose. And just for some context, I found out after, I didn't know anything about benzos either.

Melissa Bond:
I was a total smoothie drinking yoga, practicing person, and it never really taken medications, certainly not long term. I was prescribed them for really, really bad insomnia, the kind where you're just like, just kill me now.

Melissa Bond:
So I was prescribed two, and people are given that amount when they have a grand mal seizure in the ER. So that was the context I was trying to give. I ended up going up to six because your body gets acclimated to it so quickly, it's so addictive, and six is just an insane amount.

Melissa Bond:
And so what I found out was if I had gone off, if I had just thought, you know what, I realized that this medication is terrible, I need to go off. If I had gone off the amount of excitation because of the neurotransmitters that happen in the brain when you take the emergency break off, which is what the benzos do, it would have literally set off a firestorm in my head, and it would have been a fatal seizure.

Melissa Bond:
Or I literally would have gone psychotic, which I think is what happens a lot and people end up in the ER, and then they just get shot up with more benzos.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you think, and I know neither of us are doctors, because I mentioned this in my intro, and you mentioned it, talking about how people in culture, like Xanax and Valium have this very, like people take it as like a chill pill.

Melanie Avalon:
And literally that's how I've been, like when I've been prescribed it, I don't know if I ever actually would take it for what I needed it, what it was prescribed for, like for the surgery or whatever.

Melanie Avalon:
I literally just kept in the cabinet, and then it really helps me with photo shoots. I guess my question is, do you think some people with their brain chemistry, it becomes more of an issue, or is it about the amount of times you do it, or, because I don't feel any withdrawal from it if I take like one.

Melissa Bond:
Oh yeah, yeah, I think one, that's, see, I'm not anti medication at all. I mean, I think it's a really powerful drug and it's great for very, very acute like usages. And by that I mean, if you really absolutely, if there's something for which you're going to be super anxious, like either a photo shoot or some people get super anxious going on that, it is so powerful that thing will take it takes your system down because it does.

Melissa Bond:
It does. It's it's one of the great inhibitory drugs. So it like everything in your brain like just chills you out. So one, that's what it's phenomenal for. But if you because it's so addictive, if you begin using it chronically and by that, I mean, they say a couple of weeks, but I think you can, if you take it for more than four or five days in a row, I think you will suffer some pretty serious bounce back.

Melissa Bond:
And if you take it for a number of weeks or a number of months, then you can have some very intense withdrawals. So you know, it's like everything, it has to be used, the tool has to be used in the right way.

Melanie Avalon:
That completely makes sense. I will say though, I've completely, it's like completely changed my perspective on my own relationship with, I guess, pharmaceuticals and just how I see it in culture and just everything.

Melanie Avalon:
And speaking to this word addiction, because you talk about this in the book about people saying you're addicted, but the difference between addiction versus dependency, I'm thinking about it like an analogy.

Melanie Avalon:
Is it sort of like water versus like diet coke or coke or something? Coca -Cola, not cocaine. As in like when your brain is on those benzos, like it actually needs it like water and people who need water, we don't say we're addicted to water and yet you would die if you don't have water and clearly people really need water compared to like diet coke or something where you don't have to have that, you won't die without it, but you really crave it.

Melanie Avalon:
But yeah, just could you talk a little bit about this whole idea of addiction versus dependency? It's your

Melissa Bond:
really, really, that's a really simple and clear description. I really like that because it is true. And I, you know, one of the things that I found when I got involved in the benzo sort of community, because there is a huge community because everyone's like, how did you get off?

Melissa Bond:
How did you get off? Because there's it's so unlike any other drug, you can't do like a 30 day, you know, rapid taper where you're like sweating it out and shivering and like huking on some mattress, you know, and then you're done.

Melissa Bond:
Like the brain just does not get off of them that easily. And even if you do get off and you're like not like having a seizure, you can often have months and months and months of withdrawals because your brain is just freaking out.

Melissa Bond:
So when I got involved, I noticed that like there was a huge backlash against any kind of language talking about addiction. While I think that is a really salient point because there's so much shame that's associated still in our culture with addiction, which, you know, now they're using the term substance use disorder, which I think is much kinder and gentler.

Melissa Bond:
What I what I found was, you know, there is a difference because the craving of addiction, which is Leslie Jamison has this great book called The Recovering where she talked about her addiction to alcohol as being like this crave use repeat.

Melissa Bond:
And I was like, Oh, that really defines the kind of the addiction of like wanting something craving that Diet Coke or you know, out of an or alcohol or whatever it is, and a dependency, which is you're prescribed something for, you know, some I had a lot of people get prescribed benzos for insomnia, for restless leg for grieving.

Melissa Bond:
And then all of a sudden you realize, Oh, if I like stop taking this, I'm like having tremors, I can't walk across a room, I can't breathe. That is a very different kind of addiction. That's where your body is freaking out to the degree you can't function.

Melissa Bond:
And so I think it's both important to make a distinction, but to also have like kind of, you know, the overarching conversation that like our language is packed with shame and that shame does not help anybody.

Melissa Bond:
And substance use disorder is a real thing, like it's, it's, it's a response to pain. And people try to numb out or, you know, have various reasons that they're doing it. But that also is, you know, people need help and compassion in that arena as well.

Melanie Avalon:
love what you talk about about that with the role of shame and culture. You talk about the ABC segment that you were supposed to have and what happened with that. And then you had a whole conversation about basically how drugs are presented in culture.

Melanie Avalon:
And the news likes to focus on things like heroin and stuff because that makes us feel safe, which I thought was so interesting. Could you tell listeners a little bit about your experience with ABC? And I have a follow -up question I'm super curious about.

Melanie Avalon:
But first, just what happened with that?

Melissa Bond:
Oh my gosh, it was wild. So yeah, so ABC News with Diane Sawyer contacted me because they'd found my blogs. Like I was just blogging about my experience and you know, I was in the middle of it. So I was, I was really mad.

Melissa Bond:
I was really pissed just at the system. You know, it just felt so unfair and the fact that I was like, wait a minute. So my doctor gave me these drugs to help with insomnia after my second pregnancy and now like my body is falling apart and I can like barely function and, and they don't know how to get me off.

Melissa Bond:
And so I'm writing about this and I'm furious. ABC contacts me. They're like, Hey, would you be willing to like tell your story? You know, the most vulnerable story. And at first they were actually like, will you do a video diary of yourself going off the last five milligrams?

Melissa Bond:
And I was like, no. English is not like TV worthy. People just look really sad. So, so they come and you know, it's a different producer. It's this guy, you know, who's like chewing his nails and he's like drinking Diet Coke's like one after the other after the other.

Melissa Bond:
And so they, they film for two full days. And they also film this guy who's in the book, he's named Dr. James, but he was my addictionologist, this big seven foot tall guy. He was huge. And he helped me get off.

Melissa Bond:
And so they interviewed him, I think to make sure like, you know, she just some crazy like somebody that is, you know, craving and using and, and he gave them kind of the legitimacy of talking about Benzos in the medical field.

Melissa Bond:
And they're supposed to film it. And it's right before the Olympics in 2014. And so I sit down, I've got like my popcorn, I'm like texting all of my friends. I'm like, we're ready to go. You know, here we go.

Melissa Bond:
Okay, there's, there's like a story about Katy Perry and Chinese like all opera that's doing the song Roar. And we're texting back and forth. And then they don't air it. And I'm like, what's happening?

Melissa Bond:
And a couple of days go by and I'm watching and then Philip Seymour Hoffman dies. And they know this is one of those things that I referenced in the book, his body has Benzo de Asipine's in there. They get the toxicology report.

Melissa Bond:
And I was like, wow, they're gonna, they're gonna say something about it. This is a perfect segue. And all they talked about was heroin. You know, they had and they like the images, like you've got the needle, and then you've got the powder.

Melissa Bond:
And then you've got like the, the tape, you know, cordoning off the hotel room that he died in. And I was like, wow, we just love the heroin glamour because it's not in our, at least most of us, it's not in our medicine cabinets.

Melissa Bond:
It's not like our safe medicine. It's like that street kind of darkness. And we can't imagine that that darkness actually exists in our doctor's office.

Melanie Avalon:
I mean, that makes so much sense. And I was wondering, because I know it didn't air, but I'm super curious about, because you mentioned the, when they wanted you to do the video diaries and everything, I actually was laughing during that part of the book because you did like for a little bit take video diaries, right?

Melissa Bond:
Well, they were like, we need some kind of visual, you know? And so we do like night videos of yourself having insomnia. And so I was like, yeah, what's exciting about watching somebody not sleep?

Melanie Avalon:
I kept thinking about paranormal activity.

Melissa Bond:
Exactly. You know, and then my my husband at the time was like, I'm not I'm not going to be in this thing. So I'm like trying to like position the camera so it like only gets his leg, you know, it was just it was ridiculous.

Melanie Avalon:
So funny. My question about it though is, so say it had aired because you talk about how they did try to make it more dramatic. Do you think that would help or hurt? Say the media took Benzos and ran with it.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you think it would be beneficial if they really did up the drama to make it more, you know, aware?

Melissa Bond:
It's, I think it's probably would have done both. There's not really a way for me to know without knowing how they were gonna contextualize it because one of the things that I talk about is like, I'm not gonna be like, I didn't want to just be this like, you know, mama's little helper, like primetime pity sandwich kind of thing like I wanted to really illustrate that this is pervasive and deadly and it can happen to anyone.

Melissa Bond:
So there's part of me that feels like, well, every little drop is another drop in the bucket of awareness. So even if they dramatize it, they're at least talking about benzos and that there's a real danger.

Melissa Bond:
But at the same time, it was not at all the ideal, like what we're doing now is deep diving into it. And like Diane Sawyer and ABC at that point, they were doing like one and a half to two minute segments.

Melissa Bond:
So you really, you just cannot get the real information. So I think it maybe would have been like a half of a drop in a bucket, if anything.

Melanie Avalon:
Could you tell the listeners briefly the journey that led to the actual Benzo? Because you start the initial things you got prescribed was like ambient, right?

Melissa Bond:
Yeah. Yeah. So, so I, you know, I had had the occasional night of insomnia throughout my life, you know, or like a couple of hours of not sleeping or even a half a night of not sleeping, but nothing really, really devastating.

Melissa Bond:
And, and it was bizarre. So I'd had my son and then six months later, I got pregnant again, which my body was just like, no. And what I realize now is, you know, I'd also been working as a magazine editor and it was during the recession.

Melissa Bond:
So we had a recession, the magazine folded. I found out I was pregnant and I had a six month old with Down syndrome. And so there were all of these like life, major life events that happened. Oh, and no small thing.

Melissa Bond:
My marriage was a disaster. So I was super just like every part of my identity, you know, like this new motherhood and my identity as a writer was suddenly kind of evaporated. And I was like, Oh, I'm like the CEO of the household.

Melissa Bond:
And I don't even know how to change a diaper. Like I don't know what this, how is this going to work? And I, and upon reflection, like the stress of that probably caused the insomnia, but it was so severe.

Melissa Bond:
Like I woke up, you know, and they know like physiologically that my adrenals, which are, you know, they, they secrete your stress hormones, they were secreting really high levels of cortisol at like 9pm.

Melissa Bond:
But this, this we found out way later. And so the stress hormone, which is the like, go, go, go, you know, you've got a run, a tiger is chasing you was coming out at nine o 'clock at night. So I put my son to bed, I'm pregnant and boom, I feel this rush in my chest and I am up and awake and this, and I literally that first night, I, I don't remember sleeping.

Melissa Bond:
I mean, I was watching the clock like a hawk and thinking this is impossible. Like how is it I can like not fall asleep. And that went on for day after day after week after week, maybe getting one or two hours of sleep a night.

Melissa Bond:
And you get like it's, it is like, you know, advanced enhanced interrogation level, like techniques are, and I looked this up at some point when I was researching the book, and I was like, the CIA counts 48 hours of no sleep as an enhanced interrogation technique.

Melissa Bond:
And I was like, I would tell anybody anything I would do anything I was like, please just hit me over the head with the two by four, I will do anything to get sleep. And so at the first trimester, and I went to everyone, this is this is in the book as well.

Melissa Bond:
But I literally I was like, okay, I'm covering my bases, I'm going to go to a GP, I'm going to go to a sleep specialist, I'll do the like Western version, I'm going to go see a shaman, I'm going to go see a natural path.

Melissa Bond:
Like, and everyone was like, yeah, I don't know, like, you're really going through something and you're pregnant. So there's nothing we can do. So they finally gave me, like you said, Ambien, because that was deemed at that time safe, after the first trimester.

Melissa Bond:
And I cold turkeyed that when my daughter was born, and that cold turkey was not good for the brain, they, they, that is not recommended at all, but no one had said anything to me. And then three months later, I went in to see who I call Dr.

Melissa Bond:
Amazing in the book, who ended up prescribing the out of an not the beginning.

Melanie Avalon:
which for listeners, I was telling Melissa this right before, I just realized the copy that I had did not have the bonus chapter where she confronts Dr. Amazing. So I get to read that after this and learn what I'm like dying to know.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm like dying to know. When did they add that? Did you release the book without the chapter and then you added it? Wait, let's okay.

Melissa Bond:
Okay, so we released the book in 2022, and it went great. And then for the paperback, a couple of months ahead of time, they were like, we were in an additional chapter. And at first, we were thinking, oh, is it going to be like, how is my life now?

Melissa Bond:
Like, am I stable? And can I keep a full -time job? And am I normal? Or do I still have really severe impacts neurologically? And I was like, yeah, I could do that. But that's only so interesting so far, to a certain degree.

Melissa Bond:
Like, yes, it's great to know that I've regained my health and my brain has recalibrated. But I was like, what is the one thing that is left unfinished? And I realized that whenever I would tell people the story, or I would see friends, they were like, does Dr.

Melissa Bond:
Amazing know? Like, did you ever tell him? And I thought, oh my gosh, like, this guy still practices medicine in my town. And do I have the guts to go into his office with my book and say, hey, you impacted my life in such an extreme way.

Melissa Bond:
I wrote a book about it. I'd like you to read it, and I'd like us to talk about it. And I was like, oh my gosh, I don't even know if I could. I was so scared, which is weird in some ways, but it was so like, there was so much PTSD in me about the experience.

Melissa Bond:
But I thought, this guy's still practicing medicine. And if I have the guts to tell him, at least he will know. And he can maybe deny it, or you never know what's going to happen. So I decided to actually do that and then just write about whatever happened.

Melissa Bond:
Oh my gosh.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh my goodness, what a teaser. I'm like dying right now to know. I'm wondering if it went the way. I recently confronted, it wasn't a doctor, but I confronted a pharmacist about, I was pretty sure that the medication I was being prescribed for my thyroid was like off because I'd been on it for so long and I will tie this back into the topic of conversation.

Melanie Avalon:
But I told him I felt like it was off and could he test it? He's like, we do our testing. This is right. He's like, you probably just need to change your dose. And I was like, I don't think so. So then I went and did my own testing myself and it was wrong.

Melanie Avalon:
He was like, you can test it yourself, but it's going to cost this much and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay. So then I left and I did it myself. You actually did it. Yeah. With the lab that he said to do it with and it was not as expensive as he said it would be.

Melanie Avalon:
And then I came back in, I was so scared. And I imagined this probably was how you felt going in because I went back in with my paperwork of showing that it was off. I was so scared. And he completely talked down to me again and told me that he was basically like, I think we just need to change your dose.

Melanie Avalon:
I was like, we need to change my dose.

Melissa Bond:
Oh my gosh! And you've got the lab results! Maybe one of you!

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, it was crazy. I mean, it was actually a really beneficial experience because it just made me realize how much you really have to just take agency with your health and your relationship with doctors.

Melanie Avalon:
And there are wonderful doctors out there, wonderful pharmacists, but there's also people who are not wonderful and you really just have to take agency. And that's what you did with your journey. So that's why I'm just, you know, so grateful for everything that you're doing.

Melissa Bond:
Oh, and that's a huge topic because, you know, we hand over so much trust and we really sort of give ourselves over to these experts, you know, that are, you know, have taken the Hippocratic oath and we think are doing everything in our best interests.

Melissa Bond:
But the, you know, there are so many factors that go into a doctor or a pharmacist being a really good practitioner. One of them is continuing education because there's so many medications that come out.

Melissa Bond:
One of them is their own hubris, you know, like they're thinking that they really know everything and not ever having the humility of saying like, huh, this patient is telling me something's not working.

Melissa Bond:
Let me look into that, you know, and then also just the impacts of the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry and the human element. There are so many things that create cracks in our healthcare system that I think doing what you did is so important being an advocate for yourself, taking agency, asking the questions and not putting them on a pedestal because they are human and they know a lot, but they don't know everything.

Melanie Avalon:
I could not agree more. And what makes it further complicated is, like when you first meet Dr. Amazing in the book, like he seems like he really, really gets what's going on. It's not always black and white in that it's obvious or not as to whether a practitioner is making the right decisions with your healthcare.

Melanie Avalon:
It's just so confusing for people.

Melissa Bond:
And there's so much that we're like, this happened to me just the other day, this is crazy. So, and you read this in the original, the first version, the hardback of Blood Orange Night, we end up finding that I have what's called a PFO.

Melissa Bond:
It's just a hole in my heart between the atria and the ventricle. I ended up having two strokes and a lot of people have these. I went to see my card, to see a cardiologist, a new cardiologist recently, because my old one like left, because I have to take blood thinners as part of, they tried to patch the hole, went through the whole surgery and it didn't work.

Melissa Bond:
And so I go to see this cardiologist and she's like, oh, I think you need to be on statins. A lot of people are on statins, probably out there. And I was like, I think you're wrong. And she said, oh no, you're this cholesterol needs to be at this level.

Melissa Bond:
And so I went back and talked with another doctor, friend of mine and did a bunch of research. And I was like, you know what? Now I do a ton of research. I'd always been a big researcher, but what I realized is when you're really, really sick, you kind of hand over a lot more of your agency over because you're so sick.

Melissa Bond:
But at this point, I was like, I felt so great about my decision. I was like, guess what? You're crazy. I am not taking stats for the life of me because my blood work is phenomenal. But anyway, that's kind of a side note, but stuff like that happens all the time.

Melissa Bond:
And I think if we don't have that agency, we can end up taking something that can cause us much greater harm than we would ever imagine.

Melanie Avalon:
I could not agree more. So did you take the hole in your heart part out of the paperback?

Melissa Bond:
No, no, that's in there. It's called Metaphor of the Holes, I think it's the chapter.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so when you're okay because you're saying the hardback copy, I was thinking it was just in the hardback copy, but it's in both. No, it's in both. Yeah. Okay. Did you make any edits for the paperback?

Melissa Bond:
Yeah, no edits at all, just added the final chapter, the big, like the big comfort.

Melanie Avalon:
I know that I get to read after this. I'm so excited. Where are you now with your dosage?

Melissa Bond:
So the timing of us recording this is really interesting because so I've been at five milligrams of valium. That's what I was able to get down to. My withdrawals just got too severe. Like I was literally, they call it like a water titration.

Melissa Bond:
You like crush up the pill and you do like you crush it into water and you start doing like just like little like, I'll do like 0 .1 milliliters off, you know, of the valium. And I was, I think because, you know, my marriage was really like at a point of where it was ending.

Melissa Bond:
It had been incredibly stressful for years, but it was just kind of devastating. And my son, whom we had put in daycare while I was doing the withdrawal for weed, he was in daycare for about six months, which gave me a really good head start.

Melissa Bond:
Like those were six months of very acute withdrawals. And if he hadn't been in daycare and my daughter as well, it just, I don't think I would have been successful, but he got kicked out of daycare because he's got Down syndrome, but he's also got autism.

Melissa Bond:
And they, you know, kiddos with autism are just a room full of 30 kids will take anybody to the brink. And if you've got autism, like he just couldn't handle it. So I ended up going home and I just couldn't get further on my dosage.

Melissa Bond:
So I've been at five milligrams for a decade now. And starting January, I am going to begin tapering those last five. Like I feel like my brain has recovered enough that I can make another attempt at the last five.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow. Oh my goodness. Scared. I'm really, really scared. Because I know in the book, when you were doing a lot of your tapering, you went and stayed with friends. Are you going to have to do anything like that?

Melissa Bond:
I mean, the reason I did that, there were a couple of reasons. And it was such a good recommendation. I had this guy that was a social worker and a Tibetan lama of all things, recommend that I stay with friends.

Melissa Bond:
And it was basically, he said, this is going to be the worst thing you've ever gone through. This is like so far and above any other kind of withdrawal in terms of the duration and the severity. And he said, you are going to need to be able to just curl into a ball, you know, and like rock or do whatever, vomit, whatever, you know, and he said, for a long time, and you want to be able to do that and not, you know, feel responsible for like somehow holding it together for the kids.

Melissa Bond:
And you're going to want to protect your kids and your husband. I didn't want them to see that. Like I wanted to structure it in such a way so that I would see them before daycare, after daycare. And then I would, I would be able to kind of manage the timeframe of my withdrawals and do things to mitigate them.

Melissa Bond:
So when I would see them, I was the best mom I could be. And then I knew that they were taken care of throughout the day. They are now old enough to make their own ramen and get themselves ready for school.

Melissa Bond:
And my daughter is old enough for us to have a discussion about it. So I'm setting up a lot of support for them. But I think the emotional impact will not be as intense as it would be if, you know, they were like two and three or, you know, so they don't need me as much basically, and they have an intellectual understanding, at least my daughter does.

Melissa Bond:
I'm still setting up like a lot of support, you know, so if I have to like curl into a ball for a number of days or weeks, but I'm going to do it in such a way, hopefully that I can be functional because I do have a day job.

Melissa Bond:
So, so we'll see how it goes. I really, I really don't know what's going to happen.

Melanie Avalon:
Is there any way to titrate at such a tiny, tiny, tiny amount that you don't get symptoms, or is it inevitable?

Melissa Bond:
And I think so what you've talked about is like the best guess a lot of us have in the Benzo community or even the medical community. It's like, okay, can you just go so like we call it like the, the turtle slow taper where maybe it'll take two or three years and that is an option.

Melissa Bond:
That is one of the things they recommend weirdly the, the addictionologist I worked with when I first was tapering when I got to five milligrams, he was like, I'm fine with you holding here. It's not going to impact your body the way 60 milligrams was impacting your body of valium.

Melissa Bond:
But he said, I think when you go off, he was like, I actually remember, I recommend you, you just jump off, go from five to zero. And he said, because it's going to suck either way. So I think in saying all of that, we don't really know.

Melissa Bond:
I'm going to try to do it in a month. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I've been like taking all of these micronutrients and I've been doing all of this stuff to like get my brain health as ready as possible, you know, for the hit.

Melissa Bond:
And I think, you know, I don't have a lot of the stressors that I had back then. So I think it's possible for my brain to be able to recover more effectively. And I'm also experimenting with something which I'm going to leave off right now because it is going to be hopefully a second book.

Melissa Bond:
If it works, we'll see if it works. It's an experiment, but it's something that I think if it works, it could really, I have the hope that it could help other people because the hard thing is that it's such a long, such a long withdrawal process and you're so like slammed for so long.

Melissa Bond:
You end up like losing, you can't work, you can't take care of your kids. And I was like, there's got to be a better way. So I'm going to try a way that may be better.

Melanie Avalon:
I want to give you all the biohacking things. Yes, please give me all the biohacking. I haven't specifically researched them with been so specifically, but there are so many things in this biohacking sphere about for the brain, technologies, supplements, practices.

Melanie Avalon:
I bet a lot of them could probably help.

Melissa Bond:
Well, we'll have to talk. I mean, I've been working with the ones I know, but it's such a huge field. I would love to tap into your brain there.

Melanie Avalon:
I keep going back to that story about my friend, but it was shocking because he had never told anybody, I don't think, except for his wife about all of this. And she, I don't think she quite understands all of it.

Melanie Avalon:
And so when he told me about it, I was like, oh my goodness, I was like, I was like, you don't understand. I literally just read a book about what you're going through. Like, exactly. And he was saying that with his issue with titrating off completely was that he was able to get down to a certain amount, but then he really needed a doctor.

Melanie Avalon:
And it's what you talked about in the book to prescribe like another drug as well to help with the taper. Which one were they saying that it paired with to make it easier?

Melissa Bond:
Well, so we are so far behind the times in terms of any kind of research that will help people get off. Like we really, we don't know a lot. And so I'm going to say that that's part of why I'm doing this experiment on myself.

Melissa Bond:
What I used, the withdrawals can be so severe that you like for me and everybody has a different constellation. There's so many possible withdrawal symptoms. It's, it's unbelievable. And they're weird.

Melissa Bond:
Sometimes they're weird. Like I had one. The ashtray smells for you? Ashtray smells and the like my vision going black because there are a lot of neurotransmitters connected in the retina. And so I was driving my kids one day and my vision went black.

Melissa Bond:
I was completely conscious, totally aware. And it was like my something happened with the lens of my eye. I don't know what it was. But my vision literally went black, like a film noir, like fade to black and I'm driving with my kids in the back.

Melissa Bond:
So that's like not a great withdrawal and symptom and not something that I would have thought about was a benzodiazepine. So to, you know, to get back to the drugs that they ended up using for me, that only happened once.

Melissa Bond:
But the insomnia and my doctor prescribed trasadone, which a lot of people will be familiar with to help me sleep. But then also a very low dose of an atypical anti -psychotic called cerakul. And in low doses, it causes a lot of sedation.

Melissa Bond:
And so, you know, I had this whole conversation with Dr. James and I was like, look, I don't want to go on another drug to get off this drug. And he was like, I know it sucks. It's, it's insane that we have to do this.

Melissa Bond:
But he was like, these drugs are so, we don't know really what they do in the brain. And you're basically trading a lesser evil to get off of this evil. And then you'll taper off of the cerakul and the trasadone.

Melissa Bond:
So I don't know. I think that's used quite often. And there are other like their muscle relaxants, like literally like a lot of doctors are just like, I don't know, let's try this, you know.

Melanie Avalon:
That's what my friend was saying. He was saying that I'm assuming when you dive into this whole world on the internet that you probably see the similar protocols and such, because he was saying that he was trying to find a doctor that would work with him and prescribe the other drugs he needed to get off of this drug.

Melanie Avalon:
He was saying that normally they just want to put him on SSRIs instead. He's like, no, I guess he had that experience and that was awful for him. It's just like I said, it's just so eye -opening and shocking to me that this is so pervasive.

Melanie Avalon:
And I feel like there should be a protocol if this is such a thing. The industry should be tackling this more with more agency.

Melissa Bond:
I think they're starting to. I think part of it is research dollars. Who's gonna fund during research into a withdrawal that is so long? Some people takes two years. It took me a year and a half to get from 60 milligrams of valium to five.

Melissa Bond:
And that is a long time. But I think also as they're starting to realize how pervasive it is, people are being taken out of the workforce. I can't even tell you the number of emails that I have gotten all over the world.

Melissa Bond:
Like I was just recently on a podcast of this sweetheart guy in the Netherlands who's a social worker and ended up having Lyme disease and then that got treated and he had tinnitus, the ringing in your ears and he couldn't sleep so they put him on benzos.

Melissa Bond:
He just got horrible medical advice. They cold tapered him and he had a stroke and a heart attack and all of this stuff that happened. And so in saying that, it's an American issue but it's also a global issue.

Melissa Bond:
And I think I know in the UK they've done the most research and a lot of people do use what's called the Ashton manual. But I mean, this was a woman that she was doing this research like 30 years ago and we really haven't added a whole lot to that.

Melissa Bond:
Like there needs to be a lot more research.

Melanie Avalon:
It'd be crazy if they created a drug that helped you get off of other drugs, but then that marketing would probably shoot themselves in the foot because if they're like, we're making this drug so that you cannot take this other drug, it would have to be a completely different pharmaceutical company that made that one if they're making the original one.

Melissa Bond:
I mean, it's kind of like methadone, you know, like, oh, you can, you can take this and this is like state sponsored, but you're still addicted to that. Like, this is what's so crazy, Melanie. He's like, this is a total tangent, but you said I could tangent.

Melanie Avalon:
I love tangents, I love tangents.

Melissa Bond:
So back when I was being a journalist, I got this great assignment to interview this guy who was this beautiful violinist, but he was a homeless guy, but no, not a violinist, a cellist. And he would play theaters outside.

Melissa Bond:
So you would go see a great movie, or you would go see a great symphony or something like that, and you would come out, and there would be this guy that was just in this tattered brown jacket with very few teeth and looking really hunched, but just a maestro on the cello.

Melissa Bond:
Just incredible. And so this editor was like, I want you to figure out who this guy is and interview him. And so I went and found him. He was living behind this violin making studio. He had wanted to be a violinist and make violins.

Melissa Bond:
He was a cellist and he'd studied in the sun overseas at some Philharmonic and then came back here and got hooked on crack. I remember the first time I saw him, it was at the violin making studio, and I was like, hey, I'm a journalist.

Melissa Bond:
I'd like to do an article on you. Are you up? How do you feel about that? And he was like, okay, well, that's great. Will you just take me to the methadone clinic first and then we can talk? And I was like, sure.

Melissa Bond:
And I was like, this is so crazy because he was like, I've got to get my head of methadone. And I was like, wow, state sponsored addiction. It's all over the place. So he ended up dying of an overdose.

Melissa Bond:
And he was just a sweetheart and it was heartbreaking because he was so talented. But I was like, wow, he traded one for another and is that better? That's crazy. And did you publish the piece? Oh, yeah, I did.

Melissa Bond:
It was a long time ago. It was in my 20s when I was like this. And it was in a local magazine in Salt Lake City. But yeah, his name was Ellie. I remember. He was a sweetheart.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh my goodness, I love it. And speaking of your writing history, this is a super random question that I just have to know. I noticed a big motif with birds in the book.

Melissa Bond:
You are the first person to say that, Melanie! Oh my gosh, I can't believe it!

Melanie Avalon:
Yes. Oh, I was like, there's a lot of birds. And I was like, even Finch, that name is a bird. Chloe's not a bird though.

Melissa Bond:
Chloe's not a bird. No, that was intentional. I realized as I was going through withdrawal, one of the things that I had to do to keep myself from just totally spiraling into the dark and feeling sorry for myself was like, I have got to keep my head up and every day look for things that are beautiful.

Melissa Bond:
Like what can I do to feed my soul because it feels so dark and my body hurts all the time and I like wanna glock myself every other day. And so I would, everything that I saw, I would be like, oh, that's so beautiful.

Melissa Bond:
And I would look and it was in particular, like watching sparrows in the sky. Like they do their little, no, swallows, them do their little swallow dance. And it became for me this like symbol of the freedom I was looking for and the health and like regaining that sense of freedom in my body.

Melissa Bond:
And I can't even tell you how excited I am that you picked up on that.

Melanie Avalon:
Aww, yay. No, I was like, is this gonna be weird if I ask this? But it was just so pervasive throughout the book. So I figured it meant something to you. Oh, I love that. I love that so much. My other writing question, I'm curious, what was the hardest part of the book to write?

Melanie Avalon:
I'm wondering things like, because you're very vulnerable in the book and you even share moments and we haven't talked about this yet on the show, but your role as a mother and feeling like a failure or a wife failure.

Melanie Avalon:
And you even talk about when you have Chloe, it takes a while for you to develop feelings of love for her. I was wondering what was the hardest thing to write. And for some of it, do you wonder about your kids reading it someday, what they'll think?

Melanie Avalon:
Just what was that like? Yeah.

Melissa Bond:
Yeah, yeah, it's, oh my gosh. So Chloe has not read it. She's 14 and she could read it, but she's like, I know your life story already. She's like, however, she wants to do like, she wants to present it in her class.

Melissa Bond:
I was like a book report and I was like, really? Are you sure you want me to do that? She's like, I'm not even gonna, I'm not gonna tell him it's you. And I was like, okay. But she's, yeah, so I think honestly, the hardest thing, like it was actually, it was vulnerable, like writing about the kids and writing about like Chloe being so, so collicky, the first three months, I was just like, I'm just trying to survive.

Melissa Bond:
I don't even know if I like this kid. She just screams at me, you know? And then like, then like the moment where I fell in love with her and just like how incredible that was. But the hardest part to be honest was my relationship with my ex -husband was so difficult.

Melissa Bond:
And I really in the book wanted to portray him to be able to see from his perspective as much as I could. And at the same time, be really honest to what I experienced. And so I thought through it over and over again, like am I viewing it from somebody who like, from the outside, he's watching this woman that he married suddenly turn into a complete wreck and not have anything really that either of us could point to.

Melissa Bond:
Like I would describe it as like, okay, you get cancer. There's like, there are test results. You can say, okay, here's the offending tumor. Here's the X -ray that shows it. Here are the tests we have to do. 

Melissa Bond:
And this is the protocol that we're gonna do to get you better and hear your chances for success. But there was so little that was known at that time and all he saw was me just turning into this like ghost of myself and being angry and being exhausted all of the time and how I tried to really like feel into like how hard and scary and weird and frustrating that would have been for him.

Melissa Bond:
And at the same time me feeling on the inside like I've you know I have lost the only support really that I have and he is completely turned off emotionally. So to try to portray both of those sides in a way that was authentic and honest was the hardest.

Melanie Avalon:
I can comment on that to say that I think you really accomplish that goal. The way I felt as a reader, not knowing either of you and not, you know, having witnessed any of the actual situation when it was occurring, was that I could feel your characters, like feeling a lack of support and frustration from your husband at the time and how hard it probably was from your perspective.

Melanie Avalon:
And also, you made it very obvious and evident that what he was going through as far as what, with your actions and everything. And so the whole thing, it just felt sad. Like, it just felt like sad. Like, this is the way it is, and it's probably not going to get better.

Melissa Bond:
Right. And you know, some people, people react to trauma differently. And what we were going through was really traumatic. And his reaction, you know, some people are like, I'm going to take action. I'm there.

Melissa Bond:
They try to fix it or their helpers. His reaction was just to completely shut down. That was his trauma response. And it was unfortunately like the worst possible thing for me, because I felt so left alone with all of it, you know, and he was just angry all of the time.

Melissa Bond:
And, you know, there were, there were things that happened that, like to this day, I'm like, wow, I can't even believe it, but I, I get it because it's a trauma response, but I still can't believe it.

Melissa Bond:
You know, and it's, it was sad because for him, like it was just, he just couldn't get it. It sucked. The story is funny though. Oh, Melanie, I was just like, I don't want, I don't want your listeners to think that it's all just one long story.

Melanie Avalon:
No, there really is. And I was laughing out loud during some of it. And there are moments like the Christmas moment after the TV segment. That was bittersweet, I suppose. You say in the book that the worst thing that people could say to you was, I'm sorry.

Melanie Avalon:
You say that at some point. And then you also say at one point that one of the most difficult questions you could ask is how are you? Like what is the worst thing people could say to you today about everything?

Melanie Avalon:
Is it still, I'm sorry.

Melissa Bond:
So let me give a little context around that one. So the I'm sorry one was when my son was born and you know, where the scene is like my husband at the time and I are calling our close friends and family and giving them the diagnosis like, wow, we thought we were gonna have a kid who was neurotypical, but guess what?

Melissa Bond:
We got a kid with Down syndrome and we were trying to just like digest that. And like, what does that mean? And I had never even met anyone with Down syndrome. So I was like, how am I gonna take care of him?

Melissa Bond:
What is his prognosis? How functional is he gonna be? What does this mean for our lives? And I had a friend that was like, I'm really sorry. And it felt like this, I'm sorry meant like my son was broken.

Melissa Bond:
And in that moment, I was so in love with him. I mean, I feel it in my heart as I'm talking about it. I was so in love with him. It did not matter to me what diagnosis he had. I was like, I would do everything for him.

Melissa Bond:
And to feel that comment as though he was broken was like broke my heart. So that's the context around that one. And then the, how are you? What that speaks to to me is like a level of like authenticity that is either present or not because we'll oftentimes like say, oh, how are you doing?

Melissa Bond:
And it's kind of like, it's almost like knuckle bumping. You know, you don't really expect an answer like an authentic answer. Or sometimes it's more like a, hey, I see you, but I remember I was so acutely sick and I knew people didn't really wanna hear about it.

Melissa Bond:
You know, and I just didn't even know how to answer because I didn't want to be inauthentic. But I also was so devastated and sick every day. I didn't know how to say like, I'm holding on for dear life right now.

Melissa Bond:
How are you? You know, like I didn't know how to answer. So now, I mean, now that I'm healthy, you know, I realize it's just one of our cultural things, but I think it gave me a really acute awareness of, you know, the fact that we never know what people are really going through in their lives.

Melissa Bond:
And the presence that we have with people is really important. And even those small questions, you know, to like, how present can I be when I ask those questions that are just like these social throwaways, you know?

Melanie Avalon:
I love that. And I've actually, since reading that, when people ask me that, it's made me reframe it because I'm like, oh, and it's like, how do you answer it? Because like you said, it sort of is on the one hand, just an acknowledgement.

Melanie Avalon:
Like people don't really expect an answer, authentic answer. And sometimes you don't want to, you know, provide all of that. It's a really fascinating question that we ask each other for sure.

Melissa Bond:
Yeah, and I try to like every day like when people ask me that like I try to give an authentic but like not an overshare. I'll be like wow I I think like and I'll just really get in my body I'll be like well I just had a half a cup of coffee so I'm feeling really jacked right now.

Melanie Avalon:
Love it. I like saying if I'm not doing well, I like saying I'm surviving because I feel like that kind of captures everything without saying too much and without being like melodramatic sounding. Yeah

Melissa Bond:
And that's, and everybody gets that too, like, oh yeah, I feel

Melanie Avalon:
you. Is there anything else that you wanted to touch on from the book? I mean, there's just so much there. I can't recommend enough that listeners read it.

Melissa Bond:
Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that I wanted to say is that like, you know, yeah It's a book about drugs. It's a book about relationships, you know and parenting and marriage and you know addiction and Dependency and language, but I think more than anything for me what it feels like is It's a book about One, you know, we all have those times in our lives when when it's a real turning point when you are Devastated by something it's some kind of trauma whether it's an illness or a loss or you know grieving or You know, who knows a tragedy of some kind and we don't know if we can pick ourselves back up again And I kept thinking about the book in that way like it's both for me a way to like, you know Move education out there about Benzodiazepines in particular But in general it is about this life We have you know that the Buddha has has said it is a life of suffering and the more we sort of cling To that or cling to trying to not have it be suffering the more we suffer And so for me it was an exploration of like wow I made it through that how did I do that and how do other people do that?

Melissa Bond:
Like you know when when we are brought to our knees what happens inside of us that helps us pick ourselves back up again So that's kind of what I learned through the whole thing. It's just the power of the human spirit if you

Melanie Avalon:
If you could wave a magic wand and not have gone through all of that, would you choose that?

Melissa Bond:
You have such good questions. I can only answer this in retrospect. I, gosh, I don't think I've ever said this out loud. I don't think I would change it. Part of it is because I am healthy, but part of it is because it was such a dark night of the soul and so much has changed for me as a result of that.

Melissa Bond:
I think because I confronted it, like I was full frontal. I was like, I am not losing this. I am going to like get off these things if it kills me. And that process built a muscle in me I didn't know I had.

Melissa Bond:
And for that, I'm grateful.

Melanie Avalon:
One last question, while you were going through that, did you think someday I'll be grateful for this, or were you just like, I gotta get out of this?

Melissa Bond:
I did not have any idea. No, I was literally like crawling through the mud every day. And I would ask myself, I was like, wow, why am I working so hard? But there was just something in me that would not let go.

Melissa Bond:
But I didn't know if I would even make it. So there was no sense of future. There was just like, I've got to crawl through each day. And then tomorrow I'm going to crawl through each day. Well, I'm so...

Melanie Avalon:
glad you kept crawling. Me too. I'm so glad you're here now, and I don't want to say I'm excited for you. How do I feel about your upcoming journey of Thai trading again? Well, I'm going to

Melissa Bond:
to say for me, if we discover something, working with this functional medicine and addiction doctor, if we discover something that really will change and help people get off without suffering so intently, I'm really doing it for that.

Melissa Bond:
Because I could do like a five year micro taper. And I feel scared a little bit, but I also feel like, I don't know, I have a lot of resources right now and it just, I'm going into it consciously and by choice.

Melissa Bond:
So it's not going to be fun for sure, but I'm not fighting for my life this time. Well I think I am excited for it.

Melanie Avalon:
you then. Yes, let's be excited. Awesome. Well, Melissa, thank you so much. This has been so incredible. Just from the moment I started reading your book, I was so excited to talk to you about all of this.

Melanie Avalon:
And I can't thank you enough for what you're doing, sharing all of this and raising awareness and being so vulnerable and open and you're changing so many lives that I'm sure you'll never see. So just thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Melanie Avalon:
And how can people best get your book, follow your work, all of the things.

Melissa Bond:
Oh, so yeah, so all of the things. So getting my book is really easy. I mean, you can go to your local bookstore, you can go to Amazon. It's mostly everywhere unless you're in, it's just really small bookstore somewhere.

Melissa Bond:
The Audible Edition, I'm gonna like toot my own horn here. The Audible Edition, The New York Times picked it as there, one of their favorites for 2022. And to me, this is like the, this, it was really meaningful to me because I fought, I didn't fought well.

Melissa Bond:
I, yeah, I fought to be the person to read it.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh yeah, they wouldn't let me narrate mine, so.

Melissa Bond:
Yeah, they were like, I first said, hey, can I, can I really want to narrate my own book? And they were like, oh, that's so sweet. No, we have professionals. And I was like, really, I really think that it's the right thing for me to narrate it.

Melissa Bond:
And then somehow, like as we went through the process, they were like, oh, yeah, you're going to narrate it. And I, maybe because it's so deeply personal, I don't know, but it just worked. And so if you like listening, it's, you know, it's me, but I, I mean, I, I'm feeling it all the way through.

Melissa Bond:
So I recommend that. And then my website is Melissa A bond .com. You can buy it through there. And then I'm on Instagram at Melissa B author. So those are all of my big handles.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. I'm glad you brought up the audible because I did want to comment on that because I listened to the audible and I love it when authors narrate their own book and you did a fantastic job. Thank you.

Melanie Avalon:
I can't believe you didn't let you do it. There's an intro chapter, so they let me do that and then they had their narrator after that. In their defense, it was, I didn't even have my podcast yet, so I didn't have a voice, like a well -known voice yet.

Melanie Avalon:
I think it would be different if I did it now. I also was very overwhelmed and exhausted at the time, so when they were like, you can do the intro, I was like, actually, that's kind of best of both worlds because it's a lot to know.

Melissa Bond:
It's hours of standing there.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, how many days did it take you?

Melissa Bond:
I think we did it in like four or five days.

Melanie Avalon:
a journey for sure. It probably was really a journey for you being so personal, reliving all of that.

Melissa Bond:
Well, yeah, I cried a couple times. Like they had to stop and I was like, just give me a second. You know, like just, you know, reading about my kids and there are just moments in there that I still like choke me up.

Melissa Bond:
Yeah.

Melanie Avalon:
I bet. Oh, and that's incredible about the New York Times. Congratulations. That's amazing.

Melissa Bond:
I knew! I was so psyched.

Melanie Avalon:
That's amazing. Well, thank you again, Melissa. So for listeners, we'll put links to everything in the show notes. I'm sending all of the love and all of the good vibes for January. And hopefully, hopefully that goes beautifully.

Melanie Avalon:
And I'm looking forward to your next book. You'll have to come back if you're open to it for the, for the next one.

Melissa Bond:
Are you kidding? You've asked some of the best questions. It has been a delight, honestly.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much. Oh, and that made me, oh my gosh, I forgot the last question that I ask every single guest on this show because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Melissa Bond:
I mean, it's funny, I have the gratitude practice at night where I go through what I'm grateful for as I'm falling asleep, but right now I'm grateful for you. This has been such a beautiful interview and your questions are so deep and thoughtful.

Melissa Bond:
And the fact that you're doing this work on a big podcast, I'm right now feeling super grateful for you. Oh, thank you.

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much. Well, it's completely mutual. As well, I'm so grateful for what you're doing. Like I said, I just feel like I had no idea, no idea until I read your book. This has honestly become something now that I'm really passionate about sharing with people.

Melanie Avalon:
So thank you so, so much for what you're doing. I look forward to talking to you more in the future. Absolutely. Thanks, Melissa. Bye.

Melissa Bond:
I