The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Psychiatric Medication EXPOSED: The Hidden Costs of Mental Health Treatment

Summary

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The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Psychiatric Medication EXPOSED – The Hidden Costs of Mental Health Treatment

Date: September 22, 2025
Host: Tudor Dixon
Guest: Dr. Joseph Whit Doring (psychiatrist, former FDA medical officer)

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Episode Overview

This episode delves deep into the hidden costs and overlooked consequences of psychiatric medications, particularly antidepressants and other mood-altering drugs. Host Tudor Dixon and Dr. Joseph Whit Doring discuss the approval process, real-life impacts, blunted emotional lives, generational shifts, underreported adverse effects—including violent outcomes—and the role of the FDA and physicians in possible long-term harms. The conversation is candid, sometimes unsettling, and aims to challenge prevailing narratives around psychiatric drug safety and necessity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Psychiatric Medications Are Approved

• Approval studies are short-term: Most clinical trials for antidepressants last only 12 weeks; no randomized controlled trial exceeds one year. Yet, many patients are on these drugs for years or decades.

  “The studies are only about 12 weeks long, and we've never had a randomized controlled trial go longer than a year. And that should be a reason for a lot of people to pause, because we put people on these drugs for a really long time.”
  — Dr. Doring (04:02)

• Drug regulators’ lower standards: Approval hinges mainly on reduced symptoms on a depression scale, not tangible life improvements like better relationships or work productivity.

  “Antidepressant is a marketing term... Essentially, these are drugs, these are mood constricting drugs…that effect can be experienced as therapeutic for some people, but it can also hold you back and make things worse.”
  — Dr. Doring (05:09)

2. Emotional Blunting and Real-life Impacts

• Many users experience a reduced range of emotions—less pain, but also less joy, connection, and motivation.

  “I look at something, I know it's sad. I want to have an emotion and I cannot have any emotion at all.”
  — Quoting a patient’s experience (06:31)

• While some find the numbing effect initially helpful in crises, long-term use often dulls all feelings.

  “Over time you will start to notice that it's blunting positives... you may not feel the same way when you hug a loved one.”
  — Dr. Doring (07:05)

3. Generational Shifts: Impact on Youth and Families

• Historically, adolescence was framed as a tough but normal period. Now, negative feelings are often pathologized as “chemical imbalances,” leading to more prescriptions.

• Children and teens may bluntly suppress emotions about life’s setbacks via medication, stunting emotional growth. (08:42–10:24)

• Risks extend to emotionally numbed parents, potentially harming bonds with their own children.

  “They realize they've missed quite a lot of their child's emotional life. Now, the issue is that the person on the drug rarely realizes that they have a problem because essentially you're in a drugged state.”
  — Dr. Doring (11:20)

• The need for a “spotter”—someone who can observe and speak up about personality or behavioral changes. (11:52)

4. Lack of Meaningful Monitoring & Measurement

• Real world effects such as failed relationships and job dissatisfaction aren’t tracked or valued in studies, nor by the FDA.

  "If we're going to give people drugs that change their mood and personality, ...we need to measure outcomes. How many divorces are happening between the two groups? How many people are saying that they're satisfied in their job?"
  — Dr. Doring (13:34)

5. Psychiatric Medications and Violence

• Growing public suspicion links mass violence to psychiatric drugs—ADHD and antidepressants, in particular.

  “Every time we see violence, they say 'Was there some sort of psychiatric med involved?' ...It's always, 'what was prescribed to them?'”
  — Tudor Dixon (18:57)

• FDA warning labels themselves cite hostility, aggression, irritability, suicidal and even homicidal ideation as known side effects.

  “If you look at drugs like Abilify...it will say homicidal ideation. This has been put in there by the drug companies...”
  — Dr. Doring (21:09)

• Rare but real legal precedents: Notably, the Donald Schell case in Wyoming, where a jury found a pharmaceutical company liable for violence following medication. (22:50–23:42)

• The media and certain medical authorities often downplay or dismiss these links, but courts have on multiple occasions found a causal relationship.

6. Systemic Issues: Overprescription and Lack of Oversight

• Family doctors, not psychiatrists, prescribe 80% of psychiatric medications—with only brief consultations.

  “Most people listening right now will know that they get probably five to seven minutes of FaceTime with their family doctor...adverse behavioral side effects are frequently missed because they are hard to detect in short visits.”
  — Dr. Doring (26:50)

• Polypharmacy (multiple psychiatric drugs prescribed together) can lead to cascading side effects, requiring even more medications to manage the fallout.

  "Suddenly you are trying to patch... it's like there's holes in this bucket and you're trying to patch every possible place to prove that a medication is doing something good while it destroys every other part of this person's body."
  — Tudor Dixon (31:33)

• Dr. Doring's controversial position:

  “I don't think family medicine doctors should be prescribing like things like antidepressants...That should be done by a psychiatrist who has enough time... there's nothing more complicated than giving someone a drug that can, that can alter their mood and personality.”
  — Dr. Doring (31:48)

7. Cautionary Tales: Extreme Side Effects

• Even so-called “benign” drugs like benzodiazepines prescribed for MRI anxiety can produce rare but devastating reactions:

  “They offered them an anxiety med...the patient had a terrible reaction, gouged out their own eye, and ate it. That is terrifying to me.”
  — Tudor Dixon (33:44)

• Dr. Doring's takeaway: The automatic medicating of even mild situational anxiety can, in rare cases, lead to horrifying outcomes.

  “We've gotten so used to just, oh, you have a little bit of anxiety. Just take it...These medications, in rare instances, they can have very serious side effects.”
  — Dr. Doring (34:14)

8. Philosophical & Common-Sense Perspective

• The notion that a single pill could “magically” resolve complex life and relationship problems is both enticing and misleading.

  “How could that ever make sense that you could take a pill...with the complexity of the mind and the human experience, that you could expect that to solve your relationship problems, your spiritual issues, your problems in your work? It's simply not true. It is... too good to be true.”
  — Dr. Doring (36:25)

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “The studies are only about 12 weeks long… we put people on these drugs for a really long time.”
  — Dr. Doring (04:02)

• “Antidepressant is a marketing term... these are mood constricting drugs.”
  — Dr. Doring (05:09)

• “Over time you will start to notice that it's blunting positives. Yes, you're going to feel less negatives, but you may not feel the same way when you hug a loved one.”
  — Dr. Doring (07:05)

• “It takes like, these smoke alarms, these normal things that trouble people… when you take the drug, it recasts it as a brain problem, essentially. And people are robbed of the opportunity of actually addressing issues.”
  — Dr. Doring (08:42)

• “The person on the drug rarely realizes that they have a problem because essentially you're in a drugged state.”
  — Dr. Doring (11:31)

• “If we're going to give people drugs that change their mood and personality... we need to measure outcomes. How many divorces are happening between the two groups?”
  — Dr. Doring (13:34)

• “If you look at drugs like Abilify… it will say homicidal ideation. This has been put in there by the drug companies because they have noticed that this is a side effect and this has happened.”
  — Dr. Doring (21:09)

• “Most people listening...get probably five to seven minutes of FaceTime with their family doctor...adverse behavioral side effects are frequently missed because they are hard to detect in short visits.”
  — Dr. Doring (26:50)

• “I don't think family medicine doctors should be prescribing...antidepressants... that should be done by a psychiatrist who has enough time.”
  — Dr. Doring (31:48)

• “These medications, in rare instances, they can have very serious side effects.”
  — Dr. Doring (34:14)

• “How could that ever make sense that you could take a pill...with the complexity of the mind and the human experience...to solve your relationship problems, your spiritual issues, your problems in your work? It's simply not true.”
  — Dr. Doring (36:25)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• FDA approval process & term “antidepressant” challenged – 04:02–06:05
• Emotional blunting and lived experiences – 06:05–08:42
• Impact on youth, families, and generational changes – 08:42–12:40
• Monitoring, spotters, and systemic problems – 12:40–14:29
• Mass violence, legal cases, and psychiatric meds – 18:57–24:10
• Physician roles, five-minute prescriptions, overmedication – 26:02–31:48
• Extreme adverse effects and common sense argument – 33:44–36:25

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Memorable Moments

• The shocking case of paradoxical reaction to benzodiazepine—self-harm during an MRI (33:44–35:27)
• Host's candid personal stories of dealing with trauma, hospitals, and the temptation to trust physicians uncritically (32:39–36:25)
• Dr. Doring's direct call for curbing family doctor prescriptions of antidepressants—a “hot take” (31:48)

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Summary Takeaways

Tudor Dixon and Dr. Joseph Whit Doring provide a rigorous and critical examination of psychiatric medications—a space where social, medical, and regulatory forces often promote “safe and effective” narratives with little reflection on deeper costs. Their conversation surfaces hidden harms: emotional flattening, missed family connections, underreported violence, and a reductionist medical model that treats existential suffering as mere “chemical imbalance.” Listeners are left to question the wisdom of rapid widespread psychiatric medication, the integrity of the FDA approval process, and the ability of rushed family medicine visits to responsibly manage such powerful drugs.

Next Episode Teaser:
A promised follow-up will run deeper into the effects of cannabis, more on drug-induced sexual dysfunction, and a frank look at psychiatric meds and trans issues.

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Transcript

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

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[Tudor Dixon]

Learn [e-mail] welcome to the Tudor Dixon Podcast. We are so blessed today to have a doctor with us, Dr. Joseph Whit Doring. He is with us today, and you've probably seen him talking all over about the FDA and medicines that are prescribed to us. You've seen him on social media, on a bunch of different podcasts. So he has expertise here. He's actually a former FDA medical officer, too. So we're really excited about having you. Thank you so much for joining me today, Tudor.

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me on.

[Tudor Dixon]

Absolutely. So, as I said, we've seen you in many different interviews. We hear you talking about these medicines that I think people are interested in hearing about because we have people that in our lives, either we are taking them or people that we love are taking them every day. And we've seen this. Those of us who have been around it, we've seen the changes in their ability to connect, their ability to have an emotional reaction, their ability to have intimacy. And it's devastating, these devastating effects. So I ask you, as someone who was at the fda, how do these drugs get approved?

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

So, I mean, these drugs are. And people are often shocked when they hear this, what the studies are like to get them approved. So the first thing I usually emphasize is that the studies are only about 12 weeks long, and we've never had a randomized controlled trial go longer than a year. And that should be a reason for a lot of people to pause, because we put people on these drugs for a really long time.

[Tudor Dixon]

I mean, decades, sometimes decades.

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

Yeah. 50% of antidepressant users have been on them for five years or more. And the other thing is that. And this is why I do what I do now, because I worked at the fda, I got to kind of see behind the scenes, and I was just like, this is crazy. And so the other thing that I noticed that was really shocking is antidepressants are said to be effective by the drug regulators if they simply reduce symptoms on a depression scale. Now, that's therapeutic for some people. But what I want to contrast this against is, you know, when you hear the term antidepressant, you might think, well, you know, I'm going to do better in my relationships or I'm going to be doing better in my work, or, you know, it's going to lift me out of depression and it's going to improve my life in these tangible ways. That's not the outcome. The outcome is decreased symptoms on a scale. And Obviously, you can get that if you essentially just blunt emotional range. And so what I really think is important for people to know is that antidepressant is a marketing term. People can kind of imagine all sorts of things when they, when they hear antidepressant. Essentially, these are drugs, these are mood constricting drugs. Yes. That effect can be experienced as therapeutic for some people, but it can also hold you back and make things worse. I mean, if blunting your emotional range, you know, leads you to staying in a job that you don't like, staying in a relationship that you don't like being, being blind to legit problems or maybe health issues in your life, that's actually working against you, and I think that message has been lost.

[Tudor Dixon]

It's interesting that you bring this up because I was just with a girl yesterday and she said her, one of her friends had a traumatic experience. Her mother died in a traumatic way. And that was what she wanted. She said, I think at that point she wanted to feel nothing. And they put her on these medications and she said it really did make it so that she was not able to feel, and that was what she wanted. At the moment, it's five years later, she's struggling to get off of them. And she said to her friend, I can't explain it, but I feel, I look at something, I know it's sad. I want to have an emotion and I cannot have any emotion at all.

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

Yeah. And I think that is a really common experience that, that a lot of people go through. And I just want to say, just, just quickly, these drugs, they have their place and, and we will. And I, I'm a psychiatrist, I see this all the time. People say, I took it, it was helpful. They'll even say it's life saving. I mean, if your life is in chaos and there's a lot of things going on, if you take something that can numb you or restrict your emotional range, you will experience that as therapeutic. But the issue is, and this is what's happened with, with your friend is over time you will start to notice that it's blunting positives. And so, yes, you're going to feel less negatives, but you may not feel the same way when you hug a loved one. You may not feel the same way when something sad happens and you go, I want to cry. You may feel blunted to maybe things happening in your relationship. Maybe your wife is upset, and in the past, maybe you would have been like, okay, there's something going on. I can tell just by the change in her in the way she's responding to me, that I need to go and talk to her, because something is festering. If you wipe that out, you will. You're going to miss things.

[Tudor Dixon]

And so I want to stop you there, because you make a great point. But a wife can understand you're not doing what I need you to do. And that can be a conversation. It can be incredibly frustrating. And that person may actually still not see it, but there is the opportunity for the other adult in the relationship to say, something's happening to you. We need to do something about it. How is this impacting youth? Because when I was a kid, these drugs really were not out there at all. I mean, I think in the 80s is when we started to see Prozac, and I was in high school by the time people were actually, I was out of high school by the time people were really being prescribed this kind of medication. So I don't remember these situations happening. But I look at kids today, and they are completely ignored by their parents. And I don't think their parents know they're doing it.

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

I mean, the impact. If I think about the impact of these medications on youth, I mean, it, for me, it boils down to some of the messaging that comes along with these drugs. Now, let's talk about adolescence. This is a very challenging time. You're hormonal, you're navigating relationships for the first time. Maybe you're trying to find out your purpose and what you want to do in life, in us. You know, in the zeal of the medical profession and somewhat the pharmaceutical industry as well, to kind of promote the drugs and also promote the messaging that people have chemical imbalances and that they need these drugs. We are changing the narrative about how people see totally normal problems. Going through a breakup, devastated, you know, that used to be normal. Now it's a chemical imbalance dealing with problems of social isolation and loneliness. You might fix that in the past. Okay, this is something I need to work on. You know, you have a chemical imbalance, you know, not certain about what you want to do in your life. Chemical imbalance. And so some of the issue is it takes, like, these smoke alarms, these normal things that trouble people. And, you know, when you take the drug, it recasts it as a brain problem, essentially. And people are robbed of the opportunity of actually addressing issues. And you could just imagine the problems that would have is if you just kind of suppress the feelings about problems happening in that person's life for, like, I don't know, 10 years or something when they're on it, eventually they're going to have to deal with. With that when they come off the drug later on. And. And so I personally worry that it's getting in the way of just. Just general maturation and the ability to deal with normal bumps in life.

[Tudor Dixon]

Well, and I worry that if you have a parent that is on these medications, I mean, sometimes my daughters come to me with something. I mean, just the other night I had. One of them had an issue at school, and she was crying. And my reaction is very emotional, you know, and I try. I'm. I'm holding it together for her, but it is in my head the rest of the night, the rest of the week, and I'm checking in with her and I'm thinking about. I know that you are emotionally hurting right now, and I need to come around you and make sure that I'm supporting you through this. But if you are on these medications, it is hard to break through your outer. Your emotions, too. So as a parent, can you identify when your child is in an emotional state? If you are not feeling those emotions? And if. If children are in a situation where the parent is essentially not bonding to them, what does that do to that child as they grow up?

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

Sure. Yeah. And this. This is something that I have seen firsthand. I have parents who tell me, hey, because this is what I do, I bring people off the medications, and they'll say, I had no idea how blocked I was to the problems going on with my child. I would be, you know, sitting there doing my work at home, and they would come home after school and they would say things to me, and I would just kind of shrug it off, completely missing that there's emotional problems going on. And then when they come off, they start to notice it a lot more, and they realize they've missed quite a lot of their child's emotional life. Now, the issue is that the person on the drug rarely realizes that they have a problem because essentially you're in a drugged state. So when it comes to how do you detect if this is happening to you, it's so important to have someone else, whether it's a spouse or family member or a very trusted friend, know you're getting on the drug, because they are going to be the ones who will say, you know what? You've kind of changed. And I know you're karma, but I think it's actually harming you in some ways. And so people need to be warned that this can happen at the outset of use, but they also need A spotter, you know, someone there who can just say, hey, you might not realize this is, this is happening.

[Tudor Dixon]

But the problem is they might not care because they are in that state. I mean, it's like a double edged sword because you can go to that person and say, hello, this is not you. This is a totally different you. And I mean, I've had this experience with people where they go, I can't function without this, so this is the new me. And then where does that leave everyone around them?

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

I mean, that's a really challenging situation. And if you want to.

[Tudor Dixon]

That's why I say this is something that. Why does the FDA allow this? Because the FDA passes this, says it's okay, not our problem. This is going to go to the families now. And you are telling me, I mean, think about what you're telling me. A doctor prescribes something, a non doctor, just a loved one around you has to watch you and be ready to say, okay, it's gone too far. You're no longer you. And yet you, you're fighting the medical system because the doctor is still telling that, no, you need this drug.

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

Yeah, yeah. It's a complicated issue. And I think one of the problems is when we study these drugs, as I mentioned before, it's on this depression scale and it's for 12 weeks, which is insane. We need to be, I mean, we should have said, like, if we're going to give people drugs that change their mood and personality, because let's face it, that's what these drugs are doing. We need to measure outcomes. How many divorces are happening between the two groups? How many people are saying that they're satisfied in their job? Because, like, that's where this is going to turn up. You know, when, when these drugs get in the way of, you know, your relationship and it can lead to breakups, we actually need to be measuring these things. And the FDA isn't doing that. And I think you make a good argument that, you know, how safe are, are these really? If we're, if we're not measuring that and we're only studying them for three months.

[Tudor Dixon]

Hey, stick around because we have more with Dr. Joseph Whit during. But first, I want to talk to you about my partners at ifcj. You guys remember, so clearly it was almost two years ago that terrorists went into Israel and murdered more than 1200 innocent Israelis and took 250 hostages. There are still hostages today. And it seems like the cries of the dead and dying are being drowned out by this anti Semitic hatred. You guys see it. We see it all over social media. I am shocked by how intense the anti Semitic hatred is right now and this brutal attack on the Jewish people, the most brutal attack since the Holocaust, has been forgotten as we have a world that looks away. But there is a light right now that shines in this darkness. It's a moment of love and support. This is a movement for the people of Israel called Flags of Fellowship and it's organized by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. On October 5th, it's just a few weeks away, there are going to be be millions of people across America that will prayerfully plant an Israeli flag in honor and in solidarity with the victims of October 7, 2023 and their grieving families. And you can be a part of this movement too. To get more information about how you can join the Flags of Fellowship movement, visit the fellowship [e-mail] that's ifcj.org now. Stay tuned. We'll be back right after this.

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[Tudor Dixon]

So there's a lot of question about, not only that, I mean you talk about something very critical, relationships and how this affects people in, in their home life. But you, you see a lot of violence today, a lot of violence. And people, every time we see violence, they say, was there some sort of psychiatric med involved? It's crazy to me because we're so in tune to the fact that it could be a psychiatric med that you don't ask anymore, were they high on coke, Were they drunk, Were they high on weed? It's always what was prescribed to them. Let's get a toxicology report. We want to know what was prescribed to them. And I was reading earlier about the trans shooter in Nashville. This is a young woman who was put on medication for depression at 6 years old. Now, at 6 years old, you cannot tell me that they knew that this child was clinically depressed and that there wasn't. There couldn't have been some other way to get this child through this emotional time in their life. But from six on, she was on medication. Is there a connection between these mass shootings and this mass violence and psychiatric meds?

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

Yeah, so there is a connection. But I have to come in and say that this is a multifactorial problem. I think we would all. I don't think anyone is saying that every single mass shooting that occurs, you know, psychiatric drugs involved, although I get cast as saying that some. Sometimes there's issues of social contagion going on, there's issues of access to guns, there's issues of drugs being involved. And yes, there are issues of people being on psychiatric medications which lead to behavioral disinhibition. My position on this is that people need to start looking at all of these factors and they don't. They like to sweep it away and just say, you know, it's, it's guns or it's, it's mental illness. We are not looking at this in a responsible way in terms of public health. And so I'd like to talk about why I believe these medications can lead to mass acts of violence and suicide. So this isn't, this is not something that is fringe. If you open the drug labels, you look at ADHD meds in the warnings and precautions, which is the highest, one of the highest sections in the label for the most important risks, it says right there, it says hostility. That is a really common side effect with ADHD medications. If you look at drugs like Abilify, which are antipsychotics, in the label it will say homicidal ideation. This has been put in there by the drug companies because they have notice that this is a side effect and this has happened sometimes. If you look at the antidepressants, it will say that they increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior. It also lists aggression, irritability and hostility in there. Okay, now that's not exactly saying in the label these drugs can lead to mass shootings. But already you're seeing that for some people who are sensitive to these medications, again, these are rare side effects. They're not going to have that normal like blunting, emotional constricting effect. They're going to have a paradoxical unusual visual reaction which you cannot predict. It just has to do with something about their biology where they will become more irritable, agitated or aggressive. Again, not common. Now, have there been cases where this has led to mass acts of violence already? And they have been. And these have gone before judges and juries. You know, the most well known case is Donald Shell. This was over in Wyoming. He had previously taken Prozac. He had a bad reaction. He became worse. And then another doctor, not realizing that, put him on a very similar medication called paxil. They're both SSRIs. It never should have happened. If you responded Negatively to one in the past and had behavioral problems. You don't put someone on this again. But that happened to him. Within a week of getting on this medication, he developed a psychosis. He became homicidal and suicidal. He killed his wife, he killed his daughter and he killed his granddaughter. He shot them all. And then he, and then he killed himself. Now his, the surviving son in law took this case against Smith Kline. You know, this was before GSK and the jury found Smith Klein to be 80% responsible for the death. For failure to warn, he was awarded a million millions. I think it was like $6 million, which was a lot in the early 90s. They appealed it, but they were not successful. And the verdict has stood. And this has happened in many other cases. People, the media doesn't like to talk about this. But in many cases when been behavioral adverse reactions and it's resulted in violence or homicide, they have gone to the courts, juries and judges. Objective people have heard the evidence and then they have ruled that the drugs have been involved. But if, when you say things like this these days, people say this is, you know, this is a myth. You're scaring people away from psychiatric medications. You're out there trying to do harm. There's no way they can do this. It's not true. It's in the labels already. It's happening in the courts. And we need to look at this with individual cases because if we knew.

[Tudor Dixon]

Then maybe as parents we would even react differently. I read that the Parkland shooter had been on ADHD drugs for many, many years, but his behavior hadn't improved. And I think oftentimes teachers will even push. I've even seen teachers push to get kids on medication. So this kid was on ADHD drugs. He was very aggressive. The reports from his childhood in the classroom, very aggressive, very aggressive with parents had thrown mom up against the wall still on these drugs. Clearly if you've been this aggressive in school and you are under the care of a psychiatrist, which I assume you are, if you're getting these. However, I will say I've known general practitioners that have been able to give out these drugs and the monitoring is different. But I would assume that as a doctor, if you've given someone this medication, you would continue to follow up and say how has the behavior changed? And mom and dad are saying, my gosh, he's getting in trouble at school. He threw mom up against the wall. That didn't change the fact that they kept him on these meds. And then he went in and there were reports, from what I remember, there were reports that he had been saying, I have these homicidal thought, and he went in and shot up an entire school. So when you say, you know, people don't want to be freaked out about this, I agree, but it's. This is a fact. This is not like a myth. This is not a maybe. This is a fact. And parents are afraid every single day that they drop their kids off at the bus stop or at school that there is going to be a parkland kid that could go in and do the same thing that this kid did. And we deserve to know if these kids are on medications that are causing them to have the negative, negative reaction that should mean we take them off.

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

Yeah, we do deserve to know that. And I think, really, a lot of the time, the. The critics out there who have an agenda against having this go out, you know, whether it's, you know, whether it's a drug company or it's the American Psychiatric association, any. Any group that has a vested interest in the public seeing the drugs in a favorable way, they almost wield this, oh, you're going to scare them away from drugs. As it's like a compassionate thing to do for society, really. It's a form of intimidation against the critics. They want to say, you, Mr. Critic, you are dangerous. You know, how could you ever, you know, spread such a, you know, conspiracy theory? But the reality is that's not compassionate from a public health perspective, because the compassionate thing to do is to be honest about what's happening. I mean, you can even say it's rare because it is rare, and just say, despite this, we need to start looking at these things. We need to start looking at. Why is this being missed? You know, because that's another issue that you touched on. And sorry, another piece of information is 80% of these drugs are given out by family medicine physicians. Most people listening right now will know that they get probably five to seven minutes of FaceTime with their family doctor. And that is how these people are being monitored. And when you are monitoring someone in five to seven minutes and you're spending half of the time talking about some other health problem, are you really going to be able to conduct a history where you're saying, is this drug making them worse in some way? Tell me about their behavior. Let me call their mom. Let me talk to someone at the school. What is happening is. So none of that happens. They just simply assume that the mental illness is worsening and they increase the dose or they add another drug because it is expedient and it is faster than really kind of digging into things. And so adverse behavioral side effects are frequently missed because they are hard to detect in short visits.

[Tudor Dixon]

Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tutor Dixon Podcast.

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[Tudor Dixon]

At what point do you say that doctors should be investigated if they have a history of having patients just, just kind of load up on drugs? And I'm serious about this and I know people go, oh well, you don't know what's best for the patient. But I know people that they put them on an antidepressant, they put them on an anti anxiety, they put them on Adderall, all three of those. And then they end up having a facial tic and they have to go on some medication for that. And then they end up having high blood pressure and they have to go on a medication for that. And suddenly you are trying to patch. It's like there's holes in this bucket and you're trying to patch every possible place to prove that a medication is doing something good while it destroys every other part of this person's body.

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

Yeah, I mean, you're going to get a hot take from me. This is not what I think most people believe, but personally, I don't think family medicine. Doctors should be prescribing like things like antidepressants. I mean, you're giving a drug that can potentially change someone's personality and their mood. It can affect their relationships and their work and their ability to recognize problems in their life. That should be done by a psychiatrist who has enough time. Now we have this narrative in society now where it's like depression, anxiety, it's so common, these drugs are so safe. I think it's completely wrong and I think that needs to be changed. I think we need to treat these drugs, which can be useful for some people with the respect that they deserve and with the time that they deserve. Because listen, there's nothing more complicated than giving someone a drug that can, that can alter their mood and personality.

[Tudor Dixon]

So you shared a post recently, it's really graphic. But I want to talk about it because you shared this post about this person getting an MRI and it was shocking to me, but not shocking to me because I'm a cancer survivor. So I've been through the MRIs and the CAT scans and the biopsies, and one of my biopsies for my cancer, they said, we're going to do this biopsy. And I thought, yeah, I've had other biopsies. That's fine. And they were like, it's going to be a mammogram biopsy. And I had no idea what this was. And you have to climb up on this machine, and you're like, half on top and half on bottom. They're sticking needles through your body parts, and you can't move at all. Like, not at all. And they told me ahead of time, you can't move. Your legs are going to be up above you, your arms will be out. You. If you even so much as have an itch, you have to tell us you cannot move. And afterward, I got down in the wal. Woman said, did you take the Valium? And I said, what are you talking about? And she said, oh, that test is so stressful. Generally we offer someone Valium ahead of time. And I said, oh, nobody mentioned that. She said, you were just very calm. Because when you're in that situation, I mean, I know that there are people who panic, but I do think that they talk you through it enough that they know if you're ready or not. But you shared with a story about a patient who was going into an mri, and they offered them an anxiety med. Before they went in, the patient had a terrible reaction, gouged out their own eye, and ate it. That is terrifying to me.

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

Yes. And so, again, you know, putting it in context, listen, this is the first time I've ever heard of it. You need to hear that these medications, in rare instances, they can have very serious side effects. And so that's the point that I want people to hear. Benzodiazepines, which are commonly used to help people, you know, go in the narrow tube of an mri. They, you know, they relax people, but they can cause paradoxical reactions like all drugs. And the point when I put that out there, because it was graphic and it was shocking, was that we've gotten so used to just, oh, you have a little bit of anxiety. Just. Just take it. You're a little nervous about being in the narrow tube. Take this medication. What has happened to us? I think we can tell people like, yes, some situational anxiety is normal. Some claustrophobia is normal. And you know what? This drug has side effects. Maybe we go ahead and we Try it without. I'll be there with you. I'm going to reassure you. You're going to get through this. It's okay. Very quickly, we just default to using meds, which in rare instances can have absolutely horrific outcome.

[Tudor Dixon]

That is probably one of the most horrific things I've ever heard. And I honestly would have read it and said, no way. Except for having my own experience in the hospital of them saying, we generally offer this to everybody. And I think we've had this inherent trust in the medical system. And honestly, back then, that was 10 years ago, I probably would have been like, okay. They're telling me, most people take this, I should take it without thinking, I'm fine. I don't need this. And that's the thing that I think is the unusual part about psychiatric meds. It's kind of like someone saying, you need this. Even if you haven't, if you haven't discussed, I'm not anxious about this test. There's a push to take it regardless. Like, we have a solution for you. And yet when you look at it with common sense, you would say, you know, what, am I going to take a pill every day? And it is going to magically change.

[Dr. Joseph Whit Doring]

Everything in my life, you know, is what I'm going to say. Because I think there's something common sense about that where it's like, how could that ever make sense that you could take a pill? And it, you know, with the complexity of the mind and the human experience, that you could expect that to solve your relationship problems, your spiritual issues, your problems in your work? It's simply not true. It is. It is just. It's too good to be true. And because it's not that. I mean, that's not what they do.

[Tudor Dixon]

Thank you so much for being here with us today. Dr. Joseph Witt during. And we are going to have you back. In the next podcast, we're going to dig into some pretty crazy subjects. We're going to talk about cannabis. And I know a lot of people think cannabis is safe. We're going to get into some of the things you might actually not know about cannabis. We're also going to talk a little bit deeper about those side effects from these drugs that have sexual dysfunction. But also we're going to get into the trans issue. So it's going to be very interesting to hear what the good doctor has to say. But thank you all for joining us today on the Tutor Dixon podcast. You know, as always, you can go to tutordixonpodcast.com and subscribe or go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and you can always check out the whole video. It is on Rumble and YouTubeutorderdixon. But make sure you join us next time on the Tutor Dixon podcast and have a blessed day.

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[Christina Quinn]

Many ultra processed foods you could be starving your gut microbes and they'll get hangry. That's one of many things I learned after working on a new audio course about the gut microbiome. You can learn how to keep your gut happy by listening to Try this from the Washington Post. I'm Christina Quinn. I host Try this. Dig in with me on practical advice for life's common challenges. Follow. Try this right now, wherever you're listening. Seriously, try it.

[Rodney Williams and Travis Holloway]

I'm Rodney Williams. And I'm Travis Holloway. Welcome to the wealthbreak podcast, a real conversation about finance. Let's be honest, building weft doesn't look the same for everyone.

[Tudor Dixon]

I feel like sometimes being broke is a cycle and that we might have.

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To revisit that and we're not stopping at success stories.

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What happens when it doesn't go right? How do you cope with it?

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Because wealth isn't just about money. It's about creating a life where you thrive and help others do the same. Listen to the Wealth Break podcast on the iHeartradio app.

[Christina Quinn]

This is an iHeart podcast.