Dr. Alexis Ritvo is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist and assistant professor of psychiatry at University of Colorado (CU) School of Medicine. She also serves as the Medical Director for the Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices. She has been the program director for the CU addiction psychiatry fellowship since July 2020. She is co-chair of the Benzodiazepine Action Work Group with the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse, which she co-founded with Dr. Steven Wright, the former medical director for the Alliance. She has a passion for psychotherapy, teaching and improving health systems and policies. Her professional goals are twofold: 1. to increase psychiatry resident’s competency in evaluating and treating substance use disorders and physical dependence to benzodiazepines in general outpatient psychiatry and 2. to improve patient access to psychiatric treatment for substance use disorders and physical dependence to benzodiazepines co-occurring with other psychiatric disorders.

D E Foster ("D") is founder of the support sites Easing Anxiety and uneven, host of the Benzo Free and uneven podcasts, and former co-chair and founding member of the Benzodiazepine Action Work Group. He is a published author on multiple research papers including the paper that introduced benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction (BIND). Today, he spends his time as a global advocate for anxiety and benzodiazepine awareness, education, and support.

D has struggled with anxiety most of his life. In 2002, he was prescribed clonazepam (Klonopin) by his primary care physician for gastric distress, and he took the medication for 12 years without warning. His withdrawal experience was extreme and became the foundation for his book, Benzo Free: The World of Anti-Anxiety Drugs and the Reality of Withdrawal. D has been benzo-free since 2014, but he still deals with the lingering effects of BIND to this day.