My Benzo Story - Part 5 | Guy the Taperman
A six-hundred-dollar a month protocol by Peter Smith, the famous voices warning me against it, and the contradictions and red flags I couldn’t square.
I know how this, previous posts and probably future ones as well might read. What follows is critical of a number of public figures in this space - a coach, an author, and the leader of a major group. From outside this community, the easy verdict is: a kook who was on drugs and has serious issues with people.
I don’t. What I have is a strong sense of justice - which is why I am still in this community, trying to help, when it would be far easier to walk away. And everything I say in these pieces comes with receipts; where it helps, I may attach them. If you have lived inside this world - if you have sat in a benzo group, or watched one coach contradict another over what is safe to put into your body - I suspect you will recognise the level of dishonesty and unprofessionalism on both sides of the fence.
In a proper world I wouldn’t be writing any of this. I wouldn't even have gone through this the first place! Doctors would know their stuff. Tapering coaches wouldn’t need to exist. We wouldn’t need “warriors” writing books in the dark, and even then acting just like the aloof doctors that harmed them in the first place. No one would be put on these drugs without full, informed consent - and only after their situation was bad enough, and only after gentler options had been tried first: mild natural supplements, non-pharmaceutical therapies, real support. Facilities and support groups for psychiatric drug withdrawal would exist at the same scale, and be as free, as the ones for coming off alcohol or opioids.
That is not the world we live in. And I’ve made a decision: I won’t hide things to make myself 'easier to swallow', and I won’t soften the truth for financial gain. If what I KNOW and experienced can stop someone else from wasting money and energy on something, or worse - damage their health further, I'll put it out there. I’m aware it might cost me - strong opinions and named names can make some people nervous about confiding in someone like me. So let me be precise about who I name, and who I never will.
My patients’ names and layperson names are always protected. The names of friends in the psychiatric withdrawal community, and of the people I speak to who are recovering from psychiatric drugs - PROTECTED. Always. I will not expose any of them, even if they later turn on me or cause me harm for some reason. It’s not on. I’m a professional, and that’s the line.
The names of the PUBLIC figures who shape this field, I will not hide - coaches who charge for their work, group admins, authors who sell books, people whose voice directly influences what someone in withdrawal will or won’t try. Everything I write about them, I can back up. Audio, video, screenshots - I keep the receipts. Defamation isn’t on the table, because what I’m describing happened.
Let me pick up where I left off - with Peter Smith.
I found Peter on YouTube. He had a lot of videos, and he came across as genuine - eccentric, a bit of a mad professor, but clearly someone who knew his subject. One video in particular ran a full hour on how to come off benzodiazepines, and it laid out techniques I had never seen mentioned anywhere else.
A lot of his advice was about the rest of your health - the parts most people ignore. He talked about inflammation, about making sure none was lingering in the body. He talked about your teeth. He talked about hidden infections. And he talked about supplements that never came up in Beating Benzos - Rosalind’s group, and the loudest one in this space against taking 'anything'. Because of the size of Rosalind’s following, the fears she leans on tend to get absorbed by her readers as truth.
Now - I understand the reasoning behind that, at least partly. Some people in withdrawal do become hypersensitive to anything they put in their bodies. But that is not a good enough reason to tell everyone, flatly, to take nothing and “just eat your food.” Some of those supplements are food. Omega-3 is food.
As I have mentioned in previous parts, there was a group of women I used to speak with on video calls, and they always referred to him as “Dr. Peter Smith,” or simply “Dr. Peter.” Maybe it was his way of talking (RP accent does make you sound like a pro!). But he is not a doctor. They held him in enormous regard regardless - and yet, as far as I could tell, not one of them actually followed his methods, except for very trivial things like magnesium glycinate.
That gap has always fascinated me, because I see it everywhere. People will accept information from the internet, or from a peer in a group, without a second thought - but they will not pay for real help. I admit that it also took me 1-2 months to be brave enough to fork out the money, after watching his videos quite a lot (in tiny amounts.. I couldn't really concentrate for too long back then and was quite 'stupid' even understanding or remembering simple concepts while in this mess). Peter’s rates were not expensive but also not cheap! For intake he took 150 pounds, around $190USD back then. However that's not a lot in this space, especially compared to what others allow themselves to charge these days. I know some people genuinely cannot afford it; I couldn’t really either! But I refinanced the house. And I was prepared to spend whatever it took to get my health back.
He had two websites - one half-built, one older - both crammed with information, heaps of it. But they were both not well built technically, and some parts simply said “work in progress” or didn’t render right. From his YouTube videos and website I understood his own condition is bipolar disorder, and for most of his life he had been suicidal. He pulled himself out of it by studying obsessively at university - he never actually finished a degree - and through supplements; lithium orotate for example, as well as other supplements such as Glycine and Taurine. What he does not have is any lived experience of benzodiazepine withdrawal - but his excuse was that, when it comes to CNS dysregulation, benzo withdrawal was similar in many ways. He considered himself what in the UK they call a “functional doctor” (using natural supplements to help patients), and got into this by accident, after helping a friend with her own benzo taper difficulties.
I have asked in Beating Benzos, as well as other groups, if people know of him. In Beating Benzos I got a reply from Rosalind, saying he is a dangerous person who doesn’t understand the sensitised CNS of people coming off benzo. She then deleted that comment. Ironically, given my history with Rosalind, her answer alone (and deleting it!) convinced me I should definitely try him out... (she also blocked the post from further comments!). Of course, a broken clock is right twice a day. But given my history with Rosalind, her warning - and the fact that she then silenced the conversation - pushed me toward Peter rather than away. It told me he was probably saying something she didn’t want said. He also referenced in one of his videos the 'mob' in the comments who are angry with him for suggesting supplements, and immediately knew where they probably come from...
But I kept trying to find people who could vouch for him, through Google and also through other groups and forums, but I couldn’t find many. He had no reviews, and when I asked him to talk to someone he had helped, he didn’t want to give me names, citing “privacy” (he could have always just asked them). Of the people I did manage to reach, one - someone with horrible insomnia - had tried Peter’s protocol and got worse (Peter said people who persist through his protocol succeed, but later, when I pusehd him about this specific person, admitted that “he couldn’t help this one”). Another veered off the subject entirely and tried to talk me into mushrooms. Only one woman told me he had genuinely helped her husband, and slammed the groups, saying that if she had to listen to them, “they would still be counting beads!” - but was not willing to talk to me further, which was very disappointing. The only other review I found of him was of a lady mentioning him as helping her son - who was addicted to pot - a lot, but it was in a post about how he ended up committing suicide! I don't hold it against him of course, and she definitely didn't, but in my cynical mind I thought that was a really weird way to thank him for helping, when the addiction came back and her son actually took his own life - in reality this is a disservice to him. So I did take it as a 'positive' review, but had doubts. In any case, a very puzzling picture, as you can see.
The others I did speak to had only had one meeting with him, and they weren’t serious about the work, so couldn't tell me if it helped or not.
Getting to the appointment at all was difficult. I was trying to be asleep by 10 p.m. every night, usually after a 3 hour 'ceremony' of meditations and low light, and Peter is in the UK - the opposite side of the clock from me - and he starts his days late. On his website, he does ask people from Australia and Asia to contact him directly to set up a time (otherwise you need to use his website’s calendar utility). I tried to contact him, but he wasn’t answering emails, and when I called him, his phone was off most of the time. But somehow we managed to communicate and set up a time at the end, though I already started to feel unease from his lack of communication. Peter sent an email and told me precisely how he expected me to sit, what light to use, and exactly how to position my laptop. It had to be exact. He explained that this was so he could see me properly and watch how I reacted to things; he said he was a psychologist. Perhaps that is true. It still felt strange and over the top.
I was waiting very eagerly for the session. I remember how very stressed I was, waiting for the virtual video session to start. The session ran four hours! Now - I had paid for one and a half hours, I think. He spent four, and for most of that time he simply repeated, in detail, the same material that was already in his videos and websites. In one sense that was generous, and I recorded the whole conversation so I would not lose anything he said. In another sense it made no sense at all. It was just too long, especially for someone who needs to be asleep by ten, and in withdrawal - I literally had no ability to absorb all of this. By the end, I had quietly stopped taking it in.
He also told me - when I asked him why it's so hard to get an answer from him on email - that he has 1000s of unanswered emails. I don't know why he thought that's normal.
I had told him everything, including what I have come to call the horrors of the night. He said he had been through something similar himself. He said that, unfortunately, he couldn’t help me with that, but I still had hope and refused to accept it, and wanted to be able to taper faster, and hoped his protocol would help anyway. In his method, by taking all those supplements and applying his techniques, I would be able to taper 10% a week, exponentially/'hyperbolically', rather than every month.
After the first appointment, he told me he was going to send me a plan. These plans, he said, were not to be shared with anyone - because they were personalised, and what worked for me might not work for someone else. That much I accept. In my mind also - I assuemd he works hard on them, for each patient, and if someone else needs one, they can book him too; compared with others in this field, he is not expensive.
Then I waited. And waited. And waited. It took longer than he said it would take, at least a week, I believe. The plan finally arrived on my father’s birthday dinner - I was already extremely occupied with why it hadn’t arrived, couldn’t stop talking about it, and was very stressed during the start of the evening - and the moment it did, I was OMG OMG it’s here. Euphoria! But then...
I could not open it. The file was in a weird format I could not read, and despite spending 20 minutes during the dinner franticly trying to find what softward opens it, I couldn't.
It is hard to describe what that did to me. I was so stressed that I had to tell my mother what was happening. I had been so happy when I saw the email land, and then, seconds later, completely crushed. Big time. Sending a client a file they cannot open is a small thing, technically. It is also exactly the kind of small, careless thing a professional does not do. And knowing that if I send him an email back, I probably won't hear from him for days at least, I was basically in full panic mode! He did, eventually, write back about the file - a few hours later to my surprise - to say, “Sorry, I saved it the wrong way.”
When I finally compared his plan to one he had written for someone else (I was cheeky, and did convince one of his ex-patients to show me his plan), the truth was plain: the two were nearly identical. There was nothing personalised about mine at all, except that he had replaced two or three supplements, I assume over time - the old plan was at least a year or two old. Worse, it contained things he should never have offered me as options. One of them was 5-HTP (there was another serotonergic supplement I don’t remember right now). I was taking paroxetine at the time - I was not only on a benzodiazepine - and you do not combine those two. It is not safe, and it’s not even a secret or something doctors don't know - most people on SSRIs are told and know you must not mix two drugs that increase serotonin. To make matters worse, the plan was full of spelling mistakes, including writing “Brisbain,” I believe. By the way, when I tried to contact him, if I remember correctly, he confused me with someone else from Brisbane and said that’s why he didn’t reply! I actually begged him to connect me with that other person, since we were in the same area (it was very, very lonely, and there were no support groups), and he never did. Now, he might have dyslexia. And I know he has other issues like the bi-polar (and maybe ADHD?). That’s not an excuse. As a professional, failing to check and proofread a document you evidently send out to people quite often - and there were errors all over it - screams unprofessionalism. It was actually quite hard for me to understand some parts, and I had to ask him.
Still, I went to iHerb and bought everything on his list. More red flags kept going up. In a follow up appointment I was asking him the obvious question: Are you SURE I can start on all of these together? why take all of these things at once? Would it not make far more sense to start with one, see how I respond, and then add the next? That was plain common sense to me. He refused. His answer was that he knew exactly what he was giving me and exactly what each thing would do; if something disagreed with me, he would make a good guess or know which one. There was, he said, a balance between excitatory and inhibitory substances - take a single excitatory one on its own, and it “won’t work.” He said all the supplements are “mild,” but together they work in synergy.
At first there was little change - but I was not actively tapering againt yet. I asked him whether I should pause the taper while I introduced all of this. No, he said: most of the people he helps keep tapering while they take it. Again, completely unscientific. The sound way to do it is to stop first, let things settle, and only then add the supplements - so that if side effects appear, you know they came from the supplements and not from the taper itself. I waited still, and then started to taper even slower than before. Still daily, but now around 25% slower - around 0.3% a day of the previous day's dose.
Then after 2 weeks - a real setback hit. The nightmares came back. I felt terrible. The insomnia returned. And Peter’s response was to admit, despite his previous claims, that he did not know what was causing my problems. I contacted him again with other questions, including one about CBD oil (this bit will get it's own article). A text, naturally, got no reply; I had to book another appointment simply to ask.
And it mattered far more than it should have, because of how Peter operated: he never answered anything on a timely matter. I tried calling - no answer. I sent text messages - nothing. I tried every channel I could think of; I emailed him - silence. The only way to actually reach Peter Smith was to book, and pay for, an appointment. In fact, later on, when I had to ask him one or two questions on WhatsApp, he wouldn’t respond - or he’d tell me I had to book an appointment with him “because it’s a conversation that will bring more questions and will take time” - but in reality I couldn’t find any time on his calendar that wasn’t my night-time. He ignored this, despite what he had written on his website - that you should contact him directly in exactly this situation. I tried, and again he wouldn’t respond. I literally waited days, like a person waiting for a crush to reply to his text, by the phone, suffering, only now it was for someone your life sort of depends on, as you are going through his protocol. He even told me that “sending him messages like that is a sure way to make him answer much later,” or something horrible like that. I complained about him being “cruel,” and he was so upset by it that he made me apologise for using the word if I wanted to continue with him, and said he had to put a “hard boundary” with me.
All of this made it very clear to me: Peter Smith is, himself, still very sick. He was protecting himself, but that came at the expense of those he was claiming to help. There is nothing wrong with that on its own, if you are not a therapist. It only becomes a problem when it begins to limit your ability to help the people in front of you. Someone in withdrawal cannot be left stranded, unable to reach the one person who is meant to be guiding them. You have to give them a way through to you. In that respect, working with Peter was very, very hard. He did tell me, a few times, that I misunderstood his role, and that if I had a crisis I could call Lifeline. With respect to the people who do that work - and they do important work - that wasn’t an answer to what I was facing. A volunteer trained to support someone in acute distress isn’t equipped to talk anyone through a medically induced reaction that even most doctors don’t recognise.
I also reached out to Baylissa Frederick, to ask about Peter.
Baylissa was famous in the benzo community back then, and - like the groups - firmly against supplements. She had put out a post, one Rosalind had shared years earlier, that said, in effect, that she had had so many clients, and that so many of them - not all, but a great many - had tried something and ended up in the emergency room, or in a horrible setback. The list was VAST! So once again the message was simple: every supplement is a danger. And again - I genuinely do not understand the audacity of saying that. You cannot hand people a warning like that with no context and then simply walk away from it. If you are going to make the claim, bring the full case. How much did the patient take? Did they start low and build up slowly? If it was an elderly patient, what else was going on with them? Did they have MCAS? Had they come off cold turkey? In my experience, the people who get hit hardest are almost always the ones who went cold turkey, or tapered far too fast and are now living in the aftermath of it. A blanket warning tells you none of that.
The reason I had messaged Baylissa in the first place was something I had noticed on her Amazon page - and it is still there today, 3 years later. In the description of her book - not down among the customer reviews, but in the actual description - there are three endorsements. One is from Dr. Ashton - the founding mother of safer benzo tapering, maybe the most famous person in this space. The other is from Peter Smith. Peter, plainly, was happy to be seen applauding her book, and Baylissa was happy to have him on the same level as Ashton, promoting it.
And that is exactly where it stops making sense. Peter was asking me to spend six hundred dollars a month on supplements, or more - while Baylissa, whose book he had publicly endorsed, is completely opposed to supplements. So I asked her directly, in an email, whether she knew him. She told me she did not. That was hard to square with what I was looking at. Even if a publisher had assembled that description, the names sitting in it are famous names - you would recognise them, and you would, at the very least, have looked at your own book’s page. If a man’s endorsement is printed in the description of your book, you know who he is.
She did warn me, in her way. She told me to be extremely careful with anything Peter offered me. And then came the part that genuinely unsettled me. She specifically warned me against a few supplements like ashwagandha - and against coffee enemas. I actually laughed. Coffee enemas? Why would anyone ever suggest that to me? I knew little about them, but it sounded absurd, and extreme. And then, in one of my last appointments with Peter, he suggested exactly that, I kid you not. Once he did, I felt like this is a cynical joke and quite bitter... I smiled politely, continued the session, and I believe that was my last appointment with him. No one, in all my years in this, has ever even mentioned coffee enemas. Except those two.
From where I stand today - on the outside of it, no longer in withdrawal, no longer feeling every symptom in real time - that kind of thing is almost funny. It is also infuriating. But back then it was neither. It was simply frightening, because I was being pulled between two people I was supposed to trust, each telling me the precise opposite of the other, and yet somehow connected so much that one was publically, on a promotional page, endorsing the other one's book! Perhaps Baylissa was holding back to avoid openly defaming him? I don’t know. They are both British and I know defamation laws in the UK are quite scary.
OK, but what was positive about this? I did learn a lot from his protocol. I did study a lot of what he offered. A lot of his sleep advice, which he wrote a lot about (he also has a highly regarded book about this on Amazon), I now use with my own patients, as some of it works well and has a real base in science. He did research a lot, and he did give advice that was good in many ways - and I tell my patients to use many of the same supplements that I used, and that were helpful, I believe, at least on paper. I learned, from how he was with me, how I should and shouldn’t be with my own patients.
Btw, his websites are still online, and seem to be in the same way they were in 2023.
https://www.balancingbrainchemistry.co.uk/
https://petersmithuk.com/
Somewhere around April or May of 2026, 2–3 years after all of this happened, and after many months of not posting on her YouTube channel, Baylissa surfaced again with a new video - except it was not really a video. It was a recording, and a terrible one: the audio was so distorted it was almost unlistenable. I have no idea why she thought it was acceptable to publish it in that state and leave it there, rather than re-record. It’s only about half an hour, and voice only. Beyond the basic problem of not being able to understand her, there is the audience to think about. These are people in withdrawal. Harsh, broken sound is genuinely bad for them - at my worst I could not tolerate even music of any kind, only meditation tracks, and I could not even turn on the television. You cannot put something that abrasive in front of that audience and call it help. The content itself was the usual: vague instructions about what not to do, supplements among them, I believe.
I wrote her a long comment on YouTube - I still have it saved - laying out more or less everything I have just told you. She did not engage with a word of it. What did she do? She blocked commenting on this video.