Navigating Akathisia with Jill Nickens

**Dr. Drew** (0:10)
Hey, welcome to Dr. Drew Podcast, everybody. Appreciate you all being here, and please do support the people that support us. We want to keep doing this thing, and we like doing it. Don't forget to check out Ask Dr. Drew. That's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, typically at three o'clock. Sign up, subscribe on the Rumble channel. We would appreciate your support there as well.
And we tend to move that show around a little bit, but I think you'll find it very interesting. This audience in particular would find it interesting. A lot of interesting folks, I've learned a lot by doing that.
Speaking of learning something, today will be no exception. Today, I'm interviewing Jill Nickens. She is the founder of the Akathisia Alliance, akathisaalliance.org, it's where you can find out more. And although you may never have heard about this topic, it is one of the more important topics for discussion, not the least of which is because should you or someone you love develop this, you will be misdiagnosed, and you may never be properly diagnosed.
And I'm imagining, Jill, that's what's happening to you. And your family, and your people in the Alliance.

**Jill Nickens** (1:11)
Oh, definitely.
There is a large community of people.
We all, most of us met in a support group on Facebook. There are thousands of people, thousands, and most of whom have been misdiagnosed. And I could say that because, and it's, Akathisia is like getting hit by a ton of bricks. If it happens, and any doctors who have experienced it themselves would agree that it's impossible not to know you have it. You might not know what it's called, but when it hits you, it can make anyone instantly suicidal. It's that horrific.

**Dr. Drew** (1:55)
That's one of the great problems with Akathisia is that people will hurl themselves off buildings and things because they are so, it's a kind of misery that is rarely experienced. So define, Jill, what it is so people know what we're talking about.

**Jill Nickens** (2:10)
So Akathisia is, it's a neurological disorder that most often causes severe agitation and inability to remain still and an overwhelming sense of terror. It's...

**Dr. Drew** (2:26)
And I would argue that, unfortunately, when we start using words like agitation and terror, what happens to people experiencing these things is they get either diagnosed with anxiety disorder and panic or agitation per se. And akathisia often follows a medication problem. It can be a medication side effect.
And so you get diagnosed as tardive dyskinesia, which is a movement disorder. So you get diagnosed as having agitation, which is something you may have had before you took the medication in the first place. And now you have tardive dyskinesia on top of that.
And tardive dyskinesia, if people don't know, is sort of this, it used to be caused a lot by the major tranquilizers. Now it's less common, but almost any psychotropic medication can cause it, where there's sort of mouth movements and leg movements and sort of, you know, you see it advertising for it now on TV, because they're advertising some of the antidotes for it. At least they're very expensive antidotes that are being advocated.
And I bet you're seeing people that get put on that all the time too.

**Jill Nickens** (3:29)
Oh, yeah, definitely. And Akathisia, when it first, when the term was first coined, it was in 1901 And it was put in the category of, at the time it was called hysteria, which has now evolved, you know, went through something called conversion disorder, basically psychosomatic. So, but sometime in the 1920s, it was finally determined it was organic. So there was a, you know, a chemical change in the brain that it's different from anxiety. It's not a fear that something's going to happen.
It's a feeling like it's currently happening.
And even it's been told that the Soviet Union used psychotropic medications to induce akathisia as a form of torture. And it is torture, it really is. It can make anyone, people who have no history of mental illness, have never taken a psychotropic medication, may go to the emergency room with a migraine or something and require an anti-medic or an anti-nausea medication. And instantly, you know, getting the IV, you want to pull the IV off and run and jump off the top of the building. It's...

**Dr. Drew** (5:01)
And I imagine you saw that more with the compazines and those earlier drugs. Are you seeing it with the zofrans now, too?

**Jill Nickens** (5:08)
Not zofrans so much. I mean, there may be rare cases, but definitely the compazine and reglan is a bad one.

**Dr. Drew** (5:17)