Ask Dr. Drew - Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring: Is Rising Violence Fueled By SSRI Drugs Meant to Fix It? + How Leland Vittert Tackled Autism & Became A NewsNation TV Anchor – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 541

Episode Date: October 11, 2025

Is the mental health crisis fueled by drugs meant to fix it? Despite a 450% surge in antidepressant use, mental health outcomes are worsening especially among young adults. Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring, a psychiatrist and expert on drug-tapering, warns SSRIs may be linked to rising violence. Dr. Witt-Doerring points to FDA corruption and psychiatry’s focus on quick-fix prescriptions over root-cause care, like nutrition and trauma support. He critiques lifelong drug reliance and severe withdrawal effects, pushing for reforms including better informed consent and integrating life skills into treatment to address the spiraling crisis. Leland Vittert is host of On Balance with Leland Vittert and NewsNation’s chief Washington anchor. When Leland was diagnosed with autism, his father quit his job to coach him full-time in social skills and humor. Later, Leland became a foreign correspondent and anchor at Fox News before getting his own show on NewsNation. He tells his story in the book “Born Lucky: A Dedicated Father, A Grateful Son, and My Journey with Autism“. Learn more at https://bornluckybook.com and https://x.com/lelandvittert Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring is a board-certified psychiatrist and former FDA medical officer. As Medical Director of TaperClinic, he specializes in safe de-prescription of psychiatric medications and recovery from psychiatric drug injury. He previously worked for Janssen Pharmaceuticals (Johnson & Johnson) and the FDA. Follow at https://x.com/drjosefWD NOTE: Suddenly stopping mental health medications may cause dangerous side effects or withdrawals. Only start or stop these medications under the direction of your physician. 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/sponsors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/fatty15⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/paleovalley⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • VSHREDMD – Formulated by Dr. Drew: The Science of Cellular Health + World-Class Training Programs, Premium Content, and 1-1 Training with Certified V Shred Coaches! More at https://drdrew.com/vshredmd • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twc.health/drew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://kalebnation.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Susan Pinsky (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/firstladyoflov⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠e⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, Leland Vittert is the host of On Balance with Leland Vittert on News Nation. He is a Washington anchor and he was diagnosed with autism and his father dedicated himself to supporting his son such a way that he could manage those symptoms. I won't take away the glory that his book will tell you about. The book is born lucky, a dedicated father, a grateful son. journey with autism. You can follow Leland on X at Leland L-A-N-D, V-I-T-T-E-R-T-E-R-T-E-R-T-E-R-T-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-E-R-N-N-E-R-N-E-L-E-L-E-E-V-D. Back after this.

Our laws, as it pertain to substances, are draconian and bizarre. The psychopaths start this right. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction. Fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for, I say, where the hell you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician.

I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Lovelin all the time, educate adolescents, and to prevent, and to treat. You have trouble. You can't stop, and you want to help stop it. I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. Did you lock the front door? Check.

Close the garage door? Yep. Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision? No. I... And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection, and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web? I'm looking into it Stress less about security Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online Visit tellus.com slash total security to learn more

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Drew to receive 15% off a 90-day starter kit subscription or use code Dr. Drew at checkout for that 15% off or just go to our website, Dr.Drew.com slash fatty 15. All right, Leland is a friend and those of you that like News Nation, I'm sure you are fans, as am I. His book is a strong, recommended read. It is, again, born lucky, a dedicated father. Leeland, welcome to the program. Hey, good to be with you.

the tables have turned. Indeed they have. Let's see how this goes. We do okay when you're the host. Let's see how we do when I'm the host. So I think the place we should start obviously is the book. And Caleb, let me ask you, do we have a click-through to purchase the book? Oh, yes.

They can go to the website, Dr. Drew.com slash 106, 2025, and they'll find all the links right there. Sure enough. Tell us about the book, sir. So this book is proof that there is hope for every parent who has a kid who is struggling, not just the way I did with autism, but with anxiety, ADHD, things you and I, Dr. Drew, have talked about a lot for young kids, bullying, the difficulties of growing up, social media. This is my father's quest to adapt me to the world rather than adapt the world to me. So we launched the book a week ago. It has now sold out a couple of times on Amazon. They're printing another 40,000 copies because not my story, but because of how this story speaks to parents who want hope and I think also want agency that they can make an enormous difference in their kids' lives.

Did your father attempt this on his own or did he get advice? or consultation or were you in any way assessed or once they were assessed, did he throw all that away and do it on his own? Yes, sort of to different parts of that question. So when I was about five, it was very clear I had real issues. So they were told by the school that I went to that I needed to be evaluated, went to one of these medical testing centers. Parents send me off. They sit there in the waiting room with the, you know, linoleum floors and bad coffee and old magazines. Woman comes back and says, look, there is a lot going on in his head.

We really don't understand it. I had real terrible behavioral issues. So I would hit anybody who touched me because it was so abrasive to me. Sensory issues with, you know, my socks and clothes and all sorts of things. Anger management issues. They did an IQ test. So two halves of an IQ test. test. On one half, I was genius. On the other half, I was mentally retarded. So in the parliance of the

day, a 20-point IQ spread was a learning disability. I had a 70 point. And like any parent, my parents said, what can we do? And the woman says, not much. And my dad goes, anything we can do. And the woman goes, generally not. So he then embarked on this quest to adapt me to the world. And that was, you know, taking somebody who had an EQ, an emotional intelligence, below freezing, and over time, day by day, hour by hour, teaching me social and human interaction. Inborn lucky, we take you through that. The famous watchtap, where if we were at lunch or whatever, and I was talking too much, who would tap his watch, and I would be quiet, and then we would remember that moment. Later, we would post-game it, and trying to give me some kind of self-esteem. So I couldn't be good at school.

I wasn't going to be good athletics, friends. Go ahead. I want to ask you something. So the one sort of ineffable ingredient in kids getting better with various sorts of challenges is the child's willingness to participate. And this is, you know, this is an old problem in psychiatry. You know, there was like a joke, you know, how many psychiatrists did it take to screw in a light bulb? you know, one, but the light bulb has to want to be screwed in. And so that's kind of especially something I've known.

Like, I had a kid with a learning issue around reading and stuff. And at the age of nine, we gave him some, you know, some consultation and training. And he just, he just dedicated himself to it. I couldn't have done that at nine. I couldn't have done it. And so were you, was there something about that that, you know, your internal motivation, Was that because of your dad's dedication? Was it something in you?

Was it something that just developed over time? Is there a way we can get our head around that piece a little bit? I think it's a great question. And one so far I haven't been asked in all of the media we've done. So you hit the nail on the head. And actually the woman who diagnosed me said to my parents just that. He has to want it. But I had to know what I wanted, right?

And I think that was a big part of... Right. that was a big part of the honesty that came from my father that is so different than I think what is in the literature today of just meet everyone where they're at. Every kid is perfect. Celebrate them for who they are. Celebrate their oddities, whatever you want to call it. That was not my family. My dad was very clear that he loved me and he thought I was wonderful. But if I wanted to interact in the real world, I had to understand how to adapt and modify my behavior to meet people. where they were and meet the world where it was. So it was a very clear conversation. It was always from a position of love on his part. He never said, you know, you suck. But it was clear that he would say, you know, there are, there's a lot to this that you can change and worked with me tirelessly to do that. I want to talk more about what he did. But the phrase meet people, meet a patient, say where they are, is one of the scariest phrases.

that has entered. It's really social work, is how it got in. And not that I'm saying you should negate where a patient is. What I'm saying is I specifically don't want you to be where you are, and I want you to come with me. I want you. And oftentimes in the world of addiction, I have to put a whole team around that person

to make sure they can't break through that wall, and let's go. Let's do this hard work of taking you somewhere else, not meeting you where you are, starting where you are, of course, I'm not going to abuse you where you are, but we're going to go somewhere else. This meet people where they are just immediately implies they can just stay where they're if they want because they're perfect and they're cool and they're me, man. You're you, so who's better than you?

That was definitely not the conversation I had. I think my dad made a distinction, right, between the things that he felt I was good at and could be proud of, which was work ethic and attitude and character. And then the things that I was going to have to adapt on, which was how I interacted with people and how I dealt with the rest of the world. He quit his job. Is that right? Yeah, it's a great point. I mean, he said, I realized at five years old, you weren't going to have any friends. So I thought I could be your friend. And he never talked to anybody about this. You know, he never got therapists. He never had counselors. He never told any one of my diagnosis that was never extra.

time on test. There was never a behavior modification plan. It was just him helping me. And I've gotten this a few times because born lucky, you know, is this story of dad and I. It's not a prescription. It's not a cure. He's in my journey together. People say, well, you know, that's great. Your dad could quit his job. And I asked him about that as we were writing this book. And he said, well, he said, you know, I knew that you needed me before school and after school. And if it meant I would have had to work the night shift in a factory, I would have done it because I knew that was your only chance was for me to be there every night and put you back together after the bullying and isolation of school. You said we wrote this book together. I think that's, I was going to be

my next question is your father's input as a reader. You know, I'm very interested in that. It's a great, great moment with my dad and I, he didn't tell anybody, right, about this. He didn't tell me I was diagnosed until I was in my 20s, didn't tell my sister. So, born lucky is the deepest, darkest, most difficult moments of my life. And I think when you read it, you realize just how raw a lot of this emotion was. You know, a teacher looking at me in eighth grade in front of the entire class and saying, you know, if my dog was as ugly as you vittered, I'd shave its ass and make it walk backwards. Principals calling my parents in to say, two weeks into school,

everybody in this school thinks Lucky's really weird and I do too. So dad really didn't want to tell a lot of these stories. And I was interviewing him for it. Every story, he's like, are sure you want to tell this? Are you sure you want to tell that? And I said, we're not going to do this. He said, you're going to tell me everything. I'm going to write it.

If you don't like it, we're not turning in the manuscript. And you'll know this because you've written a lot of books. I didn't really have a plan if he said no, because I had a book contract. But we'll deal with that. I thought we would deal with that later. And so I gave it to him to read. And again, he came back. he said, boy, this is a lot of really deep, deep, personal, dark stuff.

And I said, I know. I said, but let me turn this around. If rather than telling you there really wasn't a lot of hope, that woman had diagnosed me and said, here, read this and handed you born lucky, how would you have felt? And he said, I would have read it every single week. What a great question. And what a great sort of endorsement of the book for... families with non-neuronormative kids.

Does, is it, does your dad, I mean, you're not trying to be prescriptive, as you say, but is there a prescription in there? You know, I mean, because there sort of is, right? I mean, let's, let me say it. Let me say what the prescription is. And you do tell me if I'm deriving, you know, concluding correctly. Self-esteem movement was a failure. We probably are due better teaching kids to develop grit.

And they're varying ways to develop grit, but it's certainly not by being overly gratifying. It's trying to support kids as they are challenged in small, incremental ways. Right? Isn't this the prescription? Yeah. I think it's the undo. It is the story of what, in the words of George Will, who wrote the forward, the mountain moving power of parental love. And this isn't the story of how to turn your autistic kid into a TV news anchor, right? But it is a story of how to, through parental love and teaching grit and supporting and holding their hand through adversity, every kid, whether neurodivergent to use the term, whether with social anxiety,

whether with just problems with bullying, whatever it is, helping them meet their full potential and be more because their parents said, let's go, and I'm going to support you. And I'm going to make sure that self-esteem is earned, not given. And I think that was one of the pieces of the book that spoke to you. Oh, my God, yes. That and an idea that, I mean, it's, it is prescriptive for parenting generally. Gosh, it's interesting to me. This book kind of, there was a book, a friend of my wrote called Fear of Failure that I liked very much a long time ago, you know, because parents weren't letting their kids fail.

This is the next level. This is the next iteration of how parents should think about things, which is fundamentally exposed. Exposure. But your dad really, exposure, you don't just throw kids, you know, into some horrible situation. That's traumatizing. But incremental exposure with support, with the available resource of another mind, extremely beneficial for all parenting. The opposite of safe spaces, the opposite of wah-wa-wobsy, you're you, only you can be you. You're great as you are or whatever that nonsense is. It's the opposite. It's how you. It's how you. you create impaired people with the way we've been doing it? Yeah, there was no safe spaces and well, I should take that back. There certainly weren't safe spaces at school, right? You know, the bullying and the isolation was crushed. Most of the stories in the book are about the teachers and how awful they were because you can imagine if the teachers were that awful, the kids were even worse. But I had no friends and my dad knew that. So the safe space, right, was him and him putting

me back together every night. But I would call that, it's different. That's refueling. There's a formal term for it. It's called rapprochement. It's where you go back to the parent for the safety of refueling and checking in. And then you go back out into the world. That's not, because the safe space is you never go in the world.

You stay in the safe space. You avoid the world. I'm more interested, I'm also interested in the bullying. Have you gone back around to talk to any people who knew you when they were unkind to you? You know, it's a great question, Dr. Drew. In the book, there is one person who emailed me, and this was when I was in Libya as a foreign correspondent, and the father of a kid who was just awful to me emailed to say how

proud everybody in St. Louis was because they were all watching me on Fox News. And I got that after having come back from the front lines for the day, and we were in this little makeshift workspace that we had in a hotel, a couple of towns from the front lines. And I write in, born lucky, it was the single most surprising thing. I had been shot at. I had been in Gaddafi's torture chambers. I had run with the rebels. I've been bombed by Gaddafi. You know, all of these things had happened, including being in Tahrir Square when Mubarak resigned. And that email surprised me by far the most. just surprise or did you have any sort of good feelings did you feel like proud i think what my dad wanted

to teach me and his mantra to me was the characteristics and qualities and your ethic that is getting you bullied and isolated and beat up and tortured in high school and middle school um is going to be what makes you successful later on and And by example after example, right, if, you know, if you can survive really hard things, you know you can survive more really hard things. Now, what dad didn't say is that middle school would be the perfect training for a Washington newsroom. I know what you mean. I've been there.

Yeah. Yeah. So, but I think also the feeling to me always was not about what people were doing to me, but was about what I wanted to accomplish. And that was what dad always sort of put as the North Star, right, is setting goals, achieving them, whether it was about doing 200 pushups a day when I was a kid, to your point to earn self-esteem,

little moments to teach that grit. And I've been so sort of stunned by the outpouring that I've heard since the books came out a week ago, the father of a profoundly autistic kid who told me his 20-year-old son had just started swimming, went from splashing in the pool to swimming a mile and a quarter. And it's like, yes, that is the, that is the story, right, of born lucky and not giving kids self-esteem, but helping them earn it. Let's spend our last few minutes, if you don't mind, talking about your insights generally about what's going on in this country and Maha, maybe particularly, in that one of the great, I have lots of non-neuronormative friends.

And I love, I love asking them for insights because they see things I don't see, right? it's one of the gifts of of having you know this these these liabilities there's sort of nothing in evolution that that isn't part asset part liability you know what I mean even even things that seem like full liability come with real serious assets associated with them and so you know this world we're in right now it feels like things are being ratcheted up to the point are just they are getting absurd and I'm wondering what they look like to you And then I want to talk a little about Maha. Generally speaking, in terms of American politics, I come from the idea that America is still the greatest place on Earth.

And yes, things are getting ratcheted up. It's the way it happens. If you go back to the 1790s, things were ratcheted up pretty high back then to. Same around the Civil War. Same in the 1930s. Same in the 1960s and 70s. So people forget in the 1970s, there were bombs going off every few days in America. with the weather underground and others so i don't i don't subscribe to this idea that the american

experiment is teetering on the edge of you know ending or on the edge of some kind of abyss uh i don't and i don't subscribe to it when it comes from either party because both use this sort of hyper hyper um disasterized message of you know tomorrow could be the end if this doesn't happen or if this does happen i don't see that um but i think it also goes to to sort of spin that in, the Maha movement, and how there is so many people now who are far more interested in scoring political points against Donald Trump or RFK Jr.

Than acknowledging the rise of autism should be the scientific question of our time. Right. I saw another trend where once again they were saying it's just got to be the data. Yeah, I'm sure some of it is the data, but it's so clear that there's been some sort of,

I will tell you, just the observation I had some 15 years ago, well, probably in the 90s and in the middle 2000, I used to give lectures at Caltech to the freshman students. And when I first got there, you know, you can kind of, you can see moderately autistic kids. They just, you know, just sometimes they make themselves evident. And that group went from two or three kids to the bottom third of the class. I mean, the bottom third, I mean, the bottom third of the room, they'd be in front. And I thought, wow, this is, and the school started having specialized programs for autistic students because so many had entered into this training, which makes sense. We've always known that scientists, you know, really bright scientists, often have, they're often non-neuronormative. And but it seemed to suddenly, I just saw it increase and then you started hearing about it more on a national scale.

And what exactly has happened here? I mean, there's, I think there's going to be multiplicity of factors. I'm a little frustrated with sort of the Maha faithful is that science moves slowly. You don't get answers overnight. And they want everything yesterday and tomorrow. And at the same time, they seem to be getting confused about the difference between wellness and medical sciences. Those are two different topics. Yes, they overlap a little bit.

But the fact is, you need medical research. We need pharmacological agents. We will all get sick at some point. When you do, people like me, use those pharmacological agents to help prevent disability and death. Now, how we use them and what we spend on them and all these things and, you know, how the research is done. Yeah, these are all needs to be talked about. How the research is tainted or not tainted. I'm so glad we're doing all that.

But it's not like I heard so much complaining about the recent deal that the government made with Merck. was it Merck? No, Pfizer, I'm sorry, Pfizer. Pfizer. And I get it. I get it. I would love an apology from these people. I want some, I get the why they're complaining. But we, we, there's a complex situation and we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. What do you think? This is not my world. You know, I am a television anchor and I am not a scientist and I am not a doctor. Therefore I don't have, and I have the chemistry grades to prove all of that. So it scares me. Let me interrupt you. If you don't mind, I want to interrupt you because it's so shocking to hear you say that

because during COVID, every television anchor I saw had an opinion about a medication and they just learned how to pronounce or a particular, I mean, it was unbelievable. The next day, they had an opinion about a medication I've been using for 20 years and complex medical management of an ICU patient. They had opinions. Thank you for pointing out how effing insane that was. That was insane, but go on. I'm sorry.

Yeah, as I said, I have the chemistry grades to prove I am not either of those things. So therefore, I don't opine on. I listen to experts. I interview experts. I question them, whichever side they are on and then come to a conclusion. I think you're very right to point out that science happens slowly. And science, I don't have to tell you this, but the best line I heard was science is the pursuit of the truth. It is not the truth.

Yes. And that. It never gets the truth. It never can achieve the truth. It is, I even move it back one step further. It's a pursuit of an approximation of the truth because we know we can never know the truth in total. God knows the truth. We don't know the truth.

We know a lot and we've really, we've used this scientific method to peer into nature, but we don't know the truth. Right. And I think what is most interesting is, you know, to your purpose. point about every TV anchor was an expert on COVID. There is this response when it comes to what's causing the explosion of autism cases, one in 1,500 when I was a kid, one in 31, three times higher in boys, much higher and poor in minority communities, that no one can tell you what it is. But everybody is damn sure that it is not vaccines, and you must say that first. and I had J. Batachari on who said, I can't tell you what the answer is.

This is the head of the NIH. And he says, I don't think it's vaccines, but that makes it sound like I know it's not vaccines and I don't know. So I think finally now we're having people who are willing to ask this question. And this is personal for me, right? Because if my wife was pregnant, I would not like to have an autistic child. I know what growing up with autism was like, born lucky categorizes it. lays it out there. It was a miserable existence. I would love to check the box that no, my child won't have autism. So if we can find the answer to that question, wonderful. It should be

a common cause. And I think that would be a really fantastic thing. And now that people are willing to ask that question without having any sacred cows and not being afraid to ask the question is fantastic. I agree. And I would urge you to hang your faith on J. Badacharya. When he told me that he was being considered for NIH, I was like a Shakespearean moment for me. It was poetic.

Like, this is unbelievable. This man that Francis Collins suggested needed to be subjected to a devastating takedown and an email to Fauci is, I called him a fringe epidemiologist.

Ugh, these these moments should never be forgotten. There's learning. all of them. Well, thank you for writing the book. Thank you for being out here talking about it. Thank you for being so reasonable on this topic. What is coming up on on balance? What are you looking forward to this week? Well, we're going to have Speaker Johnson on tomorrow. We have Bill O'Reilly on tonight. Specific to Born Lucky, I hope you come on and talk about it as well. But we're going to look at why this has had such an extraordinary reception outside of the autism

community. And I think what we're going to find is that so many parents, not of autistic kids, of kids with ADHD, had a mother who come up to me and thank me for writing it whose kid had a nut allergy and was told, just take peanuts out. Everywhere he is, you have to eliminate peanuts. And she goes, no, I'm going to figure out a way to desensitize my kid. And now he's in an ROTC, which he never would have been able to be in. So that's the born-lucky story. We're going to be looking at that throughout the week. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're at the vanguard of a generational shift where we're going to understand the failure of

safe spaces and self-esteem movement and all this nonsense. And you're right there. We started with allowing kids to fail. Now we're at let's really challenge them and help them build so they can flexibly adapt to the world such as it is.

My wife loved and so did I, by the way, that interview you did with O'Reilly on the strong band in history. I forget how it was framed. the evil confronting evil yeah it was great and it's

really hard to make they give you no time and you guys were able to distill it down to some really interesting nuggets yeah I know you're talking about Bill O'Reilly's confronting evil we did a special on it

his book is out I consider myself a student of history and I learn things reading reading it Bill goes through sort of about 13 or 14 of the most evil in the world there are Americans on the list. Obviously, the big ones, Hitler, Pol Pot, and others are on their own.

Sorry, Pol Pot didn't make it. He was the one who didn't. It was Hitler, Stalin, and also Putin in comparing those. So I appreciate you saying that. That special is available on News Nation. And then Bill and I also did a special about the book because I wanted a journalist to really question me on it rather than trying to kind of just do a puff piece.

I think I'm on the book, too. Originally we were going to, you and I were going to talk. a little bit about the book in person. Yeah, you were part of the special. Yeah, you were part of the special as well. Charlie Kirk. Yeah, Charlie Kirk. Yeah, Charlie Kirk's. Yeah, Charlie Kirk's, uh, yeah, Charlie Kirk's, uh, and uh, I was, I was fine. I was glad you were able to go out and participate in that. That's, and I was happy to participate in your book and happy that you were able to make it to that event. So, listen, uh, great to see you. I love, uh, we'll have to do more of this role shift stuff. I like this. Well, as we get to know each other. This is fine.

I'm at your service. I look forward to being on your show as well and just congratulations on all your success. Thank you. Good to see it. Liam, good to see you too. Okay, get the book, read the book. If you're actually if you're a parent, I mean, again, it's a paradigm shift, right?

We're moving into a world where parenting is not seen as some sort of helicopter protecting, you know, free, we're not saying free range is the way to go. We're saying that challenging, exposing, and refueling, then challenging, and doing it in a very systematic way over long periods of time really helps people develop

the ability to manage in life. You have to have resiliency. You know, people, maybe I'll talk to Dr. Vit During about this, is that we don't really have a, we don't have actually a definition of mental health. We have a definitions of mental illness, but not really a mental health.

And we'll talk a little bit about that. We're also talking about the challenges of psychiatry. There's a lot of things worth thinking about in terms of, are we over-medicating? I'm in the opinion we both under and over-medicate simultaneously. We couldn't get it worse. And the rise in violence, suicides are up. There's so much to talk about.

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is something. I literally, this cup next to me had a bunch of bone broth in it just a few minutes ago. It's at doctoru.com slash paleo valley, 15% off your first order, 20% off when you subscribe. Again, that is at Dr. drew.com slash paleo valley. So our next guest is a physician, psychiatrist, who is raising concerns about some of the issues that are pertinent psychiatry. including things such as the increased suicide rate, seemingly issues with identity formation,

all the issues of gender formation, there also is increased violence, and there's seemingly excessive prescribing of SSRIs and other psychiatric medication. You can follow Dr. Joseph Witt During at, I think it's Dr. Joseph, JOSEF, says WD. I wonder if that's MD. I'm going to have him clarify that for me. and also the Taper Clinic, T-A-P-E-R-Clinic.com. Dr. Vitt Daring, thank you so much for joining us. Dr. Drew, great to be here, and it is W-D for W-D-Ferring,

so you got it right when you said it the first time. There we go. Thank you for straightening that out. So deprescribing has been a hot topic in the world of pharmacology. The pharmacologist have been spearheading the de-prescribing movement generally, but I would argue, of course, most of that is for elderly patients on pharmacopoeia. You know, elderly patients can put on one medicine after another medicine after another medicine, and, you know, three quarters of them they don't need. So that's where

deep prescribing came from. But psychiatry is kind of a special case within that movement. Tell me about it. So, yes, I mean, deep prescribing, it's a big deal right now. I mean, some of the statistics we have on this, frankly, horrifying. if you ask me, we have one in three women over 60 on a psychiatric medication now. That is absurd. And also, if we look at how much, how many antidepressants we're using, it's gone up by a factor of five since the early 90s. And you would think that, you know, with the increased use of these medications,

we might actually be getting better results, but that's not what we're seeing. In fact, suicide rates are up. Psychiatric disability is up. More people are depressed than ever. and so it kind of makes you go to this question of are these drugs really working? Are they really effective? And for a lot of patients, they're finding that they're not and that they've kind of been sold a lie. And the lie really is that these medications are fixing a chemical imbalance. Patients are told that there's something wrong with their brain and if you take this antidepressant,

it's going to fix you just like a type 1 diabetic needs insulin. There's something wrong with your brain. and you need the drug to make it better. But that's simply not the case. You know, the drugs that we've never found a chemical imbalance and essentially the way that they're working is by masking symptoms. Now, most people intuitively know that if you just sweep problems under the rug, they don't go away and they fester.

And that's really what's happening with a lot of anxiety and depression treatment in the US. And so what happens when you use these drugs to essentially mask symptoms is that for many people, they wear off over time. You know, our body is not a static machine. You know, it develops tolerance. It reduces the amount of serotonin we're producing.

It desensitizes the receptors. And you get many patients who have been on these drugs for, you know, two to five years. They're now maxed out on the dose. It's not doing anything. And they're dealing with the same problems. On top of that, especially with the SSRIs, many people gradually feel worse over time. This is one of the biggest secrets that no one is talking about. It's the fact that long-term SSRIs.

is associated with fatigue, brain fog, and low motivation. This is often missed by doctors, and they end up stacking them on multiple medications. And before you know it, you have someone on five different meds and they're at the end of the line. And that's usually when I find them. And so, you know, right now there's hundreds of thousands of people online in communities who are in this situation. They're, they're nuked on multiple drugs and they're trying to come off. And they're finding it's actually very difficult. And so that's, you know, that's really what I've been focusing on is helping these people find a way out of this maze. I think the public looks at the prescribing of psychotropic medications and goes, you know, if this is so unaffective, why did

doctors do it? But the reality is there, you and I are both seeing, there, there is benefit short term for the properly selected patients, properly prescribed. By the way, shouldn't be a primary care doctor doing it because primary care doctors have virtually no training in this. Just a quick aside, I spent 35 years working in a psychiatric hospital. I was always interested in brain and psychiatry and stuff, but I didn't want to be a psychiatrist. But I watch you guys very carefully, and I learned a lot. And so, you know, I can identify things. I can figure out what's going on.

But even with all that experience, I know as a primary care doctor, as an internist, I should not, I will always get a psychiatric consult if I think somebody really need psychiatric medication. So, A, we don't do that. B, we don't look past the short term oftentimes. We get some short term stabilization. Then another doctor sees the patient in the system the way it is now. The doctor that did the initial prescriber doesn't even see the patient half the time these days or a nurse practitioner falls up or somebody else sees the patient. And just to add on, just to pile on to what you were saying, you know, there's a whole.

you mentioned motivation being off, sexual desire, sexual responsiveness, all that stuff can be permanently affected by this. You know, Dr. Drew, you really touched on a very common experience for Americans these days. They are going in and getting these drugs from family medicine doctors after about five to ten, you know, five to ten minutes of FaceTime.

That's where the majority of SSRIs are being prescribed. And you know as well as I do that, you know, five to ten minutes really isn't enough to actually understand the complexity of a person's life. You know, now that more people are realizing that depression and anxiety, it's much more than just genes or a brain illness. I mean, we're talking about fixing problems like your diet, you know, your lifestyle, the fact that people aren't moving enough, relationship problems, traumas that turn up in people's lives and how they connect with one another, issues with meaning and work. These are some of the most complicated things that people go through.

And obviously they make people unhappy and depressed. And if you are relying on a family medicine doctor with five to ten minutes of FaceTime to help you untangle some of the most complicated issues in your life, I mean, you're delusional. And I wish I could say, you know, here's the thing. Yeah, you go. Go ahead, finish that thought.

Oh, I was going to say. Well, I was going to say, I wish I could be more promising about like what happens with the psychiatrist as well. But honestly, it's not that different. with psychiatrists. Right. Well, at least it's done from, with a more skilled input. At least you have a chance.

But the, but it is kind of, there is kind of a mass delusion going on, which is this, and I bring this up all the time. I hope people listen to me when I say this. We are in a time in this country, particularly this country, where we expect pharmacological agents

to make life better. They are not designed. to make life better. They are designed to intervene on disabling and life-threatening illness. Period. End. And only when the risk is worth it. And half the time it's not. Even if

you do have a serious condition, you may elect not to try some of these things that we're talking about that are handed out casually. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. Gosh, if I was in a motor vehicle accident, bring me to the emergency room, get me fixed. If I had tuberculosis or an infection, something life-threatening like that,

they can actually hit the cause. I want to see, you know, a traditionally trained doctor. But if I'm having like, you know, problems with obesity or diabetes or high blood pressure or anxiety and depression, lifestyle diseases, gosh, we are not doing a great job in the US. And, and patients need to hear that. I think they're waking up to it. They realize that they have to take a lot more ownership of their health because these things, they're not quick fixes. I mean, if I were to tell you, you know, how long do you think it takes for you to find the right partner to be with or a good social circle or, you know, to find work that you find meaningful? Gosh, you could be figuring that out for a couple decades. I mean, good, you said

in the previous segment, you know, what what does good mental health mean? Well, it's a lot of these things, good relationships, good work and good physical health. And you cultivate these things over several years, sometimes even decades. And, yeah, I mean, you know, thinking that you're going to get that in a pill, it's just crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, it's interpersonal health. It's meaningful engagement in the world. It's, of course, you know, not having overwhelming pain or depression or these things that can disable you.

But we can get you out of those things pretty quickly. But you've got to go back to managing. Ultimately, it's meaning-making and service and contributing. I mean, really, that's where it's at. Couldn't agree more. The Hulu original series Murdoch Death and the Family dives into secrets, deception, murder, and the fall of a powerful dynasty.

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Yeah. So I'm sure you heard the conversation that I was having with Leland a few minutes ago. There's a couple of things embedded in that conversation that I wanted to get to you on. One was this issue of how do you motivate a child in particular when you're trying to do interventions as a parent or you're using, needing professional intervention. I've seen over and over again. If the child participates, outcomes are good. Child is resistant. Outcomes are rarely good.

Do you have techniques other than motivational interviewing for getting through those blocks? I'm going to say something really. I think Leland was actually a very unique case because he was obviously very motivated. Whenever I see problems like psychiatric problems in kids, it's not the kid's fault. It's the parents' fault.

You have to work with the parents. A lot of the times there's problems in the house, I mean, there can be neglect, there can be abuse, there can be dysfunctional parenting styles. And they want to just send, they want to pack the kid up and send it away to the doctor so they don't have to change. When the most effective thing is bringing in mom and dad, getting to know them and finding out what is happening in that internal environment. So much of child psychiatry, I mean, it's just, it's parenting and finding way to fix it. So that's how I really look at it.

If you can help the parents kind of step into their roles, for the mother to help the child feel safe, for the father to coach the child, make them feel brave, socialize them to the world. If you can get those things happen, if you can give the child enough attention, a lot of these problems, they do a lot better. And it's a lot better doing that

than putting kids on SSRIs that increase the rate of suicide and can potentially cause sexual problems that can be permanent. And again, it's one of these issues where even I think the doctors sometimes, you know, we're in a system that's just like very transactional, quick visits, all of this. And they don't have time to do this. And so, you know, reactively we're saying, well, I don't have time to, you know, do all of this therapy with the parents. Here you go, take this pill. It's FDA approved to see you later without even telling them that the drugs are studied for no longer than a year. And it's just like, you know, it's, I think it's a dereliction of duty that that's going on. And I think our patients and and our, and our. children deserve more than that. Yeah, I always said, you know, adolescence and prior, your patient is the patient is the family unit. That's your primary patient. And do you agree with what we were talking about as it pertains to exposure therapies and resiliency? Yeah, I mean, one of the, so, gosh, I'm going to come at this in a roundabout way.

I actually don't think therapists are doing a great job either in this country. And I'm going to link it back to your question about what is good mental health. You know, sometimes your good mental health is getting in good relationships. Sometimes it's, you know, you know, getting in the right career. And so let's just talk about relationships, for instance. If you are really lonely, sometimes you need someone to encourage you to get exposed to social situations. You need sort of that paternal or masculine energy. You need someone to say, how can we expose you to increasingly, you know, scary situations for you?

so you learn that you're brave. I find that that doesn't really happen a lot in psychotherapy. This is what I'm hearing from my patients. I feel like therapy in a big way has actually become very just, it's very much about validation. It's very much about, oh, and I understand why things are so difficult for you. You know, this is, it's almost like an excuse for why you're suffering instead of kind of, you know, a bit more direction and just saying,

hey, here are the things that you need to do to actually fix things in your life. I think exposure therapy is really, really useful. It's why I like things like DBT, which are much more skills-based that really help people like learn new techniques in managing things. And I think we could use a lot more of this, you know, this sort of push to kind of push outside of your comfort zone instead of all of the validation that happens.

Yeah, I agree. It's one of the reasons 12 steps works so well. You start with, shut up, put the cotton in your mouth, take the cotton out of your ears, more in your mouth. Just shut up and listen and start doing the simple things we tell you. Yeah, I always said when I was treating addicts, if you did, if you do everything I tell you, you'll get well.

If you don't, there you go. Which brings up an interesting question for me, which is, you know, we see some of these behaviors now. I don't know if it's just because, I don't think it's just because of social media that we're seeing some of these outrageous, violent, impulsive. I mean, people making lewd sexual gestures towards ice agents, people. And it's just aggressively out in ways we ask yourself, what, like, what were you thinking? You're coming up against a soldier.

What are you doing? What is this? What do you imagine has happened here? You know, I was reading a little bit about just this afternoon. I was trying to figure out, you know, what happens when social, normative social structure starts to decay. who are the people that really start to then lose their frontal cortex and starting to have all these crazy aggressive impulses? I mean, I want to talk about the roles that drugs have to play in these behaviors,

but before I do that, I mean, the thing that's smacking me in the face right now is that I think in the media and our politicians have kind of emboldened people to disrespect our authorities, you know, in the name of social justice or some sort of cause, People feel like they can walk up to police officers and disrespect them these days, which is just wild. And so when I see, you know, when I see someone getting taken down for disrespecting the police and getting in their way, I think, you know, one, that person's not very smart. And two, I'm just like, gosh, what have we done as a society to get to the point where people feel like they can treat our law enforcement in that way? And so, you know, I think that's going on. Joseph, but then we have mayors saying, saying, yeah, keep going and I'm going to make it, you know, so you should be, we have these authority figures not reinforcing and then escalating.

It's just odd to me. I don't know. Yeah. Well, you reap what you sow, and that's why we're seeing some cities with absolute lawlessness, where I think people are, you know, it's hard to live there now because, you know, law enforcement has become ineffective. I mean, it's really a sad thing, thing to see. I would love to talk to you a little bit about the role of psychiatric medications and violence, if that's okay. Go ahead. Yes, please, of course.

We were going to get there, but I'm a perfect time. Yeah. Yeah, good stuff. So this issue right here is completely swept under the rug by media and by academics in psychiatry. And so this may sound a little much, but I want to share my credentials. briefly, just because I'm going to say some things that are going to seem crazy. I used to work at the FDA, and I was a drug safety officer for the pharmaceutical industry as well. And, you know, I spent a lot of time studying side effects. Without a doubt, antidepressant

medications, they can contribute to mass shootings. And I want to walk you through a little bit why this is going on. The first thing that I want to say is these drugs, already in their labels, violent behavior is listed. If you look at the SSRI labels, many people already know they can increase suicidal behavior, but they can also increase aggression and hostility in the drug labels. Look at ADHD medications. In the warnings and precautions, it's one of the most prominent sections in the label for important side effects. It lists aggression and hostility. You look at the drug label for Abilify, a popular antipsychotic, and it has homicidal ideation already there in the label. On top of this, and this is the thing that the media

never talks about. Every time people bring this up, the media never says this, there have been numerous court cases already where impartial judges and juries have heard all of the evidence about these cases. And they have ruled that the drugs have been involved in mass murder and suicide. And the most well-known case of this is the case of Donald Schell, who back in the early 90s in Wyoming, he was exposed to Prozac. It's an SSRI. He had a very bad reaction to it. And then another doctor didn't know that. And they put him on Paxil. And when he was on Paxil, within, after two doses, he became psychotic. And in that state, he killed his wife, he killed his daughter, he killed his granddaughter, and then he shot himself. When this went to

trial against Smith Klein, the manufacturer was found responsible for this, and it was a million dollar settlement. And there have been numerous cases like this where these drugs, through these rare paradoxical adverse reactions, because that's what this is. These are paradoxical, rare adverse reactions that just happen in a small proportion. Hang on. Hang on. Back to our prescribing by primary care doctors,

that particular case and many like that sound like a bipolar patient rather than a unipolar patient who was twice prescribed in SSRIs and probably precipitated a severe manic episode. So I'm wondering, A, is that

a likely description of what's going on there? And B, can we dissociate that unfortunate side effect which I blame on our peers they've been properly diagnosed a pill versus the homicidal effects of the medicines

otherwise prescribed? Yeah so that's a really nuanced point which I would expect to get from a physician who's kind of focused on this area. Could this be an antidepressant triggering a manic episode or could this be aggression in and of itself

coming from the drug? And the truth about this is, is that we actually don't know how to discern those things. I mean, there's no kind of objective way of doing it. But I think, you know, what has happened for a really long time is that any time one of these reactions has taken place, people say, oh, the patient was just bipolar. Well, you know, that could be the case. But if you look at the, you know, the case history here, what we see is within two days of getting on this medication, the person's become, you know, they started. to hallucinate and then and then this this very bad thing has happened. This has also happened in patients who have never had a history of mental illness before or bipolar disorder. It's it's something

that we see across all drug classes. I mean, we see this with cannabis. We see this with stimulants. Anytime you take a drug that acts on your nervous system, you can have one of these paradoxical reactions. And then the other thing that I always like to mention here is like even with the antidepressants, I mean, drug companies have paid out over, I'd say about a billion dollars in settlements to settle cases like suicides and, you know, and acts of violence. Without a doubt, there's something about these drugs that in very rare circumstances, they can cause behavioral changes in some people. And we need to be looking at that whenever these acts of violence. You're being very cautious, and I appreciate that, but I am gravely concerned about psychostimulance, not just for the reasons you pointed out, but, but, you know, prescribing dextro amphetamine by the fistful, how could that not have a truckload of problems? Number one. Number two, cannabis is overlaid on a lot of this stuff now, so people get sort of a cannabis.

depression then they get put on SSRI i think that combination is particularly problematic that's my suspicion and no one's looking at any of these things it just keeps going it keeps happening yeah cannabis is another one of these things gosh you're hitting my hot you know the hot buttons for me this this drug is a gateway drug to a bipolar and schizophrenia diagnosis people think it is this safe herb that is harmless. And it is simply not. As someone who works in deprescribing, a lot of the patients that come to me, they've had a drug-induced psychosis. They've been misdiagnosed bipolar and schizophrenic and they've been put on antipsychotic medications. When they stop using the drug, sometimes it takes a year or so. Eventually the psychosis, the mania goes away and they can

come off. I actually believe that for some vulnerable people, cannabis is actually neurotoxic. And if you have one of these really bad trips, sometimes even for like a year or two later, my patients, they're telling me they're still having periods of psychosis. The cannabis that we're using is about 40 times stronger than the ditch weed. People used to smoke back in the 70s. And we're pretending like it's the same thing. Yeah. It's different. It's weird how we, the public or the public conversation that they can't seem to differentiate, like they can't.

differentiate alpha and delta COVID from Omocrine COVID, different illnesses. They can't differentiate cannabis from 1975 versus cannabis now, it's 98% THHC. These are different you really cross thresholds where they're literally different

molecules in the sense of how they affect the physiology of the human. Can I share a frightening statistic with you if that's okay? Please. Please. Yeah, so the background rate of schizophrenia in the general population is 1%. They did a study in London, and they looked at what was the rate of getting a schizophrenia diagnosis

and people who were smoking 15% THC strain. And now, okay, so the ditch weed back in the day is 1 to 3%, 15%. That's already kind of, you know, that's purposely hydroponically grown to be stronger. It was 1 in 20. One in 20 of them and ended up getting a psychotic diagnosis. That's a fivefold increase. Now, here's the actual scarier part. 15% cannabis isn't even that.

at high compared to what we're using in North America. Most people going to a dispensary are getting like 30% hydroponically grown, you know, strains. At least. Just to give you, yeah, it's, and then sometimes up to 90% if they're using like, like, um, like concentrates and things like that. Tabs. Yeah. Wax.

Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Listen. I see it, see it, see it all over the place. But, but oftentimes an SSRI is mixed in there. And I've wondered to the extent to which, you know, the relevant.

relative effect of the SSRI is because the cannabis patients get depressed along the way and they keep smoking more weed to deal with the depression. It helps me with my anxiety, blah, blah, blah, not understanding it's making everything worse. And then they get the psychotic symptoms and off it goes. Oh, goodness, this is so anxiety provoking for me because I know exactly what you're talking about. I see what you're talking about. I see the nature of the problem. Let's be kind of prescriptive and prognostic here. What needs to be? done? How effective do you think we're going to be? So at a nationwide level, like if we're going to combat the over-prescribing epidemic that's

going on right now, I think we need two major things. Firstly, we need informed consent. I strongly believe that if most Americans knew that antidepressants aren't studied any longer than a year and that for some people, they can lead to permanent sexual dysfunction and that they're not fixing a chemical imbalance, four out of five people already off the bat just say, yeah, no thanks. That doesn't sound like a good idea. We've just actually just been lying to people and not telling them about the risks. So that's the first thing. The second thing is we need to get back in line with what good mental health is. You asked such a good question with Leland earlier on. And when I think about good mental health, I think about good physical health, you know,

focusing on your diet and your nutrition, think about relationships. I think about relationships. I I think about purpose and meaning, and I think about avoiding drugs. So how do we integrate professionals that can really build up our patients in that way into primary care? Now, this is really where I love what Maha is doing. I love that we have working groups that are looking to this. I love that we're looking for leaders to lead, you know, new leaders for NIMH and NIMH. And what I would love to see is a focus on getting experts into primary care in a scalable way. maybe they're doing groups for nutrition, diet, lifestyle, you know, relationships,

helping people, you know, getting access to like career coaches, like actually helping people with the obvious things, the obvious things that make up, you know, the depression for most people. I really strongly believe that there is a way that we can help the American public at the root cause of their mental health problems at a scalable way. And I think this administration is the one to do it. Well, I hope your mouth, God's ears, as we say. And I let's, it's also, you know, the thing I've been talking about throughout this last hour is we have to, because when you deal with the public, you discover people are not motivated oftentimes. There's a lot of lack of motivation. We have to kind of,

have to inspire and motivate and we have to, which maybe educate about, you know, why it's, it's so important to be doing these things. Because it's hard to get people to change. Change is hard. and we have to sort of acknowledge that. And there was something else I wanted to say about the job. You mentioned that the psychotropics or the SSRIs are not studied for more than a year. This has driven me crazy about the addiction literature my entire career. I've never seen a study more than six months, and I rarely see a study more than six weeks. And in the setting of a lifelong chronic illness addiction, that's insane, meaningless.

and of course they're conducted by people who really don't understand the illness so they're not even asking the right questions or not trying to solve the right problems which is I suspect that's what you're really kind of pointing out here in psychiatry generally it's the same same problem yeah it's the same problem

and I think people are waking up to it and I actually think and I'm not afraid to say this I think the American public has been betrayed by the NIH because there's oftentimes there's not an incentive from a pharmaceutical company to do any more than it needs to do to get a treatment onto the market. But like the NIH, yeah, and the NIH, what they've been doing in psychiatry is they're just obsessed with biological targets to make drugs. You know, they're not doing

these long-term studies to see whether these interventions are effective. They're not comparing them to lifestyle interventions, relationship help, helping people find purpose and meaning. And you would think, you know, with one in three American women over the age, of 60 with nearly 20% of women on antidepressants that, you know, that that impair sexual functioning that have all these problems, you know, when if you give birth while you're on these medications, I mean, this is a huge public health issue. Why aren't our institutions looking at this? I mean, this is, everyone is on these drugs. Um, drives me mad as well. Well, you mentioned, you brought the word delusion up and there's been kind of a weird

culty mass illusiony kind of a thing and I'm as guilty of it as anybody I was very dismissive of I don't think this conversation would have been like this with for me five six years ago it's just we have to rethink things a little bit and the evidence suggests we haven't been helping and if our desire is in fact to help and to make life better and to help human thriving which I think that's what we're trying to do we need to get pretty serious about what we're doing here and and yes continue to fight illness like you said being able to do our open reduction internal fixations of our femurs and be able to do our you know interventional radiology if if somebody's got a you know that's the robotic stroke or

something yes yes all good things very important but we can't we can't be doing things that aren't clearly helping that's the bottom line yeah well dr joseph I appreciate your being here. Yes, finish that thought. Oh, yeah, Dr. Drew, I was just going to say, I think a lot of people are just like you, ever since COVID happened, and people just realized what was going on

with the pharmaceutical industry and just how, okay, everyone take the drugs. Now don't take the drugs. Now we're going to kind of completely roll it back. Wait, you said this. And they're actually just seeing this pattern everywhere. People are waking up to the fact that healthcare is a $4.9 trillion industry in the U.S.

It's five times larger than our annual spending on defense. And when you have pharmaceutical companies and doctors and all of these people who have so much to gain from a certain narrative, it distorts. It pulls us, you know, we end up hearing commercial messages and it pulls us away from what we want to do as doctors. We are here to help our patients.

We're not here to sell drugs. We're not here to charge insurance or anything like that. And that's what I think is happening right now. And I'm excited. I think a lot of healthcare providers are getting back to what we were. really here for, and it's an exciting time. I agree with you, although I worry about, it's funny we're having this conversation

because I had a thought this morning. I was drawing by a hospital I know very well, and there is so much construction going on around the hospital. It frightened me. I thought, oh, there is a consolidation going on here where the hospital is the next problem. The hospital itself is our next juggernaut that could spiral out of control. And it really, again, it's us who practice in hospitals and our nursing colleagues. They've got to get this, make sure it doesn't spiral. We've got to take back control. We have to get the hospitals out of the hands of private equity and back in the hands of physicians and nurses.

Yeah, I'm afraid. So we're the only ones that actually understand. The only one that's actually responsible for the patient in front of us. That's us. That's our job. All right, listen, appreciate you being here. I suspect I'll want to check in with you again. sometime soon to see what the progress has been.

But where do we like people to go to find you? So I'm on all social media, so it's Dr. Joseph, but that's the German spelling, J-O-S-E-F. You can find me there. And if you're interested in coming off psychiatric medications, we work in the 14 most populous states in the U.S. and our website is taperclinic.com. Thanks so much for having me, Dr. Drew. You bet. Pleasure to have you.

Thank you so much. All right, let's, Caleb, look at what's coming up here. It's the schedule is a little wonky and choppy. We are traveling on Wednesday, and I've got a, if you've seen that show, Hollywood Demons that I do, we're doing a full day of filming tomorrow. Peter Navarro coming in on the 9th, Viva Fry on the 14th, Del Big Tree on the 15th.

We're having a WTWC show with Gary Bracca on the 16th. Ryan Sickler, I'm having surgery somewhere on the 21st, the 23rd for a basil cell, no big deal. but enough that I have to be out of commission for a couple of days Salty Cracker coming back we're going to get him in here as much as we can everyone loves him

I don't know if it's just they love him or they love us together but it seems like that creates a lot of excitement and interest Caleb anything coming up for you No I know that I just got a I got a text from Emily during the show so one of those show dates might be moving around

I'm not exactly sure which one but yeah Is that because of my dates I think so. Yeah, I just glanced at it and saw somebody like that there were some schedule changes. But that chart is pretty close to what we're going to be doing. We have a lot of really interesting people coming up. Oh, yeah. And she's got a lot of people that are sort of in the on deck because of my stupid schedule. They're having trouble. She's having trouble committing. But like I said, I'm doing the Discovery ID show tomorrow.

Then I fly on Wednesday. So no show Tuesday, Wednesday, but Peter Navarro on Thursday. His book is, I went to jail so you don't have to. So it should be a really interesting conversation. And then on Friday, Adam and I will be on the Greg Gutfeld show. It's a little mini-lovelin reunion with Gutfeld. That should be fun. And other than that, we will be looking for you all on Thursday at 2 o'clock Pacific time.

Hope to see you then. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published.

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