This week, I’m traveling to Los Angeles for a round table discussion with a small group of wildly successful people who all have one thing in common: we were medicated with psychiatric drugs when we were kids.

We connected through a private WhatsApp chat hosted by a megawatt podcaster. Around 800 of us are in the group, all of whom have either guested or will be guesting on this podcast (my episode should be released by the end of the year.) Amid the usual chatter about sales funnels and product launches, the conversation turned to medicating kids. Multiple people chimed in about how a childhood spent on Adderal, benzos, and antidepressants derailed the first third of their lives and led to addiction, psych wards, and prison.

Though all of us are lucky to have come through it, one person put it best:

“After years of struggle, I’ve finally overcome the battle but not without an immense cost to my sanity, family, and friends.”

All of us were minors when we were medicated, so all of our parents signed off on the treatment. I can’t speak for anyone else’s parents, but my mom maintains that had she known what she knows now, she would have at least gotten a second and third opinion before filling my scripts.

Though most of my focus is on psych drug withdrawal and how to find yourself in the aftermath of long-term psych drug use, I always hope my work makes people think twice about starting a psychiatric drug in the first place. And I especially hope it stops parents from drugging their kids just because it’s the easy way out and every other parent is doing it. The costs of this choice are incalculable. I cannot overstress that there is zero scientific backing or research exploring the effects of psychiatric drugs on developing minds and bodies. To drug your kid with stimulants, antidepressants, or antianxiety drugs takes away their agency, turns them into an experiment, and can irrevocably change their system and perception of the world for the rest of their life.

And if you don’t believe me, maybe the work of Robert Whitaker, a Pulitzer prize finalist, or Dr. David Healy, former Secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology can sway you.

With that, here are five books I think every parent should read before medicating their kid or taking their kid to a psychiatrist.

Share widely.

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By Robert Whitaker

There is an uncomfortable question in the world of mental health and treatment that everyone thinks about, but no one says out loud: If medicating mental illness with psychiatric drugs was working, why are people getting worse?

This book examines over fifty years of research to find the answer and comes to a startling conclusion. I think it is the single most comprehensive and explanatory book on the market about the true nature and outcomes of psychiatric drugs and that it should be required reading in all medical schools.

It is also divided into multiple diagnoses (schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, and ADHD), which I found particularly useful as someone who focuses mostly on the history and treatment of depression.

By Ethan Watters

To understand why mental illness has such a strong pull in American culture, it is important to understand how mental illness is created in the first place. Yes, created.

When I was depressed and taking antidepressants, I thought my depression was caused by a chemical imbalance and that it was just who I was. After all, that’s what the doctors told me. We now know the chemical imbalance theory is unsubstantiated, and yet the narrative remains.

Watters’ book blew my mind by showing exactly how the false chemical imbalance theory was exported all over the world and why this has fundamentally affected recovery rates—for the worse—all over the globe. 

By David Healy

Though this is technically an academic book, it is extremely readable and the best account of the manipulative marketing, hidden court cases, and corruption that occurred during the development of Prozac and Zoloft.

It’s one of those books where, if my mother or I had read it before I was medicated at 15, I’m quite sure we would not have made the same choices. 

By Ben Goldacre

A book about pharmaceutical corruption and manipulative science can rarely make me laugh out loud, but Bad Science does just that.

Not only did the book make me a better advocate for my health by teaching me what red flags to look out for in research and shady science journalism, but it kept me consistently entertained to the point where I was disappointed when the book ended. It should be required reading in all high school science classes. 

By Abigail Shrier

It took me a long time to understand how my mother’s well-intentioned decision to send me to a child psychologist derailed my whole life, but Bad Therapy finally put the pieces together. In being diagnosed with depression and anxiety as a teen—and consequently medicated for it—a message was sent by the adults around me: I did not have the capacity to help myself.  

That unspoken message haunted me for the next fifteen years, leading me down a path of self-induced victimhood, fragility, and, paradoxically, more depression. I see this happening with an entire generation, and this book explains why—a must-read for every parent or medicated kid.