Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1278 ｜ Former FDA Official Unveils Pharma’s Shocking Lies About Depression ｜ Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring

00:00:00.000 A former FDA medical officer and a former drug safety officer for the pharmaceutical

00:00:05.400 industry, Dr. Yosef gives us an inside look into the corruption that is going on at the

00:00:11.820 FDA in the pharmaceutical industry.

00:00:14.160 He tells us scientifically how these so-called antidepressants are actually making people

00:00:19.760 sicker, more depressed, and more anxious.

00:00:23.000 This is a fascinating, completely enlightening conversation about what is really happening

00:00:28.580 at our med schools, in the pharmaceutical industry, what is going on in the government

00:00:33.400 that is lying to people about these SSRIs.

00:00:37.000 You've got to listen to this full conversation.

00:00:39.580 It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:41.600 Go to goodranchers.com, use code Allie, and check out this goodranchers.com, code Allie.

00:00:46.780 Dr. Yosef, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

00:00:59.460 Could you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

00:01:01.820 Really happy to be here, Allie.

00:01:03.400 So I'm a psychiatrist, and what I do now is I help people come off psychiatric medications.

00:01:11.140 And so I guess I went through this sort of roundabout journey where I did traditional psychiatry.

00:01:18.620 I ended up in the pharmaceutical industry developing drugs, and then in the FDA regulating them.

00:01:25.160 And the abbreviated version of that is like once you see how the sausage is made in the

00:01:31.280 factory, you're just like, I'm never going to touch that again.

00:01:33.600 And so I looked at the evidence behind a lot of it, and I really think one of the best things

00:01:39.620 that we can be doing right now is actually helping people come off the medications and

00:01:44.400 find more sustainable ways to address their mental health.

00:01:47.420 And so that's what I do.

00:01:48.400 Okay.

00:01:49.060 Let's back up.

00:01:50.240 How did you get into psychiatry?

00:01:53.220 I got into psychiatry just because I was naturally interested in personal development, philosophy,

00:01:58.920 psychology.

00:01:59.760 It was something I was always into from a young age.

00:02:02.320 And you grew up in Sydney.

00:02:04.260 I grew up in Sydney, Australia, yeah.

00:02:06.560 And I ended up in medical school, and this interest in personal development stuck, and

00:02:17.460 then I started thinking, oh, wow, there's this thing called psychiatry where I could merge

00:02:22.260 my interest in medicine and the body, but also this enduring interest that I've had in

00:02:26.300 self-help.

00:02:26.760 And so I became a psychiatrist, and I had this idea that I would go into training, and

00:02:35.040 I would see these patients, and I'd be like this quarterback, and we'd be helping them

00:02:40.840 with their relationships or with their physical health, with their diet, and maybe with their

00:02:47.420 sleep, really getting to understand them.

00:02:49.300 But what I saw when I got to my intern year and then throughout residency was it was not

00:02:55.040 like that at all.

00:02:56.540 It started, it really looked like a conveyor belt, like a production line, like patients

00:03:02.580 would come in, they'd fill out this questionnaire, they'd get a diagnosis.

00:03:06.500 You really wouldn't understand that much about their life, and then you would give them a

00:03:10.740 medication.

00:03:11.680 And I'm like, where are all these other people who should be helping?

00:03:14.940 You know, it was really hard to get access to therapists, you know, we hardly ever talked

00:03:19.840 about nutrition or sleep, faith, or, you know, values on how to live.

00:03:27.420 It was like, you have this mental illness, you know, we diagnosed you on this checklist, 0.99

00:03:31.460 and don't worry, we've got the solution right here.

00:03:34.280 And intuitively, I was just like, something just seems off about that.

00:03:39.600 Like, how could you actually help someone if you don't really understand their life and

00:03:45.460 their problems?

00:03:47.960 But asking those questions was kind of dissuaded.

00:03:50.380 It was just like, you know, you really don't want to go there, Yosef.

00:03:53.340 Like, it's, you know, these patients, you know, they're stigmatized enough.

00:03:58.760 We have to be compassionate to them.

00:04:00.160 We don't want to bring up, you know, we don't want to make them question the medications.

00:04:05.560 You know, the FDA has approved them.

00:04:07.380 They're safe and effective, you know, this is what the experts say.

00:04:12.160 And so, yeah, there was this constant, like, sort of push away from, you know, push from

00:04:18.400 academia to not really, like, kind of dig at this question about, like, is it really, like,

00:04:24.320 a sustainable way to, like, help people by just, like, drugging the symptoms?

00:04:27.940 Right.

00:04:28.200 Um, and so, you know, I, I kept on, on poking at that and I eventually decided that there's

00:04:38.700 enough here for me to be, like, really suspicious about what's going on.

00:04:42.920 I, but I need to become an expert in the area.

00:04:45.660 I mean, I'm probably 26 when I'm in internship.

00:04:48.660 Where'd you go to medical school?

00:04:50.220 Um, University of Queensland.

00:04:52.420 Okay.

00:04:52.860 And then I did my residency at Biola College of Medicine.

00:04:56.960 Okay.

00:04:57.280 Okay.

00:04:57.780 So you stayed in Australia for med school and then you came to the States.

00:05:02.000 Yes.

00:05:02.400 For, and you said Baylor.

00:05:04.140 Baylor.

00:05:04.560 Yeah.

00:05:04.780 Houston.

00:05:05.380 Yeah.

00:05:05.640 Okay.

00:05:05.780 I just had to interpret the accent.

00:05:07.540 I thought you said Biola.

00:05:09.360 Okay.

00:05:10.180 Baylor.

00:05:10.620 So that's where you started seeing, okay, this is like a conveyor belt to use your words

00:05:16.180 that people come in, they say, I feel like this, they check things off a list and that

00:05:20.660 just felt suspect to you.

00:05:21.860 Did you notice that also in medical school in Australia?

00:05:26.260 Well, I did, but I wasn't clued into it in the same way.

00:05:30.140 I mean, I just, you know, the, the medical school education that a lot of doctors get

00:05:35.940 is that there's this thing called depression, it's probably biological and we have these

00:05:42.420 drugs called SSRIs and they increase serotonin and there's probably something about that that's

00:05:48.340 helping people and that's pretty much it.

00:05:50.700 Yeah.

00:05:50.960 And so you're just like, okay, okay, you know, whatever, you know, this is what my professors

00:05:55.320 are teaching me.

00:05:56.360 Yeah.

00:05:56.860 But that like interface where you're at, because what really brings it to life is when you're

00:06:02.560 working with patients in the clinic and you start noticing things, you're like, well,

00:06:07.100 okay, so I put this person on, you know, a low dose of Lexapro, which is a very common

00:06:11.600 SSRI.

00:06:12.840 And can you tell us, remind us what SSRI stands for?

00:06:16.620 So it's a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.

00:06:20.080 Okay.

00:06:20.520 And serotonin is a hormone.

00:06:22.460 It's a hormone.

00:06:22.920 Yeah.

00:06:23.220 It's, it's, it's a hormone in the brain that is involved in your mood.

00:06:28.100 And for a really long time, doctors have been telling people that, um, if you're anxious

00:06:33.160 or depressed, it's probably because you have low serotonin.

00:06:36.580 It's just a very simplified and reductionistic way of understanding it, which is, which is

00:06:43.760 wrong as well.

00:06:44.980 Yeah.

00:06:45.320 And we'll, we'll get into that.

00:06:46.600 But Lexapro is one of those.

00:06:48.960 And so super common drug.

00:06:50.900 Um, so you'd give them Lexapro and then, you know, they cut and yeah, it would work

00:06:57.380 initially.

00:06:57.860 They'd say, okay, I feel, you know, I feel a little bit less anxious.

00:07:00.620 This is good.

00:07:01.480 And then they come back six months later and the, and they're just like, I only feel

00:07:05.700 it 10% or I don't even feel like it's doing anything anymore.

00:07:09.740 And so you increase the dose and then they come back a year later and the same thing happens.

00:07:14.320 And you're starting to notice that when I put people on these medications for quite

00:07:19.960 a large group of them, they just become tolerant to the effect.

00:07:23.880 You know, we're not really correcting any chemical imbalance.

00:07:26.920 It's just like the, the drug effect is wearing off.

00:07:30.060 Yeah.

00:07:30.280 And then you would start to see people like stacking on drugs.

00:07:34.640 And so now you're maxed out on the Lexapro.

00:07:36.960 We're going to put you on some Seroquel, but now you're kind of fatigued and we're going

00:07:40.500 to add like another one on.

00:07:41.640 And so it's really, once you get in there, you, you see that this kind of narrative about,

00:07:48.700 Hey, you know, it's, it's really simple.

00:07:50.400 You just put them on this drug.

00:07:51.840 You know, it's not, you know, that they're wearing off over time and we're stacking them

00:07:55.320 on top of each other and patients, they just don't look good.

00:07:58.680 I mean, you, you would look at people that have like a list of five different medications.

00:08:03.720 I mean, they're hardly, they're hardly doing well at all.

00:08:06.440 I mean, they're quality, you know, they're, they're blunted.

00:08:08.400 They're having problems sleeping, you know, their sex drive is annihilated, they're gaining

00:08:13.180 weight.

00:08:14.460 And, you know, the, what I was always told at the time was like, oh, this person just

00:08:19.820 has really bad depression.

00:08:21.120 You know, the depression is just morphing.

00:08:22.820 It's like, it was like mild at the start when they went through the divorce, you know,

00:08:26.860 but this scary biological thing has just like changed.

00:08:29.760 You know, don't look at the fact that, you know, they've been on drugs for, you know,

00:08:34.720 25 years now, like pretty high potency drugs.

00:08:38.220 Don't look at that as maybe one of the reasons why they're not doing well.

00:08:41.620 You know, it's just their underlying condition.

00:08:44.400 That's morphing, which is obviously like a really easy way to just, you know, stack on

00:08:50.260 more drugs, just to increase doses and really not have to look at the fact that the model

00:08:55.660 is broken.

00:08:57.480 And so when I started to see that as well, like one is like the theoretical stuff just

00:09:02.640 didn't make sense what I was being taught.

00:09:04.360 But like in practice, I'm just like, my patients aren't getting better.

00:09:08.900 Yeah.

00:09:10.200 There's something really off about this way of trying to help people.

00:09:14.660 Right.

00:09:15.300 And when we're diagnosing other things that you medicate, like a thyroid disorder, you

00:09:20.000 have to take a blood test and there's a certain level that if it's not producing enough

00:09:24.120 T3 or T4, you, you know, get on artificial, you know, thyroid hormones to help you.

00:09:30.500 But with how you're describing the diagnosis for putting people on these powerful drugs,

00:09:35.940 there's not a blood test or a brain test, right?

00:09:38.360 That shows you exactly this is what your serotonin level is.

00:09:41.740 Is it basically just a guess based on a survey?

00:09:46.020 Yeah, it is.

00:09:46.780 And so in the, you know, in the DSM, it's, they make you pick from nine symptoms.

00:09:54.880 And it's like, if you have five out of nine of these symptoms, so it's like low mood,

00:09:59.200 anxiety, sleep problems, like, you know, lack of interest in things, you know, feelings

00:10:04.120 of guilt.

00:10:04.580 It's just like a very arbitrary list of symptoms that kind of make sense.

00:10:09.580 You know, they make sense for people who are depressed.

00:10:11.480 And the way the people who wrote this diagnostic manual wanted to define depression was like,

00:10:19.260 oh, well, if you just have any combination of five of them out of nine, we'll say you

00:10:23.460 have depression.

00:10:24.680 And a lot of people don't understand that it is really arbitrary.

00:10:28.020 And they think that, oh, I have major depressive disorder.

00:10:31.300 And it was, I was given this diagnosis by my doctor or I have clinical depression.

00:10:35.880 It's like, they almost assume that there's been this additional step where there was

00:10:41.080 like a blood test or a brain scan, or there was something that really like made sense to

00:10:48.460 say that this was a different entity.

00:10:52.100 But no, it's just essentially like a survey.

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00:12:04.420 I've always thought of psychiatrists as people who are talking to the client or talking to

00:12:14.220 the patient and giving them advice and trying to understand their circumstance.

00:12:19.160 But what you're describing doesn't sound like that.

00:12:21.400 It sounds kind of like a very quick interaction of someone saying, I feel sad.

00:12:25.620 I don't want to get out of bed.

00:12:26.740 I don't want to eat.

00:12:27.880 And then just prescribing medication.

00:12:30.140 Was there any kind of like relational aspect when you're meeting with these patients?

00:12:35.240 So psychiatrists in general do a better job of that because we get a lot of training on,

00:12:42.040 you know, relationships and trauma and all of that.

00:12:45.200 Where the big issue is happening in the US and in much of the sort of the Western medicalized

00:12:51.720 world right now is within family medicine because depression is so common.

00:12:56.880 80% of our prescriptions are being handed out by family med docs.

00:13:02.520 But even within psychiatry and many people, if they've ever seen a psychiatrist will have

00:13:10.500 noticed this, there are incentives that make it so the doctors want to see you in a very

00:13:17.720 short period of time.

00:13:18.760 So like the aim of the game is like billing insurance in this country.

00:13:22.980 And so you like if you saw one person for an hour versus four people in an hour and shorter

00:13:29.440 visits, it works out that you essentially make double by seeing four people within an hour.

00:13:36.140 And so even though you have psychiatrists out there who may know a lot about your, you

00:13:41.940 know, prior history of trauma, you know, nutrition, exercise, they may be motivated and, you know,

00:13:48.500 they want to help you come off, you know, harmful substances and things like that.

00:13:52.240 There's always this like pressure where it's like, well, I need to kind of turn through these

00:13:57.380 patients to do my billing.

00:13:59.080 And so that pushes it all in this one direction where it's just like this very in and out

00:14:06.660 interaction where it's like, okay, are we going up on the drug?

00:14:09.940 Are we going down?

00:14:10.760 Are we holding it the same?

00:14:12.120 And that's a very common experience for people interacting with doctors these days.

00:14:18.820 Why do you think as you were an intern and you were going through your residency, you started

00:14:24.600 to be troubled by this process because I'm sure you had, you know, a lot of friends who

00:14:30.260 were going through the same process who weren't really troubled by it.

00:14:32.800 So what is it about you that made you say, oh, I don't know.

00:14:36.880 This is not what I thought it was going to be.

00:14:38.700 Yeah, I've thought about that.

00:14:40.140 And I think it's like personality.

00:14:44.660 And this, I mean, this can sound kind of funny, right?

00:14:47.380 Like a lot of people would be like, yeah, sure.

00:14:50.560 You know, surely doctors, they just want to understand the truth.

00:14:53.180 You know, they just want to get into the issue because they really want to help people.

00:14:57.580 And that is just the main thing that drives them.

00:15:01.040 But there's all these other incentives at play, you know, when you're in a career.

00:15:05.280 And a big one for doctors is to fit in and to kind of-

00:15:10.000 Just like anywhere else.

00:15:11.000 Yeah, just like anywhere else.

00:15:12.100 It's like, okay, well, this is what my professor is saying.

00:15:14.740 You know, this is kind of how things work.

00:15:17.380 I'm not going to sit around and criticize it.

00:15:19.340 I'm not going to, I'm just going to go with the flow.

00:15:21.800 Everyone else is doing that.

00:15:23.720 And that's like a really strong driver for people.

00:15:26.540 It's just, you know, I want to play nice in the sandbox and fit in with my peers.

00:15:31.220 And I'm just not built that way.

00:15:33.240 Yeah, I don't like that.

00:15:34.440 If I don't understand something, it gets under my skin and I just have to pick and pick and pick.

00:15:39.700 And that's kind of how I was, you know, in the drug companies and the FDA, like really just

00:15:44.560 obsessively trying to figure out what was going on.

00:15:48.780 And so I'm just wired that way.

00:15:53.260 Yeah.

00:15:53.620 Yeah.

00:15:54.040 That's the common answer.

00:15:55.100 I always like to ask the, like the troublemakers about that.

00:15:58.680 Like, what is it about you?

00:15:59.840 What do other people say?

00:16:01.120 Same thing.

00:16:01.620 Same thing.

00:16:02.120 Yeah.

00:16:02.300 Same thing.

00:16:02.780 It's just something.

00:16:04.160 I mean, I'm sure it is personality.

00:16:05.900 It could have been something in their upbringing too, but just something just makes them, whether

00:16:10.720 it's people who left cults.

00:16:12.180 I just interviewed someone who left a cult.

00:16:14.600 Her whole family was completely bought in, but from a young age, there was just something

00:16:18.300 that bothered her and she ended up leaving.

00:16:20.580 So yeah, it's really interesting.

00:16:22.400 I guess it is a personality trait and I'm very grateful for it.

00:16:26.060 Okay.

00:16:26.500 So you said that you started asking questions while you were a resident, but that it was

00:16:30.840 discouraged.

00:16:31.320 What did that look like?

00:16:32.380 Like, I mean, it looks like people saying, you know, you, you bring them up and then

00:16:38.800 it's like, it's, it's like threats.

00:16:40.900 It's almost like, you know, Yosef, if you keep on, you know, talking about these things,

00:16:45.700 you're going to scare people away from the medications.

00:16:47.700 You're going to scare them away from life-saving drugs.

00:16:50.700 And by saying these things just like, Hey, why are we treating this like a conveyor belt?

00:16:55.320 Yeah.

00:16:56.180 Yeah.

00:16:56.380 It's like, you know, there's always this feeling there, like you've missed the memo.

00:17:01.340 Like, it's like, Hey, everyone else got the memo.

00:17:03.900 We don't question the SSRIs. 0.50

00:17:06.240 We don't question the fact that these drugs were off over time.

00:17:09.100 We don't question the fact that the studies to support these medications coming onto the

00:17:14.400 market were only three months long and we put people on them for decades.

00:17:19.260 And whether the brain is really even designed to be in a drug state for decades at a time

00:17:24.980 and whether that could make people worse.

00:17:27.040 It's like everyone else in the program got the memo that we don't ask those questions

00:17:32.060 apart from me.

00:17:32.920 And so there's just this constant like awkwardness when, when you would bring it up and it's just

00:17:38.220 like, it's like, don't, you know, we don't, we don't go there.

00:17:43.140 And if you push, they eventually say, well, people with mental illness, you know, they're

00:17:47.500 stigmatized.

00:17:48.440 And if you ask these questions, you're actually shaming them and you're going to push them towards 0.91

00:17:53.180 suicide.

00:17:53.540 And so then you get this veiled threat that if you're like questioning these things,

00:17:57.640 like you're dangerous somehow. 0.52

00:18:00.740 And, you know, the more, and the more I looked at it, I mean, all of this is just a crafted

00:18:05.000 narrative.

00:18:05.480 I mean, there's a drug company, you know, there's a pharmaceutical industry.

00:18:09.960 They have a lot of money.

00:18:11.260 They have a lot of influence and they can shape the way we talk about issues because they have

00:18:17.420 PR and they have marketing.

00:18:18.840 And anytime there's like, you know, a problem with a drug or someone commits suicide unexpectedly,

00:18:25.000 or there's a school shooting, you know, they have their team ready to go that says there's

00:18:30.100 no evidence of this.

00:18:31.180 And on top of that, the people who say there is evidence of this, you know, they're in it

00:18:35.740 for the notoriety and they're actually really dangerous.

00:18:38.460 And so it creates this climate where it's just like, shut up, don't bring it up because

00:18:44.520 that's just not what we do.

00:18:46.480 And so it's that, it's that kind of vibe.

00:18:48.840 And the best PR campaigns are the ones that you don't know exist.

00:18:52.860 It's just like, oh, why do I have this thought about this person?

00:18:55.580 Or why have I seen this person everywhere?

00:18:58.160 Well, it's not organic, it's orchestrated.

00:19:00.260 And the same thing is true when it comes to pharmaceuticals, but you did kind of go into

00:19:04.460 that world after residency.

00:19:06.680 So tell us what that looked like.

00:19:09.460 Yeah.

00:19:09.660 So, I mean, after residency, I end up in the pharmaceutical industry, you know, as a drug

00:19:14.840 safety officer.

00:19:16.640 And what is a drug safety officer?

00:19:18.160 It's someone who's responsible for understanding the safety profile of the drug and writing

00:19:25.600 the labels for the drug, which communicates the most important information to the doctors

00:19:31.660 so they can have conversations with their patients and monitor the patients well.

00:19:37.300 So that was what I did.

00:19:39.740 Did you go into that thinking that you were going to cause trouble, like be a disruptor?

00:19:45.840 I went into it with good faith.

00:19:48.020 I went into it from a place where I was like, I'm really troubled about these drugs and I

00:19:53.560 actually don't want to practice clinically because I can see the constraints in the system

00:19:58.140 where it's like, I have to treat people in 15 minutes.

00:20:00.760 I don't really think I can do a good job there.

00:20:03.240 But what I'm really into is understanding this evidence and maybe I can better characterize

00:20:08.080 the safety issues, the things that I'm really concerned about, you know, the drugs wearing

00:20:12.340 off, all of that.

00:20:13.100 Maybe I can better understand that and then convey that to the public.

00:20:17.780 Yeah.

00:20:18.000 And I, as is normal, like I kind of bounced around my actual, my first gig in the pharmaceutical

00:20:24.900 industry was in oncology.

00:20:27.000 So it wasn't even in psychiatry.

00:20:28.740 That was like my, my step in the door was doing a cancer drug development and we had developed

00:20:35.900 a drug and we, you know, they, you know, it was going to the market.

00:20:41.020 We'd been working on it for a really long time.

00:20:42.920 And the pharmacovigilance team, that's sorry, drugs, the drug safety team, they were really

00:20:50.480 interested in publishing a manuscript about all of the safety issues.

00:20:53.940 They said, you know, we've been developing this drug for 10 years.

00:20:56.540 We've had thousands of people use it.

00:20:58.540 Let's take all of this information that we know and publish it.

00:21:01.700 So doctors who want to learn from us can, and we would have leadership come down to us

00:21:07.760 and essentially say, well, let's not do that.

00:21:10.860 Like we already have some of this information, very abbreviated in the drug label.

00:21:16.080 We don't want to make a bigger issue of this than it is already.

00:21:19.680 You know, they're thinking like, if we make a manuscript about the safety issues, our competitors

00:21:24.100 out there are going to grab that thing and they're going to walk around to all of the

00:21:27.400 doctors and just say, use our drug because look at this manuscript, which is really there

00:21:31.720 to help people.

00:21:32.560 But did you know it causes this problem and this problem and this problem?

00:21:35.720 And so I quickly learned within the pharmaceutical industry, like to the extent they possibly

00:21:41.680 can, they will always be minimizing the risks associated with the drug because it's life

00:21:47.600 or death for them.

00:21:48.580 You know, when it's like, when you're in a marketplace and there's multiple other drugs,

00:21:52.440 you just care about your market share.

00:21:54.320 Yeah.

00:21:54.760 And if people, if doctors are worried about the safety of your drug, it's like, boom,

00:22:00.340 you're gone.

00:22:00.700 And so that's how the drug companies live.

00:22:04.000 And that's why you really don't get reliable information out of them.

00:22:09.120 It's, they will do everything that they can to make doctors view the drug in the best possible

00:22:14.080 light without like kind of stepping over the line into something that's blatantly fraudulent.

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00:23:33.860 The doctors don't even have good information.

00:23:36.260 If we ask our doctors, well, what are the side effects?

00:23:39.240 What are the possible symptoms?

00:23:40.280 They don't even know the full picture because they have to rely on the pharmaceutical companies

00:23:44.120 to tell them, right?

00:23:45.620 Yeah.

00:23:46.240 And it gets, I mean, there's a part of this that's even darker because when you think about,

00:23:51.980 you know, who do doctors trust?

00:23:55.240 And a lot of the time it's the people who train them.

00:23:58.260 You know, the professors who are leading the institutions and, and these people are called,

00:24:03.720 you know, the drug companies refer to them as key opinion leaders.

00:24:07.020 And so these are the people at the top of Harvard and Stanford and Yale, UCSF, all of these places.

00:24:13.960 And when I was in the, when I was in the industry, I would notice that we would work with these people

00:24:21.920 to essentially launder information.

00:24:24.360 And, and so you would have a drug company, they would have like a manuscript and then

00:24:31.580 they would get a publisher to write, so they'd have a drug company has a clinical trial.

00:24:37.380 They get a publisher to write up that study in a completely biased way, you know, that,

00:24:41.920 you know, overhypes the benefits, minimizes the risk.

00:24:44.360 And then they shop around for academics to put their name on the, on the authorship line.

00:24:51.000 Um, and yeah, and you may be asking, yeah, why, why would an academic do that?

00:24:57.120 Like, why would someone compromise their integrity in that way?

00:25:00.960 And it has to do with how people get promotions within an academic system.

00:25:05.320 So if you want to become a professor at a place, you do that by collecting these feathers

00:25:11.140 in your hat, you know, so it's lots of publications on your CV, it's lots of international talks.

00:25:16.440 Um, and, and once you have enough of those, you can say, Hey, you go to the dean of the

00:25:23.040 institution.

00:25:23.500 I am the established expert in this place.

00:25:26.100 Look at my CV and they go, yeah, you are.

00:25:28.780 And what academics learn, especially in psychiatry, but I think this is happening in a lot of medicine

00:25:34.300 is one of the best ways to do this is by running drug company studies.

00:25:38.380 And so very early on in their career, they start to be heavily involved in clinical trials.

00:25:44.240 And so instead of having to do their own research or apply to the government agencies for grants,

00:25:49.980 which is very time consuming, they go, okay, Janssen or Pfizer or Eli Lilly, I'm going to help you.

00:25:56.480 And when they do that, they get the protocol done for them.

00:25:59.460 They get the support staff, they get the funding, um, people write the manuscripts for them.

00:26:04.200 They, they fly them around the world.

00:26:05.760 It's, it's like the fast track to, to getting to the top.

00:26:10.360 And so what this has created in, in a lot of medicine, especially in psychiatry,

00:26:15.320 is that you have this upper echelon of people who are heavily biased, uh, towards the drug

00:26:22.300 companies because they're kind of reliant on them for career advancement.

00:26:26.760 Um, and so, you know, people in the community, um, who aren't aware of what's going on, they go,

00:26:32.180 Hey, there's a professor at Harvard who says SSRIs are the ants pants.

00:26:36.360 They're the greatest thing ever.

00:26:37.740 They're just thinking to themselves, you know, Harvard's a great institution.

00:26:41.780 One of the best institutions in the world, this guy at the top, he's probably there because

00:26:46.240 he's the smartest, most ethical and, you know, a very moral person.

00:26:51.040 And so that's, and so they go, I'm going to believe him, but they're not really understanding

00:26:54.980 that that person's there because essentially he's become a shill for the drug company because

00:26:59.140 that's how you get to the top.

00:27:01.160 Um, and so you mentioned a moment ago, some of the most persuasive marketing is the marketing

00:27:05.820 that you don't even realize that is happening.

00:27:08.420 And one of the main ways that it's happening right now is that the academic elite has been

00:27:14.340 bought by drug company money.

00:27:16.380 Wow.

00:27:17.200 Yeah.

00:27:17.580 And so you're learning all of this while you're working in the pharmaceutical industry.

00:27:22.360 Tell us more about your kind of evolution, your enlightenment.

00:27:26.920 Did you have one moment that was a wake up call?

00:27:29.080 Like, okay, this is not redeemable.

00:27:30.900 I can't be a part of this anymore.

00:27:33.160 So there was not one moment.

00:27:35.460 And it was, it was like these several little things along the way.

00:27:38.760 And so, you know, I did a stint at the FDA as well, which is, it's kind of, you know,

00:27:44.060 when you're at the FDA, you're looking after, you know, 20 to 30 different drugs and all of

00:27:49.100 the safety issues are coming to you and you can actually see how all of the studies are

00:27:54.000 done.

00:27:54.460 That was really where I put it together because for a long time I was, you know, people would

00:28:00.200 say, you know, SSRIs, these are evidence-based treatments.

00:28:03.780 And I, and you kind of like, unless you really know like what that means, you just have to

00:28:10.140 take them at their word.

00:28:11.540 And so when I'm at the FDA, I'm looking at animal studies.

00:28:14.160 I'm looking at, you know, early phase one studies, phase two, phase three.

00:28:20.640 And that's when I started to notice, I'm like, there is not a single study for any psychiatric

00:28:26.720 medication that was done in a, you know, randomized placebo controlled way that's gone over a year.

00:28:35.220 And, and so I was, I started to think to myself, I mean, we're telling patients these are safe

00:28:39.820 and effective, but we're missing leaving out for the one year that they were studied for.

00:28:45.040 And then on top of that, I'm learning that, you know, SSRIs can make some people worse.

00:28:51.160 They can cause this, this thing called tardive dysphoria, which essentially is where you get 0.69

00:28:57.240 very tired and you have brain fog.

00:28:59.920 And that's like a chronic issue that emerges after several years on the drugs.

00:29:04.580 I noticed, you know, I started learning about benzodiazepine induced neurological dysfunction,

00:29:10.180 which is something that people get from drugs like Xanax and Klonopin, where they start to

00:29:15.160 become more anxious and agoraphobic and they start to develop insomnia.

00:29:20.780 And agoraphobic means you're scared to go outside.

00:29:22.900 You said, yeah, you said, you're so like anxious that you're just like, I don't even, yeah,

00:29:27.440 I don't even want to go to the grocery store because if someone talks to me, I'm going to

00:29:30.500 have a panic attack.

00:29:31.500 And so your world just gets smaller and smaller and smaller and you stay inside.

00:29:35.080 And a doctor might tell them, well, that's just your anxiety getting worse.

00:29:38.800 Let's up your medicine. 0.72

00:29:40.080 Yeah.

00:29:40.660 Yeah.

00:29:40.840 And so it was really those two things where I'm just like, oh, wow.

00:29:46.380 You know, when they said evidence-based, they meant that, you know, for the one year that

00:29:51.360 they were studied for and, you know, they never really talked about the fact that some of these

00:29:56.220 drugs are making people sicker over time.

00:29:59.900 And so at that point, I was just like, this doesn't like, how could this be a sustainable

00:30:05.940 way to help people?

00:30:07.420 We have drugs that frequently wear off over time.

00:30:09.880 They're making a proportion of people actually sick.

00:30:14.600 We have to find another way to help people.

00:30:17.680 And so that was 2020.

00:30:19.800 I end up just leaving.

00:30:22.060 I just go, I'm not doing this anymore.

00:30:23.720 And my wife, who's also a psychiatrist, we opened this clinic together.

00:30:28.720 It's the Tabor Clinic.

00:30:30.000 And then we started to focus, you know, firstly on just getting people off these medications

00:30:35.280 when they weren't doing well.

00:30:36.960 And then over time, it's morphed into a, almost like a complete alternative to the mental health

00:30:43.360 care system, where we look at nutrition, sleep optimization, different therapies.

00:30:50.060 And we try and give people all of the non-drug treatments that have good scientific evidence

00:30:56.060 for actually working and keeping people well.

00:30:58.460 And we pair that with the drug tapering.

00:31:00.640 And then that's what I've been up to.

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00:32:14.920 Okay.

00:32:15.540 So I was about to ask, what year was all of this going down in your life?

00:32:19.800 You said you left the FDA in 2020.

00:32:23.820 What an interesting time.

00:32:25.420 What was this after COVID?

00:32:28.040 Yeah.

00:32:28.660 So it was during COVID.

00:32:32.440 And so I...

00:32:35.620 So yeah, after COVID had started.

00:32:37.520 Yeah.

00:32:37.780 Yeah.

00:32:38.320 Yeah.

00:32:38.860 Yeah.

00:32:39.480 Okay.

00:32:40.380 Well, I was going to ask, what did you think about everything that was going down during COVID

00:32:45.700 from the top level of like, you know, the mixed messages about masks and the COVID vaccine and

00:32:53.100 all of that?

00:32:53.840 I'm sure you had a lot of insider insight into how those decisions are made.

00:32:58.360 You know, I got the shots, you know, so I had two of the Moderna shots at the time, because

00:33:05.980 even back then, I was just like, well, psychiatry is a dumpster fire, but maybe the rest of medicine

00:33:11.980 is okay.

00:33:12.920 Yeah.

00:33:13.120 And so, you know, thank, you know, my wife and I, we both got the shots, you know, thankfully

00:33:18.840 that we were okay.

00:33:20.580 But as I kind of went further down this path, I started to realize, oh my God, I'm like allies

00:33:28.040 with the anti-vaxxers, you know, because I'm over here, like, I'm just like, these drugs

00:33:32.320 are bad.

00:33:32.880 They're the worst thing ever.

00:33:33.940 You know, they're causing all of these problems.

00:33:36.100 And I'm getting flamed on Twitter, but I have this support from this anti-vax group.

00:33:42.480 And then, so I start looking into it more.

00:33:44.160 Interesting.

00:33:44.760 And then, so I've, you know, over the last couple of years, like my skepticism to medicine

00:33:48.820 has really just broadened.

00:33:50.160 I'm just like, this is not just a psychiatry issue.

00:33:53.160 This is, you know, the money from the pharmaceutical industry has really just like taken over all areas.

00:34:00.280 Yeah.

00:34:00.580 Before we get into more of what you and your wife do now, I want to go back to something

00:34:05.780 that you said.

00:34:06.760 You said that it's not true that depression and anxiety are necessarily caused by low serotonin.

00:34:14.200 And so the premise of the necessity of SSRIs just doesn't necessarily hold up, right?

00:34:20.380 That it's supposed to be raising your level of serotonin, but you're saying that that's

00:34:24.680 not necessarily the problem to begin with.

00:34:27.380 Yeah.

00:34:27.860 I'd love to expand on that a little bit because that has been one of the most dominant myths

00:34:33.420 and about how these drugs work.

00:34:37.680 And so, I mean, you know, to do a brief history lesson, back in the 1950s, a drug was discovered

00:34:45.720 called ipronizid and it was being used as an antimicrobial for patients with tuberculosis

00:34:51.240 and they were hoping to cure them.

00:34:53.340 And so they gave them this medication and they noticed that these patients started to

00:34:57.360 perk up and they said, hmm, you know, they're more energetic, they're more lively.

00:35:03.000 Maybe this drug has some promise as an antidepressant.

00:35:06.200 Let's go and give it to depressed patients.

00:35:08.720 And so they went and they did that and it worked.

00:35:11.780 You know, these patients who were, you know, very low energy, very unhappy, started to look

00:35:16.680 better on the drug.

00:35:17.540 And so this narrative really could have gone in two ways at this time.

00:35:23.120 It's really pivotal.

00:35:25.080 One way they could have said is, hey, we just found a drug that has these energizing properties

00:35:30.080 and it can perk people up.

00:35:32.320 And, you know, what we're seeing is a drug effect.

00:35:34.040 But the other narrative was, well, maybe these drugs are actually helping these depressed

00:35:40.380 patients because they don't have enough, you know, serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine,

00:35:46.260 because that's what they had discovered ipronizid was doing.

00:35:49.080 They knew it was lifting these chemicals up.

00:35:52.240 And so they said, well, we know this drug lifts these chemicals up.

00:35:55.420 Maybe that's the problem.

00:35:56.580 And so one narrative survives and the other dies.

00:36:03.660 And so the narrative that survives is that the patients, they have these chemical imbalances.

00:36:08.220 And the reason for that is because it's a better commercial narrative.

00:36:12.820 Now, intuitively, like I know we just like gobbled down antidepressants like crazy now,

00:36:18.180 but really like just going back to like prior, like the 80s, a lot of people intuitively were

00:36:25.720 like, it's not a good idea to mask your symptoms with drugs.

00:36:30.080 Like, let's not sweep our problems under the rug because they're just going to fester there.

00:36:34.980 We need to address them at their cause.

00:36:37.520 And so the drug companies knew this and they said, well, a better way to package this drug

00:36:42.460 is to say, hey, this drug is actually fixing a medical problem.

00:36:47.880 Like, don't worry about your life.

00:36:49.120 Don't worry about these issues.

00:36:50.180 Your problem is serotonin and we've got the drug that's going to fix it.

00:36:53.620 If you characterize it as like you're fixing a biological problem, all of a sudden it makes

00:36:59.440 sense to take a biological agent rather than a drug to mask things.

00:37:04.400 But there's no biological test.

00:37:06.120 There's no biological test.

00:37:08.080 And so for a long time, they would just say, well, we're just about to find it.

00:37:13.320 You know, our researchers are looking into it.

00:37:15.660 And I mean, this was a big splash.

00:37:17.780 I think it was like three years ago, Joanna Moncrief and her team in London, they did

00:37:23.720 umbrella review on this where they looked at all of the evidence trying to find differences

00:37:29.160 in essentially serotonin between depressed and non-depressed patients.

00:37:33.840 I mean, they looked at cases where they would get a group of depressed patients and they would

00:37:38.760 do a lumbar puncture.

00:37:39.920 That's where you stick a needle into the spine. 0.72

00:37:41.740 And you actually remove some of the cerebral spinal fluid, which is the fluid that surrounds

00:37:47.160 the spinal cord and the brain.

00:37:48.820 And you're looking for metabolites of serotonin.

00:37:52.020 And so they would do that in depressed patients and then non-depressed patients.

00:37:55.480 And they'd say, well, are there any differences here?

00:37:58.760 Right.

00:37:59.260 No differences.

00:38:00.300 Wow.

00:38:00.740 They would find people who had committed suicide when they were depressed and they would do

00:38:06.160 autopsies on them.

00:38:07.340 And they'd say, well, maybe there's differences in the number of receptors in the brains of

00:38:12.140 depressed and non-depressed patients.

00:38:13.700 And so they would look at that.

00:38:16.040 No difference in the receptors there.

00:38:19.080 And even when it comes down to like genetics or brain scans or any of these things, they have

00:38:26.000 never been able to find a biomarker that can separate people who are depressed from people

00:38:32.700 who are not depressed.

00:38:34.880 Not one single biomarker has been found between depressed people and non-depressed people.

00:38:41.980 So we don't know of any biological cause for depression.

00:38:45.640 Well, there are some things now which I do think are kind of getting at it in that direction.

00:38:51.640 I think inflammatory markers, they do tend to correlate with depression, but they also

00:38:57.560 correlate with heart disease and all of this stuff.

00:38:59.760 And that's a whole nother avenue why, you know, diet is really important.

00:39:04.640 Because none of that, no form of inflammation is addressed by an SSRI.

00:39:08.400 No, no.

00:39:09.400 Or if it is, you know, very shortly at the start, but long-term, no.

00:39:14.620 Really, a lot of the major causes of inflammation are really dietary.

00:39:19.060 That's, you know, 70% of our inflammatory cells, they sit in our gut because that's the

00:39:24.220 main place we interface, our body interfaces with the external world.

00:39:29.100 So that's why, you know, it seems like everyone's talking about diet these days because it's

00:39:34.040 important.

00:39:36.180 But yeah, essentially there's no difference in any of these chemicals.

00:39:40.380 And so these drugs aren't correcting anything.

00:39:42.740 They're simply masking symptoms, which is, you know, you could have a moral argument and

00:39:49.500 say, yeah, morally, I disagree with that.

00:39:51.900 But you could also just say, well, I don't really care.

00:39:54.500 I just want to feel well and I'm suffering.

00:39:57.240 And I think that's totally fair because we want people to feel better.

00:40:01.100 But then the issue is we don't tell them about, hey, these are drugs just like any other

00:40:05.660 drug.

00:40:06.080 They're going to wear off over time.

00:40:07.400 And there's also risks of prolonged use because our brains aren't used to being on

00:40:11.140 them.

00:40:11.920 And so we give them this very like, you know, it's just a lie.

00:40:17.760 You know, it's just a misleading message about the safety of the drugs and how they

00:40:21.200 work.

00:40:22.500 And because the more responsible thing to tell people is, hey, these have drug effects.

00:40:27.980 Yes, they do work.

00:40:28.900 You know, they constrict your emotional range.

00:40:31.180 Many people experience that as therapeutic.

00:40:32.940 But, hey, this is probably not going to work forever.

00:40:36.420 And while you're on this drug, we better make sure we figure out why you are unhappy.

00:40:41.000 And we start introducing those things.

00:40:43.480 And then we tape you off this medication so you don't have this chemical exposure just

00:40:47.900 lingering around for years later that can cause all these problems.

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00:41:46.220 We had a woman on who she had been on different forms of antidepressant, anti, I guess SSRI is

00:41:58.840 the right way to say, but it's marketed as an antidepressant, anti-anxiety medication.

00:42:02.980 From the time she was a teen, her dad died.

00:42:04.860 She went through a really hard time and they just stuck her on all of these pharmaceuticals.

00:42:09.160 And the most devastating part of her story that she shared was that she said, it wasn't

00:42:13.100 until my 20s that I felt joy for the first time after she got off all of these medications.

00:42:18.480 She weaned herself off.

00:42:20.160 She doesn't recommend doing what she did.

00:42:21.720 I mean, she just came off cold turkey because she was like, I'm tired of not feeling.

00:42:25.440 You talk about that shortened range of emotions.

00:42:27.720 And I think we focus on, well, that person may temporarily for a period of time feel less

00:42:33.080 sad, but there's a possibility that they won't feel joy.

00:42:36.600 And that's a big sacrifice that people aren't being told about when they sign up for these

00:42:41.300 drugs.

00:42:42.980 Yeah, that's what they do.

00:42:44.280 You know, they constrict your emotional range.

00:42:46.760 And I mean, you may go through a pregnancy or you may go through your child's childhood being

00:42:53.860 blunted.

00:42:54.240 You may never really enjoy intimacy with your partner because the volume of that is turned

00:43:02.120 down as well.

00:43:03.100 You may not be able to grieve the loss of a loved one.

00:43:06.780 I mean, you may be at a funeral and you're just like, I don't feel anything.

00:43:13.120 And so, yes, I mean, you know, some people listening will just say, hey, you know, I'll take that

00:43:19.180 over the pain that I'm suffering.

00:43:20.820 But for many people, they're going to miss out on really what it means to be human and

00:43:26.980 going through these hardships and this pain.

00:43:30.820 You know, not only is it an integral part of being human, but some of these things teach

00:43:34.980 us, teach us about life.

00:43:37.400 I mean, you could think about, you know, let's say, for instance, you're in a bad relationship

00:43:42.380 or a career that you find unsatisfying.

00:43:48.140 Do you really want to numb yourself to the smoke alarm going off in your head that's just

00:43:52.260 saying, hey, something is wrong, something is wrong, something is wrong.

00:43:54.860 You take a drug to tolerate that.

00:43:57.960 But then you've missed all of this.

00:44:00.620 You know, you probably should have been working actually on the issue.

00:44:03.900 You could be on a diet that is just massively inflaming you.

00:44:09.800 You could be living a lifestyle where you're on night shifts and your sleep is disrupted

00:44:14.800 and all of that.

00:44:16.020 And all of these symptoms that you're experiencing, they mean something.

00:44:19.920 It's just like, I feel restless.

00:44:22.200 I feel tired, but wired.

00:44:23.760 I never feel that sense of peace in the afternoon when work is over, where I'm just like sitting

00:44:28.280 back and I'm like, oh, I feel good, you know, like those are all signs that something is

00:44:34.280 out of order.

00:44:35.280 And if you just like put someone on a drug, you've robbed them of the opportunity to actually

00:44:41.160 have health, you know, like true health that's sustainable and good.

00:44:47.940 Yeah.

00:44:49.000 You're saying it's like, say your smoke alarm is going off and you're like, this is so

00:44:54.700 annoying.

00:44:55.180 I'm just going to take the batteries out.

00:44:57.020 Well, that doesn't change the fact that there's a fire in your kitchen and the fire could continue

00:45:01.340 to grow, but because you no longer hear the smoke alarm, you think everything is fine.

00:45:05.980 You're saying that's basically what it's like to get on these pharmaceuticals.

00:45:09.060 Yes.

00:45:09.620 Yep.

00:45:10.020 You are numbing, you know, the smoke alarm.

00:45:13.020 Yeah.

00:45:13.280 Right.

00:45:14.080 And how does it, does it, does it really raise your level of serotonin?

00:45:18.500 Like, is that the mechanism that is used to shorten the emotional range and possibly make

00:45:25.120 someone for a period of time feel less depressed?

00:45:28.300 You know, truthfully, people don't really know what happens.

00:45:31.760 Like when they do studies, like, like brain scans, looking at the serotonin receptors, immediately

00:45:37.920 it seems like the serotonin goes up.

00:45:40.000 And then after about a couple of months, the serotonin levels actually go down.

00:45:44.400 Now, is that what's causing the drug effect?

00:45:47.040 We don't really know.

00:45:47.840 I mean, there's so many downstream effects on how it changes neurotransmission.

00:45:54.680 But I think just the appropriate level to understand it is it's just seems the chemical

00:46:00.220 just induces a drug effect.

00:46:01.980 And that drug effect is just one of numbing for most people.

00:46:05.300 Mm-hmm.

00:46:06.460 So when people say, because I will get messages like this, well, that saved my life or that

00:46:12.180 saved my husband's life.

00:46:13.660 He was on, you know, he had PTSD.

00:46:15.480 He was on the brink of suicide.

00:46:16.700 He got on this medication.

00:46:18.060 It changed his life and saved my husband.

00:46:20.040 How could you be demonizing this?

00:46:22.020 Like, what is your response to that?

00:46:24.260 So my response to be to that is that's absolutely true.

00:46:27.480 You know, if you're in a state of severe anxiety and you take a drug that kind of constricts

00:46:33.840 that range, even if it knocks out the positives, you will experience that as therapeutic.

00:46:38.340 You will experience yourself as being more functional.

00:46:41.280 Now, if that anxiety or PTSD or whatever it was, was to the point where you're actually

00:46:45.980 suicidal, that drug can be life-saving in the short term.

00:46:50.780 So I don't want to take that away from anyone.

00:46:53.860 I mean, essentially, we're just talking about a drug that will just constrict your emotional

00:46:58.580 range that will be helpful for some people.

00:47:00.580 The part where I want people to think about this more is, what does this mean long term?

00:47:06.220 And to be aware that none of the controlled trials show that they actually work consistently

00:47:10.660 after about a year.

00:47:12.220 Does that mean that it's not going to work consistently for everyone?

00:47:14.840 No, of course not.

00:47:15.780 For some people, you know, they're out there and they've been on them for like 10 years

00:47:18.860 and they're fine.

00:47:19.860 Other people, that's not the case.

00:47:23.860 They also need to be aware that they're at risk of the drug turning on them.

00:47:27.400 And so if you're someone who, you know, you got on it initially and it was working and

00:47:31.880 now five years later, you just feel like you have brain fog and you're tired all the time,

00:47:36.740 don't get bought into this narrative from the doctor who just says, oh, your depression

00:47:40.660 is evolving and now we just need to stack on a cocktail.

00:47:43.960 It's like maybe your brain can't handle being on that drug for five years like many of my

00:47:49.860 patients.

00:47:50.340 And so it's more nuanced.

00:47:53.340 I mean, we never want to shame someone for being on the medications or demonize them.

00:47:57.560 We just want to see them in an accurate way.

00:48:00.160 And the best way to look at them is, yes, they can help and they can be lifesaving, particularly

00:48:04.380 in the short term for some people.

00:48:07.100 But hey, we better make sure that we're looking at other sustainable non-drug approaches that

00:48:13.100 will help the person for the rest of their life where they're not dealing with the drug

00:48:16.220 wearing off and they're not dealing with the drug, eventually making them worse.

00:48:20.360 Would you say that it's fair to say that SSRIs are causing more depression and anxiety than

00:48:27.560 fixing it?

00:48:30.280 I mean, that's actually what I believe, which may be a bombshell thing to say.

00:48:37.320 But if we look at antidepressant use, like antidepressant use has gone up like 5x since

00:48:45.640 the early 90s.

00:48:47.180 And we have more disability from depression.

00:48:52.120 We have more suicides than we've ever had before.

00:48:58.220 And so when I look at it, it's like, you know, the drug use is going up and like all of these

00:49:03.880 markers is going up.

00:49:05.020 And so I think, you know, is it the drugs making people worse or is it the fact that

00:49:11.340 we live in this medical system right now that is just telling people like, hey, the problems

00:49:16.540 you're experiencing, go and see your doctor and take the pill rather than actually like

00:49:20.260 helping people address them.

00:49:22.160 But the model of helping people with mental health problems at a population level is failing

00:49:27.120 the US.

00:49:28.140 Yeah.

00:49:28.580 And it's just become so glamorized to be on something like Lexapro.

00:49:32.980 Like there are ballads that people put on TikTok that go viral.

00:49:37.300 People like just thanking their antidepressants for saving their life.

00:49:41.360 It's almost become trendy to talk about what form of SSRI you're on.

00:49:46.720 And that is not an indication of a healthy society in any sense.

00:49:51.260 Yeah.

00:49:51.480 You know, it's it's this weird, you know, I'll take off my psychiatry hat and put on my social

00:49:57.420 commentator hat for this one, we incentivize very strange things at the moment, you know,

00:50:05.140 and it could be, you know, whether it's, you know, you're incentivized to identify as a

00:50:10.920 racial minority or a sexual minority or, you know, and right now we're just like, oh, my

00:50:17.880 God, you know, things are so hard for you.

00:50:20.420 And, you know, even institutionally, like very recently and still like there's advantages

00:50:26.360 to certain groups.

00:50:27.740 And we have done the same thing with mental health problems.

00:50:30.560 Like it's it's like, you know, the mentally, you know, people who have mental health problems,

00:50:35.400 they're stigmatized, they're suffering like these people need, you know, to be coddled in

00:50:41.920 this way.

00:50:42.280 And I'm not saying it in a mean way that that these aren't difficult things, but there is

00:50:46.040 a message out there, there are incentives for people to identify with their mental illness.

00:50:52.800 And then also, you know, we see these campaigns like, I don't know, there was one about like

00:51:00.040 showing what medication that you are taking.

00:51:02.980 And this was viral on TikTok probably three or four years ago.

00:51:06.820 And it's just like, hi, I'm so-and-so and I take Lexapro.

00:51:09.840 And it's like, you get this badge for like, I am acknowledging I'm depressed and I'm taking

00:51:15.120 this medication and I'm fighting stigma.

00:51:17.420 And so there's also this sense that like when you talk about having this medication, you

00:51:21.860 are this warrior out there.

00:51:23.500 And there's a bunch of like conservative, like redneck types out there that are just 0.99

00:51:27.840 like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, like quit being a wuss, taking the meds. 0.63

00:51:32.480 Like they're sort of constructing this boogeyman out there where it's just like, there's all 0.98

00:51:37.040 these people stigmatizing the mentally ill and there really isn't.

00:51:40.680 And so I see it as well.

00:51:41.800 I see people on TikTok and they're just like, you know, listing their medications and they

00:51:46.360 think it confers this sort of social currency or it gives them this air of being like, you

00:51:52.540 know, having more depth of character or like suffering in some way.

00:51:55.860 It's very twisted because that's like a weird thing to flex about, like taking psychiatric 0.96

00:52:02.060 medications.

00:52:03.060 Yeah.

00:52:03.440 Yeah.

00:52:03.740 It is a very weird thing, but you're right.

00:52:05.680 Oppression is a currency.

00:52:06.840 And if especially, I think maybe that's one reason, this is a total hypothesis, but it

00:52:13.720 seems like we see a disproportionate usage of SSRIs among older white women who don't

00:52:20.220 have very many oppression points because they're just, you know, white, straight women. 1.00

00:52:25.940 And so having some kind of mental illness, I think gives them an intersectionality point.

00:52:32.140 That's my analysis anyway.

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00:53:49.480 Tell me a little bit more about what you and your wife do, the kind of patients that you

00:53:58.560 see and how you're getting them off of these psychiatric drugs and helping them actually

00:54:04.160 feel better holistically.

00:54:05.980 Sure.

00:54:06.240 So a lot of the patients we see are people who have been on medications for years and

00:54:16.540 they are just at the end of the road.

00:54:19.360 You know, every time they go to the conventional system, they get a new medication and they're

00:54:24.800 not thriving.

00:54:25.600 They're not doing well. 0.97

00:54:26.540 They have brain fog.

00:54:27.580 They're fatigued.

00:54:28.260 They can't sleep even though they're on massive doses of sedatives and their quality of life

00:54:33.700 is just terrible.

00:54:35.060 So typically that patient may find us at that point or they may even try and come off the

00:54:40.360 medication and then they'll experience withdrawal because another part of this dark narrative

00:54:47.980 is that you remember before I was telling you about these academics and how they had been

00:54:54.100 compromised.

00:54:54.660 Well, back in the early 90s and early 2000s, the issue of psychiatric drug withdrawal was

00:55:02.860 sort of bubbling up from grassroots.

00:55:06.060 And so Eli Lilly ended up sponsoring a consensus panel where they picked all of these professors

00:55:11.740 from these different institutions and they put them together and they said, well, you know,

00:55:16.560 what do you guys think about this withdrawal issue?

00:55:18.620 And the conclusion of that consensus panel who were all heavily biased was that drug withdrawal

00:55:25.300 was mild and it went away in two weeks.

00:55:28.160 And so, and they based this off the three-month clinical trials.

00:55:32.980 And so, yeah, no wonder, you know, in a three-month clinical trial, that's not enough physical

00:55:37.580 dependence to really build withdrawal, but they kind of bury it there.

00:55:42.540 And so, they generate this manuscript saying, don't be worried about withdrawal and the

00:55:47.180 drug companies, they give it to their sales rep.

00:55:49.680 And then anytime they're at a doctor's office and the doctor is saying, well, this patient

00:55:53.940 just had a problem with withdrawal and now they're worried, you know, they read something

00:55:57.380 in the news, they're worried they're never going to get off.

00:55:59.580 They say, hey, I've got this consensus paper from all of these academics that say it's not

00:56:03.820 a big deal.

00:56:05.020 What's happening to them is actually when you took them off their medication, their underlying

00:56:09.240 condition is coming back.

00:56:10.440 And so, they need to be back on the drug.

00:56:12.460 Wow.

00:56:13.080 And so, that's the kind of the status quo.

00:56:15.460 That's how I was trained.

00:56:17.600 And so, many doctors will end up pulling people off the medications really, really quickly.

00:56:23.420 And they don't give the person's brain time to adapt to the removal of the drug.

00:56:28.940 Because after several years and sometimes decades on this medication, the brain has adapted to

00:56:36.640 it through a process called homeostasis.

00:56:38.860 It's essentially like if you take a drug, not only does it change the way your neurotransmitters

00:56:45.240 are working, but it also changes the way your gut works and your heart works.

00:56:48.800 I mean, these neurotransmitters control everything in your body and your body doesn't like it.

00:56:53.580 So, it sends signals up to the brain to down-regulate receptors and make all these changes to kind of

00:56:59.580 bring it back into a more stable balance.

00:57:02.700 And if you just like yank the drug out in two weeks, it's like pulling foundational beams out

00:57:09.580 of a building.

00:57:10.180 The whole thing just starts to collapse.

00:57:11.560 And so, while there are a group of people who can come off these drugs pretty rapidly because

00:57:18.440 their brains are very elastic and they go through a bad withdrawal, maybe it lasts a month or two,

00:57:24.300 there's a massive group of people, I'm going to say millions of them, who when you do that,

00:57:29.680 they develop insomnia, severe anxiety, sometimes psychosis.

00:57:33.440 And it's completely disabling and it goes on for months at a time.

00:57:37.300 They're not able to look after their kids.

00:57:39.280 They're not able to care for the home.

00:57:41.140 They're not able to perform at work.

00:57:43.820 And it completely turns their life upside down.

00:57:47.680 And so, we get a lot of those patients who have tried to come off before the doctors have said,

00:57:52.540 hey, this was just proof you need to be on the drug forever.

00:57:54.720 And then, you know, they see me online or they come across something that I've, an op-ed that I've

00:58:02.180 written and they say, oh, wow, you know, this is, there's actually a way to come off in a more

00:58:06.720 gradual step-by-step approach.

00:58:09.540 And so, that's the first thing that we do.

00:58:11.180 Like, we will do custom design tapers for patients.

00:58:16.060 And it's typically just driven by three things.

00:58:19.000 There's three important things you need to understand about tapering.

00:58:21.480 The first is that using a liquid is always a really good idea.

00:58:25.040 That's because if you just cut tablets, the most you can cut them is into quarters.

00:58:30.360 And sometimes those quarters, like that's too big of a jump between doses.

00:58:35.120 But if you liquefy it, usually on a syringe, there's like a hundred little spaces.

00:58:38.920 You can just steadily bring it down every two weeks and you have a lot more control.

00:58:43.820 We teach patients to follow their body.

00:58:46.220 You know, don't do it on a set schedule.

00:58:48.380 You need to kind of learn how your brain is readapting.

00:58:52.140 You experience a wave of withdrawal.

00:58:54.860 Okay, okay, now it's gone away.

00:58:56.220 It's been two weeks.

00:58:56.980 Now I'm ready to do another drop.

00:58:58.900 And so, we tell them to get rid of a schedule, listen to your body to come off.

00:59:03.420 And then we also help people go really slow at the bottom.

00:59:06.020 Because most people don't understand that at the very low doses of the drug,

00:59:10.560 that's where most of the withdrawal symptoms hit because the drug is binding very tightly

00:59:16.760 to the receptors.

00:59:17.900 And at the low doses, just to kind of make it simple, is where all of a sudden the receptors

00:59:23.320 disengage very, very rapidly, much more than at the higher doses.

00:59:26.720 And it plunges people into withdrawal.

00:59:28.780 So, that's a bit of a technical approach.

00:59:30.660 But in a nutshell, we do these very slow tapers, usually over a year or two.

00:59:37.160 And when you do it in that way, my patients, they can keep on working.

00:59:42.140 They can keep on looking after their kids.

00:59:43.980 They never get overwhelmed.

00:59:45.400 They don't fall into horrific insomnia or anxiety.

00:59:49.260 And we guide them off.

00:59:53.100 And the other thing that we do is, you know, we look at, you know, so if we look at depression

01:00:00.960 and anxiety, it's like, where does it come from?

01:00:03.480 So, in the conventional system, it's like, hey, you know, depression and anxiety, it's

01:00:08.800 either, okay, there's some very clear, obvious problem in your life, like a trauma or a relationship

01:00:13.840 issue.

01:00:14.280 You go and see the therapist.

01:00:15.840 Everything else is a chemical imbalance.

01:00:17.620 Go and take a drug.

01:00:18.320 Like, that's how we kind of, you know, triage people.

01:00:24.260 But there's a whole bunch of other things that are really important.

01:00:28.360 I mean, diet being the main one, you know, for anyone who has symptoms of anxiety and depression

01:00:33.420 and they're way out of proportion to the stresses in their life or they just seem to come out

01:00:38.580 of nowhere, you have to look at their diet.

01:00:42.720 Inflammatory food makes people feel really bad.

01:00:45.700 You have to look at people's sleep as well.

01:00:49.580 You have to look at their overall stress levels.

01:00:52.760 And even for some people who are just like, if you're like a person who's just like wired

01:00:56.380 all the time and if you can't remember like the last time you clocked off work and you

01:01:01.580 just sat back and you're with your family or friends and you just felt really at ease

01:01:05.860 and comfortable and just like relaxed and you're just like, oh, I could take a nap.

01:01:10.740 If you don't feel that like fairly regularly, you're in like an amped up sympathetic state.

01:01:16.540 And so, you have to teach them about, you know, minimizing caffeine use, nicotine use,

01:01:21.320 also doing mind-body practices with like deep breathing exercises being really important.

01:01:26.280 You could do yoga, you can do different things, but just teach people some way of learning

01:01:31.760 to control like that sympathetic nervous system that gets people really amped up.

01:01:37.940 And so, we do all of that.

01:01:39.080 We also do a lot of medical testing looking for nutritional deficiencies and other sources

01:01:43.140 of problems like, you know, hormonal issues, estrogen, testosterone, also thyroid problems

01:01:49.920 as well.

01:01:50.600 And so, we try and just grab all of the things that people tend to miss and then we help them

01:01:56.800 with that while they're coming off the drugs.

01:01:58.560 Wow.

01:01:59.040 It's called the Taper Clinic.

01:02:00.300 Taper Clinic, yeah.

01:02:01.140 And where can I hear more from you and learn more about the clinic?

01:02:05.340 Yeah.

01:02:05.560 So, the best place to learn more about what we do is my YouTube channel.

01:02:10.620 So, that's the Dr. Josef and it's spelt in the German way.

01:02:14.960 So, it's J-O-S-E-F and we publish a whole bunch of videos on this topic, you know, drug

01:02:23.460 tapering, non-drug approaches for depression.

01:02:26.640 And if you're interested in learning more about my clinic, we're in, I think we're in like

01:02:30.440 16 or 17 U.S. states, the largest ones.

01:02:33.500 I did not realize that it was that big.

01:02:35.100 That's awesome.

01:02:35.720 Yeah.

01:02:35.980 Yeah.

01:02:36.160 We've got a growing team of people.

01:02:37.980 There's a big demand to come off these meds and that-

01:02:42.440 There is, for sure.

01:02:42.760 It's only going to get bigger.

01:02:44.060 Yeah.

01:02:44.420 Yeah.

01:02:44.800 I'm thinking it's like, are we, well, I hope not, you know, I hope, you know, what I wish

01:02:49.960 is that we get, you know, with Bobby now in charge, we actually get people shifting towards

01:02:56.340 more sustainable ways.

01:02:58.860 The cynic in me is like, oh, you know, is mental health going to get worse?

01:03:01.840 And then I think about AI and like the loss of jobs and stuff.

01:03:05.660 I'm just like, okay, that's really bad.

01:03:07.560 But I'm like, I don't know, maybe if we have really good public health and we can get people

01:03:11.580 moving and eating the right foods and, you know, not getting led astray with these weird

01:03:19.440 narratives about the drugs, like it will get better.

01:03:21.620 But anyway, so my clinic, if people want to find me and learn more about our business,

01:03:27.840 it's taperclinic.com.

01:03:30.320 Taperclinic.com.

01:03:30.840 Taperclinic.com.

01:03:31.340 Easy enough.

01:03:32.020 Yeah.

01:03:32.480 Well, Dr. Yosef, thank you so much for taking the time to join us and enlighten us.

01:03:36.480 And thank you so much for what you and your wife do, for being willing to go out and do

01:03:42.080 something different that is very, very necessary.

01:03:44.500 So I appreciate y'all.

01:03:45.920 Thanks so much for having me, Allie.

01:03:47.240 Allie.

01:03:47.300 Allie.

01:03:47.680 Allie.

01:03:48.240 Allie.

01:03:49.240 Allie.

01:03:49.300 Allie.

01:03:50.240 Allie.

01:03:51.240 Allie.

01:03:51.620 Allie.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - December 12, 2025

Ep 1278 ｜ Former FDA Official Unveils Pharma’s Shocking Lies About Depression ｜ Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring

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