[00:00:01] Luke: So Kim, why do you call yourself an accidental advocate?

[00:00:07] Kim: I wish I didn't have to call myself the Accidental Advocate. I call myself the Accidental Advocate because I now am in a world that I never chose to be, and I'll explain the story in a second, but sometimes I realize that our greatest life purposes choose us. And so my Accidental Advocacy started almost over 20 years ago when my life looked very different than it does today.

[00:00:34] I was happily married to my husband of almost 10 years, and we both had successful careers, traveled, and we were about to start to have a family. And Wood got his dream job with a startup company and he was like a big recycler, whatever.

[00:00:52] And he started having trouble sleeping. So he went to his doctor because he was a guy who needed eight hours of sleep, and Wood was waking up at 3:00 AM, and it wasn't comfortable for him. So he was a good patient. The doctors fixed him. He was a big athlete, so they stitched him up.

[00:01:17] When he broke his foot, they brought him back to health. So he did what most people did and he went to his doctor, and after a visit, he was given a three-week sample pack of an antidepressant and said it would take the edge off and help him sleep.

[00:01:36] Woody went home with the three weeks that automatically doubled the dose after week one. I happened to be out of the country those first three weeks Woody was on the drug. I was down in New Zealand on an advertising shoot. And so I was not there to see anything that was happening to Woody.

[00:01:55] And when I came back, I'll never forget, I was like super excited to see him and have the evening. And he walked through our back door and he was completely drenched through his blue dress shirt, and he had his briefcase, threw it on the floor. He's bawling, falls into a fetal position, and he, in front of our kitchen on the dishwasher and with his hands around his head like a vice, Kim, you got to help me.

[00:02:23] I don't know what's happening. My head's outside my body. And he goes, I don't think I can handle one of these. And I'm looking at him like, what? I don't even know what this is. And so we calmed him down. We prayed. We did yoga breathing. And he eventually called his doctor. And the doctor said, you got to give the drug four to six weeks to kick in.

[00:02:43] And so every night the next week, Woody came home and he'd be like, what do you think about hypnosis? I'm going to beat this feeling in my head. What do you think about acupuncture? I'm going to beat this feeling in my head. Because he was a guy that was trying to figure out what's going on with his head, this outside his body.

[00:03:01] So it was my busy time this season, and I was out of town again, and it was August 5th. I left. And I had talked to Woody that night, and he seemed a little different. I was like, is everything all right? And he's like, yeah, I love you. That was the last word I ever heard from him.

[00:03:22] And the next morning I woke up and I had a really fun story I wanted to tell him, a dream. And I called him. No answer. Called him. No answer. Called him. No answer. Sent him an email because this is before text. And it wasn't until I called our home voicemail answering machine and the partners that Woody was in business with had left a message saying, Woody, where are you? We have a huge meeting tomorrow at Target.

[00:03:48] And at that moment, I was like, something's not right. So I called my parents and I'm like, could you guys do me a favor and just go check on my house? Because I think Woody might have fallen and maybe hit his head or something. And my dad went over there, and I'm still shooting, and I get a call, and it's my dad, and he's like, it's bad. It's bad.

[00:04:10] I'm like, what do you mean it's bad? And they're like, he's dead. I'm like, what? And so I walk out into the back lot and I'm like, what do you mean he's dead? And I'm like, how do you know he's dead? There's no way he's dead. What do you mean? He goes, he's hanging. I go, hanging? What?

[00:04:25] And in that second, my life, the life that I knew literally just fell apart. Standing out there in the studio, going, what just happened? Hit me almost like a shock. And I went back into the studio and I'm like, can somebody bring me back to the hotel? I have a family emergency.

[00:04:54] I couldn't even tell anybody. I didn't even know what to say. Like in that second, my whole life that I had known and planned and dreamed fell apart. And so I went back to the hotel and the coroner called and asked if Woody was taking any medication. And the only medication Woody was taking was Zoloft.

[00:05:19] And I go, I think there's a drug upstairs and she goes, oh, there's a bottle sitting under a light on the kitchen counter, Zoloft. And I go, yeah, that's it. And she goes, we're going to take it with us. It might have something to do with his death. Clue number one. Also, that same day that Woody died, the front page of our newspaper had an article that said the UK finds the link between antidepressants and suicide in teens. Both of those things, the same day.

[00:05:53] And as I'm trying to get back from Detroit, I remember thinking, we never questioned the drug when that whole head outside the body was happening. Because it was given to him by his doctor and it was advertised, sold as safe and effective, FDA-approved. Never questioned. We trusted.

[00:06:19] But yet, something in the deepest, deepest, deepest, deepest part of me, in my soul, knew that there's no way that this is what happened. There's something to do with the drug. There's no way Woody, who loved life, would take his own life. Literally, it just became like, I got to figure it out.

[00:06:40] What happened? There's no way. We just booked our trip. We booked our 10-year anniversary trip. We had to do in vitro. So we're trying to figure out how to do that. There's no way. And that's really where my whole accidental advocacy journey started.

[00:07:01] And it started as something that made no sense. I didn't choose to go do this, but what it became and what I'm still doing 20 years later to make sure-- I had to go figure out, like, what? There are no warnings on these drugs? And so that became our mission for Woody, because Woody would always say, I will never judge my life based on how much money I make.

[00:07:27] It'll be based on my family, my friends, and leaving the world a better place. So I felt like it was my love for him. And also, that is not the legacy he was going to-- there was nothing in the way he died that made sense of the person who he was. And so my brother-in-law that night, my sister's husband Googled Zoloft and suicide, and we were shocked at what was out there.

[00:08:03] The FDA held hearings in 1991 when it was just Prozac on the market, and it was about the emergence of violence and suicide when it was Prozac, and there were all these families that were coming talking about their loved ones' suicides as well as shootings of their loved ones and behaviors changing.

[00:08:25] And so, really, we're like, oh my God, my brother-in-law is like, this is our mission. Obviously, he didn't come to me right away, but he spent weeks, those first couple of weeks reading everything he could so that he could come to me and say, I think I know what happened to Woody. Because I was just trying to figure out just happened? Like, who am I?

[00:08:51] I don't even know who I am anymore. I'm not a wife anymore. I'm not going to be a mom. All the things that I thought I was, I had to go back and do, I was just sitting there an empty soul, empty vessel at that point. And then I remember, it was right after Wood's funeral, and my advertising agency was amazing. They made life-size posters of Woody for the service, and they were all lined up in my basement, and I sat on the floor, and I was bawling.

[00:09:32] Heartache's real. It is a pain that you just want to scratch, and I wanted to scratch it out. I had marks on it. But I remember crying and praying and I'm like God take my pain and use it. It does me no good. Because I just wanted this to go away. It hurt. And I just kept praying that over and over and over and over, but little did I know what eventually that meant. It started with like, take this, and here I am. I will do what I need to do. And then that's about that time that Eric came to me and said, I think I figured out what happened to Woody.

[00:10:20] Luke: Oh my God, I feel like I need to take a few deep breaths. That is so, whew, hardcore. I cannot imagine that experience.

[00:10:36] Kim: Uh-uh.

[00:10:36] Luke: Honestly. And I'm someone who, I'm sure I'll have my day, but I have not had a lot of experience of death that immediate. And when I meet people like you, honestly, it's like, how do you even persevere through that? Let alone into the advocacy, but just your own personal healing of the shock and the grief. It's literally hard for me to fathom. So even 20 years later, sitting here now with you, my heart goes out to you.

[00:11:10] Kim: Thanks. Because I do a lot of advocacy, I tell this story a lot. And I remember when I first started. Somehow I believe that the way I was wired and maybe it's the way I was raised as a kid and held everything in. This is why all of the stuff that I've had to do my own personal work since then, not related, although the advocacy helped with some of the healing, but not some of the deep like stuff that's stuck in your body.

[00:11:43] I had a gift to be able to turn off my emotion of being and to tell that story. And I think I was given that so I could go and do something with it. But when I would go home, that is when I fell apart. When I walked in that house and I'm like, this isn't even-- I kept everything. I didn't want anything to leave, because we didn't have kids. So it was almost like, was he even real?

[00:12:19] So you're like, oh, good. There's clothes. Okay, you were real. But literally, you don't take anything with you. And Woody always said, but it's funny who he was, and so he's now one of my greatest teachers. And I know for a fact, and I'll tell you that story in a second, he's still working on the other side. We came to this world, I almost have come to now say, but if you would have told me that back then, no way.

[00:12:48] I think we were meant to do this because it almost had to be somebody like Woody who didn't have a history of depression. He just started his dream job. He went from not being able to sleep, head outside the body, and hanging in five weeks. And so I feel like that was a huge part of my healing. But when I think about who he was, it made no sense. And also, what was left, you start looking at all the things that you put into what you think life is, and then it's ripped.

[00:13:27] And that's really what it felt like. It was just ripped. The carpet just, Nope, not that world anymore. You're over here now. It's like, huh? And so I remember that night coming home and my sister had a friend whose husband died the same way, 10 years earlier, and my house was full of my friends.

[00:13:50] Everybody coming over to my house. My house was like, literally, and I'm just sitting there going-- it just was a zone. But somebody said, this girl, my sister's friend's friend or whatever, had a husband, and I go, I want to talk to her. And I remember that night when I got back, I go, I want to talk to her. I need hope. I need to ask her, will I laugh again? Will I love again?

[00:14:20] I need something like to hold on. Because your friends, it's not a breakup. And I was 37 years old, so it was like I was young, and it didn't fit into like my lifestyle of working in advertising. I was working with a top company in the world. It didn't fit into any of what just happened to my life. And so, yeah, I almost had to learn how to had start all over.

[00:14:55] Luke: What were some of the initial tools that you applied other than support from friends and family? Was there therapy involved? Were any books helpful or any spiritual practices? I think when you're dealing with any kind of trauma or loss, obviously, we don't want to feel the feelings that you described.

[00:15:22] And so oftentimes there's like escapism and numbing and you're just, it's just too much. It is too overwhelming when your reality is upended in that way. And for some of us, I think there's a period of negating, and you just can't face it. And then as we start to come into the reality of it, we start looking for tools of ways in which we can work through those feelings.

[00:15:44] What was your initial and subsequent journey like outside of the advocacy work and stuff? Which we'll get into, but I'm just so curious. I think it's helpful to a lot of people listening who have experienced that kind of loss or trauma. It's like, how do you even start to come out of that dark place so you don't end up where the person you lost was? How do you keep your head from not feeling like it's out of your body and ending up needing some kind of way out in that regard?

[00:16:15] Kim: It's so funny when you said friends. I remember a friend of mine, she lost her husband six months earlier, suddenly, and she comes over. And before Woody died, I remember saying, I don't know if I could ever handle that. And now, fast forward, here I am in the same place.

[00:16:34] She walks into my house and hands me a big bottle of Xanax and said, I think you need this. She was like, you're going to need this. I think I've always had that a little bit in my system. I never liked taking pills just because I couldn't swallow them. I had nothing from escaping. So I remember looking at her on that.

[00:16:58] But the funeral home said, oh, you should go to suicide support group. So I went once and I was like trying to tell them what happened, but I saw people around that were there 10, 15 years later. And I just saw flashes that were coming to me. I'm like, oh my God, this cannot be me either.

[00:17:17] And then I told them what happened and they patted me on the head like, oh, we never saw it coming to. And I was like, I was so mad. And then I come home and I go, I don't think I should go to this support group. And then my friend's like, you don't need to. Why do you think you need to? I'm like, oh, I'm not supposed to?

[00:17:36] Then I had to unwind all my thinking that you just do what you're supposed to do. Then somebody goes, you might want to go to this grief group at church. So faith was a huge part of my start of the practice, knowing that there must be a reason or just something to hold on to.

[00:18:00] I think I was just looking onto something. And I grew up going to church and stuff like that, but I never knew that God's within. That whole idea of relationships just felt like a church building. But I have to say that was super helpful because there were things-- again, I needed hope and just something that made me feel peace.

[00:18:21] I always wanted to go to therapy. I thought I wanted to go to therapy. All my friends were going to therapy when I used to live in Chicago, and I go, I bet I need some therapy. That's what I used to always say. And then I was like, oh, now I have the excuse to go to therapy.

[00:18:42] So I had somebody who stayed with me and we went and interviewed four therapists because I could immediately tell if I was going to click, and I found somebody, and that was helpful for a long time. And I also started yoga, and I had never done any of that. I was a runner, and the yoga made me really still.

[00:19:10] So that was helpful. But I think the thing that I had to, at this point, that initial point, was really probably my therapist and friends. And also, I remember going to the doctor, my GP who I've had forever. She goes, do you think you need something? And I go, my husband just died. Aren't I supposed to hurt?

[00:19:41] She goes, well, you don't need to. And I was like, I think I do need to. And that was one of the videos from the grief group church that it was a really bad from a production. It was really hard for me to still not be in my snotty advertising production world.

[00:20:00] But I saw it was this video of a train going through a mountain. And it talked about the concept of grief, of you can't go around it. You can't go underneath it. You're going to have to go through that dark tunnel, and it is black and black and black, and you never think you're going to get through it.

[00:20:25] But at some point there will be a pinhole of light. And then that light will get a little bigger and a little bigger and a little bigger and then you're through it. Grief is a part of you. You learn. It's a dance. You have some things that trigger it, but it's like, do you have the tools?

[00:20:49] And then I'll have one other thing that will relate to my advocacy, which I do think there's a lot of research out there that people who throw themselves in like, mothers against drunk driving. The Jacob Wetterling foundation that started after her son was murdered by a homeless person.

[00:21:13] I think there's like healing that comes to make sense when some tragedy happens. So the advocacy was definitely a piece. So when I met Wood, he always said, Kim, do not throw me in the ground, in a box. I want to be cremated on the middle of Lake Michigan. He always said that from when we were babies. I mean not babies, 20s. So I honored him. We had him cremated, and we were throwing the ashes out in the middle of Lake Michigan, which is where we used to live in Chicago.

[00:21:56] And we're in the middle-- and my brother-in-law by this time had just came to me and said, I think what I know what happened. And we're getting ready to go on a very daunting task going out. And especially suicide, like, yeah, sure, a drug killed you. It was really hard and challenged everything about me, but it was the two of us standing on the middle of on the boat the Chicago search and rescue boat. Woody's brother was a cop, so he arranged it.

[00:22:25] So we're in the middle of Lake Michigan, we're getting close to Oak Street Beach, and I'm holding this box of Woody and all of a sudden we look down and I'm like, this is what life is, in this box? And then all of a sudden right there in the middle of the lake, literally two feet in front of us, there's this red book floating like this, floating. And I go, does that say what I think it is? And he goes, yeah. In gold letters it said, The Holy Bible.

[00:22:59] Luke: No way.

[00:23:00] Kim: Oh yeah. And if it was just me who saw it, people would be like, oh my God, she's making up stuff. It was the two of us. And he was my partner who would never have done any-- and he was so afraid of taking me on this mission because who knew where it was going to go or lead, but he was listening to something, and he had his own backstory of something that happened to him in college that he felt like he was saved for this moment.

[00:23:32] So for the two of us to see this, at that moment, I was like, oh, wait, this is so much bigger. It meant so many levels deep of what that meant. Like I'm good. Don't worry about me. But this is way bigger, and you got to trust. And going over that Lake Michigan, it's like an ocean, and to see that it was literally right there.

[00:24:06] And it was the Chicago search and rescue cop guy. We dropped it off and I go, hey, can I ask you a question? Have you ever picked a Bible or a book out of the water? He goes, in classic Chicago cop, ma'am, I've been doing this for 25 years. I've never picked up a Bible because books don't float. You idiot.

[00:24:27] Because they don't. They waterlog, and they sink. So to me, that has been something that I've had to-- and that happened only four months after Wood died or three months after, but that is something that was a really huge thing. I had to lean on as part of my own, not in the advocacy part, but also me that I'm going to be okay.

[00:24:57] And every time I'd fly out to DC, and we went there-- I've been there so many times, but I would look down at the lake, and I was like, I cannot believe that there was a red book, Holy Bible that floated right by me. How does that happen? I'm like, there's another world that I don't understand.

[00:25:24] Luke: Incredible. I think the faith piece is maybe not for some, but I'm sure for others, very relatable because it's like when you're in the human experience and this reality includes loss and suffering, I honestly, whether it's the death of a loved one or any other hardship, I don't know how anyone deals with it without some level of faith that gives us an understanding that there's more to the picture than we can ever realize, that there's a higher purpose.

[00:25:57] And that, I think to some people sounds like rationality or making excuses for things that are difficult in the human experience. It's like, oh yeah, God has a plan. It sounds like kind of a cop out. But what else is there at that point? And I know things that I've gone through in my life, going through them, challenging times, it's like if someone were to say that to me, like, oh, Luke, later you'll see that this is part of God's plan for your life, it's like I would want to punch them in the face.

[00:26:31] And then you keep your heart open as best you can and your mind open and then some time passes and you start to put together the puzzle pieces retroactively, like your Bible story, and you start to go, ooh, well, the chances of this event or this person or this thought or feeling being connected, the odds are against that that's just an accident.

[00:26:50] And so it's like, I don't know. If we're forced to find some sort of rationalization, so be it. Even if it's just that. If it helps, it's almost like spiritual placebo or something. It's like, well, I don't really care how I'm contextualizing this in order to get through it and to be able to survive the pain or the loss or whatever it is. Who cares?

[00:27:14] But I don't believe that that's the case. I think that there is so much mystery in our life experience that just can't be explained. And that's one of the difficult things about being a human, is that you just have to rely on faith in the unseen realms, that there's something going on that is not tangible.

[00:27:38] It's not understandable. It's non linear. It's non physical. It's not rational. You can't explain it. You can't understand it. You can't even speak to it. You just have to lean in and surrender to that. And looking at the work you've done, which we're about to talk about over the past 20 years, it seems obvious to me, as someone looking at you and your life and your work objectively, that, yeah, the loss and Woody's leaving the planet at that time was for a purpose.

[00:28:10] As much as it sucks and as painful as it is, it's like, well, how else are you going to contextualize that in a way that doesn't make life seem hopeless and futile? It's like, there has to be some meaning that we can extract and apply to our lives. Otherwise it's like, how could any of us be here? You just look at the world right now or anytime in history, really, depending on the lens from which you're looking at it, the human experience is so rich with suffering and loss and death and pain.

[00:28:42] Luke: But equal parts beauty and love and success and all the other things too. So it's like if we want the moments of ecstasy, we have to be willing to accept the duality of those moments of abject, suffering, and despair. It's like, you don't get out of this game without experiencing both sides of that polarity.

[00:29:03] Kim: Right. And I think that is, to your point, if somebody would have said to me, oh, there's a purpose, God. You'll see it. There's a time and a place, and I think it's not even my place to ever say or believe our journey is to come to almost that place and make peace with everything.

[00:29:27] Because where did we ever believe that this world is supposed to be suffer free? And yet, when I look back at other times of my life and well before I even did anything with my advocacy, I had started this program called Free Arts, and it was working with abused, neglected, at risk children using the power of arts, and mentors, and giving them a voice.

[00:29:55] And that was my real passion. And I still do. I love the art and the creative because I think we all come in this world as creative beings and perfect beings. And I think when you go to the faith part, what do they say what faith is? It's like childlike belief. When you go back to being a child because you had no blinders on, you didn't have blinders that you had to like, that doesn't make sense and you try to prove everything. It blind trust.

[00:30:27] Luke: The imagination too.

[00:30:28] Kim: Right. The imagination play.

[00:30:30] Luke: You would never go to a three-year-old who's telling you about their imaginary friend and tell them that they're hallucinating and that it doesn't exist. You know what I mean?

[00:30:39] Kim: Oh, no, there's [Inaudible].

[00:30:39] Luke: Yeah, you humor them and encourage them in their creativity and curiosity.

[00:30:45] Kim: What if that actually is because we just came into the world as pure before all of life happens? So I think a lot about those kids that I had-- these are kids that got removed from the home. That's a lot of trauma. And yet, I remember watching them and the ones that didn't fight it, because you're a kid trying to find, what does this even mean?

[00:31:15] When we keep throwing, I don't know-- I've just had my opinions-- throwing meds at them, throwing meds, and that's what they-- so before I did anything with Woody, we had just worked with the kids and had an amazing session, and this was a group home.

[00:31:29] So they all lived there, eight to 12-year-olds. So it's not normal to live in a dorm. And they had seen some really horrific things in their life. They had been removed. And now living here, the ward of the state. And afterwards, it was 8 o'clock at night and we were down in the art room and the staff said, hey, kids, do you want to show your volunteers where you live?

[00:31:50] And they're like, yeah. We stopped in there, and every one of those kids picked up a cup of meds when we walked into their dorm. And this was in 1998. And I was like, oh. And I'm thinking, oh my God, do they have strep throat? I knew none of this.

[00:32:09] I'm like, oh my God, they have strep throat. Am I going to get strep throat? This is what I'm thinking. And the lady goes, oh, no, that's just their behavior medicine. I'm like, behavior medicine? And then I fast forward and doing all my work and I see that this is what we've done. There's a lot of really sad traumatic things that people have seen.

[00:32:34] I always say, I'm like, I got this one covered. I can handle this. It's when I've heard people who lived in their home and their home burnt down a fire. I'm like, I don't know if I could handle that. That's because my house was my vessel. It felt safe.

[00:32:52] And they were thinking, I don't think I could handle losing my husband because that's the way I was able to survive this. And I thought, no, there is no degree of suffering. It's just suffering, and not one's better than the other. And it is where the greatest growth comes from if you're willing to sit in the pain and the darkness of suffering.

[00:33:22] Luke: It's a tough lesson.

[00:33:24] Kim: It's a really tough--

[00:33:25] Luke: You're trained through the mountain analogy, the famous saying. I'm sure it can be attributed to someone, but the only way out is through. It's one of the toughest things about the human experience, especially dealing with our emotions. Because our nervous systems are wired to pursue pleasure and to avoid pain. It's a survival mechanism. And it's beautiful. Thank God it's like that.

[00:33:49] Otherwise we'd all just be walking off cliffs and not eating food that's not rotten or whatever. You can just kind of play that out in a million ways. You go, oh, thank God we're designed like that. But it's a glitch in the system in a sense because we're wired to avoid that pain and feeling that pain completely and fully and expressing it however it needs to be expressed in a healthy way is the hardest way to deal with it but it's really the only way you'll ever overcome it.

[00:34:20] Otherwise it starts to fester and-- I can't say that word, what's that word? Proliferate? Proliferate, that's the word I'm looking for. It starts to manifest in all these other ways, whether it's addiction or mental illness or you become an oppressor and abuser yourself because it happened to you. All of these sort of reactions to our pain and suffering, if it's not dealt with, in other words, it's going to come out--

[00:34:45] Kim: It's going to come out somewhere.

[00:34:47] Luke: One way or another.

[00:34:47] Kim: What you resist persists. And I'm going to be really honest. Because I didn't want to feel like once I got into the advocacy, I was like, I want a partner. So I've done a lot of my own stuff in the last probably three, four, five years. Five years.

[00:35:07] I got into a relationship because I didn't want to feel. So I realized I was judging like people who wanted the numbing of medications and stuff. Oh, I got in a relationship, so I didn't feel like I could cover that piece that I didn't have to deal with. And for a long time, I was with this person, and eventually, I realized I was not doing myself any service because when that bandaid got ripped off and ended and suddenly and brutally, guess what?

[00:35:42] I had to go back and deal with the pain now, not only of this one, but this one, the Woody, the original trauma, my own personal that got wrapped up with my own self. So this has been a journey through that all started with Woody. So my personal journey has been bigger for me in the last couple of years to find-- because you can do all the stuff and the advocacy, and we helped get black box warnings. We can get into all that. It's great, but if you don't still take care of yourself, and that's really where I've come to realize--

[00:36:33] Luke: Well, thank you for sharing your personal journey through that. Aside from some of the things we're going to talk about related to the advocacy work, I think it's a really important message for people that are experiencing grief of any kind. It's part of what we got to do here, man.

[00:36:53] And none of us are going to escape it. And I love something you said, too, about the subjectivity of pain. I think that's a really valid perspective. Because the way the human mind works is we like to compartmentalize, and we do that through comparison. So it's like, you tell me your story, I'm like, oh my God, how would you ever live through that? I literally can't imagine.

[00:37:20] But I could tell you some things about my life and my childhood. You look at that and go, oh my God, how's this guy sitting here breathing? And it's like, if Jarrod over there grabs a hammer, comes up with equal force and hits each of us in the knee with that hammer-- don't do it, Jarrod. Just an analogy.

[00:37:36] We're each going to have our own personal experience of that pain, and yours is going to be as bad for you as mine is for me. Even if he hits you, maybe a bit lighter, not even equal force, you're going to be in your own level of suffering that I will never understand. I'll be in mine that you won't understand.

[00:37:55] And because mine is objectively maybe a bit worse, it doesn't matter. You're still experiencing that. It's like when you look at the different things we go through as children. It's like outward trauma, say, and then there's neglect. So you think of outward trauma as something that's been committed, versus maybe neglect is something has been omitted.

[00:38:21] There's no hugs. There's no love, etc. And each kid's going to experience their own level of trauma and suffering as a result, even though objectively you would look at maybe the kid that was beat or verbally abused or whatever as having a worse time. But it's like, inside, we each feel the feelings we feel to the degree that we feel them.

[00:38:43] It's a really important thing, I think, for people to understand and a great way for us in terms of mental health to model that it doesn't negate anyone's suffering because it objectively seems not as severe as another.

[00:39:00] Kim: Right. And who's the one that's supposed to judge that? And I think we do want to compare because maybe it's something for our own ability. Like, well, at least I don't have that happening. But no. I actually gave my base story at church and I was like, whether it could be Woody dying, it could be a divorce, it could be you lost your job and it came suddenly, the job you've had for 30 years, that might be your level of suffering, and that might be it equally as bad.

[00:39:38] I don't get to judge that. And I don't think it was ever meant to be compared because I don't know what your childhood was. And like you said, outward inward, we have no idea just because you didn't maybe have something that happened to you as a kid, you didn't use your voice. And that now manifests all these years later.

[00:40:06] Luke: Totally. Let's talk about some of the issues with psychiatric medication. The thing that is immediately just shocking to me is that Woody was prescribed a psychiatric medication for temporary insomnia. Is that something that was common then or something that is common now? Like as you said, the doctor said, oh, this will take the edge off and help you sleep.

[00:40:33] And you have someone who has a good life, a great wife, is not suicidal, is not depressed, doesn't have any major anxiety or anything like that. That just seems totally insane to me that you would risk someone's brain chemistry for something where you could give them some goddamn melatonin or something, or a breathing practice or whatever.

[00:40:56] Kim: Especially now looking back. But back then they were using it. If you look at the television ads that were out there, they were using it for everything, like, social anxiety. And only your doctor can know if you have a chemical imbalance. And so the drug companies were out promoting, and I'm sure they would say, oh, he must be anxious.

[00:41:20] He was waking up at 3:00 AM. So this will take the edge off and help you sleep. And that's a practice. Antidepressants get used for a lot of things. At that time, they were really only approved for, I think, depression, general anxiety, and OCD or something.

[00:41:43] But they were giving it for every-- you could take it two weeks on, two weeks off if you had premenstrual dysphonic disorder. So antidepressants were being handed out like candy, and unfortunately, they still are being handed out like candy, like a daily vitamin.

[00:42:02] And they're just quickly prescribed, like, here, without any information. And it's even harder for me to watch it today because back then, Woody's doctor didn't know what we know today. He didn't know what was going on. We didn't have black box warnings. We didn't have any of those things on antidepressants.

[00:42:28] And so now that antidepressants have black box warnings, and we had to fight like crazy to get them in 2004 for kids and 2006 for young adults, but to this day, there still is no warning. So Woody would still not have a warning.

[00:42:45] Luke: Wow, that's insane.

[00:42:47] Kim: It's insane. In addition to helping get the black box warnings on, I had a big lawsuit against Pfizer. And let me tell you, that's not a fun process going through, especially with Pfizer.

[00:43:04] Luke: How did you fund that lawsuit? I can only imagine with the amount of resources they have, their legal team has to just be like a den of wolves. I'm just imagining the litigation process there. It was like, how do you even go up against a beast like that?

[00:43:18] Kim: I'll tell you, this is when I get my fighting spirit with it. At that point, there were a bunch of lawsuits. Do you remember Phil Hartman who was on Saturday Night Live? His wife murdered him and then killed herself. That family had a lawsuit against Pfizer, and my lawyers represented him, and that was all secretly settled. My law firm--

[00:43:43] Luke: Did they have to sign an NDA because they won or something like that?

[00:43:47] Kim: I'm thinking they did. So again, we're talking about how magic happens and connections when you're supposed to. One of the books that my brother in law was reading right after Woody died was this book by David Healy, and he said, you need to talk to this law firm in LA.

[00:44:06] We called them up. Eric told him about the head outside the body, and they're like, oh, we'd love to meet you. So we flew out there and we interviewed, and I remember saying, if I'm doing a lawsuit, I'm never going to be quiet. I will never settle. I will never not tell my story.

[00:44:22] And so we signed. We started working with them, and at that point it was one of those with-- the lawsuits today with a lot of what's happening with drug safety are very different than back then. They signed on its contingency, so this law firm had already been in the files of Pfizer. And they had binders worth of documents, including one head outside the body.

[00:44:49] Luke: Whoa.

[00:44:51] Kim: Oh yeah. So once you start seeing the documents, and that became one of my main goals of the lawsuit, is we were able to get documents out from under seal that showed that Pfizer, the FDA, they've all known about it.

[00:45:06] Luke: That's the beauty of discovery, right?

[00:45:07] Kim: It is why they try to do everything they can so you can't discover it. Yeah.

[00:45:14] Luke: Just that head outside the body thing, every time you say that, for some reason, I find that so striking. I think I've probably had that feeling a couple of times, maybe not to that degree, but I don't know. There's something about that particular statement that's just chilling to me.

[00:45:29] I'm sure people listening, a few can relate to that feeling when you're just losing your shit to the point where the whole world just turns upside down and you're like inside a clothes dryer, just spinning around and nothing makes any sense. It's like a disembodied feeling.

[00:45:47] Kim: They call it a disassociation. And you can get there with other states and stuff like that.

[00:45:54] Luke: You can get there in a good way?

[00:45:55] Kim: In a good way. I going to say in a good way.

[00:45:58] Luke: Meditation, certain plant medicines.

[00:45:59] Kim: Yes, exactly.

[00:46:01] Luke: You can use it in a productive way, but if you're not doing it with some intentionality and you don't know it's going to happen and you don't have any support there, it's like if Woody's-- I don't know, if his psychiatrist had been present and able to hold his hand through that process and said, hey, you're here. You're okay. I'm here. Give me a hug. It's going to pass.

[00:46:24] Kim: We had no idea.

[00:46:25] Luke: If you're expecting it, then I don't know. It seems like it would be easier to deal with. But if that just hits you out of the blue, it's like, how do you even talk yourself down off that ledge, because everything just starts to go fuzzy and crazy, and obviously the result in this particular case was someone's demise.

[00:46:43] Kim: Yeah. And so when he said that, the head outside the body, this document that-- and I have it, I love it. I use it all the time. Because it was the South African FDA equivalent writing to chief medical officer of Pfizer saying that they have doctors who are reporting patients on 50 milligrams, which is what Woody was on, which apparently is a pretty low dose. People who are on them tell me.

[00:47:11] And they were saying that the patients were reporting standing outside their heads looking in. And Pfizer writes back to them, oh, it happens on all SSRIs. We don't know why. I'm like, why didn't you tell the doctors? And then there's another document that we got out from under seal that showed-- so in the US, most people don't realize that you only need two clinical trials. The gold standard, two clinical trials, double blind and placebo-controlled. Well, Pfizer did a bunch of studies for Zoloft to actually get the two that were marginal to send to the FDA to get approval. The other ones--

[00:47:51] Luke: Oh. And they just shelved the other ones?

[00:47:51] Kim: Yes. And so this came out of litigation. So in the UK, you have to have all, you had to present all your clinical trials to get approval. Well, they had a document that they presented for, it might've been the Irish Medicine Board. And it talked about looking at the levels of suicidality, one to 30 days, 50 milligrams, 31 to 40 years old. When they looked at all their clinical trials, all three of them were Woody. And so when I saw--

[00:48:27] Luke: Perfect storm kind of situation.

[00:48:27] Kim: It is a perfect storm. And my lawsuit was a wrongful death, failure to warn. And the side effect that they kept from the doctors is called akathisia, and that's the head outside the body. You're constantly moving. You feel like something's itching, like your skin is crawling. Those are some of the ways people discuss it.

[00:48:53] And there was an article that was in the medical journal that Pfizer chief medical officer, same guy, wrote talking about if a person experiences akathisia, "death may be a welcome result." So that article was public, but what wasn't public was the memo that he sent to the sales staff, said, the attached journal article is not suitable for general practitioners, only neurologically inclined psychiatrists. And they did that intentionally because they know that the bulk of their business comes from GPs and non psychiatrists. So they kept all of this.

[00:49:43] Luke: My question here, and you can't answer this, I don't think, is how do these people sleep at night? Given, it's a pyramidal structure, and there's compartmentalization. Anytime you have a nefarious organization, corporation, government, etc., it's like, at the lower levels, you have GPs, you have well-meaning, loving, kind psychiatrists that got into psychiatry because they really want to help people. And they care about their fellow humans.

[00:50:13] So I'm not demonizing all of medicine or every pharmaceutical executive, but at a certain level of the pyramid, someone's seeing those documents and they're going like, eh, we're going to make some money. Let's just push that to the side. That is psychotic in and of itself.

[00:50:29] How do you see that and then you're like, eh, I'm going to make some money. I don't care how many people kill themselves or go on a shooting spree or whatever. To me, I don't know, maybe I'm naive. I just think that level of evil, it's hard to fathom how a human being can just go about their lives behaving that way, making those kinds of decisions that have such dire consequences and repercussions for generations.

[00:51:01] The kind of pain and grief you've dealt with, and I'm sure all of Woody's other relatives and friends, it's like you have this nucleus of a family and then there's a reverberation of suffering that just goes out probably infinitely, and someone made a decision, or a group of people made decisions that allowed that to happen or were the direct causality of that. It's unfathomable that people can be that callous and unfeeling and selfish. It's crazy to me.

[00:51:31] Kim: I think there are people who think, it's my job. There are people thinking they're doing the right thing. Then there's also the fact of, they don't see you as the number as you, a person. It's a data point, and they're like, oh, there'll be a certain percent, like percent.

[00:51:57] So it's acceptable collateral damage or cost of doing business. But if you start looking at those actuaries that do all their analysis, we know that there's going to be this many, numbers, numbers, not a Luke or a Woody or a Kim.

[00:52:15] Luke: Not this many moms, or sons, or nephews.

[00:52:19] Kim: And it's one of my things. Every one of those numbers are somebody's love in their life, mom, husband, daughter, kid, how many families I've met during this time who had little kids that took their life.

[00:52:37] And so when I go back and look at those documents, there was another one-- the Pfizer executives deciding the FDA wanted information on a withdrawal. Withdrawals are a huge problem with antidepressants. Do we want to give them the simple, straightforward report, or do we want to give them the complicated, confusing one?

[00:52:56] We don't. And so they decided to give the complicated, confusing one because they didn't want to have the FDA make up their minds on something. So they control every aspect. And these documents tell a story. And so once I saw those, I'm like, we need to get these out.

[00:53:15] And I have advocate lawyers that are amazing. Michael Baum worked with RFK on the Roundup. And so those are the type of lawyers where they go in. They know how the system works. They get the documents. Because those documents belong to the public. And so when you see them, that became-- when I saw that in black and white, their letterhead, head outside the body, 31 to 40 years old, 50 milligrams, I'm like, we need these.

[00:53:45] And I marched those out to DC everywhere I would go. We would bring binders worth. And so my lawyers were eventually able to get those out of declassified so that we could use them in our advocacy efforts.

[00:54:02] Luke: Wow. I know that no amount of money makes up for that kind of loss, but in your settlement, did you receive enough money where you could live comfortably so that you could do your advocacy work and not have to grind on your advertising career? I'm always curious about that when there's a wrongful suit or something.

[00:54:21] Kim: No. You know what?

[00:54:22] Luke: Can you at least never worry about money for the rest of your life kind of thing?

[00:54:25] Kim: No. And you know what? Ultimately, I think I ended up resolving the case. The case got resolved. And that's because Pfizer had tried so hard-- I wanted to go to court. I wanted them to be guilty. For Woody, this is the thing that I wanted more than anything. I wanted his death certificate to be changed to Zoloft-induced suicide. Instead now it says hanging. That's what I wanted. That's what I wanted for him. Now, for me, I'll keep doing my work, my story. I will never-- so it's very interesting learning about litigation.

[00:55:11] So when they had me in deposition, they didn't actually care. The first half the time, because I was under oath, they wanted to know who knew what out in DC. And finally I said to him, I go, can I ask you a question? They're like, no, we're asking the question. I go, I don't know what any of this has to do with my husband being dead. You're not even asking me anything about Woody.

[00:55:35] Kim: You want to know how did Senator Grassley get involved? They wanted to use it so that they could-- they knew I was super out there and active. And so they wanted to know, use it for intel gathering.

[00:55:53] Luke: Have you ever been concerned for your own safety in the work that you do, going up against such a Goliath of power and corruption?

[00:55:57] Kim: You know what? I probably should.

[00:56:00] Luke: Maybe I should be too, having people like you on the podcast.

[00:56:04] Kim: No, maybe I should. But you know what? It's probably a little naive when I'm like, let's take them on, not knowing any of that whole thing. But I have believed I have been surrounded by light, and if I die, I die, if this is what my purpose was. But I didn't do anything wrong.

[00:56:29] Go through anything I've ever done from FDA. I got invited to testify in front of the US Senate. My story's never changed because I've spoke the truth. And what I am saying, this is the same thing today as it was tomorrow, as it was yesterday.

[00:56:52] They on the other hand have to keep dotting their i's. They have to think, oh God, what did I say? Did I cross the T? They have to always think about what they said. And I believe if I'm doing a bigger mission for humanity and helping people, that I'm fine. So if all of a sudden you hear that I died, took my life, I didn't. I always say I didn't.

[00:57:20] Luke: I know when people break conspiracies and independent media, they'll often say like, just so you know, I'm happy. I am not suicidal. And here's the story.

[00:57:29] Kim: Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I'm fine.

[00:57:30] Luke: Oh man, but that's beautiful. I think that there is something to be said for living by principle. What you're seeking, what I hear is justice, which is a very noble cause to seek justice, not revenge. Revenge is different. Revenge has hatred, anger. You've suffered, so therefore you want the other to suffer. You're just like truth, justice, transparency, and advocacy for--

[00:57:57] Kim: Accountability.

[00:57:58] Luke: Yeah, accountability and advocacy for change to avoid this happening to other people. It's pretty damn noble. So I would agree you would be protected by some sort of divine light, one would hope. Back to the addictive nature of these medications, and I'm sure they all have their own unique profiles because they're unique concoctions, I can speak with some degree of experience back in, I guess it was like the late '90s, I had been an addict and an alcoholic for decades and I got sober and was struggling a lot with mental health issues and whatnot.

[00:58:40] And so I did what anyone would do. I went to a psychiatrist. Within 15 minutes, they sent me out the door with a sample pack of this antidepressant called Effexor, I think it was called.

[00:58:51] Kim: Mm-hmm.

[00:58:53] Luke: He interviewed me basically and was like, do you have racing thoughts? Are you sometimes sad, just stuff that like any kid that just got off of the drugs and alcohol that I was withdrawing from would have had those symptoms. And I came later to understand that just as the, I don't know, there wasn't even a diagnosis for it, but I would call it untreated alcoholism or untreated drug addiction.

[00:59:19] You're in pain, so you self medicate. That works for a while, then it starts causing more pain, and if you're lucky, you get out of that alive. And so you take the solution that you were applying to the pain away, which is the addiction and those substances, and then you're left with the underlying pain, and it starts to fester and rise to the surface, as we discussed earlier.

[00:59:38] There's no getting away from that pain, whether it was childhood trauma, a divorce, losing your job, a death, an injury, whatever. So looking back, I go, I'm a 26, 27-year-old kid walking into-- and I went to like the fancy Century City high rise, top of the line shrink, $375 an hour or something in the '90s.

[00:59:56] And so I'm like, okay, I'm in good hands. Ask me a few questions, sends me out the sample packs. And I'm like, oh, finally. Because the way he sold it to me, and I'm sure it was well intentioned, but he's also incentivized to sell drugs. He's a drug salesman. And I didn't know that at the time. And he named all my symptoms.

[01:00:15] He said, take these pills, and it's going to go away. I'm like, hell yes, sign me up. I probably took it in the elevator on the way down. So I didn't go nuts walking out of there. Long story short, I don't know how long this lasted. It was probably a few months. I was completely insane on that medication. I don't know that I had suicidal thoughts, but I was super manic.

[01:00:38] Kim: Yeah.

[01:00:39] Luke: It made me much worse. And it acted on me like amphetamine. I was just super obsessive and just crazy, doing all kinds of weird home projects where I just would refinish furniture. I was like a tweaker basically. I was tweaking on it, and I knew it wasn't good. But the longer I was on it, the harder it was to stop.

[01:01:04] And I remember calling their office and I would be trying to stop but I would start going so nuts that I would cave. And it was just like when I would call my dealer before and I'd start to go through with heroin withdrawals or something.

[01:01:17] I was like, oh, don't hit the pager, back in the day. You paged your dealer. I was like, don't page him, don't page him. I'm like, I got to do it. I just can't take this pain. And I was like, what the hell, man? I worked so hard to get sober and here I am now. My dealer is in a high rise in Century City.

[01:01:33] And I would call them and he would like leave samples down by the mailbox at this high rise. And I'd go over there at midnight and get my pills. And I'm like, this isn't right. I'm supposed to be getting well, not sicker.

[01:01:48] Kim: Right.

[01:01:49] Luke: And yeah, when I would try to stop, it would get very dark. And I think eventually I was able to just kind of wean off and just take a lower and lower dose. Thank God I got out of that. But I can say from my own personal experience, I was 100% addicted to that medication and would go through very extreme--

[01:02:11] Kim: Did he ever try to put-- so a lot of times what happens, even if you were manic, they're like, oh, it's your disease getting worse, and so they would layer something else on it.

[01:02:21] Luke: God, no. Thank God.

[01:02:23] Kim: So that's one I hear all the time. That's why I was curious if--

[01:02:27] Luke: I can’t imagine having a cascade of neurochemistry going crazy like that.

[01:02:32] Kim: That is very common.

[01:02:34] Luke: I bet.

[01:02:36] Kim: It's really common. So I'm glad you were able to get off, but withdrawal is a huge problem. And there are now businesses and practices out there of helping people get off of their psych meds because now you have gone through-- and I was just talking to somebody who went through treatment and they were shocked that the treatments, they were trying to put them back on these meds that were legal drugs during the treatment.

[01:03:04] And so now there's this whole movement, and I don't really follow the treatment movement so much, but because people are addicted to the psych meds and many times they'll be on multiple, I just heard one, two antidepressants and anxieties drug, trazodone, and a sleep med.

[01:03:27] And so there are businesses, now practices, that are doing nothing but helping people wean off of them because people's bodies-- there were big litigation back when our litigation was going on with people trying to get off of these medications.

[01:03:45] Luke: Yeah, it's crazy just the tragic irony of the addiction model and the recovery model of people trying to get off of their chemical dependencies and then being thrown into, in some cases, even worse dependencies. There's, of course, side effects if you're abusing alcohol, cocaine, crystal meth, heroin.

[01:04:06] It's not going to go well for you. But there's also records of heroin addicts that were heroin addicts for 20 years and doing okay. You know what I mean? It's probably not a great life, but you get your maintenance dose and you're not going to lose your mind if you're on heroin. You're just probably going to lay around the house a lot.

[01:04:25] Maybe break into some cars when you need to get dope. But when you're talking about some of these dangerous psych meds and then combining them, you talk about like clinical studies. If there's clinical studies on one drug and it's problematic and then that information is suppressed, as you described, that's bad.

[01:04:44] But there's no, I don't think, probably exceedingly few, if any, clinical studies, oh, what happens if we do a Zoloft and an Effexor? And then we throw in some Xanax and some Ambien.

[01:04:55] Kim: You're the test. You as the individual are the test. Well, that's what I found shocking. So now, if I sit on that-- remember when I was saying in 1991 that they did not do their job when it was just Prozac? All of those members of that FDA advisory committee took money from pharma. Now, ironically, I sit on that same committee as the consumer representative. So I'm seeing all of how drugs come to market and the clinical trials and all that.

[01:05:26] I was shocked when I was like, wait, the way they do trials, it's in the most ideal situation. You're going to have somebody monitoring you. It's for short six weeks, just enough to get the data, to get it go through my committee and then go to the FDA for approval.

[01:05:45] But that's not real world. And so that's the other thing that I think is really important for people to understand, that just because something's been FDA approved, it doesn't necessarily represent what's happening in real world prescribing, like what you just explained, this, this, this, and this. That doesn't happen.

[01:06:06] Luke: Also, if you think about it logically, clinical trials are extremely expensive and difficult to fund. You're talking about millions and millions of dollars to get something approved. So if you have a pharmaceutical corporation A and pharmaceutical corporation B and then C and D that have their own board of directors and their own investors, and they're making competitive drugs, of course, there's not going to be crossover in their clinical trials.

[01:06:36] You know what I mean? It's like, if I own Chevy and we're doing safety tests, I'm not going to bring in a Ford and a Volkswagen and like, let's see what happens when we mash them all together in a wreck. It's not fiscally sound and illogical to do so. But when the trickle down ends up with the unknowing, unwitting consumer, that's a huge problem. Neurochemistry is so sensitive. I know this. There's certain days I take a bunch of supplements and nootropics and stuff. I'm like, bad combo today.

[01:07:10] Kim: Yeah. And you can feel it, right?

[01:07:10] Luke: Yeah. I'm just off. It happens more than I would like to admit because I'm a tinkerer. But I'm not tinkering with things that are going to make me want to jump off a bridge or go shoot someone. I'm just like, oh, I feel a little off today. Maybe I'm not my best self. But when you're talking about mixing things like that, and there is no research going into what happens to the human brain and the delicate nature of our hormones and neurotransmitters and you're just hitting it with a wave of all these different medications, that is a train wreck.

[01:07:41] Kim: It is a train-- and the way they're advertised and sold, just safe and effective, safe and effective, safe and effective.

[01:07:51] Luke: Very popular term these days.

[01:07:52] Kim: It's a very popular term. That's why I could see right through it when it did come. But everything's safe and effective. I'm like, that is an empty marketing slogan if I've ever heard one. You think about the system that we've lived in, and it's a system. We've been taught to just trust, blindly trust. And everybody's blindly trusting.

[01:08:19] We're blindly trusting the doctors. The doctors are blindly trusting the FDA, the whole thing. We're just trusting and nobody's questioning. So anyways, I always say to really think twice about and research these medications. And again, it's about accountability. It's about information. It's about transparency, and it's a business. I always say we should actually say buyer beware.

[01:08:54] Luke: Look at a pack of cigarettes.

[01:08:56] Kim: Buyer beware.

[01:08:57] Luke: Packs of cigarettes, I don't think they even used to have warnings back in the day, and then when they did, they were a little soft.

[01:09:03] Kim: Yeah, they're half the pack or something.

[01:09:05] Luke: Yeah. I haven't bought a pack of cigarettes in a while, but I'll be in a gas station and go, this will kill you. And I go, Hey, good job.

[01:09:11] Kim: Yeah. Totally. You're being honest, finally.

[01:09:12] Luke: Yeah, informed consent. I go, well, I really like cigarettes, so I'm willing to take the hit, or take the risk. But yeah, that's obviously very problematic. What about the interactions with alcohol, for example? It can't be a great idea to be on Prozac or Zoloft and then have a drinking problem or go out on a bender.

[01:09:32] Have you seen any evidence to support the dangers of not only mixing different pharmaceuticals together, but when you mix them with just recreational drugs or alcohol and things like that?

[01:09:43] Kim: Well, you think about it, all of those are different type of chemical, what they're doing. One's increasing this, the other one's suppressing this. It's a cocktail that's stew in your brain, is what I call it. And some people, I have not seen particular studies per se. I hear a lot of anecdotal of people that are out there doing research or looking at that.

[01:10:09] But it is a problem because we're mixing too many chemicals. And we're the guinea pigs. We're the guinea pigs. We are a chemical lab, and we're allowing that. Because the warnings actually say it could cause with alcohol, but if you're going to go get on some of these meds, do they actually tell you not to drink your alcohol? Probably not. They don't even give you the informed consent.

[01:10:41] Luke: Right. And to be fair, many of us, even if we see a warning label, you could probably look at a bottle of NyQuil, and it's like, may cause nausea, dizziness, and you're like, I got a cold. I don't care. You glance at it, but you don't really take it that seriously.

[01:10:54] Kim: You don't think it's going to really happen to you. I actually had a situation that actually happened. I ended up in the hospital in 2020, and I don't take any meds, but my hemoglobin dropped, but it was a slow burn. I had been taking Advil. And what is Excedrin? What does it say on the warning? May cause stomach bleed.

[01:11:19] Luke: Oh, wow.

[01:11:20] Kim: That was the one drug that I had taken, and so it was case in point of like, Kim, everything you know, and you still fell in it.

[01:11:32] Luke: Through your advocacy work over the past 20 years, have you experienced being ostracized, demonized, censored, labeled a nutty conspiracy theorist or anything like that along the way?

[01:11:47] Kim: Oh, absolutely. So when you came out and spoke out about any of the antidepressant mental health drugs, I was called a scientologist.

[01:11:57] Luke: Oh, right, that's part of their platform.

[01:11:59] Kim: It is.

[01:12:00] Luke: I respect that part of the platform. I remember in LA, on Hollywood Boulevard, scientology is huge in Hollywood, yeah, and they have these big billboards that like, psychiatric drugs will kill you. And I would drive by and be like, I don't know about the rest of their curriculum, but they're on point with that part.

[01:12:16] Kim: 100%. But so anyways, I would get called after I testified-- this is a funny story. After I got invited to testify at the US Senate, it was Kennedy and Obama, Hillary were both senators. It was a pretty big deal. It was myself and a couple of other FDA commissioner, former commissioners.

[01:12:37] Afterwards, National Alliance for Mentally Ill, which is the patient advocacy organization that you think is actually advocating for mental health and whatnot, they take a lot of their funding from pharma. So they afterwards took my written statement, because I had an oral statement and a written statement, and went to every one of those senators’ offices and said, don't believe a word she's saying. She's a scientologist.

[01:13:06] That came from the top of the advocacy organization, and it's meant to discredit. And so that happens all the time. And now with this last couple of years and the COVID products, if I say anything, now you're an anti vaxxer, scientologist. You're an anti-drug. You're a Trumper--

[01:13:36] Luke: You're a Trumper. That's funny. I wonder when that label's going to wear off. Eventually he'll go away and there'll be new people.

[01:13:43] Kim: It'll be somebody else, but it represents something. And I was like, wait a minute. If I was a scientologist, and this is what I remember saying, we would have known not to take the drug. Woody would never have taken it. That makes no sense.

[01:14:01] But yes, I have been demonized or also, and now I find it a little bit of an honor. So every time there's a new FDA advisory committee that they're going to come up and review, they have companies that actually will tell you about the person who's on the advisory committee so you can go like, that person's going to be a friend. That one's not. They said, Witczak has never seen a drug that she likes. I'm not anti. Just put out a drug that actually does some good work. Put out the truth.

[01:14:39] Luke: Yeah, well, that's part of the marginalizing tactic, is if somebody is, say, pro vaccine safety, that's immediately inverted into they're an anti vaxxer. Which I would say I probably am. Anyone can call me that because I've not seen any evidence that there's any benefit to them.

[01:15:04] So call me what you want, but you just take anything where you're like, hey, let's just ask some questions here. There might be a problem. Let's look into this. Ooh, anti vaxxer, Trumper, or whatever. It's just like, wait, I wasn't saying throw the whole thing out. I'm just asking some questions.

[01:15:20] Kim: When has asking questions about anything like safety become all of a sudden like, you don't care about people. You're against medication. I'm like, no, it's just asking questions. We should all ask questions. I have never really done a whole lot of vaccine advocacy because I don't have kids.

[01:15:44] But when the COVID jab came out and it was Pfizer, every part of my body was like, something doesn't make sense. I was watching it all. And then I started actually getting into the information, and I went to a lot of those FDA advisory committees and spoke out because I have a history of doing that.

[01:16:07] And were the things before that committee that was going to vote on whether or not to even approve it, the first one, in December 20, the EUA. And fast forward, I also was part of Senator Johnson's hearing on November 2nd when it was all-- that's the first time I met a lot of these VAX injured that told their stories.

[01:16:32] And I was there telling about the history of just what I've learned with antidepressants, and I see that there's a lot of similarities between the two. And afterwards, I was watching all of these people that I had just met that were injured. And watching the treatment that they have received, it breaks my heart.

[01:16:53] And telling them that they're an anti vaxxer, I'm like, they took the product and they are now here, and you're gaslighting them. You tried doing that to us with the antidepressants. When I look back at the FDA advisory committees that we had when we were trying to get warnings, we got to show up in public.

[01:17:22] This is before I was on the committee. All those advisors are up there, the FDA, the companies and the audiences. It was overflow, and it was all these families, you killed our kids, coming up telling their story and through their three-minute open hearing.

[01:17:36] And the lines, it was all cameras and security with guns that were there. And I was like, I wanted that so badly for all my VAX injured friends to be able to show and come. But I also believe that's also why the FDA has continued to keep things on a Zoom platform. Because it's really hard to ignore.

[01:18:00] It's easy to ignore when you get three minutes. You can't see them. You can't actually see that you just walked in, like my friend, who's a marathon runner and now ends up using a walker, healthy. You don't get that sense when you're looking at a Zoom camera.

[01:18:18] And so I've seen this whole idea of trying to marginalize anybody who's been hurt and safety, not even saying it could be a possibility. What if it was both and? What if we looked at this instead of saying you're a this? You're killing people. You're killing grandma. Why don't we just both and and see the people? We're not seeing people.

[01:18:48] Luke: the Zoom hearing thing is super shady. What an easy way to dehumanize people?

[01:18:55] Kim: Oh, 100%.

[01:18:57] Luke: It's already dehumanizing to not have that physical presence and physical interaction and being able to look someone in the eyes and be able to determine whether or not they're truthful. It's like you see someone coming with a cane and then you see videos of them running a freaking marathon, it's like, okay, maybe we should listen. But if they're a black box on a Zoom with 200 people on it, it's like--

[01:19:17] Kim: You don't even see them. And when you're actually in there, and I'll never forget that room, November 2nd, with Johnson's hearing, which by the way, none of the senators showed up. I never record myself, and I came back, and I was so full of emotion, listening to all these people that could have been-- for me, I do everything now to keep myself healthy.

[01:19:45] These guys got hurt and they're physically hurt. I can handle heartache. And I think it was just 20 years of caring, that feeling of humanity that has been hurt, and I bawled and then I had let off on, where were all the senators? Where were all the media? Where was everybody that was invited to go to that hearing? They didn't have the balls to show up. Are you kidding me? That was a really fun video. I was like, I can't believe I actually spent this-- where did this come from? But I think it was really fun to--

[01:20:25] Luke: Somebody has to do it.

[01:20:27] Kim: Cowards.

[01:20:28] Luke: We need the mama bear energy. And it's like you're obviously demonstrating such massive levels of courage to speak out for those that can't speak for themselves. And then you have the people that are actually calling the shots that are too cowardly.

[01:20:43] Kim: Cowards.

[01:20:43] Luke: Yeah, yeah. Oh God, that pisses me off too. I'm getting pissed. I'm getting pissed. My blood's boiling. Is it true that pharmaceutical drugs in general are the fourth leading cause of death, something like that?

[01:20:59] Kim: Yes. And it's funny. They actually think it's higher than that now. And I work with somebody. He called me out and he goes, Kim, why are you saying fourth leading cause? He's been studying all the clinical trial stuff. He actually believes it's the number two or three leading cause. So it's somewhere in there.

[01:21:24] Luke: Even if it was the in number 19 out of 20, it would be cause for alarm.

[01:21:29] Kim: Well, it should be. You know what? We don't talk about harms here. Last month there was the drug safety or adverse event day, which is a really bad name. It should be called harms in medicine day. And it was to call alert to get people to pay attention. Nobody pays attention.

[01:21:49] But if all of a sudden, every single day there were 35 747s falling out of the plane, guess what? We would be paying attention. But I think harms in medicine, first of all, the system is not set up to actually want to talk about harms. Everybody thinks it's you and I, the people on the market that actually pay the price for it, but the system to get it approved does not look at harms.

[01:22:15] But then when you think about the planes falling out of the sky, harms happen one person at a time. But imagine you put them all together and we're planes. You better believe people would be paying attention. And so I feel like we're looking at this right in front of us right now with a lot of the COVID VAX injured, but we're not paying attention. But we do need to start really looking and thinking about-- again, I go back to, let's say unsafe until proven safe.

[01:22:52] Luke: What's crazy too, if you look at different foods, for example, that are demonized and regulated like raw milk, you see these news stories all the time about the dangers of raw milk. In Texas, you can't buy it from a store, for example. You have to like go direct to a farmer. It's this whole thing.

[01:23:10] And I see stuff like that. And I'm like, really, there's consumer warnings about raw milk? We're worried about raw milk when we're in the middle of a worldwide genocide, to your point of the analogy of the planes? If you could put all of the people that have been injured by this, what I consider to be a bioweapon or people that have been killed and throw them all in planes and drop them around the country, would we still be worried about raw milk or cannabis or any of the things out there that are so highly regulated and demonized when, if you look at the statistics, it's like very few people are being harmed.

[01:23:45] That's always very suspect to me too, is not only are we ignoring some very obvious elephants in the room of things that are very obviously dangerous and harmful, but then all of the attention is going on things that have such a low risk profile. It's super shady.

[01:24:01] Kim: If a person was actually looking and being critical thinking, because who's saying it's the mainstream media? Squirrel. There's a squirrel. There's a squirrel. So they're all pushing this when we've got right in front of us, and nobody's paying attention. There are people who are paying attention clearly, but you've got this happening.

[01:24:21] I'm like, how are you guys missing? You're making it about raw milk? Or even when they were looking at-- my friend just wrote an article on the measles outbreak and like measles are outbreaking. And so he actually went and looked and he's like, this is classic scare mongering, fear mongering. The same thing. Yes, are there, but to create this big drama-- and remember, fear sells. And fear is also the opposite of health.

[01:24:54] Luke: Yeah, fear sells, and fear controls.

[01:24:57] Kim: Yeah. It's the opposite.

[01:24:59] Luke: If scare a human being, you can get them to do anything.

[01:25:04] Kim: Right. It's powerful.

[01:25:05] Luke: Yeah, what about-- and this one's pretty touchy for some people, but there seems to be a pretty obvious correlation between psych meds and mass shooters. And every time one of these events happens, which are obviously tragic, they go after the guns.

[01:25:26] Kim: Low of hanging fruit.

[01:25:28] Luke: Meanwhile, if you look at this country, since its inception, it's been a very heavily armed country. And that's the thing too. Humans don't look at history. We're just like, ah, what's the news telling me today? Oh, we got to stop the guns. And if you look at the history of this country, for example, there have always been the amount of guns that there are now, yet there was a certain point in our history at which these mass shootings started to happen more and more.

[01:25:58] And there's pretty obvious correlation that you could probably point to causation that around the same time as the rollout of all these psychiatric meds that we're talking about, that then you have all these mass shootings in schools and different places like that.

[01:26:11] It's like, wow, another thing that's an inconvenient truth. Because you want to politicize something and blame what seems to be the obvious solution, which is, wow, we need to get these firearms out of people's hands.

[01:26:25] Kim: Mm-hmm.

[01:26:26] Luke: But they've always been there, and people weren't shooting up schools before. So what changed? That's where my mind goes. It's like, oh, okay. Well, it's pretty obvious that one thing changed. We can't say that they're all a result of that. But have you seen any valid statistical analysis of how many of these mass shooters in the last 20 years have been verifiably on psych meds or anything like that? Or is that just my anecdotal observation?

[01:26:54] Kim: No. Well, first of all, let's go back and remember that-- and I would say everybody should go look at the 1991 FDA Advisory Committee and listen to those testimonies. There were a lot of shootings in there. And that hearing was about the emergence of violence and suicide with Prozac. So they've known about the history. Now I'm going to tie it to my documents.

[01:27:23] There were documents where Zoloft said, I don't think Fluoxetine, which is Prozac, is out of the woods yet with its association with violence. Fast forward, why does Pfizer have a prosecutor manual for Zoloft that was created in the late '90s? That came out from under seal. So when I look at Columbine, you look at all these big shootings, these have been on again, correlation, causation.

[01:27:55] It's not saying, but we have not yet had an investigation into the role because as soon as something happens, it's completely shut. HIPAA applies. It is another entire force that comes in there to stop the investigation. So after Parkland, Florida, shooting, one of my lawyers went down there because I still want a big lawsuit so we can get in there and do-- and I went with them.

[01:28:25] I go, I want to fly down there. I want to go down there. I want to meet with these families because I'm so tired of the same thing that'll happen. It'll happen again. It'll happen again, happen again, and it'll always be, we got to look at the guns. Let's take the guns. That's the easy, low-hanging fruit.

[01:28:43] And it's also using to make it divisive. And so why aren't we asking the question? Again, my whole thing is let's ask the question. Let's have a federal investigation or a state investigation. But until we do that, we're going to keep having this. It's going to keep happening. It's like Groundhog's Day over and over and over.

[01:29:13] Whoop, there's another. And we've become almost desensitized to it. But the reality is every one of us should care about this. We could be at the movie theaters. I always think about that now. I don't want to think like that. Until we do that, until we look at and investigate--

[01:29:33] Luke: Yes, yes. And I'm not certain of this, so I might be speaking out of turn, but I have heard, and someone will have to verify this, that the highest cause of firearm related death is suicide. Pretty sure of that. More so than people killing other people, more people take their own lives with guns. Pretty sure.

[01:29:55] What about an investigation into how many of those people are on psychiatric meds? Woody hang himself, but if he had been a gun enthusiast, and I don't know that he wasn't, a shotgun might have been a quicker way to go. This is something that's like so common, military vets and so on.

[01:30:14] Kim: So if you think back to the night Woody was found, the coroner said, we're going to take it with us and hit the drug Zoloft. It might have something to do with his death. And I thought, oh my gosh. So that was one of my ideas, not right then, but eventually I thought, that little bit of information from the coroner, wouldn't it be interesting if you did a study on the shootings with suicides, how many were on meds?

[01:30:47] And of course, what it comes back to, blame the victim. Well, of course, they were on them because they were depressed and you're going to kill yourself. But that's not how we're wired.

[01:30:56] So I think that idea of going out and investigating, we should be looking at all of this. There has to be motivation. And there's so much incentive to not-- and if you think about what's new, the mental health it's an industry now. And so the schools, everybody's trying to protect their part in it.

[01:31:22] So they're not going to go and investigate because it's behavioral health. And they now have schools that are doing school based clinics at high schools that they're letting kids come in there without their parents' knowledge and like, hey, I'm feeling sad. They're just handing the drugs out.

[01:31:45] Luke: What?

[01:31:45] Kim: Oh yeah, this just happened in Maine, and there's a big lawsuit.

[01:31:48] Luke: Oh my God.

[01:31:49] Kim: And it's without a parent. I'm older than you, but when I grew up, we had nurses’ stations that you went there for a headache and you lay down and you're not-- so this system, there's a system that has been created around mental health.

[01:32:06] And I'm always like, are we really making people better? I feel like mental health has gotten-- like I was saying, when I first got here, the fact that Forbes did an entire business case study on what antidepressants are, what it's going to be like in the year 2030, and how the pandemic was really good for the business of antidepressants, we are making people sicker. We're not helping people.

[01:32:36] And so that in itself to me is we need to reframe mental health because I feel like it's a sick model and start talking about mental wellbeing and how do we help people. Because I'm not sure this is helping people. It's getting worse. Suicides are up.

[01:32:578] And now there was just, I don't know if you saw this last week, a Harvard psychiatrist, head of the department had this brilliant idea. Let's just make antidepressants over the counter. So there's a movement that wants to put antidepressants over the counter to make it easier because there's the access argument. I'm like, that is a really bad idea.

[01:33:31] Luke: Wow. That interesting. That's very diabolical because if it's being framed from the point of accessibility and someone's financial standing, socioeconomic standing, it's like oh, well, people in disenfranchised communities have mental health issues. Yes. Probably maybe even more so because of the stress of a life where you don't have resources.

[01:33:53] I'm all for that. But then when you're talking about what the solution is, and the solution has such dire consequences, that's really diabolical to say, oh, okay, well, we're doing it out of compassion. There's so much of this inversion now these days where it's like, we care about the disenfranchised, so let's offer them a solution that's actually going to hurt them more than they already are. It's like double evil. You know what I mean?

[01:34:17] Kim: When you just said that, it reminded me of the 100 gift cards for the poor areas, like in Minneapolis. They still did it to go get your COVID shot.

[01:34:28] Luke: 100 bucks?

[01:34:29] Kim: 100 bucks. That's a lot of money.

[01:34:31] Luke: That's a lot of money for someone who's broke.

[01:34:32] Kim: That is a lot of money who is not thinking any big deal. Sure. I'll just get a shot and get 100 bucks.

[01:34:38] Luke: That's a lot more incentivizing than donuts.

[01:34:40] Kim: Oh yeah. Way more. I'm sorry I brought it back, but when you just said it's the opposite of we're trying to disenfranchise people, like, oh, we'll make it easier, accessible. Oh, you're going to have to pay for it. Or, hey, we'll help you by giving you 100 dollars.

[01:34:58] So I think that's in what I think is happening right now, and I think COVID did a really-- I can't believe I'm still doing this work, but I think COVID was the thing that shined the light into a lot of these failures in the system. So maybe this is going to be a time of blowing things up. You have to blow things up first and then kind of rebuild. And how do we rebuild?

[01:35:28] Luke: We're in that tunnel through the mountain. It's the thing. There's two ways on any given day, I'll look at where we are as a society now. Some days it looks really bleak because I'm in the tunnel. I can't see that little pinhole of light at the end. Like, oh, no, this is the great awakening. Really? This is what it looks like?

[01:35:47] There's a lot of death and suffering around us as a result of these systems we're talking about. But on a good day I can see the past four years despite the suffering and the compassion I have for people that have been killed or injured and all of that.

[01:36:03] I do see it as the system showing his hand. It pushed so hard. It got so aggressive and so obvious, even to some people that aren't really paying attention. I think there's like a middle group of people that were kind of just, status quo, not conspiracy theorists, not rebels, just people that are just living their life and following the rules and not complete sheep that have been totally brainwashed, thinking conscious people.

[01:36:35] That middle group, and then you have the conspiracy theorists on one side. They don't trust anyone or anything. Then you have the people that are just totally asleep that are just doing anything the TV tells them to do. I think that middle group is our salvation. And those are the ones, the sleeping giants that have been like, wait, hold up.

[01:36:52] This has been four years. I used to trust the system, and this is just not adding up, and I think because they played their hand so aggressively, that that group is now growing, and it's starting to kind of erode the banks of that river of the super paranoid people and the super trusting people, and it's growing.

[01:37:12] And now the middle is people, hopefully many listening to this right now, are going to go, hey, hang on, maybe there's another way to do this, and maybe the institutions that we've been sort of indoctrinated into and have grown to trust, maybe we should start asking questions. It's about time.

[01:37:30] So like I said, on a good day, I'm like, oh, no, we can't see the other side of that tunnel, but I think we are now on the other side. Because it's like when you look at the plandemic, you had the first doctors that came out accredited, legitimate MDs, scientists, virologists, etc.

[01:37:49] They started asking questions, and they were all demonized and just completely subjugated and censored. And everyone just didn't say anything and just let them all get deleted and unpersoned. But as time went on, you start seeing more of the mainstream institutional people of that nature start to come forward and ask questions.

[01:38:12] And now it's like, I don't know, the levy has seemed to have broken where you have people going, all right. I wasn't going along with the conspiracy theorist doctors that all got demonized at first. I thought they were crazy, but now the data is becoming so obvious that I don't think it can ever be completely suppressed. You can't sweep all of that back under the rug.

[01:38:31] There's just too much evidence at this point. I've taken a long time to get to this point, but let's talk solutions now. So we realize we do in fact, worldwide, have a mental health crisis. We know that. All you have to do is turn on social media for five minutes. You're like, wow, people are losing their shit. We need to help people and help ourselves.

[01:38:56] So if the model that we built, and I'm sure pharmaceuticals help some people too, and maybe some people don't have these reactions and that's all well and good. But I know in my own life, the things that have really moved the needle for me have nothing to do with taking any kind of drug. It has to do with, we were talking about earlier, faith, meditation. That's why I wore my meditation is my medication shirt today.

[01:39:18] And so many of the traumas and PTSD and pain that I've been able to overcome and the grief that you've been able to overcome has had nothing to do with anything really outside of myself, but just inner work, things like meditation, breath work, mindfulness, just awareness, being willing to face my feelings, therapy, all the different things we can do to help ourselves.

[01:39:43] So that brings me to one thing that I think holds a lot of promise, and that is psychedelics. I'm very hopeful that there's now some very substantial research being done that shows the efficacy of even microdosing psilocybin and LSD and MDMA therapy, not even to get into some of the higher dose plant medicine ceremonies and things like this, for whom, for many, their entire lives have been transformed in an incredible healing. Of course, there's risks involved in all of that too.

[01:40:18] But to me, that's the pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel. I'm like, wow, man. I've met so many people personally that aren't into taking drugs. They're not psychedelic people at all, and they hear about microdosing or ketamine therapy or something like that, and they're getting incredible results.

[01:40:35] And I don't follow the research that closely, but I just see this percolating as one of the many possible solutions. So you being in the thick of this fight, as you are, what are you seeing in terms of a promise and hope of some things that can actually help with our mental health, the anxiety, depression, insomnia, all the things, that don't come with such risks?

[01:41:01] Kim: So I too would love to see because I've been watching the whole plant medicine and other alternatives along with therapy that could actually-- some of the vets that are seeing some promising research. I always say I hope the pharmaceutical companies don't get a hold of it.

[01:41:24] Luke: Don't ruin it.

[01:41:24] Kim: Yeah, don't ruin it. That's what I'm like, please don't ruin it. Please don't ruin it.

[01:41:29] Luke: That is a risk because they want to patent everything, right?

[01:41:31] Kim: I know. It's the patent. But how do you patent--

[01:41:33] Luke: They're going to take a molecule that's really great and then ruin it maybe anyway.

[01:41:38] Kim: Right. That was my thing. Because I've seen a lot of people, and I personally have as well. But I would go back to a couple things. I didn't realize how much trauma lives in our bodies and that we are body, mind, spirit. I remember one of my friends way back when said, hey, you should do rolfing.

[01:42:05] I'd never even heard of rolfing where it's the pulling your fascia. And so I'm like, oh, yeah, that sounds great. Because I'm thinking it's like a massage, whatever. We get to session six, which is your diaphragm, and my rolfing therapist was working on it, and I don't even know what happened.

[01:42:25] I bawled, gut balled, for two hours. She had to leave me there and she had other clients. It was just pouring out of me and I was like, what is this? It scared me because I had no idea that it was all here. And so I started to look at that idea of like body and where it stores and I'm like, oh, so that should be part of the solutions, getting people to understand the connection of trauma that lives in our bodies as well. So that was fascinating.

[01:43:02] Luke: That's very interesting too, thinking about, as you described earlier, the heartbreak that you felt, that visceral feeling within your body of your heart being broken as a result of your loss. It makes sense that when you would get to the diaphragm that some of those feelings were stuck in there.

[01:43:19] Kim: And then I realized it wasn't even all this stuff from even Woody. It's lifetime of holding myself back. And then I think ultimately, you got to start looking in the mirror. It's doing the shadow work that's uncomfortable. When something makes you uncomfortable, you have to dig deeper. And you have to do the work. Why am I anxious? Why do I get this way? Oh, I get this way because maybe I'm actually insecure about something.

[01:43:52] And I have to face stuff that I don't actually want to face about myself. Because I've looked in the mirror, and I have to look in the mirror, and it's really uncomfortable looking in the mirror. It's way easier to run.

[01:44:07] Luke: In the immediate.

[01:44:09] Kim: In the immediate. You're like, Oh God, do I have to like face it? And then also realize that sitting, looking, and giving tools of like-- and again, I don't know how you go back. You would never say it's all meant for good.

[01:44:28] Having that faith, I think, helps because eventually you'll make sense of all the stuff in your life. And I hope that at the end, you can look at it. It's like the backside of a tapestry and you're like, whoa, these are all the things that I thought were bad, but look at the beautiful image on the front it made, which was my life. But that is a reframing of the stories that we tell ourselves. I also think there are things like transformation courses and things that, again, it all goes back to yourself, getting in the mirror.

[01:45:10] Luke: Well, that's self-responsibility. So many of us go through our lives and we feel victimized by the circumstances of our lives, and sometimes we legitimately are. But what's been empowering for me on my journey is, yeah, acknowledging there were a few cases in my life in which I was legitimately and objectively victimized, childhood abuse and such.

[01:45:30] I did nothing to deserve that. I had no part in that. Whereas most of the things in my life, if I really am honest with myself, I kind of set myself up for it because of my own selfishness or ignorance or whatever, naivete, and so on. But even in situations in which you've been victimized and you had nothing to do with it, the response and the perspective on that still very much colors how you process it and how it affects your life.

[01:45:57] So it's like, even if I wasn't to blame, the feelings about that situation are still my responsibility because that situation was 45 years ago or whatever, that circumstance. So your point that you raised, I think is so important of that self-responsibility and autonomy and saying like, man, these are my feelings.

[01:46:17] This is my body that's holding these feelings. These are my thoughts. This is my perception, my perspective, and no drug, no therapist, no healer can go inside of us and change that. It's only through self-education and awareness where we can go, wow.

[01:46:34] Kim: It's awareness. I had nothing to do. I couldn't have helped what happened to me. Or even things when I was younger. But my responsibility is, what do I do with it? Do I let that be my excuse? Do I let that be my story? Those are things that I think we are only responsible for our reaction and how we look at it.

[01:47:02] And I do think that there are things like psilocybin and some of those that get you to do your own journey back as a tool. It's a tool that you can use that still ultimately is about self-reflection, where you look at your pain and trauma and life and come out of it, and what new information, and then figuring out how do you integrate it all back to make sense of this world that we live in that is both happy and joyous? And joy does not mean happy, I learned. Joy is about embracing both end.

[01:47:52] Luke: Oh, that's beautiful.

[01:47:53] Kim: Yeah, the really shitty things that have happened.

[01:47:56] Luke: That's cool. I like that. I've never thought about that.

[01:47:59] Kim: Yeah. It's right in that space of, it doesn't mean happy. It means embracing all of it.

[01:48:08] Luke: That's beautiful. I always resist the idea of making a goal out of happiness. Happiness as an emotional state seems very fleeting and a setup for a fall.

[01:48:24] Kim: Mm-hmm.

[01:48:24] Luke: You know what I mean? I think the things that appealed to me more are maybe joy, I've never contextualized it that way, but just serenity, equanimity, peace, where there's that level of awareness where your boat doesn't really get rocked by the waves, and you have the insight and the foresight to see even if you don't feel great and life is objectively challenging that there's something in it for you. 

[01:48:52] And what you described early in the conversation about your journey of faith the purpose that you found in your life and the gift that Woody gave you. As sad as that situation was, going back to psychedelics I think for some people they can be a great shortcut, not a shortcut as in a cheat code, but a way to actually that level of awareness where in the course of a few hours you can look at something like your situation in your life that might have taken 20 years without the assistance of the spiritual nature of those experiences and the level of self-honesty and insight that you can have of your own psyche.

[01:49:32] Being able to really hold up a mirror that you can't run from in those settings is incredibly powerful. And for me, it's been just a huge catalyst in being able to recontextualize some of the suffering I've experienced in life and sometimes in a moment just go, oh, I get it.

[01:49:49] I see the big picture. I'm able to see the unseen hand, the orchestration that there are no accidents. There are no coincidences that as painful as the shit is sometimes, there is a higher purpose. And being able to surrender to that and have the humility to know like, hey, I'm never going to really understand why this is all happening-

[01:50:10] Kim: But trust.

[01:50:10] Luke: But I'll get clues that I can trust into, right?

[01:50:13] Kim: Yeah. I think about this. I just had somebody contact me about a big disappointment for them. And I said, I remember being really disappointed that I didn't get asked to be the main speaker for a house hearing because I'm like, we were the ones there. And I was like, wait a minute, that's your ego.

[01:50:35] So I had to actually, look at myself like, I did all the work. Eric, why aren't they whatever? And I had to let it go, but I also had to do a lot of my own, like, Kim, that was you. You weren't the right person for it. So eventually, two years later, I was at the place where I was supposed to be, but I have to now, when I have disappointments, sit in that place of disappointment and actually look in, is there something to investigate there like, oh, that one didn't work. But that's because I know there's something bigger and better that's meant for me, and we'll use whatever just happened.

[01:51:13] Luke: Beautiful. You were talking earlier about your initial loss and you wondering how you could ever open your heart and love again. Have you been able to do so?

[01:51:27] Kim: Funny you should say that. That's where I fell in that relationship. When that relationship ended, and it ended pretty sudden, because I'm sure Woody was up there going, what are you doing, allowing? So when I came, and I was mad when it ended, because I was with him for a long time.

[01:51:47] What I had to do is I had to go back, and I had to find love for me first. Because I was broken when I went into a relationship, because I'm a really good relationship person. Meaning, I can stay there, and I won't leave when I should leave. And so the last five years, and I did a psilocybin journey that was with my person, had it guided.

[01:52:15] And let me tell you, I went in there, and my first question, my intention for the day was going to be, can I love again? And then something woke me up in the middle of the night and said, that's not your question. Your question is, can you love you the way God loves you? Can you see who God sees?

[01:52:40] And I'm telling you, I went that morning and I go, that's my question. And she was like, ooh, this is going to be good. And let me tell you, it was exactly-- I realized that I have not loved myself and that I can't love somebody until I see who I was. And so now I'm really actually excited for when I find the right person that I now am in a place where I'm really good by-- when I say by myself, I love myself. I can honestly say that.

[01:53:16] Luke: You're not by yourself. You're with yourself.

[01:53:18] Kim: I'm with myself. I can honestly say that. For the first time in my life, I can actually say it so I know when it happens, I'm going to be the best version of me. And I always say that I wish I could have been this version for Woody, but you actually made me who I am. And same with you, my ex. Thank you. Thank you for releasing me because I didn't have the courage to release me. And so all of that has been a long way to round to say, I'm in a relationship with myself, and it feels so good.

[01:53:58] Luke: So powerful. I love it. I relate to that deeply. Same experience here. Yeah, I love the way you articulated that. That's the crazy thing about love. It's like we have this very wholesome, natural yearning to be seen, to be held, to have intimacy with another human being.

[01:54:22] And so many of us, myself included, chase our tails, thinking that there's someone out there that can provide that for us when we haven't learned to provide it for ourselves. And that was the exact experience that I had with my wife, Alyson, who you'll soon meet.

[01:54:38] Just a lot of pain and a lot of suffering for all parties involved, not just me. But yeah, when I really started to get that of just, wow, what if I just learned to have a relationship with myself and not have an attachment that there has to be another out there somewhere to complete me?

[01:54:58] Kim: Right. That's why, literally, when I go back and think about that question that came to me in the middle-- God was like, who lives in me? He's like, how about you? Again, you're doing what you did out there. You're looking out there. What about this? This person? Do you love the person looking back at you?

[01:55:24] And so now I'm like, oh, wait, isn't this what they say you always find, you attract what you are? And no wonder why I-- I wasn't in it, and I always say now I'm like, Kim, you know who you cheated on? You cheated on yourself. So he cheated. Yeah, he did cheat, the ex, but I'm like, no, you. I'm not even mad about that. I'm mad that you cheated on you. You cheated yourself. And so I think those are the awareness that, why did it take so long?

[01:55:54] Luke: I know, man. I know.

[01:55:57] Kim: What the hell?

[01:56:00] Luke: The good news is though, it's like how many lifetimes have we not learned that lesson?

[01:56:06] Kim: Clearly I haven't.

[01:56:07] Luke: What a gift it is. We're finally in a body having an experience of this life. And we're getting it this time. As painful as it's been, what a gift, man. What a gift. And who knows how long we've been trying. I think about that sometimes with the idea of reincarnation. It's like, wow. If this life has been so rife with suffering and also gifts and awakenings and maturation and all of the great parts of it, how many times did I just sleep through a lifetime and not get any of this stuff? It's like, wow, thank God. I got a long way to go. But it's like, man, there's been some serious progress.

[01:56:45] Kim: I feel more alive today than I've ever felt in my-- I feel alive. It doesn't mean that life's always great. I just feel alive. And that's the realization. I felt I finally was connecting here. I just feel alive, better than when people are like, oh, you're 20s. You're your best. I'm like, really? I'm like, what about right now? I feel like I'm doing things that I didn't. I love going to EDM concerts. I love dancing. I love moving.

[01:57:27] Luke: Really? That's funny.

[01:57:35] Luke: Yeah. I love moving. I love moving, and I used to be afraid of dancing unless I was drunk. Because I was afraid to be seen. Now I don't need that.

[01:57:39] Luke: You need to give me some lessons on self-expression because I'm still--

[01:57:42] Kim: Oh my God, the music taps me for whatever reason. But my friends, my college friends are like, Kim, we did that in our 20s. I'm like, yeah, but I didn't. But I didn't. This is my life. That made me go, wait, I've lived a prescription of a life. You're like, oh, you go to high school, then you go to college, then you'd get married, then you do this. And then you don't be a kid anymore.

[01:58:16] The sense of play doesn't exist. But maybe our whole life is we come back to where we came from. Going back to that person, that little soul that came into the world that I always say that was meant to be a creative little being to be seen. And we're all creatives.

[01:58:35] That not doesn't mean artistic. It can be music. It can be somebody who's a scientist. They love to express themselves. But then we fall away from play. We fall away from imagination. What if all of this was coming back to that pure state that we came in?

[01:58:53] Luke: Epic.

[01:58:56] Kim: I have no idea.

[01:58:58] Luke: I love it, and I think you're so awesome. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today and sharing your heart. I love having these type of conversations because it's like, you and I just met at an event, and there's a bunch of people there. We might have a chat. Oh, she was cool.

[01:59:14] She's doing good work. She's been through a lot, and she's pulled out the other side. And she's doing it. Right? And I would respect you and maybe like you, and we'd have a little moment of rapport, and then that would be it. But you get to sit down for a couple of hours, if somebody's willing to go where you're willing to go, and where I'm willing to go, I think there's so much value in that, and so much healing for the people that get to share these conversations by listening to them and watching them, for those that are called.

[01:59:41] It's not for everyone, I'm sure. Maybe a couple of people have tuned out because they're like, all right, we get it. Don't take psych meds or whatever. You know what I mean? But it's just such a gift for me to meet people like you that are just awake and embodied, and it's just an honor to get to share your journey, so I appreciate it.

[01:59:57] And I'd like to let people know, I think we offered some solutions and some insights and pretty decent philosophical foundation for just how you deal with being a human and the things that we go through. But in terms of the real world, what are some ways that people can support your work or your advocacy or any other organizations that are making progress in terms of the things we talked about? What can someone do if they're sitting there going, man, I want to help?

[02:00:29] I want to make the world a better place and try and shine light on some of these issues and come up with not only just shining light to complain about the way the system is so rigged and so destructive, but ways in which we can build new parallel systems that eventually will eclipse these antiquated systems that we're dealing with now.

[02:00:48] Kim: Yeah. Well, first of all, you can reach me just at my website, kimwitczak.com. And I also have a sub stack that I'm trying to be better at doing acceptable collateral damage. And in there, I try to put ideas, and just right now it's informing people of the history of a lot of these medications.

[02:01:08] I will be working on a project with a docuseries that I'm really excited about called-- and it's with somebody who wrote the book 20 years ago, called Selling Sickness. And now we're going to do Unselling of Sickness. So at some point we'll be looking for people to be a part of it, help supporting it, etc.

[02:01:32] And I think the biggest thing is, don't be afraid to tell your story. And that is just something I tell everybody all the time. If you have something don't be afraid to share your story and to push back and to really be able to question when you go medications and stuff. Or even what we're doing right now, it's that ability to have a conversation and actively listen.

[02:02:00] And I think that in itself can help make the world one person at a time. And it's not the big changing the world. It's starts here. And so I think we changed the world by changing us. And so that would be my message for somebody. And I'm on Instagram and Twitter. And I know most people are X, whatever. But Twitter is actually.

[02:02:28] Luke: I'm always going to call it Twitter.

[02:02:29] Kim: I know. Yeah, I still call it Twitter. But that is a good place for a lot of my drug safety advocacy work because that's where I share a lot. It still is a pretty big platform for people.

[02:02:41] Luke: Cool. And we'll put all of the links to all the stuff you do at lukestorey.com/kim. And I also want to let the single fellas out there know we've got a woman here who's done a lot of work on herself. She's learned how to love herself. Her heart's open. She's single and ready to mingle. So you can find her on her Twitter account and maybe hit her up.

[02:03:01] Kim: Oh my God. Not a dating app.

[02:03:02] Luke: Hit her up with the DM. Hey, man, I'm rooting for you. You're awesome. You deserve an incredible mate in your life. It's like when you've done that level of work and faced the things you have, it's like, man, it's a beautiful gift to be able to share it with someone who is like-minded.

[02:03:20] Kim: Yeah, like-minded.

[02:03:22] Luke: I'm halfway kidding, but not really. Last question for you is this. Who have been three teachers or teachings, philosophies, etc., in your life that have influenced you and your work that you'd like to share with us?

[02:03:36] Kim: Well, I will start by saying my grandmother. My grandmother was one of my greatest teachers from observing. She was a simple person, lived out on a farm, lost her child at 5 before my dad was born. Never complained. She was kind, resilient. So I think I learned a lot from my grandmother.

[02:04:05] Luke: What was her name?

[02:04:06] Kim: Lilian.

[02:04:07] Luke: Cool.

[02:04:07] Kim: Yeah, I loved it. I loved my grandma. She's so sweet. Another would be, and I ended up getting to meet and spend a lot of time with him, Wayne Dyer.

[02:04:19] Luke: Oh, word?

[02:04:20] Kim: Yeah. This is like a really bizarre world. So free arts that I had started, somebody said, hey, this girl wants to be on the board, whatever. Can you go meet her? I'm like, yeah, I'll go meet her. It was just two months after Woody died. And I'm reading the book, Power of Intention, and that will always be my-- so that is the book and why I say Wayne.

[02:04:43] Because it's what do you put your attention, your focus on, the power of intention? I put ideas out and all of a sudden I'm like, wait, that person just showed up. And so when I was telling Tracy, I said, oh, I just started reading this book, Power of Intention. She goes, that's my dad. I go, what? This is in Minnesota. I thought his kids didn't live in Minnesota, but he it's his oldest. And so I spent a lot of time with him. And so we would have some deep, amazing conversations, but it was that book, The Power of Intention.

[02:05:11] Luke: What a gift? How cool.

[02:05:12] Kim: Yeah. How crazy. And he told me he was going to come back as a butterfly.

[02:05:15] Luke: And you saw a zillion but butterflies today here--

[02:05:18] Kim: Yeah. That's why I was like--

[02:05:19] Luke: Pissing on the wild flowers.

[02:05:21] Kim: Yes. That's why I kept saying I'm going to get in a car accident, because I could feel him all over me.

[02:05:28] Luke: Did you ever meet his daughter Serena?

[02:05:29] Kim: Yeah.

[02:05:30] Luke: Oh yeah, she was on the podcast a couple of years ago. Yeah, she's lovely.

[02:05:34] Kim: Oh my god. I love Serena. Because they would be in Hawaii when I would go there. Mm-hmm.

[02:05:40] Luke: So cool. Yeah, I had a really great conversation with her. She sent me her book. Yeah, it's really interesting to meet the offspring of people that have awakened. It's so cool to see how their influence trickles down into someone's life. It's really cool. And then you think like, man, they won the parent lottery.

[02:06:02] Some of us pick parents that had to learn their lessons and pass their lessons onto us. I love my parents, and they've done a lot of work on themselves, thank God. But I definitely wasn't growing up in a freaking ashram or something where everyone was loving light.

[02:06:16] Kim: No, absolutely. So I would say that just because that was one of the books that actually put me on-- because I didn't really think this way spiritually, just maybe I went to church. But it's different. It's not the same. And I also saw it work.

[02:06:36] So anyways, Wayne. He loved my work, and he would have me on his podcast and goes, I'm not having you on it because of my daughter. I believe in the work you're doing. And he also is the one that told me, he goes, you and Woody came in this world to do this. And I looked at him, I'm like, you're crazy. But that was the first time. So Wayne.

[02:07:07] And then I would say in the world of my advocacy, it would be David Healy's book. It was all about the antidepressants, and he's a psychiatrist. But that book, he was the person that taught me a lesson, which is you can write to somebody that you don't know, that you might admire. You read a book, and just tell them that you admire, and write that. They may or may not write back. He wrote back.

[02:07:36] He put me in touch with who became my lawyers. And if that never happened, that lesson, I would never have been doing what I'm doing today because getting that lawsuit and all those documents and the power and the introduction and the connections, that would never have happened if David Healy did not respond to an email that was just an unsolicited email.

[02:08:03] So it taught me a really good lesson about the connections. And his book's fantastic. He's probably one of the guys who's been really critical thinking on the whole antidepressant.

[02:08:16] Luke: Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. We'll put his book and site in the show notes at lukestorey.com/kim. And I just thought of another great addition to the show notes if you want to take note of that, my friend, Jarrod over there. Kelly Brogan, who we talked about before we recorded, she's been on the show a bunch of times.

[02:08:35] One of our top fan favorite guests. And her book in terms of solutions, I think it was the book, A Mind of Your Own, offers a lot of lifestyle recommendations for people with mental health issues, anxiety, depression, and things like that. There's so much you can do even just with diet, if you're not someone who wants to go do psilocybin or something, a, respect, but just getting off of aspartame and just all the things and just cleaning up your life can do a lot for your neurochemistry.

[02:09:05] Focusing on sleep, movement, dealing with EMF, blue lights, sleep hygiene, getting hot, getting cold. There's a lot of things you can do that don't cost money that can have a massive impact on your wellbeing, especially your mental wellbeing.

[02:09:20] So I wanted to give her a shout out as another early pioneer that was really indoctrinated into the system, had an awakening, and said, I'm out and I'm going to expose this shit. And she's paid a price for that too in terms of being vilified and becoming one of the disinformation dozen during the plandemic.

[02:09:40] Obviously, when you live with your integrity, you can't lose. But there's a lot of people like her and many others that have taken a lot of arrows by just coming out and speaking their truth and sharing information. So that's another great person to follow when it comes to alternative wellness and mental health practices and lifestyle choices.

[02:10:04] And there's a lot of stuff out there. And of course many of the things we cover here on the show are helpful with that, but I don't want to leave someone listening that's like, wow, I'm bipolar, so I'm screwed. It's like there's always a solution. There's always a healer. There's always the inner healer following the work you're doing. So I'm really just grateful to have this conversation today. Thank you so much.

[02:10:24] Kim: So thankful.

[02:10:25] Luke: Yeah, there's going to be tens of thousands of people that hear this, not to be dramatic, but you probably save a few lives. It's not a stretch. So thank you.

[02:10:37] Kim: Thanks. Thanks for having me.