Sacred psychedelic plant medicines are increasingly entering the Western mainstream, but is it cultural appropriation?
From the medicinal and ceremonial use of mescaline-containing plants by the Indigenous peoples of Mexico thousands of years ago, to the brewing of ayahuasca by several Indigenous groups in the Amazon today, entheogens have been a part of the cultural heritage of these communities in ways that Western society is just starting to understand.
Because there are significant differences in the ways these plants have been used historically and the way Western society is integrating them, let’s take a brief look at both approaches.
Indigenous Uses of Sacred Plant Medicines and Traditions
Various Indigenous cultures have used medicinal plants with psychoactive properties for hundreds of years including the Mazatec and Huichol of Mexico, Native North Americans, tribes in Africa, and Indigenous groups in the Amazon. The uses of these plants vary from culture to culture, but have a few commonalities when it comes to their healing purposes. For most, there is a general belief in their sacredness and spiritual properties.
“Plants, in general, have been used for ceremony, food, and utilitarian purposes. Sacred plant medicines were always used in ceremonies and never used for recreational purposes. Plants were placed on this earth to heal humanity as I understand it,” Belinda Eriacho, Native American Healer, tells Psychedelics Today. “In my own experiences, these sacred plant medicines have helped me to heal intergenerational trauma, to find peace with deceased loved ones, and to look at my own life and improve many areas of [it].”
When it comes to ayahuasca, Indigenous peoples from Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador have used the brew in their sacred rituals for many years. It served and continues to serve as a basis for the establishment of different spiritual traditions by these peoples. They hold the vine in high regard and believe it can facilitate the perception of the complexity of the natural world and human creation.
Similarly, the consumption of peyote in sacred rituals allowed the Huicholes and the Tarahumaras of Mexico to come into contact with divine beings or ancestors and to cure various diseases. To this day, peyote has also been adopted by several Native American peoples. They see peyote as a gift from the creator, and a direct communication channel with the “Great Spirit”.
These cultures have preserved rituals and sacred medicines but have also gone through extreme hardships in order to do so. Many Indigenous spiritual practices in Mexico were severely persecuted and banned during the Spanish Inquisition, and hundreds of thousands of natives were brutally murdered. Many other Indigenous communities in the Americas faced the same barbarities during colonization, having their codices destroyed and much of their ceremonial knowledge lost.
Western Uses of Plant Medicines
In the Western world, the use of psychedelic plant medicine can also be traced for thousands of years. A few examples are The Eleusinian Mysteries, the most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece that involved ceremonies with psychoactive plants. Furthermore, Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Sámi people of Northern Europe used Amanita Muscaria mushrooms in their sacred traditions.
Many medicinal plants have found their way into numerous products that the pharmaceutical industry sells today to treat a variety of diseases and health conditions, from aspirin derived from willow tree bark, to the current growing interest in entheogens for therapy and the possibility to revolutionize global mental health.
Scientists have been carrying out research for decades on psychedelic plants for their chemical properties and pharmaceutical potential. In this model of Western medicine, science seeks to understand these substances simply as chemical compounds detached from their ethnobotanical origin.
Adapting the uses of sacred psychedelic plants to Western medicine brings the advantage of making them accessible to people who can benefit tremendously from their properties on a global scale. In recent years, research into psychedelics has demonstrated their potential to address disorders that have proved difficult to treat including depression, anxiety, chemical dependency, and post-traumatic stress disorders.
But in reality, there is a suspicion that dominating the market is more important than addressing the mental health crisis. For instance, we are currently witnessing a debate on whether it’s ethical for companies such as COMPASS Pathways to try and monopolize the psychedelic industry with their patent strategy.
Additionally, in the past few years, the New Age spirituality movement has merged with positive psychology and the wellness industry, bringing many to seek healing, transcendental experiences, and self-improvement through entheogens. For many, these plants are the catalyst of positive life changes and are also revered with respect. However, there is concern that some are engaging in ceremonies so often that “spiritual bypassing” is now a recurring theme in psychedelic community discussions.
“I find it interesting how often I hear stories of people doing ceremony [using sacred plant medicines] every weekend. In many indigenous cultures, you were blessed to have one ceremony in your lifetime,” says Eriacho. “I would suggest that if individuals are finding that they need to use these plant medicines every weekend then (1) they are not taking the time to fully integrate into the experiences shown to them, and (2) these plant medicine(s) are not working for them.”
This high demand and constant search are not without negative consequences. Issues related to cultural appropriation, sustainability, and the commercialization of spirituality are often ignored by Westerners while engaging in such frequent ceremonies and spiritual tourism when they should be taken into greater consideration.
What Is Cultural Appropriation?
To understand the meaning of “cultural appropriation”, we need to understand the meaning of “appropriation” and ”culture” on an individual basis. We can define culture as the set of practices, symbols, and values that a specific group shares. For example, tattoos are an important symbol for many Indigenous cultures, as they are an essential part of the historical constitution of the groups to which they belong.
On the other hand, appropriation is the act of taking for oneself a certain element without the owner’s consent. So cultural appropriation would be the action of adopting elements of a culture to which you don’t belong without consent. An important detail to remember is this becomes problematic when it involves a power relationship. For example, it’s cultural appropriation when a culture which has historically been suppressed and marginalized has its elements stolen and its meanings erased by another culture that has dominated it.
Cultural appropriation contributes to the maintenance of structural racism in our society and the continuity of different stereotypes about cultures. But we must not forget that individuals appropriating a culture are just symptoms of a much larger problem. A capitalist system that aims for profit and uses extractivism (the exploitation of natural resources on a massive scale generating significant economic profits for a powerful few) to transform a community’s culture into a product but does not value the people whose culture it belongs to, is the real problem that needs addressing.
In the context of medicinal psychedelic plants and fungi, cultural appropriation may manifest itself in different ways. An example was the bioprospecting (the practice of searching for botanical miracle cures) of psilocybin mushrooms out of their Oaxacan context at the end of the 1950s by R. Gordon Wasson. And more recently, cases of “neo shamans” offering ceremonies they label “authentic” without years of experience and a real understanding of the cultures to which these ceremonies belong, are also examples of cultural appropriation.
The Answer? Awareness, Balance and Respect
There is a growing tendency to commodify these substances without giving back to the communities who have held this knowledge for centuries at their own risk. For example, who is really benefiting from expensive retreats in the Amazon jungle? Additionally, the development of new treatments with synthetic derivatives of these substances will reach the market through pharmaceutical patents without properly recognizing traditional knowledge.
For Indigenous people throughout the world, the commercialization of their spirituality is just one of many daily challenges embedded in larger societal struggles. Western engagement with Indigenous spiritual traditions often contributes to a false romanticization of these communities’ situations; it can even feel like an erasure of the injustices that they have experienced in the past, and continue to experience to this day. Indigenous people have to fight daily for the preservation of their lands, their languages, and their cultures. In fact, many continue to be murdered for standing up for their rights. As psychedelic enthusiasts, we have the responsibility to bring awareness to these dynamics.
“While psychedelic plant medicines still have most of their potential still to be taped into for the benefit of society, contemporary psychedelic studies are at risk of replicating harmful colonial behavior with the territories and communities from which the plants originate,” writes anthropologist, Paloma David, in her forthcoming publication, “Decolonizing Psychedelic Studies: The Case of Ayahuasca”. “A decolonial approach is essential to the current renaissance as failing to recognize indigenous perspectives as equally valuable to the discussion in the appropriate use of these substances only contributes to deepening the colonial wound in which these plants are interwoven.”
Will psychedelics be reduced to high-class wellness, healthcare, or self-optimization products that are only accessible for those who can afford the steep price tag while the people that carried this traditional knowledge are excluded from the market? As we are about to enter the era of psychedelic capitalism, it’s important for us to remember that balance can be achieved if we acknowledge that respect is crucial for any relationship.
We need to look at what we are doing when it comes to sacred plant medicine, how we are doing it, and what impact our actions have on other communities around the world. There needs to be an effort to educate ourselves in order to comprehend Indigenous paradigms, and the effect of their loss of languages, land, culture, and knowledge. As we begin to better understand spiritual identity and sacred reciprocity, we can start making an effort to no longer let Indigenous peoples and their cultures be seen as resources to be harvested.
“Through my lens as a Native American woman, when we are ill or when we seek balance in our lives through ceremony, we often look to our plant relatives for healing,” says Eriacho “There is a ritual or practice of utilizing these sacred beings. Before the plant is harvested, we are mindful about how much will be needed, and then explain to the plant why it is needed and for whom. This is done out of respect for the plant in exchange for its life. We offer tobacco, cornmeal as an act of appreciation. This is referred to as sacred reciprocity. We need to be respectful and reverent of these sacred plant medicines.”
So how can we protect and develop traditional ceremonies in a way that is useful and respectful of Indigenous communities? And how can we prevent the so-called psychedelic renaissance from exclusively benefiting non-Indigenous Western entrepreneurs?
When I speak to Paloma David about how we can move forward in a respectful fashion, she says, “Firstly, by being culturally humble in actively listening to Indigenous voices who are authorities on the use of psychedelic plant medicines and actively including them in the conversation on the appropriate use of these substances.”
“By being aware of our own cultural biases. By understanding that people’s making-sense of an ayahuasca experience is highly dependent on their cultural background, religious beliefs (or the lack thereof), and personal psychology.” David continues, “And secondly, by avoiding the harmful reproduction of colonial dynamics of appropriation, epistemicide and exploitation in which the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous knowledges are interwoven.”
Reflecting on these ethical dilemmas can offer us models for understanding and solving this continuing harmful and extractive economy. Another solution might be pointing out paths for fair and reciprocal reparation agreements with Indigenous communities.
More importantly, considering these issues make us question the colonial and racialized Western mentality that contributes to the continued delegitimization of Indigenous communities and their knowledge so we all can at least start asking ourselves: What are the true costs of our healing?
About the Author
Jessika Lagarde is a Brazilian storyteller, Earth and climate activist, and Women On Psychedelics co-Founder. Women On Psychedelics is an educational platform that advocates for the end of the stigmatization around women’s mental health and substance use, and the normalization of the use of psychedelics for its therapeutic potential and healing capacities. Jessika’s environmental work and psychedelic path have made her more aware not only of the crisis of our planet but also of how human disconnection is a direct cause of it. All of her work is informed in taking action in a way that serves the Earth and our human collective, in hopes of mobilizing inner healing towards outer action.
In this episode, Joe interviews freelance writer Jasmine Virdi, who, in addition to writing for Chacruna and Lucid News, has been writing for us for the last year and a half.
She tells the story of her path toward becoming a psychedelic-focused writer: An early interest in mysticism to a high-dose solo psilocybin experience, to volunteering with David Luke at a retreat in Wales, to eventually interning at the Institute of Ecotechnics, which led her to Synergetic Press. They talk about peyote conservation and the IPCI, 5-MeO-DMT and the protection of toads, how ayahuasca churches and facilitators have dealt with Covid, and the concept of plant medicines protecting people from Covid and other diseases.
They also talk about neurodivergence and how psychedelics could help autistic individuals, the environmental impact of having kids, panpsychism, Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, how language has changed us, the concept of “slow is smooth,” perennialism, the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, and more.
Notable Quotes
“Culture moves so fast nowadays. …We need to move at the pace of nature in order to align ourselves with its values.”
“A general trend among facilitators is that they had noticed [that] throughout Covid, they actually felt the demand for ayahuasca ceremonies increasing as opposed to decreasing. …I think it kind of speaks to the fact that the world is in dire need of healing, and also, maybe people are connected with a sense of what they really value and want to move towards when they’re confronted with their own mortality. And building community is now more important than ever, and I think a lot of people find community in plant medicine circles.” “I don’t think that psychedelics are the only answer or even the answer, but for me, I feel so passionate about them because they have been tools in turning me onto what I feel are greater parts of this reality.”
Jasmine Virdi is a freelance writer in the psychedelic space. Since 2018, she has been working for the independent publishing company Synergetic Press, where her passions for ecology, ethnobotany, and psychoactive substances converge. Jasmine has written for Psychedelics Today, Chacruna Institute for Plant Medicines, Lucid News, Cosmic Sister, Psychable, and Microdosing Guru. She is currently pursuing an MSc in Spirituality, Consciousness, and Transpersonal Psychology at the Alef Trust with the future aim of working as a psychedelic practitioner. Jasmine’s goal as an advocate for psychoactive substances is to raise awareness of the socio-historical context in which these substances emerged in order to help integrate them into our modern-day lives in a safe, culturally sensitive, ethically-integral, and meaningful way.
In this episode, Joe interviews Daniel Moler: author, artist, comic book creator, and sanctioned teacher of the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition (a form of Peruvian shamanism).
Moler talks about the Psychonaut Presents comic series he writes and illustrates, which delves into his experiences with consciousness exploration, most notably in his first ayahuasca experience and the subsequent experiences he’s had through his shamanic training. And he talks about his pathway to shamanism, the attention shamanism places on the act of service and bringing wisdom from the experience back into the world, and the importance of finding your flow and aligning with its current.
He discusses San Pedro: how much he loves it, how he uses it in conjunction with Singado, and how it enhances his facilitation work. And he talks about Alan Moore, the Kamasqa Curanderismo Tradition, Terence McKenna, Aleister Crowley, Chaos Magick, Rick Strassman, how Christian and Catholic-based iconography became a part of Indigenous traditions, and how the worlds of science and traditional Indigenous culture could learn from each other for the betterment of all.
Notable Quotes
“There are Christian shamans. There are Islamic shamans. There’s shamans from various types of pagan traditions. So it doesn’t have to be locked into this framework of: ‘Oh, it’s only Indigenous tribal peoples that have a shamanic framework.’ Because shamanism is just about having that direct experience with the world of soul and then expressing that, bringing that out into the world in a way that helps benefit the planet. There’s a lot of controversy around the word, but I’ve, over the years, just learned to kind of shun that. It’s the word we have right now. It’s what we’re using.”
“When you have found your soul’s purpose, you have found a way to operate in the universe where the universe works along with you to help align your life in the direction that you would like it to lead.”
“A vital component of shamanism is that everything has a consciousness. Everything is alive, and especially these medicines. They’re not tools. Some people refer to these as shamanic tools. That would be like referring to my wife as a tool, or to you as a tool in this conversation. You’re a consciousness and I’m a consciousness and we’re two people participating together.” “Don’t just follow some kind of ritual paradigm, because it may not work. You’ve got to do what works for you, so find a method and a formula that works. And you know it’s going to work and that it’s going to be valid for you because every time you do it, it works. You have repeated, repeatable results.”
Daniel Moler is an author, artist, and astral entrepreneur. He is writer, artist, and creator of the hit comic seriesPsychonaut Presents, the author ofShamanic Qabalah: A Mystical Path to Uniting the Tree of Life & the Great Work from Llewellyn Worldwide, as well as the psychedelic urban fantasyRED Mass, and the Terence McKenna guidebookMachine Elves 101. He has also made contributions in Ross Heaven’s bookCactus of Mystery: The Shamanic Powers of the Peruvian San Pedro Cactus andLlewellyn’s 2020, 2021, and 2022 Magical Almanacs, among numerous other articles in journals and magazines around the world. In April 2019, he was noted asAuthor of the Month by best-selling author and researcher Graham Hancock. Daniel is a sanctioned teacher of the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, a form of Peruvian shamanism brought to the U.S. by respected curandero don Oscar Miro-Quesada. Visit Daniel online atdanielmolerweb.com.
How do you draw the line between a healthy escape and a dissociative disorder? And could dissociative psychedelics like ketamine play a part?
We live in a deeply interconnected world. From our ecosystems to our societies, the Earth is made up of living things held in dynamic relationships. We as humans are deeply woven into this fabric. But sometimes, all this connection can be too much to hold. Whether from acute trauma, overstimulation, or constant societal stress, our bodies have built-in intelligence that allows us to dissociate or disconnect from our current experience when we’ve reached our saturation point.
On the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of how we cope with and heal from traumatic experiences has been front of mind. I spoke with somatic practitioner, Claudia Cuentas, MA, MFT, and Psy.D., psychologist, ketamine specialist and founder of KRIYA (Ketamine Research Institute), Raquel Bennett, to discuss the psychology of dissociation, what happens when it becomes a disorder, the healing power of escapism, and where psychedelics like ketamine fit into the conversation.
Raquel Bennett, who has been studying therapeutic ketamine since 2002 and who teaches the Masterclass on Ketamine in our Navigating Psychedelics for Clinicians and Therapists course, put it this way: “There are different kinds of dissociation or disconnection, including dissociation from your body or bodily sensations; dissociation from your thoughts or awareness; and dissociation from your biographical history, identity, or sense of self.”
Claudia Cuentas explained it another way. “Dissociation is a physiological self protective response, and it is activated when the body feels saturated or overwhelmed by an input or by too much information at once. That information can come from an internal or external stimulus. Dissociation is our bodies’ ability to remove its attention from the present and take a break, pause and/or, hopefully, recalibrate back into presence. Children do it all the time. That gazing and daydreaming is self-regulating. It is an amazing regulatory system we have.”
While they may look the same from the outside, many experts say that dissociation is different from absent mindedness. Many of us can relate to driving home and not remembering the drive, or checking out during a meeting because we are distracted by something going on in our personal lives. Dissociation is a common experience, and not necessarily a cause for concern. The question is: Is dissociation or the dissociation patterns you have developed to cope with internal/external stressors interrupting your ability to enjoy life?
On top of this, the pressures of modern life can almost be too much to bear at times. We are inundated with unlimited newsfeeds and chaotic information overload in a way that no generation has ever been. What are embodied creatures like us meant to do with the realities of systemic injustice, climate catastrophe, and economic collapse, on top of personal concerns like relationships, mortgages, and health issues?
In response to these pressures, we’ve normalized a culture of disconnection. Checking out of life may become a habitual way of coping with the strain of daily life: binge watching TV or scrolling on social media. Gaming out. Numbing with drugs or alcohol. Swiping on Tinder. These are activities that put us in passive roles and don’t require our engaged presence or participation.
Tuning out itself isn’t necessarily problematic. When it comes as a response to overstimulation, it serves a purpose and then the person can return to present awareness naturally when they feel ready. However, this disconnection can sometimes happen involuntarily or becomes a default way of moving through life. Often, chronic dissociation comes as a result of acute or ongoing trauma.
For people living with dissociative states, this disconnection from one’s body, mind, emotions or identity can be distressing and have a major impact on relationships and quality of life. They may experience depersonalization (feeling as though they don’t control their body, thoughts or emotions) or derealization (a disruption in one’s perception of reality, as though the world is unreal, hazy or flat).
Dissociation can show up in a lot of ways: tuning out during a difficult conversation, personality changes, forgetting major memories or stretches of time, difficulty staying present during sex, or feeling unaware of one’s own body. Sometimes these episodes begin in response to overstimulation or an event that triggers traumatic memory or association.
I asked Cuentas how these disorders happen, and how they might be addressed.
“At times, we may feel that life is not that safe or that the present is not that safe. This is especially true when there has not been an ability to heal, digest and process past trauma and understand why an experience was so frightening or difficult. People don’t want to feel present because if they do, they will be overwhelmed by sensations associated with pain, sadness, overwhelm. The body sends a signal to the brain through the nervous system, and the brain and/orr the body disconnect from the present reality. So the mind says, I am going to release attention from the whole system so that you are here… but not here. I am going to keep you safe.. This way, you don’t have to feel the pain you have gone through.”
“Dissociative diagnoses arise when we are using this way of coping as an unconscious default,” she adds. “Sometimes people struggle because they aren’t feeling like themselves. Maybe everything is numb. Or they feel like they are witnessing a facade of somebody else. Most of the time, dissociative diagnoses are connected to intense, deep, unaddressed trauma from very early on stages of life.”
This questionnaire is a useful tool for distinguishing between normal and problematic dissociative experiences.
Could Somatic Practices & Dissociative Drugs Like Ketamine Be The Path Back?
According to Cuentas, the way to alleviate dissociative disorders is to increase one’s tolerance over time for sensations that may be uncomfortable or overwhelming, essentially moving through the trauma at a pace that’s comfortable and tolerable to the individual.
“We have to get beyond this self-protection mechanism that kicks in automatically. So how do we decode the experience to relieve the body from the automatic response in order to enjoy the present? If you keep unconsciously self protecting to not feel the pain, then you’re missing everything– joy, love, intimacy, all your senses. You turn off your ability to sense comfortable or uncomfortable experiences, like enjoying a sky full of colors, feeling the softness of your skin, hearing a song and go, ‘wow, I like that’. It’s numbing, and the person may not, at times, even realize.”
Finding pleasurable ways to exist in one’s body is an essential part of processing, healing, and moving through trauma. Many trauma therapists work with a particular focus on the body, known as “somatic” practices. This is essential because, although the mind can check in and out through dissociation, the body carries the load of a lifetime of experiences. Cuentas’ work focuses on the use of embodied approaches, like art, dance, music, drama and storytelling as healing modalities for families and communities.
Psychedelic substances may offer another path to doing this work. Part of the theory around why psychedelics help with trauma is related to capacity building. By promoting states of openness, they create opportunities for people to re-engage with painful or traumatic experiences and form new relationships to these memories.
Psilocybin and MDMA have received the most press in recent years, but ketamine has held a steady role as one of the only legal psychedelics clinicians can currently offer. It’s common to hear people speak about ketamine as a dissociative. I asked Bennett her thoughts on this classification.
“When you take ketamine, you may be dissociated from your body; in other words, the signals from your sensory input organs may be temporarily muted,” she says. “However, when ketamine is utilized in a physically and psychologically safe setting, people tend to be keenly aware of or connected with their own thoughts and internal images.”
The dissociation felt with ketamine is more physiological than psychological. I asked Cuentas to expand upon this. She explained that, based on a somatic perspective, it seems like ketamine temporarily disconnects the body and the mind, whereas the coping mechanism of dissociation can often disconnect people from their own consciousness as well.
“Seems like Ketamine can turn the body off so the mind doesn’t have to negotiate how to to keep the body safe or what to do with the body’s intense signals of stress, which are common during or after traumatic experiences,” says Cuentas. “So for a period of time, it may not have to navigate the usual intensity and discomfort. If this happens, the mind is released from its usual concerns/stressors, and its attention can possibly concentrate on other sensations or realms of awareness.”
“As the body experiences numbness or dissociation, it is still tracking the experience, but not reacting. When a body is affected by an anesthetic like Ketamine for therapeutic uses, it will put the body in a highly suggestible state,” Cuentas adds. “From a somatic perspective, there is a window of time as a person is coming back to feeling their body again— that is the moment of doing a lot of processing. I believe this is possibly the most effective way to work with ketamine. Whatever happens in this window of reconnection between unconsciousness and consciousness or body awareness, will be recorded in the body. You would have to be intentional because whatever you introduce in that state can have a great impact on your psyche.”
Feeling good is an essential part of our healing.
Returning To Safety From Dissociative Disorders
Dissociation is the human body’s way of trying to achieve safety. As we are unlearning automatic responses that don’t serve us, the need for a sense of safety is still present. How do we develop a sense of safety within ourselves when we can’t guarantee it in our external environment? Therapists refer to resourcing—tools that help people develop a higher tolerance for discomfort. In this way, we can stay in the present moment longer without needing to dissociate.
Especially for people from marginalized communities, creating microcosms of safety, even temporary ones, can be essential practice for dealing with life. These pods of comfort can come from affinity spaces, keeping a close inner circle, getting immersed in something you love, and for some people, exploring altered states.
In pursuit of safety, a natural response to triggering scenarios is to remove oneself from further harm. However, safety can’t necessarily be achieved in a societal context which is inherently unsafe for many people in our communities. Some people may feel they always have to be shut down or running to escape harm. For these folks, there is an even greater need for networks of support and practical tools that grow the ability to stay present. It can be empowering and freeing to stay present through a practice of pleasure, feeling the body’s sensations, and finding what feels positive and safe in the here and now.
When Dissociation Can Be a Positive
For those of us not dealing with chronic dissociation, the question to ask is whether we are habitually checking out from the present moment and if so, what shifts in these habits might help us have a more fulfilling quality of life. Perhaps instead of relying on screens or substances to wind down, we could incorporate activities that invite pleasurable presence: music, dance, breath work, meditation, meals, or the company of a loved one. It helps to view this as something to practice, rather than something to be good or bad at.
On the other hand, escapism isn’t always a bad thing. There is agency in choosing when and how to turn off the outside world for a while. In order to absorb the benefits of this freedom, dissociating needs to be something that is consciously chosen, rather than an automatic stress based response.
In some ways, escapism is a combination of dissociation and resourcing. Tuning out on purpose, or even altering one’s perception, can offer a healthy way to find rest and recovery from the concerns of daily life. It can also help us to remember what it is like to feel good and build capacity for pleasure. Feeling good is an essential part of our healing.
Grammy nominated singer Jhené Aiko often writes songs about the use of cannabis and psychedelics as medicine. As a mixed race woman of color, she poetically contrasts the peaceful haze of altered states and the harsh realities of the world outside.
She says it well in her hit, “Tryna Smoke”:
Life’s no fairytale, I know all too well/ Gotta plant the seed sometimes /Then you let it grow
Inhale, exhale some more/ Heaven in Hell/ If you know, you know/ That sh*t is beautiful
You gotta just let it go/ Spark up a blunt and smoke
Similarly, in her song “Bed Peace”, featuring Childish Gambino, she sings:
Yeah, what I am trying to say is/ That love is ours to make so we should make it
Everything else can wait/ The time is ours to take so we should take it
We should stay right here/ We should lay right here’Cause everything is okay right here
Conclusion: Dissociation Is Complex
Dissociation is multifaceted. It can signal trauma, offer temporary respite from trauma, and potentially even a path to healing trauma.
Altered states of consciousness, whether from known dissociatives like ketamine, or other substances, give us an opportunity to choose when and how to leave our physical realms and return. They shift our awareness of our spirits, minds and bodies, and often create pleasurable sensations and new insights along the way.
Cuentas closes our conversation by reminding me that the intentions we bring to these experiences are important. “You are recording information in your subconscious/psyche. So what do you want to put there?” she asks.
We can’t necessarily make the world safer today. So there is power in creating microcosms of the world we are dreaming forward. In creating a practice of pleasure and joy, we’re able to fill our spirits like a well to draw upon during difficult experiences. Perhaps eventually, as these micro-moments of safety and resourcing find their way into our embodied realities, they will spread like mycelium and we will create a world that is less traumatizing to begin with.
This article was updated on July 19, 2021 to reflect changes by one of the sources.
Rebecca Martinez is a Xicana writer, parent and community organizer born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She is a co-founder of the Fruiting Bodies Collective, an advocacy group, podcast and multimedia platform addressing the intersections between healing justice and the psychedelics movement. Rebecca served as the Event & Volunteer Coordinator for the successful Measure 109 campaign, an unprecedented state initiative which creates a legal framework for psilocybin therapy in Oregon. She is also the author of Edge Play: Tales From a Quarter Life Crisis, a memoir about psychedelic healing after family trauma, spiritual abuse, and police violence. She serves on the Health Equity Subcommittee for Oregon’s Psilocybin Advisory Board as well as the Board of Advisors for the Plant Medicine Healing Alliance.
In this episode, Joe interviews former Navy SEAL and BUD/S instructor turned actor and star of two of his own TV shows (“Manhunt” on Discovery and “Predators Up Close” on Animal Planet), Joel Lambert.
Lambert talks about his 10 years as a Navy SEAL and the toll it took on his brain, from the microtraumas from repeated gunfire and other weaponry causing his memory, mood, and cognition to deteriorate, to the difficulty of adjusting back to normal civilian life after a decade of living at a speed and intensity normal people don’t understand- a transition for which we, as a society, don’t provide enough time and space. And with detailed description and humor, he tells the story of what saved his brain and brought him back to the person he once was: a trip to Mexico and amazing experiences with ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT.
He also talks about his more recent psychedelic experiences and how he no longer feels he needs psychedelics, how his meditation has become one of the biggest parts of his life, his “Manhunt” show, the future and scalability of psychedelic-assisted treatment, and his appreciation for Dr. Martin Polanco, Amber and Marcus of VETS, and the donor who made it possible for his life to completely change.
Notable Quotes
“When you look at warrior cultures throughout history, in almost every society that has a warrior tradition, there is some sort of ritual or acknowledgement of these warriors coming back from whatever it is they do and the medicine man or the shaman or the religious persona or function in the tribe would do something to isolate [them]. …Even the acknowledgement of a ritual purification; whether it is something specific and material and effective or not- just that acknowledgement is huge. And we don’t do that.” “We connect back to the myth, we connect back to the ritual. We connect back to the power of the collective unconscious in whatever way that it is we can bring that forward. And there’s a reason that it’s there and there’s a reason why we flounder when we are not connected to it.” “It started off with this buzzing. This nightmare buzzing started happening all around me. And then the visions. Boom. I had never seen, Joe, anything with my physical eyes with the clarity and distinction and reality that these visions were playing in my mind. And it’s a nightmare. It is a literal nightmare. ….It was an alien machine hell of fractals and a consciousness that was like nothing I could conceive of before experiencing this in this alien machine hell.”
“What’s crazy is I think I’m actually moving past the psychedelics now. It’s been amazing, it’s been incredible, and I’m a huge psychedelic proponent and fan and I want to bring this to people as much as possible, but what’s amazing is that with the meditation and with the practice and with, I think, the integration that the group has provided for me and my own integration and my own practices, it’s gotten to where my consciousness and the springboard that psychedelics provided has taken me to a place where I feel like I don’t need them.”
Originally from the Pacific Northwest and raised in a little logging town on the Columbia River, Joel Lambert grew up performing on stage and in commercials before selling all he had and running off to join the armed forces, where he served as a Navy SEAL for ten years, earning distinction and experiencing combat in places like Kosovo and Afghanistan. Returning home decorated and serving as a lead Instructor at BUD/S, the screening and selection school for men aspiring to join the elite Navy SEALs, he was drawn back into the world of film and television.
A review of The Nature of Drugs: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact (Synergetic Press, 2021), a collection of eight lectures given by the “godfather of ecstasy” Dr. Alexander Shulgin.
And so begins one of the best classes you’ll ever take…
“Most of you have already been exposed to drugs, and most of you will personally decide if you wish to become exposed again in the future. The goal of this course is to provide specific information concerning drugs, as to their actions, their risks, and their virtues. And that’s really what my role is, I’m a seeker of truth. I’m trying to find out what’s there. I am not an advocate for nor an advocate against drug use. I have my own personal philosophies that have no business in here. You’ll find that I am quite sympathetic with a lot of drugs that people say are evil and bad. But in truth, I want you to have enough information that you can decide for yourself whether this is something that’s your cup of tea, quite literally caffeine, or whether it is something you wish to stay out of.
“I’m going to have a theme for this whole course called “warts and all.” Namely, what is known about drugs, what is to be found out about them, what do they smell like, what do they taste like, what are the goods, what are the bads. Why is it so bad to use drugs? Why is it occasionally so good to use drugs?”
—Alexander Shulgin, The Nature of Drugs: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact
The Nature of Drugs: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact by Alexander Shulgin is out now with Synergetic Press.
What’s beautiful about this work—a volume of the first eight lectures from Alexander “Shasha” Shulgin’s popular course on drugs at San Francisco State University—is that for those of us who never knew Sasha, or only saw him briefly, it’s a window into a beautiful soul. Like Robert Sapolsky, he’s one of those extraordinary teachers of science who brings so many layers to the experience of how science actually works. Through his anecdotes and asides, he does away with science as a function of perfect observers, removed from their subjects with ideal impartiality and presents a messy system of egos, funding priorities, ‘novelty’ and blind groping towards the Truth.
Many of us know Dr. Alexander Shulgin through the landmark books he wrote with his wife Ann, PIKHAL and TIKHAL, which are a mix of autobiography, love story, and drug syntheses. Even more of us know him through his beloved compound MDMA, which he popularized and made famous. But this book, The Nature of Drugs: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact, shows another side: a teacher of phenomenal worth.
I’ve been studying drugs for twenty years, but Sasha Shulgin’s lectures to his students still gave me new insights on almost every page. He has a way of making the complexities of pharmacodynamics accessible by turning the human body into a bathtub. He talks about how the water gets filtered, how it goes down the drain, and how that makes a difference in the drugs you take. The understanding he imparts of how drugs work is invaluable.
But what feels so special is the glimpses you get of the alchemical man himself. In these lectures, occurring in the Year of our Reagan 1987, he makes clear his opposition to the War on Drugs. The students taking his course might not have expected a year-by-year rundown of the increasing crackdowns since 1980, but that’s what they learned. And if you sit yourself in their seat as you read this book, imagine being a student in Reagan’s Amerika learning about the Drug War from a white-haired chemist who admits in the first lecture, out of the 250 known psychedelic compounds, to have tried about 150 of them.
But he doesn’t look like Hunter S. Thompson. He looks like a tall kindly man with his pretty wife in the front row taking notes. He approaches chemistry as a ‘sacred art’. He rails against ‘holding laws’ that are simply used to hold people that the police don’t like the look of. He drops jokes constantly and calls his scribbled diagrams of molecules ‘dirty pictures’. I like to imagine myself in this classroom and I wonder if I would have been sharp enough to figure out that this was one of the greatest underground chemists of all time.
There’s a clue near the end, while he’s talking about his own history in industrial research and playing one of his imagination games with his students:
“Take, for example, how you define new sweetening agents, agents that you put in coffee that make coffee taste sweet. How would you go about finding them? It’s your job. You’re hired and you are working for Monsanto. “Find a new sweetening agent. We want to knock Nutrasweet off the market.” How are you going to find it? You’re right now at the nitty gritty of research; your task is to find a new sweetening agent. Here are our leads. Here are five materials that do cause sweet tastes, but this is too toxic, this has a bitter aftertaste, this one takes fifteen minutes to come on, this one causes cancer, and that one causes teratogenesis. We can’t use them. But we need one because we’re losing the market. Saccharine is not going to be available much longer. How do you find one?
“Well, my philosophy, that people would cringe at, is to put a damp finger into it and taste it. [Laughter.] That to me is the heart of how you find a sweetening agent. Well, what if it’s going to cause cancer of the jaw? Okay, then you come down with cancer of the jaw, but you’ve found a sweetening agent. [Laughter.] So you have risk and you have reward.”
This was the same method he used to test MDMA when he first synthesized it a decade before these lectures. Unfortunately, only three months earlier, the feds had banned MDMA by putting it into Schedule 1. They also passed the Federal Analogues Act that would be used as a wide club against any “substantially similar” molecule (a phrase that makes him shake his head. “Is the taillight structure of a 1986 Pontiac “substantially similar” to the taillight structure of a 1984 Chevrolet?”). Despite these crackdowns, his wife in the front row would go on to lead an untold number of therapists into an alliance with MDMA and its chemical cousins like 2C-B. And their books PIHKALand TIHKAL would document a beautiful love story, fertilized by his psychoactives. He knew that the drugs that interested him couldn’t be found by testing them in animals. As an alchemist, he knew you had to stick your finger into it and taste it for yourself.
In his first lecture, he shares with the students,
“My first experience with morphine was with a wound I had during WWII and I was going into England. I was about three days out of England on a destroyer and was below decks and we were playing cards and killing the time until we got into England. I was on morphine pretty much all the time because this was one hell of a painful thing. And I was dealing with one hand, I learned to deal with one hand, and the guy in sick bay would come by and say, “Is your thumb still hurting you?” “Yeah, probably a little bit more than it had before. Whose deal?” You know, the next thing you’re dealing cards. The pain is still there. It’s a beautiful, powerful tool to treat pain because the pain is there, but it doesn’t bother you.”
As he doesn’t reveal in the first lecture, in 1960 Sasha first tried mescaline while a young chemist at Dow Pharmaceuticals. He said of the experience, “I understood that our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence, but it is indeed there inside us, and there are chemicals that can catalyze its availability.’’
Chemicals can also catalyze profitability. The next year, he created Zectran, the first biodegradable pesticide. Dow could sell it by the ton. And as he said to his class—most likely with a wink and a Groucho Marx smile, “And industries love things they can sell by the ton.”
With his success, Dow was content to leave him alone in his lab, puttering around and doing just the kind of things he wanted. It was a chemist’s dream. And this dreamer dreamed up novel psychedelics.
As Hamilton Morris lovingly laid out, Sasha began with a simple modification to the mescaline molecule. He added one carbon to a side-chain and it became the psychedelic amphetamine that he called TMA. He continued experimenting and produced TMA-2 through TMA-6. The last one eventually went on to become a moderately popular psychedelic in the US and Japan.
As an alchemist, he knew you had to stick your finger into it and taste it for yourself.
1963 marked the beginning of the end for the cushy Dow years: Sasha synthesized DOM (his PIHKAL entry here). By 1966, with LSD illegal, this psychedelic amphetamine started appearing on the street under the name STP (Serenity, Tranquility, and Peace). It earns its name. Shulgin himself said on 4 mg, “It is a beautiful experience. Of all past joys, LSD, mescaline, cannabis, peyote, this ranks number one.”
But the effects of DOM can last much much longer than LSD. You might have been enjoying the merry-go-round, but eventually you want to get off and let the world stop spinning. At 5 mg, he wrote, “The experience continued unabated throughout the night with much tension and discomfort. I was unable to get any sleep. I hallucinated quite freely during the night, but could stop them at will. While I never felt threatened, I felt I knew what it was like to look across the brink to insanity.”
Unfortunately, just in time for the Summer of Love, some underground chemist dosed a batch at 20 mg of DOM per pill. On top of that high dosage, the full effects can take two hours to kick in and so it’s easy to imagine redosing because you don’t think it’s working. In Golden Gate Park at the huge and historic Human Be-In, thousands got way too high in trips that could last for three days. Within a year, the feds made DOM illegal and when Dow figured out the mind behind the molecule, they kindly showed Dr. Shulgin the door.
He went to his home laboratory in the hills outside Berkeley, California, and became a gentleman scientist in the vein of Ed Ricketts. But instead of the sea, Shulgin peered into the mind. He kept his Schedule 1 license by being useful to the DEA and funded himself with consultations and teaching. In plain sight of the authorities, he tinkered with hundreds of psychedelics—including the rediscovery of MDMA.
From this unique perspective, the students in Sasha’s class got to learn about two of the trickiest problems in pharmacology and sociology:
How do you define ‘drug’?
How do you define ‘drug abuse’?
He begins, “Philosophy aside, what is a drug? The FDA has given a marvelous, marvelous, long legal definition that goes on for four paragraphs”. He continues to gently mock this FDA definition until he shares a better explanation from Professor Samuel Irwin: “A drug is any chemical that modifies the function of living tissue, resulting in physiological or behavioral change.” But Shulgin takes it farther:
“I would make the definition looser yet, and considerably more general. Not just a chemical, but also plants, minerals, concepts, energy, just any old stuff. Not just changes in physiology or behavior, but also in attitude, concept, attention, belief, self-image, and even changes in faith and allegiance. “A drug is something that modifies the expected state of a living thing.” In this guise, almost everything outside of food, sleep, and sex can classify as a drug. And I even have some reservations about all three of those examples.”
Cue the laughter. In these transcripts, you often see [laughter], and you know the transcribers are probably underreporting it. It makes you want to listen to the original tapes. Those lucky kids, getting to learn about ingestion methods from one of the great alchemists of the century. Sasha teaches on how we metabolize these drugs, how they sequester to different tissues, how we form bad habits with them and how we form good habits with them.
“If you can drink modestly, if you can use tobacco modestly and have a choice, have freedom of choice, and choose to do it and you have a good relationship with it, and it applies to alcohol, it applies to tobacco, it applies to LSD, it applies to heroin—there is nothing intrinsically evil about any of those drugs. Drugs are not intrinsically evil. In fact, we are going to get into the question of what is drug abuse. The problems that are bothersome with the definition of the word “drug” are nothing compared with the ones that are to be faced with the word “abuse.””
He even had a collection of definitions of ‘drug abuse’. From his huge consumption of articles, essays and public talks, you can imagine the different versions collected in his files, like species of beetles pinned in a collector’s cabinet. He found they fell into “the four operative words: what, who, where and how.”
What a drug is…
a particularly lousy definition because drug abuse is linked directly to the shape of the molecule itself.
Who’s giving the drug…
following Szasz, if drugs from a doctor is drug use and if self-medication is drug abuse, then doctors stand between you and your drugs like priests did between you and God before the Reformation.
Where is the drug obtained…
according to Dr. Jerome Levine at NIMH, drugs from “illicit channels, and/or in medically unsupervised or socially unsanctioned settings.”
“I personally believe, most strongly, that in the improper use of drugs lies their abuse. Dr. Irwin has phrased it thusly: “[Drug abuse is] the taking of drugs under circumstances, and at dosages that significantly increase their hazard potential, whether or not used therapeutically, legally, or as prescribed by a physician.
…
“People use drugs, have always used drugs, and will forever use drugs, whether there are physicians or not…
“Any use of a drug that impairs physical or mental health, that interferes with one’s social functioning or productivity is drug abuse. And the corollary is also true. The use of a drug that does not impair physical or mental health or interfere with social functioning or productivity is not drug abuse. And the question of its illegality is completely beside the matter.”
And the Freedom Fighter in him isn’t slow to point out how these definitions are used to harm people in the real world via the War on Drugs. Plus, the sly wizard mentions the recent banning of MDMA as a textbook example of the misuse of drug abuse.
What a prof. He defines terms, rambles on to fascinating asides and uses brilliant metaphors. And of course, he made no secret of his dislike of midterms, finals and grades. He’s the kind of cool teacher who takes a Socratic poll on what kind of final to have and finally decides to make it an essay question where you have to disagree with him.
Buy The Book: The Nature of Drugs
All these lectures give the portrait of a courageous, beautiful soul. And with this book, the course is only getting started. There’s another volume still to be published where he will drill down into the various categories of drugs.
Anyone interested in psychoactives should get this book and support the further compiling of Dr. Shulgin’s work. If you’ve ever spent $30 on any of his chemical creations, helping out by buying the book seems only fair. And you get to own a lovely portrait of someone whom we are very lucky for having lived and having taught.
The two have an intimate conversation that spans from how Carhart-Harris’s work began, how his theories, like the REBUS model, took shape, and what other applications psilocybin may have for treating mental, spiritual, and physical health conditions.
The interview has an interesting twist because Wing participated in an NYU trial of psilocybin for major depressive disorder and experienced full remission from a recurrent battle with depression after his first dose of the magic mushroom compound. Wing shares a lot of his first hand experience with Robin Carhart-Harris on how the trial he participated in changed his mood state and mindset, and what the possible neurochemical changes felt like subjectively.
Court Wing: Is this, in any way, in the arc of what you expected to see when you started out this research?
Robin Carhart-Harris: Wow. Hmm… Maybe it is. Or… no it’s not. No. [laughs] I mean, after a few years, you start to realize the therapeutic potential, or I did.
Initially, it was like, psychedelics are fascinating tools… Powerful tools to revolutionize our understanding of the mind and the brain. That’s what drew me in. And then I was like, “Oh, and the therapeutic application is actually very compelling.” Once I caught onto that (and this was probably sort of midway through my PhD in the late noughties, you know, late 2000s). Then, I remember, Ben Sessa was trying to get a psilocybin for alcoholism study going at Bristol, where I was doing my Ph.D. We had meetings with seniority, who basically weren’t interested in our idea. And then I said, “Leave it ten years,” and we’ll be able to do this research. I think someone said once, “You overestimate what you can achieve in a year and underestimate what can be achieved in ten.”
That rings true. The changes in a decade have been colossal so it’s been beyond expectations, really.
CW: Personally, it’s hard not to feel a great deal of gratitude for the work that you’ve all done. As you know, I went through the NYU psilocybin study for major depressive disorder a year ago. And [now I’m in] total remission. I mean, just so unexpected. And I read the research, I saw the reports, I read the review paper of the neural mechanisms, which actually was the first thing that truly excited me because I had lost track of the prefrontal cortex atrophy and seeing words like neurogenesis, synaptogenesis, dendritic arborization; it’s like, that’s part and parcel of what I had been studying in things like chronic pain for the last ten plus years. But to go through it and to feel a physical absence of the depression; I don’t have a better term for it. Like a missing burden.
Anyways, what type of data were you seeing [early on] that made you want to pursue this on a study level? Because it’s one thing to hear about this stuff occurring anecdotally, but then to [say], “Boy, there’s enough traction there that I think we really have something”?
RCH: Yeah, yeah. I think if we rewind to the end of the 2000s or even earlier, mostly in terms of mental health data, it was abstract. It was the work done in the 50s and 60s that we looked at as a historical curiosity.
It wasn’t enough to put that and Indigenous use in [a] healing context. It wasn’t enough to put that together in my mind and think, “Oh, this is really compelling.” So a few things made the difference. And I think sometimes you need to (even though I’m a scientist, and I shouldn’t say this, in a way), you do sort of need to see things with your own eyes. And what made a big difference for me was doing our own brain imaging research.
Taking healthy volunteers, looking in their brains and seeing things that were suggestive of an antidepressant effect, and then listening to them say, “I feel lighter. I feel unburdened.” And then thinking, well, now this seems really tangible. And that makes sense in the context of Roland [Griffiths]’s work in healthy volunteers, and Charlie Grob’s work in end-of-life anxiety.
So then we started piecing things together for a UK Medical Research Council grant. And that got through. And the reviews were remarkably good. I don’t know, but I imagined some fellow researchers in this space were allowed to review our proposal and did us a favor, because the reviews across the board were top marks. And I think, then the UKMRC were in a difficult situation, because [they thought], “How do we reject this when everyone’s saying this is really top quality research that they’re proposing?” And actually, we proposed a double blind randomized control trial then in 2012 that we couldn’t complete until 2021 because of the difficulties of actually doing the research. We ended up doing that open label trial that was published.
But I would say, a turning point for me was the first patient in our TRD [Treatment Resistant Depression] trial. She just responded remarkably. She visibly became a different person from heavy, head down, minimal eye contact, tearing up when starting to open up, no smiles—gosh, no, just frowns. And then, after the treatment, the warmth and the color and the smiling and a beautiful smile came on her face. And it was just a wonderful, beautiful thing. It’s such a privilege to be able to do that for someone. And that was a massive turning point. It was like, “Oh, my goodness, this really works.”
CW: Yeah. It’s startling, trying to describe to people the one-day turnaround quality of this. And I think it’s actually very much undersold, because I told the researchers, Dr. Stephen Ross at NYU and my facilitators afterwards. You know, I went through the MADRS scores, which you are now more than familiar with [laughs], and at the end of the session, one of the facilitators [asked me], “So how do you feel?” And I’m like, “Oh, good.” And then I did a deeper scan, like reflexively, and I was like, “Good.” Like, I could tell it was gone. And I was like, “That fast? Honest to God, that fast?” And they’re like, “Well, we’ll know when you’re unblinded.” But in retrospect, if I had been given the chance to take the original MADRS evaluation again, my scores would have gone higher. Because now in the absence [of depressive symptoms], I can tell how much more severe they were. It’s a strange thing.
One thing that you’ve said a couple times here, and perhaps it’s a figure of speech, but I believe there’s a somatic quality to it. And since you brought up the fMRI studies, you mentioned people discussing feeling lighter, feeling unburdened, like there’s this description of the condition that has this feeling of extreme heaviness or being bogged down. So there’s some aspect that involves this interoceptive quality where there’s obviously slower reaction times and things like that, but what do you think is operating there? Because I remember, in the fMRI studies, you guys were a little bit surprised by seeing the type of changes in blood flow that were going on. I believe, [you] expected one thing and instead ended up with something else. Do you have any thoughts to that area?
RCH: Yeah, yeah. I’ve often thought (and experience has endorsed this view) that we often intuit mechanisms through our language, the way we’re describing the experience, and whether or not there’s some kind of priming effect or not. Maybe it is [priming], but also, I’m not sure it really matters, when ultimately you do the research and see that it’s endorsed. But the analogies that you’re used to hearing today (the popular ones, or the well-used ones) around heaviness and being bogged down; it’s all weight related. There’s heaviness, there’s weight. You know, you get bogged down. So there’s a gravitational pull to the depression, which means it pulls you in and you can’t get out very easily. And I think (I’ve got to intuit, because we don’t know yet, but) it’s something to do with synaptic weighting, and that certain circuitry gets weighted. If we really zoom in on a very low level, it’s probably the synaptic weighting certain connections belonging to certain circuitry associated with heavy introspection. [They] get heavily weighted in depression.
What happens? Well, that’s another fascinating question, and maybe a different question. But let’s just say that that’s the character. On a descriptive level, that’s the character of chronic depression and a depressive episode is that you get stuck. Literally, you get stuck in a certain sort of dynamic configuration because that heavy synaptic weighting is the reinforcement of that.
RCH: Yeah, it’s very relevant. In people’s people’s mind’s eyes, they can imagine a landscape. And in a depressive episode, you literally have a depression in that landscape. And if you imagine a ball being able to move in this landscape, and that being your mind at any given time, then in a depression, the ball is spending a disproportionate amount of time in the depression in that landscape. It falls in very easily, [and it’s] very difficult to get it out. And so what psychedelics are doing is just pushing up that depression and flattening the landscape.
CW: Right. I’ve heard the ski slope analogy. So either we have fresh powder that’s either filling up the depression, or we have some sort of artificial means like a snow plow that’s smoothing everything out. So if we were to just roughly characterize the nervous system as biasing towards efficiency, even if that depressor, that enemy energy minima is more efficient, it’s not necessarily more effective anymore in our daily lives. At some point, it was the 2A adaptation toward some high priority event, but now it’s become maladaptive… I listened to that lecture byAndrés Gómez Emilsson of QRI [Qualia Research Institute]. There’s this discussion of criticality with the mind and with a depression. It’s almost, to some degree, like an event horizon, almost. Right? The pull is so strong, it’s very hard to get out of there. So why is it, once that landscape is flattened, as these new neural connections in the functional connectivity are occurring, why does it resort into a better, healthier connection? I mean, if this quality of openness is being promoted, why are we defaulting back to something that’s more useful, something that’s healthier, something that’s more, I guess, effective, as well as efficient?
It’s one of the issues with doing psychedelic research. [It’s] almost by saying, “I’m a psychedelic researcher,” [that] you’re seen as somehow a lesser scientist.
-Robin Carhart-Harris
RCH: Yeah. I actually do think that the fresh covering of snow is a good analogy. So if you’re born into this world, and you haven’t been affected by life in any particular way, you have a very smooth, fresh ground of snow there. And I suppose, what’s happening with the psychedelic experience; I mean, this is very mechanistic, and is not putting much on the therapeutic component and so, that’s a little dangerous to put it all on, like, “The brain resets.”
CW: Sorry. Yeah, well, the intent makes a huge difference. That’s clear.
RCH: It does. And so, you could have the snow falling, and you can manipulate things in a way that potentially could even reinforce certain circuitry. But that doesn’t happen, because the contextual; the environment in which you have the psychedelic experience is nurturing in the way that it should be for a newborn coming into the world: You’re not trying to heavily indoctrinate them or drive them in any particular direction, other than to care for them and just say, “You are safe, and I will hold you as we move through life.”
But you know, things could go in a horrible direction there. Horrible kinds of things could happen that could start to reinforce a certain shape to the snow. And so anyway, I think it’s a mix. It’s a mix of the fresh falling of the snow [and] shaking the snow globe, [which] is the one [metaphor] that I came up with personally. But the fresh falling of the snow is like an old neuroplasticity analogy. And there is something called the plasticity paradox, which says that plasticity, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily healing, but if the plasticity comes and is utilized in a positive way (and so in the context of psychedelic therapy, it’s utilized and honest in a therapeutic way), then you have the magic sauce.
And so I like to say these days in as many interviews as I can [is] that psychedelic therapy is fundamentally a combination treatment. It’s not just shaking the snow globe. You could shake the snow globe in someone already psychologically unstable, and when the snow settles, it might not be a great picture. But you shake the snow globe in someone who’s ready for this to happen, and it happens in a perfectly nurturing, supportive environment, then the snow is going to settle. I think you can feel quite confident that the snow is going to settle in a healthier way.
CW: Do you think beyond just the psychiatric applications, which seem quite vast still—I mean, honestly, the smoking cessation and cocaine addiction early results… are just completely astonishing—but do you think there are lateral applications? Obviously, I’m quite invested in the changes that are possible, I think, for chronic pain of a potentially non-nociceptive type, but even for nociceptive chronic pain. I have to give credit here to Dr. Brendan Hussey. I saw his presentation on your REBUS model back in July with a MAPS Canada Journal Club, and he had an amazing slide deck. And, I, myself, personally, had a very deep revelation on March 6th, which was the day after I went through [psilocybin-assisted therapy] (March 5th [was] my dosing day) where it’s like, all of these things suddenly opened up where it’s like this can change this whole picture here. Once I saw Brendan’s work describing yours and I had a visual, [I realized] the REBUS model completely overlies the descriptions for the last decade and a half of what’s going on in chronic pain, in terms of how a pain neurosignature is formed. Have you thought about it at all? I think it’s like, beyond psychological.
RCH: Well, that’s fascinating. Maybe there’s some things there that I don’t know that I could learn. We are planning a chronic pain trial in fibromyalgia with psilocybin therapy.
It’ll start at the end of this year at Imperial. I’m moving to UCSF, but that trial will carry on with the money that I was lucky enough to bring in.
[It relates to] the REBUS model in the sense that the precision weighting is exactly what we’re talking about here. Assumptions are heavily weighted. Certain assumptions—you might call them pathological assumptions, you might even call them adaptive assumptions, defensive assumptions—deserve a bit of compassion, because the body of [the] mind is doing its best to try and stabilize things in a way. So in a sense, depressive episodes, eating disorders, image disorders, chronic pain, they’re often the body and the mind trying to do their best defensive strategies. But we’d rather not have them, you know? And then that takes some bravery, doesn’t it?
Perhaps this is most acute in something like anorexia, where the [adaptation] is so maladaptive, it’s killing people often. It’s ego-syntonic for the sufferer, meaning they don’t see themselves as suffering, like, “This is good, this is working.” And so, it’s adaptive, maladaptive, it depends how you look at it, but to most eyes, it’s maladaptive. But it takes bravery, because [people think], “Oh my goodness, you’re going to take away this thing that I need?” like in an addiction. Like, “I’m not ready to give this up, I need this!”
You know, and there’s sort of irony there: “I’ll die without it.” It’s like, “No, you’ll die with it.” But that’s the sort of pivot, isn’t it? And again, it brings us to the requirement. Sometimes, actually, a conscious decision needs to be made to let go, both in the experience itself, but also the decision to have the treatment in the first place.
CW: You spent the better part of a week, pre-publication [of the “Psilocybin vs. Escitalopram for Depression” trial], going through this long explanation of how someone should look at a study as both proposed and then executed, and then how the results are interpreted, and how a journal can also interpret those things. But you took it upon yourself, I think, slightly unusually, to kind of let people know: Really go to the tables, go to the appendices, that’s where you’re going to see the striking numbers. And there’s been many expert reviews saying, “Well, okay, they were wise to in fact not do an adjusted comparison, because then it doesn’t account for the random chance possibility that it’s just a statistical anomaly,” right?
At the same time, honestly, I met someone who also went through the same trial I went through up at Yale, [being treated for] 26 years of major depressive disorder and [then experiencing] full remission. We couldn’t stop going on about the MADRS [depression rating] scores. I understand the QIDS [depression symptomatology scale] one, and now there’s a little buyer’s remorse in there about like, “Ahh, why [did we choose] this one [for the psilocybin vs escitalopram study]? Why this one [QIDS]?”
RCH: [laughing] I know.
CW: And there’s been some criticism that in the prereq, if I’m saying it correctly, where there was kind of one expected outcome that was supposed to be measured, and they [New England Journal of Medicine] were saying there is one way that was registered with the US boards and another way with the UK boards, and that, in the paper itself, it didn’t actually discuss those things. But it doesn’t feel like you guys were pulling a dodge or anything like that. And I think even if people just look at the QIDS remission and response rates and the secondary outcomes; I mean, I am trying not to fanboy all over the place, but it’s so commensurate with what happened for me and what other people have described.
RCH: Yeah. It was a very interesting experience. We certainly didn’t in any way, or could be accused of pulling a dodge. I would say one way to look at how all of this has gone is that we played it so straight, and so the miss on the primary has to be reported because it was pre-registered ahead of the trial to be the primary.
Do we regret choosing the QIDS as the primary? Well, of course we do. And now we understand. Actually, and this could be sort of sour grapes, speaking to a bias in favor of psilocybin, but I do believe it’s not a great measure. And you just have to look at that forest plot that I’ve now pinned to my Twitter page, to see that it’s an anomaly. It looks like a false negative. And I think the right interpretation is that it’s likely to be a false negative and these two conditions do separate.
So we played it very straight. Was it bad luck? Well, if you believe that the ground truth is that psilocybin is the better treatment, and that hasn’t come through because of the miss on the primary, then yes, it’s bad luck. And so part of the effort in trying to get ahead of the messaging was just that; to try and keep people closer to the results themselves, and to say, “Look at the results in some detail.” And that’s quite unusual, I think, for researchers to do.
RCH: They’re often more wanting people to hear their narrative. And I was sort of, in a sense, saying, “Look beyond the narrative (because it wasn’t our narrative, it was the editor of the journal), and look at the results. And you decide.” I felt that we were made to spin the results in a way that misled the reader, that didn’t accurately represent the results. And that bothered me. So I felt I had to communicate to people early on, and I couldn’t say it at that stage, because I couldn’t reveal the results.
So all I was saying to people was trying to explain the nature of the stats, and then say, you know, if there’s anything you do here, just look at the results in detail, and go to that supplementary appendix. The way we were treated in terms of not being allowed to include that forest plot, what’s the agenda there? Hiding results? It’s very questionable. And I’ve stopped short of getting conspiratorial about it, but it’s almost like, “Well, let’s move that out of the way, and, you know, lift this one up, it’s missed on the primary.” And there was so much more to see.
It was an unusual experience. And it felt like the power of [the] deep establishment wanting to frame things a particular way, like, “Nothing to see here. Carry on, everything’s as usual everybody. SSRIs are for everybody.” I don’t know.
CW: It certainly wasn’t your first rodeo. It’s not as if you were fresh to letting results out or doing deep, intimate work with a well-received theoretical basis, right? And yet, they’re almost acting like, “Well, these young fellows, what a nice idea they have,” or something like that.
RCH: Yeah, [it’s] one of the issues with doing psychedelic research. [It’s] almost by saying, “I’m a psychedelic researcher,” [that] you’re seen as somehow a lesser scientist.
And the deep establishment has that position on things. I actually think there’s some published work on this where people have looked at the opinion of scientific peers on those who declare whether they’ve had a personal psychedelic experience or not, and it does transpire that peers view people disclosing their personal uses as suggesting that they’re a weaker scientist in some way. And that’s kind of frustrating, but it is what it is.
But there are some very high standards that we’re being assessed by here, standards that haven’t always been in place. As SSRIs have developed and got through, there’s been a lot of scandal and bad practice in terms of the data on SSRIs. So playing it very straight as we did, and, in a sense, underselling the results, I’m kind of okay with, because I know in time, the truth will [come] out. And the whole area has been getting so excited and expectations are so high that a little bit of moderation at this stage with this particular trial is probably a good thing. So I sort of accept it somewhat reluctantly, in terms of the way the paper was framed. But it got into the New England Journal of Medicine.
CW: Yes it did.
RCH: And that was really important.
CW: And even if it was a moderate, conservative, staid description of the results, the results were like: It [psilocybin] was just as good as our standard of care [SSRIs] right now. And the appendix; that’s why I wrote the Op-Ed for Psychedelics Today, just to say, look, he’s been telling us, and anyone who’s gone through this, that went into full remission, can say this is not even remotely close to the same thing. I almost wonder if the quality of remission that we’re discussing between the SSRI and psilocybin, if, internally, it’s two different types of remission? Because I’ve been on the other stuff, and this is not that. It isn’t.
RCH: The one result that’s most impressive is probably the remission rates. What we’re seeing with the escitalopram (and this probably reflects a more general rule) is improvement in symptom severity, but not reliably into remission. I think that’s it. If remission is ultimately what you want with a treatment, which of course it is—to be free of the disorder—then you’re much more likely to achieve that (twice as likely to achieve that) on the most conservative measure on the trial with the psilocybin.
CW: I think [on] day two of the study, there [were] approximately (depending on which score you used), something like 25 to 30 plus people [who] had stopped being depressed on day two. I truly envied the fact that you guys were running a two-dose study, because it did seem like, from my perspective, even though things had gotten remarkably better [for me], that a second dose would have made a big difference.
RCH: What time point, Court, do you think a second dose would have made [the] most sense?
CW: I think you guys have got it right on the money. Honestly.
I think three weeks. It’s like you have that first week where you’re just kind of in this freefall, like, “My God, is it really this simple?” And then starting to incorporate it in the following week, you know, kind of like, “Is this stable?” Probably doing a lot of reality checking. And then [you’re] just waiting for that ghost of the previous condition to kind of re-emerge. And then by week three, you’re now actually starting to incorporate all this and it’s like, “I have more questions.” I keep regretting the time I didn’t spend under the eyeshades. [laughs]
Honestly, you know, at a certain point, there [were] things [I was] so compelled to talk about, you know? I wasn’t psychedelically naive. 25 plus years earlier, someone had led me on a set-and-setting transpersonal session with [a] high-dose [of] LSD, and that had been remarkable, honestly, for years. But this was… the psychological material that emerged, it’s like, I had no idea [that] the things that came up were going to, and so a second session, like, by week three, it’s like I had formed enough around what had occurred in the first session. It could have been five weeks and that would have been fine.
But I think if you’re talking about things in the course of treatment, like say, spatial summation vs. temporal summation, I think to kind of maintain that intensity level for that neuroplasticity to really gel, usually you need novelty and intensity. And I think Andrés Gómez Emilsson could probably argue this quality of valence. I think three weeks seems just about right. I don’t know. I’m thinking of Ros Watts, and she’s like a bodhisattva on the planet, I swear. Every time I hear her voice, it’s so calming and reassuring. But I think in the three week period, beyond that, you start to get almost lonely for your therapist and the session, if that makes sense. So, you know, it’s just like, “Ah, good. I finally got to go back to that thing again.”
It’s an extraordinary time [considering] what’s just happened with the MDMA and PTSD studies. And I think that’s about their spread there, too. They have three sessions. And I think (don’t quote me on this) it’s something like three weeks apart.
RCH: Right, okay. Maybe we intuited things the same way.
CW: Yeah.
RCH: It’s a promising time.
CW: Yeah, it is. I’m sorry, we’ve come to time and I don’t want to chew up any more of yours. You’ve been very generous. And just once again [nervously laughs]… See, I used to be very reactive. When I’d say things like this, it was impossible not to get choked up and I’m kind of struggling to be a good representative here, but honestly, it’s [holding back tears]… quite a life.
RCH: Yeah, I hear you Court.
CW: I took mine [psilocybin-assisted therapy] 10 days before the lockdown in New York City. I can’t imagine… I’ve been inside with my boys for a year. I can’t imagine what would have happened if it had been the placebo…
Anything in closing? And also I should [mention], Kyle and Joe, and now Michelle, at Psychedelics Today, were extraordinarily welcoming. They’ve created such an incredible community with so much information there, and really a very broad spectrum. This brings in a very large tent of people. But any final thoughts to offer or anything that’s emerged from the studies in terms of like, lateral effects that have surprised you or anything like that? I’m fascinated to see what else is going to be changed by this quality of openness being enhanced. Because that really, that’s so many things besides just like, no longer being locked in iterative rumination. It’s a whole spectrum of life possibilities and cultural assumptions.
RCH: Yeah. There’s a lot of other measures in the paper, the secondary measures. The REBUS model has a focus more on the relaxing of the top-down, but when you talk to people, often the pertinent statement is, “The things that came up.” I think that’s an important space to get a better handle on in the future. What is that? You know, what is that mechanistically, “The things that come up”? I’d love to understand that better. I mean, I’m mechanistically minded, so I tend to go there.
But it’s been wonderful to chat to you and I very much am moved by what you told me. And I’m so pleased that you’ve had the experience that you’ve had, and it’s helped you as it has. It’s wonderful to hear that. It makes it all worthwhile, what we’re all doing.
This interview has been edited for clarity and grammar.
About the Author
Court Wing has been a professional in the performance and rehab space for the last 30 years. Coming from a performing and martial arts background, Court served as a live-in apprentice to the US Chief Instructor for Ki-Aikido for five years, going on to win the gold medal for the International Competitors Division in Japan in 2000 and achieving the rank of 3rd degree black belt. In 2004, Court became the co-founder of New York’s largest and oldest crossfit gym, and has been featured in the New York Times, Sunday Routine, Men’s Fitness, and USA Today. He is also a certified Z-Health Master Trainer, using the latest interventions in applied neuro-physiology for remarkable improvements in pain, performance, and rehabilitation. You can find out more on his website: https://courtwing.com .
Defining sacred reciprocity, exploring the historical use of psychedelics, and establishing ways to give back to the communities who have lost the most holding this ancient wisdom.
Nature exists in a dynamic balance of interconnected relationships and exchanges. When more is taken than returned, the results are depletion, imbalance and system collapse. Many of us in the Global North have the advantage of enjoying psychedelics simply by purchasing them or receiving them as a gift. We are no longer in direct relationship with their roots or required to know where they came from, who grew them, or how they were sourced and produced. We do not bear the historic or contemporary burdens carried by those for whom entheogens are integral to their way of life.
The psychedelic movement is surging, in part because many of us have had the privilege of direct, life-altering experiences with these substances. These medicines, whether grown or synthesized, give generously, often in the form of healing, wonder, reconnection, play and illumination. But they don’t exist in a vacuum. Thankfully, they also offer the capacity for openness—and this unlocks a door to a more nuanced and responsible conversation about where our medicines come from and the impacts of our participation in what has become, for better or worse, a global market.
Just as being good stewards on this Earth requires us to know the stories behind our food, clothing, fuel and devices, we also have a calling to ask deeper questions about psychedelics. What don’t we know about the places, cultures, ecologies, peoples, and complex histories associated with the healing modalities we venerate? In asking these questions, we can uncover practical and meaningful ways to contribute to a culture of reciprocity, sustainability and integrity, toward the benefit of all. Then we can begin to see how this reciprocity lays the groundwork for collective healing.
Sacred reciprocity offers an opportunity to help restore balance to a presently imbalanced system of extraction amidst the global expansion of psychedelics.
Reciprocity requires an exchange of value, to be sure—but it should be a meaningful contribution to which we bring our whole selves, rather than simply a bill that we pay.
What Is Sacred Reciprocity?
Sacred reciprocity is the heartfelt exchange, gratitude, and acknowledgment for everyone and everything that sustains us. In psychedelics, it is a call for those who consume plant medicines to give back meaningfully to the communities and lineages who have preserved these medicines for generations. Indigenous communities bear the impact of the expansion, along with, in many cases, oppression from local governments.
The concept of sacred reciprocity comes from the Quechua word, ayni. Quechua is the Indigenous language of the ancestral peoples of the Andes, specifically Peru. Ayni is a principle of receptivity and gratitude, marked by a lifestyle of giving back in an inhale-exhale type relationship with the natural world.
Even those who consume only lab-based substances can participate in sacred reciprocity through a number of practices detailed here.
The History of Indigenous Psychedelic Use
Here’s a quick and dirty history lesson.
So, where and from whom do our medicines come? What is their traditional use? The following list is by no means exhaustive, and it’s important to remember that many entheogens are found throughout multiple continents and their practices vary between lineages. Additionally, much history has been lost and erased through the process of colonization. We recognize the unnamed groups and honor their heritage from which modern life has been severed.
Psilocybin
Psilocybin-containing mushrooms are sacred to many indigenous communities in Mexico, especially in the mountains of Oaxaca.
Psilocybin mushrooms have confirmed Indigenous roots in Central America, most notably the Mazatec people of Oaxaca, Mexico (recall the oft-told tale of Maria Sabina and R. Gordon Wasson), as well as the Mixtec, Nashua and Zapotec peoples.
It has been theorized that ancient Greeks used a combination of psychedelic mushrooms and ergot fungus in their ceremonial brews. Evidence of ceremonial mushroom use has also been found in Africa, with Algerian cave paintings dating back 9,000 years and psilocybe mushrooms found in Central Africa and South Sudan.
Modern Mazatec people have spoken of the “Hippie Invasion” of the ‘60s and the way the commodification of sacred mushrooms reshaped their communities. Learn more about Mazatec Perspectives on the Globalization of Psilocybin in this article from Chacruna Institute.
Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca, also called caapi, yajé, or yagé, is a ceremonial drink made from the stem and bark of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the leaves of Chacruna (Psychotria viridis) or other botanicals. It was first formulated by Indigenous South Americans of the Amazon basin, particularly modern day Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. In 2010, a 1,000- year old bundle of shamanic herbs with ayahuasca was found in a cave in Bolivia. Ceremonial use for the Shipibo-Conibo people does not always include chacruna leaves, which contain DMT.
While the Shipibo people are the most well-known tribe associated with ayahuasca medicine, close to 100 distinct Indigenous groups use ayahuasca. The global expansion of ayahuasca tourism (and the Western emphasis on visions and DMT) has led to overharvesting, deforestation, violence, non-Indigenous owned retreat centers and competition between shamans.
In addition, deforestation in the Amazon has reached record highs, which has a global impact on climate instability. Yet, a 2020 study found what many First Nations people have often said and may seem obvious: Collective Indigenous property ownership reduces deforestation and protects human rights, as well as cultural and biodiversity.
Peyote
Peyote is sacred to many Native American and Mexican communities. It contains mescaline.
Peyote is a sacred cactus native to what is now known as the American Southwest, Mexico and Peru. With a human-plant relationship dating back 10,000 years, this ceremonial cactus has been used in rites of passage and annual pilgrimages by Native American and Mexican Indigenous groups for millennia and is inseparable from cultural heritage for many tribes, including the Wixaritari, Raramuri, Yaqui and Cora peoples.
Peyote contains mescaline, a psychoactive substance also found in Huachuma (San Pedro cactus). For the last century, Indigenous groups have fought convoluted government policies, environmental degradation, private land ownership, poaching, mining, and urbanization.
The Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative is a collaborative effort to preserve peyote and ensure the survival of this sacred practice for generations to come. Learn more here.
Huachuma
Known as the grandfather of entheogens, Huachuma (which came to be known as San Pedro after the Spanish Invasion) is a cactus native to Peru and Bolivia. Its use can be traced back 4,000 years. With roots in the Andes, this medicinal plant is associated with the Chavín culture, which laid the foundations for the Inca civilization. Stone temple slabs dating back to 1,300 B.C. show a figure holding a huachuma cactus.
Huachuma contains mescaline, and while it is legal in the United States to grow the cactus for ornamental purposes, consuming mescaline is illegal. Because it grows so much faster than peyote and is more widely available, conservation and Indigenous rights advocates recommend that those who feel called toward a relationship with mescaline choose huachuma rather than peyote. In this way we can preserve peyote in solidarity with the Native American communities for whom it is a sacrament.
Rapé
Tobacco is one of the oldest and most important shamanic medicines in the Americas. It is impossible to separate Indigenous history in the Americas from the ceremonial use of tobacco, known as Mapacho. Rapé (also called Hapé or Rapéh) is a form of sacred Amazonian snuff tobacco. It is made by combining dried tobacco leaves (Nicotiana Rustica) with sacred tree ash and other botanicals and grinding it into a dust-fine powder. Blends are distinct from tribe to tribe and the shamanic process of making rapé can take several weeks. It is known for its grounding and stimulating qualities.
Tobacco is not prohibited in most of the world the way other entheogens are. However, this open legal market has created other concerns. In recent years, an explosion in global interest in rapé has resulted in many white-owned “shamanic supply” businesses popping up online, selling rapé and other Amazonian medicines on web stores and Instagram. It is wise to dig deeper when companies claim they are in partnership with local tribes or have a “trusted source.” Keep in mind that “a portion of proceeds returned to the tribes” and “mutually beneficial relationship” are undefined and potentially exploitative claims and fair trade practices aren’t always readily enforced.
Kambo
Kambo, also known as toad medicine, is a controversial ritual. Historical use of kambo is very different than the modern practice. Hunters in the Matsés tribe of Peru would coat their blow darts with the frog poison, believing that this purified the animal they shot. They would then bring the animal back to their village to be sacrificed and eaten. Kambo is quite different than other Indigenous medicines; the modern practice, as Westerners know it, seems to be a new invention. The first human use of Kambo (for sharpening the skills of hunters) was documented in 1925 by French missionaries. It was popularized in the 1980’s, by investigative journalist Peter Gorman, and numerous patents were also filed at this time.
Sourcing kambo involves first extracting the peptide-rich poison from the body of the Giant Leaf Frog (Phyllomedusa bicolor). This is done by catching the animals and then stressing them so that they secrete their poison, either by stretching their limbs or holding them over a fire. A stick is then used to scrape the gluey secretion from their skin and save it for later use. This biological material is shipped around the world to practitioners who promote it as a detoxification and immunity-building medicine.
Kambo practitioners burn holes in the skin of their clients and then apply the frog secretions to the wounds. The purging and immune response which follows is believed to cleanse the user of ailments and negative energies.
The Giant Leaf Frog is currently threatened by climate change and habitat loss (though it is currently listed as “Least Concern”). Furthermore, patenting kambo is yet an example of bioprospecting, which is a common practice in the incredibly diverse rainforests of the world and has major impacts on the Indigenous communities from which these molecules are sourced.
Ibogaine
Ibogaine comes from the root bark of the iboga shrub, which is native to Gabon in central West Africa. It has been used for centuries by people of the Bwiti religion as a rite of passage and initiation. The preservation and expansion of the Bwiti tradition and iboga medicine has a complex history involving French occupation, displacement, intertribal violence, religious suppression and political marginalization.
Medicalization of ibogaine began in the late 1930s, with decades of intermittent but promising research into its potential to treat substance use disorders, particularly opiate addiction. Its legal status remains complicated and restricted in many countries.
Global enthusiasm about iboga’s healing potential has created problems not unlike those faced by Indigenous Americans with peyote, such as difficulty sourcing medicine for their traditional use and ongoing political struggle to protect their practices.
Wild iboga is currently endangered in Gabon due to poaching, climate change, illegal export to satisfy international demand, urbanization and habitat degradation. As an alternative, iboga can be grown sustainably in greenhouses and farms, and advocates also point to the option of using semi-synthetic ibogaine from the voacanga tree instead.
DMT
DMT has been called the spirit molecule. This powerful, naturally occurring entheogen is concentrated in modern ayahuasca brew, thanks to the presence of chacruna leaves. It is also produced endogenously by a variety of plants, fungi and animals, including toads, salamanders, rats, shrubs, seeds and amanita mushrooms. Some have theorized that the human body even produces DMT at birth and death, and it has been found in the urine of people experiencing schizophrenia and other psychoses. DMT is structurally similar to LSD.
Due to conservation concerns, many in the movement advocate for the use of synthetically derived DMT to avoid contributing to habitat loss and extinction as interest and demand for this medicine grows.
LSD
Ergot fungus growing on rye. LSD is derived from ergot.
While tiny squares of paper blotted with synthesized LSD and printed with cartoon characters may seem the farthest thing from nature, it was first discovered by Swiss chemist, Albert Hoffman, working with ergot, a fungus that grows on rye.
Lab-Made Companions
Synthesized compounds such as LSD, MDMA, ketamine, 2C-B and others need not be excluded from the list of substances deserving of our gratitude. When we partake with intentionality, the journeys give generously back to us. Sacred reciprocity can be viewed as an essential element of psychedelic experience, regardless of the catalyzing substance.
Qualities of Sacred Reciprocity
Now that we have some context for the historical and contemporary issues surrounding entheogens and psychedelic medicines, let’s look at some guiding lights for giving back meaningfully.
Relational Reciprocity
Sacred reciprocity comes with the humble energy of the ask. To seek consent not only from the medicine itself, but also the elders and medicine keepers, is to set aside one’s own agenda in the interest of the larger good. Are we willing to take no for an answer? This is a nuanced question and cultural considerations are different with every entheogen and context. For example, partaking in ayahuasca may have different steps for accountability than partaking in home grown mushrooms. This is why moving at the speed of trust and cultivating lasting relationships is a responsible approach.
Proactive Sacred Reciprocity
Rather than an afterthought, sacred reciprocity can be woven into the entire psychedelic process, from decision making and intention through to integration and daily life. Think ahead and be intentional with how you want to give back. Involve your peers in this shared effort as well, and watch a culture of integrity bloom and flourish before your eyes.
Practical Reciprocity
When we talk about reciprocation, it’s important to focus on impact over intention. How does this action directly benefit the people, ecologies, and futures we seek to support? This is why we recommend backing organizations without intermediaries so that good intentions are not lost in translation.
Grateful Sacred Reciprocity
Every great medicine journey begins with gratitude. Whether in a deeply healing or rambunctiously festive environment, pausing for a few breaths or words of gratitude can have major impact on the ways we relate to the substances we consume, what we bring to the experience, and what we come away with. Thank the medicine, yes— but also thank the ancestors, wisdom keepers, protectors, ecologies, and chemists!
Humble Reciprocity
Readiness to listen and learn is a powerfully healing force. The forces of colonialism, which could have wiped out these medicines completely, are rooted in ideas of superiority and entitlement. Unwinding these attitudes is a process that comes full circle within the very medicine spaces that have been protected for generations.
The concept of ayni is one rooted in a living, dynamic relationship. If we fall into a guilt-driven, transactional mindset of repetitively taking and repaying, we begin to lose the heart of ayni. Reciprocity requires an exchange of value, to be sure—but it should be a meaningful contribution to which we bring our whole selves, rather than simply a bill that we pay.
Informed Sacred Reciprocity
Recognizing the true history of entheogenic medicine is a tough pill to swallow. We all benefit from the sacrifices of Indigenous groups who have preserved their heritage in the face of colonialism, genocide, religious persecution, criminalization and exploitation. Medicine work calls us to awareness. Awareness calls us to relationship. Relationship inspires action. This is a healthy cycle of responsibility that can have far reaching benefits for global healing, if we’re willing to engage with it.
Understanding also enables us to spread knowledge and context within our communities and gradually shift the culture at large.
Multi-faceted Reciprocity
Reciprocity considers the interconnected social, economic, ecological and spiritual factors at play within the global expansion of psychedelics. Offerings of gratitude seek to edify multiple facets of the movement—for example, financially resourcing native communities hit hard by COVID-19 and spreading awareness of entheogen conservation issues among your social circle are tangible ways to give back.
Committed to Sacred Reciprocity
To step into a reciprocal relationship with entheogens means stepping into the right relationship with the Indigenous communities where they originate. It is difficult to imagine an ethical way to consume psychedelics while ignoring the ongoing struggle of the very groups who have shared them with us.
Commit to supporting indigeous survival, thriving and self-determination. This includes the return of power, agency and resources to the original people of the land. The common psychonautic reprise that “we are all one” and desire to “stay out of politics” becomes difficult to justify while directly enjoying the traditions these people have made sacrifices to defend.
Complex global issues are at play here, so nuanced and open-ended relationships are the name of the game. We have to let go of short term solutions and quick fixes. This is a process of unlearning as much as learning—but the alternative is an old story in which we in the Global North unconsciously repeat the harms of the past in more subtle, but equally detrimental ways.
Commit to learning and honoring the lineage and preservation of medicines you consume (studying and sharing this article is a solid start).
Financially support Indigenous-led organizations* The Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative, hosted by Chacruna Institute, offers a directory of community-determined projects which you can support directly. Check it out here.
Use medicines sparingly. These substances are powerful, limited and rapidly declining. Consider ways to spread out your journey work, and make the most of each experience through self-responsibility, preparation and integration.
Grow your own medicines and choose medicines that can be sustainably grown or produced.
Dig into your own Indigenous history. Get into relationship with your ancestry through family, food, research, community and focused journey work. Solidarity reaches deeper when it hits close to home.
Advocate for drug policy reform and work to understand systems of oppression in your community.
No money? Use what you have.
Volunteer time. Many organizations and projects could use help with web-based marketing, fundraising and awareness efforts.
Talk with loved ones about sacred reciprocity.
Cultivate practices that are good for the Earth and its ecosystems in your diet, travel, and consumption habits.
Do journey work specifically focused in prayer for Indigenous protection and thriving.
Commit to the path of interconnectedness. Embrace systems thinking over simplistic solutions.
*The Chacruna Institute makes an important point here: “It is vital that members of the psychedelic community help support Indigenous groups and the traditional ecological knowledge they practice. Many organizations and individuals have a genuine desire to help, but struggle to find ways of connecting directly with local communities. Sometimes, the only option is donating to massive non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based in Western countries. Many who care about the environment and its interdependency with Indigenous lives are aware that money given to large NGOs often fails to reach the people on the ground due to the large infrastructural costs needed to run these organizations. Yet, small grassroots groups doing the most impactful work often labor to connect with people wanting to offer direct support through donations. For this reason, Chacruna has created the Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative of the Americas.”
Conclusion
With so many converging forces in the psychedelic movement, it is refreshing—audacious almost—to envision a community-led path forward that isn’t shaped by “corporadelics” or pharmaceuticals. The culture of sacred reciprocity is a first step toward healing the traumas of the past and present. The potential of the psychedelic resurgence multiplies when we embrace the inherent value of our roots and the lives that sustain this medicine.
Sacred reciprocity is a worthy cause. It requires humility and dedication. There lies before us a chance to live out a new story—one that our descendants will no longer have to spiritually bypass in order to fully enjoy their trip.
Rebecca Martinez is a Xicana writer, parent and community organizer born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She is a co-founder of the Fruiting Bodies Collective, an advocacy group, podcast and multimedia platform addressing the intersections between healing justice and the psychedelics movement. Rebecca served as the Event & Volunteer Coordinator for the successful Measure 109 campaign, an unprecedented state initiative which creates a legal framework for psilocybin therapy in Oregon. She is also the author of Edge Play: Tales From a Quarter Life Crisis, a memoir about psychedelic healing after family trauma, spiritual abuse, and police violence. She serves on the Health Equity Subcommittee for Oregon’s Psilocybin Advisory Board as well as the Board of Advisors for the Plant Medicine Healing Alliance.
In this episode, Joe and Kyle interview Mark Haberstroh: mushroom enthusiast, contributor to our Navigating Psychedelics course, and in Joe’s words, the “person who has worked at more psychedelic retreats than anyone I know.”
Haberstroh talks about his journey from a liter-of-vodka-a-day “drinking career” to rehab, to finding his calling and spiritual path through a combination of using psilocybin for the first time at a retreat center and later, someone at a festival asking him if he used mushrooms intentionally. He talks about what he’s learned from working at so many retreat centers, from issues he’s had with unwelcome surprises and miscommunication, to ways retreat centers can improve to become more people-focused with more attention paid to the very necessary (and all too often neglected) aftercare piece.
He also talks about the importance of researching retreat centers, how different retreats could be geared towards different intentions, the power of the Lakota Sun Dance, Stan Grof’s theory of perinatal matrices, how integral community is to the healing experience, and the complicated aspects surrounding our collective focus on safety.
Notable Quotes
“It’s unfortunate, but when people don’t know about these substances, they compare them to the substances they do know, and if I told them I was doing mushrooms, they equated it to heroin and alcohol and other drugs. These things are so different, and people are so set in their ways, not only would they not listen to me, but they wouldn’t even see me. I lost a hundred pounds, I became active and healthy and happy. …Nobody saw that. All they saw or heard was that I was using mushrooms, and to them, that was bad.” “People ask me about [microdosing] and I’m like, ‘I don’t know. Personally, I don’t get anything out of it.’ We don’t have any data, the placebo effect is really, really strong. But like, whatever. Same thing about spirituality: If you’re happier, healthier, and it’s working for you? Fuck yea.”
“These things have been around forever. We just kind of forgot about them or became afraid of them.”
“I grew up playing video games. And at one of these retreats, I was walking through the woods and was like, ‘Oh my god, I grew up having nature pre-packaged and sold to me for 60 bucks. An ‘adventure,’ and I’ve been ignoring actual adventure in my own life. I need to sell my PlayStation.’”
“It’s a chaotic time right now, but I think we’re also witnessing a real paradigm shift and it’s what we need societally. We need to think about, reevaluate, and revamp the education system, the prison system, [and] the medical model that likes to put band-aids on things rather than getting to the root cause of the issues.”
Mark Haberstroh is a self-educated entheogenic specialist and amateur mycologist, working with mushrooms of all varieties for the last 6 years. He has traveled the world, visiting and working for different psilocybin retreats, educating himself on the different models currently being offered in countries where this work is legal. Originally from Alabama, he now lives in Oregon and is attending the School of Consciousness Medicine.
In this episode, Joe interviews Nick Meyers and Tyler Chandler, the makers of the documentary that has made a lot of waves over the last year (and been praised on this podcast): “Dosed.”
They first visited the podcast last year, a few months after the film’s release, and are back to talk about the response it’s received and their progress on “Dosed 2: Psilocybin and the Art Of Living,” which will follow the journey of one of the patients granted legal palliative psilocybin therapy by TheraPsil last year. And although it’s not mentioned, they’re actually planning a “Dosed” trilogy.
They talk about their early psychedelic experiences, the accusations that some of Adrianne’s scenes in the film are fake, the risk profile of iboga and how age can be a factor in its efficacy, the strength and passion of the iboga community, the complications of methadone in our opioid crisis, “The Pharmacist” docuseries, pill mills, the absurdity of the drug war, and the argument for treating someone for a year vs. a lifetime. They also talk about how many people have been inspired to change their lives after watching “Dosed.”
“The way we did it was, as I said earlier, maybe not exactly correct, but she still had the profoundly beneficial experience, and I think that’s because her intentions were there. She was ready to make a change in her life. And anybody that’s looking to get past depression, anxiety, and/or addiction, you need to have that shift and realize it’s time to make a change and move forward.” -Tyler
On criticisms of the film: “I find it actually a little frustrating, but I can just go back just a few years in time and if I had heard about a film like this, not knowing what I know now, I would probably be like, ‘Yeah, right. That sounds hokey or kind of like, bullshit.’” -Tyler
“A better judge of what it’s doing and the impact that it’s making is not a negative comment here or there; it’s the fact that we have emails in our inbox every single day from people that are expressing to us that the film changed their lives, [and] it set them on a different path, away from their struggles and towards potential solutions. It’s a very, very good feeling to be a part of something like that.” -Nick
“Mental health is a problem that is actually getting worse and worse over the last few decades even though the pharmaceutical industry is supposed to have all the answers. But ‘Why is it still getting worse and worse?’ is the question.” -Tyler
Nicholas Meyers is a Canadian producer, writer and cinematographer, known for the multi-award winning feature documentary, DOSED. He’s currently in production on DOSED 2.
Tyler Chandler is a Canadian documentary director, writer, and producer. His directorial debut is the award winning feature documentary, DOSED, about the therapeutic use of psychedelics like magic mushrooms and iboga to help people overcome mental health issues including depression, anxiety, and opioid addiction. Prior to DOSED Tyler produced two other features, winning three awards, and he’s currently in production on DOSED 2.
Paradigm-shifting tools don’t fit into paradigmatically static ways of doing things
Psychedelics. Maybe you’ve heard. They’re having a bit of a moment right now. And for good reason. To name just a few examples, the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is moving MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD through the FDA approval process. Decriminalization of psychedelics, including LSD (!), is taking place at a breakneck pace. Psilocybin-assisted therapy was even legalized in Oregon during the 2020 election. And, multi-million dollar research institutions are also popping up left and right.
However, there’s an elephant in the room. The looming presence of large, for-profit companies swallowing up patents left and right and ostensibly becoming the primary option for psychedelic therapies of the future is becoming too big to ignore.
It’s beginning to get called out, for a start. More articles are popping up rightfully critiquing this situation as an issue. About a month ago, famous entrepreneur Tim Ferriss kicked off a question on his blog asking if there are any viable alternatives to for-profit psychedelic companies. In reply, Christian Angermayer, one of the main investors behind Compass Pathways, a for-profit psilocybin-assisted therapy company responsible for a large chunk of the patent grab, basically said, “Nope”.
This is disheartening to many in the psychedelic field, to say the least. Most of us didn’t become advocates for psychedelics because they promised to make our healthcare system a bit more effective and a few people a lot more rich. We became advocates for psychedelics because they offered a promise of a better way of doing things; not just for healing, but for the world.
Traditional for-profit companies that are seemingly dominating the space are a betrayal of that promise, especially when no viable, scalable alternative seems to be in sight. Luckily, I think there is a true paradigm-busting healing model that’s not only a proper fit for psychedelics, but has been worked on for years right under our glitter-speckled toenails. We just haven’t yet given it a name. But first, let’s address the elephant in the room: equity.
The Equity Elephant in the Room
I’d like to call this elephant in the room the “Equity Elephant” for two reasons. One is that this elephant is largely a product of private equity entering into the psychedelic space a few years ago. Think venture capital and angel investors. Another reason for deeming it the Equity Elephant is that the response to large, for-profit companies dominating the psychedelic space has largely been one of increasing equity in terms of fairness—or in other words—increasing access. This makes sense considering that most of the companies in question are derived from our healthcare system, which is not exactly the Cadillac of compassion and accessibility.
Thus, the question around what to do about the Equity Elephant has largely been around increasing access. There’s a problem with this, however. Much like how the old paradigm for mental health failed because it treated symptoms rather than causes, increasing access to a system that is inaccessible by design isn’t really going to do all that much good.
We became advocates for psychedelics because they offered a promise of a better way of doing things; not just for healing, but for the world.
Another issue is that we’ve only so far been using one half of the meaning of the word “equity”. Another important use of the word is equity as ownership. So far, asking who owns the future of psychedelic healing has been relatively off the table when it should really be on the tips of our tongues.
First, let’s dive into what ownership means a little more. Ownership is not just about who gets to keep the profits from something. This is another relic from the old paradigm. It’s also about who has the power to direct something’s future. It’s about stewardship, rather than just status. Equity as a term, defined as meaningful power over directing something, needs to be put to use yesterday in the psychedelic space.
The absence of discussing equity as ownership is, in my opinion, why the Equity Elephant in the room is so disheartening. It exemplifies a radical feeling of disempowerment by us in the psychedelic scene who’ve experienced profound healing benefits from these substances. When faced with these behemoths of capitalism making such large strides in the psychedelic space, it’s no wonder we feel outmatched. These organizations don’t strike us as stewards to the future we’re trying to bring about.
But fear not. Now that we know equity is about access and ownership, or fusing them together to increase access to ownership, I think some very promising alternatives will begin to emerge.
Before we go into what those are though, let’s take a quick look at who, in my opinion, actuallyowns the psychedelic future and why they’re charting its path forward: community-based psychedelic organizations.
Community-Based Psychedelic Healing
Perhaps I’m a bit biased. I have been leading the Brooklyn Psychedelic Society since 2016. But to me, what’s been taking place at psychedelic societies across the globe over the past years is muchmore headline worthy than a new multi-million dollar psychedelic company popping up overnight.
Psychedelic societies are self-organized, mutually supporting organizations that together form a grassroots movement of thousands of healers, seekers, organizers, artists, psychedelically curious, and many, many more that have been healing each other with little input from traditional therapeutic institutions. They’ve been doing this for years in ways that regular for-profit companies can only dream of, in an effective, decentralized, evenly distributed and accessible manner.
Why isn’t this getting any headlines? Well for one, twenty people gathering in a park for an integration session with a net yield of $8 and some palo santo sticks isn’t exactly click bait. It’s also because it’s emblematic of a pattern that took me many a psychedelic trips to realize: The most transformative changes aren’t in the headline-grabbing epiphanies (I’M GOD?!!), but in the little, subtle things that we integrate and adopt into our lives patiently and gradually over time (I really need to start painting again and be nicer to people). And that’s exactly the kind of transformation that psychedelic societies have been holding space for.
Because of this, a bonafide healing modality on its own has emerged: community-based healing. Besides just anecdotes from the hundreds of people I’ve met who’ve gotten healing through our community and other psychedelic societies around the world, there’s good ol’ science to back this up as well.
Much like how the old paradigm for mental health failed because it treated symptoms rather than causes, increasing access to a system that is inaccessible by design isn’t really going to do all that much good.
Mike Margolies, founder of Psychedelic Seminars, even came up with a nifty acronym to describe this approach: PEACH (Psychedelic Education and Community Healing) that I highly recommend reading. But, why is community-based healing its own approach altogether?
As mentioned earlier, the old mental health paradigm was failing because it treated symptoms rather than causes. We know that isolation and loneliness exacerbate some of the conditions psychedelics treat so effectively, such as addiction and depression. Thus, delivering psychedelic healing in environments that lack an authentic social component seems to repeat the same mistake of the old paradigm, albeit with better tools.
Of course, clinical modalities for psychedelic therapy should always be available and made as accessible as possible—if that’s what’s needed by the person seeking healing. I don’t think community-based healing will or should replace therapy altogether. But it does seem to be a genuine fourth context that goes beyond the clinical, retreat, and recreational settings, and should probably be the first place to go when someone is seeking a transformative experience.
Psychedelic Mutualism
While we are on a streak of trying to get to the root of things, I’d like to briefly outline what I think is the core philosophical difference between the community-based approach to psychedelic healing and those of the clinical models.
The difference is that community-based approaches take interdependence not just as a fact of life, but as a necessaryaspectof well-being and growth, especially when it comes to healing. This is called “mutualism” in biology and is something that ecologists have long been saying is key in order to awake from our anthropocentrism.
Therefore, psychedelic mutualism is the philosophy that emphasizes community, interdependence, and proactive peer support as centralto growth and flourishing on both an individual and societal level.
The clinical and retreat models contrast with this approach. These modalities are derived from an older philosophy: We are all atomized individuals with consciences that need to be preserved and kept secure. Hence the model: Go to a clinic and get your healing, and then go back to your private life, work and all the other dysfunctions of modern living included.
Sure, these settings might have some community components to them, such as check-ins with retreat members for a few weeks after the journey. But this is not core to their operating philosophy.
Psychedelic mutualism, and the healing modality in which it’s most exemplified, community-based healing or “PEACH”, puts community at its core. The psychedelic experience shows us this in spades by revealing our interdependence not only intellectually but viscerally, in our minds, bodies and hearts.
So how do we scale these modalities to not only increase access, but also increase ownership over them? In other words, how do we democratize the ownership of psychedelic healing?
The Cooperative Model of Ownership
Most traditional organizations are either non-profit or for-profit, with a board, an executive team, managers, employees, and then the people they serve (usually, the customers). While input is sometimes welcomed by other stakeholders within and outside the organization, the decisions are ultimately made by a small handful of people.
Using our definition of ownership as meaningful power and say over something’s future, these organizations are centrally owned. There is an alternative to this model called worker or member owned “cooperatives”.Cooperatives, or co-ops, work differently than the organizations previously mentioned. A cooperative is democratically owned (decentralized) and controlled by its members. Its members can be its workers, its consumers, a combination of both, or any number of different combinations depending on the needs of the community that it serves. Each member gets to vote on the direction of different parts of the organization’s future.
Thus, the key difference between co-ops and regular for-profit companies is that they’re owned by the people that produce and use their services. Put in another way, the profits made by cooperative organizations are in service to the community, not vice versa.
Cooperatives are social and equitable (in both the access and ownership sense) by design, rather than community being a nice byproduct. In other words, mutualism is baked into how they operate. One of the best accounts of this model specifically in a psychedelic context is Bennet Zelner’s Pollinator Model. In his article, Zelner contrasts “pollinator” organizations—those that contribute to the wellness of its members, surrounding communities and society—with “extractive” organizations that accrue value for its shareholders but don’t distribute that value to those they serve or are adjacent to.
Most of the companies that the psychedelic community is rightfully up in arms about are the latter variety. The co-op model is just the answer we’ve been waiting for, I believe. It just has to be applied.
Owning Our Future with Psychedelic Co-ops
You can’t fit a paradigm-busting tool, like psychedelics, into a paradigmatically-static context, like our healthcare systems and traditional for-profit companies. You also can’t use an old philosophy to help shoehorn it in. The settings and operant philosophy needed for psychedelic healing to scale in an authentic way must be at least as transformative as the tools and modalities they are provisioning.
So far, however, no viable and scalable alternatives have been presented. This is where cooperatives and psychedelic mutualism enter into the picture. Yes, large for-profit companies will be in the space. But they are not the end all be all. One day, I hope for-profit companies in the space will be the alternative to the default model: psychedelic co-ops.
Psychedelic co-ops would treat psychedelics and healing as they are meant to be treated: as a publicly accessible service that’s for the benefit of all, in the communities they serve. We have all the building blocks we need to not only construct our psychedelic future, but to own it. So all we need to do now is build. Together.
About the Author
Colin Pugh is the executive director of the Brooklyn Psychedelic Society (BPS), a MAPS-sponsored organization whose mission is to make psychedelic healing a publicly accessible good through community, education, democratic ownership, and advocacy.
In this episode, Joe interviews returning guest Richie Ogulnick, a facilitator/guide who has been helping clients through ibogaine experiences for 26 years.
Ogulnick talks about how ibogaine works, why he prefers working with the whole plant (iboga), why the flood doses he used to recommend weren’t as effective, and the importance of allowing his clients to spend as much time as they want on intention-setting before their session. And of course, he talks about the session itself, which usually tends to be a gradual slide into a 15 to 30-hour waking dream state of deep exploration, followed by the slow process of coming out of it, making sense of it, and starting to work towards integrating what was learned.
He also talks about LSD, the work of Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh (Osho), an instance of someone who had no experience with iboga (and why), methodologies and experience, and tells a story of a time in NYC, watching someone shoot up heroin while explaining their experience to him as a way for him to better understand addiction and an addict’s search for a feeling of peace.
Notable Quotes
“Very often, people ask me if they should bring a tape recorder with them, and I say, ‘Well, just make sure that it’s a voice-activated tape recorder, because you may say a few words and then 15 hours later, you may finish the sentence.’” “Unlike other psychoactives, it’s interesting- it’s almost like you’re introduced to a new language, and 6 months, 8 months later, people are sharing with me that their intentions have finally all been worked through and they’re maybe considering doing another session in 6 months or a year. Whereas, with other psychoactives, you can very comfortably do ayahuasca once a week, once a month, for months or years. People tend to do iboga maybe 2 to 4 times in a lifetime.”
“Psychedelics or iboga or meditation- methods won’t get us to that beneficence. What methods tend to do is allow us to crawl back to ourselves and say, ‘I’ve accumulated all of these experiences through this methodology, but I can’t go any further. I have to let go of this method’ and then the beneficence really happens. So it’s running at the arrogance of adulthood until you crawl back to yourself and you say, ‘I surrender.’” “The cool thing about setting intentions is not so much the content but the impetus. You create the pilgrimage to go deep within, irrespective of what you really explore.”
Richie Ogulnick is a long time Ibogaine provider and enthusiast Over the course of fifteen and a half years, he conducted about 750 sessions, including addiction-interruption treatments. He spent the next several years referring close to 1,000 more people to other ibogaine providers. During that time, he also trained doctors and ex-addicts who opened ibogaine centers throughout the world. Richie feels a pull to focus again on the more therapeutic and psycho-spiritual treatments where he is able to offer his expertise in ibogaine treatment along with his knowledge of reintegration with individuals who are looking to deepen and enrich their life experience.
We know this past year has been extremely challenging and isolating. Humans are social creatures by nature, and quarantine and social distancing have been hard on all of our psyches and mental health. But as a community, we have to get real: if we really want what’s best for the collective whole of humanity, the truth is that it’s still not safe to meet up in big groups to do psychedelic work or ceremonies.
We’ve been talking about it a lot on the podcast, especially on Solidarity Fridays, so here is a reminder in print: COVID-19 is real, psychedelics and spirituality won’t make you exempt from catching and spreading it, and therefore, it’s still too dangerous to be doing group psychedelic work.
Often, when people justify disregarding masks or social distancing measures, their line of reasoning is that they’re not a senior citizen or immunocompromised, and so the current safety precautions don’t apply to them. But this is not a zero-sum, “die or survive” game, and it’s not just about you and your healing; it’s about the people around you–employees at your local grocery store, your bus or taxi driver, the nurses, doctors, and teachers in your community–people you don’t know and don’t think about, who still might be harmed by your actions.
And COVID-19 is not temporary. There are psychedelic community members with vagus nerve damage, permanent vocal cord damage from severe coughing, lung issues, and other serious long-term conditions. We know plenty of people in their 30s and 40s who survived COVID-19 and thought everything was fine, but their post-virus quality of life has since been severely lowered. We know folks who are still sick, struggling with chronic pain, brain fog, and low energy for over a year, who have therefore been unable to work and have become dependent on family members to support them as their recovery extends past the 13, 14, and 15-month marks.
Beyond our immediate community, a recent study published in The Lancet journal of psychiatry found that a significant portion of COVID-19 survivors were diagnosed with a neurological or psychiatric condition within 6 months of contracting COVID, many for the first time. And remember- we’re still seeing COVID variants pop up, so while many feel we’re making our way out of this dark period, we may still have a long way to go.
And it sucks. We understand people are struggling right now. Kyle sees it every day in his therapy and coaching practice, and we all feel it. Being in isolation and lacking human connection is extremely hard, unnatural, and affecting us all. The need for healing and contact is immense and only getting bigger, and we absolutely empathize with you all. We understand that it goes against our individualistic cultural conditioning, but this is a social responsibility that is beyond individual healing or personal politics, and we have to think communally. When the community is sick, the individual is sick. And when the individual is sick, the community is sick.
When we’ve posted about this on social media, we’ve had folks bring up suicide statistics from 2020, using the high number as an argument for encouraging much-needed psychedelic healing work. Everyone on our team has lost someone to suicide and we know how difficult that is, and also how easy it is to think that perhaps an ayahuasca or mushroom ceremony could have saved our loved ones from their afflictions. So it feels insensitive to compare numbers of deaths against each other, but since that’s something that gets brought up a lot, look into it: while the 2020 stats aren’t final and don’t take overdoses into account, the numbers are actually very similar to 2019, with the number of deaths directly attributed to COVID-19 being drastically higher. It’s uncomfortable to think about, but the numbers speak for themselves. This is beyond our emotional ties to the issue; this is for the sake of the whole community of humanity.
The fact of the matter is, psychedelic group work involves a lot of touching, being close together for 6 to 12 hours, and being in close proximity to others’ bodily fluids while we cough, purge, or cry. Cups of water, pipes, snuff tools, and tobacco cigars are often shared. People hold hands, hug, and practice bodywork with each other. These are all optimal opportunities for viruses to spread. Plus, when you are under the influence of a psychedelic medicine, the realities of social distancing and spreading germs won’t exactly be in the forefront of your mind and can easily be cast aside as “silly human problems.” And while that belief may feel freeing, it won’t protect you from catching or spreading disease.
Are there safe options for participating in psychedelic healing work? At the moment, we think the safest option for those looking for mental health relief with psychedelics is ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and infusions. Unlike underground group work or retreats abroad, ketamine clinics and practitioners are regulated by organizations like OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) in the US, meaning they have to follow governmental guidelines for safe and sterile working environments. Also, ketamine infusions, injections, lozenges, and nasal sprays are not typically done in groups, and if they are, they also follow social distancing protocols, as outlined in our recent piece on the topic.
We understand that for many, treatment options like ketamine-assisted psychotherapy may not be accessible or appropriate, and some people will still participate in group work anyway. To those people, we encourage everyone to do everything as safely as possible by only engaging in small ceremonies that are following strict safety and social distancing protocols and have contact tracing in place. If the work can be done outside, do it there. And if you’re traveling, please quarantine in consideration of the communities you’re traveling between. But don’t forget- there are lots of virtual psychedelic community offerings to keep us all engaged too. And think about the other work you can do, from meditation, breathwork, and journaling, to creating art or just going for a walk in the woods. Not all healing comes from psychedelics and group work.
As more people get vaccinated and the world begins to reopen, we are all feeling the excitement to move towards the sense of normalcy we all miss so much. But this is a slow process, and we encourage everyone to continue to move slowly, stay cautious, and continue engaging in safe practices and social distancing measures until we get there.
We know that this is not what a lot of the psychedelic community wants to hear, but regardless of how unpopular putting this out might make us, we feel it’s a necessary reminder that we all have a shared responsibility to keep our communities safe.
Thanks for your support,
Joe, Kyle, & the rest of the Psychedelics Today team
If you’re a regular listener of Psychedelics Today, you know how much Joe loved Dr. Carl Hart’s newest book and testament to responsible, out-of-the-closet drug use:Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear. In this episode, Joe and Kyle get to sit down and talk with the man himself for nearly 2 hours. This one’s in the “can’t miss” department, folks.
Hart’s main points echo many of ours: that the drug war is doing exactly what those in power created it for, that drug exceptionalism is wrong and only seeing one path towards progress is limiting, that our job is to use facts and logic to battle inaccuracies and people clearly pushing a false narrative, and that drugs can be fun and coming out of the closet about responsible drug use only opens up the dialogue more (and in the interest of that, this show notes writer is high right now).
They also discuss how scientists rationalize their work within the drug war, the frustrating inaction from drug policy organizations around coming out of the drug closet, opinion-makers and their relationship to the rest of society, what needs to be done to help Brazil, how decriminalization doesn’t stop problematic policy and police, the treatment industry’s misaligned focus on drugs over environment, incorrect assumptions about heroin, the importance of safe supplies and testing your drugs, and Hart’s desire to change “harm-reduction” to “health and happiness.”
Notable Quotes
“I’m always thinking that all I have to do is make this argument logically, and then people will fall in line. That’s naive as fuck, as I’m discovering. But that’s the world in which I live, and I love that world because I can’t live in an illogical world.”
“If the treatment provider is focused on the so-called drug of the person who’s having a problem …they’ve already lost.” “High Price was a book that was kind of comfortable for progressives and conservatives as well- it’s an up-from-slavery book, you know? A poor, Black boy from the hood done well, ‘We feel good about ourselves and our society. See? It can happen to you!’ kind of story. Whereas this book is like, ‘Fuck that. We want our rights.’”
“When these people say that they are worried about drug addiction or what I’m saying might increase drug addiction, that’s some bullshit distraction. If you’re really worried about the negative effects of drug addiction, you would make sure everybody in your society is working. You’d make sure they all have health care. You’d make sure that basic needs were handled. Because if you did those things, you don’t have to worry about drug addiction.”
“The way they portray heroin in the movies sometimes, it’s upsetting because they portray it like people are deadening their emotions and feelings. It’s like, no, shit, you take heroin to feel.”
“When politicians or whoever are out here saying that they care about the opioid crises and they’re not talking about drug-checking, you can stop listening to them because those people are idiots or they think you are an idiot, but in any case, there’s no reason to listen to those people.”
Could taking and integrating ketamine in groups make psychedelic therapy more accessible?
As psychedelic-assisted therapy continues marching into the mainstream, the issue of how absurdly expensive the treatment is continues to present countless difficulties. Of the strategies practitioners are taking to circumvent this problem, one of the most promising—and underreported—approaches is offering psychedelic-assisted group therapy.
Despite promising preliminary research using psilocybin in small groups to treat depression in cancer patients and MDMA-assisted therapy for couples where one partner has PTSD—and ignoring the fact that psilocybin-containing mushrooms are traditionally taken in group ceremonies in Mexico—ketamine is the only psychedelic medicine that’s already legally used in psychedelic-assisted therapy. Let’s take a look at the emerging world of group ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, its benefits as well as drawbacks.
Group Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy
Though traditionally used as an anesthetic, ketamine, an Essential Medicine of the World Health Organization, is now widely being prescribed off-label by qualified practitioners to treat a host of mental health diagnoses, including depression, addiction, PTSD, and chronic pain.
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy—“KAP” for short—is a growing mental health treatment option for people who meet diagnostic criteria. In line with most psychedelic therapy protocols, KAP involves a sequence of medicine sessions, in which clients take the substance with the mental health professional present, and sober therapy sessions referred to as “preparation” and “integration.” Through KAP, many people are finding healing where prevailing mental health treatments have fallen short.
Also in line with most psychedelic therapy protocols, KAP is really freaking expensive.
Though ketamine’s effects are relatively short-acting compared to MDMA and psilocybin, therefore requiring fewer therapist hours to pay for, sessions still cost several hundred dollars. Ongoing treatment can quickly climb into the thousands.
Even ketamine “infusion centers,” which involve no therapy, tend to charge $400-$600 for each intravenous infusion—and they typically make it clear that lasting symptom relief only occurs after several rounds. At such centers, folks may receive infusions in group rooms, but oftentimes it’s more akin to the way you’d find yourself sitting on a sterile lab chair next to some stranger at a plasma donation center, while someone who doesn’t want to hear about your problems sticks a needle in your vein and leaves. While this might help some folks, costs remain abundant.
Group ketamine-assisted psychotherapy is different. Though there is currently no published research on group KAP’s efficacy, ketamine’s legality via prescription allows therapists to smoothly translate the modality into groups. As group members can then split the price of the therapist’s time—the largest contributor to high costs of treatment—the overall cost decreases significantly.
Raquel Bennett, Psy.D., is a psychotherapist and researcher who specializes in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, who also teaches our masterclass on ketamine ethics as part of our Navigating Psychedelics for Clinicians and Therapists course. She practices in Berkeley, CA, where she runs the KRIYA Ketamine Research Institute. Bennett has been studying the therapeutic properties of ketamine since 2002, when a personal encounter with the medicine sparked her awareness of its powerful antidepressant properties. That was over a decade before infusion centers started popping up, well before “ketamine-assisted psychotherapy” was a term.
“I was studying this long before it was cool,” Bennett tells Psychedelics Today with a laugh.
Motivated by a desire to lower cost and increase accessibility, Bennett began facilitating ketamine groups with her medical partners in 2016. The same motivation also prompted the Wholeness Center, a leading ketamine therapy clinic and psychedelic research site in Colorado, to offer ketamine therapy groups as well. Scott Shannon, M.D., who founded Wholeness in 2010, teamed with colleague Sandra Fortson, LCSW, to offer the clinic’s first ketamine therapy group last year.
“One of the most prominent reasons why I endorse and am exploring group therapy is that it solves one of the greatest drawbacks of the psychedelic model right now, which is that psychedelic therapy is a treatment of the affluent,” Shannon tells Psychedelics Today. “Instead of offering KAP for three or four hundred dollars a session, group therapy brings the cost down closer to a hundred dollars a session, which is a big difference.”
Fortson elaborates on how significant that difference can be: “Clients are looking at a savings of almost 50% for a 5-week KAP group curriculum—including medical clearance, intake, 3 experiential sessions and final integration session.”
At the time of writing, Shannon and Fortson have facilitated two groups, each spanning five sessions. They are currently planning for a third and foresee group KAP as an important option in the Wholeness Center’s future psychedelic therapy offerings.
What Group Ketamine Therapy Looks Like
Bennett breaks down the process of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy into four essential steps:
Patient selection
Patient preparation
The medicine session
Follow-up care
At the preliminary level of patient selection, legal concerns must be taken seriously. “In order to participate in a ketamine group, you still have to fully meet the criteria for a clinically necessary treatment,” Bennett explains. “It’s currently not legally defensible for a person to participate in a group just because they want a ketamine experience.”
Both Wholeness and KRIYA use a cohort model where the same participants come together at scheduled times, and their series of sessions begins and ends together. Throughout that process, the group engages in both ketamine and non-ketamine sessions together, the latter of which involves working through their challenges and implementing insights into their lives with the support of the therapist(s) and fellow group members.
Shannon and Fortson have limited their cohorts to four people due to COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing protocols. Going forward, Shannon envisions groups of eight participants, which would require two therapists present. At KRIYA, Bennett has found that five or six participants with two clinicians is an optimal ratio.
At the Wholeness Center, participants sit on bean bag chairs in socially-distanced corners of a large room. During the ketamine sessions, members are given eyeshades along with their measured doses. Specifically-curated music plays through speakers, and Shannon and Fortson remain present in the space, supporting as needed and facilitating conversation if appropriate—and if possible, for at higher doses of ketamine, folks often temporarily lose their capacity to form words with their abruptly-nonexistent mouths.
There are three primary routes of administration in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy:
Lozenges (held in the mouth)
Intravenous (IV) administration
Intramuscular (IM) injection
All three require an MD’s prescription, and the latter two require a nurse or doctor for administration. Dose ranges vary significantly in each route—though low-dose sessions are often orally administered, while high-dose sessions typically come through IV or IM.
Each route yields a unique experience in terms of onset, depth, length, and intensity. Different routes of administration and doses are associated with the treatment of different conditions—in individual KAP, for example, high-dose IM treatment is often regarded as uniquely effective for suicidality. At KRIYA, doses and routes of administration are determined based on individual and group assessments.
“As providers, we need to be clear about what effects we are going for, and then make our dose recommendations based on that,” says Bennett. “That varies depending on the needs of the group and what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Regardless of dose and route of administration, ketamine sessions at KRIYA follow a consistent protocol. “Our ketamine groups include an opening ritual, time for sharing, the ketamine administration, quiet rest, and a potluck meal, with more time for sharing,” Bennett explains.
The frequency of group sessions at KRIYA varies. “For some cohorts, the participants come once per month for four consecutive months. In other cohorts, the participants come once per quarter, four times in a year,” describes Bennett.
A capacity for fluidity and openness is called for on the part of the therapists, along with a willingness to learn from the groups and attune to the members’ needs.
“Sometimes, we ask people to share something that feels heavy on their heart, and that usually opens a conversation,” Bennett says. “Then, we move to something they feel grateful for—it’s very helpful to invite people to enter a positive mindset as the medicine is wearing off, because that then seems to linger. Other times, we are quiet and simply hold the space as people spontaneously work on what they need to work on.”
At the Wholeness Center, ketamine groups have thus far followed fixed, five-session structures. Shannon details the process:
“We start with a prep session, where we get to know each other and build rapport. The second session is a low-dose oral experience, which doesn’t put people in a full, dissociated state. It reduces their inhibitions, opens up their heart; what we find is that people actually bond very well during that session. They feel safe and secure. In the third session, which is a moderate-to-higher-dose oral session, they begin to have deeper, fuller psychedelic experiences. We really encourage people and give them the instruction that they can come in and out at will. If they want to come into more consensual reality, they can talk with us, connect with us, or their peers even—or they can go inside if they’re feeling pulled to explore.
“That third session begins to give them the taste of the more full-fledged psychedelic experience,” Shannon continues. “In the fourth session, they have a high-dose IM experience, where they’re going to fully dissociate and go into their personal inner space. People reenter the group space at various times as they’re ready and able, and come back and process it. Then, the fifth session is an integration session.”
Unlike the varied frequencies of KRIYA’s groups, the Wholeness Center’s groups meet once a week. Shannon is not attached to that model and expresses that future groups may follow different formats. Likewise, Bennett remains open to new possibilities. Even after all her years of ketamine research, she reflects, “We are always learning and trying things to find the most effective strategies.”
How to Establish a Safe Group Culture
For an effective group, a culture of safety and trust must be established. One way of doing that is to create “homogenous” groups, where all members share common struggles, such as depression or anxiety. The Wholeness Center, for instance, is in the process of creating a KAP group to treat PTSD experienced by COVID first responders, as well as a group for alcohol addictions.
At KRIYA, Bennett is not attached to homogeneity as a necessity, yet she recognizes that disregard for commonality among group members can be detrimental to the group’s safety, and therefore efficacy.
“It is possible to have somebody in the group who is on such a different page than the other folks that it really puts the group out of balance,” she explains. “We try not to do that.”
Bennett circumvents issues related to group imbalances by focusing on preliminary assessment. She describes the assessment process as an under-regarded component of psychedelic healing, the “magic for helping people to get better in the fastest and most cost-effective way.” If therapists take a first come, first serve approach to their groups, imbalances are bound to emerge, negatively impacting trust and safety.
“Not everyone is a good candidate for group treatment,” Bennett candidly states. “Ketamine is a fickle medicine. People need to feel physically and emotionally safe in order to have big and beautiful and expansive experiences. They need time to relax into the space and develop trust with us.”
For example, Bennett has found that people with complex trauma are better suited for individual work, noting that these folks “are often better served by having the individual attention of the therapist.”
Shannon underscores the necessity of a detailed intake process to ensure safety. When group safety and assessment are sufficiently prioritized, however, he has found that ketamine presents very little risk to individuals or groups in a therapeutic context.
“People are screened ahead of time for concerning medical or psychiatric issues,” Shannon says. “We haven’t seen any safety issues in our groups so far. I think that reflects our experience with KAP in general—that it’s a low-risk, quite safe medical process.”
For folks who have been properly screened and assessed, Shannon has found that the drop in individual attention from the therapist that groups entail does not negatively affect the healing process.
“I think we overrate the value of having an expert in the room, and we underrate the importance of connection and community in our current mental health paradigm,” he reflects. “My observation is that although the attention of the practitioner is more divided in a group, that is more than enhanced by the sense of community and safety and support that comes with it.”
Healing in Community
On top of assessment, non-ketamine preparation sessions help establish the safe and supportive group environment.
“People spend time getting to know each other in the preparation sessions before the medicine is introduced,” Bennett explains. “We’re not just throwing people in and shooting them up. That would be totally unethical.”
The cohort model contributes to participants’ sense of safety through rapport and consistency. When safety is established, Bennett has found that groups are not only consistently effective, but offer a host of benefits she did not anticipate.
“In individual treatment, people often felt very alone, that they were the only person on earth dealing with whatever problem they were living with,” she explains. “In the group, people quickly found that there were other people who had similar issues and challenges. That in itself is healing.”
Shannon and Fortson have observed the same trend. Fortson shares, “While it is difficult to explain, there is something about the sense of connection and support that is fostered in a group environment, specifically as it pertains to KAP, that seems to greatly expand the therapeutic benefit experienced by participants.”
Shannon notes this “enhanced response” is influenced by participants’ magnified expectation of hope, as well as something more primordial.
“With the pandemic, and really just in modern society, one of the major plagues we’re facing is a sense of disconnection, isolation, and removal from our social roots as herd animals,” he reflects. “A primary reason I like group therapy so much is that it really makes use of the power of community and group process.”
This unmeasurable component of community healing is emerging as a trend of group psychedelic therapy. The Forbes article linked in the introduction indicated that the cancer patients who receive psilocybin treatments together “frequently develop a sense of community and mutual support that can enhance their recovery and overall well-being.”
Implications of Ceremony in the West
An intriguing argument sometimes leveraged on behalf of group psychedelic therapy hinges on its potential correlation to group entheogenic healing ceremonies practiced by countless cultures for millennia. While it would be imprudent to propose a generalized, catch-all comparison between the two, given drastic differences in cultural context, traditional plant medicine healing ceremonies testify to both the safety and the power of group psychedelic journeying when held in an intentional and meaningful container. Base-level similarities between these processes—i.e. community healing through visionary journeys—suggest the possibility of a ceremonial, rite-of-passage element to group psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
Now, I am not advocating for psychedelic therapists to buy rattles and drums and chant songs from other cultures they do not understand. That would be very bad. My suggestion—which I am not the first to make—is that outside the boundaries of important issues related to appropriation, there are archetypal processes of ceremonial rites of passage that have factored prominently into countless cultures through the ages, and their general lack of existence in Western society may have some connection to the rampant isolation, existential confusion, and struggles of purpose and maturity afflicting so many people in this hyper-individualized capitalist paradigm.
It strikes me as significant that countless Western people are traveling to distant countries to experience sacred plant medicine ceremonies of cultures about which they know nothing, seeking a kind of spiritual healing and renewed sense of meaning their lives lack. Could group psychedelic therapy play a role in patterning these forsaken archetypal ceremonial processes into Western culture?
What kinds of ceremonies could fit into and emerge out of a Western therapeutic context? Can such rituals respectfully incorporate wisdom shared by other traditions, while establishing a unique and authentic identity? How might ceremonial rites of passage, held in a safe therapeutic container, help heal the complex, multitudinous mental health struggles unique to our techno-capitalist world?
These questions are way too massive to attempt to answer here. The fact that group psychedelic therapy raises them, however, highlights an added layer of its potential significance.
Diversifying the Psychedelic Space
The decrease in cost has the obvious benefit of making the treatment accessible to more people. A hope is that such increased access will invite more diversity to the space of psychedelic healing, which remains strikingly un-diverse. In 2018, Dr. Monnica T. Williams and her co-authors demonstrated that between 1993 and 2017, 82.3% of participants in psychedelic therapy trials were white. While no research has been conducted on diversity in the practice of ketamine-assisted therapy, it is unlikely that results would be much different.
It would be erroneous, however, to suggest this lack of diversity is related exclusively to cost and implicit bias among practitioners. It’s also about safety. In my recent interview with MAPS-trained therapist Dr. Joseph McCowan, McCowan reflected, “People of color desire to do what is safe prior to contributing to research or science, or even healing themselves. Right now, psychedelic spaces, due to their illegality and the stigma they carry, are not safe.”
While offering more affordable treatments is a great start, white therapists must educate themselves on unique struggles and barriers related to mental health in communities of color, as well as the socio-political factors—i.e. the ramifications of the War on Drugs—that keep these barriers standing. Further, they must use that education to create more safety. Only then can the decreased cost offered by modalities such as group KAP really help diversify the landscape of psychedelic healing.
Training and Ethical Considerations for Group Ketamine Therapy
As the field currently stands, there are no regulated training requirements for clinicians to facilitate ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Theoretically, so long as an M.D. prescribes the medicine to the client, any therapist can offer ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Many are disturbed by this lack of regulation, and an increasing chorus of voices is calling for higher ethical standards for ketamine therapy practitioners to abide.
Bennett is a leading voice on the ethical front. She recently authored this article on ethical guidelines for ketamine clinicians that was published in the Journal of Psychedelic Psychiatry, which establishes the importance of assessment, medical safety, preparation, training, and maintaining professional conduct for providers.
As with other psychedelics, ketamine should not be taken lightly or offered carelessly. It is a powerful substance that can consistently facilitate healing experiences when offered with care; at the same time, it can have destructive consequences when handled carelessly. If facilitators are unprepared to work with deep and painful unconscious content that can unexpectedly erupt in clients under its influence, they are putting clients at risk of retraumatization that could leave them in a far worse state than before. At a broader level, reports of such egregious harms could do significant damage to the still-vulnerable field of psychedelic therapy in general.
Many practitioners advise therapists who intend to offer KAP to experience the medicine themselves. Both KRIYA and Wholeness have run groups for mental health professionals who meet specific criteria; Bennett shares that KRIYA’s professional participants “reported that their direct experiences with ketamine vastly increased their understanding of how to use this tool with their own clients.”
If therapists do not meet criteria to experience ketamine therapy themselves, a number of trainings in KAP now exist, many of which involve an experiential component. Shannon and Fortson, for instance, helped found the Psychedelic Research and Training Institute (PRATI), a nonprofit organization that currently offers several KAP trainings each year. Over the course of the three-day intensive, therapists are given the opportunity to experience both a low-dose and high-dose ketamine session while dyad partners practice skills in the facilitator role.
“For clinicians who want to do group work with ketamine, it is strongly recommended that they get specialized training,” Bennett emphasized. KRIYA has compiled a list of reputable trainings for those interested in learning more.
Group Ketamine-Assisted Therapy: Summarizing the Journey
In the new mental health frontier of psychedelic-assisted therapy, group psychedelic therapy represents an even newer frontier. With its potential to lower cost and invite the healing power of community into psychedelic therapy, group ketamine-assisted therapy calls for more attention in both research and ethically-minded practice. It will not be for everyone, and it is far from a panacea, but the modality holds tremendous promise to help people with a whole lot more than lowering their bill.
And even if a lowered bill proves to be the sole benefit, that’s still a huge accomplishment for the current landscape of psychedelic therapy.
About the Author
Sean Lawlor is a writer, certified personal trainer, and Masters student in Transpersonal Counseling at Naropa University, in pursuit of a career in psychedelic journalism, research, and therapy. His interest in consciousness and non-ordinary states owes great debt to Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, and Hunter S. Thompson, and his passion for film, literature, and dreaming draws endless inspiration from Carl Jung, David Lynch, and J.K. Rowling. For more information or to get in touch, head to seanplawlor.com, or connect on Instagram @seanplawlor.
In this episode, with hisrecent salvia experience in mind, Kyle interviews creator of the salvia pipe, and somatic salvia guide working to bring mindfulness to salvia use, Christopher Solomon.
To many of us, the word “salvia” conjures up images of one or both of the following: smoking salvia with friends and having a panicked, out-of-body experience that (rightfully) scared us away from ever doing it again, or watching Youtube videos of people filming themselves doing the same. Solomon’s goal is to reframe salvia’s reputation from one of confusion and panic back to how it’s known to the Mazatec people who discovered its power: as a loving, empathetic healer.
He talks about his first time smoking salvia after meditating and meeting a female entity, the differences between smoking, chewing leaves, and drinking a tincture, virtual salvia sessions, why you should smoke tiny amounts of salvia repetitively rather than 50x bong hits, why so many people feel like they’re zippers while on salvia, and his thoughts (and salvia’s) on if salvia should be smoked or not. And he lists out all the unique feelings that salvia can bring to the table if it’s approached with mindfulness, trust, and respect. “The more respectfully and cautiously and mindfully one approaches salvia, the more rewards she gives.”
Notable Quotes
“Aside from the fact that I was taken aback at seeing this entity, what was also amazing with it was the sense of emotion and love that was coming from this being. There was a very genuine, caring, telepathic connection that I had with this being that was made out of colorful, almost magnetic-looking lines.”
“When we think of transformation or transformative experiences, we think about these big, explosive, cathartic things, like, ‘Oh my gosh, my entire life flashed before my eyes and I could understand everything, and boom! I had this big transformation, and now I’m healed.’ And that can happen, but the real transformations happen in small, bite-sized moments that can be integrated, like taking that small sip of air- getting that one deep breath in if you haven’t had a deep breath in a long time.”
“Maybe we’re experiencing the zipper because we go so deep within our bodies that we’re actually getting taken into the felt experience of our DNA replicating.” “If you’re trying to make decisions in your life and you’re waffling back and forth and making lists of pros and cons and debating with yourself and then getting guidance from other people and you’re not sure where to go- you bring those questions to salvia, and she very quickly gets straight to the heart of the matter.”
Christopher Solomon is a somatic Salvia guide, teacher, and inventor of a pipe that aids in the mindful exploration of Salvia Divinorum. Incorporating lessons learned directly from Salvia and as a student of somatic psychotherapy, Christopher is pioneering techniques to use Salvia as a therapeutic tool for guided self-healing, meditation, and introspection. Christopher lectures about the proper, intentional, and therapeutic use of Salvia, offering a blend of scientific, esoteric, and therapeutic perspectives. He also cultivates a medicinal Salvia garden for use in his therapeutic practice with clients. His main goal is to teach people how to use Salvia for themselves in a manner that is supportive, informative, and empowering. He has a B.A in Psychology from the University of Texas at Dallas, and received his training in somatic psychotherapy from the Hakomi Institute of California.
In this episode, Kyle interviews clinical psychologist focusing on sexual trauma, health, and identity, and author of The Psychedelics Integration Handbook, Dr. Ryan Westrum.
Westrums’ biggest focus and conversation with clients right now in our age of Covid concerns who we are without medicine- how we fill the liminal states between our sessions or rituals. He talks a lot about the work people can do on their own now: learning to listen to our inner healers, honing and sharpening what we already know, stretching ourselves, listening to the different parts of our intuition (our physical bodies, emotional hearts, and cognitive thinking) and realigning when one is out of sync, and maybe the most important lesson: embracing the idea that self-work doesn’t have to be built on trials and tribulations, and often, challenging ourselves to use our hands and practicing something we know we’re good at or getting back into a long-forgotten hobby can be just as effective towards growth and feeling better about ourselves.
He also talks about solitude, how to use technology the right way and not fall into false engagement, what safety means to people in today’s climate, the importance of tethering yourself to trustworthy allies, how psychedelics and his work with sexuality converge, and how to embrace the wonder and beauty of what we discover through psychedelics in everyday life.
Notable Quotes
“We have to consciously watch what we’re consuming, being prudently aware of this mindful consumption rather than this inappropriate consuming of information when we don’t even know why we just touched our phone or why we just engaged in learning more. Without sounding blasphemous (because I love the internet), what’s it for? What are we doing it for? …How often are you getting lost in people you don’t even know? And how often are you reaching out to people that could actually be there for you? And it leads to psychedelic medicine work- are you leaning on the people that could actually support you?”
“What is the higher level of intention we’re living? If we are going to take the challenge to dive into medicine work by ourselves, we should still be constructing something that’s higher level, and to speak volumes of motivating the purpose of why we’re doing it. If you’re just doing it to do it because you think that’s the next thing, I’d ask you: what are you doing in your life away from the medicine?”
“Some of the most amazing transcendences are personal, and without being disrespectful to the medicine, do we need it to evoke that? Is that a state of being that we can find within ourselves through evocative breathing, through a great song, sexual pleasure with your partner, whatever? There’s other avenues. That’s what that leads me to, is the plethora of opportunity outside of taking psilocybin or doing an ayahuasca ceremony- [the] plethora of experiential experiences that are very evocative towards healing.” “Without going into hours of conversation, even in couples, people are unaware of what they can share, unaware of entering into what they want to ask for. And that’s where the intersection of psychedelics happens, is it gives them this embodied expression of: ‘This is genuinely who I am, sexually, emotionally, spiritually,’ and it’s quite beautiful.”
Dr. Ryan Westrum, PhD, MA. is a nationally recognized psychedelic integration expert, author of The Psychedelics Integration Handbook, and Doctor of Clinical Transpersonal Psychology. For more than 15 years, his primary focus has been working with individuals and groups facilitating experiential therapy and integrating psychedelic journeys into healing and personal transformation. Ryan speaks on myriad of topics and leads experiential groups, like dreamwork integration therapy and psychedelic integration groups. The founder of http://healingsoulsllc.com and psychedelicintegration.net
Could 18-MC, a synthetic derivative of Ibogaine, make treatment safer without the psychedelic trip?
With COVID-19 still spreading, mutating, and killing, it’s easy to forget the other health crises ravaging the country. One of the most concerning of these is drug overdose deaths, with opioids representing a large share of such casualties. From 1999 through 2018, nearly 450,000 people fatally overdosed on opioids in the US. While slight decreases in 2018 buoyed hopes that we were past the peak, even then, overdose deaths were four times greater than in 1999. In 2019, such optimism was dashed as the number of opioid overdose deaths climbed to 50,042, an increase of nearly 7 percent over the previous year. But, are there viable treatment options that are overlooked by the medical community and general public?
In the psychedelic community, many would argue yes, and highlight the potential of ibogaine, a psychedelic compound found in the West African shrub, Tabernanthe iboga. But ibogaine comes with more possible health risks than other psychedelic plants and substances that we’ll explore below, and of course, there remains a lingering bias in some parts of the medical establishment against psychedelics. And so, a non-psychoactive alternative, 18-Methoxycoronaridine (18-MC) was developed in the 1990s and is now advancing through the FDA’s drug development process at a steady clip, while research into ibogaine remains virtually frozen. However, the question remains: are the concerns about ibogaine’s risks valid enough to explain the differing fates of these chemical cousins, or are other factors at play?
What is Ibogaine?
Ibogaine is a plant-derived alkaloid with unique psychoactive properties distinct from those of classic psychedelics, such as LSD, psilocybin-producing mushrooms, or DMT. One of its effects is panoramic recall, often described by patients as watching a movie of their life playing in their head. Sometimes called a dissociative psychedelic, Geoff Noller, a medical anthropologist with a doctorate from the University of Otago’s Department of Psychological Medicine, prefers the term “oneiric” (pronounced ō-ˈnī-rik), which is defined as, “dream-inducing.”
This description of the ibogaine experience was seconded by Dr. Bruno Rasmussen, a physician and researcher based in Brazil who provides ibogaine therapy. “Ibogaine doesn’t make you hallucinate; Ibogaine makes you dream, but you are awake when you are dreaming,” Rasmussen said. “If you do an EKG during the effect of ibogaine, the lines will be like they are in a REM state, the rapid eye movements state, the dream state.”
How Does Ibogaine Work?
The unique, psychedelic qualities of ibogaine are not the only way it differs from more familiar hallucinogens. Psilocybin, LSD, and DMT all act in a more focused manner on the brain’s serotonin receptors. And while ibogaine does act on serotonin levels in the brain, it also acts on numerous other neural systems. Noller compares its relatively blunt mode of action to cannabis, which also acts on many different receptor sites, and contrasts it with more targeted designer medicines like Prozac.
While the exact neural systems ibogaine engages are not fully understood yet, studies show it can reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms and help control cravings. This offers a window of opportunity for patients to make changes in their life that would otherwise be more difficult due to the pain, anhedonia, and other symptoms of withdrawal. Once they have weathered this storm, the reduction in cravings increases their likelihood of not relapsing.
Furthermore, studies have shown that ibogaine reduces the amount of drugs, like cocaine, alcohol, and nicotine, that animals self-administer, despite the fact that each of these drugs has their own distinct way of influencing neural chemistry. This ultimately suggests that ibogaine acts on multiple regions of the brain. Studying this broad function could lead to new insights into the physiological underpinnings of addiction, which makes the relative dearth of research on ibogaine all the more curious — until you consider its potential hazards.
Ibogaine Risks
The benefits of ibogaine must be weighed against its potential dangers. An article in the Journal of Forensic Science examined 19 deaths that occurred following ibogaine treatments given between 1990 and 2008. Post-mortem testing revealed that at least 11 of these patients had other drugs in their systems, such as benzodiazepines, cocaine, opiates, and methadone, all of which are known to be dangerous when mixed with ibogaine.
Prior to treatment, however, a dozen of the patients who died also had one or more comorbidities known to pose risks when using ibogaine, such as obesity, brain neoplasm, and a range of diseases affecting the liver, heart, and other organs.
Although ibogaine research in the US stalled in the late ‘90s, it continued abroad. Thomas Kingsley Brown, a California-based anthropologist, worked with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) for a 2017 study in Mexico, where ibogaine treatment is not specifically outlawed. Thirty people with opioid dependence received ibogaine treatment and were evaluated over the following year. After one month, half of the research subjects stated they had not used opioids since their ibogaine session. Further follow-ups showed sustained anti-addictive effects.
“To address the first question of whether or not ibogaine can be used safely and effectively, my short answer is yes,” Brown said. “There are going to be risks with that, but you can also minimize the risk.”
In addition to screening patients for potentially dangerous comorbidities and identifying contraindications, such as the presence of drugs that could cause harmful interactions, Brown explained that genetic tests can determine how quickly people’s bodies break down ibogaine into noribogaine. This helps those administering the treatment determine whether it’s safe for a patient to move forward with ibogaine and how to calculate an optimal dosage.
Noller also worked with MAPS on an ibogaine study, though this one was based in New Zealand, where Medsafe (the country’s equivalent of the FDA) made such treatment legally available as a non-approved medication in 2010. According to Noller, this classification gives doctors the ability to write a prescription for a drug or treatment even if it hasn’t gone through a three-phase trial testing period.
He points out that ibogaine’s mortality rate is comparable to methadone. A 2008 paper in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology reported 11 ibogaine-related deaths from 1990 to 2006 out of the 3,414 people estimated to have taken it — a mortality rate of 0.32 percent. A 2007 paper in the Drug and Alcohol Review found 283 methadone-related deaths in Australia between the years of 2000-2003 out of an estimated 102,615 episodes of treatment, which yields a mortality of 0.27 percent.
But Rasmussen believes it can still be safer, attributing the majority of ibogaine-related deaths to preventable failures on the part of caregivers, such as not having qualified doctors present, forgoing the use of cardiac monitors, and passing on testing patients for drugs that could cause harmful interactions. His strongest piece of evidence for the ability to safely use ibogaine is that none of his roughly 2,000 patients have died due to or during treatment. In fact, he hasn’t even had a subject develop complications, like severe heart arrhythmia. In Brazil, doctors can legally prescribe ibogaine therapy in hospital settings, a model Rasmussen champions.
“I think that the trick here is to face it as a little surgery,” Rasmussen explained. “We make some pre-surgical examinations, lab tests, blood tests, and EKGs. We do it in a big hospital with the emergency team aware that there is an ibogaine patient in the hospital. For anything we could need, we are backed up, but we never needed the emergency team because we do the lab tests, so we can usually prevent the complications.”
18-MC: The Non-Psychedelic Alternative to Ibogaine
Concerns about ibogaine’s psychoactive effects and potential risks led to the development of 18-MC in the 1990s. Dr. Kenneth Alper, a professor of psychiatry and neurology at New York University School of Medicine, explained that 18-MC is a structural analog of ibogaine, meaning they share a common molecular base, in this case the ibogamine ring system. At the microscopic level, even small variations can lead to big changes.
The general consensus seems to be that 18-MC is not psychoactive or oneiric, though Alper speculated that it could potentially be hallucinogenic at higher doses. 18-MC also does not seem to carry the same cardiovascular risks. MindMed, a new Canadian pharmaceutical company focused on psychedelic and psychedelic-inspired medicines, obtained the patent for 18-MC in 2019 when it acquired the biopharma startup, Savant HWP, for an undisclosed sum. MindMed recently completed Phase I testing on 18-MC. The company declined to share information about their 18-MC trials or comment for this story.
18-MC Patent and the Halting of Ibogaine Research
Karen Szumlinski, a neuropharmacologist, neuroscientist, and professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, worked on animal studies for both ibogaine and 18-MC from the mid to late ‘90s—long before Savant HWP or MindMed existed. 18-MC was first developed in 1996 by a group of scientists, one of which served as Szumlinski’s research mentor. Based on her observations, Szumlinski believes 18-MC is not psychoactive. But the bias against psychoactive compounds combined with 18-MC’s minimal cardiovascular risks are likely the reasons why ibogaine research in the US halted when it did.
Another reason ibogaine studies in the US stopped is due to profitability. Ibogaine is a natural product not eligible for a patent, according to Brown. Patenting molecules is how companies make big profits. Somewhat confusingly though, Howard Lotsof, the person credited with discovering ibogaine’s anti-addictive properties, was able to patent the use of ibogaine and related molecules in doses ranging from 1 mg/kg to 60 mg/kg given orally or rectally for treating poly-drug dependency in 1990. The patent covered addiction to one or more of the following: alcohol, heroin, methadone, cocaine, caffeine, amphetamine, desoxyephedrine, and nicotine. However, it’s the patents held by companies like MindMed that cause Rasmussen to express concerns.
“Big pharma, they like molecules that they can register as their intellectual property and make more money on,” Rasmussen said. “So, I think that’s the reason that there’s a lot of money for 18-MC and there’s no money for ibogaine research.”
Is the Ibogaine Experience a Crucial Part of the Treatment?
Ibogaine’s effectiveness for treating substance abuse disorders and addiction is established in human trials and supported by numerous first-person testimonials. We were unable to find data showing the same for 18-MC, likely because the results of clinical research don’t exist on the molecule yet. But when such information is available, it may offer additional insights into whether the consciousness-altering properties of ibogaine are essential to its effectiveness for treating various SUDs.
Alper suspects the new data will be consistent with what is shown in the existing research. “In terms of ibogaine and its effects on self-administration and withdrawal, the animal model and human experience appear to align pretty well,” Alper said. “Effects on reduced drug self-administration following treatment with ibogaine or 18-MC are not likely to be based on the processing of the content of psychoactive experience.”
In other words, Alper doesn’t think that the reduced consumption of addictive substances by lab animals is caused by psychedelic epiphanies. Rather, he believes it’s the physiologic processes induced by ibogaine. He suspects the same is true for humans, though he also accepts that the psychedelic experience could be a useful aid for patients undergoing psychotherapy.
Other researchers were less optimistic about 18-MC’s relative prospects in human trials. “I think that at least in some cases—not the majority of them maybe, but in a significant number of situations—the psychedelic experience is a key to solving the problem,” Rasmussen explained. “It’s not that I think that 18-MC will not work, but I really don’t understand how it would work as well as ibogaine does without the psychedelic experience.”
Instead of viewing the question as a zero-sum game that promotes one treatment at the expense of the other, the true win-win scenario for patients would be that both medicines become safely available. After all, the need for more effective therapies is paramount. COVID-19 and the policies put in place to contain it have only exacerbated the risks posed by SUDs. The Lancet reports that as of July 2020, drug overdose deaths in the US increased by 13 percent, with rates in some states up by over 30 percent.
If the end goal is to reduce harm and save lives over the long haul—and not pump up stock prices in the short term—then it’s up to those within the psychedelic movement to continue their decades-long struggle to end the criminalization of these potentially life-saving medicines. Otherwise, the fate of these powerful and potentially transformative substances will be decided by supporters of the failed policies of criminalization and the corporatization of psychedelics.
About the Author
Jeff Kronenfeld is an independent journalist and fiction writer based out of Phoenix, Arizona. His articles have been published in Vice, Overture Global Magazine, and other outlets. His fiction has been published by the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Four Chambers Press, and other presses.
In this episode, Joe interviews “Car Bomb”- the 9-year NHL veteran, 2-time Stanley Cup winner (as a member of the Chicago Blackhawks), founder of The Chapter Five Foundation (an organization helping athletes transition into post-sports life), and advocate for the healing power of psilocybin, Daniel Carcillo.
Carcillo tells the story of his struggles and depression brought on from post-hockey life transition, 7 diagnosed concussions, and the death of his good friend and fellow player, Steve Montador, who struggled with similar issues before his sudden death in 2015. He talks about the stress of pro sports and the cult-like, team-first attitude in hockey, the hazing athletes experience coming up, the causes and effects of yelling coaches and a “be better” attitude, and how his post-hockey work and speaking out has ostracized him from the community while many people are reaching out to him for help behind the scenes.
His first hero dose of psilocybin forever changed his life, but it wasn’t just psilocybin- he’s done a lot in the 5 years since that first ceremony, from neurofeedback, acupuncture, deprivation tanks, and using a gyrostim, to regularly microdosing, taking medicinal mushrooms like lion’s mane and reishi, meditating, starting a CBD and supplements company, and growing huge crops of cannabis. He talks about how this has all helped improve his life and his relationships with his family, and what he hopes to do with his Chapter Five Foundation and beyond- researching more into what worked for him and developing a protocol/regiment to help people affected by concussions, post-concussive syndrome, TBIs, CTE, or just those struggling with what to do after sports.
Notable Quotes
“I’m an advocate for everything, for all tiers. I’m an advocate for the Decrim Nature [model] because it’s a lower-tier model to get people this medicine, and then I’m an advocate for the clinical model that people are pushing forward in Oregon, and I’m an advocate for these big pharma/biotech companies coming out and researching. …You really have to make sure that we’re doing it the right way, and I think a lot of the companies out there are, so I think there’s such an opportunity at the ground floor right now to really get in, and if you have something that’s proven, that’s worked (like we do), then I really, really just feel so passionately about furthering that type of research, to again, get millions of people this type of treatment and this type of option.” “It’s still kind of unbelievable when I begin to talk about it, kind of what I’ve set in motion, but I believe in it so much and I’m still really in awe of what this medicine has done for me. We have one life to live. How do I help the most people that I can?”
“I just had to adjust my whole perspective and thinking and how I spoke to myself, changing the negative motivation to positive. But it’s constant work, because I’m just so used to being yelled at and then [being negative towards myself]. It’s definitely one of the biggest shifts that I’ve had, and I had that shift- that was at 2 and a half months after that big ceremony. That’s where I knew- that’s what really convinced me, and I’ll never forget this: I was driving out to my plants and they were about, I don’t know, 3 feet tall, and we were about 2 and a half months in, and I was like, ‘Wow Dan, really good job.’ I had this voice say that and I was like, ‘What the hell was that? Where did that come from?’ I’ve never done that, ever, and I was like ‘Ohhh man, something happened. Something shifted.’”
Daniel Carcillo is a two time Stanley Cup Champion and played 9 seasons in the National Hockey League. Daniel experienced emotional, sexual and physical trauma within hockey’s culture and battled mental health and addiction issues during and post career. When he retired in 2015, after sustaining 7 concussions and due to Post Concussion Syndrome, he founded Chapter 5 Foundation, a charitable organization that helps athletes transition into life after the game. Daniel struggled with PCS symptoms like light sensitivity, slurred speech, insomnia, headaches and head pressure, impulse control issues, anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts and traditional treatments did not work. Daniel brought forth the Decriminalize Nature resolution to the city of Chicago, sits on the Decriminalize Nature National Advisory Board & the board of the Heroic Hearts Project, a registered 501(c)(3) non profit that connects military veterans struggling with mental trauma to ayahuasca therapy retreats. Daniel has recently founded Made Therapeutics, a life sciences company that is researching loading and maintenance doses of psilocybin to treat traumatic brain injury, Post Concussion Syndrome, migraines and TBI related anxiety, depression and PTSD. Daniel and Made Therapeutics will be working towards validating the first novel care option for TBI survivors through Health Canada (IMPD) and FDA (IND) clinical trials, with Pre-IMPD & Pre-IND meetings set to establish a pathway forward to fast track status for traumatic brain injury.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Kyle and Joe talk about what they’ve been up to in the last few weeks: doing drugs!
Kyle first tells us about his recent experiments with revisiting salvia (which is legal in his state) and how different the experiences were from his young-and-dumb experiments as a teenager- how smaller doses in more ceremonial settings with years of experience in breathwork-inspired non-ordinary states of consciousness helped him see salvia differently. He talks about feeling like he just met the spirit of salvia, and the first message was to “respect the plants.” He may be seeing her again.
And Joe talks in-depth about his experience last Friday with his first intramuscular ketamine injection- the setting, the music (Sigur Rós- good call, Joe), the dose and timing, and what he heard and felt (and didn’t) in his ultimately anxiety-relieving, body-dissolving time in an empty void. Like Kyle, he’s now even more open to and supportive of ketamine after the experience.
And they also talk about a new ibogaine analog that was recently created called tabernanthalog (or TBG), of which a single injection helped against heroin use relapse in mice for 14 days and doesn’t stimulate the brain’s reward centers. And they talk about the good that could come from the drug-designing technique used to create it, called function-oriented synthesis.
Notable Quotes
“Some people tell me they like 1.2 mg/kg. Some people even like to go as high as 2. I think 2 mg/kg is essentially like, they could harvest all your organs and you wouldn’t notice one bit. Based on how high and dissociated I was, they probably could have done it to me- if they made it quick, like 5 minutes. I probably would have been fine.” -Joe
“The way I always framed it before going in was: this is an experience of consciousness without identity, without ego, without anything, really. And I didn’t really feel like there was anything there that was me. The idea of ‘Joe’ felt like a weird thing, a weird silly thing. There was just, like, I and ego and one consciousness, so it wasn’t like a Hindu, bliss consciousness thing; it was like me, as an entity, experiencing… something. Like empty void.” -Joe
“This experience was really just fascinating, like how rapidly my consciousness changed. It wasn’t a hurried, frenetic thing like DMT. It was like, “Oh, nope. You’re just here. You’re chilling. You’re not going anywhere.” -Joe “The MAPs protocol is going to be very expensive. Psychedelic Therapy is already very expensive. So, if we could have a drug that would be safe for somebody to take at home, alone, I think of course we should do that. Not everything is cured through the psychedelic experience. Though a lot of things can be, it’s not the case that everything needs to be.” -Joe
In this episode, Joe interviews Dr. Naveen Thomas of Clarity Psychiatry in Boulder, Colorado.
Naveen first discusses what he initially looks for in patients (low-lying fruit like a vitamin D deficiency or poor diet) and what he recommends for boosting immunity and improving overall health, then this becomes a bit of an “everything you ever wanted to know about ketamine and ketamine-assisted therapy” podcast.
He talks about the range in treatment methods across conventional models and what you could expect to experience in relation to dose, experience, and price, and how he likes to use ketamine in his practice. And he talks about the dependence that can come from more conventional “get dripped” methods, the variation of doses and subsequent effects on most people vs. more sensitive people, ways to calibrate a patient to give them the best (and safest) possible experience, the missed opportunities of models that don’t spend as much time on the experience and integration, why he believes so strongly in the efficacy and safety of ketamine (especially when compared to other psychedelics), and why how he’d like to see breathwork be used more in conjunction with both psychedelic and traditional therapies.
Notable Quotes
“In the worldview of the way I was trained, the whole point of ketamine therapy is not to get somebody hooked on ketamine for the rest of their life. It’s to give them enough corrective expanded experiences of healing and of their own inherent wholeness that they don’t need the ketamine- that whatever was off-balance is coming right.” “I’d like to maybe reframe the word ‘dissociative.’ With ketamine, chemically, in the ketamine state, we are becoming less and less in tune with outside sensory input. We are dissociating with ourselves as a body, temporarily, to some degree. And we are associating with ourselves as something other than body. And there’s some real- I’m just going to go ahead and use the word- there’s some real magic in that possibly. There’s some real healing potential.”
“One of the final common pathways, shall we say, of any medicine or technique that can induce a non-ordinary state is temporarily softening the ruminative negative self-narrative that’s so characteristic of human suffering and mental illness. And how you achieve that state, in some ways, is potentially not even that important. …Holotropic breathwork, or what I call journey breathwork, in any of its forms, absolutely can soften that egoic function and give people access to the parts of themselves that are bigger than that negative self-narrative, and just to bask in the juiciness of what’s possible when that happens. …And I think from a pragmatic standpoint, if we were to use breathwork as [an] interim integration tool between sessions, could we get away with maybe slightly decreasing the frequency of the more expensive psychedelic sessions? Might there be societal value in that while still retaining the efficacy and the self-learning and the insights and all the good stuff that goes along with that?”
Dr. Thomas graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He completed his medical school training at Emory University School of Medicine. He then went on to complete his post graduate psychiatric residency training at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, the typical Solidarity Fridays format is switched up yet again, this time with Joe interviewing author of best-selling book, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name,and recent Joe Rogan Experience guest, Brian Muraresku. Because where do you go after Joe Rogan? Psychedelics Today, of course.
Muraresku discusses how his fascination with Latin and Greek and the 1978 book, The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (by R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A. P. Ruck) and its proposal of a psychedelic sacrament of sorts being imbibed at the Rites of Eleusis led him to spend about 12 years searching for evidence to prove it. From the idea of “graveyard beer,” to Alcibiades and the profanation of mysteries, to wine parties to interact with the dead called refrigeriums, Muraresku dives deep into his findings: that the wine they drank was, at the least, spiked with herbs and spices to create something very different and likely hallucinogenic, that participants were seeking immortality, a euphoric ecstasy, and communion with both God and the dead, that both the Dionysian Gospel and Christianity are heavily related to the Rites of Eleusis, and that these ceremonies don’t appear to have been isolated to Eleusis- that people took what they learned and practiced elsewhere, in what Denise Demetriou refers to as “open-access sanctuaries.”
Notable Quotes
“Some of the legacies of this civilization, from democracy and the arts and sciences to literature and philosophy and the very concept of a university- all these inheritances are the things that we associate with the very literate Greeks. And there stands Euelisis at the center of it all. …And they [the Rites] were seen as so important, so central, so integral to life at the time, that even Cicero, a Roman in the first century B.C.- he referred to Euelisis as ‘the most exceptional and divine thing that Athens ever produced.’ So it wasn’t democracy, the arts, sciences, etc. It was Eleusis.”
“They saw something. The thinking for a long time was that maybe it was a theatrical performance- maybe there was something happening in this temple that has been lost to time. And then that book I mentioned in 1978, The Road to Eleusis, was saying as long as we’re talking about a vision, why can’t it be something that was produced internally? Why couldn’t it be one of these great epiphanic psychedelic visions? And so, as a hypothesis, it makes sense just based on the way people talked about this experience. It was a once in a lifetime experience that essentially erased the fear of death and made these initiates immortals. And weirdly, which is why I picked this up in the first place, it’s very, very similar to the testimony that comes from the volunteers in the Johns Hopkins experiments with psilocybin. It’s again, a once in a lifetime single dose of psilocybin [that] seems to result in these profound, mystical transformations in people; including atheists, who will describe it as among the most meaningful experiences of their lives.”
“I think that there was a historical Jesus, and I think that we have these relatively conflicting accounts of what he was and what the message was in the canonical gospels that have come down to us. But we have these other gospels and this Gnostic literature that didn’t make it in The Bible, and the gospel of Mary Magdalene. And what comes across to me, time and again, are people trying to find ecstasy, people looking for communion with Jesus. And again, you don’t have to look off into all this esoteric stuff just to focus on the very simple proposition that the Eucharist is an immortality potion, plain and simple.”
Brian Muraresku graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University with a degree in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. As an alumnus of Georgetown Law and a member of the New York Bar, he has been practicing law internationally for fifteen years. He lives outside Washington D.C. with his wife and two daughters.
In this episode, Joe interviews Ph.D., Professor at the University of Saskatchewan, and author specializing in the history of psychedelics and their relation to the medical industry, Erika Dyck.
Dyck talks about her interest in Canadian history and specifically Saskatchewan, which was the first jurisdiction in North America to elect a socialist government. She talks about how it was clear in the early days of governmental support that they were reaching out to people with bold ideas, leading to Humphry Osmand coming there in 1951 to commence research that he felt was being stifled in London.
They talk extensively about the work of Osmand and Abram Hoffer, early experiments with giving staff in mental hospitals LSD to encourage empathy toward patients, a hospital architect taking LSD and learning that tiled, checkerboard-esque floors may be a challenge to patients with depth perception issues, a “Hollywood hospital” where wealthy film stars were flown to deal with addiction largely in secret, the concept of having patients write out an autobiography before a medicine session in order to reflect back on their life afterward, Osmond’s participation in a peyote ceremony and his subsequent report, why the Timothy Leary model of dropping out of the scientific/academic world isn’t helpful, why time passed and changed public opinion have led to old research coming to light, and why it’s more important to talk to people who aren’t sold on psychedelics yet instead of those who are already bought in and live in our psychedelic bubble.
Notable Quotes
“Even people like Humphry Osmond or Abram Hoffer who were on the frontlines of that psychedelic heyday in the 1950s- they were quite careful (and obviously they were sort of practiced at this), but they were quite careful about how I might characterize their work with psychedelics, and they insisted that what they were doing was not unethical, they did not have money from the C.I.A., they had lots of checks and balances, and they were clearly responding to that very heavy reputation and characterization of psychedelics. And I reflect on that every once in a while, and wonder, ‘what would they would say today?’”
On Osmond and peyote: “It was the question of whether or not these chemicals and these rituals using chemicals should be allowed more broadly. And I think that the federal government in Canada was thinking that, again, this white-coated British guy would walk in and behave like the colonialist that they expected him to be, and come out and say ‘these are rotten ceremonies,’ but that was absolutely not who Humphry Osmond was. He participated fully. He chewed the buttons, he threw up, he participated in the feast afterwards, he participated in the drumming circle. …So Osmond then made a statement (and he’s published about this in a variety of different places) saying this was an absolutely beautiful ceremony, it was absolutely sacred, it should be protected, it should be promoted, [and] people should be given access to peyote so that they continue this sacred ceremony. And the Canadian government was not impressed with this reaction.”
“Our governments are addicted to the war on drugs.”
“I think that part of what the psychedelic world needs to do, in my humble opinion, is to reach out and seek these kinds of bridges and these alliances, because I think that there’s a risk that we can just convince ourselves that psychedelics are good and that it won’t actually break through the psychedelic bubble, if you will, to convince regulators that in fact, there is real merit here. There’s still a sense that– even just saying LSD- I gave a presentation last week to a group of retired physicians and these are people with medical training and who’ve spent their careers doing medical education and medical work, clinical work. And they’re like ‘oh, but LSD, that’s the one that fries your brain, right?’ I mean, these were disproven studies in the 70s, and yet it’s very interesting that that characterization is so strong.”
Erika Dyck is a professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan. Her work focuses on 20th century medical history, especially the history of psychedelics, psychiatry, eugenics and population control. Her books include Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from Clinic to Campus (2008); Facing Eugenics: Reproduction, Sterilization, and the Politics of Choice (2013); Managing Madness: Weyburn Mental Hospital and the Transformation of Psychiatric Care in Canada(2017); and she is editor of A Culture’s Catalyst: Historical Encounters with Peyote and the Native American Church in Canada (2016) and co-editor of Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond (2018). She is a guest editor at the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. You can email her at Erika.dyck@usask.ca.
In this episode, Joe interviews MD, attorney, host of the Plant Medicine podcast, and founder of the Psychedelic Medicine Association, Dr. Lynn Marie Morski.
She talks about her time working for the United States Department of Veteran Affairs and how her frustrations with not being able to recommend medicines she knew would help people led to her creating the Plant Medicine podcast, and how realizing that the podcast wasn’t reaching enough doctors led to her creating the Psychedelic Medicine Association. She discusses their goal: to bring organizations, corporate entities, lawyers, and practitioners/therapists (really anyone in the medical field responsible for the wellbeing of another) together through forums and newsletters to bridge the enormous gap between those on the cutting edge of new medicines and modalities of healing and the more traditional doctors who don’t know nearly enough about this emerging world.
She talks about her podcast and dedicating 4 full episodes to each drug, common misconceptions about doctors and healthcare, what it’s like to be both a doctor and a lawyer, doctors who judge patients for using cannabis and the disservice that is, the complications of what comes after the FDA approves a drug, what’s necessary for getting psychedelics more into mainstream culture, and the silver lining that could come from COVID and COVID-related trauma.
Notable Quotes
“It should not be weighing job security vs. saving veterans’ lives, but that’s really the position a lot of us are put in, and I couldn’t take that anymore, and so I left the VA and made it my mission to undo the years of silence by speaking out a whole lot about it.”
“FDA approval, for example, of MDMA or psilocybin, is just step 1. What do you do when you’ve got a medicine now approved that doctors are afraid to recommend or prescribe because it came out of nowhere? They’re like, ‘Whoa, psychedelics were Schedule I and extremely dangerous and ‘Don’t do drugs!’ and now I’m supposed to be giving it to a patient?’ That is a barrier.”
“We’ve known about the 22 veteran suicides, and somehow, still, things haven’t gotten done in mental health. Maybe because, again, that’s ‘other.’ We have this whole issue with others, right? ‘That’s happening to these other people over here.’ The pandemic is one of the first things in… ever that has happened to everybody. It’s not ‘Oh, only the poor get this.’ Nope. Poor and rich. Tom Hanks got it right off the bat. Everybody’s getting it. Prime Ministers get it. And a lot of people are suffering the same mental health issues from the quarantine and so, it’s no longer where we can say ‘Oh, mental health struggles are for others.’ This has hit everybody. …The suicide rate is rising for everybody. Mental health issues are rising for everybody. Is this the tipping point where the mental health system looks around and says ‘Ok, our tools aren’t sufficient. Can we start looking at these other modalities, including psychedelics, because we’ve got a second epidemic on our hands here?’”
“It should be absolutely crucial for anybody on the front lines of patient care to know at least the basics of these medicines. We’re not trying to get doctors to all want to do psychedelic medicine at all. That’s not our goal. If people learn about it and get excited and want to get trained and do that? Fantastic. But we just want a basic level of knowledge, and like you said, if just 20% of doctors knew, that’d be great. And then those doctors can talk to their colleagues in other areas. But that’s essentially the way that we’re impressing it on people: ‘This is coming. You, as a professional responsible for other people’s health need to educate yourself on this.’”
Dr. Lynn Marie Morski is the president of the Psychedelic Medicine Association, host of the Plant Medicine Podcast, the founder of Plant Medicine.org, and the medical director for Way of Leaf.com. She is a Mayo Clinic-trained physician in family medicine and sports medicine, as well as an attorney and former adjunct law professor.
In this episode, Joe interviews Ryan and Rory of Cultivating Connections, a Vermont-based nonprofit and podcast dedicated to fostering deeper connections between themselves and the members of their ritual, as well as promoting the idea of intentioned rituals, answering questions and giving advice on creating your own ritual, and eventually, hosting larger group rituals.
They talk about how Ryan’s depression and Rory’s heroin and crack addiction (and eventual overdose) and experience with ayahuasca led them to realize that their biggest problem was disconnection, and through sharing a joint in the woods and talking openly, they realized they could help each other by continuing to embrace that connection with each other. They discuss the weekly ritual that blossomed from that: the different things they’ve tried, the specific details of what they do, and the big moments that made them believe that what they were doing was helping them grow and change.
While they admit that they wouldn’t be where they are today without psychedelics, psychedelics or other drugs (they use cannabis) are not necessary: ultimately, it’s the intention and dedicated practice that matters most. Being vulnerable, accepting yourself and others, opening up and sharing, remaining consistent and steadfast, trusting the process, and most importantly, embracing their fear is what has helped them the most. And the biggest thing they’ve learned is the power of staring into each member’s eyes for as long as possible, which has given them deeper connections than they thought they could have.
Notable Quotes
“You can say, ‘I want to experience something in a psychedelic experience. I want to face my fears.’ But what you say is not what you get. If you create a structure that you come to every week, where everyone has this unwritten, unspoken bond- that you know the intention is to get deeper into your psyche- into your unconscious, and confront the shit that you need to deal with, then every week you go there, you can’t avoid it.” -Ryan
“I’d say the most intense experiences of my life have been these weekly sessions the past 22 weeks. And it’s also been the most transformative time of my life. So I think there’s a lot to be said about the intensity of what you’re feeling and how you can use that. If it’s not in the right setting, it can become traumatic. But if you’re in a setting where you’re supported and you can grow with it, then it becomes a transformative experience.” -Ryan
“For us, it’s really about doing these things with intention in our group setting and our community setting, with the intention of connecting and facing fear. Really, I think the big thing that we focus on is not looking at fear as a negative thing. Fear is not something that we should repress, it’s something that we should let in- we should accept, and we should find value in. But if you repress your fear, you end up manifesting it.” -Ryan
Ryan and Rory are two brothers from Vermont, that have struggled with mental illness and addiction most of their lives. With the help of plant medicines, they came to realize disconnection was at the core of their problems. They created Cultivating Connections as an attempt to try and foster deeper connections in every aspect of their lives. One of the ways they do this is with their podcast. Another way is with their weekly group ritual.
Claudio Naranjo was a Chilean-born shaman of Moorish, Spanish, and Jewish descent. He was also a psychotherapist, medical doctor, author, educator, serious Buddhist practitioner, and pioneer in the areas of psychology, psychedelic therapies, and human development. His integrative approaches to a variety of fields elevated his work and created global reach and influence. He was always keen to point out that “spirituality should not be confused with religious beliefs or moral codes.” Towards the end of his life, he stressed the importance of emotional education, and the forgotten goal of educating for wisdom– and not just for knowledge to be harnessed for financial gain.
An early practitioner of Enneagram, he enriched it by integrating Gestalt therapy via Gurdjeff, meditation, music and art therapy, and other practices designed to provide deep, personal insights. But he admitted a vulgar commercialization of the Enneagram took place in North America. He explored the power of education to counter the patriarchal beliefs contributing to our deepening global crisis. “To change the world,” Claudio would say, “change education.” Naranjo’s approach to Buddhism was the same as the Buddha’s; he taught meditation with the offer to “ just try it,” and “see what it offers.”
His many years of teaching at Esalen Institute in the 1960s were both a pinnacle as well as a painful period in his life. One of his closest friends was Carlos Castaneda, who agreed with his concern that the “powerful gentleman Mr. Money” had increasingly taken control of the world, and belittled human beings to the point of dehumanization. Claudio soon became one of Fritz Perls’ three successors at Esalen, along with Jack Downing and Robert Hall. Claudio attended sensory awareness workshops with the legendary Charlotte Selver. Richard Evans Schultes arranged for Naranjo to make a special journey by canoe up the Amazon River to study ayahuasca with the South American Indians. He brought back samples of this drug and published the first scientific description of the effects of its active alkaloids.
Claudio also took part in the meetings of Leo Zeff’s pioneering psychedelic therapy group. He was an early enthusiast of using psychedelics (primarily ayahuasca, MDMA, and ibogaine) as medicines for a panoply of social and psychiatric conditions. Married four times, his last partner was Carolyn Merchant, a marriage and family therapist and a co-worker with Claudio on his book and teachings. In 1970, Claudio lost his only son in a terrible car accident on Big Sur’s Highway 1. He stated that the most significant realization of his life was that “nothing is more important in our time than our learning to be a little kinder.”
The Naranjo Institute presented the Seekers After Truth (SAT) program in 2012, with a new cohort opening annually. The program consists of four residential workshops, each lasting between six to nine days. The retreats represented a comprehensive exploration of psychological, spiritual, and expressive practices for understanding the human trajectory toward growth and fulfillment. From exploring who we have become and the precise ways we have each become stuck and continue to get stuck, the program went on to encourage processes of active healing and the expansion of one’s sense of possibilities. It was a “supplementary curriculum” of self-knowledge, relationship-repair, and spiritual culture.
In the course of its evolution as a program for personal and professional development of therapists and teachers since its rebirth in the late eighties, Naranjo called SAT a “psychotherapy laboratory,” in which people learned to help each other through the development of psychotherapeutic skills that do not require a background in the customary academic theoretical literature. He called this the “democratization of psychotherapy,” and education of future teachers, who may be able to assist their students in their personal growth.
Claudio’s recent and last talk was the highlight of the 2019 World Ayahuasca Conference in Girona, Spain. I will never forget his courage as one of his arms was violently swinging in the air due to his Parkinson’s. For all of his powerful influence on the development of human consciousness, in the bigger picture, Naranjo felt unsatisfied with his work, and disillusioned: “The economy has dominated politics, and practically everything else, asphyxiating life and its intrinsic values, the social order, and all our institutions.” A harbinger of things to come (such as defunding police) was his hope that the community take charge of many things (or perhaps of everything) that it once delegated to its governments, including communications, finance, and maintaining peace.
Claudio also found time to write or edit numerous books. He revised an early book on Gestalt therapy and published two new ones. He published three books on the Enneagram of Personality, as well as The End of Patriarchy. He also published a book on meditation, The Way of Silence and the Talking Cure, and Songs of Enlightenment.
Published in 2010 with a foreword by Jean Houston, was Healing Civilization: Bringing Personal Transformation into the Societal Realm through Education and the Integration of the Intra-Psychic Family. Naranjo explored what he saw as the root causes of the destruction of humanity: war, violence, oppression of women, child abuse, environmental endangerment, and patriarchy, which has taken root over millennia in our own conditioned minds. He touted the work of Tótila Albert, who asks us to see ourselves as three-brained with the “Inner Father” (corresponding to the head), the “Inner Mother” (corresponding to the heart), and the “Inner Child” (corresponding to the instincts). As people learn to integrate these three “brains,” Naranjo believed, they (the instincts) may bring about a functional- even divine, family within. For Naranjo, transforming education to be oriented toward personal and collective evolution could help heal civilization.
In his last book, The Revolution We Expected: Cultivating a New Politics of Consciousness (2020), Dr. Naranjo presents a call for individual and societal transformation in order to rebuild and humanize our institutions and realize a post-patriarchal global ecological community. “Even if the catastrophe of the sinking of the patriarchal vessel in which we have been sailing continues,” Naranjo writes, ”it is better for us to understand, by going through our crisis with faith, that the agonizing death rattles of our civilization are our greatest hope for regeneration.” He speaks of “apprentice shamans, who, without knowing it, are searching for their own development, and will sooner or later have the possibility of being of help in a world needing precisely those qualities they are developing.”
Dr. Naranjo observes that ‘realizing’ is the bravest thing of all- “to see that one was wrong and to change direction.” As Canadian psychologist Steven Pinker reminds us, “We humans have a very good eye for intellect but we do not yet have the right organ to understand consciousness.”
Claudio Naranjo passed away in July of 2019 at 86 years old.
In this episode, Joe interviews Del Jolly: co-founder and Director of psychedelic research nonprofit Unlimited Sciences, previous Business Development Manager at Charlotte’s Web, previous Outreach Director for Decriminalize Denver, and member of the Board of Advisors for cannabis nonprofit, The Realm of Caring.
Jolly talks about his path to Unlimited Sciences and its purpose: to collect as much data as possible through an observational research study through Johns Hopkins University, where participants are asked to provide as many details as possible about their psilocybin use. Like “Cannabis moms” Heather Jackson and Paige Figy collecting years of data from cannabis users through The Realm of Caring, Unlimited Sciences aims to do the same with psilocybin. They want data from recreational users as well, and they want to know where these users are, since location often establishes comfort levels (think about how much more relaxed someone would be in a decriminalized area like Denver vs. a country where you could be killed for doing these types of drugs). The goal is to use this data to find trends in all aspects of psilocybin use and figure out where to go next, both in terms of suggested use and legality.
Jolly talks about some athlete friends who are doing a lot, from UFC fighter Rashad Evans speaking on panels, to Blackhawks player Daniel Carcillo and his work with his organization Chapter 5, to Brandi Chastain pledging her brain to the Concussion Foundation. And he talks a lot about concussions and traumatic brain injuries- how female soccer players seem to get the most concussions (and women are more prone in general), how smaller, repetitive hits to the head often cause more damage than being knocked out, and how Marcus Capone of Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS) believes it’s not PTSD that’s leading 22 veterans to commit suicide a day, but more likely post-concussive syndrome. And he talks about his hope for psilocybin to emerge as something that can help these people (and all people) legally.
Notable Quotes
“If we never stopped studying psilocybin, we’d have about 50 years of research under our belt. Maybe there’s a slight possibility we’d be able to- and I’m not even kidding, help people walk again after being paralyzed.”
“If we want to slap on some dumbass bumper sticker that says ‘Support our troops,’ but then we really don’t, because we don’t want to look at psychedelics as an option or cannabis as an option, that doesn’t seem like supporting the troops. Supporting the troops, to me, means providing as many options as we can to these humans who have sacrificed everything to provide us the luxuries that we have. Can we please reciprocate to some degree and at least research this shit?”
“Something has to be done to unify to some degree, because at the end of the day, the champions of this are these smaller nonprofits and the community. And the cold hard facts about these nonprofits and community and the veterans of this space- we don’t have the money that big pharma does. We don’t have the power that the political side does and if we don’t unify and have a pretty common goal, we will be crushed in a New York second. …And realistically, if we just want to cannibalize ourselves by saying who’s ok and who’s not and all that jazz, it’s a waste of effort and it’s just going to speed up the opposition’s position.”
“This is a bipartisan subject in my opinion. Here’s how I see it- there’s not a single person who isn’t going to be affected or could not potentially benefit from the potential of something like psilocybin. Everybody, at least the last I checked, at some point, is going to suffer from depression or anxiety. …If we would just open the floodgates on research, we’d be able to help these people. So, this is a human issue. This isn’t a red, blue, black, white- this is a humanity issue that we need to just get responsible and realistic about. And the time is now. We have the information. There’s no excuse anymore. There’s no excuse. There’s no excuse not to be exploring and understanding everything we can.”
Del comes from a position leading business development for Charlotte’s Web Hemp oil, the world’s largest CBD oil producer. Del is currently on the community board of advisors to the Realm of caring, a high impact cannabis non-profit, and was the outreach director to the Decriminalize Denver campaign, which passed a historical initiative to decriminalize psilocybin in the city of Denver.
Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) is a small, spineless cactus endemic to North America, growing in the vast desert thorn scrub that runs from the southwestern United States into north-central Mexico. For centuries, the mescaline-containing cactus has been used by Indigenous groups in Northern America as a ceremonial medicine and a religious sacrament considered integral to their way of life. The rapidly growing psychedelic movement has generated a new wave of interest in plant medicines, including peyote, requiring us to tread with awareness for the impact this has on the Indigenous cultures and communities who have long stewarded these medicines.
At present, the peyote cactus is in the midst of a deep conservation crisis. Over the past few decades, wild peyote populations have been rapidly declining due to a convergence of factors including oil and gas development, illegal poaching, agricultural development, and unsustainable harvesting practices. Amongst Indigenous communities, there is a growing need to conserve this quickly disappearing natural resource that is a core element of the Native American Church (NAC), the largest pan-Indigenous religion in the United States.
Due to growing evidence of the decline of peyote and mounting concern about obtaining their sacred medicine, the NAC commissioned the Peyote Research Project (PRP) in 2013. The first phase of the project (PRP 1) concerned itself with documenting the decline of peyote as well as assessing threats to its natural habitat, while the second phase (PRP 2) focused on identifying conservation strategies, including “securing sovereign land” to protect the Peyote Gardens and building relationships with landowners to lease space for replanting and harvesting.
Sandor Iron Rope, former President of the Native American Church of North America, current president of the Native American Church of South Dakota, member of the Oglala Lakota Oyate (Oglala Sioux Tribe), and Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative (IPCI) board member, reflects that “supply and demand have always been an issue, and when we started looking at it through the lens of the PRP, we found out many issues were in the forefront of the longevity of supply.”
The research activities of the PRP showed that peyote was under threat, both in regards to its populations and quality of the plant. As the need to conserve peyote became more pressing, the National Council of Native American Churches (NCNAC) called for the establishment of the IPCI. “The coalition of the NCNAC were involved in PRP 2, and the collective decided that conservation itself needed to be addressed. Hence, IPCI was born in 2017,” says Iron Rope. “The Church is a religious, spiritual organization, however, peyote is a cactus that needs its own attention as far as its conservation status.” IPCI is not a religious organization, but a conservation center focused entirely on supporting the broader NAC community in North America. It is led by a Board of Directors controlled by NAC leaders from across the United States.
In late 2017, the NCNAC secured 605 acres of peyote habitat in southern Texas, often referred to as “the 605” on behalf of IPCI, with the help of the RiverStyx Foundation. Later that year, IPCI was formally established with the aim of empowering Indigenous communities across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada to conserve and regenerate peyote for generations to come. IPCI operates as a non-profit, officially becoming a 501c(3) organization in 2018. In early 2019, IPCI held its first peyote harvest on the 605, educating children alongside their families on how to harvest in an ecologically and spiritually respectful way.
Unlike other conservation initiatives, IPCI is a cooperative Indigenous-led initiative, and is employing a range of biocultural strategies in order to conserve, as well as facilitate spiritual reconnection with peyote. Beyond purchasing land allotted for peyote conservation, they are also building alliances with local landowners, and developing a system of harvest and distribution that is in line with their values.
IPCI considers the rancher community in south Texas an important ally in its efforts, and its members have established an ongoing relationship with landowners from whom they lease land for biocultural harvesting and replanting. “Sharing our perspective as practitioners with the ranchers, we were encouraged to seek our own land and regain sovereignty over our medicine,” shared Iron Rope. “Most ranchers that we spoke to had a lot of issues concerning poaching, and lack of respect for their land making them fully supportive of our cause.”
Lophophora williamsii – Peyote
How and When Did Peyote Become Endangered?
For decades, Indigenous cultural practices and peyote ceremonies were suppressed across the U.S., with peyote ceremonies being illegal in many states where peyotists practiced. It wasn’t until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) was passed in 1978 (and further amended in 1994 to expressly include peyote) that the NAC was finally granted exemption on a religious basis, allowing federally recognized tribes to use peyote as a ceremonial sacrament. The possession, transportation, and use of peyote by persons who are not members of federally recognized tribes remain illegal under federal law.
The endangered status of peyote is by no means a new problem. According to Dawn Davis, a Shoshone Ph.D. candidate at the University of Idaho and an Indigenous researcher studying the peyote habitat, researchers and scholars have been talking about peyote’s endangerment since the 1960s, when so-called “hippies” became aware of its “psychedelic” properties.
In the heat of the 1960s countercultural revolution, peyote was brought to public attention, gaining worldwide popularity through the works of Aldous Huxley and Carlos Castaneda. Their writings generated a newly sparked interest in the psychoactive properties of the plant and resulted in an influx of eager psychedelic tourists traveling to Texas and Mexico to seek out the famed cactus in its natural habitat.
To some extent, this trend continues today as we find ourselves in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance, and interest in the therapeutic potentials of visionary plants continues to grow. Such “psychedelic tourism” has inevitably impacted the availability of peyote for Indigenous groups. In fact, it was the countercultural movement of the 1960s and the corresponding interest in psychoactive substances that resulted in the U.S. government enacting The Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which classified peyote as a Schedule I substance.
Due to improper harvesting techniques and overharvesting, peyote populations were left decimated, and it was declared an endangered species in Mexico as early as 1991. Currently, peyote is listed as “vulnerable” as populations in the wild continue to decline. “The International Union for the Conservation of Nature placed peyote on their red list as a vulnerable species in 2009 and the next level after re-evaluation of the population, it could move to endangered status,” says Davis. “It is also important to acknowledge that within the United States, in Texas, peyote is considered an endangered species at the local level.”
Other threats to peyote populations are largely a result of exploitative land management practices, including mining, oil and gas development, the construction of wind turbines, rancher root plowing, cattle grazing, and poaching. “Over the last ten years, wind turbine development within peyote gardens has had a huge impact on peyote populations, completely extirpating large populations of cacti from the natural range,” says Davis.
Lophophora williamsii – Peyote
Another less obvious threat to peyote lies in the ongoing debate between Indigenous groups and the decriminalization community. Earlier this year, IPCI and NCNAC leaders produced an official statement in response to Decriminalize Nature Oakland’s resolution to decriminalize all plant medicines, including peyote. Although those working with Decriminalize Nature (DN) might have been well-intentioned, NCNAC leaders felt disappointed in Decrim’s failure to consult with Indigenous peoples, as well as their oversight of the cultural and religious history of peyote and the plant’s endangered status. The NCNAC’s statement requested that Decriminalization initiatives should not include peyote in their efforts to decriminalize all plant medicines, with the concern that it would provide citizens with a false sense of legality. Indigenous leaders fear that the decriminalization of peyote could unintentionally cause damage to populations by serving to “increase interest in non-native persons either going to Texas to purchase peyote or to buy it from a local dealer who has acquired it illegally and unsustainably in Texas.”
Very recently, Decriminalize Nature Santa Cruz issued a formal apology to the NAC for not consulting with them prior to proceeding with the resolution to decriminalize all entheogenic plants and fungi. DN Santa Cruz’s apology was accepted, and both the NCNAC and IPCI have stated that they “look forward to building a continued relationship based on unity, solidarity, and allyship.” DN Santa Cruz hopes other Decrim efforts will follow their lead, building a respectful relationship with Indigenous peyote practitioners.
A licensed distribution system was established in Texas as a regulatory companion to the federal exemption for Native religious use of peyote. This system employs licensed dealers, also known as peyoteros, to legally harvest and distribute peyote to NAC members, however, not all peyoteros necessarily consider Indigenous values of spiritual and ecological sustainability.
There have been issues with over-harvesting and improper harvesting by the current licensed dealers. When harvesting is done sustainably, the top of the root hardens and is able to produce more peyote pups in the future. Peyoteros (and black-market poachers) sometimes sever the root, causing the entire plant to die.
Iron Rope expressed IPCI’s intentions of being inclusive of and working with existing peyoteros, wanting to build relationships with them and start a dialogue about sustainable harvesting techniques. “The IPCI are a new family in the neighborhood,” he says. “We come as friends, as neighbors, as partners, and we don’t want to engage in any type of conflict.” However, IPCI also wants to take a step towards sovereignty, training Indigenous distributors so as not to rely solely on current suppliers.
“As Indigenous practitioners, it is important for us to reconnect in order to gain the full spiritual benefit of our medicine,” Iron Rope shared. “We are learning how to sustain our peyote for generations because a lot of our tribes have never harvested medicine and we have become lazy in a sense, relying on the non-practitioner distributors to send it to us in the mail.”
At the beginning of this year, there were four licensed peyoteros. According to Davis, the process of becoming a licensed peyotero is both time-consuming and costly, involving submitting an application to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Up until last year, peyoteros were licensed through the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). However, the law has changed and the DPS regulatory program was dissolved, making it only possible to acquire a license through the DEA.
“The stringent process of becoming a licensed peyotero involves annual application fees and thorough background investigation, but as far as harvesting protocols and regulations, there are now none,” adds Davis. “This has contributed to a lot of the issues that peyote is having in regard to propagation, because distributors aren’t necessarily harvesting ecologically. “If you look at pictures taken from peyote harvests, you can see that a shockingly high percentage of peyote are harvested unsustainably.”
Even if harvesting protocols and regulations were implemented through the DEA, Davis is doubtful that they would be effective, in that peyoteros operate in sparsely populated areas and such regulations would be hard to monitor. She also fears that increasing regulation would push distributors out of the business, making it more difficult for tribes who don’t have a connection to landowners in Texas to access their medicine.
“I feel that there is a more organic way of resolving this than relying on western law,” says Davis. “Rather, NAC practitioners could prevent these issues by educating fellow peyote practitioners about what a properly harvested peyote button looks like, encouraging them to buy sustainably harvested peyote.” Demanding properly and spiritually harvested peyote is the first step to bringing about lasting change.
Lophophora williamsii – Peyote
How Can The Psychedelic Community Respect Indigenous Traditions?
As the psychedelic renaissance continues to unfold, it is increasingly important that we learn from the mistakes of the past, and make efforts to avoid another wave of colonial entitlement when it comes to peyote as a plant medicine.
Despite being given such reverence by Indigenous tribes and the NAC, peyote traditions have been extremely misunderstood by outsiders for centuries. From the persecution of peyote traditions beginning in the early 1600s by Spanish colonists in Mexico to the 19th and 20th-century legal suppression of peyote practices in the U.S., Indigenous people have had to undergo countless struggles to ensure the continued use of their sacred medicine.
Rather than feel entitled to peyote, the psychedelic community can serve as an ally to Indigenous communities by listening and choosing to support them in the ways that they wish to be supported. “It starts off with respect. Those that want to help can do something as simple as supporting Indigenous initiatives such as IPCI,” offered Iron Rope. “Indigenous people know what is best for them for the most part, and allowing them to take lead on certain matters is important.”
Beyond this, Davis expressed that one of her biggest concerns as a practitioner and a researcher is that non-Indigenous people should try to understand the history of peyote and what Indigenous people have endured in order to access and use their medicine. “Peyote went back underground until the passing of the AIRFA amendments in 1994, and now we have this movement pushing for peyote to be a sort of ‘free for all,’ and completely negating the historical struggle of Indigenous people’s use of peyote.”
Further, Davis also urges people to stay clear of harvesting wild peyote populations anywhere throughout its range, suggesting that one of the most important things that allies can do for peyote is to take the position that they will refuse to harvest wild populations while encouraging others to do the same. “Whether it be in Texas or Mexico, people who are truly respectful of this medicine- this plant, this way of life, will not harvest any wild populations because of peyote’s status as a vulnerable species with potential for future extinction.”
As we traverse the developments of this renaissance, it is crucial for our community to be aware of the impact we have, not only on mainstream culture, but also on Indigenous communities who have so frequently been left unheard. There are several steps that we can take to support peyote conservation, including sharing information about peyote conservation issues and educating oneself on the ethical considerations to be made when choosing to buy or use peyote outside of a bona fide NAC context, which must include awareness for the socio-historical baggage specific to this plant medicine.
About the Author
Jasmine Virdi is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader. Since 2018, she has been working as a writer, editor, and social media coordinator for the fiercely independent publishing company Synergetic Press, where her passions for ecology, ethnobotany and psychoactive substances converge. Jasmine’s goal as an advocate for psychoactive substances is to raise awareness of the socio-historical context in which these substances emerged in order to help integrate them into our modern-day lives in a safe, grounded and meaningful way.
In this episode, Joe interviews Ash: Netherlands-based psychedelic entrepreneur with his hands in many psychedelic spaces- drug manufacturing company Synergy Trading, nootropics company Cerebra Nootropics, and podcast, Shifty Perspective.
Ash talks about his path from trying San Pedro on a farm, to trying DMT and living on the road and in squats for years, to moving to Belgium from the UK, to finding his way into the world of CBD after a friend recommended it for his epileptic girlfriend at the time. When she went from 12 seizures a day to none within a month of starting regular CBD use, he started a CBD company to sell to consumers at much cheaper prices than had been established, as well as to provide CBD for researchers. He eventually moved to the Netherlands and started a nootropics company, which has started manufacturing Micro1p, the world’s first legal lysergamide microdosing product, which uses LSD’s active ingredient (available only through their website, and only to specified countries (the U.S. is not one of them)).
Among other things, they also discuss U.S. state law vs. federal law and the differences between U.S. policy and the UK, big corporations’ willingness to lock people up to ensure continued profits, the idea of DMT being used with VR, Daniel McQueen’s DMTX extended state DMT-infusion pump, UK harm-reduction group The Loop, his new CBD drink called Galaxy, how much he loved and came to partially fund the recent Dosed documentary, and nootropics and the idea of having a “health-span” instead of a lifespan.
Notable Quotes
“I feel that I want to change the world, and I feel that psychedelics are one of the many great ways of changing humanity for the better, and I’m going to do whatever it takes.”
On corporations funding opposition to alternative medicines: “It’s pretty demoralizing when these billion-dollar industries are just totally stopping it because it’s taking away from their potential profit. …They’re the biggest cartels in the world, really.”
“I think that the medical and spiritual things kind of actually intertwine. Things like anxiety and depression are crippling society. So many people have horrendous pressure on them from these high-stress lives. It’s exhausting just living- all the pressure from jobs and education. So there’s higher suicide rates [from] people suffering and being over medicated. I think with psychedelics, we can just reduce that massively. I’m not saying we can globally cure depression and anxiety and everyone’s going to be happy, but even if we reduced it by 5%- even by a percent, it would be a huge seismic change in people’s lives and their attitudes, and that kind of goes hand in hand with opening people up, which then brings people together. So by tackling those huge problems, it allows people to talk about their problems. …And we can actually start to bring people together.”
As an innovative business man with a history working in the CBD industry, Ash likes to get his hands on as many projects that he can handle. He has a firm belief that the products offered by Synergy Trading can help better humanity.
In this episode, Joe interviews Wade Davis: Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, explorer, ethnobotanist, star of the recent documentary, “El Sendero de la Anaconda,” and author of several books, including bestseller The Serpent and the Rainbow, which was optioned for a movie, starring Bill Pullman and released by Universal Pictures in 1988. His new book, Magdalena: River of Dreams: A Story of Colombia, comes out on September 15th.
Wade discusses his history with Richard Evans Schultes, the strange phenomenon behind the growth of ayahuasca compared to other more benign plants, how set and setting can shift expectations across generations, how Indigenous people treat plant medicines in comparison to the western world, the difference between ayahuasca and yagé, Haitian zombies, Voodoo, and the mystery of how Indigenous people have been able to identify plants and learn of their combined effects through the plants speaking to them.
He also speaks about his hatred of cocaine and the damage it has caused Colombia and its people from US drug laws and global consumption leading to violence and deforestation for generations. He’s working to decouple cocaine from the coca plant (hopefully through some sort of future coca nutraceutical like a chewing gum or tea), encourage people to stop supporting the illicit cocaine market, and to think of Colombia differently than its unfair reputation encourages. Through his new book, which has been called a love letter to Colombia,he hopes to show people that everything they think they know about Colombia is wrong.
Notable Quotes
“This sort of quest for individual health and healing, for individual enlightenment, individual growth – which, at some level, is completely understandable, but it is also a reflection, in good measure, of our own culture of self; the ongoing center of narcissism, the idea that one’s purpose in life is to advance one’s own spiritual path or one’s own destiny – that is, in my experience, very much not what is going on in the traditional reaches of the northwest Amazon, where the plant (the medicine) both originated, but also, where today, it’s taken very much as a collective experience, such that the ritual itself becomes a prayer for the continuity and the wellbeing of the people themselves- where you’d never even think of this in terms of Self or I.”
“All of these cultures are fundamentally driven by this idea that they, themselves, are the stewards of the forest- that plants and animals are just people in another dimension of reality, that there’s a transactional relationship between human beings and the natural world so that the hunter is both hunted and the hunter; where you don’t simply go to get meat, you must seek permission to get that meat; where the shaman is less a healer than a nuclear engineer who periodically goes to the very heart of the reactor to reprogram the world.”
“I still am incredibly loyal to that passage in my life, and I find that I’m very proud and happy to say that I wouldn’t write the way I write, I wouldn’t think the way I think, I wouldn’t treat gay people the way I treat gay people, I wouldn’t treat women the way I treat women, I wouldn’t understand the power and resonance of biology- of nature itself, if I hadn’t taken psychedelics.”
“Everybody who uses illicit cocaine, I’m sorry to tell you, has the blood of Colombian people [and] the near destruction of a nation on [their] hands.”
“Everything you’ve ever heard about Colombia is wrong, and this dark cliche that has persisted is completely inaccurate, and an injustice to a people whose miseries have largely been caused by our actions- our prohibition of drugs and our propagating of this war on drugs, and of course our consumption of this horrible drug.”
Wade Davis is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. Named by the NGS as one of the Explorers for the Millennium, he has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.” In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Australia, Colombia, Vanuatu, Mongolia and the high Arctic of Nunuvut and Greenland. An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, Davis holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent over three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among fifteen indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best seller later released by Universal as a motion picture.
In this episode, Joe and Kyle interview Sara Reed, MS, LMFT, CEO and cofounder of Mind’s iHealth Solutions, and Director of Psychedelic Services at the Behavioral Wellness Clinic in Connecticut.
Reed talks about her path to psychedelics- from graduating with a masters in emerging family therapy and wanting to do research specifically with black Americans, to working with Dr. Monica Williams and eventually MAPS, to being selected as one of the therapists for a phase 3 MDMA-assisted psychotherapy trial (which focused on people of color), to making the transition from practicing with MDMA to ketamine based mostly on one woman with racial trauma and her amazing transformation through ketamine-assisted therapy.
They talk about her process and practice, from the screening process to building relationships and rapport, trying to determine if ketamine is the right path, what dosing she prefers, and setting expectations; to the post-session check-ins and integration, how she practices everything through a cultural lens and personalizes treatment based on her level of connection, how important it is to know when to intervene and when to be a silent partner, stories of purging and the meaning behind it, the significance of dreams clients have around sessions, and her concerns surrounding emerging online ketamine therapy.
Sara Reed will be giving a presentation on chacruna.net on September 3rd concerning culturally responsible care with ketamine therapy.
Notable Quotes
“Just as much as we want to emphasize how transformative ketamine can be used as an adjunct to psychotherapy, I think it’s equally as important to emphasize the integration. Because you can have these insights all day long in psychedelic-assisted sessions, but it’s really integrating those experiences and those insights into real practice where I see a lot of the therapeutic work coming in, and the importance of the therapeutic work is to really integrate those insights into practice.”
“Isn’t that so interesting how, even as therapists, we’re still, in these moments, trying to control the outcome of what happens? I think these moments definitely remind me that I’ve got the skills, and I’ve got the training, and that I also must surrender to the process and check myself about my own process as a therapist.”
“This idea that we have around the healing process- that healing has to be this painful, ‘no pain, no gain’ kind of healing that you have to go through (which, I think in some aspects- absolutely, healing can be painful. It can be challenging). But, joy can also be an important process of healing. And experiencing love can be an important process of healing, or experiencing relief.”
“I’m not trying to be the spokesperson for people of color- for black people, around what diversity, equity and inclusion looks like in this work. And I’m even trying to be mindful about how many talks I do accept, and I’m always trying to refer other folks who have equally valuable perspectives and input around this work within this field to elevate other voices too, because I also think it’s important to value other perspectives. We can’t just be the only folks talking about it, because we’ve got our blind spots too.”
Sara received her undergraduate degree in Bioethics and Philosophy from the University of Louisville in Kentucky, and her M.S. in Marriage and Family Therapy from Valdosta State University in Georgia. Prior to her move to Connecticut, she worked as a licensed marriage and family therapist associate at the Behavioral Wellness Clinic in Louisville. Sara Reed is a Marriage and Family Therapist at Behavioral Wellness Clinic in Tolland, CT. She is also a Study Therapist on the Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy research study for Major Depression at Yale University. As a socially-minded therapist, Sara works to advance health equity and upward social mobility for Black Americans.
Is Salvia divinorum more than just a crazy trip? And what would salvia therapy or spirituality even look like?
Like many teens in the mid-2000s, I took a bong rip of Salvia divinorum extract in a group of laughing friends, and didn’t feel the need to touch the plant again. The 5 to 10-minute trip completely took me out of my mind, body, and surroundings in what I’d still, to this day, categorize as one of the most intense psychedelic experiences of my life. In the dreamlike state, I was walking on clouds and then found myself stuck in a cave where I had to move boulders aside to escape. As the cave slowly faded away and I drifted back to reality, I found that I was on my hands and knees in the corner of my best friend’s room, moving scissors and other art supplies around. I looked back to see my wide-eyed friends still sitting on the bed, bong in hand, staring at me, simultaneously giggling and relieved to see that I had returned.
When Psychedelics Today co-founder, Joe Moore, asked me to look into salvia for my next article nearly 15 years later, I laughed out loud, recalling that cave and the thrashing, ripping-apart-of-the-body feeling that salvia can give in high doses, and said something along the lines of “that shit is crazy.” But through researching this piece and talking to experts, I’ve learned there’s so much more to Salvia divinorum than smoking that weird black extract that was easier to get than booze or weed when I was 17- that there are people both in indigenous communities in Mexico and psychedelic societies in San Francisco who are developing deep and healing relationships with this purple flowering plant that contains the strongest naturally occurring psychedelic on our planet.
Indigenous Salvia Ceremony and Practices
The oldest standing Salvia divinorum tradition is held by the same indigenous community that still practices magic mushroom ceremonies, the Mazatec of Oaxaca, Mexico. “For us Mazatecs, salvia is very sacred,” says Inti Garcia Flores, Mazatec professor and archivist. Over WhatsApp, he explains to me the Mazatec legend of the origin of Salvia divinorum, or “La Pastora” (Spanish for “the shepherdess”) as he refers to it during our conversation. Essentially, salvia was one of the first three plants in existence. Tobacco was the first plant, who is a male spirit and the father. Then came salvia, who is a female spirit and the mother. Lastly, the mushrooms were born, who are the children.
Oaxaca highlighted in map of Mexico
To prepare for such a powerful encounter, part of the Mazatec tradition is a 40-day cleansing period before the actual ceremony. When it’s time for the ceremonial encounter with La Pastora, prayers are said while leaves are picked from salvia plants that grow around the Sierra Mazateca mountain range. Notably, it’s the only region in the world where this psychedelic strain of sage grows, and it has likely been propagated by indigenous people of the land for hundreds of years and possibly longer.
Salvia Divinorum
Salvia is consumed in ceremonies which are held at night, in the home of a curandero (Spanish for “healer”), and in front of an altar that typically faces the west. Then, the leaves are either chewed and swallowed in pairs, or drunk in a kind of salvia mash tea, but the plant is never smoked. Mushrooms are also consumed in pairs in Mazatec ceremonies to represent the duality of life: the masculine and feminine energies- a necessary balance, which, as I understand it, is a core concept in their spirituality. Garcia tells me that approximately 40 leaves are eaten for a Pastora ritual, sometimes more. It really depends on the curandero and the purpose of the ceremony. “Every curandero has their own style,” explains Garcia.
And to my surprise, ceremonies last about four to five hours, approximately the same amount of time as the effects of mushrooms. Then, the ritual is to be followed by another 40-day cleansing period. As far as the purpose of these ceremonies, healing and divination are two of the main reasons for seeking out La Pastora, and it’s especially common to use salvia when mushrooms aren’t in season (mushrooms only grow in the rainy season in Mexico, which is generally May through September. Garcia tells me that salvia, on the other hand, grows year-round).
Personal Salvia Divinorum Rituals
Learning about the sacred power of La Pastora got me thinking about the bad rap salvia has gotten in the west as a crazy and unpleasant, short-acting psychedelic. By smoking it, especially in extracted form, are we disrespecting the delicate plant spirit, and therefore missing its healing potential? But not everyone outside of the Mazatec community are teens like my friends and I were, tricking each other into smoking salvia. In fact, there are some folks using Salvia divinorum in a ritualized manner for healing trauma and other psycho-spiritual matters, like spiritual emergence coach and marriage and family counselor, Michelle Anne Hobart.
For Hobart, who’s also the author of Holding Sacred Space, salvia came to her in a time of need. She was recovering from trauma when she was guided to salvia, and the plant had a message for her: “Let go of all other practices for a year and work with me alone.” So that’s exactly what Hobart did. She formed a relationship with salvia in its tincture form. “She was very specific with me that I was only to take it in sublingual tincture form and not smoke it,” Hobart tells me over the phone, referring to salvia with feminine pronouns, just as Garcia had done.
In fact, Hobart’s salvia ritual had some similarities to the Mazatec tradition. She practices a pre-ceremony cleansing period where she only eats vegan and refrains from smoking or drinking (a practice that has now become a lifestyle). She also consumes La Pastora in front of her own altar with much prayer and meditation involved. For Hobart, this protocol has helped her reconnect with herself and her body, and she feels the short psychedelic experience (taken sublingually, she reports the experience lasts about 90 minutes to 2 hours) is very manageable and “integratable” for her as a highly sensitive person who is recovering from trauma.
Hobart spent much of her monogamous year with salvia working in low dose ranges that gave her a more spacious quality to her meditative practice. She explains that for those with trauma, even meditating or connecting with the body can seem like “a daunting, almost impossible task.” But by working with different levels of salvia and titrating her dose to cautiously work her way up to a higher dose range, it became more manageable. “If there was anything I learned in my experience of healing trauma with salvia, it’s that I don’t have to go to the top plateau to do the work. There’s work at every level and you can be gentle and compassionate with yourself and your nervous system. And honestly, you can integrate better when you titrate.”
That was especially interesting to me as someone who went straight to a smoked high-dose salvia experience. Are there really other levels to this medicine that are less intense? Hobart definitely thinks so, and when I ask her about the uncomfortable feeling in the body at higher doses, she reports that with her tincture protocol, she doesn’t find that to be the case. She explains that she views a salvia trip as having 3 phases: the clearing phase, the resourcing phase, and then the re-embodiment phase. At higher doses in the clearing phase, she can have visions, which she interprets as a cleansing that’s connected to the trauma she holds in her body. Then, in the resourcing phase, she can experience a type of ego-loss where she becomes one with the earth, which helps her release the trauma that can come up during the clearing phase. “It helps me realize I’m more than this body,” she explains.
Then in the re-embodiment phase, she returns to herself, “clean and free of that trauma.” Hobart specifies that she’s not completely free of trauma though. “There’s always more work to do. But in that moment, for that piece of work that needed to be done, I can re-inhabit my body in a safer way than I ever have before.” In that year of regular practice, Hobart was able to clear a lot of trauma, which, in turn, helped her anxiety decline. “I was able to return to my own sovereignty and empowerment through the understanding that this story is mine to tell,” she says.
Cloud forest of Southwestern Oaxaca
Somatic Salvia Therapy and Effects
Christopher Solomon, who is a somatic salvia guide, went down a similar path with the plant that started over 10 years ago. He had smoked salvia a handful of times as a teen in the early 2000s and found the experience pretty bizarre and unwieldy. “It just didn’t really make much sense,” he tells me over Skype. But one day, as he was loading his bong with salvia, he received a “download” from the plant. “Out of nowhere, there was a feeling inside of me that just said: ‘Wait. Meditate first.’” Even though he didn’t have much of a meditation practice at the time, he took 10 deep breaths before inhaling the salvia, “and it was just completely different… it was a lot smoother and more gentle on my system,” Solomon explains. “It was more grounded. Instead of me being taken elsewhere or torn apart, it was more like this other reality unfolded gracefully in front of me.”
Now, over ten years later, he’s also developed a very intimate relationship with the plant and its many levels of psychedelic experience, and he’s even started to guide others through salvia journeys. Like Hobart, Solomon also sees a lot of benefits in working in lower dose ranges. In fact, he’s theorized the salvia experience has about 10 levels, and a lot of the most therapeutic work is done in levels 1 through 7. Solomon explains that levels 1 through 3 are almost sub-perceptual.
“It’s very akin to being taken [to] a very, very deep, still place in meditation. One’s breath becomes deeper and there’s a feeling of grounding down and opening up. It’s not opening up to [the] world around one, it’s more as if one’s body is opening up to itself, like an internal opening. There’s a sense of slight physical tingles that come on the body and then the chattering mind gets a little bit less chattery. It can be summed up as being taken to a place of quiet, deep stillness.” He adds that finding this place in regular meditation practice can be very difficult for a lot of folks, echoing a sentiment Hobart expressed about how daunting it can be for those with trauma to try to reconnect with their bodies. But according to Solomon, in levels 1 through 3 of salvia, focusing on one’s breath feels pleasurable and comfortable, even euphoric. “It really increases your ability to remain attentive to whatever you put your concentration on. With the quieting of the mind comes a greater ability to concentrate on one’s own embodied self and be very present.”
This is a key concept in somatic therapy, in which Solomon is certified. “One of the main premises of any sort of somatic work is coming back to what is in the present,” he explains. “And instead of getting caught up in stories, expectations or memories, it’s about coming to the present moment- to the now, and seeing what’s right in front of one and seeing what we think.” When it comes to the salvia experience, the sense of presence that the plant insists on can be very healing. For Solomon, the lesson has been very clear- that learning to be present in the current moment is key to living a healthier, happier life. Salvia taught him: “Don’t worry about the future. Don’t worry about the past. Just be here now, and engaged, and aware, and playful. And then everything else kind of works itself out.”
These messages from salvia often come in the next dose range, in levels 3 through 7, where the feeling in the body becomes more intense (sometimes called “salvia gravity”), and visions, entities, and being taken to a new reality are more common. However, Solomon notes, the best preparation for these higher dose experiences is working in levels 1 through 3 first and getting comfortable there. But many of us don’t know about this preparation or don’t bother, and are shot straight to levels 9 or 10 on our first trip of smoking a bowl of 20x or 50x extract, and in turn, are completely turned off by the intensity of the salvia gravity sensation.
Photo of salvia packaged for retail sale
But when you prime your body first by titrating your dose and starting in lower, sub-perceptual dose ranges, “the pushing feelings do happen in your body, but it doesn’t feel as aggressive or foreign. It feels a lot more controllable instead,” says Solomon. And this is where things get really interesting and hard to explain. But through his deep practice with the plant, he’s learned that you can control those pushing and pulling feelings, or “energies,” and direct them towards parts of your body that need healing. Solomon’s most profound example of this is also the experience that led him to pursue sharing salvia with others as a somatic guide. Essentially, a few years ago, he had a swollen lymph node in his neck for months that he tried everything to cure, including three courses of antibiotics and diet and lifestyle changes. “But no matter what I did for months, there was this big swollen lymph node in my neck. It just didn’t go away.” At the time, he consulted with a couple of doctors who both said he needed to have his tonsils removed.
Before having the surgery, he decided to turn to salvia for the first time in nearly 2 years. “I smoked a bowl of 20x extract,” he says, “and usually when I do, I feel this pulling and pushing sensation on my body coming from outside, or it feels like I’m being moved through time and space.” But this time was different. “I felt all this energy tingling, kind of like little ants rushing up from every extremity of my body. And it all went straight to where the swollen lymph node was. This energy was congregating around the swollen lymph node and a thought came to me: ‘Oh, well, let me just heal myself.’” He says his hand “automatically picked itself up,” and he began pressing on his swollen neck like he had done many times before. But this time, as he rubbed his lymph node in a circle, “I felt it split in half,” he recalls. As he kept rubbing, it kept splitting. “It got smaller and smaller and smaller. It felt like tiny little grains of sand. And then those split even more, and it kept dividing until I couldn’t physically feel it anymore. Then all that energy that initially rushed to that part of my neck rushed over the rest of my body.” He reports that he laid there for about ten minutes until coming to, and his swollen lymph node was totally gone, and has remained absent ever since.
A Profound Salvia Divinorum Healing Ceremony
Kathleen Harrison, famous ethnobotanist, writer, psychedelic elder, and co-founder of the Botanical Dimensions library in Northern California, told a similar story in a talk at the Entheogenesis Australis conference in 2018. She sought out a Mazatec curandero who specializes in salvia healings and had a traditional ceremony in the highlands of Oaxaca. At the time, she was experiencing a lot of heart trouble and doctors told her that the only way forward was lifelong medication to manage her condition. But in a ceremony with salvia, she felt a female presence wave a hand right through her body and physically take her pain away. “A little door opened in my heart. It blew open like a sudden breeze had come, and I just saw this hurt fly out and dissolve. And my heart was better. I never had another problem with it,” Harrison describes in her talk. When she got back to her California home, medication was no longer necessary.
These healings are hard to explain in terms of what’s happening in the brain, even though there are psychedelic researchers looking into Salvia divinorum at Johns Hopkins and other universities. Formal research began in 1994, when ethnobotanist and researcher Daniel Siebert first isolated the psychedelic compound in Salvia Divinorum – Salvinorin A – and published his findings. Since then, Siebert has become salvia’s champion: he founded the salvia information vault, Sagewisdom.com, which includes a salvia safe-use guide, and he ended up piquing the interest of psychedelic researchers and run-of-the-mill psychonauts alike.
Is Salvia Legal?
Today, salvia is still legal in about 20 states, which makes it easier than psilocybin or MDMA for researchers to study. In 2010, Johns Hopkins University conducted the first controlled human study of salvinorin A, and their team is still looking into how salvia works. That’s partly because salvia is unique in the way it affects the brain, and so offers researchers a novel opportunity to study other psychedelic (and potentially therapeutic) mechanisms of action. Essentially, most classic psychedelics, like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT, mostly bind to the serotonin 2a receptors, and that action is thought to be responsible for most of their psychedelic effects. Salvia, on the other hand, has no affinity for the legendary 2a sites, and instead focuses the majority of its attention on the kappa opioid receptors.
Salvia laws in the United States (may not be fully up to date) – Source Red – Jurisdiction where salvia is illegal. Orange- Jurisdiction where salvia is decriminalized. Yellow – Jurisdiction where salvia is legal with age restrictions. Blue – Jurisdiction where salvia extracts are illegal but the plant itself is legal Green – Jurisdiction where salvia is legal.
But, How Does a Salvia Trip Work Exactly?
Yet, oddly enough, according to Manoj Doss, a postdoctoral scientist at the Hopkins Psychedelic Research Center (who is the lead on analyzing the latest salvia brain scan data), even though the receptor action site is different, the overall effects on the human brain are very similar to classic psychedelics. “We essentially found the same pattern [that Robin Carhart-Harris found with LSD],” Doss explains. “We got decreases in functional connectivity within network connectivity, so these networks are communicating less within themselves… [and] decreases in Default Mode Network connectivity, [which was the strongest effect]. And, we have increases in connectivity between areas that don’t usually communicate with each other as much.” However, although the effects were “quite similar” to other psychedelics, Doss believes more research is needed. “There are a few more caveats that are going to require a study with a larger sample size,” he says.
To folks like Solomon, while research is exciting, it’s not necessary towards understanding how salvia works for healing. “It’s very somatic medicine,” Solomon says. And it’s inspired him to complete a certification at the Hakomi Institute and provide guided somatic salvia sessions to clients. And unlike other traditions, Solomon’s clients smoke salvia, but not all in one go. In fact, Solomon has invented (thanks to a message from the salvia plant herself) an entirely new smoking apparatus for consuming salvia, aptly named “the salvia pipe.” The contraption has five separate bowls into which he sprinkles just a couple of flakes of salvia for clients. The idea is to titrate the dose to make the experience more similar to a chewed fresh leaf ceremony, which he admits is his preferred method of consumption, but isn’t very accessible unless you grow your own salvia. And so, his clients only smoke a very small amount at a time, then they meditate together for five minutes between each bowl to gradually work up to a level 3, 4, or 5 experience that they can manage and are comfortable in.
Solomon even does guided salvia sessions online, which have become increasingly popular since the pandemic, and the first thing he does is send clients a salvia pipe packed with the correct dose (if the client lives in a state where salvia is legal). He says folks come to him for a whole host of reasons: sometimes just out of curiosity, and others to work on self-esteem, physical ailments, or trauma. “I like to think of salvia as ‘the great neutralizer.’ If you’re feeling up, salvia will help bring you back down to a baseline calmness, or ‘groundedness.’ But if you’re down in the dumps, salvia can bring you up… and that is essentially how it incorporates so well into somatic therapy—because a lot of trauma therapy is getting the person to a sense of feeling grounded and stable, as if they have their own resources… it’s like a hard reset—a reboot to the present.”
Regardless of how Salvia divinorum works, it seems it has a lot of therapeutic potential that’s not getting a lot of attention, especially considering that it’s legal in 20 states. But I believe that’s because most of us go on one incredibly intense and off-putting first date with salvia at a young age and are completely unprepared for the experience. Yet it seems by building a relationship with the plant by preparing one’s set and setting, titrating dose, and being mindful of its sacred power, it can have lasting benefits for those who bother to take the time.
About the Author
Michelle Janikian is a journalist focused on drug policy, trends, and education. She’s the author of Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion, and her work has also been featured in Playboy, DoubleBlind Mag, High Times, Rolling Stone and Teen Vogue. One of her core beliefs is that ending the prohibition of drugs can greatly benefit society, as long as we have harm reduction education to accompany it. Find out more on her website: www.michellejanikian.com or on Instagram @michelle.janikian.
In today’s episode, Joe speaks with spiritual coach, author, and creator of the upcoming High Together app, John Selby. Selby’s most recent book is titled Cannabis for Couples: Enhance Intimacy and Elevate Your Relationship.
Selby talks about how he got to where he is today, from signing up for a hypnosis research center at Princeton that turned out to be a secret government NIH psychedelic research center studying if psychedelic states could be induced through hypnosis, to working on the first quantitative EG study of heavy LSD users to determine if it caused permanent damage (that was marred with corrupted data and later found out to have been an MKUltra mind manipulation project), to becoming excommunicated by the Presbyterian church for teaching his youth group yoga and Buddhist meditation, to becoming a therapist, spiritual counselor and author, to his time at Microsoft and Plantronics leading to him wanting to create an app for improving cannabis use.
His High Together app (which should be available soon) works in conjunction with his latest book to help cannabis users focus their attention, augment consciousness, and in the case of couples, improve their relationships. Through short guided sessions, statements of intent, and a strong emphasis on breathwork, his goal is to help regular users aim their attention towards more rewarding ventures, and help new users get through their first cannabis experiences safely and enjoyably (some estimate that 10 million boomer couples will try cannabis for the first time within the next 2-3 years).
Notable Quotes
On leaving Plantronics: “Right when it was time to do the funding and to launch this as their first software product in your headphones, two people on the board- these two old guys- Presbyterian guys- they decided that I was some sort of subterfuge revolutionary trying to undermine American capitalism. And I had to say, ‘I think you’ve got that just about right.’”
On his High Together App: “It’s everything that I’ve found, as a therapist and spiritual guide, that’s really, really effective for helping people to focus their attention in directions that augment higher consciousness. We can either get stoned, or we can get high, and people don’t realize that really, they have the choice.”
“Most of the people, they really need help in the basics. It’s very scary for most people. If you’re 60 years old and you’ve never basically let go of control of your ego, it’s like ‘WHOA!’ I’m there to help people make it safely and enjoyably through that first 10 minutes, when you actually have the muse of marijuana come in and say ‘Okay, here we go! Let go- there’s nothing you can do about this, so enjoy the ride.’”
“There’s a pretty sober sense of responsibility that we really have a world civilization that can really self destruct if we don’t wake up and act. I think that cannabis and psychedelics are powerful medicines to help us in that direction.”
John is both a fiction and non-fiction author with over thirty published self-help/meditation books plus eleven feature screenplays and half a dozen novels and 40 published folk-jazz songs. John’s most recent book is titled Cannabis for Couples: Enhance Intimacy and Elevate Your Relationship. Over the years he has been a cognitive therapist and spiritual counselor, and conducted NIH brain-research studies examining the inner mechanics of mindfulness meditation. John has taught creative writing and publishing strategies, coached authors in book-project development, and ghostwritten over a dozen books for aspiring authors on a wide variety of themes and genres. He now continues with this satisfying work, while also developing a new app-driven approach to mindfulness training and personality growth.
In this episode, Kyle speaks with Imperial College London research assistant and past guest, Dr. Malin Vedøy Uthaug, who just earned her doctorate and published her dissertation on Ayahuasca and 5-MeO-DMT research.
Uthaug discusses how she started working in this field, why Prague is a good place for research, what past research has led to today, how certain factors could predict whether someone would have a more challenging or more mystical experience, how these experiences can treat people with PTSD differently, what dissociation actually means, the differences between vaporized 5-MeO-DMT and intramuscular 5-MeO-DMT injections and how injections typically lead towards better trauma resolution over the “too much too soon” effects of vaporization. They also talk about reactivation (re-experiencing parts of the 5-MeO-DMT experience at a later time) and why it might happen, how it is different from LSD flashbacks, and how expectations, the experience, and the facilitator all come into play.
They discuss her research and dissertation, which consisted of 2 studies on ayahuasca and 3 on 5-MeO-DMT, focusing on if participants saw improvement in convergent thinking and mental health variables (depression, anxiety and stress), and how her placebo-controlled study revealed that those who received the placebo still saw a marked improvement. This leads to a conclusion that often, context may play a larger role than the medicine- feeling safe and being heard in a ceremonial, community-based setting may be the biggest factor towards healing.
Notable Quotes
“Once you make the unconscious conscious, then you can learn from it, and [it’s not] so much about resisting anymore. Carl Jung says, ‘what you resist persists,’ and what I think is happening, especially with PTSD, is that you’re kind of just holding this ball underwater and it’s not allowed to float to the surface.”
“You need to feel safe, you need to experience being heard and seen. Psychedelics do help us remember things that we have repressed, but obviously, [they] also make us very vulnerable and things might come up. And having somebody witness that and validate those feelings that are expressed and shown can be incredibly healing for people.”
“What we can learn is to learn to sit with difficult emotions and to not push them aside. …I learned that there is comfort in the discomfort. I learned that you can basically figure out so many things about yourself if you just sit with yourself for a moment and you stay in that uncomfortable silence.”
Malin completed her PhD at the department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, at the faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. As part of her PhD, she investigated the short-term and long-term effects of Ayahuasca and 5-MeO-DMT in naturalistic settings, while simultaneously initiating several other studies on the psychedelic substance Mescaline and the breathing practice known as Holotropic Breathwork (HB). Malin is currently working as a Postdoctoral researcher at The Centre for Psychedelic Research, at Imperial College London, led by Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris. Here she is investigating the effects of 5-MeO-DMT on mental health related variables, brain activity and consciousness together with Dr. Christopher Timmermann. Besides being a researcher, Malin is also an editor for the ‘Journal of Psychedelics Studies’, a board member of the American podcast-show known as Psychedelics Today, and the co-founder of the Norwegian Association for Psychedelic Science (Norsk Forening for Psykedelisk Vitenskap [NFPV]) whose main aim is to educate the general public as well as researchers, and mental health practitioners in Norway about psychedelics.
In today’s episode, Joe interviews Author Mike Crowley to talk about his book, Secret Drugs of Buddhism.
Links
About Mike Crowley
Michael Crowley was born February 26th, 1948 in Cardiff, Wales. He began studying Buddhism with a Tibetan lama in 1966, becoming an upasaka of the Kagyud lineage in 1970. In order to augment his Buddhist studies, he acquainted himself with Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mandarin Chinese. Mike has lectured at the Museum of Asia and the Pacific, Warsaw, the Jagiellonian University, Cracow, the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work has been published in Fortean Times, Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness, and Culture, Psychedelic American, and Psychedelic Press UK. In January 2016, Mike received the R. Gordon Wasson Award for outstanding contributions to the field of entheobotany. He currently serves on the advisory board of the Psychedelic Sangha, a group of psychedelically-inclined Buddhists, based in New York and he teaches at the Dharma Collective in San Francisco.
In this episode, Joe speaks with Peter Hendricks, Ph.D. and Associate Professor at the University of Alabama, currently involved in researching the effects of psilocybin on people dealing with cocaine-related substance use disorder.
He discusses the details of the pilot trial (following the Johns Hopkins model, with music created by Bill Richards), some early findings and speculations, what music might work best for these sessions, how excited he is to bring these findings to the criminal justice system, and how religion and tribalism come into play when looking at what people get out of these psychedelic experiences. Hendricks points out that while psilocybin is currently being researched as a treatment for tobacco use (by Matthew Johnson at Johns Hopkins) and alcohol use (by Michael Bogenschutz at NYU), this is the first large study with cocaine and could lead to the first medication for major stimulants. And while there have been many studies on psilocybin in general, they’ve rarely been focused on the people he’s working with, who are often poorer, less educated, often out of work, and usually struggling more than those typically involved in these studies. They also talk about what research of the past has given us data-wise, and how inspirational it has been to the work being done today.
Notable Quotes
“The participants in our trial- they haven’t read Michael Pollan’s book or others. They’re not in the know. I’ll have to explain to them what the drug is, and the common reaction is, ‘uhh, so you’re going to help me stop getting high by getting me high?’ and I’ll try to explain how the drug might differ from others, from more addictive drugs like cocaine. And as we know, it’s an ineffable experience- it’s a difficult experience to put to words…. I’m honored and I have admiration for our participants because they have the courage to dive into this study conducted at a University by people they’ve never met. It can be a very frightening experience and they say, ‘you know what, I’ve tried everything. At this point, I’m desperate, let’s give it a try.’ I probably couldn’t overstate how much courage it takes for them to do what they do. I don’t know that I could do it myself.”
“I think for most of the world’s fates, the tenants are that we’re all in this together, and we’re bound by love. And that really might be the message that most people get from psychedelics, but similar to religion, sometimes that message is perverted a bit and what you take from it is, ‘my in-group is what’s most important and I’m going to act to preserve my own tribe, even if it means treating others in an awful, inhumane way…’ Sometimes experiences that are really meant to foster a connection with everybody can go haywire and we have to be aware of that”
“One criticism of some of the studies conducted so far has been, how do we know that psilocybin might have these effects on a sample that isn’t all college-educated or doctorates or who are Professors at Universities who make more than 100,000 dollars per year and live comfortably? How do we know that this experience would have any meaning to somebody who’s making less than 10,000 per year, who has a fifth-grade education, who’s unemployed and homeless? I think in large part, this study might answer that question. If we find an effect, then we can say it appears to also have an effect among those who look different and whose life circumstances are much different than some of the earlier participants.”
Dr. Hendricks received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of South Florida and completed a post-doctoral Fellowship in Drug Abuse Treatment and Services Research at the University of California, San Francisco. His research centers on the development of novel and potentially more effective treatments for substance dependence, with specific areas of focus on tobacco, cocaine, and polysubstance dependence in vulnerable populations.
In this episode, Joe Interviews Dosed filmmakers Tyler Chandler and Nick Meyers, as well as the subject of their documentary, Adrianne.
Nick and Tyler tell the story of how they went from really knowing very little about the psychedelic healing movement to becoming advocates solely from a panicked call from Adrianne.
Adrianne speaks of her journey from opiate addiction and severe depression to trying mushrooms and eventually learning she needed Iboga and a community around her to really fight her way out of a life she no longer wanted to live.
They touch on the costs of Iboga compared to other rehabilitation methods, the often glazed-over dangers of Iboga, the effectiveness of psilocybin against opioid withdrawal, anxiety in the western world, holotropic breathwork as a safer method towards healing, the power of the Pixar movie, Inside Out, and why it would be beneficial for young viewers to watch Dosed.
Notable Quotes
“I have gotten sober and detoxed many, many, many times and not stayed sober, so obviously while the physical withdrawals are completely excruciating and definitely a big barrier to getting sober, there’s really something more to recovery than that, and that’s that kind of spiritual experience or awakening. And the psychedelic component is really important to that and I feel like that’s what’s contributed to me… not only getting sober but staying sober.” -Adrianne
“The real problem is that… people are forced to make these decisions and take these risks because something that has been known for 40 years to have this wonderful effect on opioid addicts is somehow something that nobody knows about and isn’t legalized.” -Nick Meyers
“No matter how you choose to recover or what you do to get sober and stay sober, having a community around you and staying connected with people is so, so important.” -Adrianne
“I definitely had a lot of discomfort just learning to… be still or be with myself and not have an escape. That’s part of recovery and it’s very uncomfortable. It takes time to get used to that. I was always used to having some kind of coping mechanism that took me out of myself, that just helped me not feel uncomfortable or whatever negative feeling I was feeling. So that’s always a challenge and there’s no shortcuts to that- you do have to just learn to be in your body and feel feelings, which I did not like very much. But, you know, it gets easier over time.” -Adrianne
“Everybody is so scared of just saying… ‘this is something that teens should do’ because nobody wants to have anything bad happen and then have it get traced back to them. But look at the realities of what teens are going through with… the rampant alcohol and other drugs, and… vaping and smoking and all the other vices- prescription medications, everything that’s available. And there’s like, no guidance, no supervision a lot of the time… What we’re doing right now isn’t working. Can I dare say it? It would be better if there were rites of passage with psychedelics in controlled settings with proper set, setting and dose with young people, because it really helps you recontextualize and reframe things in your mind.” -Nick Meyers
After many years of prescription medications failed her, a suicidal woman turns to underground healers to try and overcome her depression, anxiety, and opioid addiction with illegal psychedelic medicine such as magic mushrooms and iboga. Adrianne’s first dose of psilocybin mushrooms catapulted her into an unexpected world of healing where plant medicines are redefining our understanding of mental health and addiction.
As the use of ayahuasca becomes increasingly widespread, the Amazonian vine has extended its roots beyond the traditional indigenous and religious contexts of South America, lending itself to a newly evolving field of practice. However, the economic viability of ayahuasca ceremonies combined with the vine’s complicated legal status opens the field to a plurality of malpractice, particularly when it comes to what practitioners actually serve in the cup.
A Closer Look at the Chemical Composition of Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca, otherwise known as yagé, is perhaps one of the most curious hallucinogenic plants of the Amazon, known for its powerful psychoactive effects and healing capacities. Generally, when we refer to ayahuasca, we refer not only to the woody liana Banisteriopsis caapi, but the visionary decoction made by pounding its stems and boiling them together with various plant admixtures.
Typically, ayahuasca, as prepared by the syncretic ayahuasca churches of Brazil, the Santo Daime, União do Vegetal, and Barquinha, only contains B. caapi and P. viridis (Psychotria viridis). However, it is increasingly common to encounter additional plants in brews made by the indigenous groups in Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. For example, Colombian yagé is made with an entirely different DMT-containing admixture plant, Diplopterys cabrerana, which produces mild qualitative differences in terms of effect.
The psychoactive compound DMT is inactive when ingested orally, as it is the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO) in the gut that breaks down the vision-inducing ingredient before it is able to cross the blood-brain barrier and make its way into the central nervous system. However, the vine itself contains the beta-carboline alkaloids harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine (THH), of which harmine and harmaline are monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs). Chemically speaking, the alchemical essence of ayahuasca rests in the mixing of monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) present in the alkaloids of the B. caapi vine with a DMT-containing admixture plant.
Determined to understand the diversity of ayahuasca brews, Helle Kaasik, a researcher from the University of Tartu, Estonia, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Campinas, Brazil, sought to illuminate the chemical differences in ayahuasca brews across traditions.
Their study, yet to be published, analyzed changing distributions of DMT, harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine (THH) across 102 ayahuasca samples. These samples were taken from different locations in Europe and Brazil, spanning across different traditions including indigenous shamanic, Santo Daime, and neo-shamanic.
Interesting tendencies emerged based on the traditions from which the samples came, with indigenous brews showing a balanced ratio between the concentrations of DMT, THH, and harmine. Samples that came from the ayahuasca religion, Santo Daime, also showed a similar balance between chemical compounds, although some brews tended towards increased concentrations of DMT.
However, when it came to brews received from neo-shamanic facilitators of different backgrounds, there was notably more variation between chemical constituents, and on average, they contained substantially greater concentrations of DMT than indigenous brews.
Of the 102 samples, 39 were further tested for additional additives and contaminants, with several brews from neoshamanic practitioners found to contain Peganum harmala (Syrian rue) andthe DMT-containing Mimosa tenuiflora, otherwise known as jurema. Similar to the ayahuasca vine, Syrian rue contains the MAOI, harmaline. The combination of the MAOI in Syrian rue with the DMT-containing M. tenuiflora mimics the chemical composition of ayahuasca, being a well-known ayahuasca analog or “anahuasca.” The substitution of P. viridis with M. tenuiflora contributed to the higher concentrations of DMT found in neoshamanic brews.
More shockingly, two of the samples obtained from Europe were found to contain no caapi at all. Rather, this counterfeit ayahuasca was found to contain a combination of moclobemide (a pharmaceutical antidepressant and MAOI), psilocin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms), and high concentrations of DMT from M. tenuiflora.
For years now, well-seasoned psychonauts have been imitating the active ingredients in a similar manner, creating ayahuasca analogs by combining other DMT and MAOI-containing plants. Combinations made of extracted or synthesized ingredients are referred to as “pharmahuasca.” However, there is a distinction to be made between testing anahuasca, pharmahuasca, and other psychonautic cocktails on oneself as opposed to falsely marketing brews as ayahuasca. Hence, using the term “counterfeit.”
Comparatively, there was no counterfeit ayahuasca found among disciplined ayahuasca traditions such as the Santo Daime and among indigenous practitioners. In South America in general, the raw materials to make ayahuasca are both abundant and affordable, removing any incentive to replace them with other plants or pharmaceuticals.
Towards an Ethos of Transparency
Within the psychedelic community, the pressing issue of counterfeit ayahuasca is either often neglected or largely unknown. Thus, without pointing fingers, it is important that we as a community work to develop self-regulating mechanisms that foster and encourage transparent practices.
According to ayahuasca researcher and co-author of this paper, Helle Kaasik, the complicated legal situation surrounding ayahuasca combined with its lucrative viability as a business “attracts risk-prone and overconfident people who often do not understand the level of responsibility of giving a strong psychedelic to people in need of healing.” As a result of these bad actors, disciplined ayahuasca traditions should not be persecuted or forced to go underground.
“What the community can do,” Kaasik explains, “is to expect clear information about [the] composition of whatever ‘medicine’ is offered to them and avoid drinking with facilitators who don’t tell the full truth about the constituents or act offended when asked.”
Ayahuasca religions such as Santo Daime have their own self-regulating mechanisms built into the tradition. For example, amongst Daimistas, the brewing of the sacrament is a ritual in which the whole community participates, making it almost impossible for contaminants to be added while cooking.
In line with Chacruna.net’s “Ayahuasca Community Guide for the Awareness of Sexual Abuse,” we should also seek to establish guidelines for transparency among ayahuasca practitioners when it comes to informing participants about a brew’s origin and composition. Practitioners should take it upon themselves to communicate truthfully and proactively to participants what is in the brew before they decide to participate in a ceremony.
Building a culture around transparency is especially important in the case of adverse reactions. “Imagine someone ‘enrich[es]’ your ayahuasca with dissociatives, mushrooms or synthetic chemicals without your knowledge?” Kaasik adds. “This would be ethically unacceptable and unsafe, but sadly, sometimes it happens.” In such cases, knowing what was in the brew could make adverse reactions more easily remedied and avoided.
In many circles, ayahuasca is reverently referred to as “the medicine,” but would we ingest a medicine without first knowing what we were taking? To uphold the sanctity of this beautiful sacrament, it is critical that individuals keep themselves actively informed about what they are ingesting. Given the choice, people don’t want to take suspicious substances with questionable facilitators when they have access to safe communities. If we are to call ayahuasca a medicine, we should also treat it like one.
About the Author
Jasmine Virdi is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader. Since 2018, she has been working as a writer, editor, and social media coordinator for the fiercely independent publishing company Synergetic Press, where her passions for ecology, ethnobotany and psychoactive substances converge. Jasmine’s goal as an advocate for psychoactive substances is to raise awareness of the socio-historical context in which these substances emerged in order to help integrate them into our modern-day lives in a safe, grounded and meaningful way.
Its based on Stanislav Grof’s research into psychedelic therapy, holotropic breathwork, transpersonal psychology, and spiritual emergencies
Dr. Stanislov Grof and his wife just launched this program
It’s not just about breathwork
His involvement in the Grof transpersonal training program dropped off in the last few years
He wasn’t allowed to teach breathwork in the GTT model, there wasn’t any growth in the company, so a lot of people like Grof left and started their own thing
Kyle says this is pretty common with trademarks and protocols
Joe says he’s very excited about it
Kyle says Stan’s work is very important and a lot of the reason Psychedelics Today came to be
Peyote
Native American Churches don’t have as much access as they need to properly grow Peyote
Perhaps, in countries where Peyote isn’t illegal, there should be growing of Peyote
Native American’s are in a bad spot due to colonialism
As insiders, we need to talk about how to use less Peyote
“Pick one, plant two” should be the mindset
Kyle says, “how do we just respect these sacred medicines?”
2,561 individuals (mean age 32 years; 77% male) completed an online survey about their single most memorable entity encounter after taking N,N-dimethyltryptamine
Senses involved were visual and extra-sensory
The most common descriptive labels for the entity were being, guide, spirit, alien and helper
41% of respondents reported fear
More than half of those who identify as Atheist before, no longer identified with Atheism after the experience
Out of any other method, DMT seems to occasion the most entities
Throughout my twenties, I spent a lot of time wondering what the meaning of my life was. I was reading Hermann Hesse, Viktor Frankl, and other similar authors, but I couldn’t quite connect those books to my own life. I wanted to know what it was like to experientially engage in a vocation. Reminiscing on this struggle, I was motivated to write an article on my experiences thus far with psychedelic integration, share what has been helpful to me, and provide insight to those either wondering about this practice, studying it, or actually beginning it.
My path towards becoming a licensed psychotherapist was not direct, as I did not receive my clinical license until my late 50s! I can now see, with that lovely 20/20 hindsight, that everything I did led me here, with valuable insight that I would not have had if my path had been more direct. I studied food, nutrition, and painting, had children, taught yoga, and became a certified Ayurvedic counselor before landing on my current path.
My Ayurvedic practice began to really crystalize my direction. Ayurveda is a science of life and embodies the mind, body, and spirit to integrate a lifestyle most suited for each individual. Much of my Ayurvedic practice had to do with clients’ emotional states. As such, I became more focused on the mind. This led me to a conversation with the dean of a nearby university, and shortly after, I enrolled in a Master’s program that had not even been an idea in my conscious awareness the year before.
Plant medicine was not on my radar at the time of my schooling. This path evolved through witnessing the healing that close friends and family experienced. Having had my fair share of psychedelic experiences as a young adult living through the ‘70s, I was always comfortable with the experience but did not yet see it as a healing therapy. After going directly to the source again and having my own experience with this new idea in mind, I now KNEW this was an unprecedented healing modality. I have since expanded my mindset to welcome plant medicines/psychedelic experiences as one of the most effective healing therapies that exists.
For thousands of years, people have been using psychedelic substances to further their understanding of themselves and the universe. Sadly, most of these medicines have been labeled as Schedule 1 drugs in the USA, though this is changing with several FDA clinical trials currently taking place. These research trials are studying the efficacy of using psilocybin as a treatment for depression, and MDMA as a treatment for PTSD. The trials for MDMA are in Phase 3, and the hope is to have this as a valid form of therapy by 2021. In the meantime, outside the US, there are countries where plant medicine is legal now.
Psychedelic Integration is designed to assist those seeking support in connection with psychedelic experiences. Individuals who have had difficult experiences can benefit from a better understanding of the often-challenging feelings stirred up by psychedelics; while those who have found the use of psychedelics to be a positive method of gaining insight can use supportive therapy to bolster and integrate that knowledge into their daily lives (http://www.ingmargorman.com/psychedelic-therapy). This part of the process, before and after the experience itself, is such an integral component of the whole journey. Working together, the therapist helps the client to understand what may happen, guiding them toward the safest set and setting (this phrase describes the physical, mental, social and environmental context that an individual brings into a psychedelic experience), and then fully integrates the experience afterward, perhaps even for months or years to come. We all have the capacity to understand our own selves, but having a guide makes sense of a plant medicine journey or psychedelic experience leads to deeper healing and a deeper understanding of self. I like to think of it like this: if plant medicine is a teacher, then an integrative therapist is a tutor, helping the traveler understand the teachings.
There are 3 categories in which I have been offering integration to clients, not one necessarily more prevalent than any of the others.
Category One: “My husband is freaking out! He did Bufo 3 days ago and he is sitting on the floor of the shower, shaking and crying… he can’t seem to come out of it.”
Category Two: “I found your name on an integration list and I need to talk to someone about an experience I had…”
Category Three: “I’ve been thinking a lot about going to do ayahuasca (or psilocybin, etc). I’ve read so much about it but I feel scared. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
All names and details are changed to protect privacy as I proceed to describe a sample of each category:
Category one:
I received a call from Ron, who was clearly in distress, evidenced by the urgency and desperation in his voice. He was begging me to see him (he lived 2 hours away). He had experienced a powerful bufo journey (the strongest known natural psychedelic on planet earth, tryptamine 5-MeO-DMT, produced by Bufo Alvarius, a toad of the Sonoran Desert). I found out that he was not an inexperienced partaker in psychedelics, as he had gone on an ayahuasca retreat for a week the year before. Regardless, the bufo experience floored him. Until I was able to get him in to see me, I instructed him to go to the beach, assisted by his friend, and sit on the sand, feeling the sand under his hands and legs, and breathe in the healing salty air, using a mantra of “I am safe, I am right here” repetitively. This mantra was to ground him to the here and now. I also had him eat grounding (comforting) foods, which his friend was able to provide (warm stew, butternut squash, soup, etc.).
He arrived the next morning to my office wrapped in a blanket with sand on his feet, as he was coming straight from his second day of sitting on the beach. He was trembling and he didn’t understand what had happened to him. Having been further informed by his friend, and thankfully, with the knowledge of Dr. Stanislav Grof’s work with “spiritual emergency,” I was able to normalize this intensity for him. He was experiencing past trauma (that he re-lived during his ayahuasca ceremonies the year before), but now he was somatically experiencing it, coming up and out of his body, resulting in uncontrollable shaking. Through his tears, he described his trauma as his body continued to tremble. As a child, Ron had been repeatedly molested by his older brother, and when he went to his mother, she told him he was lying. Confused and traumatized, he left home at 11 years old to stay with a friend, and his mother never came to collect him. I encouraged him to just keep on letting his body tremble- that this was a necessary part of releasing the traumatic experience. I found myself moving closer to him and making sure he felt safe. After giving him the encouragement that this was exactly what needed to happen, and with the support of his loving friends and family, he was eventually able to go home, instead of what normally would have resulted in an ER visit (I have to admit, when he first arrived, I thought I would have to refer him to the ER, but am very thankful that this didn’t happen). His trusted friend kept very close by, physically assuring him that he wasn’t alone and he was safe.
Two of his friends brought him back the next morning. Ron already looked better and was able to articulate more about his experience. He went on to meet with me several more times and has been able to process these very difficult events to the point where they are no longer stuck in his body. He has since described a sense of calm that he couldn’t ever remember feeling.
Because of the knowledge of what each of the particular plant medicines can do and how the body processes trauma, we were able to prevent what could’ve been a very detrimental stay in a psychiatric hospital. This is a very clear example of why integration is so important, and particularly with a trained therapist, with prior experience working in an acute care unit of a psychiatric hospital.
People who reach out for integration are looking to understand their experience and process it through their own history and trauma. They’ve turned to plant medicines or psychedelics because what they have been doing hasn’t been working and they’re not happy with how they’ve been living. They have not been able to get through the walls they built to keep them safe growing up (but no longer serve them as an adult).
In a therapeutic environment, there are no “bad trips.” The experience referenced above may appear to be frightening, but as we can see, it was very intense, and yet, very healing.
Category Two:
As for Category Two, I’ll share an example I had with Paul. He called to tell me that he wanted an appointment because he had a psilocybin experience that left him feeling happy for the first time since he could remember. He had been on the verge of suicide many times for the 3 years prior, seeking different forms of therapy and medication to no avail. He could not get out of a deep sadness and numbness that he felt, no matter what he tried. Plant medicine was a last resort, and in his words, if it didn’t work, he was done.
He tentatively arrived in my office and described this feeling of peace and love that he was somewhat desperate to hold on to. This integrative therapy evolved in a way that I didn’t expect, because over the course of a year of our work together, Paul went through some physical symptoms that derailed him for quite some time, but was so closely connected to the fear that kept him from experiencing any joy in his life. As he came to realize that these symptoms were connected to past trauma, and as he realized that he was, indeed, a very sensitive person (this was met with almost disdain when it was suggested in the early stages of therapy), he truly began to heal and come alive. This is an example of what the “spectrum of trauma” means. Paul’s repressed grief had a lot to do with his intense emotions around the death of a beloved pet when he was 11 years old. He was shamed for his grief by family members and peers. By pushing down these feelings of grief, coupled with this new shame, his capacity to feel was also pushed down, and depression became his norm. While this trauma may not appear to be nearly as intense as Ron’s trauma, it affected Paul to the point where he had disconnected from himself, and ultimately, didn’t think life was worth living, although he had no understood connection to the repressed grief at the time.
The psilocybin journey showed him what was possible, but it did not enable him to live a happy life until he got underneath his “firewall” (described below) and worked at it. There was a lot of grief for him to process, and tears came along with shame until it moved its way out. Today, I can happily say that smiling is the norm for him, and spontaneity is part of his daily life. He embraces his sensitivity and sees how it has become a gift to him. He worked hard to get there.
We all have unresolved trauma. Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel the full range of emotions and experiences. Some of us have experienced more intense trauma than others, but some of us are more sensitive than others as well. If a disturbing experience led you to disconnect from your true self because what you were feeling was too much, that is the internal impact of trauma. We create a “part” that protects us from this overwhelming emotional pain, assuring us that we will not feel it again. Most of the time, we are completely unaware that we have done this.
These traumas become more clear during integration therapy, as the plant medicine helps to reveal that which we have buried deep in our subconscious. I truly believe that psychedelics/ plant medicine, when used properly, are here to bring us back to our whole self- to show us our own “operating system” that we have created as a result of our experiences, and how there may be some “firewalls” up that are protecting us from pain and keeping us from our true nature. Why would we want to pull down this firewall that has protected us for so long? Because that pain we are protecting is where we are going to find ourselves the most alive. We need to sit with it, feel it, allow it, and finally, let it move its way through us and out. What is depression, but a condition where we feel disconnected from self and others, where nothing will make us feel better because we have lost our way? What is anxiety, but an unprocessed fear that we are not going to be ok? We may have felt like we couldn’t survive this emotional pain as a child (emotional pain can be very intense and confusing for a child, and none of us are exempt from this), but we need to know that we will survive it now. This is also what integration therapy is about- having a safe place to be reminded that you will be okay now. You are safe. You can learn to witness and feel at the same time, thus allowing the firewalls to gently move out of the way.
Category Three:
Finally, I’ll touch on Category Three. Terry called to tell me that she wanted to take psilocybin but was very scared to. Her husband and brother had both taken it and assured her that they would be there for her. Her motivation for wanting to do this was to help understand and heal her Misophonia, a condition meaning “hatred of sound,” which manifested in her becoming highly irritated at many sounds, with the sound of someone chewing or sniffing causing her the most distress. She loved her husband and children, but these sounds, even coming from them, created anger inside of her, which in turn, stressed her out even more.
We talked about some of her history and when the Misophonia began. She described overhearing a conversation between her parents that involved her father being unfaithful with a man. Terry loved her dad, and I believe she did not know what to do with any feelings of anger towards him, and she remembers being really angry at him chewing his food. This wasn’t the first time she thought there was a connection, but she didn’t know how to remove the root of it. We talked about what the set and setting would be like for her journey: music, a mantra she could use as she began preparing for the day, and what her husband could do as her “sitter.”
When we met after her journey, she described feeling so much love and no fear at all. She shared that she had a sure feeling that whatever was going on, there was something inside of her that was going to know how to handle it and know what to do. This was the plant medicine reminding her who she really was. Our subsequent sessions were about connecting with the anger that she was sidestepping and sitting with feeling uncomfortable around that, as she was able to understand that while it wasn’t safe for her at the time to feel anger towards her father, she transferred it to something that did feel safe. Obviously, this was no longer serving her and it was hurting her and her family members. Because of the inner knowing that she received from her experience with psilocybin, she was more easily able to access the anger in our integration sessions afterward, without feeling like she couldn’t handle it. She worked hard through these sessions and in-between, and while the Misophonia isn’t completely gone, she feels it very rarely now, and she is able to easily ride through the irritation.
As a therapist, it is a very rewarding experience to see the recognition in someone’s eyes that “yes, I can handle this and I will be ok.” This concept, called “therapeutic alliance,” allows a client to let go- to begin to trust. Many clients aren’t aware that they don’t trust because they’ve never experienced trust in the first place. They don’t know what it feels like to let go and still feel safe. Somewhere along their road of life, usually in early childhood, the world became an unsafe place to be. This is often due to parents or caregivers unable to see their child’s pain, or not knowing what to do with it, likely due to their own unrealized traumas. The child then learns to do whatever is necessary to survive because their world depends on them burying their intense emotions and “pushing through.” Intense emotions can make someone feel as if they are going to die. The emotion is too big for the child to bear, and often, there are no words to communicate this. If they are not seen by someone who cares, then the child has to figure it out for themself. This is where plant medicine can reveal deep traumas, underneath all of their survival mechanisms, beyond the “firewall.” Of course, there are other methods, but here, we focus on plant medicine.
It takes a great deal of courage (doing something in spite of fear) to put yourself in the hands of a shaman or sitter and enter the unknown. Most clients will say that they were scared but did it anyway.
Another final case I’d like to share: Brian had been addicted to heroin on and off for about 7 years. Many rehabs and detoxes did not accomplish what a 10-day stay at an ibogaine clinic did.
Brian had been on and off with me for about 3 years. We were working on a harm reduction approach away from opiates. This approach involved cannabis and kratom (an extract from a tropical evergreen tree from Southeast Asia, often used to help wean someone off opiates). Brian had already been through Buprenorphine and Methadone enough times to realize they weren’t going to keep him from relapsing back to opiates. The cannabis and kratom approach was up and down, and he still felt desperate. After much talk about ibogaine (ibogaine is a plant-based substance extracted from the iboga shrub, which originates in Africa), he went to a clinic out of the country and was administered ibogaine from a medical doctor. I believe that it is an immense disservice to addicts that ibogaine has not yet been legalized in this country for opiate addiction, although that is a subject for another article (stay tuned!). Two weeks later, he was back in session with me describing his experience, and it was clear that something had truly changed. He was able to see different paths that he took in his life, and how he always had other options. These paths were shown to him in a way that he reports “almost felt like it had rewired my brain. My interest in opiates is just not there”. A year and a half later, still clean from opiates, Brian has been working on creating that trusting relationship with his own self, developing confidence that he can withstand uncomfortable and painful emotions. Without integration, the uncovering of painful emotions could have led back to a relapse.
Thus, integration involves creating that relationship with yourself, dialoguing with that younger version of yourself, and helping your inner child to heal- integrating your OWN self. The word integration is so perfect, because as we are integrating the plant medicine experience, what we are really doing is integrating our true self, beyond all of our ego’s constructions of what was necessary at the time, but no longer serves us in being whole.
What has been most helpful to me as an integrative therapist was my own experiences with plant medicine, particularly ayahuasca. It’s not always easy to “hold space” for some of the pain that is releasing from clients, as the energy can be intense. One of the most important visions I had during an ayahuasca journey in Peru was the night I had a matrix in front of me of all happenings between humans for a long timespan. Certain squares of the matrix would become the focus as I observed specific human mental suffering, abuse, some more benign scenes… some family members and friends I knew… I could move the scene out of the way if it wasn’t something I felt I needed, and focus closer on scenes that were meaningful to me in some ways. I witnessed a scene between a relative and her father that was devastating, as well as several others like this. The reason this was the most important vision for me was I was a silent observer. I was aware of the pain and tragedy, but I wasn’t in pain myself. This is not usually true for me in my daily life, as I feel pain in my own body when someone else is experiencing pain. It has, at times, made it difficult for me as a therapist to hold back tears when a client is in tears, and I have had to momentarily think of something funny to pull me out of this empathic experience. Being able to be aware of the pain in this matrix experience, but not be in pain myself, has helped me tremendously in my practice, as well as with friends and family. I feel less responsible to “fix” it, in a way, because I clearly realize the pain is not mine. This has not made me less empathetic in any way, but it has enabled me to have more clarity. Therapy isn’t about fixing, but helping people to uncover their own guide within; their own inner wisdom. This has become my purpose, to just be a guide in the storm of someone’s life and allow them to see that they’ve known all along who they are, they just need to move their “firewalls” out of the way.
If you are reading this and have been wondering what it might be like to work with people in this capacity, I hope this has been helpful. As Terence McKenna once said, “It’s all about love… making someone else’s existence just a little easier… nothing else matters. I know this now.”
About the Author
Debbie Kadagian became certified as a Holistic Health Practitioner in 2007, specializing in Ayurvedic Health Counseling. She traveled to India to study at the Jiva Institute with Dr. Partap Chauhan. She received her Masters in Social Work from Fordham University and became a licensed clinical social worker. She has worked at inpatient psychiatric hospitals and outpatient treatment centers prior to setting up her private practice. Debbie is also a certified yoga teacher since 2001. Debbie has a true desire to assist people in finding meaning in their lives in order to transcend suffering, addiction, and trauma.
Debbie is the producer of the film, “Healing the Mind: The Synthesis of Ayurveda and Western Psychiatry.”
In this episode, Joe and Kyle interview Erik Davis, Author of High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies. In the show they cover topics on La Chorrera, uncertainty, synchronicities and more.
3 Key Points:
Erik is the Author of High Weirdness, a study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson.
These 3 authors chart the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. Erik examines the published and unpublished writings of these thinkers as well as their own life-changing mystical experiences.
Erik is America’s leading scholar of high strangeness, and talks of synchronicities, uncertainty, and all things weird.
Show Notes
About Erik
Erik went into the PhD program and always wanted to write about Phillip K Dick
He got a sense that he didn’t want to spend 3 years in Phillip’s head
He looked into the works of Phillip K Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, The McKenna brothers, etc
He wanted to find a way to take their experiences seriously, without taking them literally
The Book
Much like understanding religious experiences, unpacking psychedelic experiences involves clinical analysis, free-thinking, pragmatism, and skepticism. “Creative insecurity is one of the greatest gifts of these compounds.” People want an answer, but maybe there isn’t always an answer. “There’s something else that’s going on that’s more cosmic, and difficult in a lot of ways. I want to invite that difficulty in.”
A large reason people have difficulty with uncertainty is because often, there are many “answers” right there, likely from someone trying to sell them something. Studying religion made Davis more critical of these “sellers,” but gave him much more sympathy and patience for religious people because of the fact that they’re seeking something.
Davis’ favorite image for the idea of courage in trying to understand the unknown is that of a tight-rope walker. The tight-rope walker steps away from solid ground, and the only way to survive is to maintain balance. “There is a way of continuing to be reasonable, asking questions, respecting balance and homeostasis, even as you enter into really difficult situations.”
He wanted to tell these stories because “that’s what the weird is. [Psychedelic experiences] are great- they can be holy, they can be integrative, they can be healing, they can be unifying, they can be restoring- all those things are true, and they’re totally weird! And what are you going to do with that? You’re going to pretend that’s not there?”
The healing part of psychedelics is great, but viewing psychedelics as a learning tool is equally as important.
La Chorrera
Erik says that it’s the great story
He says that no one had taken it seriously, and he wanted people to recognize what their work was, which was their experiences
Its half science, and half a ritual
It was a theater of transformation and novel experience
The purpose is to avoid the traps of blaming it on psychosis, and look at it as a creative venture
“I think a lot of us wrestling with psychedelics and visionary experiences have our own challenge of, how do we put these pieces together?” – Erik
Uncertainty
“I want to invite that difficulty in, it’s not always love and light” – Erik
When someone is uncomfortable, people just turn away from it, and they just live in this lie
Erik says he blames the culture and capitalist scene
Because of uncertainty, there are so many experts ready to sell you something
“The people who are seeking, I have more sympathy for. The people that are selling, I have less sympathy for” – Erik
“If you keep the balance, you can go pretty far and not fall in” – Erik
A lot of conspiracy theorists hand over their sovereign-ness
“I know” gives you an answer
We have reasons to distrust institutions
It’s good to have a dose of skepticism
Conspiracy
“Conspiracy theory is a concept that is and has been used to obfuscate real questions” but why do we put our trust in one entity over another? While some of this obviously comes from a growing level of distrust of the media and mainstream authority figures, a lot of it comes from people wanting to avoid “not knowing.” “I see a lot of conspiracy theorists just handing over their own sovereign ‘not knowingness’ and they can gain a false power of ‘knowing.’”
Believing conspiracies gives people an answer and story, makes them feel both knowledgeable and a part of something (they’re an insider vs. all the others who don’t know what’s going on), and they’re marginalized because they’re going against the mainstream system- they thrive in an “us-against-them” conflict.
Synchronicities
Research synchronicity: “A lot of the synchronicities are actually just books talking to each other in weird and unexpected ways.”
We are pattern recognition machines on a spectrum. Not recognizing enough can make us viewed as cold and unemotional, but if we see a lot of patterns, we’re more open to paranormal or occult ideas. If we see too many, we may have mental issues.
These experiences happen, but Davis doesn’t believe there’s much more to it than that, as we are living in a mystery. “I enjoy the feelings associated with them, but in the same way that we do not “believe” great works of art, I don’t leave with some sense that I have now seen something that requires me to revise my worldview. The take-home prize is mystery.”
Cults
Erik says he can’t write off people like Osho or Crowley
Even if they may have caused abuse or bad things, they have done a lot of great things for humanity
While misogynistic, creepy and cruel, it is rude to not recognize Crowley’s contributions. And “when he was on, he was a great writer. Visionary literature.”
Genesis P-Orridge said that cults are actually important to the development of humanity. Davis feels that cults can be like theatre- a creative director sets a stage and usually they’re the only one who knows everything that’s going on, there are practiced, learned scripts, some people like it, while others get screwed and hate it, etc. Cults are more complicated than people give them credit for, and are often seen more negatively because they disrupt families, particularly the role of a parents vs. the parental-like roles of cult leaders. But often, while not a popular opinion, good things can come out of cults.
What’s a cult? Its a creative director who sets the ‘stage’ and script that people learn etc
Davis was born during the Summer of Love within a stone’s throw of San Francisco. He grew up in North County, Southern California, and spent a decade on the East Coast, where he studied literature and philosophy at Yale and spent six years in the freelance trenches of Brooklyn and Manhattan before moving to San Francisco, where he currently resides. He is the author of four books: Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica (Yeti, 2010), The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape (Chronicle, 2006), with photographs by Michael Rauner, and the 33 1/3 volume Led Zeppelin IV (Continuum, 2005). His first and best-known book remains TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (Crown, 1998), a cult classic of visionary media studies that has been translated into five languages and recently republished by North Atlantic Press. He has contributed chapters on art, music, technoculture, and contemporary spirituality to over a dozen books. In addition to his many forewords and introductions, Davis has contributed articles and essays to a variety of periodicals. A vital speaker, Davis has given talks at universities, media art conferences, and festivals around the world. He has taught seminars at the UC Berkeley, UC Davis, the California Institute of Integral Studies, and Rice University, as well as workshops at the New York Open Center and Esalen. He has been interviewed by CNN, NPR, the New York Times, and the BBC, and appeared in numerous documentaries. He has hosted the podcast Expanding Mind on the Progressive Radio Network since 2010, and earned his PhD in Religious Studies from Rice University in 2015.
In today’s episode, Joe and Kyle sit down with Dr. Mike Hart. In the show they talk about Cannabis and Ketamine used as medicine.
3 Key Points:
The main uses for Cannabis are for chronic pain and mental health. CBD is really good for people with inflammation.
When it comes to any psychedelic/plant medicine therapy, it’s all about agency. The power lies within the individual, the therapy and the drug are just tools to help the person obtain the power to heal themselves.
Ketamine is a useful treatment for depression. It’s instant, a patient can take it and it’s effective right away, where typical antidepressants may take 4-6 weeks to kick in.
Show Notes
About Dr. Mike Hart
He attended Med school on Saba Island
Then he came to Ontario where he did his residency
8 months after practicing he started prescribing cannabis
He got into cannabis because it’s a great alternative to opioids and pain pills, etc.
Cannabis
The main uses for Cannabis are for chronic pain and mental health
CBD is really good for people with inflammation
CBD is good for anything with -itis like arthritis, etc
THC is found to be much better than CBD for things like sciatica and nerve pain
Kyle mentions that when he takes CBD he has flashbacks of ayahuasca dreams/experiences
CBD is not psychoactive in that it doesn’t get you high
Kyle says that people can have spiritual experiences just by breathing, so the
CBD is just another vehicle that helps
Adding a small amount of THC to CBD isn’t going to potentiate it, but there may be an entourage effect that can be a further benefit to a patient
Don’t use more than 2.5mg of THC with CBD if you don’t want psychoactive effects
Mike says that some people use CBD isolate, and that’s great, but like an egg, it’s best not to eat just the egg whites, it’s best to eat the whole egg to get all of the benefits
So just like eating the whole egg, the best way to get all the benefits of cannabis is to use/consume the whole plant
There are definitely situations where using the whole plant is best, and other situations where isolation is best
Cannabis and Therapy
Anxiety can be treated very well with exposure therapy
Exposure therapy is exposing something you’re afraid of, and exposing it over and over until its not an anxiety anymore
CBD can decrease learned fear
PTSD is a learned fear
“The people who end up doing the most in life, are the people who have had the most trauma. We need to tell people that their trauma does not define them.” – Mike
It’s all about personal agency
It’s not about the drug, its you
It’s not about therapy, its you
The power is in you, its just learning how to harness and use that power
Mike says your relationships, your job, and your health are the three most important things to master
Going without something makes you more grateful for that thing
Ketamine
Mike has been prescribing Ketamine for just over a year now
It is helpful for mental health and chronic pain
Ketamine is really useful for treatment resistant depression
He prescribes Ketamine orally
He advises his patients to take it in the morning as soon as they wake up on an empty stomach
If it is taken that way, they get a psychoactive effect, and he thinks that it is the most effective way
Its instant, a patient can take it, and its effective right away, where typical antidepressants may take 4-6 weeks to kick in
Michael Hart, MD is the medical director and founder at Readytogo Clinic in London, Ontario. Readytogo Clinic focuses on cannabinoid medicine, but also offers family medicine services, IV vitamin therapy and specialized hormone testing. Dr. Hart is a recognized speaker on the topic of cannabis. He has spoken at CME events throughout Ontario, multiple cannabis conferences and has been featured on a variety of cannabis websites. In March of 2017, Dr. Hart released a free Ebook with his co-author Jeremy Kossen. Dr. Hart has seen first hand how the opioid epidemic is affecting our population and wanted to take action by finding a solution. Dr. Hart believes that cannabis is an excellent alternative to opioids and has seen excellent results in his practice. Dr. Hart emphasizes lifestyle changes in his medical practice and follows a low carb diet himself. Dr. Hart actively trains MMA at Adrenaline Training center and follows a comprehensive strength and conditioning program.
When we think of psychedelics, we don’t often think of cannabis. But in an era when people are turning to alternative medicines for mental health, can we use cannabis as an adjunct to therapy?
By Sean Lawlor
As people eagerly anticipate MDMA’s forecasted legalization as a therapeutic adjunct for treating PTSD, others are turning to a popular plant medicine to work through trauma.
When people hear that cannabis is used in therapy, they often respond with confusion. Cannabis is often thought of as a drug to avoid or dull pain and trauma—not a medicine for healing it. But, if the psychedelic renaissance has made one thing clear, it’s that intention can transform a drug experience into a journey of profound healing.
Daniel McQueen is regarded as a pioneer of “psychedelic cannabis,” or using the plant to experience insight, growth, and healing. After earning a masters degree in transpersonal counseling from Naropa University in 2012, McQueen founded Medicinal Mindfulness, an organization dedicated to promoting safe and intentional psychedelic medicine practices for personal and global healing, and transformation.
Given the illegality of psychedelics, Medicinal Mindfulness focuses on integration coaching and psychedelic harm reduction. The organization even offers psychedelic crisis counseling at festivals. McQueen’s trip sitting workshops unknowingly paved the foundation for a Psychedelic Sitters School, one of Medicinal Mindfulness’s most popular offerings.
When Colorado passed its adult-use law in 2014, the organization focused on harnessing the plant’s psychedelic potential in “conscious cannabis” circles. Like many plant medicine ceremonies, these groups involve intention setting, ceremony, music, and breathwork to enhance the psychedelic experience and catalyze a powerful internal experience. From these groups, McQueen developed cannabis-assisted psychedelic therapy, where clients use THC as an adjunct to their one-on-one therapy.
In 2014, no other organization approached cannabis with a therapeutic lens. In recent years, other businesses have launched clinics using the same concept. From Massachusetts to Alaska, there’s now some form of cannabis-assisted healing found across the USA.
Due to Colorado’s cannabis laws, Medicinal Mindfulness can offer their services above-ground. An agreement with the clinic’s landlord allows clients to vape cannabis oil or use a tincture in the therapy session, so long as the client provides their own cannabis. While doctors may refer patients with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to the clinic, a referral is not necessary because PTSD is a qualifying condition for the state’s medical-cannabis program. Plus, you don’t need a card to procure cannabis anymore.
“We’ve never had a legal issue,” McQueen explains. “In Colorado, you can get a medical marijuana card for PTSD. We’re just [addressing trauma] in a novel container.”
That container is a therapy office and assistance with personal growth and emotional healing. Medicinal Mindfulness’s therapeutic container is built on a foundation of trust, connection, and empathy, so clients feel heard and safe before entering a vulnerable emotional state. These sessions also involve talk therapy and going inward, or lying down with an eye mask on and listening to slow, relaxing music, while the therapist leads a guided meditation or other support.
Dr. Carla Clements is Medicinal Mindfulness’s Clinical Advisor. On top of having served as chair of Naropa’s transpersonal counseling department and as the independent rater for MAPS Phase II MDMA study, Dr. Clements has 35 years of clinical experience specializing in helping women with PTSD. She describes the ideal container as a place where clients can feel seen and heard. This gives them space to relax into a sense of safety, which is essential for healing trauma.
“Trauma is not just the mind being captured by a traumatic event,” Dr. Clements says to Psychedelics Today. “We now know trauma is buried deep in the body’s neurological system.”
Specifically, trauma gets buried in the body’s sympathetic nervous system (SNS), home to the fight, flight or freeze response. Trauma hijacks the SNS, restricting access to the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the internal network that controls feelings of pleasure and well-being.
Parasympathetic Nervous System Sympathetic Nervous System
(PNS) (SNS)
The curve chart—used by Dr. Clements to explain trauma—represents the spectrum of possible emotional experience. Most experiences occur near the middle. Stress pulls one to the right, while relaxation opens to the left. The far right of the curve represents severe trauma. People with this type of trauma often become trapped in that small sliver of emotional experience. “The normal range of emotions gets crushed into the trauma reaction,” explains Dr. Clements.
In contrast, the far left represents a height of pleasure and satisfaction or a “peak” experience. The sympathetic and the parasympathetic cannot function at the same time, however. So, if a person is trapped in the SNS, the bliss and relaxation of the PNS is impossible—unless something breaks them out of their rut.
Enter plant medicine.
“What we’re learning about psychedelics,” Dr. Clements explains, “is that they have a peculiar ability to help people restore normal functioning in the PNS/SNS balance.”
Similarly, Dr. Clements believes cannabis is a highly-underestimated modality that can evoke healing experiences on par with more traditional psychedelics. “We minimized the power of cannabis,” she says. “We called it a ‘weed.’ We didn’t understand its healing power, and we’re finding our way back now.”
She sees that when we use cannabis with intention, ritual, and support, it can help people “touch that peak place inside,” widening the spectrum of emotional potential. In the therapeutic container of empathy and trust, she invites the patient to relax and focus on their embodied experience by deepening their emotional awareness. As they focus on relaxation, the patient creates new neurological memories outside SNS panic. In this state, Dr. Clements can help clients integrate these new feelings into their lives, ultimately making pleasant, calm emotions more accessible.
Dr. Clements explains that during integration—the session that happens post-plant medicine to help patients integrate messages, ideas, and new perspectives into their lives—patients can experience and relive positive feelings similar to the way they recall negative emotions about their trauma. “Now, there’s a tiny bit more balance, a little bit of good against that tidal wave [of negative emotions],” she says. “[They] then can create a structure around that memory, a healing trajectory where goodness can expand.”
So, why isn’t every therapist incorporating cannabis into their practice? Unfortunately, all evidence showcasing cannabis’s healing power is technically anecdotal. This is largely due to the plant’s Schedule I status, and the DEA’s archaic regulations forcing researchers to study notoriously weak cannabis flower grown at the University of Mississippi—product that pales in comparison to what’s available in dispensaries.
Dr. Clements admits her model—focusing on cannabis’s effects on the nervous system—is less aimed at scientific validity than communication of complex issues. She describes her model as a way of “understanding what’s occurring inside, with some science and metaphor mixed in.”
The scientific language of the SNS and PNS can help people understand their experience of trauma. But the curve is ultimately an allegory for one’s internal experience, a way of visualizing severe trauma and one’s inherent potential to heal.
Interestingly, Dr. Clements’s model is comparable to MDMA treatment in several ways. For instance, MDMA regularly energizes sensations of love, empathy, and relaxation. It allows trauma survivors to have peak experiences, ultimately rebalancing the nervous system. Still, there are key differences between using MDMA and cannabis to heal trauma. A cannabis experience is shorter, allowing people to use the plant day-to-day without much disruption. The comedown is gentler, too, compared to MDMA, which is often followed by a period of depression from serotonin depletion. Most significantly, cannabis does not overwhelm the participant, which is essential when working through the complexity of PTSD.
“With cannabis, there’s a lot more agency and control, which people who have been traumatized really benefit from experiencing,” says Dr. Clements.
Still, Dr. Clements doesn’t believe that cannabis therapy can produce the results seen in the MDMA trial, where 68 percent of participants no longer met the criteria for PTSD. McQueen disagrees, however. “I’m becoming more and more convinced that cannabis, when used skillfully, may be as effective as MDMA in treating PTSD,” he writes in Psychedelic Cannabis; Breaking the Gate, his most recent book.
Then why do some folks experience paranoia and dissociation when medicating with cannabis? For McQueen, it comes down to the classic concerns of set and setting—a concept generally overlooked in cannabis consumption—and, McQueen’s contribution: Skill.
Skill involves blending flower strains with equal weights of sativa, indica, and hybrid. McQueen recommends making a ritual of the process by setting intentions through meditation or prayer. With clients, skill also incorporates a ceremonial approach and helping clients with therapeutic interventions and shamanic practices. That includes breath work and somatic releasing or discharging stored tension from the nervous system through organic processes such as crying, laughter, and even physical shaking.
“We’re creating a container to allow our clients to gently turn toward their present moment experience with relaxation and acceptance,” McQueen explains. “With these special blends of cannabis, you can mimic the physiological effects of MDMA. The body shakes out the trauma like they do in MDMA sessions. I’ve seen transformational results in just a few sessions.”
“Cannabis medicine is a very soft provider of lessons,” Dr. Clements explains. “If you’re open and relaxed, you can have profound psychedelic experiences where you touch the peak—you feel it, you are in it, and it is you. When people have that again, it is life-transforming.”
Cannabis appears to facilitate more healing than its reputation suggests. In many states, it is already accessible. “It’s legal, it’s affordable, and it can be scaled up to groups—and you can grow it in your backyard,” McQueen points out. With his book and training, he’s trying to spread the word as far as possible. Because, ultimately, everyone has the right to heal. “The gentler we are, the slower we go, the more permission we have to take care of ourselves—the faster we actually move through these transformational processes.”
About the Author
Sean Lawlor is a writer, certified personal trainer, and Masters student in Transpersonal Counseling at Naropa University, in pursuit of a career in psychedelic journalism, research, and therapy. His interest in consciousness and non-ordinary states owes great debt to Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, and Hunter S. Thompson, and his passion for film, literature, and dreaming draws endless inspiration from Carl Jung, David Lynch, and J.K. Rowling. For more information or to get in touch, head to seanplawlor.com, or connect on Instagram @seanplawlor.
In this episode, Kyle and Joe interview Eamon Armstrong, host of the Podcast, Life is a Festival. In the show, they talk about Eamon’s Iboga experience, the festival culture, rites of passage, ethics and more.
3 Key Points:
Eamon Armstrong is the host of Life is a Festival, a podcast promoting a lifestyle of adventure and personal development through the lens of festival culture.
Maya is an intelligence platform for psychedelic therapists to manage their clients and their protocols.
Rites of Passage can look different for everybody, they can look like going to Africa to be initiated in an Ibogaine ceremony, to attending Burning Man.
Show Notes
About Eamon
Eamon is the host of the Podcast, Life is a Festival
It’s not about festivals, it’s about how to make life like a festival
Eamon is very passionate about mental wellness
After graduating college, he felt very lost
He was throwing mushroom tea parties, making electronic music with his friends
The key to throwing a mushroom tea party is to have people drink less mushrooms than they think that they’re drinking, everyone just thinks they are tripping harder than they were
He went to Burning Man in 2010
He started working in social media for Burning Man’s off playa events
Psychedelics and harm reduction became core to their editorial voice
He worked closely with Psychedelic Peer Support, Zendo, Kosmicare, etc
Ibogaine Experience
Eamon attended an Iboga retreat in Gabon, Africa, and he says it was more about the retreat than the Iboga
He was in the chamber for 5 days, and he was alone in it
This retreat was in the Bwiti religion
He really went there for a full sledgehammer experience
He felt he had some addicted aspects that were hindering his sexual experiences
Iboga goes to the root of the trauma and shows you where the addictive pattern of behavior is
Iboga has a long integration period
Iboga is a root, and he consumed it in a form of a tangled nest
He felt very blasted open from the experience
Iboga took him directly to his anger
“We have in our modern Western Culture, a lot of lost, young people” – Eamon
“The value of a rite of passage, is that you are confronted with certain things that you can’t get to on your own” – Eamon
The fact that you can die in an Iboga experience, is part of the initiation
Rites of Passage
Burning Man isn’t a rite of passage, but it can be used as a rite of passage
Burning Man is a temporary experience in civic living, it is not orchestrated by elders
There is a growing topic on psychedelic parenting, and taking psychedelics with children
Maya
Maya is designed in partnership with psychedelic practitioners & ceremony leaders
Maya is an intelligence platform for psychedelic therapists to manage their clients and their protocols
Ethics in psychedelics are so important right now
This does not replace the therapist, it’s everything the therapist needs to support their clients in healing
“The ecosystem itself will thrive when we are all working in service to each other” – Eamon
“If you want to be a part of the cool kids, and the cool kids are doing it ethically, then you have to do it ethically” – Eamon
Final Thoughts
The soul is the most beautiful thing
“Psychedelics as medicine, treat society, beyond individuals” – Eamon
Eamon Armstrong is the creator and host of Life is a Festival, promoting a lifestyle of adventure and personal development through the lens of festival culture. He is the former Creative Director and public face of Chip Conley’s industry-leading online festival guide and community Fest300, where he was a global community builder. Eamon’s belief in the transformational power of psychedelics led him to take part in a traditional Bwiti initiation in Gabon, and to become a trained Sitter with MAP’s Zendo Project. Eamon is a passionate advocate for mature masculinity and offers public talks and workshops from mythopoetic men’s work to stand-up comedy on integrating masculinity.
For decades the consensus of the psychedelic science community regarding bipolar disorder is that people with manic depression should avoid psychedelics as to not aggravate their condition.
They’re one of the few groups, along with those with a psychotic spectrum disorder or a heart condition, who are told sorry, psychedelics are not safe for them. In the case of those diagnosed with bipolar disorder, the fear is that the psychedelic experience can cause them to go manic, a state characterized by grandiose thinking and over-extending oneself (and often one’s bank account) that can lead to reckless, dangerous, and intrusive behavior that’s essentially out of character and can cause folks to lose control of their own lives or put themselves and possibly others in life-threatening situations.
And it’s not a myth, there are case studies, like this one from 1981, of people going manic during or after psychedelic experiences, but there haven’t been any trials controlling for things like the type of substance, set and setting, and dosage.
The Serotonergic System and Bipolar Disorder
Classic psychedelics and other medicines like MDMA work largely by affecting the brain’s serotonin system, especially the 5-HT2A receptor, says Will Barone, PsyD who’s worked in research and clinical settings with therapies involving MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine. For most people, that’s not a huge risk. It’s not physically dangerous unless mixing different substances or taking super-high doses. But for people with bipolar disorder, the serotonergic activity may be what poses the problem – that increased activity could potentially trigger mania, or at least “increase the likelihood for mood episodes,” as Barone puts it.
Most bipolar people can’t even take SSRI anti-depressants without the risk of hypomania or a manic episode, and it’s how many of the folks I interviewed and who filled out a survey on bipolar and psychedelics I created got diagnosed in the first place. They went to their doctors feeling depressed, got prescribed an SSRI, and instead of feeling better (or nothing at all), they went manic, some even bordering or breaking through to psychosis. And so, to most in the psychedelic community that’s the end of the story. If an SSRI can cause mania, then surely it’s unsafe to give these folks psilocybin, MDMA, or ayahuasca, for example. Sorry bipolar diagnosed people, but you are excluded from the incredible and mystical insight, perspective shift and depression relief that psychedelics can grant others. But what if it’s not as open and shut as the community would make us think?
Before I dive any deeper into what I found investigating this subject, it’s important to say that I am in no way encouraging anyone to take psychedelics or get off their prescription medications. But living with bipolar disorder can be hard. Not only can mania be dangerous but the depression is also life-threatening; people with manic depression are much more likely to attempt and commit suicide than the general population. Yet, the hypersensitivity that is sometimes a handicap can also be a gift, one that many are unwilling to give up. And traditional pharmaceutical medication often suppresses empathy, creativity, spirituality, and concentration, among a host of other natural processes. So are there other options for folks living with this condition?
The Use of Ketamine for Bipolar Disorder
“Ketamine is the primary substance I would feel comfortable working with for a bipolar client,” says Barone. “It doesn’t seem to have the same risk for inducing a mood episode as MDMA or psilocybin.” He explains that ketamine doesn’t work nearly as much on serotonin as other entheogens, that instead, its primary action is on the glutamate and NMDA receptors, which has made many researchers theorize how ketamine produces its rapid antidepressant effects. “We’re still figuring out a lot about how ketamine works,” Barone explains, but the risk of inducing a manic episode from clinical ketamine treatment seems to be very low. “That’s one of the interesting things,” he says, “so far in clinical ketamine treatment, we haven’t seen mania develop in people with bipolar disorder, even with a history of mania. I haven’t personally seen any cases.” However, it’s important to note, many bipolar clients of Ketamine assisted therapy or infusions are also staying on their medications, likely mitigating the risk. “Ketamine is one of the only medications with psychedelic properties where it is appropriate for a patient to remain on their mood-stabilizing medications,” says Barone. “This is important for patients with bipolar disorder who can be destabilized by stopping medication too abruptly.”
In the program where Barone practices, Healing Realms Psychotherapy, clinicians sometimes utilize ketamine assisted psychotherapy (KAP) for individuals with bipolar disorder. It’s on a case by case basis, but essentially ketamine can be offered at different doses in conjunction with talk therapy, which can “use that psychedelic or altered experience to better understand your situation,” says Barone, “to have better awareness of your ego functioning and how to manage mood, in addition to the mood-stabilizing properties of ketamine.” Then, clinicians often increase the amount of follow-up sessions for bipolar clients to continue to monitor changes to mood or cognition, Barone tells me.
The Risks of Triggering Mania with Different Substances
A Ph.D. candidate at Flinders University, Benjamin Mudge, is looking into this phenomenon for his thesis and believes the type of substance plays a large role in mitigating the mania risk and providing the most balanced depression relief for those with manic depression. Mudge himself is bipolar, and at 48 has been through the wringer in attempts to treat his condition. Over a three hour Skype conversation, he tells me about being institutionalized and medicated on 17 different pharmaceuticals over 10 years with varying degrees of negative side effects, from weight gain and hair loss to losing his ability make art (a practice many thought he’d pursue professionally as a young person), capacity to make and perform music, and complete numbness to the rich world around him.
“I don’t feel suicidal, manic, or crazy [on the drugs the psychiatrists prescribed me],” Mudge explains. “But I don’t feel pleasure, fun, or arousal. I don’t feel a spiritual connection with nature. I can be sitting in a sacred ceremony, church, music festival, or forest, and everyone that’s around me is feeling something deep. But I just feel numb. And as a result of that, I then feel a sense of frustration and alienation from other people, and a sense of pointlessness.”
Eventually fed up, Mudge stopped taking pharmaceuticals cold-turkey (a practice he does not recommend to others) in search of a more natural remedy. After failed attempts with herbs like St John’s Wort, a friend asked if he had heard of ayahuasca. Now, 15 years later, Mudge drinks ayahuasca every couple of months to manage his condition (in addition to being careful with nutrition and avoiding other psychoactive substances) – and has never felt better. Even though, he tells me repeatedly throughout our conversation that this path isn’t for everyone and he in no way recommends folks stop taking their meds in favor of ayahuasca.
But his Ph.D. in psychiatry gives him the opportunity that many don’t have: he is systematically recording his moods and other reactions to ayahuasca, along with analyzing each tea he drinks in the lab to try and figure out the optimal brew for those living with manic depression. And he’s formulated a few fascinating theories that are catching the eye of psychedelic researchers around the globe.
For one, substance matters, and Mudge believes DMT might hold the most benefits for those with bipolar disorder because of its incredibly short binding time to the 5-HT2A receptor. Most psychedelics “plug into” the 2A receptor, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT included, but the length to which they stay there determines the length of a trip. So for example, (see image 1) LSD stays plugged in for the longest, which explains why it’s such a longer-lasting trip than psilocybin or simply smoking pure DMT. But Mudge theorizes the binding time also matters when determining the mania risk for the bipolar brain, that the short binding time of DMT poses less of a risk of pushing bipolar people into mania, while substances that bind for longer, like LSD, present a higher risk.
His theory gets more complicated than this and some of his mechanical ideas are based on findings of his mother, Anne W. Mudge, a Professor of neurobiology at University College London. In 2002 she discovered the bipolar brain has a malfunction in its inositol phosphate metabolism, which is a key regulating function that helps average folks regulate their moods, speed of their thoughts, and other related actions. In a nutshell, she discovered that instead of the bipolar mind being “too high” or “too low” (aka manic or depressive), that in reality, it was functioning at speeds that were too fast or too slow because of its missing regulating mechanism, thus explaining how medication like Lithium comes in to help regulate that speed (see image 2).
Now when we add serotonergic psychedelics or SSRI medication on top of a “dysregulated” brain, there’s a chance it could overextend itself and go too fast for too long, which could look like mania. And often, depression follows the mania in these cases, hence, the “disorderly” moods. However, this gets back to the binding time in Mudge’s theory, because what if shorter-acting psychedelics didn’t push people over the edge into mania, but rather, jump-started them out of depression and left them with more self-awareness to notice when their moods are fluctuating, giving them the ability to be more proactive in that process?
Mudge has found that ayahuasca and DMT help him the most (in carefully curated circumstances that we’ll discuss below). It brings him depression-relief and healing from a long list of past traumas, plus incredible awareness of the internal signs of a rising manic episode and how those behaviors have affected others. “One of the most fundamentally valuable things about ayahuasca for bipolar people is that it’s helped me understand how the manic episode is damaging people around me and damaging myself,” Mudge explains. “There is a sort of heightened sense of conscience, a social conscience that comes from the psychedelic awareness. That principle is perfect for getting bipolar people to understand how problematic the mania is, even if it feels amazing at the time.” And with the right brew of ayahuasca in a supportive container, this insight and healing come without pushing him into mania. He says after an ayahuasca ceremony he feels a “humble happiness” rather than a speedy or bordering on manic one.
Part of his research is interviewing others and collecting qualitative data of folks with bipolar disorder who use ayahuasca and DMT to try and determine what’s happening. And it’s beginning to prove his theories. For example, of the 10 bipolar people, he’s interviewed that smoke or vape pure DMT (without any MAOI inhibitor-containing plants or substances), “none of them went manic.” He says, “All of them reported the same thing, which was that it was mildly antidepressant. But it was also calming and grounding. As in, if they were on the manic end of the spectrum [which three were], it would bring them back to the center. And if they were depressed, it would bring them slightly up, but it wouldn’t keep pushing them and escalating into mania.”
This is a shocking finding, but not a surprising one. Psychedelics in the right dose and a prepared set and setting are known to give people a new perspective on their lives and behaviors, so why couldn’t they help folks increase their self-awareness around their mood? In a survey I conducted of bipolar diagnosed people who have tried psychedelics, I came to a similar finding. Of the 42 bipolar people who continue to use psychedelics like psilocybin, ayahuasca, DMT, mescaline and even LSD, 35 found the experience helped them manage their symptoms, including not only depression-relief but more awareness to ground themselves during mood shifts and ability to recognize manic behavior.
“I am aware of my manic episodes when they are taking place. I am also able to recognize them faster after they happen. Maybe I can’t change what I did in those moments, [but] I am able to hold compassion for myself and understand that I am still learning and growing because for so many years I just numbed myself with Pharma and alcohol,” described Mary* a 31-year-old with Bipolar I who no longer takes pharmaceutical medication but has been using psilocybin in varying doses since January 2019. “The manic events are shorter and less severe. For example, instead of spending $1,000 at a store, I’ll spend $100 and then recognize it and am able to hold compassion that I am making progress. (My manic episodes tend to lean towards over-spending, over-eating, over-everything). Also, it has helped my binging and purging, and my depression. Obviously, all are related, but I am just more aware of everything and also the plant medicine helps me see where everything is stemming from so I can re-parent those sides of myself.”
Interestingly, some who reported more awareness and ability to manage manic behaviors pointed to mania being a very “ego-driven” experience, perhaps explaining how psychedelics are helping folks deal with it rather than aggravate it further. “When I am starting towards a manic episode, psychedelics kind of smack me back down to earth and help me remember that I don’t have all my shit figured out. It humbles me and relieves the burning anger and irritation with compassion and connection to the ‘other’,” explained Sarah*, a 37-year-old with Bipolar 2 who is now off pharmaceuticals and instead uses psilocybin truffles about once a month in different doses, which are legal in the Netherlands where she lives.
Admittedly, the responses to the survey I created have a bias because most folks found the Google Form through my social media where I’m very pro-psychedelic (especially psilocybin mushrooms) and so my followers are more likely to report positive experiences than negative ones. However, considering the lack of options beyond lifelong medication for the bipolar population, it’s an interesting finding in need of more investigation beyond anecdotal reports. Could one psychedelic experience every few months “ground” bipolar folks, allowing them to experience and manage their full range of feelings without heavy meds like Lithium? Even in Barone’s practice with ketamine, he tells Psychedelics Today that when appropriate, the goal is to wean some patients off their pharmaceutical medications eventually and instead, manage their moods with the help of intermittent ketamine-assisted therapy sessions and building skills to independently manage mood fluctuations.
It’s super controversial, especially considering unmedicated bipolar folks are at a much higher risk for suicide. Plus, going off psychiatric medication quickly without a doctor’s supervision is also dangerous, especially when combined with psychedelics. Barone, who’s volunteered at Burning Man’s Zendo Project for seven years and supervised for four, explains the combination of stopping medication to take psychedelics has caused numerous attendees to have a psychotic break at Black Rock City. Plus, Barone says that for some people, “It may be the intensity of the experience or having insufficient support during and after a trip that shifts mood or cognitive process beyond the effects of the substance.”
At the same time, mixing bipolar medications with psychedelics seems to be contraindicated, although getting a clear answer from doctors on this is hard. While it’s pretty common knowledge that SSRI’s shouldn’t be combined with psychedelics for several reasons, including the potential risk of Serotonin Syndrome, there’s less info out there about common bipolar medications like lamotrigine and lithium. Some doctors, like a psychiatrist Mudge, knows of in New York and those I interviewed for my book on mushrooms, seem to think lamotrigine doesn’t pose a huge risk when mixing with psilocybin or ayahuasca, however, lithium seems to be in a class of its own. I’ve personally heard of two instances where lithium mixed with LSD caused such negative reactions (including a seizure) that both people were sent to the emergency room to the despair of their tripping friends. There’s more info on mixing Lithium and LSD in this Erowid vault.
To make matters even more complicated, even some of those who responded to my survey saying psychedelics help them reflect on their manic/hypomanic behaviors and ground themselves often also describe a singular incident where they did go manic and even psychotic or deeply paranoid after particular psychedelic journeys where they either “took too much,” had a “bad trip”, or took substances in less than ideal set and settings. Which brings us back to Mudge’s theories, that the bipolar brain is more sensitive and can’t handle certain substances or situations, like frequent psychedelic use or poly-drug mixes, without possibly heading into mania.
And so, Mudge has created harm reduction guidelines for bipolar diagnosed people who want to drink ayahuasca, although he tells me multiple times he is not advising anyone to take ayahuasca or do anything illegal, but instead to please wait until his research and other community initiatives are completed. Yet, if people ignore his advice, the guidelines (see image 3) do provide a lot of interesting information to reduce harm and the risk of mood episodes. For instance, while the ayahuasca tradition is to partake in multiple ceremonies over a week or two, Mudge says that puts the bipolar brain at a much higher risk for mania. Instead, participating in one ceremony and getting enough sleep afterward will provide folks with a lot more benefits than continuing to drink – and stimulate their 5-HT2A receptors – night after night.
Plus, he’s seen this high frequency of psychedelic use play out badly with other substances as well in his interview subjects, even at microdoses. For example, he tells me of a bipolar man who was microdosing psilocybin every day to manage his mood and had the worst manic episode of his life – at 40. Mudge believes it was the repeated stimulation of taking a serotonergic substance that binds for six hours that induced mania – similar to what an SSRI would do to a bipolar person.
When it comes to safe ayahuasca practices for those diagnosed with manic depression, Mudge believes mixing with other substances – even if they’re presented in ceremony as holy tools, like rapé, cannabis and even cacao or chocolate – poses a higher risk for pushing the bipolar brain into mania. I ask if there should be a specific bipolar “dieta” (a concept in the ayahuasca tradition where you adhere to a special diet in preparation for your ceremony) and he says absolutely. “This is why you’re not supposed to eat overripe bananas and soy sauce. Because it’s chemically reactive,” Mudge explains, and for bipolar folks, the dieta will have to be even more restrictive to provide the maximum benefits and the least amount of harm.
Lastly, when it comes to ayahuasca, not all brews are created equally, and Mudge also believes some brews that pose a higher risk than others based on their chemical composition. For example, ayahuasca prepared in the Amazon jungle can have a different combination of herbs and precise species of vine depending on the shaman, culture, and retreat center. While most psychedelics have a single type of molecule causing the experience, there are at least four psychoactive ingredients in ayahuasca: harmine, harmaline, tetrahydroharmine, and DMT. Therefore, brews can have different ratios of MAOI inhibitors to DMT molecules, and Mudge believes the bipolar brain responds better to a brew that has more DMT because the MAOI inhibitors can push people into mania (just like MAOI pharmaceuticals are known to do). He also says ayahuasca prepared in other parts of the world that use Syrian Rue instead of the ayahuasca vine also poses more of a risk because it has a different ratio of harmala alkaloids than the Banisteriopsis caapi vine used in genuine ayahuasca.
Plus, lots of the ayahuasca that is consumed isn’t brewed fresh, but brewed once and is carried around for months to over a year, and in that time it begins to ferment and produce alcohol. And Mudge believes fermented ayahuasca poses a problem for the bipolar brain where a depressive hangover can follow rather than a humble afterglow. “I think it changes the qualitative experience for everybody,” he elaborates. “I think it makes the ceremony more intense, more into the shadow.” But for the bipolar brain, “which is more sensitive” it can leave people feeling agitated and depressed. He explains there is a trick to getting rid of the alcohol in aged ayahuasca, basically cooking the brew on a very low heat for 10 to 20 minutes so that it steams the alcohol off but never starts to boil or even simmer. “It should start to smell like a vegetable soup when it’s ready,” Mudge says.
And it’s not like bipolar people don’t ever go manic after drinking ayahuasca, it happens, and 17 of his 62 interview subjects experienced it. But, after investigating each situation further, it seems many, if not all, of the 17 were mixing substances, drinking fermented ayahuasca or brews with Syrian Rue and participating in multiple ceremonies in a week, and so in terms of his research, are technically false negatives. Although, these situations only further prove the need for his research and more like it.
Clinical Perspectives and Safety Concerns
But what about other psychedelic substances? If Mudge’s theory is correct, is DMT the only option that’s less likely to cause mania? What about mushrooms, LSD, or MDMA? Could they all have a place with specific safety guidelines? And what would those guidelines look like for a person diagnosed with manic depression? Cynthia*, a clinical therapist specializing in spiritual emergence and psychedelic integration who was trained in the transpersonal paradigm at the California Institute for Integral Studies (CIIS), thinks bipolar clients not only need a lot of preparation and integration support for a psychedelic experience, like with a professional therapist or spiritual guide, but they need to be able to sustain their stability without medication first, which she realizes just isn’t possible for everyone. She’s come to this belief not only as a clinician but as someone who was diagnosed with bipolar herself over 20 years ago, although she doesn’t identify very strongly with the diagnosis.
She views bipolar, and all mental illness, through a very spiritual lens. “It’s not just our biochemistry and our diagnostic criteria, but it’s really our souls,” she says. She tells me about her only manic-psychotic episode which was brought on by SSRI medication in the late 1990s when she was only 20 years old. “It absolutely was also a very spiritual experience and very much a healing crisis.” She explains, during her episode, she had trauma from her early childhood come up and other painful material that needs resolving, but she didn’t get the support to really examine it until years later. I ask her if she thinks mania can be thought of in terms of Stanislav and Christina Grof’s idea of “Spiritual Emergence(y)”, a theory that views some non-ordinary states of consciousness as healing processes that could be supported for the most positive gain rather than suppressed with tranquilizing medication.
“I do think mine was a spiritual emergence. And I knew that at the time, but I didn’t have the language for it,” she says. “And what I’ve come to conclude is I think it’s not necessarily a completely ‘either-or’. I think there’s both, or it’s almost like two different languages used to describe a similar thing. Because, if you go through the checklist, I definitely fit the criteria for manic psychosis. And I definitely was having trouble, just at the very end, not eating and sleeping and not being able to use words, things that were dangerous. Now, if I had had sitters and 24 hours of support and a bunch of space to wander around, I probably could have rode it out and had the support to just be in that state faithfully until it ran its course. But I didn’t, and most of us don’t.”
It’s a curious and radical idea that insight and healing can come from some natural non-ordinary states of consciousness, like mania and psychosis, if they could be “sat with” and supported as they played out, just like a psychedelic trip. And it’s not the first similarity between manic depression and the psychedelic experience that I came across researching this piece. Two other bipolar diagnosed people I spoke to pointed to mania being very much like a entheogenic journey. “So much of my mania feels like tripping,” said Pam* a 39-year-old woman with Bipolar 1 who no longer takes prescription mood stabilizers but uses different psychedelics to deal with her depression, “If the tripping will end, so will the mania.”
However, in our society, we very much view these states as needing to be “cured” and suppressed rather than explored and supported. And in Cynthia’s case, she ended up in a psychiatric hospital and then on Lithium for five years after her episode. But during her first semester of grad school at CIIS, she began working with a holistic psychiatrist, part of the Grofs’ Spiritual Emergence Network, who helped her confront her trauma, wean off the medication, and learn to feel and manage the full range of her emotions through the use of spiritual and Eastern practices. Which admittedly, right after years of Lithium, was hard. She essentially had to relearn how to feel and it was overwhelming at first. “And then I was terrified of doing anything spiritual. I was terrified to meditate. I had a chance to do holotropic breathwork and I was like, I don’t want to rock the boat.” But she did learn and developed other spiritual practices, like yoga, which helped her understand how to regulate her own energy. And, even though she’s not currently on daily pharmaceuticals, she definitely still thinks they have a place, like to regulate mood for a shorter time and to control “breakout” symptoms of mania, such as trouble sleeping.
Implications for Future Research and Guidelines
For Cynthia, psychedelics were not part of this re-learning for 20 years. Instead, she spent that time integrating her spiritual emergence/manic episode, learning how to recognize the “edges” of hypomania and ground herself naturally. But two years ago, she finally felt ready to go back into the psychedelic space with spiritual guides, and now she manages all types of psychedelic experiences, even the ones Mudge warns against like LSD, MDMA, 2C-B and others I had to look up like 3-MMC and 2C-E. She says it’s not the psychedelics that keep her grounded like some of my survey participants reported, but since she’s learned how to ground herself, these experiences are manageable and beneficial for other healing.
“I’ve had a lot of stuff come up from around my episode, like fear of my own greatness. It’s like I’m scared to go visionary because they’re going to label me as manic. But I had to reclaim my comfort with that.” Cynthia admits, after a trip, especially with “heart medicines” like MDMA, she does have increased energy, “It’s exciting, I have this sort of energy of how wonderful everything is. I just have to make sure I’m sleeping and intentionally doing things to stay grounded.”She says there was atime recently where she was taking empathogens a little too often – once a month, sometimes more – and she started to have “more depressive dips and more anxiety.” But she was able to recognize that and back off. “Now I’m trying to keep it like once a quarter or even less than that.”
However, she says as a clinician, “I don’t feel super comfortable if I had a bipolar client doing classic psychedelics. I might, but it would be very case by case because I do think there is that potential risk.” She also believes bipolar to be a spectrum, and those with more severe cases with recurrent manic episodes might not be able to stabilize themselves like she’s learned to. But the connection between spiritual emergence and bipolar disorder, psychedelics and mania seem too close and full of such vast potential to not be investigated further. And of course, Mudge has a plan for how to proceed.
Once Mudge figures out the ideal recipe for brewing ayahuasca “in a balanced way” that is medicinal but “not dangerous in terms of triggering mania,” his mission is to create the “Manic Depressive Community Church”. It would serve as a community for those with bipolar and those affected by the condition (like parents and spouses) where ayahuasca, served in the safest possible way by understanding facilitators who are bipolar themselves, is the sacrament. His vision is that this church would be a non-profit organization that’s local to people so they wouldn’t have to travel to the Amazon to take this medicine. And of course, being the academic that he is, he also envisions setting up a clinical trial or having the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) come in to do an observational clinical trial so the community can finally get some hard data on this population other than assumptions, anecdotes, and old case studies.
Mudge also insists that bipolar folks wait for him to accomplish this goal before they start drinking ayahuasca or taking other kinds of psychedelics. He says his safety protocol and recipe are still about two years away from being complete, and in the meantime, he encourages folks to prepare by getting their lifestyles in order. He explains that it means accepting their diagnosis and getting on medications that work, like lamotrigine and a low dose of lithium. It also means getting enough sleep and stopping other recreational or self-medicating drug use like alcohol, cannabis, or whatever else. “That’ll help you in the next year or two in a massive way,” says Mudge, “and then you’ll be ready to drink safely.”
But the weight of the bipolar community’s desire to heal shouldn’t be all up to one man. The psychedelic science community should also step up and start investigating the potential benefits and harms for this large and desperate population. “There’s a massive potential of psychedelics, but bipolar people have unique brain chemistry,” says Mudge. “They need the psychedelic experience to be chemically tailored to their brains’ needs.”
In this episode, Joe interviews Tom and Sheri Eckert, organizers of the Oregon Psilocybin Therapy Initiative. The IP 34 is the bill that would legalize psilocybin therapy.
3 Key Points:
IP 34 asks the Oregon Health Authority to create a licensing system that will create a regulated program where Oregonians suffering from depression, anxiety, trauma and other challenges can see a licensed and trained facilitator to receive supervised psilocybin therapy.
IP 34 was written by licensed therapists in Oregon along with the country’s leading advocates in the field. It is supported by healthcare professionals, treatment providers, veterans’ groups and community leaders across the state.
There has been a multitude of studies from leading medical research institutions such as Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and NYU showing that psilocybin therapy works.
Show Notes
About
Tom and Sheri began their interest in psilocybin research about 5 years ago when they read an article in The New Yorker by Michal Pollan
They realized how powerful psilocybin was for clinical work
They are both therapists, and were inspired to find out if there was a way to create a modality that allowed them to provide psilocybin therapy to help their clients
Psilocybin Assisted Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is supposed to be experiential, the breakthrough is where the change happens
Sheri says that psilocybin therapy gets all parts of the brain in communication together
“The more intense the mystical experience the more clinical outcomes that are achieved” – Tom
Ballot Initiative
They started in 2015
They wanted the breakthrough studies and the research proving low risks to work for them
The psychedelic community was very helpful
They went through rotations with the way the initiative was written
They like the therapy model, its safe, careful and mindful
Clause
Joe asks about a Supremacy Clause, where the state supersedes local districts
This initiative does not get in the way of any other initiative
There are angles on all different types of drug policy reform
There is nothing in the IP34 that blocks any other initiative like decriminalization
We are all a part of the big picture, we all need to work together
GMP Psilocybin
They wanted to keep this in the frame of non-commercialization
Their goal with this is not about money, it’s really about the healing
“We are trying to move forward a healing modality to help people, we are trying to legalize psilocybin assisted psychotherapy” – Tom
There is a part in the initiative that says measures will have to be taken to make sure the psilocybin is ‘food grade’ standard or in general just clean and safe
As husband-and-wife founders of the Oregon Psilocybin Society (OPS) and authors of the Psilocybin Service Initiative (PSI), Tom and Sheri Eckert have set in motion a historic campaign to legalize Psilocybin Services, also known as Psilocybin Assisted Therapy, in their home state of Oregon. A growing number of Oregonians are getting behind the idea, largely in response to the latest science. The Eckerts, with a growing army of volunteers, are spreading a truth held increasingly self-evident: that the psilocybin experience, when facilitated under safe and supportive conditions, can be a life-changing gift.In addition to their activism, the Eckert’s own and operate “Innerwork” – a private psychotherapy practice serving the Portland metro area. Included in their catalog of services is their groundbreaking “Better Man” program, which is shown to neutralize intimate partner and family violence. Sheri has been awarded a Cosmic Sister Women of the Psychedelic Renaissance in support of her presentation at the Spirit Plant Medicine conference.
In this episode, Joe interviews Amanda Feilding, Founder and Director of The Beckley Foundation. In the show, they cover topics on psychedelic research, policy work, regulation, and the benefits of psychedelics in a time of crisis.
3 Key Points:
The Beckley Foundation pioneers psychedelic research to drive evidence-based drug policy reform, founded and directed by Amanda Feilding as a UK-based think-tank and NGO.
There is some interesting research happening around LSD expanding the neuroplasticity of the mind and increasing neurogenesis.
We are in the midst of a mental health crisis, especially in the West, and psychedelics may be helpful in improving mental health.
Show Notes
The Beckley Foundation
Amanda says she felt alone for a long time, they were taking a scientific approach, and it was much too serious for the underground
The Beckley Foundation is doing policy work, medical work, scientific work, etc
Amanda has a passion for science, but felt a social responsibility to do the policy work
It’s a very destructive work with ‘drugs’, because they are all under the same umbrella, but we psychedelic enthusiasts know, that psychedelics are beneficial and different than other drugs
Joe mentions he always thought how crazy LSD sentencing is, in some places it is longer than murder charges
“The ego is really a mirror of the government, and it can be much too restrictive and damaging” – Amanda
LSD
LSD increases cognitive function by expanding the networks of integrative centers in the brain
Amanda thinks that LSD is better at increasing cognition than mushrooms
She says they are doing exciting work with LSD and how it expands neuroplasticity of the mind, and how it increases neurogenesis
She thinks we haven’t really even scratched the surface of exploring the benefits of these compounds
Joe says he is hearing about a lot of athletes using LSD as a performance enhancing drug
Neuroplasticity is like when the brain becomes hot metal and it can adapt and change
Crisis
We have a horrible mental health crisis in the west, 1 in 3 teenage girls are depressed
Out of all death causes in the US, air pollution is one of the largest
“Our society needs a paradigm shift” – Amanda
Amanda says that she doesn’t believe that all people need to take psychedelics, but that they can be very beneficial
Regulation
Joe says he would love to see regulation everywhere
The cause of most drug harms are prohibition
Portugal and Switzerland are great models for boosting public service
Recognizing the potential benefits helps (starting with medical but not stopping there)
Final Thoughts
We are all moving in the right direction
The spreading of knowledge and education is the right path
The intuitive gains are the main benefits of these altered states of consciousness
Amanda Feilding has been called the ‘hidden hand’ behind the renaissance of psychedelic science, and her contribution to global drug policy reform has also been pivotal and widely acknowledged. Amanda was first introduced to LSD in the mid-1960s, at the height of the first wave of scientific research into psychedelics. Impressed by its capacity to initiate mystical states of consciousness and heighten creativity, she quickly recognised its transformative and therapeutic power. Inspired by her experiences, she began studying the mechanisms underlying the effects of psychedelic substances and dedicated herself to exploring ways of harnessing their potential to cure sickness and enhance wellbeing. In 1996, Amanda set up The Foundation to Further Consciousness, changing its name to the Beckley Foundation in 1998.
In this episode, Joe interviews Michelle Janikian, Author of Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion. In the show, they talk about Michelle’s book, the need to speak about the unspoken, and how psychedelic experiences differ for everyone.
3 Key Points:
Michelle Janikian is Author of the book, Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion, an easy-to-use guide to understanding magic mushrooms, from tips and trips to microdosing and psychedelic therapy.
Psychedelics can help people, but they don’t solve all problems. Doing the homework after an experience is so important.
The psychedelic subculture has a lot of repressed stuff going on like sexual abuse. We need to speak about the things that aren’t necessarily good for the movement, we need to talk about all of it.
Show Notes
About Michelle
Michelle was originally a cannabis journalist
Then she was a staff writer for Herb
She then started writing her own book, Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion
So much has been happening with mushrooms lately, and Michelle thought we really needed a resource on how to use mushrooms safely
Ulysses Press did a few Cannabis books
Michelle was approached by them, they wanted to do a mushroom guide
She first took mushrooms when she was 17
She took them for fun, but had so many deep and meaningful experiences too
Michelle believes there are multiple right ways to use psilocybin, either therapeutically, ceremonially, recreationally, etc.
“As long as you’re being safe with your surroundings, and with yourself, anyway is the right way (except for the fact that they are still illegal)” – Michelle
In places where mushrooms are decriminalized, she mentions it totally changes your comfort level and experience when you’re not so afraid to have them on you
Retreat
Michelle just volunteered as a trip sitter at a week long women’s retreat in Mexico at Luz Eterna Retreats
She says she doesn’t have all the answers, but the group environment can be really great for some, and not good at all for others
She suggests, “do what feels right for you”
Routes of Administration
There isn’t one ideal form of administration across all drugs
Joe says one route of administration may be good for one person, and not for another
You can powder the mushrooms and put them into capsules, put them on food, eat them plain, make a tea out of them, etc
Michelle says she has a great recipe in her book for mushroom tea to prevent nausea
Different for Everyone
Michelle felt a calling to write the book because she says many other books and publications were coming out, and she didn’t want some people to feel upset when psychedelics didn’t just ‘heal them’
She says psychedelics help her, but they don’t solve all of her problems
Doing the homework after an experience is so important
The Unspoken
She says she feels uninspired to write about the ‘black and white’, the same old, stereotypical narrative
She wants to write about the grey, the unexpected, the in-between
Michelle asks how do we talk about the things that aren’t right for the movement? Like the sexual abuse that happens in this space
This psychedelic subculture has a lot of repressed stuff going on, and how do we talk about it?
We need to keep learning in this field to keep improving, it is dense and detailed
Michelle leaves us with a final thought, “read more books written by women!”
Michelle Janikian is the author of Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion, the down-to-earth guide that details how to use magic mushrooms “like an adult.” As a journalist, she got her start writing about cannabis for publications like High Times, Rolling Stone and Herb. Now, she writes a column for Playboy on all things drug related and also contributes regularly to DoubleBlind Mag, MERRY JANE, Psychedelic’s Today and others. She’s passionate about the healing potential of psychedelic plants and substances, especially psilocybin and cannabis, and the legalization and de- stigmatization of all drugs. Michelle studied writing and psychology at Sarah Lawrence College before traveling extensively in Latin America and eventually settling down in southern Mexico. Born in New York City and raised in New Jersey, Michelle ventures back to the States a few times a year to give talks and workshops on safe mushroom use and other cannabis and psychedelic related topics.
In 2014 I became aware of a gentleman named Kilindi Iyi in Detroit, Michigan. He was doing some wildly exploratory and esoteric mushroom trips in community with others. Kilindi was one of the most interesting people I had the chance to talk to during my time running my first podcast.
Here is a list of things that struck me as important while speaking with him.
He had a community of peers and students doing very similar work and sharing results.
Kilindi was not afraid to grow mushrooms and was quite public about it.
He used VERY high doses in silence (10+ grams being common).
Some in his community went so far as to do extractions to help stomach larger doses.
His approach of warriorship and courage in mushroom experiences was powerful and unique.
His African martial arts practice hugely informed and assisted his psychedelic work.
To me, he was an important pioneer in the psychedelic world. The psychedelic world will do well to remember him and his work. He did a tremendous amount for his community and our movement. His legacy will certainly continue to help us moving inward, outward and upward for many years to come.
In this episode, Kyle sits down with Rob Heffernan, an independent researcher and activist. In the show, they talk about churches, Ayahuasca, accessibility and the Psychedelic Liberty Summit by the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. Rob is also part of Chacruna’s Council for the Protection of Sacred Plants.
The Council for the Protection of Sacred plants is “an initiative of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines that endeavors to advocate for the legality of sacred plant medicines among indigenous peoples and non-indigenous communities, encourage legal harm reduction practices that protect those who use them, educate about conservation of plant species, document relevant legal and social issues, and consult on legal cases including possible litigation. ”
3 Key Points:
The Psychedelic Liberty Summit is a gathering on legal, cultural, and political issues around the emerging psychedelic renaissance.
Accessibility is not just about whether or not people can afford psychedelic therapy, people cant even afford regular therapy, the whole healthcare model is an issue.
A lot of churches get a bad name, but really most churches are built around community. Psychedelics can help revitalize churches.
Rob is a member of the Chacruna Council for protection of sacred plants
He is an integrative sound and music practitioner
He is involved in the Santo Daime
He has been drinking Ayahuasca for over 20 years
He began to ponder and ask a lot of questions about involvement with medicine communities
Psychedelic Liberty Summit
Rob will be hosting a talk on religious exemptions and more
There will be speakers of all different initiatives, from decriminalization to indigenous relations
There are a lot of investors interested in the psilocybin market
The issue is complex because there is this ongoing cultural history of the US and other countries exploiting those cultures and removing resources (oil, medicines, etc)
Ayahuasca
The first time Rob drank Ayahuasca was back in 2000, where there weren’t Ayahuasca retreats going on then
People who lived in the area were not familiar with Ayahuasca use
People started coming from around the world to use Ayahuasca
There are feedback loops between the cities and the forests
People typically think integration is what happens afterwards, but really it is also the sacrifice from the start, the preparation, such as a dieta
We need to honor what we have learned from the indigenous, and give back
Traditional dietas don’t involve actually drinking the Ayahuasca, the culture has come a long way
Accessibility
While these medicines are relatively safe, you can get in trouble using these substances recreationally, there is a role for the therapeutic support
It’s not just about whether or not people can afford psychedelic therapy, people cant even afford regular therapy, the whole healthcare model is an issue
Santo Daime
It was founded in the 1930’s in Brazil
The reason that the Santo Daime looks more white in the USA is due to the segregation
There are all sorts of ways that the Santo Daime may look
When Rob first got involved in drinking Ayahuasca, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to get involved in the Santo Daime, but he said the container was so strong
There are hymns sung, and it’s very structured
It allows you to really go deep
Sometimes it can look like drumming, dancing, and fire, but there is also a style of sitting in silence
There is a profound ethical foundation which is really important
All of the elements make for a really important container
In the traditional form, you do not touch anyone, unless there is a certain circumstance, and a prior consensual agreement, and waivers signed, etc
There have been issues of sexual abuse in the psychedelic realm, the Santo Daime takes many precautions against this
Churches
There are legal churches in the US through the Daime and the UDV (União do Vegetal)
The Daime has 5 churches that are explicitly legal
The government has decided not to pursue or prosecute Ayahuasca for those other churches
Someone tragically died at the Soul Quest Church, but it wasn’t related to ayahuasca
There are a lot of people that claim to be a part of a Native American church that are not
A lot of people reach out to Chacruna on how to become a part of the Native American Church to hold ceremonies, and it’s not easy, you almost have to already be a part of it, instead of just joining
Some people don’t like the word church, but it originates from the words ‘congregation’ and ‘assembly’
“The problem is the controlled substances act, that these things are illegal in the first place” – Rob
“The experience in all those settings is about community. The goal isn’t to have spiritual experiences, its to have a spiritual life” – Rob
Psychedelics and entheogens could be central to creating a new hub
It is possible to create psychedelic churches outside of the Santo Daime
The Ayahuasca tradition really uses the potential of group process
“How individual is the psychedelic experience, where you need some one-on-one work?” – Kyle
Psychedelic Liberty Summit
April 25-26 in San Francisco
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Rob Heffernan has been involved in the Peruvian curandero tradition and the Santo Daime for the last 16 years. He was a member and chairman of the North American Santo Daime Legal Committee for a number of years. He has been engaged in independent research and active in ad hoc groups promoting legal clarity and ethical integrity in the Ayahuasca Community. He is also a certified Integrative Sound and Music Practitioner; Shamanic Breath Work Facilitator; and a long time student and practitioner of Buddhist Dhamma. He has a BA in Communications and Social Studies from Fordham University, and works in the AV/IT communication industry.
In this episode, Joe interviews Clinical Psychologist, Alicia Danforth. In the show, they cover topics including how to get involved in the space, consent, research, MDMA, Autism and more.
3 Key Points:
Alicia Danforth is a Clinical Psychologist who will be having a talk on Ethical Challenges in Psychedelic Medicine at the ICPR Conference in the Netherlands, April 2020.
There is a possibility for MDMA to have a non-responder effect. No one has done research dedicated to why some people don’t react at all to MDMA.
Psychedelic science is very hard to talk about. We have the language of science that studies the psychopharmacological effects of drugs but no language that holds the effects of an altered state of consciousness yet.
Her path to her current place is such a random road that led her to where she is
She was going to burning man and getting into harm reduction when she realized the untapped value of psychedelics, its where her interest began
She began volunteering, doing administrative work for a doctor
She was offered to be a study coordinator
She got introduced to the power of psilocybin as a medicine, for dying cancer patients
The patients had a prognosis from 6 months to a year
To see how this state of consciousness helped people transition to the end of life so smoothly, that is what inspired her
5 months after she started working on the study, she got a cancer diagnosis
Getting Involved in the Space
Alicia would always get people approaching her about how to get in the field and she tells them “what field?”
Her Power Point making skills, are what technically got her involved in this field
“You never know what skill may be needed in this field” – Alicia
Alicia encourages people to look into their own collection of skills, and dig deep into that, find your niche, and then use that to contribute to the movement
Clinical therapists and psychologists are not the only people in this field We need accountants, marketers, etc
Consent
People start to get really religious around this field
Joe mentions a story where someone performed non-consensual reiki
Current Research
She is currently looking at why psychedelics appeal to people who typically like to abuse power
She did a talk at burning man about ‘coming down from the psychedelic power trip’
She tries to cite as many references and research as possible
Her talk at ICPR is going to be the very professional, version of that talk
Why are individuals who seek to abuse these tools so irresistibly drawn to psychedelics?
“If someone gets abused, and people say don’t come out about it because it’s not good for the movement, then what kind of movement is that?” – Joe
Empathogens
MDMA is known as an Empathogen
Can empathogens help people who are not empathetic, become empathetic?
Cohen’s D is the measure of effect size
Big pharma uses this all the time, to determine the effects of one drug compared to another
The Cohen’s D is how large that difference is
Non-response MDMA
There is a known, non-responder effect with MDMA
There was a few double-blind sessions, where the patient received MDMA, and they didn’t react, their vitals didn’t change
At the end, it was revealed that they truly received MDMA, and then even to be sure, they would do a blood test, and it showed up in the blood
No one has done research dedicated to why some people don’t react at all to MDMA
It’s probably common, that for people who are relying on MDMA to work as their last resort option and try it and not feel anything at all, to end their life afterward
Media and Support
It’s the most difficult thing in dealing with the media
When you are entirely dependent on funding, if you don’t talk about what you’re doing, then you can’t get funding at all
There is a crisis in science on the replicability on these studies
Joe says its cool to have these studies replicated outside of the US
“Psychedelic science is very hard to talk about due to the subjective nature of the psychedelic experience. We have the language of science that studies the psychopharmacological effects of drugs. There is no language that holds the effects of an altered state of consciousness yet.” – Alicia
The rapport that the patient and facilitator have, and the effect of that relationship, is a variable
Alicia received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto in 2013. Since 2006, she has worked in clinical research at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center on clinical studies for adults with anxiety related to advanced-stage cancer and with autistic adults who experience social anxiety. She is currently a lead clinician and supervisor for a clinical trial at UCSF for psychological distress in long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS. She is also certified in Trauma-Focused CBT and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy.
Given the overall state of the world’s mental health, this research is sorely needed, and long-overdue. With the kind of success rates we’ve been seeing, with lasting relief sometimes from one or a few sessions, it’s reasonable to predict that these remarkable substances will play an increasingly important role in the treatment of many mental illnesses, and hopefully will also be sanctioned for safe use in other contexts, as well.
While their effectiveness is becoming more and more established, psychedelics’ “mechanism of action” is perplexing to many psychologists, particularly to believers in prevailing ideas about mental illness and treatment. They’re clearly working, but why or how are they working? What is the cognitive or neurological basis for their sometimes near-miraculous treatment success?
One thing that’s not yet being discussed enough is how the high success rate of psychedelic therapies can be seen as a challenge to dominant mainstream paradigms about psychiatric epidemiology (the study of what causes mental illnesses), particularly the reductionist biological chemical imbalance theory, and related ideas. While we’ve all heard psychedelics are working, the largely untold story is how the way they seem to work should cast doubt on prevailing theories of mental illness.
Reductionism in Psychology
Psychology today has become dominated by the idea that most common mental disorders, particularly mood disorders like depression, can be explained by reducing mental activity to things like chemical imbalances in the brain, a wrench in the neurochemical gears so-to-speak, which are generally more or less random and/or biologically predetermined. While the psychological sciences have acknowledged more recently that depression is more complex than that, the idea remains prevalent among psychiatrists, and the overall view of mental illness in general remains mechanical and biological.
In other words, scientific reductionism in psychology dominates the scene, and determines how mental illnesses are understood, and treated. Like the universe itself, according to philosophical materialism which many think of as “the scientific worldview”, mental illness is considered a random, meaningless occurrence, which is best controlled by adding new chemicals to the brain to offset the error, and perhaps implementing cognitive-behavioral changes through the efforts of the conscious, rational mind. We are biological robots in a meaningless universe, and mental illness is like a computer malfunctioning.
There are many reasons for objecting to biological reductionism in psychology, but the general idea is that a sizeable dissenting minority of psychologists believe reducing everything to brain chemistry and other scientifically measurable variables isn’t enough when it comes to understanding the human mind. Even in a purely materialistic universe, the inability to account for the role of emergent qualities in psychological health goes largely ignored, under this model. While this skepticism of the reduction of the psyche is a powerful intuition in itself, there are also good reasons for believing in the limitations of biopsychiatry on a rational basis, as well.
Psychology has a rich history of non-reductive theories which emerged from other types of methods of investigation, including the humanistic and depth psychology traditions, as well as transpersonal and contemplative approaches, to name a few. Could these now alternative theories of the mind help us understand the findings of the psychedelic renaissance; to go even further, could their legitimacy even be implied by psychedelic experiences, themselves?
These alternative perspectives often pertain to branches of psychology which recognize and deal with things outside the purview of biopsychiatry (meaning things that aren’t so easy to measure), and which aren’t taken seriously by materialism. These include phenomena such as the dynamic between the conscious and unconscious mind, and its importance to psychological well-being, and potentially transcendental components of the human psyche, or at least the importance of transcendental states of consciousness. Because they are difficult to measure and prove, all these are things which the biopsychiatry crowd usually relegates to the realm of pseudoscience, or speculative fancy, and denies their very existence.
Yet, in light of the therapeutic and transformative effect of psychedelics, these ousted theories do seem to be granted a rise in validity. This is not to say that the findings of cognitive neuroscience research into psychedelics are no longer relevant, but an honest assessment of the psychedelic experience in all it’s profound strangeness coupled with its therapeutic success should at least call reductive assumptions into question. If psychedelic experiencers and researchers observe the emergence of unconscious material, and mystical or other non-ordinary states of consciousness, and these seem to act almost like a miracle cure for many of our psychological ailments, why should we ignore what that implies about the ailments themselves?
Depths and Heights Encroaching
The problem (for reductive explanations) is that some of the findings of psychedelic research indicate that their unique action, which can sometimes bring almost overnight cures or at least long-lasting one-time treatments, may pertain to both the emergence of psychological content from the unconscious mind, and also their ability to take people to the heights of human mystical experience. Most people who have encountered psychedelics in culture know of the profound realizations or otherworldly qualities they’re said to have, and in the lab, they are not so different. What’s surprising to those totally disconnected from the very idea of spirituality is that they work so well.
It’s not uncommon to hear recipients of psychedelic therapy say things like, “It was like years of therapy in one night,” or therapists reporting that “Miracles are becoming — not mundane, but pretty normal around here.” Since psychedelics are being found to accelerate psychotherapy by allowing people to discover underlying issues which had been inaccessible to normal therapeutic practices, this arguably implies that there are unconscious elements that influence and perhaps cause mental illnesses, a view long held by depth psychology known as psychodynamics.
Although the unconscious is not necessarily outright rejected by all cognitive scientists, some of whom have proposed a more reductive “New Unconscious”, it has generally been rebuked or deemphasized by the more science-oriented modern trend in psychiatry. The subjective psychedelic experiences of therapy recipients where unconscious material seems to be brought to the surface of consciousness, therefore, calls this rejection into question and deserves further investigation. This is compounded when some neuroscience indicates the validity of psychodynamic models, as well.
While psychedelics’ effects on the unconscious psychodynamics are only slightly explored in the literature, psychedelic mystical experience is a far more heavily researched topic, and its long-lasting psychological benefits have been a central point of the larger discourse around psychedelic research since the time of the Good Friday experiment, in 1962. Some have noted that the benefits of psychedelic mystical experience may relate to their ability to enhance the perception of meaning, another area where science remains agnostic beyond questionnaire measurements. The phenomenon of ego dissolution, where a person’s sense of self is temporarily obliterated to be born anew like a phoenix, also seems to be a major part of what creates these transformative effects.
Tracing from Cure to Cause
Although we typically approach illness by first investigating its cause and then using that knowledge to find its treatment, it is possible to do the reverse, when effective treatments already exist. We can learn more about the cause of a problem through what treats it best; in this case, a better understanding of the epidemiology of mental disorders may be derived from the very fact that the psychedelic experience treats or resolves them better than other methods, and this is most pointedly true in the case of depression.
The negative implications of psychedelics’ success for the chemical imbalance theory of depression aren’t difficult to see. Conventional biopsychiatry wisdom says that depression is a random chemical imbalance, although in more recent years they have broadened it to include “caused by a combination of genetic, biological, environmental, and psychological factors. (NIMH)” The ability of psychedelic mystical experiences to drastically improve or even cure depression, potentially by enhancing meaning, should be a clue that depression may have causes which are simply difficult to measure, and therefore not amenable to a scientific definition.
For instance, some have proposed that a major part of the epidemic of depression is something deeper than a mere chemical imbalance, but is instead a side-effect of a cultural swing towards the philosophy of materialism. Of course, many deny this connection, or even that materialism is inherently depressing, but it’s hard not to see this as straw-grasping. You don’t have to have a doctorate in philosophy to recognize that scientific materialism is dreary, as it basically tells us that we are little more than dust in the wind of a meaningless, purposeless, cold and cruel universe. To deny the inherent bleakness of this perspective is an exercise in futility; I won’t belabor the point here. What’s worse, this is now put forward as the intellectually orthodox worldview.
Naturally, this is not to say that scientific materialism and its intrinsic nihilism are the only reason that people get depressed; no doubt, various factors like economic disparity and poverty, political chaos, childhood development issues, and trauma play a huge part. Regardless, the fact that psychedelic experiences both help with depression and tend to make people more spiritually-minded should give the bio-centric psychiatrists pause. Just because it’s difficult to measure or explain, is it really so hard to see how psychedelics’ ability to show that we might be more than just space dust successfully treats people’s depression, and that this might shed light on a major cause or contributor to the disease itself?
A War of Ideas On the Battlefield of the Mind, and It’s Casualties
The point of critiquing reductionism in psychology is not that we should leave the psychiatric sciences behind us, but rather that a pluralism of methodologies and theoretical approaches have their place, in our quest to understand and heal the human mind. Measuring the activity and chemical levels of the brain during mental illness, or during the psychedelic experiences that seem to treat them, need not lessen or replace other theoretical systems, but instead can supplement them. It doesn’t have to be either/or.
This seems like a fairly pragmatic, diplomatic, and agreeable assessment, but unfortunately, psychology has become a casualty to a much larger ideological war of scientism against all things immeasurable. Psychology is merely one domain, one battlefield in this philosophical conquest, but a critically important one because so much of our suffering or well-being hinges on our having the best understanding of the human mind we can achieve.
One result of this parsing out of anything that can’t be scanned, measured, or repeated in a lab is that the default treatment for mental disorders has become (conveniently for pharmaceutical giants) psychoactive daily medications like antidepressants. We have reached a point in psychiatry where the central goal is essentially to chemically engineer the population’s neuro-soup, until all can be productive members of society, ideally in a way that is highly profitable. The fact that antidepressants aren’t really working comes as no surprise to those who never believed in the adequacy of biopsychiatry, in the first place.
While many seek refuge from guilt or blame in the biological definition of their mental illness, the reality is that understanding our illnesses to be more than just random neurochemical accidents, but perhaps fragmentations or distortions of the psyche which can be healed, can replace biological fatalism and reliance on daily doses of Xanax with hope and progress towards restored mental health. Psychedelics can help us make great leaps towards that brighter future, once we recognize and integrate the things they are showing us, and let go of our outdated ideological assumptions.
About the Author
Jonathan Dinsmore is a writer and digital freelancer with a degree in psychology, and a passion for all things philosophy, science, spirituality, and psychedelics.
Dr. Carl Hart is neuropsychopharmacologist and Chair of Columbia University’s Department of Psychology. His research, which focuses on the behavioral and neuropsychological effects of psychoactive drugs in humans, has been published widely in academic journals, and Dr. Hart has discussed his research on numerous shows including Democracy Now!, The O’Reilly Factor, and The Joe Rogan Experience. His award-winning memoir, High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society, charts Dr. Hart’s journey from childhood in a harsh Miami neighborhood to an academic life devoted to reframing society’s biased and harmful narratives around stigmatized drugs.
At the 2019 Psychedelic Science Summit in Austin, TX, Dr. Hart addressed a crowd of psychedelic enthusiasts about concerning language he’s noticed in psychedelic-focused conversations. In this interview, Dr. Hart explains how these narratives create a “psychedelic exceptionalism” that perpetuates harmful narratives around drugs like heroin, methamphetamine, and crack cocaine, by extension demonizing people who choose to use such substances. In these transitional times, Dr. Hart reminds us of the importance to hold healthy criticism while always maintaining focus as humanitarians.
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Sean Lawlor: In your speech, you were less gung-ho about this psychedelic renaissance than other people. This was partly due to something called “psychedelic exceptionalism.” Can you speak about this?
Carl Hart: This term refers to the perspective that psychedelics are somehow better and more useful than other classes of drugs like opioids or stimulants. I was just trying to remind people that these are all psychoactive substances. They interact on receptors in the brain to produce their effects, and we shouldn’t be treating some drugs as if they’re special while other drugs are somehow evil. Drugs all carry some risk, and depending on how you define danger, they fall on different levels of the spectrum of risk, and benefits.
Sean Lawlor: So, you’re responding to seeing people glorifying psychedelics while continuing to demonize substances that have been demonized since the War on Drugs, if not before?
Carl Hart: That’s exactly it. It’s great to be enthusiastic about your drug of choice. But remember not to vilify other drugs. That puts people at risk, and it marginalizes people. I don’t think anybody really wants to do that.
Sean Lawlor: Can you say more about how that puts people at risk?
Carl Hart: When people talk about heroin being evil or dangerous in generalized ways, it stigmatizes that drug and, by extension, people who use that drug. Then, we have increased penalties, and we view those people as being defective for even using that drug.
Sean Lawlor: A way of “othering” those people, putting them in a negative box.
Carl Hart: That’s right. We did that with crack, and we did that with that methamphetamine. But you look at MDMA versus methamphetamine, and the chemical structures are not that different. But we have wildly different narratives about them. It’s just not warranted.
Sean Lawlor: What do you see as the roots of this exceptionalism?
Carl Hart: I think people think that they’re being strategic. Folks who want to increase the availability of psychedelics for medicinal reasons, for recreation — I think they feel that if they associate with stigmatized drugs, then that stigmatizes their drug of choice. They’re playing a political game, a numbers game — you could say they’re calculating this. But there are people who are really suffering, who don’t have a choice to calculate, and no one’s given us the right to play with people’s lives based on politics. What’s wrong is wrong, what’s right is right, and it’s wrong to vilify drugs and people. No matter what.
That’s why I try to keep the focus on doing what’s right as a human being, as a humanitarian. It’s just wrong to vilify people for wanting to alter their consciousness and the particular drug that they use, especially when you’re doing the same thing with another drug. That’s just inconsistent with respecting other people’s humanity.
Sean Lawlor: I think a lot of people have seen friends and family die from opiates. You talk about how these deaths may be due to what they’re getting, how much fentanyl may be in there, etc. But if someone’s caught in cycles of addiction with drugs that have a higher overdose potential than, say, mushrooms, and a high dose of mushrooms could allow them to work on deeper issues fueling addictive cycles, how could that drug not be seen as more healing?
Carl Hart: Because there are all kinds of assumptions with that question that are flawed. First of all, it’s not up to me to decide what people choose to work on and what drug they use. If they choose heroin as opposed to mushrooms, that’s cool. That’s their decision as autonomous adults. And if we think heroin is uniquely more dangerous than mushrooms — well, if we’re talking about respiratory depression, yes, it certainly can be. But if we’re talking about paranoia at large doses, mushrooms are more dangerous.
When we look at the Swiss situation, with a regulated supply of heroin and all sorts of services, you don’t have the problems of overdose that we see in this country. So it’s not the drug. It’s the conditions under which the drug is being administered.
Now, we do have people in our country who are dying from heroin or opioid-related overdoses. That’s a fact. But that has more to do with the stigma and the social conditions under which the drug is being taken. I am wholeheartedly in support of dealing with those issues, which are not that complicated. We could have a regulated supply of heroin. We could check the mixture to verify that people don’t have an adulterated drug. With mushrooms, you’re less likely to have adulterants in your compounds than you are with opioids. That’s a problem, but not of the opioid itself. That’s a problem of our supply.
Sean Lawlor: How about the problem of what’s underlying people’s addictions in general?
Carl Hart: That’s a whole different issue, that we have to figure out why people are addicted. People are addicted for a variety of reasons — and when I say “addiction,” I mean the DSM criteria for substance use. Those criteria have to do with people’s inability to inhibit, their lack of responsibility skills, or the conditions under which these drugs are available or not available. It has more to do with all of those things than, again, the drug itself.
It’s true that opioids can produce a physical dependence, whereas other drugs are less likely to. But alcohol can produce a physical dependence that is deadly, and we do alcohol relatively well in this country. There are people who have problems with alcohol, but the vast majority of folks don’t. So, alcohol will remain legal.
Whether it’s a drug or an activity like driving a car, people can and will get in trouble. It’s crazy to think we’re somehow going to prevent all negative possible outcomes of some activity. We can certainly take steps to minimize it. And we do. And we could do the same thing with drugs like heroin.
Sean Lawlor: You said something during a panel that elicited a strong response. I believe your quote was, “Heroin made me a better person.” I’m curious what that meant.
Carl Hart: I don’t remember the context that I was saying that. But the point I was trying to make is simple. We have alcohol at receptions, for example, where alcohol functions as a social lubricant. The same can be true with a drug like heroin.
Many of these psychoactive substances people use make them less anxious, more magnanimous — all of these kinds of things. That’s not a shocking statement. It’s only shocking for people infected with the Puritanism virus. Anybody who knows anything about drug use, particularly with opioids, knows they can enhance positive social interactions, and that’s why many people take them.
Sean Lawlor: You’ve said that only 25% of people who use heroin are addicted, which is different than the instant-addiction cultural narrative we’ve inherited.
Carl Hart: Yeah. But still, you don’t want people to become addicted. And when I say addicted, I mean the DSM criteria, not just physical dependence. People who take antidepressants, for example, have physical dependency. They can’t abruptly stop after taking antidepressants for a number of years. They have to be weaned off. The same is true with opioids. So when I say “addiction,” I mean that the person is distressed by their drug use and the consequences of their drug use, and they have disruptions in psychosocial functioning.
That 25% still concerns me. But I think it has to do with the stigma associated with heroin. People have to hide their use and engage in tremendous risk because of how society sees heroin. In places like Switzerland, where heroin is available medically, you don’t see people engaging in disruptive behaviors to get it. They just go to the clinic and they get their daily doses. In many cases, these people work. They’re responsible members of society.
Sean Lawlor: If there’s a psychedelic correlate to these trends, I’d say it’s LSD. Microdosing is popular, but LSD carries the heaviest social stigma of any psychedelic. I hear far less people speak publicly about their use of it than mushrooms and MDMA, which have essentially been adopted as “good.” And LSD often appears at festivals, where you don’t know what you’re getting, and really bad stuff can happen.
Carl Hart: Exactly. You hit it on the head. We see that with all stigmatized drugs. People are more likely to take risks that decrease their likelihood of getting the drug they’re seeking, because people can replace them with more potent drugs. And that could be dangerous.
Sean Lawlor: Do you see any effort in this psychedelic community to combat psychedelic exceptionalism?
Carl Hart: I have to tell you, I’m always disturbed when people identify themselves as a “psychedelic community.” That seems fucking bizarre to me. When you have all of these psychoactive substances, and people are taking them for similar reasons of altering consciousness, and then you have a line — these drugs over here, these drugs over here — I just find it bizarre that people would even identify as such a thing.
Sean Lawlor: Have you noticed that delineation more than me saying it right now?
Carl Hart: Oh, yeah. I didn’t mean — you’re absolutely right. I’m just saying as a neuropsychopharmacologist, as somebody who’s interested in consciousness and having your consciousness altered by these substances, it just seems strange that people would have the audacity to include themselves in a single sort of community that delineates its boundaries in a way that excludes other people doing the same thing.
Sean Lawlor: Yeah, that very language is a kind of exceptionalism, aligning with a “community” that uses drugs that are becoming less stigmatized and more popular.
Carl Hart: Yeah. It’s very disturbing. It’s just inconsistent with being a humanitarian.
Sean Lawlor: I’m thinking about how the War on Drugs set regulations in place that have disproportionately affected people from particular areas or particular races who tend to associate with particular drugs, and how that’s created, institutional divisions.
Carl Hart: But it’s not necessarily the laws. It’s the enforcement of the laws. The laws can be enforced in a way that hits across the various dimensions of society. But the laws are not enforced in that way. The enforcement of the laws seems to focus on specific communities of color, so enforcement is the problem.
My expertise is in drugs, so I focus on that. But this is not unique to drug law enforcement. This is how we behave in this country in general. That’s why I try to help people to understand how their verbal behavior about one compound versus another contributes to a misperception that allows for disproportionate enforcement of the drug laws.
Sean Lawlor: What is your parting advice for people invested in this psychedelic renaissance?
Carl Hart: I would ask that people think about the language they’re using for substances they like versus their language for substances that have been vilified. I ask that people think about the narratives that have been built around crack cocaine and heroin versus the narratives built around drugs like psilocybin and MDMA, and how wildly they conflict. Whether people are using heroin or MDMA, they’re seeking to alter their consciousness. They’re seeking intimacy with partners. They’re seeking the same things.
Sean Lawlor: Thank you for your time, Dr. Hart. I figured some biases and assumptions would come through my questions, but hopefully representing them here can help dismantle them for others who read it.
Carl Hart: I hope so. Thank you for doing this. And if you just remind people to think about other people’s humanity in the same way they think about their own, this won’t be an issue. If they think of people as being equal to them, this is not a problem. We all make mistakes, and that’s fine. But once you remember that no matter who you’re dealing with, they’re another person who deserves the same kind of respect you deserve, then it becomes easy.
About the Author
Sean Lawlor is a writer, certified personal trainer, and Masters student in Transpersonal Counseling at Naropa University, in pursuit of a career in psychedelic journalism, research, and therapy. His interest in consciousness and non-ordinary states owes great debt to Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, and Hunter S. Thompson, and his passion for film, literature, and dreaming draws endless inspiration from Carl Jung, David Lynch, and J.K. Rowling. For more information or to get in touch, head to seanplawlor.com, or connect on Instagram @seanplawlor.
In this episode, Joe interviews Joost Breeksema from the Netherlands to talk about the Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research. In the show they cover topics on ICPR 2020, and the importance of accessibility.
3 Key Points:
The Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research takes place April 24-26, 2020 in the Netherlands.
It’s important to acknowledge the indigenous, ethical, and political dimensions to psychedelic use at conferences.
Although this conference will be catered toward mainstream science and research, personal experiences and stories are important too.
Nobody before was doing research on psychedelics in the Netherlands
William James work sparked Joost’s interest in psychedelics
ICPR
Starting with the OPEN Foundation, the conference has been very scientific
It is interdisciplinary, but also taken very seriously
This field is so broad, you could really never get bored
Wade Davis, Alicia Danforth, Matt Johnson and more will be speaking at the conference
There will be over 80 speakers
Joost expects it to be a pretty international conference, half local, and half from abroad
Psychiatrists are usually short on time, and they like things compressed more
It’s really easy and cheap to grow psilocybin as mushrooms or truffles
Even in Mexico, they need to use GMP Psilocybin
Accessibility
“If this is going to be the treatment, how are we going to help people afford it?” – Joe
There is some tricky stuff happening, companies trying to patent different parts of psilocybin to use it for therapeutic use
Ketamine has been off patent for years, but you can develop a new route of administration, patent that, and make a ton of money
Spravato is making it to the UK
Conference Themes
Joost is both excited and scared that they are bringing indigenous practitioners to the conference
It’s important to acknowledge the indigenous, ethical, and political dimensions to psychedelic use
Talking about concepts and approaches to healing is going to be an important aspect
The goal would be to do research with the indigenous communities to be able to address the needs of psychedelic use
There are also a few neuroimaging people coming
For mainstream scientists, the conference has to be as close to a scientific conference as possible, they may be turned off to the cultural aspects of psychedelics
It’s the conservative nature of psychedelia
Joost also says that although the scientific research is important, it is really cool to hear the personal experiences
Joost Breeksema is a part of the OPEN Foundation, which from it came the Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research. His current research focuses on the experiences of patients that are undergoing therapy assisted by psychedelic substances. His aim is to better understand psychological mechanisms of action/change, to tease out salient themes, and finally to learn about what works and what does not work in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
In this episode, Kyle invites a guest interviewer, Hallie Rose of the Thought Room Podcast, to interview him on his recent experience at Soltara. In the show, they talk about Soltara, Kyle’s experience with the plant medicine, and important topics like privilege.
3 Key Points:
Integration is an important part of working with psychedelics and plant medicines. Indigenous cultures have different integration perspectives than Western attendees. In the West, attendees come back to more hustle and bustle, and may need more time for integration. Soltara does a really good job at providing integration resources and educating guests about the post-medicine experience.
Ayahuasca is a relational medicine. An anology that one of the facilitators used was that with psilocybin and other psychedelics, there is this one big entry door into the space – you eat the mushrooms and open the door and get to experience it heavily. With Ayahuasca, there is a smaller doorway to penetrate throug and you have to create a relationship with the medicine first.
If the people that really need the help can’t even afford medicine experiences, then how do we have mass healing? Peer support movements may be a way forward with this issue. As the field continues to grow, we need to look at more affordable and accessible models.
Hallie mentions that she was blown away by the amount of effort that it takes to uphold a medicine center like Soltara
Kyle says right from the start from arrival to the location, he was greeted with such warmth and it reminded him of his breathwork background
The ground rules that they laid down right at the start made him feel so safe
She said it’s amazing to see the amount of healing that happens in that space
“When it comes to your own medicine work, your own journey work, only you know what’s right for you” – Hallie
Hallie is part of a mastermind group through Aubrey Marcus, the CEO of Onnit
She is connected to a bunch of people as a part of this group
She was introduced to Dan Cleland, a co-founder of Soltara, who invited her to come down
Yes they had the traditional Shipibo aspects, but they also did a fantastic job of adding in the Western concepts to cater to the western needs
Hallie mentions that coming from the West, we have the need to integrate the experience in a different way than those coming from the East, and Soltara does a really good job with that kind of integration
The First Session
Before the first ceremony, participants engaged in what is called “vomitivo.” This is a process of clearing the body through purging. Participants are asked to drink a tea made from lemongrass and other admixtures that contain purgative properties.
Kyle said the tea was actually tasty
You drink a lot of it where you override the system to where the body wants to purge
The purging is to clear the system out of toxins and clean it out energetically
Soltara built in pre-ceremony sessions like yoga or meditation to help ease into the actual sessions
Kyle said that the Ayahuasca experience was familiar
Everything felt very green behind his eyes
There was a serpent weaving in and out of his DNA
The experience felt so healing
Kyle didn’t purge (vomit) but did do a little crying
He said he did not experience much anxiety
The serpent was healing him and stitching parts of himself back together
“There is something intelligent here working on very subtle levels” – Kyle
The next two ceremonies were very gentle, some crying, going through family dynamics, but always in the background, there was that same serpent
Kyle said the first 3 sessions felt really easy, compared to previous experiences with psychedelics
The spirit said to him “oh you think this was going to be easy, that you would just drink this and that I would show you all this stuff. Well, we have to get to know each other first”
With psilocybin, there is this one big door, you eat the mushrooms and open the door and get to experience it heavily, with Ayahuasca, there is a smaller doorway to penetrate through, you have to create a relationship with the medicine first
Final Ceremony
It was during the full moon in Cancer and lunar eclipse, the energy was already intense
For the 4th ceremony, Kyle was already feeling high energy, and did not want to go too strong, so he started with ¾ of a cup
Kyle felt more subtle effects of the medicine during the first part of the ceremony and the medicine told him to ask for a second dose
The facilitator gave Kyle ¼ of a cup more
That ¼ of a cup really opened up a door for Kyle
After the singing, he laid down and that’s when things took off
All of a sudden, he saw himself back in the CAT scan machine (referring back to his NDE as a teen)
He always tells the story as blissful and beautiful, but this time was so different
He saw himself back in the CAT scan machine as a child, and was terrified, and he began shaking
He felt this pain in his pelvic area as he felt during his NDE
He was shivering and so cold, it brought him right back into that state
He was re-experiencing the fear in a new way during the ceremony
He went into his body and felt the scar tissue and felt that shake and stretch and kind of brought in some healing there
After his actual surgery/NDE, as he was healing he was always really afraid to move in certain ways in the fear that movement would re-open some of the healing wounds
He got a clear way of looking at how the body holds trauma, especially after surgery
That trauma is tied to the way we hold ourselves, the way we walk and talk and in so many ways
This ceremony helped Kyle view somatic body work in such a new light
The ceremony was not scary, he allowed his body to process the fear, but not attach to the fear and become fearful
Yoga can also bring that out, stillness and vulnerability can bring up some body trauma and put you into that fight or flight response
Even when you think you’re done processing something, there are always more layers to dig into and see something differently to bring more clarity
Preparation
Hallie said what she is learning with this medicine, is that she doesn’t need to make anything happen, she needs to just let it happen
That feeling of relaxing things is scary because it means giving up control
It’s a practice and its a lot easier said than done
The most important part is the set (mindset), because the set is you
“Having your set figured out, when the going gets tough, you’re safe still” – Hallie
Kyle said that Aya always told him to wait, he didn’t need to jump into trying it right away, he waited over 10 years to process his NDE trauma
Hallie says it’s just like marriage, you can get married easily, but it’s not always going to work out if you don’t have the tools and the skill sets to maintain it
Ayahuasca is similar in needing the right tools and time to do it right
The dieta and the prep itself is so hard
People are turned off by the idea of doing something disciplined
These experiences can be so much different when we go through the process of giving something up
It’s not to punish ourselves, it’s to heal ourselves
“There is a whole other side of us, that opens up when we cut out some of the things that numb us” – Hallie
The dieta strips away the illusions, the plant medicines help us remember who we are
Hopi Creation Story
The great creator said “I have a gift for the human beings, but I need to hide it somewhere until they are ready to find it”
It is “the gift of the knowing that they can create anything, they can create their own reality”
The creator asked the earth where he should hide it
The eagle said he will bring it to the moon
The fish said he will bring it to the bottom of the sea
The buffalo said he will bring it to the edge of the plains
The creator said no to all of them, they will find it there
So the great grandmother who lives in the breast of the earth said, put it inside of them
And the creator said “it is done”
It brought Kyle back to his fourth ceremony, the Ayahuasca was a reminder that everything he needed was already inside of him
Privilege
It’s hard to tell people of their only legal options for healing, which most of them are leaving the country, which is not an option for some people
We are all worthy of finding relief of our suffering through psychedelics
Is therapy only going to be for the rich and elite? There are so many people who really need it
Yes, you can grow mushrooms, but then you’re at risk of the law
The system is so complex and we need a more humane way of moving forward in this field and offer experiences like this to the people that need it
Therapy is a privilege
Most people that need therapy are in survival mode that don’t have the privilege of access to therapy
Peer support movements are a way forward in this issue
If the people that really need the help can’t even afford it, then how do we have mass healing?
There are great healers out there that never became healers because they didn’t have the privilege to
Kyle says he escaped a lot of suicidal ideation after his near death experience, it took a lot of time to call earth his home
“Just to wake up and be a part of this, even that is magical in itself” – Kyle
“The stars come out every night, and we watch television” – Hallie
Authentic Self
Hallie has recently had her 12th Ayahuasca experience
“I am no longer breathing, I am being breathed” – Hallie
“Hatred does not exist, it is only a resistance to love” – Hallie
Even being hard on ourselves is only a resistance to loving ourselves
Its love with nowhere to go
People that have a lot of self hatred toward their bodies or themselves, the medicine always comes back to the self, it teaches people to love and take care of themselves
“You really can’t love anything outside of yourself until you love yourself” – Hallie
Kyle says that the people who he looks up to (ex, Stan Grof), what if they never showed up for themselfves? What if they never stood up for what they believe in?
Hallie Rose is an author, speaker, educator, and relationship coach from New York City. She is the host of The Thought Room Podcast and also the founder & CEO of the company Lunar Wild which aims to reclaim the sacred feminine and address a modern need for a Rite of Passage into womanhood. The Thought Room is a combination of edge-of-your-seat storytelling and groundbreaking interviews with celebrated thought-leaders from around the world. The show covers a breadth of topics including psychology, spirituality, sex & relationships, psychedelic science & plant medicine, bio-hacking, fitness, nutrition, alternative health, business & entrepreneurship, mindfulness, yoga, and meditation.
A few important notes. This is an episode of an individual experimenting with powerful drugs to see if he can get any sort of relief from autism. In this case, it appears to have been successful. That said, this came with a substantial amount of risks, and people need to be aware. Please read the below bullets so you understand.
Autism is not what is treated. The thing being treated would be a symptom like social anxiety.
“The field of autism science includes a long and shameful history of quack treatments and parents taking desperate and harmful measures to “fix” their children. Autism is a spectrum of congenital and neurocognitive variants, and there are no published research data in support of any compound that can influence its course.” Alicia Danforth, PhD
Please do not administer these drugs to children with autism. It would be highly unethical to do so.
There are only two researchers investigating where MDMA and autism meet – Alicia Danforth PhD and Dr. Charlie Grob. A scientific paper will likely be available on this in the next few months. Expect to see more here.
These drugs have not been shown to cure or treat autism, but in some cases, just like with neuro-typical individuals, some have seen meaningful changes.
Even if changes are noticed the person is still autistic no matter how many high doses of psychedelics they take.
Obtaining pure drugs is very difficult if not impossible in black markets.
Verifying purity will require the resources of mass spectrometry from organizations offering these services like Energy Control or Ecstasy Data
Providing unsafe, dirty or compromised drugs to people can cause serious harm or death.
If you are planning to use MDMA to alleviate some suffering on your own, please wait or don’t.
Do substantial research and have skilled people available to help.
Thanks to Alicia Danforth for helping us understand the nuance’s in this area.
..autism is a genetically determined cognitive variant. It’s pervasive, and it affects the whole person, not just the brain. No chemical compound has been shown to treat, cure, or alter the course of autism. However, for some people, substances like MDMA can help them manage symptoms such as anxiety, social anxiety, and trauma effects. – Alicia Danforth, Ph.D
In this episode, Joe sits down with Aaron Orsini, Author of Autism on Acid. In this powerful episode, Aaron shares his moving story on how LSD gave him life-saving relief from his struggles with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
3 Key Points:
Aaron spent the first 20+ years of his life suffering from the struggles of Autism Spectrum Disorder. He changed his life in an unexpected way through the use of LSD.
LSD gave Aaron the emotional installation of perception to see the stimuli in life that he had been blind from because of his disorder.
Aaron is the author of the book, Autism on Acid, a self told story on his autistic perceptions before, during and after his LSD experience. He goes into great depth on his experience in the show.
He didn’t know what he needed, he just wanted to leave
He got a backpack and a bike and headed west toward California
He had an opportunity to try LSD
He thought it was going to be an escape, and it ended up being the most involved experience of his life
He sat on a tree stump in a wooded area, finally noticing everything that had been there his whole life that he hadn’t seen before
He saw the beauty in literally being alive
He sat there and cried for an hour or two, it was a lot
Aaron eventually got up, and started walking and saw some people walking and he had an urge to say hello, so he did, and they said “hello, how are you” back
He describes it as a sensation of a child riding a bike for the first time
Them saying “hello, how are you” to him, was the first time he experienced someone saying hello to him and him feeling it
It was like a def person getting a cochlear implant and hearing for the first time
It kick started his exploration of the world around him
Integration
His LSD experience was about 6 years ago, and he didn’t know much about LSD at the time
He didn’t know what to do with his experience
In the beginning, he felt as if he would go into it, see everything very clearly, and then back out of it again, and things felt more muted and ‘blurry’
“I was utilizing LSD, not for a sub-perceptive, metabolic effect, I was going for a supra-perceptive effect” – Aaron
Aaron was taking at or slightly above the threshold dose amount (20-50micrograms)
For someone who already had sensitivity issues, it was very apparent when he would take ‘too much’
In no way is he advocating someone to repeat what he has done, he wants it more to spark interest in researchers to find more data on this in the hopes to find relief for others
Emotional Installation
“LSD has helped me understand myself and embrace that” – Aaron
Aaron said he’s willing to take a risk to not be anonymous, because it’s not some simple thing, it’s so important, it’s the most important thing to him
He gets emails all the time saying the same thing has happened to them, but they want to stay anonymous
Aaron says it has changed his relationships with his loved ones, the fact that he has this new depth of feeling has changed his relationships dramatically
The main treatments for kids with autism was to help the caretaker, to help the child not fidget when they sleep
Aaron says he needed to fidget, he needed to squirm around
“If you can’t hear, and someone is telling you over and over again ‘listen, listen, listen’, how are you going to begin to listen? That’s the void that LSD filled.” – Aaron
He fell in love with parts of himself that he didn’t get a chance to before
Every other form of therapy was coming from the outside and telling him what to feel, LSD was the only therapy that came from the inside
He mentions a quote from a documentary on someone who used truffles to help them, “Truffles installed emotionality in me”
Hope for Research
There were studies done with LSD on autistic children in hospital settings before the drug prohibition
The results showed the kids changing so fast and so effectively
It’s a difficult topic, ASD research in general is heavily funded by the government
Autism aside, the older you are in life, the more surprised you are when that veil is lifted for a moment
The risk that he is taking is nothing compared to the significance of what good this has a chance of bringing
It’s not a desired risk to come out as an Autistic person, and especially as one who has taken controlled substances to heal from it
Aaron Paul Orsini is a writer, public speaker, and survivor of a decades-long battle with clinical depression resulting from social isolation, mental rumination, and hypo-sensitivity issues common in autistic individuals. When Aaron was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of 23, he took comfort in receiving a diagnosis but remained deeply depressed as a result of seeing himself as broken and blind; someone who just couldn’t and wouldn’t “get it”. But then came his first experience with LSD, during which he became intuitively aware of the very stimuli he’d been incapable of perceiving throughout his life. Thanks to LSD—and a yet-to-be-fully-understood combination of chemically-induced synesthesia and associated fluctuations in intrinsic functional connectivity within the salience and default mode networks, Aaron can now perceive critical social cues embedded in facial expressions, speaking tones, and body language, which in turn means he feels fully connected to the human experience, and fully capable of navigating the social and emotional landscapes of life.
In this episode, Joe interviews Dr. Peter Addy, Licensed Mental Health Counselor out of Washington. In the show, they talk about the research and therapeutic use of Salvia.
3 Key Points:
Salvinorin A is the active molecule that causes the psychedelic experiential reports, although there are at least a dozen unique compounds in the Salvia plant.
In a recreational setting, Salvia is usually smoked, but in the Mazatec culture, they do not smoke it, they use a sublingual method.
The clinical applications of Salvia are tricky right now. It’s not easy to get funding for psychedelic research.
Peter helped found the Yale Psychedelic Speaker Series
The main goal was to normalize talking about psychedelic research as research
Peter joined the pharmacology lab for his post doctoral research on Salvia
The team was mainly studying THC but were also studying Ketamine
He wanted to bring in MDMA and Psilocybin research
Peter attended The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
As a psychologist, Peter focused heavily on feedback and experience
Transpersonal Psychology
It all started when Peter stumbled across a dusty book in the library as a Freshman, " target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">States of Consciousness by Charles Tart The book talked a lot about meditation
Joe says he has been practicing non-drug transpersonal states (breathwork) for years
You can have a psychedelic experience without drugs, and you can also take psychedelics and not have the psychedelic experience at all, it’s not about the drug
“Everyone has an innate desire towards transcending who they are, moving towards wholeness, and personal and societal transformation” – Peter
“If I’m kind, then people around me are more likely to be kind, it’s about the transformation of groups and societies than about having a cool trick” – Peter
Salvia
“Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy is proven to do a lot of really good things, but it’s not the only way and it’s not necessarily the right way. There are wrong ways to do it, but not one culture owns this experience.” – Peter
“Having a healthy critique of science in the modern world is helpful because its a series of provisional truths, it’s a good tool to get closer to objective reality, but its not perfect, it’s all we have so far” – Joe
Peter says that art is an amazing tool as well
Verbal language is limiting, he has seen images that can convey an experience way better than words can
Salvinorin A is the active molecule that causes the psychedelic experiential reports
There are at least a dozen unique compounds in the Salvia plant
There was going to be a bill to make Salvia illegal in 2008 or 2009
Now it’s just illegal for minors
Salvia Study
Peter recruited 30 people who had all used psychedelics
He used a controlled set, setting and intention
He used either a Salvia extract or just the unadulterated leaf
No one in the real world is using Salvinorin A, they are smoking the leaf or using extracts of the leaf
The participants smoked it when they desired, Peter was not enforcing the smoking
It was a very relaxed setting
Once the participants smoked, they then had an experience for 10 minutes, and then he came together with them and just listened to their experience
2 people got up and moved, the rest just sat there in the experience
Interoception (the inner feelings of your body) is the internal form of proprioception (the feeling of your body in space)
Every time you smoke something it is going to hit you quickly and be over quickly
By the time you realize what’s going on in a Salvia experience, you’re already on your way out
In the Mazatec culture, they do not smoke it, they use a sublingual method
Advice
The clinical applications of Salvia are tricky right now
It’s not easy to get funding for psychedelic research
Peter says if you do get funding, attach it to something else
MDMA research didn’t just begin to ‘see what it could help’, PTSD sucks, and there isn’t a whole lot that works to treat it, but MDMA does and it just happens to be a type of psychedelic
Peter is both a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Washington and a Licensed Professional Counselor in Oregon. He earned a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Sofia University in 2011, including certification in biofeedback and Process Oriented Psychodrama. There, he studied non-ordinary states of consciousness, holistic and all-encompassing views of a person, and ways that these experiences can transform a person and society. Peter then engaged in post-degree specialty training at Danville State Hospital, Yale University School of Medicine, and the Connecticut Mental Health Center. As faculty at Yale University he engaged in research and training. Some of his clinical training is in mindfulness-based therapies, Motivational Interviewing, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. He also discovered a passion for data management and security which he brings with him to his online therapy practice.
In today’s episode, Joe visits Naropa in Boulder, CO to sit down with Rafael Lancelotta and Alan Kooi Davis. Alan is a Clinical Psychology Professor at Ohio State and Rafael is a legal Psychedelic Therapist operating out of Innate Path in Colorado.
3 Key Points:
Facilitation is a huge problem in the 5-MEO-DMT space. Some people take it without the intention of working on it afterward, they are commonly given too much, and also in a poor context. This recipe of poor facilitation and guidance leads to a lot of challenging experiences and a lot of integration work.
The feeling of oneness typically arises when taking 5-MEO-DMT. It can be great for some, but for others, it can be extremely overwhelming and harmful when not provided the correct intention, context and tools to work through it.
Privilege is a huge issue in the psychedelic space. The goal in this space is to make everyone’s voice heard, not just those of privilege.
Rafael studied Mental Health Counseling at the University of Wyoming
He is currently at Innate Path in Lakewood, CO doing Ketamine and Cannabis assisted Psychotherapy
Alan
Alan is on the Faculty at John’s Hopkins
He is a Clinical Psychologist
He is currently doing clinical research on psychoactive substances
5-MEO-DMT
It is a psychoactive substance that comes from the Sonoran Desert Toad
It’s a fast acting and powerful psychedelic substance that is challenging to predict
Some have amazing, beautiful and transcendent experiences, but it also has the ability to bring up challenging and dark things to deal with
It isn’t as visual as other psychedelics, it has to deal a lot more with consciousness itself
“It may feel like being shot right into the center of love, or the center of the universe” – Alan
DMT can be more visual, while 5-MEO-DMT can be more spiritual, not that they can’t dip into each other
5-MEO-DMT Harms
Alan did a talk on 5-MEO-DMT at Horizons
There are a lot of harms when using 5-MEO-DMT
Both Alan and Rafael have been contacted numerous times about looking for facilitators or about trying to integrate massive and difficult experiences
An ego death, in the right context, can be transformative, but in the wrong context, can be extremely harmful.
The facilitators are the problem
If the facilitators are delivering the medicine in a shamanic practice, and the people using it are coming from a Western mindset, then with goals misaligned, there can be some major issues
People have these grand, god-like experiences when using psychedelics, then feel like they need to become shamans and facilitate these experiences for others and have literally no clue or education on how to properly care for these people using the Toad
Joe says facilitators commonly overdose their users because the toad venom is hard to predict potency
Alan says that the fear response needs to be initiated when extracting the venom from the toad
He thinks it can come up as a huge problem when using 5-MEO-DMT from a fear-stricken animal
Alan says there is a lot of reports of feeling abducted by aliens, and it could be related to the fear response from the toad being hunted for its venom
It’s a similar concept to the traumatization of any other animal by the way it is killed and then eating the meat of that traumatized animal
On average, there is roughly 10-20% of 5-MEO-DMT in the venom
Oneness
When someone becomes ‘one’ with everything, it takes a lot of detailed integration
When someone becomes ‘one’ with everything, that would also mean that they experience the suffering of everything around them
When the rational mind comes back online, if the person does not decide to take action, it can be seriously overwhelming to feel that oneness
Integration has part to do with the experience but then the other part is everything before it, our family, relationships, job, our personality, etc.
“Yeah its cool that we are one with the universe, but so is everything else” – Rafael
Power and Privilege
Privilege means having a voice, but it also means position in society, gender, race etc
In psychedelics, for so long, it has been so hard to find a voice
But with this psychedelic renaissance, it has become so much easier to speak up about psychedelic use, research, etc
The people within the scientific community get put on a pedestal to speak about psychedelic research
Alan says his goal as someone in the middle of the research role, is to create community, to bring every voice to be heard
Being connected to psychedelics in anyway, used to mean prosecution
There are still imbalances that need to be looked at
The psychedelic renaissance is a chance to look at systemic issues
We need to determine what our personal values are, and values of the whole community, and whether or not they are aligned
Final Thoughts
Alan says his goal is to continue having a voice and allowing others’ voices to be heard in this space
Rafael says his goal is to make this therapy more available to those who can benefit from it and not just for the privileged
Rafael is a graduate from the University of Wyoming in Mental Health Counseling. He has worked as a wilderness therapy guide with adolescents and young adults experiencing a wide range of emotional and psychological challenges. He has also worked as a counselor at the Behavioral Health Services unit of a psychiatric hospital treating severe and persistent mental illness and medically supervised drug and alcohol detox. He has worked on several research projects studying the epidemiology of 5-MeO-DMT use in the global population and is also the administrator of 5meodmt.org, an online forum dedicated to hosting community discussions on harm reduction, integration, and safe practices around 5-MeO-DMT use. He is interested in the use of psychedelics paired with therapy for increased resiliency, mental health, and openness. He believes that the counseling relationship is essential to deepen, enhance, and actualize the benefits of psychedelic-assisted therapy. He is passionate about finding ways to make psychedelic-assisted therapies available to all those who may benefit from it as well as helping to raise awareness as to responsible clinical applications of psychedelics/entheogens.
About Alan Kooi Davis
Dr. Alan K Davis is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at The Ohio State University and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Psychedelic Research Unit at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Davis’s clinical experience includes working with people diagnosed with trauma-based psychological problems such as addiction, PTSD, depression, and anxiety. His clinical expertise includes providing evidenced-based treatments such as motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy. Consistent with his clinical interests, his research interests and expertise focus on contributing to the knowledge of and ability to help those suffering with substance use and mental health problems, understanding how to improve clinical outcomes through examining new treatments, and developing ways to conceptualize substance use and mental health problems through a strengths-based approach.
Sonoran Desert toads emerge from earthly tombs every year after the late summer monsoons roll in, which cause countless tiny ponds and lakes to form. Though most will evaporate in a few hours or days, toads lay eggs in the depths of these small water beds. Most of the tadpoles won’t last longer than the waters in which they are born, a few will become pollywogs then toads, ensuring survival for another generation.
Life in the desert is stark as it is. But these unique desert toads are currently facing a host of new threats, including climate change, habitat loss and — perhaps most dangerous — commodification. Bufo alvarius, the Sonoran Desert toad’s scientific name, is the only known animal source of 5-MeO-DMT, a popular chemical among psychedelic users. Unfortunately, poachers overharvest toads to feed the ever-growing market for this powerful substance. While the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species placed these toads in the lowest category of risk for extinction in 2004, the same report acknowledged they were virtually extinct in California. Scientists, conservationists, and artists are banding together to ensure the rest of the species avoids a similar fate.
Climate Change on Habitats
To understand how human-caused climate change could impact Sonoran Desert toads, we first need to look at potential effects on their home region. A 2012 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicted that the Southwest would continue to get hotter and drier. A 2018 National Climate Assessment bore out those predictions. This is bad news for toads, who already live near their physiological limits. More troubling was a 2017 report in Nature Climate Change, which predicted the probable decline of monsoons by 30 to 40 percent over the next century.
Thomas R. Jones, Amphibians and Reptiles Program Manager for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, believes parsing the impact of climate change from other threats and historical fluctuations is difficult if not impossible. This past summer he observed a decrease in toad populations at a site where they are normally abundant. “I think it’s a reasonable assumption to say if the monsoon gets squirrely and we have drier years, it will be rougher on summer breeding anurans — toads and frogs — like the Sonoran Desert toad,” Jones said.
Overdevelopment and the Destruction of Habitats
While climate change looms like ominous clouds in the distance, habitat loss is the single greatest threat to Sonoran Desert toads. According to a 2013 report from the USDA, 90 percent of riparian areas in Arizona and New Mexico converted to other land uses over the last century, ultimately turning habitats into agriculture fields or residential developments. At the same time, surface water was diverted from the few year-round rivers into massive reservoirs as aquifers pumped out groundwater in order to supply the region’s growing population and agricultural production.
These toads once thrived in farmland irrigation systems, too. But, due to the increasingly intense use of chemicals — both pesticides and fertilizers — and mechanization, they disappeared from some agriculture areas, such as the Southern California side of the Colorado River and the Imperial Valley.
Paved roads are also particularly deadly to these creatures. Toads go to pools that form on impermeable surfaces where water can more easily absorb through their skin. The hot spots for Sonoran Desert toads are lined with roads, often putting them in harm’s way. In fact, a 2010 study in Human-Wildlife Interactions estimated 12,264 amphibians died annually on roads in and around Saguaro National Park just west of Tucson, Arizona. Roads also hinder the toad’s range, causing a loss in gene flow, or genetic evolution, which negatively effects populations, according to Jones. “The number of animals that die on roads are just huge.”
Pop Culture, Money, and Psychedelic Tourism
The least understood threat is the impact of poaching and overharvesting for the 5-MeO-DMT market. Though Sonoran Desert toads can be legally gathered with appropriate licenses in Arizona, collecting them for the extraction of 5-MeO-DMT — which became a Schedule 1 substance in 2011 — is a federal crime.
In order to extract 5MeO-DMT, the toads must be agitated, which causes their glands to excrete poison. Then, it’s squeezed or scraped out. Robert Villa, president of the Tucson Herpetological Society (THS) and a research associate at the University of Arizona’s Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, is concerned about the harm this poses to toad survival.
“I think what’s going to happen over time is that if intensive collection continues,”Villa explained,“it’s going to create a vacuum in these areas, what is also known as a mortality sink.”
Some argue that indigenous communities have used the drug for centuries. But Villa points to flaws in this argument, saying that some advancing this position may have a vested financial interest in doing so. Some scholars have cited the discovery of toad bones at shamanic burial sites. If true, it could legitimize the toad extraction industry, helping businesses grow at the expense of the toad populations. For doctors or others selling 5-MeO-DMT, this would be a boon.
But Villa noted the bones were from a different species of toad that doesn’t produce 5-MeO-DMT. He is not convinced by the evidence that indigenous people historically used the toad as a source of 5-MeO-DMT. “We couldn’t decipher it from residues. There’s research that discovered cacao residue in pots in New Mexico,” Villa explained. “What we see today is a blatant misuse of indigenous culture to do it.”
We may never know who first smoked 5-MeO-DMT for sure, but one of the earliest academic papers citing its psychedelic properties appeared in a 1967 issue of Biochemical Pharmacology. Then, knowledge about how to extract, prepare, and consume 5-MeO-DMT from toads was first widely propagated by a pamphlet written in 1983. The document contained detailed instructions, diagrams, and background information. Its author was listed as Albert Most, a pen name, though multiple people throughout history have claimed to be Most.
Though its authorship is disputed, the pamphlet’s role in raising awareness about the drug is not. Following its publication, groups like the Church of the Toad of Light started promoting 5-MeO-DMT consumption. Its proponents claim the drug can help with depression and anxiety, which was supported by a study in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse earlier this year. Advocates also claim it helps with recovery from substance abuse.
Unfortunately, a number of bad actors are harming toads and humans by providing the toad excrement for consumption. An open letter published earlier this year accused two doctors who facilitate 5-MeO-DMT use, Octavio Rettig and Gerry Sandoval, of defrauding, harming, and even causing patients to die. Numerous self-proclaimed shamans administer the drug illegally throughout the US and other countries. One such person was identified as Shaman Dan. He is alleged to have led a series of 5-MeO-DMT parties at the residence of a woman in Southern California, who we’ll call Christina (not her real name) for the sake of anonymity.
Christina was connected to Shaman Dan by her mentors, who recruited her into Amway, a multi-level marketing company accused of being a pyramid scheme by consumer advocates, academics, and newspapers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. She described Shaman Dan as a white male under 25-years-old who formerly sold energy drinks through a multi-level marketing company. He told Christina that he was trained in Mexico by a woman named Shaman Sandra. After extracting the toad’s poison — which Christina incorrectly identified as venom — Shaman Dan described using an undisclosed chemical as a bonding agent into the 5 MeO-DMT blend.
“It’s not something the individual taking it knows,” Christina said. “That’s why it’s very important that you trust whoever is administering this, because if they do not know what they’re doing, they will mess you up. It’s basically like taking crystal meth from a drug dealer off the street.”
Public awareness of the toad has grown rapidly in recent years, with increasing references not just in academic journals, but in popular media as well. Journalist and author Michael Pollan discussed his negative experience with 5-MeO-DMT in his 2018 bookHow to Change Your Mind, which reached number one on the New York Times bestsellers list. Pollan also discussed the subject on The Joe Rogan Experience,a popular podcast. Host Joe Rogan has covered 5-MeO-DMTs transformative power many times, perhaps most notably in an episode from earlier this year with Mike Tyson. All this buzz leaves the little toads facing evermore heavyweight dangers from all corners.
The Sonoran Desert toad does not face these challenges alone, however. The THS is funding a project to study how the ionic composition of cement water holes may be harmful or even lethal to amphibians. Villa partnered with Cream Design and Print to produce t-shirts, posters and other items that spread awareness about the danger extraction poses to toads, and to raise money for conservation efforts. He hopes that if potential 5-MeO-DMT users know the harm they’re doing to these hardy animals, that they will choose less-harmful methods for obtaining whatever it is they seek.
While the toad may be the only animal source for 5-MeO-DMT, the compound can be synthesized and found in many plants. The seeds of one species of Anadenanthera trees in South America contain 5-MeO-DMT and DMT. Virola trees also originate from South America, and some species of this plant contain both forms of DMT as well. They are both typically prepared as snuffs but can be consumed otherways as well.
Synthetic 5-MeO-DMT is in many ways a superior delivery vehicle to the toad-sourced variety. The extract from toads contains many other chemicals and can be dangerous if it is not consumed correctly. Synthetic 5-MeO-DMT can be precisely dosed, whereas every toad’s extract is a little different. The study cited earlier showing 5-MeO-DMT’s effectiveness as a treatment for depression and anxiety used the synthetic variety in its experimental trials.
The benefits of synthetic versus toad-sourced 5-MeO-DMT were even discussed by Rogan on his podcast. Rogan reported a very positive experience when he consumed synthetic 5-MeO-DMT. Pollan had a very different reaction, describing his consumption of the toad-sourced variety as horrible. For the most toad-loving psychonauts, these alternatives can provide a safer and more eco-conscious way to experience this unique molecule. “It boils down to your individual ethics,” Villa said. “As psychonauts, I would hope that you are able to think about how your use of substances and your acquisition of those substances has an effect on the rest of the world.”
About the Author
Jeff Kronenfeld is an independent journalist and fiction writer based out of Phoenix, Arizona. His articles have been published in Vice, Overture Global Magazine and other outlets. His fiction has been published by the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Four Chambers Press and other presses. For more info, go to www.jeff-k.com.
In today’s episode, Joe interviews Mike Jay, Author of the book, Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic. In the show they discuss Mescaline’s origins and the history of Peyote use.
3 Key Points:
Mike Jay is a Cultural Historian and Author whose topics include science, medicine, drugs, madness, literature and radical politics.
Mike’s recent book, Mescaline, is a definitive history of mescaline that explores its mind-altering effects across cultures, from ancient America to western modernity.
Over time, Peyote has been used by spiritual seekers, by psychologists investigating the secrets of consciousness, artists exploring the creative process, and by psychiatrists.
Mike Jay is a freelance writer, an author and cultural historian
Mike has been interested in Mescaline for a really long time
Indigenous Use
James Mooney is a crucial figure in the transition from indigenous use of peyote to the more current applications
The New Deal made religions respected, protected under the First Amendment for freedom of worship
History
There is a ton of literature before the 60’s on psychedelic use
It was obvious that if people were interested in psychoactive drugs, they would take it themselves
Back then, science was much more proactive than it is today, but it is becoming more popular again
Peyote Experience
It’s hard to find an ethical source of Peyote
Mike says its unpleasant but warm and tingly and euphoric
By 1970, Mescaline was this legendary substance, but it was hard to find on the streets unless you knew an underground chemist
On the Erowid site, they have a bulletin that the DEA created about all of the street drug seizures He wrote a book 20 years ago called Emperors of Dreams
2CB is not as intense as Mescaline
Mescaline is a phenethylamine
It does not cross the blood brain barrier as easily. So you need to take more of it
It is a body and mind drug
Indigenous Use
The Comanches were in a reservation in the Wichita mountains
He was notified by the Comanches on some history
He went to meet with them, and they told him stories on the history
Peyote use originated inside of a Tipi
“The way that we see psychedelics in modern Western culture, is not the only way of thinking about it:” – Mike
Native American Church
There is an interesting thing that happened between Mexican/South American Shamanic practice and Native American Church
In the ceremony, the facilitator is made to not ask like a priest, everyone is their own priest
It is a healing modality for everybody
The very first peyote experiences in the west encouraged artists to make art
Salvador Dali was apparently anti-drug use
The surrealist movement had a number of rules
Huichol art is a very psychedelic inspired art
The plant
Peyote is so fast growing, in some places it is growing naturally
San Pedro is way more sustainable than Peyote
There is a lot of demand for Peyote currently
Joe says he thinks that Peyote is not scheduled in Canada
Accounts
The western story is full of first-person experiencesIts based on the personal
experiences and visions
In the indigenous accounts, there are very little stories on experience or personal matters, its more recording on the collective experience
Mike Jay is a leading specialist in the study of drugs across history and cultures. The author of Artificial Paradises, Emperors of Dreams, and The Atmosphere of Heaven, his critical writing on drugs has appeared in many publications, including The Guardian, The Telegraph, and The International Journal of Drug Policy. He sits on the editorial board of the addiction journal Drugs and Alcohol Today and on the board of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. He lives in England.
In this episode, Kyle sits down with Raquel Bennett to recap on the KRIYA Conference. Kyle attended the conference, which is to bring people together with dedication to understanding the better use of Ketamine.
3 Key Points:
The more recent KRIYA Conference was the last of its kind. The goal is to make information on ketamine more accessible to more people in the future.
At KRIYA Institute, they believe that there is not one right way to use ketamine, different patients are best served by different treatment strategies.
Intramuscular ketamine is usually 93% bioavailable, while nasal and lozenge based ketamine is usually only 40% bioavailable. The less variability the better when working with a powerful medicine for therapy.
KRIYA is an international conference focused on ketamine and its therapeutic potential
The goal of KRIYA is to get people of all different ketamine backgrounds in the same room
Different people benefit from different things, and different doses and methods matter
There is a symbiotic relationship between therapeutic and spiritual practice of ketamine
She wanted to create a place where researchers and clinicians could come together
This last conference was the last one
The conference is CME accredited, which means physicians can get units for their education
Raquel picks people from different backgrounds, therapists who use low dose ketamine for therapy, to those who do full blown spiritual work with ketamine
Ketamine is a relational medicine – which is about having a relationship with the substance
Ketamine Therapy
Ketamine Therapy Lessons
Wisdom Teaching
A Loving Relationship
The Medicine
The medicine is adjunct to the entire process, it’s not just about the ketamine, it’s about the relationships, the wisdom teaching, etc. And each are powerful on their own, and even more powerful when all combined
When people are using ketamine in absence from the other components, people are not getting the full effect that they could
“Ketamine when done correctly, when administered in the right setting, with the correct support, enhances resilience.” – Raquel
Therapy is an important mechanism to teach coping skills needed in psychotherapy
Highlights of KRIYA
When Raquel first started running this conference in 2015, the clinicians were afraid to even come, they were afraid to talk about Ketamine
This past year, there were hundreds of applicants and so much excitement around talking about ketamine
In 2014, a whole bunch of psychiatrists stood up and said they have been using ketamine for their patients and it worked
A doctor talked about combining meditation with ketamine to heal substance use disorder
When ketamine is offered in a structured context, its highly beneficial
Another doctor talked about using ketamine to treat those who are acutely suicidal
People who are severely psychiatrically distressed benefit from ketamine treatment
Another doctor talked about combining ketamine with EMDR to treat patients with PTSD
Bioavailability
Raquel says she prefers intramuscular ketamine over lozenges
It’s the cheapest way of doing it
Its super precise, you have a great control of the bioavailability of the ketamine to the patient
With IM, 93% is bioavailable
With nasal and lozenge ketamine, usually 40% makes it to the patient’s brain, which is a huge range of variability when working with a powerful medicine
Progression
Clinicians are on the fence for prescribing for at home use
A doctor talked about 4 different tiers of ketamine experiences related to dosage
Other doctors talked about measurement tools of pre and post experience ways to take data when administering ketamine to patients
There is a lot of ketamine use outside of the medical context
The field is stuck in the question “Should ketamine be allowed to be used by people who aren’t psychiatrically fragile?”
Everything good that is going to come out of ketamine usage and assisted therapy, will come
It’s a slow process, but it is all moving forward
Final Thoughts
Raquel encourages people to are interested with using ketamine in therapy to get together regionally and learn from each other
She is thinking about creating a video series, as well as a retreat for ketamine providers
The KRIYA Conference is over, but the KRIYA Institute isn’t going anywhere
She is looking at ways to get the information out faster and to more people, than to limit it just to conference attendees
Dr. Bennett is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Clinical Psychology (PSB 94022544), working under the supervision of Dr. Bravo. Dr. Bennett primarily works with people who are experiencing severe depression, who are on the bipolar spectrum, or who are contemplating suicide. She has been studying the therapeutic properties of ketamine since she first encountered it in 2002. In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Bennett’s practice has evolved to include consultation services for medical professionals who wish to add ketamine services to their offices. She also lectures frequently about therapeutic ketamine. Dr. Bennett is the Founder of KRIYA Institute and the Organizer of the KRIYA Conferences.
Psilocybin for depression is becoming a major avenue of clinical research. The Usona Institute out of Madison, Wisconsin is about to begin the largest psilocybin-depression study in the US. Part of the FDA’s drug approval protocol, this phase 2 clinical trial will test the magic mushroom compound in 80 individuals for safety and efficacy in treating major depressive disorder (MDD).
When Usona co-founder, Malynn Utzinger, MD presented at this year’s Horizons Conference, she explained that she and co-founder Bill Linton originally wanted to look at psilocybin for depression and anxiety in those with terminal cancer. But when they brought the idea to the FDA, the government organization basically said: Why limit yourselves to depression in cancer patients? And so they changed gears to research psilocybin for depression more generally.
“It is our duty to make sure a potentially effective medicine gets to the widest… group of medical need,” Utzinger said on stage. She went on to explain that depression affects 300 million people worldwide and is predicted to be the second-largest cause of medical morbidity by next year, to further show the need for this research.
Psilocybin Depression Studies
So could psilocybin help those millions of people? Usona is hopeful, especially among the large portion of people with depression for whom traditional treatment, like anti-depressant medication, does not work. They’ve recently secured 7 clinical trial sites that will conduct this research and give qualified participants psilocybin along with therapeutic support. The sites are located around the US and include Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the University of California San Francisco, Yale University in Connecticut, University of Wisconsin-Madison, private testing sites in Chicago and Miami, and NYU in Manhattan – which is also the first site to complete training of facilitators and begin recruiting participants.
People are very interested in trying this new depression treatment. In fact, Utzinger said in her talk that over 6,000 people have volunteered for the 80 available spots in their phase 2 trial.
Although this is the biggest study in the US looking at psilocybin for depression, this isn’t exactly a new concept. Outside of clinical trials, folks have been reporting reduced depression symptoms from psychedelic experiences – and peak experiences in general – for a long time. In fact, a 2017 study that looked at lifetime psychedelic users in “naturalistic settings” (meaning outside of a trial, but whether it’s for fun or ceremony is unknown) found them to be less “psychologically distressed” and suicidal than users of other substances.
Over at Imperial College London, their team of psychedelic scientists have been looking into this even further, trying to figure out how psilocybin works for depression, both on a psychological and neurological level. Clinical psychologist from the Imperial team, Rosalind Watts, PhD and her colleague Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner, spoke right after Utzinger at Horizons, and presented a paper Watts authored which gives practitioners a framework for facilitating psilocybin for depression therapy, called the “ACE (Accept, Connect, Embody) Model.”
Watts developed this idea after facilitating participants’ psilocybin experiences during Imperial’s first psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression trial. During “psilodep 1” 20 people were given psilocybin-assisted therapy, and 19 had decreased depression symptoms at week 1 and nearly half at week 5. Plus, none of their participants began a new course of anti-depressants until after week 5.
Now, she tells Psychedelics Today over the phone that Imperial is halfway through their second study on psilocybin for depression; they’ve seen 38 out of “65, possibly 70” participants in a trial that’s comparing psilocybin to an SSRI antidepressant for depression treatment efficacy.
Psilocybin for Depression: The ACE Model
The ACE Model (which should be published before the end of the year) highlights psilocybin’s ability to promote psychological flexibility as a key function in how this therapy works. Essentially folks move from a psychologically rigid place where they’re stuck ruminating on negative thoughts to a more flexible, open, and accepting place, post-psilocybin session.
Watts describes it to me in terms of a ski slope. That our minds, or our “default mode network” is like a skier who follows the same path in the snow until they’ve become deeply ingrained grooves. Then a psilocybin-assisted therapy experience is like a snowplow that comes in and evens out the entire mountain. And so folks are suddenly freed from their ruminative ruts and now have the option to ski anywhere (or think about anything) they please. “They feel that they can think a different way. That they can have new thoughts and see themselves slightly differently,” Watts says. “They can have a sense of space and freedom, mental clarity, not stuck in those deep groves.”
It’s this same idea that her colleague at Imperial, Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD, made famous, that psychedelic experiences can “reset the brain” or “shake up the snow globe” allowing for new thoughts and perspectives. “It’s a disruption,” says Watts. “It’s actually that disruption that allows for a reset.” Yet, she explains that doesn’t happen so easily for everyone, and she doesn’t think it’s healthy for folks to go into these experiences with that expectation, because if they aren’t magically “reset”, they can be extremely disappointed.
“They’re often in very, very desperate states. Sometimes they haven’t been outside of their homes for years and their relationships have suffered and they’re feeling very isolated,” Watts says of the depression participants. “The amount of expectation and pressure that is on them for those experiences is huge.”
Therefore, in the ACE Model, they frame the whole experience in terms of a journey – rather than a reset – for participants, to try and lower the pressure and encourage the acceptance of all experiences as they come. That includes accepting challenging material that may arise as well as not making participants feel like a failure for “resisting” the medicine; in the ACE Model, it’s all part of the experience. And that’s where preparation and integration become critical to the whole healing process.
“It needs to be a therapeutic intervention where that person’s unique set of fears and hopes can be gently sat with, processed and held so that the person that’s sitting with them has some sense of the complexity of the whole scenario,” Watts explains. “Because so often the healing isn’t actually just in the trip, it’s in the environment, it’s in the relationships that you have in the room. And actually, often it’s as much about the narrative, the story you co-construct [as the psilocybin].”
When all the pieces come together, when people feel fully supported and understood, then psilocybin can help folks out of depression by helping them see themselves and their lives more clearly. The process can also include planning actionable steps during integration that participants can take to improve happiness, like being less hard on themselves and spending more time with community or in nature.
Watts described the psilocybin healing process in a 2017 paper as people “moving from disconnection to connection” or “from avoidance [of emotions] to acceptance” and that’s very much part of what they try to instill during the therapy sessions. The ACE Model also includes guided meditation, and during a preparatory session they have participants visualize a journey, often a diving expedition where they’re encouraged to go deep into the dark parts of their mind in search of pearls of wisdom. The therapists remind divers that pearls are often found in scary, prickly oyster shells, so it may not always be easy, but the value will be great and worth the struggle.
This process of psilocybin-assisted therapy for depression is personal, and experts like Watts and Utzinger both point out its high rate of success is likely as much about the deep connections participants feel with their therapists as it is about the effects of psilocybin. Unlike taking anti-depressant medications for depression – which tend to numb people’s feelings – psilocybin and the therapy surrounding it encourage people to dig deep into their emotional worlds to try and heal themselves from the inside out.
The Future of Mushrooms for Depression
Even though psilocybin-assisted therapy is working for people in initial studies, it’s often not a permanent fix. Watts says many people from her trial have found that their depression symptoms come back after a few months. However, when I ask her about this, and about the potential future of legal mushrooms for depression therapy, she’s hopeful folks will have more options, including opportunities to do psilocybin sessions once every few months or so. She also adds that she thinks there’s lots of room to develop integration practices for more long-term depression relief, which could include integration groups that go out and do meaningful activities together, like planting trees.
Obviously this is just the beginning of scientific research looking into this treatment. And hopefully, as law and science catch up with nature, there will be more options for folks to access this therapy for depression in the near future.
About the Author
Michelle Janikian is a journalist focused on drug policy, trends, and education. She’s the author of Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion, and her work has also been featured in Playboy, DoubleBlind Mag, High Times, Rolling Stone and Teen Vogue. One of her core beliefs is ending the prohibition of drugs can greatly benefit society, as long as we have harm reduction education to accompany it. Find out more on her website: www.michellejanikian.com or on Instagram @michelle.janikian.
In this episode, Kyle sits down with Jac Harrison, a grammy nominated music producer. Kyle and Jac talk about music as therapy, how DMT mimics the near death experience, and how Jac produces music based on frequencies of mystical experiences.
3 Key Points:
Jac shares his story about his near death experience, and how DMT has been a therapeutic option for him to cope with his crippling anxiety and PTSD.
Jac is a music producer, who uses frequencies from mystical experiences to produce music. His music helps people with addiction, sleep issues, anxiety, and more.
Music is not an FDA approved medicine, but if there is music that tricks your mind into thinking you have taken a medicine, then it should be an option for those suffering.
Each song he did after that, catalogs the DMT experience he had
“An old projector TV, I had one for a while, it was great. The light came on and told me I needed to change the bulb. I changed the bulb and saw in a new and clear way forever. That’s what DMT is like.” – Jac
Kyle says that when he attended COSM for the DMT Spirit Molecule release party, Rick Strassman was there and said that the idea that DMT comes out of the pineal gland is just a hypothesis, and people took it and ran with it as truth
Frequency for Healing
After he smoked DMT, he heard this humming, and so he started humming and recording it as a frequency for the album
He took opium, and then figured out the frequency that substance performs at
He wrote music, based on the mathematical equation on how opium works and releases
He says it has helped others detox off of opium
Jac cant take mushrooms because he is allergic, so he takes DMT
Jac worked with a man who had gone through a ton of trauma, he had gone through combat
He kept reliving his combat trauma when he would try to go asleep
He smoked DMT, and really relived the experience, and was able to let go of it after that
“Your mind is a bitch.” – Jac
“If you can lock onto a memory, and dissociate it with something, and re-associate it with something else, Every time you can go back to that memory,you can relive it in a way that it’s tolerable, and get over it.” – Jac
Jac says without this, he would not be able to function, and he would be institutionalized
Jac’s music is Alex Grey’s form of art creation
It is made to go with journeywork experiences
It is supposed to mimic taking a pill, so you don’t need to take the actual pill
It is supposed to guide people when taking different psychedelics
His tracks match the frequency of specific psychedelics
Malta Hypogeum
The Malta Hypogeum, the oracle chamber, is a cave with naturally occurring frequencies
Raymond Reif is an underestimated person in history
He beat cancer using frequencies in the 30’s and 40’s
“If we’re not going to someone to get drugs for something that we need drugs for, and solving our problems using plant based medicines, music therapy, and frequencies, we are much better off.” – Jac
Jac came across psychedelics when trying to treat crippling anxiety
Kyle is the first person he has told this NDE story to
Alzheimers is not a neurological problem, it’s a perception problem
Psychedelic medicine should be used for research to treat cognitive health problems, PTSD, alzheimers, etc
“If the earth gives us something for our body, we should be able to take that at the same time we are able to take modern medicine.” – Jac
Jac says that he started doing this type of work as more of an Atheist, and after the psychedelic experiences, he says he has become more spiritual
Intuition
Jac says that his intuition and discernment came after his near death experience
Kyle says that this happens after mystical experiences, we become more in tune with what is going on around us
“I believe that we have something in us, that is triggered, when we have a fear of death.” – Jac
Final thoughts
Jac recommends Relief as the first track for listeners
He extends himself to people who are heavily anxious, have severe PTSD, or depressed, to come to him, and he will make music for them
He said that this is not medicine, but if there is music that tricks your mind into thinking you have taken a medicine, then it should be an option for those suffering
Having spent most of his adolescent life medicated to treat ADD/ADHD, Jac developed a dependency on the medications and could not function without them. When he stopped using them, his anxiety was so bad that he was diagnosed with PTSD in 2009; so he took his love for music with his understanding of mathematics and developed music to help himself get off all the medication. Mind Toy Box is the result of his work.
This is the fourth and final blog of a podcast recorded in John Cobb’s apartment in Claremont, California. This was recorded during a small weekend conference on psychedelics titled “Exceptional Experience Conference.” You can listen to the full talk in this episode of Psychedelics Today.
John Boswell Cobb Jr. is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associated with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.
John Cobb: Obviously, I’m not going to put this forward as a great psychedelic experience, it still doesn’t feel like it’s just simply my talking to myself. It feels like I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t thought about this before. Suddenly, yes, of course, that’s what I need to do.
Kyle: It feels like it comes from somewhere else, but it is inside.
John Cobb: But of course somewhere else is not as special somewhere else.
Kyle: Right.
John Cobb: It doesn’t come out of my normal ego consciousness. It feels like that there’s a wisdom in it that was not my wisdom. There’s an otherness about it.
Kyle: Right. And that it’s coming from somewhere.
John Cobb: I know. They’re coming from somewhere, it is immediately… Vision is so spatially oriented that if we talked in a visual language somewhere else is going to be very prominent. With just hearing music, the location of the music isn’t that important, is it? It’s the music in your ear or is it inside your body? Is it in the airwaves around you? Is it where the orchestra is? Well, yeah, any and all of the above. But you see a book, all right, that book is on top of that book. It’s so very clearly located and each object that you see has boundaries. And so that just creates a language and a culture.
The difference between Gautama and the other great Indian thinkers, for Gautama when you seek the self, there is nothing. But the others there is Atman, and Atman is the same as Brahman. The ultimate substance. And Gautama and many of the Buddhists assume that if you conceptualize at all, you will be misled. That just shows how powerful concept and visualizing is such a scene too. Whereas I belong to the view that it should be possible to have… like Bohm was saying, “Okay, let’s just use gerunds.” I don’t think it’s impossible to conceive process. That’s the part, I hope you understand, this is not me anti-Buddhist. I think it’s amazing that 2,500 years ago somebody was able to think so deeply. I regret that the tendency even today is to become anti-concept, when what we need are better concepts.
Joe: Yeah. I’m feeling like you say you can’t skillfully conceptualize process, but perhaps it’s more about feeling like
John Cobb: You can conceptualize feelings.
Kyle: Right. True.
John Cobb: It’s just that our Indo-European languages haven’t, so you can’t quickly think of examples.
Joe: That’s interesting.
John Cobb: And conceptualize maybe the wrong term. But I don’t like a kind of retreat into mysticism. If you say it’s mystical, then you say you can’t think about it anymore. I think we can think about it, and if you don’t want to call it concepts, call it whatever you want. But we can think about processes. And science needs to think about them. And thinking about them doesn’t necessary… I mean, what it has so often meant is locate it in a sight oriented world or substance oriented world, then you’ll see then you’re not really thinking about them anymore. Anyway, that’s why David, I think, has done a remarkable job of thinking about process. And has given us a language that can help us do it. And I think that’s very useful.
Joe: Yeah, I think it’s really helped me quite a bit with perhaps handling psychedelic experiences with a little more grace because it’s not so… Just Lenny has put a lot of this knowledge on us and it seems like it’s really helpful. And it’s hard to put, for me, at this point, to really phrase that well. But it’s certainly been a Boon.
Johanna: What was the one thing that was helpful for you? I’m sure there’s lots of things.
Joe: Lenny’s complicated. And as a result that…. probably more of a gerund type attitude towards the thing as opposed to this is this, this is an Apple. It’s more like, wow, this is just a dynamic flow of things through this very complicated system.
John Cobb: I see. I don’t know Chinese, so my statement that it is not so substance oriented. But when I’ve tried to talk about this with Shahar he points out that the same character can function as either.
Joe: Oh, wow.
John Cobb: An example of a word that this has happened to in English is the word pastor. It was a noun for a long time. You were a pastor. But now people talk about, “I’m going to pastor such and such a church.” No, I think that that gets closer to reality to say a person is a pastor, what does it mean? It means that he pastors. But when you locate it as a pastor, it’s just sort of strengthens this individualistic thinking rather than a focus on the activity.
Kyle: It is versus it’s doing or it’s happening.
John Cobb: Yeah. Well to pastor people means you listen to them when they have something to say and you hear them without judgment. I could go on and on. But that’s what a pastor does. And to call a pastor is really to be pointing into that dimension of activity. The same person who is a pastor is also a preacher, but unfortunately we have a verb to preach so we don’t say to preacher. I just wish there were more cases where I could point to how a noun has just come to be used as a verb. And there are others, but at the moment I’m not thinking of them.
Joe: Do you recall the first time you heard something that made you interested in the positive impact of psychedelics or anything around the beginning?
John Cobb: Lenny was certainly one of the early ones. But I don’t want to say his first because I just don’t know.
Johanna: Right. It was southern California in that period of time when it was probably pretty intense.
John Cobb: But obviously having him, he was really trying to convert me. I appreciated it. This is not a criticism. Anytime one discovers something that’s very helpful, one wants other people to benefit from it. So my relation to him was the first time this had become something that I really had to deal with. But that doesn’t mean I hadn’t heard of it before. Probably I had heard of it more negatively than positively. Because of course the hippie culture included some negatives. I grew up in a context where drinking was already a bad thing to do. And the tendency in circles I moved in, which by that time has ceased to be particularly strongly against drinking, was to associate alcohol and psychedelics.
I was quite sure alcohol did a lot of harm as well as working well for conviviality… You know what I mean. Of a mixture. So I thought psychedelics, and I had no doubt that some people had great experiences and other people that may found them very attractive, but it… Generally, I suspected that society was better off not to have it. So Lenny was probably the first person who really opened my eyes to the potential of very positive use.
I had another experience not too long after I came to Claremont. I had always assumed that civilization was a good thing. There was a professor at Pitzer College, who I worked with quite closely. We co-taught courses. He was very convinced that civilization was the basic evil. I’m not convinced. I mean I think every civilization we’ve had has been pretty horrible. I wouldn’t have said that if I hadn’t had to interact with him about that. But I think if there are people today of course, who just think we need to get rid of civilizations and then we’ll be all right. My impression is today it would be very remarkable if 10% of the world’s population survive without civilization.
Even though I appreciated his opening my eyes, I didn’t walk through that door. And the same thing was true with Lenny, I really appreciated his opening my eyes, but I didn’t walk through that door.
Kyle: I appreciate your openness and curiosity of the subject. For somebody that didn’t walk through the door, you seem to very curious about it.
John Cobb: I’m confident there’s much good that could come from it. And so when there are people who are using it for good, I want to be as supportive as I possibly can. A lot of people today will say, “Yes, we really need basic changes.” But you know what it means to make basic changes in worldview, and most of them don’t. So it’s very comfortable to be in a group of people who when they talk about changes, they know what the-
Joe: Extraordinary change.
John Cobb: Yes.
Joe: Yeah.
John Cobb: Whitehead has made me understand what I think would be the changes that might make us behave in responsible ways. So I don’t feel the necessity of having unusual experiences.
Johanna: And what would be some of those changes?
John Cobb: Have to change from our substance thinking to our process thinking. This would be a change from our thinking of every individual as self-contained, to understanding that we are all our products of our relationships with each other, and that the human individual is… Well, for one thing, I mean from Whiteheadian viewpoint, any individual is the many becoming one. That’s what it is to be an individual. So to be an individual is to be part of everything, is to have everything being part of us.
Economics, as an example, I think economics is the worst, because it is the most powerful shaper of the world and is the worst expression of the university. It assumes radically individual and really the only relationships that count are economic relationships. I think those are just two absolutely erroneous views. If they are not changed, then they have to be changed existentially, not just, oh, that philosophy might work better or something. And it’s because what you do helps to make the existential change that I in no way want to say, “Oh, all we have to do is to do philosophy.” No, no. I think the change has to go way beyond that.
I had one experience out there, which made me very high. So in that sense, but it had nothing, it wasn’t a matter of breathing exercises. It was being in a group where I just felt completely accepted, completely loved. I think that can happen just by the way a group of human beings relate to one another. I was still feeling that deep comfort when I came home. It took my wife a little while to puncture the balloon. So I’m not suggesting that everybody should always be in that state, but nevertheless that’s a feeling of being one with that group of people that people need. The church should be doing this. I’m not trying to push me into the church, you should understand that’s important for me in my understanding.
When I was in the army, one night I said, “Kneel beside my bed.” And the whole room just simply itself felt like it was filled with love and acceptance. You’re not just an individual when that kind of thing happens. You are part of something else. So I’m just saying you could call them psychedelic experiences, if you want, they don’t have many of the characteristics that people describe as psychedelic, but they are experiences of a different possibility that is still a perfectly human possibility.
There is a woman by the name of [unclear Thandeka 01:13:05]. She’s Afro-American and Bishop Tutu. He gave her the name. And she’s spent a lot of times studying neuroscience and gotten getting acquainted with key people in the field. And she’s created an organization called Love Beyond Belief. She seems to be able to help. She’s Unitarian, and she has worked with Unitarian churches, which are not the places that I would have thought, which I say most readily, but sometimes it turns out that people who have been putting all their emphasis upon reason and rationality and so forth, other ones who are really ready for something else. She thinks it’s possible to organize a service of worship in such a way that people will really existentially feel loved. And to whatever extent she can do that, I think that will accomplish much of what I’m interested in. But obviously a number of people in this group, and in almost any group I’m at, have had a completely different experience of a church. That church is a place of judgment and condemnation and guilt and all of that. And that is of course the absolutely opposite of what is needed.
I think the church has great potential for good. It has great potential for evil. It’s like almost everything else. Education has great potentials for good, great potentials for evil. And I think the modern world has tended to bring out the potential for evil in both. But that doesn’t mean, I think, in the middle ages everything was wonderful. I really think Europe was better off in the middle ages than it has been in modernity. But I’m not interested in going back.
John B. Cobb, Jr., Ph.D, is a founding co-director of the Center for Process Studies and Process & Faith. He has held many positions, such as Ingraham Professor of Theology at the School of Theology at Claremont, Avery Professor at the Claremont Graduate School, Fullbright Professor at the University of Mainz, Visiting Professor at Vanderbilt, Harvard Divinity, Chicago Divinity Schools. His writings include: Christ in a Pluralistic Age; God and the World; For the Common Good. Co-winner of Grawemeyer Award of Ideas Improving World Order.
This is part three in a four-part series recorded in John Cobb’s apartment in Claremont, California. This was recorded during a small weekend conference on psychedelics titled “Exceptional Experience Conference.” You can listen to the full talk in this episode of Psychedelics Today.
John Boswell Cobb Jr. is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associated with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.
John Cobb: There were lots of biologists who have worked with us that they rather resent being constantly pushed into mechanism when in fact they’re dealing with organisms. That organisms are only complex mechanisms. A lot of biologists know that isn’t right. So we have a chance of making breakthroughs, whereas I don’t think Rosemary Ruether, brilliant as she is… I hope you understand that I’m picking people. We get it. We take her with us when we are promoting process theology. Even if she will say, “Oh, I’m not interested in process theology.” What she says is process theology, so we don’t (laughs)… So the label is not that important, the insights are important. And in a foundational way, they are common sense.
I think the common sense is that our knowledge of each other is not just by visual and auditory clues. But people have been told so long that it is. If you could just have people who never went to school (laughs)….
Kyle: What else would it be informed by if it wasn’t visual and auditory?
John Cobb: Just by our immediate experience of each other.
Kyle: So a felt experience?
John Cobb: Yeah. I think that we’ve had an experience of being in a group where when you walk in, you feel a climate there. If you go into a room where everybody is angry with everybody, of course, you are told that you really are get visual and auditory clues. It doesn’t feel like that. You just feel this is not… The vibrations here are not good. Okay. So we need to deschool. Are you familiar with Ivan Illich’s book, Deschooling Society?
Joe: It’s great.
John Cobb: But of course we also need schools, and there’s no reason, in principle, that schooling has to be indoctrination into a bad worldview. It could be something else. And there are a few schools that are already doing something else.
Kyle: I think a lot about the education system, but I’m curious what would your vision of an education system be if it’s not working right now?
John Cobb: Well, I think the one that Matthew Siegel teaches at in San Francisco CIIS. CIIS and Naropa are examples of a different educational system. I have not studied either one of them enough to hold up one and say it’s better than another. Another educational system that I think well of is The Great Books Program. It needs revision because in the past it’s only been the great Western books. And at Chicago when I was there, the college was operated on a great books basis. And I hope by now they have incorporated great books from other parts of the world.
It’s very different. I’m just saying, I think there are different kinds of educational systems that are better than what we have. If I’m just going to have the opportunity to create a school, it’s going to be a school that teaches ecological civilization. Because in my mind, a healthy human survival is a goal that ought not to be regarded as an eccentric and marginal one, but ought to be regarded as what all we human beings ought to be getting behind collectively together. And if you have a school for that, again, curriculum could really be quite varied, but you would try to see what do people most need? And I think that the production and consumption and sharing of food would be a very, very central part of it. But also we need to understand technology and understand how it can be used for truly humane purposes. We need to understand that capitalism has ignored much of reality.
In economics 101, you can find out what the assumptions are. They are wrong. So people should be told what the assumptions have been and why they’re wrong. Reflect together about better assumptions and what their implications are. How we can go about changing. I’m not giving you a curriculum, but you will understand. I’d try to get the people who know the most about curriculum in the abstract in general. What students at a certain age are likely to be ready to do. All those things are relevant to developing a curriculum. My role is deconstruction. I just want to make it clear what’s going on now is absolutely absurd.
Enlightenment is the worst curse of humanity. We have been enlightened into not believing all kinds of things. The disappearance of subjects from the world of actuality. If that’s enlightened, I don’t want to be enlightened. But I think we need a lot of reflection about the language we use. And of course language is a very popular topic. But the questions that I think are most important are very rarely asked.
Joe: One of my favorite parts of Whitehead is the re-framing of language. In kind of your book, Whitehead Word Book, that’s a really foundational thing. Our language carries weight, our words carry inertia that we’re not aware of.
John Cobb: And I’m sure that the reason we have 36 universities with Center for Process Studies in China and zero in the United States is that the Chinese… The idea that process is more fundamental than substance doesn’t seem strange to them. To us, we know it ain’t so because we got to talk about books and tables. Those are the really real things. And how do we know that? We know because we’ve been speaking that language the whole time.
I’m sure language is important. Western intellectual history I have increasingly come to think of as for a long time a marriage of Hebrew hearing oriented with Greek sight oriented. And hearing oriented has made history important. And now, the universities have succeeded in excluding hearing oriented ideas completely. It’s a complete victory of Cartesian sight oriented thinking. History is no longer taught.
Sight oriented people can know that there have been past events and they can study past events, but history as meaningful, as helping you to locate yourself in a long process, that comes only from Israel. And that used to be very important. I mean a lot of very secular… I mean you didn’t have to be believing Jew and believing Christian in the West to think history was important. If you’d think Hegle and Marx, I mean these are all history thinking people.
We need to understand how things got to be the way they are. What are the issues today coming out of that history? And I think that’s very important. But the university has finally excluded it almost completely. You see for science only what can be repeated in the laboratory (is true). First of all, what can be repeated. But the whole point of history is that events cannot be repeated. That automatically excludes history. Excludes a lot of other things too.
Kyle: I’m curious, you said you haven’t had any experience with psychedelics, but you feel really hopeful about their reintegration in society.
John Cobb: Yes, if they reintroduction in the way this group would do it (regarding a private conference at Claremont College). Obviously if they are reintroduced primarily for the profit of the reintroducer, I’m not confident it would end up being a benefit. The more people use the most expensive drugs, the more profit.
Joe: Right. And you know, skillfully used, you probably need less than 10 LSD experiences to heal most of what you’ve got. And to do some really creative work. Some people just have one and that’s it for their life. That’s a very different thing than drugs that are around for our whole life.
John Cobb: That would be sort of like a near death experience. One is usually enough.
Kyle: I’d say so.
Johanna: Were you there for Kyle’s story? Kyle had one at age 16.
John Cobb: No. I was not there yesterday afternoon.
Kyle: I got in a snowboarding accident and ended up rupturing my spleen, and I lost about five to five and a half pints of blood internally. I guess like where it started to become mystical was when I was in the MRI machine, CAT Scan machine, and they were trying to figure out where the blood was coming from. I was on the other side of the room with the doctors, but I was also in my body at the same time. I kind of describe it as like an orb of light kind of surrounded me, and a voice kind of appeared and said… It wasn’t an external voice. It seemed a little bit more internal, or maybe it felt experienced. I don’t know how to really put it into words.
John Cobb: You felt internal, but nevertheless, it wasn’t just you talking to yourself.
Kyle: Yeah. And something just said, “You’re going home, going back to the stars where y’all come from. And this is just a transition. The more you relax into it, the easier it’s going to be. This physical life’s going to cease to exist, but you’ll continue on.” And it was a really blissful kind of experience at that point, and I got excited, I was like, “Oh, I’m going home.” But then coming back to reality, it was difficult to reintegrate that.
John Cobb: Within the experience itself, there was nothing about coming back to reality?
Kyle: No, there’s a-
John Cobb: Because many people report a kind of moment when there’s a decision made.
Kyle: Yeah. I think they caught me at the right time as I was really starting to slip away. They put me under anesthesia, but I didn’t remember anything. There was a felt sense that I went somewhere and I talked to something. But I couldn’t remember it. And when you say, we’re so fixed on the visual aspect, I mean, that’s what I think irritated me the most that sometimes people report going down a light or they see something. This was a felt experience. Like I knew something happened, but I couldn’t describe it.
John Cobb: In the auditory world, the location of the words… in the auditory, sometimes a meaning is communicated. And if you explain to somebody else, of course you have to put it into words, but it’s initial reality is not words. I think a lot of the time in the Bible when it says, God spoke to me and said such and such, people just felt called. And I’ve had that kind of experience. I’ve never had hearing in the liberal sense. But I just sometimes sit quietly for a while and then it just comes to me, there’s something I need to do.
John B. Cobb, Jr., Ph.D, is a founding co-director of the Center for Process Studies and Process & Faith. He has held many positions, such as Ingraham Professor of Theology at the School of Theology at Claremont, Avery Professor at the Claremont Graduate School, Fullbright Professor at the University of Mainz, Visiting Professor at Vanderbilt, Harvard Divinity, Chicago Divinity Schools. His writings include: Christ in a Pluralistic Age; God and the World; For the Common Good. Co-winner of Grawemeyer Award of Ideas Improving World Order.
This is part two in a four-part series recorded in John Cobb’s apartment in Claremont, California. This was recorded during a small weekend conference on psychedelics titled “Exceptional Experience Conference.” You can listen to the full talk in this episode of Psychedelics Today.
John Boswell Cobb Jr. is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associated with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Cobb is the author of more than fifty books. In 2014, Cobb was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.A unifying theme of Cobb’s work is his emphasis on ecological interdependence—the idea that every part of the ecosystem is reliant on all the other parts. Cobb has argued that humanity’s most urgent task is to preserve the world on which it lives and depends, an idea which his primary influence, Whitehead, described as “world-loyalty”.
Kyle: Do you think what’s going on in the mind, say like neurotransmitters or electrical activity firing, that’s creating this reality, or the experience is having an influence on the neurochemistry?
John Cobb: It’s all experience. It’s a question of whether this is the experience of the neurons or of the psyche, and I think the evidence is that the psyche plays a role. One of the first people we worked with, a very famous physiological psychologist. And there was a man who did a lot of experiments on the split-brain. I’m sure there were other people. I think the name begins with an S, but anyway. He was over here at Cal Tech, so he was more accessible to work with. He really appreciated working with us because he found he could now formulate his findings. He was very, very clear that the evidence that he had was that conscious experience had a causal role.
It’s just common sense. I decided to put my watch back on and stopped fiddling with it and I put it back on. Amazing. Pure coincidence in terms of… Since purpose cannot play a role. I call it the metaphysics. It was wrong when it was only applied to other animals. It deepened the anthropocentrism since it was an only human experience that counted. But it’s just so absurd. Scientists who are busy engineering genetic change tell us that genetic change has no purpose. Purpose plays no role in the genetic change. I don’t think they believe it, but that’s what they have to teach.
Kyle: What do you mean by no purpose in the genetic change?
John Cobb: Because purpose cannot have a causal effect in the Cartesian world. Now, the other way they would say, “Oh, but I know that my purpose is actually completely the result of mechanical relationships between my neurons.”
Johanna: I have a question about the actual occasions.
John Cobb: Yes.
Johanna: So what you say that the human being is an actual occasion?
John Cobb: No, I would say the psyche consists of a series of actual occasions.
Johanna: All right. So could you elaborate on this definition of actual occasions? I know that it’s a really hard concept.
John Cobb: Well, an absolutely basic question in traditional philosophy, I don’t know what’s taught under the rubric of philosophy today, I won’t address, is the question of what kinds of things are in and of themselves actual that would be in distinction from things which can be divided up into other entities. So an actual occasion would not be divisible into other actual occasions. And of course for a long time, beginning with some of the Greeks, the answer was an atom. An atom is indivisible. But that doesn’t keep it from actually existing.
Now for Whitehead, the word atom is so bound up with substantive thinking. For me to simply say an actual occasion is an atom would be confusing. But if you take the basic meaning of atom, the actual occasion is the basic unit of actuality. And of course saying that is an alternative to a substance way of viewing, and it doesn’t exclude the possibility other people will come up with other theories.
But I mentioned Quarks and Quanta, not that I know they cannot be divided further, but right now there is no clear indication that Quark is made up of other things. So it seems to be a unit of reality. So when we deal with living things, obviously if they are like us, have brains and so forth, we assume they have a psychic life, and the occasions of psychic life will also be atomic.
One of the things that I raised in one discussion that there was some evidence that plants also have some kind of unified experience. I don’t think it’s been studied enough to be making any clear pronouncements. But I don’t know whether I mentioned in the larger groups of Findhorn. Have you heard of Findhorn?
Johanna: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
John Cobb: Okay. Well, the people there commune with their plants. They’ve been doing it for 50 years, so it’s not a fly by night. I think there are a lot of people who have a feeling about the tree that it’s not just a lot of cells interacting, but maybe the tree itself may have some purpose or something to say. But that’s all of what are the actual occasions, is an entirely different question from what it means to say it’s an actual occasion. Is that okay or do you-
Johanna: That’s fine. Thank you.
John Cobb: They’re atoms.
Johanna: Yeah.
John Cobb: And when you talk about a society of atoms like the sofa or the chair or the table, which are the kinds of things that standard brand philosophy, for a long time, held up. They’re clearly not atoms. Society as I was indicating, if you have enough actual entities, their dynamism disappears in the society as a whole. Making negative statements that are always very questionable, it’s hard for me to think that a stone is an experiencing entity. I think the molecules are. And I’m sure cells are.
Kyle: Okay, so the rock as the whole isn’t, but the molecules and the atoms are?
John Cobb: That’s right. I’m sure that those cells are influenced by the emotions of people. I don’t think a rock is, could be wrong, and it could be that the molecules are slightly, but that’s just canceled out. But the plant organization, I don’t think it gets canceled out. What happens to the cells affects the way they relate to each other and the total development of the plant. I hope you understand, again, having a particular conceptuality does not tell you just how it’s going to map out on real things, but Whitehead, so many things, well these are empirical questions and they’re important empirical questions. When I think some of the evidence is so great that I just go ahead pretend I know.
Joe Moore: You can see how this worldview seems very psychedelic.
John Cobb: That’s what we keep hearing. I mean even we who haven’t, who don’t know that we have psychedelic experiences, that the things that people report sound true to us. And if they are true, then how you got there is also of great interest.
Joe Moore: Did you have the opportunity to communicate with Stan Grof at all?
John Cobb: You know, I may. I’ve been at Esalen twice, and I kind of think he was there one time. I didn’t have any real conversation.
Joe: Okay. John Buchanan brought him here, I’m sure you’re aware, in 2015, for the big conference.
John Cobb: That’s right.
Johanna: You were very busy. Thousands of people.
John Cobb: I did not have conversations with…
Joe: Thankfully you did (have him at the conference). It was really great. Lenny and John Buchanan have been really pushing Whitehead on Stan, which is really interesting.
John Cobb: Yes. I mean I would like to offer it. If people are not interested, that’s-
Joe: Yeah. I don’t know if pushing is the right word.
John Cobb: It’s perfectly okay. Yeah. But I think when people who have had the experience hear that there is a philosophy which works very well with the cutting edges of science, that they’ll likely define that something positive. That doesn’t mean they have to go spend a lot of time reading Whitehead. And there are so many people who when I listen to them I would say eco-feminism. I’ll give a particular example. The eco-feminists I’ve known best, I mean the theological world, but they’re very strong eco-feminist. Mary Daly and Rosemary Ruether are two of them. Now Mary Daly knew some Whitehead and liked it, but Rosemary Ruether, everything she writes sounds just right to us. She said, “I will not read a word of Whitehead.” So I don’t think that Whitehead is the one and only way of arriving at what I… The reason I push him is that I’m very concerned by the institutions, and especially educational institutions that they have enormous power over what is considered good policy and so forth. And they are so wrong about it. If you say, “Oh, but psychedelic experience shows that’s a mistake.” It doesn’t really open the door for further conversation.
If you have a philosophy that can make more sense out of physical evidence that is taken seriously by physicists, I’m announcing that they are very, very slow to be interested. But at least among quantum physicists, Whitehead’s name is known and appreciated. And that could be an opening wedge that would mean that physics as a whole would adopt an organic model rather than a mechanical. That’s the usual way. We put it and fit.
John B. Cobb, Jr., Ph.D, is a founding co-director of the Center for Process Studies and Process & Faith. He has held many positions, such as Ingraham Professor of Theology at the School of Theology at Claremont, Avery Professor at the Claremont Graduate School, Fullbright Professor at the University of Mainz, Visiting Professor at Vanderbilt, Harvard Divinity, Chicago Divinity Schools. His writings include: Christ in a Pluralistic Age; God and the World; For the Common Good. Co-winner of Grawemeyer Award of Ideas Improving World Order.
This is part one in a four-part series. Kyle, Joe and Johanna Hilla were able to spend time recording with John B. Cobb at his apartment in Claremont, California. This was during a small weekend conference on psychedelics titled “Exceptional Experience Conference.” You can listen to the full talk in this episode of Psychedelics Today.
John Boswell Cobb Jr. is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associated with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Cobb is the author of more than fifty books. In 2014, Cobb was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.A unifying theme of Cobb’s work is his emphasis on ecological interdependence—the idea that every part of the ecosystem is reliant on all the other parts. Cobb has argued that humanity’s most urgent task is to preserve the world on which it lives and depends, an idea which his primary influence, Whitehead, described as “world-loyalty”.
John Cobb: The senses heighten and intensify the connection on particular kinds of connection. The eyes are obviously very sensitive to particular wavelengths, and the ears are sensitive to other wavelengths and so forth. But that this is to think that sight is the most direct relationship to what’s going on externally, doesn’t make sense. Sight requires… I mean there’s lots that happens before what we call sight occurs. And those happenings are more fundamental than seeing. But the tendency of British empiricism has been to start with the data of sight. Philosophy should go deeper than that. What label can we give to the most fundamental relationship? First, we need to describe that relationship. The most fundamental relationship is any happening, the world is made up of happenings, rather than substances.
Any happening enters into its successors. And one of the best kinds of meditations in terms of conscious experience is to think of what’s happening. As you listen to music in any given moment, there’s just one tone, but you don’t really just hear a tone. If you heard just a tone and then another tone, you wouldn’t hear music. You hear at least the musical phrase, and the whole musical phrase is still in the experience at the time that the concluding note is being struck. So the experiences of the previous tones do not end when that experience ends; it gets transmitted.
Our experience is the inclusion of elements of previous experiences. It’s very much like Buddhism in this respect. Whitehead calls the fundamental relationship of inclusion including part of the previous experience a prehension. So a prehension is the way in which one experience enters into successor experiences. And he thinks this is what’s going on also in the subatomic world. So the word, “prehension” is a cause. It’s a causal relationship. But the image of course that Hume was looking for just looking in the wrong place.
So if the world is made up of prehension, then what, in any given moment, is prehended, and Whitehead says everything. That is every past event leaves some trace and has some trace in the present. In that context, you can try to figure out why sometimes particular past events sort of revivifies itself in the present.
You could study it under what circumstances, there’s some event from your childhood all of a sudden. But it doesn’t mean it has had no relationship to your experience. The conscious experience is, of course, a very special form of experience, and the boundary between what is conscious and unconscious is a very fuzzy one.
So when we talk about everything being experience, we certainly don’t mean everything is conscious. Sadly among a lot of philosophers, the only use of the word experience is referring to conscious experience. And then there’s no understanding of Whitehead’s view.
Since everything is a synthesis of relations to everything in the past, you have much more material to work with when you’re trying to explain experience. Now an experience is not exhausted by its relation to the past. Whitehead calls the relatedness to the past, physical prehension. We are prehending actual entities. But we also prehend potentialities. Now those potentialities may also be prehended as realized actualities in the past. So it doesn’t mean that every conceptual feeling is of something that is radically novel, but it is being experienced simply as a potential, not as actual. And Whitehead thinks this is present even in very elementary matters. Waves of vibration. He liked the term. It’s a very large part of the world we live in.
And then when you go back and forth between two states, this is the minimum of novelty that actual entities can have. Both states, neither state is novel, it’s constantly recurrence. He thinks that without some variation from moment to moment, nothing really happens. So this kind of novelty is to be found all the way down in the quantum world. And though as the description of the quantum world, so the indeterminacy and all of that certainly suggests that this is not unreal. Most of the developments in science since his time tend to fit very well into his ideas. Quantum was just on the edge coming into existence when he was writing. He wrote very extensively about relativity, very little about quantum. But many quantum physicists are quasi-Whiteheadians. David Bohm, we worked with a lot because he came and spent two weeks in the house next door to me and we talked all afternoon, day after day. So I really thought I got acquainted with him.
He was very process-oriented. He actually thought that we needed to change our language. He thought we could do it simply by shifting to gerunds from nouns. Because gerunds suggest something’s happening. Nouns suggest something IS. And this has distorted our understanding of the world in which we live.
So from the Whiteheadian side, any experience, however weird, needs to be taken seriously, that happened. If that is experienced, however confusing it is, however misdirecting it may be, nevertheless, if it happened, it happened, and that has to be taken account of. And his combination of the inclusion of actuality and potentiality usually makes it possible to figure it out. And of course, if it’s too much potentiality and too little grounded in actuality, you better be careful of it. But on the other hand, if you don’t have the potentiality, then you ultimately just have a completely deterministic universe. Then you can’t explain a great many of the most important phenomena.
Johanna: Does Whitehead relate potentiality to his ideas about intuition?
John Cobb: The word intuition, you don’t find in Whitehead. I shouldn’t say that. It’s a very limited word in Whitehead. But I think people who have studied about intuition in other traditions usually find that what they mean by intuition is a form of prehension. Intuitions, I think, can be both of pure potentials and can be intuitions about other people. Yeah.
I mean obviously proximity is likely to make something stronger. My psyche can prehend your psyche when you’re sitting there and I’m here. And also around the world even it could… It becomes less and less likely when there were no other supportive… I think when you’re actually talking to somebody, obviously you have visual cues and auditory cues and it enriches the connection, but that’s not the basis of it. That there is an actual occasion over there that is experiencing hearing me and seeing me is intuitively about a certain… It’s really in many ways more certain than that’s a patch of blue. I’m more likely to be wrong about the color than I am about the sheer being, sheer occurrence. So obviously a lot of what are called paranormal experiences are not magical or supernatural or something.
So many things that the university just won’t touch for a Whiteheadian point of view should be regarded as empirical theories. The fact that somebody claims to have seen something or done something doesn’t mean that’s true because there are plenty of illusion. But rather than dismiss it, they just study it and test it rigorously. I mean, it’s not that you just immediately are gullible about everything,
I mean, frankly I have until yesterday paid very little attention to astrology. Now as a Whiteheadian, that does not mean that I think that the planets have no effect on us whatsoever. I’ve just rather assumed it was a rather minor matter. I’m much more open now to learning more about the connections as they say. But just the fact that you find thoughtful people have developed elaborate theories about these connections doesn’t make them right. But it should mean well, that’s interesting. What evidence is there?
And somebody was telling me that… You will see that as far as names are concerned, I’m absolutely terrible. But the woman who spoke (Becca Tarnas)
That she had told him, I don’t think it was either reviewed.
The year he was born, correctly. Just on the basis of very little knowledge, well, no, when I hear that I think, wow, okay, there’s more to this than I thought. But that doesn’t mean Whitehead says anything about this. It’s just he… If we prehend everything that has ever happened, however trivial, then to know in advance that this couldn’t be true is ruled out.
So on the other side, since he does not privilege our standard sensory experience, then if people started talking about having very different sensory experiences, there’s no bias against it. I’m saying what Whitehead offers, and since he makes very explicit points, we need to study experience, drunk experience, sober, he doesn’t say experience in the psychedelics and not, but it’s obviously included.
And then while he’s experienced drunk, does not seem to give one insights into reality through any very… I mean it tells you something about the human body and how our body chemistry affects neuronal activity. I mean, in that sense it cannot be understood, but that it gives you a vision of reality that happens to be much more like Whitehead’s, naturally increases interest on the part of the Whitehead is.
I mean, most people who’ve had drugs feel a deep relationality that is not given to us. An insight, for example. And the world has much more dynamic, and Whitehead shows us how vision abstracts from the dynamism rather than commuting the dynamism.
So I think Lenny can tell you. I mean, he wrote an article that we published in The Center for Process Studies that is using process categories to explain the psychedelic experience. And John Buchanan has been working on that, it got many people. And of course, the psychedelic experience is different with different people. So it’s different with different drugs and all of that. So you can explain one experience, you haven’t explained all. And obviously it can be just as misleading about what the world is like as normal experiences. So the interaction should give rise to hypotheses for testing.
But if someone is already convinced that our interconnections are far more extensive than if somebody says, “Oh, I had this vision and I saw everything related to everything else.” We Whiteheadians are not going to test it, we just say, “Good, I’m glad you’ve see it. I wish I could see it that clearly. I believe it.” One of the very important features of Whitehead is to distinguish a complex society. I mean, the table is a complex society. And if we talk about pan-experientialism, we’re not saying that the table has had the experience. But we are saying that if you analyze the table into the quanta and quarks, that these are dynamic entities.
So when you put together a lot of dynamic as it is, and even as indeterminate as it is. I mean, one of the ironies is that predictions based on theories in quantum, they call it quantum mechanics, but it ain’t mechanic. And they develop a formula and these tend not to be more precise than when you’re just dealing with the big objects. So you might think that if you have a little bit of indeterminacy in the entities that then this could be multiplied, but statistics don’t really work that way.
I mean, if you flip a coin, you flip a coin 10 times, it wouldn’t be too surprising if you got seven on one side three on the other. If you flip it a hundred times, it would be very surprising if you’ve got a 70 on one side and 30 on the other. If you did it 10,000 times, it would be utterly amazing. And you would be quite sure this was no longer neutral, that there was something about the coins or something that was causing this difference. So when you get trillions of cases, as you would in a table, that it comes out so that the prediction can be so precise, doesn’t mean it’s a mistake to think that there was uncertainty in the individual cases.
Physics has opened up vast amounts of things. From a Whiteheadian point of view contemporary physics would be almost universally valid if the world were composed entirely of physical feelings.
Kyle Buller: What do you mean by physical feeling?
John Cobb: Physical feelings are feelings of actual occasions. This term for what is, is an actual occasion. Human experience is an actual occasion.
Johanna: So what would be opposed to the physical feeling?
John Cobb: Conceptual feelings are feelings of potentials.
Johanna: Right.
John Cobb: And he (Whitehead) thinks now our feelings are potentials in every actual occasion. So physics is never adequate to any individual entity. And the attempt to make physics apply, standard physics, of course I mean, apply to the quantum world is a total failure. Almost everybody agrees on that.
John Cobb: I think the attempt to make ordinary physics apply to human experience, which is the task assigned to Neuroscientists. The neuroscientists I have known, and they’re obviously a select group, on the whole, they’re completely convinced that subjective experience has a causal role to play in the world. Whitehead thinks it has the causal role to play in the world.
But as long as you are only talking about the experience of past entities, you can avoid it. But when they found out that when they study Zen practitioners and discovered that their brain’s shapes are changed by their practice, I just don’t see how they can keep on saying that subjective experience has no causal role. And they don’t. I mean the people who are doing these experiments, they said they have to be very careful how they word this when they go back to their… One of my many reasons for not thinking highly of the American university. It is more committed to metaphysics than it is to empirical study. Really is.
John B. Cobb, Jr., Ph.D, is a founding co-director of the Center for Process Studies and Process & Faith. He has held many positions, such as Ingraham Professor of Theology at the School of Theology at Claremont, Avery Professor at the Claremont Graduate School, Fullbright Professor at the University of Mainz, Visiting Professor at Vanderbilt, Harvard Divinity, Chicago Divinity Schools. His writings include: Christ in a Pluralistic Age; God and the World; For the Common Good. Co-winner of Grawemeyer Award of Ideas Improving World Order.
In this episode, Joe interviews Cody Swift from the Riverstyx Foundation. In the show, they talk about Peyote and the troubles for Native Americans and their church not having access and preservation of Peyote.
3 Key Points:
RiverStyx is a small family foundation that funds projects that demonstrate the potential for healing and beauty. RiverStyx has funded the preservation of land to protect the sacred Peyote plant.
The Portugal Model shows that decriminalization works. Portugal faced unprecedented overdoses and drug abuse, typically with heroine, and when they turned to decriminalization and treatment, overdoses and incarceration dropped significantly to almost none.
The Native American churches have held onto their ceremonial practices very tightly, and they struggle to find legal and sustainable access to Peyote, their sacred plant medicine.
Cody says, if cane syrup was made illegal because it is killing people, we wouldn’t ban the growth of corn, because it is sacred and used for so many other things
“Jail is one of the biggest problems for mushroom users” – Joe
Joe mentions that he was a little frustrated that Michael Pollan was able to take mushrooms and not go to jail, but the average person could go to jail
Cody says that he highly respects Michael Pollan and what he has done for the psychedelic revolution, and that he thinks that Pollan wouldn’t want anyone to go to jail for this
People like Michael Pollan and Tim Ferriss have done a tremendous job securing funding for Psychedelic Research
Peyote
Native American people had always been close to Cody’s heart
As a philanthropist, he didn’t know where to begin
There is a myriad of problems facing Native American communities
About 5 years ago, it just came into consciousness
He got connected to Sandor of the Native American church
He learned about ceremony and it became absolutely clear that he had to be a part of it
It was an unclear path on how to support the community in the beginning, there was no 501C-3, there were no other philanthropists, the community is so large
“How to support them in the continuance and empowerment of their using of a highly potent and healing substance to treat communities that have suffered so much, that was the key question” – Cody
Looking at the threat and endangerment of the Peyote plant was the most important part of securing the preservation of this sacred plant
Synthetic Mescaline is difficult to access and expensive
Ceremony
It’s hard to track the ancient original threats to the traditions
The Native American churches have held onto the ceremonial practices very tightly
It’s important that white people don’t just come in and tweak the ceremony
The average life expectancy for Native Americans is only in their 50s
They have gone through so much suffering, and they are very awake, sensitive people that are holding this culture and practice close to them
Alcoholism is one of the largest problems in Native American communities, and Peyote has shown to be a highly tangible benefit and cure for alcoholism
Preservation
It has taken over 4 years to begin building these alliances
Riverstyx and Bronners have been the only sources of funding, they need more
Through this, they purchased 605 acres of land for peyote preservation in Texas
600 acres may not solve the Peyote crisis, but it is a start and has opened the doors to connect with other farmers that has now led to 12,000 acres dedicated to peyote preservation
This is to return sovereignty and control to the Native
After the land was purchased, they had a pilgrimage with the Navajo
Peyote is God to them, it’s their connection to the spiritual realm
Native Americans have resisted acculturation and stuck to their ways, that is their strength
RiverStyx Foundation attempts to lessen human suffering caused by misguided social policy and stigma, while advocating enhanced opportunities for healing, growth, and transformation in such areas as drug policy, criminal justice, and end-of-life care. The Riverstyx Foundation believes in the human potential for healing, growth, and transformation. The Riverstyx Foundation works to provide a bridge to the relinquished parts of ourselves, our society, and our ecology, to ease those fears and prejudices by funding projects that demonstrate the potential for healing and beauty, when life is embraced in its fullest expression.
In this episode, Joe sits down with Jordan and Lou from Mycology Now, a company that makes and sells spore syringes for microscopy use. In the show, they talk about the start of Mycology Now, the culture change caused by psychedelics, and personal stories on how psychedelics changed their lives.
3 Key Points:
Mycology Now is a company that produces premium spores for microscopy use. The goal is to spread knowledge about mycology, one spore at a time.
We are living in an age of information that has never been experienced before, people have the tools to break the stigma on their own just by educating themselves.
Psychedelics are becoming a culture change agent, more and more people are becoming accepting of psychedelics, and psychedelics are helping people come together to create positive change.
Jordan and Lou are co-owners and creators of Mycology Now
The company runs out of Florida
Mycology Now is a company that sells spores for microscopy
They have two locations in Denver
The mission of the company is to spread spores and knowledge
Lou shares how his interest in mycology began
He says it began with his struggle with depression and suicidal tendencies
Psilocybin had ended up being the only thing that helped with the struggle, the depression was completely erased
Jordan shares his story
His mother was in a relationship when he was about 10 years old with an abusive man
This man abused narcotics, opioids
He was abusive mentally, physically and emotionally
He grew up being convinced that he wasn’t worthy of love, and he blamed himself
About 2 years ago, he discovered mushrooms, and was able to go into the painful parts of his childhood and forgive himself and heal from his trauma
“Although negative things did happen to me, and to my family, I was not the cause of it, and I should not have to carry that around with me.” – Jordan
He wants to do everything in his power to bring that to the rest of the world
Shattering the Stigma
One thing that they have noticed about the younger generation is that they are way more open and have way more acceptance of psychedelics and an interest in self care and mental health
“We are living in an age of information that has never been experienced before, people have the tools to break the stigma on their own just by educating themselves.” – Jordan
Joe mentions that in Colorado, psychedelics are a bit normalized to have conversation about
In Florida, the median age is 55, so there is more of a challenge because people that age grew up in the taboo time of psychedelics
The start of Mycology Now
It organically grew into a website
Lou says it was an entity that grew on its own
Joe predicts that in 2020, we are about to see the Psilocybin movement really take off
Joe brings up the Paul Stamets Stack, which is Cubensis, Lions Mane and Niacin
There are testimonials about auditory changes that you can measure, you can increase your ability to hear frequencies
They bring up an example of a deaf man being able to hear the waves of the ocean for the first time after practicing the Stamet’s stack
Psychedelics as a Culture Change agent
Some people say its the worst time in history, and other people say this is the best time in history
There is a hunger of more digestible ways of receiving information
Psychedelics can help us understand the impermanence of things
Lou brings up that Paul Staments and Dennis McKenna were the catalysts to his understanding of mycology
Jordan says that his inspiration and influence came from people at music festivals
People are very open and authentic when on psychedelics
Meeting real people with real lives who had profound change in their lives because of psychedelics are his major sources of inspiration
Psilocybin for Cancer and Depression
Lou’s sister was diagnosed with Metastatic breast cancer with a double mastectomy and was diagnosed with depression afterward
After talking about the health benefits, she took psilocybin, and laid down and disconnected with her body
Afterward, she was able to come out of it and talk about her ease with death
The experience felt like death itself, and having felt what death might feel like, she no longer experiences depression about her cancer
Final Fun Fact
Johns Hopkins psilocybin study on smoking cessation
80% of people were abstinent from smoking cigarettes on a 6 month followup
Those people smoked an average of 19 cigarettes per day for an average of 31 years of their life
Mycology Now is a humble small business dedicated to spreading awareness. They are a company that makes and sells spore syringes for microscopy use. Their Mushroom Spore prints and syringes speak for themselves; always having a heavy spore count.
In this episode, Kyle joins in conversation with Dr. Daniela Peluso, Cultural Anthropologist and Associate Director at Chacruna. In the show, they discuss guidelines for the awareness of against sexual abuse in Ayahuasca ceremony.
3 Key Points:
Ayahuasca settings bring together shamans and participants, and with the increasing occurrence of such encounters, there is an alarming rate of incidences where shamans make sexual advances toward participants during or following ceremonies.
Ayahuasca is a commonly used substance for seducing participants looking for healing, whom then return from their retreats needing additional healing from sexual abuse.
This guideline reviews some of the key behaviors to look out for and ways to prepare before attending an Ayahuasca retreat to avoid and protect oneself against sexual abuse.
There was an initiative that made a guideline for doing Ayahuasca but it was held back because there are so many different ways ceremony can be performed and it wasn’t accurate
Drinking with friends is wise
Drinking with experienced women or a couple is another wise move Abuse mainly happens to women but it does happen to men as well There is a higher chance for a person to speak up when they have someone they know and trust there with them Ayahuasca tourism is why sexual abuse is such a problem When someone doesn’t know that touch is out of the norm in ceremony, they might accept it because they were never informed that it’s wrong They may think that being touched sexually is just a part of the ceremony, and it’s not AyaAdvisors and Tripadvisor are both decent resources for reviews on Ayahuasca centers/ceremonial retreats Unless something goes terribly wrong, you will usually get good reviews Places also change over time
It’s not necessary for healers to touch intimate parts of your body or any area to which you do not consent There are forms of healing where the body is touched, so it’s important for the person to make known what is okay and not okay from the start
Curaciones, Sopladas and Limpiezas do not require you to remove your clothes If a shaman removes clothing, that may be a warning sign because that is not a part of tradition
Look out for warning signs that a healers intentions with you might be sexual When healers start to talk about how they aren’t married or that they can give you ‘special treatment’ or that sexual or ‘love magic’ is necessary for healing, that is a warning sign Use common sense and draw the line immediately if anything sexual comes up
Sexual Intercourse between healer and patient during ceremonies or directly after the ceremony is not acceptable in Ayahuasca tradition
Sexual intercourse with a healer does not give you special power or energy
Consider cultural differences and local behavioral norms when interacting with native healers, letting go of ethnocentrism Having an understanding of what is culturally normal is important
Consider cultural differences and local clothing customs
Protect your personal space, physically and spiritually Each person has a right to know their body and know what feels right and wrong to them No means no
Be wary if healers offer psychoactive substances other than those used during ceremonies
He is a Shaman, not a Saint! There is a lot more “I am a Shaman” these days, where it used to be more of “I am not a Shaman” Ayahuasca tourism definitely romanticized what being a Shaman really is
If violation occurs, get support People should speak up as quickly as they are able to, vocally or physically “There is no need to suffer in silence” – Daniela
Beware of what might appear to be consensual sex It has a lot to do with having the same form of communication, trust, and power dynamics
Beware of getting romantically involved
If you are aware of or witness sexual abuse, speak up
Final Thoughts
“Individuals have to accept that Ayahuasca has become a business and an industry as much as it is a spiritual practice, and that it includes the trappings of capitalism like exploitation and inequality.” – Daniela
Daniela Peluso is a cultural anthropologist whose current research focuses on indigenous Amazonian communities. She has worked over the last two decades in Lowland South America, mostly with communities in in the Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon. She is actively involved in various local efforts on issues relating to health, gender, indigenous urbanization and land-rights and works in close collaboration with indigenous and local organizations as reflected in her publications. She also specializes on the anthropology of finance. She received her PhD in 2003 from Columbia University and is a senior lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Kent. She is an Associate Director of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and on the board of the Society of Lowland South America (SALSA) and People and Plants International (PPI).
After years of seeking refuge at the bottom of a bottle, Karen Shaw’s experimentation with psilocybin yielded unexpected discoveries… and a fresh start
Not long after Karen Shaw started microdosing psilocybin, a very distinct thought seemed to cry out, louder than the rest.
“One of the things I said to myself is I have
to make my life more beautiful. I have to do things to make my life beautiful
and happy.”
For months leading up to this point, Karen’s
life felt far from beautiful.
Having deviated from her career to start a
silversmithing business with her partner of 10 years, the venture turned sour
early on as their relationship disintegrated. With both her professional and
personal lives entwined in a deepening crisis, the depression and anxiety Karen
had struggled with for decades intensified and began to close in.
Laying out the story from her home office in
The Hague, at this point Karen paused and looked down at her teacup. A feeble
laugh and a pixelated Skype connection did little to disguise her lingering
pain.
“I’m a bit surprised. I thought I was over it.
But there’s obviously still something there. I’m happy to be talking about it,”
she said, lifting her chin. “They were bad days. Feeling like I could spiral
into the depths of despair and not come out of it.
“I felt like I was hanging on for dear life sometimes.
“Just trying to keep my sanity and keep going.
And of course, relying on drink too much.”
Alcohol had been a toxic ally during ongoing
bouts with mental illness. Feeling trapped in a decaying business still reeking
of her failed romance, Karen’s reliance on the habit grew.
“I think it was vodka at the time. If I’m
honest about it, I was probably drinking between half a bottle to a bottle of
it a day.”
***
Karen’s mounting dread and desperation, as well as her dissatisfaction with past mental health treatment, sent her searching for other solutions. Having stumbled across an article on microdosing a few years earlier, Karen decided it was an alternative measure she was willing to try. Living in the Netherlands, this was a significantly easier undertaking for her than it would be for many others.
“I bought a grow kit of magic mushrooms at a
shop down the road from me. I grew them, dried them and I started microdosing
in March 2017,” she said.
Following a protocol recommended by
psychologist and psychedelic researcher, Dr. James Fadiman, Karen took a
sub-perceptible dose of psilocybin mushrooms twice a week for six weeks.
“I would weigh out 0.2 to 0.3 of a gram and
put it in a little capsule and take that in the morning. I would do that on
Wednesdays and Sundays. They were my microdosing days,” she recalled.
From there, it didn’t take long for things in Karen’s life to start rearranging. Within weeks, she was finally able to pry herself from the doomed business and damaging relationship. While walking away was liberating, the reprieve was brief. At 59-years-of-age, having to join the unemployment line offered proof her life would have to get ugly before finding beauty.
“I was on employment benefits and I had the
opportunity to do some courses in how to design what you want to do with your
life. I remember feeling very insecure walking into those rooms, feeling
everybody was looking at me. I didn’t want to be there.”
The early days of her microdosing experiment
also proved a little bumpy. With some gentle coercion from the psilocybin she
was taking, Karen was forced to embrace a deeper level of vulnerability and
openness, which caused her to “feel a lot of anxiety at first. I think it’s
because I felt that I actually had to face the problems I was going through,”
she said. “It (microdosing) does make you think a lot more. It makes you
analyze yourself and why you do things and of course that can make you feel
uncomfortable.”
But as the days inched past, anxiety gave way
to something else.
“There was a gradual realization that things
were getting better. That I could handle things better. I was much calmer.”
Eventually, this shift unearthed another
realization Karen would never have thought possible… She was now ready to say
goodbye to an old and domineering friend.
“I started drinking less. I’ve not stopped. I
might have a glass of wine, or some cannabis, a joint after work. But I don’t
drink to excess. I don’t like getting drunk anymore. It’s not something I
enjoy.”
***
Following a 10-week break, Karen began her second round of microdosing, and the insights continued to flow, alongside some unexpected opportunities. A few months after making the tough decision to abandon silversmithing, someone approached Karen and offered her work on a small project. Given her background in graphic design and website creation, she decided to take it on. Then, a crazy notion caught her attention.
“I thought, ‘okay, now’s a good time to start
my own business.’ Which I did.”
Softly spoken and harboring a gentle temperament, Karen doesn’t come across as the bragging type. But as she described her newfound joy and contentment at growing her fledgling freelancing venture, she allowed herself a confident smile. Progress is going well. Networking events have filled her calendar as she seeks to expand her client base.
“Before, I just didn’t think I had it in me.
But I haven’t looked back since.”
Throughout this time, Karen has continued to
microdose on and off. She’s recently returned to it again, this time only
taking one dose a week. As well as using psilocybin to climb out of a
depressive slump, Karen found it’s benefitted her creativity, ultimately aiding
her work.
“When you microdose, you sort of go into this
flow state and become very, very aware of everything around you. At first, I
could get very distracted. But once I could control it and focus it on one
thing… well, you just forget everything. You get a sort of childlike delight.
It’s difficult to explain,” she said, shaking her head.
“I feel I can enjoy everything much more completely than
I have done for a long time.”
Digging into the depths of her artistic
potential, Karen has also discovered a love of writing. With the freedom to
explore a new passion, she’s since developed it into more than just a pastime,
and now offers it as part of her professional repertoire.
“I always thought I hated writing. These days,
I can spend hours getting the tone and the message right and enjoying the
language. I’d never enjoyed that before.”
While she’s relishing a fresh start, Karen realizes the difference between her old life and her recent achievements is terrifyingly slim. Asked where she’d be right now, had she not purchased that mushroom grow kit… Karen was adamant she’d be worse off.
“I’d probably still be drinking a lot and just
not enjoying life.”
Having come close to snaring a number of
helpdesk positions during her time searching for work, Karen is grateful such
an opportunity never came to fruition.
“I would have jumped at whatever came along.
I’d be sitting behind a computer answering problem emails all day and feeling
very bored and very unhappy with myself.”
***
While Karen’s career has enjoyed a kickstart,
the most radical transformation has been unfolding internally.
“One thing I noticed is I actually like
spending time on my own. I like being in my own head.”
This prospect, as simple as it seems, wasn’t
an option for Karen before microdosing. Stuck in a never-ending game of cranial
cat and mouse, she spent much of her mental capacity drowning out the pain of
her thoughts and problems. When this got too strenuous, liquor was able to
finish the job.
“My head was like one of those old telephone
exchanges,” Karen said, tensing her hands all talon-like above her light brown
hair to emphasize the analogy. “And it was a terrible mess. I didn’t know what
my problems were. I didn’t know how to turn my life around. I didn’t know how
to stop drinking. I didn’t want to
stop drinking.”
The biggest gift psilocybin gave her, Karen
said, was a “brain reboot”.
“It’s as if you had all this chaos in your
brain then all of a sudden, it sorts itself out and all of the connections are
working properly again. You can think more clearly and make better decisions.”
While the phrase “brain reboot” feels as if it
was lifted straight from the greasy elevator pitch of a Shake Weight salesman,
proof of Karen’s claim goes far beyond her words — it’s written all over her
demeanor. The current portrait of Karen Shaw hasn’t a single brushstroke of the
anxious scrapheap she spent half the interview describing.
“I think if you spoke to my eldest daughter,
she would say that I’m a very, very different person now than I used to be.”
So different, in fact, that talking to this
daughter wasn’t something even Karen herself could do back then. Difficulties
communicating led to frequent confrontations. The shame she carries about for
being inattentive to her children’s needs was just as easy to pick up on as her
own emotional scarring.
“When you feel pain inside, it’s very
difficult to connect with other people. You tend to lash out at them and not be
aware of their situation and their feelings,” she said. “I don’t think I’d ever
thought about my role as a mother before. I sort of just became a mother but
never thought about what that really means. Which sounds awful doesn’t it?”
As Karen’s relationship with psilocybin
deepened, so too did the frayed relationship with her eldest daughter start to
mend. Being less swept up in her perceived problems, Karen’s empathy grew.
Perhaps for the first time in her life, Karen started truly listening to her
daughter.
“She’s much more willing to phone me about her
problems and I’m not just able to help her more, but I’m happy to as well. I’m
gradually getting this feeling that I want to be a role model.
“I want to show my daughters that you can work for
yourself. You can be an independent woman and enjoy your life. I’d never
thought that before.”
Admitting this was a completely unexpected
development in her microdosing journey, the sheepish excitement that crept into
Karen’s features betrayed her gratitude for it nevertheless.
“I’m even looking forward to being a
grandmother. Before, that was something I didn’t want to think about. I thought
being a grandmother meant you were old!” Karen laughed, but was cut short by
the follow up: Is it possible a reconciliation may never have taken place?
“I think if I’d carried on like I was, then I
really think we might have grown further and further apart. It’s awful to think
that was definitely a possibility.”
***
Beyond the prospect of becoming a grandmother,
Karen has much more to look forward to. Chief among all of that is a commitment
to spend as much time as possible with herself.
Being at home, enjoying creative pursuits,
cooking, and gardening now sit at the top of her list of priorities. The simple
pleasures, it seems, are where she’s discovering vitality, as well as that
all-important objective she set out to achieve back when her life fell down
around her ankles — these days, Karen finds beauty where she’d never once cared
to look.
“I can spend hours just watching the birds and
the insects… Oh, and the spiders!” Karen added, an overt tinge of enthusiasm
taking hold of her voice. Someone imbued with a healthy distrust of spiders
might even describe her tone as bearing an irrational relish. “I find myself
being blown away by the incredible beauty of their webs and how they made them
and what clever little creatures they are.
“I even postponed trimming one of my bushes because a
spider had its web up and it was obviously preparing for winter. I wouldn’t
have thought that way before. I’m much more empathetic and feel very connected
to everything.
Last year, a published study out of the
Spiritual Mind Body Institute suggested cultivating a belief in being connected
to something greater than oneself can “have profound impacts on people’s
lives”. Having highlighted exactly where in the brain transcendent states are
processed also helped researchers deduce that spiritual encounters aren’t just
limited to religious practice, but can be brought about in many varied ways.
Potentially, Karen’s newfound love of spiders, and nature, in general, may be helping her build a brighter outlook and find greater meaning.
“Life is such a great thing. It’s all around
us. The world is teeming with life and we’re just a tiny little part of this
living entity,” she said, before more muttering about sounding silly again.
As for microdosing, Karen plans to continue
with one capsule a week, for as long as she feels is necessary. Lately, the
toughest thing about it is actually remembering to take the dose. Without a
reminder set in her phone, she’s prone to forgetting it altogether. It’s a much
different relationship with substances she’s still getting used to, but
understandably, she doesn’t mind the change.
“I’m healing. I don’t know if that process will ever stop, because you’re always growing and changing. But it’s certainly put me on a different path and has me feeling a lot better about myself,” she said. “The world could do with a lot more microdosing, I think there are a lot of people who could benefit.”
About the Author
Jason Schwab: When a 10-week microdosing experiment helped Jason overcome a lifelong struggle with depression and anxiety, he immediately became a passionate advocate for the widespread acceptance of psychedelics. A believer in the power of informed, intentional substance use to foster positive transformation, Jason knows that pulling people’s stories out from the shadow of prohibition is key to inspiring true healing on a global scale. A former journalist, he now travels the world seeking out the everyday men and women taking ownership of their health and wellbeing, making a real difference in their own lives, and consequently, the lives of others.
Extinction Rebellion has become the most well-known climate justice movement in history.
With over 100,000 members and worldwide protests regularly attracting crowds of thousands, XR aims to use non-violent civil disobedience to share their message: political leaders are not doing enough to protect the world from climate catastrophe.
Now the XR hourglass logo can be seen dotted around most major cities, and local groups are catalyzing a global revolution.
Extinction Rebellion began as a collaboration between climate activists who were becoming disenfranchised by the slow progress of their protest efforts. And uniquely, its roots are deeply set in the world of psychedelic plant medicines.
The Psychedelic Origins of Extinction Rebellion
Gail Bradbrook, one of the original co-founders of Extinction Rebellion, has been very transparent about the psychedelic influences behind her decisions.
Having been involved in climate activism for most of her life, Gail was feeling like nothing was working. Speaking at this year’s Breaking Convention in London, UK, Gail described howshe prayed for “the codes to social change” during an ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica. Gail also took iboga and kambo, alongside ayahuasca, during her time there.
In her talk at Breaking Convention, Gail described the immediate lessons she learned from the West African plant medicine iboga, which told her: “Gail, you create your own reality!” The notoriously uncomfortable iboga experience eventually gave way to Gail feeling all her negative thought patterns being gently removed by a grandmotherly figure.
It was in an ayahuasca ceremony that Gail asked the specific question about where to go next with her activism. The Amazonian psychedelic brew, typically associated with intense physical purging, is often taken by people in search of otherworldly wisdom. “I was praying for guides, and allies, to know that people would have my back.” Although she received no immediate answers, Gail was aware that “ayahuasca is mysterious, and her gifts come later.”
One month after her ayahuasca ceremony, Gail met with activist Roger Hallam, and they talked for hours about the latest research into activism and revolution. It ended with Roger saying “What you’ve got here, Gail, are the codes for social change.”
It looked like her prayers had been answered.
Disobedience was the foundation of these codes, and it directly led to the philosophy of Extinction Rebellion. “It’s only by being disruptive that you get people to have a conversation about an issue,” says Gail. During the press conference at Breaking Convention, Gail called for mass psychedelic disobedience, “where we take [psychedelic] medicine to tell the state that they have absolutely no right to control our consciousness and to define our spiritual practice.”
Gail’s calls for psychedelic law-breaking are a distinct contrast to the mainstream stance of the psychedelic community, who are mostly seeking the medicalization of psychedelic compounds, the first wave of which could come within the next ten years.. Gail has responded to this by saying “We don’t have time to wait for the science. […] Society will have collapsed by then. Why mess around behaving ourselves?”
Psychedelics Can Shift Our Relationship With Nature
Although the Extinction Rebellion organization has no official stance on psychedelics, there’s good reason for XR to be interested in their potential. We know that psychedelics can help to change the way we see ourselves and our position in the world.
People who have more lifetime experience with psychedelics are more likely to feel a connection to nature, and be more environmentally friendly (such as reducing water usage and recycling) compared to others. Even when other personality traits linked to environmental behavior – such as conscientiousness and liberal morals – are taken into consideration, this finding stands up.
It’s also been shown that the intensity of the psychedelic experience can predict the level of connection to nature that people have. Those who have had the most profound sense of a “loss of self” during their psychedelic experiences are the people most likely to feel a strong connection to nature.
These findings are important because our detachment from nature is arguably a large part of why humanity has caused the climate and ecological crisis we find ourselves in. As Daniel Quinn explains in his book Ishmael, the modern narrative of our inherent disconnection from the natural world is a pervasive philosophy that has convinced many of us that humanity is a lost cause.
One chance we have to reject this philosophy is through psychedelics. Science has now confirmed that psychedelics have the potential to change our perspective of the natural world. And any psychedelic journeyer can testify about their power to remind us that there is no such thing as humanity outside of nature.
A Return to Animism?
It’s not just the psychedelic experience itself that can bring us into an awareness of our true place in the natural world, but also the traditions that can accompany it.
Most cultures that have developed alongside psychedelic plant medicines are fundamentally animist societies. This means that they believe every living thing in the world has a spirit, or soul. In other words, every being is just a human in another form; another life.
Animism takes interconnectedness to be the very core fact of life. Although animist societies are not immune to greed, corruption, homophobia or misogyny, in general they appreciate that these actions have consequences. These cultures, though often flawed, very rarely destroy their lands, and they understand that their existence relies upon the wellbeing of their surroundings.
The concept of animism is also starting to enter mainstream Western thought, as our growing understanding of quantum physics points towards consciousness being something of a big deal. The philosophy of idealism, adapted to fit our quantum view of the world, could be about to see a surge in popularity among Western thinkers and scientists. Animism could soon see a resurgence in Western culture.
Westerners often end up taking psychedelic plant medicines within animist cultural contexts, as the most experienced shamans and practitioners usually come from these traditions. This means that psychedelics present a unique opportunity – not just for the encounter with one-ness they can induce, but for the animist wisdom they can bring us into contact with.
Could Psychedelics Catalyze Social Change?
Is an increased connection to nature enough to catalyze widespread social change? Could this be enough to combat the climate crisis?
Gail Bradbrook does not think that this should be our focus. She feels that although changing our relationship to nature will be crucial in order to build a less destructive society, it would be a process requiring “many centuries of work.”
Right now, Gail is calling for urgent social upheaval, starting with large acts of civil disobedience.
Plant medicines have already catalyzed the formation of Extinction Rebellion. Now, they may be used as an expression of cognitive freedom. And ultimately, they could be a route towards a society thataccepts its place in a global ecosystem.
About the Author
Patrick Smith, PhD, is a biologist and science writer. He has been working in the psychedelic space for the past five years. He currently writes for EntheoNation.
In this episode, Kyle and Joe interview Ben Sessa, a Consultant Psychiatrist who is heavily involved in psychedelic research. Ben comes on to talk about preliminary results from the first ever, MDMA assisted therapy for alcohol use disorder (AUD).
3 Key Points:
Ben Sessa plays a role in leading the current MDMA assisted therapy study for alcohol use disorder, and shares preliminary results.
In the current stage, out of the first 12 patients, 2 have turned back to drinking, 5 have stayed completely dry and another 5 who have had a drink or two but have not relapsed back to their typical levels of consumption.
Most people with a long term substance addiction have a history of trauma. MDMA can help people feel safe, in order to work through and heal trauma.
They had 13 people in the study, and they took data on 4 people
The first caveat in these results is that there was no blinding and no placebo in this study
There is no way to tell that it was solely the drug that resulted in the effects
In terms of tolerability, everyone preferred it to other treatment, there were no bad reactions to the MDMA, there were no negative reactions, it was a total success in terms of tolerability
In the current stage, out of the first 12 patients, 2 have turned back to drinking, 5 have stayed completely dry and another 5 who have had a drink or two but have not relapsed back to their typical levels of consumption
They did a similar study previous to this one except without the MDMA and they had 11 patients, 9 of them went back to their full level of consumption
They chose alcohol use disorder because it’s so difficult to treat
All patients are recruits from local drug and alcohol services
Ben picks them up after they have detoxed, after they have been cured of the physical dependence, but when they have yet to be cured of the psychological dependence
They receive 2 dosing days within their 8 week therapy (usually weeks 3 and 6)
They do 125mg and then half that size dose 2 hours later, which sustains the high
Ben mentions that recruitment is difficult, a lot of people have a drinking problem, but they can’t have patients that are depressed, suicidal, pregnant, epileptic, etc.
Future for the Study
Up until next March, they are continuing to take in new patients for the study to have more data
The next step is to have a randomized control study
This current study is sponsored by Imperial College of London
It’s not a MAPS sponsored study, it’s the first non MAPS, MDMA study
The main papers, with all the data are over a year and a half away from publishing
Addiction and Trauma
“MDMA addiction is as rare as a hen with teeth.” – Ben
“Most people with a long term substance addiction have a history of trauma.” – Ben
Trauma and PTSD is highly treatment resistant
There are certain drugs that inhibit fear response, such as alcohol, heroin, etc
They make you forget the pain but you can’t work with them and do therapy with them, with MDMA you can
MDMA can help people feel safe, in order to work through and heal trauma
“We are all the products of our attachment relationships.” – Ben
Breaking Convention
This past year was the 5th one
There were 1300 attendees from all over the world
What’s wonderful about Breaking Convention is how multidisciplinary it is
There’s the guy in the gray suit in one room talking about high level neuroscience and a hippie with dreads in the other room talking about the spirits that live in the Salvia leaves
Ben says they work really hard to make that balance work
There’s a lot of debate and conflict in the psychedelic movement right now,
Breaking Convention is very important for creating space for this debate
Looking ahead
Ben is looking into opening a clinic
He mentions academia is not his area of study, he is a clinician, but this research is an excuse to treat patients
Ben Sessa is a consultant psychiatrist in adult addictions, working part-time at Addaction in Weston-Super-Mare and is senior research fellow at Bristol, Cardiff and Imperial College London Universities, where he is currently taking time off clinical medical practice to study towards a PhD in MDMA Psychotherapy. He has specialist training as a child and adolescent psychiatrist and is interested in the developmental trajectory from child maltreatment to adult mental health disorders. Dr Sessa’s joint interests in psychotherapy, pharmacology and trauma have lead him towards researching the subject of drug-assisted psychotherapy using psychedelic adjuncts. He is the author of two books exploring psychedelic medicine; The Psychedelic Renaissance (2012) and To Fathom Hell or Soar Angelic (2015) and is currently conducting research with Imperial College London and Cardiff universities studying the potential role for MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment of PTSD and alcohol dependence syndrome. Dr Sessa is outspoken on lobbying for change in the current system by which drugs are classified in the UK, believing a more progressive policy of regulation would reduce the harms of recreational drug use. He is a co-founder and director of the UK’s Breaking Convention conference.
In this episode, Joe and Kyle interview Rachel Anderson and James Franzo, founders of the EDELIC Center for Ethnobotanicals. In the show, they talk about the benefits of creating a healing practice using botanicals such as Kratom and the need to decriminalize all plants.
3 Key Points:
EDELIC is a non-profit in Eugene, Oregon that began as a public lending library that has grown to a community of information, events, and conservatory of psychoactive botanicals.
Kratom can sometimes get a bad rep, commonly thought of as an opioid. But Kratom is not an opioid, it just affects the opioid receptors in the brain, respiration never changes, and it’s actually in the same category as the coffee family, so it gives a boost of energy.
There is not an economic incentive that puts the botanical research on the same level as synthetic research. At EDELIC, the goal is to create scientific evidence that validates citizen-led research, authentic scientific information, and create a scientifically valid, open science and praxis oriented, non-commodified access pathway, to and from the direct human & botanicals/fungi relationship while protecting the bounty emerging from therein.
EDELIC is a non-profit in Eugene Oregon that has been operating for 4 years
They started as a public lending library
They put on a weekly discussion group and host events
What started as a library, grew to a conservatory to protect plants, and now includes research
Conservatory
They have 15-16 psychoactive species, such as Salvia, Kratom, San-Pedro, etc.
Volunteers are able to help out in the garden
They are interested in growing the conservatory to have different climates that cater to each individual plant
Events
They have done both a CBD event and Kratom event, and have brought the plants from the conservatory
The events that they have been holding are based on community desire for more information on those plants
Kratom
Kratom has the potential to prevent deaths in the opioid crisis with less initial stigma than ibogaine, psilocybin, etc
The symptoms of withdrawal from Kratom are similar to withdrawal from coffee
Kratom is a plant and the benefits can be harnessed along with a practice
when habits are formed, a person doesn’t need to have a dependency on the Kratom
Kyle mentions that creating a practice is a foreign concept to some people, they think their healing comes solely from the substance and not the practice
The best way to take it is in tea form, and let all the intelligence centers of the body take the medicine in
James says he hears news and TED Talks on Kratom tinctures and extracts, and he thinks that leans Kratom toward that abusive behavior again
Using it continuously and re-upping on the go makes it less of a practice
“In all cases, were encouraging folks to focus on the whole botanical, letting the intelligence of the body to form the relationship with the plant will keep you safer than going in the other direction” – James
The goal is to use the Kratom to take away the pain to a point where the individual has more energy and to say, “what can I do to improve my health in this moment?”
That may look less like taking 100% of the pain away and taking it away just enough to have the energy to create a practice of healing without the reliance on another substance
Its generally safe, it has a predictable response in individuals, and it is legal
Kratom is not an opioid, it just effects the opioid receptors in the brain, respiration never changes, and its in the same category as the coffee family, so it gives a boost of energy
“Botanicals, integration practice, and realizing our internal intelligence centers can really influence and inform our decision making process” – James
Kratom can be tested, and there are industry standards similar to how cannabis is tested
Kratom is highly unregulated and you are taking a risk when not testing it for quality
Decriminalize Nature
In 1994, the World Trade Organization introduced this piece of legislation that says in US Patent Law, minor scientific alterations to natural botanical plants can be patented
Patent law protects scientific adaptations to botanicals, and therefore, the US claimed that third world countries owe us royalties for agricultural products
In Canada, they said to patent an indigenous plant is to steal from the third world country, and i n that case, the US owes other countries over 300 million and in pharmaceuticals, billions
That is why in the US, there is an urge to make money on synthetic versions of these plants
There is not an economic incentive that puts the botanical research on the same level as the synthetic research
The WTO does not recognize technology or innovations by farmers, artisans or grassroots innovators that happen in a grassroots setup
There are churches that are recognized at the federal level, they cant conduct research, but they have access to provide these plants
“We are hoping to create scientific evidence that validates citizen-led research, authentic scientific information, and create a scientifically valid, open science and praxis oriented, non-commodified access pathway, to and from the direct human & botanicals/fungi relationship while protecting the bounty emerging from therein. – James
Rachel notes that all funding so far has been from volunteers and donors
“I am strongly for decriminalizing nature, it protects the indigenous, it protects nature, there is no reason someone should be criminalized for using plants” – Rachel
There is a unique interplay between the laws at the local, state and federal level
Final Thoughts
There is a need for people to come together, a need to not feel alone, a need to share
If anyone is interested in starting a non-profit, Rachel and James are willing to help
Rachel’s focus is on somatic therapies and the healthy integration of plant practices. She has successfully fund-raised, planned and organized public events, hosted intentional integration practices with ethnobotanicals, created artwork, designed integration journals, met with the 4J school board to discuss drug awareness education in classrooms. Rachel brings power, stability, and genuine strength and determination to ECfES and acts as an original steward for the original ECfES vision.
About James Franzo
A 20-year journey of self-education (using what has now become a large part of the lending library we operate) inspired James to launch ECFES. Additionally, gaining experience working in the field of chemical dependency treatment and social services contributed further to his disenfranchisement with current policy and treatment modalities, and attracted him further to evidence-based approaches to drug policy reform and the mental health field in general. Specifically, potent ethnobotanical plants and mind/body methodologies for integrating them. James is also an honorably discharged military veteran, who served for six years. James has been the website content developer @ ECFES, library archivist, team builder, and steward of the original vision for ECFES, an ethnobotanical/psychedelic/entheogenic healing center under one roof.
Psychedelics Today is sharing this research project from Naropa in hopes that some with adequate experience may contribute! Below is a message and invitation from the Naropa University team.
Hello,
We are a team of researchers from Naropa University investigating the effects of N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (N, N-DMT), an illegal substance.
We are inviting you to participate and/or promote our survey about DMT through your individual connections, your group’s email list, and social media platforms. This is an anonymous questionnaire to gather preliminary data about the potential risks and benefits associated with taking DMT. The data that we collect will ultimately be used to create a protocol for extended state DMT research.
Responses will benefit those who choose to use DMT in the future, as well as help the scientific community to obtain more information about a sparsely researched topic.
To participate in this survey, please click on the following link: https://survey.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_245uviVxh3H7aV7 and you will be directed to a consent form. If you agree to the consent by clicking on the arrow at the bottom of the screen, you will be directed to the beginning of the survey. If you know people who might be willing to participate, please forward this email to your contacts, or share the link on your social media and/or website.
Anyone who has ever used DMT in any setting is welcomed to reply.
This survey should take about an hour to complete. Participants can choose to stop responding at any time and may return at their convenience.
Participants can use their phone, tablet, or computer to respond.
There are no compensations or incentives provided.
Responses will not be connected to any identifying information.
If you have any questions, or experience any difficulties accessing the link or completing the survey, please contact Dr. Carla J. Clements ( drcjclements@msn.com) or Dr. Travis Cox ( tcox@naropa.edu).
We appreciate your support. Sincerely,
Dr. Carla J. Clements, BCPC LPC Dr. Travis Cox, Ecopsychology Professor Naropa University Andrew Linares, Registered Psychotherapist Rosario Vergara, Registered Psychotherapist Mozelle E. DeLong, Registered Psychotherapist.
In this episode, Joe interviews Tep, a chemical engineer and educated, psychedelic enthusiast. They dive into rich conversation regarding drug use education and creating a cohesive meaning among recreational, medical and therapeutic substance use.
3 Key Points:
There is a disconnect between drug education and drug use. There are a lot of people who use drugs, but not a lot of people who are educated on how to use them.
There is a huge advantage of isolating the property of the drug when using them for therapy. For example, using isolated psilocybin vs mushrooms.
Learning on site at festivals and music events may not be super successful, drug education and harm reduction may look more like preparation.
Tep listens to all sorts of music, whether that’s rave style with lights, or jam bands, or a music festival with camping, or even rap and jazz
There is a whole spectrum of drug use in the music environment
She points out that some people are very mindful of what and how much they are taking, and other people are just taking anything they can find, and sometimes a lot or too much
She started to talk to people at festivals and realized that people really didn’t know about the benefits and power of psychedelics
There definitely is a place for harm reduction education at festivals
Drug Use Assistance Groups
Joe brings up the Zendo project and other initiatives that help people who are having a difficult drug experience to walk them out of it
Some festival ‘families’ go around and have missions to hydrate people or make sure people are having a good time
They aren’t staff or paid to do it or anything but they do it for the good of the whole
Vision
Learning on site may not be super successful, most festival goers have an agenda for adventure and music and not for learning at a booth or speaker
Drug education and harm reduction may look more like preparation
Tep mentions Diplo doesn’t allow any drug use at his shows, alcohol is the only allowed substance
Tep thinks that he probably doesn’t know that alcohol is far worse than psychedelics and other drugs
Theraputic Use
When someone goes and has a vacation, they have certain chemicals released in their mind, it is still therapeutic, even if it’s not a psychedelic experience
“Not only can psychedelics be fun, they can also be therapeutic.” – Tep
Tep started going to camping style festivals and started hanging out with a crowd of people 10 years older than her, where their drug use was mature and mindful and safe
Then when she would hang around her younger friend group again, she realized how unsafe and unmindful their drug use was
It led her to be more active in wanting to educate everyone on how to use drugs properly
Exotic Compounds
Shulgin’s magical half dozen includes 2CB, 2CT2, and others
Tep mentions preference of truffles over mushrooms
Her and Joe bring up the decrease in potency of most drugs with exposure to moisture and time and other variables
Compound Isolation
There is a huge advantage of isolating the property of the drug when using them for therapy
For example, using isolated psilocybin vs mushrooms
The therapy is just as important as the substance
There is a way to find information in this community without getting a degree in it
About Tep
Tep is a chemical engineer who had an interest in modern psychedelic research. She is passionate about the EDM and music culture and finding new ways to educate drug users on harm reduction and drug use education.
Ayahuasca is a psychoactive tea traditionally used by indigenous communities of the Amazon rainforest for its powerful healing, purgative, divinatory, and visionary properties. As of late, and with the rise in use of DMT itself, ayahuasca is becoming majorly popular for the intense visions it induces, and which are usually attributed to DMT.
Although the brew’s potency is often recognized by its DMT component in the West, the plants that contain this compound are really just admixtures. The core ingredient of ayahuasca is the vine Banisteriopsis caapi, whose name in the indigenous Quichua language is actually aya waska (meaning “the vine of the soul” or “the vine of the dead”).
There are a number of scientific and cultural reasons why this vine is central to the ayahuasca brew. In this article, we will look into its potential as a healing agent and its place in the Amazonian indigenous lore.
Ayahuasca’s Rising Popularity
Ayahuasca has a wide range of ethereal applications: it’s used for diagnosis and healing, learning and training, social bonding and rite of passage rituals, creating hunting and agricultural strategies, finding missing objects or people, and various other kinds of shamanic activities. Its mystical properties have drawn a number of ethnobotanists and psychonautical enthusiasts to explore and chart the indigenous use of this powerful potion since the mid-20th century.
All the incredible documentation of Amazonian master plant healing practices has brought about the rise of ayahuasca tourism – the phenomenon of Western people visiting indigenous communities in order to take part in ayahuasca rituals.
After decades of development in tourism infrastructure and at a time when viral online information sharing is a highly prevalent means of communication, the brew’s unparalleled popularity can largely be attributed to the wild visions it presents its drinkers with.
Many believe that the source of these visions is the dimethyltryptamine molecule, the major active component in the admixture plants that go into most standard ayahuasca preparations. However, that’s all DMT is – one potential, but well-established additive to an already powerful healing and divinatory potion.
Ayahuasca is more than just DMT. To really understand this, it’s important to learn about the core constituent of this sacred brew – its primary ingredient dubbed the Vine of the Soul.
The Heart of the Brew – the Vine of the Soul
The most common ingredients that make up a typical ayahuasca brew are the vine Banisteriopsis caapi and the DMT admixtures: the shrub Psychotria viridis (also known as chacruna, meaning “mix” in Quichua) or, less commonly, Diplopterys cabrerana (also known as chaliponga or chagropanga). Although traditional brews will vary in their ingredients, all of them will contain B. caapi.
B. caapi contains three indole alkaloids with β-carboline structure: harmine and tetrahydroharmine (THH) in high amounts, and lower amounts of harmaline.
P. viridis and D. cabrerana contain DMT, known worldwide as The Spirit Molecule. DMT’s incredible psychoactive properties are likely the result of its role as an agonist at the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor.
The alkaloids in B. caapiare reversible MAOIs – they inhibit monoamine oxidase enzymes in our bodies, which normally metabolize orally ingested DMT before it can pass through the blood-brain barrier. With this inhibitory activity, DMT remains intact and can access the central nervous system.
The inhibition of both the MAO enzyme and serotonin reuptake systems as a result of ingesting harmine, harmaline, and THH causes a rise in the levels of serotonin and other monoamines. Ayahuasca’s highly potent antidepressant effects could be (at least in part) attributed to these neurochemical processes.
Aside from their effects on MAO enzymes and serotonin receptors, the β-carboline alkaloids in the B. caapi vine have been found to have antiparasitic and antimicrobial functions, as well asa host of other beneficial effects. A recent comprehensive scientific synthesis explains in great detail all we know so far about ayahuasca’s neurobiological workings and its actual and potential therapeutic and clinical implications.
When consumed on their own, harmine, harmaline, and THH have quite distinct and powerful effects.
According to a report from an experienced psychonaut, “Harmaline is a very mentally stoning drug, causing a foggy dreamy state of mind and making you a little shaky and a little disoriented at moderate doses. Harmine is more stimulating and more clear headed, not as disorienting, but otherwise quite similar to harmaline. Both cause a peaceful emotionally detached feeling. […] tetrahydroharmine feels almost completely different. Its main effect is mood enhancement and pleasant orgasmic tingling all over.”
Many other anecdotal reports available online confirm these characterizations.
Traditional preparations of ayahuasca
Furthermore, in traditional indigenous practice (i.e. in the preparations of the Napo Runa, the Sharanahua, the Tukano, and the Waorani, to name a few), the ayahuasca brew would often be made solely from the B. caapi vine, and it was only after the popularization of DMT’s effects among westerners that the DMT admixture plants became a universally present ingredient. The development of ayahuasca tourism brought about the need for facilitators of ayahuasca ceremonies to basically guarantee the visionary effects that have become well-publicized by their past visitors, and a yearning of their future ones.
Knowing about these therapeutic and psychotropic properties of the alkaloids in B. caapi, it’s no wonder that this vine has long been revered as the actual healing agent that catalyzes ayahuasca’s spiritual experience.
According to Terence McKenna, who popularized ayahuasca as not much more than “orally active DMT” in the first place, “[T]he action of the Banisteriopsis, as far as the visions are concerned, is to prevent the Psychotria from being neutralized by gastric enzymes” (Calavia, 2011:131). However, DMT-containing plants are just some of the 80 different plant species that have so far been identified as admixtures to traditional ayahuasca recipes (that number is estimated to be much greater in reality). Each plant modulates or enhances the total or partial effect of the brew, and B. caapi is a visionary plant in its own right.
An interesting fact is that many different varieties of B. caapi itself are used in ayahuasca preparations throughout the Amazon basin. Depending on the strain availability in their respective location, and the desired effect, different indigenous communities will use different varieties. These strains are often botanically identical, and the distinctions are only visible to well-trained eyes familiar with the vegetation in that specific part of the jungle.
Some of the commonly distinguished strains include:
red ayahuasca (ayahuasca colorada) – used almost always by shamans alone to exacerbate their ability to heal others;
white ayahuasca (ayahuasca blanca) – used to facilitate light or dark magic (brujeria), such as projecting spiritual darts (tsentsak) or defending against them;
yellow ayahuasca (ayahuasca amarilla) – widely cultivated and used strain, known for its gentle, but powerful healing properties, and crisp visionary aspect; often given to inexperienced drinkers;
sky/pink ayahuasca (ayahuasca cielo/rosada) – also a commonly used strain, but stronger than yellow, for more experienced drinkers;
black ayahuasca (ayahuasca negra) – very strong and not very visual – most of the visions are said to be drowned out by a thick black fog; intensely healing and purgative;
thunder ayahuasca (ayahuasca trueno) – only given to experienced drinkers, brews made with this ayahuasca cause intense bodily shaking and a violent purge;
Indian ayahuasca (ayahuasca india) – an ancient and extremely powerful strain which is only harvested from white sand rainforests and is not cultivated;
There are dozens more strains in use. Each has its role in the lives of the indigenous peoples who employ them, and their unique systems of beliefs about the spirits of the rainforest. Their names are given based on their purpose, but also based on the color of the plant (the flowers or the vine when the bark is scraped off), or the shade it gives to the visions.
As these strains belong to the same plant species, no scientific distinction has been made in terms of their chemical composition. However, knowing what we know about the individual effects of the β-carboline alkaloids, it’s safe to assume that the indigenous nomenclature may correlate with the alkaloid level ratios in different strains.
B. caapi has for centuries been revered by indigenous Amazonians as an omnipotent Master Plant – it’s their healer, their medium, their knower. Meanwhile, our knowledge about its components and effects is being broadened faster by independent psychonauts than by academic researchers. Western science needs to step up its inquiry into the vine’s therapeutic properties and substantiate the centrality of B. caapi in indigenous healing practices.
Xavier Francuski: With a background in research psychology and apprenticeships in ethereal worlds, Xavier tries to reconcile the astounding nature of the realms beyond with what sense we can make of them in this one. Xavier writes for EntheoNation.
These are the people who toil away in obscurity for years doing the hard lab work with little to no recognition for their efforts. It is my opinion that “science” gets way too much credit while real scientists (not celebrities in lab coats) should be the ones getting the credit and publicity of groundbreaking research. I believe that the recent DMT study published in Scientific Reports is by far the most important study in 2019 and all the scientists involved in the study should deserve wide name recognition and credit for their efforts. Credit needs to go to the following: lead author and fast-rising DMT researcher Jon Dean, Dr. Jimo Borjigin, Dr. Steven Barker, Dr. Rick Strassman, Dr. Michael M. Wang, Dr. Tiecheng Liu, Dr. Sean Huff, and Dr. Ben Sheler.
It’s difficult to recall the last time that I had a great meal and made the generic claim of “I love food”. Generally speaking, it’s either the restaurant that receives compliments, the type of meal that receives praise, or homage is paid to the chef directly. This is why it’s so amusing and yet perplexing when people seem to generically pronounce their “love for science” when an interesting study is published. Similarly to the cooks of a great meal… it is humans, people, scientists that actually carry out the experiments.
JC: So… while many people have heard the backstory of how Dr. Rick Strassman got involved in DMT research due to his book “The Spirit Molecule”, not many know about how you got your start in this field. Would you mind giving us a little bit of background as to how all of this came about?
Jimo: I had been working on the pineal gland and studying how dynamic secretion of melatonin from the pineal gland teaches us about how circadian clock works in the mid-2000. I was also teaching our graduate students about the pineal gland. One day in 2011, when I googled the word “pineal gland” (hoping to find some cool pictures to include for my class teaching), I came across Rick Strassman’s book (DMT: The Spirit Molecule) and the documentary about the book. I was very surprised when I heard Rick saying that DMT was made and secreted in the pineal gland, since I knew nothing about it. I emailed Rick directly and asked him for the evidence that his statement was based on, and was told that it was just his speculation. I told Rick that I was interested in testing his theory, as we were routinely performing pineal microdialysis experiments and I believed that if DMT is ever secreted from the pineal gland, we should have them in the dialysates. Rick was nice and encouraging; he introduced me to Steve Barker who routinely analyzing controlled substances in his lab, and the rest was history.
JC: Good stuff… so let’s just dive right into it…you did a really big study recently. I’m obviously biased but this is probably the most important study of the year for sure. Your research team found the circulating levels of DMT at similar levels to very commonly studied neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine. Being that you stated that this was found in the extracellular fluid am I correct in assuming that this is the cerebrospinal fluid? If so, where do you hypothesize that the DMT is synthesized in terms of the measurements you took at the cerebral cortex?
Jimo: Oh wow (laughing). Thank you I’m very flattered. Well, it’s within tissue in the extracellular space… we didn’t really stick a probe only into the brain ventricles where the cerebrospinal fluid is in abundance. We stuck our probe into the brain tissue where neurons are packed. So it is definitely extracellular. So, these are not the quantities within individual cells… I’m assuming that DMT is a neurotransmitter and it might be actually packed and stored inside the vesicles within neurons. The release is only activity-dependent if DMT is truly a neurotransmitter. The basal levels of the 3 monoamine neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine), which the DMT concentrations were compared with, were also assayed the same way. This means that they inserted a microdialysis probe into the brain to measure the basal level of those 3 neurotransmitters, which is why we think DMT is comparable.
JC: Where do you hypothesize that the DMT was synthesized when taking measurements at the cerebral cortex? Any specific cells?
Jimo: We believe that DMT is made in the neurons. The reason for that is the following… we showed that one of the DMT synthetic enzymes AADC which is also called DDC… the same protein with 2 different names. This is the first of the two DMT enzymes that converts tryptophan into tryptamine. It is essential for all other monoamine neurotransmitter synthesis, but it is also required for DMT synthesis. For a long time people knew that there are neurons in the cerebral cortex (really all over the brain) that contain AADC. However, none of the other 2 enzymes (tyrosine hydroxylase or tryptophan hydroxylase) that are essential for the synthesis of canonical monoamine neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine were found. It is tryptophan hydroxylase (-TPH2 in the brain) that is required for the synthesis of serotonin together with AADC; tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) together with AADC required for the synthesis of dopamine (and norepinephrine). So when people look for monoamine neurons that synthesize serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, … they always have to look for both enzymes (AADC + TH/TPH2). So in these scattered cortical neurons that contain AADC (called D-neurons), people couldn’t find either one of those enzymes (TH/TPH2). So clearly there is a lot of work to do for us to really have a thorough understanding of the details of the localization of potentially DMT produced in neurons in the brain. The reason we think these are neurons is because D-neurons were confirmed to be neurons in both human brains and animal brains in the cortex by others. But we still need to use a neuron-specific biomarker to measure the colocalization of a neuronal marker in the INMT- positive cells to thoroughly demonstrate that these neurons are the source of DMT or have the capacity to produce DMT.
JC: Prior to this study much of the discussion surrounding endogenous DMT from researchers in the field was based on stating that the lungs were the primary source of DMT.
Jimo: Right, right.
JC: From what I understand this was based on the levels of INMT found in the lungs… right?
Jimo: Correct! Yeah it’s amazing (laughing).
JC: But this recent study found not only INMT but AADC co-localized which we basically just covered. But in essence… the same people that were saying that DMT is not produced in the brain or not produced in the pineal gland…based on the INMT-DMT lung hypothesis it would seem that they would be forced to concede that DMT is produced in the brain now?
Jimo: Yeah (laughing)… I would think that any reasonable person would say that. It’s amazing to me that a lot of people were saying that DMT is made in the lungs. In the case of DMT production, it’s been known for a long time that it requires 2 enzymes and ideally, the 2 enzymes would be situated in the same cells in order for that cell to produce DMT. And yet… people are simply just looking at INMT expression and assuming that that alone is sufficient to produce DMT (without AADC).(
JC: Some people think that this study puts the pineal gland theory to rest. I feel like that’s not entirely correct.
Jimo: I think you’re right.
JC: This is the first study that actually shows that the human pineal gland has INMT/AADC in order to make DMT.
Jimo: Yes.
JC: While the extracellular levels of DMT in the cerebral cortex were similar between normal and pinealactomized rats, is it possible that the pineal produced DMT has a greater effect in the third ventricle or thalamus region in comparison to the cerebral cortex levels?
Jimo: Well… all I can say is that the neocortex can produce DMT in the absence of a pineal gland. Our study did not really address the issue of pineal DMT production. The fact is that in our data in the absence of the pineal gland the DMT levels go up (not significantly, though). Our data is relatively crude based on the fact that we surgically removed the pineal gland. When you yank the pineal gland out you disturb the blood-brain barrier a bit since the pineal gland is part of the blood-brain barrier preventing things from going in and out. So we don’t know why it goes up in the absence of the pineal gland. I haven’t given it too much thought but all we’re showing is that the brain doesn’t really require the pineal gland to produce DMT. The pineal may produce a small level of DMT but it’s clearly not contributing a huge amount. If the pineal gland produced 3X as much then we should have seen a difference. I strongly believe that the cortex (where we utilized our microdialysis probe) makes and secretes DMT independent of the pineal gland. The pineal gland is not essential and is not required… it doesn’t mean the pineal gland itself cannot make DMT since all the machinery is there. But we had a long paragraph in the discussion part of the paper discussing why we think the pineal gland may not contribute much to DMT production. If you look at the affinity of the AADC enzyme, it actually prefers to convert 5-hydroxtryptophan (5-HTP) into 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT). For serotonin production tryptophan is first converted to 5-hydroxtryptophan by TPH and the second step for serotonin synthesis is converting 5-hydroxytrytophan (5-HTP) to 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT); so apparently, AADC has a higher affinity for 5-HTP than tryptophan. So if both 5-HTP and tryptophan are around (in this case in the pineal gland) AADC would prefer to catalyze the reaction of 5-HTP to 5-HT… so it kind of ignores tryptophan. However, in other cells if AADC is only looking at tryptophan and if 5-HTP is not around, it should readily convert tryptophan to tryptamine.
JC: Are there any neurotransmitters or any endogenous biochemical(s) for that matter that have been identified to be rat specific in comparison to that of humans as far as we know? What I mean by this is whether there is any data to suggest that rats produce different biochemicals than humans in the brain or throughout the body?
Jimo: Usually when you go up the evolutionary tree, it is higher-order animals such as humans that have something that the rats don’t have and it doesn’t go the other way around. Especially being that both rats and humans are both mammals, so it’s highly unlikely. On the other hand, if you go down to invertebrates or lower vertebrates who have very unique habitats they may have stuff that humans don’t need. So my answer is NO, not as far as I know. There are genes and proteins only found in humans, but not in mice or rats. I am not aware of any genes or proteins present only in rats but not in humans.
JC: So that would mean that for someone to claim that DMT is not found in the human brain because the research only took place in live rats (although you took in vitro sampling of human brains that observed the same exact enzymes that rats produced in order to synthesize DMT) that they would be making claims that fall outside the scope of scientific data to date?
Jimo: Unless I’m mistaken Dr. Steven Barker has already measured DMT in the brains of deceased individuals and trace amounts in their blood. This could be a question for Steven regarding the solid evidence of showing DMT is found and collected from humans. All reasonable people would agree that if human brains are found to express both INMT and AADC, it is highly likely that DMT will be made in the human brain. The next step would be to stick a probe in a live human’s brain so we could monitor DMT at a level comparable to other neurotransmitters but usually, that level of proof is rarely demanded for research because it is so unusual to be able to get samples using such invasive techniques. No one would want to volunteer for that kind of experiment being that it comes with some kind of risk. So I don’t believe it is necessary. Having experimental proof from humans would certainly help, but it is not always feasible to do so.
JC: I think all the hard-nosed “skeptics” continuing to question whether humans brains produce DMT following this recent study should volunteer for the brain-probe study…
Jimo: (laughing) But remember we don’t want to really make any enemies. My take is that unless you have evidence against the human brain-DMT hypothesis there isn’t much to say. We are doing our best effort.
JC: Going back to the yanking out of the pineal gland… Being that DMT has been observed to have anti-inflammatory properties, is it possible that yanking out the pineal gland causes cerebral inflammation-inducing a periphery response to synthesize more DMT to alleviate this then causing the levels to go up?
Jimo: That is highly unlikely as in the periphery, there are very few cells that contain both AADC and INMT in contrast to the brain. Plus, if there were any inflammation, it should be within the brain near where the pineal gland was in touch with, which is not known to exert peripheral inflammatory responses. We performed numerous pineal removal surgeries over the years, have never observed any signs of notable inflammatory responses in rats.
(JC Note: I didn’t clarify when I stated “periphery.” I meant the periphery area of the brain in near proximity to the pineal gland wound not peripheral nervous system outside of the brain. It was my fault for not clarifying.)
JC: Ok. I find it super interesting that much of the same team that did this study also did the 2013 cardiac arrest study which observed the global and coherent surge in gamma waves in the brain. Based on the literature out there it seems as though exogenous DMT and Ayahuasca also induce increases in gamma waves. Do you believe that there is a possibility of a tight correlation between the upregulation of endogenous DMT and gamma activity?
Jimo: Well… in this recent paper we didn’t even have cardiac arrest in the title so it wasn’t our focus. The main message from this recent paper is that DMT can be produced and released from the neurons in the brain at the level that is comparable to other monoamine neurotransmitters. My students are super excited about our 2013 cardiac arrest paper and the link between the DMT and near- death experiences. The two areas of studies (near-death consciousness and DMT) emerged coincidentally at the same time in our lab as 2 independent branches of research which appear to have the potential to converge into a related research theme. Clearly Rick Strassman talked about this hypothesis and the idea has been floating around out there for many years and it sounds reasonable. In the recent paper, we wanted to know whether there was anything that could upregulate or downregulate DMT release. So when we induced experimental cardiac arrest in animals, their DMT levels went up in some but not all animals, which is interesting. The recent study was not done to demonstrate DMT levels in cardiac arrest but it was more based on showing that there are physiological events that can increase DMT. Some kind of physiological event can regulate DMT release. Regulated release of chemicals is required steps for something to be called a neurotransmitter. We are trying to push this work toward demonstrating DMT as a neurotransmitter. Some interpret our data as DMT being linked to NDE’s which is not my intention or the goal of the study; but clearly a lot of people are interested in the study because of that potential link. However, for DMT-NDE to be linked, we would have to do the same exact study we did in our 2015 PNAS paper where we monitored neurotransmitter release at 60 second intervals and measured the amounts of neurotransmitters released… and it was a huge amount. Within 2 minutes of asphyxic cardiac arrest, dopamine went up, norepinephrine went up, serotonin went up, GABA went up… not all neurotransmitters went up so high though. Glutamate only went up 2-fold… so it’s a massive release of various neurotransmitters, a tightly regulated process that happens super- fast. So we would have to monitor the release of DMT at a finer resolution in order to really say anything about whether DMT is potentially involved. That study still remains to be done.
JC: I guess what I’m asking you is to maybe hypothesize about… in the 2013 study you saw a huge surge in global gamma waves. Basically faster brain activity…
Jimo: Yes.
JC: In the 2015 study you basically saw a “brainstorm” in which a bunch of neurotransmitters were upregulated.
Jimo: Yes.
JC: Do you think it’s that far-fetched to think that DMT might be a part of that biochemical mix and that it could contribute to the gamma wave correlation or is that still too speculative?
Jimo: It’s possible. I guess until we do the experiment we’re not sure, we don’t know. There’s a possibility that those 2 are linked.
JC: In terms of a definitive way to know whether DMT is tightly correlated with gamma waves… is that something that you could figure out with an INMT-KO animal?
Jimo: Yeah… I think if a gamma surge disappeared then that might be a way to support the hypothesis.
JC: That makes sense… but it wouldn’t even really have to disappear necessarily right? It could just be affected.
Jimo: Correct… yes.
JC: Switching gears… One of the biggest issues I’ve seen is that people are so excited about psychedelic research and there seems to be a decent amount of funding for the field but I think that the endogenous research is even more interesting.
Jimo: I think so too (laughing). I agree with you there.
JC: Much of the psychedelic research these days focuses on fMRI studies so it seems like cerebral blood flow seems to be the predominant measure of perceived activity. However, in a yet to be published interview I did with Dr. Mauro Zappaterra he stated that based on his research, cerebrospinal fluid can act as a signaling medium being that it can carry the neurotransmitters and signaling throughout the brain on a global level. This would seem to add another layer of complexity in terms of analyzing brain activity when comparing fMRI to EEG. What are your thoughts regarding this?
Jimo: FMRI monitors changes associated with blood flow. Robin Carhart- Harris has done psychedelic work with fMRI and the subjects actually show the lowering of fMRI measures. It’s a different mode of regulation so we don’t really know… I wish when Rick Strassman did his study he had everybody monitored for EEG or fMRI to see what happened to them. My guess is that study is coming and somebody is working on that. We can easily do an EEG study on animals but we just cannot ask them what they experience. Sooner or later it will have to be done.
JC: It’s interesting that fMRI shows a decrease in whatever might be termed as brain activity but in EEG studies it shows that there’s an increase in faster oscillations and a decrease in slower ones.
Jimo: Right.
JC: A lot of stuff to uncover there…
Jimo: Correct.
JC: While the recent study focused on DMT and the enzymes INMT and AADC… what are your thoughts on researching endogenous monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI) such as tribulin, tryptoline, neurocatin or pinoline and their relationship with endogenous DMT?
Jimo: Yeah, there is a lot to do and the future research is just wide- open for these questions to be addressed. Our study simply points out that there is a whole new world out there for people who are interested in the molecular basis of altered states of consciousness and a potential new direction for looking into psychiatric disorders. So I think there are lots of interesting things that can happen but right now we have to focus on something that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) could consider funding. We have to convince them that this is something that may be medically relevant and that we’re not just thinking about euphoric states and psychedelic states… something that can benefit patients.
JC: Yeah… would you consider private funding?
Jimo: Oh yeah totally.
JC: We’ll go off the record with that discussion…
Jimo: (laughing)
JC: Do you have any interest in replicating this recent study but also measuring levels of 5-MEO-DMT and Bufotenine?
Jimo: Oh yeah. Once again this is another area that is wide open that one can do. It all depends… once again… on funding. Right now people are lined up to want to work in my lab. Every year, lots of graduate students contact me for a position my lab; and the first thing I tell them is: I am sorry that I can’t take you in my lab because I don’t have NIH funding for DMT research.
JC: (Cutting in) Horrible
Jimo: (laughing) That’s the standard answer for several years now. I just recently accepted a very good student who insisted on joining my group regardless of the lack of NIH funding. In any case, we try to collaborate with people that have grants to make it happen; but the key is to have research funding to support the DMT endeavor.
JC: Absolutely. That’s one of the most frustrating things I see in terms of scientific research. There’s so much money that goes into genetic research and things of that nature but there’s so little funding that goes into endogenous DMT research by comparison.
Jimo: There are various ways that this line of research can now be supported because we’ve shown that DMT is really in the brain and may serve some kind of functions; we just need funding support to do more studies. That’s why I’m happy to discuss this research with the media, so we can raise more awareness and hopefully garner funding for our DMT research. Scientists tend to stay in their labs and do their own research and it takes years to get their data out there to be in the public and to gain support from the public. I think that the publicity this paper has created (which surprised me) may generate a lot of interest.
Jimo: (laughing) I think it would be faster to just wait for the paper to be published right? I don’t know who the author of the paper is though.
JC: It was a study in which the author of the paper passed away so that’s why Dr. Barker said it didn’t end up getting published.
Jimo: Oh. I see.
JC: I think it would be a really interesting replication study in the sense of Barker’s speculations that we have an endogenous hallucinatory system and that a lot of hallucinogens might just be activating that system rather than simply acting on their own.
Jimo: That’s interesting… hmmm. Yeah… well… I’m not sure. There are so many things to do. We have to choose wisely… I have to pick my fights wisely (laughing). I guess it depends on whether the funder is really interested in pushing that line of research and if it’s somehow in-line with my own interest. I am interested in things like demonstrating that DMT is a neurotransmitter which is something that requires some work, and establishing the whole system of DMT centric neurotransmission. Beyond that… as far as looking at the homologues and endogenous system… like you said monoamine oxidase inhibitors and the recent study you mentioned regarding Barker & LSD, there are a lot of interesting things to do (laughing). It would require more dedicated, highly motivated students and people working hard to making it happen.
Jimo: Gamma waves need to be mediated by neurotransmitter secretion that is acting on the post-synaptic neurons. So there has to be a neurochemical reaction that translates into electrical signaling. So I wouldn’t be surprised at all if DMT could be one of the many neurochemicals (not the only one), contributing to the experience although it could be a key chemical. The only real way to test how much DMT plays a role in the experience is to have a DMT deficient human (or group of them) undergo the “God Helmet” and have them report the types of experiences they have and compare them to people secreting DMT normally. So basically I would say that it is not impossible, unless data shows otherwise.
JC: Do you know if there are any methods to induce respiratory fluctuations in animals without inducing anesthesia? The reason why I ask is because breathing techniques such as the Wim Hof Method (WHM), Stan Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork, Joe Dispenza’s meditation, and the more ancient yogic renditions (Pranayama) have all been cited to induce visionary states when carried out for prolonged periods of time. There’s much speculation regarding DMT’s involvement and based on our conversation (and recent study) it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising as to the upregulation of DMT (alongside everything else) from these breathing exercises. Is it feasible to do a comparable study of breathing exercises in live animals?
Jimo: It’s something that I haven’t looked into so I don’t have an answer right now. Changes in breathing patterns can lead to excitation in the central nervous system. In an animal model I think you can create alterations to their trachea… it would be kind of a reversible time-controlled experiment in which you stimulate the nervous system of the animal to breathe harder. Experimentally it seems doable, as long as there are animal models to induce hyperventilation similar to that as humans it’s possible. I’m almost thinking it would be much faster and easier to do this study in humans but the invasive nature of measurement is an issue.
JC: I hear you Jimo. If it was up to you… what would you say are the top 5 studies that need to take place within this field that you are specifically focused on right now?
Jimo: The first one is that DMT is actually a neurotransmitter. After that, we would like to know how the DMT synthesis is controlled; and how it’s release is regulated. My prediction is that some of the regulatory mechanisms in charge of DMT release might be dysfunctional in patients with psychiatric disorders that feature hallucinations. We know that DMT has hallucinatory properties, so it’s not too far-fetched to predict the link there. The potential role of DMT in regards to Near Death consciousness remains to be experimentally tested explored with the gamma waves as you discussed in your blog. That’s something we can easily do to demonstrate that endogenous DMT can stimulate gamma waves.
JC: Ok.
Jimo: And, of course, whether DMT contributes to neural correlates of dream states is also an interesting question.
Jimo: So we’re not the first one to bring up the lack of funding! (laughing)
JC: It’s amazingly horrible. In terms of the human studies… do you have any ideas on how you might go about doing endogenous human studies? Have you looked into any of the technology out there that might be able to do it less invasively?
Jimo: Well… I believe there are human patients who are helped and being diagnosed with a microdialysis setup in certain parts of their brain. I think if we can find patients like that, we could potentially collaborate with their physicians or scientists who are working with those patients and maybe get a sample from them.
JC: That makes sense… like somebody being treated for hydrocephalus or something?
Jimo: Yeah something like that or even from someone undergoing surgery for brain tumor removal. Their brains are already exposed so maybe we can share a little bit of CSF from them and monitor their levels while the patients are alive.
JC: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Have you heard much about a technology called proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy? I was reading that it has the ability to measure brain fluctuations in glutamate and glutathione non-invasively. Would this be applicable to DMT?
Jimo: Hmm… I’m not sure. I haven’t really looked into any measurement of DMT in humans yet. But that’s something to look into once we’re going that route… I’ll think about that (laughing).
JC: Well Jimo… it seems like I have some work to do in terms of reaching out to some people to try and get your lab some funding to continue this very important research. Thank you very much for your time… do you have anything you’d like to say in closing?
Jimo: What I’d like to emphasize is how important collaboration is to make science happen, not just the funding. If Rick (Strassman) did not introduce me to Steve Barker, our first DMT paper (Barker et al., 2013) would not have been materialized, and Jon Dean, the first author of our DMT paper and a very dedicated graduate student passionate about psychedelic research, would not have joined my team to produce the current publication (Dean et al., 2019). Collaboration with Mike Wang (a co-author on the Dean paper) on the role of a stroke on sleep and circadian rhythms in rats allowed us to discover the surge of neurochemicals in the brain of dying rats, which ultimately lead to the discovery of the surge of gamma activities in the dying rats. Collaboration with George Mashour’s group was essential for the computational analysis of the brain’s electrical signals (Borjigin et al., 2013). Collaboration with Bob Kennedy’s laboratory allowed the high resolution (every 60-sec) measurement of neurotransmitters in dying rats (Li et al., 2015). All I can say in closing is that I have been extremely fortunate to be able to work with these fantastic scientists. Teamwork rocks!
People must remember that “science” is a methodology… it’s not a living organism that makes decisions. “Science” is not even an organization with people within it that makes decisions. “Science” does not have the inherent intelligence to allocate funding opportunities to important, world-changing endeavors. This is because “science” is merely a methodology just like cooking is the method of preparing a meal. Methodology is great and all but it is hardly what makes the world change… it is people that make the world change.
I must admit… I’ve grown to loathe the praising of the term “science” as it is such a misunderstood and misused the term. Scientists are the organisms that propel the knowledge base further so that other organisms (the general public) can reap the rewards. The praise and acknowledgment should go to scientists who work in important fields of research (no… not all fields of scientific research are important). I’m expecting this interview to generate 200,000 to 300,000 reads by the end of the year so for those of you that are interested in seeing endogenous DMT research propelled further… please realize that it won’t happen on its own. This entire field of research has been lagging tremendously since the 1970’s financially speaking. It is embarrassing that with an annual budget of over $39 billion dollars that the NIH still refuses to allocate any amount to endogenous DMT research. One would figure that if the NIH can spend $3.2 million studying the effects of alcohol in monkeys, it can surely spend the same amount on a field that the general public is extremely interested in such as endogenous DMT. In any case, it’s been estimated that there are nearly 2,500 billionaires in the world and likely over 50,000 hundred millionaires (people with $100,000,000 or more). There is enough private funding out there collecting dust that could change this endogenous DMT research industry in a very short time frame. If you’re reading this right now you are already aware of the importance of this topic. I ask you, readers, to assist this movement and reach out to whatever contacts you might have that have access to private funding that has the courage to financially back this very important field of studies. And somebody… anybody and everybody sends this interview to Joe Rogan as he discusses DMT quite often on his podcast and has the reach to help in this endeavor of fundraising. I’m tired of waiting for the NIH to get it right.
E-mail us at dmtquest@gmail.com if you have any comments or $50 million to plunk down into “DMT/Endohuasca” research. DMT Quest is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to raising funds primarily for endogenous DMT/Endohuasca research as well as providing media material (documentaries, articles, podcasts) to present the results of this research in layman’s terms. You can learn more about the DMT Quest project by visiting dmtquest.org. We can help fund Jimo’s research as well as other vastly underfunded DMT researchers throughout the world.
About the Author
John A. Chavez is an independent researcher that is interested in the biological correlates of “supernatural” occurrences.
Download In this episode, Joe interviews Dr. David Nichols, American Pharmacologist and Chemist. Dr. Nichols has made many contributions to the psychedelic space and is recognized as one of the foremost experts for his outstanding efforts in medicinal chemistry of hallucinogens.
3 Key Points:
Dr. David Nichols is the founder of The Heffter Research Institute, which promotes research of the highest scientific quality with the classic hallucinogens and psychedelics in order to contribute to a greater understanding of the mind leading to the improvement of the human condition, and to alleviate suffering.
Dr. Nichols has a strong opposition toward the DMT/pineal gland theory. The assumption is that DMT is released during birth and death, but Dr. Nichols presents opposing arguments as to why it isn’t true.
David doesn’t believe in the research of microdosing psychedelics. He believes there are many other diseases and disorders that research money could be put toward discovering drugs for than the potential for heightened creativity with microdosing.
He is the founding President of Heffter Research Institute
He was introduced to psychedelics before he went to graduate school
David’s work was never interrupted during the drug war because he wasn’t doing any clinical work
He proposed the study for MDMA testing on rats for a micro-dialysis of chemicals being released from the brain
David’s History of Substances
David attended a meeting at the Esalon Institute
He met Rick Doblin, a young kid at the time, who was enthusiastic about MDMA and Marijuana
Rick decided he wanted to develop MDMA as a drug, and asked David to make it with him
Then David met Rick Strassman, who asked him to make DMT
So he made the DMT and then DMT Spirit Molecule came out as a result
David made the first batch of psilocybin for John Hopkins
“The only way to use these substances, is to use the medical model.” – David
Microdosing
David doesn’t agree with microdosing, he thinks its all just a big hype
He says that there is a huge placebo effect with microdosing
He says there isn’t a lot of proven results and literature to make him believe in it
He thinks that there are far too many other things to research and create drugs to cure (like eating disorders for example) vs. just heightening creativity with microdosing
David edited Torsten Passie’s book, The Science of Microdosing Psychedelics
DMT
Rick Strassman’s DMT hypothesis is that upon birth and death, the Pineal gland produces DMT, which produces an outer-body experience
David says that the pineal gland is too small, it’s only 180mg
It produces 25 micrograms of melatonin in 24 hours, so there is no way for it to produce 25 milligrams of DMT, the amount needed for a DMT trip
Heffter Origins
Heffter Research Institute was David’s idea
Arthur Heffter was a scientist with a PhD in Pharmacology and Chemistry
He was one of the most well respected Scientists in Germany
He got samples of Peyote, and knew there were alkaloids in it, and he separated all the alkaloids, and took each alkaloid himself to find out that mescaline was the active component in Peyote
He was the expert who invented hair tests to find out if people were suffering from lead poisoning
Heffter Research Institute
The effects that they discovered from Psilocybin blew them away
They knew LSD had powerful effects, but they weren’t expecting to find the therapeutic benefits that they did with Psilocybin
Psilocybin has a great timeline too, LSD is really long lasting, and 5-MEO-DMT is super short and really powerful
Psilocybin is great for use in therapy because of the time it allows for integration
GMP Psilocybin Patent
Joe mentions the patent of GMP Psilocybin and asks if there are other ways to make psilocybin
David says that he believes there are other ways to make Psilocybin
The cost of psilocybin is trivial in comparison to the cost of therapy, David doesn’t think that the drug itself will have a monopoly
Dr. Nichols originally conceived of a privately funded Institute as the most effective mechanism for bringing research on psychedelic agents into the modern era of neuroscience. This vision led to the founding of the Heffter Research Institute in 1993. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC, where he continues his research. The focus of his graduate training, beginning in 1969, and of much of his research subsequent to receiving his doctorate in 1973 has been the investigation of the relationship between molecular structure and the action of psychedelic agents and other substances that modify behavioral states. His research has been continuously funded by government agencies for more three decades. He consults for the pharmaceutical industry and has served on numerous committees and government research review groups. Widely published in the scientific literature and internationally recognized for his research on centrally active drugs, he has studied all of the major classes of psychedelic agents, including LSD and other lysergic acid derivatives, psilocybin and the tryptamines, and phenethylamines related to mescaline. Among scientists, he is recognized as one of the foremost experts on the medicinal chemistry of hallucinogens. His high standards and more than four decades of research experience set the tone to ensure that rigorous methods and quality science are pursued by the Institute.
In this episode, Kyle sits down with Dr. Torsten Passie, Professor of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy with the Hanover Medical School in Germany. In the show, they cover a range of topics on Dr. Passie’s studies on microdosing.
Dr. Torsten Passie will be taking part in a special panel dedicated to microdosing at Breaking Convention 2019 (August 16-18, Greenwich, London), also featuring Amanda Fielding of the Beckley Foundation, Dr David Erritzoe of Imperial College, London, Dr Devin Turhune (Goldsmiths), and Dimitris Liokaftos, exploring myriad aspects of microdosing, including its effects, unknowns, and media representation presented by BC director Nikki Wyrd. Find out more about Breaking Convention: https://www.breakingconvention.co.uk/
3 Key Points:
Psychedelic research in the University setting died off after 2004, but is finally seeing an increase as the psychedelic revolution continues to grow.
There is very little to no documentation of doctors doing self-experimenting with psychedelic drugs. It’s becoming popular for therapists to use the substances used on their patients, more common to do the self-work before doing the work on others.
Even if microdosing does not produce any significant effects and it is all placebo, the trend is a new way to introduce it into our society.
Dr. Passie has been researching psychedelics for 25 years
He specializes in the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs
He has found difficulties in researching psychedelics during prohibition
Dr. Passie had a mystical experience before using psychedelics and then became interested in psychedelic use
He had grown up as an atheist, a materialist, and his experience required him to change his psychological state
His perception of reality was irritated and he had to see a therapist to integrate this experience
He said that this was frustrating because he was young and still in search for his identity
Through all of this, he decided to study medicine and become a psychedelic doctor
He became very conscious that he was on the right track
Research Studies
The researchers were the only ones doing studies on psychedelic states, there wasn’t much happening at the Universities
He did studies with cannabis, ketamine and even laughing gas
The research then was on how cannabinoids can help with psychosis
They were not successful with that, but it came to be that CBD was a neuroleptic and an anti-psychotic
Research pretty much stopped after 2004 due to new laws and the cost of the research
Dr. Passie does mention that in the past 10 years research has really taken off again and that we are really seeing the renaissance of psychedelic culture
In most of the literature of doctors doing self-experimenting, there is very little to no documentation of doctors doing self-experimenting with psychedelic drugs
Kyle mentions that MAPS has included into their training protocol to allow for therapists to have self-experiments with the substances that they are using on patients
Kyle also mentions he can’t imagine trying to hold space in breathwork without having had his own experiences with breathwork
Dr. Passie says that the history of self-experimentation with psychedelics has shown that the participants can become ‘gurus’ and lose their objectivity, he uses Timothy Leary as an example
But with only a few times of self-experimentation, maybe 2-4 times, he doesn’t see risks
HPPD
Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD) is a disorder in which a person has flashbacks of visual hallucinations or distortions experienced during a previous hallucinogenic drug experience
Dr. Passie thinks there is a selection bias in what is published about HPPD
Its more common to have a study published that talks about an adverse effect of LSD than a benefit of it
Hundreds of thousands of studies were conducted in the 50’s, and no one claimed that this phenomenon came up
And now one person has conducted a study, claiming that this phenomena exists
Dr. Passie says that this pattern happens among people who are prone to anxiety and who are dissociative
He says that most subjects that claim to experience HPPD, have experienced visuals even before ever taking LSD
Microdosing
It has been known to not have any effects from 15-20 micrograms of LSD
20-50 micrograms of LSD is considered mini-dosing, where you can feel some type of effects from it, but not as much as the full dose
Dr. Passie says it is strange for people to claim to have increased cognition during microdosing based on conventional data that shows that LSD produces poor cognitive function
He thinks that whatever the effects are of LSD at a high dose, that the effects at a low dose are the same, just less, not completely different effects
He believes that there is some placebo effect with microdosing
In terms of the microdosing trend, Dr. Passie is critical about the productivity factor, he does believe in the creativity factor though
The flow state may also be increased with microdosing
He claims that in his own experience with microdosing, he doesn’t experience the flow state, in fact he experiences a feeling of agitation
Combinations
In a study, when patients took a microdose first, and then a little while later, they took a different full psychedelic dose, the microdose impacted the experience of the full dose
It lessened the effects of the full dose psychedelic
Psychedelics and Sleep
Dr. Passie mentions a study where patients were given LSD, both high and low doses, during sleep
What was found was that LSD impacts REM sleep patterns
The dreams were not altered
The REM phases got longer during the beginning of sleep, and then much shorter near the end of sleep
It shows that the impact of sleeping patterns brings someone to feel much different the next day
The Microdosing Trend
Microdosing has much to be explored yet
But even if microdosing does not produce effects, the trend is a new way to introduce it into our society
“Microdosing might be a new assimilation process of psychedelics into our culture” – Torsten
Instead of the 60’s where we are taking huge doses, we are taking tiny doses as a slow approach to assimilate psychedelics back into society
Torsten is a professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy affiliated with Hannover Medical School, and led the Laboratory for Consciousness and Neurocognition. He has conducted clinical research on psychoactive substances and has written several books including The Pharmacology of LSD (2010) and Healing with Entactogens (2012). Between 2012 and 2015 he was visiting professor at Harvard Medical School.
Download In this episode, Kyle interviews David Krantz, Certified Epigenetic Coach, and an expert in nutritional genomics. In the show, they talk about the effects of substances via the implications on an individual’s genetics.
3 Key Points:
Epigenetic testing is a bio-hack for boosting cognitive function and harnessing our creativity and ultimate human potential.
There has been a lot of research done on genetics and the effects of THC. The body produces cannabinoids that activate the THC receptors internally, which varies from person to person.
Each person should be seen on an individual level, and the more we know about our unique genetics, the more we can understand about our interactions with different substances.
David works with clients on creating optimal epigenetic expression
He uses people’s genetics as a guide to look at recommendations for diet, herbs, supplements, etc.
He began looking at cannabis for recommendations and found curiosity in psychedelics too
Epigenetics studies the effects of the modification of genetics
It looks at chemical groups attached to the DNA itself and what happens to them over time
Cannabis and Genetics
The most robust area of research on genetics is THC
David said he has seen some research on Psilocybin and just very recently that liver enzymes are responsible for LSD interactions
It looks at the way people are metabolizing these substances
When you ingest something or smoke it, it has a higher impact on the body, edibles are a great example
Kyle brings up the curiosity of edibles impact being either physiological or biological
Genetics show the body’s cannabinoid levels
The body produces cannabinoids that activate the THC receptors internally
There are two enzymes that break down cannabinoids in the body, Anandamide and 2AG
There is a higher likelihood to use cannabis in a person with lower levels of endocannabinoids
This makes some people high-functioning stoners, and others non-functioning stoners
The substance is neutral, it’s all about the body and how it reacts to it
When the liver breaks down an edible, it makes THC more potent
There is speculation that the slow metabolizers have a better chance of passing a drug test because they don’t have a chance to convert 110HTHC to the COOHTHC
Food and Substance Effects
Kyle mentions someone who was drinking grapefruit juice everyday for 3 weeks, and it potentiated the effects of Ketamine
In order to psilocybin to be converted to psilocin, you need a chemical in your body called alkaline phosphatase
Vitamin C deficiency and Vitamin B-6 deficiency all both correlated with alkaline phosphatase deficiency
David brings up his experience going keto, it worked really great for him, his energy levels increased, he lost weight, but his wife had a horrible time with keto
Then he looked to genetics and it made perfect sense to him as to why it worked for him and why it failed for her
Metabolism, biochemistry, genetics, and so many other factors impact a person’s reaction to substances
David also mentions that with companies like 23 and me, they get their money from selling people’s genetic information
He says Apeiron is focused on what you can actually do with the information, not just simply providing the results
David says its super valuable for people to know these things about themselves, how to mitigate stress, how the metabolism works, knowing what to eat, knowing vitamin deficiencies, etc.
Psychedelics in the Future of Epigenetics
David thinks were going to see that the epigenetics of psychedelics are going to show the ability to overcome trauma
When we look at people at an individual level, we all have our own idiosyncrasies and variations
“Because there is no such thing as an average human, let’s stop treating people like average humans and start treating them like they are individual people. Let’s stop leaving out the outliers.” – David
Taking an individualized approach to the psychedelic space is highly beneficial
David Krantz is a certified Epigenetic Coach who specializes in boosting cognitive function and helping clients harness their creative and personal power. As a lifelong musician, David sees the various systems of the body as parts of a complex symphony. And, as a coach, he excels at fine-tuning those parts to create resonant harmonious health. David also serves as Director of Psychoacoustics at Apeiron Center in Asheville, NC where he develops sound-based tools for better mood, energy, and focus. Additionally, he’s an expert in the pharmacogenetics of the endocannabinoid system and has developed a proprietary genetic test for looking at individual response to cannabinoids. A biohacker by training and artist by nature, David enjoys working with others who have a deep passion for enjoying life.
In this episode, Joe and Kyle sit down and chat with Veronica Hernandez and Larry Norris of Decriminalize Nature Oakland. Decriminalize Nature is an educational campaign to inform Oakland residents about the value of entheogenic plants and fungi and propose a resolution to decriminalize our relationship to nature, which just recently had success in doing so.
3 Key Points:
Decriminalize Nature Oakland is a campaign that just recently found success in decriminalizing psilocybin mushrooms as well as other psychedelic compounds naturally derived from plants or fungi, such as ayahuasca, peyote and DMT.
The mission behind Decriminalize Nature is to improve human health and well-being by decriminalizing and expanding access to entheogenic plants and fungi through political and community organizing, education and advocacy.
These decriminalization initiatives are gaining traction across many cities in the US. It’s about connecting to key people in the community and educating them, so they can use their reach to get information about these plants out there, to provide access to people everywhere.
Veronica is a clinical psychologist licensed in Peru
She has been working in the US as a Social Worker Clinician
She has been combining plant medicines and spirituality back into psychology
She is currently finishing her PhD at CIIS
About Larry
He is in the same PhD program as Veronica
Him and Veronica are the team that created ERIE
In between they have taken the time to run Decriminalize Nature Oakland
Decriminalize Nature
In this initiative, they had to convince 8 people of city council to agree to this, in comparison to the Denver Initiative, where they needed thousands of ballot signatures
This bill included naturally occurring psychedelic compounds, not just mushrooms
Larry mentions they used the word entheogen instead of psychedelic, as a way to create new conversation around the plant medicines a reduce the stigma
A Win for Plant Medicine
From where Veronica comes from, Ayahuasca and other plant medicines are national patrimony, state and church can’t touch them
To be able to bring these to a place where it’s considered schedule 1, Veronica is super inspired about being able to make this happen
Right now these plants are in a tug of war between money interest of the tax side and the government, and the other side of corporate interest
The goal now is to educate people on what these plants do, safe practices and develop places and services to hold the space and make these plants available to people
It’s about connecting to key people in the community and educating them, so they can use their reach to get information about these plants out there
Starting city by city is typically easier to initiate, to then have a better hold on direct action and education afterward to be able to duplicate on the state level
They have had 50 different cities from 30 different states reach out to make this happen in their communities
Veronica says that her first time trying San Pedro, she had felt an immediate connection to the plants
It became her goal to combine conventional medicine with plant medicines and make it available to everyone
“To be in touch with something bigger than yourself is one of the most important things” – Veronica
Sustainability
Although there was no verbiage in the bill, they are being mindful about sustainability of the plants when making them more available with decriminalization
Synthesis is a better idea for ibogaine, 5-MEO-DMT and other compounds that are naturally derived but also pose a risk to their sustainability with decriminalization
The landscape just doesn’t allow for synthesis right now, so we start at decriminalization and then hopefully open doors to the route of synthesis to aid in the sustainability of these substances and resources
Larry’s advice is that instead of spending your money and taking a trip to Denver or Oakland, to stay home and organize this is your own community because it can actually happen
It starts now and it starts with education
Joe says the most major push-back received in Denver for the decriminalization was the threat of people driving on mushrooms
Veronica Hernandez, is a clinical psychologist and shamanic practitioner from Peru. Since 2006 she has been trained on shamanic facilitation. She received her clinical training at the Institute of Rational-Emotive Therapy, New York, under the supervision of Dr. Albert Ellis. She was assistant professor at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia and research assistant at the Hospital Psiquiátrico Noguchi de Lima (Peru). In the United States, she worked as a Social Services Clinician at John Muir Health Hospital’s Inpatient Psychiatric Adolescent Unit, California. Currently she is completing her doctoral degree at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), San Francisco, where she is carrying out research on the healing and transformative benefits of entheogens, especially Ayahuasca.
About Larry
Larry Norris, MA, PhD Candidate is the co-founder and executive director of ERIE (Entheogenic Research, Integration, and Education) 501(c)(3), a group dedicated to the development of entheogenic research and integration models. Larry is also a co-founder and on the Board of Decriminalize Nature Oakland and helped to co-author the resolution which received an unanimous decision from Oakland City Council. Beginning his studies in cognitive science as an undergrad at the University of Michigan, he is now a PhD candidate in the East-West Psychology department at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. His dissertation reviews archived ayahuasca experiences to identify transformational archetypes that induce insights hidden within the experiences. As adjunct faculty at CIIS, Larry taught a graduate course called Entheogenic Education: Contemporary Perspectives on Ancient Plant Wisdom in order to discuss the concept of entheogens as educational teachers and cognitive tools. He was also an adjunct faculty at John F. Kennedy University teaching a class titled Paradigms of Consciousness. A dedicated activist and proponent of cognitive liberty, Larry’s efforts are a contribution to not only change the Western legal status of these powerful plants, fungus, and compounds, but also to emphasize the potential sacred nature of entheogens given the right set and setting.
In this episode, Kyle talks with Tom Lane, author of Sacred Mushroom Rituals: The Search for the Blood of Quetzalcoatl. In the episode, they discuss the history of Quetzalcoatl, the ceremony of the deified heart and sacred mushroom rituals.
3 Key Points:
Quetzalcoatl is a feathered-serpent deity of ancient Mesoamerican culture that can come to you when partaking in the ceremony of the deified heart. Quetzalcoatl teaches how to overcome fear and hatred and bring love.
The ceremony of the deified heart is a sacred mushroom ritual that when methods are combined correctly, can bring about Quetzalcoatl.
In the episode, Tom tells intriguing stories of his experiences with mushroom rituals and experiencing Quetzalcoatl, including a ceremony with Maria Sabina.
He was not an Aztec, he originated as a King in the Toltec civilization thousands of years before the Aztecs
As legend has it, where his blood fell is where the sacred mushrooms grew
Some people believe he was a Naga, a combination flow of energy, a male/female serpent
A winged, jeweled, male/female, serpent
In the ceremony of the deified heart, the serpent will come to you
About Tom
He was building geodesic domes in a remote area in Mexico
He had some of his first mushroom experiences, and it led him to realize that the story of mushrooms was about Quetzalcoatl
His first experience with the mushroom was mild
He said the mushrooms found him, he takes them as a sacrament
Ceremony of the Deified Heart
The legend was that Quetzalcoatl gave cacao to participants as an aphrodisiac and it would help release serotonin
The goal is not to talk a lot
Then, the mushrooms are to be retrieved from the ground, fresh
Before the ceremony, Tom says he likes to put four candles placed in all four directions
The key to eating the mushrooms is eating them totally covered with honey
You eat them two at a time, as it represents the male and female
And when you eat the mushrooms, you actually never swallow
You chew and chew and the mucous membranes of your tongue take the psilocin straight to the brain and spine
He says once it starts to take effect, it feels like there is a snake up your spine (He mentions his friends call this Kundalini)
Then you go out and Quetzalcoatl will come
When he comes, he is like a rainbow jeweled serpent, an embodiment of pure light, pure energy, pure love
Tom says the next day it feels like you’re 10 years younger
Its a pure force of love, an obliteration of the concept of time
Quetzalcoatl created this ceremony to bring about the serpent for healing, for a balance of male and female
This ceremony is best done during the night, with thunderstorms in the mountains
Ceremony with Maria Sabina
One night they went to see Maria Sabina
She agreed to do a ceremony at night
Her house was in the mountains and had a thatched roof with no windows or doors and sometimes clouds would come through her house
During a ceremony a lightning bolt came though the house, in one window and out the other
Maria’s daughter gave him truffle like mushrooms and he brought them back with him
Maria’s daughter really tried to learn his name, she repeated it a multitude of times until she said it exactly perfectly so she could say it during the ceremony
Quetzalcoatl Messages
God gave us love and pain
We have to learn how to celebrate the pain
God gave us knowledge, and tools of how to heal the pain
Tom’s goal is to teach people how to take the sacred mushrooms to meet Quetzalcoatl and find healing, love and peace
“Once you get rid of the ego, you get rid of fear, and then you have love.” – Tom
The only way you can overcome hatred and fear is with love
The body is teaching the mind when consuming the sacred mushroom
It’s best to just try to love people and be kind, and it’s all acts of kindness and love that makes a person feel good
Tom, Author, has a Bachelors in Forestry from the University of Tennessee and a Masters from the University of Florida in Science Education and Middle School Education. He has worked full time in the Solar Energy field as a Contractor and Trainer and has a background in Mushrooms. Tom spent some time in 1973 living in the jungles of Palenque in Mexico and learn about mushrooms and mushroom ceremony. Tom is the Author of the book, Sacred Mushroom Rituals, The Search for the Blood of Quetzalcoatl.
In this episode, Joe interviews Raquel Bennett, Psy.D. at Kriya Institute. In the show, they cover topics surrounding the properties and paradigms of therapeutic Ketamine use.
3 Key Points:
The Kriya Institute is devoted to understanding the therapeutic properties of Ketamine. Raquel Bennett specializes in using Ketamine therapy for patients with severe treatment resistant disorders.
There are three questions that should be used when determining if someone is fit for Ketamine therapy. Is it safe? Is it legal? Is it ethical?
There are many different paradigms for Ketamine Therapy, but determining the best method for each individual patient is the goal.
The Kriya Institute deals with how to work with Ketamine specifically in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
Kriya provides clinical services to patients, training for other clinicians, and Kriya conference
The conference is a big collaborative meeting
Raquel is trying to create a patient assistance fund to make services more available to people
Ketamine
Ketamine isn’t addictive physically
It is possible to become psychologically addicted to Ketamine
Raquel thinks its a property of the person not of the object
It’s possible to become addicted to anything, shopping, sex, etc.
About Raquel
She first encountered Ketamine in 2002 when she was suffering from severe depression
She was seeing a therapist that took her to a psychedelic shaman where she took Ketamine
From the way she felt after taking Ketamine, she wanted to know if it was replicable for other people
She is interested in people with treatment resistant mood disorders, such as severe depression, unusual bipolar disorder and people living with active suicidal ideation
She remembers her teachers (who gave her Ketamine) saying they don’t use it often, and don’t know if it will work
They were not seeking an antidepressant effect, they were helping her to connect to the cosmos and the universe, to find out why she was having such severe depression
The fact that it acted as a rapid-acting antidepressant was a surprise to them, and that’s what triggered her curiosity with it
“Most of what I know of being a Ketamine provider, I learned from being a patient” – Raquel
Ketamine and Patents
Johnson and Johnson just came out with a filtered Ketamine product that they patented
$850 for 84mg of filtered Ketamine
$1.59 for 100mg of generic Ketamine
They are only providing it as a nasal spray
Companies tried to make a new molecule, but they couldn’t
Instead, they modified it, and filtered it, and then patented it (Esketamine)
Ketamine Treatment Paradigms
There is a lot of disagreement on the route, the dose, the setting importance, etc
This was the reason she created the Kriya conference, to share ideas, to find the best possible methods
One way is to give it as a low dose infusion out of the anesthesiology model (0.5mg of Ketamine per kg of bodyweight in an infusion center)
They aim to get enough ketamine in the patient’s body without the psychedelic effects
They take the normal dose, divide it by 6, and space it out to avoid the psychedelic nature
The patient is being forced into a passive role, they aren’t being called to heal themselves, they are just showing up for the medicine
Raquel says that’s not all that there is to it, the medicine is only half of it
Another paradigm for using Ketamine is facilitated Ketamine Psychotherapy
In this way, the Ketamine is used as a lubricant for talk therapy
We are using Ketamine to help people to talk about material that is too painful or too shameful to get to otherwise” – Raquel
In this paradigm, the emphasis is on the therapy, not the Ketamine, the Ketamine is a lubricant and a tool
In this way, the patient and the therapist are both participating 50%, the patient is not passive
She says the psychedelic effects are to be avoided, or else the patient becomes too far out
The third paradigm would be to induce mystical experience on purpose
As a provider, it is believed that the visions are meaningful
Only about 1 in 6 patients are actually a good candidate for psychedelic dosing
The patient is willing to offer their body up as a vessel, and the messages they receive are from God
The provider’s role is to make sure the journey is safe, and then help the patients to help construct meaning from what they saw, create actionable steps on how to change their lives
Raquel says that all of these paradigms are helpful, different methods work for different patients
That’s her job as a Ketamine Specialist, to determine which method is best for patients
“This is where the direction of the field needs to go, being aware of the spectrum of the services available, and then matching the treatment to the patient. Individualized treatment.” – Raquel
Proper Use
Is it safe? Is it legal? Is it ethical?
Is it appropriate to give Ketamine Treatment to someone without a profound impairment or disorder?
The literature supports the use of Ketamine for the following psychiatric or psychological disorders; major severe refractory depression, bipolar depression, physical pain with depression, recurrent suicidality and obsessive compulsive disorder
Do the potential benefits verify the potential risks?
Raquel doesn’t believe that making this experience available to everyone is the right way, her goal is to demonstrate that Ketamine is safe and useful for refractory problems
Group Administration
They can work with 6 clients at a time
It includes carefully selected individuals that all fit into the group
This provides a much lower cost for patients
Ketamine Types
There are 3 Types of Ketamine
The molecules themselves are not flat, they are 3 dimensional and fold in space
Some molecules are ‘right handed’ and others are ‘left handed’
Right handed molecules are Arketamine and left handed are Esketamine
Generic Ketamine is an even amount of Arketamine and Esketamine molecules
What Johnson and Johnson did with Esketamine was patenting the filtration process of removing Arketamine from the Esketamine molecules
Kriya Institute Site
Kriya Conference in November
A list of providers working with therapeutic Ketamine
Dr. Bennett is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Clinical Psychology (PSB 94022544), working under the supervision of Dr. Bravo. Dr. Bennett primarily works with people who are experiencing severe depression, who are on the bipolar spectrum, or who are contemplating suicide. She has been studying the therapeutic properties of ketamine since she first encountered it in 2002. In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Bennett’s practice has evolved to include consultation services for medical professionals who wish to add ketamine services to their offices. She also lectures frequently about therapeutic ketamine. Dr. Bennett is the Founder of KRIYA Institute and the Organizer of the KRIYA Conferences.
In this episode, Joe records with Sean McAllister, an attorney who helped advise Decriminalize Denver. During this special, extra episode, Sean helps us understand the language in the recent bill for Mushroom Decriminalization in Denver, CO.
3 Key Points:
Recently, Psilocybin Mushroom Decriminalization passed on the ballot in Denver, CO.
Psilocybin mushrooms have not been made legal, they have simply been decriminalized. This means that Denver has the lowest law enforcement priority around psilocybin and that no money can be used to criminalize this behavior.
Decriminalization of Psilocybin in Denver is a big step toward changing the stigma around psychedelics. But we need to be careful, decriminalization is just a tiny step in the right direction and we need to be respectful and responsible with this initiative.
On May 8th, the city of Denver, Colorado voted yes on I-301, which decriminalizes the possession and use of Psilocybin-containing mushrooms. The official results will be certified on May 16th. As of May 9th – the unofficial results are – yes (50.6%) and no (49.4%).
I-301 decriminalizes adult (21 years or older) possession and use of Psilocybin mushrooms – making these offenses the lowest priority for law enforcement. This initiative also prohibits law enforcement to spend money and resources enforcing arresting adults with possession of mushrooms.
Sean’s Role in the Mushroom Decriminalization in Denver, CO
Sean is an Attorney with McAllister Garfield Law Firm in Denver
He has done a lot with cannabis law since 2005
He heard about the Mushroom Decriminalization campaign and began working with them
His role started in January to help the team understand what it would look like if the bill passed and his role definitely continues going forward now that it has passed
What the Vote Means
“Decriminalize” means just that
Psilocybin mushrooms have not been made legal, they have simply been decriminalized
“You should never be arrested for putting something in your body that grows naturally in nature.” – Sean
This means that Denver has the lowest law enforcement priority around Psilocybin
It’s not legal, it’s not regulated
This bill means that a person cannot be imprisoned for possession and cultivation for personal possession amounts
The city is not supposed to spend any money to criminalize this behavior
You can grow them to eat them yourself, but you can’t grow them to sell them
This also doesn’t mean that groups can host events and ‘give out’ mushrooms as a gift in return for a donation, this is not good behavior for this initiative
This initiative is simply a first step at looking at mushrooms in a better light and reducing the stigma
For the benefit of this bill passing, we have to be careful about amounts, the smaller the amount of mushrooms the better
There isn’t an amount listed in the bill to distinguish between personal use and intent to sell
The city has to establish a review commission
What this commission is supposed to do is track the public safety impact, use, criminal justice impact, etc
We hope and guess that psilocybin will not impact any of these, just like how marijuana did not impact anything for the worse when it was decriminalized
Once the city sees the results, they won’t have so much stigma about it, and Denver will lead the way for the state and the rest of the nation for sensible drug policy
Political Pushback
The typical response was “we already legalized marijuana, let’s not jump to something else”
Sean thinks this gives Denver an amazing reputation, that it understands therapeutic ability and research and no tolerance for the drug war
“We need a system that addresses public safety concerns but maintains as much personal liberty as possible on these topics” – Sean
Other Initiatives
Sean is a part of Chacruna, based in San Francisco
Oakland is attempting to Decriminalize Nature, which by nature means all naturally occurring substances
They aren’t on a ballot, they are looking to convince city council to agree with it and accept it
California attempted to raise signatures to be on the ballot in the 2018 election but it failed to get on the ballot
Oregon is now collecting signatures to get on the ballot at the state level in 2020
Oregon’s model is for medicalization, Sean expresses concern for a purely medical model
Between big pharma and quiet equity firms, they want to monetize on psychedelics like they did with marijuana, and that’s what we risk with medicalization
Psychedelic Liberty Summit in 2020 in the Bay Area will be to talk about the rights and wrongs around psychedelic initiatives
Final Thoughts
Sean mentions a possible system that revolves around a licensing structure
Similar to how we get a drivers license; we practice, we take tests, etc.
For psychedelics, we would need to learn the effects, harm reduction techniques, take tests to verify our knowledge, etc and receive a license that allows us to use psychedelics freely
If we abuse psychedelics and use them improperly, then we would get our license taken away, suspended, etc.
Overall, after this initiative passing, we have to be careful we don’t ruin this victory with poor behavior
Let’s just do what we’re doing respectfully, responsibly, and to ourselves
Sean T. McAllister is one of the nation’s leading cannabis business attorneys, licensed to practice law in both Colorado and California. Sean’s legal work focuses on the complex interplay between corporate law and state cannabis regulatory structures and federal law. Sean is a recognized leader in the cannabis industry. In 2004, he founded Sensible Colorado, which worked on all of the ballot initiatives in Colorado that culminated in recreational cannabis legalization in 2012.
A single inhalation of vapor from dried toad secretion containing 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) in a naturalistic setting is related to sustained enhancement of satisfaction with life, mindfulness-related capacities, and a decrement of psychopathological symptoms
The recent publication summarizing the effects of 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) on mental health-related variables authored by myself and my colleagues has received great attention both from the scientific community and the public, see full text here; https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00213-019-05236-w
Although my colleagues and I are very pleased that the publication has been so well received, it appears that the study findings are being misinterpreted and misrepresented on (social)media primarily in the general public as an advocacy for use of toad secretion.
Not only is this very disappointing, as the publication is in fact communicating the very opposite, but it is also of great concern to me as the misrepresentation of the study findings may contribute to further unnecessary consumption toad secretion from Bufo Alvarius.
I, therefore, feel it is not only necessary, but also of high importance to clarify that the recent publication is in no way an advocacy or toad secretion use, but rather the opposite.
In fact, the article is summarizing the effects of 5-MeO-DMT, which is the main compound in the toad secretion – as demonstrated by a lab-analysis. This finding makes a clear and strong argument that toad secretion is in no way superior to synthetic 5-MeO-DMT, putting a scientific nail in the coffin for the discontinuation of toad secretion use as a means of obtaining and consuming 5-MeO-DMT.
Furthermore, the article also points to the ethical and ecological implications that comes with toad secretion use. Basically, the increasing demand for the vapor produced by toad secretion will disturb the ecological equilibrium of the toads through the invasion of habitat, excessive milking, amphibian trafficking, and black-market dynamics. Harassment of the Bufo Alvarius toad, however, can be easily prevented by using synthetic 5-MeO-DMT instead of vapor from dried toad secretion containing 5-MeO-DMT. You can read a summary of this issue to greater length here: https://psychedelicstoday.com/2018/10/03/ethics-ecology-bufotoxins/ ).
Additionally, even though many people have benefitted from sessions whereby 5-MeO-DMT from toad secretion has been consumed, others have instead, based on anecdotal reports, had a rather unpleasant encounter with the facilitator and so too experience with 5-MeO-DMT from toad secretion. The reasons for the unpleasant encounter vary per person, but as our recent publication highlight it is clear that some of the recent allegations of malpractice against two facilitators in particular, namely Octavio Rettig and Gerry Sandoval addressed in an open letter (read full text here; https://5-meo-dmt-malpractice.org/), extends beyond these individuals. In our recent publication it was demonstrated that the set and setting vary quite a bit from location to location of these sessions, dose(s) are not standardized but determined by eye-measuring, and span between 30-120 mg of toad secretion (those who received 30 mg dose may have had 7.5-9 mg of 5-MeO-DMT, whereas those who received 120 mg dose may have inhaled up to 30-36 mg of 5-MeO-DMT). Additionally, none of the facilitators have the necessary expertise (clinical background) to properly hold a safe space where altered states of consciousness can be entered, nor to screen for contraindications in participants that are included in a session. This is not only concerning, but also dangerous as it puts people in an unnecessary risk for having an unpleasant, and even traumatic experience which can impact them as well as those around them negatively.
Finally, although the study suggests that inhalation of vapor from toad secretion containing mainly 5-MeO-DMT (with very low traces of bufotenine and DMT) is related to sustained enhancement of satisfaction with life, mindfulness-related capacities, and a decrement of psychopathological symptoms, these findings are in no way conclusive. This molecule still needs further extensive research to assess safety, and to control for various other variables that may account and/or add to the outcome effects such for example set and setting, social desirability bias, therapeutic relationship, and placebo response.
About the Author
Malin Vedøy Uthaug, MSc, originally from Bergen, moved to Prague, The Czech Republic, after graduating from high school in her hometown in 2012. After obtaining her dual bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of New York in Prague (UNYP) and Empire State College (ESC) in New York in June 2016, Malin continued with her studies at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Here, she acquired her master’s degree in Psychology with a specialization in Health and Social Psychology in the fall of 2017. During her research internship, Malin conducted fieldwork investigating the sub-acute and long-term effects of Ayahuasca on affect and cognitive thinking style. This field study was under supervision of Dr. Johannes Ramaekers and Dr. Jordi Riba, and was the starting point of her career as a psychedelic researcher.
After finishing her master’s, Malin continued working as a PhD candidate at the department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology (FPN) from fall 2017. Her current doctoral research centers around the continuous investigation of the effects of Ayahuasca in naturalistic settings, and pioneer work on the effects of 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) in humans.
Outside of her thesis work, besides being a co-founder of the Norwegian Association for Psychedelic Studies, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Psychedelic Studies, Malin is also investigating the effects of Mescaline and Holotropic Breathwork. Finally, she is interested in trauma(resolution) and works hard to aid in changing the current treatment modalities available in the west by demonstrating the superiority of Non-ordinary state Psychotherapy (NOSP) through extensive research, (academic) writing and public speaking.
In this episode, Joe talks with Shane LeMaster, Licensed Addiction Counselor and Certified Mental Performance Consultant. Shane is also involved in Psychotherapy as well as Sport and Performance Psychology and Psychedelic Integration Therapy. In this episode they cover a range of topics such as social work, Ketamine, sensory deprivation, psychedelic icons and the psychedelic culture.
3 Key Points:
Shane has a podcast of his own, and his goal with the podcast is to bring people’s personal experiences to light to learn from them, to master the potential of our minds.
Ketamine is a great gateway to opening up people’s minds to all of the other psychedelics. Its also a great place to start for therapy.
Every single facilitator or shaman has different techniques and styles and that’s okay
If we don’t have differences then we won’t have styles to choose from.
Joe and Shane met up recently at a Psychedelic Club meeting about harm reduction in Fort Collins
Shane just got accepted into the PhD program in social work at CSU
He had been pursuing a PhD program in psychology and it wasn’t working out for him so he decided to take the social work route
He works with many people and has developed a strong skill set on the micro level and he wants to start making impact on a macro level with helping people
Social Work
Shane thinks of social work as an integrative approach for every discipline that we find useful, to come to a holistic, greater understanding of an issue
Shane wants to use Ketamine as a ‘medium’ term goal, because it’s legal
But ketamine is not where he is going to stop, he finds there are benefits in many other substances
He would love to work with LSD and Psilocybin
He will continue to offer his services through his business Mind Ops
Shane’s Podcast – Conversations with the Mind
His goal with the podcast is to bring people’s personal experiences to light to learn from them
It’s important to create dialogue and invite people for conversation with differing opinions
The goal is to create a theory that implements both opinions
Ketamine
Ketamine is a great gateway to opening up people’s minds to all of the other psychedelics
Shane has had a lot of personal and recreational experiences on Ketamine and when he returns to it as a medicine, he is able to attain and sharpen skills for mindfulness
Joe brings up the idea that recreational ketamine could have the ability to bring up past trauma or may re-traumatize someone if not used therapeutically
Ketamine has a lot of risks, but being educated and using the substance correctly can be absolutely beneficial
Shane says we shouldn’t try to avoid trauma, we should accept it and use it for good and let it power us
“Sometimes we don’t even know what were suppressing. We need some assistance to show us what were avoiding in life and I think that psychedelics help with that a lot.” – Shane
Sensory Deprivation
Shane says he’s interested in John Lilly’s work from back in the day and his terminology of being able to meta-program your human brain
Joe says John Lilly was a big part of isolation chambers which led to float tanks
Psychedelic Icons
Joe mentions Robert Anton Wilson, he was good friends with Timothy Leary
“My interest is not in psychedelics themselves, but psychedelics as a means to access higher states of who we are, parts we have forgotten.” – Shane
Psychedelics are just one way to tap into ourselves and discover our ultimate potential
“We should all be questioning, everyday, changing our belief systems” – Shane
“Belief is the death of intelligence” – Robert Anton Wilson
Shane says a lot of people give Leary a bad rap, but Shane appreciates what he has done
Joe mentions ‘smile squared’ – Space, migration, intelligence and life extension
TFYQA – Think for yourself question authority
“Turn on, Tune in, Drop out” – Timothy Leary
Shane says that phrase sticks with him, it called to his rebel phase in youth to grow and do this work in his life
The Psychedelic Culture
Splitting – a rephrase of divide and conquer
Joe says the psychedelic world is very cut throat
“We should take care of each other a bit more in this space” – Joe
Shane says, we need to lift each other up versus look for ways to step over each other
Every single facilitator or shaman has different techniques and styles and that’s okay
If we don’t have differences then we don’t have styles to choose from
“We can’t become fundamentalists in our own practices, we need to value the differences culturally and from a world view. They are all valuable.” – Shane
Shane earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology from the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO, completed extensive coursework towards a Master of Arts Degree in Sport & Performance Psychology at the University of Denver, and earned his Master of Arts Degree in Sport & Exercise Psychology from Argosy University.
Shane is nationally certified as a Sport Psychology Consultant and a licensed mental health clinician in the state of Colorado. Having worked in community non-profit mental health since 2008, Shane has gained experience working with the entire spectrum of mental disorders and with all populations and age groups. Shane plans on attending a Ph.D program in Counseling Psychology where his interest in Resiliency, Mental Toughness, and Mindfulness Training Program Development can be explored and further developed.
He is a life-long athlete having competed at various levels in more than a dozen different sports. Because of his passion for warrior cultures of past and present, Shane has been ardently developing his own “Warriorship,” training in various forms of Martial Arts for 25 years. Shane feels that the self-discipline, the philosophy of non-violence, the innumerable mental and physical benefits, and the enjoyment that he gains from the Martial Arts is what helped drive his passion in the field of Psychology.
His personal interest in Eastern Philosophy stems from his adoption of a Buddhist lifestyle and blends well with his training in Western Psychological Science. Clients describe Shane as an out-of-the-box clinician that is easy to get along with, knowledgeable on a variety of topics, credible with lived experience, and as having the ability to make therapy fun and interesting.
In this episode, Kyle hosts a conversation with Veronika Gold from the Polaris Insight Center, a center that offers Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy. They compare and contrast Ketamine Psychotherapy methods and Ketamine Infusion.
3 Key Points:
The most studied way of using Ketamine has been infusion, mainly used for treatment resistant depression and PTSD. Veronika used lozenges and intramuscular Ketamine therapy working for Polaris.
When people are healed from depression, there is a lot of anxiety and activation that happens. Infusion clinics don’t offer the therapeutic help that comes with Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy.
The dissociation that happens with Ketamine is a different dissociation that happens with trauma. With trauma, dissociation happens when the nervous system can’t handle the stress in someone’s life, with Ketamine, it allows people who feel dissociated from their trauma, to feel again.
She is involved in the clinical trials for the treatment of PTSD, sponsored by MAPS in San Francisco
Veronika is originally from Czech Republic
She studied at CIIS
She grew up in the Czech Republic in a communist time so she dealt with a lot of trauma
She met Stan Grof at 16 at a Transpersonal conference
She was fascinated with his work and Transpersonal Breathwork became a part of her healing
It lead her to study psychology and become a psychotherapist and study non-ordinary states
Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy
Ketamine therapy has been studied from the late 60’s until today
The most studied way of using Ketamine has been infusion, mainly used for treatment resistant depression and PTSD
In Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy, the therapy is as important as the medicine
There is a biochemical effect of Ketamine
When people are healed from depression, there is a lot of anxiety and activation that happens
Infusion clinics don’t offer the therapeutic help that comes with Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy
Benefits of Ketamine Psychotherapy
The treatment method used at Polaris includes a comfortable room, eye shades, music tailored to the therapy, and an ongoing therapist
They use non-ordinary states of consciousness as a part of the transformation
They use lozenges and IM (Intramuscular)
Only 30% of the ketamine from the lozenges are effective
The lozenges allow for a slow onset of the medicine
With IM, a higher dose can be used because it’s less taxing on the body and more effective
The property of Ketamine is dissociation
Veronika says she prompts people to explain where they are, to share about what comes up for them
“Sometimes there are memories that come up that are connected to their struggle. Sometimes they do full trauma processing. There are times where they go inside and then come out.” – Veronika
Ketamine vs. Classic Psychedelics
They used Ketamine as a means to do the work legally
For the work that is being done underground, the therapists are putting themselves at risk for legality, and it does impact set and setting
But even if other substances were legal, Veronika thinks Ketamine will still be used for certain issues
A moderate to high dose can allow people to have a near death experience or ‘review of their life’
The dissociation that happens with Ketamine is a different dissociation that happens with trauma
With trauma, dissociation happens when the nervous system can’t handle the stress
Opposingly, with Ketamine, it allows people who feel dissociated, to feel again
Veronika mentions a study that says the higher the effects of dissociation from a Ketamine session, the higher the antidepressant effects are.
She has work in somatic studies and organic intelligence
Breathwork
Veronika’s experience with Breathwork helps her understand her patients
The bodily experience that happens in Breathwork also helps her understand the body movement/energetic blockages, etc that happen in Ketamine therapy
The last 30-90 minutes is where the integration starts
Sessions
They do mainly one-on-one session but have done a few pair therapy sessions
Veronika says its easier to do one-on-one because the sessions are short and there is a lot of internal work
The Future of Ketamine
Veronika is excited about people’s curiosity with Ketamine therapy and the effectivity of it
Ketamine is a new and emerging field and we are figuring out who it is useful for and who it is not
Veronika says that non-ordinary states are all beneficial for healing, and not having to use Ketamine (using Breathwork) is still beneficial
“A big part of the healing is having a positive experience and connecting with places that feel good, having positive visions. Its supportive for our nervous system and our ability to heal.” – Veronika
“When we allow the inner healing intelligence to come through, it will take us to where we need to go.” – Veronika
Patients don’t always need to just feel the dark stuff and the trauma, sometimes sitting with the good feelings and remembering what good feels like is a part of the healing too
Kyle and Veronika were both on separate episodes of the Consciousness Podcast with Stuart Preston
Veronika has expertise in the treatment of trauma. Her approach is integrative and informed by Somatic Therapies, contemplative practices, and mindfulness. She also has an interest in educating others about the healing and transformational potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness.
In this episode, Joe interviews Computational Neuro-Biologist, Dr. Andrew Gallimore, one of the world’s knowledgeable researchers on DMT. In the show they discuss DMT and the possibilities of being in an extended state of DMT, such as accessing higher dimensions and communicating with intelligent entities.
3 Key Points:
This reality that we are in is a lower dimensional slice of a higher dimensional structure. DMT is a technology or tool that allows us access to reach out to these higher dimensions.
Andrew has developed and written about the Intravenous Infusion Model, which allows a timed and steady release of DMT to induce an extended state DMT experience.
Extended state DMT hypothesizes that with enough time spent in the DMT space, the ‘map’ of the space would begin stabilize over time and you could develop a ‘life’ in the DMT space like we do in our waking life.
Since age 15, he was into psychedelic drugs and altered states of consciousness
He was at a friends house and was looking at a book called Alternative London and it had writings on different psychedelics but only a very short segment on DMT
His fascination grew from his yearning to learn more about DMT
His interest turned into academic work, learning chemistry and pharmacology and he is now into learning more about the brain itself
He is currently a Computational Neuro-Biologist
DMT
DMT is a compound found almost everywhere in nature, highly illegal, yet highly interesting
Interaction with entities are common
All frames of reference are gone
Andrew says that the first few times were very intense and he would come back with no way to comprehend or describe it
Then after a few more times he started to see the entities and have a more stable experience with more intent
Andrew describes a very vivid experience of a man in a dark robe where he asked him “show me what you’ve got” and he opened his mouth and Andrew woke up a if he had seen God himself. He describes it as a shattering experience
These beings in the DMT experience, aren’t just pointless beings in a dream, they are powerful and extremely intelligent
We don’t have any way to comprehend the levels of intelligence in this dimensional space, we only are ever able to experience intelligence with our human capacity for what intelligence is
There is a sense that these beings are intelligent because they have been around for billions and billions of years or potentially infinitely
Communicating with Intelligent Entities
He calls his book the ‘textbook of the future’
“We are imprisoned in some kind of work of art” – Terence McKenna
This reality is a construct or artifact of the alien intelligence or the ‘other’
“This reality that we are in is a lower dimensional slice of a higher dimensional structure. DMT is a technology or tool that allows us access to reach out to these higher dimensions” – Andrew
DMT is everywhere
“Nature is drenched in DMT, but it takes a high level of sophisticated intelligence to identify it, isolate it, and discover a means of using it as a tool” – Dennis McKenna
“In order to communicate with these beings, we need to bring the right tools to the table” – Andrew
Target Controlled Intravenous Infusion Model – using the same model for DMT as the anesthesia model
It uses administration of a short acting drug using a mathematical model to control the release
“We are not just passive receivers of information but we are actively constructing our world from moment to moment.” – Andrew
Continuity Hypothesis of Dreaming – it says that dreaming is continuous with our waking life, the brain constructs the world when you’re asleep in the same way that it does when you’re awake
Extended State DMT (DMTx)
Our brains are constantly updating its model of reality, so if you put someone through the DMT space for months at a time, that person’s model of reality would completely shift
This idea has been completely unexplored
The hypothesis is that an extended time in the DMT space would begin to make that space more stable over time, the goal being to live in the DMT space as you would in this reality of waking life
The measurement of DMT in the blood with Ayahuasca is 1/5th the level of DMT in the blood as a breakthrough DMT experience
Andrew hasn’t heard of anyone trying the Intravenous Infusion Model yet
There is this space that exists one quantum away, and it is accessible by everyone (technologically, not necessarily legally)
Dr. Andrew Gallimore is a computational neurobiologist, pharmacologist, chemist, and writer who has been interested in the neural basis of psychedelic drug action for many years and is the author of a number of articles and research papers on the powerful psychedelic drug, N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), as well as the book Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game (April 2019). He recently collaborated with DMT pioneer Dr. Rick Strassman, author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule, to develop a pharmacokinetic model of DMT as the basis of a target-controlled intravenous infusion protocol for extended journeys in DMT space. His current interests focus on DMT as a tool for gating access to extradimensional realities and how this can be understood in terms of the neuroscience of information. He currently lives and works in Japan.
Ibogaine is a psychedelic chemical found in the West African shrub Iboga. Bizarre in chemical structure and psychoactive properties, the drug remains mysterious to scientists and psychonauts alike. At high doses, ibogaine causes intense, unforgivingly introspective and dream-like hallucinatory experiences that can last upwards of 24 hours2. The African psychedelic might have remained nothing more than a curiosity in the West if not for the discovery of its ability to disrupt physical and psychological drug addiction4, 5. Thousands of anecdotal reports and preliminary scientific research provide evidence that a single dose of ibogaine can eliminate both withdrawal symptoms and craving in drug addicts1-7. In the United States, ibogaine remains a schedule 1 drug, and those seeking treatment must pilgrimage to countries that do not regulate it or take a chance with illegal underground treatment centers. What will it take for ibogaine to become medically available in the United States?
New drugs must undergo a rigorous vetting process to move from discovery to the legal market. To become a prescriptible medication, drugs must pass through clinical trials regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These trials consist of a pre-testing phase, four clinical phases, and regulatory checkpoints throughout. Advancing to the next phase is predicated on successful completion of the prior phase.
Before moving to clinical trials, researchers must collect extensive pre-clinical data and submit an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the FDA. Pre-clinical studies use rodent models to determine how effective the drug is for its intended purpose and its safety.
Phase 1 is the first set of studies to determine the safety and efficacy of the drug in humans. If these studies are successful, researchers can proceed to Phase 2, which are well-controlled studies with larger populations. Phase 3 studies test safety and efficacy with different dosages of the drug in even larger populations comprised of various demographics. While the time it takes to move through all phases varies, this process can take many years. After successful Phase 3 trials, the FDA reviews the data and the researchers submit a New Drug Application (NDA). The FDA reviews the NDA and the drug’s labeling to ensure accurate and sufficient information is provided to the consumer and drug-provider. The drug production facility is also inspected by the FDA for health and quality assurance. If the drug is approved, it will be released on the market and available for prescription. Phase 4 trials occur only after the drug has been approved and is publicly available. In Phase 4, the drug manufacturer must continuously monitor the effects of the drug in patients and submit safety reports to the FDA.
For ibogaine to come to market, it must pass through each of these clinical phases of study. Remarkably, ibogaine began the process of becoming an FDA approved therapeutic medication in the early 1990’s. Pre-clinical and Phase 1 trials conducted by Dr. Deborah Mash at the University of Miami supported the anecdotal evidence that patients had significantly reduced drug withdrawal and craving following ibogaine administration. These trials ended prematurely as a result of several factors, including criticism from the pharmaceutical industry, the apparent costliness to continue, and an intellectual property lawsuit between Mash and ibogaine crusader Howard Lotsof1, 2. No clinical trials have been conducted with ibogaine since this preliminary work over 20 years ago.
Another issue facing the medical legalization of ibogaine is that it cannot simply be prescribed in pill form by a doctor. The drug must be administered in a therapeutic setting, potentially as an aid to psychotherapy, as is the case with MDMA. Pre- and post-counseling are vital to ensure proper translation and integration of the psychedelic experience, as well as addressing the underlying problems that contribute to drug abuse. Furthermore, patients must implement changes outside of the clinic to ensure successful treatment outcomes. This means getting away from the external factors that contribute to drug abuse, which can include leaving relationships with friends, family or partners, and/or moving to a new area. While legalization for medical application is important, there must also be infrastructure developed to support proper administration of the drug.
There have been cases of death associated with taking ibogaine. However, none of these cases have been a result of overdose or toxicity2. Individuals with certain heart conditions are at a higher risk of cardiovascular-related death after consuming ibogaine, and taking drugs of abuse with ibogaine may cause adverse reactions that can result in death. Rather than supporting the case against legalization, the risk of death for certain patients further evidences the necessity of legalization: unlike some clandestine ibogaine sources, regulated treatment centers would have the resources to screen patients for comorbidities (reasons not to ingest the drug) prior to ibogaine administration.
Ibogaine has many hurdles to overcome in order to reach the legal market, but pharmacologist Stanley Glick at Albany Medical College and chemist Martin Kuehne at the University of Vermont developed a drug that could reach consumers much faster: 18-Methoxycoronairidine (18-MC). 18-MC is a derivative of ibogaine intended to produce the same anti-addictive properties without the negative side-effects or psychoactive experience. Some ibogaine advocates contend that the psychoactive experience of ibogaine is equally important for attenuating addiction as the physiological effects. But 18-MC’s lack of psychoactivity will likely be more palatable to consumers, and to the FDA.
The process for making 18-MC medically available is already underway. In 2014, a company called Savant HWP began pre-clinical and Phase 1 trials with 18-MC funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. These trials were successful, and Phase 2 trials are set to begin this year. If clinical trials continue to be successful, 18-MC could be an FDA approved treatment for addiction within the next decade.
18-MC becoming available to patients would be a massive step towards ending the opioid crisis, but ibogaine remains full of unexplored potential. While the legal status of ibogaine in the US makes research a significant challenge, countries in which ibogaine is unregulated provide the opportunity to study its use in legal clinics. In 2017, the Multi-Disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) sponsored two studies investigating the efficacy of ibogaine in Mexico and New Zealand3, 7. With abundant data available for legal collection across multiple fields of study, scientists are just beginning to scratch the surface of ibogaine research. Those interested in studying ibogaine should not be discouraged by the barriers in the United States and should look abroad for more opportunities. For more information about how to get involved in ibogaine and other psychedelic research as a scientist, you can read our post here.
Not a scientist? You can still get involved! The simplest action you can take is to call and write your state and federal legislators. Explain how ibogaine’s legal status is hindering the scientific investigation and preventing sufferers of addiction from receiving effective treatment. During voting season, research how the candidates feel about illegal drugs and vote accordingly. You can also donate money to MAPS and other legitimate research organizations to support the scientists who are currently studying ibogaine.
If you are interested in learning more about ibogaine or 18-MC, you can visit the following links:
Alper, Stajić, & Gill, (2012). Fatalities Temporally Associated with the Ingestion of Ibogaine. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 57(2), 398-412.
Brown, & Alper, (2017). Treatment of opioid use disorder with ibogaine: detoxification and drug use outcomes, The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse
Cappendijk, & Dzoljic. (1993). Inhibitory effects of ibogaine on cocaine self-administration in rats. European Journal of Pharmacology, 241(2), 261-265.
Glick, Kuehne, Raucci, Wilson, Larson, Keller, & Carlson. (1994). Effects of iboga alkaloids on morphine and cocaine self-administration in rats: Relationship to tremorigenic effects and to effects on dopamine release in nucleus accumbens and striatum. Brain Research, 657(1), 14-22.
Mash, Ameer, Prou, Howes, & Maillet, (2016). Oral noribogaine shows high brain uptake and anti-withdrawal effects not associated with place preference in rodents. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 30(7), 688-697.
Noller, Frampton, & Yazar-Klosinski, (2017). Ibogaine treatment outcomes for opioid dependence from a twelve-month follow-up observational study, The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse
In this Bonus episode The Teafaerie and Joe Moore get into lots of great topics. Enjoy! !
The Teafaerie micro-bio(me)
The Teafaerie is a writer, flow arts teacher, ruespieler, toy inventor, app designer, street performer, party promoter, and superhero. erowid.org/columns/teafaerie
This interview was transcribed from our Navigating Psychedelics: Lessons on Self-Care & Integration master class with Elizabeth Gibson of Dreamshadow Transpersonal Breathwork. In this interview, Elizabeth shares her insights of integrating exceptional experiences from facilitating and working with Holotropic Breathwork for over 25 years. Elizabeth has a great wealth of knowledge about the integration process and we are honored to present her insights.
Introduction
Kyle Buller: Welcome to the Psychedelics Today exclusive interview for the Self Care and Integration course. Today we are here with Elizabeth Gibson of DreamShadow Transpersonal Breathwork to talk about integration and breathwork. Thank you for joining us today, Elizabeth. It’s great to have you on.
Elizabeth Gibson: Thanks for having me, I’m happy to be here.
Kyle: So, let’s dig in, what does integration mean to you?
Elizabeth: Well, it’s a big topic and a really important topic to me. To me, integration is one of the most important aspects of work with extraordinary experiences. How do you take material that’s come up for you and bring it into your everyday life? That’s where the real benefit of this work comes from. I think it’s a topic that’s often overlooked.
So, how do people go back out into the world and realize the benefits of the intense inner work that they’ve done? That’s what it’s about to me. It’s about how people figure out how to do that and supporting them in that process.
Kyle: To backtrack a little bit, you have been facilitating breathwork for almost 20 years at this point? [25 years as of 2019].
And then you also were part of some MDMA therapy back in the 80s, right? When it was legal? So, you’ve been in this work for a while — working with people with non-ordinary states and doing integration work.
Elizabeth: Trying to, yeah.
Joe: What are some of the most important thing you see people maybe not do adequately to try to integrate?
Elizabeth: Well, I think the basic principle that we always remind people of when they are leaving a workshop or leaving a session that has involved an intense experience of any kind is the ongoing nature of the process. So, a lot of people who are, especially people who are new to this work, tend to think it’s all about the session.
The session, of course, is extremely important, but the process continues after the session is over. The intense emotions or material that has begun to come up during the session, if it’s a very organic process, can continue in the days and weeks after the session has actually taken place.
So, it’s really important to remind people that it’s important to give themselves space and to allow that process to continue and to really respect what’s going on inside and not try to jump right back into everyday life and the demands of work. given that, for many people, that’s a very difficult thing. People have jobs and families and relationships that they’re going back to.
It is important to remind them to remember the ongoing nature of the process and that it’s not all about your hours in the session. I think all of us who have done this work ourselves personally, I mean, I remember after when I did MDMA-assisted psychotherapy back in the ’80s, I can remember for days afterwards just kind of yearning to get back in the space I had been in.
It seemed like such a sweet experience and my life outside of the session seemed pale by experiences. It’s almost if I was trying to get back to where I had been in the session instead of understanding that I needed to pay attention to what was happening to myself right now in the moment and reconnect with myself in that way.
I think that’s really what integration is about — learning to be more present and authentic with ourselves in the moment. No matter what we are doing, whether we’re in an intense session or you know, even something as mundane as washing the dishes.
Kyle: Yeah, you make some really great points. Joe and I put that quote, “chop wood, carry water” in our presentation in this course. But also, it seems like people want to jump back into sessions again, like I think we brought up the fact that people may want to just go back and do ayahuasca ceremonies over and over again.
Maybe not because of the purging aspect, but just continue taking drugs to stay in that state (of consciousness). Or go back and do a bunch of breathwork sessions to move through some stuff. I think it is important to have that downtime and really be able to embody the experience and really understand what that means.
Elizabeth: I agree, Kyle. I think a lot of the changes that come about as a result of doing this work are subtle changes. The traumatic changes are fairly obvious and maybe don’t need as much attention in the sense that with the subtle changes they can be easily overlooked. The long-term changes that take place over time, those are the ones that I think you really want to honor and respect and give space to allow that to happen in yourself.
Developing A Daily Practice
Kyle: Do you have any tips or advice to how to stay in the moment after a session for the next week or a couple months to really embody what just happened?
Elizabeth: Yeah, well that’s the challenge. I think that it really is a very individual thing. There are specific techniques that can be used. I was looking this morning, and Stan Grof spoke in his book, Holotropic Breathwork, He has a couple of entries for integration. He talks about specific kinds of techniques that can be helpful for people after they do this kind of work. And you know, it’s the kinds of techniques that allow you to tap into yourself, be it whatever kind of form meditation works for you.
Some people like sitting meditation, some people like more active kinds of meditation like tai chi. Some people can’t really connect with meditation at all and there can be other kinds of activities like I remembered when I read Stan’s passage that he used to recommend for people who had intense kinds of physical experiences, that aerobic exercise, like swimming, running, for people who might be inclined in that way, who are more physically active, just as a way of connecting with the kind of energy and feelings that are operating at the deeper levels.
So, for me, I always have found it helpful to journal about my experiences in the days afterward. Not right after an experience because I’m not that verbal yet, which is why initially after a breathwork session, for instance, we offer drawing materials so people can just work with shapes and colors and begin to work with their experiences symbolically on that level before even putting words to them.
But then maybe a day or two later, I always find it really helpful to write about my experience. I notice if I keep up the process journaling in the days moving forward from there, I’m apt to stay more connected with the feelings of the experience.
But again, it’s whatever works for an individual person to create space for themselves to just sink into themselves. Basically, that means some kind of ongoing form of practice, daily practice, whatever works. And that’s a very personal and individual kind of thing.
And we’ve all, I know, tried in our lives to stick to some kind of practice. We’ve tried lots of things. What I’ve learned over the years is for me, I have to make my practice manageable. I can’t try and make it too big. So, I’ve learned for me, if I do something every morning for about half an hour, that’s probably the most realistic expectation I can have for myself.
So, I like to do yoga and tai chi, and I like to journal. Some combination or at least one of those, ideally in the morning. But then during the day, I mean, think what you like to do to nurture and support yourself. Get outside, go for a walk, connect with nature, to work it into your daily life as much as you can so it’s not like a separate kind of thing that becomes one more thing to do every day that you may not get to.
Kyle: Right. And then if you start acting that way, then you start beating yourself up that you’re not practicing, so yeah. I know that happens to me. I’m like, “Ah, I should really meditate more.” Then I think to myself, “Well, why am I beating myself up over it?”
Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah.
But do you find that? I mean, I do. I know that if I do something first thing in the morning, then if I wait ’til the end of the day, it’s less likely that it’s going to happen, so-
Kyle: Absolutely.
Elizabeth: My tai chi teacher used to say, “Just do it before you think too much about it. Get up and do it.”
The Importance of Community and Group Process
Joe: Can you think of any things not to do that might impact integration in a negative way?
Elizabeth: That’s a really interesting question, Joe. Things not to do. I think it’s important not to isolate yourself after you do this kind of work. So, that in addition to the whole principle of the ongoing nature of the process, I think the principle of community is really important.
I’ve come to appreciate the community around breathwork over the years — the relationships that we have created and the support that people offer each other. I really think we can’t do this kind of work completely on our own. We need support not just during the sessions, but in the days and weeks, months and even years between sessions.
We need support. We need to be able to talk with people about our experiences. We need to process our experiences verbally. I mean, we’re very social animals as human beings and we thrive in group kinds of settings. Now, some people at first are put off by group experiences and prefer to work one on one, maybe with a guide or a therapist. And that’s fine, but usually, there’s at least one other person involved. Somebody who can help you get through the rough spots in a way that’s supportive and not overly directive. And that can be a good friend as much as a therapist or an experience facilitator.
Kyle: Yeah. What’s Lenny’s saying? “We’re the descendants of very successful tribes.”
Elizabeth: Yeah, we’re all the descendants of successful tribes. So, that’s part of our heritage. I think in our margin, in our modern culture, that’s something that’s missing. And you see a lot of people just yearning for that kind of communal experience.
A lot of people come to our workshops, I see them get so much meaning and joy out of just the personal connections that are made. A lot of people are simply lonely, and you just need that kind of contact and the building of community and relationships.
Kyle: It makes me think a lot about rites of passages, how those are formed, say, in some of those traditional cultures where maybe the adolescent would go out and you’d have this experience, but then they’d have the safety net of the elders, the container, and the community to come back to.
And when we have these really big experiences, I mean, we might have a few people to talk to, but we don’t really have that community to come back to. I know after my near-death experience, I was like, “Whoa, who do I talk to you about this now? I can’t really talk to my parents about it.” And I had to leave to find that. And I found it in Burlington. I found it in breathwork with you and Lenny.
Elizabeth: I remember that about you, Kyle. And that was a process that took many years for you to build that kind of community. So, as a young teenager, that was really … As I understand it, that was one of the hardest aspects of it afterwards was that you didn’t have anybody you felt you could really talk to.
Kyle: Yeah, exactly. And that’s been one of the biggest integration pieces for me when I think about integration — how do you just be okay with the people around you and learn how to just embody that experience even though you might not be able to talk to that person necessarily? How do you continue to be in a relationship with them and not feel so isolated?
Elizabeth: Well that kind of goes back to your last question, Joe, of what not to do. So, Kyle just touched on that really when he mentioned who you can’t talk to about these experiences. So, I think it’s important to search out people who you know will be supportive and understanding, and not share your experiences with people who might discount or trivialize your experience because they just don’t understand this kind of work.
And that can be lonely if it’s somebody important in your life that you can’t discuss these kinds of experiences with. That’s definitely a big dilemma.
Kyle: Do you have any tips or advice to work through anything that arises after a workshop or an experience? We talk about the process continuing, but maybe how to work with some of that stuff that comes up in the next coming weeks to months.
Elizabeth: Well, so if there’s somatic stuff coming up in the body, it can be really helpful to go get some bodywork after a session. A really good deep tissue massage or any kind of work that’s going to help resolve things that might still be coming up in the body. We’re fortunate now in this day and age, there are so many different kinds of bodywork.
Bodywork can be extremely helpful.
And then those of us who are holding the space for people and supporting this kind of work, I think it’s on us to make ourselves accessible to people after the sessions and to say that we can be available for them to reach out and contact us if they’re having trouble — so that they know there’s somebody who understands what they’ve been through who’s there for them to listen to them.
I mean sometimes people just need to talk. It’s not like you have to do much else than just listen and support them with your attention. People need to be heard and feel that what they’re experiencing isn’t totally abnormal but it’s just a normal part of their process. That can be all they need maybe. Just a friend or a person who understands that they can talk with.
Joe: That ties into a lot of what we’ve been talking about lately where, maybe you have these integration groups, but that’s the essence of it right there is just to talk and be heard.
Elizabeth: I love the idea of the integration groups that you guys are doing. I mean, I think that’s exactly the kind of format that will help fill in the space in between experiential sessions and give people the sense of community and belonging.
I mean look at the whole AA thing, the fact that that’s done as group work. I mean, people struggling with in the addiction field, they go to groups that meet regularly where they can talk about their experiences and share them and feel that kind of support.
That has been an incredibly successful approach over the years. So, I think your idea of having these integration groups is exactly the kind of approach that’s going to be helpful for people who are struggling with integrating extraordinary experiences. I’m really happy you’re doing that.
Kyle: Thank you. Yeah, part of it too is we come to your workshop for a weekend, have these really close connections, have these really powerful experiences, and then in between it’s like, “Oh, where’s that community?”
So, part of it for me is how do we keep it going? How do we keep the conversation going and finding those people that we can support and hold space for so the process can continue and it’s still healing with it.
Elizabeth: Technology has made that easier too. I mean, look at what we’re doing right now. And the fact, even as an email group, you can continue sharing. It definitely has its limitations, but it’s better than nothing.
Don’t Make Any Big Changes Right Away
Joe: You often speak about not making any big changes in the next six months. Can you speak about that?
Elizabeth: Yeah. Well, a lot of times people take material that comes up in their sessions, there’s a tendency maybe to take it literally and think that to interpret their session in a certain way that makes them think, “Oh, that means I need to leave my job right now, or I need to end this relationship now.”
We encourage people to sit with that for a little while before they act on it, to be sure that things have settled and that they’ve had some time to process their experience a little more before making any major life decisions.
But there are no hard and fast rules about that. It’s just something to be aware of. People can have amazing insights and extraordinary experiences that are … Can be taken literally. But sometimes as you know, there are many levels to these experiences, and you have to treat them symbolically or metaphorically. So, it’s just a caveat, but not a hard and fast rule.
Final Thoughts
Joe: Is there anything, any additional points you might want to raise before we kind of wrap up here?
Elizabeth: I would just encourage people to reach out when they feel like they’re having difficulty or trouble understanding something that might be going on, and knowing that there are all kinds of groups out there. And to be sure that when they do this kind of work, they do it in a safe setting, and that they have access to people who will be able to support them afterwards.
The MAPS website is a really good resource for understanding this aspect of the work. I think there’s material there about safety set and setting. So, to keep all of those considerations in mind, I would just end with that reminder.
Joe: You’re never alone and people do want to help you.
Elizabeth Gibson, thank you very much. You can find her website at dreamshadow.com.
Elizabeth: Thank you.
About Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson, M.S., holds a bachelor’s degree in literature and a master’s degree in biology from The University of Tulsa. She has completed Herbert Benson’s Clinical Training in Mind/Body Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Previously she worked as a consultant at Arthur D. Little, Inc., and Radian Corporation in the areas of environmental protection and food research. She is a writer, editor and homemaker with interests in environmental literacy, yoga, music and gardening. Elizabeth is the editor of Stanislav Grof ’s The Ultimate Journey: Consciousness and the Mystery of Death and a contributor to the teaching manual MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, both published by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. For the past 12 years, she has been responsible for local news for the Town of Pawlet, and from 2008 – 2014 she was the editor of the weekly environment section for the Rutland Herald and Montpelier Times Argus newspapers in Vermont.
In this episode Kyle and Joe sit down and discuss Esketamine, a new FDA approved drug that is a derivative of Ketamine. They invite quotes from professionals who have experience with generic Ketamine and to voice their opinions.
3 Key Points:
Janssen Pharmaceutica has announced an FDA approved derivative of Ketamine, Esketamine, called Spravato.
The new drug is facing critique on its pricing, route of administration as well as functional differences when compared to the traditional, generic Ketamine.
Joe and Kyle invite professionals in the field who have experience with generic Ketamine to voice their opinions, hopes and concerns about Spravato.
Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Johnson & Johnson Subsidiary has created a derivative of Ketamine called Esketamine and has gone through the whole FDA approval process
There has been some concern about a big pharmaceutical company, Janssen coming in and creating a ‘new molecule’ and introducing an FDA approved ‘psychedelic’ to make generic Ketamine obsolete
Pricing
There is going to be price differences based on routes of administration (Intravenous vs lozenges)
$1.59 at 100 milligrams (93% bioavailable when administered IM)
The list price of Esketamine through Janssen will be $590-$885 per treatment session based on the dosage taken which will vary between patients
During the first month of therapy, that would add up to $4720-$6785
After the first month, maintenance therapy could range from $2300-$3500
Joe reads a quote from Scott that says that the new Janssen Esketamine product is overpriced, the research data showed that only 2 out of 5 studies demonstrated effectiveness, and generic Ketamine is much more effective and cheaper than Esketamine
Insurance
Insurance might cover Esketamine
Kyle says he hasn’t heard of too many generic Ketamine sessions being covered by Insurance
“I need not continue the discussion. The case is too clear for elaboration. Yet the trained body of physiologists under the influence of the ideas germane to their successful methodology entirely ignore the whole mass of adverse evidence. We have here a colossal example of anti-empirical dogmatism arising from a successful methodology. Evidence which lies outside the method simply does not count. We are, of course, reminded that the neglect of this evidence arises from the fact that it lies outside the scope of the methodology of the science. That method consists in tracing the persistence of the physical and chemical principles throughout physiological operations.” – quote from Function of Reason
Opinions
Joe invites listeners to ask questions and leave a message of opinions and such (either anonymously or using your name)
Google voice 970-368-3133
About Kyle
Kyle’s interest in exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness began when he was 16-years-old when he suffered a traumatic snowboarding accident. Waking up after having a near-death experience changed Kyle’s life. Since then, Kyle has earned his B.A. in Transpersonal Psychology, where he studied the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness by exploring shamanism, plant medicine, Holotropic Breathwork, and the roots/benefits of psychedelic psychotherapy. Kyle has co-taught two college-level courses. One of the courses Kyle created as a capstone project, “Stanislav Grof’s Psychology of Extraordinary Experiences,” and the other one which he co-created, “The History of Psychedelics.”
Kyle is currently pursuing his M.S. in clinical mental health counseling with an emphasis in somatic psychology. Kyle’s clinical background in mental health consists of working with at-risk teenagers in crisis and with individuals experiencing an early-episode of psychosis. Kyle also facilitates Transpersonal Breathwork workshops.
About Joe
Joe studied philosophy in New Hampshire, where he earned his B.A.. After stumbling upon the work of Stanislav Grof during his undergraduate years, Joe began participating in Holotropic Breathwork workshops in Vermont in 2003. Joe helped facilitate Holotropic and Transpersonal Breathwork workshops while he spent his time in New England. He is now working in the software industry as well as hosting a few podcasts. Joe now coordinates Dreamshadow Transpersonal Breathwork workshops, in Breckenridge, Colorado.
In this episode Joe interviews, Richie Ogulnick, a long time Ibogaine provider and enthusiast. During the show they discuss Ibogaine and Addiction-Interruption Therapy.
3 Key Points:
Ibogaine is a compound found in the Tabernanthe Iboga plant that has been used to treat opioid and other addictions.
Ibogaine has shown to have the power to reset the biochemistry of a person to a non-addictive state, and reduce/eliminate the agonizing symptoms of withdrawal, allowing a person to heal from an addiction.
The combination of Ibogaine, relocation and integration therapy is the best scenario for healing someone and preventing them from relapse.
In 1989 he was Introduced to Ibogaine while visiting family and friends in New York
Its an alkaloid extracted from a West African shrub
He was ready to fall in love with doing something with purpose
He came across an article about a corporation called NDA created by Howard Lotsof
When Howard (a heroine addict) was 19 years old, a chemist gave him a dose of Ibogaine
A few days later, he realized he “wasn’t afraid” and then he realized he wasn’t having opioid withdrawals
In “Needle Park”, a park in New York, heroin addicts come there for free needles
Richie’s dream was to dose all the addicts with Ibogaine, and that only a quarter of them would show up to Needle Park because they were not addicted anymore
He brought 13 grams of Ibogaine back from Africa with him
He received a chapter from a book (Healing Journey) called Ibogaine: Fantasy and Reality by Claudio Naranjo
People were coming from all over the world to receive Ibogaine treatments
It was 15 years where he conducted over 750 psycho-spiritual and addiction-interception sessions underground
Upon training people, those people would then go and open their own treatment centers in Mexico, abroad, etc.
What is Iboga
Tabernanthe Iboga is the plant
Ibogaine Hydrochloride is the best product to use to interrupt addiction and symptoms of withdrawal from an addiction
Ibogaine is safe as long as someone has had an EKG that has been looked at very closely for any red flags
Other than cardiac risk and previous suicidality, schizophrenia, psychotic breaks there aren’t many more threats to being treated with Ibogaine
The Miracle Compound
“There is a miracle compound in ibogaine. There is nothing I have come across on the planet that can reset the biochemistry to a pre-addictive state, that can bring a person to make a choice without the agony of the symptoms of withdrawal.” – Richie
There is a 36 hour window where a person has a life review, what brought them to the addictive process in the first place, the person’s willingness and maturity
It creates a symbiotic relationship for a person to explore themselves with insight
Relapse is possible if they don’t work on the reason they became addicted in the first place
It’s the witness component that Ibogaine delivers that helps people process through their addiction
Ibogaine as a molecule has a really pharmacologically complex, alien like structure
Relapse
Justin Hoffman, a DJ in Las Vegas runs Holistic House, a facility where people get to relax and get out of their previous context for a week or two after treatment
If a family wanted to help out their family member who is addicted to heroine, Richie says that he asks the family about relocation because it’s a big part of reducing relapse
He also says that finding a proper therapist to help afterward is huge too
The combination of Ibogaine, relocation and integration therapy is the best scenario for healing someone and preventing them from relapse
Big Pharma’s Impact
Joe says how he got a message from Dana Biel, talking about how the harm reduction movement has been manipulated by the ‘Big Pharma’ industry, especially suboxone
Richie says that drugs like suboxone are prescribed to be used everyday for the rest of someone’s life, and Ibogaine is a “one-time-only” style drug that doesn’t require alot of money to heal people
Ibogaine is not profitable so its not attractive to Big Pharma
“Ibogaine will never hit the streets like LSD did. It’s not a recreational experience, it’s a long, daunting 3 stage process.” – Richie
Use Cases
He knows of a story where these two ladies took Ibogaine daily for their Parkinson’s, and as soon as they stopped taking Ibogaine, they got their symptoms back
He knows of another lady who had been walking with a cane and upon taking Ibogaine she was walking a mile around her neighborhood without her cane
Final Thoughts
Joe asks if Richie thinks we are over harvesting Iboga
There is the Wakanga tree that contains a small amount of Ibogaine, so he thinks we are okay
Ibogaine is an important subject because a lot of people are dying from opiates
Ibogaine is available in Portugal but it hasn’t had much activity
It can be used for therapeutic use as well as addiction-interruption
Richie Ogulnick is a long time Ibogaine provider and enthusiast Over the course of fifteen and a half years, he conducted about 750 sessions, including addiction-interruption treatments. He spent the next several years referring close to 1,000 more people to other ibogaine providers. During that time, he also trained doctors and ex-addicts who opened ibogaine centers throughout the world. Richie feels a pull to focus again on the more therapeutic and psycho-spiritual treatments where he is able to offer his expertise in ibogaine treatment along with his knowledge of reintegration with individuals who are looking to deepen and enrich their life experience.
In this Episode, Joe interviews Brad Burge, Director of Strategic Communications at MAPS. In this episode they discuss the Phase 3 Trial for MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy, contradictions and Expanded Access.
3 Key Points:
MAPS is about to run Phase 3 Trials of MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy
If MDMA passes this third phase, it will still be tricky to get insurance involved. But the cost of one series of MDMA Therapy is much cheaper than a lifetime of typical pharmaceutical drugs and therapy sessions to heal PTSD.
The only reason for-profit companies haven’t gotten involved before was because there wasn’t a promise on their investment. Finally, for-profit companies (like Compass Pathways) are interested in advancing these medicines (Psilocybin and MDMA).
After phase 3 trials, if all goes well, it would mean that MDMA would be the drug to be used (only) alongside Psychotherapy
MAPS is training therapists, counselors and social workers
One way to get more people educated who are interested in this would be taking therapy interns in and having them gain credits for interning and learning alongside trained therapists
Access
Expanded Access is known as ‘compassionate use’, a program by the FDA that allows people to receive a treatment that is still in trials
In order to administer the therapy you are required to get a DEA schedule 1 license
“If there’s one thing that changes public perspective on psychedelic therapy, its individual stories of people who have been healed, transformed by or positively or even negatively affected by them in some way” – Brad
They have published many studies of the trials
The most recent was the Boulder study, 76% of people didn’t have PTSD a year after MDMA assisted therapy
Insurance won’t cover expanded access, it will have to pass Phase 3 trials until insurance can be used in MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy
The MDMA is a very small cost (fraction) of the total cost, it’s the hours on hours of psychotherapy that cost so much
But the cost of one MDMA Therapy Session process is much cheaper than a lifetime of pharmaceutical drugs and therapy sessions to heal PTSD
Argument
Joe says he hears this strange argument that people say “giving soldiers MDMA just makes war easier”
Brad says it’s not about putting these people back into war, it’s about healing the retired veterans to help them adapt back into their everyday life
“MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy is going to make them a better lover not a better fighter” – Brad
“If there’s one commonality in psychedelic experiences, its that things are connected.” – Brad
Compass Pathways
Joe mentions that people are scared to see a business come in that’s acting like a normal pharmaceutical company
MAPS is not tied at all with Compass Pathways
Out of the top two things Americans are mad about, at least one of them is the Pharmaceutical Industry
Finally, for-profit companies are interested in advancing these medicines (MDMA)
The only reason for-profit companies haven’t gotten involved before was because there wasn’t a promise on their investment
Capitalism has a tendency to put profit first
“Money can be used for good as well as evil” – Brad
MAPS has raised over 70 billion dollars all from donations
Compass owns its own safety data
Part of the goal of a patent is to protect the investment
Zendo Project
MAPS Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Peer Support resource
Brad Burge is Director of Strategic Communications at the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Brad earned his B.A. in Communication and Psychology from Stanford University in 2005 and his M.A. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego in 2009. He began working with MAPS in 2009, where he engages daily with journalists and media producers around the world to enhance public knowledge about psychedelic research, while also helping develop and evolve MAPS’ brand and outreach strategy. Brad is passionate about finding healthier, more effective, and more compassionate ways for humans to work with the pharmaceutical and digital communications technologies of the 21st century. When he’s not plugged in, you’ll find him in the mountains, carrying a backpack, somewhere down a long trail.
In this episode, Joe interviews Nathan Sepeda, a Research Coordinator at Johns Hopkins. Joe and Nathan cover topics on 5-MEO-DMT research and survey studies, the difference between synthetic and toad sourced 5-MEO-DMT, the sustainability of the Bufo Alvarius toad, and the benefits of a proper facilitator.
3 Key Points:
5-MEO-DMT is starting to gain traction in the research world. The conversation continues on whether the synthetic 5-MEO-DMT experience is any different from a 5-MEO-DMT experience sourced from the toad venom.
As the popularity of 5-MEO-DMT increases, concerns about the wellbeing and sustainability of the Bufo Alvarius toad also increases.
Proper facilitation has been shown to affect a person’s experience on a substance like 5-MEO-DMT. The use of a practitioner, finding the substance from a reputable source, and integration all play a critical role in the user’s experience.
Joe found out about Nathan Sepeda and the work being done on 5-MEO-DMT after Johns Hopkins released a poster on 5-MEO-DMT
Alan Davis put together a survey about people’s 5-MEO-DMT experiences
Half of the use was recreational, and then the other half of survey participants used more of a therapeutic approach set and setting including a sitter and integration
The study found that the more structured the 5-MEO-DMT experience was around set and setting, the more often participants reported a more mystical experience as well as a lower likelihood of having a difficult experience
The survey only looked at synthetic 5-MEO-DMT
Using 5-MEO-DMT from a toad also runs the risk of the other toad venom constituents
Joe said the first time he heard about data on 5-MEO-DMT was at the Oakland Psychedelic Science Conference in 2017
Stan Grof had a keynote saying that 5-MEO-DMT was the future of psychiatry
Toad Conservation
The Bufo Alvarius toad’s population is increasingly declining
Joe says he knows someone who lives on the Mexican border in the Sonoran desert, and he would have toads jump into his house all the time
He doesn’t even see them anymore
Joe also mentions the toads flocking to the UV street lights, and people scooping them up or even running them over
“How do we do less harm to living things and treat our environment better?” – Joe
Nathan’s Role at Hopkins
Nathan is the Research Coordinator of Psychedelic Studies at Johns Hopkins
He works as an Assistant Facilitator (sitter) for the psychoactive drug sessions
He is involved in Psilocybin studies (currently the depression study)
He says he is grateful to be a part of the research, seeing people change in a matter of days from the help of the substances
Nathan has a background in Psychology and Neuroscience
Mary Cosimano is the primary facilitator for all of the studies at Johns Hopkins
His training consisted of mock sessions, ways to ask/answer questions, and overall hold the space
A lot of people will describe their experience being the most spiritual experience of their life
Joe asks about upset stomach with synthetic psilocybin
Nathan responds saying they ask patients to eat a light breakfast, but he never really sees upset stomach with synthetic psilocybin
Proper Facilitation
The use of a practitioner and finding the substance from a reputable source are the two biggest factors in having a great experience, along with integration
Nathan says that these findings are preliminary but they are a great start to data on the substance and its use
Joe says he is cautious about the religious affiliation people prescribe to their experience with these substances
It can get out of hand, there are “shamans” that taze people or throw buckets of cold water on their patients when they are on the substance
Waterboarding, sexual assault, all of these things speak to the value of screening practitioners
Joe has heard about a facilitator using an extremely high amount of 5-MEO-DMT on his patients, far above the effective dose
Joe mentions a story about a “shaman” who was to facilitate a session. The participant thought they were going to do standard DMT, and the shaman gave them 5-MEO-DMT instead (without the users consent)
Joe suggests that just because you know a reputable source for a substance, doesn’t mean they are a good facilitator
Nathan Sepeda is an assistant facilitator (or guide) for psychoactive drug sessions and research coordinator for the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit. Nathan earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota studying psychology and neuroscience. His interests in addiction and mood disorders, in combination with the promising research with psychedelics, have led Nathan to Dr. Roland Griffiths’ lab. Nathan is involved in a number of projects investigating the effects of various psychedelic substances, including psilocybin, salvinorin-A, and 5-MeO-DMT.
In this unique episode, Joe brings Tom Hatsis and Dr. Jerry Brown together for a psychedelic debate. They go back in forth in conversation on whether there was psychedelic use in medieval or ancient Christianity and if so, was there a secret tradition of including art of mushrooms or psychedelic substances in cathedrals and castles.
3 Key Points:
Jerry Brown makes the claim that there is evidence of visionary plants in Christianity and the life of Jesus found in medieval art and biblical scripture.
Tom Hatsis makes the claim that Christianity is not hiding a giant secret inside the biblical texts about the true hallucinogen at the root of the religion being an Amanita Muscaria.
Jerry and Tom debate back and forth, pulling from art and textual evidence (and lack thereof) to support or deny the claim that Psychedelic Mushrooms are the root of Christian religion.
Anthropologist, Author and Activist
Served as the Prof of Anthropology at FIU in Miami
He designed and taught a course on hallucinogens and culture
He is the Co-Author of Sacred Plants and the Gnostic Church: Speculations on Entheogen use in Early Christian Ritual The Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Christianity
Tom Hatsis
Author, Public Speaker, Roller Derby Player and Potion Maker
He is the Author of three books in Psychedelia;
The Witches Ointment: the Secret History of Psychedelic Magic
Psychedelic Mystery Traditions; Spirit Plants, Magical Practices and Psychedelic States Microdosing Magic: A Psychedelic Spellbook
Partnered with event organizer and short film maker, Eden Woodruff, who runs Psanctum Psychedelia in Portland in the process of winning the Guinness Book of World Record in Magic
Intro
The debate is around the early Christian use of psychedelics and mushrooms in Christian art
The conversation is on the validity on whether or not psychedelics were used in early Christianity
Dr. Jerry Brown on Psychedelics in Christianity
The Miracle of Marsh Chapel – a double-blind experiment conducted by Walter Pahnky in 1962 where 20 students were divided into two groups, half received niacin and the other half received psilocybin
9 out of 10 who took psilocybin had a profound psychedelic experience
Brown explains that this is an important part in the entire history of psychedelics
After discovering the Amanita Muscaria mushroom (confirmed by Paul Stamets) in a 15th Century Church in Scotland, he realized that there were many entheogenic images in Christian art
He says that most church historians do not have training in mycology to recognize entheogens and mushrooms
He brings up an image of Adam and Eve standing next to a large Amanita Muscaria mushroom
He went to a Parish Church and saw an image of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a Donkey, and one of the youths welcoming Jesus is holding a long mushroom cap
He went to churches in England, Germany and France
In the drawing of Genesis, he saw God creating plants (psilocybin mushrooms)
“When you go back beyond the 3rd century, there are no visual images or Christian art due to poverty and persecution” – Jerry
Jerry reads a passage,
“Jesus said to his disciples, “compare me to someone and tell me who I am like” Thomas said to him, “Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like.” Jesus said “I am not your master, because you have drunk you have become intoxicated from the bubbling wellspring that I have personally measured out. He who will drink from my mouth will become like me, I shall become like he, and the things that are hidden, should be revealed to him.”
He interprets the passage as a reference to drinking a psychoactive mushroom substance
Jerry goes on to explain that Jesus realized his feeling of eternal life through the use of psychoactive entheogens
He says that this is not a means of dismissing Christianity, but instead to reintroduce Christianity with its original roots
Tom Hatsis on Psychedelics in Christianity
Tom says that Jerry makes a lot of assertions, but does not present any evidence. He talks about art, but not anything in scripture
Tom is curious why the only artwork that Jerry brings his assertions about mushrooms are from a time where we can’t ask them about it
Tom brings up Julie and Jerry’s book and that the first chapter has nothing to do with Christian History at all
Tom uses an example of stone mushrooms. Someone doing a cross cultural analysis, might agree that they are mushrooms based on the other findings of cannabis and opioids
But, as a historian, Tom looks for evidence and in this case, there are eye witness accounts of its use
He brings up the example, the infamous plaincourault fresco of Adam and Eve at the tree of good and evil with the forbidden fruit
Using this one example, he wants to prove how critical historical methodology is used to prove unsubstantiated claims on Christian art as wrong
The paradise tree is a mix of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and a symbol of Christ’s victory over Adam’s transgression. In the play, it was tradition to place small Eucharist wafers on the tree branches so that’s what the white dots are on the tree branches
The tree’s shape is not a mushroom cap, it is a parasol of victory
Jerry’s Rebuttle
Jerry says that the absence of evidence, is not equal, or proof of evidence of absence (just because it’s not written in text, doesn’t mean that its not there in the art)
Jerry’s issue with the fresco is that “The Fall” is a New Testament creation, not all the way back in Genesis
He says that on their website, they do not ‘alter’ the image, they ‘enhance’ it
He says that Tom claims the fruit doesn’t matter, but the fruit does matter (it could be a psychedelic mushroom)
He touches on the skeletal appearance of Eve and the meaning of renewal of life
Jerry thinks this image is the beginning of the religious experience and symbolism that the soul is immortal and will continue to exist after death
He says the serpent is not a depiction of evil entering Eden, but instead a source of knowledge and a spiritual guide to the feminine to help bring man into higher awareness
Tom’s Rebuttle
Tom says he didn’t hear any evidence from Jerry, he heard arguments to authority
He says that Jerry uses anthropology to uncover history, and opinions of art historians, but medieval historians agree that the mushroom is not present in Christian art
He also says he did agree with Jerry about the mushroom in art, but that was last year and he has proven himself wrong and that the mushroom caps are parasols of victory
Jerry says that Amanita Muscaria was in the Soma, but Tom says cannabis was, and mushrooms were not Chris Bennett’s book on Soma
There is zero evidence for mushroom art during medieval times
In Jerry’s book, he writes about the Basilica di Aquilea, saying that they are Amanita Muscaria, but Tom says they are not that type of mushroom
Tom also says that in the play depicted in the plaincourault, that the script literally says the wafers are hung on the tree, and that the little white dots are not the dots from an Amanita Muscaria
Jerry’s Closing Remarks
He says that this isn’t just cultural analysis, this is about fieldwork and looking at how native people view this artwork
The problem he has with Tom and Church historians is that it is not taking evidence from Ethnobotanists
Jerry says he believes that there is a long tradition of entheogenic mushrooms in Christian art and would like this debate to continue
Tom’s Closing Remarks
Tom says he still isn’t hearing evidence, he is only hearing assertions and argument to authority and eminent scholars
Tom says that Genesis doesn’t matter in the plaincourault, because we know that it’s about the play
He has multiple articles debunking these images on his website
Check out our online course, “Introduction to Psychedelics”
About Jerry
Jerry B. Brown, Ph.D., is an anthropologist, author and activist. From 1972-2014, he served as Founding Professor of Anthropology at Florida International University in Miami, where he designed and taught a course on “Hallucinogens and Culture.” The course examines the use of psychoactive plants by tribal and classical cultures, including Ancient India and Greece, and by and discusses the discoveries of the modern mind-explorers, the “psychonauts of the twentieth century.”
About Tom
Thomas Hatsis is an author, lecturer, and historian of witchcraft, magic, Western religions, contemporary psychedelia, entheogens, and medieval pharmacopeia. In his spare time he visits rare archives, slings elixirs, and coaches roller derby.
In this episode, Joe interviews Steve Hupp, the Host of Kentucky Ayahuasca, a new series on Viceland. Topics include Steve’s background and how he wants to impact the American Ayahuasca scene through his work.
3 Key Points:
Kentucky Ayahuasca is a docu-series on Viceland about Shaman, Steve Hupp as he works with people seeking healing from severe emotional and physical issues.
Steve comes from an unusual background of career criminal and bank robber, and because of his time in prison with a Peruvian Shaman, has decided to bring the tradition to the United States.
Steve is careful not to mock what shamanism is by creating ceremony in the States. He wants facilitation to be done as safely as possible and is simply trying to help people through Ayahuasca ceremony.
It landed him in prison and put him into the same cell of a Peruvian shaman who had overstayed his visa and was probably doing some facilitating in the States
His name was Guadalupe and Steve called him Loopy because of the things he was talking about
But here and there Guadalupe would say something that would resonate with Steve days and weeks later that just made sense
Prison
He spent 4 years in prison
He got into the federal system because he had beaten the state system so the federal system picked up the case
Steve pleaded guilty and made a deal with them to give them their money back
He also agreed not to sue the police for opening fire on him
He was one of the first bank robbers released on a bond
Religion and Spirituality
Up to that point he was an Atheist
He decided that something else was keeping him alive for something because of what he survived during the police chase
Steve says he’s seen how religious law worked by seeing gangs turn into congregations
He says he is no longer an Atheist after having experience with Ayahuasca
He had an epiphany that “anything is possible” and he decided he wanted to bring this to everyone
He started to have coincidences that led him to facilitation
Shamanism
Steve isn’t trying to defraud what Shamanism is, but he is trying to tailor it to the American way of life
He says the Shaman in the jungle has a different context than an American does
Joe mentions that people get upset about how the word ‘shaman’ is used
Steve says ‘shaman’ comes from the Siberian word, ‘saman’, which means “to know” but has been branded by anthropologists
He also says shamanism is the oldest world religion
Joe brings up that so many people suggest doing Ayahuasca in the Amazon because that’s where the spirit of the plant is, but he also mentions that the same type of biodiversity exists in Kentucky too
Purpose
Steve says they face reverse-racism because they can’t work with native tribes because they are white, but he’s just looking to bring everyone together
“If we don’t start helping our little blue sphere heal, it’s all we’ve got” – Steve
He said he had more fear transitioning into Ayahuasca facilitation than any bank he’s robbed because he had to put his name on it
His intent is not to build a cult, he believes we are at the dawn of a new world and we are all in this together
Helping Addiction with Ayahuasca
Steve says he believes there are no addicts, just unbalanced humans
Joe says he read recently that the term “addict” keeps people in their problems
When he helps people who are addicted to drugs, and they drink Ayahuasca, they realize the drug is not the problem, but the guilt and the shame about using the drug is the problem
Plant Teacher
Steve believes we are intergalactic children
We could use our technology and knowledge to better us rather than being so distracted by the ‘lines in the sand’
He says we could feed everyone on the planet with land the size of Texas
What Ayahuasca is trying to teach us is to be kind to each other and we have that choice everyday
We need to get past this barbaric attitude of domination
“I know I’ve got grandchildren that I may never see, but I’ve got to try to leave them a world better than the one I’ve found” – Steve
If we were to teach our kids to teach our grandkids something, we wouldn’t be handing them millions of dollars in national debt
Its a non-violent change
“What if we collectively manifested accountability in our government?” – Steve
Law Enforcement
Steve believes law enforcement shouldn’t be able to have more power than soldiers at war
Soldiers in Iraq can’t fire unless they have been fired upon
Shaman University
No one has ever done this before, Steve wants to put together a structure to make sure this operation is done ethically
He wants to lay the foundation for people to participate in Ayahuasca ceremony safely
He says anybody can brew Ayahuasca, but doing it safely and properly is key
Joe encourages viewers to check out the series on Viceland
Steve also encourages listeners who want to do Ayahuasca abroad to do tons of research before attending to make sure there are proper facilitators, ethical procedures and quality emergency response techniques and resources
Check out our online course, “Introduction to Psychedelics”
About Steve
Steve Hupp had spent time in the Military. He was lost in materialism, drug abuse, alcoholism and pride that led him on a 5 year bank robbing spree that ended with him in Federal Prison, where he met his first Shaman, a cellmate. Now he is an Ayahuasca Shaman performing psychedelic healing ceremonies in Kentucky. Steve has worked with Ayahuasca for 15 years, trained by a Shaman from South America on how to work with Ayahuasca. He has spent much of that time working alone and experiencing many visions and entities that called him to found Aya Quest.
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In this episode, Joe and Kyle interview Jake Mitchell from the Flight of Thoughts Podcast.
Jake has spent 4 years as a Paramedic in Canada and leads trainings around mental health, first aid and is bringing better practice of psychedelics into the psychedelic space.
3 Key Points:
It’s so important to know your substances and get a testing kit so you know its not laced and you know exactly what you’re taking.
More people seek help when they look at an overdose or a difficult experience as if they are suffering versus breaking the law. Decriminalization at the least, would help make people be seen as a patient and not a criminal.
Most police aren’t trained on mental health issues, and they have shot and killed people because they don’t know how to correctly respond to issues like schizophrenia. We need more mental health training among our law enforcement.
He had major depression and didn’t know it, and started to use cannabis as a useful tool for his depression
He started to notice some of the first responders use MDMA and Psilocybin off-duty to help with their PTSD
“PTSD for those who have been in combat is more understood than for first responders with it, people think that we can just handle it.” – Jake
There are levels of trauma that don’t qualify daily for PTSD, but for police and firefighters and such, they can be triggered by certain events
It’s hard to say what percentage of first responders use cannabis, MDMA and psilocybin for personal therapeutic use
Jake says he knows of at least a quarter of first responders who have been open about their use
There is a new initiative that if police use cannabis, even right before their shift, as long as they are ‘fit for duty’ they won’t be scrutinized
CBD
CBD counteracts the effects of THC, THC binds to CB1 receptors, and CBD binds to CB2 receptors
CBD is similar to Advil
If someone has taken too many edibles, they can take Advil to counteract the effect of the THC
It counteracts the THC similar to how CBD does
People used to say to have a good night, eat a pot brownie, but it’s a better idea to smoke for the first time than to eat an edible
Harm Reduction – Teaching People How to Respond to Overdose
They are teaching people about harm reduction kits or when to call an ambulance
Know your substances, and get a testing kit so you know its not laced and you know exactly what you’re taking
Know what breathing technique you want to use if you “feel the fear” setting in
If you know someone is on a clean substance, you can try to help them through it, but if it could be laced (with fentanyl, etc) call an ambulance
If someone is unresponsive, that’s a sign they could be overdosing
You can rub as hard as you can with your knuckles on their chest and scream their name, and if they don’t wake up, that’s a good sign to call 911
Always turn them on their side so that their air passages open up and they don’t asphyxiate on their tongue or vomit
If you are informed on how to use narcan and you think they are overdosing on fentanyl, use it
If they are awake and are psychologically freaking out, just sit them down and simply ask them “how can I help?” They might want something as simple as some water or to go for a walk
Knowing your dose is so important
LSD and psilocybin don’t have cardiac effects, they don’t shut off breathing, so you shouldn’t have a reason for feeling like your going to actually die unless it’s been laced
MDMA is one you have so worry about but you’d have to take hundreds and hundreds of milligrams
Usually the only reason that people overdose on heroin is because it’s laced with pharmaceuticals
Advil and Tylenol work similar to opioids
Sometimes we have emotional trauma and it comes out as physical pain
More people seek help when they look at it as that they are suffering versus breaking the law
Narcan costs $20-$40
An overdose death costs $30,000
In Canada, the pharmacist will inform you on how to use Narcan
Jake says he hopes that the US will catch up Narcan availability and use
The grinding of the teeth after taking MDMA may be a sign that it contains amphetamine
Decriminalization at the least, would help make people be seen as a patient and not a criminal
A Healthcare Issue, Not a Crime
The Good Samaritan Act in Canada says if you have minor possession of a substance and not a traffic-able amount, and you call the ambulance for an overdose, you will not be searched or charged
Most police aren’t trained on mental health issues, and there have been situations of people with schizophrenia having a moment in public, and because the police don’t have education on signs to look for, they have shot and killed the victim
23 and Me, the gene testing company, tested over 180,000 people’s genes in a sample
The findings showed that cannabis doesn’t cause schizophrenia, but people likely use cannabis to relieve symptoms of it
Serotonin Toxicity
Jake says he’s been hit in the face by someone on PCP
It took 6 police to hold one person down.
Another time, there was a guy who was wearing underwear in freezing weather, punching cars driving at almost 40 miles an hour
They were snorting Wellbutrin, an antidepressant that works as a stimulant when snorted
Serotonin syndrome is super dangerous
Ketamine is used in the ER for scenarios like this
Does taking MDMA too frequently ruin your serotonin system?
Emanuel Sferios – the number one risk of using MDMA is you might not get high from it anymore
Addiction
Type II Diabetes is a symptom of sugar addiction
Sugar and carbs create bacteria in the gut that releases plaque in the blood
Technology addiction – Jake had a patient that sliced an artery and was texting and on candy crush and Snapchat
Check out this FREE online course, “Introduction to Psychedelics”
About Jake
Jake is a Primary Care Paramedic with experience in emergency response, evidence-based research practice, harm reduction techniques, and crisis intervention. He is the Founder of The Psychedelic Society of First Responders and Emergency Workers.
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In this interview, Brian Pace interviews Dr. Jason Slot at Ohio State University. In the show, they talk about Jason’s contributions of the psilocybe genus. Jason is in the faculty at OSU in the department of plant pathology.
3 Key Points:
There are over 200 species of mushroom forming fungi that produce psilocybin, and Jason studies how and why these organisms produce the psychoactive compound.
Animals seek altered states of consciousness as a potential evolutionary mechanism.
Mushrooms use horizontal gene transfer to pass on their psychoactive properties.
“There weren’t many mycology job postings in the area, and a job came up for someone to study the evolution of fungal genomes” – Jason
It all just fell into place
What is Neurochemical Ecology
Ecology is the interaction among organisms and their interaction with their environment
Neurochemical ecology is a special case where the chemicals are specifically targeted to processes of nervous systems in animals
There is an opportunity for plants and fungi to produce drugs and compounds that manipulate their behavior or inhibit their eating
Species that Produce Psilocybin
There are over 200 species of mushroom forming fungi that produce psilocybin
Jason has found many more
Distribution of Psilocybe
Mushrooms were anatomically modern
There were flowering forests and wood that spanned to each of the poles
The supercontinent would have broken up after that and as the continents separated, so did the mushrooms
Humans have been distributing psilocybe through the dung of migrating animals
Columbian Exchange
During colonization from the old world to the new world, there was the biggest exchange of fungi
If the amount of biomass and dung expands, then the number of fungi species evolves and grows
The underlying change in the climate that changes the planet from forested to open grasslands also has an impact
During human evolution, psilocybe has been around the whole time
These neurochemicals have dated human genus
Serotonin
Serotonin is analogous to psilocybin
Bacteria was the first organism making serotonin
Insects produce serotonin
“Serotonin is a great key, it fits into a lot of different locks and is used in a lot of different ways” – Jason
It’s in plants, its in amoebas, and its in animals
In animals, they have specialized a lot of different receptors that respond to serotonin
Serotonin only interacts with one type of receptor in the body
Altered States of Consciousness
“It must be like something to be a bat, and it must be different than what it’s like to be a human, what must it be like to be a bat under the influence of psilocybin, is it anything like a human?” -Brian
Animals seek altered states of consciousness
Bees seek out fermented grapes
We have video footage of foxes taking huge bites out of Amanita Muscaria
Seeking out intoxication is a natural human drive
Maybe the desire to seek out these altered states of consciousness is an evolutionary mechanism that is happening
If you search out new ways of perceiving the world, you may come upon a new pattern that your group of species learns how to live better
If ants come back to the hive too drunk, they get punished and get bit
Language
One of the ways humans distinguish ourselves
We have specialized vocal chords, and tongues that make our language unique
Terrence – Stoned Ape Theory – the thesis was that psilocybin mushrooms were a part of the diets of the hominids
There was some kind of co-evolutionary relationship that may have resulted in human language
Psilocybin’s role in our development
“What kind of role did psilocybin mushrooms play in our development?”
The hominids came down from the trees and now they are standing upright
We have to look at opportunity, constraints, etc.
If the ape eats psilocybin, it may have an idea or understands its environment better
It may help the ape acquire more food or expand into new territory
The access to food and changes in locomotion are huge forces in our evolution
Having fire to cook our meat and change our availability to nutrients is one of the biggest forces in evolution of human consciousness than mushrooms
Horizontal Gene Transfer
Vertical transfer of information means from parent to offspring
Horizontal transfer of genetic information happens between species
One bacteria has a gene to resist an antibiotic, and another doesn’t. One bacteria can obtain that gene from the antibiotic resistant bacteria (ex. Antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus)
Gene transfer can happen in multicellular creatures like mushrooms
Fungi are exchanging genes through different species
Paneolis Mushrooms did not inherit the biosynthetic pathway to produce psilocybin, they received it from a totally different genera
KT Extinction
A comet impact that caused havoc and climate change that resulted in the extinction of dinosaurs
Mega herbivores, putting out tons of herbivore dung
The genes to make psilocybin were acquired by a dung loving Paneolis from a dung loving Psilocybe
Dung attracts flies, but it doesn’t kill the insects that eat psilocybin
Psilocybin is one of the safest drugs for consumption
The amatoxin in Amanita Muscaria (The Destroying Angel, commonly mistaken with Matsutake), interrupts the central part of cellular metabolism
Identifying Genes in Psilocybin
He sequenced 3 different species of mushrooms that make psilocybin, and then looked at one species that didn’t make psilocybin
They take two pieces of DNA and then compare them
They all have those genes, but how did they get them?
Validated the biosynthesis of psilocybin
Mediated Horizontal Gene Transfer
When fungi are under stress they take the DNA from their environment
Cicada Parasitism
There are cicada pathogens that infect the cicadas before they emerge from their ‘underground’ and their rear end is transformed into these spore producing structures
They fly around and drop their spores all over
Are these plants or fungi are using any of these neurochemicals in house for cognition?
Turing test – a computer can convince you that it’s human
Check out this FREE online course, “Introduction to Psychedelics”
About Jason
Jason Slot is an Evolutionary Biologist that studies topics in three major areas, the genomic and metabolic bases of fungal adaptation and niche, horizontal gene transfer mechanisms and the evolution of symbioses. He is in the Department of Plant Pathology at Ohio State University.
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