
Culture
PTSF86 – Ayahuasca, Chronic Pain, and Legal Psilocybin, with Payton Nyquvest of Numinus
November 26, 2021
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, we have another split podcast, with side A bringing you a short PTSF check-in from Joe and Kyle, and side B featuring an in-person interview recorded at Wonderland with Numinus Co-founder and CEO, Payton Nyquvest.

In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, we have another split podcast, with side A bringing you a short PTSF check-in from Joe and Kyle, and side B featuring an in-person interview recorded at Wonderland with Numinus Co-founder and CEO, Payton Nyquvest.
Joe and Kyle first talk about upcoming courses (and possibly an in-person pop-up in Breckenridge?), Wonderland, Covid, and whether or not psychedelics are in an “ivory tower,” as Dr. Alex Belser, Chief Clinical Officer of Cybin, suggests they are. And they discuss Mike Tyson: his insistence on saying “toad,” his relationship to Gerry Sandoval, and the dangers of celebrities promoting the further endangerment of such highly threatened species.
Then we go back to Miami where Joe and David speak with Payton Nyquvest of Numinus, a company with two major pieces: ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and a clinical platform offered through Numinus Health, and Numinus Biosciences; which recently produced the first legal psilocybin product derived from natural psilocybin-producing mushrooms. He discusses how his mother’s substance abuse recovery and a trip to an ayahuasca retreat center taught him how to reimagine his chronic pain as a gift, the need for reciprocity, and what the recent Compass Pathways results show us about integration. And he asks an important question we don’t often ponder: Why do healthcare providers only offer psychedelics after they’ve tried everything else? Why not first?
Notable Quotes
“I was in the trauma ward at Lion’s Gate Hospital, I booked my flights while I was in the hospital, went home, packed my bags, and got on the plane. I’m hesitant to create an expectation of a panacea or anything like that, but one week with ayahuasca and I never had any chronic pain issues ever again.”
“We keep talking about treatment-resistant depression, treatment-resistant anxiety or treatment-resistant PTSD, and the reason why the psychedelic space has seen this re-emergence is there’s a huge burden on the healthcare system at the moment, and there’s this recognition that psychedelics could take some of that burden off of the healthcare system. So why are we putting psychedelic treatments at the end of a patient’s life-cycle? Why should they have to go through this prolonged period of suffering? …Why is it not a standard of care, with curative intent? Put it at the beginning. …If they’re safe and effective, why are they not prioritized?”
“When I speak with institutions and stuff like that, they say, ‘Wow, you guys really seem to be approaching this from a 3-5 year standpoint, and intentional.’ And my response is: ‘Who’s not?’ …Let’s not be short-sighted, and recognize [that] a paradigm shift in healthcare is so significant. We haven’t seen significant innovation in mental health in 35-40 years. So that’s a big shift. …Let’s not try and squeeze psychedelics into old paradigms of the pharmaceutical space or something like that. Let’s recognize that these are interventions, and where do they fit within the healthcare system?”
Links
From Joe and Kyle’s segment:
Huffpost.com: Mike Tyson Says He Smokes Toad Venom As Much As 3 Times In A Day
From Payton Nyquvest’s segment:
About Payton Nyquvest
Support the show!
- Patreon
- Leave us a review on Facebook or iTunes
- Share us with your friends
- Join our Facebook group – Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community.
Navigating Psychedelics


