More and more people are looking to have psychedelic experiences every day, but what do you do if you don’t know who to go to – if you don’t have that in-the-know friend that so many of us had? How do you find the right facilitator?
In this episode, Joe interviews Nico and Susan Simon: Co-founders of JourneyŌM, a concierge service looking to address that missing piece.
Through a dedicated vetting process, JourneyŌM is adding a layer of risk reduction and accountability to this strange new world, by traveling the country and amassing a network of trusted facilitators who work with all types of medicines and modalities. By getting to know guides and seekers personally, they’re able to offer possible matches – and they usually agree on who would work best with each other.
They talk about:
Their process for building their network and finding the right facilitator for someone
Their concept of going “beyond the bio” and getting to the heart of what drove someone toward becoming a guide
Susan’s struggle with supporting Nico through his psychedelic healing, and the need for support options for spouses not sharing in the experience
The importance of community and the amazing work Nico has seen in men’s groups
The healing powers of movement and living as your authentic self
While the psychedelic industry is facing intense growing pains, the ketamine industry has been allowed to grow, largely unchecked. How did we get here, and how does the ketamine space rebuild trust?
In this episode, Kyle interviews Juan Pablo Cappello: co-founder and former CEO of Nue Life Health, whose assets were subsequently acquired by Beckley Waves.
Cappello discusses the current challenges and controversies facing a ketamine industry that has moved much faster than anyone anticipated, and stresses the need to create industry-wide standards – especially for at-home ketamine – before the government imposes its own standards on us. Citing the Matthew Perry case and other bad behavior from providers, he talks about the risks of overpromising and underdelivering, the lack of integration in the majority of ketamine frameworks, and how profit-driven, subscription model motives have overshadowed patient care and ethical practices.
He also discusses:
The complications from personal perspectives and passions shifting after a psychedelic experience, and how that can change over time
The FDA’s recent rejection of MDMA: What would have happened to MDMA if it had been approved?
Hope for more Native American churches, and what they can learn from the DEA’s denial of Soul Quest
The story of a bump of cocaine ruining the hope for cannabis to be decriminalized under the Carter administration
Our current Wild West of gas station CBD, Delta-8, and barely-regulated vapes
As the mainstreaming of psychedelics continues, ketamine-assisted therapy at work (well, through one’s employer) is no longer a pipe dream. What does the future of employee benefits look like?
In this episode, Joe interviews Jessica Tracy: head of sales & partnerships at Enthea, a company that works with employers, unions, and employee assistance programs to be able to offer ketamine-assisted therapy (and psilocybin where it’s legal) to employees.
She talks about her path to psychedelics and how the shifts in her life led her to want to help others, finding Enthea and using her 15 years of experience in healthcare to make an immediate difference. She explains how the process works for an employee of a company Enthea works with, and the importance of evidence-based medical policy and rigorous screening to make sure people are getting the best intervention possible. One of Enthea’s largest clients is Dr. Bronner’s, who reported incredible improvements after employees used the benefit, with a 65% improvement in depression scores and an 86% improvement in PTSD.
She also discusses:
How psychedelics bring awareness to what we need to work on
Less-discussed treatment modalities, like electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and stellate ganglion block (SGB)
The inefficiency of traditional talk therapy: 50% of people only see really good benefits after 20 sessions
The importance of viewing mental health as individualized care: What else can we offer to people who haven’t been helped by traditional methods?
The research that she wants to see, like measures in how present or productive people are before and after experiences
After years of work, MAPS/Lykos was finally able to present MDMA to the FDA as a possible tool in the fight against PTSD, only to be denied in devastating fashion. Just why did the FDA reject MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD?
In this episode, Joe interviews Ingmar Gorman, Ph.D.: clinical psychologist and co-founder and CEO of Fluence, a psychedelic education company.
Gorman served as a co-principal investigator and study therapist on MAPS’ Phase II and III clinical trials for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD, and works with drug sponsors: training, developing the components for clinical trials, and designing therapy manuals. With his insider’s perspective, he discusses the reasons why he believes the FDA rejected MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD: from ICER’s 2.1 section of the report giving legitimacy to allegations they don’t have the authority to research, to Lykos not being able to defend some accusations due to confidentiality, to the damage caused over time (which likely influenced the decision) from attacks against Lykos from dissenters.
He discusses:
How, despite abuse claims, the main allegations in the report were actually about the mishandling of data or influence of investigators on participants
The complications of needing to follow study frameworks: Should your adverse experience be in the report if it happened outside the study window?
How easily opposition can attack and demonize a faceless company, while forgetting the humanity of the people behind it
Inner healing intelligence and the proposition that people have been indoctrinated into this concept by MAPS
The need for journalists to research more and not just jump on a narrative
Psychedelic experiences can be a key drivers toward finding your soul’s purpose. But how can the insights learned lead to professional growth or a completely new career?
In this episode, Kyle interviews Beth Weinstein: spiritual business coach, host of the “Medicine For These Times” podcast, and founder of the Psychedelics, Sacred Medicines, Soul’s Purpose & Business summit.
She talks about a pattern she noticed of people working with psychedelics and seeing progress on what they set out to heal, but with a short-lived afterglow, as they remained in unfulfilling jobs without making any changes. She wondered: What if they applied the lessons they learned during their experience to their careers? What small steps could they start taking to either improve their current job, or find their true soul’s purpose and carve out a new path? Weinstein’s path has led her to combine practical business action plans with more spiritual and traditionally psychedelic modalities to help people grow in their careers and become their most authentic selves – especially if they’re trying to enter into the psychedelic space.
She discusses:
The importance of making time to talk things out with a coach, integration circle, or friends – especially in a culture that only gets more distracting and chaotic every day
The challenge of differentiating between guidance: Is it your soul’s true purpose, or a trick of your ego?
The weirdly taboo topic of money in psychedelics, and the delicate balance of aligning with charitable values while making a living
The mystical aspects to how life can change with new energy: Maybe that layoff happened at the perfect time?
The power of positivity and small steps toward change, and how working on something outside of work can transform how you show up at work
and more!
Weinstein’s newest course begins early next year: The True Path Entrepreneur Group Business Coaching Mastermind Program, which is a 12-month live coaching course designed to reprogram limiting patterns and beliefs and help move people into alignment with their true path. Click here for more info and to apply.
As more people have experiences with non-ordinary states, integration becomes more important than ever. But if there isn’t one in your area, how can you create your own psychedelic integration circle?
In this episode, David interviews Daniel Shankin: psychedelic integration coach, Vital instructor, and founder and director of Tam Integration.
He talks about the underrated importance of integration circles, how he created Tam Integration out of a personal need for them, how simple it can be for people to create their own groups, and how open-ended newly formed groups can be. He also discusses his “fractal inquiry” coaching method, and how the best coaching involves simply asking questions that lead clients to their own realizations and wisdom. He is offering courses that teach both of these skills: a course called Creating Community Psychedelic Integration Circles, and the newly-launched, year-long Mt. Tam Psychedelic Integration Coaching Program, beginning in October.
He discusses:
The importance of learning how to focus on your breath, especially during a tough experience
Hugging the Hindu spiritual leader, Amma (Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi), and the special energy that some people have
The benefits of knowing when a mind path isn’t worth exploring
The difference between judgment and curiosity
The weirdness of psychonauts, and how maybe getting a little weirder is what’s needed for your healing
It’s no secret that psychedelic experiences can make people think differently, resulting in more open-mindedness and connection. How can that concept be applied to corporate culture to create more connected leadership?
In this episode of Vital Psychedelic Conversations, David interviews Rachelle Sampson, Ph.D.: researcher and founder of Blue Prism Coaching; and Bennet Zelner, Ph.D.: researcher, speaker, and creator of the Pollination Approach. They are both Vital instructors and Associate Professors at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland.
Based on a passion for regenerative economics (how we might be able to apply patterns of nature to socioeconomic systems), they are co-leading the Connected Leadership Study, a research project tracking how psychedelic experiences can facilitate change in people in leadership positions. They believe that a shift from a mechanistic attunement to a more synergistic recognition of our interconnectedness should lead to new ways of thinking, resulting in more creative leaders with better decision-making and team-building skills, and corporate culture caring more about values, regenerative models, equity, and sustainability – all while still being successful. They wonder: Can psychedelic experiences create better leaders? Can capitalism become more conscious?
They discuss:
The structure of the study, what they learned in the first cohort, and why they track participants for a year
How change happens over time, and why they believe it to needs to happen from the bottom up
The concept of emergence and emergent change illustrated by the shifts in movement of a flock of birds
How synergistic attunement can be traced back to the cellular level
The challenge of balancing the therapeutic aspect of psychedelics with the more corporate strategy/professional side
and more!
The study’s next cohort begins in October, so if you’re a business leader interested in being a participant, head to Leaders.study for more info. And if you’d like to learn more about these concepts, the new Regenerative Business and Leadership specialization path in this year’s cohort of Vital digs deep into this world. And we’ve just extended the applications to Sept. 2, so you still have time to apply!
If you told a person 20 years ago that you were looking to make a career in psychedelics, they would typically look back at you nonsensically. Today, however, there is a burgeoning legal psychedelic industry and people are doing just that. The sector took a kick recently, with MDMA-assisted therapy denied approval and biotech Lykos Therapeutics subsequently cutting 75% of its staff following the decision. But optimism is still high – it’s never been a better time to work in psychedelics and many people are carving out careers in the field.
“The psychedelic field is attracting a really diverse range of professionals,” said AnnaRae Grabstein, the CEO of consultancy firm Wolf Meyer. “There are not just the traditional pathways to providing support and integration for people that want to experience psychedelics, but there’s all of the wraparound businesses that support the psychedelic space. By integrating psychedelic knowledge into existing careers, businesses are broadening their practices.”
Here are some of the leading psychedelic jobs in 2024:
1. Private Practice Facilitators
Need a tripsitter or a private ceremony? There’s probably someone in your area for that. In the recent Psychedelics Today report on the emerging psychedelic workforce surveying students and graduates of the Vital program, more than 80% said they were already involved, or planned to be, in private practice.
“This is indicative of the growing number of therapists and practitioners who see the value in offering psychedelic-assisted therapy or related services in a more personalized setting,” the report said.
Naturally, it is only kosher in places in the U.S. which have effectively decriminalized the possession and use of certain psychedelics.
“I wanted to train in psychedelic facilitation because of my background in counseling,” said Lianna Tullis-Robinson, a recent graduate of the Vital program. “It seems as though the overall field of psychology is venturing into this integration of psychedelics for treatment. As a Black, female psychologist, I wanted to make sure I was involved.”
2. Psychedelic Event Organizer
In places where psychedelics are effectively decriminalized, an ecosystem of psychedelic-focused events is popping up and beginning to thrive. In Vancouver, with an organization called The Flying Sage, there are regular events such as ganja yoga classes, 4-AcO-DMT and huachuma breathwork sessions, integrations circles, ecstatic dances, and much more.
“I feel like the Flying Sage is uniquely contributing to the psychedelic ecosystem as a whole because we’re offering an alternative method of access to psychedelics,” said founder Michael Oliver, on a recent Instagram video. “We’re really demonstrating what community-powered psychedelics looks like.”
3. Psychedelic Biotech Company Employee
Think of it like a regular pharmaceutical company, just a bit smaller, and with psychedelics instead of opiates and benzodiazepines. Naturally, there are all manner of jobs available in organizations like Atai and Compass – such as administrative staff, lab technicians, managerial roles, and much more – though they, like Lykos, recently consolidated their businesses and laid off staff.
“After I completed the 12-month Vital program, I went on to build a biotech company in the psychedelic space,” said Kaitlin Roberson, the founder of Cacti Therapeutics. “We’re focused on addressing the root causes of people’s chronic pain and inflammation.”
4. Psychedelic Scientist
Biotechs also hire scientists to help them develop novel psychedelic drugs and to design and run clinical trials. Psychedelic scientists also work as educators, giving talks and seminars. Almost a quarter of survey respondents said they were working in research-oriented settings, reflecting how a key segment of professionals in the psychedelic space are dedicated to pushing the boundaries of our knowledge about psychedelics and their therapeutic potential.
“Being a psychedelic neuroscientist is truly a fascinating journey into a cutting edge frontier,” wrote Manesh Girn, who works at UC San Francisco and is chief research officer at Entheotech, on Instagram recently. “Beyond grateful to be living the dream!”
5. Mushroom Cultivator
A few companies have sprung up manufacturing psychedelics. Some grow the mushrooms, rather than producing psilocybin from scratch, saying that the fruiting bodies are the most efficacious version of the fungi. Scott Marshall, head of mycology at Optimi Health, is one of few ex-legacy mushroom growers to now be a licensed psilocybe cultivator.
“It’s going to have a super therapeutic effect on the world,” he told Vice.
His colleague Dr. Preston Chase is in charge of creating MDMA for the company. “I’ve definitely had some ‘Walter White’ moments holding up the flask and filtering off white powder containing hundreds of MDMA doses, but this is medicine,” he said.
6. Psychedelic Reform Advocate
Organizations like MAPS, Heroic Hearts, Reason to Hope, VETS, and others, continue to lobby policymakers in D.C. and elsewhere to ease the laws controlling the research and use of psychedelics. These organizations have staff who effectively work as lobbyists, helping prepare bills, and having meetings with politicians.
“I feel like if we can really put our heads down and add to the body of research so that we can advocate for these therapies to be available inside the borders of the country that these veterans chose to defend, then we can not only help them in a more meaningful way, we can end the veteran suicide epidemic, and hopefully these therapies will be available to all Americans in due time, because they really are saving lives,” Amber told Psychedelics Today.
7. Retreat Center Manager
A psychedelic retreat is the new wellness getaway. Americans are heading to Costa Rica, Mexico, Jamaica and elsewhere in droves to spend several days in paradise (and ceremony) for intensive psychedelic or holistic experiences. Retreat centers, which are now dotted around those countries and sometimes better resemble medical clinics, do not only need managers who make sure everything is running on schedule and that the property is maintained. They need nurses, cooks, cleaners, facilitators, supporting staff, therapists and many other attendants to assist guests. Almost 70% of people surveyed said they were interested in working at retreat centers. A gray market has also developed in the U.S., while several churches also have the right to use certain psychedelics as sacraments.
After finishing her professional training in 2023, Jessika Lagarde began working for the Microdosing Institute in the Netherlands as a co-facilitator.
“I expanded not just my direct work with people, but also in education. I’m really bringing all the sides of me to this work,” she said.
8. Psychedelic Media, Marketing, and Content
New media companies such as DoubleBlind, Lucid News, psychedelics.com, Reality Sandwich (and Psychedelics Today!) employ full-time staff working in editorial and production. These organizations are embedded in the psychedelic space and create content including videos, podcasts and articles that may often be considered too niche for the mainstream media, but are of great interest to psychonauts and the psychedelic curious. There are also publicists working exclusively within the psychedelic space, tasked with getting certain stories into the media.
Have you been noticing polished psychedelic branding, captivating social content, and slick-looking mushroom packaging floating around recently? Boutique marketing firms and freelancers have sprung up all over the world, many talented creative pros moving over from big marketing agencies, consumer packaged goods companies, and regulated industries like cannabis and pharma to focus on psychedelics. Some offer social strategy, while others focus on target market profiling, email marketing, or branding.
9. Integration Specialist
Retreat centers and clinics are hiring integration specialists to work with them full-time, as they have steady streams of new clients, who often receive several hours of one-on-one or group integration support following their intensive experiences. The psychedelic community as a whole is yet to agree on a single protocol for integration – and perhaps never will – and it can often take different forms depending on the person. Many people already trained in other forms of therapy and counseling are taking psychedelic integration courses with organizations like Psychedelics Today and Being True To You and are now offering their services.
“Integration is an ongoing process,” said Kyle Buller, Co-Founder of Psychedelics Today. “Typically, people like to think about psychedelic integration as working with the experience post-session, but I also like to view it as the process to work with any material that’s coming up pre-session. The process begins when you pay attention to what is showing up.”
10. Psychedelic Lawyer
As psychedelic churches and dispensaries pop up, mostly working in legal gray areas, the need for lawyers specializing in drug law has perhaps never been greater. Organizations such as nonprofits Sacred Plant Alliance, Ayahuasca Defense Fund, and others, work to help defend the right to the religious use of psychedelic sacraments, while many churches and individuals employ their own legal support teams.
“The way I came to this was working with a psychedelic church and realizing there should be more information out there for churches to clearly understand what it means to have to defend yourself with respect to what your religious beliefs are under the law,” said Allison Hoots, the head counself for the New York Psilocybin Action Committee, in an Instagram video.
Interested in pursuing a psychedelic career? Consider starting with Vital, a professional 12-month training program that can help you pursue your psychedelic path in unique speciality areas, including Spiritual Emergence, Somatics & Trauma, Regenerative Business and Leadership, Microdosing, and Depth Psychology. Applications for the September cohort are open now. Limited seats remain.
A recent report estimated that four million people in the U.S. started microdosing in the last year, with many microdosing at work to improve their leadership skills. But most people start their practice alone, which leads to the question: How much do preparation and peer support change the microdosing experience?
In this episode of Vital Psychedelic Conversations, David interviews Tiffany Hurd: microdosing coach, speaker, business leadership advisor, and student in our current cohort of Vital.
After 15 years in the corporate healthcare industry and several years on antidepressants, she started microdosing psilocybin and saw an immediate change in her life, tapering off antidepressants within a few months. She realized that she could blend her background in business development and strategy with microdosing, helping companies (and specifically company leadership) become more vulnerable, heart-centered, and innovative. She has found that the changes in people have (not surprisingly) led to improved employee mental health, better team relationships, and more open-mindedness and authenticity, and likely, a large reason for that is not the microdosing itself, but the increased attention to preparation and integration – two huge factors often not discussed with microdosing.
She talks about:
Why mentorship/coaching has not been seen as an integral part of a microdosing practice, and why it should be
Her drive to normalize the use of low-dose psychedelics, especially in our Western ‘go all in’ culture
The benefits of pairing microdosing with other healing modalities, and how microdosing can help you embrace more of them
Why she signed up for vital and how she feels about the course half way through
How she deals with the illegality of substances in the corporate world
and more!
Microdosing is one of the new specialization tracks featured in our next cohort of Vital, beginning September 16. If you want to know more, send us an email or attend one of the next Vital Q+As!
In this episode of Vital Psychedelic Conversations, Kyle interviews two Vital graduates: Alice Dommert: certified breathwork facilitator and co-founder of retreat company, The Infinite Center; and Kara Tremain, ACC: somatic practitioner and growth and development coach.
A huge part of Vital is the experiential aspect of attending a retreat. Students report that being part of a group process, feeling the power of the proper set and setting, taking a journey as both a sitter and experiencer, and separating from the world and connecting with each other has been one of the best parts of the program – even life-changing. With Dommert behind 13 Vital retreats to date, she and Kyle dive into what they’ve learned in how to run a successful retreat.
They discuss:
Facilitator humility and how important it is for everyone to be on the same page
How much additional activities can add to the experience (tea ceremonies, CrossFit, chanting, fireside chats)
The importance of allowing enough time and space for everything, from personal time with facilitators to possible issues
Co-creation and openness: What can facilitators and people coming to the retreat build together? How do we create the most meaningful time together?
In this episode, Joe interviews Elliot Marseille, DrPH, MPP: founding director of UC Berkeley’s Collaborative for the Economics of Psychedelics (CEP), a network of health economists and researchers analyzing the economics behind emerging psychedelic-assisted therapies.
In the early days of drug research, efficacy was the leading factor in decision making, but as time has gone on, people are looking much more into the economics of everything: If a government is granted X amount of money, what should they spend it on that will be the most beneficial to the most people? How do you create models for future research and regulations based on the data we have now? Can there be a time in the near future when someone sits before Congress and says, “This is the exact societal cost of not making psychedelic therapy accessible”?
He discusses:
His early work with the SEVA Foundation, studying at the economics behind HIV/AIDS treatments in developing countries
His experiences working with Ram Dass and having a big psychedelic journey with Leo Zeff
His issues with the recent ICER (Institute for Clinical and Economic Review) report which said they couldn’t endorse MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
Why we need more studies tracking people for long periods after psychedelic therapy, specifically analyzing their healthcare utilization over time
In this episode, Joe interviews Devon Phillips: Community & Partnerships officer for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).
Phillips works on strategies to tackle the questions: How do we responsibly mainstream psychedelics? And how do we get culture engaged? He’s focusing on being the bridge to psychedelics outside of research, facilitating workshops and psychedelic coming-out stories at music festivals and conferences. He talks about harm reduction and drug checking at festivals, the concept of training big names to become trustworthy resources, the differences found in a hop hop crowd compared to EDM, and the power in using psychedelics for pleasure and celebration – not just healing and growth.
He also discusses:
MAPS’ involvement with the NFL for their ‘My Cause, My Cleats’ campaign, and how the San Francisco 49ers’ Jon Feliciano is bringing awareness to psychedelic healing
Details about MAPS’ first responders training, fiscal sponsorship program, international therapist education program, and upcoming membership program (launching in June)
The success of MAPS’ Psychedelic Science and his hopes for the 2025 edition, taking place June 16 – 20 at the Denver Convention Center
Dr. Carl Hart, drug exceptionalism, and the importance of creating safe containers and inclusive drug policy
In this episode, Joe interviews Juan Pablo Cappello: co-founder and former CEO of Nue Life Health, whose assets were subsequently acquired by Beckley Waves.
Cappello digs into his recent article which has been making waves across the psychedelic community: “Profit Over Patients? A Critical Look at At-Home Ketamine Therapy.” He created Nue Life with the goal of helping a million people address the root cause of their anxiety, and while the company was successful, he began to see a problematic trend: that using ketamine while providing services of a mental health company is very expensive and resource-consuming, and as companies saw a large percentage of clients requiring maintenance doses, the most profitable business model became essentially slinging ketamine to patients without providing any real integration or aftercare. Are these companies promising healing but really only guaranteeing recurring revenue?
He talks about:
How this emerging model makes it harder for ethical practitioners to be able to provide their services
The tools they built at Nue Life for long-term benefit, and why these should be the main focus – not repeated ketamine
Matthew Perry’s death and how the media was quick to place the blame on ketamine
The need for companies and communities to come to gather and create ethical industry standards for the at-home ketamine model
How cannabis was almost decriminalized under the Carter administration
and more!
Notable Quotes
“There’s all sorts of ethical companies and practitioners who are doing the good work every day on the front lines, and we have to recognize that. We also have to be honest that it’s harder and harder for those ethical practitioners to make a living because of what unethical practitioners are doing every day in the trenches, which is slinging ketamine.”
“Do I think that it’s probably a good trade to take ketamine six times a year as opposed to taking an antidepressant every day? Yeah, that’s probably a good trade. But there’s a better trade. which is: Let’s address the root cause of your depression, anxiety, or trauma once and for all. Let’s do the hard work. Let’s use ketamine as a beautiful tool to help you reset and reboot, and let’s get you well. And let’s support you in your wellness journey going forward, rather than putting you on the cycle of feeling better, feeling worse, feeling better, feeling worse.”
“I absolutely believe the pharmaceutical companies are way too close to the regulators, absolutely. But what do we expect when getting a drug approved by the FDA is a billion dollar proposition? I mean, look at what MAPS has gone through. They’re still raising money, notwithstanding the amazing clinical results that they’ve had with MDMA. …[They’re] continuing to raise money for clinical trials of a drug that wasn’t made illegal until 1982. So it’s not as if, in terms of the safety profile of MDMA, we don’t have oodles and oodles of real life data prior to 1982. Nothing’s a better sign of how broken the system is than what MAPS has gone through.”
In this episode, Christopher Koddermann interviews Dr. Sam Banister: co-founder and chief scientific officer of Psylo, an Australian biotech company developing next-generation psychedelics.
Banister discusses how he got involved in drug development, how Psylo came about, and the hallucinogenic and non-hallucinogenic 5-HT2A agonists Psylo is working on. He talks about the compromise between immediate need and ambition, and the ethical considerations and possibilities behind developing non-hallucinogenic compounds: What can we take from the psychedelic experience for people who aren’t ideal candidates for one? Is the psychedelic experience truly necessary? And for what indications will these new Gen 3 compounds be most useful?
He discusses:
What we can infer about the volatility of biotech and the state of the psychedelic industry based on recent mergers and acquisitions
The long-term challenges of drug development and the scalability of treatment options
How the initial success of Spravato has played a role in allaying fears around new compounds
Head twitch response and concerns it’s not as accurate of a metric as we’ve believed
Australia’s decision to down-schedule psilocybin and MDMA, and the speed of implementation and licensing: How long will it be before people have easy access?
What he sees for the future and why we need to be careful with language around expectations
and more!
Notable Quotes
“I think the reality is, beyond any ethical consideration, there are just people who won’t want to have a psychedelic experience or are contraindicated because of other comorbidities, family history of psychoses, or other things. These are pretty challenging experiences for a lot of people, if you speak to participants in some of these trials. They’re not without risk. There are adverse events reported from these trials as well. So if we can see good efficacy for any given indication for some of these non-hallucinogenic agents, I absolutely think they will have value beyond whatever else is happening with psychedelic-assisted therapy.”
“Given the waiting times we have in the U.S., in parts of Europe, in Australia, and New Zealand as well, for psychiatrists, for psychotherapists; generally, I don’t see this as being something that will be resolved along the timelines that are needed for this to be a broadly accessible treatment for the numbers of patients who are going to need it. So I think that is probably the largest barrier, in my mind, to the broad deployment of these therapeutics.”
“I think this sort of unbridled enthusiasm needs a bit of a sense check, and I think people should be cautious in the language they use. …I think the communication to patients in this space needs to be done very carefully. These are not substances that are without risk. There are plenty of patients who can have very serious adverse events from psychedelics, and some of these can be persistent and quite problematic – more problematic than whatever disease they’re seeking to treat.”
In this episode, Joe speaks with Paul F. Austin: Founder & CEO of Third Wave, Founder of Psychedelic Coaching Institute, and host of Third Wave’s The Psychedelic Podcast.
Recorded in-person at this year’s reMind conference, this episode – a shared release with Third Wave – is a rare glimpse into the inner workings of both Psychedelics Today and Third Wave, with Joe and Paul reconnecting after early podcast appearances and interviewing each other about where they’ve come from and where they’re going now that they’re so many years into this. Paul breaks down Third Wave’s history and new coaching training program, and Joe discusses Vital: Why he invested in Vital over an investment raise, what we’ve learned from the first two cohorts, how we’ve handled scholarships, and why sometimes losing money can be worth it if it’s for the greater good.
They talk about the challenge of keeping the lights on while trying to create something new; the balance of running a media company while building out an educational platform; the importance of staying focused and ignoring the noise; the relationship-building they’ve seen from their students; why we need to welcome the corporate types we may be inclined to dismiss; and why seeding good actors in as many roles and communities as possible is vital to the growth of psychedelics.
Notable Quotes
“What I find time and time again, is people need way less information than they think they need. They need way more courage and just a willingness to go out and make stuff happen. And so a lot of the relationships that are then formed in these cohorts that we have; people will then go out and start to collaborate and do things together out in the real world. They’ll start retreats together. And it’s fantastic.”
“The North Star of the program or the ethos or focus is: Inner transformation leads to external mastery. And what that means is: We can give you all the theory, we can teach you what we call the five key elements (assessment, prep, experience, integration, and microdosing), we can teach you different models, different frameworks; but if you don’t actually walk the path yourself, then you aren’t really being of full service to the clients you want to potentially work with.”
“There’s no prescription, right? We often want a prescription, just: ‘Tell me what to do; what’s the cookie cutter model? If I have a client, just give me– I want to do this, this, and this, and I’m good?” I’m like: No. You’ve got to learn yourself. You’ve got to know the different aspects and elements, but at the end of the day, this has to be yours – and only yours, and fully yours, because that’s the only way to really be a great practitioner or facilitator. There are no cookie cutter models when it comes to psychedelics.”
In this episode, recorded in-person at the recent reMind conference, Joe interviews Kaci Hohmann and Dave Kopilak: business attorneys at Emerge Law Group and co-chairs of Emerge’s psychedelics practice group. Hohmann also serves as Chair of the Oregon State Bar’s Cannabis and Psychedelics Law Section.
They were both drafters of Oregon Measure 109 (with Kopilak as the primary drafter), so this episode goes deep into the details, legalities, and possibilities behind Measure 109. What licenses are involved? What does a business heading to Oregon need to prepare for? What do they think the feds will do and how does that relate to cannabis’ Cole Memorandum? What is tax code 280E and how can its effects be minimized? What do they see the future looking like?
They discuss what they do for clients at Emerge Law Group; the differences between the cannabis and psychedelics industries; why service centers are likely more important than the products; and how the psilocybin service center experience is more like a relationship with clients than anything in the cannabis world, which makes everything much more complicated – but also much safer.
Joe also highlights some recent news, including MAPS PBC rebranding to Lykos Therapeutics, symptoms from traumatic brain injuries being improved by the combination of ibogaine and magnesium, and more!
Notable Quotes
“Cannabis growers have different philosophies on indoor/outdoor, all kinds of stuff that a discerning customer may or may not be interested in. So I think that some facilitators, just like service centers, can have any type of look and feel they want. Facilitators can have their own style of facilitation, which could range from anything: Indigenous/shamanistic or not, or health-oriented or something. And the ceremony part of it could be meaningful to folks or maybe not (like ‘here, take a capsule,’ you know). It sort of depends on a lot of things, but I think that’s interesting because it allows the facilitators to kind of mold their own ways of doing things and the service centers to mold their way of doing things. And you mix them all together and every experience might be unique.” -Dave
“I think there’s a lot of negative talk around Oregon’s program, or misconceptions. And I think some are valid, but overall, I think that things are going to trend in a positive direction, and I think as the program matures, we’re going to see a real healthy, sustainable program in Oregon. So I’m excited about the future, and I really enjoy all the clients that we work with. Everyone seems to be in it for great reasons. And I think that’s awesome, as an attorney, to be able to represent businesses who are doing something right in the world.” -Kaci
“I’m really hoping that this is a new industry that can, years from now, just be sustainable, be profitable for folks. So I want folks to stay in business. That’s why I want folks to go in with good business plans, good legal advice, good CPA advice, good business advice, know what they’re doing, play defense a little bit, not get sued (that’s a big one), get insurance when it’s available, and set a good example for other states. And I think if it proliferates like cannabis [did], that’s a great, great thing for the country. And I think it will. So every state will do things a little differently, there’s always things that can be improved under any system, but it’s all an evolution. We’re at the beginning stages, we just have to keep going and surviving.” -Dave
In this episode, Joe interviews Mason Marks, MD, JD: drug policy analyst, writer, Professor at the Florida State University College of Law, and senior fellow and project lead of the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR) at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.
As somewhat of an expert on drug policy and FDA regulation, Marks discusses much of the current legal landscape: What was controversial and most interesting about the FDA’s recent guidance for researchers running clinical trials; how an amendment changed Colorado’s Natural Medicine Act and the odd vibe coming from the rule-making process (very private with canceled meetings and a notable lack of urgency); concerns over Oregon’s confusing program not being sustainable; and how Senate Bill 303 drastically changed confidentiality and how personal data would be collected in the state.
He also discusses the complications and ethics of end-of-life care and psychedelics; the theoretical heart valve risk from chronic use and ways we could research this; the challenge of informed consent; the legal risk of transactions involving people gifting illegal substances; the Gracias Foundation’s recent $16 million grant to Harvard and how people at Harvard feel about psychedelics; and more.
POPLAR, which was founded to essentially change laws around psychedelics, is hosting a conference on February 16 in Manhattan called “Drug Law for the 21st Century,” which will be looking back on 50 years of DEA drug policy and envisioning what could be different going forward.
Notable Quotes
“I love the law because it’s sort of the rules by which society functions, and I think that’s why law in psychedelics is so interesting. And that’s why we founded this project, POPLAR, in the first place, was that we saw that there were academic, medical programs popping up all over the world (so they’re focusing on clinical trials), but it’s really the law that is the bottleneck in a lot of the scientific progress. So there wasn’t anyone focusing on fully investigating that bottleneck: How do we actually change the law [and] open up the valve so that we can get more scientific research done?”
“If you look at the law and you look at the Oregon Health Authority’s rules to implement Measure 109, there’s no question: It’s a non-medical program. People hate it when I use this word, but it’s a supervised recreational program. …Whatever term you use to describe adult use cannabis, that’s really what Oregon is with the change that there is this supervision component, and it creates a lot of problems, to be honest. One of them is the incredible cost.”
“I think just having honest conversations is what it really comes down to, telling people that we don’t really know. ‘This mystical experience you might have: It could be a very important part of the therapeutic process or it might be kind of ancillary. We don’t really know.’ I think a lot of people do jump to conclusions, and being open-minded like you said and educating oneself [is important]. I’m constantly learning. You have to be about this. You could study for a lifetime.”
In this episode, Joe interviews Flor Bollini. Named “The Corporate Shaman” by Forbes Magazine, she is an entrepreneur, medicine woman, and the Founder and CEO of NANA Health.
NANA Health is a platform that provides best practices, educational content, and peer to peer support around a framework that is fully personalized, using what they call “psychedelic-initiated transformative medicine.” Inspired by feminine energy, African tradition, and Ayurveda, their concept is that if you can’t afford a luxurious retreat, what can you do at home? What are the lifetime practices and biohacking techniques that can enable your self-healing capabilities to take over, with or without any psychedelics? Is your trajectory reversible?
She talks about accepting her healing destiny and what she learned from several ayahuasca experiences across different countries; contrast therapy and the use of sweat lodges throughout history; how so many of our struggles come from repressing sexual energy; why 5-MeO-DMT is the best tool to treat the most complex issues; the concept of using 5-MeO as a Eucharist in church; why we need to connect with the divine; and why we need more spirit in Western medicine.
Notable Quotes
“I was a non-believer and I had no framework. …But then psychedelics screw that up. If you’re agnostic, then you have a psychedelic experience; well, it doesn’t matter what you believe or not believed before. Now, you had the experience and you know there’s something, but you don’t have a framework of how to bring it back, what just happened. And especially serving 5-MeO is very drastic. There is no God, then there is a God, [then] you are God in five minutes.”
“Don’t be our intermediary anymore. Let me communicate directly with [the] source, because that is how we’ve been designed to work. And when you took that away from us, it actually affected us enormously; first, because we lose our connection with nature, we lose our connection with ourselves, we lose our connection with one another, we don’t understand sexuality as a healing and spiritual practice. It’s portrayed more like being a pig. …All the most direct ways of connecting with [the] source have been demonized.”
“At some point, you don’t need the medicine anymore. At some point, it is your lifestyle practices that sustain your transformation.”
“Spirit is important, and spirit is something that doesn’t exist in Western medicine.”
In this episode, David interviews Shauheen Etminan, Ph.D. and Jonathan Lu: Co-Founders of Magi Ancestral Supplements.
Through studying ancient Zoroastrian writings and 2,000 year-old Chinese texts in search of compounds and formulations forgotten by history, Etminan and Lu co-founded drug discovery company VCENNA in 2019 to use extraction technology to isolate these compounds. This led to an understanding of the health properties behind beta-carbolines, which led to their nootropic company, Magi Ancestral Supplements. They talk about the early days and experimenting on themselves, how beta-carbolines create dream-like states, and how their research sent each of them further into their own heritage, and asking themselves: How do we remember what our ancestors knew?
They discuss espand, haoma, Syrian rue, and how common Syrian rue is in both Iranian culture and psychedelic history; what is a drug vs. what is a supplement; common threads they’ve seen across different cultures and how we may be repeating some of their mistakes; Etminan’s recent ayahuasca experience with the Santo Daime church; and of course, some of Magi Ancestral Supplements’ products and their expected effects – from deep meditation to lucid dreaming to even mild hallucinations. You can get 10% off any product using code PT10 here.
Notable Quotes
“The journey started with basically experimenting with different alkaloid’s extracts. So we were able to extract these compounds from different plants. Specifically, the journey started with just doing some experimentation with psilocybin, looking into what are those alkaloids inside the psilocybin mushroom. And then basically, this story took us into our own heritage and trying to see what other plants are psychoactives but they’re less studied in the West.” -Shauheen
“This terminology you put between what is a supplement, what is a drug, what is food; even going back to what Andrew Weil talks about here, like, is caffeine a drug? Is nicotine a drug? …These words that we apply to what is a drug vs. what is a supplement are fairly arbitrary. We give the label of something as being a drug just because it’s gone through the medical establishment of a thousand people have tested it and based upon the evaluation of a guy wearing a white lab coat with a diploma on the wall, he said that more than 65% of them (or vs. those who were given a placebo) had a positive response, and therefore I can call it a drug now instead of a supplement and you can make a medical claim. But you know, the plants, the compounds: They don’t really care what we call them.” -Jon
“I am not very fascinated about psychedelics in general; I’m fascinated about the effect of psychedelics on human consciousness, because we are really behind our capacity, and I would love to see that we come together with good intention in a way that we can pave that way for fostering something that is serving everybody rather than just a group of people.” -Shauheen
Though psychedelics have been used for thousands of years, modern technology is beginning to teach us more – much more – about their effects on our minds and bodies. We caught up with Apollo Neuro co-founder and neuroscientist and board-certified psychiatrist, Dr. David Rabin, to learn more about how people are using wearables to gather new insights about their trips.
Alexa: For anyone who isn’t already aware, can you give us a high-level overview of what wearable tech is for, who might want to use it, and why?
David: I think of wearable technology as a powerful tool in our health toolkits to help combat the stresses of modern life, just like mindful practices like meditation, breathwork, and exercise. The wearable technology that we’ve developed at Apollo is safe for children and adults alike, so it’s really for anyone who feels they could use a tool to help them feel more safe, in control, and calm and experience better sleep, less stress, and a brighter mood. When we feel more secure, we’re able to fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer, focus more effectively, socialize more freely, and sustain energy throughout your daily tasks
Alexa: Can you explain the synergy between technology and psychedelic treatments in achieving better mental health outcomes?
David: Psychedelic-assisted therapy can be scary or intense for people, especially during their first time. Wearables can serve as a somatic anchor for both the patient and the therapist so they can stay in tune with their bodies. It helps the therapist to remain impartial on any difficulties or challenges that the patient may be experiencing, and it helps the patient to have a smoother journey.
To date, we have never had access to modern tools to help us solve these challenges that exist within and around the psychedelic experience. Today, the Apollo wearable is the only patented technology to reduce uncomfortable experiences associated with medicine-assisted therapy. So far the results from Apollo plus psychedelic-assisted therapy in the real world have been tremendous, including reducing anxiety in advance of medicine administration for easier drop in, reduction in ‘bad’ or uncomfortable trips, and improved ease of integration afterward. Apollo represents the very first example of how wearable technology can empower us to make healing with psychedelic and non-psychedelic techniques easier and more accessible for all.
Alexa: Can you share some examples of scientific research or studies that support the effectiveness of wearable tech and its combination with psychedelic therapies?
David: Currently, the Apollo Neuroscience Clinical Research Team is running an IRB-approved clinical trial with the support of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a nonprofit sponsoring the most advanced clinical trials of a psychedelic-assisted therapy. The purpose of this study is to understand how the Apollo wearable touch therapy impacts long-term outcomes and improves integration following MDMA-assisted therapy in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Two large clinical trials evaluating the Apollo wearable in PTSD patients are currently underway and recruiting participants. The first is taking place at the Rocky Mountain VA in Denver, CO and the second, a nationwide trial, is evaluating the Apollo wearable to sustain remission from PTSD following MDMA-assisted therapy, described above. Anyone who has participated in a MAPS trial of MDMA-assisted therapy is eligible to join the MDMA-Apollo study and receive an Apollo wearable for the study.
We’ve seen tremendous results with the Apollo wearable in thousands of traumatized individuals and those who have participated in psychedelic-assisted therapy thus far. Some of the most promising responses were in people receiving ketamine-assisted therapy, particularly those new to psychedelic medicines or who have a lot of anxiety in anticipation of new experiences. We care about the outcomes, and anything we can do to help people stay in remission or feel better for longer periods of time is a big win for our field. We are very much looking forward to seeing how the Apollo wearable will contribute to the integration period following MDMA-assisted therapy.
Alexa: Have there been any clinical trials or user feedback demonstrating the positive impact on mental health?
David: The Apollo Neuro technology has been studied in over 1,700 research subjects in seven complete and 14 ongoing real-world and university clinical trials demonstrating very promising improvements in everything from sleep, pain, and fatigue to mood, anxiety, and focus. Ongoing studies of the Apollo technology include studies of PTSD, ADHD, and TBI, metastatic breast cancer pain, and severe autoimmune disorders.
Alexa: There are tons of wearable devices out there these days, could you share an overview about Apollo and how it’s different?? What specific features or technologies does Apollo employ to support mental health?
David: The Apollo wearable is different from other wearables as most wearables are trackers. They tell you what is going on with your health but leave it up to you to make decisions to improve it. The Apollo, on the other hand, actively improves your health through soothing vibrations that shift you out of “fight or flight” and into “rest and digest,” or a parasympathetic state. You can actively choose how you want to feel on the Apollo Neuro app on your phone – Focus, Social, or Unwind, for example – and the wearable plays vibrations that help to shift you into that state, much like the way certain songs pump you up or chill you out.
Alexa: What mental health benefits can users expect from your wearable technology on its own, and how does your wearable tech complement or enhance the effects of psychedelic therapies?
David: On average, users experience 40% less stress and feelings of anxiety, an 11% increase in heart rate variability (HRV), up to 25% more focus and concentration, and up to 19% more time in deep sleep. In an ongoing real-world sleep study, users get up to 30 more minutes of sleep a night. Less stress and feelings of anxiety is especially helpful in a psychedelic-assisted therapy setting, as well as an increase in HRV, as that is the biggest indicator of how well your body responds to stress.
Alexa: What does the future of this type of therapy look like? Do you collaborate with mental health professionals, therapists, or healthcare providers to integrate your technology into treatment plans?
David: The future of Apollo being used in this type of therapy is that it will be used by clinicians and patients in the office or treatment facility where medicine is administered, beginning in the waiting room or before arrival, to improve short term experiences. It will then be used, as it is today, by patients/clients after their experiences at home to improve clients engagement in treatment and enhance their outcomes from integration practices, which are the most important piece of treatment and often ignored.
Alexa: If a healthcare provider is interested in incorporating wearable tech into their practices, what is the process for going about that?
David: We work with hundreds of healthcare practitioners ranging from holistic health clinicians, centers for ADHD and autism, psychedelic assisted therapy clinics, trauma therapy practitioners, Chiropractors and more. Our goal is always to work hand in hand with them to tailor a program that meets the needs for their clinic and their patients. To learn more about partnership options with Apollo, Practitioners and Clinicians can reach our partnership team directly by filling out this form on our website.
Alexa: How do you see the intersection of technology and mental health evolving in the coming years? Are there plans for further advancements or updates to your technology to enhance its mental health benefits?
David: The future of mental health involves the convergence of technology, psychedelic techniques, and our current practices. As Apollo learns from people over time, it will personalize vibes for each individual user based on their needs at any given time today. This is already happening with Smartvibes for sleep, which is the first wearable technology AI collaboration to give us 30-60 minutes more sleep each night that is concentrated in deep and REM sleep, just by understanding our sleep signature and acting on it predictively to prevent unwanted middle-of-the-night wakeups. This will only get better over time!
Interested in trying the Apollo Neuro, or gifting it to a friend or loved one? Purchase through this link and save $50.
Bogdan* is a 43-year-old asylee who lives in New York City. He has a Master’s degree from the University of Sussex. He used to live in student accommodation on the King’s Road near my old house in Brighton on the south coast of the UK, but he is currently homeless and living in what he calls a “ghetto.”
A series of highly traumatic ayahuascatrips with a famous ‘shaman’ led Bogdan to become seriously ill. It wasn’t helped by later trips with LSD and san pedro, either. Blighted by a debilitating mixture of chronic pain, anxiety, depression, and brain fog, he says he “feel[s] like a 100-year-old Alzheimer’s patient.” Bogdan suggests that successive traumas have left his central nervous system “fried.” He has no medical insurance, and so cannot pursue the Somatic Experiencing therapy people have encouraged him to try.
Bogdan did five sessions with ICEERS’ free integration service, but he doesn’t think “just talking with someone on Zoom will help” him. A cash handout from the local Eastern European community was helpful, yet it only lasted so long. One wonders how much processing his ‘stored trauma’ would alleviate living in a homeless shelter.
Or take Kristen*, a 39-year-old who participated in a Canadian clinical trial for psilocybin. In between each dose of psilocybin, Kristen developed debilitating spikes in anxiety that eventually manifested as a visual complaint, which in turn flowered into full-blown HPPD after two ‘therapeutic’ trips once the trial ended. What was driving Kristen spikes in anxiety? It wasn’t only the likely dysregulating effects of psilocybin’s serotonin dump. It was also significant financial stress. That didn’t just go away.
For those with severe HPPD, the visual presentation is so intense as to impair one’s ability to work. Reliance on scant welfare and disability benefits is not unheard of; I remember a phone call with one long standing HPPDer who was on the continual brink of homelessness for the destabilizing and disabling effects of his condition.
Possibly as many as 60% of homeless people have schizophrenia, and over half may have serious mental health problems. If we take seriously how dangerous psychedelics can be, these will be the outcomes. There will be many more people like Bogdan, Kristen, or those whose lives are destroyed by HPPD, increased anxiety, depression, or brain fog brought on from a challenging experience with no support, or simply the financial and life stress that continue on after even the greatest experience. Suicide is a tragic and occasional fact one cannot escape in HPPD communities – something that has been openly acknowledged by the late, great Roland Griffiths.
So what is the answer? As is hopefully becoming clear, ‘harm reduction’ is not just a matter of appropriate drug testing or set and setting and integration. It is a matter of having enough money to muffle a mental health crisis’ worst outcomes – to pay for help, stay housed, and stay healthy amid the stress and chaos that can follow a trip. Simply put, if we want to help those most affected by the challenges of psychedelic exploration, there may be a case for direct monetary transfers: giving people money to safeguard their material container.
A Cost of Living Crisis
There is a curious gap, a kind of Uncanny Valley, between our dreams of healing the ‘Mental Health Crisis’ with psychedelic mystical trips, while an arguably more primary Cost of Living Crisis is tearing apart people’s wallets. The association between anxiety, depression, addiction, and poverty is well known, and requires no elucidation. Even those who are not on the streets or actively facing homelessness in the future need money.
Have you looked at how expensive therapy is lately? $75-$150 a session is not viable for someone on a low income, so what could be a necessity becomes necessarily optional. It’s the same for gym memberships, exercise equipment, or good food and nutritional check-ups: all vital ingredients for good mental health and recovering from a psychedelic shockwave. The costs of therapy especially can add up while one shops around to find a suitable practitioner, or at least one who isn’t a weirdo – a genuine concern in psychedelic circles.
After an extremely destabilising LSD experience in September 2021 – whose sequelae included a deep depression, cannabis dependency, and suicidal ideation – I first tried a ‘psychedelic integration’ specialist based in Brighton. He wasn’t good. A couple of friends and I were wondering whether to do mescaline together, and I thought that might be a terrible idea. My ‘therapist’ urged me to wonder whether the second thoughts were perhaps the internalized voice of the “free market.” I burned through about £600 with this guy. I then burned through another £350 on another, thankfully more helpful therapist who gave me a discounted rate. It still amounted to £50 a session, or $60 USD.
Most people cannot afford to do this. And if they cannot afford to seek help while suicidal, they may die. We ought to consider the history lessons of psychiatric research. The ‘Decade of the Brain’ set in motion by President Bush in 1989 envisioned a future of revolutionary psychiatric treatments furnished by data from brain imaging and genetic research. This has not happened. Psychiatric outcomes have deteriorated. SSRI medications are of uncertain value relative to placebo and involve a staggering list of side-effects. Neurobiological markers have so far proved too wide and confounded to guide treatments – not least when our brains must exist in a world that’s crumbling.
“[W]hile we studied the risk factors for suicide, the death rate had climbed 33 percent. While we identified the neuroanatomy of addiction, overdose deaths had increased threefold,” Dr. Thomas Insel, the former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, reflected in his 2021 book, Healing. “While we mapped the genes for schizophrenia, people with this disease were still chronically unemployed and dying twenty years early.”
In many ways, we already know what works: people need social support, housing, good therapeutic rapport, and food on the table. What will spell the difference for many people is the possession of resources that will enable them to reach for such low hanging fruit.
What Would a Harm Reduction Fund Look Like?
It is already well-known that the psychedelic movement is overwhelmingly middle- and upper-middle class and white, and has a particular representation among the aristocracy. The psychedelic movement is mainstreaming, though, and more people of color and low income are joining ranks of users. This means more people are at unnecessary risk, for lack of social and economic resources, of the worst outcomes of psychedelic drugs.
The psychedelic movement needs to own this risk, because the public sector and existing infrastructure probably won’t. As discussed above, welfare support is measly and the most vulnerable will be without medical insurance – if such packages would even cover the debilitations of drugs illegal in many parts of the United States. The Zendo Project, DanceSafe, and Fireside Project are laudable, but their applications for those struggling after their trips are limited.
It is often accepted that some proportion – usually dismissed as a merely ‘rare’ occurrence – of people will be greatly damaged by psychedelic drugs, and end up homeless, dead, or struggling with severe mental illness. What if we stopped accepting these as inevitable?
If we are really interested in harm reduction, one option may be a fund for those harmed by the effects of psychedelic drugs.
Suppose there was a fund of $500,000 – similar to the resources required in a study – which was focused on those facing suicide, homelessness, or mental health crisis after a trip. The details can be discussed and fleshed out by anyone who wants to take my proposal seriously, but it would simply provide bursaries, cash transfers, and much needed subsidies to people struggling in the wake of psychedelic journeys to seek help. Perhaps the effects of the help they seek can be recorded to collect data. Perhaps it could fund legal action against therapists and ‘Shamans’ that leave their clients in tatters, much as Bogdan is facing now. Such projects would likely mean saving or seriously changing dozens of lives. I welcome feedback on my loose suggestion.
Of course, there would be a risk of people ‘gaming’ the system, but I imagine its wastage would be comparable to a study, which has large opportunity costs in terms of the direct help such a fund could provide. Search costs would be invested to ensure the person is who they say they are: interviews, conversations with family members and friends, possible documentation. Different priorities would be made. Do we invest 80% of our budget for search costs on that 20% at the greatest risk of peril? Or ought we to prioritize creating free support in other ways, like expanding free therapies along the lines of ICEERS?Alternatively, as I suggest in a new article for Ecstatic Integration, immediate support could occur through peer support groups organized through Reddit, whose potential is, in many ways, untapped.
Certain challenges would no doubt arise through using private money, as well as exporting what should likely be a government task, such as through a Universal Basic Income – there’s a risk that some measure (number of people helped vs. number of dollars invested) would become a core indicator rather than real value provided. There’s likewise a risk that the kinds of interventions and support deemed worth subsidizing will fit with donors’ own biases, or that the pool of therapists deemed acceptable will be narrow and normative.
I would not be surprised if the data were relatively unsurprising. Income support and housing for those most debilitated would be a clear game changer. Free CBT, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, membership to a local gym that has a sauna and a pool, or full blood work to scan people’s nutritional deficiencies and inform a better diet would all likely help. These are relatively inexpensive interventions, but the marginal gains are probably enormous, and could be, at the very least, comparable to the hundreds of thousands raised to fund studies – which will not necessarily translate into interventions and treatments, nor with any particular immediacy.
The Psychedelic Movement and Owning the Risk
One may wonder if a post-psychedelic fund is arbitrary. All mental health problems, including but not limited to psychedelics, vary with poverty and access to resources. Why have a post-psychedelic fund and not one concerned with mental health in general? How can we ever separate the two? I suppose similar questions can be raised about the psychedelic sector on the positive end as well. Why the interest in psychedelics, when similar experiences can be engendered by other means like meditation – including with similar risks? To focus on post-psychedelic risk is likewise only repeating the same distinction already explicit in psychedelic risk management: that psychedelic trips can meaningfully create adverse outcomes even while connected to broader life concerns.
Even if this proposal doesn’t make sense to you, something needs to be done to address post-psychedelic harm. I believe we know more than enough to do something right away – and something specifically targeted towards those worst affected, for whom every dollar of subsidy and support reaps massive gains in social benefit – and saves lives.
These are new ideas, but let’s start the dialogue.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of sources profiled in this writing.
In this episode, Alexa interviews Dom Farnan: Founder of DotConnect; author of the best seller, “Now Here: A Journey from Toxic Boss to Conscious Connector”; and Founder and Chief Consciousness Connector of DoseConnect™, a first-of-its-kind company blending organizational strategy, systems thinking, and talent acquisition in the psychedelic space.
Farnan shares her personal journey with psychedelics, discussing her experiences with psilocybin, ayahuasca, and 5-MeO-DMT, and how the last few years of her life have been focused on slowing down and integrating those experiences. She discusses the current state of the psychedelic industry, including downsizing and company closures, but also opportunities from networking, community engagement, and volunteering. She believes that while options may not be clear now, they will be there in the future, and may be jobs we never anticipated. So get to know companies now, and pay close attention with good discernment – not everything is as it appears.
She discusses her experiences with mentors and coaches; how psychedelic journeys and integration build onto each other; the importance of journaling; the need for patience as the industry grows; her book and the concept of conscious leadership over toxic leadership; and the beauty of embracing the openness we experience after a psychedelic experience: Can we use what we’ve learned to reprogram what we’re taught about life, invest in ourselves, let go of dissenting and limiting voices, and truly redefine what success (and happiness) means to us?
Notable Quotes
“It’s not always about the substance or the plant medicine. It is underlying about the healing and being more conscious as a leader and as a human being and as a contributor to the community that we live in. And so, for me, that’s what all of this is really grounded in. As much as I’m an advocate, I’m also very much aware that not everyone can leverage these medicines, and a lot of people are still scared and don’t quite know and maybe they can’t handle it and all of that. And that’s totally fine. …I just look at life as being psychedelic, and there’s so many things that you can do in your daily life that create this beautiful experience that don’t require any other things to contribute to that.”
“When you do this exercise, the invitation is to give yourself full permission to let go of everything that you’ve ever heard from anybody else. So, like, get out of the shoulds or your parents say this or your partner thinks that, or your best friends think this or your boss says that. Let all that shit go and just drop into truly your own heart space. Like, what does success look and feel like to me? If money were not an option, what would I be doing? How would I be spending my days? And the energy that I want to feel and be in – less so even, like, the tasks and the doing stuff, but it’s like, how do you want to feel? Because that helps you to then think through opportunities that will be in alignment of you achieving that feeling every day.”
“Understand the energetics, because if you’re going to be leading from a place of fear in your life, it’s only going to attract more of that stuff. If you’re really leading from a place of faith and looking at this as an opening for something new in your life, then that is when something new will show up. You have to be in that energetic vibe.”
In this episode, Joe interviews Deborah C. Mash, Ph.D.: neuroscientist; Professor Emerita of Neurology and Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine; and leading researcher in addiction and brain disorders for over 30 years.
She is also the CEO and Founder of DemeRx Inc., a clinical stage drug development company working to advance ibogaine and its active metabolite, noribogaine, for the treatment of opioid use disorder. She talks about the Federal and state complications behind ibogaine research, the need for partnerships between clinics and researchers, what needs to be done to collect much needed Phase II and III ibogaine data, and why this all has to be in partnership with the FDA.
And she discusses much more: her story of how studying Cocaethylene led to her finding out about ibogaine; ibogaine and QTc-prolongation; deaths related to iboga and the amount of variables that aren’t considered; how the French were essentially using noribogaine in the 1930s; and, as this was recorded at Psychedelic Science 2023, her thoughts on the event and Rick Doblin’s opening statement.
Notable Quotes
“We can now study all of the neurons in the brain for the first time and genetically phenotype them. So now we know there are subclasses of GABA neurons, there are subclasses of glutamate neurons. I mean, this is profound. And so here we are. We’re at, again, another next wave of learning about the human brain. There’s more neurons and neural connections in the human brain than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. So it’s a complicated story.”
“If anything, ibogaine is the hardest psychedelic to work with. But I’m here for the challenge.”
In this episode, Alexa interviews Chase Hudson: Founder of HempLucid, a premium CBD wellness brand.
Hudson discusses his journey from being a firefighter to becoming involved in the cannabis and hemp industry, the origins of HempLucid, the restrictions they faced, and their current genetics and flagship water soluble tincture. He talks about the benefits of CBD and cannabis used in conjunction with psychedelic therapy – especially ketamine-assisted therapy, which he gives to his employees as a benefit. And he talks about Lamar Odom and the documentary he executive produced, “Lamar Odom Reborn,” which chronicles how Odom came back from rock bottom through high dose CBD, iboga, and ketamine therapy.
He also discusses the idea of cannabis as a gateway drug to healing; the need for insurance to cover psychedelic therapy; the changing landscape of Utah from religious ideology to psychedelics; ketamine as the bridge between old and new models of healthcare, and more. And they talk about their own journeys a lot, with Hudson telling the story of his powerful and life-changing ibogaine treatment, and Alexa sharing stories from her tragic car accident and recovery, as well as the ketamine sessions she recently began. The conversation ultimately becomes one about the need for education and conversation to help us all climb out from decades of drug war propaganda.
Notable Quotes
“We do a lot with kids with seizures. I also do a lot of work with children with autism, and we’ve seen great results over the years. We’ve been in business seven years, so we’ve been fortunate to just see the impact and the change that happens within people personally, but then also within their family. And it’s been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.”
“There’s this whole frontier that is going to open up here. I mean, it’s opening now, but it’s going to be accelerated as this old guard starts to collapse. We’re living in a time where Babylon is really falling. These pillars of what reality has been structured on are failing because it’s been built on a bed of lies. Our government, our financial system, our healthcare system, our media: these structures of the matrix, essentially, are failing. And as it fails, there has to be something to kind of transition people into the new world, and that new world is everything that we’ve discussed and are doing. And it’s exciting to see, but as Terence McKenna says: we’re in the birth canal for sure, and there’s going to be blood, it’s going to be hard. But we’ll make it out, and humanity will turn into something beautiful on the other side of this.”
In this episode, Kyle interviews Lisa Wessing: Clinical Psychologist and facilitator specializing in harm reduction at Kiyumí retreats in The Netherlands.
Wessing shares her personal journey and the shift from being uninspired with studying psychology to being a part of space-holding in Mexico and finding her true path. She dives into the world of Kiyumí retreats, discussing their holistic healing approach using psilocybin, somatic movement, dance expression, and other methods supporting their four pillars of embodiment, nature, mindfulness, and art. She discusses their more long-term program with Dr. Gabor Maté integrating his Compassionate Inquiry framework; their Equity Program, which offers partial or full funding for people who may not have the financial resources or who come from marginalized communities (e.g. BIPOC & Queer); and the importance of integration as a continuous process and checking in with people much later to build their “Kiyumíty.”
Much of this discussion covers the challenges of somatic psychology and facilitation in group containers: how most people are somatically illiterate and the challenging journey of becoming more somatic; what to do about someone laughing or singing in a group context; what moving into one’s body really means; and different ways of using art to integrate an experience.
As part of our Vital program, we are running a psilocybin retreat with Kiyumí from September 6-11, and we have some available spots left! If you like what you hear, you’ll be in The Netherlands in September, and want to have an amazing experience with us, click here for more info!
Notable Quotes
“Something really important is expression: self-expression and expression in community. So seeing and being seen is something also that we value. And that seeing and being seen can create awkwardness and strangeness, and it’s something that we really like to also go into, because once we break through that awkwardness, there’s so much potential of creativity amongst people.” “It’s the fostering of allowing discomfort that is just generally important in this kind of work and in self-work itself. …We live in context in which it’s all about escaping the discomfort. We want to have a really comfortable home and a great job, and our vacation has to be as comfortable as possible. And also in medicine, it’s better to take just a pill that will do the job for me. Psychedelic work is often really uncomfortable, and so the group process reflects that discomfort. So I guess one of the main missions and one of the main challenges is to present that: like, yes, you will be uncomfortable. And let’s work with that.”
In this episode, Joe interviews Stéphane Lasme, a former professional basketball player from Gabon who is now a partner at SteddeCapital, a private markets investment platform investing long-term capital into U.S.- and Africa-based opportunities across sports ownership, infrastructure, technology and plant medicine.
Lasme speaks of his childhood, growing up in Gabon with more traditional Catholic values while journeying deep into the jungle to visit his Grandmother every summer. It was there that he embraced the cultural aspect of Gabon and community, and first learned of iboga, which he had a profound experience with at age 12, and would later revisit in his basketball days. He discusses the drive and passion that led him to become the first person from Gabon to play in the NBA, and the subsequent pressure, stress, cultural differences, and “ok, what now?” moments that came at the end. He talks about Gabonese traditions; how iboga improved his stress relief and mental focus; how embracing yoga and Buddhist methods of self-discovery improved his life; scientific reductionism vs. the magic of mystery and trying to define an experience; and more.
While Gabon allows for the export of iboga, Lasme’s goal is to build a lab and treatment center in Gabon and share the power of Gabonese culture with people – so they can experience the medicine in its own country, with its traditional rituals and music. He has begun the fundraising process, and through his investment and facilitation work, is working to get African athletes to invest back into Africa and make Gabon a major destination for iboga.
Notable Quotes
“Deep inside, I wanted to be the first basketball player from Gabon to get drafted in the NBA. I never advertised this as a kid. I never advertised it to anyone. Even while I was at UMass, I never talked about it. But I know there is a relation between me going through that culture, that traditional experience, and me deciding to be that person. That’s why I say ‘me deciding who I want to be’; I think there is a big connection. And I can’t tell you or explain to you where the connection started, what triggered me thinking that way, but I just know it’s connected.”
“We have to believe in ourselves. Our stuff here, whatever we have in Gabon, is actually the shit. It’s actually the stuff that’s going to help everyone. Everyone is going to run towards us to look for solutions, so we should be prepared. We should be working on a better environment for people to come and just witness what kind of a great thing that we have going on in Gabon. This is the motivation I have today: really building this company, building this network, this ecosystem, this network of people in the states and in Gabon around this plant. That’s the main thing that motivates me.”
In this episode, Kyle interviews Liana Gillooly: Strategic Initiatives Officer at MAPS, Board Chair & Founder of the non-profit, North Star, and Advisor to Chacruna’s Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative.
While she talks about updates in MAPS’ world and how to manage and scale a rapidly growing industry while trying to change a system from the inside, she mostly talks about what she, the rest of MAPS, and a lot of the psychedelic space in general are most excited about right now: Psychedelic Science 2023, the largest psychedelic conference in history, beginning next week in Denver.
She discusses the growth of the conference; why they chose Denver as a location; and how programming has changed over the years to embrace the multiplicity of identities inside the psychedelic space, including much more business content, a culture stage that focuses on how psychedelics interact with the mainstream, various programs put on by community partners, pre- and post- workshops covering an array of topics, and an area they’re calling Deep Space, which was designed to help attendees get out of their heads and more into their bodies.
If you were thinking of attending, this episode should serve as a great inspiration to finally buy a ticket. When you do, be sure to use code PT15 to get 15% off your purchase, and when you’re there, visit us at booth 834 Wednesday through Friday. Joe is hosting a Psychedelic Morning Show with Anne Philippi on Thursday and Friday, and we’re partnering with Lounge CashoM, an all-inclusive environment designed to be a decompression space from that big conference energy. Email hello@cashom.org for more info, click here for tickets (use password MotherEarth to access tickets, and code PT20 for 20% off), click here for our guide on events we’re most excited about, and click here for a full guide of afterparties and events.
Notable Quotes
“I was 22 in 2010 when I attended the MAPS conference, and it completely changed the trajectory of my life and opened me into understanding that it was possible to have a career working in psychedelics (which was such a foreign concept back then). So when I think about what I’m most excited about, it’s the people. It’s bringing together our global community, and it’s what can come from the magic of an event; of being in connection with one another, of all the little collisions that happen and all the ways that we discover how we can support each other and work together to make this field the best that it can be.”
“All these really big topics of our time that people are interested in and chatting about: if you just flip over the rock, there you will find people who have been directly inspired by and impacted by psychedelics.”
“There’s no escaping the reality that we’re all connected. So rather than trying to dip out and create private utopias, I’m more interested in understanding how to engage with what is, and invite it into the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible.”
In this episode, Joe interviews Nick Kadysh: Founder and CEO of PharmAla Biotech and member of the board of directors for The Canadian Psychedelic Businesses Association.
PharmAla Biotech is a Toronto-based Life Sciences company with two focuses: contracting with manufacturers to provide researchers with GMP MDMA (created under Good Manufacturing Practice regulations), and creating and researching novel analogs of MDMA. And just today, they announced that Health Canada has authorized them (and their distribution partner, Shaman Pharma) to supply their LaNeo™ MDMA for the treatment of a patient under Canada’s Special Access Program – the first time this has happened in Canada.
He discusses the creation of PharmAla and why their model changed from primarily researching analogs to manufacturing; why they’re operating out of Canada and using manufacturers instead of running the lab themselves; the excitement around Australia’s recent about-face on MDMA and psilocybin-assisted therapy; the bureaucracy of U.S. drug policy and how much a broken supply chain affects the whole industry; bad IP and companies filing rapid fire patents; why creating new analogs of MDMA is so important; and why the psychedelic space needs to bring culture along with us.
He also talks about Spravato, cannabis and risks of cancer, THC nasal sprays, and research he’s most excited about: that MDMA seems to alleviate dyskinesia caused from Parkinson’s disease, and that MDMA could improve social anxiety in people with autism. He’s aiming to run a clinical trial and believes they have developed a safe MDMA analog that the autistic community will respond to very well.
Notable Quotes
“I don’t want to give the impression that we think that MDMA is unsafe. In the case of PTSD-assisted psychotherapy the way that it’s being presented by MAPS, I think it’s remarkably safe. But, you know, better is still possible.”
“If you told me that you have a brand new drug that was developed in a lab that nobody has ever seen or tried or tested before, and let’s call it drug A. And then you have drug B, which is derived from a mushroom, that people have been consuming regularly for the past 5,000 years and no one’s died. And you’re asking me which one is safer? It’s the mushroom, man. It’s not even a question.”
“We owe it to ourselves in this industry to take the population along for the ride. This is why I think safety is so important, because if you’re working on safety, people like that. People trust that. That’s what happened last time: there was the counterculture and the culture, and the culture won, and we’re still paying for it today. So let’s bring the culture along.”
In this episode of Psychedelics Weekly, Joe and temporary-Colorado-resident Kyle once again record in-person, discussing how psychedelics could change business, the drug war and safe supply, and more.
They cover:
-a Rolling Stone profile on David Bronner, who makes the case for multi-stakeholder capitalism; where businesses are accountable to their workers, customers, the environment, and surrounding Indigenous communities instead of just investors – an idea more people would likely align with after a psychedelic experience;
-The first psilocybin service center in Oregon (EPIC Healing Eugene) finally receiving their license via the Oregon Health Authority;
-A man who saw his color blindness improve for four months after a 5g mushroom experience;
-The opening of ‘The Drugs Store’ in Vancouver, British Columbia: a mobile store selling drugs illegally as a response to the opioid epidemic and constant influx of untested and laced drugs – the “inevitable result of the government doing nothing” towards offering a safe supply;
-and a survey from the CDC showing that cannabis use among teenagers has declined since legal dispensaries began opening, disproving one of the most common prohibitionist arguments that legalization would only increase use.
And of course, these topics bring on a lot of conversation: how businesses need to be more reflective on how they’re operating; concern over if too much regulation is nerfing the world; the human cost of the drug war and the ever-escalating amount of ODs and drug poisoning cases; HPPD and the need for research around psychedelics and vision/perception; why we will always need both clinical access and the recreational underground, and more.
Have you attended a psychedelic industry conference over the past few years? Gone are the days of few-and-far-between events, and the lone, massive annual psychedelic happening that one simply must attend if they want to keep up on new research and development. It’s 2023, and the psychedelic conference circuit has become a bonafide industry in and of itself.
With dozens of new psychedelic-focused events springing up ’round the globe in recent years – from Oakland to Reykjavik to Tel Aviv – one can tap into this global network of entrepreneurs, activists, and psychonauts, and really choose their own adventure for the first time in psychedelic history. Interested in learning about the commercializing of psychedelics? Perhaps applying insights to your own life or business ventures? Or how about simply keeping up on what’s happening at the vanguard of the psychedelic industry that’s rapidly evolving (for better or worse)? Chances are, there’s a psychedelic conference for that.
My Psychedelic Conference History
I first became aware of the mainstream psychedelic industry conference circuit when I attended the Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics conference in New York City in 2022. For those unaware, Horizons is the longest-running psychedelic conference in the world (15 years and counting!), and for a long time, was unmatched in its size and scope.
The day before Horizons’ official programming started, I was invited to a pre-party hosted by journalists Josh Hardman and Shayla Love at Shayla’s apartment in New York City. I counted my lucky stars for my extroverted personality, as I found myself awkwardly wedging into established circles and cliques of prolific psychedelic journalists, academics, and entrepreneurs who all seemed to know each other already. Curious about how they all became friends, I asked how everyone seemed to know each other so well. Without skipping a beat, three people simultaneously answered: “Conferences!”
The psychedelic conference circuit has become the place to connect with, learn alongside, and build a meaningful sense of global psychedelic community that is arguably impossible to establish or replicate quite as intimately in a digital environment.
Admittedly, when I launched the Mycopreneur Podcast in January 2021, I had never heard of any of these conferences. Despite being a deeply committed psychonaut and media producer since 2006, I was unaware of the existence of psychedelic conferences until I was invited to Meet Delic in November 2021.
Since then, I’ve been invited to a number of major conferences as press, moderator, and a panelist, and am set to present at and report on considerably more major international conferences throughout the rest of 2023.
I’ve been to eight major psychedelic industry conferences to date, and another dozen or so well-attended underground conferences and festivals across three countries over the last two years. Here are my top tips for maximizing ROI at psychedelic conferences.
1. Clearly define your goals ahead of time
My first psychedelic conference experience felt like a piñata swinging contest, whereby I blindly maneuvered around in search of my bearings and an actionable game plan. The whole time, I felt like I was a step behind everyone and was unsure of the optimal protocol and conference flow. Luckily, Liana Gillooly of MAPS took me under her wing to help me navigate the numerous conference-adjacent events happening in that week, and to help me infiltrate an exclusive afterparty for the Palo Santo fund where I loaded up on prosciutto and camembert cheese while masquerading as the heir to a Connecticut hedge fund fortune.
I left Horizons feeling like I had one foot in the door of the ‘psychedelic industry in-crowd’ (which, yes, is a thing) and recognized the value of investing in attending conferences at all.
When the opportunity surfaced to join the press corps at Wonderland in Miami one month later, I jumped on every connection I had in the area to make it happen. This time, I was ready.
I clearly defined my goal for the event: meet as many people as possible, and get contact info for the ones that resonated with me. I take a shotgun approach to networking, which is more of a benign tactical strategy than a hostage situation, but I whittle down the ‘call to action’ group for following up after the conference with people that I really see myself building and collaborating with.
I managed to connect with at least 100 people at Wonderland in face-to-face conversations and afterparties, and I followed up with a few dozen of them after the event. Some of these meetings and connections have prospered into ongoing friendships and business relationships that have returned great value to my life and platform.
What are your goals? Expanding your network? Finding sales leads? Or simply to make more sense of psychedelics and learn? Write them down. Look at your goal statement periodically throughout the event – does the way that you’re tackling the conference, the presentations and panels you’re taking in, and the people you’re spending time with align with your goals? If not, adjust. Rinse, and repeat.
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2. Get real about your budget and resources
Conferences can be extremely expensive. If you can’t afford to make the trip and you don’t have an employer backing you, they’re 100% hackable – if you’re resourceful.
I’ve rented Airbnbs one hour away from a conference and commuted on public transport because it was all I could justify affording. Sleep on people’s couches and air mattresses if you have to. I’ve eaten bread and hummus from the grocery store on many occasions, skipped meals, and even better, loaded up on deli meat and cheese from platters at afterparties. Like anything, you get out of these events what you put into them – so eschew any sense of expectation or entitlement, and focus on defining why you’re there in the first place and executing on your game plan while leaving some room open for spontaneity and the magic of psychedelic community.
Prior to Wonderland, I reached out to Miami psychedelic community stalwart Ray Oracca of Moksha Arts Collective, who had extended an open invite to me to do stand-up comedy at their art gallery earlier in the year. Once I made a deal to stay at the Moksha studio for a week in exchange for a stand up performance, I used credit card points to book the cheapest, most inconvenient flight I could find to Miami. I think I had seven layovers en route, and three of them were in Las Vegas. I didn’t even have a ticket when I showed up, banking on finagling my way in by insisting that I was related to Bob Parsons. The day before the conference kicked off, an unexpected VIP pass showed up with my name on it thanks to Ray and the Moksha community. This type of magic happens more than you can plan for on the conference circuit, and plenty of people arrive at a conference without a ticket and capitalize on the networking and afterparties that surround the event. Almost every event has room for volunteers, media, and programming support, so offer yourself up.
Do you have the finances to afford attending the event? If not, will your employer support your trip? If all else fails, ask yourself: “who do I know, and what can I offer that could help fund my event experience?”
3. Find the others
This is probably the most important angle of the conference circuit. At SXSW in Austin earlier this year (which was jam-packed with psychedelic programming), I was so overwhelmed and baffled by the first half of day one that I considered going back to my friend’s house and spending the day with his dog instead. It took everything in me to come to terms with the madhouse frenetic environment of the convention center and downtown Austin; I spent two hours sitting cross-legged on the floor trying to ground myself by chanting the mantra “psychedelic renaissance” over and over until it became a meaningless verbal Rorschach test.
This all changed when I connected with my friend Peter Vitale, who is an excellent steward of community and psychedelic lawyer (which is actually a more sober and jurisprudential vocation than Hunter S. Thompson’s attorney in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas would have you believe – though there are certainly some overlapping elements).
Peter got me dialed in to the wider and more connected community of psychedelic industry folks who were at SXSW, as opposed to the more scatterbrained approach I was taking wherein I just kept attaching myself to the fringes of Paul Stamets’ entourage. Connecting with a critical mass of aligned people is key to a successful conference experience. Finding likeminded people enables you to move with the ebb and flow of the group, and to break off into satellite groups with one or two people at a time for side quests as you see fit.
This is a big one for many people hoping to build and scale their networks and businesses. I learned this one the hard way in my early days navigating the music and entertainment industry, when I shot my shot far too often without any sense of connection or community framework to the people I was pitching myself to. Quentin Tarantino doesn’t care that your new script has a scene where he gets anally probed by proboscis monkeys with AI capabilities when he’s just trying to have a nice dinner out with his family in Tribeca, and the same principle rings true among the psychedelic conference circuit movers and shakers.
I’ve seen the same thing happen time and again as this industry continues to ascend, but this time, I’m the one who receives the unsolicited pitches and million-dollar ideas that sound far better on ketamine than on paper. It’s best to build rapport with people and communities first before trying to sell them on your project – people buy into you as much (if not more) than what you’re working on, so establishing trust and relationships is key. Be patient. As you continue to hone your network, you may find yourself invited into projects and opportunities that serve to strengthen and add value to your own work.
5. Pace your partying
I learned this one the hard way after Wonderland. I actually quit drinking largely because of my experience at the Wonderland afterparties. Open bars and a taste for mezcal are awesome for stags and the Gathering of the Juggalos, but not always great for professional networking. This, of course, depends on your intention that you’ve clearly stated as your reason for being at a conference (see tip #1). Considering my standard goal is to effectively and meaningfully network and add value to other people’s organizations while elevating my own platform (and also to pick up new satire material, because I can’t switch that part of my brain off anymore and industry types are often unintentionally hilarious), blacking out and rambling about boofing Hape on camera for a professional film crew at an exclusive afterparty sponsored by a high-profile company is, arguably, detrimental to the cause. I’ve seen this kind of thing happen a lot, and while some may not hold it against you, it’s probably not the look you’re going for. Don’t be the person from the afterparty everyone talks about the next day.
In parallel, it’s essential to stay hydrated, on point, and ready to pivot at any moment. Opportunities arise on the fly, and you need to be positioned to jump on them. During events, I’ve received many unpredictable invites to meetings or opportunities that require precise timing and preparedness, so I’ve learned that my phone must always have a charged battery, and that I’m ready to jump in an Uber or navigate to a second location at a moment’s notice. You can’t do that when you’re busy staring in disbelief at galactic swirls in your fingerprints all night.
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At each subsequent conference I’ve attended, I’ve refined my approach to include eliminating alcohol and substance consumption from afterparties to stay sharp and on the ball. I’m usually a solo macrodose tripper, and conferences give me all the social fulfillment I need without surrendering my consciousness to a trustafarian shaman with a Hape applicator and really good MDMA.
As Salvador Dali said: “I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.” Okay, fine. I’ll try some of your mushroom chocolate if you twist my arm.
6. Find the WhatsApp and Signal Groups
There’s virtually always some kind of group chat thread where invitations to the afterparties and unique events that are not officially announced anywhere are posted. If you see someone who works with an established psychedelic company, flag them down and naively inquire about the existence of such a group. Use blackmail if you have to. It’s great to have an overview of the conference atmosphere and what people are doing, and you can take and leave the invitations to panels, parties, and events as you see fit. You don’t have to go to everything, but if you don’t know, you can’t go.
7. Carve out time for 1 x 1 meetings and collaborations
Going to lunch with people, building personal relationships, and dreaming up plans and projects together is what it’s all about for me. The best way to bypass the digital age of impersonal queries and project proposals is to meet people IRL. I’ve sowed the seeds of projects during five-minute conversations with people at conferences that have taken over a year to manifest. If you can steal a few minutes away to eat meatball sundaes with Kyle Buller while the Psychedelics Team shops for rugs at IKEA before Cannadelic Miami, do it.
Get people’s phone numbers and keep in touch with them. Don’t just hit people up when you need something from them or want to sell them on something. If you have a chat about pygmy elephants with someone at a conference, and you click, then text them the next time pygmy elephants come up in your life (this happens surprisingly often in my world). Text or call people on their birthdays, show an interest in what they’re doing, and look to add value to their lives and be a resource rather than trying to extract value from them.
I can’t over-emphasize the importance of showing up wherever you can. Take a leap of faith and put yourself out there.
Hit the Ground Running
Are you looking for an upcoming psychedelic happening to attend or support in 2023? Psychedelics Today wants to see YOU at these great upcoming events:
DiscoveryCon 2023: Taking place on April 18 – 19 in the Bay Area, this gathering of the psychedelic community includes an impressive lineup of speakers including Robin Carhart-Harris, Hamilton Morris, and Bia Labate. DiscoveryCon will be held on Bicycle Day, the anniversary of the first intentional LSD trip taken by Dr. Albert Hofmann (use code PSYCTODAY for 30% off tickets).
Breaking Convention: Europe’s largest psychedelic consciousness conference is happening April 20 – 22 in Exeter, U.K. Breaking Convention offers groundbreaking research and insights across disciplines such as human and social sciences, law, politics, art, history, and philosophy (use code PSYCHTODAYBC10 for 10% off tickets).
Trailblazers NYC: Happening April 24 – 25 in New York City, Trailblazers brings together entrepreneurs, investors, and other leaders in the psychedelic industry.
PsyCon: Scheduled to take place in Portland, OR from May 19 – 20, this event will focus on the emerging psilocybin market in Oregon, featuring speakers including Lamar Odom, Yolanda Clarke, and Del Potter. A second PsyCon event is being held in the fall (from Sept. 29 – 30 in Denver, CO.)
Psychedelic Science 2023: Organized by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), Psychedelic Science is set to be one of the longest-ever psychedelic conferences. Held from June 19 – 23 in Denver, CO the event features research on psychedelics, therapeutic uses of psychedelics, and the impact of psychedelics on society (use code PT15 for 15% off tickets).
In this episode of Psychedelics Weekly, Joe calls in from Los Angeles to cover the week’s news with David.
They review:
-Dr. Julie Holland’s recent appearance on the The Cannabis Investing Podcast, where she discussed the concept of cannabis being a psychedelic;
-Vancouver Island University in British Columbia, Canada, planning to establish a Psychedelic Research Centre, with a focus on the historical and ethical context of psychedelic substances, using a “two eyed seeing” approach that combines Western-style science with Indigenous perspectives;
-A group of investors creating a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) to purchase real estate for the purposes of psychedelic therapy, which, if used as the collaborative model we imagine it could be, could solve a lot of problems;
-Diplo completing the Los Angeles Marathon in 3 hours and 35 minutes while under a reported 4-5 drops of LSD, and the dismissive spin mainstream media added to the story;
and a Rolling Stone article focusing on (and somewhat oversimplifying) the conflicts between the medicalization and decriminalization/legalization camps (can we just do both?).
The articles of course lead to much larger discussions: how cannabis has helped David overcome OCD; the need for more transparency and a review system based on abusive behavior in the psychedelic space; the idea of collectivization in therapy models; the need to agree on ethical foundations; and our general misunderstanding of IP and IP law: was all the criticism of Compass Pathways unwarranted?
In this episode of Psychedelics Weekly, Joe and Kyle are back at it, talking about news and what’s going on at Psychedelics Today (applications for Vital close this Sunday, March 26, and we’ve just announced a new neuroscience course!).
Following up on last week’s news that Field Trip Health had closed five clinics, they start with more unfortunate news: that Field Trip is laying off a lot of people, Ronan Levy has resigned as the CEO, trading has been suspended, and the company has obtained CCAA Protection (which, through the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, essentially allows a struggling company a chance to restructure its finances to avoid bankruptcy, all through a formal Plan of Arrangement). And in similar news, all Ketamine Wellness Centers (an Arizona company recently acquired by Delic Holdings) would be closing immediately, with employees let go with little warning or explanation. These stories (and Synthesis Institute’s downfall) highlight the sad reality many of us in the psychedelic space forget: that just because a business is heart-centered and psychedelic-minded, it’s still a business, and businesses need to be profitable to survive.
Next, they cover Melissa Lavasani and the Psychedelic Medicine Coalition creating the Psychedelic Medicine PAC (Political Action Committee) to get more government funding behind psychedelic research. Members of PMC went to D.C. last week, presenting a psychedelic briefing to begin the process of educating legislators about the realities of plant medicines and psychedelic-assisted therapy (and Joe was there).
And they discuss more: concerns over Australia’s recent about-face on MDMA and psilocybin being used legally; a recent study where researchers used EEG and fMRI together to record what is happening in the brain while under the influence of DMT (and we should probably have Manesh Girn on again to explain it better than we could); and an interview with Eric Andre at SXSW where, in about 2 minutes, he brilliantly shines a light on drug exceptionalism, the lies of the drug war, and the need for more education on psychedelics – all to a bewildered reporter who didn’t seem prepared to talk to Eric Andre (we are- please come on the podcast!).
In this episode, Joe interviews the Co-Founder and CEO of Beckley Retreats, Neil Markey.
Markey describes Beckley Retreats as comprehensive well-being programs, and talks about the importance of holistic wellness – that, while the retreats are centered around two group psilocybin experiences, the true benefits come from complementary factors: the four weeks of online prep and community building before the retreat, the six days in Jamaica surrounding the experiences, the six weeks of integration work after, and the depth of connections people find in the new community they may not have realized they needed so badly. He breaks down the details of the retreats and what they look for in facilitators, and tells a few success stories that really highlight how trauma, opposing ideas, and an infatuation with material objects and amassing wealth can all get in the way of real relationships and meaning.
Beckley Retreats is currently working on two new projects: an observational study with Heroic Hearts and Imperial College London on using psilocybin for-traumatic brain injury, and a study with Bennet Zelner and the University of Maryland to bring executives through a retreat to see how it affects leadership and decision-making: can they prove that these types of experiences lead to more heart-centered leaders?
We are currently running a giveaway where you can win a one-on-one meditation class with Neil and a custom Beckley Retreats tote, as well as many other prizes. Click here to enter!
Notable Quotes
“The problem, a lot of times with Western medicine, is if you can’t understand the mechanics of it, then we kind of discard it, or if you can’t isolate a single variable, then we discard it. It’s like: well, some things work in tandem. If you actually peel the physics back, it looks like everything’s connected to everything, so we’ve got to think about more comprehensive approaches. I think that you can learn a lot from looking at traditional practices and some of the Indigenous wisdom that’s out there; that there’s a method to how this work has been done for quite some time and we shouldn’t disregard it.”
“If we can help people in a clinic model, let’s do that. But [with a] clinic, again: when you take someone, you give them a mystical experience, and then they go right back home or right back to work and right back into life, are you creating enough space for there to be optimal change? I think we need to keep studying it and asking those questions.”
“[Amanda Feilding] never saw a rule that she didn’t want to break. She’s [this] lifelong badass that has just gone against the grain for her entire career. But it was never about money for her, it was all because she thought she could help people. It’s so inspiring. We need more of those stories; less stories about people that made a billion dollars or whatever and more material things, and [more of] these stories about folks that are just out there trying to help others. It fires me up.”
In this episode of Psychedelics Weekly, Joe and Kyle join up once again to discuss the news and articles they found the most interesting this week.
They start with the business news everyone is talking about: Field Trip Health & Wellness closing 5 of their clinics due to financial struggles (a deficit of $48.7 million since their inception and a net loss of $6.9 million reported for the last quarter), little confidence they’d be able to receive more funding, and the changing landscape of ketamine telehealth now that the Covid Public Health Emergency should finally come to an end in May. They also highlight an article dissecting the collapse of Synthesis Institute and the lessons to be learned, with both stories really showing just how new and unstable psychedelic business still is, and how the allure of first-mover advantage can be a dangerous gamble.
They also discuss four drug reform bills introduced in Vermont: two of which would decriminalize simple possession of all drugs, making a “personal use supply of drugs” a civil offense with a $50 fine; one removing penalties for using or selling psilocybin; and the last decriminalizing certain psychedelic plants and fungi.
And they look at a research study aiming to learn more about people’s lives after they’ve been involved in a clinical trial, Time Magazine’s article about psychedelics and couples therapy, and a study that found that while 64% of survey respondents said at-home ketamine helped their symptoms, 55% (and 58% of Millennials) said they used more than the recommended dose – either by accident or on purpose.
Twitter: @Eddietalksdrugs(Have you participated in a clinical trial involving #psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy? How has life been after the trial? Contact psychedelic.experiences@psych.ox.ac.uk for more information.)
In this episode, David hosts another Vital Psychedelic Conversation, this time with Bennet Zelner, Ph.D.: Vital instructor who teaches economics at the University of Maryland Smith School of Business; and Giles Hayward: Vital student and Co-Founder of Woven Science (a company backing and building psychedelic and wellness tech companies) and El Puente, which focuses on Indigenous biocultural preservation.
Zelner believes that the traditional capitalist system we’ve grown accustomed to is an extractive and predatory one directly in opposition to a natural system we should be striving to emulate – one that circulates resources and exits largely in equilibrium with its different parts. His concept of the Pollination Approach (or regenerative economics) is about developing economic structures that are capable of balance: where communities are built to directly benefit each other and where businesses are structured to share resources and capital to all involved. In a hyper-individualistic system where loneliness and never feeling good enough are key drivers of depression, anxiety, and trauma, how could we not benefit from feeling more connected to each other, our communities, and the businesses that exist within them?
They talk about different ways the pollination approach could be applied; how psychedelics disrupt these broken systems; how we can make these treatments affordable; and why we should be focusing on the delivery and integration of substances rather than creating new ones. And since Hayward is about to graduate from Vital’s inaugural run, he shares his feelings on the program and how it fell into this concept of regenerative economics.
The application deadline for this year’s Vital has been extended to March 26, but this will be the last extension. So if you’re interested, now is the time to apply!
Applications are open until March 26 for the second edition of Vital, our 12-month training certificate program in psychedelic therapy and integration, beginning in April 2023. Head to Vitalpsychedelictraining.com for more info.
Notable Quotes
“Our connection to each other and to the natural world, I think, is undeniable. To argue that our individual well-being does not depend on the health of the natural systems that we depend on for food, for air, [and] for water is just folly. …I think that deep down, everybody actually knows that we’re connected, and we’ve just been taught to forget that by many cultural forces. I think psychedelics can help us remember this innate wisdom.” -Bennet
“If we go back thousands of years, our pagan ancestors believed in animism. We believed and saw that there was a spirit and an essence in everything. And yet today, through this reductionist mindset (ever since Descartes said, ‘I think, therefore I am’), we have gone on this odyssey which has fortified this belief that we live in a separate existence, a separate world where there’s no room to see the world around us as being alive [and] full of spirit. …If we’re able to see the world as alive, [and] we’re able to develop an intimate relationship with all things around us, one might think that these feelings of loneliness could dissipate somewhat.” -Giles
“The principles of nature are sacred. Whether we like it or not, we live in a world of natural systems, and if we’re unwilling to behave in a way according to the principles of natural systems, then the natural systems will survive. We’re the ones who will not.” -Bennet
In this episode of Psychedelics Weekly, David is joined by Kyle, who is finally home after a lot of traveling, to talk shop and dig into the articles they found the most interesting this week.
They begin with the news that Paul Stamets now has a species of mushroom named after him (Psilocybe stametsii), then take a look at a recent self-report study called “Prevalence and associations of challenging, difficult or distressing experiences using classic psychedelics,” which aimed to collect data on just how many psychedelic users (in this study, anyone who had ever tried a psychedelic) felt that they had had a challenging or difficult experience. They discuss the results and highlight some interesting data: that LSD was the most commonly associated substance, that smoking cannabis was one of the most commonly reported interventions, and of course, the question of whether or not these experiences were beneficial.
They then talk about Synthesis Institute closing its doors, the possible hope Synthesis could have, and the sadness in this – when businesses fail, it’s easy to look at numbers and profit margins and be dismissive, but we forget the people involved; not just at Synthesis, but the hundreds of would-be students.
And lastly, they look at an article about a California-based startup called the Reality Center, which uses a combination of pulsing lights, sounds, and vibrations to create a drug-free but seemingly very psychedelic experience, reminding us yet again that you do not need a substance to achieve non-ordinary states of consciousness.
In this episode, David interviews Kevin Cannella, LPC: MAPS-trained psychedelic psychotherapist and Co-Founder and Executive Director of Thank You Life, a nonprofit organization working to provide access to psychedelic therapy by eliminating its financial barriers.
Co-Founded by Dr. Dan Engle, Thank You Life is very new and still in the process of officially launching, having just obtained 501(c)(3) status in December and recently gaining its first corporate sponsor in Dr. Bronner’s. The nonprofit came from the realization of just how expensive psychedelic-assisted therapy can be, and Cannella wondering: what if there was a fund practitioners could plug into when a patient couldn’t pay? While access for the patient is obvious, this model benefits the practitioner as well, which is something not often discussed in the psychedelic space – we focus a lot on how much these services will cost the patient, but rarely on the practitioner deserving to be paid fairly for their time and expertise.
Cannella tells his story of immersion into a world of ayahuasca, yoga, and vipassana meditation; volunteering at the Temple of the Way of Light, living in Hawaii, then Brazil, and finally, landing at Naropa University, where his passions were finally validated. He discusses looking for signs and learning to trust intuition, ways to increase accessibility outside of a 501(c)(3) model, how it feels to be paid well for your work, and why he only wants to work with practitioners who offer therapy alongside their chosen substance.
Head to their website to donate to the Thank You Life fund, and follow them on socials for details on upcoming launch/fundraising events in April and May, including a public event at the also-new California Center for Psychedelic Therapy. For larger donations or partnership inquiries, email kevin@thankyoulife.org.
Notable Quotes
“If the client couldn’t pay, the financial burden was falling on the therapist or the clinic, although a lot of what was in my field was just therapists in private practice. Therapists can take some sliding scale people, maybe they even do some pro bono, but they still need to make a living and they can’t just be giving away their hours and their time. So this sort of Utopian thought was like: wouldn’t it be great if there was just a fund that we could all plug into, and then that fund could take the financial burden, and we could just be saying yes to the people that we want to be saying yes to?”
“What it feels like in my body when I would do a session for $70 compared to $150: it’s different. It’s different to get paid well. It’s a different energetic experience to get paid well. And I have so much more to give when I’m getting paid well, because I’m not burdened by feeling undervalued and feeling like I’m in this uphill battle with making a good financial living for myself and my family.”
“I think it can be one big shift in the whole way our culture looks at mental health if it becomes a standard that employers offer psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for trauma healing. I mean, what a shift that that would bring, just on its own. …How different would it be if not only could you share with your boss that you got a ketamine treatment, but that the company was actually paying for it and saying, ‘Yes, go get your healing.’?”
In this episode of Psychedelics Weekly, Kyle is joined by another new voice from the PT team: one of the main instructors and facilitators from our Vital program, Diego Pinzon.
Originally from Colombia, Diego has been living in Australia since 2008 and has been involved in the Australian psychedelic scene, playing roles in the charity sector, research with Psychae Institute, and is one of the researchers in the St. Vincent’s Melbourne trial, Australia’s first trial using psilocybin for end-of-life depression and anxiety. Diego gives his insight into the recent TGA re-scheduling of psilocybin and MDMA for treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, respectively.
They cover the details, unknowns, and concerns: Is there enough time to train enough people? Do they have the infrastructure for this? What are the substances actually going to be? What percentage of people who apply will be granted access? What will it cost? And while psychiatrists will be able to prescribe, how much will the program really focus on therapy?
And they discuss Vancouver’s Filament Health creating the world’s first ayahuasca pill, which is close to FDA authorization to begin a Phase 1 trial. Of course this news begs some questions as well, mainly: with psychedelic use being such an active experience, how much does something like this change our relationship to ayahuasca? And with a consistent, more predictable experience, does that kill the magic?
In this episode, Joe interviews Jessica “Jaz” Cadoch: anthropologist, Co-Director of the Global Psychedelic Society, and Prop 122 steering committee member; and Sovereign Oshumare: Founder of XRYSALIS, an online community and retreat for queer, transgender, and intersex people of color, and Founder of Shelterwood Collective, a 900-acre eco-village and retreat center led by LGBTQ Black and Indigenous people.
Together, they are Co-Founders of ALKEMI, a consulting firm for psychedelic ethics and accountability, created due to the amount of businesses coming into this space who likely have very little understanding of the values that were established while they weren’t paying attention. They’re asking businesses questions many don’t consider: Is there a true need for them? Do they know their community and does the community want them there? Are their internal operations hierarchal or decentralized? Do employees feel heard and seen? And most importantly, have they taken any of the lessons from psychedelics and applied them towards the way they handle business and treat each other?
As Cadoch was a member of the steering committee for Colorado’s Natural Medicine Act (AKA Prop 122), she discusses what it was like from the inside: the problems (complaints about who was involved, if the voices from the community were a true representation, language in the bill); how the conflict showed how easily money and power could embody people; the problems with fighting over perfection while people are being sentenced to prison; and, where everyone is now: together in the aftermath, trying to figure out how to work together, unite missions, and build bridges between seemingly disparate parties.
They also discuss the problems with binary thinking, the concept of a business recalibrating its relationship to profit and ROI, what true access means, why it’s ok to go slow and not rush through the uncomfortable, and more.
Notable Quotes
“How are you really taking the lessons that the medicines are teaching us and applying them to the way you’re building your company? …Are you doing psychedelic business or are you doing business psychedelically?” -Jaz
“Each time that I’m broken, I’m rebuilt stronger. And that, to me, is such a journey. And committing to that journey is what I hope we as ALKEMI bestow upon people; giving them the endurance and stamina to be broken and be rebuilt, because we all need that. This system needs that. This world needs that. And we live in a system where we’re rewarded for not doing it.” -Sovereign
“At the end of the day, we are all we got. And the more we know who we are, the more we find alignment, the more we find each other, the more we mend our differences, the stronger we’ll be.” -Sovereign
“When we talk about access, it’s not only like financial access, but it’s also cultural access – to make it make sense for people who don’t speak this language, make it make sense for people who have survivor’s guilt from growing up in the hood in D.C., make it make sense for Hispanic rural communities, make it make sense for my Grandmother that needs a doctor in a white coat to tell her that this is safe. That’s what access means. It’s all of that.” -Jaz
In this episode, David interviews Raad Seraj: host of Minority Trip Report, a podcast for underrepresented views in psychedelics and mental health, and founder of Mission Club, an education and investment platform.
Seraj tells his story of growing up in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia and eventually finding himself in Canada, and how the discomfort and rage he felt as a result of class and xenophobia affected him. He talks about the idea behind his podcast, Minority Trip Report, and how, while they need to be heard, underrepresented and BIPOC voices aren’t a monolith. And he talks about the incestuous and gatekeeping nature of venture capital and the complications of actually turning investments into lasting business. With Mission club (which is partnering with Microdose), he aims to create opportunities for people who don’t have a ton of money to invest in early stage companies in this space, to help the dreamers who don’t necessarily fit the bill for traditional VC.
And he discusses much more: David Chalmers’ theory of “The Extended Mind”; the problems with having one idea of mental health and summarizing complicated minds into little boxes; how we are made up of different selves and how psychedelics can help us to acknowledge and integrate our minority selves; the differences between anger and rage and how 5-MeO-DMT helped him shed his rage; how we can use technology, culture, and capital together to amplify what exists and build what doesn’t; the three places that have transformed him the most; and initiating a bus-wide Cyndi Lauper sing-along while on tour with Finger Eleven as a host for Much Music.
Notable Quotes
“If you talk about mental health and healing: all healing is the reintegration of the narrative landscape – the autobiographical story. But the problem is; when you only have one type of story, one type of autobiographical narrative that gets to be heard, that gets to be embedded, that gets to be shared, that gets to go viral; and from that, you build courses and infrastructure and definitions of what mental health is and then you sort of impose it on the rest of the world – that is a problem because mental health is ultimately about being a human being, and we are multipolar beings and we are forced to be summarized in very small ways, whether by society or by systems.”
“You have a part that is elevated above the body and the mind and the consciousness, and seeing and observing yourself and your truest nature and your truest needs and wants and desires and so on, and I think with people who are on the margins (again, whether you’re Jewish, whether you’re bisexual, whether you’re a person of color, whether you’re an immigrant, or whatever), the parts that you suppress the most all of a sudden find light. They can be seen; that’s where the light gets in. And then that temporary visibility of all of a sudden seeing that part of you without judgment, and being almost agnostic to those parts, is powerful.”
“I recognized very early on [that] there was class. Race came after. Race is a 400-year-old concept. Class is a permanent part of any human society, but class is so much more insidious. We don’t talk about it.”
“At the surface of everything, whether it’s culture, politics, music, tech: it’s all bullshit. There’s a thin sheen of garbage. You have to dig a little deeper to find the true stuff.”
For this week’s episode, we had plans for a guest to join Joe to talk about some legal battles, but as seems to be the norm this time of year, sickness postponed that conversation to a future date. With David taking some much-deserved time off and Kyle in Jamaica on a Vital retreat, this Psychedelics Weekly is a rarity: just Joe, monologuing the news.
It’s probably best to just listen and head to the links to follow along, but some highlights this week are: Prince Harry coming out of the psychedelic closet; Virginia lawmakers proposing the legalization of psilocybin; psychedelics legislation already in plans for nearly a dozen states in 2023; NBC news recognizing the need psychedelic therapists, facilitators, and education; the WHO aiming to rename 5-MeO-DMT to Mebufotenin; and Roland Griffiths creating The Roland R. Griffiths, Ph.D. Professorship Fund to ensure his work continues to be recognized after he passes.
He also talks about Convergence, and you should know that prices increase on January 16, so don’t wait any longer! Check back next week for more news and, *fingers-crossed* a co-host – hopefully Kyle calling in to tell us all about the retreat!
In this week’s episode, Joe and Kyle are together again before Kyle sets off for a 2-month road trip centered around Vital retreats, where we hope he’ll be able to report in from live while in Jamaica.
In this week’s episode, Kyle is back on the podcast, joining Joe to discuss three recent articles; two of which pose a lot of questions.
They first look at Colorado’s Proposition 122, which, now that it has passed, enters into the long and arduous process of being figured out – all while existing in the complicated paradigm of state vs. federal legality. One of the biggest concerns revolves around data collection and privacy: Is the collected data truly anonymous? Since psychedelics will still be federally illegal, how can we trust that the DEA isn’t going to abuse their power?
Next, they discuss Attorney General Merrick Garland making moves to end the sentencing disparity between offenses involving powder cocaine and crack cocaine: while essentially the same substance, being caught with 28 grams of crack cocaine currently carries the same sentencing as having 500 grams of powder!
And lastly, they touch on a very interesting article from Lucid News about the value of psychedelic therapy, which gives some staggering data points showing why the black market will always exist: MDMA-assisted therapy sessions likely costing $11,500 (with the MDMA itself costing between $480 and $9,600), Esketamine treatments costing as much as $32,400 a year, and more – all with results that don’t seem to be as long-lasting as many believed they would be. This one deserves more analysis, but Joe and Kyle had limited time for recording this week, so stay tuned for more. For now, enjoy this episode, and Happy Holidays from the Psychedelics Today team!
In this episode, David interviews Sherry Rais: Executive Director of the Boston Psychedelic Research Group, Grants Manager for CIIS, and CEO/Co-Founder of Enthea.
Enthea is a benefit plan administrator that provides health plan benefit riders and single case agreement services for psychedelic healthcare with a provider network including certified and credentialed Ketamine-Assisted Therapy (KAT) and Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy (PAT) practitioners. In other words, if a company wants to offer psychedelic-assisted therapy as a benefit for their employees, Enthea makes this possible (and affordable). Their first client was the very psychedelically-minded Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, and they’ve just announced the signings of three new clients that you may not expect to provide KAP to their employees: Daybreaker, Tushy, and Guinn Partners. Their goal is to have 100,000 covered lives in 40 cities by the end of 2023, and, alongside the guidance of MAPS, hopefully roll out MDMA-assisted therapy in Q2 of 2024.
Rais talks about Enthea’s process, costs, and goals; her Ismaili religion; her nomadic, marathon-running life; her experience sleeping on the streets of Toronto at 16 and her need to help the less-fortunate; how her most powerful psychedelic experience was watching someone else transform; and why companies are suddenly interested in these emerging therapies.
Notable Quotes
“For me, the most powerful psychedelic experience I had was actually in a situation where I was sitting with someone else and saw this person transform in front of me. That was two years ago and that person; I still see the effects of that experience on that person’s life and how much he’s changed from this one experience, and I’ve never seen anything like it. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed.”
“I think you and I know that these medicines work, and we also know that they cost way more than $500, and immediately, that tells me there’s an equity crisis in the ecosystem; that we’ve finally found medicines that may be able to help millions of people that are suffering from a variety of issues, and there’s this huge barrier and its cost. So the goal of Enthea is to solve that problem by making these medicines affordable.”
“The fact that you have a plan that doesn’t cover mental health is very telling of the landscape and the culture in America today and why you’ve made the case for me on why Enthea is needed. Because if this doesn’t happen, when will people get access? They’ll continue waiting and waiting and waiting that their primary insurance provider covers this.”
This week features David Drapkin, Joe Moore (for the first part), and introduces Alexa Jesse, who you’ve probably heard in ads, but who makes her first appearance on the podcast.
They discuss two big political moves in the advancement of psychedelics: the creation of the Congressional Psychedelics Advancing Clinical Treatments (PACT) Caucus (led by Representatives Lou Correa (D-CA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI)), and the filing of the Breakthrough Therapies Act by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rand Paul (R-KY).
And they talk about the story of Jim Harris overcoming paralyzation through psilocybin; NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) determining that Esketamine is not cost-effective; new progress in Germany and Finland; MDMA-assisted therapy (and other psychedelics) showing alleviation of chronic pain; a ramp up in LSD research for Alzheimer’s studies; and more.
Plus, we hear a bit of Alexa’s story, wish Joe and Johanna happy birthdays, and talk about what’s most immediate in the PT world: Early Bird pricing ending today for our first conference, Convergence (use code PTINSIDER10 for a 10% discount!), and the next round of Navigating Psychedelics launching next week.
In this episode, Joe interviews Christopher Dawson & Andrew Galloway: Co-Founders and CEO and COO, respectively, of Dimensions; a Canadian-based company creating retreats that blend traditional plant ceremonies with neuroscience and a luxurious, five-star environment.
Dawson realized what so many people were starting to learn about psychedelics after attending a 2015 conference in Peru that mixed neuroscientists with traditional healers, but for Galloway, it was direct experience, as he gives credit to plant medicines for helping him to heal from a 6-year addiction to crack cocaine. They each tell their story and how it led to the beginnings of Dimensions, where they worked for a year with a “Dreamlab” team of MDs, psychiatrists, practitioners from different fields, and even a design agency to create different programs for different substances – all with a focus on true set and setting and integrating perfectly with nature. They’re in the middle of a soft launch right now, offering cannabis in a ceremonial, group setting context to friends and families at their Algonquin Highlands location; perfecting everything before opening up to the general public. And once the law catches up with them, they hope to offer psilocybin and other psychedelic-assisted therapy across several new retreat locations.
They talk about Health Canada and the country’s trajectory towards legal psychedelics; critiques of traditional addiction treatment and the efficacy of 12-step programs; the tension between the psychedelic space and traditional healing space; investing in biotech; the polyvagal theory; how animals deal with trauma (and how we don’t); and the concept of integration: If you’re just taking a pill and not doing the work, are you missing the point entirely?
Notable Quotes
“We’re biased (we’re in the retreat business), but I don’t think that psilocybin, as an example, should be reduced to a pill that you take with your juice in the morning and you no longer take your SSRI because this is your new pill. For us, it’s the psychedelic-assisted therapy that actually maximizes the potential of the psychedelic experience, and that’s the mechanisms through which fundamental, behavioral change can take place. I think the idea that a pill can replace all of that means that you’re kind of missing the point about the whole experience.” -Chris “I don’t want to slam traditional treatment because it actually did work for me to some degree. …I had a crack-cocaine addiction for six-seven years and ended up in rehab for six months and came back and participated in 12-step programs and remained abstinent. That part worked. The difference for me when I got involved with plant medicine was something else: I got healed. Instead of just abstaining and not using to cope or to manage with whatever I was dealing with, I actually healed through plant medicine.” -Andrew “Is it a pill or is it the therapeutic process? If you don’t engage in integration, then you’re just taking a pill.” -Chris
“We talked about stigma earlier; it’s changing, and [for] the general public, the stigma around the war on drugs is changing too. I think people have finally figured out that it doesn’t work. No war works. We only declare war on things that we can make money from.” -Andrew
Christopher Dawson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Dimensions, a growing collection of retreat destinations combining neuroscientific research with plant ceremony in immersive natural environments. Prior to co-founding Dimensions, Christopher was the founder and CEO of Edgewood Health Network, where he oversaw the largest private network of residential/outpatient treatment providers in Canada and led the merger and acquisition of Canada’s top three treatment centers to create that network.
About Andrew Galloway
Andrew Galloway is the Co-Founder and COO of Dimensions, a new paradigm for healing, combining ancient ceremonial plant medicines with modern science in safe, legal, and nurturing natural environments. He leads the organization’s clinical teams and operations for Dimensions Retreats, a new collection of immersive, transformational healing retreats combining neuroscientific research with plant ceremony and luxurious hospitality. Prior to co-founding Dimensions, he was a National Director of Edgewood Health Network; leading 10 outpatient centers. Andrew was the former VP at GreeneStone Muskoka, an international certified alcohol and drug counsellor, and has 14 years of experience working directly for the NHL/NHLPA substance abuse program.
In this episode of the podcast, Joe interviews the CEO of Mindset Pharma, James Lanthier.
Mindset Pharma is a 3-year old biotechnology company built on discovering and developing new psychedelic compounds to be used as medicine for a variety of indications. While the efficacy of the psychedelics we know can’t be denied, the goal of science is to improve, and Lanthier believes optimizing these drugs will make them safer, more predictable, and more palatable for a far greater portion of the population. He envisions these new molecules leading to a future of highly personalized medicine, where people who would never eat a mushroom would likely take a related drug prescribed by their doctor.
Lanthier discusses what’s going on at Mindset Pharma; why patents alone will not be sufficient protection from competition; the long game of biotech, psychedelic stocks, and overreaction to slow growth; the Nagoya protocol; mescaline; the need for big pharma and capitalism; the art of formulation; and how microdosing could soon be revolutionized.
Notable Quotes
“I had some fairly well-known psychedelic investors say to me, ‘You’re just building a better mousetrap.’ And my reaction was: ‘Well, that’s the march of science. That’s what science is trying to do.’ Take the example of what the German scientist [Felix Hoffman] did in the nineteenth century to go from the bark of the willow tree, eventually going through a whole bunch of intermediate chemical steps to eventually get to Aspirin. Science hopefully tries to make things better, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
“Big pharma has skipped right past psilocybin. Why? In my view, it would be because of the lack of strong IP rights. They’ve gone right to second and third generation drugs because they’ve made the assessment that even if you own the strongest IP in the psilocybin space, you’re still quite exposed, ultimately, to competition.”
“I think if there’s a future where you have relatively low-priced classic drugs potentially available alongside more optimized, specific drugs that have the full support of the medical community, that would be a great place to get to, I think – really great place to get to. And I think we only really get there with the machinery of capitalism moving forward.”
James Lanthier is the CEO of Mindset Pharma, and is a seasoned technology executive with strong expertise in corporate finance, public markets and M&A. Most recently, Mr. Lanthier was a co-founder and CEO of Future Fertility, an innovative early stage developer of AI applications for human infertility. As a C-Suite executive, Mr. Lanthier has assisted in the growth and successful exit of numerous technology-enabled businesses through the public markets, including Mood Media, the world’s largest in-store media provider, and Fun Technologies, a pioneer in online casual games.
In this episode, Joe interviews Julie Zukof: Head of Strategic Partnerships for Nue Life and the creator of Psychedelic Women, and Michelle Weiner: a double board-certified Doctor specializing in integrative pain management, using cannabis, ketamine, and other holistic modalities to get to the root cause of chronic pain.
Weiner tells of how her pain-management methods changed as her patients told her about the healing power of cannabis and ketamine, and how she was even more inspired by learning how much chronic pain is a result of fight-or-flight trauma reactions and resulting learned behavior. She discusses the central sensitization of fibromyalgia; ketamine infusions and dose discovery; the differences between how therapists and coaches are viewed (and the need for both); session music and trusting the facilitator in their music choice; and the importance of preparing for a ketamine experience through meditation and/or breathwork.
And they talk about Psychedelic Women, which was just founded in January as a result of Zukof realizing how much women were a minority in the psychedelic space. She talks about why we need more women in psychedelia; women’s natural inclination to connect and support each other; and how medicine should mirror that – where people from all methodologies can work together for the betterment of the patient. Psychedelic Women is in the process of updating from a speaker series to a more community-based platform. If you want to become a part of the community, sign up at their waitlist today!
Notable Quotes
“Personally, the coaches and the therapists that I use (my nurse practitioners) are mainly women. And I don’t know if that’s because they gravitate towards this field or because patients gravitate towards them, but there’s that nurturing, innate property of being a woman that also is special and unique and we can use to our advantage in that sense.” -Michelle
“I think people are under the impression that psychedelics are always meant to be enjoyable. And while ketamine oftentimes is enjoyable, sometimes it’s meant to be part of a healing journey.” -Julie
“I credit Dustin [Robinson] for bringing us on and featuring the group at Soho House, and something he said was, ‘It’s not that I don’t want to feature women on the panel, I just need more women in the space to feature them.’ And I think that’s an excellent point. And if we can help do something about that, then I think we’re winning.” -Julie
“There’s so many other people that are involved in making this experience more effective for people. It’s not just the medicine and the doctor and the therapist and the coach. …It’s so nice to see because this is really how medicine should be. It shouldn’t be everybody in their own box like with other physicians. …This whole group is really bringing people together that have certain talents and passions and saying: ‘We can work together.’” -Michelle
Julie Zukof is the creator of Psychedelic Women, a speaker series and influential community. Over her eighteen year career in NYC, Julie has created, innovated, marketed, and grown wellness brands by working at prestigious innovation firms and then starting her own consultancy. Julie is now Head of Strategic Partnerships for Nue Life, the leading mental wellness company in at-home ketamine treatments.
Dr. Michelle Weiner is double board-certified in Interventional Pain Medicine and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and a partner in private practice at Spine and Wellness Centers of America. She is a member of Florida’s Medical Cannabis Advisory Committee, vice president of Mr. Psychedelic Law, a not-for-profit with the mission of responsible legal reform of psilocybin, and a clinical advisor for Iter Investments, a venture capital firm focused on supporting emerging companies within the psychedelic ecosystem of behavioral and mental health. Dr. Weiner’s research focuses on using cannabis as a substitute for opioids in chronic pain patients and cannabis’s effect on seniors with chronic pain, as well as comparing psychedelic v psycholytic doses of ketamine for chronic pain and depression. Her unique approach of personalized and preventative medicine focuses on empowering her patients to cultivate health using cannabis and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy as a catalyst to identify the root cause of one’s suffering, optimizing their quality of life.
In this episode of the podcast, Joe interviews Lyle Maxson: Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Entheo Digital, a “technodelic” company focusing on digital therapeutics and virtual reality – both as adjuncts to psychedelic-assisted therapy, and theoretically, as new forms of medicine.
Maxson began his career by creating immersive, psychedelic-like experiences at some of the world’s largest music festivals. It was mostly those world-building experiences and some time in sensory deprivation tanks that led to his interest in seeing just what was possible through altered states of consciousness and technology. He discusses using VR before and after psychedelic experiences as a priming and integration tool; VR’s potential to ease first-time trip anxiety; Entheo Digital’s SoundSelf system and the powerful influence of biofeedback; and the question of whether or not technology (on its own) could initiate a non-ordinary state of consciousness with the same benefits as one brought on by psychedelics.
This episode treads lots of new ground, with Maxson discussing the likelihood of using different tools to be able to naturally activate endogenous DMT; the idea of a Steam-like internet marketplace for digital medicine; the possibility for technology to trigger lucid dreaming; the concept of highly-personalized digital schooling, and the tough question of how to not become so reliant on technology in such a quickly-advancing technological world. The challenge, which Maxson is eager to take on, is to shift opinions on VR from fear and pessimism to inspiration about what’s truly possible: How can we use technology not for escapism, but instead, for good?
Notable Quotes
“If you’re trying to drive to a yoga class, you’re usually more stressed out by the time you get there than if you hadn’t of left your house at all. And I feel like that’s the case with a lot of therapy work in general, whether it’s psychedelics or not; you could have [an] onboarding call with somebody the day before, but you have no idea what’s happening to them [in] the 24 hours leading up to them actually coming into your clinic. So I think the big focus on the priming is: how do we have reliable, very consistent treatment processes with being able to drop people into a very deep surrender, meditative, introspective state prior to them actually going into a therapeutic process?”
“I think that eventually, you’ll start to combine light, frequency, vibration, [and] electromagnetics to the point where you could actually activate DMT inside of your brain without having to use it from an external source – so like, literally using technology to activate the psychedelics inside of your own body. I think we will get to that place and that will be very interesting.”
“What [we’re] doing with creating digital medicine is a holy grail type of project, but with that comes the reverse side; which is the addiction that we already have to computers is off the charts, but what happens when you could literally press play and get high at any moment? Would people ever get off of it? So that’s a philosophical question, but I think we’re actually going to butt up against that in the next few years as we continue to develop this technology.”
“What does it look like to get in on the ground floor? It’d be really hard to do that in movies or radio or the variety of mediums; TV shows, all of those things. Like, they’re already pretty much dominated by content that we don’t really want or doesn’t make us feel better when we watch it. But with VR, it’s early enough to get in on the ground floor and create compelling alternatives to the zombie shooter games and the porn that will inevitably fill the device, and get people thinking about how to be an embodied avatar inside of a virtual world and do it for good instead of for escapism.”
Lyle Maxson is the Co-Founder of GeniusX, an XR education platform reimagining online learning. He is also the Co-Founder of Andromeda Entertainment, a VR publishing company focused on bringing to market “games for good,” which developed and published the first-ever digital psychedelic, Soundself VR, as well as the breakout hit, Audio Trip (voted best dance game of 2019 by VR insider). His latest venture, Entheo Digital, seeks to provide digital therapeutics solutions for psychedelic therapy and the treatment of mental health disorders. Lyle has appeared on a variety of stages, speaking on benevolent technology and the positive impact immersive tech can play in our future. He runs a 50,000 person community of transformative entertainment enthusiasts and is a pioneer in the neurohacking movement.
In this episode of the podcast, David interviews Anne Philippi; Founder & CEO of The New Health Club. Prior to her work with TNHC, Anne was a journalist for VOGUE, GQ, and Vanity Fair.
Philippi takes us through the arc of her departure from the media world in 2018 and into the realm of psychedelia. She opens up about her first experiences with LSD and psilocybin; how those journeys helped her shake off her “old narrative” as a journalist and step into her “real narrative”; the podcast that was birthed out of that inner work and its transformation into a business; and the work TNHC now does with ketamine and psilocybin truffles. Along with her personal story, she talks about things like integration; how the meaning of symbols witnessed in journeys becomes clearer over time; generational trauma (especially as experienced by Germans); non-linear healing; and how modern data pertaining to psychedelics is outshining the hangover from the US’s drug war propaganda.
Using the current COVID era and Ukraine/Russia conflict as examples, Philippi shares how crises can inspire togetherness and the importance of making psychedelic therapy available to refugees. She takes a very optimistic stance on the incorporation of psychedelics into the workplace as a means to help it evolve, and she talks about the toxicity of hustle culture; how safe, supported psychedelic practices can prevent burnout in the workforce; the companies that are already offering psychedelic experiences and therapy for their staff; and the value in entertaining psychedelics as a preventative measure – not just a recuperative treatment.
Notable Quotes
“I really think that with a psychedelic experience, or a regular checking in with [yourself] based on that psychedelic experience (maybe even to go on a guided trip [once or twice] a year), it’s really easier to acknowledge your body, to have a conversation with your body. Because we don’t say, ‘I’m tired, I feel like I need to take a break’; we mostly overstep that moment because then you have another coffee or you go for a run – all these tools we have in our Western society to ignore our exhaustion limits.” “Let’s say you have an amazing psychedelic trip, and then you go back to your shitty life and you don’t change that, and you don’t go in nature, and you don’t have a community, and you’re in a toxic relationship – then the trip doesn’t actually matter in a weird way. I think that’s also something that is becoming now very clear; that the surrounding where you actually land after your trip also has to be transformed.” “I think in the next five years, there might be completely transformed companies coming out of a psychedelic leadership idea. And again, that doesn’t mean the crazy CEO who is going crazy on ayahuasca, it’s just really to have a very conscious use of these substances, to really look into a better understanding of a very productive and creative community that is not suffering from [a] toxic work environment anymore.”
“You can find this kind of truth with the help of psychedelics. The people who I have talked to who have experienced that, whatever substance it is …pretty much, that’s the bottom line [of] what people say. At the same time, we should not really forget to say those people who found that had also done a proper integration and keep doing it, even after months and months of experiencing what they have seen.”
Anne Philippi was a successful journalist with a strong background in established media, journalism, and communication. She published books, worked for Condé Nast, was a Vanity Fair reporter in Berlin and for GQ in Los Angeles, and she wrote for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about tech and California. In 2019, she founded The New Health Club podcast and newsletter, and created a space where CEOs, founders, investors, scientists, and therapists from the new psychedelic ecosystem and business world could talk abut the disruptive power of psychedelics, new markets, new compounds, and psychedelic medicine. In 2021, Anne made it onto Psychedelic Invest‘s list of the 100 most influential people in psychedelics. She is working on bringing The New Health Club to the next level soon.
In this episode of the podcast, Joe interviews Kole, who was famously arrested for growing and possessing mushrooms in Denver back in 2019 – shortly after psilocybin had been decriminalized there.
Kole has moved on from his past and has begun a new life far away from any drugs, but he shares his whole story here, in his only podcast appearance. He discusses why he decided to start growing mushrooms; how he became involved in the decriminalization movement; why he brought several journalists to personally see his grow; and how, even though those journalists may not have had bad intentions, that blind trust led to his downfall.
He describes how the arrest played out and why he was likely let go with probation instead of the possible 6-10 year sentence he had heard warnings of. And he digs into the sociology in a lot of this: the disconnect between people in terrifying, life-altering moments and joking police who do this every day; “man’s law” and how the law is not necessarily put in place for ethical reasons; and how breaking the law (and getting caught) doesn’t just affect you, but affects everyone you care about too.
In this psychedelic echo chamber many of us live in, it’s easy to feel so strongly that what we’re doing is right, and start acting reckless; trusting anyone in the space, and believing that “that could never happen to me” when seeing others get caught. This episode is an important reminder to be extremely careful in your actions and in who you trust.
Notable Quotes
“They actually took the handcuffs off me and the agent guy kind of made a joke, like, ‘You’re not going to start swinging if I take these off, are you?’ And I’m getting the impression that it’s just another day on the job for them. But it’s sort of a life-altering moment for me. Sort of a weird disconnect there.”
“I wasn’t really doing something that created victims or hurt people, but the whole idea to make it sound like I’m leaving this environment where I was doing this? I wasn’t hurting people. My efforts through activism and cultivating was to help people and myself. So it’s weird to say I’m in a prosocial environment when I already was in one. I was around good people and I was doing the right things and I was working a full-time job. Nothing about my life was criminal in the sense that there are victims from my actions. So it’s just very weird how it was all framed just because of what the law is.”
“Other people’s ignorance affects your freedom, and I think that’s completely true, whether it’s social, political, [or] legally. Ignorance definitely harms everyone.”
“The idea that it is illegal and that there are consequences is sort of separate from actually having consequences and having all that happen to you and thinking that you’re going to be going to prison. They’re two totally different animals. I suppose if you’re going to learn from other people’s experiences; learn from mine, and do not be public with your activism, because you never know. You never know what could happen. You might not be as lucky as me.”
In this episode of the podcast, recorded live from the Archipelago Attic space in Denver, CO, Joe sat down with Unlimited Sciences founder, Del Jolly; Former UFC champion and Hall of Famer, Rashad Evans; and 10-year NFL veteran quarterback, Jake Plummer, at the initial launch of their new functional mushrooms company, Umbo Mushrooms.
Plummer and Evans tell their story of how they met Jolly and transformed from professional athletes to long-haired mycophiles who are now running their own mushroom company; discussing how difficult transitioning back to normal everyday life after a sports career can be, and how CBD, following the Stamet’s stack protocol, and learning about all the anecdotal evidence of brain injury healing started to make them question what kind of long-term issues they may have coming to them (fellow athletes have asked Evans: “Do you feel it?”). Jolly believes that functional mushrooms have just as much, if not more potential to help humanity than the often higher-praised psilocybin.
The four of them talk about a lot more in this nearly 2-hour panel discussion (with audience questions): the power in language and how a diagnosis can be a wall people put up that blocks progress; how valuable it is to learn from each other in group preparation and integration sessions (Evans calls these ceremonies “share-emonies” for this reason); how the UFC and NFL feel about psychedelics; microdosing and competition; NFTs; the Telluride Mushroom Festival; and the problem with TBI often being misdiagnosed as PTSD. And they discuss what steps we can take to better align our communities to the set and setting we want; the importance of slowing down; how every person has a specific audience they can reach; how we can learn from Indigenous people about our lost connection to community; and the interesting question of if we actually feel better from eating mushrooms because as a society, we completely removed them from our diets and our bodies have been craving them ever since.
Umbo Mushrooms has just recently launched and they’re offering a 20% off discount for PT listeners (use code Unlimited20 at checkout). Additionally, if you are planning to use psilocybin outside a research laboratory before July 1st, Unlimited Sciences is running a study to learn more about the positive and/or negative outcomes of using psilocybin in more natural settings. You can participate here.
Notable Quotes
“As a big advocate for psilocybin in particular, functional mushrooms have just as much, if not more potential to help humanity than psilocybin. I really believe that. And it’s just a matter of time before some eight year old kid is going to come up and say, ‘Oh, that’s the key. Look what I found!’ Boom. ‘Now my Dad really isn’t going to age.’” -Del
“I think tapping into those Indigenous voices – those stories, the history – is very important for the movement because they understood community. And when you look at what are the biggest [ailments] in our society is the fact that we have a broken community. Our communities are broken for the larger part. And finding ways to tap back into that old knowledge of ways we used to be can get us to remember what we are [and] how to be towards each other. I think that we don’t get better as a world until we get better as a community, and I think tapping into those strong Indigenous community roots would help us to be what we could be.” -Rashad
“The world doesn’t need psychedelics. The world needs community and a meditation practice. But psychedelics is the 2×4 that brings you to that awareness.” -Del
“Don’t minimize what your impact is. If you’re Rashad Evans with a platform, [a] Hall of Famer, Jake Plummer, [whoever]… Either you’re that or this. Don’t minimize what it is, because whoever you’re speaking to might be the person who sets it off.” -Del
“I think once you get into the mushrooms, you can’t help but learn more kindness, compassion, and love. It will open your mind. That’s kind of why I said those three words; is if we can keep that in front of everything and also the sacred part of everything… Everything should be a lot more sacred than it is, everything we do. I find myself grabbing food and eating it and then going, ‘Damn, I didn’t even really thank this food for being here.’ We take a lot of things for granted, so I think just starting with that awareness can be a step in the right direction.” -Jake
“Suga” Rashad Evans (left) is a former UFC light heavy weight champion and Hall of Famer. He currently is an ESPN analyst for the UFC and Co-Founder of Umbo Mushrooms.
Jake Plummer (center) is a former NFL Pro-bowl quarter back who played 10 years in the league with the Arizona Cardinals and the Denver Broncos. He is now a mycophile who runs Umbo and Mycolove Farms.
This week, we celebrated a humbling achievement at Psychedelics Today: three million unique downloads of the Psychedelics Today podcast!
This milestone couldn’t come at a more fitting time. It seems like the stars are aligning and shining a spotlight on progress in psychedelics, with Bicycle Day and the kickoff of our new, 12-month practitioner training program, Vital, both occurring in a 48-hour window last week. Amidst it all, the podcast download counter kept going, and rolled over to an incredible three million just a few days later. We couldn’t be more grateful to all our listeners who enjoy, support, and engage with the podcast. You’ve helped Psychedelics Today get to where we are simply by tuning in.
Psychedelics Today has also achieved the #9 rank of all Apple Life Sciences podcasts in the United States, and it stands alone as the only psychedelics-themed podcast in the Top 100 list!
When it comes to podcast guests, we’ve been lucky over the years. Our team has recorded with many world-renowned figures in psychedelic science, culture, and advocacy. But from the day we started recording in 2016, we wanted the Psychedelics Today podcast to be more than a platform for well-known figures.
Intentionally, we’ve made ample space for conversations with people who are quietly doing important work behind the scenes, too. Because this is an area of great complexity and one in which experience matters, the Psychedelics Today podcast is designed to give listeners a richness in perspective they won’t find anywhere else.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to us. We are humbled by your support and your willingness to listen to all that we and our guests have to say – which, over the past six years, has been more than a mouthful.
Looking for some essential listening? These are the Top 8 most downloaded Psychedelics Today podcasts of all-time, and some of our favorite discussions:
Joe had been raving about Dr. Carl Hart’s Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear for months before we were able to get him on, and the nearly 2-hour conversation shows just how much Hart’s views align with ours: that the drug war is doing exactly what those in power created it for, that drug exceptionalism 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.
This is one of Kyle’s favorites, since it highlighted so much about cognitive liberty and failed drug policy – two ideas central to the Psychedelics Today ethos. And it may be Joe’s favorite episode: “That was a scary one, because I wanted to do it so well and I respect him so much, that I’m like, ‘Can we do this well?’ And we did. So please check that one out. That one’s really important to me.”
“When these people say that they are worried about drug addiction or [that] 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.”
Manesh Girn is a Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience at McGill University and co-author of over a dozen scientific publications, most recently on the neurocognitive processes behind creative thinking and the potentiality for psychedelics to enhance creativity. He’s been on the podcast twice, runs a YouTube channel called The Psychedelic Scientist, and is now part of the Vital faculty as well.
This one went deep into a lot of neuroscience; covering neuroplasticity, the similarities between psychedelic mind states and dream states, distinctions in creativity, how psilocybin can affect creativity, and the complicated idea of ego dissolution: Do we really understand what it is? Do ego death and a mystical experience always have to go hand-in-hand?
“Other research has exclusively linked psychedelic experiences to the dream state, and seeing that they’re phenomenologically similar. There’s a lot of overlap in a number of different ways of looking at it. So then, on the basis of that, I was like, ok, so if we conceptualize psychedelics as almost being like dreaming (but awake), then that could be a great source of novel ideas and creative ideas because you’re now in this mental state that’s unconstrained by logic, it’s unconstrained by a need to make sense, and you can get this more free flow of ideas.”
Before Michelle was a member of the PT team and featured in many solidarity Friday episodes (and a follow-up to this episode on Magic Mushroom day), we just knew her as an extremely knowledgeable mushroom connoisseur and the author of Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion, an easy-to-use guide to understanding magic mushrooms, trips, microdosing, and psychedelic therapy. Reflecting back, Joe said: “Michelle saw that there [weren’t] really great resources for people and put this book together. …I actually don’t know of anything better that’s mushroom-specific, still to this day.”
In the episode, she tells her story and why she wanted to write the book, which she also talked a lot about on Solidarity Friday episodes: that despite what many mainstream minds will tell you, there isn’t one right way to use psilocybin.
“As long as you’re being safe with your surroundings and with yourself, any way is the right way.”
In this episode, Joe interviewed computational neurobiologist, pharmacologist, chemist, and writer, Dr. Andrew Gallimore; one of the world’s most knowledgeable researchers on DMT. They discussed all things DMT, from entity encounters to his intravenous infusion model, which would allow a timed and steady release of DMT to induce an extended-state DMT experience – the goal being to slowly make that space more stable (and comprehensible) over time, to eventually live in the DMT space as you would in this reality. “We’ve nerded out and talked about the extended state DMT stuff for a bit. That’s highly fascinating,” said Kyle.
“We know how the brain learns to construct worlds, but we don’t know how the brain learns to construct DMT worlds.”
In this episode, Joe and Kyle finally got to interview legendary author and microdosing popularizer, James Fadiman, Ph.D. Fadiman talked about transpersonal psychology, microdosing and how it emerged, how researchers are finally starting to look at brain waves of microdosers, and his newest book, Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of Who We Are, which says that we are all made up of different selves which take lead depending on the situation.
Kyle (who has an undergraduate degree in transpersonal psychology) lists this as one of his favorites, as Fadiman laid out the emergence of transpersonal psychology and the early days of the Transpersonal Association: “I think one of my favorite parts about this was just exploring some of the history of transpersonal psychology. It was really cool to chat with him about that.” Joe added: “He was there. He is named as one of the 4, 5 people, in a sense ‘in the room’ when this came about. He’s got a lot of connection to this stuff.”
“The secret of microdosing is if you’re noticing it, that’s a little too high a dose. …The perfect definition of a microdose is: You have a really good day; you get things done that you’ve been putting off; you’re nice to someone at work who doesn’t deserve it; after work, you do one more set of reps at the gym than you usually do; you really enjoy your kids; and at the end of the day, you say, ‘Oh, I forgot I had a microdose.’”
In this episode, Joe interviewed 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 the bestseller, The Serpent and the Rainbow.
Davis discussed his history with Richard Evans Schultes, the strange phenomenon behind the growth of ayahuasca, Haitian zombies, Voodoo, and Colombia and its relationship with cocaine and coca. This one covered a lot of ground other podcasts haven’t, and it was awesome to have him on, as Joe called him “possibly the most famous person on the show, other than number 1.”
“This 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.”
In this episode, Kyle and Joe interviewed Chris Bache, author of LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven. Bache talked about music in psychedelic sessions, the debate on whether facilitators should have experiences before helping others, and the five levels of the universe as he understands them. But he mostly discussed what he learned about psychedelics, the universe, and integration from going through 73 high-dose LSD sessions (after which, he doesn’t recommend working with high doses).
Looking back, Joe said, “I think the most important part are his lessons learned and like, ‘What would you have done if you knew what you knew now? What would your protocol have been?’ I think that’s a big deal. [There’s] no way for him to go back in time but we can all learn from what he did.”
“We are moving toward a collective wake up, it’s not a personal experience, it’s a collective experience – an evolution of our species.”
While most of these episodes have been in the Top 8 for a while, we knew James Fadiman would likely end up here pretty quickly. And we were all certain that it would take no time at all for Hamilton Morris’ episode to take the top spot (also by far our most-viewed YouTube video, even though we weren’t even able to record video for the episode). How could it not take the top spot? From his work with Vice, Morris has become the go-to media consultant around psychedelics, and specifically new psychedelics, as many consider him to be the next Sasha Shulgin.
While they discussed what you’d expect (including his controversial 5-MeO-DMT episodes of “Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia”), this episode is especially notable because it’s the first time Morris had really publicly talked about his relationship with Compass Pathways – a development seen as problematic by many in the space, but a relationship that’s helping him create massive amounts of new compounds week after week.
This was an in-person recording, as Joe traveled to the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia to meet him, and they recorded just outside Morris’ lab. “It was fun,” Joe said. “[I’m] really grateful for Hamilton spending time talking to us and going into some of these fun topics.”
“Yes, there are very serious differences between [psychedelics and other drugs], but if we fall into the same moral binary, then we’re ultimately no better than people that think that the distinction between licit and illicit drugs is a pharmacologically or medically meaningful distinction.”
In this brand new CE-approved series, Kyle, Veronika Gold, and experts in trauma and ketamine-assisted therapy (KAP) explore the ethical and compassionate uses of KAP in the treatment of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. Sign up now!
Psychedelics Today Team Recommendations
The members of the team who have been here the longest (and therefore listened to years worth of episodes) talked about some of our favorite episodes as well, and we thought it’d be cool to share which ones we liked the most.
Joe’s picks:
Having been involved in the majority of episodes, Joe was a bit overwhelmed with this question. Dr. Carl Hart’s episode was the first he mentioned, but these were some he particularly liked as well:
“Grof’s work has been at the foundation of PT, so this episode felt like a huge milestone for us and I’m so grateful for Stan and Brigitte’s time,” said Kyle. “One thing I really enjoyed about this episode was hearing what Grof’s vision is for the future of psychedelics.” A few others he really enjoyed were more recent:
In addition to managing several projects, Marisa handles most of our social media, our affiliate programs, and contributes a lot of art and graphics. Marisa wrote the show notes for each episode up until June of 2020. “There are so many episodes that I love, but the ones that make me feel are the ones that resonate.” She particularly loved these three:
“These episodes stand out to me because they are extremely moving stories of how psychedelics have the power to heal, leaving me in tears of inspiration.”
Rob’s picks:
Other than the very early episodes, every episode of Psychedelics Today sounds much better than it originally did because of Rob’s work. In addition to being our main audio engineer, he’s helped with video on many courses at our Psychedelic Education Center. The episodes that came to him right away were:
I didn’t listen to many episodes before (sorry, Joe), but since I took over writing the show notes in June of 2020, I’ve listened to every one. Dr. Carl Hart was also one of my favorites, and although it was hard to listen to, I strongly recommend the same Dena Justice episode Marisa picked. Other than those, the ones that stand out to me are the episodes that make me think of things differently or present opposing viewpoints to what we’re used to. A few that instantly come to mind are:
Between our regular Tuesday episodes and different Friday episodes (Solidarity Fridays and Vital Psychedelic Conversations), there are over 400 episodes of Psychedelics Today to listen to. And the best news of all? With that many episodes and three million downloads now under our collective belt, we’re just getting started.
Keep listening, and we’ll keep bringing you psychedelic conversations that you won’t hear anywhere else.
Follow the Psychedelics Today Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you like to listen. Have an idea for a podcast theme or guest? Was there a guest that blew your mind who you want to hear from again? Do you have feedback about how we can make the show better? Connect with our team on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or by email at info@psychedelicstoday.com.
In this episode of Vital Psychedelic Conversations, David interviews Omar Thomas: Founder of Jamaica’s Diaspora Psychedelic Society, CEO of Jamaican Organics, Psychedelics Today Advisory Board member, organic farmer, and certified death doula.
Thomas discusses how we define home, the importance of having open dialogue with our children about psychedelics, how the psychedelic experience relates to permaculture, our cultural absence of a rite of passage, the joy in psychedelics, and the value in allowing change to become a natural evolution we experience once we take the mindful seat of the observer.
Thomas breaks down all the ways in which Jamaica is shaping its framework as a psychedelic-informed health & wellness destination and the country’s cultural roadblocks that could potentially impede its development. And he talks a lot about his work as a death doula: the importance of taking a more sacred and preparatory approach to death, how helping someone through the transition is the ultimate holding of space, and how each psychedelic trip can be a practice session for death.
A theme that is consistent throughout this conversation is self-directed growth via The Warrior’s Way – an exercise in discovery, surrender, and developing daily practices toward change. Thomas posits that it’s when we hold space and shed the many layers of our identity that we can begin to foster real change – by “staying on” and becoming an observer rather than directly trying to change things, change will happen naturally.
Notable Quotes
“The things you need for a psychedelic trip are the same things you need for life. You need courage when you’re afraid and you need to prepare yourself for the things you’re going to undertake, and to do them seriously and with appreciation for the moment.” “The idea of holding space is so much about us not being in the way of hearing what others have to say, and allowing them to come to realizations that they would come to naturally if they would but take the time to sit for a while and contemplate the idea without distraction.”
“I found that Jamaica itself is healing. The island is healing. And I don’t want to get too esoteric about it, but there’s something about even just being outside for me in the early morning hours before the sun rises in a climate that can allow me to do so comfortably, and to be able to start to appreciate still connection, just on its own – I’m finding that this place seems to be tuned to some sort of frequency. It just makes it easier to slip into a feeling of wholeness, or at least of wanting to be.”
“We have our lifetimes only to begin to affect the change in the things that move us. If we are upset about the climate, let’s use the life we have. Let’s use the life we have to connect so that when death comes, we have lived a life worth living, that’s so satisfying that it’s okay to let go. For me, the psychedelic trip and journey is about letting go in a micro sort of way. Each trip is a practice session.”
“I’ve seen people laugh and chuckle now at the idea of not being, because during the trip, they learned that there’s no way to not be, because matter cannot be created or destroyed. …We’re afraid of smoke and mirrors and shadowboxing – things that we don’t need to fear.”
Omar Thomas is the founding advisor of Diaspora Psychedelic Society (DPS) and a member of the Jamaican Diaspora Task Force on Behavioral Health. His Afro-Caribbean upbringing led him to seek out non-traditional answers to his own PTSD and trauma issues in the early 90s. His search eventually took him to Mexico where he underwent 30 days of fasting, isolation, and intensive sacred mushroom work under curandero guidance. He’s lived as a permanent resident of Mexico for a number of years developing a deeper connection to the medicine in the context of community. He brings his years of experience in Mexico to bear in guiding the vision for DPS.
Through Diaspora Psychedelic Society, Omar collaborates with a number of organizations to promote more equitable access, Jamaican inclusion, and innovative approaches to psilocybin-supported therapies. In addition to overseeing day-to-day DPS activities, he is the CEO of Jamaican Organics, and sits on the strategic advisory board of Psychedelics Today.
Omar now resides on his ancestral island home in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica.
In this episode of the podcast, David interviews lawyer, activist, and co-host of our Eyes on Oregon web series, Jon Dennis, Esq.
Dennis has been heavily involved in Oregon’s Measure 109: creating the Entheogenic Practitioners Council of Oregon, writing a proposed regulatory framework for religious practice under Measure 109, and presenting to the psilocybin board subcommittees all in an effort to protect religious psilocybin use and ensure paywalls don’t ruin the unique and historic opportunity Oregon has opened up here.
If you weren’t as knowledgeable about Measure 109 as you’d like to be, this podcast serves as a great summary of how we got here and what’s next. Dennis discusses how Measure 109 came about; how it’s gone through a reputational makeover of sorts (and is more about supervised adult-use than therapy); the role of each subcommittee; Measure 110; who defines what counts as religious practice; the complications of requiring specific psilocybin testing; community support models as harm reduction; how it will become harder and harder to make good legal change in an emerging “psychedelic industrial complex,” and how he’s using the travails of María Sabina as an inspiration to make sure people aren’t left behind as Oregon moves forward.
If you agree with us that religious use should be protected under Measure 109 (and especially if you live in Oregon), please sign his petition by April 20th, send an email by April 21st, or speak up during the comment periods during one of the upcoming subcommittee meetings on April 18th (5-7 PST) or April 21st (10m-noon PST). The board has 9 hours left of meeting time to make decisions on the recommendations of the subcommittees, so the time is now to make sure this is done right.
Notable Quotes
“I think at this point, we all will agree it’s inevitable that psychedelics are about to enter the mainstream, but how they enter the mainstream is important so that they not be delivered directly into the hands of capitalists behind paywalls that keep out millions and millions of people.”
“The depth of human suffering right now is immense. And if we only wait until Compass Pathways and other companies that are pursuing legalized medical applications of psychedelic compounds [complete their research]; not only is that a long time to wait when people are suffering now [and] hospice patients are dying now, [but] to say that they have to wait through even the three or four or five-year expedited ‘breakthrough therapy’-designation type of process through the FDA – we don’t have time to wait. People are suffering now and we have enough information to not need to be really afraid of psilocybin and other psychedelics.”
“I think over 37 million Americans live in poverty and almost 600,000 Oregonians live in poverty. And to think that we’re just going to leave those people out because of an elevated safety concern; it’s just really hard to kind of square that all together in light of what the actual risks of psilocybin in particular are. …If Oregon decides to create a program – the world’s first regulated psychedelic services program – that prioritizes business interests to the detriment of marginalized people, I think the historical record will bear the stain of scandal and corruption on this.”
Jon Dennis, Esq. is a lawyer and activist in the psychedelics ecosystem and a consultant at the firm, Psychedelics Now. He is the co-host of “Eyes on Oregon,” a podcast by Psychedelics Today exploring the latest developments in Oregon’s legal psilocybin landscape. He serves on the Executive Committee of the Oregon State Bar Practice Section on Cannabis and Psychedelics and is a co-chair of its Psychedelics Subcommittee. He is a member of the Psychedelics Bar Association and sits on its Religious Use Committee.
Jon is the chief architect of the proposed regulatory framework for protecting religious and spiritual communities who operate under Oregon’s new psilocybin program. He has presented to multiple subcommittees of the Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board in support of religious and spiritual freedoms and a community model for psychedelic services. He is a founding member of the Entheogenic Practitioners Council of Oregon. Jon has taken the North Star Ethics Pledge and is drawn to this work by the conviction that psychedelics possess the potential to accelerate our individual and collective shifts away from self-destructive paradigms. Prior to joining Psychedelics Go, Jon worked as a civil litigator and managed a nonprofit law office giving free legal assistance to people living in poverty. Jon has a BA in Religious Studies from the University of Kansas and a law degree from Lewis & Clark Law school. He lives in Ontario, Oregon.
In this episode of the podcast, Joe interviews Adam Bramlage: Founder and CEO of Flow State Micro, a functional mushroom company and microdosing educational platform.
Bramlage talks about his journey to psychedelics and discovery of microdosing, and how he worries that the troubling issues he saw in the legal cannabis industry are already finding their way into the psychedelic space. He discusses what he experienced when he started microdosing; how he connected with James Fadiman; how he defines microdosing; the concepts of neurogenesis and a gut-brain axis; how more and more professional athletes are using psychedelics to heal brain injuries as well as optimize performance (and how leagues may handle this going forward); concerns over chronic microdosing; and why the goal is always to microdose less over time.
While we expected to hear about the benefits of microdosing, their conversation also goes deep into its history and our ancestral connection to psychedelics (particularly psilocybin), touching on Hernán Cortés; R. Gordan Wasson banking for the vatican; Christianity, Jesus, and mushrooms; repeated examples of control through the erasure of history; Tim Leary; Al Hubbard; MKUltra; the Tarahumara Indians’ peyote-influenced ultra-running; cave paintings; Whitey Bulger, and more.
Bramlage is a speaker on May 27th’s Microdosing Summit (along with Joe), and just released a new “Microdosing Movement Masterclass” in collaboration with the San Francisco Psychedelic Society, which focuses on our ancestral connection to psychedelics and the potential evolutionary use of microdosing. Use code psychedelicstoday at checkout for 10% off!
Notable Quotes
“I’m a single dad to two kids, and both of those kids, at periods of time in their life, were raised on a cannabis farm. And what I’ll tell you is this: when you normalize these plants and these tools and it’s just like a flower or a squash that my kid sees farmed like the farmer next to me, my kids want nothing to do with cannabis. It is so uncool. It’s the last thing they want to be around. I don’t have any worries about my son or daughter smoking pot. And why? Because we normalized it. And if you look at Portugal and what they’ve done with drugs and the success they’ve had with decrim legalization, supporting substance abuse issues with therapists and programs; this is the future. This is the answer.” “We have an ancestral and evolutionary connection to these plants and it’s only in the last couple hundred years that they’ve been made illegal and bastardized. …We’re putting five or six year old kids on Adderall (which is methamphetamine), but we’re pointing fingers at a parent who gives their kid 10 milligrams of a mushroom.”
“Psychedelics have an afterglow, or a 48-hour effect, so you don’t need to microdose seven days a week. You can take it on a Monday, take Tuesday off, and you’re still getting benefits. So what I see over time with microdosing is the more people use it, the less they need it. This isn’t a Western medical model of: you’re going to take microdoses five days a week because it regulates your blood pressure and your heart condition. It’s not like that. This is more like: the more people are microdosing over time, the less they need it. …When I’m coaching people or working with clients, the goal is to eventually not microdose.”
Adam Bramlage is Founder/CEO of Flow State Micro, a functional mushroom company and microdosing educational platform focusing on harm reduction and best practices. Bramlage works one-on-one with clients to optimize their microdosing experience. He’s helped hundreds of people, from professional athletes to people suffering from addiction and depression, achieve incredible results through microdosing. Bramlage works closely with psychedelic researcher, pioneer and father of modern microdosing, Dr. James Fadiman. In collaboration with Doubleblind Magazine, Bramlage launched his 14 episode online course “How to Microdose,” which was recently featured in Forbes Magazine as one of the masterclasses of psychedelics, and received an award from Gear Report for Top Ten Wellness Products of 2021. In collaboration with the SF Psychedelic Society, he has recently released his online Microdosing Movement Masterclass, looking at our ancestral and potential evolutionary use of microdosing. He is co-founder of the Microdosing Support Network, the first free online monthly microdosing support group. Prior to his work with mushrooms, he spent more than a decade in the Prop 215 and Prop 64 California cannabis space as a farmer, distributor, and manufacturer. He hopes psychedelics does NOT go the same route as legal cannabis.
In this episode of the podcast, Joe sits down with Co-Founder and CEO of Numinus, Payton Nyquvest, this time for a full episode (you may remember that he had a brief segment in Solidarity Friday #86).
Nyquvest tells the story of how ayahuasca became the cure for his chronic pain, and discusses pain in general and how we deal with it: how people so often fall into a box where their diagnosis becomes their identity, and how so much of healthcare is about alleviating the symptoms but never getting to the root cause.
He talks about how Numinus came about; how Health Canada’s Special Access Program could be huge towards more legalization; his concerns with the rush to ketamine and virtual therapy; patents and Compass Pathways; the importance of a safe container and community; and the need for a shift in how we view psychedelics and self work, from something we view as a last ditch resort to something we treat more as regular preventative tune-ups or check-ins.
Numinus is working with MAPS in their Phase 3 MDMA for PTSD study, and due to a license amendment by Health Canada that now allows them to produce a product from natural fungi, they have just produced what may be the first legal psilocybin mushroom since the 1970s.
Notable Quotes
“[I] saw this possibility [that] someone, through shifting their mental health and mental state, could greatly become a better version of themselves. And so, in my mid-to-late teens, became very, very passionate about mental health and my own mental health, and the intersection of mental health [and] physical health, and the recognition that you can’t compartmentalize the two. They’re all part of the same thing.”
“If you look at AA for example, there’s not a city on the planet I think that you could go to where you don’t find an AA community. And while certainly all these communities have their strengths and weaknesses, it really shows that with a really, really strong community, you can really help facilitate a lot of healing. …While the psychedelic experience is important, the integration and ongoing support and community is, I would argue, as important or more so.” “I encourage everybody to read the results from the MAPS Phase 3 work, which is probably, I would argue, the most astounding clinical data we have on psychedelics for treatment-resistant PTSD, which, for anybody who doesn’t know; treatment-resistant PTSD is– this is a population of people who have tried every other treatment and have failed. Over 80% of people who went through the MDMA protocol saw a significant reduction in their symptoms and 67% actually no longer met the PTSD criteria after three treatments. That’s a cure for treatment-resistant PTSD, which is just an astounding thing to be able to say.”
Payton Nyquvest is the Founder, Chair & Chief Executive Officer of Numinus, a company that empowers people to heal and be well through the development and delivery of innovative mental health care and access to safe, evidence-based psychedelic-assisted therapies. He has a deep understanding of the psychedelic industry from its infancy, driven by life-saving personal experiences with multiple therapy modalities. Additionally, Payton has deep business leadership experience, particularly in the finance sector, and is a recognized innovator and visionary in mental health care. At Numinus, he guides teams leading strategy, innovation, research and clinic network expansion, and supports the marketing and capital markets functions. He is responsible for raising more than $70 million for Numinus in the past year, and is quoted widely in media such as CTV, Forbes and the New York Times. In addition, he brings more than 15 years working in finance, investment and retail banking with some of Canada’s leading independent investment firms, including Jordan Capital Markets, Canaccord Financial and Mackie Research Capital. In these and other roles, he has raised more than $100 million for a variety of small cap companies.
“Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire.” – William Butler Yeats
The interest in psychedelics as a therapeutic tool is growing at a rapid pace, both by individuals looking for better solutions outside the current medical regime, and by practitioners looking for new and better ways to help their patients.
Even though regulatory systems lag behind, a paradigm shift in healthcare is clearly under way. The demand for safe, ethical, and effective treatment and integration is growing exponentially. Now more than ever, it is vital that educated, informed practitioners are ready and equipped to provide care when called upon.
After enrolling over 9,000 students in our eLearning platform and graduating over 500 in our eight-week, 47-hour program, Navigating Psychedelics, we’ve heard a lot about what people want and need from an in-depth training program – and also, what isn’t being offered out there. Our students have told us that training can be overly prescriptive, rigid, and clinical, with logistical hurdles and barriers to acceptance.
That’s where Vital comes in. Our new 12-month certificate program fills gaps in the current landscape of psychedelic training – both in course content and structure – and takes a holistic, experiential, and reflective approach to psychedelic practice and integration.
Here’s how Vital is different:
A truly inclusive training program. Vital welcomes students of all backgrounds – licensed or unlicensed clinicians, medically-trained healthcare professionals, legacy operators, and integrative wellness practitioners. All previous experience, informal learning, and formal training will be considered when reviewing applications.
A drug agnostic approach that equips practitioners with the knowledge to work with clients who use or are interested in exploring a range of psychedelics. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to psychedelic therapy, and the potential benefits are not limited to a handful of substances.
A holistic curriculum balanced between clinical and scientific research and protocols, while also focusing on philosophical self-reflection, transpersonal psychology, Indigenous traditions, and somatic approaches to healing trauma.
An opportunity to learn from and interact with world-renowned researchers at an economical scale.
A modular and malleable curriculum with finance and scheduling flexibility, designed to accommodate a global student population.
An open forum on harm reduction that encourages honest discussion on personal experiences with substances in a safe space.
Vital at-a-Glance:
Vital was created by Psychedelics Today Co-Founders Joe Moore and Kyle Buller, M.S., LAC, and a team of people dedicated to helping others master the elements of psychedelic practice and contribute to the healing of the world. The culmination of over 15 years of work in psychedelic practice, the first Vital cohort of 100 students kicks off on “Bicycle Day,” April 19th, 2022.
Course content is packaged into five core modules, covering: psychedelic history and research; clinical therapies; the art of holding space; medical frameworks; and integration theories and techniques. Each comprehensive module spans between seven to ten weeks of specialized lectures led by guest expert teachers as well as more intimate study groups facilitated by our instructors.
The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.
-Alexandra K. Trenfor
World-Class Teaching Team:
Over the years, Psychedelics Today has developed relationships with a humbling number of leading researchers, historians, clinicians, and bright minds working in research and application, advocacy, spiritual practice, and patient care. We’ve assembled some of the very best to work with Vital students, including:
Ben Sessa, M.D. Chief Medical Officer at Awakn Life Sciences, licensed MDMA and psilocybin therapist, academic writer, and psychedelic psychopharmacology researcher.
Ayize Jama Everett, M.A., M.F.A. Fiction writer, practicing therapist, and Master’s of Divinity who teaches a course called “The Sacred and the Substance” at the Graduate Theological Union.
Richard Schwartz, Ph.D. Developer of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, adjunct faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
We believe that no amount of learning from clinical studies, reading textbooks, or listening to an instructor can make up for first-hand experience with holotropic states. Furthermore, we believe openness and sharing of experience validates clinical evidence, helps inform research and the approach to patient care, and helps undo stigma and misguided perceptions caused by the war on drugs.
Throughout the course, students will be challenged to deepen their personal understanding of psychedelics and reignite their transformation by attending one of six experiential retreats (in either the United States or abroad). Stay tuned for more details on dates, locations and pricing.
While the deeply experiential nature of the course supports the growth of practitioners, the course is also designed to equip participants with the knowledge they need to establish a psychedelic-informed practice from the ground up. For coaches, facilitators, mental health and complementary health practitioners, Vital provides a thriving community of specialists to support their mission.
Promoting Equal Access and Career Development:
Fair access to psychedelic medicine begins with fair access to essential education. In addition to flexible payment plans for all students, we’ve committed to provide scholarships for 20% of students from each cohort, sponsoring up to 100% of tuition to support their mission.
Scholarships are awarded on a case-by-case basis, and are reserved for people who:
Are in demonstrated financial need
Identify as BIPOC
Identify as LGBTQIA+
Are military service members/veterans
Serve marginalized or geographically underserved communities
At the end of the program, graduating students receive a certificate in Psychedelic Therapies and Integration. CE credits will be offered, but stay tuned for more details.
Full details on scholarships and credits are in the extended course brochure, available on the Vital website.
Program registrations are open now, and close at midnight EST on March 27th. Acceptance will be offered based on eligibility and order of submission (with priority to students receiving scholarships). Once all seats in the initial cohort are filled, subsequent approved students will be placed on a waitlist and invited to join the course when a spot becomes available. Interested students are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. Apply here.
In this episode of the podcast, Joe interviews Josh Hardman, the Founder and Editor of Psilocybin Alpha, a news website and weekly newsletter covering the psychedelic space with a focus on emerging companies and drug development.
Hardman discusses how the juxtaposition of the studies coming out of Imperial College London and the way hippie culture intersected with various political movements made him want to create Psilocybin Alpha. He talks about his early anonymous days and how the 2020 US election jumpstarted the site, especially due to the passing of Oregon’s Measure 109 and people suddenly showing a lot of interest in psychedelic stocks.
And they talk about a lot more, as this podcast is very topic-to-topic conversational in the way you’d imagine a podcast between two people neck deep in psychedelic happenings may be: why the UK is so conservative when it comes to drug policy; Brexit; cryptocurrency, decentralized finance (DeFi), and decentralized health (“De-health”?); overuse of Sonoran desert toads and over-harvesting of iboga (why aren’t LSD and psilocybin good enough?); data collection and data privacy; patent thicketing; integration as a new recurring-revenue model; psychedelics and VR; investor obsession with derivatives and analogs; and 2022 seeing the likely consolidation of many for-profit companies in the psychedelic space.
Notable Quotes
“The point at which it went from just being kind of a side project to me to being ‘I should work on this full time’ was the November 2020 elections in the US. I remember I sat here up to like 5am in the UK, watching the results to see measure 109 in Oregon (obviously) and the DC ballot initiative to decriminalize. I think that was the point, to me, where I saw not just traffic to the website go up thousands of percent overnight, but also the types of people that were reading Psilocybin Alpha went from weed investors and crypto investors to therapists and people who were seeking therapy, emailing me. Hundreds of emails the next day saying, ‘I want to get involved in this. I’ve been working in psychiatry or psychotherapy for 30 years and I want to understand this new modality.’”
“Why are people depressed? I think a lot of people are depressed because something acute happened to them or because maybe they do need to go inside and work some stuff out internally, but, me being a student of sociology and political economy, I’m more inclined to think a lot of people are depressed because of their material situation: their job or their home life, economic realities in America, lack of health insurance. These things are all external. So I have some concern with how much we can really solve whilst in a system that makes people so upset and miserable.”
“The reason psychedelic companies are so disruptive to the healthcare system is because something like Prozac is chronically dosed. It’s like almost a recurring revenue model. It’s a subscription model. And obviously psychedelics can potentially not cure someone but put them into remission (at least clinically) in two or three sessions. So you could say that if a company is able to capture the integration part of the treatment arc as well, that’s where they start getting their recurring revenue.”
“I think people are concerned about investing in another psilocybin company. So if you can take a derivative, an analog, or a new chemical entity entirely (even if it’s very similar to psilocybin); to the investor or to the untrained eye, it’s new. It’s novel, and it’s going to get a patent, so therefore it must have some value. I think that might be a big story in 2022, when we start realizing that a lot of these supposedly new chemical entities either start failing in preclinical work or in Phase 1 work or they’re just not that remarkably different.”
Founder and Editor of Psilocybin Alpha, an online resource and weekly newsletter covering the psychedelics space with a focus on drug development efforts.
In this episode of the podcast, Joe interviews co-founder and CEO of Journey Clinical, Jonathan Sabbagh.
Journey Clinical is a telehealth platform specializing in remote and in-person ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, but what makes them a bit unique is their larger focus on the needs of the psychotherapist, by helping approved psychotherapists integrate KAP into their practices, and by building out a platform to facilitate the delivery of customized treatments of all modalities to their patients under the same umbrella – the idea being that more specialized treatments can lead to more patient progress and less therapist burnout, which is a bigger problem than many people realize.
Sabbagh tells the story of his own burnout after 20 years in finance, which led to ayahuasca and a career change, and discusses data privacy; why ketamine is just an adjunct; how Journey’s process works; the importance of building a safe container (in therapy and digitally); wearables and the future of combined tools; what he’s most excited about; what it meant to see his company’s banner hanging at Horizons; and why it’s important to have a growing industry be led by true believers.
Notable Quotes
“I think people don’t talk about this enough – about the impact of being with patients who are stuck and who are not progressing in their therapy for years – and that’s really a big driver of therapist burnout. And we’ve had people work with patients who were stuck, really stagnant in their progress, have a few ketamine sessions and have major breakthroughs at a reasonably low dose, and say, ‘Wow, this person has never been so open, this has changed the psychotherapy.’ And that really re-energizes them and I think that is just really wonderful.”
“People are looking for ways to feel better, mental health isn’t taboo anymore. And so I think that as we progress, we’ve got technology, psychedelics, there’s a lot of work being pushed forward, openness to mindfulness-based practices; and I think they’re all going to support each other.”
“I think one of the beauties of the stage where we’re at in our industry (and also the nature of our industry) is that it’s still believers that are building it out. And so we’re all figuring ourselves out a little bit but we care about doing this. We’ve got a personal stake and personal experience into it and I think that’s true for the majority of people involved.”
Jonathan Sabbagh the co-founder and CEO of Journey Clinical. He spent the first 20 years of his professional career working in finance, where he occupied a variety of roles including building two businesses from the ground up. While building one of them, he suffered a burnout that was the result of undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. After being heavily medicated, suffering from substance abuse issues, and undergoing a lot of psychotherapy, Jonathan finally found relief in a series of traditional ayahuasca ceremonies and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy; experiences where he discovered he needed to lead a more integrated life and to be in service to others. He quit finance and went back to school to study clinical psychology. While he was on his path to becoming a clinician, he felt the need to integrate his background as an entrepreneur with his long-term goal of becoming a psychedelic therapist in order to expand access to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. This is the genesis of how Journey Clinical was born.
In this episode of the podcast, Joe interviews Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Tryp Therapeutics, Greg McKee.
Tryp Therapeutics, a fairly young, early-stage biotech company, is focusing on nociplastic pain (the hard-to-explain pain where nothing seems physiologically wrong, but a nerve signal related to pain seems to be stuck in the “on” position) and how it could be alleviated through the rewiring often possible in the psychedelic experience. They are first looking at psychedelics for chronic pain and eating disorders, and when this podcast was recorded, had just received FDA clearance to begin a fibromyalgia study at the University of Michigan (with studies on phantom limb pain, complex regional pain syndrome, binge eating disorder, and hypothalamic obesity likely coming after). They are also working on a psilocybin derivative-based novel compound and novel route of administration/protocol, possibly with the ability to stop a difficult trip when necessary.
McKee discusses the origins of Tryp, the benefits of using synthetics, 5-MeO-DMT, how the Nixon administration killed research progress, the positives to take away from Compass Pathways’ preliminary psilocybin Phase 2B trial results, MAPS and possible insurance models, Robin Carhart-Harris, why a lot of early psychedelic investors may be mistakenly panicking, and the idea of insurance covering the treatment of a patient for a period of time rather than number of visits.
Notable Quotes
“We think that there’s a huge opportunity to unleash the full potential of psychedelics, well beyond traditional mood disorders.” “It’s a fascinating field, no doubt. There’s a lot to be learned and there’s still a lot more questions, frankly, than answers. That’s the thing that’s really quite surprising. I mean, I’ve been on a learning curve [and] I got right to the edge fast, because I realized, ‘Oh shit, nobody has the answers to these questions.’”
“The thing about synthetic is that it just allows you not only to have consistency and all that that we just [talked] about, but it allows you to scale so you can impact so many other people’s lives. So it is a little bit of a pain in the backside to go through this process, and I can totally get why certain people are saying, ‘Hey, why do we need the pharma industry to do this?’, but on the other hand, if life science investors and biotech and pharma companies do get involved and push this through to market; boy, you’re going to be able to treat so many more patients.”
Greg McKee serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Tryp Therapeutics. Greg has served in executive management positions for more than 20 years. He started his career in life sciences with Genzyme before serving as Chairman and CEO of publicly traded Nventa Biopharmaceuticals. Greg also served as CEO of CONNECT, a startup accelerator, and as Co-founder and Managing Director of Torrent Ventures. Greg earned a BA in economics from the University of Washington, an MA in international studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from the Wharton School. He has worked in Tokyo for seven years and has been a member of YPO since 2006.
In this episode of the podcast, Joe sits down for the very rare multi-guest podcast, this time with four: teacher and author, Ayize Jama-Everett; LMFT, certified sex therapist, owner and operator of Doorway Therapeutic Services, Courtney Watson; LMFT at Doorway Therapeutic Services, Leticia Brown; and activist and facilitator, Kufikiri Imara.
The group has come together to create A Table of our Own: a for-Black-people by-Black-people psychedelic conference and corresponding documentary. While noticing how often it seemed members of the BIPOC community were being used to check off a diversity box for grant money, they decided that before they were another guest at someone else’s table, it was time for them to gather at their own table and figure out exactly what they want out of this “so-called psychedelic renaissance” first.
They talk about why a Black conference is needed and what it could look like; how affinity groups create safety; the ease in communication and connection when having shared experience; the problems with modern, performative-based psychiatry; and why it’s true that when Black people win, everyone wins. And reflecting on some of the recent abuse allegations, they also discuss abuse in the psychedelic space: how abusers always learn from abusers, how communities learn from the behavior of elders, how guidelines for facilitators and therapists are drastically oversimplified, and how we all need to recognize our own ability to cause harm.
A Table of our Own is happy to take donations, but only if you’re in it for the right reasons (i.e. you aren’t filling a quota or need your company’s banner hanging at the event). And if you’re someone who understands affinity groups but the idea of a Black-only event feels like segregation (like many felt when Nicholas Powers talked about a Black Burning Man), definitely check this one out.
Notable Quotes
“There’s a lot of ‘We want you at our table, we want you at our table,’ but as people of color, we’re not a freaking monolith. We haven’t sat at our table. We haven’t shared our stories, the positive and the negative. We haven’t collaborated on what’s going to do best for our communities. We haven’t had those conversations. And so the conference is about: Let’s just sit together and talk. Where are we at? How are you feeling? What’s going on? What do you need? Do you need a hug? Can you get fed? Can you be comforted? Can I hear your knowledge? Are you willing to share yours? Can we get that back-and-forth going? And then once we have that; well, let’s document that, because not everybody’s going to be able to come to this. What we need to show is: Hey, this is how we do.” -Ayize
“For survival purposes, because of the nature of historical precedents, we have to adjust who we are for the environment that we’re in for survival, understanding that there are those in the same society that expect the environment to change to them because that is the way things have been set up. So when we’re in an environment of a Black experience of people of the African diaspora, understanding that that’s not something we have to do in that space (like the others said, around being policed and thus having to police themselves); there’s a uniqueness around that.” -Kufikiri
“The harm comes in in ways of presenting itself as some authoritative model around good and bad, right and wrong; yet misses so much of the harms that exist in society that are navigated by those in marginalized communities (especially those in Black bodies and Western colonial spaces) that don’t account for that aspect of someone’s identity, but yet is looking to work with someone around what their identity is. So that harm is a very real one. …How do you know your worth and your value in a space if you’re always being compared to someone that does not look like you or does not have your experience?” -Kufikiri
“Black folks, when we’re in spaces together; we’re not all sitting around talking about our trauma. We are often just connecting with each other and laughing with each other and holding each other. So this conference is also a space where we can heal through play and joy and movement and dance and everything about how we navigate the world that brings so much flavor, including the joy. Black joy is a whole other kind of medicine that is always present when we gather.” -Leticia
Ayize Jama-Everett (b. NYC 1974) has been in various relationships with plants, substances, and communities since his birth. Born into the Black Power movement’s conflicts, Ayize comes from the lineage of the Lincoln Detox project, a community organization in Harlem, New York, that taught the formerly incarcerated to use acupuncture to help with heroin withdrawal. At sixteen, he traveled to Morocco and was taken in by the Gnawa and was privileged to join their rituals. Ayize served as the director of Outpatient services for Thunder Road Adolescent Treatment center for three years before joining Catholic Charities of Treasure Island as the substance use and mental health services manager. He’s worked in both abstinence and harm reduction modalities. He also served as a high school therapist for over a decade.
Ayize Graduated from the Graduate Theological Union in 2001 with a Master’s of Divinity. His thesis was on the spiritual use of substances among the homeless youth of Morocco, London, and the Bay Area. Soon after, he began teaching the Course “The Sacred and the Substance,” one of the first survey courses of sacred plant use at the Graduate Theological Union. In 2003, Ayize received a Masters degree in Clinical psychology from New College of California. In 2019, he received a Masters in Fine Arts, Creative Writing, from The University of California, Riverside. He is the author of four books, and his shorter works can be found in The L.A. Review of Books, The Wakanda Dream labs, The Believer, and Racebaitr. As an African-American male, Ayize’s focus has been consistently on underrepresented communities in the sacred plant community.
About Courtney Watson, LMFT
Courtney Watson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and AASECT Certified Sex therapist. She is the owner of Doorway Therapeutic Services, a group therapy practice in Oakland, CA focused on addressing the mental health needs of Black, Indigenous & People of Color, Queer folks, Trans, Gender Non-conforming, Non binary and Two Spirit individuals. Courtney has followed the direction of her ancestors to incorporate psychedelic assisted therapy into her offerings for folks with multiple marginalized identities and stresses the importance of BIPOC and Queer providers offering these services. Courtney has received training from the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research at CIIS, MAPS and Polaris Insight Center to provide psychedelic-assisted therapy with a variety of medicines.
She is deeply interested in the impact of psychedelic medicines on folks with marginalized identities as well as how they can assist with the decolonization process for folx of the global majority. She believes this field is not yet ready to address the unique needs of Communities of Color and is prepared and enthusiastic about bridging the gap. She is currently blazing the trail as one of the only clinics of predominantly QTBIPOC providers offering Ketamine Assisted Therapy in 2021. She has founded a non-profit, Access to Doorways, to raise funds to subsidize the cost of ketamine/psychedelic-assisted therapy for QTBIPOC clients (now accepting donations for our first 100 recipients!!).
About Leticia Brown, LMFT
Leticia Brown (she/her/hers) is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Black queer femme whose practice engages various healing modalities at the intersections of harm reduction, sexuality and social justice. She prioritizes work with BIPOC & QTNBIPOC communities through a liberatory lens that values communual interdependence and affirms the inner healer we all hold within. Constantly exploring ways to decolonize her relationship to healing, she incorporates intergenerational exploration, spirituality, ritual, the use of the body, and reconnection to intuition in her practice, and sees her role as co-creator with those she walks beside on their healing journeys.
Leticia has been trained in a variety of Psychedelic-assisted Therapy modalities, including Ketamine-assisted Psychotherapy trainings with Sage Institute, Polaris Insight Center, Healing Realms and Doorway Therapeutic Services, where she maintains a small private practice. Leticia was also a trainee of MAPS’ first-ever MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy Therapy Training for Communities of Color, in August of 2019. Additionally, she is a therapist with the MAPS expanded access program, using MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for treating severe PTSD. In her harm reduction consulting and training, Leticia encourages both self-introspection and challenging discourse. In her work supporting therapists with engagement of anti-racist and decolonizing practices, she aims to offer a sense of groundedness and purpose to the work. In her work with clients and therapists around issues of sexuality and (other) altered states of consciousness, she holds a sociopolitical lens, and aims to cultivate a safe relationship to the body. In all of this work, Leticia aims to be guided by Fannie Lou Hamer’s mantra that “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free”, particularly in her work with QTBIPOC folx.
About Kufikiri Imara
Kufikiri Imarawas born and raised on Huichin territory of the Ohlone people (Oakland, California). With parents that were involved in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s, he grew up in a family and community that strongly emphasized cultural awareness and social responsibility. He volunteered with Green Earth Poets Society in NYC, bringing poetry to incarcerated African-American youth. He was an early member of the Entheogen Integration Circle in NYC, supporting marginalized communities. He is a friend of Sacred Garden Community as a facilitator. A former member of the Decriminalize Nature Oakland grassroots collective, he went on to head the DNO committee on Outreach, Education, Access, & Integration. He lent his voice to the Horizons Media documentary film “Covid-19, Black Lives, & Psychedelics.” He also facilitates a BIPOC Entheogen Integration Circle with the San Francisco Psychedelic Society. Kufikiri Imara is a voice championing the important issues of access, education, and inclusion within the larger psychedelic community.
In this episode of the podcast (recorded in-person at Horizons NYC), Kyle sits down with Founder and Managing Director of Vine Ventures, Ryan Zurrer.
After witnessing the work at his wife’s ayahuasca retreat center in Peru and seeing the emergence of psychedelics for healing as a new paradigm, Zurrer noticed a strong aversion to for-profit companies and venture capital in general, so part of the mission of Vine Ventures (an early-stage venture fund focused on psychedelics) is to change that. He talks about their Vine Reciprocity Pledge (where 50% of GP Carry is donated to nonprofits specializing in what they refer to as “conscious health and wellness”), their Knowledge Preservation Project (which aims to catalog Indigenous knowledge through interviews and recordings), and their most recent news: the announcement that they have created a SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle (essentially a subsidiary company)) with MAPS to infuse $70 million into patient access infrastructure and research for MDMA-assisted therapy.
He explains the ins and outs of this agreement and how it will benefit MAPS and the future of psychedelic medicine, as well as their upcoming projects with NFTs. He also discusses how any capital coming into psychedelics is beneficial, how the future of psychedelics is in community and figuring out how to expand the use of naturals without affecting the environment, and how the new spiritual-but-not-religious, “California sober” way of life could (and maybe should) be considered a religion.
Notable Quotes
“Putting MAPS out in front first will allow a thousand entrepreneurial flowers to bloom over the next decade in the long shadow of a drug patent. And I think that that’s really inspiring for investors who want to continue to support this space [and] I think it’s really inspiring for entrepreneurs who now have an avenue to carve out value in the space for their in-city clinic in a city that is not New York or LA or try something new that they couldn’t. Now there will be more value available because a pharmaceutical company isn’t hoovering up all the value in the space.” “What platforms were to the 2000s and networks were to the 2010s, communities will be to the 2020s in venture. So the most valuable organizations that will emerge in the 2020s will be ones that are the most valuable communities.”
“I generally believe that when venture capital is applied correctly, it seeks to create great value from solving the world’s biggest problems. I can think of no other problem on planet Earth than the mental health crisis that we’ve unleashed onto our society. And I come at that knowing the global warming problem very intuitively. I spent a decade in renewables, and spoiler alert: we’ve actually solved global warming, it’s just a matter of deploying the technologies. Mental health, we have not solved. Very far from it.”
“All the things that religion historically provided – a sense of community, a sense of belonging, a sort of social safety net, a sense of something greater than yourself – all these things we seem to really want as a society and as individuals right now, but then have this great aversion to whatever would be classified as religion.”
Ryan Zurrer, a venture investor and entrepreneur for 16 years, is the Founder and Managing Director of Vine Ventures, an early-stage venture fund focused on psychedelics. He is also the Co-Founder and Director of Dialectic, a family office with a focus on alternative asset management. Ryan has consistently delivered extraordinary returns through a decade in venture. Previously, he held senior roles deploying utility-scale renewables globally.
He is an avid biohacker and was an early contributing member to the Quantified Self Movement in the early 2000s. Ryan was a seed investor in some of the best performing venture investments of the 2010s including MakerDAO, Ethereum, Polychain Capital, and a host of other companies. He launched Polychain’s private investment activities and is considered the creator of the SAFT. He led Polychain Capital’s investment team and was instrumental in delivering Polychain’s 2017 returns (in excess of 28X net of fees to LPs).
In this episode, Joe interviews seventeen year veteran of federal policy, past Navigating Psychedelics student, and founder of Healing Equity and Liberation (HEAL) Organization, Micah Haskell-Hoehl.
Haskell-Hoehl talks about growing up in Pittsburg and seeing disparities in how the school system treated him in comparison with people of color, discovering psychedelics and their healing potential, his path to federal policy and creating HEAL Organization, and his realization that psychedelics can not only help heal deep wounds, but also do something less talked about when considering race relations: help white people deal with how they fit into a culture founded in colonialism and white supremacy. He also discusses the nuance in patenting and IP; how private companies have financially benefited from taxpayer dollars; and how, while he’s excited for the future, he’s worried that mental health disparities will get even worse in the coming corporate wave if these medicines are only available to the rich and connected (or if policymakers aren’t thinking of everyone).
Through HEAL Organization, he’s working to gather evidence that proves to providers that it makes financial sense to cover all types of psychedelic therapy, get public funds allocated to give everyone access, and fix barriers so people have the time and resources necessary to work with these medicines. He has worked with the Plant Medicine Coalition to create the National Council on Federal Psychedelics Priorities to collect like-minded individuals and organizations, figure out exactly what psychedelic policy should look like, and take the first steps to get this (unfortunately slow-moving) process going.
Notable Quotes
“From as early as I can remember, [I] can recall thinking there’s not that big of a difference between these kids and [me]. We’re all human. We’re all very much the same. So there’s something going on here that is warping our experiences and our life trajectories, and that’s external to who we are as individual people.” “As a white guy, I know my experience, and I just want to say that I think that there’s really tremendous possibilities out there for white people to deal with our racial shit through psychedelic healing as well. So you know, there’s the whole concept of white fragility and the shirking away of confronting issues of race and systemic oppression; that is a common experience for white people. The way that we, I think, as white people, have internalized trauma that is premised on white supremacy as well. …Psychedelic healing is a real amazing opportunity for us to dig at those issues in ourselves, because the systems of oppression operate external to us, but also through us, and exist inside of us too.”
“I just don’t believe that psychedelic healing can reach its full potential inside of this broken social container where these systems of oppression are just running roughshod over entire communities of people. I just fail to see how that’s possible. So I think as a movement, I would challenge folks to think about why it’s psychedelic to promote a full end, hard stop to the war on drugs.”
Micah is the founder of Healing Equity and Liberation–or HEAL–Organization. It is working to create a justice framework for psychedelic decriminalization, regulation, and healing, using federal policy. He’s worked in federal policy for nearly two decades, including at Vera Institute of Justice and the American Psychological Association. Micah’s both found healing from depression through the use of psychedelics and struggled with substance use, for which he’s been in long-term recovery for over eight years.
In this episode, Joe and Kyle interview CEO & Co-founder of Nue Life, Juan Pablo Cappello, from his home in Miami during the Wonderland conference.
Cappello first talks about growing up in Chile and provides some history; covering how peyote became religious and how Catholicism spread through the Americas like a franchise system. And he talks about his family’s relationship with San Pedro, his entrepreneurial past (starting the first online bank in Latin America), and how selling that company for $700 million felt like an abject failure.
He discusses how the idea of depression and PTSD being symptoms of an unaddressed root cause led to the creation of Nue Life, and what he wants to do with what he considers a primarily data-based company: use the massive amounts of data connected devices are already harvesting from us (digital phenotyping) for our benefit rather than our detriment. He believes most medical models focus primarily on the continued income from maintenance medications like antidepressants, and instead, A.I. could use this data to recognize patterns in behavior and make recommendations based on each user’s specific data points – a sort of health ecosystem attuned to what works best for each person.
While he’s very excited about the progress so far (data from 2k people, Nue Life being licensed in five states with five more coming soon), he also talks about his concerns with the current psychedelic gold rush: how Big Pharma is pushing pioneers in the space into restrictive models, and why we will soon see a flame-out of many of these emerging highly-appraised companies.
Notable Quotes
“At the height of the drug war under Clinton, we had 2.2 million people going to jail for drug crimes. This year, it’ll be 2.1 million. So we still have huge, huge numbers of people being incarcerated and going to jail, and for me, that’s because of the way we’ve managed the cannabis industry. And I really, especially at a conference like this where it becomes about the money (not about the impact); I’m very, very concerned that we’re going to find ourselves missing this once-in-a-generation opportunity to make real progress. And real progress really begins with decriminalizing these amazing substances.”
“We’re not a psychedelics-focused company. We’re a mental wellness-focused company that’s going to use whatever technologies are available to drive these extraordinary patient outcomes.”
“How can we, rather than having our phones be a source of body dysmorphia and negativity and a place I feel compelled to go to but it ultimately is bringing me down – how can we turn that technology around and have it be something that helps elevate our patients? …We’re constantly giving out [data] but that data can be used, like a lot of tools, for good as well as for bad, and we’re in a position where we’re really saying: let us be one of the first companies that’s going to use this data for good.”
Juan Pablo Cappello is a passionate entrepreneur who believes in the power of technology and innovation to address humanity’s biggest challenges — mental wellness being one of them. In his home country of Chile, Juan Pablo has seen both the trauma caused by years of a military dictatorship and the power of psychedelic therapies to heal that trauma. As Nue Life‘s CEO & Co-founder, Juan Pablo measures the company’s success by how many lives Nue Life positively impacts.
In this episode, Joe travels to the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia for a rare in-person interview with chemist, filmmaker, science journalist, and go-to media consultant, Hamilton Morris.
They cover a lot: Hamilton’s early realizations of how ill-informed the media was about psychedelics; his time at Vice and how being a journalist gave him a license for curiosity; why he was most interested in covering the substances people were comfortable hating; respectability politics and how only showing what helps the movement is propaganda; how we can learn from watching people do salvia on YouTube; drug elitism; PCP advocate and Process Church alum, Timothy Wyllie; how people attribute more to chemical makeup than their own psychology; how we all need to be more open about our psychedelic use; and why it’s unnecessary (and potentially dangerous) to embrace the narrative that you need to suffer (and do so with a shaman) to truly heal.
They talk a lot about his two 5-MeO episodes of “Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia,” with Hamilton laying out what he wanted to do with the episodes, detailing what led Ken Nelson to first milk a Sonoran Desert Toad, and explaining how small of a chemical difference there is between toad-derived and plant-derived 5-MeO-DMT. And they touch on the hot topic of his relationship with Compass Pathways- how it’s not that different from what several historical psychedelic figures did, and how it’s leading to the creation of many new drugs.
Notable Quotes
“As an outsider, you might think, ‘Well who’s going to object to this? It’s going to be Christian mothers and middle America- those are going to be the people that object to it.’ But that’s actually not the case at all. I’ve received no objection from law enforcement or conservatives. 100% of the opposition comes from within the psychedelic community. That’s where all the in-fighting and the discord tends to be localized.”
“Yes, there are very serious differences between [psychedelics and other drugs], but if we fall into the same moral binary, then we’re ultimately no better than people that think that the distinction between licit and illicit drugs is a pharmacologically or medically meaningful distinction.” “It’s actually kind of interesting how within this neovitalist/animist concept of the activity of plants, …people are dismissing their own psychology entirely and attaching all value to the molecular identity of the drug. And this is coming from someone who is a staunch materialist who spends all of their time thinking about the molecular identity of drugs, and I can tell you, this is crazy. The human mind is a huge contributor. If you take the exact same dose of LSD every year, I would be amazed if it’s the same. I would bet against any resemblance between these experiences because you will be different. You will be in a different mood, you will be thinking about different things. You change all the time, much more than the drug.”
“In the last three months, we’ve synthesized more psychedelics than in the preceding three years. …I understand, and I actually am happy about the vigilance of the psychedelic community and I think it is important to keep an eye on these things and make sure that everyone behaves in an ethical manner, but at the same time, there’s something a little bit surreal about waking up each morning to invent new psychedelics and people thinking that’s a bad thing.”
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe sits down with photographer, entrepreneur, veteran of the cannabis industry, and current CEO at Microdose; Patrick Moher.
Moher talks about his path through the cannabis world and to Microdose; entrepreneurship, his business ethics, and how to build a team; the openness of psychedelic companies; Tim Ferris; the bravado in cannabis; the war on drugs; and everything Microdose is working on, including CME-accredited training, a magazine, and a documentary. But they mostly talk about Moher’s biggest project right now, the massive psychedelic expo happening November 8-9 in Miami: Wonderland.
We’re psyched to announce that we’re Silver Sponsors of the event, and Joe, Kyle, and David will all be attending. Featuring an insane lineup of speakers (Robin Carhart-Harris, Rick Doblin, David Nutt, Mike Tyson, Matthew Johnson, Ben Sessa, and many more), projection mapping, VR applications, an art exhibit, wild decorations (giant mushrooms), and sure-to-be memorable afterparties, Moher’s goal was to create a business-minded event that people would actually have fun at.
We’ll surely be talking more about Wonderland as we get closer to the already-very-close first day, but if you want to act now and save some serious cash,use our affiliate link here to buy tickets! Oh, and we’re nominated for a fewMicrodose awards as well, so vote for us and vote often! (you can vote once a day)
Notable Quotes
“As an entrepreneur, the way I want to do my business is ‘win-win or no deal.’ If everyone’s not benefitting and we’re not contributing to the future that we want to see, then I’m not really interested in engaging.” “A lot of people give a lot of grief to a lot of things. But it’s like, is that benefitting your life at all to just be hating on what somebody else is doing? They’re clearly following a passion, doing what they feel is important, doing their life’s work. Why don’t you go and do yours?”
“If it’s not your cup of tea, there’s 20 other teabags sitting on the shelf. Go find it.” “Mike Tyson and Lamar Odom: I know they’ve had their troubles in the past, Mike being a particularly controversial figure. [But] do you believe in second chances? Do you believe that these things can help people become better and do you believe that we can heal together? [That’s] the unifying story there.”
“When people talk about ‘what is the psychedelic industry really going to change?’, I’m trying to think way further. What happens when you have a society of people that aren’t in jail, they’re happier, they’re healthier, [and] they’re not dealing with mental health implications? You’ve got less people in jail, less people in the medical health care system, more people [being] creative, innovative, [and] open to building things for good rather than having this inner narrative of shame and regret and fear. To me, this is one of the only things that I’m an absolutist on. I believe that absolutism is generally what’s causing a lot of our world’s chaos and negativity right now, but if you don’t think that psychedelics or drugs in general are a fundamental human right, and if you don’t think they’re actually going to benefit humanity; I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. They are, and they’re doing it in real time, and we will continue to see that change.”
Patrick Moher is an industrious entrepreneur working in psychedelics and cannabis, currently the CEO at Microdose Psychedelic Insights. As a passionate and unapologetic environmentalist, his relentless work ethic has directly translated to previous success in his photography career, as well as founding Ethical Image, co-finding Alan Aldous Communications, Goodwood Accessories, UCannAcademy & and becoming a partner at ADCANN. Patrick is focused on helping combine creativity, CSR, and sustainable profitability for companies. He has a dynamic ability to unite individuals across social and corporate spectrums to create unique business solutions. His dedication to community service has seen him actively collaborate with many volunteer organizations, photograph hundreds of events/portraits/weddings, & sponsor the planting of over 20,000 trees (and counting).
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe and Kyle sit down and tackle a question we are often asked at Psychedelics Today: “How do I get involved in the psychedelic field?”
While Kyle wrote apretty helpful blog about this a few years back, they dig in deeper this time, really highlighting the various paths one could take, from the more obvious roles we typically see (therapists, clinicians, guides, trip-sitters, scientists, researchers, and journalists) to the less-discussed (politicians, marketers, artists, accountants, SEO experts, social media consultants, and more). It’s really about figuring out what skills you have and what you could bring to the emerging field, what solutions you could find answers to, and what’s realistic based on your experience, age, geography, willingness to learn, and degree to which psychedelics are involved. And would you still want to take that path if they weren’t? Could your path simply be doing what you’re good at for a company involved in psychedelics?
They discuss the benefits of volunteering, attending any event you can (to both learn and network), and even just starting a club and letting the power of community steer your direction. And they touch on a bit more: how some educational programs don’t allow the underground to participate, how body shame affects the body, and how somatic energy and bodywork can be enhanced by psychedelics. Hopefully this podcast helps you take your first step down a new and exciting journey!
Notable Quotes
“Models should improve over time, and you can contribute to us collectively evolving our models. And what is this relationship, long-term, that we’re trying to culture here between psychedelics and the human race? I think there’s a lot. How do we go ahead and manifest that mindset that might save the world from ecological collapse, [and] re-enable families to be healthy systems again? …There’s plenty of issues out there. You’ve just got to pick a couple or one or two and just really go for it. There’s no way any of us as individuals are going to take on every issue out there. Revel a little bit in your limited scope.” -Joe
“There are going to be limits to primate knowledge. This kind of brain is going to only go so far, so when we’re dealing with these really strange frontiers like psychedelics, we should just respect that. The mystery might just keep on going.” -Joe
“You can get involved in the psychedelic space. There’s plenty of room for everybody. This is going to be a really, really big space as things come more online, more states have legal access, more countries have legal access, [and] things are approved by the FDA. There’s going to be room for probably everybody who’s listening to this podcast today and more. So stay tuned, figure out where you want to go, get a nice foundation, and see if you can make some progress.” -Joe
In this episode, Kyle interviews psychiatrist, co-founder/CEO of Brooklyn Minds, and co-host of the Clubhouse show, New Frontiers: Carlene MacMillan, M.D.
MacMillan talks about the importance of systems: how there is a ton of work between FDA approval and actually getting drugs into the hands of the people who need them, and how we too often talk about the life-changing effects of psychedelics but not the importance of insurance companies being able to cover them (and having the infrastructure in place to handle it all). She talks about how many clinicians don’t want to offer ketamine because of costs but will offer Spravato due to insurance covering it, and how a colder, more clinical model of healthcare is exactly what many people are looking for.
And she discusses a lot more: How medicine needs to move from the procedure-based, fee-for-service model toward value-based care, why self-insured employers can be more flexible around mental health care, how the intentions of good people at insurance companies are halted by bureaucracy, the notion of nonprofits all being good (and for-profits all being bad), why public benefit companies are better for the future, why she’s worried we might see what we saw in medical cannabis again, and how we need to apply the same multidisciplinary approach we take in medicine toward our ideal vision of legal psychedelic care.
Notable Quotes
“Either it does nothing like it’s a bust, or it’s dramatic. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of: ‘Well, maybe it worked, I’m not sure.’ It’s really: ‘No, like, wow. I feel completely different. That suicidal voice in my head is just gone now.’ It’s just remarkable when it works.”
“I hear more about the interesting science and trials, and I hear stuff about accessibility in terms of scholarships and nonprofits and grants and things like that, and I think that’s all very important. But I think if we really want this to be mainstream and widely part of the mental health toolkit, we need to also really focus in on this insurance piece.”
“I’m very much for decriminalization and regulation. I think if you look at the dangers of most of these drugs compared to alcohol, they are far safer than alcohol. And I don’t think that they should be for children and I think they should be regulated and in moderation, but I don’t find a criminal approach is at all productive. It doesn’t fit with how we think about any of this.”
“People can’t ignore that system part of the equation and we really do need to think about how payment models and clinic models are going to be ready. I think of it like: people are building the planes and we need to build the runways. And so I would encourage people to get in touch to start to build those runways and airports so that we’re ready. Because the planes are coming.”
Carlene MacMillan, M.D. is the co-founder/CEO of Brooklyn Minds. She is a Harvard-trained adult and child psychiatrist who pioneers team-based and tech-enabled mental health care that helps individuals with complex psychiatric concerns live meaningful lives. She collaborates with stakeholders to build novel value-based (as opposed to volume-based) care models. Dr.MacMillan is also known for her role as the co-host of New Frontiers, an award-winning show on Clubhouse where mental health experts weigh in on aspects of our culture. She is an internationally recognized leader in Mentalization Based Treatment, collaborating with leaders at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families. She is on the Clinical Advisory board of Osmind and a member of the Ketamine Taskforce for Access to Safe Care and Insurance Coverage. She is on the Clinical TMS Society Insurance Committee and is the co-Chair of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Consumer Issues Committee.
In this episode, Joe interviews Dr. Tiago Reis Marques: senior fellow at Imperial College, lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, and CEO of Pasithea; a biotech company developing new drugs for the treatment of psychiatric and neurological disorders.
Although Pasithea is creating new drugs, Marques talks a lot about the importance of repurposing existing ones. Due to the insane complexity of the human brain and the myriad of possible problems one can experience; until we have new drugs to address everything, we need to use what we have. And he discusses how this repurposing process comes about: how companies have to run big, expensive trials to prove efficacy and do so while they still have the patent (because once they lose the patent, there’s no financial incentive to continue).
And as Pasithea is also offering at-home ketamine infusions (first in New York and California, but soon, all across the US), he talks a lot about ketamine: How it covers a wide range of disorders, the pros and cons of intramuscular ketamine and IV infusions, drug interactions, its similarities with other psychedelics, and the (maybe surprising) lack of side effects.
He also discusses how making a pharmacoeconomic analysis can show how a few expensive ketamine infusions could create incredible savings, why new drug development is a very high-risk, high-reward industry, what “responded” means in clinical trials, how Covid-related spikes in PTSD relate to the pandemic timeline, the importance of talking about mental health more, and what we can do with historical and outdated (but important) data.
Notable Quotes
“What you’ve seen in this revolution that is happening in psychiatry is [this] renaissance of substances that we consider …as bad [or] toxic and we’re actually using them again. We have laughing gas for treatment-resistant depression, we have MDMA for PTSD, you have ketamine for treatment-resistant depression, PTSD. …We’ve been rediscovering these drugs that we thought were lost [to] the dark side and we’re using them again.”
“If you look across the spectrum, the majority of disorders are rising in the field of psychiatry and that’s due to environmental conditions [and] now Covid. We see an exponential rise in psychiatric diagnosis and we see that a large majority of patients; either they do not receive the treatment (in this case, drug treatment, pharmacological treatment) or if they receive it, they experience side-effects, or they don’t like [it], or these treatments don’t show efficacy. So we need to create new drugs.”
“There’s always a problem with ketamine. Some of these patients end up relapsing after a period of approximately one month. But if you meet someone who has experienced PTSD symptoms, even one month of relief of symptoms is tremendously helpful. They make them live again. So, we’ll see a space for ketamine in the treatment of PTSD, for sure. Let’s hope the medical community embraces this.” “There’s people out there in the past that have tried things and there’s reports and so on, that any researcher that is reading them should read them in a way that’s at least [to] increase their curiosity for why, 50 years ago, someone tried this and experienced this. That’s a bit how psychedelics were rediscovered, because there were all these trials in the seventies that were completely forgotten until someone read them again and saw that they’d been used and they show efficacy. …So maybe a lot of research is just redoing it again using new methods, new drugs, new delivery ways (using brain imaging as a biomarker or response) and trying to improve our knowledge, just trying to not only replicate it but also adding something.”
Tiago Reis Marques is a senior fellow at Imperial College, a lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London and a psychiatrist at the prestigious Maudsley Hospital. The Maudsley Hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry constitute the largest psychiatry center in Europe and ranks among the 3 best in the world. During his research career, he has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the Research Award from the Royal Society of Medicine’s psychiatry section and the Young Investigator Award of the International Congress on Schizophrenia Research. He is also a co-funder and CEO of Pasithea, a biotech company developing new drugs for the treatment of psychiatric and neurological disorders.
In this episode, Joe interviews co-founders of the charity, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS): Executive Director, Amber, and Chair of the board and former Navy SEAL, Marcus Capone.
They talk about Marcus’ transition back to normal life after 13 years in the service, and his “fizzling out,” depression, cognitive decline, and uneventful trips to brain clinics, followed by a life-changing experience with ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT in a ceremony outside the US- something that, at the time, was very new and very scary but seen as a last resort. They talk about what he learned from his experience, the improvements they’ve seen in the people they’ve helped, why they call their grants “foundational healing grants,” and how the current psychedelic renaissance is missing a key element in the power of psychedelics: that maybe the issues we are working to try and heal (and their solutions) may be more physiological than we realize.
VETS has raised the money to provide grants to 300 veterans (and some spouses as well), and aims to do more, as they are currently working with the Stanford Brian Simulation Lab on a brain imaging study to investigate the potential physiological improvements from ibogaine.
Notable Quotes
“I was spending a lot of quiet time, just praying and thinking, and I remembered that one of our friends had gone outside of the US. And I didn’t even know what it was- I didn’t know anything about psychedelics, I didn’t know anything about ibogaine. I didn’t know anything other than someone we trusted was having a similar set of challenges and found relief through something crazy.” -Amber “I don’t think you can explain psychedelics, what it does. You’re opening your brain, really. You’re tapping into higher levels of consciousness that you just can’t explain to others unless you do it. And then the majority of people that do it [and] do it the correct way, they’re changed forever.” -Marcus
“It just creates this happiness that’s contagious, and it makes everyone else around them want to perform at that level as well. I know that I can say that for myself, and the shift in our family dynamic, and whether it’s our relationship with our kids, to our kids also setting goals and attaining them- that’s a real thing. There’s so much healing happening beyond just the veteran that we’re supporting.” -Amber “What we’ve come to realize, and what I personally feel, is that vulnerability is actually the greatest show of strength.” -Amber
“I feel like if we can really put our heads down and add to the body of research so that we can advocate for these therapies to be available inside the borders of the country that these veterans chose to defend, then we can not only help them in a more meaningful way, we can end the veteran suicide epidemic, and hopefully these therapies will be available to all Americans in due time, because they really are saving lives.” -Amber
When he was medically retired after 13 years and multiple combat deployments as a US Navy SEAL, Marcus Capone started experiencing an escalating myriad of challenges, including depression, isolation, cognitive impairment, excessive alcohol use, headaches, insomnia, and impulsivity. Marcus was diagnosed with PTSD, and later, TBI. When all hope seemed lost, his wife, Amber, learned of a new kind of treatment, and Marcus traveled outside of the US to receive treatment with Ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT, to tremendous results.
This experience inspired them to co-found the non-profit, Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS) in 2019, which has since provided grants for hundreds of US Special Forces veterans to receive psychedelic-assisted therapy treatment, as well as preparation and integration coaching. VETS believes that psychedelic therapy can lay the foundation for further healing. This “foundational healing” enables continued progress across a range of therapeutic modalities, and is supported by a robust coaching program, providing a holistic treatment solution for veterans.
Taking a deep look at what Measure 110 did and didn’t do in Oregon, and speaking with one of the measure’s Chief Petitioners, Anthony Johnson, on the future of drug policy reform.
“There’s never been a better time to be a drug policy reform activist,” says Anthony Johnson, a Chief Petitioner of Oregon’s Measure 110. Amid a sea of despairing headlines, it’s refreshing to hear a streak of optimism, especially from someone who has been working in public service for over twenty years.
Measure 110, also known as DATRA (the Drug Abuse Treatment and Recovery Act), received 58% of the Oregon vote in November. Similar to Portugal’s drug approach, the measure decriminalized the personal use and possession of all drugs. In addition, it allocated cannabis tax dollars and prison savings to pay for expanded drug treatment and other vital services. This progressive policy was passed alongside Measure 109, which created a legal statewide psilocybin therapy program.
Measure 110 was implemented statewide on February 1st, 2021. Addiction recovery centers and services must be available in each of the state’s 16 coordinated care organization regions by October, 2021.
What Measure 110 Does:
Removes criminal penalties for low-level possession of drugs. The amounts are as follows:
Under 1 gram of heroin
Under 1 gram, or fewer than 5 pills, of MDMA
Under 2 grams of methamphetamine
Under 2 grams of cocaine
Under 40 units of LSD
Under 12 grams of psilocybin
Under 40 units of methadone
Fewer than 40 pills of oxycodone
Allocates $100 million in state funding to expand behavioral health, addiction, recovery, housing, peer support and harm reduction services and interventions.
Establishes an Oversight and Accountability Council, made up of people who have direct lived experience with addiction, along with service delivery experts.
Reduces the criminal penalty for larger amounts of drugs from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Replaces the misdemeanor charge for small possession (which held a maximum penalty of 1 year in prison and a $6,250 fine) with a fine of $100. This fine can be waived by completing a health screening within 45 day of receiving a citation.
Nearly eliminates racial disparities in drug arrests, according to an independent analysis.
The Measure Does Not:
Legalize or create a regulated supply of drugs.
Change the criminal code related to drug manufacture and sale.
Change the criminal code for other crimes which may be associated with drug use, such as theft and driving under the influence.
I spoke with John Lucy, a Portland-based attorney focused on cannabis and business law, to clarify. He explained that Measure 110 covers all controlled substances, Schedule I through IV. The defined amounts in the bill language were provided for the more well-known drugs. So in short, Measure 110 really does make simple small possession a Class E violation for most drugs (with some A misdemeanors for larger quantities of the drugs listed that don’t meet commercial drug offense guidelines).
To be more specific, substances such as GHB (Schedule I and III), 2C-B (Schedule I) and Fentanyl (Schedule II) are now all class E violations, subject to the new $100 citation.
Why Measure 110 Matters for Racial Justice
The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission (OCJC) is an independent government body which is responsible for research, policy development and planning. In 2020, the Secretary of State released a Racial and Ethnic Impact Report, which explored the potential impacts of Measure 110. The findings make it easier to understand why Oregonians voted overwhelmingly in favor of this measure.
According to analysts, Measure 110 is slated to:
Prevent 8,000 arrests.
Reduce drug convictions of Black and Indigenous Oregonians by a whopping 94%.
Save between $12 million to $48.6 million from ending arrests, jailings, and convictions.
Also noteworthy are the more systemic solutions that could come from this measure. According to the OCJC’s report:
“This drop in convictions will result in fewer collateral consequences stemming from criminal justice system involvement, which include difficulties in finding employment, loss of access to student loans for education, difficulties in obtaining housing, restrictions on professional licensing, and others,” the report says, adding: “Other disparities can exist at different stages of the criminal justice process, including inequities in police stops, jail bookings, bail, pretrial detention, prosecutorial decisions, and others.”
Q & A with Anthony Johnson on Current and Future Drug Policy Reform
The three chief petitioners of Oregon’s Measure 110. From left to right: Haven Wheelock, Janie Marsh Gullickson, and Anthony Johnson.
I spoke with Chief Petitioner of Measure 110, Anthony Johnson, about the treatment-not-jails approach and where he hopes the drug policy reform movement will go next.
Rebecca Martinez: It’s a little late, but congratulations on the passage of 110. What a huge accomplishment!
Anthony Johnson: It’s a step in the right direction. Oregon took a big sledgehammer to the failed drug war. But I would say there is still more work to be done around the criminal justice element, making sure that harm reduction, treatment, and recovery programs are fully funded. And there’s still more work to be done expunging past criminal offenses that people have suffered from.
RM: Do you foresee new organizations being formed under this measure, or will the funding go to expand existing ones?
AJ: Right off the bat, at least with the initial funds, it will go to groups like Central City Concern and Bridges to Change that set up sober housing living situations and want to expand their programs so they can help people find places to live, get job training and experience, and be able to move on with their lives. Programs like that can expand. There could be rural organizations that understand there are places in Oregon where people have to travel hours to receive drug treatment. Groups could get funding for mobile units and meet people where they are. And then we have organizations like Outside In, who may want to expand the ability to provide NarCan, or fentanyl-testing supplies so that lives can be saved.
So in the short term, it will be organizations that are already up and running, doing good work and have experience applying for these types of funding sources. Over time, I could see new organizations established based upon lessons learned and the needs of the community.
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RM: When it comes to drug testing [as in checking for purity, not to be confused with urine drug testing], is this something we currently have in some form, and if not, is it legal and allowed under this new program?
AJ: Right now, organizations can get funding to expand programs to test drug supplies. There are organizations working today in Oregon that provide test strips so people can test their own drugs and make sure they are not fentanyl. I’m unaware that this conflicts with federal law if a group is just supplying testing equipment. It’s a little different than say, a safe consumption site where there is a violation of federal law happening on site. It’s more like, “Here’s your kit,” and you’re on your way.
When we talk about the interplay and all these issues of impact, I want to highlight one point, and I believe we did this effectively during the campaign. I hope this can reverberate all throughout Oregon: When people talk about drug policy changes, ultimately it is not about the drugs. It is about the people. Our loved ones. No matter where you live, who you are, you have family members using drugs, most likely illegal drugs, but definitely legal drugs, be it alcohol, tobacco, or prescription drugs.
Knowing the truth about these drugs, treating them without stigma so that when people who do have an issue, they’re willing to come forward and there are resources available to them. Ultimately, what do you want for yourself or a loved one? How do you want to be treated? Do you want them arrested, put in jail, fired, given a scarlet letter “F” labeling them a felon for the rest of their lives so they can’t get certain housing opportunities? Or do you want them treated with dignity and provided resources if they need help. Remember that the majority of drug users actually don’t need help and can lead productive lives.
When mainstream media stories are written, headlines are going to be as inflammatory as possible. The photo’s gotta be needles and lines, razor blades, if they can they throw some guns in the picture too, but that’s not a realistic representation of life in America. As we move forward, we want to be compassionate, empathetic, end the stigma, and treat people how we want to be treated.
When people talk about drug policy changes, ultimately it is not about the drugs. It is about the people.
RM: I have two immediate family members who have been incarcerated. Is there a pathway to ending sentences for people who are serving time for substances that are no longer illegal? Or, is it: “What’s done is done”?
AJ: Something could be done about it, for sure. And we were able to accomplish some of this work with cannabis. We could have something passed that provides a study saying, “Who is in prison for these substances that are now decriminalized?” Or, “The offense was reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor and their prison time should be reduced and they should be let out.”
For whatever reason, there’s often some reluctance around that. I don’t quite understand it. The way I see it, when we legalize cannabis or drug possession, voters and society are recognizing that the state has made a mistake. Cannabis shouldn’t have been illegal in the first place. These small amounts of drugs should not be a felony or a misdemeanor. So, why are people in prison and why do people have criminal records when the state made the mistake?
It will take further legislative changes to accomplish this. We still have such a huge stigma around drugs. Cannabis has taken 25 years. It may be due to coronavirus and other concerns, but really there’s been no movement on further decriminalizing drug possession yet.
RM: What do you want to see moving forward?
AJ: What I want to see, what I’m working for and will continue advocating for, is automatically expunging old convictions. Automatically releasing people from prison. Following Measure 91 [Oregon’s Legal Marijuana initiative, on which Anthony was also Chief Petitioner], one of the most proud moments of my activist career was reading an article on OPB.org in which a man said he cried tears of joy because his cannabis delivery conviction could finally be expunged from his record, after following him for 30 years of his life.
Now, six years later, I am still proud of that, but I am struck that we didn’t go far enough. He was in a position to hire an attorney, pay the court fees, pay for the filing. [But] expunging your criminal record should not depend on your ability to hire an attorney. The law is the law. It should just be off everybody’s record. It should not be based on how much money you have or whether you know how to jump through legal hoops.
RM: Have you heard interest from people in other states who want to create models designed after 110? Given what you know now, what would be the dream model that you believe could be pushed through in more progressive states?
AJ: I have been in touch with people interested in enacting similar policies, and even city or countywide changes where statewide is not feasible. The cannabis movement did the same thing with local efforts. I definitely support anything that moves the issue forward. I became an activist over 20 years ago and I definitely see a key change in where we are and we are definitely going to move forward in other states. My dream model would be largely based in Oregon.
Now, the possession limits of what you decriminalize should be examined and should be realistic around peoples’ usage. One of the critiques I heard a lot from addiction doctors was that the possession limits we decriminalized in Measure 110 were, really, too low for a lot of users.
Even potentially, so long as someone is not selling, [general possession] could be decriminalized. Automatic expungements of past offenses and early prison release, and I think there should be funds allocated for treatment, harm reduction and recovery for those who need it.
This should be looked at as an extension of our healthcare needs. States should also be looking into studies into the medicinal benefits of various psychedelics, be it psilocybin mushrooms or MDMA. Slowly but surely, we are getting research moving forward at the federal level, but it is really up to the states to move these things forward.
In the future, something like 109 and 110 could be combined.
Explore the shadow side of psychedelics in this learn-at-your-own-pace course.
AJ: I support anything that moves the issue forward and educates people. My one caveat [about Decrim Nature and the Plant Medicine Healing Alliance] is I don’t want anybody to possess larger amounts of these drugs [in Oregon] than what Measure 110 allows, believing they are okay under state law because of a city resolution. A city cannot make something legal that the state has made illegal.
This is a problem with not having a city court, and this is something I look at when we are planning future drug policy reform measures. Cities that have their own city court, such as Columbia, Missouri where I went to undergrad and law school, can pass a measure and force the city prosecutor and police to keep that case within city courts and not send it to county or state [court], or refer it to the feds. So in these places, you can actually change the law [at the city level].
The city can’t make, say 28 grams of psilocybin mushrooms legal if the state says 12. It could be de facto legal, if the district attorney chose not to prosecute people, but DA’s change and it may not always be that way. [It’s then up to] local police discretion… it could be “lowest law enforcement priority,” but they could still arrest you.
RM: If it is on the discretion of the police, is it worth putting resources into these city-based resolutions? The last thing any of us wants is blood on our hands or anyone having a brush with the law because they thought they had legal protection when they didn’t.
It is imperative for all advocates to do what they can to be open. Lowest law enforcement priority measures are symbolic measures. If you are not actually changing the law, people can still be arrested and convicted. There could still be a lot of good out of that, but we need education that helps people realize this doesn’t actually change the criminal code. It’s up to advocates to make sure people know the truth of the matter. We don’t want to do harm. That said, if anything is moving the issue forward, I tend to support it. My focus is on changing the law, but I support anything that’s chipping away at the drug war. We should be honest about the pros and cons.
We want to let science, truth, and common sense guide us. We need to be truthful about what a lowest law enforcement priority measure does.
Expunging your criminal record should not depend on your ability to hire an attorney. The law is the law. It should just be off everybody’s record.
RM: What would you say to those who are pro-psychedelics who are new to the idea of broader drug policy reform?
This is something I’ve battled within cannabis legalization, which I’ve been involved in for over 20 years. Early on, and still to this day, there was cannabis exceptionalism. People had the attitude of, “Don’t arrest us [cannabis users]. Arrest these other people who use heroin, or meth, or these other drugs.” And now we’re seeing the same thing with psychedelics.
In the end, I believe people need to do their best to be empathetic to the situations people are born into, how they’re raised, the traumas they go through, and the drugs that are used. If you were born in a different city, state, whatever… you may have used different drugs than what you use today.
When I first told people in cannabis activism that I was working on 110, they were like, “You’re not going to decriminalize meth, right?”
Bottom line is: Arresting and convicting people, whatever the drug is… it’s counterproductive. Throwing someone in jail and taking away their education, housing and job opportunities is not good for them or society. We have to set aside our feelings about drugs because we believe some substances are better than others and that [certain] people should be treated better than others. We all have circumstances and hardships. No matter the drug of choice, arresting, criminalizing and stigmatizing them is a counterproductive policy.
We always need to come back to that. We need to appeal to people’s compassion and empathy. We cannot arrest and jail our way out of people using drugs.
RM: You make an important point. You’re touching on the question of: What does punishment do to us? Does it move us closer or further from the society we want to have?
We have to change the conversation. Imagine the headlines you’d see if other drugs caused the consequences we see with alcohol. Car accidents, death, abuse, other accidents, all these bad decisions people make… if that was another drug, just imagine the headlines, every day. People committing crimes, getting in wrecks with alcohol in our systems. But for better or worse, it is accepted in our society.
But if someone came to you and said they used alcohol and thought they needed help, that is [also] totally acceptable in society. And it should be. That’s where we want to get with all drugs. No matter the substance someone uses. If people seek help, they should get the help they need. Ultimately, we need to end the stigma. It’s difficult when even people within drug policy reform have their own stigmas around certain drugs. I’m a different advocate in 2021 than I was in 2000. Everyone has their own journey, but I definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel.
We got a strong majority of the vote [in Oregon]. Drug decriminalization got a higher percentage of the votes than Jeff Merkeley, who is a very popular senator! This is more popular than we think. We’ve got to thank Dr. Carl Hart, who is braver than most, for paving the way.
I believe in ten years, in this discussion around decriminalization, stigma and use, we’re going to be in a much better place than we are now. It’s not just electoral victories, it’s conversations we have publicly like this one, conversations with our friends and family, we can just chip away at it.
I’m actually very hopeful. Drug policy reform is two steps forward, one step back. But as scary and maddening and the world can be, I’ve never been more optimistic about what we can do. I’m proud that Oregon’s been playing our part and other states are following suit.
I believe in our lifetime we are going to end the drug war.
Rebecca Martinez is a Portland, Oregon-based writer, parent and community organizer. She is a co-founder of the Fruiting Bodies Collective, an advocacy group, podcast and multimedia platform exploring the intersections between healing justice and the psychedelics movement.
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Michelle is back, Joe is in Phoenix, news is covered, and rants are made.
They first cover Maine’s recent proposal to legalize psilocybin therapy, and how interesting it is that a diagnosis wouldn’t be needed, but a “licensed psilocybin service facilitator” would: Is this a move towards liberation or far away from it? They then discuss the excellent results finally coming out of MAPS’ Phase 3 Trial for MDMA-Assisted Therapy, which leads to a huge sidebar about the efficacy of therapy, what a diagnosis can mean, how we define “sick” and “healthy,” and how we trust “evidence-based” studies and the DSM when maybe we shouldn’t so much.
They then talk about a CEO of a $2 billion startup getting fired for using LSD at work in a microdosing experiment, the FDA proposing a ban on menthol-flavored cigarettes and flavored cigars (which Michelle refers to as what a lot of us know them as, “blunt wraps”), and the list that sparked a lot of controversy in the community, Psychedelic Invest’s “100 Most Influential People in Psychedelics” list, which, despite Joe’s inclusion at #85 (Yay Joe! Sorry Kyle!), Michelle did not entirely agree with.
Notable Quotes
“I understand that maybe totally regulating and legalizing psilocybin for sale without the facilitator component is a little radical for the mainstream to handle, but …I do hope that this is a first step toward that. Maybe we can show how safe and gentle psilocybin can be, and that the facilitator aspect should be a choice among people and not a necessity.” -Michelle
“You don’t need a clinical diagnosis to know you have shit to work on.” -Joe “Talking about diagnosis and the medicalization of therapy, I think it’s this double-edged sword where some people really find relief in having a diagnosis, and go, ‘oh, it gives me some sort of language that this is what’s going on with me and I have a path forward to treat it,’ but that also limits people from wanting to seek out therapy.” -Kyle “The establishment wants us to think that they’re keeping us safe so that they can continue to justify their existence. That’s one of my reads. I understand how that’s pretty cynical, but it’s kind of the way it’s been: ‘Oh, you’re smoking cannabis? We’re going to put you in jail and take your kids away, because it’s what’s best.’ That sounds like a nightmare, first off. And then secondly, where’s your data? Where’s your data that prohibition has ever worked? Ever, ever, ever?” -Joe
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 week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, everyone’s back and so is the news.
They cover California Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 519 bill to decriminalize psychedelics statewide (which is the first time a decriminalize bill has been put through and passed by lawmakers instead of ballot initiatives), a 3rd Massachusetts city decriminalizing psychedelics, an article pointing out how the various flaws in our capitalistic world also thrive in the psychedelic world, and a TIME magazine article on ibogaine and Marcus and Amber Capone’s VETS organization (that curiously didn’t mention Marcus’ 5-MeO-DMT use or iboga’s endangered status).
But there are 2 big articles that lead to the most discussion this week: first, Psymposia’s article about Third Wave’s Paul Austin stealing provider information (possibly including Kyle’s) from Psychedelic.support and MAPS and the ethics of doing something like this, and second, Vice’s article examining patents and ethics within the psychedelic world. How can companies be profitable while also being ethical? How can a company grow within a capitalistic society without falling into the greed traps of our Western ways?
And although he doesn’t call it out, this episode features the return of this show notes writer’s favorite PT segment, Joe’s Paranoid Update- this time about the chaos that could ensue if the Colorado River dries up.
Notable Quotes
“We can work on ourselves, but does that ultimately heal the society when these systemic issues are at play which continue to make us sick? It just feels like this endless feedback loop. …If we’re just focused on our individuation and not actually engaging and participating in the community, in the society, then what are we doing the work for? Are we just doing it for our individual selves?” -Kyle
“Representation matters so much and it affects people’s self-esteem and self-worth when they don’t have it there, because they don’t think that that’s ever going to be a possibility for them. It just felt so good to be able to put that article out there and to represent some different types of people in this space and highlight their really important and often overlooked work. And we’re going to continue to do it.” -Michelle
“It really is just this cool new therapy for the affluent class [that] Compass [Pathways] wants, and that’s how you make the most money. But I think that if you were an ethical psychedelic company, that wouldn’t be the goal. That wouldn’t be the mission, and you wouldn’t dress it up all in this B.S. language.” -Michelle
“I do feel like we’re in the middle of something really powerful and it can either really change everything or… not. I just hope that we, as a community, keep our eye on the prize, which is like- it’s more than psychedelics. It’s cultural change, societal change.” -Michelle
In this week’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Kyle, Joe, and Michelle first discuss an article from Salon.com that illustrates the flaws behind psychedelics being continually hailed as a miracle cure: has everyone just replaced the oft-criticized model of selling a “miracle” pill with selling the narrative that a few psychedelic sessions can cure anything? And inspired by Lenny Gibson, they point out that this rabid focus on medicalization is a direct result of these substances being made illegal in the first place. What would things look like if that had never happened?
They then cover the developing drama between Compass Pathways and seemingly anyone compassionate and not making money from Compass Pathways’ seedy behavior, represented this week by Tim Ferriss and David Bronner. The latest update includes Compass co-founder Christian Angermayer calling Ferriss’ millions in donations a “drop in the ocean” in an odd donations-measuring contest, an email sent to investors saying competitors will never be able to bring a product to market due to the (absurd) patents they’ve filed (which Angermayer actually defended), and co-founder and CEO George Goldsmith mobilizing opposition to Oregon’s Measure 109.
This, not surprisingly, leads to a discussion about the competition between corporations, the race for patents, the drug war, how companies overestimate costs of drug-research and potential loss, how so little of the money being made is going to the Indigenous cultures we got all of this knowledge from, and more fun stuff in the endless mire of bullshit we have to wade through as a result of the drug war and greed.
Notable Quotes
“The only reason why we need to get this medicalized is because we made it illegal and we put it on a scheduling system. So, to make it official and legit and to deschedule it to make it into a medicine, we have to go through FDA-approval. …What if it was never made illegal to begin with?” -Kyle (inspired by Lenny Gibson)
“I really don’t believe in the antibiotic of psychiatry. You really have to actively work on changing the way you think and behave and react and all these things, and it’s a lot of hard work. Mushrooms make it more fun, but it’s a lot of hard work.” -Michelle
“We’re not trying to be the enemy, but please be open to critique and understand where we’re coming from. In the same way a white male in America needs to understand American history and Imperialism and the crazy shit we’ve done, medicine should also try to own that a little bit. Like, why don’t certain communities trust you? Why don’t you get the results that the data says you should?” -Joe “This is not just about decrim. This is about restoring our rights as citizens of the world, regaining autonomy over our bodies, [and] improving science.” -Joe
The week I am writing this, author and psychedelic philanthropist Tim Ferriss poised a very direct question (via Twitter) to the public and various leaders in the psychedelic community, including Michael Pollan, Rick Doblin, and Robin Carhart-Harris.
Ferriss asked about how best to navigate the apparent “patent land grab” occurring behind the scenes within various private companies, many of which have received millions of dollars in investment capital and stock valuation.
This was in no doubt a response to the bizarre move by the British psychedelic startup Compass Pathways to patent, according to a recent VICE article, “the basic components of psychedelic therapy,” including the use of “soft furniture and holding hands.”
The internet being what it is, Christian Angermayer, a venture capitalist representing both Compass Pathways and a biotechnology company called ATAI Life Sciences, chimed in. Downplaying Ferriss’ philanthropy efforts and deeming his concerns as “wrong,” Angermayer defended the business strategies that Ferriss, along with many other leaders in the psychedelic community, called into question.
We are in the midst of a psychedelic gold rush. This comprehensive article from VICE addresses the nauseating pace at which psychedelic patents are springing up, including everything from psilocybin-infused cannabis to Phillip Morris e-cigarettes containing DMT and patents for psychedelic treatment of food allergies.
As if our world wasn’t getting strange enough.
If the $1 billion initial public offering (IPO) of Compass Pathways tells us anything, it is that we are well into witnessing the birth of an unwieldy and unpredictable psychedelic capitalism–a phrase which would likely compel the Huxleys, Hoffmans, and McKennas of the world to roll over in their infinite cosmic graves.
With multiple decriminalization measures passing this past year across the US, along with Measure 109 in Oregon that will allow the therapeutic use of psilocybin, the trip train is moving fast.
This news is worth celebrating. Personally, I am overjoyed, especially due to the fact that psychedelics played a central role in why I became a psychotherapist. Yet at this very moment, the future of psychedelic medicines is being bought and sold through high-level investment pitches delivered in sleek board rooms across San Francisco, London, and beyond.
Along with it is the potential for equitable and affordable access to psychedelic treatment for millions of people desperately seeking their healing effects–the very same people these companies claim to want to “help.” Forgive me for being skeptical.
Because here’s the thing we all must keep in mind as we trudge along into this wild new century:
Psychedelic Capitalism Doesn’t Exist.
There are psychedelic substances, experiences, music, art, and literature. There are psychedelic philosophies, ethics, worldviews, and sub-cultural communities. And there is psychedelic healing, treatment, and indigenous traditions. Psychedelics dissolve boundaries and reveal the soul, as the Greek definition of the word indicates (psyche– soul, delos – to reveal).
And then there is capitalism: an economic system controlled by private corporations based on infinite growth, resource extraction, consumption, and the bottom line of financial profit. Capitalism engulfs, confines, and extracts the soul from what it consumes.
Like “military intelligence” or the “music business,” the two words create a philosophical conundrum. We are currently witnessing how these paradoxical concepts will mesh in the here and now. The balance will undoubtedly be precarious.
In the heart-wrenching internet comic,We Will Call it Pala, artist Dave McGaughey tells the story about one woman’s vision to start a psychedelic healing clinic colliding with the hyper-optimized ethos of Silicon Valley and the cold-blooded demands of her venture capital investors.
As the story progresses along its all-too-likely trajectory, she faces the monstrosity she has unwittingly created. Grieving for her seemingly naive vision, the heroine laments, “There is no medicine strong enough to blow a corporation’s mind.”
This is because, despite their legal standing in our society, corporations are not conscious beings. By definition, a corporation will never have a mind-altering or heart-opening experience. And though the etymological roots of the word inevitably boils down to “body,” a corporation will never feel a thing.
Art may be one of the best arenas where we might be able to predict how the weird, alchemical vinegar of psychedelics will merge into the oil-laden waters of capitalism.
It is said that art can serve either as a hammer or a mirror for society. Even once a great work has been absorbed by the market–a Banksy or a John Cage or a Van Gogh–the impact of that work can still continue to resonate within the psyche and catalyze an imaginal or inner shift, no matter how many coffee mugs it’s been plastered onto.
Art is able to, at least partially, escape the trap of capitalism because it exists between two realms.
Art takes a form in our physical, time-bound reality, but also lives within the imagination, and is formless. Art can embody and transmit ideas, imparting rare messages that transcend the tangible and time-bound. Art changes culture. Art evokes emotion, even if we’ve seen the same image a thousand times. Art can shock, uplift, or crush us. Art is dangerous.
The Art of the Trick
Lewis Hyde, in his book Trickster Makes This World, argues that artists have evolved to become the mythological trickster figures within our modern culture, previously relegated to ritual and story.
Charting the work of figures as diverse as Marcel Duchamp, Bob Dylan and Frederick Douglass, Hyde explores the very nature of the words “art” and “artist,” tracing their etymological origins back to the Latin “artus,” which means joint, or juncture.
As Hyde playfully elaborates, the “artus-workers” of our modern era now play the role that Hermes, Raven, and Coyote played in their own cultural mythologies, as gods of the threshold, the trick, the lie, and the oft-misunderstood bearer of culture.
These were celebrated beings who, often unwittingly, upset the established and most likely stale cosmic order, and introduced a bit of divine chaos, thereby creating a new cosmic law, sacred technology, or a new world entirely.
Despite their humble or comedic natures, tricksters, like psychedelics, are not to be taken lightly.
Take the Greek myth of Hermes that Hyde uses as an example in his book. Hermes, through stealing and then slaughtering the golden cattle of his brother Apollo, performed the first sacrificial offering to himself and made himself a god. He clearly made a fool of his brother, who had a thing for fancy board rooms in the sky. The other Olympians thought it was hilarious and let Hermes stay.
Another example, Coyote, comes from Native American tradition, as told in the 1984 book, American Indian Myths and Legends. In thousands of tales told across many languages, Coyote creates the world, teaches hunting and tracking, or travels to the land of the dead, amongst other adventures. Up north, Raven brings fire to humans, invents the fish trap, and perfects the art of theft. He also travels between the earthly and heavenly realms, bringing messages across the divide.
Eshu and Legba, trickster gods from West Africa and the Carribean, are invoked before all other gods, for it is understood that every act of divine communication and exchange must pass through their hands. According to Hyde’s book, even though Eshu and Legba are not the most powerful beings in the Afro-Carribean pantheon, these lords of the crossroads are feared above all others because of their pivotal cosmic position. And you never know what you are going to get.
Even the Loki, dark trickster of the Norse pantheon, sets into motion events which would result in the destruction of the very gods themselves–Ragnarok. But what is often forgotten is that Ragnarok is not just about the fiery end of all things. It is also the beginning of the new world, all of which was put into motion because Loki couldn’t help but push a few buttons up in Asgard.
Come to think of it, trickster myths seem to have a lot in common with the role that psychedelics play within the psyche and the brain. Stay with me here.
Neurology and New Worlds
Neuroscientist and psychedelic researcher Robin Carhart-Harris’ landmark 2014 article, The Entropic Brain, highlighted the ways in which psilocybin decreases blood flow to an area of the brain called the default mode network (DMN), enabling novel connections to be made between neural pathways that are normally routed through this cognitive superhighway.
Psychedelics upset the applecart of our normal cognitive functioning, and by introducing a bit of pharmacologically mediated chaos, make room for new and different neural connections to take shape.
Of additional interest here is Carhart-Harris’ discussion of psychedelic states being “poised at a ‘critical’ point in a transition zone between order and disorder” in terms of consciousness. The place between two places, often called the liminal, plainly invokes the many trickster gods we have been speaking of, for all dwell on this same precipice, and can be found anywhere that roads, worlds, and perhaps even neural networks, collide.
Even the many studies showing the promise of psychedelics to treat addictions can be seen in the light of trickster myths (e.g. de L. Osório, et.al, 2015, and Hamill et.al, 2019). Whatever epiphany is granted during the psychedelic experience that might finally help someone kick a long-held, potentially lethal habit, marks a shift from one world to another, mythologically speaking.
True recovery marks an end and a beginning. Such an epiphany, especially in the language of Alcoholics Anonymous, is seen as a message from a higher power, which the Greeks and the Yoruba knew was always mediated by the trickster.
Lastly, let’s not forget the reason why psychedelics were made illegal in the first place. As Terance McKenna famously said, “Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”
Just like art, psychedelics have the potential to change culture, and can be dangerous to the established order of things. The 1960’s and 70’s proved that with a spectacular flair. It is not difficult to imagine why Nixon deemed Timothy Leary “the most dangerous man in America” at the onset of the drug war.
The simple fact that a naturally occurring plant or fungus could impart such soul-revealing visions may even be “the best kept secret in history,” according to Brian Muraresku in his revelatory book, The Immortality Key. Who needs priests to talk to god when you can do it yourself with the help of a plant? But that’s a story for another time.
Even if these awe-inspiring revelations are “occasioned” (to use the words of psychedelic researcher Roland Griffiths) through a psychopharmacological trick of serotonin agonists, if the above mythologies teach us anything, it is that sometimes a trick is exactly what’s needed for real transformation to occur.
Standing at the Crossroads
Psychotherapy, it has often been said, is both an art and a science. And now as psychedelics firmly make their way into the field, it may require those facilitating this work to embrace the deeper dimensions of what such a sentiment actually implies.
Perhaps the evolving art of the psychedelic therapist or facilitator will be to more deeply embrace the fact that these medicines are as unpredictable as the tricksters we’ve just met, and that their true implications for both individuals and culture lay far beyond simply feeling better and having a nicer day at the office.
To believe that psychedelics can be confined to the clinic, the lab, or the corporate body not only ignores the volatile history of these compounds in the 20th century, it ignores the fact that the very function of these substances is to dissolve boundaries and dismantle familiar, long-held structures on neurological, psychological, and cultural levels.
To bring this all to a close, and to end where we began in true trickster fashion, it seems that Hermes has one last ace up his sleeve. Not only was he the divine messenger, bringer of dreams, guide of souls, and lord of the crossroads, Hermes was also the god of the marketplace. Any time money is exchanged, Hermes is said to be there. The true “free market” is imbued with the spirit of Hermes, and involves much more than the simple exchange of currency and intellectual property rights sold to the highest bidder.
Emerging philosophies, religions from far off lands, rumors of wars, and village gossip were all exchanged in the markets of old. They were places of excitement, cross-pollination, unpredictability, and community–things I think we could all use a bit more of these days.
There’s one last thing. It was said that one could ask for Hermes’ help by leaving an offering at his shrine, located at the heart of the market, covering one’s ears, and walking away. The first thing you heard when you opened your ears was Hermes speaking to you. The fine print is that one had to be firmly outside the hustle and bustle of the market before listening for the winged messenger’s reply. I believe the modern term for uncovering one’s ears too soon is called an “echo chamber,” and we all know how helpful those can be.
What does this mean for our purposes here? I haven’t the slightest idea. Only that the god of the marketplace requires us to maintain a certain distance from his domain to be clearly heard. Just because Hermes rules the marketplace doesn’t mean he lives there.
So just like where we find ourselves today, peering over the precipice of this new psychedelic capitalism, there’s no map for where we must go before listening for Hermes’ synchronistic response. Go far enough out and we might encounter the language of owls, moonlight, and whoever else prowls those liminal wilds. Stay too close, and we risk repeating just more of the same.
And if we get lost, and find ourselves back at the crossroads where we first began, perhaps that is the message we were needing all along. Because ultimately, the joke’s on us.
About the Author
With a masters (MA) in depth counseling psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, Simon Yugler is a depth and psychedelic integration therapist based in Portland, OR. Weaving Jungian psychology, Internal Family Systems therapy, and mythology, Simon also draws on his diverse experiences learning from indigenous cultures around the world, including the Shipibo ayahuasca tradition. He has a background in experiential education, and has led immersive international journeys for young adults across 10 countries. He is passionate about initiation, men’s work, indigenous rights, decolonization, and helping his clients explore the liminal wilds of the soul. Find out more on his website and on Instagram , Twitter (@depth_medicine) or Facebook.
In this episode, Joe interviews the founder and CEO of MindMed, JR Rahn.
This one’s a bit different and plays out perhaps unsurprisingly, as Joe’s well-established talking points against the drug war and DEA, legalize-everything stance, and all-inclusive focus on the many branches of drug-use (medical/therapeutic use, religious use, celebration/partying, inner work and exploration, and creative problem-solving) meet a businessman whose life was saved by psychedelics and who doesn’t want to talk about the battle but instead wants to push forward, all-in on the method he thinks will get people in need the medicine that could save them the fastest: not putting so much effort towards state-by-state decriminalization and demonizing the DEA, but instead, working with them towards medicalization, and telling them what we want by passing measures that allocate more capital and resources towards infrastructure that will help people.
Rahn talks about what MindMed is working on: the first approved commercial drug trial studying the effects of microdosing LSD on adult ADHD, and their more long-term plan, developing a trip-neutralizing drug that would be a safer option than Xanax for ending a challenging trip and getting people back to stability. He also discusses the importance of scalability and lowering healthcare costs, changing anecdotal evidence into real science, and his life-saving (and cheaper) hope of patients being able to work with therapists in their homes rather than in expensive, anxiety-increasing medical environments.
Notable Quotes
“As a society, we need to prioritize treatment and we don’t. …It’s just completely illogical to me that, as a society, we stare it in its face every day and we blame the opioid crisis and we blame drug addiction for our crime and all these things, yet, as a society, we don’t allocate the resources necessary to solve it.” “I think there’s that Forbes article where I was like, ‘Oh, I want nothing to do with the decrim people.’ I definitely said that, but that’s not really what I meant. What I meant was: if we’re going to make psychedelics into a medicine, and we’re going to make it scalable and accessible, I think we should be having a federal conversation about it, and to me, the most efficient pathway to do that is the FDA. And I’m concerned that we’re going to go through this process of state-by-state legalization that happened in the cannabis days and we’re going to get some pretty unsavory people involved in this community …and I’m just concerned that, if it happens in that manner, it becomes a political battle, and it doesn’t become: How do we help people? How do we get medicine to folks that are in need?”
“If we’re going to get people willing to healing themselves and get over the stigma, I think it’s important to have the feature of: ‘Look, we have the emergency stop button. Your therapist can press it if they need to when they feel that you’ve reached a point that is not good anymore.’ And I think that, ultimately (and we’ll have to study this), it might make the experience even more therapeutic. …They should be walking into a cocoon and we’re taking care of them. They should not be walking into [a room] or sitting on their couch, going, ‘Holy shit, am I going to die?’” “I’d love to get to the point where we have destigmatized these substances enough in society that people value them for what they are, and I think we will be a much better society when we get to that point, but I don’t think we can do it all at once. People tried that- didn’t work. I would just hate to watch the potential for so many people that are actually suffering from mental health and addiction [to] not get access to this treatment because we went too fast.”
“Psychedelicstoday.com: best podcast in psychedelics.”
JR is a former Silicon Valley tech executive who realized that transformational solutions to mental illness and addiction might lie in psychedelic medicines. He spent 2 years researching and began personally investing in psychedelic research through his investment company. JR partnered with drug development veteran Stephen Hurst to start MindMed in 2019, assembling a leading clinical drug discovery and development team with vast experience conducting clinical trials and research on drug candidates derived from psychedelics. Before starting MindMed, JR worked in market expansion and operations at Uber.
Our regular contributor on legal matters explains how the nascent psychedelic pharmaceutical industry and grassroots reformist movement could work together to achieve both their goals, read to the majesty of the classic American musical, Oklahoma!
Interested in learning more about the legal side of psychedelics? Then sign up here to receive info on our upcoming FREE series: Religious Use of Psychedelics in the United States.
In my last article, I introduced the idea of crafting the Uniform Plant and Fungi Medicine Act (UPFMA), which could be employed as a public initiative or adopted by state legislatures as a solution to the local piecemeal reforms and slow and improbable response from the federal government to make traditional entheogens lawful outside of religious use. I am happy to report that a team is assembling to undertake drafting UPFMA.
This, of course, begs a serious and important question: Who’s going to pay for that?Cue music…
“Oh, what a beautiful morning!” …. it would be to see the burgeoning psychedelic pharmaceutical industry back and support UPFMA. Why? Because, like the cowman and the farmer, the pharmaceutical industry and the grassroots movement can be friends. In fact, they need one another. No need to struggle with your feelings over cowboy Curly McLain and farmhand Jud Fry, Laurey. You can have both!
This is no mere minstrel show; this is serious stuff. Consider:
Farmers (Played Here by Grassroot Reformists) Need a Friend
UPFMA’s promise is to provide a uniform model body of law, akin to other uniform model laws (e.g., the Uniform Commercial Code) for state reformation and regulation of plant and fungi medicines. Amongst UPFMA’s goals are to promote further options in health care, responsible use, freedom of choice, elimination of the underground market, and personal and public safety, through state adoption of a uniform reformation law that will span the gulf between prohibition and total deregulation via a reasonable regulatory structure. The model we hope to write is intended to be adoptable either by state legislatures, or by public initiative campaigns in the more than a dozen states that allow citizen legislation.
Even with the volunteers who exist and those who will come, the production and campaign will cost the sort of sums that these sorts of campaigns cost. Let’s just put it out there on the square dance floor: “Purty little surreys” ain’t cheap. UPFMA needs benefactors, sponsors, patrons, supporters, shekels. So, peering over the fence and into the grazing lands, UPFMA’s supporters want to give a loud “Howdy, Neighbor!” to our cowmen friends in the pharmaceutical industry. We cannot help but to notice that supporting UPFMA would be hugely beneficial to your interests. It need not be, “All Er Nuthin.” Can we count on you to be neighborly?
Cowmen (Played Here by the Pharmaceutical Industry) and Grassroot Reformists Are Not Competitors for Territory
The psychedelic pharmaceutical industry will derive its revenues by exploiting patents and trademarks. But, aside from modified genetics, the pharmaceutical industry cannot patent or trademark natural medicine in its unrefined state. In contrast, UPFMA would seek only to democratize natural substances and would not be aimed at the same patent-driven and trademark-driven “market” as western industrialized pharmaceuticals seek to create. UPFMA poses no challenge to pharmaceutical patents or trademarks. Indeed, discussed further below, UPFMA might even be able to help facilitate product research. Like the cowmen and farmers from Oklahoma!, pharmaceutical industry and grassroots reformists may occupy overlapping interests, but they are not competitors and do not seek incompatible goals.
UPFMA Can Help Cowmen Catch Cattle Rustlers
As the existing pharmaceutical industry can tell the future psychedelic pharmaceutical industry, the individual home grower and/or user is no threat. Rather, it is the underground market, where pirate industrializers infringe intellectual property and undercut prices, that are your true “cattle rustlers.” Unfortunately for our cowmen…errr…pharmaceutical companies, the coming FDA approval of their products also brings an increase in public interest in psychedelics, and so too an increase in the illicit market. UPFMA is no friend of the unregulated market. Rather, one of UPFMA’s goals is to reduce illicit trade, and not just in (our metaphorical) Kansas City.
You Can’t Sell the Steak, But You Can Sell the Sizzle: Pharmaceutical Companies Benefit by Supporting UPFMA
Until FDA approval is given, the psychedelic pharmaceutical industry may not advertise their products or offer them for sale. Psilocybin and MDMA are at Phase 3’s door, and FDA approval looks promising, if not inevitable. But FDA approval is still years away, and pharmaceutical companies continue to burn capital waiting for the FDA’s start pistol to fire. This delay in marketing is a costly lost opportunity.
Meanwhile, UPFMA can do what no pharmaceutical company may – begin to educate the public and draw national popular interest in natural psychedelics. While pharmaceutical companies vie for rescheduling and for FDA approval, pharmaceutical companies who back UPFMA will receive years of permissible brand awareness and marketing research, in advance of being able to bring their products to market.
Support of UPFMA Does Not Risk the Ranch
Natural medicines and their patented counterparts do not typically compete. Instead, they compliment. Because of pricing constraints, a significant population will be unable to afford pharmaceutical industry products. It is significantly that demographic – those who cannot afford these patented medicines – that UPFMA addresses. UPFMA offers an alternative to exclusion. UPFMA does not pull market share away from the pharmaceutical industry. Rather, it addresses “customers” the industry never had or was going to have. In the wise words of Obi Wan-klahoma, “These are not the cows you’re looking for.”
There’s a Bright Golden Haze on the Meadow: Support of UPFMA Grows the Ranch and Buys More Cattle
Just like the nascent psychedelic pharmaceutical industry, UPFMA optimistically predicts the public will warm to psychedelics as an optional (if not preferred) tool to fight all sorts of mental illness. As UPFMA democratizes access, a residual effect will be the encouragement of further investment, thereby enabling pharmaceutical companies to more easily explore varieties of formulations, concentrations, extractions, etc., making their products more varied and more accessible to an ever-increasingly interested market. Again, UPFMA’s focus is on natural non-branded medicines, and has no ambition to occupy the patent market.
Support of UPFMA Allows Industry Cowmen to Better-Protect Fences
UPFMA intends to consider and to factor traditional use of entheogens, including cultural and environmental interests. UPFMA’s focus is legal access, not promotion of industrialization and scale, and UPFMA resists commoditization. UPFMA can help build fences, to allow the grassroots reformists to sustain themselves while leaving scale as the province of pharmaceutical companies. And don’t forget, pharmaceutical companies will, by virtue of their patents, retain exclusivity to further refine and to sell refined products.
UPFMA Helps When the Pharmaceutical Industry Brings Its Cattle to Market
By supporting UPFMA, the pharmaceutical industry invests in itself. UPFMA helps to popularize and to normalize psychedelics and can do it more quickly than the nascent industry presently may. Not only might that help to speed FDA approval for the industry’s products, but it might help to speed acceptance by health insurance companies. In turn, that speeds up and increases revenue that can be paid back to investors or poured back into research and product development.
UPFMA Gives Cowmen Opportunity to Show the Pharmaceutical Industry’s Human Side
At the end of Act I of Oklahoma!, an unscrupulous patent medicine peddler sells our heroine actual heroin – laudanum, to be precise – promising he had her best interests at heart, whilst taking her money. While no one expects the pharmaceutical industry simply to be just a girl who “cain’t say no,” industry support of UPFMA avoids a coming public relations whirlwind over the unavoidable disjunction of the pharmaceutical industry touting the benefits of its patent medicines, while pricing them outside the reach of many.
Support of UPFMA is consistent with ubiquitous sound public policy of fostering and promoting good mental health and responsible drug use. UPFMA can help give the public an alternative, while allowing the industry a platform to openly share the benefits of supporting humanitarian goals that pharmaceutical companies hold in common with the public. In other words, if the pharmaceutical industry touts its wares as good for everyone, support of UPFMA allows the industry to walk the walk.
UPFMA Can Create a Public Health Database
For public health study, UPFMA may consider inclusion of voluntary and anonymous data gathering provisions. This may include regulatory agency ability to present program users with voluntary questionnaires regarding their experiences and other relevant health data points. Support of UPFMA fosters gathering data and sharing it for study and research.
I submit that UPFMA and the pharmaceutical industry would be fine partners at the square dance. And, like in Oklahoma!, this would be OK. Besides, UPFMA needs a partner. How about it, cattlemen? Care to two-step?
Interested in learning more about the legal side of psychedelics? Then sign up here to receive more info on our upcoming FREE series: Religious Use of Psychedelics in the United States.
In this episode, Joe interviews Vancouver-based serial entrepreneur, co-founder, president, and CEO of Better Plant Sciences Inc., and founder and CEO of NeonMind Biosciences, Penny White.
White works to take companies public, and was running Better Plant Sciences before creating NeonMind as a subsidiary, largely inspired by Michael Pollan and research by scientists at the University of British Columbia who were looking to treat addiction with CBD. Now that NeonMind has successfully gone public (which just happened at the end of December), her goals with the company are to develop a protocol around using psilocybin to tackle obesity (they’re in pre-clinical trials now and have 5 patents filed), to work more with medicinal mushrooms and sell products with proven health claims (they sell mushroom coffees now), and eventually get into work involving drug addiction and preventing the effects of Alzheimer’s- also likely with psilocybin.
This podcast feels like a meeting of 2 minds fully immersed in the psychedelic world having a bit of a check-in about where we find ourselves at the beginning of 2021. Among other topics, they talk about NeonMind’s path, taking companies public, how cannabis and psilocybin are regulated in Canada, the benefits of being able to prescribe psilocybin, the worries of oversaturation in Oregon, and the complications of trying to make legal cannabis businesses work in federally-illegal land.
Notable Quotes
“It’s cool for younger people who are coming of age and having money for the first time and deciding what to do with it, and people that are just interested in promoting things they believe in. It’s an opportunity for people to say: ‘I love the idea of psychedelics becoming legal or becoming available as drugs to help humanity, and so I’m going to buy some of this stock.’ It’s empowering in a way.” “We may end up doing some compound work. We may end up looking at other mushrooms and maybe combining more than just one compound- psilocybin maybe being the key compound. So we’re still at the early stages of what we’re doing, but by no means would we ever have any kind of monopoly on the use of psilocybin. I mean, it’s a plant, right?”
“There’s a lot of people who really very religiously rely on the advice of their doctor, and for them, health is going to your doctor and doing what your doctor says. And so, a lot of people won’t have access to alternative medicines unless they’re prescribed by their doctor. I think those people are going to benefit the most from a drug that contains psilocybin that can be prescribed.”
“I’m still very, very interested in drug addiction and how psychedelics can help people get off drugs, and so, if I come across any companies that are focused on this, any clinical work- if I can get involved in that or help in any way, to be a co-sponsor, something like that- that would be something I’d be really interested in.”
Penny is a serial entrepreneur with over two decades of experience building companies. She was recognized in PROFIT Magazine’s W100 most successful entrepreneurs and her private company was included in PROFIT 500 Fastest-Growing companies in 2015 and 2016. She is also Co-founder, President and CEO of Better Plant Sciences Inc. (CSE: PLNT, OTCQB: VEGGF). She was an initial officer and director for 2 years at Merus Labs Inc. (TSX: MSL), a speciality pharmaceutical company focused on acquiring and optimizing legacy and growth products, which was acquired by Norgine B.V. for $342 million in 2017.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Kyle and Joe cover a crazy story about a man who injected psilocybin tea, only to end up having fungi grow in his blood and put him into organ failure. They question the logistics of this and wonder if it’s ever happened before, but Joe has since found an article reporting that this did happen back in 1985. So as crazy as it seems, it is absolutely possible. Be careful out there, folks.
They then talk about how the current psychedelic rush is diluting the existing culture, and how we should react to it, comparing it to “Eternal September,” the Usenet term for when AOL started mailing out internet disks to millions, providing access to Usenet, and how that affected the long-established and tight-knit Usenet community. This leads to a discussion of what tends to happen in the black market when cannabis is legalized, what lawyers will likely be doing in this space, why outlaw behavior is so attractive to people, and how “plant medicines” is too broad of a term to be used for psychedelics.
They also talk about Dr. Carl Hart’s new book, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear, and let us know that seats are already selling quickly for the next round ofNavigating Psychedelics for Clinicians and Therapists, which begins on March 11th. Curious about what you’re missing? Head to the page and view the growing collection of glowing testimonials to find out!
Notable Quotes
“Say you have a small music club and you’re used to 20 people coming, or a social club of some kind, and all of a sudden, 20 people get added every day. At a certain point, culture can’t really persist. That original culture’s going to be so diluted that it’s not necessarily a substantial part of the thing anymore. And I was thinking about this in terms of psychedelics, because there’s so much money coming in. If you’ve come in because of Michael Pollan, you’re part of this new wave. There’s some resistance to it- we see a lot of hate directed at Michael Pollan [and] a lot of these businesses. And I kind of get it- the resentment towards newcomers, but how do we balance that? How do we not turn into vicious defenders of our culture, as opposed to emissaries pushing our values in a nice, positive way? …There’s plenty of room for cultural dissemination. It’s just: how do we do it skillfully without becoming the thing we don’t want to become?” -Joe “There’s this whole tradition that has nothing to do with psychedelics, necessarily, and it’s quite multicultural. Plants were largely medicine for huge portions of our history- probably the majority of our history as a species. And now, in the last 60 years or whenever this whole trend started, people say ‘plant medicines’ and they really mean psychedelics, but they don’t want to sully their perception of their preferred plant allies by saying ‘psychedelic.’ They want to differentiate themselves because ‘those LSD users and those heroin users are dirty. But we’re clean.’ …Carl Hart pointed out that calling yourself a psychonaut or any of these terms that we use in the psychedelic world- it’s sort of mental gymnastics that we use to justify our drug use and vilify other people for their drug use.” -Joe
In this episode, Joe interviews author of Psychedelica Lex, general counsel to the Peyote Way Church of God, founder and president of the Arizona Cannabis Bar Association, and practicing attorney for nearly 30 years, Gary Michael Smith, Esq.
Smith talks about what he specializes in- the law and how it relates to psychedelics, and what’s happening most in his world right now: people trying to create new religions, people fighting for their religions to be legally permitted to use entheogens, and investors rapidly trying to push psilocybin and MDMA through the FDA as prescribable medications. He also talks about the Peyote Way Church of God, the history of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (often referred to as RFRA), the problems with banks and dealing with money attached to illegalities, the complications of fighting for legal drug use and the importance of having established history with entheogens, the antihero aspects and deification of Timothy Leary, Nixon and the scheduling of cannabis, federal patent law, today’s speed of knowledge and the youth’s resistance of what they’re being told, and how there’s an argument to be made that many of today’s existing religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam, of note) have a right to use entheogens due to their somewhat newly discovered historical use.
Notable Quotes
“The short story is, I went looking for this book and I couldn’t find it. It didn’t exist. So I figured well, heck, if I’m going to have to pull and do all this research, I might as well assemble it into a book and fill the void. So that’s how the book came about- written because nobody else wrote it.” “There aren’t really any psychedelic lawyers yet. I’m probably the first one to publicly come out and say that I am. And for good reason: there’s really not a lot of business right now that attracts this. But seeing cannabis unfold over the last decade, as I have- it doesn’t really take a genius to figure out that the law is way behind the curve on this, and lawmakers even more behind the curve, and there’s no shame in trying to catch up, or, Heaven forbid, get ahead.”
“I’m advocating a middle ground position where I think that these companies absolutely have a place, I think that they absolutely can do good (it’s not the tool that’s bad, it’s how you use the tool), so what I’d like to see is both the fostering of this licit market where there are companies that can mass-produce and also give people in the West what they’re comfortable with, which is a Western model of medicine. …I think as long as there is an across-the-board decriminalization so people can still do freely for themselves, let the medical model grow up next to it. There’s no contradiction as far as I’m concerned.”
A seasoned litigator, advisor, mediator and arbitrator, Gary Smith focuses his practice on commercial matters, construction, real estate, cannabis and administrative law. He has represented a wide range of individual and institutional clients in both State and Federal courts, administrative hearings, and arbitration. Moreover, Gary is one of the leading cannabis attorneys in the state, often advocating for ADR in the industry under the Weediator and Weediation brands. Notably, he served as amici counsel to the former Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services in the Arizona Supreme Court petition State v. Jones, attempting to restore cannabis extracts and concentrates to legal status under the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act. He has authored numerous articles about cannabis law, and he is commonly invited to share his expertise with professional association and industry groups. Further, Gary is a founder and current president of the Arizona Cannabis Bar Association, an organization committed to educating lawyers and the public about cannabis law and responsible legislation.
In today’s Christmas episode of Solidarity Friday, Kyle and Joe take a break from the news and instead sit down with Jonas Di Gregorio and Kristina Soriano of the Psychedelic Literacy Fund, a donor-advised fund working to raise money and co-finance the translation and publication of the most important books on psychedelic therapy into a variety of different languages.
Their first project is both volumes of Stan Grof’s The Way of the Psychonaut, which they hope to have translated into German, French, and Italian by July (for Grof’s 90th birthday), and they have started a list of future projects, with Christopher Bache’s LSD and the Mind of The Universe likely next. They talk about early interactions with Rick Doblin, why they went with a donor-advised fund rather than a crowdfunding model, the synchronicities they saw at early steps in their path, what Grof’s work has meant to them, and a possible future goal of setting up a Grof museum in Prague. Kyle and Joe also share stories of their interactions with Grof and how his work (and how little he was being discussed) led to the beginnings of Psychedelics Today 4 years ago.
If you’re feeling some holiday generosity and want to help more people gain the knowledge Grof has brought to so many, please visit Psychedelicliteracy.org and make a donation (or volunteer translation services or suggest future projects).
Lastly, if you celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas from Psychedelics Today!
Notable Quotes
“We have an inherently global mission. We’re an Italian and a Philippino living in America, trying to translate the work of a Czech psychiatrist.” -Kristina
“For me, it’s his capacity to really connect different fields, from quantum physics to psychiatry, [to the] history of religion- it’s really remarkable. The depth of his knowledge is so wide, and I think it can speak to so many people coming from different fields. I remember as a teenager, sharing the content of the books by Grof with friends that were studying physics and friends who were studying philosophy and friends who were studying psychology, and all of them could find something they could really appreciate.” -Jonas
“A book can be a harm reduction tool. …Just having a book at the right time can really help you integrate a difficult experience and change the course of your life. Definitely, this has been the case for me. I didn’t know anyone in my community at the time that could really guide me, and these books played that role.” -Jonas
“Especially now, there’s a lot of conversation about diversity- how to increase diversity in the psychedelic community. Maybe the way to do that is literally to speak their language.” -Jonas
“I think the mental health crisis isn’t language-specific. I think it happens everywhere.” -Kristina
Husband-and-wife team, Jonas Di Gregorio and Kristina Soriano, established the Psychedelic Literacy Fund: a donor-advised fund managed by Rudolf Steiner Foundation Social Finance in San Francisco. Their vision is to connect with other donors passionate about supporting the translation of books about psychedelic therapy in different languages.
Kristina Soriano holds a Masters Degree in Healthcare Administration from Trinity University. A classically trained pianist, she is the patient relations manager at a boutique doctors office in San Francisco. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Women’s Visionary Congress.
Jonas Di Gregorio comes from an Italian family of publishers, Il Libraio Delle Stelle. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from La Sapienza University of Rome. He co-produced the documentary The Psychedelic Renaissance.
Wittingly or not, pharmaceutical companies are clearing the path to the next populist revolution in traditional psychoactive plant and fungi medicines. Although still on the horizon, reregulation is fait accompli. As decriminalization and rescheduling of plant and fungi medicines advances, the inability to drive product costs suitably down will fuel the existing black market. Illicit users exist and more will join their ranks as pharmaceutical companies create a customer base. While new understanding of these ancient medicines disseminates, the public will learn that plant and fungi medicine is significantly less expensive to forage or cultivate at home than clinics or pharmacies could ever offer.
Pharmaceutical Companies Are Protecting Their Interest with Patents, and the FDA Will Impose Limits on End-Users
Pharmaceutical companies are doing necessary and helpful work, leading the way with regulators. But their reign will not last. It is inevitable that a populist preference to procure psychedelics per penny will prevail. Profiteers have a problem: price.
Consider the effect on price caused by:
Federal law’s support of patent “monopoly.”
Health insurance’s slow adoption of psychedelics.
Investor need to recoup investments in years of research and promotion.
Investor hunger for profits.
Novelty, as the world awakens with fascination to something old as something new.
To recoup the tens-to-hundreds of millions of dollars invested in securing FDA approval and related patents, and then the expense of thereafter marketing their wares for a profit, the corporate owners of these future FDA-approved psychedelics are not acting out of principled charity or for the goodwill of all humankind. They are going to make their money, either in the pricing of the medicine or in the coupling of it to clinical services. At least in the early years, as the owners of these patents and FDA approvals try best to figure out how to market their products, it seems the inevitable price per dose will be multi-hundred dollars. Even if the price gets down to tens of dollars, nature remains tough competition- nature’s price tag of “free” is a tough price to beat.
Pharmaceutical Companies Are Not the Problem— But They Are Its Origin
This not a rant against pharmaceutical companies, capitalism, or therapeutic services. It’s far from such, and each plays a necessary and vital role in this story. Without pharmaceutical company efforts, there would be no story. This is simply an observation that plant and fungi medicines are nothing more than unrefined nature, metaphorically and literally as cheap as dirt. With simplicity of that sort as competition, pharmaceutical companies are going to have a tough time keeping the genie in their “bottle of exclusivity.” This is not the circumstance where a retort of, “If you don’t like our prices, try to manufacture your own ibuprofen” ends the conversation. With psychoactive plants, if you do not like industrial prices, you can easily forage or home grow for pennies or free.
FDA Approval Means Islands of Privilege and a Festering Public Resentment
Here is the rub: future customers who may initially believe it acceptable to pay high prices for psilocybin or other natural therapeutic psychoactives will be the second group to bear resentment.
The people who cannot afford to partake are the first to be left out.
The western industrial medical model is unintentionally in the midst of creating a psychedelic privileged class. If you cannot afford FDA-approved medicine, you will be left out. And if you try to partake like the wealthy people who can pay Gwyneth Paltrow prices, you will be branded a criminal. The difference? Pay your “tithing” to a corporation, and you will be alright. Do not pay? Well, tough luck on you, felon.
Who dares tell those who can’t afford this ancient “new” medicine not to turn to alternative sources, after science and corporate America confirm these plants and fungi are effective and healthy? Who dares blame those who correctly observe that contemporary science confirmation and corporate blessings do not themselves literally turn something old into something new? The fact that a corporate board finally figured out how to squeeze a nickel, or a politician found courage through campaign donations is not going to wipe out thousands of years of well-documented natural medicines and their effects.
Shareholders telling the public not to access nature, while slapping nature’s bounty with big price tags, is not going to sit well. The public will not long tolerate pharmaceutical companies touting the “added value” their little tweaks, concentrates, or clever packaging and marketing may bring. The public will inevitably learn that science did not give us psychedelics. Rather, science, in the name of politics, merely confirmed what thousands of years of human history have already well documented. The use of certain psychoactive plants and fungi to treat anxiety and depression is no more a credit-worthy invention than Columbus accidentally running into North America, and like a continent, thousands of years of history were not waiting for a contemporary politician’s approval to justify its existence.
Resentment over artificial financial barriers will satiate itself in a black market and home cultivation. The more pharmaceutical companies raise awareness, insisting compounds like psilocybin treat depression and anxiety, the more the public will want affordable access. Profiteering pharmaceutical companies are making a case against their own long-term interests. As modern cannabis has taught us, much like every vegetable at the supermarket, product price is a race to the bottom, and the vendor with the lowest price wins. Mother Nature, with her pesky ability to self-generate, and with a price tag of “free,” poses eternal and tough competition.
State Legislatures Could Be the Solution (But Won’t)
As federally approved plant and fungi medicines make inroads, there will be market-driven increase in illicit use- illicit being “illegal,” only because our current laws deem it so. Knowing this, the logical thing would be for legislatures to act and get ahead of what will become a problem. Make no mistake, it is coming. But most legislatures are too frightened of change, and psychedelics, for too many, represent radical change.
The political familiar is not the noble lion. It is the chicken, and rather than face their fears (and in so doing, master them), legislatures opt to ignore and pretend it will all just go away. My home state of Arizona is such a place. Three times, the citizens of Arizona passed pro-marijuana laws by public initiative. This election, a successful citizen initiative made Arizona the 13th state to legalize recreational marijuana. Although invited multiple times to craft laws, Arizona’s legislature took no action, forcing the citizens to do so for themselves.
A Better Solution— Introducing the Public Initiative
No one expects self-initiated reform from the federal government or from agencies like the FDA and DEA. One need only look to cannabis’ experiences these many decades. But one-by-one, citizens of certain states and cities are changing their local laws through a direct democratic process known as public initiative.
Public initiatives are citizen-initiated and citizen-driven proposals for new state laws or state constitutional amendments (sorry, there is no such thing as a federal public initiative). If enough citizen signatures are collected to qualify an initiative to be on the ballot, the initiative is added to the ballot and citizens vote on whether to adopt the initiative as new state or city law. For example, in November 2020, a few plant and fungi medicine citizen initiatives went to ballot, including Oregon’s psilocybin initiative, Measure 109, Arizona’s recreational cannabis initiative, Smart & Safe Arizona, and District of Columbia’s Initiative 81. All were successful- a historic first in U.S. history.
Even though state initiatives do not change federal law, changes in state law take off some pressure, reduce individual criminal entanglements, and allow for experimentation of policy reform. Plus, public initiatives garner the attention of other states and the federal government, thereby advancing the dialogue of reform.
Citizens of states with no public initiative
laws are in a tougher place. They must resort to lobbying and campaigning for
office to make these changes. But maybe those of us in states with public
initiative laws can help at home. Plus, there is no reason a uniform model
plant and fungi medicine act could not similarly be adopted by state
legislatures. After all, the goal of a public initiative is to create laws upon
which a majority of citizens agree. Any well-worded initiative good enough for
a public vote could as easily be adopted inside a legislature.
Do Not Move a Mountain One Pebble at a Time
Although an initiative’s success at the ballot box is important, the progress it brings is slow, local, and piecemeal. There is a better way. Citizens can join forces and campaign with a uniform initiative that could be introduced simultaneously in multiple states and flip the country in one election.
As seen with cannabis, successful initiatives sometimes have a domino effect. There is every reason to believe that neighboring states will take notice. A well-regulated legal environment is apt to serve as the national model, and success invites imitation. Strong currents in law and politics favor uniform laws. They make commerce and predictability more reliable across jurisdictions. The unanimous adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code is emblematic.
Strength in Numbers
Imagine the buying power of shared campaign costs across ten or more states. Imagine the impact on national public awareness with campaigns running simultaneously in multiple states, educating the public about plant and fungi medicine reform. Imagine the favorability a well-crafted initiative will receive, if citizens across the country know they are not alone in considering change. A multi-state public initiative can attract and focus investment dollars from every national (and local) group with a stake in serious drug policy reform. In lieu of small and local, perhaps a national campaign will attract national dollars and national support from national drug policy, mental health, civil liberty, and similar reform organizations.
As results of the 2020 election suggest, there has never been a better time than now to push for impactful reform. A uniform initiative can succeed if it is thoughtful about cost and access, is patient-focused, is respectful of privacy, is driven by science, promotes responsible access and responsible use, and looks upon plant and fungi medicine as a health and spiritual issue instead of a criminal issue.
Remember there is no such thing as perfect law, and there is always someone ready to complain. Doomsayers can be placated with the inclusion of terms to address child safety, impaired driving, tax allocation, etc. A well-crafted uniform model plant and fungi medicine act can and should deal with the good and the bad upfront. A well-crafted uniform plant and fungi medicine initiative can curry favor amongst millions of citizens and be implemented in multiple states in a single election cycle. Swaths of the nation can tune in and turn on together, while implementing sound and measured policy that can start to erase the damage of the last 50 years of oppression and societal harms brought about by the Controlled Substances Act and the war on drugs.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Kyle and Joe sit down and discuss several topics in the news.
First, they congratulate co-founder of Psymposia, President of Adelia, and friend of Psychedelics Today (and first podcast guest) Brett Greene, on Adelia being acquired by CYBIN, for the equivalent of about $15.75 million USD (!!). And they talk about Silo Pharma announcing an upcoming Phase 2B trial testing low-dose psilocybin and LSD on the effects of neurogenesis on patients with Parkinson’s disease and how we often forget that psychedelics can help with physical ailments (and not just depression and anxiety), 17 healthcare professionals at TheraPsil being allowed to take psilocybin as part of a training program and the need for therapists and sitters working with psychedelics to have psychedelic experiences themselves before working with others, and rock art evidence of datura being ingested at Pinwheel Cave in California.
And they also discuss a very important article about how to keep the psychedelic renaissance from going off the rails. With so much excitement surrounding psychedelics and so many underground groups and professional organizations doing so much without any centralized control, it’s too easy for people to drain their bank accounts, jump ahead of science, and overcommit to an idea, forgetting the very real risks of these substances and everything surrounding them. And if we go too far, it just raises the risk of those in power shutting it all down.
Notable Quotes
“There’s a lot of nervousness around training, I think. Like, what constitutes good training? Not only is a ton of education, but it’s kind of a ton of time. The same way psychoanalysts have to go through psychoanalysis themselves, and therapists have to do therapy themselves, why is it not the case that psychedelic people need to do the same?” -Joe
“I think we need to be having some of these honest conversations even if it goes against our mission here at times of wanting to help get these substances legalized, decriminalized, whatever that track is. And [talking about] the promise of it, sometimes maybe we do get idealistic and say ‘This is going to revolutionize and change the world!’ but I also have to think back to some of my past experiences and be like, ‘Do I want to go through that again? I don’t think so.’ I mean, it pushed me out on the other side and I think made me a stronger person to some degree, but going through what I went through in those early years, it was pretty terrifying.” -Kyle
“Education and caution, I think is the point here, moving forward, and to be really honest with yourself too, especially if you’re in a place [where you’re] educating folks about psychedelics. How can you listen to other people’s stories and hear that maybe they’re not always light and magic- that people do experience a lot of fallout from it at times and things can get worse?” -Kyle
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, after a short and much-needed break, Kyle and Joe return, but don’t really touch on any news. This time, they have a very open conversation largely focused on philosophy and capitalism.
They dive into a lot of philosophical questions: are we reducing the mystical to the medical? Do we understand enough about spirit and somatic energies to measure them? How much are therapists and sitters interpreting mystical experience and assigning meaning to it for others vs. teaching people how to interpret it themselves? What makes a God? Is commodifying the sacred bad? And what makes something sacred other than it being significant? And the classic: What is good?
They also touch on Harvard School of World Religions’ year-long series on psychedelics and the future of religion, the Divine Command Theory, James Kent’s DoseNation podcast series, Charles Eisenstein and the concept of deflationary money, the billionaire pledge, triple bottom line thinking and other ways to incentivize employees to make businesses closer to co-ops, and why not all capitalism is bad. Lastly, Joe highly recommends Tom O’Neill and Dan Piepenbring’s book, CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, which touches on MKUltra, the Phoenix Program, how the government used Charles Manson, and how the drug war was a logical consequence of the paranoia of the U.S.S.R. and communism toppling the USA and capitalism.
Notable Quotes
“Coming from the somatic world, our bodies- I think, sometimes we dismiss that and maybe might call that a little ‘woo woo,’ but how is your body an actual instrument that can help you understand maybe what’s going on? It’s firing a bunch of signals all the time, right? Information is just coming in and we have to try to make sense of it. Is it an appropriate instrument to try to learn how to discern the information that’s coming in? Could we finely tune that?” -Kyle
“It’s helpful to have diagnostic categories, but I think we’re taking the diagnostic categories a little too seriously and making them a little too real. A diagnostic category is not as real as a glass of water in your hand. One’s real concrete, one’s real abstract. Both are helpful at times. Both could be harmful, depending on what you do with the glass.” -Joe “A lot of folks want to just use psychedelics and escape the world, like the ‘drop out’ thing. Like, ‘I’m just going to be with the spirit world.’ But it’s like, what good is you being with the spirit world if you’re not having any impact on the world world?” -Joe “Being hubristic enough to say that ‘I have an answer’- that’s where I see the problem. Being willing to engage in conversation with people with a lot more experience with this kind of thing is probably where it’s at. Like, ok, let’s talk to 4-5 economists and see what their opinion is. Maybe talk to some professional ethicists to see what their opinion is. I don’t think anybody is going to have the answer, but by hearing all of those perspectives, we can learn more.” -Joe
In February 2020, Israel treated its first PTSD patients in Phase 3 trials with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. The trials are part of a research initiative conducted in partnership with the US-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), encompassing 15 sites in the US, Canada, and Israel, that is expected to conclude in the fourth quarter of 2021, in anticipation of receiving full regulatory approval.
The first randomized controlled trial of MDMA, the results of which were published in 2010, achieved an incredible 83% success rate in alleviating symptoms of PTSD, sustained over the 3.5-year duration of the study. More recent studies have demonstrated such significantly higher therapeutic results with MDMA relative to FDA-approved drugs for PTSD that in 2017, the FDA granted it a breakthrough therapy designation (BTD).
In 2019, Bella Ben Gershon, director of the Israeli Ministry of Health’s Psychological Trauma Unit, reported a 68% success rate for clinical trial patients whose PTSD symptoms were resistant to more conventional forms of treatment.
Considering the role of post-traumatic stress in exacerbating and perpetuating conflict, one way the US could improve its prospects for achieving a sustainable set of interdependent diplomatic agreements addressing security concerns in the Middle East would be to lead a Middle East science diplomacy initiative including Israel, Iran, and the Arab states.
A highly promising area of research to focus regional cooperation on would be the application of psychedelic drugs to the treatment of post-traumatic stress, which, over time, could be applied to countering violent extremism, security sector reform, and conflict resolution.
Political opposition to a US invitation to Iran should be reconsidered in light of decades of scientific cooperation on a broad range of issues between the US and the Soviet Union from the Eisenhower to the Reagan administration. Israel and the UAE’s more recent decision to conclude a peace agreement and engage in scientific cooperation, followed by a similar agreement between Israel and Bahrain (despite outstanding policy differences between these countries concerning the Israeli-Palestinian issue) set the stage for regional science diplomacy. Despite persistent enmity between Israel and Iran, Israel’s direct offer to the Iranian public to assist in water supply management, though lacking in diplomatic tact, further strengthens the case.
Though its many applications have yet to enter into the mainstream of international relations, psychedelic research based in prestigious Western research institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, New York University, MAPS, Imperial College London, and Beckley Foundation has made great scientific strides since the missteps of the 1960s and subsequent decades of government suppression of research into these highly intriguing substances.
One can envision a future, as close as the next decade or two, in which they become instrumental- not only to the treatment of mental health disorders that established medications and therapeutic techniques have, in many cases (at best) unsatisfactorily managed, but also to resolve some of the most complex problems of international diplomacy. Solving these problems will depend on leaders reconciling with their own trauma and expanding their empathetic and creative problem-solving capacities, all of which psychedelics have the potential to facilitate, depending on the openness of those who are courageous enough to explore them.
This is not such a bold proposition considering the broader historical and current context. Intelligence agencies, including the CIA, researched LSD and other psychedelics beginning in the 1950s (if not earlier) for their potential efficacy in interrogation and covert operations. Illicit drugs such as Captagon are being distributed on the battlefields of Syria to bolster combatants’ endurance and fighting resolve.
The highly unstable state of the Middle East and the demonstrated shortcomings of world leaders to engage broadly in effective diplomacy raises the question of why drugs should not be studied in earnest with the aim of applying them to psychological issues related to peace-building and international cooperation. Considering the existential threats to human civilization from cyber and hypersonic nuclear weapons and the callous disregard of world leaders for the destabilization of our planet’s climate, this is arguably, more than ever, a moral imperative.
As MAPS’ Director of Policy and Advocacy, Natalie Lyla Ginsberg, notes, “For millennia, indigenous communities around the world have used ceremonies and traditions involving plant medicines in the service and protection of intergenerational peace, and some communities continue to use traditional medicine practices for active conflict resolution. For example, in Colombia, councils of indigenous communities are joining together to hold yagé (ayahuasca) ceremonies to bring together those fighting on opposing sides of the civil war.”
Anecdotes of deep personal shifts in perspective, healing, and transformation have been documented in American veterans who have explored treatment with ayahuasca for post-traumatic stress- a contributing factor to substance abuse, domestic violence, and suicide.
In addition to ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms, there is evidence that natural psychedelics such as ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT may be able to catalyze healing from post-traumatic stress and related symptoms, as documented in a study published in the scientific journal Chronic Stress in July, 2020.
In an October 2018 segment on treating veterans with the empathogen MDMA, The Economist reported that the VA alone spends approximately $400 million per year on PTSD and other mental health issues. An estimated 8 million Americans suffer from PTSD.
Approximately 900,000 Israelis- 10 percent of the population- also suffer from PTSD, according to Dr. Keren Tzarfaty, MAPS’ representative in Israel.
Among the millions of refugees and internally displaced persons of the conflicts of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya, vast numbers are susceptible to developing PTSD and some are vulnerable to recruitment by militant groups, in part, as a result of their traumatic experiences.
Psychedelics do not offer magic cures to the complex problems ailing our world. They can be used for nefarious and noble purposes and everything in between. As with nuclear power or any technology, it ultimately depends on how one chooses to use them. With wisdom and good intention, they may help us to achieve even deeper diplomatic breakthroughs that have, for so long, eluded us, in great part because they have so challenged our political leaders’ empathic capacities.
Thomas Buonomo is an independent political consultant with expertise in Middle East affairs. Much of his research over the last decade and a half has focused on how trauma associated with violent conflict can inhibit conflict resolution and, in more recent years, on how psychedelics could help increase the probability of constructive diplomatic outcomes. His writing has been published by Middle East Policy, Atlantic Council, Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Fikra Forum, The Cipher Brief, Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE)’s The Fuse, Cairo Review of Global Affairs, The Daily Star, The National, RealClear Defense, Informed Comment, The Hill, CQ Roll Call, The Humanist, et al.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe and Kyle continue their conversation from last week with Will Hall: therapist, host of the Madness Radio podcast, author of Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness, and previous psychiatric patient diagnosed with schizophrenia.
This week, Hall compares how the medical industry treats those seeking therapy and growth vs. how they treat the homeless and victims of sexual abuse, how the framework for mental disorders disrespects the individual, neoliberalism and why capitalism and the free market shouldn’t be the answer for everything, Grof’s focus on etiology and why his model of spiritual emergence is problematic, the future of psychedelic advertising in a world where anything that can be sold will be sold, and the 3 biggest factors towards successful therapy.
And he focuses a lot on what we should be doing: creating and promoting individualized medicines and healing techniques over mass-produced Band-aid medicine, not reducing a difficult psychedelic experience to biology and instead focusing on getting to the root of what is causing the issue and working through it, not solely researching the effects of drugs, and most importantly, researching how people have bettered themselves without drugs- if the long-lasting effects of psychedelics and integration work are the catalyst for change, how can we get to those effects and integrations without the drug?
Notable Quotes
“Drugs are drugs. I don’t believe in psychedelic exceptionalism. I don’t believe in psychiatric drug exceptionalism. Drugs are drugs. There’s no exceptionalism for drugs. If they change your consciousness, they’re getting you high in one way or another, and that is what is either beneficial or nonbeneficial to you, based on your experience.”
“The people who are having successful treatment with MDMA psychotherapy- they aren’t just reporting ‘oh, my depression is down;’ they’re reporting all these wonderful benefits of MDMA. Why should we wait until you have a diagnosis of PTSD to give access to MDMA [to someone] if they want to experience those benefits as well? The people who are having the experiences of psychedelics are not having the experiences of disease-treatment, they’re having the experiences of psychedelics, which can be, for many people, very positive. So why are we gate-keeping the access? And if we don’t gate-keep the access, then we have to admit that, actually, it’s not a disease treatment; it’s actually something that many people find beneficial and some people don’t.”
“What is the commitment? Is the commitment to get psychedelic drugs accessible at all costs? And we’re going to lie, cheat, and steal our way to get there? Or is the commitment to trust that truth is the way? And if we just stick with the truth, that is how we change society?”
“I think you’re onto it. I mean, this is the key thing- psychedelics, in the best of contexts, is the pathway towards that. So why not study that? Why not research that? Why not invest the resources to exploring how we can create contexts for that which you’ve just described- create more spaces in society for successful encounters and engagements with openness, deeper relatedness, developing more trust, learning to communicate better, learning to form better community bonds, learning to develop our loyalties for each other, overcome our traumas together, tell our stories, overcome our shame, find ways that we can accept each other and support each other? That’s what we should be researching. That’s what we should be investigating, not psychedelic treatments that might have the effect of this, because this is what we’re really after.”
Will is a counselor and facilitator working with individuals, couples, families and groups via phone and web video (Zoom). He has taught and consulted on mental health, trauma, psychosis, medications, domestic violence, conflict resolution, and organizational development in more than 30 countries, and has been widely featured in the media for his advocacy efforts around mental health care. His work and learning arose from his experiences of recovery from madness, and today he is passionate about new visions of mind and what it means to be human.
In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, Joe and Kyle sit down and dissect 3 recent items in the news.
First, they discuss a 2-year study on 18 older long-term AIDS survivors (OLTAS) with a high degree of demoralization and trauma, in which participants underwent 3 hours of individual psychotherapy, one 8 hour psilocybin session, and 12-15 hours of group therapy. While the study predictably showed improvement in demoralization after a 3-month follow-up, the bigger takeaway is the effectiveness of group therapy and the ability to replace hours of individual therapy, (in this case) cutting therapist time almost in half. With many people struggling to connect with facilitators but finding connection in groups, could group therapy work better to help with healing while also cutting costs? This brings up the concept of AI therapy and what improvements we could see by adding technology to this fairly established clinical model, both in cost and effectiveness.
They next talk about Decriminalize Nature Oregon groups urging voters to vote “no” on the upcoming Oregon Psilocybin Service Measure 109 due to them finding the measure to be highly restrictive and essentially putting these plant medicines behind a paywall, making it even more difficult for those with race and income-based trauma to gain access. They wonder why DN is so opposed to what they see as progress- why not come at the problem from all angles and embrace legality alongside other initiatives, especially in a time when we are likely to see huge spikes in pandemic-related PTSD?
This leads to a discussion of David Bronner of Dr. Bronner pulling funding from DN at a national level (but still supporting local initiatives) and the in-fighting that’s seeming to happen everywhere with this battle. And that leads to money and the very common feeling that large donations usually come with ulterior motives. And how do you make sure they don’t? Does taking money from someone to further your cause automatically make you a sell out? Or is there only a conflict if you have the contingency of the donor needing some sort of return on investment that affects the end goal?
Notable Quotes
“Let’s just keep experimenting and understanding what we lose when we get a little bit more technical, and perhaps also what we might gain. What would happen if you had your clients wearing a wearable, so you could review how their week actually was in data terms vs. self-reporting? That would be an interesting adjunct. And what happens when you do a full system thing with apps and the wearable being tied to that, to say, ‘Alright, hey, you should go meditate for a little bit, [and] right now, because you are spiking’ or ‘Go do this bio-feedback thing for 5-10 and re-regulate and then go back to your day’?” -Joe
“I think a lot of people that are just starting off, that are looking for some sort of mental health treatment- they’re probably going to want this medical model. Going to a group setting scares the shit out of them. They might not want to go to ayahuasca ceremonies or these spiritually-oriented, self-development groups with people. They might want that one-on-one, individual session, maybe to start off with, until they can build up a little bit of expertise and understand their own inner psyche, where they say, ‘Huh, maybe I can explore different models and different uses of context now.’ But I think that is something that is important to try to explore too- what do the people want that are outside of these inner circles that are more seasoned psychonauts- people that are trying to push for some of these changes and trying to say, ‘Hey, this is the model that we want’? Well, does everyone want that? Is that going to work for everybody?” -Kyle
“There’s no real reason to think that laws stay forever. Laws are flexible. Laws are a pain in the butt. Laws are also amazing sometimes. So consider flexibility when thinking about laws and that citizens can change things. Perhaps we don’t get it right [on the] first try, but let’s get it right iteratively. This is the direction of right, in my mind- what OPS [Oregon Psilocybin Society] is doing.” -Joe
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 speaks with Jacob Curtis, photojournalist at Denver7, a Denver-based ABC affiliate.
Curtis covered Alaska’s marijuana legalization in 2014, and as a photojournalist living in Denver, has been at the forefront of the Decriminalize Denver movement, even providing some of the first broadcasted footage of a local mushroom grow.
Curtis speaks about attending Psychedelic Club meetings and meeting James Casey, wanting to be the person to bring this story to the mainstream, and how these meetings and growing interest from the community were ultimately the incubators for the Decriminalize Denver, and later, Decriminalize Nature and #thankyouplantmedicine movements.
They also discuss the National Psychedelic Club (of which Joe reveals he is now on the Board of Directors), Edward Snowden and the dangers of speaking with the media, and advice for how to protect one’s identity, the Telluride Mushroom Festival and documentaries like “Dosed,” the Psilocybin Mushroom Policy Review Panel, new startups in the field like MindMed, the Denver Mushroom Cooperative, MkUltra experiments in Denver, the importance of the #thankyouplantmedicine hashtag, and ultimately, how much Covid-19 has impacted the speed of progress in bringing legalization to the mainstream.
Notable quotes
On James Casey: “He was an awesome subject to sort of wrap the story around, and he was the perfect poster child because he had all the right ingredients- he was a veteran, really well-spoken, and just pretty straight-laced.”
“It is interesting to watch, how the media sort of responds and works with stories that are on the fringes and then move slowly towards the mainstream. It’s one of those things about our culture- it bends and shifts. The times change and what was radical 10 years ago is normal now.”
“We’ve had so many huge events that have taken place in our lifetimes that this kind of seems trivial… it’s not the highest priority anymore after we had the 2000 election, September 11th, the Iraq war. Those things [psychedelics] aren’t as high on the list of things that we are supposed to be worried about anymore.”
“I don’t think that we’re going to shy away from talking about psychedelics after a catastrophic virus collapses the world economy. It’ll be an easy topic.”
On #thankyouplantmedicine: “I don’t think there was necessarily a hashtag for drug policy reform that has been a conscious effort like that before, so it definitely gained some attention… If anything, it brought people together. If it didn’t get this big media splash, it definitely helped grow the network.”
Jacob is a photojournalist at Denver7, a Denver-based ABC affiliate. He has been at the forefront of the Decriminalize Denver movement, even providing some of the first broadcasted footage of a local mushroom grow.
In today’s Solidarity Friday’s Episode, Kyle and Joe interview Dave McGaughey, Founding Partner of NorthStar. In the show, they talk about NorthStar, Ethics, and the story, “We Will Call It Pala”.
Show Notes
About Dave
Dave was interested in natural food and kombucha and sold kombucha commercially and personally for 10 years
The critical moment for Dave was at a convention hall on an escalator
On the escalator, in the middle, there were signs for an ‘exit’ that each company sold for
“What do we spend our short lives doing and why?” – Dave
He became humbled by the genius around him there and left the natural foods ‘industry’ for something more
Business Ethics
People come in with really good intentions, and then things get out of hand
Money screams security and comfort, even though that’s not really the case
Joe says integrity has been Psychedelics Today’s number one goal, we’ve turned down investors that were not ethical, been public about partnerships (and the ending of some), etc
Reflect inward to maintain ethical standing
“How do we reflect on what we actually need and what we need to do?” – Joe
Since the beginning, Joe and Kyle would reach out to their advisory board for questions and guidance
Anchoring Community
At Northstar, they look at a large coalition of people in the psychedelic field
Pollanators – those who have read Pollan’s book and are super excited
Those who have had their own psychedelic experiences
Investors who are coming into the space and gaining a lot of power very quickly
Anchoring Community – the people who have been here for the longest time, and doing work in this space (elders, drug policy activists, etc)
In the underground, there is no strategy of how to hold accountability of facilitators, etc
“The eco-system is most thriving when non-profit pharma, and decrim and legalization are going really well” – David
Mindmed
Mindmed is making a drug that acts as a LSD Neutralizer technology to shorten and stop LSD trips
Dave says it could be really valuable for the ‘bad’ experiences
Another thing about the patent that might be bad for the community is that it says that trips are bad
He says Mindmed is specifically structured at doing something that may hurt the field
Book Recommendations
Dave recommends two books that give insight on organizations and language use
Dave mentions a book that helps centrist people understand systemic issues around inequality, The Jungle
He recommends to the activist community, Nixonland, of the rise of the culture war
Consumer Education
It could be wise to have consumers decide the market
“The fact that the field is more precarious, actually puts more incentive to act ethically, especially for patient care.” – Dave
Dave says at NorthStar they ask, “In what ways do you build power to incentivize or pressure ethical action across the ecosystem at large?”
Joe says a lot of the stuff happening in psychedelics are by people that are underfunded and underpaid
NorthStar is not an industry association
NorthStar Pledge
It’s a starting point to a dialogue on ethics
The NorthStar Pledge is on integrity and ethics
How do people in the field who care about this, talk about ethics?
Kyle says capitalism has influence on systemic issues
He says that people who embody psychedelic influences, are typically ethical
Being capitalistic, usually equates to bad ethics, but how do we embody the psychedelic wisdom to create a new model and change the capitalistic model to be more ethical?
Capitalism
Is capitalism really bad?
Imagine how capitalism would look if it were run by women and people of color, individuals who systematically don’t operate with power
Imagine if companies were run by ethics, and not by money or power
Final Thoughts
At NorthStar, there are 3 women in high leadership positions
Dave wants to see more women and people of color in leadership positions
Dave says he is so proud by the leadership who runs NorthStar
Dave McGaughey serves as Creative Director for Auryn Project, a non-profit incubator in the psychedelic field supporting heart-lead, highly effective organizations scaling equitable, affordable psychedelic medicine. He is a founding member of North Star, an initiative dedicated to centering integrity and ethics in the heart of the emerging psychedelic field, starting with the North Star Ethics Pledge. Dave is the author of We Will Call It Pala, a short work of graphic fiction exploring one potential future for psychedelic commercialization. Dave has done graphic design and web development for Auryn Project, North Star and Sage Integrative Health. Prior to psychedelics, Dave worked in Natural Foods and has brewed kombucha commercially and personally for more than ten years.
In today’s Solidarity Friday’s Episode, Kyle and Joe sit down with Brett Greene, who was the very first guest on Psychedelics Today four years ago. In response to last week’s episode on the Corporadelic topic, Brett comes on the show to talk about companies and drug discovery.Show Notes
Brett Greene
Brett Greene was the very first guest on Psychedelics Today four years ago
Brett and Kyle originally met at the Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics conference in New York City in 2013.
He works at The Center for Drug Discovery
Drug Development
At his new company, they are making drugs from tryptamines that are more predictable
His team has not only done this countless of times with the FDA, they have also done it with psychedelics
Ethics
The psychedelic movement doesn’t own psychedelics, they don’t own molecules, but they do own their history
“We should get away from the right and wrongness of the mechanics, and get into the right and wrongness of the ethics” – Brett
“Patents are the language of invention” – Brett
“An ethical charter is one that covers cognitive liberty, business ethics, and responsibility and accountability for patient safety” – Brett
What are the minimal acceptable requirements when doing this work?
Final Thoughts
We need to be kind with each other
We need to balance truth with kindness and compassion
For those interested in a work postiton email Brett@adeliatx.com
About Brett Greene
Brett works in research administration under Alexandros Makriyannis, one of the world’s top cannabinoid researchers. His job consists of a multitude of functions, ranging from administrative support for a team of 15+ grant submitting scientists to lab equipment and lab management, and diverse recruitment for NIH grants.
In today’s Solidarity Friday’s Episode with Kyle and Joe, they talk mostly about Corpora-delic, companies and wealthy individuals investing in the psychedelic industry.
The CEO, Jason Hobson says, “The current health pandemic has resulted in a societal shift in the way we think about our health and the importance of access to treatment, both physical health and mental health. Ei.Ventures believes this is the right time to lean into mental health issues such as mood disorders and addiction, and eventual access to therapeutic treatments from innovations in botanical compounds that have been around for thousands of years.”
Joe and Kyle say that there is so much money coming in, and it worries the psychedelic community because they aren’t used to seeing capitalism
Joe says that he hopes that some patents don’t equate to ruining access
“Are these companies going to bully the smaller organizations out of existence so that diversity doesn’t really exist in the way we think it should?” – Joe
Medical is a great model, but it should be reduced to that only
Kyle says the sacred-ness feels like it may be taken away, and big companies just look at it as a commodity
“Not everyone sees this opportunity for entrepreneurship as a good thing. For researchers looking into the efficacy of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes, these substances are far more than a market opportunity—they’re potentially life-saving medications. And after decades of prohibition, psychedelics are just barely gaining mainstream acceptance.’ – from the article
People are bold enough to stand up to companies they don’t agree with It’s no joke how much money was spent on making Tim Leary look bad
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is launching a new drug program for treating soldiers with PTSD, depression, anxiety, and drug addiction, and it is drawing inspiration from psychedelic research.
Kyle mentions that this is tricky, its both a biochemical and experiential thing
Will eliminating the hallucinations ruin the experience?
Joe says that there are some people that are so unstable that a psychedelic experience can be really a lot
Joe also says that there arent alot of drugs that their use needs to be supervised (medically) and psychedelics are some of them
If we aren’t coming from psychedelic values when bringing these substances into the mainstream, then what are we doing?
What are psychedelic values?
Valuing the planet, valuing your place in the planet, a sense of connection, cooperation vs. competition, how do we honor a lineage or where these medicines come from? these could be some psychedelic values
Following the permaculture principles and applying them to life is a great tool for systems thinking
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 completed 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 today’s Solidarity Fridays Episode with Kyle and Joe, they talk about current topics in the news including MindMed, psilocybin synthesis, treating climate grief with psychedelics, psychedelic decriminalization and more.
MindMed is a psychedelic Pharmaceutical company that is exploring LSD and patenting anything they find during the research
Joe comments and says that organizations like Zendo are able to do optimal work and we don’t necessarily need a Pharma company to help in recreational/festival settings
But in a clinical setting, this is more necessary
“Are these big companies coming into the space as allies are not?” – Joe
Joe says he thinks they are part of the ecosystem, for better or worse
Joe says, imagine if drugs were legal, they would be so much safer
Kyle questions what legalization would look like not in a capitalistic market
There is a lot of reason why people choose not to play in commodified markets
“How do we know what is true? How do we know what is helpful for us?” – Joe
Joe says lets not have a quick easy answer
“It’s infeasible and way too expensive to extract psilocybin from magic mushrooms and the best chemical synthesis methods require expensive and difficult-to-source starting substrates” – a quote from the article
If COVID wasn’t a thing currently, it looks like decrim would happen in the belly of the beast, in D.C.
Despite the public health crisis, its looks like citizens want to reassess entheogenic use
“When there is hardship, creativity seems to spike” – Joe
Joe says to check out the microdose VR by Android Jones
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 completed 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, Kyle sits down with Dylan Beynon, founder of Mindbloom, NYC based mental health and wellbeing platform. In the show they talk about how Mindbloom differs from other centers, paving the way for accessibility and affordability.
3 Key Points:
Mindbloom is a next-generation mental health platform, catered to accessibility and affordability.
They use ketamine tablets, different from lozenges and any other method. The tablets are held in the mouth and then spit out to avoid entering the liver, causing a sedation-like experience.
Mindbloom differentiates themselves from other psychedelic therapy options by using a patient-choice model, to keep it affordable for those who need it. They offer the 4-week therapy model and give patients the option to choose ‘add-ons’ like extra integration.
Dylan is not a clinician or a doctor, he is an entrepreneur and a psychedelic medicine and therapeutic ketamine patient
These medicines have been transformative in his life and he wants to bring their benefits to the public
He grew up in a family that suffered greatly from mental illness
He lost his mother to addiction
He discovered positive psychology
When learning about the science of happiness, he realized that he wasn’t happy
He was in business school and wanted to be a banker and make a ton of money
He soon realized that money doesn’t buy happiness, and he thought maybe everything he was doing was a lie
He was self medicating with psychedelics
About 5 years ago he heard about psychedelic therapy
About 18 months ago he started working with a clinician doing ketamine therapy
He saw that when it’s done in a therapeutic context, it can have a profound effect for people to get the most out of it
“Recreational vs therapeutic use is a false dichotomy” – Dylan
Mindbloom
The goal is to build the next-generation mental health platform
Right now they are doing Ketamine therapy
They are trying to make it accessible by making it affordable
They are trying to bring an elevated client experience, which they do with the space and software
Software Background
Voters Friend – a platform to help inform voters on the candidates, to increase access to democracy
Mighty – increasing access to social justice
Mindbloom – increase access to psychedelic medicines
Differentiation
The protocols that Mindbloom are using are capped
They are increasing access to the medicines, making it affordable
They keep it at $150-$250 a session, where at most Ketamine Therapy centers, it can range from $1000-$2000 a session
Dylan says he makes this possible by bringing in technology and software tools to make the sessions for efficient and effective
They use patient choice care, where the patient can use their best judgement on how in depth they want their treatment
They can ‘add on’ extra integration time onto the therapy session, or choose not to
This keeps the price down and accessible for each individual patient if need be
Mindbloom is a 4 session program, usually 1-2 months
They use the platform to have the client practice using the information in the weeks between each session, so they can practice integration even when not with a therapist or in session
The Program
The clinician prescribes a 4 week Ketamine Therapy session for anxiety and depression
The clinician will schedule a video interview to learn their symptoms
Then they will meet in person and build an integration program if needed
Its $1000 for the 4 session program and $600 for the renewal program
They use Ketamine tablets (similar to lozenges but faster acting)
They’re not swallowing it, they spit it out after
If they swallow it, it breaks down in the liver into nor-ketaine, and that produces a sedative effect
After they spit it out, there is about an hour of music with no vocals
After the session, they move to an integration room where they are journaling
The protocols at Mindbloom were based on the MAPS protocol
They don’t have a clinician in the room during the experience, only for after the experience
Dylan is looking to expand to other locations
A lot of people request couples or group therapies, so they will be taking that into consideration when building new locations
Final Thoughts
The more people who are thinking critically about this and putting their intentions into making this more accessible the better
There needs to be more gentle conversation around psychedelics and therapy, especially around the people that are still so unaware about this field
We should bring sacredness, specialness, and care to the conversation with those who might still be afraid about it
Dylan is the Founder & CEO of Mindbloom, an NYC-based mental health and wellbeing startup helping people expand their human potential with clinician-prescribed, guided psychedelic medicine experiences. There, he is partnering with clinicians, technologists, researchers, and patients to increase access to science-backed treatments, starting by reducing the cost of ketamine therapy for depression and anxiety by over 65%. Dylan is a 10-year psychedelic medicine patient and 3-time tech entrepreneur with both $100M+ in funding and an exit in his prior startups, which were focused on increasing access to justice and democracy. Dylan graduated from The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania.
In this episode, Joe and Kyle sit down to cover highlights from the Horizons Conference. In the show, they discuss the presentations and topics they heard at the conference.
3 Key Points:
Joe and Kyle attended Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics Conference in NYC, it is a forum that examines the role of psychedelic drugs and plant medicines in science, medicine, culture and spirituality.
Carl Hart gave a compelling talk; Dispelling the Lies that the Psychedelic Community believes about Drugs. Greater than 80% of the effects of drugs used are positive.
Another popular topic was on the economics around psychedelics, and discussion on companies trying to monopolize on psychedelics.
Carl Hart did a talk; Dispelling the Lies that the Psychedelic Community believes about drugs
Greater than 80% of the effects of drugs used are positive
PCP is a psychedelic drug, but the psychedelic community chooses not to own it
Ketamine was derived from PCP
Hamilton Morris said that no drug is bad, it comes down to the dose and how its being used
Poison can be a medicine, and medicine can be a poison, it all depends on dose
No drug should be illegal, drug scheduling should just go away
Some states are starting to ban private prisons
Joe says the drug war is the war on race, the war on class, etc
Joe suggests looking up the Portugal drug law; less overdoses, less HIV, less incarceration, etc
Kyle mentions that in some cultures they would drink alcohol to get into a trance state and dance around all night and then chill for 3 days afterward because they would all be recovering from the hangover
Talks and Topics
Shelby and Madison, co founders from Doubleblind Magazine did a talk
Fiona Misham did a talk on the use of psychedelics for festivals and fun
She talked about having on-site drug testing facilities and how they heighten safety
In 2018 in Europe the MDMA contents were tested at 168milligrams
1 in 5 substances are mis-sold
1 in 20 MDMA samples were long lasting N-ethylpentylone, a drug that keeps you up for 3 days straight
There was also an Economics panel
Kyle says it was a heavy and hot debate
There was a lot of conversation on companies making money on psychedelics
There was worry from some on Compass Pathways monopolizing on psychedelics
Kyle says big and fast growth can be dangerous for mental health
It’s possible that these companies will just push for results to pay off the investment than to really take the time to have slow meaningful sessions and include the therapeutic model
When therapists have more congruence with their client, they get better results
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 completed 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 the heart of Manhattan’s busy Greenwich Village, the Horizon’s Conference: Perspectives on Psychedelics, graced the Cooper Union Great Hall on October 12th and 13th. The largest and longest-running gathering of the psychedelic community brings folks from around the globe together for presentations on psychedelic research findings and activism every year.
The conference first ran in 2007 as a single afternoon of talks at the Judson Memorial Church with around 250 attendees. This year, both days were sold out and attendance exceeded 2,600 people, not including after-parties and other unofficial events around town.
This was also the first year that offered pre-conference classes for physicians as well as interested individuals, like Introduction to Psilocybin Therapy with Bill Richards and Rosalind Watts, Intro to MDMA Therapy for Clinicians led by Shannon Clare Carlin and Marcela Ot’alora, Intro to Ketamine Psychotherapy, and Sexual Ethics in the Psychedelic Community, all of which were sold out on Friday, October 11th.
But what kind of talks are given in such a collegiate atmosphere, at a podium that’s hosted leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, and Barack Obama? On day one, Julie Holland, M.D. and author of Weekends at Bellevue hosted the science-themed presentations, including recent research on psilocybin from the Imperial College London team, mindfulness-assisted Ketamine therapy by Elias Dakwar, M.D., the potential harms and benefits of 5-meO-DMT given by Alan K. Davis, PhD, among other fascinating and informative talks.
Then on day two, the theme switched to culture and Bia Labate, Executive Director of Chacruna and MAPS’s cultural specialist hosted presentations on psychedelics in the media by the DoubleBlind Mag founders, the indigenous peyote way of life by Steven Benally, president of Azee’ Bee Nahagha Nation (formerly known as the Native American Church of Navajo Land), the intersection of art and psychedelic-assisted therapy by artist and activist, Swoon, along with other important and moving discussions.
Let’s take a look at three main themes that emerged this year at Horizon’s to get a sense of the kinds of issues the psychedelic community is currently debating.
1. Psychedelics are coming, but how? Medicalization vs. Decriminalization vs. Legalization
The conversation at this year’s Horizon’s seemed to move past whether or not legal psychedelics are coming. Everyone at the conference seemed to agree that the future includes some kind of legal option for substances like psilocybin, but now the question is: What’s the best model for moving forward?
Yet, even for the psychedelic community, Hart’s ideas are somewhat radical. Other organizations in the space strongly believe in a more medicalized model, where psychedelics wouldn’t be legal to use and possess by anyone, but instead only by doctors who would administer them in a controlled environment to qualifying patients. It’s a big debate in the community, especially considering the medicalization of psychedelics probably wouldn’t be accessible to everyone because of the high price tag that will likely come attached.
Decriminalization is the third option, but can still fall short of being enough for the safest and most responsible drug use. For this reason, many in the community see it more as a step toward full, adult-use legalization than the finish line. In Hart’s talk, he pointed to the fact that law enforcement can still marginalize certain groups, especially POC (people of color), with decriminalization, and without regulations and purity testing of substances, people don’t have enough information to use drugs safely.
2. Economic Models of Psychedelic Expansion
Which brings us to our next point, if psychedelics are legalized, will companies be able to make a profit from selling them? Could “Big Psychedelics” come in and monopolize the space?
George Goldsmith, Bia Labate, Dr. James Rucker
While this issue was brought up in many contexts at Horizons, it was the center of discussion on Sunday morning at a panel titled, “Economic Models for the Expansion of Psychedelics”. George Goldsmith, co-founder and CEO of Compass Pathways, a for-profit company that has patented synthetic psilocybin and threatens to monopolize the space, was a member of the panel and put in the hot seat by many in the community, both during the Q & A and by the other panelists. Goldsmith is already a millionaire and is poised to make the most profit and have the most control over medicalized psilocybin, and that is cause for alarm for many people in the community. Most of the other organizations sponsoring research into psychedelic-assisted therapy are not-for-profit organizations, like MAPS with MDMA and the Usona Institute with psilocybin.
Other options for psychedelic expansion were also addressed in this discussion, like the “pollinator approach” by economics and public policy professor, Bennet A. Zelner, PhD, which is a more community-based model of resource and information sharing and distribution.
3. “Coming Out” as a Psychedelic User
Lastly, another main theme that was touched on in both presentations and private conversations was the need of community members to “come out” publicly as psychedelic users. The idea is to show the mainstream that anyone can be a responsible psychedelic (or other type of drug) user to try and break some of the stigma that still surrounds these substances. If we can change the public perception of psychedelics, then a shift in law and policy could naturally follow.
There’s even a group from Costa Rica trying to start an international coming-out campaign on February 20, 2020 called “Thank You Plant Medicine” to support folks in telling their transformative psychedelic stories publicly.
It was a busy and exciting year at Horizons NYC, and a great opportunity for the community to come together to push the conversation forward. These are three major issues to continue to pay attention to as psychedelic research and decriminalization progress!
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.
Download In this episode, Kyle sits down to chat with Greg Kieser, Founder of think-tank, Supersystemic.ly and author of Dear Machine, a book written as a letter to a future super-intelligent entity. Topics covered include blockchain, AI, money, Psychedelic Investments and how psychedelics can help humanity prepare for the emergence of super-intelligent entities.
3 Key Points:
Blockchain offers an enormous amount of opportunity, by taking data that would otherwise be protected by government or big corporations, and making it accessible to the general population for a more accessible information source.
Money is this interesting concept, that we are storing our time, our energy and our goods in a piece of paper. Psychedelics can help with this, be rewiring the way we think about money and the overall exchange for goods and services.
Psilocybin is a cure, its use does not need to be continued for it to work, so Compass Pathways is highly incentivized to continue to heal new people, which is what we want, healing at scale.
Greg worked at a foundation in NYC aimed at reducing the rate of poverty
He started an angel investment firm/think tank, Supersystemic.ly
He wrote the book, Dear Machine, a letter to a future, super-intelligent entity
Looking to the Past
Our nutrition narrowed when we became farmers
“The truth is, we can’t go back to where we came from, we have to go to a new place, so how do we do that?” – Greg
There is such difficulty with people living in clusters (cities) and transporting all of the food in from the country
It’s important for the psyche to get back to nature and even taking on a hobby as simple as gardening can be so healing
Children’s immune system has been shown to become stronger when living on farms and playing with animals and in the dirt
Psychedelics are helpful in understanding how interconnected everything is
Integration of Technology
Blockchains have the capacity to take data and pull it into a place where we have more control over it (can’t be bought or sold)
When we combine our knowledge of technology with psychedelics, we will really start to progress as a species
Block Chain
The creator of Bitcoin created BlockChain, which is a type of database that lives out on the internet that no one can own
It offers an enormous amount of opportunity, by taking data that would otherwise be protected by government or big corporations, and making it accessible to the general population for a more accessible information source
Greg mentions a block chain that will be a regeneration of land
Maybe all the members donate $50 to the block chain, and those members then can follow the progress of a pond or the growth of a tree, etc
Its a good example of a block chain being used for good
Money
Money is this interesting concept, that we are storing our time, our energy and our goods in a piece of paper
Psychedelics can help with this, be rewiring the way we think about money and the overall exchange for goods and services
AI
AI is going to get more and more powerful and corporations and governments are going to want to get their hands on AI for more power
In Dear Machine, Greg wrote about a super aware machine that helps us to make super intelligent decisions based on what food to eat (based on our microbes, our genetics, what is the most sustainable for the environment, etc)
Greg fears that the government will try to take control of it and have its own agenda, but he thinks that with super awareness for decision making, that good will win
Kyle mentions that the Western mind is so obsessed with Apocalypse
AI and Superintelligence are going to accelerate whatever systems we already have in place
If it happened right now, it would look ugly
But, if we create a world that appreciates interconnectedness and the diversity and complexity of our minds and our bodies, then we will be in a much better place
Psychedelics have a huge role to play, it allows us to appreciate things, it helps get our ego out of the way, it helps us break addiction
Monoculturization has led to a lot of bad things
“Don’t try to change the system, just make a new system” – Buckminster Fuller
Human well being and environmental stability are two metrics that we need to work on
Interest in Psychedelics
Greg’s interest in psychedelics began when we was invited to Psilocybin ceremonies
He said it just ‘clicks’
“You really don’t understand what psychedelics are until you take them” – Greg
He then began to invest in psychedelics, microbiomes, agriculture, etc
Compass Pathways
The main problem with the health system is that we get into the idea of patenting molecules
Psilocybin is a molecule that can’t be patented, so he’s not worried
Greg wants to see psilocybin use at a larger scale, so the medical model is a great way to get there
As a part of Compass Pathway’s program, in order to be a therapist and provide the therapy, you have to go through the therapy yourself
Psilocybin is a cure, its use does not need to be continued for it to work, so Compass is highly incentivized to continue to heal new people, which is what we want, healing at scale
Looking Ahead
Greg is most excited to see healing from opioid addiction
Alcohol and tobacco fall under that in his hopes for healing
Greg is also really excited about the microbiome and the gut connection to the rest of the body
There was an Autism study that gave people with Autism a microbe transplant from healthy people and after 2 years there has been a remission of symptoms Microbiome Reddit
Greg Kieser is founder of Supersystemic.ly, a Brooklyn-based think-tank and angel investment firm dedicated to increasing humanity’s readiness for the emergence of superintelligent entities through the study and spread of “supersystemic” perspectives and innovations. Kieser, whose university and independent studies of complex systems science form the operating thesis of the company, founded Supersystemic.ly after more than a decade overseeing a portfolio of technology initiatives at an NYC-based poverty-fighting foundation. His work at the foundation was driven by a complex set of metrics for measuring the impact of investments on the economic, physical and mental well-being of low-income New Yorkers. Dear Machine, and to a greater extent the company, unites his unique skills and knowledge in technology, social investing and complex systems science.
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.
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Jon Dennis, Esq. is a lawyer and activist in the psychedelics ecosystem and a consultant at the firm, 
