In part two of Tudor's conversation with Dr. Josef Witt-Duerring, he pulls back the curtain on the overlooked risks of cannabis, from psychosis to long-term mental health struggles. He shares powerful personal accounts alongside scientific research on cannabis and SSRIs, addressing side effects like sexual dysfunction and the growing debate around gender dysphoria. The discussion also takes aim at the pharmaceutical industry’s role in shaping mental health treatment, underscoring the urgent need for transparency, compassion, and truly informed care. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, hello everyone, and welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
We are back today with doctor Joseph Witt Douring and
I told you we were going to talk about all
things that are crazy with these drugs. We're going to
get into the sexual side effects. A lot of people
have texted me, a lot of people have messaged me
about that part of it. I think that's because that's
(00:21):
one of the most shocking parts of the psychiatric meds.
But I also want to get into some of the
cannabis stuff because I have seen that you have been
out there posting some of the stuff about cannabis psychosis.
It's near and dear to my heart. We legalized marijuana
in the state of Michigan back in twenty eighteen, and
(00:41):
I wanted to get your opinion on this because I
don't think anybody I don't think that's a common household
name cannabis psychosis, and it's kind of scary.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, So, out of all the things I talk about,
I usually get the most criticism about this. People hold
cannabis near and dear to their heart. You know, it
is a herb, it is a medicine, it is safe.
And my position is that if you care about good
psychiatric health, it is something that you need to avoid completely. Now,
(01:13):
what a lot of people don't realize is that high
potency cannabis products are the norm these days, and they're
about forty times more potent than the ditchwed that a
lot of people grow up smoking back in the day.
And what we found when we look at the science
behind this in the epidemiology, out of all drugs that
(01:36):
you could have a psychotic response to, because this happens,
I mean, this shouldn't be surprising. Like many people have
heard that you can have a bad trip on cannabis.
That's what we're talking about. You know, ten people smoke joints,
nine of them are giggling and having a good time.
One person becomes paranoid. And this happens with all drugs
of abuse, and out of all of the drugs of
(01:59):
a use, you know, meth aanphetamine, LSD, cocaine, the one
like the one drug that if you have a psychotic
reaction to that you have the highest likelihood of going
on to being diagnosed with bipolar or schizophrenia. Essentially, that's
a proxy for ongoing manic or psychotic symptoms that aren't
(02:22):
just confined to when you got high that continue to
go after that. It's cannabis, and people are often surprised
when they hear that. They go, why isn't it meth?
Why isn't it LSD? And the point that I want
to make to people is that there is something uniquely
damaging about cannabis that can precipitate ongoing mania and psychosis.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
That so that's very interesting because we just had a
case in Michigan where a man. You may have heard
of this story of the walmart stabber, the guy who
went in and he stabbed several people in the walmart
and the story, so the backstory of that many people
heard because it was just a local story here in
Traverse City. The man he was in his forties and
(03:07):
when he was in high school, he had had a
bad hit of weed and he came home and his mom.
His mom was like, you know, he's never been the same.
He came home and he was curled up in the
fetal position and he said, mom, I got some bad weed.
And she said, you know, that was the day we
lost her. He was fourteen years old. She said, that
was the day we lost him. He was never the
(03:28):
same after that, and they have suffered with all kinds
of paranoia. He's committed multiple crimes because of the paranoia
because he's no longer the same. His brain was permanently
changed after one hit of bad weed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, And I think people listening to this, they'll go, oh,
this is just this is some reef of madness stuff
from back in the days. You know, this is a
lamist and so I want to kind of I need
to add a little bit of nuance here. And this
is for people who have ever encountered doctors. Like if
you if you have a like a cannabis and juice
psychosis and you go to the doctor and you start
(04:04):
to have more psychosis after that, they'll say it has
unmasked your schizophrenia, which is essentially a way of saying
your brain was broken. You're already this was going to
happen anyway. It's just you know, you smoke some weed
and now you know you were more sensitive, but you
actually have schizophrenia. Having worked with people at the tape
of Clinic, because one of the reasons why people come
to me is that they're on they get put on
(04:26):
any psychotic medications after they have a cannabis and juice psychosis.
They continue to have psychosis, and so they're taking the antipsychotics.
Eventually they decide that they want to come off the medications,
and sorry, eventually they stop smoking cannabis and they want
to come off the medication at that time. What I
found is that even after they stop smoking the cannabis,
(04:50):
that they still have like enduring psychosis for several years afterwards.
And this has been seen by other people, not just me.
I mean Aubrey Adams is someone that talks about this
a lot. And when you actually support people coming off cannabis,
you will notice that sometimes for a year, sometimes for
two years, they're not quite right. And so you have
(05:11):
to kind of ask yourself, why does it take a
year or two for some people coming off cannabis to
have their moods stabilized, to stop experiencing paranoia. The one
explanation that I can think of is that there is
something toxic about cannabis that is actually harmful to the neurons.
And the reason why it takes a year or two
afterwards for this to clear up is that your brain
(05:34):
is actually healing, it's recovering from a toxic insult, and
that's why it's that's why it's taking so long that
now the problem is, and this is I know this
is kind of a longer point. The problem is is
that most doctors will miss this and they will say
that it's schizophrenia and they need to stay on the
(05:54):
drug indefinitely, when really what they need to do is
completely stop smoking weed like any of it, and then
they just need to be patient. They need to wait
a couple of years for their brain to heal.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
That's so interesting because the mom was interviewed in this
case in Northern Michigan and she said it was his
drug of choice then and it is his drug of
choice now. So obviously this is an ongoing issue. One
other thing I wanted to ask you about which you
may not know about this. I don't know if it's
incredibly rare, but we had someone who worked for us
(06:29):
who was constantly ill, like physically ill, vomiting, not able
to keep food down, and they couldn't figure out what
was going on with him, and he just kept coming
into work and he was like, you know, I'm so sick.
I'm so sick all the time. You have to remember
when you are taking any type of drug, whether it
(06:49):
is cannabis or anything else. You're putting a drug in
your system, it's changing your system. He was also a
heavy pot smoker and he ended up dying. It was
devastating to the family, to everybody around. He was so
such a beloved person. And afterward a doctor said to
one of his family members, you know, he may have
(07:10):
had this sickness that occurs when you some people can't
smoke cannabis or do cannabis to that level, or they
or their body that kind of rebels against them and
they can no longer get nutrition.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it sounds like cannabis induced hyperemesis,
which really isn't that uncommon. And I know you said
it was rare, but this is this is a common
thing that happens with heavy cannabis uses. And yes, I
mean if you're having if you're vomiting a lot, you're
going to have electrolyte imbalances. Some of these issues can
lead to heart attacks, and so it's not a safe product,
(07:48):
especially the stuff that they're handing out now that is
so hypotency and there's really not great regulations around it,
and we're going to see more episodes of psychosis, more
hyper emine and this this whole like branding of it
as this safe natural medicine, it just doesn't hold true
for the products that are being sold on the US
(08:09):
market today.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Well, again, you could have a medical cannabis card before
it was legal in Michigan. I think there are other states.
I think Florida is one of the states where you
can have a medical cannabis card. So that makes you
feel like this is medicine. I've been prescribed to this card.
I have to have it. But even when you have
the card, you're kind of self dosing, Like this is
(08:33):
a really dangerous thing to give it to people.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah, I mean that's the problem with American healthcare today.
A lot of it works like a production line. I mean,
there are bad actors out there that will, you know,
essentially give you a card for a couple hundred bucks.
You know, they're not really evaluating you. There's not really
follow up, like that's their stick, you know. Come to me.
I'm pro cannabis. I think of it as a herb.
All right, here you go. And that happens with cannabis,
(08:57):
and it happens with psychiatric medications, and many people are
getting the illusion of healthcare but yes, yeah, they're essentially
just given permission to go and take smoke cannabis for
their pain or their PTSD or whatever it is, with
really minimal oversight.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
These are huge industries. These people make tons of money.
Pharmaceutical companies, the cannabis industry, they're all making a ton
of money. Why are doctors so quick to tell people
that they have depression or anxiety? I mean, this can
happen in the first fifteen minute visit, And like you
said in the first part of this, you can be
in an office for five to ten minutes with someone.
(09:37):
You suddenly get a label that you have for life.
And I think oftentimes folks who get this label, they
internalize this label. They become this label. Rather than wanting
to overcome the label, they become the label.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah. So I'm going to give you a two part
response to this, and I'm going to start with the
first part, which is simple. There is a commercial incentive
to see people in a short period of time. Because
of insurance, you simply make more if you see four
people in an hour, And so there's time pressure and
bad incentives for doctors to just say you have depression.
And there's an FDA treatment for that, you know, I'm
(10:13):
covered legally for it, rather than do an in depth
of valuation. So that's going on. But the question is,
you know, why do doctors do this? Aren't doctors ethical?
Don't doctors care about people? Don't doctors want to do
a really good job with their patients. And as as
someone who has been in the pharmaceutical industry, I did
work there for a couple of years, I've seen how
(10:34):
their marketing machine works. And you know, people sometimes think
I'm a conspiracy theory theorists when I talk about this,
but there is a multi billion dollar industry there that
has a vested interest in shaping how you look at things.
They will deploy their resources towards medical journals, towards thought
(10:55):
leaders and academics, and at conferences to constantly tilt the
opinions about things in one way, and the ultimate sort
of outcome of them selectively, let's say, platforming certain opinions,
mobilizing you know, patient groups which they fund to complain about,
you know the fact that doctor Joss on the Tutor
(11:16):
Dix podcast and she's spreading misinformation.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
They can do that.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
They have patient organizations which they fund which seem like
they're grassroots and like independent, but they can send them
a letter because they give them millions of dollars to
come and throw hate on you and just say she's dangerous.
So effectively, what you have you got this billion dollar
industry that is essentially just controlling the narrative. That's what
it is. And so most doctors when they see patients,
(11:40):
they think, generally depression is a biological condition. I don't
really hear about relationships and works and work and nutrition.
They must not be important because my medical education didn't
emphasize that. But the reason the medical education didn't emphasize
that is because they didn't have a big industry. They're
just saying, you know, talk about this, talk about that,
(12:01):
you know, and and so essentially that that's that's what's
been going on. We've we've had our medical education taken
over by commercial interests.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I want to ask you something a little controversial now,
because you made a post about Charlie Kirk and you
said something about him being murdered for having conversations. You're
talking about really big stuff against really powerful people and
companies and the government. Do you worry about that?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I mean, I do worry about that, especially over the
last week. And I mean people have been coming after
my medical license for a long time. You know, they
follow me around on social media, you know, posting, you know,
call the Utah Medical Board, get this guy disbanded. But
after watching this assassination, yeah, I do worry about it.
(12:59):
I just want to stay here first and foremost. I'm
not suicidal, So you know, if anything kind of looks
like that's that's not you know, that's not true, but
I don't know it's I think you have to be
willing to die for what you believe in sometimes. I mean,
I don't want that to happen. And I don't say
this lightly, but I really believe that I'm here to
(13:22):
share this message with people, and you know, if that
leads to this kind of attention, then then so be it.
But I always I try to not be overly inflammatory.
I try to say things as they are. I try
and speak with compassion when I can. But yes, I
do think there is a target on my back, specifically
because I'm talking about mental illness and people on psychiatric medications,
(13:45):
and some of them may be unstable, and this can
be really confronting and challenging to some people's identity to
hear that, hey, maybe it's not just your mental illness,
maybe it's like your life. That's like a painful thing
for some people to hear. And so absolutely, you know,
I worry, but it's not going to change what I do.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
It's an interesting way of putting things because I think
Charlie would say the same thing. Yeah, I will go
out there and die for what I believe in, and
we should all be willing to say that we're going
to make the world a better place. And what you
are going out there and talking about is incredibly personal,
and you fight for two groups of people. There is
(14:30):
a group of people who say I've been wronged and
this happened to me, and there's a group of people
that don't know yet, yeah, and they don't know that
you're fighting for them. And I mean, I've even heard
that in these stories that I've seen on social media
since we lost Charlie, and people have come out and
said he was the only person that spoke truth to me.
And I got out of where I was because I
(14:52):
heard the truth, but I wasn't willing to hear it
when I was face to face, and it took me
a while and That's why I think you talking is
so critical because it does take people a while. And
that's I told you at the beginning. The majority of
people who have come to me have come to me
and private messaged me about the side effects of SSRIs,
(15:14):
and that runs the gamut of nerve pain to our
artificial arthritis pain and sexual dysfunction. And the sexual dysfunction
I think is that's the side effect that hurts people
the most because it's not their own personal side effect.
(15:34):
It's a side effect that affects their loved one and
their chance of having a loved one. And I've heard
so many stories. Honestly, I did not know the extent
of the sexual dysfunction. It's called PSSD. There's whole groups
out there. My world has been open to these people
who have been suffering in silence, and they have these
(15:57):
they have these vocal social media accounts, but they're just
not heard. They're not big enough, they're not they're being
silenced by big pharma too. But I mean, we're hearing
numbers like seventy percent of people who take an SSRI
will experience some form of sexual dysfunction. But the really
disturbing number is that in almost twenty percent of those cases.
(16:21):
This is permanent.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah, I correct you on that. I haven't seen the
twenty percent number, and I and I want to. Let's
let's unpack this. Seventy up to seventy percent of people,
maybe even high they experience sexual dysfunction on the drugs.
So we're talking about decreased libido, muted you know, muted orgasms,
(16:44):
you know, I, erectile dysfunction, all sorts of things. And
it's sort of it's told to patients as like, hey,
this is just something that happens. If you want to
take the medication, don't worry. It's going to go away.
It's a trade off for feeling better. And so people say, well,
you know, I mean a really bad plays. Okay, I'll
deal with it.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Now.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
What happens is that some people, when they come off
the medication, not only does it not go away, they
develop other problems. And so the constellation is they get
sexual dysfunction, which is characterized by genital anesthesia, which is
essentially the erogenous sensation that you normally associate with down there.
It doesn't feel like that anymore. It feels like the
(17:24):
back of your hand. And so there's sensory changes, they
have cognitive dysfunction, and they also feel massively dissociated. They say,
you know, I hug my parents or I hug my kid,
I don't feel any warmth there. I don't feel any connection.
I hear my favorite song from my youth that used
to give me prickles on the back of my neck,
I don't feel that anymore. And so they're massively blunted.
(17:46):
I mean, people have used the term chemical lobotomy to
describe this before. Now the incidence of that is what's
really important, Like how common is it that people will
experience enduring sexual dysfunction afterwards? Now, the one stat that
I'm familiar with is one in two hundred and sixteen,
and so that's far lower than twenty percent of people
(18:07):
will have this enduring sexual problems. But if you think
that we've got fourteen percent of the American population taking
these medication, it's actually probably a little bit higher. One
in two hundred and sixteen is a massive amount of people.
I mean, we're talking about tens and tens of thousands,
maybe hundreds of thousands of people worldwide with this problem now,
and that's why you know, you have places like the
(18:29):
PSSD network, which are talking about this. And the last
point that I want to make here is people are
going to be listening to this and they're going to
say this is insane. If these drugs were causing permanent
sexual dysfunction in like young people, you know, or just
takers in general, I would have heard about this. It's
in the labels in the European Union, it's in the
(18:49):
drug labels in Canada, it's in the drug labels in Australia,
it's in the drug labels in Hong Kong, and it's
being considered for the US labels currently. And so this
isn't like a fringe thing. It's just again, it's just
it's suppressed by this same fake argument of compassion, where
people who have vested interests in say the drugs are safe.
(19:10):
You know, we're advocating for mental illness. People with mental
health problems are stigmatize. I'm going to shoot down anyone
that criticizes the medications. It's a fake argument of compassion
used to silence people when we really just need to
be honest about this so people have informed consent and
they can say, well, do I really want to expose
myself to what is probably a rare risk, and many
(19:33):
people are going to say no, you know one in
two hundred and sixteen, No, thank you. Let me try
some other things. First.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. I think that we're not as
surprised as you think now, because I think there is
this group of people who have said, this Maha movement
is something different. We're finally learning that there are companies
(20:00):
out there that are getting to approval for things that
may be harming us, that the ingredients in our food
may be harming us, that we haven't been told the
whole truth. But also I think that this is a
generation that has seen some of the most horrific psychiatric
care we have ever seen in our lifetime with the
(20:20):
transgender movement. And I say that because I've seen these
people who have parts of their arm removed and have
these fake penises made, they have their penises cut off,
and they have fake vaginas made. And anybody who has
had a surgery and I've had a double mistectomy because
of my breast cancer, anybody who has had a surgery
(20:43):
like that where they cut through the nerves, you know,
you might as well be sentencing to them them to
a life of no feeling, no intimacy, no romantic relationship.
What doctor would cut off a person's genitals and tell
them you can create new genitals and be a different gender,
because you've just you've destroyed them. There's no creating new
(21:07):
genitals and there's no recreating nerves. That's not a thing.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, yeah, I mean this is such a heavy This
is such a heavy issue. And you know, I think
that the folks out there with genders dysphoria, they are
clearly suffering. But I think everyone would agree that the
best strategy is to try and have someone feel comfortable
in their own body, in the sex that they were assigned,
(21:32):
and to not expose them to treatments that are irreversible, disfiguring,
and can also impact their fertility long term. I think
one of the problems is, and it never should have
been like this. The whole issue of transgenderism was swept
up into a political swept up into the political space,
and because it's talked about so commonly, some people will
(21:56):
latch onto it as this is the reason why am
I happy? And if you and if you listen to
stories about people who have regret afterwards, they talk about that,
They talk about being lost and confused and unhappy and
being feeling isolated, and they get sucked into these communities.
They get cheered, they get told you know you're oppressed.
(22:17):
You know this is what's going on. And doctors, thinking
that they're helping patients, they cheerlead them onto these onto
these medications and doing these surgeries. I don't really think
it's in the best interest of most of these patients
going through this, and I think they're doing it out
(22:38):
of political will instead of actually taking the time to
sit with them and help them love their body and
find a way to get through whatever challenges that they're
going through.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
How does a doctor look at a ten year old
and say I should put them on puberty blockers because
a puberty blocker, a puberty blocker is just stopping that
child from going through puberty and having those life change.
It's not changing their gender. You are stopping a critical
part of your development.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, I mean, I think the problem is is that
many doctors aren't acting like scientists. They're acting like political activists.
And that's the only reason that I could see that
someone could delude themselves into thinking a ten year old
can make that kind of decision.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, that's upsetting. Yeah, it's upsetting. I was thinking this morning,
I was thinking about doing this podcast, and I was thinking,
you know, when I was in psychology, I was a
psych major in college years ago, and we studied the
DSM for so I don't even know what level you're
(23:53):
on now. I don't remember transgender. You said gender dys
for you, I don't remember transgender being in there.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, it's not in their Gender dysphoria is listed in
the DSM five. And I mean it's I mean, it's real.
I mean, people are clearly having are very unhappy about
their identity and their sexuality and all of that. I
think it's making a lot of people upset. But I mean,
(24:24):
I don't think the solution is to be deluding people
into thinking that the opposite gender, especially when that comes
along with medications and potentially surgeries. If this is something
that does happen, I think it should be rare, and
I think it should be in adults who have had
a lot of time to think about it. And I
(24:45):
mean that's that's I mean, that's my stance on that.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Well. That so let's talk about that because I do
think when I mean, when I studied it back in
the nineties, we were told it's extraordinarily rare, extraordinarily rare.
It's not extraordinarily rare to hear kids talk about this today,
But it wasn't extraordinarily rare to hear people talk about
anarexia in college either, because it was also a social contagion.
(25:13):
So I remember having that conversation in depth when I
was at the university. It's like, this can be a
situation where one girl in a room in college age
has an eating disorder and then this kind of like
travels through an entire sorority house or something. This seems
to be the case with these kids. But I have
a question for you, because when doctor Urata was on,
(25:35):
he talked about these sri SSRIs impacting the fetal brain
and that in animals you could see sexual dysfunction when
they hit adolescence, when the baby hit adolescence. And we
have all these kids today that say I'm non binary,
I don't have a gender, I'm genderless, which I think
(25:58):
for so long I've been like that since sane It's
impossible that you can think that you're generless until I
started to listen to this, and maybe I'm crazy too,
But I started to listen to this, and I thought,
I've heard stories of men who have said I was
fully attracted to my wife. I thought she was super hot.
I wanted to have sex with her all the time.
It went on these drugs and I had no interest
(26:19):
in her, and I started to think I must be gay,
And it struck me how does that happen? But if
you suddenly had no interest, your mind could trick you
into thinking, like why am I no longer sexually? Sexual
attraction is so core to who we are and our relationship.
I mean, that is what why two people say I
will commit to you the rest of my life is
(26:42):
because we connect on that level in such an amazing way.
You know, I have such attraction to you, I want
to be with you. To have no attraction it makes
me think, could these children who have been affected either
by this in the womb or I mean you were
talking about kids are as young as six going on
an SSRI. Could this permanent sexual dysfunction? Because in kids,
(27:06):
once they get to adolescents, to say I'm really not
into sex, I don't even understand it. I must be
non binary.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah, I don't think you've gone off the deep end
with this tutor. And I'm going to lay out the
bread crumbs so you know, your audience can make up
their own mind. So firstly, you know these drugs are potent.
They've got sexual dysfunction and seventy percent of people. That's
not a surprise. They are used sometimes for people who
have a history of being sexual predators. They've gone to jails,
(27:36):
like the judges will say you have to take an SSRI,
you know, because it blunts sexual desire, and they believe
it will lead to less recidivism. And so these are
even used for things like pedophilia. All of that. I mean,
it's a dark side there. But the point I want
to make is they are they potently disrupt sexual functioning. Now,
(27:58):
because we can't do like a placebo controlled trial in
humans due to ethical reasons, we do them in animals.
And here's what they found when they look at what
happens to mice who are exposed to SSRIs in utero
and in the very early stages of development when their
brain is undergoing a lot of changes. The mice who
are exposed to SSRI medications go on to have a
(28:22):
higher rate of autistic like behaviors and reduced sexual engagement.
They mate less than the other ones. Okay, and so
your question might be, then, well, what happens in humans?
You know this is mice. I mean, for me, I
would be concerned enough looking at the mice, but I
get that that's a valid arrangement. Is this potent enough
to affect humans? There have been twelve MRI studies where
(28:45):
we look at the brains of kids who are exposed
in utero to those who are not exposed in utero.
Done very well, controlling for factors like maternal depression, which
which can make things confusing, but essentially it's good studies.
There are structural changes in the brains between the kids
who are exposed and not exposed. Do these persist to adolescents? Well, yes,
(29:08):
when we look at adolescents who are exposed in utero,
they actually have altered changing in their amigdala, which is
the area of the brain that controls anxiety and fear.
The processing is different to the kids who were not exposed.
And so when I kind of well, the other thing
is and I have heard cases just like yours. I've
spoken to two gentlemen who are heterosexual, and when they
(29:30):
developed PSSD, they started to question their sexuality because they
were just very confused because they were not aroused by
women they previously would have found very arousing. And so
when I kind of piece this together, Okay, we have
this animal study, we have clear signs that are showing
changes in the brains of infants. It's progressing all the
(29:50):
way to adolescence. I have some case reports where men
are starting to question their sexuality because of this. You
can't help but kind of link that together and think,
could what we're seeing now be a result of SSRI
medications hitting the market in the early nineties, making billions
for pharmaceutical companies, you know, where Like you know, fifteen
(30:11):
percent of people are taking these medications now, and I
think it's anywhere from three percent to ten percent of
pregnant women are taking any depressants during their pregnancy. It's
a wide range, but that's still a substantial amount. Think
about anywhere from three to ten percent of pregnant women
are on these medications that are impacting the brain during
(30:31):
its most sensitive time of growth, where it's going from
a speck to a fully formed brain. I don't think
it's a stretch to think that we may be leading
to people being asexual, people being more confused about their sexuality.
That could be kind of caught up into the transgender thing,
especially with the political climate right now. I mean to
(30:52):
me that that seems possible.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
a Tutor Dixon podcast. It's interesting because as we look
at this, I think all of us have said, what
is happening? How is it suddenly that all of these
kids don't know their identity, they don't know their gender,
(31:15):
they can't decide who they want to have a romantic
relationship with. So I do believe that there is a
component that's social. And I think that as we've watched
the political spectrum and the political powers get involved in
this discussion, it's almost like a you hold someone up
(31:38):
as like the mascot of your party, right, this is
we are for this, Yeah, but it's the people who
are living this are struggling. I mean, they're hurting, And
if we're honest about mental illness, we would say that
it's painful and we deserve, or these people deserve for
(31:59):
us to step out of the political discussion and look
at this from a scientific standpoint and ask is there's
something that could potentially be causing this that causes people
a lot of pain. I mean, if you don't think
that you have attraction to someone, it's a very lonely life.
(32:20):
And I will get in trouble for saying that, Oh
my gosh, she shouldn't say that people shouldn't live alone. Well,
I mean, but we're not biologically meant to.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
No, No, I mean, it's one of the its. It's
one of the legs on the on the chair of
mental health, you know, is mutually satisfying romantic and platonic relationships.
I mean, it's a core part about being human. And
if we're going to destroy that for people, another part
of it is having a family for many people. If
(32:51):
we're going to put people in medications that impact their
fertility as well, we are really lopping off these very
very valuable legs on this still that kind of keeps
us mentally well. And listen, I won't say I'm an
expert on the behavioral outcomes data for post pre and
post transitioning, but from the people that I do listen
(33:13):
to who do follow that, it's not great. This isn't
leading to better mental health. This isn't leading to reduced suicide,
and I think that should be cause for concern and
really make people left and right look at this and
just say, is this really helping people their outcomes because
a lot of threats are thrown around if you don't
(33:33):
cheer lead people onto the medications, if you don't support
them through their transition, would you rather have a dead
child or a transgender child? Is the argument from the
people I trust who look at this. They're saying that
there's no improvement in the mental health for many of them.
And it doesn't surprise me. I mean, you could have regret.
(33:55):
You're also taking medications which do not work great in
the long term, hormonal medications which can be very disrupting
to your mood. It's just filled with land mines. That
there's so many landmines there that can lead to worse
mental health outcomes. And I think sharing this on because
of your political position, that that's not compassion. I think
(34:21):
that that's something else.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I think that's the critical point here is that it's
not compassion. It's very hard for the people who have
been through this and feel that they've been damaged by
medications and I'm talking about more than transgender because, like
I said, when we started this, the number of people
that have reached out to me and said my life
is I've lost my life. One person described it as
(34:47):
living dead, feeling like you are the living dead because
not only do you have the sexual dysfunction and no
ability to be aroused or no ability to One person said,
I have an organ and I have no physical or
emotional reaction to it anymore, and I'm just devastated by it,
and I can't imagine this. Another person described it as
(35:09):
it's not even just that I don't have a reaction
to my sexual intimacy with my spouse. I don't have
any reactions. I have a total numbness. So I'll just
end by asking you what is the answer to getting
the medical community to step up and say this is
a last resort we want to be and not only
(35:30):
is medication like this a last resort, but we will
also heavily monitor anyone who goes on it, because I
think you have that first six weeks to say, as
we see those changes, if they are significant, this isn't
right for you.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, you know, as someone that's been sort of in
this fight since twenty seventeen. You know, I've seen a
lot of things, and ultimately the way I start to
look at this problem is an it's who has the
bigger microphone now. You know, for the longest time, the
pharmaceutical industry, you know, the American Psychiatric Association, the groups
(36:06):
who you know, had an agenda to position these drugs
as look much safer than they are and the problem
as being something requiring drugs. They have been controlling the narrative.
They've had the war chest. We have a very unique
moment right now with Bobby Kennedy at the head of HHS.
He's installing people who are going to be able to
(36:27):
change things. I think we need we need government behind this. Really,
I think we need sober eyes with authority behind this
to put out messages which cannot be refuted by the
propaganda coming out of these other groups. I think we
need new leadership at the National Institute of Mental Health.
(36:48):
Up until now, they have just been obsessed with finding
biological markets for drugs when they really ought to be
obsessed with looking at non drug approaches to mental health.
We've never had a study looked at things like nutritional interventions,
you know, relationship coaching, work, coaching, these these things that
are really intuitive that everyone's grandma would agree agree with.
(37:10):
We've never had a head to head study where they've
looked at that against standard of care SSRIs over time,
where they actually measure outcomes that people care about. Most
people don't want to be just like numbed out. They
want to have better relationships, they want to have work
that they find satisfying, they want to feel healthy. And
so it's it's it's so big, but we're heading in
the right direction now, and so I mean, get out.
(37:34):
I'd say vote, you know, support your congress people and
your senators who care about this issue, and support Bobby
because he is taking the reins right now and he's
trying to change things. And I'm really happy to be
involved in that movement.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Yeah, I want to hear from you as I listened
to this is a potential answer to so many of
the questions we have. Why are our kids so sad?
Why are mayor is breaking up? Why is violence increasing?
All these things, so many of them could be connected
to how we treat our bodies. And I always tell
(38:09):
my girls, you get one, you only get one. You
have to take care of it. Make sure you're taking
care of your teeth, make sure you're taking care of
your body. You don't get to go back, you don't
get a do over. It's not like in a video
game where you get another life. You know, you have
to be able to take care of what you have,
and we just don't talk about that enough, but you
are talking about it. We so appreciate the fact that
you are talking about it. Tell people where they can
(38:30):
follow you, because I do think that you're putting out
great content every day.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Sure. Yeah, So our biggest channel is YouTube, and so
it's doctor Joseph, but it's spelt in the German way,
so instead of a pH at the end, it's an
F where on all social media channels. If you're someone
who's interested in coming off medications, you potentially like to
consider working with me. My team is at the Tape
is at taperclinic dot com. We work in the fourteen
(38:56):
largest US states. If you're an international listener, you're listening
in a different state. If you go to the contact
us section on my website, there are links to directories
for a whole range of different doctors that do psychiatric deprescribing.
They're really passionate about finding other ways to deal with
mental health apart from just medications. Check them out there
(39:17):
and and yeah, that's that's where you can find me
and where you can go for help.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I think that's a critical conversation to have because people
are looking for where I've never heard of a place
like this before. We I mean, I know that we've
had people in our family that have been like, how
do I I don't know how to get off. I
can't get off. That's a common concern. I can't. And
another common concern I will say is that when you
(39:43):
try it yourself. I've heard my normal is so bad
because I missed a dose and I immediately felt like
I want to kill myself. I'm so sad. And it's
it's something to remember for everybody who's out there that's
not you're normal.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Yeah, like a PSA quickly before we wrap, is that
many people need to come off these medications over a
long time. This might be a year, sometimes it could
be longer. Not everyone has highly elastic brains where they
can come off the meds and in two months they're fine.
In fact, a lot of people it takes much longer.
(40:22):
Don't be dissuaded. Don't think you need to stay on
the medication for the rest of your life. Don't let
someone tell you, oh, you know, because you couldn't come
off in a couple of months, you have a serious
chemical imbalance and you need to stay on it forever.
There are ways to gradually lower the medications down safely
so your life doesn't fall apart. And if you're interested
in that, that's what my whole YouTube channel is about.
(40:44):
We give out free information about how to do safe
and slow tapers. You could do it with your own doctor,
and there is a way off if that's something that
you want.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
I smiled when you said the part about don't let
someone say to you if you had trouble getting off,
you must need to go back on, because we've experienced
that in our lives, and that is incredibly frustrating to me,
because I do think that there are some medical professionals
out there that you're a consistent appointment. If you're on
a med you consistently pay your paycheck, and that's frustrating
(41:18):
to me. But I appreciate what you do. I'm so
glad you were here. Honestly, I could have talked to
you for another hour, so we'll have to have you
back doctor Joseph Witt during make sure people check him out.
If you have somebody in the situation you heard where
you can get help. We so appreciate you being on today.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
I'd love to come back, and thanks so much for.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Having me absolutely and thank you all for listening today.
Remember you can go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or you can watch the video on Rumble or YouTube
at Tutor Dixon. But make sure you join us next
time and have a blessed day.
All right, hello everyone, and welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
We are back today with doctor Joseph Witt Douring and
I told you we were going to talk about all
things that are crazy with these drugs. We're going to
get into the sexual side effects. A lot of people
have texted me, a lot of people have messaged me
about that part of it. I think that's because that's
(00:21):
one of the most shocking parts of the psychiatric meds.
But I also want to get into some of the
cannabis stuff because I have seen that you have been
out there posting some of the stuff about cannabis psychosis.
It's near and dear to my heart. We legalized marijuana
in the state of Michigan back in twenty eighteen, and
(00:41):
I wanted to get your opinion on this because I
don't think anybody I don't think that's a common household
name cannabis psychosis, and it's kind of scary.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, So, out of all the things I talk about,
I usually get the most criticism about this. People hold
cannabis near and dear to their heart. You know, it
is a herb, it is a medicine, it is safe.
And my position is that if you care about good
psychiatric health, it is something that you need to avoid completely. Now,
(01:13):
what a lot of people don't realize is that high
potency cannabis products are the norm these days, and they're
about forty times more potent than the ditchwed that a
lot of people grow up smoking back in the day.
And what we found when we look at the science
behind this in the epidemiology, out of all drugs that
(01:36):
you could have a psychotic response to, because this happens,
I mean, this shouldn't be surprising. Like many people have
heard that you can have a bad trip on cannabis.
That's what we're talking about. You know, ten people smoke joints,
nine of them are giggling and having a good time.
One person becomes paranoid. And this happens with all drugs
of abuse, and out of all of the drugs of
(01:59):
a use, you know, meth aanphetamine, LSD, cocaine, the one
like the one drug that if you have a psychotic
reaction to that you have the highest likelihood of going
on to being diagnosed with bipolar or schizophrenia. Essentially, that's
a proxy for ongoing manic or psychotic symptoms that aren't
(02:22):
just confined to when you got high that continue to
go after that. It's cannabis, and people are often surprised
when they hear that. They go, why isn't it meth?
Why isn't it LSD? And the point that I want
to make to people is that there is something uniquely
damaging about cannabis that can precipitate ongoing mania and psychosis.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
That so that's very interesting because we just had a
case in Michigan where a man. You may have heard
of this story of the walmart stabber, the guy who
went in and he stabbed several people in the walmart
and the story, so the backstory of that many people
heard because it was just a local story here in
Traverse City. The man he was in his forties and
(03:07):
when he was in high school, he had had a
bad hit of weed and he came home and his mom.
His mom was like, you know, he's never been the same.
He came home and he was curled up in the
fetal position and he said, mom, I got some bad weed.
And she said, you know, that was the day we
lost her. He was fourteen years old. She said, that
was the day we lost him. He was never the
(03:28):
same after that, and they have suffered with all kinds
of paranoia. He's committed multiple crimes because of the paranoia
because he's no longer the same. His brain was permanently
changed after one hit of bad weed. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, And I think people listening to this, they'll go, oh,
this is just this is some reef of madness stuff
from back in the days. You know, this is a
lamist and so I want to kind of I need
to add a little bit of nuance here. And this
is for people who have ever encountered doctors. Like if
you if you have a like a cannabis and juice
psychosis and you go to the doctor and you start
(04:04):
to have more psychosis after that, they'll say it has
unmasked your schizophrenia, which is essentially a way of saying
your brain was broken. You're already this was going to
happen anyway. It's just you know, you smoke some weed
and now you know you were more sensitive, but you
actually have schizophrenia. Having worked with people at the tape
of Clinic, because one of the reasons why people come
to me is that they're on they get put on
(04:26):
any psychotic medications after they have a cannabis and juice psychosis.
They continue to have psychosis, and so they're taking the antipsychotics.
Eventually they decide that they want to come off the medications,
and sorry, eventually they stop smoking cannabis and they want
to come off the medication at that time. What I
found is that even after they stop smoking the cannabis,
(04:50):
that they still have like enduring psychosis for several years afterwards.
And this has been seen by other people, not just me.
I mean Aubrey Adams is someone that talks about this
a lot. And when you actually support people coming off cannabis,
you will notice that sometimes for a year, sometimes for
two years, they're not quite right. And so you have
(05:11):
to kind of ask yourself, why does it take a
year or two for some people coming off cannabis to
have their moods stabilized, to stop experiencing paranoia. The one
explanation that I can think of is that there is
something toxic about cannabis that is actually harmful to the neurons.
And the reason why it takes a year or two
afterwards for this to clear up is that your brain
(05:34):
is actually healing, it's recovering from a toxic insult, and
that's why it's that's why it's taking so long that
now the problem is, and this is I know this
is kind of a longer point. The problem is is
that most doctors will miss this and they will say
that it's schizophrenia and they need to stay on the
(05:54):
drug indefinitely, when really what they need to do is
completely stop smoking weed like any of it, and then
they just need to be patient. They need to wait
a couple of years for their brain to heal.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
That's so interesting because the mom was interviewed in this
case in Northern Michigan and she said it was his
drug of choice then and it is his drug of
choice now. So obviously this is an ongoing issue. One
other thing I wanted to ask you about which you
may not know about this. I don't know if it's
incredibly rare, but we had someone who worked for us
(06:29):
who was constantly ill, like physically ill, vomiting, not able
to keep food down, and they couldn't figure out what
was going on with him, and he just kept coming
into work and he was like, you know, I'm so sick.
I'm so sick all the time. You have to remember
when you are taking any type of drug, whether it
(06:49):
is cannabis or anything else. You're putting a drug in
your system, it's changing your system. He was also a
heavy pot smoker and he ended up dying. It was
devastating to the family, to everybody around. He was so
such a beloved person. And afterward a doctor said to
one of his family members, you know, he may have
(07:10):
had this sickness that occurs when you some people can't
smoke cannabis or do cannabis to that level, or they
or their body that kind of rebels against them and
they can no longer get nutrition.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it sounds like cannabis induced hyperemesis,
which really isn't that uncommon. And I know you said
it was rare, but this is this is a common
thing that happens with heavy cannabis uses. And yes, I
mean if you're having if you're vomiting a lot, you're
going to have electrolyte imbalances. Some of these issues can
lead to heart attacks, and so it's not a safe product,
(07:48):
especially the stuff that they're handing out now that is
so hypotency and there's really not great regulations around it,
and we're going to see more episodes of psychosis, more
hyper emine and this this whole like branding of it
as this safe natural medicine, it just doesn't hold true
for the products that are being sold on the US
(08:09):
market today.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Well, again, you could have a medical cannabis card before
it was legal in Michigan. I think there are other states.
I think Florida is one of the states where you
can have a medical cannabis card. So that makes you
feel like this is medicine. I've been prescribed to this card.
I have to have it. But even when you have
the card, you're kind of self dosing, Like this is
(08:33):
a really dangerous thing to give it to people.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah, I mean that's the problem with American healthcare today.
A lot of it works like a production line. I mean,
there are bad actors out there that will, you know,
essentially give you a card for a couple hundred bucks.
You know, they're not really evaluating you. There's not really
follow up, like that's their stick, you know. Come to me.
I'm pro cannabis. I think of it as a herb.
All right, here you go. And that happens with cannabis,
(08:57):
and it happens with psychiatric medications, and many people are
getting the illusion of healthcare but yes, yeah, they're essentially
just given permission to go and take smoke cannabis for
their pain or their PTSD or whatever it is, with
really minimal oversight.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
These are huge industries. These people make tons of money.
Pharmaceutical companies, the cannabis industry, they're all making a ton
of money. Why are doctors so quick to tell people
that they have depression or anxiety? I mean, this can
happen in the first fifteen minute visit, And like you
said in the first part of this, you can be
in an office for five to ten minutes with someone.
(09:37):
You suddenly get a label that you have for life.
And I think oftentimes folks who get this label, they
internalize this label. They become this label. Rather than wanting
to overcome the label, they become the label.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah. So I'm going to give you a two part
response to this, and I'm going to start with the
first part, which is simple. There is a commercial incentive
to see people in a short period of time. Because
of insurance, you simply make more if you see four
people in an hour, And so there's time pressure and
bad incentives for doctors to just say you have depression.
And there's an FDA treatment for that, you know, I'm
(10:13):
covered legally for it, rather than do an in depth
of valuation. So that's going on. But the question is,
you know, why do doctors do this? Aren't doctors ethical?
Don't doctors care about people? Don't doctors want to do
a really good job with their patients. And as as
someone who has been in the pharmaceutical industry, I did
work there for a couple of years, I've seen how
(10:34):
their marketing machine works. And you know, people sometimes think
I'm a conspiracy theory theorists when I talk about this,
but there is a multi billion dollar industry there that
has a vested interest in shaping how you look at things.
They will deploy their resources towards medical journals, towards thought
(10:55):
leaders and academics, and at conferences to constantly tilt the
opinions about things in one way, and the ultimate sort
of outcome of them selectively, let's say, platforming certain opinions,
mobilizing you know, patient groups which they fund to complain about,
you know the fact that doctor Joss on the Tutor
(11:16):
Dix podcast and she's spreading misinformation.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
They can do that.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
They have patient organizations which they fund which seem like
they're grassroots and like independent, but they can send them
a letter because they give them millions of dollars to
come and throw hate on you and just say she's dangerous.
So effectively, what you have you got this billion dollar
industry that is essentially just controlling the narrative. That's what
it is. And so most doctors when they see patients,
(11:40):
they think, generally depression is a biological condition. I don't
really hear about relationships and works and work and nutrition.
They must not be important because my medical education didn't
emphasize that. But the reason the medical education didn't emphasize
that is because they didn't have a big industry. They're
just saying, you know, talk about this, talk about that,
(12:01):
you know, and and so essentially that that's that's what's
been going on. We've we've had our medical education taken
over by commercial interests.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
I want to ask you something a little controversial now,
because you made a post about Charlie Kirk and you
said something about him being murdered for having conversations. You're
talking about really big stuff against really powerful people and
companies and the government. Do you worry about that?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I mean, I do worry about that, especially over the
last week. And I mean people have been coming after
my medical license for a long time. You know, they
follow me around on social media, you know, posting, you know,
call the Utah Medical Board, get this guy disbanded. But
after watching this assassination, yeah, I do worry about it.
(12:59):
I just want to stay here first and foremost. I'm
not suicidal, So you know, if anything kind of looks
like that's that's not you know, that's not true, but
I don't know it's I think you have to be
willing to die for what you believe in sometimes. I mean,
I don't want that to happen. And I don't say
this lightly, but I really believe that I'm here to
(13:22):
share this message with people, and you know, if that
leads to this kind of attention, then then so be it.
But I always I try to not be overly inflammatory.
I try to say things as they are. I try
and speak with compassion when I can. But yes, I
do think there is a target on my back, specifically
because I'm talking about mental illness and people on psychiatric medications,
(13:45):
and some of them may be unstable, and this can
be really confronting and challenging to some people's identity to
hear that, hey, maybe it's not just your mental illness,
maybe it's like your life. That's like a painful thing
for some people to hear. And so absolutely, you know,
I worry, but it's not going to change what I do.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
It's an interesting way of putting things because I think
Charlie would say the same thing. Yeah, I will go
out there and die for what I believe in, and
we should all be willing to say that we're going
to make the world a better place. And what you
are going out there and talking about is incredibly personal,
and you fight for two groups of people. There is
(14:30):
a group of people who say I've been wronged and
this happened to me, and there's a group of people
that don't know yet, yeah, and they don't know that
you're fighting for them. And I mean, I've even heard
that in these stories that I've seen on social media
since we lost Charlie, and people have come out and
said he was the only person that spoke truth to me.
And I got out of where I was because I
(14:52):
heard the truth, but I wasn't willing to hear it
when I was face to face, and it took me
a while and That's why I think you talking is
so critical because it does take people a while. And
that's I told you at the beginning. The majority of
people who have come to me have come to me
and private messaged me about the side effects of SSRIs,
(15:14):
and that runs the gamut of nerve pain to our
artificial arthritis pain and sexual dysfunction. And the sexual dysfunction
I think is that's the side effect that hurts people
the most because it's not their own personal side effect.
(15:34):
It's a side effect that affects their loved one and
their chance of having a loved one. And I've heard
so many stories. Honestly, I did not know the extent
of the sexual dysfunction. It's called PSSD. There's whole groups
out there. My world has been open to these people
who have been suffering in silence, and they have these
(15:57):
they have these vocal social media accounts, but they're just
not heard. They're not big enough, they're not they're being
silenced by big pharma too. But I mean, we're hearing
numbers like seventy percent of people who take an SSRI
will experience some form of sexual dysfunction. But the really
disturbing number is that in almost twenty percent of those cases.
(16:21):
This is permanent.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah, I correct you on that. I haven't seen the
twenty percent number, and I and I want to. Let's
let's unpack this. Seventy up to seventy percent of people,
maybe even high they experience sexual dysfunction on the drugs.
So we're talking about decreased libido, muted you know, muted orgasms,
(16:44):
you know, I, erectile dysfunction, all sorts of things. And
it's sort of it's told to patients as like, hey,
this is just something that happens. If you want to
take the medication, don't worry. It's going to go away.
It's a trade off for feeling better. And so people say, well,
you know, I mean a really bad plays. Okay, I'll
deal with it.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Now.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
What happens is that some people, when they come off
the medication, not only does it not go away, they
develop other problems. And so the constellation is they get
sexual dysfunction, which is characterized by genital anesthesia, which is
essentially the erogenous sensation that you normally associate with down there.
It doesn't feel like that anymore. It feels like the
(17:24):
back of your hand. And so there's sensory changes, they
have cognitive dysfunction, and they also feel massively dissociated. They say,
you know, I hug my parents or I hug my kid,
I don't feel any warmth there. I don't feel any connection.
I hear my favorite song from my youth that used
to give me prickles on the back of my neck,
I don't feel that anymore. And so they're massively blunted.
(17:46):
I mean, people have used the term chemical lobotomy to
describe this before. Now the incidence of that is what's
really important, Like how common is it that people will
experience enduring sexual dysfunction afterwards? Now, the one stat that
I'm familiar with is one in two hundred and sixteen,
and so that's far lower than twenty percent of people
(18:07):
will have this enduring sexual problems. But if you think
that we've got fourteen percent of the American population taking
these medication, it's actually probably a little bit higher. One
in two hundred and sixteen is a massive amount of people.
I mean, we're talking about tens and tens of thousands,
maybe hundreds of thousands of people worldwide with this problem now,
and that's why you know, you have places like the
(18:29):
PSSD network, which are talking about this. And the last
point that I want to make here is people are
going to be listening to this and they're going to
say this is insane. If these drugs were causing permanent
sexual dysfunction in like young people, you know, or just
takers in general, I would have heard about this. It's
in the labels in the European Union, it's in the
(18:49):
drug labels in Canada, it's in the drug labels in Australia,
it's in the drug labels in Hong Kong, and it's
being considered for the US labels currently. And so this
isn't like a fringe thing. It's just again, it's just
it's suppressed by this same fake argument of compassion, where
people who have vested interests in say the drugs are safe.
(19:10):
You know, we're advocating for mental illness. People with mental
health problems are stigmatize. I'm going to shoot down anyone
that criticizes the medications. It's a fake argument of compassion
used to silence people when we really just need to
be honest about this so people have informed consent and
they can say, well, do I really want to expose
myself to what is probably a rare risk, and many
(19:33):
people are going to say no, you know one in
two hundred and sixteen, No, thank you. Let me try
some other things. First.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. I think that we're not as
surprised as you think now, because I think there is
this group of people who have said, this Maha movement
is something different. We're finally learning that there are companies
(20:00):
out there that are getting to approval for things that
may be harming us, that the ingredients in our food
may be harming us, that we haven't been told the
whole truth. But also I think that this is a
generation that has seen some of the most horrific psychiatric
care we have ever seen in our lifetime with the
(20:20):
transgender movement. And I say that because I've seen these
people who have parts of their arm removed and have
these fake penises made, they have their penises cut off,
and they have fake vaginas made. And anybody who has
had a surgery and I've had a double mistectomy because
of my breast cancer, anybody who has had a surgery
(20:43):
like that where they cut through the nerves, you know,
you might as well be sentencing to them them to
a life of no feeling, no intimacy, no romantic relationship.
What doctor would cut off a person's genitals and tell
them you can create new genitals and be a different gender,
because you've just you've destroyed them. There's no creating new
(21:07):
genitals and there's no recreating nerves. That's not a thing.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, yeah, I mean this is such a heavy This
is such a heavy issue. And you know, I think
that the folks out there with genders dysphoria, they are
clearly suffering. But I think everyone would agree that the
best strategy is to try and have someone feel comfortable
in their own body, in the sex that they were assigned,
(21:32):
and to not expose them to treatments that are irreversible, disfiguring,
and can also impact their fertility long term. I think
one of the problems is, and it never should have
been like this. The whole issue of transgenderism was swept
up into a political swept up into the political space,
and because it's talked about so commonly, some people will
(21:56):
latch onto it as this is the reason why am
I happy? And if you and if you listen to
stories about people who have regret afterwards, they talk about that,
They talk about being lost and confused and unhappy and
being feeling isolated, and they get sucked into these communities.
They get cheered, they get told you know you're oppressed.
(22:17):
You know this is what's going on. And doctors, thinking
that they're helping patients, they cheerlead them onto these onto
these medications and doing these surgeries. I don't really think
it's in the best interest of most of these patients
going through this, and I think they're doing it out
(22:38):
of political will instead of actually taking the time to
sit with them and help them love their body and
find a way to get through whatever challenges that they're
going through.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
How does a doctor look at a ten year old
and say I should put them on puberty blockers because
a puberty blocker, a puberty blocker is just stopping that
child from going through puberty and having those life change.
It's not changing their gender. You are stopping a critical
part of your development.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, I mean, I think the problem is is that
many doctors aren't acting like scientists. They're acting like political activists.
And that's the only reason that I could see that
someone could delude themselves into thinking a ten year old
can make that kind of decision.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, that's upsetting. Yeah, it's upsetting. I was thinking this morning,
I was thinking about doing this podcast, and I was thinking,
you know, when I was in psychology, I was a
psych major in college years ago, and we studied the
DSM for so I don't even know what level you're
(23:53):
on now. I don't remember transgender. You said gender dys
for you, I don't remember transgender being in there.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, it's not in their Gender dysphoria is listed in
the DSM five. And I mean it's I mean, it's real.
I mean, people are clearly having are very unhappy about
their identity and their sexuality and all of that. I
think it's making a lot of people upset. But I mean,
(24:24):
I don't think the solution is to be deluding people
into thinking that the opposite gender, especially when that comes
along with medications and potentially surgeries. If this is something
that does happen, I think it should be rare, and
I think it should be in adults who have had
a lot of time to think about it. And I
(24:45):
mean that's that's I mean, that's my stance on that.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Well. That so let's talk about that because I do
think when I mean, when I studied it back in
the nineties, we were told it's extraordinarily rare, extraordinarily rare.
It's not extraordinarily rare to hear kids talk about this today,
But it wasn't extraordinarily rare to hear people talk about
anarexia in college either, because it was also a social contagion.
(25:13):
So I remember having that conversation in depth when I
was at the university. It's like, this can be a
situation where one girl in a room in college age
has an eating disorder and then this kind of like
travels through an entire sorority house or something. This seems
to be the case with these kids. But I have
a question for you, because when doctor Urata was on,
(25:35):
he talked about these sri SSRIs impacting the fetal brain
and that in animals you could see sexual dysfunction when
they hit adolescence, when the baby hit adolescence. And we
have all these kids today that say I'm non binary,
I don't have a gender, I'm genderless, which I think
(25:58):
for so long I've been like that since sane It's
impossible that you can think that you're generless until I
started to listen to this, and maybe I'm crazy too,
But I started to listen to this, and I thought,
I've heard stories of men who have said I was
fully attracted to my wife. I thought she was super hot.
I wanted to have sex with her all the time.
It went on these drugs and I had no interest
(26:19):
in her, and I started to think I must be gay,
And it struck me how does that happen? But if
you suddenly had no interest, your mind could trick you
into thinking, like why am I no longer sexually? Sexual
attraction is so core to who we are and our relationship.
I mean, that is what why two people say I
will commit to you the rest of my life is
(26:42):
because we connect on that level in such an amazing way.
You know, I have such attraction to you, I want
to be with you. To have no attraction it makes
me think, could these children who have been affected either
by this in the womb or I mean you were
talking about kids are as young as six going on
an SSRI. Could this permanent sexual dysfunction? Because in kids,
(27:06):
once they get to adolescents, to say I'm really not
into sex, I don't even understand it. I must be
non binary.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah, I don't think you've gone off the deep end
with this tutor. And I'm going to lay out the
bread crumbs so you know, your audience can make up
their own mind. So firstly, you know these drugs are potent.
They've got sexual dysfunction and seventy percent of people. That's
not a surprise. They are used sometimes for people who
have a history of being sexual predators. They've gone to jails,
(27:36):
like the judges will say you have to take an SSRI,
you know, because it blunts sexual desire, and they believe
it will lead to less recidivism. And so these are
even used for things like pedophilia. All of that. I mean,
it's a dark side there. But the point I want
to make is they are they potently disrupt sexual functioning. Now,
(27:58):
because we can't do like a placebo controlled trial in
humans due to ethical reasons, we do them in animals.
And here's what they found when they look at what
happens to mice who are exposed to SSRIs in utero
and in the very early stages of development when their
brain is undergoing a lot of changes. The mice who
are exposed to SSRI medications go on to have a
(28:22):
higher rate of autistic like behaviors and reduced sexual engagement.
They mate less than the other ones. Okay, and so
your question might be, then, well, what happens in humans?
You know this is mice. I mean, for me, I
would be concerned enough looking at the mice, but I
get that that's a valid arrangement. Is this potent enough
to affect humans? There have been twelve MRI studies where
(28:45):
we look at the brains of kids who are exposed
in utero to those who are not exposed in utero.
Done very well, controlling for factors like maternal depression, which
which can make things confusing, but essentially it's good studies.
There are structural changes in the brains between the kids
who are exposed and not exposed. Do these persist to adolescents? Well, yes,
(29:08):
when we look at adolescents who are exposed in utero,
they actually have altered changing in their amigdala, which is
the area of the brain that controls anxiety and fear.
The processing is different to the kids who were not exposed.
And so when I kind of well, the other thing
is and I have heard cases just like yours. I've
spoken to two gentlemen who are heterosexual, and when they
(29:30):
developed PSSD, they started to question their sexuality because they
were just very confused because they were not aroused by
women they previously would have found very arousing. And so
when I kind of piece this together, Okay, we have
this animal study, we have clear signs that are showing
changes in the brains of infants. It's progressing all the
(29:50):
way to adolescence. I have some case reports where men
are starting to question their sexuality because of this. You
can't help but kind of link that together and think,
could what we're seeing now be a result of SSRI
medications hitting the market in the early nineties, making billions
for pharmaceutical companies, you know, where Like you know, fifteen
(30:11):
percent of people are taking these medications now, and I
think it's anywhere from three percent to ten percent of
pregnant women are taking any depressants during their pregnancy. It's
a wide range, but that's still a substantial amount. Think
about anywhere from three to ten percent of pregnant women
are on these medications that are impacting the brain during
(30:31):
its most sensitive time of growth, where it's going from
a speck to a fully formed brain. I don't think
it's a stretch to think that we may be leading
to people being asexual, people being more confused about their sexuality.
That could be kind of caught up into the transgender thing,
especially with the political climate right now. I mean to
(30:52):
me that that seems possible.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
a Tutor Dixon podcast. It's interesting because as we look
at this, I think all of us have said, what
is happening? How is it suddenly that all of these
kids don't know their identity, they don't know their gender,
(31:15):
they can't decide who they want to have a romantic
relationship with. So I do believe that there is a
component that's social. And I think that as we've watched
the political spectrum and the political powers get involved in
this discussion, it's almost like a you hold someone up
(31:38):
as like the mascot of your party, right, this is
we are for this, Yeah, but it's the people who
are living this are struggling. I mean, they're hurting, And
if we're honest about mental illness, we would say that
it's painful and we deserve, or these people deserve for
(31:59):
us to step out of the political discussion and look
at this from a scientific standpoint and ask is there's
something that could potentially be causing this that causes people
a lot of pain. I mean, if you don't think
that you have attraction to someone, it's a very lonely life.
(32:20):
And I will get in trouble for saying that, Oh
my gosh, she shouldn't say that people shouldn't live alone. Well,
I mean, but we're not biologically meant to.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
No, No, I mean, it's one of the its. It's
one of the legs on the on the chair of
mental health, you know, is mutually satisfying romantic and platonic relationships.
I mean, it's a core part about being human. And
if we're going to destroy that for people, another part
of it is having a family for many people. If
(32:51):
we're going to put people in medications that impact their
fertility as well, we are really lopping off these very
very valuable legs on this still that kind of keeps
us mentally well. And listen, I won't say I'm an
expert on the behavioral outcomes data for post pre and
post transitioning, but from the people that I do listen
(33:13):
to who do follow that, it's not great. This isn't
leading to better mental health. This isn't leading to reduced suicide,
and I think that should be cause for concern and
really make people left and right look at this and
just say, is this really helping people their outcomes because
a lot of threats are thrown around if you don't
(33:33):
cheer lead people onto the medications, if you don't support
them through their transition, would you rather have a dead
child or a transgender child? Is the argument from the
people I trust who look at this. They're saying that
there's no improvement in the mental health for many of them.
And it doesn't surprise me. I mean, you could have regret.
(33:55):
You're also taking medications which do not work great in
the long term, hormonal medications which can be very disrupting
to your mood. It's just filled with land mines. That
there's so many landmines there that can lead to worse
mental health outcomes. And I think sharing this on because
of your political position, that that's not compassion. I think
(34:21):
that that's something else.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I think that's the critical point here is that it's
not compassion. It's very hard for the people who have
been through this and feel that they've been damaged by
medications and I'm talking about more than transgender because, like
I said, when we started this, the number of people
that have reached out to me and said my life
is I've lost my life. One person described it as
(34:47):
living dead, feeling like you are the living dead because
not only do you have the sexual dysfunction and no
ability to be aroused or no ability to One person said,
I have an organ and I have no physical or
emotional reaction to it anymore, and I'm just devastated by it,
and I can't imagine this. Another person described it as
(35:09):
it's not even just that I don't have a reaction
to my sexual intimacy with my spouse. I don't have
any reactions. I have a total numbness. So I'll just
end by asking you what is the answer to getting
the medical community to step up and say this is
a last resort we want to be and not only
(35:30):
is medication like this a last resort, but we will
also heavily monitor anyone who goes on it, because I
think you have that first six weeks to say, as
we see those changes, if they are significant, this isn't
right for you.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, you know, as someone that's been sort of in
this fight since twenty seventeen. You know, I've seen a
lot of things, and ultimately the way I start to
look at this problem is an it's who has the
bigger microphone now. You know, for the longest time, the
pharmaceutical industry, you know, the American Psychiatric Association, the groups
(36:06):
who you know, had an agenda to position these drugs
as look much safer than they are and the problem
as being something requiring drugs. They have been controlling the narrative.
They've had the war chest. We have a very unique
moment right now with Bobby Kennedy at the head of HHS.
He's installing people who are going to be able to
(36:27):
change things. I think we need we need government behind this. Really,
I think we need sober eyes with authority behind this
to put out messages which cannot be refuted by the
propaganda coming out of these other groups. I think we
need new leadership at the National Institute of Mental Health.
(36:48):
Up until now, they have just been obsessed with finding
biological markets for drugs when they really ought to be
obsessed with looking at non drug approaches to mental health.
We've never had a study looked at things like nutritional interventions,
you know, relationship coaching, work, coaching, these these things that
are really intuitive that everyone's grandma would agree agree with.
(37:10):
We've never had a head to head study where they've
looked at that against standard of care SSRIs over time,
where they actually measure outcomes that people care about. Most
people don't want to be just like numbed out. They
want to have better relationships, they want to have work
that they find satisfying, they want to feel healthy. And
so it's it's it's so big, but we're heading in
the right direction now, and so I mean, get out.
(37:34):
I'd say vote, you know, support your congress people and
your senators who care about this issue, and support Bobby
because he is taking the reins right now and he's
trying to change things. And I'm really happy to be
involved in that movement.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Yeah, I want to hear from you as I listened
to this is a potential answer to so many of
the questions we have. Why are our kids so sad?
Why are mayor is breaking up? Why is violence increasing?
All these things, so many of them could be connected
to how we treat our bodies. And I always tell
(38:09):
my girls, you get one, you only get one. You
have to take care of it. Make sure you're taking
care of your teeth, make sure you're taking care of
your body. You don't get to go back, you don't
get a do over. It's not like in a video
game where you get another life. You know, you have
to be able to take care of what you have,
and we just don't talk about that enough, but you
are talking about it. We so appreciate the fact that
you are talking about it. Tell people where they can
(38:30):
follow you, because I do think that you're putting out
great content every day.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Sure. Yeah, So our biggest channel is YouTube, and so
it's doctor Joseph, but it's spelt in the German way,
so instead of a pH at the end, it's an
F where on all social media channels. If you're someone
who's interested in coming off medications, you potentially like to
consider working with me. My team is at the Tape
is at taperclinic dot com. We work in the fourteen
(38:56):
largest US states. If you're an international listener, you're listening
in a different state. If you go to the contact
us section on my website, there are links to directories
for a whole range of different doctors that do psychiatric deprescribing.
They're really passionate about finding other ways to deal with
mental health apart from just medications. Check them out there
(39:17):
and and yeah, that's that's where you can find me
and where you can go for help.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I think that's a critical conversation to have because people
are looking for where I've never heard of a place
like this before. We I mean, I know that we've
had people in our family that have been like, how
do I I don't know how to get off. I
can't get off. That's a common concern. I can't. And
another common concern I will say is that when you
(39:43):
try it yourself. I've heard my normal is so bad
because I missed a dose and I immediately felt like
I want to kill myself. I'm so sad. And it's
it's something to remember for everybody who's out there that's
not you're normal.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Yeah, like a PSA quickly before we wrap, is that
many people need to come off these medications over a
long time. This might be a year, sometimes it could
be longer. Not everyone has highly elastic brains where they
can come off the meds and in two months they're fine.
In fact, a lot of people it takes much longer.
(40:22):
Don't be dissuaded. Don't think you need to stay on
the medication for the rest of your life. Don't let
someone tell you, oh, you know, because you couldn't come
off in a couple of months, you have a serious
chemical imbalance and you need to stay on it forever.
There are ways to gradually lower the medications down safely
so your life doesn't fall apart. And if you're interested
in that, that's what my whole YouTube channel is about.
(40:44):
We give out free information about how to do safe
and slow tapers. You could do it with your own doctor,
and there is a way off if that's something that
you want.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
I smiled when you said the part about don't let
someone say to you if you had trouble getting off,
you must need to go back on, because we've experienced
that in our lives, and that is incredibly frustrating to me,
because I do think that there are some medical professionals
out there that you're a consistent appointment. If you're on
a med you consistently pay your paycheck, and that's frustrating
(41:18):
to me. But I appreciate what you do. I'm so
glad you were here. Honestly, I could have talked to
you for another hour, so we'll have to have you
back doctor Joseph Witt during make sure people check him out.
If you have somebody in the situation you heard where
you can get help. We so appreciate you being on today.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
I'd love to come back, and thanks so much for.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Having me absolutely and thank you all for listening today.
Remember you can go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or you can watch the video on Rumble or YouTube
at Tutor Dixon. But make sure you join us next
time and have a blessed day.
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