Training
PT380 – Microdosing, Talking to Physicians About Psychedelics, and Nurses as the Scalability Solution
January 3, 2023
Featuring: C.J. Spotswood, PMHNP-BC
In this episode, Kyle interviews C.J. Spotswood, PMHNP-BC: author and board-certified psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner currently enrolled in CIIS’ Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research certificate program.
In this episode, Kyle interviews C.J. Spotswood, PMHNP-BC: author and board-certified psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner currently enrolled in CIIS’ Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research certificate program.
Spotswood has worked with Psychedelics Today, teaching masterclasses for our Vital and Navigating Psychedelics for Clinicians and Therapists courses, but this is his first appearance on the show. His first book, The Microdosing Guidebook: A Step-by-Step Manual to Improve Your Physical and Mental Health through Psychedelic Medicine came out last year, and we’re giving away three signed copies (US and Canada only). Click here to enter!
He talks about his introduction to psychedelics and his first patient immediately asking him about microdosing; why he changed his mind on microdosing and why he wrote his book; microdosing studies he’s most excited about; the terms: treatment-resistant depression, risk reduction, and flight nurses; Irving Kirsch’s work uncovering the bad science of research studies; the need for physicians to know enough about psychedelics to be able to meet their patients where they are; the importance of group work; and how, while they’re already so well-versed in caring for patients, using nurses to their full licensure could be the answer to the quickly growing psychedelics and scalability problem.
Notable Quotes
“When you look at the early research into the 50s in the 60s; they were doing microdosing research, they just didn’t have a title for it. They thought they were using placebo levels but they were actually looking for threshold levels; things like that. Really, it was what by today’s standards [would be an] amount that we would consider as a microdose.”
“I don’t like the term [treatment-resistant depression] when we use that because if you’re using [it] when you’re looking at the standard medications like SSRIs [or] SNRIs, they’re basically all the same. …So when you say that someone’s ‘treatment-resistant’ for three medications, four medications that are all basically working the same pathways and in the same amount; is that truly treatment-resistant, or are we just trying the same thing with just different medications, whereas doing microdosing is a different pathway [and] is a different approach?”
“My first patient I ever saw as a new clinician, like, literally my first patient: I come in and I’m starting to talk to them for the first interview and I got to the point and I’m asking them: ‘Where are we going, what do you need?’ and they said to me, ‘Do you know anything about microdosing?’ …I said to them, I go, ‘Yeah, I know a little bit.’ …So I asked her what she knew, and she knew quite a bit. And she goes, ‘What do you know?’ and I kind of just said to her: ‘I don’t really know how to put this, [but I] wrote a book on it and it’s going to be coming out next year.’ …It reinforced my feeling [that] I’m doing the right thing: this career suicide I’ve thought of, going into working with psychedelics and being open and talking about it, hearing my first patients talking about it – it’s got to be serendipity.”
Links
Wmtw.com: ‘Zombie’ drug Spice worsening Maine epidemic, officials say
The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys, by James Fadiman, Ph.D.
Psychedelics Today: Surprising Results: Psilocybin Trial for Depression Alleviates Chronic Pain
Pubmed: Low doses of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) increase reward-related brain activity
Nature.com: The Discovery of Serotonin and its Role in Neuroscience
Psychedelics Today: PTSF89 – A Macro Dive Into Microdosing
Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth, by Irving Kirsch, Ph.D.
