Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry and social justice.

Hello, this is James, and welcome to part two of our special podcast for World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day 2020. In part one, we interviewed

Angela Peacock, and we talked about her experiences of taking and coming off benzodiazepines,

and also her involvement in the film Medicating Normal, which has a special screening and panel

discussion on July the 11th at 1pm EST.

And you can hear that interview by visiting madden America.com.

And before we go on, I just wanted to say that these podcasts would not be possible

without the efforts of W Bad Lead Operations Volunteer Nicole Lamberson,

who goes above and beyond to make these

interviews possible. So later in this episode, we will hear from Baylissa Frederick, who is a

therapeutic coach and psychotherapist with over two decades experience working with clients

affected by prescribed drug injury. But before we chat with Baylissa, I'm delighted to get the chance to talk with clinical pharmacologist Dr. Jim Wright.

Jim is Emeritus Professor in the Departments of Anistiology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Medicine at the University of British Columbia.

Jim obtained his MD from the University

of Alberta in 1968 and his PhD in Pharmacology from McGill University in 1976. He is a practicing

specialist in internal medicine and clinical pharmacology. He is also editor-in-chief of the therapeutics letter,

and he sits on the editorial boards of Plus One and the Cochrane Library. Dr. Wright's research

focuses on issues relating to the appropriate use of prescription drugs, clinical pharmacology,

clinical trials, systematic review, meta-analysis, and knowledge translation.

Dr. Wright, Jim, welcome. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today for

the Madden America podcast. And to get us started, really, I'd like to perhaps ask a little bit

about you and your background and what it was that led to you to a career

...