Josef Witt-Doerring is a psychiatrist who helps people get off psychiatric medication. During an interview on the Tucker Carlson show, Dr Witt-Doerring brought up the subject of cannabis. He said very clearly, “cannabis is a massive gateway drug into the psychiatric industry”.
Here is part of the transcript from the interview:
I thought cannabis was good for you?
Cannabis is actually, this is – you’re going to get me on something that I’m really bothered about – cannabis is, it’s a massive gateway drug into the psychiatric industry.
It is a huge trigger for mania and schizophrenia. It’s completely downplayed by Big Cannabis because we’ve decided to legalise it in so many States now. And many people, they’ll end up, they’ll think, it’s harmless. It’s this herb, not realizing that the potency has increased like 40 times what it used to be. And it just triggers mania and psychosis.
And then the doctors will see them and the doctors will downplay the role of cannabis, and they’ll say, “Oh, you have schizophrenia” or “you have bipolar.” And then they put them on an antipsychotic. And then this person just ends up on antipsychotics for a really long period of time when really the issue was that they had a psychotic reaction.
So you believe that cannabis use can lead to schizophrenia?
I wouldn’t say schizophrenia. I would say, I believe that cannabis use can cause psychosis and that psychosis can endure sometimes for like a year or two after they have the psychotic break. Because to say something is schizophrenia makes it sound like, you know, it’s they just had a broken brain, you know, their brain was broken and it was just inevitable to happen.
I’ve worked with patients who have smoked cannabis they’ve had psychotic reactions and even after they’ve come off the cannabis for a period of like a year or two they’ve still experienced periodic episodes of psychosis before it fizzled out. The only way I can understand that is that that drug when they had that psychotic episode, it actually damaged their brain. It was like a big hit, and it took them a couple of years afterwards to fully recover from that. And I’ve looked into this with many other people who actually work in this space and they see that. When you have a psychotic reaction to cannabis, it can sometimes take months or even a year or two to fully go away. I think doctors misdiagnose that and tell someone, “This is a sign you have a broken brain. you have schizophrenia. Time to put you on the drug”.
So you’re saying that the drug companies wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to marijuana legalisation?
No. No. It’s creating customers.
Do you really think that?
Well, I don’t think they are, you know, I don’t know if there’s like a drug company lobbyist out there just being like, “Hey, you know, we really want to kind of push this knowingly.” But it sure helps them that Big Cannabis is out there, and it is sewing a message that essentially these drugs are safe herbs. These drugs are medicine when they’re – I mean, they’re Frankenstein drugs now. I mean, they’re 40 times more potent than how they used to be.
So just a bottom line as a practising licensed psychiatrist, would you ever prescribe cannabis to a patient for mental illness?
No. That it doesn’t make any sense at all.
You can watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/UnhT77W9mtQ?si=i6sb927zAwJNLRrp&t=5108
