Podcast Summary: The Rubin Report with Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring

Episode: “Proof That Medications Are Making Mental Health Crisis Worse”
Date: January 17, 2026
Host: Dave Rubin
Guest: Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring (Board-Certified Psychiatrist, Founder of The Taper Clinic)

Overview

This episode dives into the crisis of mental health in America with Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring. The conversation focuses on the over-prescription of psychiatric medications, their long-term risks, the underappreciated role of lifestyle and environmental factors, and how modern practices in psychiatry, social media, and drug culture have fueled, rather than eased, the mental health crisis. Dr. Witt-Doerring shares pragmatic solutions and a cautiously optimistic view stemming from recent reforms in dietary guidelines.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Mental Health Crisis and Medication Overuse (01:00–06:54)

• State of Mental Health:

  • Depression and suicide rates are the highest they've been in decades, even as prescription of psychiatric medications reaches record highs.
  • Witt-Doerring finds this correlation “counterintuitive,” suggesting medications may be making things worse.

• Systemic Issues in Psychiatry:

  • Financial incentives push psychiatrists to “see four patients an hour,” often resulting in superficial treatment (01:00).
  • Most psychiatric drugs are only studied for up to a year—long-term impacts are largely unknown (07:26).
  • “It’s commercially in their best interest to do so because it’s a lot easier to say … you meet criteria for depression … there’s an FDA-approved treatment for it. Take this drug … I’ll take $500 and I’ll see you in three months.” – Dr. Witt-Doerring (01:00 & 07:26)

2. Why Psychiatrists Default to Medication (05:22–08:27)

• Broken Approach:
  • Failure to explore root causes or context behind mental health symptoms—patients are assigned a chemical imbalance diagnosis and medicated, even when lifestyle factors or trauma may be more relevant.
  • Ignored basics: healthy eating, physical activity, avoidance of substances (e.g., cannabis, stimulants).
  • “We end up just putting a whole bunch of these people on medications while the underlying issues aren’t really being addressed.” – Dr. Witt-Doerring (05:22)

3. The Dangers of Medicating Youth (08:27–10:46)

• Alarming Trends:
  • About 5% of children are on antidepressants and 6% on ADHD medications—potentially four kids in a typical classroom.
  • Early exposure alters brain development; “you disrupt the normal trajectory of development.”
  • MRI studies confirm changes in brain structure/function, especially around the amygdala (fear center).
  • “We’re basically hooking a generation of young people onto things before they can even make any decisions.” – Dave Rubin (08:27)

4. Alternatives to Medication: Diet, Exercise, and Lifestyle (10:46–13:28)

• Lifestyle First:
  • Audit for root causes—relationship issues, social isolation, lack of purpose.
  • Diet: The “MAHA” (upside down) food pyramid—emphasizes whole foods, reduces ultra-processed foods and added sugars.
  • Three randomized controlled trials show diets like MAHA outperform antidepressants (11:16).
  • Exercise is “really important.”
  • Cannabis use is heavily implicated in worsening mental health, especially with modern high-concentration THC.

5. Cannabis and Synthetic Drugs: Neurotoxicity Risks (13:28–16:52)

• Modern Cannabis Is Dangerous:
  • New strains: THC increased from 5% (old) to 25-35% (now), and vape pens/concentrates go even higher (up to 90%).
  • “15% [THC] was 5x’ing the amount of psychotic breaks. You can imagine what’s happening with … 35% or even 90%.” – Dr. Witt-Doerring (13:37)
  • Synthetic cannabinoids (“Delta 8,” “Delta 9”): much stronger, directly neurotoxic, risk of psychosis, mania.

6. Social Media’s Negative Impact (16:52–18:27)

• Isolation and Anxiety:
  • Teens spend 3.5 hours daily on social media, to the detriment of real-life connections, development, exercise, and sleep.
  • “I mean, it’s the worst of the worst… there’s very little nutritional value for the brain. …It just sends poison.” – Dr. Witt-Doerring (17:09)

7. The Taper Clinic Approach & Addiction Parallels (18:27–21:00)

• Gradual, Individualized Tapers:
  • Conventional rapid tapers fail, leading to withdrawal and misattributed “underlying illness.”
  • Multi-medicated patients—often with co-occurring lifestyle and dependency issues—need holistic, personalized plans.
  • Many modern impulsive behaviors (porn, gambling, etc.) share roots in “revved up, anxious nervous systems”—improved physical health reduces impulsivity.

8. Shifting Perceptions: Medicalizing Discomfort (21:00–22:57)

• Normal Suffering vs. Pathology:
  • Social and pharmaceutical narratives now label ordinary adolescent or adult hardship as a mental disorder, pushing drugs as the answer.
  • Attack on teachers/parents as frontline emotional support, replaced by the push for immediate professional (and pharmaceutical) intervention.
  • “[We] medicalize a lot of things. It’s very sad.” – Dr. Witt-Doerring (21:00)

9. Medication Realities: What Works, What Harms (22:57–24:55)

• Short-Term Use OK, Long-Term Use Harmful:
  • All psychiatric drugs “work” by providing an immediate effect, but do not address root causes and tend to make things worse long-term.
  • Benzodiazepines (“Xanax, Klonopin, Valium, Ambien, Sonata”) are the riskiest—cause dependence, withdrawal, worsen anxiety and sleep (23:24).

10. Side Effects and Medicalization of Well-Being (24:55–26:43)

• Dangerous Side Effects:
  • Behavioral side effects: suicide, gambling, disinhibited behavior, potential violence—side effects often minimized in commercials or clinical practice.
  • “At the end of the day, these are potent neurological drugs… we shouldn’t be surprised that when we start tinkering with the chemistry, we gain a lot of weight, we develop diabetes, our cholesterol goes crazy.” – Dr. Witt-Doerring (25:31)

11. Supplements & “Natural” Remedies (26:43–28:27)

• No Free Lunch:
  • Some supplements restore deficiencies (vitamin D, magnesium), but high-dose “nutraceuticals” (ashwagandha, lion’s mane) are essentially mild drugs with dependency and withdrawal risk.
  • “I would just look at them as just over the counter drugs that you can get. But they are drugs.” – Dr. Witt-Doerring (26:59)

12. Future Outlook: Cautious, Some Hope (28:27–31:48)

• Doom or Hope?:
  • Fears about AI, automation, and digital escapism stripping life of meaning and purpose—“we become like the human batteries in the Matrix” (28:52).
  • But recent wins (adoption of the MAHA diet) and possibilities for change in health policy offer hope for real societal improvement.
  • “Let’s celebrate the recent wins that we have right now.” – Dr. Witt-Doerring (31:13)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Prescription Culture:
  “We pretend that we can help people with serious mental healthcare problems that require a lot of understanding and a lot of effort to help with simple drug solutions. And as I dug into this more and more, I actually believe in many cases medications are making people worse.”
  — Dr. Witt-Doerring (03:34)

• On Cannabis Risks:
  “The drug at the top of the list was cannabis. It wasn’t methamphetamine, it wasn’t LSD, it wasn’t cocaine… There’s something uniquely neurotoxic about the cannabis that we have going around today.”
  — Dr. Witt-Doerring (15:02)

• On The Social Media Epidemic:
  “There’s very little, like, kind of nutritional value for the brain in there. I feel like you go in there and it’s just like, how much money do you have? What job do you have? How beautiful are you? Like… It just sends poison.”
  — Dr. Witt-Doerring (17:09)

• On The Myth of “Happy” as a Goal:
  “Jordan Peterson often talks about how you should, you should chase what is meaningful and then maybe you will become happy in the process rather than chasing happiness because then you likely will not find anything meaningful.”
  — Dave Rubin (20:31)

• On AI & Society’s Future:
  “We simply lose purpose and we descend into this hedonistic place where you can just use Grok to AI generate like sexualized content or whatever fantasy world that you want. And we become like the human batteries in the Matrix.”
  — Dr. Witt-Doerring (28:52)

• On Hope for Change:
  “The upside down pyramid is one of the best things to ever happen to our health. …trickle into our schools, into the meals that our veterans get, and to nursing homes… Let’s celebrate the recent wins that we have right now.”
  — Dr. Witt-Doerring (31:13)

Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• Shortcomings of Psychiatry & Pharma: 01:00–08:27
• Children & Psychiatric Drugs: 08:27–10:46
• Lifestyle vs. Medication: 10:46–13:28
• Cannabis Dangers: 13:28–16:52
• Social Media Impact: 16:52–18:27
• The Taper Clinic Approach: 18:27–21:00
• Over-Medicalization of Normal Life: 21:00–22:57
• What Meds Do/Don’t Work: 22:57–24:55
• Side Effects Concerns: 24:55–26:43
• On Supplements: 26:43–28:27
• Future Outlook & Hope: 28:27–31:48

Conclusion

Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring brings a critical, patient-focused lens to America’s complex mental health challenges. While psychiatric drugs can have short-term value, he warns of their dangers when used as default, long-term solutions—especially among young people. Social and environmental factors, dietary reform, and holistic health must not be ignored. Though his outlook on the digital future is cautious, Dr. Witt-Doerring points to recent policy wins and individual lifestyle changes as seeds of hope.