Why I speak out against some ‘famous’ people.
Even when it hurts me.

Heather Ashton.

This story contains gratitude as well as anger. There are people whose work gave me hope, helped me understand what was happening, or simply gave me strength to keep going. Admiration does not require believing someone is right about everything. Nor does naming them here imply that they endorse me or this article.

Professor Heather Ashton deserves an enormous place in that gratitude. Her withdrawal-clinic work and the Ashton Manual gave people a practical resource when informed help was desperately hard to find. I can question individual recommendations without losing sight of what that contribution meant.

The manual is now decades old. I do not regard every detail as accurate or sufficient for today's practice, and some people find its example schedules much too fast. To be fair to Ashton, she explicitly said schedules should be tailored to individual needs. I respect her as a pioneer working with the knowledge and practical tools of her time, not as someone whose tables must remain untouched forever.

Peter Smith once told me that people used to powder a tablet, arrange it in a line and divide it by centimetres and millimetres. Yes, that was the method he described to me. I am recounting his explanation, not presenting it as a verified history or a method to copy: the length of a line of powder does not reliably establish its drug content.

Today, inexpensive digital milligram scales and calculation tools can make some of the practical work much easier. That greater accessibility matters to me. But a display reading to 0.001 g is not a guarantee of accuracy at that level, as scale manufacturers themselves explain. Tablet weight is not the same as active-drug weight, and not every tablet can safely be crushed.

A pharmacist can help establish whether a proposed preparation method is suitable. I can help you work through this too: by understanding exactly which medication and formulation you are taking, helping you find the manufacturer's official information, and helping you get answers through the appropriate professional channels. You do not have to figure it all out alone. My aim is to help you make practical use of better tools, understand what the measurements mean and find a suitable way forward.

↑ Choose another name

Geraldine Burns.

Geraldine Burns was instrumental in getting Professor Heather Ashton to write the Ashton Manual. The Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices explicitly credits her with that role, as does World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day. In Ashton's own 2001 foreword, on page 9 of this PDF, Ashton explains that the chapters were written by request in 1999 and credits Geraldine, alongside Rand M Bard, Ray Nimmo and Carol Packer, for producing and distributing the booklet and making it available worldwide.

I also admire her work with Representative Paul McMurtry on benzodiazepine legislation in Massachusetts. But my appreciation is personal too. We have had many conversations, and she has given me a great deal of encouragement and help. I have found her wonderfully approachable, kind and generous. I honestly wish she were a coach as well. She is an example of how much it matters when someone with that experience makes time for another person.

↑ Choose another name

Mark Horowitz.

Strange, I know. I have a great deal of criticism of this man, and it has a whole panel of its own in this article. I decided to put him in both lists rather than file him under mixed experiences, because in his case the two things need to be kept apart, not blended into a polite average. My own experience with him was genuinely bad. And still: the noise he made about hyperbolic tapering matters, and it reached rooms I will never get into, even if he ignores me and the errors I found in his book.

Mark Horowitz's work matters too. The existence of the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines, co-authored with David Taylor, is important. In Australia, its recognition by the RACGP as an accepted clinical resource is documented in a South Australian government webinar summary. That is a concrete sign of progress in professional recognition and education, not proof that practice has changed everywhere or that the book alone caused every improvement.

I want to be precise about what I am not crediting. I remain deeply dissatisfied with aspects of the tables. With CBD filed away as unwise next to addictive substances, by an author who later told a public webinar that he could not say he was very familiar with those products, and with supplements getting almost nothing. And with what I consider pseudo-science in the benzodiazepine chapter: every benzodiazepine receptor-occupancy curve in that book traces back to a single 1991 PET study in non-human primates, stretched to cover alprazolam, clonazepam, lorazepam and all the rest through equivalency tables. We are not baboons. Add the other problems I found, and in my opinion this book is not merely imperfect, it is dangerous. I set all of it out, page by page, in my review.

But guidance that recognises the need for a slower, individualised withdrawal process is, in my view, a major improvement over treating “four weeks and you're off” as a universal answer. Both things can be true: this work has value, and it still does not give everyone what they need.

That brings me back to the picture I cannot get out of my head: the poor Victorian child in torn clothes, standing outside with his cap in his hand, begging for anything at all, and getting something, but not really a lot. Finally receiving something matters. But it is maddening that people can still be expected to be grateful for less than the care they actually need. Progress deserves recognition. It should not become an excuse to stop asking for better.

↑ Choose another name

Podcasters and voices with lived experience.

I really enjoyed listening to coach David Powers and to D E Foster's Benzo Free Podcast. Listening while driving gave me strength. Hearing a voice that understood helped me feel less alone.

Angie Peacock is another person I have really enjoyed listening to. I consider Medicating Normal, the documentary in which she shares her story, an important film. What I know and appreciate personally is her voice and the experience she has shared.

There are more people I follow online and on YouTube, from both the antidepressant-harm and benzodiazepine communities, than I could possibly list here. Some share their views on things they have found helpful. Many simply talk about their healing and what they have lived through. That matters enormously when you find yourself lonely in this experience. So do the everyday people who upload their testimonials and recovery stories. Hearing someone describe a struggle you recognise, and seeing them find a way forward, can mean so much.

But not every story I followed had reached a happy ending. Sometimes I only discovered someone's video diary years after they had started posting. Watching their updates, I could see the “windows and waves”: periods of relief followed by renewed suffering, with some people still struggling long afterwards. From what they described, I believe inadequate tapering contributed to prolonged suffering for some of them. Those stories stayed with me too. They are another reason I wanted to do this work: I wanted people to have better support and better ways to taper, before they found themselves going through an ordeal like that.

↑ Choose another name

The friends from the journey.

Most importantly, there were the friends who helped me through my clonazepam tapering ordeal. They kept me afloat mentally and emotionally during one of the hardest periods of my life. I will forever cherish those friendships and what those people did for me. Some are still my friends to this day, even though we live on different continents.

There are others too, including smaller coaches who cooperate with me and people who have shown real generosity. I do not want their contribution to disappear behind the difficult experiences. This field contains people I genuinely admire.

Help from outside the withdrawal world

Not everything that helped me came from a withdrawal specialist. The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris, based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and Barry McDonagh's DARE approach also belong among the resources I value.

↑ Choose another name

Humacology and Nurse Joe.

I keep the clinicians I criticise unnamed in this article. These two I will name, because the credit is theirs. After a long line of oils that did nothing for me, the Humacology oils were the ones that finally worked, and they were the cheapest per milligram I could find.

And Nurse Joe was an angel. His phone number was published on the page, and he actually answered it. Do you know how rare that is in this story? Someone inside a clinic who picks up, listens, and helps you work out what to try next. I tell that part properly in Part 9 of my story.

↑ Choose another name

Antidepressant and Hebrew groups.

One more piece of gratitude, and it belongs here. Everything ugly in this article happened in the benzodiazepine world. In the antidepressant and SSRI groups I have been part of, I have seen none of it. Most of the admins I have dealt with there have been wonderful: open, civil, willing to be asked a question without treating it as an attack. It is simply more civil over there.

That is exactly why those groups are not in this article. It is not that I am telling one side of a story. It is that this side has given me nothing to tell.

The same goes for the Hebrew-speaking world. The responsible-tapering groups in Israel, like the one Avivit Moshe runs, talk about the “10% method”, which is the hyperbolic idea wearing a name that does not sound strange: a fixed percentage of the last dose rather than a fixed amount. Same principle, friendlier packaging, and in my experience a much more civil tone.

↑ Choose another name

Peter Smith: real knowledge, and advice that nearly hurt me.

Peter Smith describes himself as specialising in treating mental health problems with natural remedies and functional medicine, and his website offers benzodiazepine withdrawal treatment, with pages such as “How to Withdraw from Benzos Safely”. I found him on YouTube while I was in withdrawal, paid for his consultations and followed his protocol. Part 5 of my story tells the whole thing. This is a mixed account, and I want it to read that way.

What helped

He knew a great deal, and he looked at the whole person: inflammation, dental health, hidden infections, sleep, and supplements the big groups would not even discuss. I learned a lot from studying his protocol. Much of his sleep advice has a real basis in science, and I still use parts of it with my own clients. Some of the supplements he recommended were, I believe, genuinely helpful to me. He also taught me, by example, a lot about how I should and should not treat the people who come to me.

What went wrong

The problems started with reaching him. Emails went unanswered, and he told me he had thousands of them. His phone was usually off. He told me in writing that he did not offer a question-answering service between appointments, so in practice the reliable way to ask him anything was to book and pay for another appointment, usually at least two days ahead and in the middle of my night. To be fair, he did sometimes make time at short notice, and once offered to see me that same morning. But someone in withdrawal who is following your protocol cannot plan around sometimes.

My first consultation ran about four hours, when I had paid for roughly one and a half. Much of it repeated material from his videos. In one sense that was generous. In practice, I was in withdrawal and could not take it in.

Then there was the protocol itself. He asked me to start almost his whole list of supplements at the same time; only the lithium was to be built up gradually. When I asked whether it would be safer to start one at a time and see how I responded, he refused, explaining that the supplements balanced each other and worked in synergy. At first he told me most of his clients kept tapering while they started. I slowed my taper instead, and later, when I asked, he agreed I should pause and establish a baseline. About two weeks later I had a serious setback: the nightmares and insomnia came back, and he told me he did not know what was causing it. I cannot prove what caused that setback. But starting everything at once meant neither of us could tell.

Then the email I will never forget. I had barely slept, I was scared, and I asked him to move an appointment I had already paid for. No answer. So I told him it was cruel. His reply: he wanted an apology, and I could accept his terms or stop working with him. I apologised. What else was I going to do? He was the only one guiding me through his protocol. To be fair to him, in the same email he reminded me that a few days earlier he had given me a 90-minute call for free. That is true, and I am grateful for it. The next day he said he was sorry for the stress. But you do not make a frightened person in withdrawal choose between his dignity and his treatment. Near the end he suggested coffee enemas. That was my last appointment.

Why he sits in the middle

In my opinion, the knowledge was real, but ego got in the way of the person he was meant to be helping: a practitioner I could not reach, a protocol I was not allowed to question, and advice that, as I experienced it, nearly made things much worse. I do not put him with my heroes, and I do not put him with the people I simply regret trusting. He belongs in between.

What I took from it is simple, and it is how I work now: one supplement at a time, starting low, going slow, and a way to reach me when things go wrong.

↑ Choose another name

CBD doctors and clinics: what helped save me, and some of the worst advice I got.

I am not naming the doctors, clinics or products here. They are in Australia, some of them genuinely helped me, and my point is about a pattern rather than any one person. Part 9 of my story tells the longer version.

A woman who had come off seven psychiatric drugs told me medicinal CBD oil had helped her do it. It took me the better part of a year, and several clinics, to find what worked for me. In the end, CBD oil during the day and a CBN oil at night, alongside other supplements, became part of what finally got me off the benzodiazepine. That is my experience, not medical advice, and it is exactly the kind of option some well-known withdrawal voices dismissed. I describe one example in Part 8 of my story.

What went wrong

Several clinics were, in my experience, long on selling and short on care. Nurses at one didn’t even know to tell me to separate the oil from my antidepressant. At another, a sleep doctor gave me real time and care he never charged for. I’ll give him that. But the dispensary he sent me to was, I later found out, his own business, and he never mentioned it. His clinic told me he thought I could go down by half my dose within weeks. I pushed back hard. His written plan: three quarters of the dose for a month, then half, then a quarter. A quarter of my dose gone every month, in straight lines. After everything I had been through, I wasn’t going to do that, and I didn’t. When the THC oil was making it hard for me to urinate, he wrote that he had “not heard of that” and asked if it was my prostate. I found documented cases easily. When I found cheaper oils that actually helped, he refused to prescribe them. To be fair, he gave a reason: one change at a time. After I refused his fast plan, his advice became cutting by a small margin every six weeks.

What went right

The clinic that finally helped had a nurse who published his phone number and actually answered it. The oils were cheaper, they contained what I was looking for, and they helped. The difference was not only the product. It was being able to reach a person.

That is why this sits in the middle: some of the most important help I found, and some of the most careless advice I received, came from the same corner of medicine.

↑ Choose another name

Rosalind and David Jones — Beating Benzos (BB): the help, and what followed

I did not join Beating Benzos looking for a fight. I joined because I was in withdrawal and needed help. And I want to give Rosalind and David credit: at the beginning, they were great with me. Their articles were genuinely helpful and introduced me to the ideas of hyperbolic and exponential tapering. That contribution mattered, and what happened later does not erase it. In Part 3 of my story, I describe the support I found there, the confusion over my tablet strength and weight when David prepared my first plan, and the revised plan he subsequently provided. I also describe building my own spreadsheet so I could understand and calculate my reductions.

The disagreement came later. I began questioning what I saw as a contradiction between the principles in their own manuals and the linear water microtaper plans being offered. To me, those plans fell short of what their articles had taught me to expect. Alongside that, Rosalind's responses to the supplements I asked about felt consistently discouraging: another warning, another reason not to try something. Instead of helping me weigh up possibilities, those exchanges left me feeling more afraid and less able to ask questions. That combination put us on a collision course.

Look at the dates. After a night of close-eyes hallucinations I wrote to them at 1am. The plan I got back: 2mg in 300ml, take away 1ml a day. A fixed 1ml a day is a linear taper. Every day the cut is a bigger percentage of what is left. In my view their own guides teach the opposite. And when I built a spreadsheet to do it properly, it was “commendable but impractical”, and I was asked whether I thought they were on “an ego trip”. David clearly understood the maths. In June he walked me through exactly how the percentage rises in a water taper. That is what makes it worse.

In Part 4, I explain my concerns about fixed-volume water tapers and recount my posts disappearing. Then, one night, I found myself removed from the group without warning. My account also describes Rosalind closing down discussion when I asked about Peter Smith. I was a frightened person trying to make sense of conflicting advice. Being shut out of a community I had relied on did not feel like a minor disagreement on Facebook. Their help had mattered to me. That is precisely why what happened later hurt.

My later video examining David's taper plans and communication goes beyond my own original plan. For clarity, some examples in that video came from test enquiries I submitted under fictional identities with invented medical histories, not from independently documented patients who suffered those outcomes. I explain what I found confusing or concerning about the replies, including the information gathered before a plan was offered. Readers should know how those examples were obtained.

A warning about me, not an answer to my criticism

Rosalind later published a warning naming me. It described me as someone determined to prove everybody else wrong, said I had not recovered, questioned my qualifications and accused me of defaming people in the withdrawal field. It also criticised my use of aliases to request plans. I discuss the post in my recorded response, but the central evidence is reproduced here so you do not need to watch a seventy-minute video to understand the dispute.

I do not deny using aliases for those test enquiries. I have explained that openly. Nor do I pretend that I held my current peer-work qualification at the time: in the recording I acknowledged that I had not yet obtained it. But disagreement with my approach does not make every criticism I raise false. And being on an antidepressant did not, in my view, give someone else the right to declare that I had not recovered from benzodiazepine withdrawal.

What particularly bothered me was a later reply in the same discussion: Rosalind said she had avoided the videos and refused to watch them, while explaining that David had watched and others had reported back. That distinction matters. I am not claiming nobody on their side had seen my work. I am asking why such a personal warning came from someone who said she would not examine it herself.

I experienced this as an attack on my credibility rather than an answer to the substance, and I considered it defamatory. That is my assessment, not a court finding. My point is not that everyone who received help from them had my experience. It is that receiving help should not require surrendering your right to question it.

Gratitude is not a lifetime agreement to stay quiet.

The “Terry” test, November 2024

By late 2024 people kept telling me David's plans had not changed. So I tested it. I wrote to Beating Benzos under a different name, as a 66-year-old man on 20mg of diazepam, and asked for a water taper plan. Yes, I used a fake name. I doubt he would have answered me under my own. The reply came from the Beating Benzos account, signed David: “Not a doctor nor pharmacist, retired high school science teacher living in England.” and “The pill reduction is done by using a metal nail file.”

The plan attached to it went 20mg to 18, 16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, and then: “Continue down by 1mg decreases until off.” One milligram at a time, all the way down. That is a linear taper again, the same thing I was given in 2023. Beating Benzos' own guide explains why that gets harder and harder as you go down: when you cut the same amount every time, each cut is a bigger percentage of what is left. And when I said so publicly, this was his answer:

My medication was fair game. My argument was never answered.

And because I do not want this to rest only on selected quotes, I have covered the full picture on my YouTube channel — including the defamatory post and serious problems I found with David's taper plans:

• I was defamed. Part 1 — Rosalind's post in Beating Benzos (analysis and response)
• I was defamed. Part 2 — Potentially illegal, dangerous and unethical issues with David's taper plans

↑ Choose another name

My emails with Baylissa and the Peter Smith connection

My concerns did not begin with a public post or a YouTube video. I contacted Baylissa directly while I was trying to decide whom to trust during withdrawal. Part 5 of my story recounts those emails and my experience with Peter Smith. Below are her actual words.

What prompted my question was the Amazon description of Baylissa's book, Recovery and Renewal. It included an endorsement from Peter Smith alongside endorsements from Heather Ashton and David Healy. Peter was advocating a substantial supplement protocol, while Baylissa's warnings had left me deeply wary of supplements. Seeing his name promoting her book added to my confusion, so I emailed her to ask whether she knew him. As I recount in my story, she said she did not.

At the time, I found her answer hard to reconcile with the book page. But an endorsement of her book is not the same thing as her endorsing his work, and a publisher can obtain or use an endorsement without a personal relationship between the people involved. I cannot infer from that page alone that her answer was dishonest. What I can describe is the uncertainty it left me with as someone looking for help.

The warning that later became uncomfortably familiar

She wrote back that she didn’t know him. Then, in the same email, she listed the adverse reactions her clients reported most often, and right there next to ashwagandha: coffee enemas. I laughed. I wrote back “Coffee enema?? Don’t worry I won’t do that!” Then, in one of my last appointments with Peter, he suggested exactly that. It doesn’t prove she knew him. It does explain why I have never forgotten it.

I describe my experience with Peter himself, including what genuinely helped, in his own account.

What I needed was help making sense of conflicting advice while I was frightened and unwell. Instead, I often felt caught between a protocol I struggled to get clear answers about and warnings that made almost every alternative feel dangerous. That is why these emails and the Peter Smith story matter to me: they are part of the experience behind my insistence on clear explanations, individual care and support people can actually reach.

Baylissa and Rosalind: when caution starts to feel like fear

In a post dated 28 June 2017, Rosalind reposted a long message attributed to Baylissa Frederick. The screenshots I retained show warnings covering an enormous range of supplements, medicines and other approaches. They also show important qualifications: people respond differently, some report benefits, other illnesses and deficiencies may need treatment, and nobody should pressure another person to take something or promise a cure. I agree with those principles.

What troubles me is the surrounding message. Linking such a broad range of options to accounts of severe crises, alongside statements such as “Band-aids won't work,” can leave a frightened reader feeling that almost any attempt to find relief is a mistake. That is how this kind of messaging affected me. My objection is not to reporting adverse experiences. It is to the leap from those reports to an atmosphere in which asking what might help feels reckless.

I want the risks examined, the possible benefits examined, and the uncertainty explained. I do not want reassurance used to close the conversation, and I do not want fear used to close it either. Something helping me does not establish that it will help you; someone else reporting harm does not settle what caused it or what will happen to every other person.

This is not an argument for taking everything. It is an argument for curiosity, proper investigation and individual care. People in withdrawal deserve more than a choice between a miracle seller and a warning against practically everything.

The later video and a conversation that closed

Baylissa returned to these themes in “When Vulnerable People Are Given Unsafe Messages”. I found its overall emphasis frustrating: to me, it risked reinforcing the same discouragement around looking for relief. But it would be inaccurate to summarise her literal position as “nothing helps”. At around 17:52, she acknowledges that some approaches may help a little or quite a bit, while others may do nothing or worsen symptoms. She also warns against treating either GABAergic or non-GABAergic labels as universal answers.

My account of what happened next is that I posted a critical response and later found it was no longer visible. Comments were subsequently disabled on the video. The comments-off notice does not establish what happened to my individual comment or why. Baylissa's written explanation says she does not have time to deal with comments and clarifies that she is not telling people to ignore facts or stop being proactive. I include that explanation below.

That still leaves my objection: a public message can continue influencing people after the public opportunity to challenge it has closed. I wanted a discussion of the concerns, not the last word. So I am setting out my response here.

↑ Choose another name

Josef Witt-Doerring and TaperClinic

I watched Josef's videos while I was in withdrawal, and they scared the hell out of me. Interview after interview with the worst stories in this world, including suicide inside a family, and no proper warning before it started. When your audience is people in withdrawal, that is not awareness. That is petrol on a fire. A clear content warning before every interview is the bare minimum.

People kept telling me he charges a fortune, so I checked, like any patient would. In October 2024 I emailed TaperClinic. The answer came from a “Patient Concierge”: fees “typically range from 30K to 40K for a year of care”, and the precise price only after a free “Discovery Call” with Dr. Josef.

To get to the booking button you had to sit through his webinar. You could not skip it and you could not rewind it. I recorded myself watching it and reviewed it on 1 December 2024. It promised a protocol that gets you off your medication “that's going to be without severe withdrawal symptoms like brain zaps insomnia severe anxiety”, and that it works “this is going to work even if you take multiple psychiatric meds or if you've been on your medications for decades”. Nobody can promise that. It pushed: “time is of the essence i'm not running a busy call center here and these spots fill up quickly”. The booking calendar I opened straight afterwards was full of empty slots. And only after almost two hours came the fine print: “i can't help everyone”, and “if you're wanting to taper and you don't have any supportive family or friends who could help you through this this is not going to be an appropriate program for you”. Those are exactly the people who need help the most. That disclaimer belongs at the start, before the promises, not at the end.

The webinar quotations are transcribed from my screen recording of it; the wording is his, the punctuation is mine.

The “patients”

Then came the success stories: five patients, each with a name, an age, a job, a medication history and a photo. Amelia, James, Samantha, David and Cliff. Before withdrawal I worked in stock photography, and these looked like stock photos to me. So I checked, and I showed the results on camera. They are. Four of the five faces are sold in stock-photo libraries, and the fifth belongs to a customer review on someone else’s website.

There was no asterisk. No “photos are for illustration”. Real-sounding names, ages, jobs and medical stories on top of stock photos. Maybe the stories are real and the faces were swapped for privacy. I do not know. Then say so. The way it was presented, someone as desperate as I was would believe these were his patients. In my opinion that is deceptive marketing, in a field where trust is everything.

The website has since changed, so all of this is about the version I recorded. To be fair, its current “Client Success” page is different: its 15 video stories look like real clients talking on webcam, cut with generic stock footage, and when I ran their thumbnails through a reverse image search on 20 September 2026, none of the people turned up on stock-photo sites. As checked on 12 September 2026, TaperClinic's admissions page lists its year-long programme at US$32,000 upfront or US$36,000 through its payment plan.

And then I looked at his connections. Josef sits on BIC's Medical Advisory Board. BIC's Medical Director is on his clinic's team page as its “Tapering Consultant”. BIC's own provider list lists his clinic ten times. The details, with screenshots and dates, are in the BIC section.

↑ Choose another name

Mark Horowitz and the Maudsley guidelines

Of everyone in this story, Mark is the one I expected the most from. He co-wrote the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines. He has lived experience. People quote him to their own doctors. In June 2023, barely sleeping, I wrote to him with one question: how do you get through the very end of a taper, when the cuts become impossibly small?

Credit where it is due: he answered the next day, which is more than most. But his answer to a sick, unemployed stranger was an offer of paid “academic consultancy”: $250 for 50 minutes. I told him I could not afford it, that I was building a free tool for everyone, and that all I needed was one answer.

When I sent him my free spreadsheet, he told me my regimens were “not hyperbolic they are exponential”, and that to do it properly you would need nuclear imaging of the brain. In the same email he admitted the percentage method is “an infinite regress that never ends” and that the rules of thumb “do not make sense at the end of a taper”. The end of the taper was the only thing I asked about.

Here is what makes it worse. In his interview with Benzo Warriors, the one that sent me to him, he described the UK NICE advice of cutting 5–10% of the most recent dose as a pattern that approximates the hyperbola, and I played that part in my Updates video. In October 2023 he sent me a chapter of his own book. In it, as I show in the same video, the 10%-of-the-last-dose method used by withdrawal groups is described as a close approximation of his hyperbolic schedules and among the most helpful approaches. So in public and in his own book, the method I used was a close approximation of his. In private, to me, it was “not hyperbolic”, and fixing its end would take nuclear imaging of the brain. To be fair to him, in a later email he also wrote that exponential tapering “works so well” for most of a taper. The end was the part I was asking about.

Then the line I have read a hundred times. I asked when the book would be out. He suggested that if I got “some of the better off people” to buy a copy, his publisher “might be more well bestowed” to me. I had told him I was too sick to work. When I called that cruel, he wrote back that he was “not concerned with my profits” and wanted the book on doctors' desks. I believe the cause is good. But I did not need a marketing plan. I needed one number.

In November 2023 I asked twice more. Four days later: “I am not sure what you are after”. In the same email he warned me off the CBD that, in the end, helped get me off the drug. Later, at a public webinar, he said he could not say he was very familiar with those products. His book still files CBD as particularly unwise during withdrawal. I asked him why CBD was “not a good deal”. He never answered.

In December 2024, off the drug and doing well, I told him I had found errors in his book and asked whether I could discuss our old emails in my review. “Would be happy to know about any errors,” he wrote. When I asked about the emails: “I would prefer a private conversation not to be aired publicly, thanks.” I do not accept that a practitioner's answers to professional questions about his own published guidance are private, and I told him so. I sent him my review. He never replied to it.

And the tables. When the guidelines finally came out, the tail of the taper was built around the tablet and liquid sizes that happen to exist, not the precision the end of a taper needs. In my view, convenient tablet fractions win over consistent reductions. My full review of the Maudsley guidelines shows it step by step. Your suffering is not an acceptable rounding error.

The circle

Mark is not just an academic. By his own declaration in a 2026 journal paper, he “is a co-founder and consultant to Outro Health”, which, in the paper’s words, “helps patients to safely stop no longer needed antidepressants”, and he receives royalties from the Maudsley guidelines. BIC told me they “were even consulted on the benzodiazepine section” of that book and “fully support” it. BIC's provider list includes him (“Academic Consultancy Only. Not registered as a medical doctor in the United States”). And in June 2026 he published a benzodiazepine paper together with BIC's Medical Director, BIC's co-founder and Josef Witt-Doerring. The details, with screenshots of both papers, are in the BIC section. Same small circle, every time.

↑ Choose another name

BIC: why that reply stayed with me

My exchange with the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition was not just an unanswered email. In December 2024 I sent them my video review of the Maudsley guidelines and asked them to take down the linear water-taper example on their website: a capsule in 300ml of water, take away 1ml a day. That is the exact method David gave me. Their answer: nobody would have time to watch my video; there is no evidence for supplements; “one individual’s opinion doesn’t change the thousands of emails of harm we receive”; they “fully support the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines”, and they “were even consulted on the benzodiazepine section”. So they were defending a book they had been consulted on. And the part nobody mentions: they agreed the example was unclear and removed the specific amount from their website. My criticism changed their page.

I replied sharply myself, calling the response rude and saying I would make a video about it. I should not leave that out. The subsequent message said my expectations of their time and attention were disproportionate to my knowledge and experience, and ended the conversation.

I understand that a volunteer organisation has limits. I am not entitled to unlimited attention. What stung was the move from disagreeing with my arguments to measuring whether my knowledge and experience merited engagement. That felt uncomfortably familiar. An organisation can do valuable advocacy and still fall short in how it responds to a person challenging it.

Who runs BIC, and who BIC sends you to

After BIC told me my “expectations of our time and attention are disproportionate to your knowledge and experience”, I looked at who runs it. When I wrote to them, I knew none of what follows. I found it afterwards, and honestly, I felt stupid. Everything below comes from public records, and I show each one with the date it was live.

The people

BIC is a US charity, a 501(c)(3), and its tax return is public. According to the latest one, filed on 13 December 2025, Nicole Lamberson is BIC’s “Medical Director and Officer”. BIC paid its officers nothing, Nicole included.

Now the timeline. On 31 December 2023, BIC’s website listed Nicole, Josef Witt-Doerring and Chris Paige on its Medical Advisory Board. On 24 February 2024, TaperClinic, Josef’s clinic, had a page for “Coach Nicole Lamberson”, and one for Chris Paige. By 20 April 2024, Nicole had become BIC’s Medical Director and joined its Board of Directors.

Nothing has changed since. On 20 September 2026, TaperClinic’s own team page lists Josef as its “CEO & Medical Director”, Nicole as its “Tapering Consultant” and Chris as its “Withdrawal Support Specialist”. This is the clinic that quoted me US$30,000–40,000 for a year of care.

She is not just a name on a staff page. TaperClinic’s “Client Success” page has a video called “When Healing Happens”, in which, the page says, “our team reflects on some of the most powerful and inspiring moments we’ve shared with clients”. Nicole is in it, captioned “Nicole Lamberson, Taper Consultant”. Right after telling the camera that she has seen “countless people go through withdrawal since 2010”, she says: “you just have to have faith and blindly trust that those of us who’ve walked this path ahead of you are telling the truth and that healing is inevitable.” I understand the kindness behind that. But in my opinion nobody in withdrawal should be asked to trust anyone blindly. Not her, not TaperClinic, and not me.

The list

BIC keeps a list of “cooperative providers” for people looking for help. On 20 September 2026, Josef’s clinic was on it ten times, under ten different states, each time with the note that he is a member of BIC’s Medical Advisory Board. Nicole was on it 51 times, for “Taper Coaching and Academic Consultancy”, with the note that she is BIC’s own Medical Director. Chris was on it too, as a member of BIC’s Medical Advisory Board. To be fair, the list does disclose those BIC roles. What it does not say, anywhere, is that Nicole and Chris are on the team of Josef’s clinic. And the same page says BIC “is not affiliated with nor does it sponsor these providers”.

Nicole’s entry also says she is “Not licensed as a physician assistant or other medical professional in the U.S. or elsewhere.” The title “Medical Director” is theirs, not mine.

The papers

On 9 June 2026, Nicole, BIC’s co-founder Janice Curle and Josef published a paper on how to taper benzodiazepines, together with Mark Horowitz and others. All three give BIC as their affiliation, not TaperClinic. The conflict-of-interest statement lists Mark’s royalties and an editorial role, and ends: “All other authors declare no conflicts of interest.”

Nine days later, a second paper, by Mark, Nicole, Anders Sørensen and others, declared that Mark “is a co-founder and consultant to Outro Health”, a tapering service, that he receives royalties from the Maudsley guidelines, and that Anders receives royalties from his book Crossing Zero. Neither paper’s affiliations or conflict-of-interest statement mention TaperClinic.

What I make of it

I am not a lawyer, and I am not accusing anyone of breaking the law. I found no record of money moving between BIC and TaperClinic, and BIC’s tax return shows it paid its officers nothing and made no loans to or from them. Volunteering for a charity while working for a clinic is not illegal, and journals leave it to the authors to decide what to declare.

But in my opinion, two authors of a paper on how to taper who are on the team of a clinic that charges tens of thousands of dollars a year for tapering should say so. And a charity whose Medical Director is on the team of a clinic it lists ten times should say that on the list, instead of telling readers it is “not affiliated” with the providers on it. People choosing who to trust with their taper deserve to know. To me it is the same small circle every time: the book BIC was “consulted on”, the clinics, the charity, the papers, and the people who told me they had no time to watch my video.

Why I think BIC was so hostile to me

Look at the dates. On 1 December 2024 I published my review of TaperClinic’s website on YouTube, stock-photo “patients” and all. Around 20 December I published my review of the Maudsley guidelines, and on 21 December I sent it to BIC. On 9 January 2025 BIC answered that it was “unlikely that anyone will have time to watch the full video”, that “one individual’s opinion doesn’t change the thousands of emails of harm we receive”, and that they “fully support” the guidelines and “were even consulted on the benzodiazepine section”. That same evening came the last one: “Do not contact us again.”

I cannot know whether anyone at BIC had seen my TaperClinic review, or what was said among them. But if they had, then within one month a stranger had criticised the clinic that their Medical Director is part of and that a member of their advisory board runs, and then the book they were consulted on. That would explain a lot about the tone I got. This is my theory, not something I can prove.

Trying to reach someone else

After the exchange with Logan, whose tone I found rude, I tried to contact other people listed on BIC's website. I wanted somebody else to hear the concerns and look at what had happened. I also tried to reach Stephen LaCorte, JD. I recall finding an email address for him, although I no longer remember how I obtained it. I did not receive a reply.

I contacted Chris Paige through Facebook. (Only later did I find out that Chris has been part of Josef’s clinic since at least February 2024.) My opening message was friendly, and he initially replied, “How can I help?” I then explained my disagreement with BIC and shared my criticism and the correspondence. My account is that he blocked me after that exchange. I was upset and challenged him through his professional page, asking whether they were a clique or genuinely wanted to advance recovery. I received no substantive reply there. The screenshots show the initial response, what I sent and my later complaint; they do not independently establish the reason for the loss of access. I include my own confrontational follow-up because leaving it out would give an incomplete picture.

Part of my frustration was how difficult I found it to identify a direct route to the people I wanted to speak with, rather than return to the same organisational inbox. That is not the same as saying none of them has public professional contact details: Chris's BIC profile, for example, links to his private-practice website. I am describing the difficulty I experienced getting a conversation, not claiming that people owe the public their personal email addresses or phone numbers.

Even co-founder Janice Curle's BIC biography has no profile photograph on the page I checked. That added to my sense of distance, but a missing photograph is not evidence of wrongdoing, and I do not know her reasons. What matters more to me is whether there is a workable way to raise a concern and have it heard.

People who cannot be reached worry me. Advocacy needs a door people can actually knock on.

↑ Choose another name

Anders Sørensen and Crossing Zero

My review of Anders Sørensen's Crossing Zero explains both what I value in the book and the concerns I believe deserve answers. In the public exchanges I retained, he responded to my review with “You sure enjoy ruining a good atmosphere, Guy” and, on another occasion when I asked for a response, “always there to party poop”. Those responses struck me as childish and, frankly, appalling. That is my opinion of the words, not a diagnosis of the person.

The second exchange was under a post celebrating US continuing-medical-education approval for a course. I acknowledged that it was a celebratory post. But if material is being used to educate clinicians, questions about its safety do not become inappropriate because they interrupt the congratulations. A good atmosphere is lovely. A substantive answer is better.

And it didn’t stop there. When I shared my articles in a withdrawal group in June 2026, Anders’s entire contribution under my post was one emoji: 😅. No question. No answer. Not one point addressed. Make of that what you want. I know what I make of it.

He did not only mock. In the other exchange he explained that he was describing adding a small dose of fluoxetine to help some people through the last stretch of withdrawal, said the manoeuvre needs expertise and close monitoring, and offered further help. And I corrected myself in public: I had wrongly described the book as recommending a multi-step SSRI to SNRI to Prozac cross-taper, and I withdrew that description. What he was describing is adding fluoxetine alongside the existing antidepressant and then tapering the original drug.

That correction does not soften what I think of the advice itself, and I stand behind every word of my review. “A small dose” is never turned into a number a reader can act on. Adding a second serotonergic drug on top of the first is precisely the situation where the risk of serotonin syndrome rises, and serotonin syndrome can be life-threatening. The book's own line, that serotonin syndrome “usually resolves within a few days of stopping the medication”, is in my opinion dangerously wrong for fluoxetine in particular: its active metabolite, norfluoxetine, stays in the body for one to two weeks after the last dose. If it goes wrong, you cannot simply stop and wait a day or two.

His answer put the weight on the clinician carrying out the manoeuvre. My answer is that the written guidance is what actually reaches people, and the reader I worry about is the one whose prescriber has never heard of any of this. Since expertise is the defence being offered, it is worth knowing that Anders is a clinical psychologist with a PhD, not a medical doctor. And his own systematic review accepts that the occupancy studies behind these curves were not done in people who had been on antidepressants for years, which is exactly who the curves get used on. In my opinion that combination is dangerous. These screenshots are extracts from two exchanges, not proof that he has never answered a concern somewhere else.

One concern in my review is the treatment of drug-switching risks, including serotonin syndrome. I will not present switching as a clever shortcut or treat interactions as a footnote. The NHS Specialist Pharmacy Service explains that using antidepressants together or in sequence can increase serotonin-syndrome risk. That general warning does not, on its own, establish that a particular author's protocol is unsafe; it does show why the details and clinical oversight matter.

↑ Choose another name

Barbara Connolly and Benzo Warriors (BWC)

Benzo Warriors was one of the good places for me in 2023, and I want to say that first because it is true. When Beating Benzos threw me out over my spreadsheet, Barbara, the group's lead admin, wrote to me that I would have “a safe home in BWC”. She pinned my spreadsheet as a featured post. She told me the team thought it was terrific.

Getting there took almost a month of “team review”. A moderator wanted me to build her own taper before she would approve my post. And this is how Barbara explained why they had to be careful with my tool:

Kindergarten or special needs. That is how she described the people in her own group, people in withdrawal who can do a lot more than she gives them credit for.

In September 2024 she asked me to become a moderator. I said yes. Within a day I saw what the job was: pages of rules, and a queue of posts waiting for approval, many of them declined. Then came the lecture in the moderators' chat. I had spent an hour on a voice call with a member who needed help. That was the crime.

Talking privately to someone who is falling apart at three in the morning is exactly what saved me. Every week I talk to people in withdrawal, sometimes for two hours while they cry. A rule that tells a peer volunteer not to pick up the phone protects the group, not the person. And who are they to tell me who I can talk to on Facebook? Their group is one of many. I told them I am not their soldier and asked to be removed as a moderator. Three minutes later Barbara said she was taking me out of the chat.

In November 2024 I made a shorter video for the spreadsheet, as they had asked. It was “passed on”. When I wrote to Barbara that “your rule of not chatting with people who are suicidal is insane”, her answer was: “This is the last time I take the time to help you. Good luck Guy.”

A week later Barbara posted about tapering without a word about the spreadsheet her group had pinned and pointed people to since July 2023. I commented: “No mention of the official group spreadsheet?” My comment was removed, I got a warning for breaking the “be kind and courteous” rule, and this note:

I lost it. I told Barbara she was acting like a dictator, and that I would expose anything she did that harmed the benzo community. I am not proud of the tone, and I am not hiding it. That same night I was removed from the group's members' chat, and then banned from Benzo Warriors.

A group with a history

Later, people who had been in Benzo Warriors for years told me its story. The group was founded by Michelle and Lennard, who have both since died. After them, they said, Barbara took over and the group changed: more rules, more control, more posts declined. The stories I was told about those years were sad. One admin of another group put it to me like this: “It was supportive and run like a fortune 500 company - but that was all Michelle. She didn't censor heavily that is all from Barb.” That is what I was told, not something I can check myself. To be fair, the guidelines Barbara sent me carry Michelle's name and a 2020 date, so some of those rules go back to the founders' time. What I lived through in 2024 was the version Barbara ran.

People in withdrawal should get the lowest possible level of ego and online bullying. That is the whole point of a support group. And that, I was told, is why Lennard's Benzo Warriors exists. It was not started by one unhappy member. A big group of Benzo Warriors' long-time members, its “elders”, about 50 people, were upset at what they saw as Barbara taking over the group and changing it, and they left to build a group without that control. Now read what that group did to me, in Terry Lyn's section. Very, very ironic.

↑ Choose another name

Terry Lyn and Benzo Recovery & Existence (BRE)

How I ended up in that group matters. I spread my free spreadsheet around every group that would have it, and that is how I found Benzo Recovery & Existence. By then Beating Benzos had thrown me out for asking why they were handing out linear water tapers when their own manuals say the opposite. Those manuals are where I first read about proportional, exponential and hyperbolic tapering, and they warn that taking the same amount out each time hits the brain harder and harder as the dose gets lower, which means more suffering the further down you go. Benzo Recovery & Existence took the spreadsheet well. One of its admins at the time was extremely kind to me and grateful for the help. By the time any of what follows happened she was no longer an admin, for reasons I do not know. She is a private person now and is not part of this story.

I had never exchanged a single word with Terry Lyn. In October 2024 I discovered I had been banned, without warning, from Benzo Recovery & Existence, a group I loved. Nobody told me why. I wrote to Terry and to the other admins. Terry never answered me.

Because Barbara Bell was a moderator both there (BRE) and in Rosalind's group, I assumed it was her, and I said so. I was wrong, and I owe her that correction. It was not her. I had even told Terry that I thought it was Barbara Bell. No answer. About two months later, Terry said in a public post that it was her.

Anthony Kalis (Benzo Recovery & Existence, BRE), another admin, apologised and let me back in. About a week later I was banned again, and this time I could not get an answer out of him at all. I wrote, and wrote, for months. Nothing. In January 2025 I found myself banned from Lennard's Benzo Warriors too. Julie Young Ingham, one of that group's admins, told me Terry was not even an admin there, and unbanned me. Three weeks later, after “a long talk” with Terry, she changed her mind: “No Terry did. But I am not overriding it.”

Lennard's Benzo Warriors, of all groups. A group that, as it was explained to me, was started by about 50 of Benzo Warriors' long-time members after they became upset at what they saw as Barbara Connolly taking over their group and changing it. I said exactly that to Julie the night I found out:

To be fair to Julie, she was honest about her reasons: she thought I needed more experience before coaching, and she disagrees with me about water tapers. Fine. Disagree with me. That is not a reason to throw someone out of a support group.

And it is not only Anthony. In these groups, admins routinely switch off their Messenger or simply never reply. Not only to me: other people tell me the same thing. I keep coming back to one question. If you do not want to talk to people, why be an admin of a support group at all? In my opinion the only answer left is ego.

Later, I was told that Terry had claimed I sent a person to hospital. I recorded it at the time, but I have not found that recording yet, so I cannot show it to you here. What I can tell you is that in October 2024 I did not have a single client. I only started coaching in December. If she said it, it is false.

Three bans, from someone I had never spoken to, and nobody ever told me directly what I was supposed to have done. That is not moderation. In my opinion it is a personal vendetta with an admin button.

↑ Choose another name