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

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Former FDA Official Unveils Pharma’s Shocking Lies About Depression

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey (Ep 1278) | Guest: Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring
Date: December 12, 2025

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Episode Overview

Allie Beth Stuckey interviews Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring, a former FDA medical officer and psychiatrist, about corruption in the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA regarding antidepressants, particularly SSRIs. Dr. Witt-Doerring shares firsthand professional experience exposing how SSRIs are prescribed, the questionable science behind them, the role of medical schools and academic elites in perpetuating these narratives, and effective alternatives to medication-centric psychiatry. The conversation pulls back the curtain on how SSRIs may be driving America’s mental health crisis, offering an inside look at how Dr. Witt-Doerring left the system and now helps patients safely taper off these medications, focusing instead on holistic health strategies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Witt-Doerring’s Journey Into—and Out of—Conventional Psychiatry

• Dr. Witt-Doerring explains his entry into psychiatry, initially inspired by interests in philosophy and personal development. He trained in Australia (University of Queensland) and completed his residency at Baylor College of Medicine, USA.

  “I had this idea that I would go into training and…we’d be helping them, you know, with their relationships or with their physical health, with their diet and maybe with their sleep, really getting to understand them. But…It really looked like a conveyor belt.” (03:09)

• He soon became disillusioned with the “conveyor belt” approach to psychiatric care, where patients are rapidly diagnosed by symptom checklists and given medications with little inquiry into underlying life problems.

• Attempts to question this model during training were discouraged.

  “You bring them up and...it’s almost like, you know, Yosef, if you keep on talking about these things, you’re gonna scare people away from the medications. You’re gonna scare them away from life saving drugs.” (16:33)

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2. The Science Behind SSRIs—Or Lack Thereof

• SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) are prescribed based on a simplified theory: that depression is caused by “low serotonin.” Dr. Witt-Doerring emphasizes this is unfounded and reductionistic.

• Diagnostic tools for depression are arbitrary checklists—not blood or brain tests:

  “A lot of people don’t understand that it is really arbitrary…they almost assume that there’s been this additional step…But no, it’s just essentially like a survey.” (09:45)

• Scientific research does not support the notion of a clear biological marker for depression:

  “…They looked at all of the evidence, trying to find differences in essentially serotonin between depressed and non depressed patients…right, no differences.” (37:04)

• SSRIs offer only short-term benefits for some but frequently induce emotional blunting, tolerance (requiring dosage increases), and significant side effects like weight gain, sleep disruption, and sexual dysfunction.

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3. Academic Corruption & Pharmaceutical Influence

• Drug companies minimize safety risks through controlling scientific output and academic partnerships.

  “To the extent they possibly can, they will always be minimizing the risks associated with the drug because it’s life or death for them.” (21:54)

• Prestigious professors (“key opinion leaders”) collaborate with drug companies, trading favorable research authorship and international speaking gigs for career advancement:

  “…The academic elite has been bought by drug company money.” (24:52)

• Academic consensus downplays withdrawal risks—often with biased, industry-sponsored research.

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4. How the FDA & Pharma Manipulate Evidence

• No long-term (beyond 1 year) randomized controlled trial evidence exists for psychiatric drugs.

  “…There is not a single study for any psychiatric medication that was done in a randomized, placebo controlled way, that’s gone over a year.” (27:33)

• Adverse effects—such as tardive dysphoria and benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction—are ignored or misattributed to patients' “evolving” depression rather than drug effects.

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5. Cultural Trends and the 'Glamorization' of Medication

• Use of antidepressants has multiplied, yet mental health outcomes (depression, suicide) have worsened. Dr. Witt-Doerring argues the current system may be fueling, not solving, the crisis.

  “Antidepressant use has gone up like 5x since the early 90s and we have more disability from depression, we have more suicides than we’ve ever had before.” (48:30)

• Mental illness and medication intake have become social “currency” online.

  “There is a message out there. There are incentives for people to identify with their mental illness…They think it confers this sort of social currency…” (49:51)

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6. The Realities of Withdrawal & Safe Tapering

• Withdrawal from SSRIs is vastly under-recognized. Industry consensus claims symptoms are mild and resolve in two weeks, but many experience months or even years of debilitating symptoms if medications are stopped too quickly.

  “Most people don’t understand that at the very low doses of the drug, that’s where most of the withdrawal symptoms hit…when you do it in that way, patients…can keep on working…never get overwhelmed.” (56:13–58:00)

Taper Clinic’s Approach:

• Custom, slow tapers (often over a year+)
• Use of liquid formulations for smaller dose adjustments
• Patient-led, symptom-guided tapering
• Focus on diet, sleep, stress management, addressing nutrient deficiencies, and mind-body practices

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7. The Importance of Holistic, Non-Drug Treatment

• Emphasis on addressing inflammation (primarily dietary), sleep, trauma, and life stressors.

  “A whole bunch of other things…are really important. I mean, diet being the main one…inflammatory food makes people feel really bad.” (59:28)

• SSRIs do not address underlying causes of depression or anxiety for most people and should not be first-line or exclusive treatments.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Conventional Psychiatry’s Limits:

  “My patients aren't getting better. There's something really off about this way of trying to help people.” — Dr. Witt-Doerring (08:57)

• On Diagnosis:

  “It’s just like a survey.” — Dr. Witt-Doerring (09:45)

• On Pharma’s Strategy:

  “They will always be minimizing the risks associated with the drug because it’s life or death for them.” — Dr. Witt-Doerring (21:54)

• On Social Currency of Mental Illness:

  “There is a message out there. There are incentives for people to identify with their mental illness…It's a weird thing to flex about, like taking psychiatric medications.” — Dr. Witt-Doerring (49:51)

• On Tapering Approach:

  “Custom design tapers…teach patients to follow their body…get rid of a schedule, listen to your body to come off…” — Dr. Witt-Doerring (56:13–58:00)

• On the SSRIs and Society:

  “I mean, that's actually what I believe, which may be a bombshell thing to say. But…SSRIs are causing more depression and anxiety than fixing it.” — Dr. Witt-Doerring (48:30)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:02 — Dr. Witt-Doerring introduces his background and motivation.
• 03:09 — Describes the “conveyor belt” problem in psychiatry.
• 06:16 — Explanation of SSRIs and “serotonin imbalance”.
• 09:45 — Discussion on the arbitrariness of depression diagnosis.
• 16:33 — Culture of discouraging dissent among medical trainees.
• 21:54 — How pharma companies squash safety information.
• 27:33 — Details on lack of long-term studies and drug dangers known inside the FDA.
• 37:04 — Serotonin theory debunked; no biological marker found.
• 42:43 — Emotional numbing and the inability to feel joy or grieve on SSRIs.
• 48:30 — SSRIs possibly worsening national mental health outcomes.
• 54:05 — Describes Taper Clinic and practical tapering strategies.
• 59:28 — Holistic care: diet, sleep, and nervous system support during and after tapering.

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Where to Learn More

• Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring’s YouTube Channel: Dr. Josef (J-O-S-E-F)
• Clinic Website: taperclinic.com

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Tone and Final Thoughts

Throughout the episode, Dr. Witt-Doerring delivers a blend of scientific clarity, insider anecdotes, and passionate concern for patients’ well-being. The conversation is both alarming and hopeful—presenting the sobering reality of systemic failures but also a clear path toward safer, more humane mental health care. Allie’s style is direct but warm, providing space for both critique and practical advice without sensationalism.

Transcript

[A]

A former FDA medical officer and a former drug safety officer for the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Yousef gives us an inside look into the corruption that is going on at the FDA in the pharmaceutical industry. He tells us scientifically how these so called antidepressants are actually making people sicker, more depressed and more anxious. This is a fascinating, completely enlightening conversation about what is really happening at our med schools in the pharmaceutical industry. What is going on in the government that is lying to people about these SSRIs. You've got to listen to this full conversation. It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to good ranchers.com use code ally at check out this good ranchers.com code ally. Doctor Yosef, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Could you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

[B]

Really happy to be here, Ali. So I'm a psychiatrist and what I do now is I help people come off psychiatric medications. And so I guess I went through this sort of roundabout journey where I did traditional psychiatry. I ended up in the pharmaceutical industry developing drugs and then in the FDA regulating them. And you know, the abbreviated version of that is like, once you see how the sausage is made in the factory, you're just like, I'm never going to touch again. And so I looked at the evidence behind a lot of it, and I really think one of the best things that we can be doing right now is actually helping people come off the medications and find more sustainable ways to address their mental health. And so that's what I do.

[A]

Okay, let's back up. How did you get into psychiatry?

[B]

I got into psychiatry just because I was naturally interested in personal development, philosophy, psychology. It was something I was always into from a young age.

[A]

And you grew up in Sydney?

[B]

I grew up in Sydney, Australia, Yep. And I ended up in medical school and this interest in personal development stuck. And then I started thinking, oh, wow, you know, there's this thing called psychiatry where I could merge my interest in medicine and the body, but also this enduring interest that I've had in self help. And so I became a psychiatrist and I had this idea that I would go into training and I would see, you know, these, these patients and I'd be like this quarterback and we'd be helping them, you know, you know, with their relationships or with their physical health, with their diet and maybe with their sleep, really getting to understand them. But what I saw when I got to my intern year and then throughout residency was it was not like that at all. It Started. It really looked like a conveyor belt, like a production line. Like, patients would come in, they'd fill out this questionnaire. They'd, you know, get a diagnosis. You really wouldn't understand that much about their life. And then you would give them a medication. And. And I'm like, you know, where are all these other people who should be helping? You know, it was really hard to get access to therapists. You know, we hardly ever talked, hardly ever talked about nutrition or sleep, faith or, you know, you know, values on how to live. It was like, you have this mental illness. You know, we diagnosed you on this checklist, and don't worry, we've got the solution right here. And intuitively, I was just like, something just seems off about that. Like, how could you actually help someone if you don't really understand their life and their problems? But asking those questions was kind of dissuaded. It was just like, you know, you really don't want to go there, Yosef. Like, it's, you know, these patients, you know, they're stigmatized enough. We have to be compassionate to them. We don't want to bring up, you know, we don't want to make them question the medications. You know, the FDA has approved them. They're safe and effective. You know, this is what the experts say. And so, yeah, there was this constant, like, sort of push away from, you know, push from academia to not really, like, kind of dig at this question about, like, is it really, like, a sustainable way to like, help people by just, like, drugging the symptoms?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Um, and so, you know, I kept on. On poking at that, and I eventually decided that there's enough here for me to be, like, really suspicious about what's going on. I. But I need to become an expert in the area. I mean, I'm probably 26 when I'm in internship.

[A]

Where'd you go to medical school?

[B]

University of Queensland.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And then I did my residency at Baila college of medicine.

[A]

Okay. Okay. So you stayed in Australia for med school, and then you came to the States? Yes, for. And you said Baylor Bayla.

[B]

Yeah. Houston. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. I just had to interpret the accent. I thought you said biola. Okay, Baylor. So that's where you started seeing. Okay, this is like a conveyor belt, to use your words, that people come in, they say, I feel like this. They check things off a list, and that just felt suspect to you. Did you notice that also in medical school in Australia?

[B]

Well, I did, but I wasn't clued into it in the same way. I mean, I just, you know, the. The medical school education that a lot of doctors get is that there's this thing called depression. It's probably biological. And we have these drugs called SSRIs, and they increase serotonin, and there's probably something about that that's helping people, and that's pretty much it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so you're just like, okay, okay, you know, whatever. You know, this is what my professors are teaching me. Yeah, but that, like, interface where you're. Because what really brings it to life is when you're working with patients in the clinic and you start noticing things. You're like, well, okay, so I put this person on, you know, a low dose of Lexapro. It's a very common ssri.

[A]

And can you tell us, remind us what SSRI stands for?

[B]

So it's a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.

[A]

Okay. And serotonin is a hormone.

[B]

It's a hormone. Yeah, it's a hormone in the brain that is involved in your mood. And for a really long time, doctors have been telling people that if you're anxious or depressed, it's probably because you have low serotonin. It's just a very simplified and reductionistic way of understanding it. Which is wrong as well.

[A]

Yeah. And we'll get into that. But Lexapro is one of those.

[B]

And so super common drug. So you'd give them Lexapro, and then, you know, they cut and. Yeah, it would work. Initially. They'd say, okay, I feel. You know, I feel a little bit less anxious. This is good. And then they come back six months later, and they're just like, I only feel it 10% or I don't even feel like it's doing anything any anymore. And so you increase the dose, and then they come back a year later, and the same thing happens. And. And you're starting to notice that when I put people on these medications, for quite a large group of them, they just become tolerant to the effect. You know, we're not really correcting any chemical imbalance. It's just like the drug effect is wearing off. And then you would start to see people, like, stacking on drugs. And so now you're maxed out on the Lexapro. We're gonna put you on some Seroquel, but now you're kind of fatigued, and we're gonna add, like, another one on. And so it's really. Once you get in there, you see that this kind of narrative about, hey, you know, it's really simple. You just put them on this Drug, you know, it's not, you know, they're wearing off over time, and we're stacking them on top of each other. And patients, they just don't look good. I mean, you would look at people, they'd have, like, a list of five different medications. I mean, they're hardly doing well at all. I mean, they're blunted, they're having problems sleeping. You know, their sex drive is annihilated, they're gaining weight. And, you know, the. What I was always told at the time was like, oh, this person just has really bad depression. You know, the depression is just morphing. It's like it was, like, mild at the start when they went through the divorce, you know, but this scary biological thing has just, like, changed. You know, don't look at the fact that, you know, they've been on drugs for, you know, 25 years now, like, pretty high potency drugs. Don't look at that as maybe one of the reasons why they're not doing well. You know, it's just their underlying condition that's morphing, which is obviously, like, a really easy way to just, you know, stack on more drugs, just increase doses and really not have to look at the fact that the model is broken.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so when I started to see that as well, like, one is, like, the theoretical stuff just didn't make sense, what I was being taught. But, like, in practice, I'm just like, my patients aren't getting better. There's something really off about this way of trying to help people.

[A]

Right. And when we're diagnosing other things that you medicate, like a thyroid disorder, you have to take a blood test, and there's a certain level that if it's not producing enough T3 or T4, you get on artificial thyroid hormones to help you. But with how you're describing the diagnosis for putting people on these powerful drugs, not a blood test or a brain test. Right. That shows you exactly this is what your serotonin level is. Is it basically just a guess based on a survey?

[B]

Yeah, it is. And so in the, you know, in the dsm, it's. They make you pick from nine symptoms. And it's like if you have five out of nine of these symptoms. So it's like low mood, anxiety, sleep problems, like, you know, lack of interest in things, you know, feelings of guilt. It's. It's just like a. A very arbitrary list of symptoms that kind of make sense. You know, they. They make sense for people who are depressed. And the way the people who wrote this diagnostic manual, wanted to define depression. Was like, oh, well, if you just have any combination of five of them out of nine, we'll say you have depression. And a lot of people don't understand that it is really arbitrary. And they think that, oh, I have major depressive disorder. And it was, I was given this diagnosis by my doctor or I have clinical depression. It's like they almost assume that there's been this additional step where there was like a blood test or a brain scan or there was something that really, like, made sense to say that this was a different entity. But no, it's just essentially like a survey.

[A]

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[B]

So psychiatrists in general do a better job of that because we get a lot of training on, you know, relationships and trauma and all of that. Where the big issue is happening in the US and in much of the sort of the Western medicalized world right now is within family medicine because depression is so common 80% of our prescriptions are being handed out by family med docs. But even within psychiatry, and many people, if they've ever seen a psychiatrist, will have noticed this, there are incentives that make it so. The doctors want to see you in a very short period of time. So the aim of the game is like billing and insurance in this country. And so you, like, if you saw one person for an hour versus four people in an hour and shorter visits, it works out that you essentially make double by seeing four people within an hour. And so even though you have psychiatrists out there who may know a lot about your prior history with trauma, nutrition, exercise, they may be motivated and, you know, they want to help you come off, you know, harmful substances and things like that. There's always this, like, pressure where it's like, well, I need to kind of turn through these patients to do my billing. And so that pushes it all in this one direction where it's just like this very in and out interaction where it's like, okay, we're going up on the drug. Are we going down or are we holding it the same? And that's a very common experience for people interacting with doctors these days.

[A]

Why do you think, as you were an intern and you were going through your residency, you started to be troubled by this process? Because I'm sure you had, you know, a lot of friends who were going through the same process who weren't really troubled by it. So what is it about you that made you say, oh, I don't know, this is not what I thought it was going to be?

[B]

Yeah, I've thought about that. And I think it's like personality and this, I mean, this can sound kind of funny, right? Like, a lot of people would be like, yeah, sure. You know, surely doctors, they just want to understand the truth. You know, they just want to get into the issue because they really want to help people, and that is just the main thing that drives them. But there's all these other incentives at play. You know, when you're in a career and a big one for doctors is to fit in and to just like anywhere else. Yeah, just like anywhere else. It's like, okay, well, this is what my professor's saying. You know, this is kind of how things work. I'm not going to sit around and criticize it. I'm not going to. I'm just going to go with the flow. Everyone else is doing that. And that's like a really strong driver for people. It's just, you know, I want to play nice in the Sandbox and fit in with my peers, and I'm just not built that way. Yeah, I don't like that. If. If I don't understand something, it gets under my skin and I just have to pick and pick and pick and. And that's kind of how I was, you know, in the drug companies and the fda, like, really just obsessively trying to figure out what was going on and. Yeah, yeah. And so I'm just. Just wired that way.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, that's the common answer. I always like to ask the, like, the troublemakers about that. Like, what is it about cheating?

[B]

What do other people say?

[A]

Same thing.

[B]

Same thing?

[A]

Yeah, same thing. It's just something. I mean, I'm sure it is personality. It been something in their upbringing too, but just something just makes them. Whether it's people who left cults. I just interviewed someone who left a cult. Her whole family was completely bought in. But from a young age, there was just something that bothered her and she ended up leaving. So. Yeah, it's really interesting. I guess it is a personality trait and I'm very grateful for it. Okay, so you said that you started asking questions while you were a resident, but that it was discouraged. What does that look like?

[B]

I mean, it looks like people saying, you know, you bring them up and then it's like, it's. It's like threats. It's almost like, you know, yosef, if you keep on talking about these things, you're gonna scare people away from the medications. You're gonna scare them away from life saving drugs.

[A]

And by saying these things, just like, hey, why are we treating this like a conveyor belt?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, there's always this feeling there like you've missed the memoir. Like, it's like, hey, everyone else got the memo. We don't question the SSRIs. We don't question the fact that these drugs wear off over time. We don't question the fact that the studies to support these medications coming onto the market were only three months long. And we put people on them for decades. And whether the brain is really even designed to be in a drug state for decades at a time and whether that could make people worse. It's like everyone else in the program got the memo that we don't ask those questions apart from me. And so there's just this constant, like, awkwardness when you would bring it up. And it's just like, it's like don't, you know, we don't go there. And if you push, they eventually Say, well, people with mental illness, you know, they're stigmatized, and if you ask these questions, you're actually shaming them, and you're gonna push them towards suicide. And so then you get this veiled threat that if you're, like, questioning these things, like, you're dangerous somehow. And, you know, the more. And the more I looked at it, I mean, all of this is just a crafted narrative. I mean, there's a drug company. You know, there's a pharmaceutical industry. They have a lot of money, they have a lot of influence, and they can shape the way we talk about issues because they have PR and they have marketing. And anytime there's, like, you know, a problem with a drug or someone commits suicide unexpectedly or there's a school shooting, you know, they have their team ready to go that says, there's no evidence of this. And on top of that, the people who say there is evidence of this, you know, they're in it for the notoriety, and they're actually really dangerous. And so it creates this climate where it's just like, shut up. Don't bring it up. Because that's just not what we do. And so it's that. It's that kind of vibe.

[A]

Mm. And the best PR campaigns are the ones that you don't know exist. It's just like, oh, why do I have this thought about this person? Or, why have I seen this person everywhere? Well, it's not organic. It's orchestrated. And the same thing is true when it comes to pharmaceuticals. But you did kind of go into that world after residency, so tell us what that looked like.

[B]

Yeah, so I. I mean, after residency, I end up in the pharmaceutical industry, you know, as a drug safety officer.

[A]

And what is a drug safety officer?

[B]

It's someone who's responsible for understanding the safety profile of the drug and writing the labels for the drug, which communicates the most important information to the doctors so they can have conversations with their patients and monitor the patients. Well, so that was what I did.

[A]

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

[B]

I went into it with good faith. I went into it from a place where I was like, I'm really troubled about these drugs, and I actually don't want to practice clinically because I can see the constraints in the system where it's like, I have to treat people in 15 minutes. I don't really think I can do a good job there. But what I'm really into is understanding this evidence, and maybe I can better characterize the Safety issues. The things that I'm really concerned about, you know, the drugs wearing off, all of that. Maybe I can better understand that and then convey that to the public.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I, as is normal, like, I kind of bounced around. My actual. My first gig in the pharmaceutical industry was in oncology. So it wasn't even in psychiatry. That was like my. My step in the door was doing cancer drug development. And we had developed a drug and we, you know, they, you know, it was going to the market. We'd been working on it for a really long time. And the pharmacovigilance team, that's. Sorry, drugs, the drug safety team, they were really interested in publishing a manuscript about all of the safety issues. They said, you know, we've been developing this drug for 10 years. We've had thousands of people use it. Let's take all of this information that we know and publish it. So doctors who want to learn from us can. And we would have leadership come down to us and essentially say, well, let's not do that. Like, we already have some of this information very abbreviated in the drug label. We don't want to make a bigger issue of this than it is already. You know, they're thinking, like, if we make a manuscript about the safety issues, our competitors out there are going to grab that thing and they're going to walk around to all of the doctors and just say, use our drug. Because look at this manuscript, which is really there to help people. But did, you know, it causes this problem and this problem and this problem. And so I quickly learned within the pharmaceutical industry, like, to the extent they possibly can, they will always be minimizing the risks associated with the drug because it's life or death for them. You know, when it's like when you're in a marketplace and there's multiple other drugs, you just care about your market share.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And if people, if doctors are worried about the safety of your drug, it's like, boom, you're gone. And so that's how the drug companies live. And that's why you really don't get reliable information out of them. It's. They will do everything that they can to make doctors view the drug in the best possible light without, like, kind of stepping over the line into something that's blatantly fraudulent.

[A]

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[B]

Yeah. And it gets, I mean there's a part of this that's even darker because when you think about who do doctors trust? And a lot of the time it's the people who train them, the professors who are leading the institutions. And these people are called the drug companies, refer to them as key opinion leaders. And so these are the people at the top of Harvard and Stanford and Yale, ucsf, all of these places. And when I was in the, when I was in the industry, I would notice that we would work with these people to essentially launder information. And, and so you would have a drug company, they would have like a manuscript and then they would get a publisher to write. So they'd have a drug company has a clinical trial, they get a publisher to write up that study in a completely biased way. You know, that overhypes the benefits, minimizes the risk. And then they shop around for academics to put their name on the, on the authorship line and.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah. And you may be asking, I didn't know that. Yeah. Why, why would an academic do that? Like, why would someone compromise their integrity in that way? And it has to do with how people get promotions within an academic system. So if you want to become a professor at a place, you do that by collecting these feathers in your hat, you know, so it's lots of publications on your cv, it's lots of international talks. And once you have enough of those, you can say, hey, you go to the dean of the institution. I am the established expert in this place, look at my cv. And they go, yeah, you are. And what academics learn, especially in psychiatry, but I think this is happening in a lot of medicine is one of the best ways to do this is by running drug company studies. And so very early on in their career, they start to be heavily involved in clinical trials. And so instead of having to do their own research or apply to the government agencies for grants, which is very time consuming, they go, okay, Janssen or Pfizer or Eli Lilly, I'm going to help you. And when they do that, they get the protocol done for them, they get the support staff, they get the funding, people write the manuscripts for them, they fly them around the world. It's like the fast track to, to getting to the top. And so what this has created in a lot of medicine, especially in psychiatry, is that you have this upper echelon of people who are heavily biased towards the drug companies because they're kind of reliant on them for career advancement. And so people in the community who aren't aware of what's going on, they go, hey, there's a professor at Harvard who says, SSRIs are the ants pants. They're the greatest thing ever. They're just thinking to themselves, you know, Harvard's a great institution, one of the best institutions in the world. This guy at the top, he's probably there because he's the smartest, most ethical and, you know, a very moral person. And so that's. And so they go, I'm going to believe him. But they're not really understanding that that person's there because essentially he's become a shill for the drug company because that's how you get to the top. And so you mentioned a moment ago some of the most persuasive marketing is the marketing that you don't even realize that is happening. And one of the main ways that it's happening right now is that the academic elite has been bought by drug company money. Wow. Yeah.

[A]

And so you're learning all of this while you're working in the pharmaceutical industry. Tell us more about your kind of evolution, your enlightenment. Did you have one moment that was a wake up call, like, okay, this is not redeemable. I can't be a part of this anymore.

[B]

So there was not one moment. It was like these several little things along the way. And so, you know, I did a stint at the FDA as well, which is kind of, you know, when you're at the FDA, you're looking after, you know, 20 to 30 different drugs and all of the safety issues are coming to you and you can actually see how all of the studies are done. That was really where I put it together because for a long time I was, you know, people would say, you know, SSRIs, these are evidence based treatments. And you kind of like, unless you really know, like, what that means, you just have to take them at their word. And so when I'm at the fda, I'm looking at animal studies, I'm looking at early phase one studies, phase two, phase three. And that's when I started to notice. I'm like, there is not a single study for any psychiatric medication that was done in a randomized, placebo controlled way. That's gone over a year. And so I started thinking to myself, I mean, we're telling patients these are safe and effective, but we're leaving out for the one year that they were studied for. And then on top of that, I'm learning that SSRIs can make some people worse. They can cause this thing called tardive dysphoria, which essentially is where you get very tired and you have brain fog. And that's like a chronic issue that emerges after several years on the drugs. I noticed, you know, I started learning about benzodiazepine induced neurological dysfunction, which is something that people get from drugs like Xanax and Klonopin, where they start to become more anxious and agoraphobic and they start to develop insomnia.

[A]

And agoraphobic means you're scared to go outside.

[B]

Yeah. You stared at, you're so like anxious that you're just like, I don't even, yeah, I don't even want to go to the grocery store because if someone talks to me, I'm going to have a panic attack. And so your world just gets smaller and smaller and smaller and you stay inside.

[A]

A doctor might tell them, well, that's just your anxiety getting worse. Let's up your medicine.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And so it was really those two things where I'm just like, oh, wow. You know, when they said evidence based, they meant that, you know, for the one year that they were studied for and you know, they never really talked about the fact that some of these drugs are making people sicker over time. And so at that point I was just like, this doesn't, like, how could this be a sustainable way to help people? We have drugs that frequently wear off over time. They're making a proportion of people actually sick. We have to find another way to help people. And so that was 2020. I end up just leaving. I just go, I'm not doing this anymore. And my wife, who's also a psychiatrist, we opened this clinic together, it's the Tabor clinic. And then we started to focus firstly on just getting people off these medications when they weren't doing well. And then over time, it's morphed into a, almost like a complete alternative to the mental health care system where we look at nutrition, sleep optimization, different therapies, and we try and give people all of the non drug treatments that have good scientific evidence for actually working and keeping people well. And we pair that with the drug tapering and then. And that's what I've been up to.

[A]

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[B]

Yes. So it was, it was during COVID and so I.

[A]

So yeah, after Covid had started.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, Yep. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Well, I was gonna ask, like, what did you think about everything that was going down during COVID from the top level of like, you know, the mixed messages about masks and the COVID vaccine and all of that. I'm sure you had a lot of insider insight into how those decisions are made.

[B]

You know, I got the shots, you know, So I had two of the moderna shots at the time. Cause even back then I was just like, well, psychiatry is a dumpster fire, but maybe the rest of medicine is okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so, you know, thank. You know, my wife and I, we both got the shots, you know, thankfully, that we were okay. But as I kind of went further down this path, I started to realize, oh, my God, I'm like allies with the anti vaxxers, you know? Cause I'm over here, like, I'm just like, these drugs are bad. They're the worst thing ever. You know, they're causing all of these problems. And I'm getting flamed on Twitter, but I have this support from this anti vax group. And then so I start looking into it more interesting. And then so over the last couple of years, like, my skepticism to medicine has really just broadened. I'm just like, this is not just a psychiatry issue. This is, you know, the money from the pharmaceutical industry has really just like, taken over all areas.

[A]

Yeah. Before we get into more of what you and your wife do now, I want to go back to something that you said. You said that it's not true that depression and anxiety are necessarily caused by low serotonin. And so the premise of the necessity of SSRIs just doesn't necessarily hold up. Right. That it's supposed to be raising your level of serotonin. But you're saying that that's not necessarily the problem to begin with.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I'd love to expand on that a little bit, because that has been one of the most dominant myths about how these drugs work. And so, I mean, you know, to do a brief history lesson, back in the 1950s, a drug was discovered called Ipreniazid. And it was being used as an antimicrobial for patients with tuberculosis. And they were hoping to cure them. And so they gave them this medication. And they noticed that these patients started to perk up. And they said, you know, they're more energetic, they're more lively. Maybe this drug has some promise as an antidepressant. Let's go and give it to depressed patients. And so they went and they did that, and it worked. You know, these patients who were very low energy, very unhappy, started to look better on the drug. And so this narrative really could have gone in two ways at this time. It's really pivotal. One way they could have said is, hey, we just found a drug that has these energizing properties and it can perk people up. And you know, what we're seeing is a drug effect. But the other narrative was, well, maybe these drugs are actually helping these depressed patients because they don't have enough, you know, serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, because that's what they had discovered iproniazid was doing. They. They knew it was lifting these chemicals up. And so they said, well, we know this drug lifts these chemicals up. Maybe that's the problem. And so one narrative survives and the other dies. And so the narrative that survives is that the patients, they have these chemical imbalances. And the reason for that is because it's a better commercial narrative. Now, intuitively, like, I know we just, like, gobble down antidepressants like crazy now, but really, like, just going back to, like, prior the 80s, a lot of people intuitively were like, it's not a good idea to mask your symptoms with drugs. Like, let's not sweep our problems under the rug because they're just going to fester there. We need to address them at their cause. And so the drug companies knew this and they said, well, a better way to package this drug is to say, hey, this drug is actually fixing a medical problem. Like, don't worry about your life, don't worry about these issues. Your problem is serotonin, and we've got the drug that's gonna fix it. If you characterize it as like you're fixing a biological problem, all of a sudden it makes sense to take a biological agent rather than a drug to mask things.

[A]

But there's no biological test.

[B]

There's no biological test. And so for a long time, they would just say, well, we're just about to find it. Our researchers are looking into it. And I mean, this was a big splash. I think it was like three years ago. Joanna Moncrief and her team in London, they did umbrella review on this, where they looked at all of the evidence, trying to find differences in essentially serotonin between depressed and non depressed patients. I mean, they looked at cases where they would get a group of depressed patients and they would do a lumbar puncture. That's where you stick a needle into the spine and you actually remove some of the cerebral spinal fluid, which is the fluid that surrounds the spinal cord and the brain, and you're looking for metabolites of serotonin. And so they would do that in depressed patients and then non depressed patients. And they'd say, well, are there any differences here? Right, no differences.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah. They would find people who had committed suicide when they were depressed and they would do autopsies on them. And they'd say, well, maybe there's differences in the number of receptors in the brains of depressed and non depressed patients. And so they would look at that. No difference in the receptors there. And even when it comes down to like genetics or brain scans or any of these things, they have never been able to find a biomarker that can separate people who are depressed from people who are not depressed.

[A]

Not one single biomarker has been found between depressed people and non depressed people. So we don't know of any biological cause for depression.

[B]

Well, there are some things now which I do think are kind of getting at it in that direction. I think inflammatory markers, they do tend to correlate with depression, but they also correlate with heart disease and all of this stuff. And that's a whole nother avenue. Why, you know, diet is really important.

[A]

Because none of that, no form of inflammation is addressed by an ssri.

[B]

No, no. Or if it is, you know, very shortly at the start, but long term, no, really, a lot of the major causes of inflammation are really dietary. That's 80, you know, 70% of our inflammatory cells. They sit in our gut because that's the main place we interface. Our body interfaces with the external world. So that's why it seems like everyone's talking about diet these days, because it's important. But yeah, essentially there's no difference in any of these chemicals. And so these drugs aren't correcting anything. They're simply masking symptoms, which is, you know, you could have a moral argument and say, yeah, morally, I disagree with that. But, but you could also just say, well, I don't really care, I just want to feel well and I'm suffering. And I think that's totally fair because we want people to feel better. But then the issue is we don't tell them about, hey, these are drugs just like any other drug, they're going to wear off over time. And there's also risks of prolonged use because our brains aren't used to being on them. And so we give them this, this very like, you know, it's just a lie. You know, it's just a misleading message about the safety of the drugs and how they work. And because the more responsible thing to tell people is, hey, these have drug effects. Yes, they do work. You know, they, they constrict your emotional range. Many people experience that as therapeutic. But hey, this is probably not going to work forever. And while you're on this drug, we better make sure we figure out why you are unhappy and we Start introducing those things and then we taper you off this medication so you don't have this chemical exposure just lingering around for years later that can cause all these problems.

[A]

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[B]

Yeah, that's what they do. You know, they, they constrict your emotional range. And I mean you may go through a pregnancy or you may go through your child's, your, your child's childhood being blunted. You may, you, you may never really enjoy intimacy with, with your partner because the volume of that is turned down as well. You may not be able to grieve the loss of a loved one. I mean you may be at a funeral and you're just like I don't feel anything. And so yes, I mean you, you, you know some people listening will just say hey, you know, I'll take that over the pain that I'm suffering. But for many people, they're going to miss out on really what it means to be human and going through these hardships and this. This pain. Not only is it an integral part of being human, but some of these things teach us about life. I mean, you could think about, let's say, for instance, you're in a bad relationship or a career that you find unsatisfying. Do you really want to numb yourself to the smoke alarm going off in your head? That's just saying, hey, something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is wrong. You take a drug to. To tolerate that. But then you've missed all of this. You know, you probably should have been working, actually, on the issue. You could be on a diet that is just massively inflaming you. You could be living a lifestyle where you're on night shifts, night shifts, and your sleep is disrupted. And all of that, and all of these symptoms that you're experiencing, they mean something. It's just like, I feel restless. I feel tired, but wired. I never feel that sense of peace in the afternoon when work is over where I' like, sitting back and I'm like, oh, I feel good. You know, like, those are all signs that something is out of order. And if you just, like, put someone on a drug, you've robbed them of the opportunity to. To actually have health, you know, like true health that's sustainable and good.

[A]

Yeah, it's. You're saying it's like. Say your, like, smoke alarm is going off and you're like, this is so annoying. I'm just gonna take the batteries out. Well, that doesn't change the fact that there's a fire in your K and the fire could continue to grow, but because you no longer hear the smoke alarm, you think everything is fine. You're saying that's basically what it's like to get on these pharmaceuticals?

[B]

Yes. Yep. You are numbing the smoke alarm. Yeah.

[A]

Right. And how does it. Does it really raise your level of serotonin? Like, is that the mechanism that is used to shorten the emotional range and possibly make someone for a period of time feel less depressed?

[B]

You know, truthfully, people don't really know what happens, like, when they do studies, like brain scans, looking at the serotonin receptors, Immediately, it seems like the serotonin goes up, and then after about a couple of months, the serotonin levels actually go down. Now, is that what's causing the drug effect? We don't really know. I mean, there's so many downstream effects on how it Changes neurotransmission. But I think just the appropriate level to understand it is it just seems the chemical just induces a drug effect. And that drug effect is just one of numbing for most people.

[A]

So when people say, because I will get messages like this, well, that saved my life, or that saved my husband's life. He was on, you know, he had ptsd, he was on the brink of suicide, he got on this medication, it changed his life and saved my husband. How could you be demonizing this? Like, what is your response to that?

[B]

So my response to that is, that's absolutely true. You know, if you're in a state of severe anxiety and you take a drug that kind of constricts that range, even if it knocks out the positives, you will experience that as therapeutic. You will experience yourself as being more functional. Now, if that anxiety or PTSD or whatever it was, was to the point where you're actually suicidal, that drug can be life saving in the short term. So I don't want to take that away from anyone. I mean, essentially we're just talking about a drug that will just constrict your emotional range that will be helpful for some people. The part where I want people to think about this more is what does this mean long term and to be aware that none of the controlled trials show that they actually work consistently after about a year. Does that mean that it's not gonna work consistently for everyone? No, of course not. For some people, they're out there and they've been on them for like 10 and they're fine. Other people, that's. That's not the case. They also need to be aware that they're at risk of the drug turning on them. And so if you're someone who, you know, you got on it initially and it was working, and now five years later, you just feel like you have brain fog and you're tired all the time. Don't get bought into this narrative from the doctor who just says, oh, your depression is evolving and now we just need to stack on a cocktail. It's like, maybe your brain can't handle being on that drug for five years, like many of my patients. And so it's more nuanced. I mean, we never want to shame someone for being on the medications or demonize them. We just want to see them in an accurate way. And the best way to look at them is, yes, they can help and they can be life saving, particularly in the short term for some people. But hey, we better make sure that we're Looking at other sustainable non drug approaches that will help the person for the rest of their life where they're not dealing with the drug wearing off and they're not dealing with the drug eventually making them worse.

[A]

Would you say that it's fair to say that SSRIs are causing more depression and anxiety than fixing it?

[B]

I mean, that's actually what I believe, which may be a bombshell thing to say. But if we look at antidepressant use, like, antidepressant use has gone up like 5x since the early 90s and we have more disability from depression, we have more suicides than we've ever had before. And so when I look at it, it's like the drug use is going up and all of these markers is going up. And so I think, you know, is it the drugs making people worse or is it the fact that we live in this medical system right now that is just telling people like, hey, the problems you're experiencing, go and see your doctor and take the pill, rather than actually like helping people address them. But the model of helping people with mental health problems at a population level is failing the U.S. yeah.

[A]

And it's just become so glamorized to be on something like Lexapro. Like there are ballads that people put on TikTok that go viral. Viral. People like just thinking they're antidepressants for saving their life. It's almost become trendy to talk about what form of SSRI you're on. And that is not an indication of a healthy society in any sense.

[B]

Yeah, you know, it's this weird, you know, I'll take off my psychiatry hat and put on my social commentator hat for this one. We, we incentivize very strange things at the moment, you know, and it could be, you know, whether it's, you know, you're incentivized to identify as a racial minority or a sexual minority or, you know, and right now we're just like, oh my God, you know, things are so, so hard for you. And you know, even institutionally, like very recently and still, like there's advantages to certain groups and we have done the same thing with mental health problems. Like, it's, it's like, you know, the mentally, you know, people who have mental health problems, they're stigmatized, they're suffering. Like these people need, you know, to be coddled in this way. And I'm not saying it in a mean way that, that these aren't difficult things. But there is an, there is a message out there. There are incentives for people to identify with their mental illness. And then also, you know, we see these campaigns, like, I don't know, there was one about like, showing what medication that you are taking. And this was viral on TikTok probably three or four years ago. And it's just like, hi, I'm so and so, and I take Lexapro. And it's like you get this badge for, like, I am acknowledging I'm depressed and I'm taking this medication and I'm fighting stigma. And so there's also this sense that, like, when you talk about having this medication, you are this warrior out there. And there's a bunch of like, conservative, like, like redneck types out there that are just like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, like, quit being a worse taking the meds. Like, they're sort of constructing this boogeyman out there where it's just like there's all these people stigmatizing the mentally ill, and there really isn't. And so I see it as well. I see people on tick tock and they're just like, you know, listing their medications and they think it confers this sort of social currency or it gives them this air of being like, you know, having more depth of character or like suffering in some way. It's very twisted because that's like a weird thing to flex about, like taking psychiatric medications.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is a very weird thing. But you're right, oppression is a currency. And if especially I think maybe that's one reason this is a total hypothesis, but it seems like we see a disproportionate usage of SSRIs among older white women who don't have very many oppression points because they're just, you know, white straight women. And so having some kind of mental illness, I think gives them an intersectionality point. That's my analysis, anyway. Last sponsor for the day is preborn. This Christmas, we are celebrating first and foremost the gospel message, but we are also reminded as part of that just the beauty of life. The beauty of life inside the womb. Jesus, of course, came as a baby, first as an embryo, then a newborn child in a manger. He was heralded by the kicks of an unborn John the Baptist. How beautiful is it that the Lord uses these little people to accomplish his great plan of redemption? And all of us are part of God's great plan of redemption. And that's one reason why it's so important for us to defend those lives inside the womb and to help their moms as much as possible. And that's what preborn is doing. Preborn resources. These pregnancy clinics across the country with the tools and the resources they need to help serve these moms. For example, sonogram equipment. When a woman sees her baby on the sonogram, she is so much more likely to choose life. But they need you to partner with them in ensuring these moms can continue to be served with the tools they need. Go to preborn.com Allie put your money where your pro life values are. Put your pro life values into action by going to preborn.com ally that's preborn.com ally. Tell me a little bit more about what you and your wife do, the kind of patients that you see and how you're getting them off of these psychiatric drugs and helping them actually feel better holistically.

[B]

Sure. So. So a lot of the patients we see are people who have been on medications for years and they are just at the end of the road. Every time they go to the conventional system, they get a new medication and they're not thriving, they're not doing well, they have brain fog, they're fatigued, they can't sleep even though they're on massive doses of sedatives and their quality of life is just terrible. So typically that patient may find us at that point or they may even try and come off the medication and then they'll experience withdrawal. Because another part of this dark narrative is that you remember before I was telling you about these academics and how they had been compromised. Well, back in the early 90s and early 2000s, the issue of psychiatric drug withdrawal was sort of bubbling up from grassroots. And so Eli Lilly ended up sponsoring a consensus panel where they picked all of these professors from these different institutions and they put them together and they said, well, what do you guys think about this withdrawal issue? And the conclusion of that consensus panel, who were all heavily biased, was that drug withdrawal was mild and it went away in two weeks. And so, and they base this off the three month clinical trials. And so, yeah, no wonder, you know, in a three month clinical trial, that's not enough physical dependence to really build withdrawal, but they kind of bury it there. And so they generate this manuscript saying, don't be worried about withdrawal. And the drug companies, they give it to their sales rep. And then anytime they're at a doctor's office and the doctor's saying, well, this patient just had a problem with withdrawal and now they're worried. You know, they read something in the news, they're worried they're never going to get off. They Say, hey, I've got this consensus paper from all of these academics that say it's not a big deal. What's happening to them is actually when you took them off their medication, their underlying condition is coming back, and so they need to be back on the drug.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And so that's the kind of the status quo. That's how I was trained. And so many doctors will end up pulling people off the medications really, really quickly. And they don't give the person's brain time to adapt to the removal of the drug. Because after several years and sometimes decades on this medication, the brain has adapted to it through a process called homeostasis. It's essentially like if you take a drug, not only does it change the way your neurotransmitters are working, but it also changes the way your gut works and your heart works. I mean, these neurotransmitters control everything in your body and your body doesn't like it. So it sends signals up to the brain to down regulate receptors and make all these changes to kind of bring it back into a more stable balance. And if you just like yank the drug out in two weeks, it's like pulling foundational beams out of a building. The whole thing just starts to collapse. And so while there are a group of people who can come off these drugs pretty rapidly because their brains are very elastic and they go through a bad withdrawal, maybe it lasts a month or two, there's a massive group of people, I'm going to say millions of them, who, when you do that, they develop insomnia, severe anxiety, sometimes psychosis, and it's completely disabling. And it goes on for months at a time. They're not able to look after their kids, they're not able to care for the home, they're not able to perform at work. And it completely turns their life upside down. And so we get a lot of those patients who have tried to come off before. The doctors have said, hey, this was just proof you need to be on the drug forever. And then, you know, they, you know, they, they see me online or they, they come across something that I've op ed that I've written and they say, oh, wow, you know, this is. There's actually a way to come off in a more gradual, step by step approach. And so that's the first thing that we do. Like, we will do custom design tapers for patients. And it's typically just driven by three things. There's three important things you need to understand about tapering. The first is that Using a liquid is always a really good idea. That's because if you just cut tablets, the most you can cut them is into quarters. And sometimes those quarters, like, that's too big of a jump between doses. But if you liquefy it, usually on a syringe, there's like a hundred little spaces. You can just steadily bring it down every two weeks, and you have a lot more control. We teach patients to follow their body. You know, don't do it on a set schedule. You need to kind of learn how your brain is readapting. You experience a wave of withdrawal. Okay, okay, now it's gone away. It's been two weeks. Now I'm ready to do another drop. And so we tell them to get rid of a schedule, listen to your body to come off. And then we also help people go really slow at the bottom, because most people don't understand that at the very low doses of the drug, that's where most of the withdrawal symptoms hit, because the drug is binding very tightly to the receptors. And at the low doses, just to kind of make it simple, is where all of a sudden the receptors disengage very, very rapidly, much more than at the higher doses, and it plunges people into withdrawal. So that's a bit of a technical approach, but in a nutshell, we do these very slow tapers, usually over a year, a year or two. And when you do it in that way, patients, my patients, they can keep on working. They can keep on looking after their kids. They never get overwhelmed. They don't, you know, they don't fall into horrific insomnia or anxiety. And. And we guide them off. And the other thing that we do is, you know, we look at, you know, so if we look at depression and anxiety, it's like, where does it come from? So in the conventional system, it's like, hey, you know, depression and anxiety, it's either, okay, there's some very clear, obvious problem in your life, like a trauma or a relationship issue. Go and see the therapist. Everything else is a chemical imbalance. Go and take a drug. Like, that's. That's how we kind of, you know, triage people. But there's a whole bunch of other things that are really important. I mean, diet being the main one, you know, for anyone who has symptoms of anxiety and depression and they're way out of proportion to the stresses in their life, or they just seem to come out of nowhere. You have to look at their diet. Inflammatory food makes people feel really bad. You have to look at people's sleep as well, you have to look at their overall stress levels. And even for some people who are just like. If you're like a person who's just like wired all the time, and if you can't remember, like the last time you clocked off work and you just sat back and you're with your family or friends and you just felt really at ease and comfortable and just like relaxed and you just like, oh, I could, I could, I could take a nap. If you don't feel that like fairly regularly, you're in like a, an amped up, sympathetic state. And so you have to teach them about, you know, minimizing caffeine use, nicotine use, also doing mind body practices with like deep breathing exercises being really important. You could do yoga. You can do different things, but just teach people some way of learning to control like that sympathetic nervous system that gets people really amped up. And so we do all of that. We also do a lot of medical testing looking for nutritional deficiencies and other sources of problems, like, you know, hormonal issues, estrogen, testosterone, also thyroid problems as well. And so we try and just grab all of the things that people tend to miss and then we help them with that while they're coming off the drugs.

[A]

Wow. It's called the Taper Clinic.

[B]

Tapir Clinic. Yeah.

[A]

And where can they hear more from you and learn more about the clinic?

[B]

Yeah. So the best place to learn more about what we do is my YouTube channel. So that's the Dr. Joseph and it's spelt in the German way. So it's J O S E F. And we publish a whole bunch of videos on this topic. You know, drug tapering, Non. Non Drug approaches for depression. And if you're interested in learning more about my clinic, we're in, I think we're in like 16 or 17 US states. The. The largest.

[A]

Did not realize that it was that big. That's awesome.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. We've got a growing team of people. There's a big demand to come off these meds and, and, and that's for sure.

[A]

It's only going to get bigger.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm thinking it's like, are we. Well, I hope not. You know, I hope. You know, what I wish is that we get, you know, with Bobby now in charge.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We actually get people shifting towards more sustainable ways. The cynic in me is like, oh, you know, is mental health going to get worse? And then I think about AI and like the loss of jobs and stuff. I'm just like, okay, that's really bad. But I'm like, I don't know, maybe if we have really good public health and we can get people moving and eating the right foods and, you know, not getting led astray with these weird narratives about the drugs, like, it will get better. But anyway, so my clinic, if people want to find, find me and learn more about our business, it's. It's taperclinic.com.

[A]

Easy enough.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, Dr. Youssef, thank you so much for taking the time to join us and enlighten us. And thank you so much for what you and your wife do, for being willing to go out and do something different that is very, very necessary. So I appreciate y'.

[B]

All. Thanks so much for having me all. Sat.