#218 - Medication Deprescribing: Get Off This

Nobody blinks when a doctor says you'll be on blood pressure medication for the rest of your life. Say the same sentence about an antidepressant, or Zepbound, and responses are quite different. This episode digs into deprescribing, the fast-growing clinical movement around when and how to stop medications, and asks why some "forever drugs" get a cultural pass while others get moralized. In this episode we will:Separate the real clinical debate around antidepressant tapering from the online discourseTake on the GLP-1 stigma directly, with two 2024 JAMA Internal Medicine studies that found no elevated depression or suicidality risk, and ask why "you may need this forever" reads as scandal here but shrug everywhere elseSit with the RLS story, where the science just ran the opposite direction: 2025 AASM guidelines downgraded dopamine agonists after mounting evidence of augmentation, a drug-induced worsening of symptoms, making deprescribing here the conservative, evidence-driven move, not the fringe oneAsk why hypersomnia drugs generate almost zero cultural friction at all, and what that quiet exception reveals about the other threeLand on what actually predicts whether a "forever medication" gets treated as a fact of chronic disease or a personal failing — and why RLS should make you distrust any tidy answer to that question, including this episode'sTo find out more about this week's podcast sponsor Fitnexa and their SomniPods 3, please use the following link https://go.fitnexa.com/egVvZ9 and use the code DRCHRIS10 for $10 dollars off your order.Original intro music Vigilanteology by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Original outro music Vigilanteology (reprise) by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026)Produced by: Maeve WinterMusic by: Dr. Abhinav Singh (@sleep_vigilante), all rights reservedMoreTwitter: @drchriswinterIG: @drchriwinterThreads: @drchriswinterBluesky: @drchriswinterThe Sleep Solution and The Rested ChildThanks for listening and sleep well!