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#16 Ryan Flavin - Ireland’s Psychedelic Debate: Why It's Time for Change

• Episode 16

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Can psychedelics help heal trauma and transform mental health?

Meet Ryan Flavin, a doctor who has ventured deep into the world of psychedelic medicine. After graduating from medicine in Ireland and practicing in Australia, Ryan obtained specialized training in administering psychedelics for both PTSD and depression. Now, he has returned to Ireland to campaign for the legalization of psychedelic-assisted therapy, advocating for evidence-based policies that could revolutionize mental health care.

In this episode, Ryan shares his personal journey—from traditional medicine to researching the science behind psychedelic therapy. He discusses how these substances can unlock repressed emotions, facilitate deep healing, and enhance mental well-being, while also addressing the stigma, risks, and need for integration after psychedelic experiences.

We also dive into:

  • Why set and setting are crucial for a safe experience
  • How psychedelics can help treat trauma, depression, and anxiety
  • The growing research behind MDMA therapy for PTSD
  • The battle between pharmaceutical companies and psychedelic research
  • The role of meditation, therapy, and education in integration
  • How psychedelics can empower individuals to become their own therapists
  • The future of psychedelic therapy in Ireland and the movement for legalization

If you're interested in mental health, self-discovery, and the future of psychedelic-assisted therapy, this conversation is for you. Whether you're curious about psychedelics for healing or skeptical about their role in medicine, Ryan's insights offer a balanced, evidence-based perspective.

The research doesn't suggest that psychiatry is caused by psychosis because that's what I hear them. until you make the unconscious conscious it will control your life and you will call it faith It doesn't profit large corporations if there is cheap, not subscription-based medicine for depression. describe it it was like being like shot with like a crystal bullet of clarity was like staring at trees for like two hours. You start becoming the observer of these visuals and you become them. You are the experience. starting is always the worst bit I find. Could invite the next go. Let's do it. Okay. At least you have, you have the experience. You're like my, my mentor here in terms of podcasts. So, you know, I'll be, I can be guided by your expertise. Yes, I consider myself an expert Ryan, so you're in good hands. Yeah, I feel so reassured. Yeah, yeah. So Ryan, what I know about you, you're a doctor. You're also an amazing artist, Ryan, and you're very interested in psychedelic medicine. Would that be a good summary? Yeah, well, thanks for having me here, John. It's an absolute pleasure to be on your podcast and everything. And yeah, just to tell everyone a little bit about myself and I guess maybe a summary of my journey to this point. So I'm Ryan, I'm 27, qualified as a doctor in 2020, went to UCC in Cork, which is great. Then did my internship in Cork, decided to take a bit of time away from medicine, spent about over a year in South America. traveling around, speaking Spanish. I then decided to work in Australia for two years, mostly in an emergency department there. And when in Australia, I was fortunate enough to do this mandatory training now required in order to gain a license for prescribing psilocybin, which is the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms, for a treat and resistant depression. and MDMA for a treatment resistant PTSD. The caveat being you do need to be an actual consultant psychiatrist to obtain the license, but even doing the mandatory training was amazing, an amazing experience. And then since then, I did another trip back to the Amazon to work with a shaman there in the jungle. And I've now moved back to Ireland permanently. Living in Ireland right now, doing a mixture of focusing on my art and hoping to start the psychiatry scheme in Ireland in July. All going well. You said MDMA for her depression and psilocybin for... What was psilocybin specifically for? it is psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression and MDMA for treatment-resistant PTSD. These are the only two clinical conditions that these two substances can be prescribed for. Nothing else. Because these are the conditions that they have the most evidence for currently. Australia is the first country worldwide to nationwide legalize, or not legalize, I suppose, reschedule these substances to make it available for patients across the entire country. I know in America and Oregon, they have decriminalized it and there is kind of a similar practice there because they rescheduled it in that state in particular. But in Australia, it's the first country nationwide to be able to do that. So they've been piling a load of funding from a psychedelic perspective worldwide into Australia because they see this as a massive opportunity to train doctors, psychotherapists and really be pioneer in leading the world in psychedelic assisted therapy, which is amazing. It had only started the year before I arrived. So it was like a perfect recipe for me arriving there and it just working out really well. So it was great. And did you, so you, did two courses in MDMA therapy and psychedelic cystotherapy. And then you said you spent time with a shaman in South America. Was that after the courses or before? I initially went to the Amazon after my intern year in Ireland. so I was kind of in a place in my life where I qualified during the COVID. I was the first cohort of doctors to start working when COVID hit. And so we had no break. We got thrown straight into the mix. My first job was on respiratory in Cork University Hospital. It was very stressful, quite a traumatic experience, I would say as well. My father, who was 44, unfortunately died of a heart attack during that year as well. And so you can imagine there was just like so much going on in my life at that point. And I never really like had like a proper break in my life. So I said, you know what? Let's just, let's just take a break for a while. You know, there's this pressure when you're in medicine to remain on this treadmill to, you know, everyone around you is saying, you know, what are you doing? What are you specializing in? You know, what are you applying for? But like, nobody really like looks around and says, you know, am I going to have some free time to do the things that I've always wanted to do if I enter a scheme straight away where, you know, you sign up to something and you have all these ideas that later on the line, I'll do all these things. But as we know, life has a tendency to kind of get out of your control. And I never want to be somebody who contempts for myself for not fulfilling some of these trips, the traveling I wanted to do, pursuits of different hobbies. And so I still felt quite traumatized from my father's death as well. So I was like, let's take the path less traveled, take some time off, explore who I am, some traveling. And I spoke Spanish anyway. I learned it in school and was always quite good at it. So it just seemed like the perfect idea to go to South America, travel down there, learn more about countries, Mexico, Peru, and then try how can I combine this interest with some of the psychedelic medicines that I'd already had an interest in that existed specifically in the Amazon with Ayahuasca and then psilocybin in Mexico, which has a... a long kind of ceremonial shamanic background for thousands of years. What can I pick up from this ancestral wisdom in these places that I can learn, adapt my own life, see what happens. But I would preface it in saying that at that point, I didn't have this vision to dedicate a large part of my life to psychedelic medicine. I feel like a lot of that came afterwards from having these experiences and just developing it from there, really. What did you do with this shaman? Was that like you did ayahuasca with the intention of healing then? It's good question and definitely happy to share my experience in the jungle when I went there and what exactly happened. I think for a lot of people, they don't know what ayahuasca is. They don't know how retreats work. I think up to this point, I definitely had an understanding, more of theoretical understanding rather than a personal understanding of the of the healing benefits of psychedelics. I think I was in this place in my life where I kind of call it like a graveyard inside your head. These dark recesses in your mind where you push a lot of the trauma, really negative interpersonal experiences really deep down into the back of your mind and you try and forget about it because this is your coping mechanism at the time. This is how you, your body protects itself to suppress a lot of these strong emotions or maybe you fell out with people in the past. And you just decided that instead of actually dealing with this, confronting the truth of what my emotions are, I'm going to suppress all this into the, you know, into this graveyard, put a wall all around it and just keep it there, you know, because, you know, this is how I'm just going to deal with it. This is my coping mechanism. And I think I had a bit of an understanding that I might've been falling down this path from, you know, my father's death. and from lots of other things accumulating in the past. And I had some kind of like theoretical knowledge that might help with that of going to the Amazon. And it was also just being honest, there's probably like, you know, cosmic curiosity of what it's like to take ayahuasca because I've been reading so much about it, done a lot of research into it as well. And what better place to take it than where it's grown, where the plants occur naturally with these shamanic. healers that have been doing this for thousands of years. And I mean, thousands of years. And so I suppose the next question is, know, how does a, how does a retreat work? What do you do there? What's the experience like? So the place I went, it was called Equitos. It's in Peru and it's in part of the Amazon area there. needs to get a flight from Lima to Equitos. And I had done a lot of research beforehand into where should I do it? What places are trusted? And so this is actually a legal substance in Peru. And so you can actually just look it up online to see the ratings for different places. But also I knew some people that had kind of gone there and was able to chat to them, which was great. So I went to this one retreat center and the benefit of this place was that I think there was only six people in total that were there, which is actually quite unusual for a retreat center. Quite often you can have up to 20 people potentially participating in ceremonies there, which for me is just a little bit too much, I think. Because obviously they're trying to make money from this as well. But it's important to try and find a retreat center that also really prioritizes having a proper shaman, particularly a shaman from a certain tribe called the Chapibo. And what the Chapibo are, it's this specific tribe in the Amazon around the Peruvian Brazil area. that have been there for thousands of years and are kind of known as like the best specialists in ayahuasca in particular. And so to have a shippibo, shaman conducting the ceremony for me was a really important part of it too. And so you rock up there anyway. And the first night I was there, we just relaxed. I met the people who were there. You have your own cabin, your own hush, which is essential for this because you are undergoing some very, very deep. personal healing and you need to be alone for the majority of the time in order to process this healing. If I'm being totally honest, think even up to this point, I had done mushrooms before and you know, I was pretty relaxed with the whole situation about, think it'll help with a bit of healing and I'll learn some interesting insights about myself. But I got to admit, I really underappreciated the potency and the level of experience that I was about to undergo. So. You go into this large hut or a tumble as they call it. And the way it works then is that the shaman is quite often sitting in the center or sitting on the side. All you have then when you come in and sit down there is like a mat or like a mat to kind of sit on. You have a pillow to lie down on. and you have a bucket to vomit in. So vomiting is extremely normal during an ayahuasca experience. I vomit pretty much every time. Very, very rarely people can get diarrhea as well, but I've actually never heard of someone getting it. And so you come in anyway and the shaman is there and when everyone's ready, he starts blessing the medicine. then you go up and you take it. And the moment I think I realized that this was probably more potent or intense than I'd anticipated was I saw the guy beside me and there was only three of us in this ceremony and he was getting like really psyched. So he had done it before and he had been here for like a week or so and he was getting like super psyched up, you know, you know, talking to himself and like, like really breathing. You could tell that like he was taking this extremely seriously. And I kind of realized, was like, hmm, maybe it isn't quite exactly what Mushems is. Obviously I'd done my reading about it and everything, but You really don't know what the experience is going to be until you undergo the ceremony. so anyway, so I go up, I drink the medicine. It tastes horrible in my opinion. There's a very earthy, viscous kind of red, red broth. It doesn't taste good, but you drink it off anyway. And when everyone drinks their dose and you start off on, they call it a half dose when you haven't taken it before, rather than the people who are with me who took a full dose. and then you go back to your math and all the lights go out. So you are in pitch darkness at this point. And a lot of the reason for the darkness is in order to let the visions, I suppose, breathe and live and make them more potent as well. I would say it takes about 40 minutes or so until you start feeling some kind of effect. And I describe the effect as, certainly at the start, as kind of like a little bit like magic mushrooms where a little bit of tingling, a few flashes of light in your vision and slowly the experience starts to build slowly mounting. And the interesting part then is that the shaman takes the ayahuasca with you and this is, know, any good shaman will take it with you because in order to properly guide you through this experience, he needs to be in the same head space. Otherwise you just can't understand. As well as the shaman, the only other person in the room was that there was one trip sitter, Christian, who was just being there as well in case we needed like help with something. We need to go outside for a second or if we're having any difficulties. And this is normal for any ceremony where you have one person who's completely sober and is able to help people if they come into any difficulty. And so the interesting part then is that when the shaman starts feeling some of the medicine, he starts singing and these songs are called Ikarus and they're like the most beautiful things. ever heard where they're like these ancient, ancient, shipibo hymns. So the shipibo language, these like hymns that have been passed down through thousands of years. And there's something like so ancient and sacred about these, these hymns, these songs. And these are the songs that guide you through the visions, guide you through your experience. And it probably sounds a bit strange of like how can a song like that guide you through an experience, but Until you are actually there, it's difficult to appreciate how important and vital these songs are. And again, there is this inherited ancient wisdom present that you feel internally and that echoes and articulates throughout your body, throughout your soul that is extremely potent. Describing the experience myself then with it coming up, the visuals, when they came on and when they started reaching their peak, it was overwhelmingly intense. Despite having done psychedelics in the past, things like that, this was another level altogether, I would say. The best way I could describe the visions is like a mixture of these melting geometrical shapes, patterns, but they're all moving and it's like you're exported into this different realm altogether. The way I would describe it is there is this painting by Salvador Dali called The Perception of Time. that I actually got to see recently in New York of this like melting clock and these like melting figures, faces. It's kind of like you're in a Salvador Dali-esque kind of place, but everything is moving and there's a point then where if you take a high enough dose, you stop becoming the observer of these visuals and you become them. You are the experience now. And I think if you're not used to this frame of mind and so the state of mind, the initial human reaction is to fight it because it feels like you're losing your mind. And it's like your body have no control over where it's taking you. And your mind based on all its perceptual evidence makes this guess that, you know, am I dying? Am I losing my mind here? And it's this like tricky aspect where you have to train yourself based on experiences, but also based on preparation that we do in psychedelic therapy, what do you do in order to try and let go during these really intense visual aspects and to try and not become extremely overwhelmed? I think for me, what really helps, I would say first is meditation. Just in order to center yourself, relax yourself, have a mantra on hand like, just let go, be open and be aware of your thoughts. try and take a step back if you can to just let the experience take over, go with it, try not fight it. But that is far easier said than done. And I think, especially for people that we're going to be helping with psychedelic therapy, I think this is one of the crucial aspects of the experience that we need to help with. Especially these initial stages where if you haven't taken psychedelics before, you don't understand the space where Your mind is taking you different into different recesses, showing you different visuals, and you have no control over this. The way I always kind of describe it to some of the people who are interested in this and some of the participants is that imagine you're on a boat, like a raft, and you are floating down a stream. Quite often, you might have something to guide you in normal consciousness, like a stick. in order to see where you want to navigate your thoughts down different tributaries of this river. And you have some control about what you want to think about, where you want your mind to go. But in this state, it's like you have nothing to guide you anymore. And you are just sitting on this boat and it's going to take you down these different paths, whether you like it or not. And in this instance, you have two options. You you can either fight it and say, don't want to do this. Nope. fight it and try and restrict your body, your mind from it and get into a sense of panic, things like that. But it's still going to take you there anyway, if the doses is strong. If you take a low dose, you still have maybe a stronger grasp on reality, maybe slightly more control over where your mind goes, you know, what you're doing, things like that. But with antipsychedelic, if you take a dose high enough, you lose this grasp of reality, you lose this control about where you can choose to navigate your mind through because the experience totally takes over and it's going to take you down these paths to see these visuals, things like that, without your control. And I suppose for me anyway, the start point like this, getting used to this mindset is the most challenging point. And I think once you can kind of like get past the visuals and the really this new sort of mindset. This is when the real healing and therapy begins. So let me kind of describe what happened for me when I was in this experience and what I found so profound. the visuals start to settle and I'm going to go in. That was so intense, like overwhelmingly intense, but like I'm through it and I've passed the peak. And I thought at that point, let's just see what happens. I think I really underpreced at that point the level and the depth of therapy that was about to occur. The way I describe it, it was like being shot with a crystal bullet of clarity right into my forehead where everything became so clear about what I'd been holding onto in my life, what I needed to see in order to grow and move forward. And so for me, the way I describe it is that It was like this graveyard that I was speaking about earlier of all these repressed memories, trauma, and you building this wall all around them. That wall came thrumbling down and you become this extremely objective observer of each of the problems, you know, that had to happen that might have occurred. And quite often with some of these issues, like let's say, I don't know, you'd fallen out with a friend or something and You know, you might've thought you were right at the time, but a lot of these instances are clouded in your own subjective narrative, you know, but it's, think everybody carries the truth with them and the answers, the raw answers internally, whether they, whether they, and in this moment then it just became extremely clear about what I needed to deal with in my life. And it was like, it brought me to all these specific moments, either in my childhood, seeing each family member. one by one and different issues that I might've had with them. Conversations that I needed to have that had been delayed because I suppose, especially in Ireland, know, we, think we like to try and avoid some of the big topics, even if there is an elephant in the room amongst, you know, your friends or family, because it's extremely difficult. And, you know, you would prefer maybe just to live in this reality where you don't have to face these, these problems, but. It was like this moment where everything became extremely clear and I realized how much baggage I had been carrying. And I think that my point of this is, guess, that you can look at this baggage, look at this graveyard and all the stuff you've been carrying. You don't realize how a lot of these problems have been like weighing you down, stopping your progress. And also. how they have been subconsciously manifesting in different ways. So I'll give you an example. I think I had some childhood issues of like some severe abuse, things like that. And it's only when I was able to reconcile, finally look at this moment face to face and realize then where, wow, this is where a lot of my anger has been coming from. This is why I've been feeling so frustrated. This is maybe why I've had some, you know, like strange relationships with girls, things like that. this is the thing, I guess, people think that when they're forgetting these problems and pushing it into this graveyard, into your subconscious that you're dealing with it. But it is always going to leak out and project itself, manifest itself in different ways, through depression, anger, anxiety, whatever it might be. You always pay the debt for this graveyard building up. And until you can look at this or face to face and reconcile with your past, reconcile with your problems, it's going to be really hard to move forward and fulfill your potential, I believe. Are you still afraid? Are you still ashamed from them? How does it help you negate the negative emotions that you would normally have felt? Are you even aware that you have these problems? aware. I was not aware of this. Obviously I had some insights into different things that might have been going on. I think if I'm being honest man, even going into this experience, it was one or two like really deep personal things that like I always kind of knew existed in the background but I said no I'm not touching that. That's too painful, it's too deep and that's tucked away in the darkest recess of my mind that I don't want to touch. However, once you enter this stage, you see everything. And it shows it, it shows it you in a way where you are, like I said, this really unbiased objective use observer where you can have empathy for yourself and you can look at it in a way where you're not afraid anymore and try and change the relationship that you had to some of these traumas by observing it in such an objective manner. And when I was able to look at it, look at this in this objective new lens, These problems stopped because I changed the way I managed these thoughts because I wasn't hiding from them anymore as well. I was able to sit with these thoughts, acknowledge them, accept them for what they are. You see the emotional baggage that you've been carrying and you kind of have this clear mindset of like, what exactly do I need to do in order to ensure that this weight is finally lifted and that I can continue. to move forward in my life without carrying the weight of this trauma with me. And I'll be honest, for a lot of these issues, haven't since doing that. I haven't thought about them again because, and even if I do think about them, I'm totally fine with it. I don't hide from it. I don't suppress it. It is what it is. I have a little thought, think about it, and get on with my day. So you think that you feel, you feel that you're more aware of your body and how you feel in certain situations. Yeah, like I one one of the most beneficial aspects, I think, John, of this experience was I think it changed my relationship with meditation as well, I would say, where I think maybe in the past, I kind of saw meditation as this how to relax your body was how to be present. But I think I really lacked the insight into how I could actually use these tools or skills in my daily, you know, my day-to-day routine habits, things like that. And so, part of the psychedelic experience, the way it changed my view on meditation is that my thoughts are not me. And I actually have a lot more control than I thought I did about which thoughts do I engage with and which thoughts can I look at as more of an observer and be able to see, well, there's some cognitive biases at play here. And maybe this is all or nothing thinking or this is because from past experiences, I might think like that. so, you know, for me, I think when I started making meditation a daily routine and habit, it definitely allowed me to be a lot more in control of my emotions. Feel this emotional response. Feel the thoughts coming into your head. But instead of having to fully engage with that, Just being an observer for a second, having this awareness of meditation to be able to take that step back and not respond to my body's physiological response, not respond to the first thought that into my mind. Take a step back, relax and become more objective about this, I think was, you know, a really crucial step in becoming a better doctor, more in control of my emotions, which I think, especially in psychiatry, such a fundamental aspect of these things. But again, it's like, Stop for a second. Feel what, describe what you're feeling right now. You're feeling angry. Your heart rate's increasing. Where do you feel it? Do you feel it in your chest? Do you feel it up, rising up your neck? Describe it. What exactly is going on here? What is the specific emotion that you're feeling? And instead of having to engage with this emotion and letting it potentially ruin your day, look at it like a wave. This is what emotions are. They rise and they fall. So just sit with it, be an observer and with the awareness that it'll pass, relax yourself. It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Don't let the small things stress you out, which is obviously easier said than done. This takes a long time to learn. And it's a daily practice where you need to catch yourself each time and say, relax for a second. Let's be an observer here again. And you need to try and make it a daily habit and daily routine. Otherwise it's not going to stick. With psychedelics and things, it might show you the door, but you have to walk through it and put in all the work yourself. And if you're not willing to put in the work, none of this is going to stick. There's this famous quote from Carl Jung where he says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will control your life and you will call it fate. And I think this is part of the real benefit of psychedelics for certain people, where you can become aware of all these subconscious aspects of your life that are controlling so much. And you kind of just assume, well, it's just me, part of my personality. But until you realize you actually like, you know, look back to your life and you can recognize some of the roots of where these come from, understand them, show compassion for yourself. You'd be surprised as to how much is in our control, how much we can actually, you know, amend and grow based on these changes. I think the fact that you're even aware of this is definitely like the first sign of, you know, trying to grow and learn from these aspects. I've taken Sci-Electrics a few times and mostly it was like recreationally in my early years in university and there were some good and bad experiences there. We didn't really know what we were doing but I remember we talked to them once like a group of us after exams and we took kind of, we actually didn't even know what LSD was at the time. I had a vague idea but most of you guys didn't. There was like 18 of us after. We were only like I think I was. 1990 after our summer exams in our first year of uni and we took a really strong dosage and we had to like spit up the groups and like go out, go out to Cork City into like um into the woods just like chill out down there for a few hours. It was kind of a mixed experience because I don't think we were ready for it but I remember the first time like I was having my conversations with people I was kind of like wow this is weird I was like not weird I was like this is definitely a different sensation and I was kind of into meditation at time so I think maybe I not better equipped than other people but maybe yeah I was able to like meditate a small bit like which reduced anxiety but a few guys again getting anxiety during it because yeah we'd taken like strong dose but whatever that was like a time I did it recreationally but definitely like sparked curiosity with me from then but I was always a bit hesitant because it was a strong dosage but the last time I actually did it was in Kikenni in 2023 I felt I was going sideways like career and I walked like move home, like get away from the strap and save money in this like hustle. Like sort my life out. And that turned out to be like a bad idea because I kind of just isolated myself. And it was only weekend that I had nothing to do. I was living in my family home and I was like 26th time. So I had like washrooms in my room. So was like, fuck it, I'll just take it. I'll take it and we'll see what happens. But I did it intentionally. And I was like, I kind of meditated beforehand and I took them. Then I took them and then I started seeing visuals and stuff and I'm quite strong and then I realized that my parents were coming home in like two hours so I put on headphones and sunglasses and went for a walk. I was like, I don't get home. I don't get home. Like, come home. I was walking through the county city. It wasn't even sunny outside with sunglasses on and headphones and one of my neighbors saw me. She's like, oh, is that John Gillman? She hadn't seen me in a few years. was like, wait. I was like, wait, and I walked on. I was like, what the hell am I doing here? So stupid. What have some talks made? and I actually called my buddy, didn't tell him who I know was going into psychedelics for healing also and he's on a few of our retreats and I called him and told him I like yeah I took psychedelics here I don't mind not to I'm a bit disorientated and he instructed me to go to nature and I was like sitting up there and then he said to me like why don't you take them and then I was like it wasn't I wasn't doing it like to be like degenerate or like it wasn't impulsively I was like it's just recreation I kind of read about them I read the book by Michael Paul, how to change your mind. And he talks about neurogenesis and healing and consciousness. I was just sitting in the park and I was just looking at trees and I felt a lot more relaxed with him, two hours in the park. And it gave me such clarity. But it did also bring up different issues that I had, like things that I think really relate to what you said with trauma from childhood. When I was growing up, my dad was quite sick. He had two forms of cancer and For a while there, we thought he was gonna pass away. And then after he was relined as a croc, I'm still really upset about that. And I just released emotions. And then after that, then I just relined that I wanted to go backpacking and I booked a flight to Colombia and had a great time after that. But I definitely don't think I would have had that clarity until I'd taken it like that. Because I was so in my head at that time and I was like, oh, I don't need to travel, I don't have enough traveling. I just need to make more money and stuff. I was digging myself into a hole. and I found it really beneficial, as well, that time. That was suicide and... wait. I think interesting as well where it was only when you went to like the park and you had this good setting to kind of like relax your mind and enter these states then of kind of therapy I guess where you were able to look at different issues with different perspectives things like that I think it really under kind of pins the importance then as well of someone's set and setting when going into a psychedelic experience. what I'd say first of all, is psychedelics are not for everybody. They really aren't, you know? And I think you need to be aware and educate yourself about them, like immensely beforehand, where, you know, you can take the example of when you and your friends went out that time. And clearly there hadn't been enough research about the dosing. As long as it's going last, what kind of effects might come up? Maybe there would have been less anxiety around it as well, and they would have been better able to tolerate the experience. The first thing is, like you were saying, what is your intention? Why are you doing this in the first place? I think people sometimes think of like psilocybin in particular as like, maybe it's kind of like MDMA or cocaine, something like that, where I'll just feel great and it'll be fine. I think this is a real pitfall that people can fall into where I think with MDMA or cocaine, there's almost more of a predictable response, I would say about, I think if you take MDMA, you're going to feel probably 95 % of time, you're going to feel really empathetic, you're going to have these rushes of euphoria and just feel really great and warm and safe. But with psychedelics, it's like each time you take them is going to be completely different. But what I would also say is that We have a lot in our control in order to try and, you know, regulate the experience that we're going to have and try and optimize what we can do beforehand to have the best experience possible. And I suppose this kind of gets back to the idea of something called set and setting where what your set is and what is your mindset going into the experience. I would say if you feel like you're in an extremely unstable part of your life where you're having, you're already having like really. thoughts, I would really advise against this unless you're with a medical professional and you have proper treperation integration afterwards, because you just don't know how this experience is going to go. And quite often psychedelics can potentiate the already pre-existing emotions that you're feeling. I didn't call my friend Dylan, like I would have had a bad, I was having a bad time. Like I was walking around the base like completely just thinking, my god, am doing, am am doing, like looking at people's heads and their like facial like moving around. I was like not adjoining it until then. For people, especially if you're not experienced, do not trip alone is what I would say. Have a trip sitter present. Somebody who you trust, one of your really good friends that you can ask anything to, is not going to judge you during the experience. And if you are having a negative time that they can try and reassure you, guide you, things like that. I think this is a really fundamental kind of all preparation for it. And I think your parents are going to be coming home at some point. And obviously you were trying to avoid your parents. But equally, you were in a town that you grew up in where you could potentially run into people that you know. And then you're anxious that you're acting weird. They're going to know that you've taken something. And I think probably once you saw that first person, it already probably triggered something in your mind about this anxiety. But I think that's a really fundamental part, you where am I doing this? And what I'd also say is like, you know, it's important to have a safe space as well, where even if you're out in nature, somewhere that like, if things are becoming a bit strong or overwhelming, you can go back there and you can relax with your friends and you can feel comfortable again, which I think is a really fundamental aspect of this as well. And I think this kind of just, suppose, underlines the importance of preparation. Anytime you're undergoing one these experiences, preparation is everything, absolutely everything. And especially if you're not experienced, you need other people who are going to be with you that can help you if something negative is happening or if you're maybe encountering like a repressed memory, like I said, you know. And this again, I think goes back to the idea of psychedelic assisted therapy, where outside of a clinical setting where you can have preparation, integration, things like that. There are risks. Absolutely. There are risks. think part of the issue about why psychedelics initially built the stigma that it has, that it's getting better, but still continues to have today is because of this hyperbolic response in the sixties by people like Timothy Leary, who was a clinical psychologist in Harvard at the time, and ended up giving some of his students LSD and was encouraging the whole world to take psychedelics and it was going to cause this revolution. He was telling people to drop out of college and to wake up, things like this. And obviously this is where it started becoming associated with the counterrevolution. And I think it is extremely important to try and learn from some of these mistakes in the past about, you know, how we want to pursue this going forward. And for me, I think the proper way to pursue this is with absolute honesty, open honesty, consideration, because, you know, we don't want these things to happen again. And I feel like we are on the cusp of something really big happening, but we need to be very clear about the risks, very clear about the evidence. And, you know, most importantly, we need to try and follow what is going to benefit most people, you know? And so just to delve into some of the risks. I think obviously, you know, one of the big risks, like I was saying, is doing this outside of a clinical setting. If you are not supported by friends, people, know, things like that, where there have been cases where people have run into traffic or people might've fallen off a building. These are extremely rare, but it just shows the importance of having people around things like that. Another thing I would say is with these bad trips. as they're quite often called, this is obviously one of the big fears that people have getting into a psychedelic experience and they absolutely exist. They absolutely do. However, in psychedelic therapy, we call them challenging experiences. We don't call them bad trips. I think one of the differences between doing it in a clinical setting and doing it alone by yourself is that in a clinical setting, let's say if someone's having a really challenging time, you have already prepared them. We've had maybe four preparation sessions up to this point about, you know, basically giving them an idea about what the experience is going to entail. You know, what can they do if they're feeling these really strong emotions? We've taught them breathing techniques, how to meditate, things like that. But also we are going to be there with them. We can hold their hand through some of these challenging thoughts and try and ask them, what can I learn from this? Because quite often, It's these negative experiences that can have the most benefit from a clinical perspective and for people with depression. Why did it bring you to this particular place? And what can we learn from that experience? How can we turn a positive aspect on this? But if you're alone and you have a bad experience, And let's say you just want this to stop, you're panicking, things like that. This is an extremely negative experience that could have some lasting side effects, especially, and this is the really crucial point, especially if you have no integration afterwards and you don't talk to anybody afterwards and you just have to live with that experience without really understanding what happened and how to try and extract some benefit from it as well. Interestingly, from all the studies they've done with people who have had negative experiences in a clinical setting, actually, they basically had the same decrease in depression scores as people who had really positive mystical experiences. So it actually had a very similar effect in terms of decreasing depression symptoms. And so just because you had a challenging experience doesn't mean the benefit is lost essentially. But with the right preparation, and integration afterwards and that part is absolutely key. The research doesn't suggest that psychos cause psychosis because that's what I hear most. All these like, echo stories of like, people jumping off buildings. From the clinical studies that we've done that have very strict inclusion and exclusion criteria, there's been no cases of psychosis or prolonged psychosis is what they call it from any of these patients. And so the kind of idea is that anybody with a psychotic disorder, let's say schizophrenia, bipolar disease, which is, know, mania, these patients are absolutely omitted from any of these studies. because basically the kind of current thinking and there's not enough science about it at the moment is that let's say if somebody has a first degree relative, let's say my mom has schizophrenia, potentially somebody could already be showing early signs of schizophrenia, things like that of having delusions, hallucinations, or some odd behavior, social isolation, things like that. The idea is that maybe psychedelics might cause their first psychotic episode or accelerate the onset of this first psychotic episode. That doesn't mean that it's been created spontaneously out of nowhere. It means that it was already going to happen, but maybe you have accelerated from maybe happening from a year or two from now to it happening now. I think the issue with this as well is that people tend to have their first psychotic episode with schizophrenia at a really young age of like, in their late teens, early twenties, which also happens to be the age where people start doing psychedelics. And so I think there is a bit of uncertainty about that. I completely stand by the point that anybody with family history of a psychotic disorder or personal history, or if they're showing any early signs, which will be assessed on the screening process in psychedelic therapy, they should be completely omitted because I think we've seen from our evidence when having these very strict inclusion exclusion criteria, nobody has had psychosis and the adverse effects that have been reported have all been mild like headache, nausea, anxiety, things like that, but no lasting psychosis, thankfully. And I think it's important to try and continue that trend. There's like, I think one of the stories that kind of goes around quite often, which I think is might be fitting is I don't know if you've ever heard of Sid Barrett. He's one of the, was one of the lead singers of Pink Floyd back in the sixties. I think he was with them for their first two albums. And he, the kind of like narrative that was portrayed from his, from his perspective was that he was taking LSD and it drove him insane. And therefore LSD causes psychosis. People can develop this out of nowhere. He had one trip and he never came back. But the reality of this was that And if you talk to any of the interviews of the band members, they will tell you that he had already been showing signs of schizophrenia long before he started taking LSD and was like acting really oddly, saying strange things, not really making sense, things like that. And that maybe LSD might have exacerbated that. But these are the exact group of people that shouldn't be taking it in the first place. And it kind of underlines the importance of education for the general population about this as well. Because like I said, There is a fantastic benefit, I believe, when done in a clinical setting. But with these particular disorders, there is a definite danger there. And I think it's important to be honest upfront about this and also to educate the population about when and when not to take these substances too. Big Pharma or Big Pharma involved yet? Like are they fighting over pigs? Cause sounds to me like a pretty popular drug to prove. I know there is Compass in the UK, which is promoting psychedelic research, but have also put a patent on psilocybin and the psilocybin that they use in particular. And so like the way that it actually comes in in psychedelic therapy is it comes in a little pill. And this is, you're not actually taking physical mushrooms or something. And the reason for that is that number one, they can regulate the dose. a lot more so they know exactly how much psilocybin this contains versus a magic mushroom where you know you're not going to know exactly how much psilocybin even if it's three grams of dried mushrooms you can only make an estimate on how much psilocybin it contains. Number two it has decreased nausea maybe a bit of fatigue things like that compared to actually eating the mushroom but so yeah so there has already been some pharmaceutical companies that have gotten in there however I think this is like a really big point is that WAF discourages and acts as a major disincentive for a lot of pharmaceutical agencies to get involved is that you're only meant to take this a few times, maybe once or twice, potentially in your whole life compared to an SSRI, like Prozac, something like that, where you're going to take this potentially every day for the rest of your life. Think of the financial incentive that they have to endorse something a lot more like that compared to something that you're only going to use a few times. And so sometimes without this pharmaceutical backing and funding then as well, it also adds this extra challenge of where to get the money from, do some of these trials, things like that. And then a lot of it is going to be state funded as well, which I feel a lot of countries are going to be opposed to until they can get more and more evidence that it's going to be worth the money. Because obviously even in Australia right now, the way it's working is that for psilocybin, for example, it goes, the whole cycle like assisted therapy goes for about six months, something like that, including two dosing sessions. But for six months, it's costing anywhere between in euros now, nine to 15,000 euros, which is a lot of money. And it might be hard for insurance companies to pay for that thing, considering the cost involved. The counterargument I would have to that though, as well is in Ireland last year, and this is a statistic I saw in the Irish Times, depression cost the economy three billion in a year. And so this is a combination of people missing work, having to go on social welfare, unemployment, know, low productivity in work and you know, hospital appointments, admissions, know, psychiatry consultations, things like that. You think there could possibly be a agenda that it doesn't profit large corporations if there is like a sheen. We kind of once off not subscription based medicine for depression. I don't think it's like some kind of like agenda of them trying to suppress their mind or something, but know, pharmaceutical companies are businesses and they're going to follow wherever the money comes in. And that's just, that's just a fact of life. How would you envision Ireland in 10 years, if psychedelic cystic therapy is passed and it becomes mainstream? Is that something you believe could be possible in your lifetime, if you're optimistic? In my lifetime, yes, I think so. How long it's going to take to get there? think definitely more than 10 years. Ireland is probably lagging behind other countries in terms of research, things like that. But let's say in this world where it becomes rescheduled and this new treatment becomes available, how would that work? The way I think it would work is that people would be going to their GPs in Italy. for symptoms of depression and they would traditionally be put on SSRIs if it's impairing their function and they're having growing depressive symptoms and the GP needs to try at least two medications before they can refer them on to service then. And the GP would also need to do a checklist of the inclusion and exclusion criteria. So like we spoke about before, you know, they can't have any psychotic disorder or a strong family history of it. They can't, they have to be over 18. They have to be able to sign and form consent and they can't be pregnant and they can't have any serious unstable medical conditions as well. And so if a patient can say, yep, they're happy to be referred, they fit all this criteria, they would then come on to someone like me. And let's say I'm a psychiatrist and I have a prescribing license for psilocybin, let's say. What I would then do is I would have do my own screening on this patient, kind of go through some similar questions about the inclusion exclusion criteria and also just tell them a bit about what's going to happen during this experience. Because like I said, I think there's a good chance that when you explain this like really clearly to people about the mindset that you enter, it's going to be, parts of it are going to be scary and you're going to be making access to parts of your mind that you had forgotten that existed. access repressed memories, childhood issues, things like that. And I think it's totally reasonable for someone to say, you know what, I'm not there yet to undergo something so intensive, something so serious. And I think that's absolutely fine. I think what's really important is to be really honest with people about what's going to happen because it is a lot of work. But for the people who have gone through it and have come out the other end, you know, the benefit is extremely clear, you know? And so the way it would work then is that normally you'd have free preparation sessions, just telling the patient what to expect, understanding their depression a bit more about what might be going on, understanding them as a person, just in general, a lot more, also getting an idea about, you know, their life, what their job is, who their friends and family are, getting an idea of who this person is and developing this therapeutic relationship, which is extremely important, especially when it comes to the day of dosing where They've actually had studies where they tested people where they rated the therapeutic relationship with their psychotherapist and psychiatrist before the day of dosing. And it actually correlated with how positive or beneficial their experience was. Because obviously during the dosing day, they are going to enter this extremely vulnerable, open state. And it is absolutely paramount to trust the people that are going to be guiding you through this experience. And so just to tell you a little bit more about the dosing day and like what happens, what does it look like for people? So they would come in and we'd obviously just go through a few things with them again, make sure they're prepared. And we've already guided them about meditation, breathing techniques, what to expect at this point. And there's obviously going to be a few nerves, things like that. And the kind of like clinical setting where this is conducted, try and imagine like a really cozy sitting room where There's a kind of low lights, a bed and a pillow and a really like warm blanket for the patient to sit in. And there will be either a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist or two psychotherapists sitting in the room that the patient will know very well from the preparation. So there's already that trust built between those people. And then the patient takes the pill of psilocybin and usually the dosing. Again, there's still a bit unclear. about how many milligrams a dose should be. The kind of general idea at the moment is 25 milligrams, which is actually a pretty big dose. I would say it's probably equivalent to maybe 2.5 grams of dried mushrooms, which for your first time is actually a pretty big dose. And I think if I was conducting my own, I'd probably start off with maybe 1.5, just to give them an idea in their first dosing session and hopefully maybe build a bit of confidence for their next dosing session. But I think the reason that they give people such a high substantial dose is that from the evidence that they've conducted, there's a direct correlation between the higher dose and this mystical type experience, which they found to be the most beneficial in terms of accessing these repressed memories, you know, having been more open to therapy afterwards as well and creating this state of neuroplasticity. So, and this is one of the really like important kind of fundamental aspects of how these substances work, where they cause new brain growth and between neurons across different brain regions that weren't previously connected. So I think I really fund the part of understanding why does psilocybin work with like depression. alcohol addiction, OCD, erectile nervosa. It's working across a wide range of psychiatric disorders. And what a lot of these disorders share is that they share this like stuck mindset of this like rigid thinking where like in depression, it could be, I feel worthless. I can't go outside today. I am a piece of crap. And it's like the same areas of the brain. just going over and over again, the same neural circuits over firing and they just can't see this other perspective because their mind is so stuck and it's not connecting the other parts of the brain to each other to try and grant them this perspective. And this is not their fault. It's just like, you become so good at falling down these neural circuits that you feel like crap is that it's kind of becomes the path of least resistance. And it's like the more these circuits fire, the easier it is to become stuck. in these states as well. And you see it with, let's say addiction. I need a drink. I'm going to do anything to have a drink. And so you see the same kind of pathogenesis of this stuckness of, you know, it's the same thought coming into your head the whole time. Same with anorexia nervosa. I feel overweight. I need to make myself get sick. And they just can't have this all alternative perspective. And so basically this is why they have a slightly higher dose then. in order to try and increase the chance that they can enter this state that caused this neuroplasticity connects the brain parts to next signal on the brain to different parts of each other. And it had the most beneficial effect. And so then the person undergoes their therapy and what's very different about how they conducted here versus like if you're just taking it recreationally in nature or something is that they give you a sleeping mask. could put over your eyes and they also give you a headset with very specific music selected for this experience. so regarding the sleeping mask, this is to cut out any kind of like external stimuli, things like that, that might distract you from your experience. And it's a very different experience when you do it this way. It makes it a lot more introspective and there's a lot less distractions. You can only focus internally if you can't see anything else. Regarding the music, I've actually listened to it before. It's a really beautiful set of music that has a combination of kind of tribal elements, nature, a little bit of classical music. And what's interesting is that the music selected is selected very specifically depending on what part of the experience of your trip that you're in. So when you're reaching your peak and the visuals are a bit more intense, there might be slightly faster music like a drum, tribal drum in the background. But once you get to this more therapeutic stage after the peak, it's more kind of like contemplative music. So they really do put a lot of effort into picking all these things correctly and really analyzing all the variables at play. And so after somebody has experienced then you have a little talk afterwards and they usually go home. One of the big differences here between psilocybin and MDMA is that during a psilocybin experience, you leave the patient alone unless they want help. So if I'm the therapist or the psychiatrist, I'm sitting back just holding the space for this person. I'm not talking to them because there's this, I suppose, idea that you need to let the medicine do its own work. And that if I was talking to them, it would be distracting their process. And even with the patient might take off their ice shades and start talking to you. And that's fine for like maybe a few minutes, but you don't want this to be a reason that they're becoming distracted. Maybe they're hiding from something. If you just try and gently guide them back into their experience to make sure they're going to get the most benefit from this as possible. But you are there the whole time where if they put out your hands, you can hold their hands. or you can try and reassure them and you make these rules with the patient beforehand about what's allowed, what's not allowed. We never want to interfere with the patient's space unless they want us to. And we'd only ever touch them on their hand or on their shoulder. Nowhere else is allowed. And this is a really fundamental aspect, especially when someone is such a vulnerable state, to build this trust and grant them their own space as well to do their healing. The way it works after that then is that you have an integration session the very next day. This is after any session, same with MDMA, you deal with it and basically the next day, the first integration session, we just ask them how they get on, try and slowly make them make sense of what happened. And then for the psilocybin trials, they do two dosing days. And then after the second dosing day, there's about five more integration sessions, which are like 90 minutes IRP sessions. trying to really root through what they learned, but then also trying to implement these techniques, structures of like, how can we use what you learned and make this into a daily routine and habit that you are going to persist with for hopefully the rest of your life and try and form these good habits now when your brain is in this open neuro plastic mindset where you're open to these ideas and you can be a bit more considerate and a bit more objective about things as well. And so that's the way psilocybin works. I would say the main difference from MDMA is that during MDMA, because it's being used for PTSD, a lot of the issue with PTSD is that classic example of somebody who is a war veteran. And basically we have evolved with this system in our brain where It had been evolutionary adaptive to have this fear mechanism to guide us about what's dangerous, what's safe, when to run away, when to fight. And a lot of this is stored in a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is kind of like the fear center in the brain. And for people who have endured trauma, injury, seeing their friends die, things like that, their amygdala is going haywire. So it's saying even in benign spraveal stimuli, like a door banging after the fact, their brain is still on high alert and sending these over signaling to the amygdala to say, you are not safe. You are in danger right now. And this is why people find it so hard to try and live a PTSD because they're constantly responding to this fear mechanism over like something like a door banging or fireworks, something like that. And then at the same time, It's impairing, you know, their function in everyday life. And because this fear signaling is so strong, they cannot speak about, about what's happened to them, about their trauma. They, it is so painful to try and go there because their brain has basically told them, no, this is pure fear as a protection mechanism. You cannot go there. And this is what makes talk therapy with people with PTSD so incredibly hard because Quite often it can be very traumatizing for them to even touch some of the events that have happened to them. However, with MDMA then, MDMA forms this openness, this feeling of empathy, connection, and that, you know what, maybe things aren't so bad and I can't talk about this. And you'd see it with people, they describe it like having been submerged underwater and finally... being able to take a deep breath once they can start talking about some of their trauma and going into these details and slowly changing the relationship that they had with this trauma. Whereas before, if this even came into their mind, they suppressed it. No, not touching that. It's dangerous. I'm going to be, I'm in danger. Whereas now when they can actually start talking about it, they can slowly realize, wait, I am not in danger. I'm actually safe. Just because I think about these things, doesn't have to always trigger this fear response. And you're slowly changing the relationship that you have with this trauma from these talk sessions during it with MDMA. We've seen incredible results with it. The most recent evidence from this large organization called MAPS showed that from their phase three trial, that over two thirds of their participants no longer qualified. as having PTSD after six months from MDMA therapy, which I just thought was absolutely incredible. And it just shows, again, if we use it in the right way with the right support, these drugs have immense potential, absolutely immense. And you may isn't necessarily a psychoactive, it just, you get like a lot of serotonin and then you feel comfortable, you feel safe and then you can talk about the traumatic events which you couldn't even access before. That's so, yeah, the way it works is extremely different from other psychedelics. It's still, so other psychedelics work on the serotonin 2A. MDMA does in some part as well, but it works on a whole lot of other receptors and at extremely high doses, you could argue that there are some psychedelic effects, but you are still very grounded to reality. And with MDMA, the whole purpose is not to try and enter this like visionary state where it's bringing you to these repressed memories, you actually have someone there that's probing you to talk about these things that you already know exist, but you're able to talk about them in a way that doesn't trigger the severe response and that you can enter detail that you've been hiding from yourself for so long because you finally relax. It feels okay to do it. And you feel comfortable. You're having these waves of euphoria. some warmth, things like that. know, instantly the doses that they give people during this as well. Um, cause obviously people, some of our listeners might have taken MDMA before and it's difficult to know sometimes what's a, what's a high dose, things like that. And people have different ideas of that. So what they generally give people during these sessions is 120 milligrams initially. And then after two hours, you can have a booster dose of 60 milligrams. And funnily enough, think it's like, 98 % of people have the booster dose because you're already feeling great. And you're like, yeah, go on. I'll have the booster. You know, I think you need to be extremely careful with MDMA as well, because, you know, like psilocybin, there are risks in terms of like physiological risks in terms of like your heart rate, your blood pressure, your temperature has basically no effect. With MDMA, however, it can increase your heart rate. It can increase your temperature. It can increase your blood pressure a bit. at safe levels, but you can see where people run into difficulties if they are taking a lot of MDMA. They're at a nightclub and maybe it's extremely warm in this nightclub as well. And they are dancing really, really heavily. Maybe they're not drinking water as well because they're having such a good time. It doesn't even occur to them. I think where the dangers occur with this in these nightclub settings, and there has been some debts with this. would be hyperthermia, becoming too hot, dehydration. There's been cases where because people are dancing so much, it causes something called rhabdomyolysis, which is like a breakdown of some of your muscle cells and that can affect your kidney. But what I must preface it with saying is that most of the deaths caused by MDMA is also the result of like polypharmacy where people, you know, it's Again, extremely, extremely unusual for someone to take like one bad pill and die. Quite often with these cases of people who have died, they've been taking cocaine, benzos, alcohol, and MDMA has just been part of that. But then MDMA gets this bad name, you know, MDMA has killed another person. And I think this is also part of some propaganda that people believe in as well about about ecstasy MDMA, largely from the government. I know there was this one There's one really famous study that was done in the late nineties where it basically came out that recreational dose of MDMA causes neurotoxicity. It is going to rot your brain cells. And it was released in, in nature, which is like a really big, well-established scientific journal. And it was done in, in apes. They did the study until they realized that it wasn't MDMA that they gave the apes. It was met. But by the time. I know, yeah, by the time they were able to put up a big thing on their journal and try and retract this, the damage had been done because it was like a confirmation bias for people. already thought MDMA was bad and then they see this research and they say, yeah, I told you and it didn't matter if it was wrong or if they retracted it, the damage was done. I think it just, again, underlines the importance of education for people. Particularly for MDMA, in terms of adverse events during these experiences are extremely low. Again, people can get muscle tightness cramping, which is actually a bit common. It's probably about 40 % of the people might get a bit of nausea. Some people have nystagmus, which is like their eyes wiggle a little bit. And it could be on the MDMA trials as well. The inclusion and exclusion criteria differs a little bit. So you can't have uncontrolled blood pressure. You can't be pregnant. You also need a negative urine dipstick because obviously I think MDMA has a slightly higher potential for abuse rather than psilocybin. Psilocybin, LSD, DMT are non addictive essentially. From numerous trials they've carried out, there's been no evidence suggests any addiction whatsoever because for anyone who's had one of these trips, last thing normally you want to do is do it again because it was such a big undertaking. Whereas with MDMA, you you felt great, really, really good. And it was positive no matter what and a very euphoric experience. And for certain people, there could be a tendency to push that, especially in party scenes, things like that. So for clinical trials then, you need to have a negative urine dipstick for any drugs. So no substance, current substance abuse disorders. And they're not using it at the moment for addiction disorder as well. It's mostly for PTSD and as well as the MDMA that they're giving people is extremely, is extremely pure. It's like something like 98%. And so, and because you've done all the preparation, you know, the timing between the doses, the, the calm downs for people during these experiences are actually pretty much non-existent. Not, not like nil, but I feel like a lot of the the come downs for people who might be taking it in a recreational setting are because they might have taken too much. They're not drinking water. They're combined with alcohol or drugs. They're also dancing so much. They've stayed up really, really late that night. And there's all these other factors, you know, that are in play that can also make you feel quite low the next day. So when carried out in these regulated supervised conditions, the adverse events are extremely low. Calm down is how you feel after The down is how you feel afterwards where MD main particular is associated with feeling depressed afterwards because it's the borrowing tomorrow's happiness for today, for this moment. And this is extremely common, especially when taken in higher doses or if you've been taking it regularly as well. This is also a risk factor for having more kind of depressive symptoms for the next few days when your serotonin regenerates. But in these clinical settings, close regulation, it's been pretty much non-existent. So we have a few questions, right? First one up is Emily. Emily is based in Barcelona and she says, do you think psychedelics will eventually replace traditional medicine? I think psychedelics will complement traditional medicine. And I guess it depends what you mean by traditional medicine as well, because obviously, I think if you were talking about, you know, schizophrenia, for example, obviously there's very different medicines that are at hand that need to block certain receptors that are known in the pathogenesis of these diseases. And like I said as well, know, psychedelics are not for everybody. Yes, question from Mike, Mike Scha, Wax and Dalton, believe. How do you plan to integrate psychedelic cystotherapy with the current systems in place on CBT for eggs? So I think with psychedelic therapy for like the integration practices, is like a dip, there's a wide range of like different modes that are being used currently for integration. like CBT, family therapy, know, more kind of like psychoanalytic therapy. There is a wide range of different integrative processes that are being used. And I think it's definitely like a really important area that requires further research. to try and develop what might be like the most optimum type of therapy being used for a certain group of people with maybe depression or substance abuse disorder, anorexia, things like that. And you can see for a lot of the studies, integration is a stage where there's really no clear answer yet. And I think there needs to be a lot of work there done as well. How long does that go on for? On potentially six months, nine months. I think there could be a benefit as well. of having follow-up after like, I don't know, a year and a half, two years. I think another important aspect of this is, you know, what does somebody do if they've done their own psychedelic experience and thinks they need integration in Ireland or something, if they've done it recreationally and maybe they had a bad experience or maybe they have, they really want to grow from their own psychedelic experience and try and see how can I maximize the benefit from this experience. and incorporate these values into my everyday life. And the first thing I would say is if you can afford a therapist or a counselor, even, or a psychologist, go to them. Obviously not everyone can afford that, but I think a good structure would be you could like write down the things that you feel you've learned from your psychedelic experience. Try and do your own work on it yourself about the things that you want to change, but then also have the benefit of having a therapist that can give you How can I make this a daily routine in my life? You know, I'm still like, let me give you an example. For me, it was like meditation, you know. So for me, there's something called habit stacking, which is from the book Atomic Habits, which I would endorse to everyone, by the way, for creating habits. And so what I had to create was that every time I had a shower, this was my trigger for meditating as soon as I have a shower. I'm basically just making this. Like I routine every day so that becomes non-negotiable after a while, like washing your teeth. So you have a shower and the next thing you do is you meditate straight away. There's no ifs, buts or maybes even for like five, 10 minutes, something like that. I do something similar with gratitude where I have like a reminder on my phone at 6pm every day to practice gratitude, which just means to write down three things that you're grateful for, sort of change your perspective about what's going well in your life and make it a daily habit. Do you? I depends. I so much time to have my hands. I would say at least 10 minutes. What about you? yeah. Well actually I was pretty consistent with meditation for a while, for... until December and I fall off it and I meditated last week. I went to like a beach meditation here. It was an hour long meditation and afterwards I just realised that I need to meditate every day. since last Thursday I've been doing like 10 minutes every day this morning and a 20 minutes but yeah I just find it so beneficial. Like for me it's such a game changer. But anyway. But I think it's an important point though, man, where it's like that, you know, it's great seeing you're going to meditate every day, but to go to the next step then, this is what is going to be my trigger point every day to say, yeah, you need to meditate right now. And maybe it's waking up in the morning that you need to, that you build this habit or something, but without having something like really, really clear and to say, I'm going to meditate in this place at this time after this event, your brain has this way of trying to procrastinate and get out of doing any work. And if you let your brain do that and you don't make these really, really clear trigger points and everything, like you said, you'll just get out of the routine. That's all true. Final question, Ryan, what advice would you give to your 18 year old self if you met him on the street? I would say there's a quote from Hunter S Thompson, I don't know if you're aware of him, from Fear and Loading in Las Vegas. He says, buy the ticket, take the ride, you know? I think just go for it. Have fun. Don't take yourself too seriously. I think honestly that even if I had my 18 year old self, I probably wouldn't have changed that much. And I feel Part of the experience in life is that you have to make your own mistakes. You have to go out there, put yourself in these situations where you're going to learn life is about the entire experience of this rather than where you get to. So yeah, buy the ticket, get the ride, let's go for it. Why not? was great chatting to you today, Ryan. It's my pleasure and we'll see you time. Hopefully so. Yeah, hopefully I'll be able to do a more talks and things and spread awareness. And yeah, listen, if anybody wants to, who's heard this and wants to talk to me about it, you know, message me on Instagram. Check out my art page. That's my Instagram as well. And yeah, listen, it's going to be a few years down the line. But I think the more awareness, education we can build about this now and honesty, openness, you know, all for the better. So yeah, thank you John for having me. Yeah, my pleasure and we'll link those Instagram pages in the description.