Ep 214: Ex-FDA Dr. Josef: What Your Psychiatrist and Doctor Isn't Telling You

Written By SARAH MOODY
 
 

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

  • The three domains that decide your mental health: physical health, relationships, and meaningful activities. Josef says almost everyone skips the first one, and it is the one that changes your life's direction the most

  • The four things to fix before you consider a prescription: your diet, how much you move, undiagnosed medical problems, and every drug you are already putting in your body

  • What your doctor is not telling you about how these drugs were studied. Most have never been tested past a year, and almost none have been tested in the combinations people are taking

  • What protracted withdrawal is, including the symptom people describe as being plugged into a wall socket and getting electrocuted, and why coming off too fast causes neurological damage

  • What Josef changed instead of having his gallbladder removed, and how fast the brain fog lifted and his sleep, energy and marriage changed once he did.

  • Why he left $700,000 on the table and started over from zero, and the promotion pattern inside the pharmaceutical industry that made him quit

  • The motto he would put on the NASDAQ billboard in Times Square, and why it will make you rethink what to do the next time you are not well

SHOW NOTES

Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring was a director at a pharmaceutical company with a compensation package approaching $700,000 and a clear path to seven figures. He quit.

He trained in psychiatry at Baylor, did a drug development fellowship at Janssen, a division of Johnson + Johnson, and served as a Medical Officer at the FDA reviewing psychiatric drug safety data. He learned that most psychiatric medications have never been studied beyond a year, and almost none have been studied in the combinations people take.

In this episode he tells a story he rarely tells. Around the time he started the clinic he was drinking three coffees a day, using eight nicotine pouches, drinking White Claws at night, taking Xanax to sleep, and working 80-hour weeks. He collapsed mid shift with abdominal pain, went to the ER, and was diagnosed with hepatitis, fatty liver disease, and was told he should probably remove his gallbladder. What healed him was not a drug, and not therapy.

What he did instead became the framework he teaches now. His mission is to help people manage their mental health without meds, to find the root cause of your illness and heal that.

In 2020 he and his wife, Marissa, started TaperClinic. It is now the largest medical practice in the world dedicated to helping people safely come off psychiatric medication, with about 20 staff and 6.5 million views on his YouTube channel last month.

Josef and I are after the same thing. The symptom is not the problem. The root cause is. And underneath all of it sits your mindset, because you can know exactly what to do and still not do it. That gap is the whole game.

This episode is not medical advice. No one should change or stop a psychiatric medication without their prescriber.


CONNECT WITH DR. JOSEF WITT-DOERRING

Listen and connect:

Apple: Rock Your Brain. Rock Your Life.
Spotify: Rock Your Brain. Rock Your Life.
Website: www.sarahmoody.com/mainpodcast

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SARAH MOODY
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Ep 213: Stacey Lindsay: Four Moves to Get Your Life Back