Brooke lives in Reno and featured in a prior Reno meeting organized by David Antonuccio which had Bob Whitaker as the speaker. She had previously met up with Bob and has since done podcasts for Mad in America. When she learnt Kim, Angie, David H and of course David Antonuccio would be in town for a follow up Reno Meeting, she sat a bunch of skeptic around a table and pressed record. It worked.
May Cause Side Effects and make tough hombres blanche and faint. The perfect present for anyone who doesn’t think antidepressant withdrawal is real and deadly and rolling a pharmaceutical is just as safe as playing roulette in Reno. A must read for anyone exposed to SSRI Tik-Toxification.
There is a BrookeSiem Substack and she is also an award winning chef, a chef to elite athletes and more…
David is a Professor Emeritus in the Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Nevada where he taught for 32 years, while also working at Reno’s V.A. Medical Center. His clinical work and research interests cover the behavioral treatment of depression, anxiety, and smoking. He has received numerous awards and authored or coauthored over 100 publications including articles on the merits of psychotherapy rather than medication for depression. He now makes music with Michael Pierce in a group called RainFall.
Angie is a U.S. Army combat veteran, psychiatric drug withdrawal consultant, and healing coach. After surviving years of overmedication and polypharmacy following trauma from her military service, she now educates individuals, families, and organizations on harm reduction and safe deprescribing of psychiatric medications.
Her story is featured in the award-winning documentary Medicating Normal (2020), which explores the risks of long-term psychiatric drug use and the challenges of recovery. Angela’s past advocacy roles include Legislative Policy Fellow for the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Student Veterans of America, Military Veteran Liaison for the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, team member for The Withdrawal Project and Social Impact and Outreach for Medicating Normal- the film.
In 2022, she founded HeartCore Collective, supporting individuals healing from psychiatric drug injury to reclaim their autonomy outside of the system.
Kim Witczak is a globally recognized drug safety advocate whose activism began after the sudden death of her husband from undisclosed side effects of an antidepressant. Her advocacy helped lead to FDA’s Black Box suicide warnings on antidepressants.
With over 25 years in advertising and marketing, Kim brings a unique perspective to FDA reform, transparency, and patient safety. She co-founded the nonprofit Woodymatters and served three terms from 2016 to 2025 as the Consumer Representative on the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee. She also co-organized the international Selling Sickness: People Before Profits conference and serves on multiple patient advocacy boards, including USA Patient Network, Inner Compass, Conscious Clinician Collective, and MISSD (Medication-Induced Suicide in Memory of Stewart Dolin). Kim works to amplify patient and family voices, advocating for accountability, informed consent, and transparent healthcare. See KimWitczak
David Healy
The Podcast was aimed, and shot on October 3. It has been fired this morning on MiA – The Real World is where the Harms Are
It also features here:
There is a Transcript Here.
mary H. says
Reading the transcript of Brooke’s podcast was really inspirational. Alongside numerous passages with which I completely agreed, I found this piece to fit my exact concerns:-
“I am extremely concerned about the expertise of de-prescribing psychiatric drugs going mainstream because I don’t think they understand fully that it’s not just taking the drug away. There is a whole unlearning or un-brainwashing, whatever you want to call it. There are layers upon layers of trauma and betrayal, so I am extremely concerned about the expertise.”
My deepest fear is the lack of compassion. We saw it with sleeping tablets a number of years ago – people , mainly women I would guess, having their prescriptions withdrawn from day one without any concern whatsoever about how they would cope with their withdrawal. We have also seen it with the prescribing of Diazepam ( in particular) where, previously, you could expect a prescription from your doctor, suddenly it was as if you were asking for a doctor’s life to dare to expect them to prescribe diazepam. Now, we’re on to deprescribing in general – our concern, of course, being psychotropic drugs. Will they DARE to take for granted that deprescribing is equal to ” just stop taking”, because, if so, we are going to have many, many cases of utter catastrophe. Even the tiniest reduction can, for so many, make life very near impossible to bear. Just imagine the result if the doctors were to get the idea in their heads that the way THEY see it has nothing to do with the way the PATIENT CAN TOLERATE IT. We must hope for a decent dose of common sense being prescribed to every prescriber!
An excellent podcast – an excellent side-effect of the main Reno Meeting.
Dr. David Healy says
M
This is probably one of the most important points made. It is difficult to see how deprescribing can be done safely without the person the meds being in charge, being the Guide, and the doctor the learner, the apprentice – which is just not a role they are used to and likely to buy into
D
annie says
“When did you start to question this?”
Perhaps one of the most important questions in the chat.
Another line “they became suicidal right in front of me”
Another line “paper in the wind”
Another line “trying to pull people out of the river”
Another few lines
“I’m also really interested in the idea from a much more spiritual perspective of putting your story down and just deciding not to carry it with you anymore. Because we’ve been there. We’ve done that. Do I really need to say everything’s connected back to this all the time? It’s just this idea of questioning the story that I’ve held on to for so long, because it mattered to me to hold on to it as I was working through it. But the more I work through it, the more like, you know what? I can just put this down as it just is. This is what happened. It literally doesn’t have to matter in my life ever again if I don’t want it to. It’s learning how to do that and just moving forward.”
mary H. says
I guess THAT IS JUST IT ISN’T IT – learning how to do that, the letting go so that healing/recovery has a chance. From what I have seen, it takes AGES, cannot be rushed, BUT ( unless we’ve been incredibly lucky), eventually it slowly happens. my feeling is that ‘letting go’ ( not just applicable to this journey alone of course) is one of the hardest things to do – but extremely rewarding. One mistake ( or that’s my opinion of it) often made is that waiting ” to be the same as I was before” which, I feel, hinders the progress. An acceptance of change, of a new way of being seems absolutely necessary in this game and that is what makes it so very difficult I guess
Anne-Marie says
If you were unlucky enough to obtain an ssri criminal record it’s very hard to let go because you have now been affectively locked out from a system that won’t let you move on until the system says you can and for some that will never happen.
People ìn this situation can only dream of moving on. They are stuck in a void of nothingness. No hopes, no dreams, no optimistic future’s to look forward to like normal people have.
chris says
“There is a whole unlearning or un-brainwashing, whatever you want to call it. There are layers upon layers of trauma and betrayal, so I am extremely concerned about the expertise.”
All those who have come off psych drug polypharmacy in the face of threats to be put on a CTO and depo injections are the real experts.
“My deepest fear is the lack of compassion.”
When people who have been affected fully realise there is no one out there who is going to help – the help/compassion is only on the surface and has no depth or patience – in fact quite the opposite the people who have harmed will show at best indifference, at worst blame their victims and even seek to criminalize and lie in the medical records. It’s up to people in these appalling circumstances, to work out, with online research, how to get themselves free of psychiatry people, their drug enforcement, delusional beliefs and need to control people to/by harm and at times into death.
Listening to a certain Inquiry the lack of knowledge and insight by families affected is jaw dropping even for me. Families ain’t gonna help with the depth and level that is required.
Dr. David Healy says
Chris
You are absolutely right on this point. The system is unfeeling, never willing to admit mistakes, and it seems getting blinder and blinder.
A German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, once used to say The Dogs Bark, The Caravan Moves On – by which he meant there might be a temporary superficial fuss but if the political caravan keeps moving the fuss gets left behind.
The Benzodiazepine Drugs are a great case in point. There was a fuss that was created by pharma aimed at getting rid of them and replacing them with the more profitable SSRIs. For a brief period there were pledges to help those harmed by Benzos but 30 years later nothing substantial has been done and any attempts to remind politicians etc of their promised don’t even ripple the waters.
It will be the same with the SSRIs. This is what the ‘victims’ need to know now at this point – that any mouthing of words of sorrow etc are just that mouthing – nothing will be done and the cycle will repeat with the next set of drugs
David
annie says
The whole revolting facade needs to be taken down. Doctors are using Benzodiazepines for antidepressant withdrawal, using beta-blockers, or even adding another antidepressant. Bad mouthing is rife, a pestering patient wants relief.
‘Mothers little helper’ saw millions of people addicted to their Benzos.
Doctors adding Benzos to an already fraught situation shows up their inability to address antidepressant adverse effects. Buy one get one free.
As David said, the blind leading the blind.
As Brooke addressed the question of moving on, Kim and Angie, brought down by their horrific experiences show no signs of moving on. Too much carnage, too much denial, and too much Pharma.
These three women are awesome, circling the wagons.
SSRIs are a malignant force of nature taking people on horrific trajectories, lucky enough to rid themselves of the drugs, then seeking a return to their usual dimension. But this old dimension has gone forever. The other side of the moon.
It could be a new start to see how JAACAP is handled. Suing a journal for GSK’s aberrations with Paroxetine won’t bring the bodies back, but it could point a huge finger of how the pubic were duped, and a ‘gotcha’ moment.
This sort of progressive actions can bring back, with a jolt, a universal action, and lead to a third dimension. Knowingly understood.
Dr. David Healy says
Annie
You are making a mistake here. The drugs are not to blame. Benzos are the best way to manage status epilepticus and can be a cure for catatonia. They are great anxiolytics used wisely. I don’t want to lose them
The same is true of SSRIs. They can be useful The problem is we (not the drugs) are repeating the same mistakes that caused benzo problems and then SSRI problems and will cause the same problems again and again. As we have been doing this. the magic that used to lie in a good doctor and good relationship has transferred into the pills and that is partly why we repeat the mistakes – doctors dishing out magic pills and Brooke and Angie seeking these things out – and even more so the Tik-Tok Generation of young women. Pharma put up the sails that take us off course but we blow the wind into them that is just as important in what happens.
There will be a post next week by Johanna that feeds into all this and strongly suggests to me that we are nowhere near sorting any of this out.
D
tim says
This is a wonderful, and moving discussion. Thanks to all who contributed.
Since I read the above D.H. response, a vivid and discomforting memory of a young child in Status Epilepticus has dominated my thoughts and memories.
I reached him in the early hours of the morning, after many hours of continuous, sleep deprived, acute clinical duty.
Experienced nurses had intravenous diazepam ready for me to check and draw up into a syringe. They managed to steady a little arm long enough for me to gain venous access and I slowly infused a recommended paediatric dose.
I was astonished when the convulsions continued. Having no alternative, and concerned about excessive dosage, I repeated this treatment, and finally the convulsions ceased with. the third dose.
Fifty years later, I am convinced that the child would not have survived had we not had access to intra-venous diazepam.
annie says
Medicine is a strange business. You take your medicine as prescribed, in good faith, that it is for your benefit, and, hopefully, you can only get better.
Pharma waved it’s magic wand, with Benzodiazepines and SSRIs. Of course, used in the right circumstances, they will be heralded. So there is every defence, that Pharma are not to blame, when some massive mistakes occur.
But deviating from the honest and true use of medication, to the use of it, in a rather slap-dash way, does make it difficult to defend. I am all for David, and Tim, using Diazepam, in ways that are most important. No-one wants to lose possible life-savers.
I just feel that my prescriptions for adverse effects of Seroxat, were like a sledge-hammer. I took a month of Diazepam, a month of Lorazepam, and a month of Chlordiapoxide, Librium. Then 400 beta-blockers appeared, and then Prozac appeared.
It’s very difficult to get your head around it.
But hopefully we will get our head around it, and kitchen tables in Reno, had a desirable effect.
Harriet Vogt says
I rather doubt the system is capable of ‘sorting’, supporting or, in system language, managing the unpredictable individual complexity of protracted antidepressant withdrawal or SSRI dysregulation.
Obvious cultural obstacles. By definition the/any system can’t really see or hear individuals. Is founded in its own ‘evidence-based’ certainty, and a diagnostic framework focussed on identifying and treating symptoms, which it can’t differentiate from harms, particularly in the psychotropic space.
I understand why Angie feels this:
‘There’s no research being done. The research that is out there is not good enough, and the patient stories are not acceptable either…I find it really hard to even talk about these things scientifically because I don’t have anything to go on.’
As human beings we all strive for a sort of certainty, – ‘scientia’. But, as far as I can see, the likelihood of a neatly tied up scientific narrative – bridging the category error divide– how SSRIs actually cause our physical and emotional reactions – is zero. The science, as you often say, lies with patients. It’s not anecdotal – they reperesent a huge database of insight, that would be regarded as invaluable in the commercial world ,and is probably monitored closely by industry. It is insufferable that the medical system sees it otherwise.
Look at this conversation I had with a really smart woman on X yesterday – prescribed venlafaxine and benzos 5 years ago, after a cancer diagnosis.
‘When I told my now former doc that I wanted to stop venlafaxine he told me that for some people isn’t possible. He didn’t tell me it five years earlier when he put me on it. Why? Had he had decided on my behalf that I was going to be on the drug for the rest of my life?’
I sent her the Rxisk piece, ‘Withdrawal syndromes: lost in translation’, drawing on the insights of Mary and Shane’s group;
‘Thanks for writing this article. It resonates so much with me. Dystopian is the only word that occurs to me when I think that those whose job is supposedly to help people feel better harm them and keep doing the same to “rescue” their victims from the harm they caused.’
This is the reality out there. No wonder membership of peer support groups keeps growing exponentially. I wish it were not so, but I’m not sure the ideal of relationship based medicine is realistic in a system of mass produced ‘care’. Ironically, I suspect AI especially Grok style, may be a better withdrawal support than human doctors, since it’s oddly personal and capable of listening to the individual’s narrative and integrating our reality into its ‘thinking’.
An individual coda.
Cathy Wield, extraordinary woman, developed her own Instinctive tapering strategy – for monster drug venlafaxine. She nibbled a bit, whenever she felt withdrawal. as she gradually reduced. Maybe being a doctor gave her extra confidence, maybe the fact that she survived 33 drugs.