[00:00:00] Joe Moore: Hello everybody. Welcome back to Psychedelics today. This is Joe joined by Erica Rex. Thanks for joining me today, Erica.

[00:00:18] Erica Rex: Thank you for having me.

[00:00:20] Joe Moore: Absolutely. Good to see you. And likewise, today we get to chat about your book. Um, we’ve chatted about a few other things, um, which there have been developments on, and if we run outta steam, we’ll go there again.

[00:00:31] Joe Moore: But, uh, we’re talking about your book today, seeing what is there, my Search for Sanity in the Psychedelic era. Um, I loved it. I thought it was unique, like very unique in this landscape of psychedelic stories where people are, you know, oh, I met my Jaguar spirit animal and now my cancer’s gone. Like those kinds of, you know, not to shit on everybody.

[00:00:53] Joe Moore: I’m sorry, but like, you know, your story was very different from that. And, um, I’m [00:01:00] excited that people can dig in and engage with it. And, um, yeah. So thanks for writing it. And could you, could you give us a little bit of a kind of personal, professional background before we jump into your book?

[00:01:14] Erica Rex: Yes. I’m, I’m a journalist and writer, excuse me.

[00:01:21] Erica Rex: And I, um, I got into this field, uh, what is it called? Field, this endeavor, um, of interest, uh, in psychedelic medicine and psychedelics rather late in life. Uh, due to my own experience with, um, having breast cancer and then being in, um, the seminal clinical trial to treat cancer related depression, which was Roland Griffith’s, um, study, which was, uh, the.

[00:01:57] Erica Rex: The results were published in [00:02:00] 2016. Um, but prior to all that, uh, I was a journalist. I did a lot of science journalism, I did a lot of natural history journalism, environment, climate, NASA for a while. Um, and um, before that I was a fiction writer and I was pretty successful. And I have gone back to writing fiction.

[00:02:27] Erica Rex: So

[00:02:29] Joe Moore: wonder, that’s my

[00:02:30] Erica Rex: story. Wonderful.

[00:02:31] Joe Moore: Great. Thank you. And one, one thing I found very interesting is that you were able to, after participating in that trial, get engagement from all sorts of people in this space. I think because of your science writing background, your kind of understanding of how trials work, science works, et cetera, would you say that was pretty helpful?

[00:02:53] Erica Rex: Uh, which part? The science writing

[00:02:55] Joe Moore: or, uh, just understanding science and then like, being able to engage with folks like Roland [00:03:00] and, and Charlie Gro.

[00:03:01] Erica Rex: Oh, yeah. Well, um, it started out as a, as a, it didn’t start out as, um, in, as a personal writing project. It, that’s this, one of the ironies of this, um, it actually started out with me getting press releases about new science coming out of Imperial College.

[00:03:20] Erica Rex: I was living in England.

[00:03:21] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:21] Erica Rex: Following, having cancer and following, been treated by cancer. And something interesting kind of came across the email, which was a press release about Robin Carhartt Harris’s study using psilocybin to sort of examine the brain and brain function. And I thought, this is pretty interesting.

[00:03:46] Erica Rex: I didn’t, you know, know that any research was being done with psychedelics at all. Now at all, you know, it didn’t exist. And so I was writing for Scientific American at the time. I [00:04:00] asked my editor if they’d be interested. They said yes. And so I started researching and writing the article and by itself as a science, uh, study.

[00:04:11] Erica Rex: It was interesting. And as I was talking to Robin Carhartt Harris, who’s now at UCSF, um, finished his doctorate, uh, he said, you know that there are clinical trials with this now. And I said, really? I thought it was illegal. And he said, oh, no, there’s was the first one, UCLA, and then there’s another one in um, Baltimore.

[00:04:36] Erica Rex: And we haven’t been able to get one off the ground here, but we’re hoping. And so I began, he said, you should really talk to Charlie Grope. You should really talk to Roland Griffiths. So I talked to Charlie Gro and that was great. And then I talked to Roland Griffiths and then about 10 minutes into the conversation I said to Roland, I think we need to reframe this conversation, [00:05:00] um, because I would like to apply for the study because here’s my story.

[00:05:05] Erica Rex: And you know, my story was I had to go to, I had breast cancer, it was 2009. I didn’t have any more health insurance. I had to move to England, um, because I could get medical care here. So that was the story. And then it evolved from there. I was in the trial. Um, I realized that the story was probably going to evolve.

[00:05:27] Erica Rex: I handed in the first draft was just a science writing article. And then told my editor, well, this is what’s happened. I’m going to be in the study. Um, and um, maybe it will evolve. And she said, well, if it does, I wanna see the draft. You won’t publish this. Till afterwards, we’ll wait and see. Said, okay. So that’s what happened.

[00:05:50] Erica Rex: So it started out as, um, it started out as an article for Scientific American Mind. And then, um, it was suggested to me by a couple of [00:06:00] people that I write a book and that evolved, uh, and it became much more of a complex book than I had originally anticipated for a number of reasons. But I am always, you know, being myself, I’m obsessed with scientific detail.

[00:06:18] Erica Rex: I can’t, I have to be accurate. It’s my training, it’s my background. Um, I have to be precise. I get mad when I see sloppy things happen. I certainly have gotten an earful from a few scientists about how they feel and whether they’ll talk to the press ever again after their work and what they’ve said has been misrepresented or quoted out of context.

[00:06:43] Erica Rex: So, um. Not because of what I did, but because of what other people did. You know, sort of as a caveat for them before speaking with me. That was, those happened a couple of times. I can’t say I blame them. So, um, and that I, I have to say, has probably only gotten [00:07:00] worse now, unfortunately, in the current political climate.

[00:07:03] Erica Rex: Um, certainly did under the Bush administration. Now it is again. So, um, I see it as very important, uh, to be very, um, very, very correct and follow the research.

[00:07:28] Joe Moore: And I guess rewinding the tape, where, where did you get trained as a journalist, science writer?

[00:07:34] Erica Rex: Um, I, um, actually went to Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I had been a journalist for years, but I had never gotten done a specialty and I was always, I was writing about science and environment before then and technology before that for a while.

[00:07:51] Erica Rex: Um, and I applied for a fellowship. It was a late, uh, career fellowship or mid-career [00:08:00] fellowship, uh, with a lot of different people in it where you could specialize in science. And I was interested in, um, science environment, climate change, uh, species laws, that kind of thing, just from my background. And, um, so I really became very, uh, cognizant of how one reads scientific papers and then how, how to ask the right questions.

[00:08:33] Erica Rex: And so that’s really where I learned that skill. It was a good skill to learn.

[00:08:38] Joe Moore: Right? Yeah. I, I’ve learned a lot from you, so thank you for that. And, um, you know, skepticism and digging in, what is the story here? Like, why would that happen? Why would they say it that way? All that kind of fun stuff. So, um, let’s get back to your book here.

[00:08:53] Joe Moore: So, you know, this was an interesting and harrowing book because you, you [00:09:00] had a, not the easiest time in psychedelia with your own kind of healing path, and you bring in a lot of really serious personal narratives that must have been excruciating to share. And I’m, I’m kind of curious, like what, um, what are some of the most important teasers you wanna leave people with to see if they, they might be wanting to read your book?

[00:09:25] Erica Rex: Well, um, I, I think if, if what you’re after is. Trying to find out more about psychedelics and whether they’re right for you. I think this is a really valuable book because I don’t have a, I, I approach it with psychedelics are useful. They’re a tool, they’re a therapeutic accelerant. They’re not a pan gloss.

[00:09:58] Erica Rex: The work is [00:10:00] yours to do for whatever you’re bringing to it. It’s like anything, and actually medicine would be a lot better off if it approached all medical encounters like this, is that you can’t just look at the disease walking in. There’s a person walking in and there’s a person with a huge history, you know, even if they’re only 12 years old, and experiences and feelings about those experiences and positive experiences and negative experiences and.

[00:10:30] Erica Rex: I think too many people are led to believe, unfortunately because of the marketing and um, things they hear and things they read about how wonderful it all is. And there are things that are wonderful definitely. And there are things that are joyful and there are great ways to use psychedelics and other related drugs that are enhancements to other experiences.

[00:10:58] Erica Rex: And I don’t wanna denigrate that [00:11:00] in the slightest, um, ’cause I think they’re valuable, as valuable there, community building. But it’s a mistake to think, I will go, I’ll have a psychedelic trip and all my problems will be over all my depression, my trauma, my bad feelings, behaviors that I’ve brought from other situations that I can’t, that’s kind of false.

[00:11:27] Erica Rex: I think that they can shed light in a way that. Other therapeutic modalities don’t because they don’t alter other, uh, therapeutic modalities have a hard time kind of altering us enough to where we’re able to sort of unc unclench from ways of looking at things. Whereas psychedelics tend to be able, but breath work I know does this too.

[00:11:48] Erica Rex: There are other states that you can get to that will do this. Psychedelics is kind of a shortcut sometimes that can lead us into an emotional and, uh, [00:12:00] physiological and psychological state where we can break through some kind of barrier we have that allows us to approach things differently. And then it’s what we do afterwards.

[00:12:15] Erica Rex: We still have a lot of life in which we need to take that journey. What are we doing? Mm-hmm. How are we approaching it? How are we looking at it differently?

[00:12:26] Joe Moore: Right. Um. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s really important caution, because there is a lot of hype and with hype and excitement, and I’m sure you saw this all over science writing, right?

[00:12:41] Joe Moore: Like, oh, this new technology’s gonna save us from climate. It’s like, well, really, maybe not, but you know, perhaps there’s something interesting and helpful here, but maybe it’s not the silver bullet we thought we might be getting. And I think, yeah, a little bit of caution. I think there’s still room for excitement, [00:13:00] right?

[00:13:00] Joe Moore: But also mm-hmm.

[00:13:01] Erica Rex: Absolutely.

[00:13:01] Joe Moore: You know, the, the field of psychiatry hasn’t had many super duper helpful innovations in, in a while. Like, you know, Prozac was the last major one, right? Actually, you would know better than me. Do you, do you think that’s fairly accurate?

[00:13:17] Erica Rex: Well, I mean, certainly in its history I don’t see psychiatry as having made any big strides in terms of actually improving life for anybody.

[00:13:26] Erica Rex: I hate to say that, but, um. I think, uh, there have been very few things that have done that without some severe consequences. Um, I know that all of those, um,

[00:13:46] Erica Rex: yes. Um, have, um, had big, um, downsides. I know that, um

[00:13:52] Joe Moore: mm-hmm.

[00:13:55] Erica Rex: SSRIs have had problems. Um, Joe, you’re frozen. Maybe you’re [00:14:00] not frozen. There you are.

[00:14:04] Joe Moore: It’ll keep working. Okay.

[00:14:06] Erica Rex: Um, so I, um, one of the big problems, especially in, um, pharmaceutical medicine, that as soon as it comes on the market, that it’s overhyped. Before we know enough, that is a big pattern. In, um, well, in terms of most marketing and most, um, American capitalism, everything is, we’ve gotta sell this now.

[00:14:35] Erica Rex: We don’t know what’s gonna happen. It’s going to happen, but we’ve, we see this big market opportunity, so we’re going to do this, and they do it, and then it’s kind of, we’ll deal with the consequences later. So there’s not a lot of foresight. Um, and that, that seems to happen a lot and it certainly has with many, um, psychotropic drugs.

[00:14:57] Erica Rex: Um, [00:15:00] so, you know, 10, 15, 30 years later, people are seeing effects that are unfortunate and so it’s better to have, be a little bit judicious, I think.

[00:15:14] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:15] Erica Rex: Um, and that’s the other problem is that the medicalization of, um, therapy has been a. A big or the medicalization of mental health. I mean, not just therapy, but the idea that mental health can be put into a basket in which if you fix something or you dittle with something or one part of the brain or one part of the person that you’re going to, that you’re going to cure it.

[00:15:43] Erica Rex: And that’s not the case. It’s about how we live and how we are in society, and how the society is with us and how we interact a lot more than, [00:16:00] uh, the current practice would indicate. So.

[00:16:05] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I’m, I’m reading a book right now called, um, radical Adventure by this guy Andrew Feldmar, who studied and worked under, um, RD Lang, who had a lot of critiques of.

[00:16:21] Joe Moore: Um, helpful critiques, I think, of the kind of psychiatric establishment in particular, like this differentiation between therapy and psychology. And I think there’s, there’s definitely huge, huge things there that we could learn from and I’m, I’m excited by this book because it’s kind of proposing a more human approach to psychotherapies and I really, really just appreciate it.

[00:16:44] Joe Moore: Um, Andy’s got some psychedelic things to say ’cause he, um, I think did some LSD psychotherapy work with Rd Lang way back, who was certainly a revolutionary?

[00:16:56] Erica Rex: Yeah, I have a lot of respect for Rd Lang. Um, [00:17:00] one of the things that, um, David Nutt and I spoke about, uh, when we spoke lately on the podcast was, um, he, he asked me about how I felt about, um, cognitive behavioral therapy.

[00:17:19] Erica Rex: Because that’s a, a nonmedical intervention. It’s a non pill type intervention. And

[00:17:26] Joe Moore: mm-hmm.

[00:17:27] Erica Rex: One of the, the criticisms he certainly has that I share is that it is, um, very behaviorally oriented and it is very linguistically oriented. So if you do some rote things supposedly, and you do some behavioral things and you learn to do them in a few sessions, uh, ostensibly, then you will [00:18:00] improve some aspect of your life.

[00:18:03] Erica Rex: I personally feel that it is not a useful modality. I, I feel that it is, um, gives, gives a false sense. Of having done something and then you’ll be better. And then what happens as he pointed out is that the people who do not feel better, whose lives are not improved or whose uh, symptoms are not improved, are led to believe that it’s because they failed.

[00:18:32] Erica Rex: That there’s some, they did the lessons they’re supposed to get to the end point, didn’t get to the end point just because you didn’t do it right. And he actually made it clear that he felt it’s quite destructive. I mean, I’ve known a few people who’ve said that it worked for them when they were working on some very small, little, very confined [00:19:00] specific way of doing things or habit pattern or something they wanted to break.

[00:19:05] Erica Rex: And I kind of agree it, it really doesn’t, uh, allow. The whole person to be taken into account. Feelings, the psyche, our way of looking at the world, our personality, our predilections, and it. And then, but that’s what a lot of psychiatry actually does, is that you’re supposed to get better on this regimen.

[00:19:28] Erica Rex: And if you don’t, you failed. And it, it’s not taking into account that, as I said, there’s a whole human there, you know, and if you don’t have some empathy or some deeper understanding of that whole, uh, world, of that human, then nothing’s gonna work because there’s no, um, there’s no way of kind of reaching it.

[00:19:50] Erica Rex: Actually already one of my favorite expressions from all of, you know, reading on, um. [00:20:00] Psychology is, is actually Rd Lang. It’s great. And I’ve used it, um, which is, um, my experience of my experience is my experience of my experience.

[00:20:15] Erica Rex: And then that you can’t, you can’t tell people otherwise. It’s theirs. And you can either decide, yes, there it’s theirs, and I enter and I am willing to comprehend it. Or if you say it’s wrong, you’ve lost them already. It’s their experience, you know?

[00:20:32] Joe Moore: Yeah. Favorite line of mine, um, is you’re the world’s foremost expert in you.

[00:20:38] Joe Moore: It was your experience and there’s no way for somebody else to tell you it was, it’s not true, or you didn’t have that experience, or your experience was bad, or you’re malfunctioning because you had that experience. It’s like, um,

[00:20:53] Erica Rex: you’re malfunctioning because of your response to that experience. That’s the usual [00:21:00] accusation that mm-hmm.

[00:21:01] Erica Rex: Whatever happened was, maybe it was okay. It’s just, you know, you’re reacting wrong, so to speak. I don’t think so.

[00:21:08] Joe Moore: Right. And it sounds like I had more influence from Artie Lang than I understood going into this book, which is nice. Um, my teacher, Lenny Gibson definitely was quite well read on all these things.

[00:21:21] Joe Moore: Um, I’ve actually been rereading Graffs first book the last few days. Um, actually reading it for the first time as Graff and Joan Halifax Roshi, Joan Halifax were married, I think it was his first wife and it’s called The Human Experience of Death. And there was all sorts of interesting conversations about the early research in Maryland, Prague, and elsewhere.

[00:21:43] Joe Moore: A lot of interesting findings on chronic pain resolution, um, speculations. ’cause, you know, neuroscience was a little young at that point. It was just great to see how they were engaging in such weird territory and being cautious about their optimism.

[00:21:58] Erica Rex: Did you, um, for psychics, did you [00:22:00] happen to read, um, the, um, well, I, I sent it to David ’cause he had never read it either.

[00:22:05] Erica Rex: The, uh, Walter Pankey’s 1959 lecture, um, on the, his experience with paying patients at the end of life and, um, at the Maryland Psychiatric Institute, or No, at, at, at a, I would

[00:22:18] Joe Moore: love read that paper.

[00:22:20] Erica Rex: Um, yeah. I have not read. It’s, it’s that same, it it’s cited in the book a

[00:22:23] Joe Moore: lot. It’s,

[00:22:23] Erica Rex: yeah, it’s, oh yeah, it’s the same.

[00:22:26] Erica Rex: Um, it’s, it’s excellent. David hadn’t read it either. I was kind of surprised. Uh, it, um, I’ll, I’ll send it to you.

[00:22:34] Joe Moore: Thank you.

[00:22:35] Erica Rex: It was,

[00:22:36] Joe Moore: yeah, it’s what, what I’ve found is that any of the older papers just kind of get ignored. And this is, uh, one of Graffs biggest gripes was that I’m not excited about psychedelic science right now because we already knew all this stuff.

[00:22:50] Joe Moore: Yeah. And, you know, because of X, Y, Z reasons we’re not, you know, treating it as useful.

[00:22:57] Erica Rex: Yeah. I mean, it was so, [00:23:00] um, visionary and it was so obvious. And you look at that and you go, well, this, he had the answer in 1950 whenever that paper was written, I think it was 1959. It was very clear.

[00:23:12] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:12] Erica Rex: And then it was chucked, you know?

[00:23:16] Joe Moore: Right. You know, just quite challenging. So,

[00:23:20] Erica Rex: yeah.

[00:23:22] Joe Moore: I guess let, let’s talk a little bit about, you know, what primed you in a lot of ways for this book. Um. Could you, this is a challenging thing to ask. Can you tell me about your parents?

[00:23:39] Erica Rex: Yes. Well that’s, you know, that’s, that’s part of what, what evolved. It became very clear to me as I was working on this book that, um, it was probably going to become necessary for me to write about that. Um, I had certainly confronted it in therapy, but I had [00:24:00] never written about it. I mean, maybe a little bit here and there.

[00:24:03] Erica Rex: So I, um, came from, my parents were both shrinks, psychiatrist, she was a psychologist, actually, he was a psychiatrist and they were trained at Harvard. Um, actually in the same era during which strangely the, um, psychedelic research was taking place. And the, um, uh. The awful Henry A. Murray experiment, which was the original sadistic experiment on Harvard undergraduates, um, to see what happens to people when you abuse and, uh, derive them for hours.

[00:24:50] Erica Rex: And then, um, sort of see how that affects their psyches. So that that’s, and my parents were [00:25:00] very, um, sick people. They were, uh, both alcoholics. They were extremely abusive towards me. It was a very kind of psychopathic family. Um, and into that environment, um, I came and for reasons that I’m kind of only begun to understand in the last say, decade, I, I was the scapegoat.

[00:25:27] Erica Rex: I was the second of four children. Um, and I had severe abuse. I underwent severe, severe, severe physical mental, psychological abuse that lasted well into my teens and really continued until I was able to separate entirely from my family of origin. And during which time I realized I had a lot to come to terms with.

[00:25:55] Erica Rex: And I was busily doing all that. So I had a [00:26:00] lot of, uh, answers that I wanted from the field of, um, therapy and therapists and to find out why and how they had been enabled, and then find out sort of the whole history of how the field had developed and really realized that that was part of. A psych geist and is actually continued, unfortunately in the field, but actually also now an American society.

[00:26:28] Erica Rex: So, um, and, and the in which the ethos is you blame the victim, it’s very simple and that the powerful people can get away with anything and, um, enabling them is the safe way to save your own skin. So that was kind of what happened. Uh, and I, and I had to come to rights with it and certainly taking psychedelics.

[00:26:56] Erica Rex: I mean, certainly when I went into the, um, [00:27:00] into the study, I mean, I had already had many decades of therapy, various kinds, um, not recent at that point. Um, and as was very clear and obviously they know going in that, in that study. They welcomed the whole person in. And so I did then have to start speaking about it.

[00:27:26] Erica Rex: It’s like we need to know what experiences you’ve had, what other kinds of interventions you’ve had, basically your entire emotional and psychological history. So I began to realize that it was actually a very important component in my exploration of psychedelics and what psychedelics could and couldn’t do, and how they would and wouldn’t be useful.

[00:27:52] Erica Rex: Yes, they were useful for my depression related to my cancer and my depression related to my life around [00:28:00] having to, um, you know, upend my entire life to move to a new country because I didn’t have ability to, uh, obtain medical care in my country of origin. So, um, it was a journey I.

[00:28:18] Joe Moore: Yeah.

[00:28:18] Erica Rex: And so certainly I’ve had to, had to revisit some of those conversations because, um, of course people in the psychiatric and therapeutic fields seem to be quite divided into whether they’re able to kind of take on board that these kinds of heinous crimes and heinous acts were actually occurring in their own field, which of course they were.

[00:28:42] Erica Rex: I mean, this wasn’t the first time somebody has said this. Jeffrey Masson has become quite a good champion. He’s a wonderful man. Um, and the, the people who are trying to maintain kind of the status quo, which [00:29:00] basically says you can’t trust anything that a child of under the age of five says about what’s happening to them, you know, um, is it’s, it’s very sad, which ’cause then it extends to, you can’t trust women when they talk about what’s happening to them.

[00:29:16] Erica Rex: So, and that’s mm-hmm. Kind of been duped out a little bit currently in the current American Right. Uh, situation. It’s interesting to see. It’s really, really, really coming to a head, you know.

[00:29:32] Joe Moore: Um, is Jeffrey the person that did that, uh, kind of piece on Freud that we’ve talked about a few times?

[00:29:40] Erica Rex: He did. Um, he wrote Against Therapy, he wrote the whole book about the Freud archives.

[00:29:45] Erica Rex: He was the one who was hired. He’s got a very interesting background, incredible scholar. Um, he had been hired by the Freud archives, Anna Freud in London, to, um, to, to basically document and write about [00:30:00] all of these letters and everything that was kind of there. It was kind of stuffed in this thing, in a, you know, in an archive.

[00:30:07] Erica Rex: And so he goes in and he starts to read and he, and he realizes, he realizes that. That the whole, you know, seduction theory was, um, nonsense. In fact, the women who came in and talked about having been abused as small children or young women were, um, actually abused. And, um, the incest that they were documenting was actually insists that occurred.

[00:30:35] Erica Rex: And Freud had actually, sadly, he had championed this. He had, Bel believed them, he had had empathy for them. But then it became very, very clear that the Psychoanalytic Institute was not gonna take that very well because they were aware of it. They were aware it was true in their own, um, in their own ranks.

[00:30:58] Erica Rex: And that he would lose [00:31:00] his status, he would lose membership. And so he said, okay, actually I was wrong. It was this thing called the Oedipus complex when it didn’t really happen to them. It was, um, something they wished for. It was not that they had these experiences, it was that they wished for these experiences and so they invented them and thus was born the seduction theory and thus murdered, uh, women for the next 150 years when they tried to speak about what happened to them.

[00:31:35] Erica Rex: So that that’s, um, and Jeffrey Masson did not make friends doing that. He was, um, fired. They were very, very unhappy. Anna Freud goes, what are you talking about? That can’t be true. And he says, look, here it is. It’s right here. It’s right here. Just written it all down. And it’s, here’s your book. Your father wrote this right in his diary and, um, made him very unpopular and he had a lot of fights about it.[00:32:00]

[00:32:00] Erica Rex: And, um, psychoanalytic establishment did not like it. Somebody was discovering that again. So then, you know, next thing that happens, um, is, uh. He, uh, pretty much has many confrontations and then decides that he’s kind of gonna change his career. So that’s what he did.

[00:32:24] Joe Moore: Thanks for that. Um, so you, over the course of the book, you were able to see what clinical psychedelic work looked like.

[00:32:35] Joe Moore: Not so clinical psychedelic stuff looked like, you know, you and I had been in touch kind of before and after some of those experiences, I think Yes,

[00:32:43] Erica Rex: Uhhuh

[00:32:43] Joe Moore: and, um, you’ve got a really unique view of kind of the international psychedelic medic, you know, semi medical scene. Um, and I think, you know, not too many people have, have done, you know, [00:33:00] both the European scene and the American scene.

[00:33:03] Joe Moore: I’m kind of curious if there’s any kind of major differences that you’ve observed. I know your American experiences weren’t all that uniform, but,

[00:33:12] Erica Rex: um,

[00:33:13] Joe Moore: no. You know, any kind of major insights.

[00:33:16] Erica Rex: Um, it’s funny ’cause it’s, it’s kind of comparing apples and oranges. I’ve sort of trying to

[00:33:22] Joe Moore: mm-hmm.

[00:33:22] Erica Rex: Explain to someone else.

[00:33:24] Erica Rex: It’s, it’s so hyperlocal, you know? Um, it’s so, uh, and especially in the United States state by state, it’s changed. It’s so different now. So I’m sure people have very different experiences. I had very few psychedelic experiences in the United One in the United States, and, um, that was my experience. That was one.

[00:33:50] Erica Rex: So most of my experience, other than, other than the study, it was that, other than the study, I just had one experience in the United States, um, and. [00:34:00] Most of my experiences were in France, actually. Mm-hmm. And in France, the, um, the underground is really, as I, uh, experienced it, they make a, an effort to be inclusive and to be, um, make sure that people have resources available so that they will be safe and in good hands when they are, um, accessing and experiencing these drugs.

[00:34:33] Erica Rex: And also have ways to process them. So in the, and there’s a kind of a national group with local chapters that runs, um, integration groups, that kind of thing. So, um, yeah. Uh, I don’t know anything about Holland. I know nothing about the underground here at the moment. I really don’t, [00:35:00] I’m assuming it’s here.

[00:35:01] Erica Rex: I haven’t really done any work to figure it out. Um, it would be interesting here being the UK where I am now, um, Switzerland. Um, it’s interesting in Switzerland because actually you can get LSD treatment through the health service, but it’s, um, a very, very long drawn out process. There’s only, there are exactly five psychiatrists who are, um, entitled or licensed to give it.

[00:35:36] Erica Rex: And, uh, it’s a very elaborate process. I obvi, I never would do it myself. I do know a woman who did work her way all the way up through that. And, um, have, uh, um, a psychedelic session, two psychedelic sessions with a doc. And they’re the only country as far as I know, who [00:36:00] actually have psychedelic treatment through the health system.

[00:36:04] Erica Rex: But they’re, like I said, they’re five guys and it’s very hard to access.

[00:36:11] Joe Moore: Yeah, I think we know one of the psychiatrists, I think, um, there’s an interesting thing that happened in Australia. I didn’t do any deep digging on it yet, but, um, they have legal psilocybin and MDMA available in a clinical capacity.

[00:36:28] Joe Moore: I believe one of the largest insurance providers made plans to start covering it, which is really interesting.

[00:36:35] Erica Rex: That’s great. Is that re progress? That’s fairly, fairly recently then. Um,

[00:36:41] Joe Moore: I recall that news within the last two months. It could have been a little older. Um, I need to, I need to dig more into that, but that was undercover as is most news in psychia.

[00:36:55] Joe Moore: Um, I don’t know of any other places looking at that. There’s a, there’s kind of a [00:37:00] domestic, um, maybe international insurance group called Anthea who’s working as like a private insurance benefit add-on where employees could take advantage of things like, uh, ketamine assisted psychotherapy and um, potentially up to travel to places like Oregon and Colorado to access the state legal mushroom programs, which is interesting.

[00:37:26] Joe Moore: Um, I need to follow up with them. They’re really interesting group. Um,

[00:37:32] Erica Rex: here, here in the uk. I mean, you can, it’s like the US I mean, I don’t, I never think of ketamine when you’re talking about psychedelics. I don’t even, it doesn’t even enter, enter my mind. That’s fair. Um, yes, there are ketamine clinics here.

[00:37:45] Erica Rex: I mean, and they have a similar sort of. Slightly too active for comfort racket. It’s not as bad as the United States where, I mean, you know, uh, I think, [00:38:00] I think that ketamine was very widely adopted because it is legal for off-label use in this way, and that’s fine. Um, I’m concerned that, so again, you know, it can be habit forming.

[00:38:22] Erica Rex: There is a downside. Um, so you just have to look at the kind of risk benefit thing there. And I’m not

[00:38:31] Joe Moore: sure. Right.

[00:38:32] Erica Rex: Yeah. Um,

[00:38:33] Joe Moore: I’ll speak to that real quick just to deflate it. I, I’ve known a lot of people with kind of, um, habits of ketamine, uhhuh. I’ve never seen the full blown, horrible addiction that ends in surgeries occasionally.

[00:38:45] Joe Moore: Um. But it, it can just be, it’s such a casual thing for a lot of people that they’ll do it many times per day. Um, and, uh, you can kind of like drinking, you can get [00:39:00] through your day doing it sometimes, but habit forming for sure, if you’re doing it, um, and space it out appropriately, like once a month or every other month, you’re probably in okay shape, but as soon as you start doing it, you know, five times a week, you’re gonna get in into some trouble just to point that out.

[00:39:21] Joe Moore: Um, always safest, uh, when done under someone’s supervision or in partnership with somebody. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I, overall, I think it’s really helpful for psychotherapy. I think it’s really helpful for a lot of things. Um, but I, yeah, we always have to watch the addiction profile.

[00:39:43] Joe Moore: I call it the addictive psychedelic. Sometimes.

[00:39:47] Erica Rex: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, the classic psychedelics is actually very hard to be addicted to them. I mean, you can want to use them, but it’s very hard to take them one day and the next day because there’s a latency [00:40:00] effect. You just

[00:40:00] Joe Moore: mm-hmm.

[00:40:03] Erica Rex: Wouldn’t work. You’d have to wait

[00:40:04] Joe Moore: Right.

[00:40:05] Erica Rex: A week or two. Yeah.

[00:40:06] Joe Moore: Yeah. In the Burning Man world, you kind of realize that quickly where it’s like, oh God, do I really have to eat four or 10 hits? Like, that seems not great. And so it is this sort of self-regulating system. It also doesn’t like, necessarily feel as great the second day either. Um, oh, this is interesting.

[00:40:24] Joe Moore: There’s a, there’s a therapist in the chat here that’s actually doing, um, some treatment with HPPD. That’s lovely. Um, have you been exposed to any of the literature around HPPD, Erica?

[00:40:37] Erica Rex: Uh, is that the, um. The per the when you can’t, when you have, you can’t get rid of the hallucination. Is that it?

[00:40:47] Joe Moore: Hall? No.

[00:40:47] Joe Moore: Hallucination perception. Persistent disorder, I think is a long term.

[00:40:51] Erica Rex: Is that right? I couldn’t remember what

[00:40:52] Joe Moore: it is. Long name. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, um, rare, but it’s real. Um, I just got notified [00:41:00] a while ago of, uh, two clinical trial participants in a psilocybin trial in Canada. Um, had reported it

[00:41:07] Erica Rex: Really?

[00:41:07] Joe Moore: Um.

[00:41:08] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. But the clinical trial, uh, didn’t wanna report it. The company doesn’t exist anymore. From what I am told. The psychiatrist, um, told one person she didn’t have that. ’cause that only comes from drugs. And the other person, I don’t know where it stood. Um, I’d love to cover that story a little better.

[00:41:28] Erica Rex: It only comes from drugs,

[00:41:31] Joe Moore: you know, not all doctors have the full story.

[00:41:34] Erica Rex: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:36] Joe Moore: Um. I, one of the leading voices in psychedelia in Europe said it’s a trauma response, which, you know, there’s a world in which that’s accurate, but I think it’s kind of not exactly accurate. I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. And a

[00:41:54] Erica Rex: trauma response to what

[00:41:56] Joe Moore: Exactly? Yeah, it’s not, it’s [00:42:00] not a good explanation if you’re trying to be sciencey.

[00:42:03] Erica Rex: Yeah.

[00:42:04] Joe Moore: Um, there’s some sort of neurological thing going on and, um, yeah. Did it ever come up in your stories, like when you were digging into the literature?

[00:42:13] Erica Rex: Uh, weirdly, no. Um, nobody that I spoke with had that experience. The closest I would say that I had to, that was, um, my, um, uh, five M-E-O-D-M-T experience where the, um.

[00:42:35] Erica Rex: I had an, uh, very, uh, very distinctive and very over, very powerful, um, auditory hallucination experience that went with the, um, the visual and kind of world shattering, um, experience. And that persisted for quite a while. Um, it was, um, mus music. It was a [00:43:00] very distinctive kind of music. Wasn’t particularly nice to listen to.

[00:43:05] Erica Rex: It was.

Mm-hmm.

[00:43:06] Erica Rex: Um, and that, that stayed around on and off for a couple weeks. It was, it was interesting. It didn’t scare me in particular. It was just interesting, you know, it was, um, and my guide had not had an experience like that, and he hadn’t, uh, ever had a, someone talk about that kind of experience before.

[00:43:33] Erica Rex: So

[00:43:34] Joe Moore: that’s really interesting. It’s triggering something in me where I had like a pretty serious recurring smell, a response to smell. Mm-hmm. Post ayahuasca. And it was really, it was dramatic for a couple years. I didn’t really consider it in like an HPPD neurological context, but that’s really possible.

[00:43:55] Erica Rex: Was it, was it a particular smell?[00:44:00]

[00:44:00] Joe Moore: Yeah, I’m having a reaction thinking about it. It was kind of like a nauseating, burnt barbecue sauce. Um,

[00:44:06] Erica Rex: okay. So that would trigger that sense of, okay.

[00:44:08] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. But it wasn’t necessarily that I was having that smell in public. Like I, I’ve not smelled something like that in a long time. So perhaps it was a sort of phantom smell.

[00:44:18] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Like, um, because it was happening with some frequency, um, kind of, you know, I’m coming to mind as kind of, uh, pregnant women reactions to certain smells.

[00:44:31] Erica Rex: Yes. Uhhuh.

[00:44:33] Joe Moore: Right. So fascinating lot to dig into there, but, you know, thanks for triggering that for me. That’s, that’s fascinating.

[00:44:40] Joe Moore: And it wasn’t like troubling. I was like, oh, this is neat. But, you know, imagine if you can’t see, like, ’cause that can be, people can be so disabled, they can’t, can’t drive with the thing

[00:44:49] Erica Rex: really.

[00:44:49] Joe Moore: But like visual snow is one of the symptoms.

[00:44:52] Erica Rex: Oh,

[00:44:52] Joe Moore: wow. Okay. Um, our cof, Kyle Buller, our co-founder, had it HPPD visually.

[00:44:57] Joe Moore: Wow. And he still has some tracer elements, [00:45:00] um, and kind of teenage, uh, acid use. I, I, I don’t know exactly the trigger. He doesn’t necessarily have a clean story either, I don’t think. Um, yeah. Um, so it’s fascinating. And, and there’s, there’s people asking in the comments about that smell. Um, no, I’ve not sought therapy for it and I don’t have it anymore.

[00:45:21] Joe Moore: It kind of went away, um, years ago, years and years ago. But it was there for a bit. Um, so Erica, you had some good critiques about. Kind of our current economic paradigm and how our culture works and kind of maybe some troubling intersections with psychedelics, um, for this kind of neoliberal world we’re in.

[00:45:47] Joe Moore: Do you have any kind of, do you wanna, can you share anything about that?

[00:45:51] Erica Rex: Well, I mean, I, I made the very strong statement in the stat piece, which I had to

[00:45:55] Joe Moore: mm-hmm.

[00:45:56] Erica Rex: Kind of, shall we say, dumb down, um, [00:46:00] to make it palatable. Uh, which is that there, there is a very strong upswing in a certain kind of personality in the modern world because I think capitalism selects for it and the people are considered successful.

[00:46:19] Erica Rex: The more people who are successful have this trait, which is, um, they have narcissism. Sometimes it’s malignant narcissism. Uh, the accompanying grandiosity. Um, they have a kind of a, a pathology in which they, uh, see the only thing that’s important is being better than and getting more. And it’s very distinctive and it’s embodied in a lot of public figures now.

[00:46:50] Erica Rex: And, um, my, uh, suggestion or my observation, knowing what I know about psychedelics [00:47:00] is that people such as these should not take psychedelics because psychedelics are non-specific amplifiers of existing personality traits. Um, this means that if you have a character trait that is empathic and creative and, uh, community minded and, um, humanistic your.

[00:47:27] Erica Rex: Trait will be amplified in the presence of psychedelics and it can persist depending upon how it goes along and how your own response to psychedelics is. And in what kind of en environment you’re taking psychedelics. Are you having these experiences? In the case of people who have these severe Machiavellian traits?

[00:47:50] Erica Rex: Uh, grandiosity, what were called dark triad. So there’s machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy, and [00:48:00] then there’s another, I mean, some people say it’s a, you know, triad and some people say it’s a tetra and then some people count seven. Anyway. These are dark factor traits that are very, very negative, that are things we see a whole lot in American, um, public life now that these people who exhibit these traits.

[00:48:20] Erica Rex: Should not take psychedelics and should not be allowed to take psychedelics in much the same way. We don’t allow, um, or supposedly don’t allow people under the age of 18 to drink because all of the downsides are there. The risks are extremely high. Obviously this isn’t going to happen, but I think it’s a big problem.

[00:48:42] Erica Rex: Um, the other thing that’s a big problem that could be addressed is the fact that there is so little emphasis put on integration in the medicalization of psychedelics as it’s happening now, or the pharmaceutical I could [00:49:00] call it. And in the interest of quote unquote saving money is that integration and the community, uh, the necessary community interaction, which normally one would have in order to deflate some of the, um, some of the.

[00:49:20] Erica Rex: Things that are inflated or made terribly important during the trip, um, are put back in context so that one can go back into the real world with increased knowledge, increased understanding, and without being delusional because of something that they saw experienced felt or, uh, confabulated during their experience on the drug.

[00:49:47] Erica Rex: And when you eliminate that, it creates a kind of danger that is becoming apparent and I think will become more apparent. So[00:50:00]

[00:50:00] Erica Rex: it’s very, very necessary to take that in mind.

[00:50:04] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Um,

[00:50:09] Joe Moore: so we’ve chatted a lot about the limitations of this world, um, the psychedelic. Psychotherapy, psychiatry world. And I’m kind of curious if you believe that it might be helpful if there’s a new category of profession that could come forward. Something along the lines of pastoral care. What do, how, how would you model it?

[00:50:32] Erica Rex: Yeah. Think. Well, I mean, I characterize it probably in entirely the wrong way because what people react to is the word church. But, um, I think that something along the lines of what the unido vegetal had done when they were doing it right. And many people, I know, several people who were in those churches for a long time, where you have a spiritual group or a, uh, mental [00:51:00] health slash spiritual group that comes together and they do a psychedelic substance regularly together as a learning tool, as a therapeutic tool, as a teaching tool.

[00:51:13] Erica Rex: And they process it together. It’s in the community. So you know the people, you have the responsibilities that come with community. You have the benefits that come with community. And I see each time it’s come up, I see these things as being the most effective way of having psychedelics in society. And it has to be, um, community based.

[00:51:40] Erica Rex: And I come back to the metaphor of the village. It has to be sort of a village type thing, different roles for different people. Um, and there’s not a separation between what I am doing for my mental health, what I am doing to improve my [00:52:00] life and my life, or what my friends, neighbors, people I interact with economically, educationally, business recreationally are.

[00:52:13] Erica Rex: Not all cut off from one another. In this realm here, it’s very, very extractive in the United States where a certain class of people are in the business of figuring out how to extract as much profit and as much value at as at as little cost to them to make a thing a substance profitable. And I think that’s completely on its head and I don’t think it will work in the long run.

[00:52:53] Joe Moore: Right. So

[00:52:57] Joe Moore: yeah, we have to take a really interesting long [00:53:00] view to see that. But I, I, I know what you’re saying and I think there’s, um, there’s a lot of lessons we can take from UDV and Santo Dime. Um. When I, when I think about it, I think about, okay, you have the men on this side, the women on this side. You gotta wear the fancy outfits and sing the songs.

[00:53:17] Joe Moore: And I, I’ve never been to one of these ceremonies. I respect people that want to go to them and, and find a lot of relief and help there and, and, and, you know, development of their spirituality. But I don’t know that it’s for me. Um, but, you know, for a lot of people that’s, that’s their entrance point and that’s like their spiritual home and that’s great.

[00:53:36] Joe Moore: Um, and I, I love that it’s different from let me go buy this thing for five grand again or more. Mm-hmm. Right. And I, I came up in a community that was kinda like that dream shadow and that’s what we kind of tried to model vital after. Like how do we, how do we create this village?

[00:53:53] Erica Rex: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:54] Joe Moore: And then, you know, it was really like, how do I create the peers that I want to see in the world?

[00:53:59] Joe Moore: [00:54:00] And I think, you know, that’s in part what we’ve helped develop, which is really cool. ’cause I don’t, I don’t care to be the head of anything. Way rather have friends than people like kind of, um, looking up to me. Um, and I think, you know, that’s a challenge, right? Hierarchy is just built into this whole thing economically and social culturally and Yeah.

[00:54:25] Erica Rex: Yeah, I think it’s unfortunate. Um, I think that it’s a model that doesn’t work for a lot of people, for most people actually. Um,

[00:54:36] Joe Moore: and

[00:54:39] Erica Rex: it, it, it was nice to believe that somehow that would be different, but it didn’t happen that way. And I would like to think that it’s not going to continue that way. I certainly saw some promise in the fact that, um, the Compass Pathways, [00:55:00] um, uh, application to the FDA was turned down.

[00:55:05] Erica Rex: And then the reason I saw promise in that is because perhaps it will force certain people to start thinking about the fact that there have to be other ways to deliver this, because it’s not going to help any individual person or any collective group if drugs are delivered in this fashion or these drugs are delivered in this fashion, it’s not going to work.

[00:55:37] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:41] Joe Moore: Do you have any kind of, um, hopes for younger women entering psychedelic science or, um, even just being psychedelic psychotherapy is like, is there any kind of, uh, justified [00:56:00] rebellion we might see from those quarters?

[00:56:03] Erica Rex: I certainly hope so. Um, I think they are in the position to try and establish kind of from the ground floor what a model should be.

[00:56:21] Erica Rex: Mm-hmm. And if they so choose, they can do it in a way that’s quite different from what’s been on offer. I think there’s a lot of room for them, you know, um, I, I know that I’ve spoken to medical student groups, uh, that are interested in psychiatry and wanna become psychiatrists and are interested, interested in becoming psychiatrists who are psychedelic providers.

[00:56:55] Erica Rex: Um, and then in speaking to them, it’s very clear that their training is so [00:57:00] conventional in that kind of. Mindset of, you know, drug delivery and we do this and we do that. And I said it, it just, there’s a kind of a paradigm shift that’s going to have to happen, um, for this to be successful. Then the question is, why are you going into psychiatry?

[00:57:21] Erica Rex: What, what’s the value in this way? Or why do you wanna work with psychedelics and psychiatry? Because what, what does that change? What does that make different from doing any medicine or doing any psychiatry really? So that they found kind of challenging that I kind of put it on them. What’s the point really?

[00:57:43] Erica Rex: What will psychedelics and the difference of that experience and the difference of that model bring to the way you practice psychiatry? Many of them didn’t have an answer. It was just, I could see that they were second years. And they had been already, even if they had gone [00:58:00] in very idealistic, they were just being flattened.

[00:58:02] Erica Rex: You know, this is sort of what happens to people. Seems to happen to people in medical school, unfortunately.

[00:58:09] Joe Moore: Right.

[00:58:09] Erica Rex: Which is why it probably shouldn’t be medical. If, if there’s an avenue that it could be non-medical, uh, non-medical school, um, providers might be a good idea. ’cause medical school is a factory.

[00:58:27] Erica Rex: It really is. That’s really clear.

[00:58:31] Joe Moore: I was chatting with a doctor the other day and it was just like clear that there’s, there’s not enough time in four years of training for it to be what we want it to be. And, um. It’s too bad. Hopefully we can just keep getting better in medicine. Um, you know, to your question, how will psychedelics change the practice of psychiatry?

[00:58:54] Joe Moore: My hope is that there’s less patients Yeah. That are intractable, [00:59:00] right? We can get people out of that kind of recurring patient model for psychiatrists. So they have a little bit more space for people who are new, um, who are, who are still intractable and there’s not yet treatments for them, you know, if they, if they want help in certain things.

[00:59:17] Joe Moore: Um, mm-hmm. That’s my hope. Less people in, you know, requiring help from psychiatry because we can actually get those people with chronic PTSD or, uh, recal syndrome, like depression, other symptoms, like out of there.

[00:59:32] Erica Rex: Well then that’s the thing, is that what you’re talking about then is a, is a supportive community model.

[00:59:37] Erica Rex: The thing that just seems to work over and over and over again for people with, um. PTSD, chronic PTSD. Um, I’m not, I think intractable depression is sort of a separate area. I’m not clear on that, um, as much

[00:59:56] Joe Moore: mm-hmm.

[00:59:56] Erica Rex: Is to get them out of the sort of recurrent [01:00:00] hospital setting. ’cause once that, or clinical setting, ’cause once that seems to start, it never seems to end and mm-hmm.

[01:00:07] Erica Rex: That’s the big question. That sounds very artificial to me because it’s not what I’ve heard and read from psychiatrists who are very familiar with models where that doesn’t happen. Uh, there was a guy named David Healy in, um, whales and, uh, he basically, you know, went against the grain and it was very, very clear that he was having very good success.

[01:00:32] Erica Rex: And he got in trouble for it. It was like he was, no, I’m not gonna, if they, if they’re not responding to the psychiatric drug, we gotta find a different way. We’re gonna find a different way. We’re gonna put them in and insisting that these endless cycles of people, ’cause maybe he was dealing with people who were slightly more disabled, that they had repeated stays in psychiatric hospitals or psychiatric wards.

[01:00:57] Erica Rex: Um mm-hmm. And he, he [01:01:00] was right. And it was, it was kind of radical. I, I have a, a whole thing about him in my book or about that fact. Um, and it’s very clear that just keeping, doing the same thing doesn’t change anything. It’s the classic, uh, a definition of neurosis or insanity. You keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

[01:01:23] Joe Moore: Right? Yeah.

[01:01:26] Erica Rex: Not gonna get a different outcome.

[01:01:29] Joe Moore: I think physicians are, are catching on, right? Like there’s this thing that you’re supposed to do, you’re only getting, you know, 5% response rate or whatever it is, right? It could be 30, but maybe there’s something better. Maybe there’s a better thing to point people towards.

[01:01:46] Joe Moore: It’s not necessarily the drug, maybe it’s group therapy. And I, I think Erica, the thing that we don’t talk about a lot in these clinical trials and a problem with some of the science is that a lot of people will actually go seek underground care in community [01:02:00] outside the auspices of the clinical trial.

[01:02:03] Joe Moore: And that changes results dramatically. Yes. And I don’t see that necessarily covered in the science, do you?

[01:02:09] Erica Rex: No.

[01:02:10] Joe Moore: Yeah, I think that’s a problem with data integrity.

[01:02:14] Erica Rex: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people are helped by the underground. Um, more than, and, and the other unfortunate fact, ’cause I see it here a lot. Doctors don’t read.

[01:02:28] Erica Rex: I mean, oodles of papers are published oodles, most doctors don’t read them for prescribing purposes. They read, they listen to what the pharmaceutical sales says. Uh, they listen to what the, um, latest update on the formulary says. And they are not necessarily taking on board the fact that this is very misguided.

[01:02:53] Erica Rex: Um, and I regularly have arguments and I did, um, I [01:03:00] regularly have arguments here, more so here than in France ironically, about prescribing. And, um, it’s really, really interesting. And then they realize I’ve read the paper that they haven’t read, you know, and so, um, you know, then the conversation can get interesting.

[01:03:20] Erica Rex: Uh, had an interesting You mean

[01:03:22] Joe Moore: about psychiatric meds generally?

[01:03:25] Erica Rex: Mostly about psychiatric meds, but also about other meds.

[01:03:28] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:29] Erica Rex: Because they tend to overprescribe other meds, uh, in different ways.

[01:03:33] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:33] Erica Rex: Um, and then, uh, under prescribed, I have a, I have a very bad shoulder, I mean really bad to where I’ve been referred in three countries now for a shoulder replacement.

[01:03:44] Erica Rex: And I’ve decided I’m not doing it for a lot of reasons. Um, and I’m going the route of having regular steroid injections. Um

[01:03:54] Joe Moore: mm-hmm.

[01:03:56] Erica Rex: And in the meantime, I had found out what helped [01:04:00] best was in France. I was prescribed, um, uh, lidocaine patches that are adhesive. They stick to your, and they’re incredible.

[01:04:07] Erica Rex: They really attenuate, they’re amazing. And in the first medical situation I was in here after I came back to the uk, they didn’t wanna prescribe them. We can’t prescribe ’em. So what do you mean? They, and they were prescribing me like. An enormous quantity of Tramadol. And I said, are you out of your fucking mind?

[01:04:28] Erica Rex: You are willing to prescribe me a drug that is scheduled, that is addictive, that I don’t become addictive to, because I’m very opposed to taking more pain medication than I need, which is why I want lidocaine patches. Okay. She said eventually it was, I won that war. It was very weird to have that war. And so I, when I moved to where I’m living now and I was gonna have to change providers, long story short, I kind of went in defensively and I said, look, [01:05:00] I’ve had this conversation.

[01:05:01] Erica Rex: He said, it’s okay. It’s okay. I prescribe them, it’s fine. We have athletes, we have guys who play rugby. I’ve seen your shoulder, you know, I’ve seen your write up. Fine. You have them. So you know, half a ton of tramadol, lidocaine patches are. Completely innocuous and they work so it, it happens in all areas of medicine.

[01:05:25] Joe Moore: Hmm. Right.

[01:05:32] Erica Rex: But, but I agree with you more in psychiatric medicine, uh, they are reluctant to, they want to put people on something that they’ve been told works. Um, they’re not interested in hearing about it. If it’s not really working, it takes a lot of time. There’s go-to drugs.

[01:05:54] Joe Moore: I think there’s, yeah, there’s this whole concept of like first line treatment and like, I think certain [01:06:00] practices, so a hospital or doctor group will say, this is our protocol.

[01:06:05] Erica Rex: And

[01:06:05] Joe Moore: so they have to kind of like follow that kind of agreed upon script with their company. That gets annoying from the customer perspective.

[01:06:11] Joe Moore: Sorry, patient perspective,

[01:06:13] Erica Rex: right? Yeah, right.

[01:06:15] Joe Moore: My experience is I’m a customer in healthcare in America. I don’t know, like $700 a month for my healthcare is, you know, really something. Um, yeah. That’s the current insurance rate in Colorado, folks.

[01:06:29] Erica Rex: Jesus

[01:06:30] Joe Moore: Christ. It’s crazy. I just paid so much money this morning ’cause I realized I hadn’t paid for a couple months.

[01:06:35] Joe Moore: Oh my gosh. Um, and I’m like, this is, uh, untenable. You know, I, I and a number of friends are considering dropping health insurance and, uh, you know, anyway, that’s not here nor there. Um, but it is part of this interesting, uh, healthcare conversation we’ve all had to have. Um,

[01:06:52] Erica Rex: yeah. But it is part of the picture.

[01:06:55] Erica Rex: It’s, it’s not about your care, it’s about somebody’s profit [01:07:00] because the insurance companies. Um, are allowed to make a kind of profit that they never were allowed to make before, uh, the end of Glass Stegel, in other words. Mm-hmm. Um, insurance companies for medical care existed to basically make a small profit and to, um, basically spread risk.

[01:07:25] Erica Rex: They were about spreading risk. That’s what they were invented for. And that’s not what happened, uh, after our friend Clinton allowed the glass to be repealed. And in, for instance, in France, when you got buy a supplemental insurance policy, or this is also true in Germany and Switzerland, um, that’s what they’re for.

[01:07:45] Erica Rex: You can buy a supplemental insurance policy just to improve certain aspects of things that maybe the public health doesn’t cover or doesn’t cover At that level, you’ll still always get care.

[01:07:57] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:59] Erica Rex: But [01:08:00] this idea that. Um, you know, and it, it would be really unfortunate to see that happen in psychedelic medicine.

[01:08:08] Erica Rex: It shouldn’t happen in psychedelic medicine. Um, which is why I tend to be all support legalization sooner than I will support, um, this industrial kind of medicine, you know?

[01:08:23] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Which is why I support everything I think in an all hands on deck every avenue approach here. You know, just wait, hoping that RFK is gonna be able to pull something off with the, um, uh, president.

[01:08:39] Joe Moore: I, I just don’t,

[01:08:40] Erica Rex: he was just

[01:08:41] Joe Moore: turned down. That’s a really good idea. He

[01:08:43] Erica Rex: was just turned down that, that sounds like that that love affair, uh, ended and that suddenly that’s, uh, not a good idea anymore. I thought that was kind of an interesting and weirdly unfortunate circumstance. I mean, um, I think the guy’s dangerously crazy.[01:09:00]

[01:09:00] Erica Rex: RFK Nicks, I mean, they’re all, they all are. I mean, it seems to be a, a whole cohort of people who share these same character traits in different ways and different, maybe slightly different expressions. So I thought it was, it was, um, kind of interesting that, that that kind of wore off really quick that what he said was good.

[01:09:21] Erica Rex: ’cause that wasn’t gonna happen now.

[01:09:24] Joe Moore: Mm-hmm.

[01:09:25] Erica Rex: Of, of psychedelics being approved as, um, medical drugs for, uh, what was it, what do it called when you do, uh, they have a, a permission structure for using non approved drugs for the

[01:09:40] Joe Moore: federal Right. The federal Right. To try act, which is

[01:09:43] Erica Rex: right to

[01:09:43] Joe Moore: something not super well defined.

[01:09:47] Joe Moore: Um,

[01:09:47] Erica Rex: right.

[01:09:48] Joe Moore: There’s pathways, but it’s difficult with psychedelics.

[01:09:50] Erica Rex: Yeah. They, I think they turned that down. That was the thing, is that it somebody that it was supposed to be on that same. Group and, uh, [01:10:00] it’s now not gonna happen,

[01:10:01] Joe Moore: right? So at the same time as I support decriminalization and legalization, I’m also involved in some federal work.

[01:10:09] Joe Moore: Um, colleague of mine, Melissa Ani at the Psychedelic Medicine coalitions, working really hard to create these veteran centers of excellence.

[01:10:17] Erica Rex: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:17] Joe Moore: At five assorted VAs, where they can do clinical trials and, um, actually deliver the drugs as treatment. So they, they could do like large cohort kind of treatments to get good data as well as actually do really good quality research, hopefully, because VA is the largest, uh, healthcare provider in the country from what I understand.

[01:10:37] Joe Moore: And that, that could lead to some really great data and results and hopefully inclusion later. But, you know, again, we’ll see, like this is all kind of a let’s try everything and hopefully we can save some lives in the process. And, you know, I, I take this weird, holistic approach, Erica, that I don’t, I, I think is perhaps too abstract for people to.

[01:10:57] Joe Moore: Take seriously. But I think, you know, as we [01:11:00] start helping people, getting people out of this kind of medical pipeline, get people on their own feet, you know, not needing, you know, regular psychiatric care, hopefully, um, to do their day to day, then I think there’s gonna be less costs, you know, more homes that are hopefully healthy more, um, you know, and more people engaged in politics and, you know, good civic work.

[01:11:24] Joe Moore: Hopefully.

[01:11:25] Erica Rex: Well, you’re talking, you’re talking about a generational change unfortunately that

[01:11:29] Joe Moore: mm-hmm.

[01:11:29] Erica Rex: Generational change has been under erosion for the last 50 years now, which was, uh, unfortunate. ’cause now it’s gone backwards for so long that, um, we’re really gonna have a lot of digging out to do. Or your generation, younger generations are gonna have a lot of digging out to do.

[01:11:50] Erica Rex: ’cause it’s a miss. Truly, I’m

[01:11:52] Joe Moore: very interested to see what people in their twenties are gonna be coming up and doing, uh, and younger folks as well, given kind of the, the [01:12:00] thing they’ve been handed. Um, yeah, it’d be very interesting to see the reaction and, and what politics looks like with younger people in charge.

[01:12:08] Joe Moore: Um, cool. Well, Erica, let’s talk a little bit more about your book. Um, so first off, where could people get it?

[01:12:17] Erica Rex: Uh, you can get it at any of the usual suspects. Um, your local bookstore can always hire it and I, uh, hire it, order it. Um, and, um, you can download the audio book. I recommend, um, the book very highly.

[01:12:32] Erica Rex: In fact, if you’re deciding, I would say please choose the audio book. Um, the publisher is lovely and the, they did a great job with the narrator and it’s very, very, very professionally and very well done. That can be downloaded at also any of the usual suspects. Um, audible, obviously audiobooks now, Spotify, anybody, [01:13:00] um, also write your local bookstore.

[01:13:04] Erica Rex: If you ask them to carry my book. Um, I hope they will. They can always order it. You can get it from Amazon. I prefer you not use Amazon, but your choice. Um, so anywhere you want, great. It’s available and it’s available in ebook. You can anywhere you want eBooks, you can always get an ebook. Um, you don’t have to carry a book.

[01:13:31] Joe Moore: Awesome. And, um, yeah, you’ve been kind of touring the book. You did, uh, drug Science with David Nutt recently. People should go check out that interview. Um, professor David Nutt’s, a hero of mine, so it’s really cool you got on there and, um, you gave, uh, little q and a in, um, New York City recently. Maybe some appearances in the UK in the near term, which is great.

[01:13:52] Joe Moore: And, uh, yeah, I’m, I’m glad you’re getting some attention. It’s long, long deserved and, uh, [01:14:00] hard earned. So thank you, long road for putting in the effort.

[01:14:03] Erica Rex: Well, thank you mm-hmm. For all of your support. I really appreciate it.

[01:14:07] Joe Moore: Absolutely. And, uh, we’ll do more. This isn’t the last of it. We got so many more things to comment on together, so thank you for being a, a thought partner here too.

[01:14:16] Joe Moore: Erica. Appreciate

[01:14:17] Erica Rex: you. Certainly my pleasure.