E24: Kim Witczak

Behind the Scenes of the Drug-Approval Process: Psych Meds, Collateral Damage, and a Story of Tragedy and Hope

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Christian Elliot

All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's episode. I am super excited to have a special guest, Kim Witczak with me today. She has quite the diverse background and ability to see life and our world with range. And it's something I, as health coach, particularly appreciate because it's easy to get stuck in one silo and miss things going on in the bigger context. So a little bit of background on her. So she is a leading global drug safety advocate.

 

and speaker with over 25 years of professional experience in advocacy, advertising, and marketing communication. She is currently a very vocal consumer representative on the FDA advisory committee for evaluating new drugs that are coming to market. So, ⁓ so much we're going to be able to talk about today, both high level and then just personal applicable, relatable things. So Kim, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really excited to talk to you.

 

Kim Witczak

my gosh. Well, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this conversation too.

 

Christian Elliot

Right on. Okay, so tell us the listener a little bit about your story. So I've heard it about how you got into this drug advocacy work and it's really kind of a heart wrenching, ⁓ my gosh, I can't unsee that type of story. So take us back to the beginning of what got you doing the work you're doing today.

 

Kim Witczak

Sure. Well, first of all, I'd like to say, I like to call myself the accidental advocate because I didn't choose to do this work. And as I've come to realize, sometimes our greatest purposes in life choose us. And so that is, I always say that because, you know, that kind of started my whole journey. So really on August 6th, 2003, over 20 years ago, I got a call from my dad that changed the trajectory of my life. ⁓

 

My dad called to tell me that my husband of almost 10 years was found hanging from the rafters of our garage dead at age 37, wasn't depressed. He had no history of depression or any other mental illness. So as you can imagine, when I got that call, it literally changed everything. I mean, I still think about that call and it brings me to my knees because it was something I was not expecting at all.

 

And especially this guy who loved life, took his own life. Like it literally made no sense. And so Woody had just started his dream job with a startup company and was having trouble sleeping, which is not uncommon for entrepreneurs or even any of us, right? When we wake up in the middle of the night, but Woody went to ⁓ his family doctor who is, you know, he had this kind of belief with

 

the doctors because they put them back together. know, he was an athlete. So if you got stitches, they stitched them up when his appendix broke, they fixed him up, you know. So he had that kind of belief of in the system. And so he went to his doctor and was given a three week sample pack of an antidepressant Zoloft, which, ⁓ and told them it would take the edge off and help him sleep. And so.

 

I happened to be out of the country the first three weeks Woody was on the drug. And when I came back into town, I'll never forget something that will again, like the phone call forever haunt me. Wood walked through their back door. He was like in a blue dress shirt. It was completely drenched. He's bawling and he falls to the kitchen floor, puts his hand like around his head, like a vice. Kim, I don't know what's happening to me. My head's outside my body. You gotta help me. I don't think I can handle this.

 

And he's like bawling and I'm like, like, literally, I've never, ever, ever seen that. And so we calmed him down and, you know, we prayed, we breathed, anything to like make this head outside the body feeling go away. Calls his doctor, the doctor says, you got to give it four to six weeks to kick in, the drug to kick in. And so every night of the next week, Wood would come home and he'd be like, what do you think about acupuncture? I'm gonna beat this feeling in my head.

 

What do think about hypnosis? What do you think about this? Like he was like a can do. Like I was always on his resume and I used to always make fun of it. Cause he'd be like, I'm a can do guy. Like he's always a solution oriented person. And so he was looking for anything. So, you know, when I got that call that he took his own life, like, you know, as I said, it made no sense. ⁓ Cause how did Woody go from head outside the bar? How did he go from not sleeping?

 

head outside the body to hanging in five weeks. And at that time, we never questioned the drug because it was given to him by his doctor. It was sold as safe and effective and it was FDA approved. ⁓ But you know, that night when he called, ⁓ I forever like thank the coroner for asking this really big question. She asked if he was on any medication.

 

And the only medication he was on was Zoloft. And she proceeded to say, we're going to take it with us. It might have something to do with his death. And then ironically, the front page of our newspaper had an article that said the UK finds link between antidepressants and suicide in teens. So those two pieces of information, no note left by Woody, and we travel both all the time, but that became our note and really became like

 

Like again, I always say this, when something happens tragically and suddenly and somebody dies, like that doesn't make sense. You kind of go into this investigative mode and that's exactly what we did.

 

Christian Elliot

And well, in your investigation led to things that you can't unsee once you see them. It led to understanding that this wasn't unexpected, that this was a known harm that could come from these medications and it had been covered up. So tell us a little bit about what you found as you unpacked that.

 

Kim Witczak

Yeah. mean, like you said, once you start going down that path, just the night that Woody was found, my brother-in-law who became my partner and doing a lot of my advocacy out in DC, who's married to my sister, he went home and typed in Zoloft and suicide. And little to our known, we had no idea that the FDA had a hearing in 1991 when it was just

 

Prozac on the market and it was the emergence of violence and suicide and that was an adult and at that point, know, so then you go down that rabbit hole and then you start seeing that wait these guys have known about this and so that kind of started it and and what happened at that point is the FDA advisory committee, which I'm on today those members had ties financial ties to the manufacturers of other antidepressant products

 

So they're like, nope, I don't see anything. The FDA, ⁓ you know, so they told Eli Lilly to study suicidality. They never did. The FDA never followed up. Now, meanwhile, you have it, you've got Zoloft on the market, which is another SSRI, and then you have ⁓ Paxil, and you have it approved for kids, you know? And so eventually, so that was one aspect of like, wait, you knew about it? So we just started like.

 

my brother-in-law ordered all these books of one of the, probably the two who've been at the leading experts that came out of the UK, ⁓ that they've known about this. And so that was one aspect. I like to call it the battle of Woody, but it became like, we're going out to DC, we're gonna talk to anybody we can, we worked with our representatives because what happened out of the UK putting, saying that they found risk,

 

Well, hello, like FDA, where's our investigation? So we helped to push for that. We met with the FDA, know, members of Congress, ⁓ media. told a story. Anytime you could tell the story about Woody, Woody was like, eventually, I mean, he really was kind of the poster child. had not, there was nothing, he had no history of this and all of a five weeks later hangs himself. ⁓ And then had a lawsuit, ⁓ a wrongful death failure to Warren lawsuit.

 

against Pfizer. And really, that in my mind is one of the most eye opening ⁓ parts of the story because it was what goes on inside the companies that you and I, the public, our doctors, and even the FDA may not be aware of what happened. that, you know, and then that to me when you just said, once you've seen you can't unsee.

 

You know, I could go out and tell Woody's story, but when you have that, and then I have binders worth of documents that are in their letterhead, the FDA's letterhead, the drug company's letterhead that says that they've known about it and Woody's dead and countless of other lives, like thousands and thousands of lives. So that became really our mission of we're getting warnings on these drugs. And eventually 2004, we did get warnings.

 

and for kids. And then it was like, they knew it's all ages, but so in 2006, the FDA upped the warning to age 24. But you know, that makes no sense. I mean, again, I feel like all of this, when you start looking at it, and we dive into this, where's common sense? Because the drug doesn't know you're 24 today and 25 tomorrow, and you're getting it for like, you you can't sleep because you're an entrepreneur today. And I mean, the whole thing is, we really do need to pay attention.

 

But it's marketing.

 

Christian Elliot

Yeah, it is. Well, and I'm excited to weave in your history as a marketing professional because there's a different lens at which you see a lot of what's going on. But before we get there, I guess help people understand because your journey started there, but you had your first I Can't Unsee that moment and you realize, I'm I'm dealing with a serial felon here. I'm dealing with a company that knows these things cause harm. And paying a fine is just a line item in their We Got Caught budget.

 

and it's business as usual with the expectation that this is just a business model to put known products on the market that cause harm. Hello, fast forward to today, but let's stay with that part of your story. They've done this. And so you start digging and investigating and, you've been at this for so long, 20 plus years now, you see this landscape with so much more breadth. So talk to us a little bit about just kind of the web that you have uncovered as time has gone on.

 

with how many different ways the tentacles of that type of corruption or that type of greed, and then at some point it's even hard to explain it with greed and corruption. There's something else going on here. What is it that you see, ⁓ paint for people who don't quite, they're kind of having their maybe red pill moment or they're having their, boy, I'm starting to have the same, can't unsee that and I'm remembering stories in my own life. Help them see the bigger threads or tentacles of this web that you are now much more intimately familiar with than the average person.

 

Kim Witczak

Sure. Well, you know, it's funny when I first started out doing this work, thought, well, it's just like, I thought it was an isolated incident or issue with just antidepressants. But what I realized, it's quickly realized actually, that it's way bigger. It's our whole drug safety system. And it's a system that's really put on the market to, know, drugs come on the market, you know, they're sold safe and effective. ⁓ Safety is not a priority. And you realize

 

that through some of these just personal experiences, going to the FDA, telling them about what happened to Woody's story. And that's like what we can all do if something happens, right? We can report to the FDA, like if we have a side effect or something. But when I went and personally with other families, met with the FDA and told them Woody's story, and I thought for sure they would be curious to wanna go investigate. Like, aren't you interested? Like how this guy went from here to here and like.

 

here's some information and they literally said, you're just an anecdote. That's just anecdotal. And I was like, anecdotal, right? No, these are a bunch of anecdotes. Anecdotes are data points, or least that's what I would have thought, right? But then they said, it didn't happen in the, we didn't see it happening in the clinical trials. So then that became one of the things like, ⁓ wait, this is all about how they look at safety if it's in the clinical trials, right?

 

And then, so when you start looking at how the drugs come to market, like the FDA is used, you I started realizing, wait, especially when you learn about how the companies, ⁓ you know, it was during the AIDS crisis when ⁓ it was, you know, the FDA was getting attacked for being too slow to approve drugs come to market. They created this whole new thing called Prescription Drug User Fee Act.

 

which basically was, ⁓ allowed the companies to pay a fine or a fee with every application to the FDA so that they would, you know, approve drugs and get their drugs, you know, a priority. And so you start seeing, wait, they're putting money into, you know, the FDA to approve drugs. And if it's all about, you know, the clinical trials, because the clinical trials are what you use, like clinical trials, like in my job in marketing,

 

We use market research all the time. And if we want to get something, I know how market research works, or if you want to show a positive, it's all in how you spin it. It's all in how you conduct your trials. It's all in, of course, like the whole premise is to, cause you have to have the FDA that by the way you're paying, but you need the FDA to give you the stamp of approval so you can start promoting it and advertising it and marketing it. So it's really about

 

like the clinical trials and how much. And so when you saw, when I connected that to what came out of the ⁓ lawsuit and looking at the Zoloft trials, the bulk of the trials placebo outperformed the drug, but that's not what got brought to the FDA. Only the ones that the or the drug barely outperformed anyways. And that's how it got put on the market.

 

There's that aspect and you start seeing that it is the system is really built around commercial interests. And there's the lack of transparency, complex of interest galore. ⁓ We've got the undue influence of the marketing and the PR spins and the ghost writing, ⁓ which are going back to like journals. Who's writing?

 

And that came, that was another thing that was discovered from the documents from the lawsuit was Pfizer already had an entire marketing plan of where the articles journal articles were going to run when and in what ⁓ and in what journals and the time and what it was going to be about. But they needed to find author TBD. I'm like, wait a minute, how did you already know when it's going to run, but you don't even have an author? Huh? That's interesting.

 

Right. So you start putting all this together and you realize, boy, then you watch, then you look at the revolving door of FDA to officials that do the damage, then go to the companies or Congress goes to the companies or, you know, it's like a system that we are caught in. And yet we, the public and even our physicians that I was shocked that they don't learn how

 

the FDA and they don't learn about all these like ⁓ the ugly side of the business. Because if they understood the ugly side of the business or basically the business, right, model, would maybe actually get some critical thinking and you would ask questions. But I think that was another part of the web is like, wait, if you control the med schools and the academic institutions of what gets put in and what's being taught,

 

Guess what? You you start capturing the entire system.

 

Christian Elliot

Yeah. And then you're in that loop of the system as the physician where your paycheck is at stake or your reputation and every all of your peers are indoctrinated with the same way of thinking and you don't it's hard to see that when the matrix starts glitching and there's official reality and real reality and you're kind of caught between the two and it's easier sometimes to just say, you know what, I'm I'm busy. I've got too many things to do. Can't look at that. And you miss some of the bigger stats like on your website, you've got

 

Three jaw-dropping stats. One of them is that there's two countries in the world where drug advertising is legal. I think it's us in New Zealand. Is that the other one?

 

Kim Witczak

New Zealand and the US. Really it's about the US.

 

Christian Elliot

So those. Right.

 

And then you've got for every dollar spent on drug research, there's what? $19 spent on marketing. Yep. Which tells you something about the money the industry has. And if any business had $19 to spend every $1 of developing their product, how much influence you could have. then the stat you have is that prescription properly prescribed.

 

drugs are the fourth leading cause of death to the tune of 128,000 people every year, which doesn't count drug interactions or properly prescribed drugs, nor does it count unnecessary surgeries or infections you get in the hospital or medical accidents. And some people even say it's maybe the third or first leading cause of death, just the system itself. And it's so uncomfortable to face if you're in that. what has been your experience kind of as your

 

Being able to articulate this web, what's the experience you see physicians or even the lay public going through? kind of ways, what stories are they trying to tell themselves to comfort themselves about what this industry has evolved into? Tell us a little bit about the cognitive dissonance you face trying to teach this information to people.

 

Kim Witczak

Yeah, well, it's been very eye opening because one of the things and how I kind of came to this when you just said that the stat of one of only two countries, right? ⁓ And so I would travel around the world because I love traveling and I'd go to conferences of really critical thinking where they actually look at this, you the ugly side of the business. But it was really a lot of these conferences were all held outside of the US. And so

 

⁓ And one of them that I remember was super profound and I now it was called selling sickness that was put on by the Dutch government in Amsterdam in 2010. And there, was, I mean, attended by people from all over the world, but there were no more than 10 of us from the U.S. there. And half of us were lawyers. mean, half of them were the lawyers that I was with. And I was like, just asking the question of like, where's all the U.S.? Like every example they were using was from the U.S.

 

And go, this needs to happen. We need this conference in the US. And I remember asking the organizers, do you think you could bring it here? And they're like, no, it's too big. It's not really our place. So I ultimately did bring a conference in 2013 called Selling Sickness to Washington DC. And maybe it was a little too before time, the time, because I think for all of us who've been in it, and a lot of times when it's families or lawyers,

 

⁓ or even like the critical thinking doctors or academics, we're all like kind of talking to ourselves, right? But until you get it out into the public, which is what you're wanting to know about this cognitive dissonance, ⁓ it's a conversation that there are people, because I think it goes to what you alluded to in the beginning, which is once you have seen, you can't unsee. And so I think that is...

 

what we need to continue going. But the cognitive dissonance, think, ⁓ you know, thankfully, I think I go back to when Woody first died, and I'd be like talking to people with doctors and stuff, and they were like, and everybody would say, you just didn't know he was depressed. like, you know, I saw that whole idea of blaming the victim, right? And it was super easy to blame the victim. Well, of course they got it. I'm around an antidepressant, like, of course.

 

And you go back and you look at all the carefully crafted PR stories that came out of the industry and Pfizer. And if you go back and look at all of them, like from GSK to Pfizer to Eli Lilly, and even ⁓ the suicide support groups and the National Alliance Mentally Ill for Illness, they all say suicide is inherent in the disease of depression.

 

And so they were able to create this entire thing that's not our pills, it's the drug, or it's not our pill, it's the person. And so that is what one thing that I think you've seen a lot of is this cognitive dissonance. I also believe that there's a lot of really good doctors out there that, they didn't go into this business to hurt people. They think they're going into it to help, right? once you, and it's where we need to get into

 

⁓ Because I think there's also this hard like I would never hurt intentionally hurt somebody. So it's easier to be willfully blind and not pay attention to it because it's just it's super overwhelming that you would actually hurt someone or that you could be a part of a system. Like, you know, they've had studies where they talk about like gifts that, you know, like, or do you think gifts and that, you know, are like the key opinion leaders? And I know that's another element of the

 

⁓ the ⁓ spiderweb, but the key opinion leaders are basically where the companies will pay these doctors to go speak at conferences and, you know, and really because they're the big influencers and they're powerful. ⁓ and some of the people who've taken the money don't think that they're actually being lackeys for the industry. But, but when you go and look at some of the studies, when they ask like, Hey, you know, do you think any, you know, do you think this ⁓

 

influences you're prescribing or anything and they'll be like, well, it doesn't mind, but I know it does my peers.

 

Christian Elliot

because I'm above that.

 

Kim Witczak

Yeah, like I would never. And so that's a very like that study is really fascinating ⁓ because it's like it's well, they know it goes on, but just not with me. I mean, my my peers, they probably all do it. So ⁓ so I think we've seen cognitive dissonance. at the end of the day, like, you know, I I was forced to sit and face something that didn't make sense. I was forced.

 

to look at my cognitive dissonance. Because we trusted, we blindly trusted, like never questioned anything, like why would we, you know? And so I had no choice as do many of the people who've been harmed or injured. They're like, and it's really hard to go, wait a minute, like it doesn't make sense, like why would anybody really do this? And then when you ultimately, you know, again, I feel like one of the things that I'm...

 

I always laugh because Woody used to say, you can do so much more than advertising. And now I think, ⁓ thank you, Wood. This is the problem you gave me. But I think my whole career has been in advertising and marketing. And it's a gift because I've been able to see it from a business standpoint. And I could see the marketing. And I always say marketing because that was one of the other stats you brought up ⁓ is one of the first things that lawyers do when

 

they get to go into, and I didn't know this, ⁓ that when they get to go into ⁓ companies to do discovery, guess where they go? They go to the marketing department.

 

Christian Elliot

Yep. Doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah, as a business owner or a health coach, I think my emotional intelligence, my reading of the human condition picked up significantly when I went through an intense season of studying marketing because you learn what motivates the human heart. You learn the storytelling, the narrative gap filling that we go through.

 

Kim Witczak

marketing department.

 

Christian Elliot

as individuals to either to make sense of our world or to justify a purchase or to turn a purchase down and, and understanding whether it's the heart or the head or the gut or the vanity or whatever elements that we could use and levers we can pull in marketing that can be very manipulative or it can be a tool that you wield for great good. And to swallow to your point, we can't unring this bell now. I've seen that there are people who use it strictly for profit and they know they're going to kill people and they don't care.

 

and it's hard to unsee that, and I wonder where else they're lying to me. And then you can take that filter and you can look at it, like you said, the lawyers can look at it through the marketing lens and be like, you knew this and you did this anyway. And that creates its own kind of destabilizing, unmooring experience for the individual to say, oh my gosh, I've been fooled. I wonder where else I've been. it's so arresting.

 

as a person to think you've been duped, that sometimes as he's just like, no, no, and you kind of stop believing it. But once that's clicked into place that now you really were, and there were people that were maliciously intending to harm, and now you have to wrestle with it. ⁓ It can be tough to feel like you get yourself back on terra firma. And then you fast forward to the trauma we've all lived through with COVID and the amount of things that have come to light. My story is similar to yours, in some ways, not from the

 

trauma that you went through, from realizing many years ago, 20-ish years ago, how corrupt and manipulated the whole medical industrial complex is. And so when COVID came around, it didn't fool me at all. like, no, these people, these are serial felons. They lie. Vaccines are not made by angels. They hurt people. And they're going to rush this through. And so I had this high degree of skepticism and known history to pull from to say, I don't trust them any further than I can throw them. Something smells really funny here. But

 

That was about the only lane of this globalist play that I was kind of aware of. And now it's expanded into, my gosh, if it's not just this industry and that kind of capture and corruption is playing out in other industries. I had my own like, ugh, this is unsettling. That's so much of the way I thought the world worked or the checks and balances or the sovereign nations or the whatever category you wanna talk about. When that hits you and you get that gut punch,

 

you are kind of like grasping for like, where's the sturdy thing to hold onto? What else do I not know? And where can I finally get to the bottom of this so I can look at life and deal with reality rather than official reality? And that process, my goodness, it takes a while. I guess I say that to give you the next question of like, how have you seen, how has your work in particular been changed or shaped or enhanced or challenged by?

 

the COVID narrative that we've lived through the last three, four years.

 

Kim Witczak

⁓ Well, good question. Like you, ⁓ I think when it first started or, when the pandemic, you know, I think I didn't know in the beginning, right? Like, you know, this virus and ⁓ lockdown, you know, and it wasn't until like all of my red flags started going off is when it became this the push that what was going to get us out of this was this one size fits all vaccine.

 

Yeah, like I was like, and then so that started like, wait, how are they rushing this? And then, ⁓ because I sit on the FDA advisory committee on another, you know, looking at the psychiatric drugs, most of the drugs that are coming to my committee now for review are using some kind of fast tracking mechanism, which means that they don't need the you know, they for an unmet need and, and if you need to and in order to get that status.

 

There can't be any other drug on the market that can be used off label or something. And so when the vaccine... So I know that and every time I bring up something about a drug being used off label, right? Because Woody got the drug off label, it was never approved for insomnia. So I will ask the FDA on my advisory committee is like, hey, how are we gonna make sure that this drug doesn't get used off label? And they're like, it's not in our privy.

 

to like, don't ⁓ tell doctors how to practice ⁓ medicine. So then when the vaccine came around and there were all these people that wanted to use some of the, like ivermectin that was on the market. And then all of a the FDA was intervening saying it's horse paced. I'm like, okay, this doesn't make any sense. So that was like a red flag. Then there was the red flag of Pfizer, you're given these drug companies complete legal immunity.

 

for any future harms? Like it took, when I look back at the antidepressants and Zoloft particularly, they had in their clinical trials in the late eighties where they had patients talking about killing themselves in that, you know, was in the clinical trial reports. And we're talking that the warnings didn't get put on until 2004. I'm like, wait, you're gonna, and these guys knew about it here. And so you're gonna give these companies on a rushed,

 

the vaccine, you're going to give them complete legal immunity? Like, no. And then so that was one. And then I was like, my marketing kicked in and they were like, bring in, bring in your vax card and you can get a donut a day. ⁓ at a crispy, I think it was Krispy Kreme. I'm like, wait, where's health? Like no discussion of health. ⁓ totally. And if you, but it's, you know, they didn't want to discriminate against the unvaxed so you can have one a week.

 

Christian Elliot

As if a donut is good for your health.

 

Kim Witczak

But if you were Vax, you got one a day for a year. And then it was like using all this promotional marketing, like a chance to win a lottery, come get a shot at the ball at the ballpark. Like, no, I'm not going to get a shot at the ballpark. And so I was watching all of this and then you had celebrities. Well, we use celebrities. I'm not a huge fan. Every client I've ever worked on knows that I don't. I don't love the use of celebrities because

 

I just think like that feels so inauthentic, right? But you had all these celebrities on air getting the jab and I don't even know if they really got it, but you know, I remember the one Richard Branson who's like, it's completely safe and effective. And I was like, what does he know about completely safe and effective, right? So I'm like, and but it worked, right? And then you started mandating it. And so I started seeing this system

 

the same system that I saw with antidepressants and other parts of the medical system. But I think it became worse because it also infringed on our, like in order to go to a concert, you had to show your card. And it became like this really weird sense of, and they used fear, they used hope.

 

they used, ⁓ do you wanna, like the marketing things were like, I don't wanna be left out, I wanna go to that concert. And so you're like, I'll get it, can't, nothing's gonna happen to me, I mean, look at all these people. And then we go back and start now with the clinical trials, even like Brooke Jackson, who was one of the first whistleblowers who was talking about the stuff she saw. And so I think...

 

All of that really painted a lens for me. But I also saw a lot of cognitive dissonance. I also saw a lot of anger towards people, like even people that I've worked with in the critical thinking space that all of a sudden said, know, we respect your work. You've done great work on antidepressants, but you're wrong about this vaccine. You're wrong. And so I had never really done much work around vaccines.

 

because I don't have kids. And so I hadn't gone and start digging deep into it like I have with drugs and devices. And so once I started looking at this, I'm like, ⁓ wait, is this like a, are they taking advantage of like the Holy grail of vaccines and like how, you know, using the narrative of polio and you know, things like that. Like, so all of, mean, it's a long way around saying that I had a lot of ⁓

 

red flags and kind of, mean, healthy skepticism. And I think that goes to one of the gifts that came out of what happened with Woody and also the reality of once your eyes are opened, can't shut them again. Like you just can't, like, you know, maybe I won't be able to go to a concert, but even when the vaccine came out, said, you know what, when people are asking what is my opinion, go, if it were me,

 

I'd wait for a couple of years. ⁓ You know, I'm sure that wasn't, you know, especially when they were telling you you're killing grandma, but that narrative of like, ⁓ I'd wait a couple of years because that's when we're going to start seeing all this, like the safety stuff. I want the truth to come. I want the truth to rise. The truth always rises. And that's what I said at that point, you know, let's see what what's happened. And now I look at it and think,

 

You guys, whoever it these you guys are, you've created this mess now when people are gonna start pushing back and not questioning and not trusting public health now. I'm sorry, you guys created this. You created it, not us.

 

Christian Elliot

Right.

 

When they did it so effectively through marketing and what really was my red pill was the censorship. I understood that majority 50 to 70 % of pharma's or that the media's funding comes from pharma. And you know, it's hard to turn on a TV channel in mainstream media and not have a drug ad during the commercial break. And so it made sense to me, of course they can manipulate the narrative, but

 

When they started, the first amendment was like irrelevant and there was no consequence to shutting down people's speech and reasonable arguments of caution or dissent were not allowed in the room. Then I started, okay, there's something else going on here. And so it really became that, whoa, what else am I being deceived about? And sure enough, was a bitter pill to swallow. There's a lot more going on here. So I guess I'm saying that as much to say,

 

for anybody who's hearing this or who has had kind of your, gosh, this is uncomfortable. I'd rather not look at it. Can't we just talk about something else? Is there a game on we can watch? we order pizza? Can we play anything but realizing that there are people out there that are really trying to take advantage of me. ⁓ I guess we want to do our best to anchor you. you, the last conversation we had, you zinged me so well with a thought I have not been able to stop thinking about.

 

You just said, cause I was asking you about what it was like to go through this recognition with your husband and then what you have come to unearth about the medical industrial complex and just the personal element of that. Cause there's a real person behind this. You are an amazing advocate. And I want to have the listeners hear a little bit more about what you actually do on the FDA panel when you sit there and voice your opinion. But what you went through is so personally challenging. It's such a, a difficult

 

⁓ emotional landscape to navigate. yet you've come through it and you have made something of it. And so you said in response to one of my questions, healing begins when you accept reality. And I could not stop thinking about that because it applies to so many aspects of our life, whether we're talking about losing someone to a psych med or ⁓ the arresting thought that maybe what I am struggling with now is actually a VAX injury. If you can't face that,

 

if you can't accept that that could be a plausible harm, then you're powerless to do something about it, or whether it's a relationship blunder or tension. And if you can't accept that maybe you're contributing to it, or maybe you're stressed and your body's bearing signs of sickness because you're overworked and you have to say no, and you can't do all the things. And whatever your... That's such a poignant example of really where any of us get stuck is that we have mis-framed reality

 

in some significant way. And we're stuck in an old story. We're stuck in a loop of an identity that who we think we are or how we think the world works. And there's at some point a kind perspective where we can say, am I in a trance? Is there something else I don't know? Is there some aspect of reality that I'm not accepting? And so I guess I wanted people to hear a little bit about your process going through that because you had, and I'm sure highly emotional.

 

moments working through what had happened to you. So talk to people about your process of what you had to accept that was real and how you've pulled yourself out of it. Because you could have been so depressed, you're living under a bridge and life isn't worth it. Yet somehow you faced it and you have come out the other side and you're doing great things. So talk to people who maybe they're starting to have their, need to face this, but I don't know how. What kind of encouragement would you have for them?

 

Kim Witczak

Sure. Well, I do say that all the time that my healing, literally when I started doing my healing is when I accepted the reality and stopped fighting with the reality or my illusion of what reality should look like. ⁓ Because I think there's so much, you know, the reality is what he was dead, period. Like, and I don't mean to say it as cold as that, but that's what I had to come to is what he's dead.

 

Now what? And I don't mean, and I don't, know, that didn't just happen right away. I mean, trust me, that was a long process of even like, you know, I remember days after Woody died, it was after his funeral, I had all these posters that my agency made, like life-size posters, and I was crying in the basement, like, and literally gripping my heart. ⁓

 

So I say to anybody, like heartaches real, like that pain is beyond anything. Like all I wanted to do and I like, had scratch marks. Like I just wanted it to go away and take it away. And like, I was just like, and I kept just praying out to God, take my pain and use it. It does me no good. I just kept saying that over and over and over. And that was like days after Woody died, just because I just didn't want.

 

I had no idea what it would lead to, but I just wanted this, like, take this, like, help me with this. So I think one aspect for me was my faith, you know, was a huge part of my process. ⁓ And that doesn't mean you just accept it. You know, you're still fighting with like, you know, why did this happen? Why me? Why me? And then I...

 

then I'd be like, well, what if I changed my perspective of like, why not me? Like not, mean, and I don't mean it like, again, why not me could be, well, you're no, I mean, we've never been told that our life was meant to have no suffering. Like that's not the human condition. Like, why not you? Like you don't get something you can't handle. And I truly believe that. I don't know that I, and I got to see that in action. I don't know if I ever, you know,

 

really truly understood it until after Wood died. But I think that was, ⁓ I think throwing myself into something, you know, that advocacy piece for me was part of my healing too, of like, my God, if I can help another family not have to experience what we didn't know, then that was part of accepting what is because

 

I was completely blind, I'm not gonna lie. If Wood took it, I'm like, well, you're an adult, I'm an adult. I don't need to, and so I had to really face it. And I also had to face a lot of my own fears of being alone. Like, who am I? I had this whole vision and plan for my life that was gonna go this way. And we all have something, it could be that I'll send you, it may not be, we all have our version of it. It could be like a divorce, it could be like,

 

I was gonna be at this company forever and they like screwed me out, you know? And so it's all of that. And then you realize, wait, is this how I wanna live my life? Like I think about who, what he was and like to honor him, but also to honor me and the person I was put on the earth to be. I had to accept, ⁓ like, this isn't, I don't wanna live this way.

 

Like God, know, I remember like, I laugh again. Well, I love again. Well, I all the things that you're just like as a human that you want. And so I think all of that. then it really comes to are you willing to look in the mirror? Are you willing to look in the mirror of where your role is? Like I can keep playing that loop in my head of like, this isn't fair. This isn't fair. This shouldn't have happened. It doesn't because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because what he's still dead.

 

So I go back like all of, so it's a long journey and you you're going all around and then you come to the reality of like, okay, none of this matters because he's dead. Now how do you want to move forward, Kim?

 

Christian Elliot

Yeah. Well, it's such a good set of lessons, obviously, because of your story, taking a medication to numb yourself out or a psych med to manage your mood was definitely not something you were going to consider. And and that's what you had to face was the ups and downs, the intense feelings of the emotional roller coaster.

 

Kim Witczak

I'll go,

 

I'm gonna interrupt you on that one. Okay, go ahead. When I went to my doctor, ⁓ this was like maybe three months after Wood died, she goes, think you need something? And I looked at her I'm like, well, I think the drugs would kill them. then I go, but the more important question is, aren't I supposed to hurt? Yeah. Like my husband died and she said, yeah, but you don't need to. And then when she said that, I was like, ⁓ boy.

 

Oh, yes, I do. Like that right there just showed me how this idea of we don't need to hurt. I think, but I think the only way you get the highs and you have to have the highs and lows you love, you hurt because you loved and you like this and this like you have to have both and you know, you're it's not meant to be this. And, know, and I think that's what I've seen so much of

 

how the drug companies have been able to do something so beautifully, evil, I say, beautifully, because they've been able to capture that feeling of, don't want to hurt the human emotion, the human condition. They've been able to, you know, like, ⁓ instead of saying it's just the normal, like it's a brain chemical, like it's your brain. No, it's not, it's human. yeah, you broke up with your boyfriend? Yeah, you might be sad.

 

You got dumped? Yeah. You got fired? Yeah. All of those things are there, but in how many people I have met over the years and even the families and still to this day are on that are being given antidepressants because they've been kind of conditioned to believe that the human condition, like we're not supposed to hurt or like instead of saying, no, a breakup hurts or you lose your job, it hurts. You're struggling with your kids.

 

They're not, you know, they're like misbehaving like, or you have got too much going on. Like a pill is never going to take that away. And, we've been conditioned through marketing versus owning what is an accepting reality and then figuring out like, what are the tools and tools come from all over different people, right? It's your friends. It's supporters like you who might be your coach. mean, I've had a lot of coaches. I've had a lot of different things, but that those are all part of your support.

 

team that you want to surround yourself with, but a pill is not going to be a support team. ⁓

 

Christian Elliot

No.

 

And a pill just, my experience with several different people I've worked with over the years is it numbs them out. It makes them really almost apathetic and numb and not sad is not anywhere close to fired up and ready to work, nor is it, I feel such a tangible reminder of why I don't want this to continue to go on that I actually motivated to get out of this situation. The depression or the ⁓ discontentment is so strong that

 

I'm finally ready and willing to do the work to make sure that I decrease my chances of being in this situation again. And if you don't have that feeling, if you don't have that disgust or revulsion or line in the sand that says, need to do better and this is unsatisfactory and I'm determined to live better. If you're just numbed out, it kills your drive. It doesn't make you want to. I don't really care that I'm fat. whatever, it's not painful enough to do something. And I love your point, because if we're willing to go and feel the feels,

 

and wrestle with, this is what suffering is like. This is a relatable human experience. And maybe there can be beauty from these ashes. And somehow you found that you were able to hit that gear and say, I'm not going to let this stay this way. I'm going to try to make something of it and honor the legacy of my husband. I'm going to ⁓ see what I can do to make sure other people don't feel this way. If you were numbed out, you probably wouldn't be doing the work you're doing today.

 

Kim Witczak

⁓ 100%, you know, I think about that. Partly, you know, I always look back and how our lives are like tapestry. And if you know, in the front of it, you don't see all the strings and the ugliness that, you know, makes sense. But I look back to when I was a kid, like I didn't like, I didn't like to have take pills. It was hard for me to swallow pills. So like that started it. But I think back to before Woody died, I had a bunch of kids that I worked with, had started, ⁓ I helped started a program.

 

free arts, ⁓ which was working with abused and neglected at-risk kids who've gone through a lot of trauma, right? And we use the power of arts and volunteers ⁓ and worked with these kids. Well, I remember ⁓ we had worked with a group of eight to 12 year olds ⁓ at a group home and they, and the staff people are like, hey, do you wanna show your volunteers where you live? And every kid,

 

this was eight o'clock at night, we went up to their locked hall that looks like a dorm room, right? And every kid picked up a cup of meds. And I remember and I remember looking at them going, they all sick? Like I'm going to get strep throat or something. She goes, oh, no, this is just their behavior medicine. And that was in 1998 before well before Woody died. And I remember coming home telling Woody, like, have you ever heard of anything called behavior medicine? Like, I mean, it just seems like

 

We've gone down this like complete, like, no, those kids have experienced trauma. That is not something that you want to numb out. you know, and you have a work with them. And that's why I loved the power of this program that, you know, just did art and, you know, self-expression and, felt safe because you're with volunteers and people who, you know, aren't getting paid to hang out with you. But I think back to one

 

Christian Elliot

Yeah.

 

Kim Witczak

of somebody, you know, I've met so many people over the years, but one was this filmmaker who contacted me and he said he wanted to do a, he was doing a film because he was trying to get off of his, ⁓ think he was on Paxil and he was trying to get off of it. so he real, and the whole premise was he, his dad or his mother died and his baby was born.

 

the same with like a week between, you know, and he felt nothing. He didn't feel happy. He didn't feel sad. Like he felt literally nothing, flatline, nothing. And like you said about apathetic, like, well, if you don't feel like the highs, lows, like he felt nothing. And so, but it was enough for him to go, wait a minute, why? Like those two are extremely different human experiences. And I feel nothing. And so then he started to go,

 

go back and this is where I say like even the, you know, where it always starts with a journey and asking and being willing to go and ask questions of yourself and are you happy or whatever. But he went back and goes, why did I ever get put on this drug that he had been taking for 10 years? And it turned out it was because he had his girlfriend broke up with him in college, who's not even his wife today. And he just kept taking it.

 

because they say you're not gonna be able to get up, you're gonna have to be on it because you got a broken brain or whatever they tell people. But he tried to get off and it was all because he was willing to look in the mirror and ask the question. But if you're like this, it's hard to go and want to go, you just accept like, oh, this is just my lot in life, really?

 

That's not our lot. Like, who said it's your lot in life?

 

Christian Elliot

Right, but may keep you from the pit, but it doesn't do anything to give you the flames of motivation to make something of yourself or make a difference for people. Maybe some of that, but with that governor on top of your own potential, it's like you limit so many of the experiences or feelings you could have that could teach you so much about life and add beauty where you had previously missed it.

 

Kim Witczak

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's one of my favorite. I love that we're having this conversation because it's one of the things that I've like struggled or have gone through my own journey. Right. I just didn't have to have I didn't use pills. I use a lot of other sources of, know, that helped me. But it ultimately started when I accepted what is and I stopped fighting and wanting, you know, my old life.

 

I can't ever have, even like any of us, I can't have what happened an hour ago. It's done.

 

Christian Elliot

Yeah, right.

 

Kim Witczak

I mean, it's just done. So we fight, I think that's that idea of changing perspective. What is just when we change perspective and ask different questions. It doesn't have to be as extreme as what happened to me, but I think there's the tools of just changing perspective and asking different questions and sitting in the uncomfortable space of ⁓ heart.

 

you know, the feeling here.

 

Christian Elliot

Well, you mentioned faith and then you mentioned people that were around you. give somebody context. If they're hearing this and they're thinking, yeah, I hear you, but I don't know that I have the support network. I don't know that I have the situation where I trust myself to start considering pulling myself out of this or letting myself feel these feels. What would be some of your hard won wisdom about how to shepherd yourself through that or what to find and pad around you for support to help you be able to

 

move yourself forward and maybe that means get off of a medication, but maybe that just means processing a really difficult season of life of a breakup or loss of job or whatever. What would be some of your tips from the history you've lived and you've seen in others?

 

Kim Witczak

Yeah, I would say, well, for me, obviously the faith piece, you know, I went right after Woody died. Everybody was going, you need to go to a suicide support group. And I'd go there and people are like 15 years still like sad. And it was awful. And I'm like, my God, if I'm like this in 15 years, like I don't want to even live. Like I cannot be like this. So then I remember and they were like patting me on the head going, we didn't see it happening either. I was like, okay. I realized that not everything at one size or like when people think

 

you know, you should. I listened to intuitively that that didn't work for me. It made me really mad and I'm not like a mad person. So I started going to a grief group at church. That wasn't my church, but I found it. for me, it helped to frame what happened, loss around faith. And that worked. And I know not everybody has, you know, has had good experiences with

 

faith and church and all that. So, but that was a really big piece of it for me. And I had somebody that went with me, my brother-in-law. And so he would pick me up. And so that was helpful. ⁓ I also think moving your body, you know, ⁓ I remember Wood and I were both like, he was a big runner training, but I remember that first day when I made myself go out and go running and, I hadn't,

 

I was like, I can't keep laying around. Like there was something that was like, just go move your body. And I went running and it maybe a block. And then I was like, okay, my head hurt. like, I'm going, you know, I'm going back. And then the next way was a little bit longer. It was a little bit longer until I made it around and then start doing like, you know, yoga, there's enough things. ⁓ So I think because I started realizing that a lot of stuff just gets

 

it's just trapped energy in our body as well. So that was helpful. I mean, not being afraid to have friends, but I think I still go back to having this conversation where you don't feel like you're alone. So I was like talking, even if it was Woody that I was talking to that wasn't even here, you know, was here, I don't know. I mean, I just started challenging a lot of things and trying different things. ⁓

 

Christian Elliot

Mm-hmm.

 

Kim Witczak

including getting into a relationship that was not a good thing because that numbed, you know, that numbed because I didn't want to feel. I mean, it was good in the beginning, but you know, I mean, so I think, I think our natural, and I think there's this idea of just, I had to just sit and realize it's harder when you're in it and for sure that good will eventually, it's like, is there something in your life

 

in a past experience or somebody you can draw hope on like a book that some normal everyday person that you don't think, that person, they've done this. Because I think if you look at even nature, going out to nature, ⁓ looking at a butterfly, butterflies don't just come out looking like a butterfly. They had to be in the darkness. And that is like how

 

Nature even works.

 

Christian Elliot

Yeah, there's a struggle to get out of that cocoon. And ⁓ the struggle is where character is forged. It's where virtue is cultivated and strength is gathered that we don't often see that that's we're being toughened up. We just feel the pain and we don't see any payoff for it yet. So thank you for sharing that because it's just I hope people listen to these shows and be and they're able to say, I took away something like that I could identify with that and

 

you're so relatable and willing to talk about tough things that I just very much admire that. So I can talk to you all day. have several more questions. I'm gonna limit myself a little bit, because I will never quit if you let me keep going. ⁓ I wanna give people, somebody's, ⁓ they're starting to wake up maybe to this medical industrial complex. They're waking up to maybe there's something else going on. And one of the things you mentioned last time we talked was how when you go to the doctor, there's what they,

 

I think it's after 65, you said everyone gets a mental health screening, but there's there's marketing funnels in place to capture people and almost segment them and market to them and try to get them almost from birth to grave onto some sort of medication. And so I wanted you to give people an insight into really the marketing surveys, the questionnaires that are not really about your health or more about funnels that are in the medical system so that people who are

 

maybe haven't seen it that way or not quite aware of it, can maybe have a little more discernment when they go to a doctor's office and know, okay, this may be part of that system. And I have another perspective or a set of questions or tools I can ask to ⁓ do what's right by me with more informed consent. tell us a little bit about what you've seen in that realm.

 

Kim Witczak

Sure. Well, I think, you again, looking at one of the forms through my marketing lens was the PHQ-9 form. And I use that, I say it because that's the form that a lot of, ⁓ you know, you go to your doctors, whether you're going to a pediatrician, your OB, ⁓ internal medicine, it's a form that is widely accepted. And it's like, in the last two weeks, have you felt sad? Have you felt less than worthy? Have you ate too much? Have you ate too little?

 

And it's just a set of questions. But what it says at the very bottom is a generous donation by Pfizer, Inc. and three physicians, key opinion leaders. Well, my natural background being the people that came up with Lisa advertising, when they would be like, BMW, you get a five series for $100 a month, but you have to go look at the tiny type. So my brain automatically looks at tiny type.

 

to see who is behind it. Well, that form is a screening form. And I look at that as a funnel, like ⁓ bring people, know, these are all of us up here. And if you can bring them into the funnel by asking these questions, because if you ask the doctor, what do they do with those forms? It's supposed to under, in good theory, right? It's a good conversation starter, but that's not what actually happens. ⁓

 

It's, you know, the person gets the drug or they'll get a prescription or that's the road that it takes. So that form that is a commonly used form was created from marketing, Zoloft marketing guys in the nineties when they wanted to bring it out of the psychiatrist's office because they knew there were a lot more people that were going to go to regular doctors. So that's one of the forms. And when you were just bringing up the 65 and under ⁓

 

So the US Task Preventative Services, which is a group of people that come up with like recommendations and you know, we should have a colonoscopy every year, we should have, you know, whatever. They had recommended that every US adult 65 and under needs to be screened for anxiety. And that was post pandemic. And so there will be a form that will be at your doctors or that they want everybody to be screened and which

 

First of all, again, I ask why, who's behind it, know, ⁓ go look at the tiny type ⁓ challenge, like for me personally, just because the doctor gives it to you as a form at the doctor's office, you don't have to fill it out. Like it says in my record, I won't fill it out. And so they're always like, well, I'm like, cause I know who it came, you know, who's behind it and what the goal is because, you know, I remember a,

 

Land's End, which was one of our clients, they're like, Hey, we need you to go do some advertising to bring them people into it went into the catalog. And once they get in the catalog, they're ours. And so or, you know, these are how marketing people think, right? You know, get them get a BMW, get your people into the BMW seat. Then once they're in the seats, we've got them. And so that, you know, that's the kind of mentality that I think, really, when you see these forms, ⁓ who's behind it? Is it really about

 

know, it's about sales. And then there's another one that even the threshold, you know, where they say cholesterol or you know, this used to be say here. Yeah, but if you bring it down to here, and you know, you look at who's behind the guidelines, this much, this difference is a lot of mean, this is millions of dollars worth, if you can lower the threshold, that means and get more people on this taking your drugs. Yeah, that's I mean, it's all about money.

 

Christian Elliot

It really is. Yeah. So just that discernment, people, when you go to the doctor's office, one, you don't have to answer all the questions they have on a form. And two, do it with, if you are going to do it with a level of discernment, because it isn't necessarily that your doctor put an empathetic question on there to try to really understand where you're coming from. It may just be something that's then on your record indefinitely that they can use against you if there's ever a need for it. It was a court case or something. Well, you mentioned you were depressed and, and now you've got something

 

that could be theoretically used against you, but it just have discernment that it may not be looking out for you. And with that filter, hopefully have a little more understanding of some of the mechanisms behind the world that we live in. And I guess, so one, thank you for that, Kim. And then the other thing I wanted, I guess, the last thing I wanna ask you before we wrap up was just about your experience on this FDA advisory committee. So tell us a little bit about...

 

I'm imagining, hopefully somebody's listening to this and maybe wants to follow in your shoes as an advocate on some level, whether it's in the medical world or not. But tell us a little bit about what you experienced and just, I imagine you to be kind of the lone voice on the historical record that says maybe we should pump the brakes on this and hear some objections or it's something so that at least we can say someone was thinking clearly back in 2000, whatever.

 

give people a sense of what they're in for with that or what you do and how they might ⁓ find their own accidental activism.

 

Kim Witczak

Sure, well, it's funny, I still wonder, I'm like, how did they get on this committee? Because usually what I've seen is a lot more like rubber stamping or like I said at the start of the show, safety is often a stepchild. It's not the ⁓ priority. And so a lot of the people, just to give a frame of reference of who's on the committee, it is like statisticians, it's researchers, it's academics, it's maybe ⁓ a physician.

 

who works at an academic institution doing a lot of research. And it's really looking at the clinical trials. Well, I come from, I'm the consumer representative, which means I represent the public. And I come because I have this marketing background, which, you know, I always say, also go look at who is the consumer rep. We've been challenging the FDA because they're putting some doctors as the consumer rep on various committees. If you go look at who was on the vaccine,

 

⁓ the VRPAC, that consumer rep was a physician. I mean, yeah, I mean, sure, they're consumers because they buy stuff, but they're also, their lens comes from that. And so I've always been pushing to have more like safety type people. ⁓ So that role is often super frustrating for me. ⁓ I am often the lone vote because I tend to assume

 

you know, I'll go and look at, you know, the data, but the whole point of the advisory committee, like we can, you know, nitpick like, and some of these statisticians do, they'll like nitpick the type of tool that they use, but ultimately it's all about getting, you know, I'm always asking the marketing questions, like, how are you going to know that we're not going to over-promote this or, you know, whatever, because that is...

 

what matters is what happens once it's on the market. And also, always tell people to, if you listen to, ⁓ you know, we look at all the data, we get a chance to ask questions of the FDA and the company who's providing the information. ⁓ And then we also hear from the public. ⁓ There's an open public hearing where people come forward and they could come from what you start seeing is a lot of them come from these

 

AstroTurf, call them, patient disease organizations, or somebody who might have been in the clinical trial that wants to get this drug on the market. Of course, their travel and everything is paid for by industry. So you kind of see how that's co-opted. But it's emotional because you're hearing people like, this, I was in this clinical trial and if my mom would have had it, whatever. And people are crying and it is emotional.

 

But you also have to realize that who's behind the type of people they're sending. And so it's just another lens to look at things. ⁓ But really what I say is if you listen to the vote, because we actually get to vote, ⁓ does this, benefits outweigh the risks? And that's kind of how it's always framed or whatnot. If you listen to the vote, because we all have to, for the record, state our name, what we voted.

 

everyone give a description. Most of the people will still bring up some kind of safety concern, but they approved that they were voting to approve the drug because they feel like we need it. And now I will say I'm voting no for the exact reason they voted yes. I don't think, I mean, the safety is not there. And so I came up with something the other day, go, what if, like what if instead of assuming that drugs are safe when they come on the market,

 

What if we assume, because we've all been taught the last couple, mean, if you never paid attention to this before, you certainly couldn't escape the safe and effective messaging from the jab. if it's unsafe until proven safe?

 

Christian Elliot

Right, which would be, it would turn so many, in the chemical industry too, so many of products we have in our hair and cleaning our floors and brushing our teeth with, if they had to prove it wasn't harmful.

 

Kim Witczak

Yeah, mean, exactly. my gosh. How great that would be like assume that it's unsafe. And I guarantee you, you're going to have people that are especially because they want to get on the market and sell. Right. I mean, I don't blame them. That's what they do. I mean, that's you know, but so then prove that it's on that it is safe. Let that be the standard. So anyways, it's a very interesting eye opening. Many times I want to hit my head on the wall and think, why do I do this?

 

But at the end of the day, had the people done their job back in 1991, when it was just the emergence of violence and suicide and Prozac, and they had taken their job serious, there'd be a warning that would have been put on these drugs and I wouldn't be here. And because we'd probably still be living our life. And so I think about these decisions have real life consequences.

 

that you and I are the ones, we're not in the clinical trial. The real clinical trial is always what's happening in the real world. Just think of that. We are the real clinical trial. it's, know, a lot of times it's just try this, try that. This isn't working, try this. I mean, so that, that is, would be my, you know, my motivation. And I've got like six months left on my term and I highly doubt I'll be coming back.

 

Christian Elliot

They don't appreciate somebody who sits there and dissents on record, I imagine. Well, Kim, thank you for the work you do because somebody has to do that. I can imagine how thankless it is. You probably feel like a locust eating prophet in the wilderness being like, yeah, I that one coming a long time ago, but I wasn't able to stop it, but at least I voiced my dissent. ⁓ I don't know how many people you've touched. You are all over the place in media and on

 

television. And so I know your work ripples beyond your ability to see the influence of it. And I thank you for taking time today just to help me spread it a little bit more and have another voice from somebody in the trenches and to such a depth that you are to see through some of what people have been living through or wrestling with or how to make a little more sense of this medical system that predates us that didn't ask us if we wanted to be a part of it, but just

 

assumed that we would be lifelong customers or frequent customers. And now we can think a little more critically. We can deconstruct, how did we get here? And what would it take to build a more ethical, upstanding, life-giving version of medicine or health for that matter? So any parting thoughts or encouragements you have for the listener?

 

Kim Witczak

No, like, well, first of all, I want to say thank you because it is really lonely work, but there are a lot of people out doing the work like yourself and sharing your platform and the work that you're doing because ultimately, you know, I think it starts with not giving our power away. And I think anything in life, if we want to change the world, it starts here, right? And if we want to change our health, it starts here. And we are more powerful than we...

 

think and not to be afraid of challenging and asking questions because ultimately no one's gonna care more about your health or your loved one's health than you. And we need to, the system is built to keep cradles to graves customers, but we need to reframe, ask questions. And also like, what do we consider health and wellbeing? You know, I always say with the mental health stuff,

 

Let's reframe it to mental wellbeing because mental health, you know, and what are those elements ⁓ to live a good life? Because we were all put on this earth to be self-expressive, creative beings.

 

Christian Elliot

Yeah, right. What if we started defining health by what it is rather than what it's not? And yeah, what a different way to look at what would it look like to thrive. And then you can imagine that scenario and you can actually find actionable things that you could be doing and a difference you could be making just like what you're doing. So thank you so much for joining me today. Tell people where they can find and follow your work or keep tabs on what you're up to.

 

Kim Witczak

Sure.

 

Well, KimWitczak.com is my website or woodymatters.com. Also, I have a sub stack, ⁓ acceptable collateral damage. And I actually put unacceptable in quotes because ⁓ we're not acceptable collateral damage, ⁓ as well as Twitter at woodymatters.

 

Christian Elliot

Right on. All right. Well, Kim, thank you again for joining me today. It's been a pleasure having you and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

 

Kim Witczak

Sounds great, thanks for having me.