Lauren Castle on Grief, Psychedelics, Functional Medicine & the Future of Collaborative Healing

Lauren Castle on Grief, Psychedelics, Functional Medicine & the Future of Collaborative Healing

On this deeply moving episode of the Conscious Physician Medicine & Psychedelics Podcast, Lida Fatemi sits down with pharmacist, functional medicine practitioner, and psychedelic advocate Lauren Castle for a powerful conversation on grief, healing, consciousness, and the evolution of medicine.

Lauren shares her personal journey from traditional retail pharmacy into functional medicine after witnessing firsthand the limitations of symptom-based care. Following the loss of her mother to alcoholic liver cirrhosis, Lauren found herself searching for deeper answers around healing, trauma, and emotional suffering — a path that ultimately led her into the world of psychedelics.

Together, Lida and Lauren explore:

• The hidden emotional and spiritual roots of chronic illness
• Intergenerational trauma and nervous system healing
• Lauren’s profound psychedelic healing experience connecting with her late mother
• Addiction through the lens of compassion instead of judgment
• Functional medicine and psychedelics as complementary approaches
• Why healthcare must move beyond rigid systems into collaborative care
• The role pharmacists can play in psychedelic medicine and patient safety
• Chronic pain, opioids, cannabis, and emerging models of integrative care
• How grief, meaning, and consciousness shape our healing journeys

This episode is an honest, compassionate exploration of what becomes possible when medicine reconnects with humanity, spirituality, and relationship-centered care.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So we have the pleasure of having our new guest, Lauren Castle, on the Conscious Physician Medicine and Psychedelics podcast today. Thank you so much for joining us today. Lauren, tell us about you. Tell us what organizations you're a part of and what you're doing right now.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Absolutely. But it is such a pleasure to be on this show with you today. So my name is Lauren Castle. I am actually a pharmacist by training. I went to Ohio Northern University, graduated in 2013, Go Polar Bears. But then within the first couple of years of working as a community retail pharmacist, I quickly realized that my patients were not getting better as quickly as I wanted. And my husband actually was having some health challenges as well. And I just realized there's nothing that a doctor's going to be able to do for you other than just give you some prescriptions and cover up the symptoms. And so we really thought we were living a fairly healthy lifestyle at the time. And I was kind of perplexed. So we ended up getting into functional medicine. This is back in 2015. And after that first experience with a provider in this particular practice area, it was just like night and day difference. And I quickly decided like this is the future of medicine. So how do I become a functional medicine provider? And so I ended up going back to school and did my master's in nutrition and functional medicine. And that was uh just an amazing experience and really getting to see how do we understand, you know, as we say, the root causes of disease, which I think that term is starting to get thrown around a lot. And in the functional medicine space, it's usually thought of as things like uh nutrient deficiency or maybe a pathogen or a heavy metal toxicity, right? Some of these things that we might not look for at first glance when a patient walks in, you know, to be seen and we're trying to figure out what's causing it. But in my own health journey, I ended up really struggling with my own mental health after my mom had passed away. And I realized that I had done all of the functional medicine things, right? My hormones were optimized, my nutrient status was amazing, like everything that we could do, I had done. And nothing would fill that hole in my heart, right? And so yeah, I I really started to realize at that point that, like, okay, well, wait a second. If if functional medicine isn't the answer to the more mental and emotional health crisis that's really happening in this country, right? And this was like 2021, COVID, like just complete mental health collapse. Now what do we do? Now what medicines do we have? Because for me, the answer certainly wasn't an SS. I knew that was not going to be the answer. And so, as fate would have it, I ended up learning about psychedelics thanks to Michael Pollan. A lot of mind changing. Um, and got really curious about that. Interestingly enough, a friend of mine had a retreat center in Costa Rica. And so I was able to go there and have an experience that completely changed everything I knew about the way the world works, about life and death, about how and where my mom went when she died, and the fact that we never really are separated from our loved ones, even when it feels like it. So I came back from that experience and I said, I think there's more, I think there's more to this health and healing and life as a whole that I didn't learn in pharmacy school. You notice that's my journey. And that is how I ended up becoming a board member for the psychedelic pharmacist association, um, which is how I ended up on this podcast with you today.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

It's incredible. What a journey. Thank you so much for sharing, Lauren. And it there's so many similarities, you know, in the world of going into medicine, Western medicine, giving medications to people. Same thing. You're like, um, no, this is not the source of the issue. And for me, having been in the psychedelic world before Michael Pollins book came out, I started shifting how I was I was asking questions with patients in the hospital. I was an academic hospitalist at University of New Mexico for a decade. And I loved teaching, I love the patients. It's an underscript community, all of that. But I would sit with them, I'm like, why? Why do you have at such a young age this extent of disease that we can't really explain? Oh, yeah, sure, the genes went wrong or it's hereditary. Is it really? Or is it the epigenetics of passing down that into intergenerational trauma? And then for sure, you know, you sit and talk to people and you're like, wow, you have had many ACEs in your short life, and oh my gosh, people who who come from the reservations, for example, with alcohol use disorder, and they're dying at age from Al KEP and from you know, hepado at age 21, and they're telling me, oh, 12 of their cousins younger than them are in the grave at the grave. I mean, it's just so tragic to hear these things, but then I I just couldn't unsee it. That that's where it's at. And you're right, we're all so, so connected. And the grief that we carry when there is no, and we all go through grief, right? But change in identity, change in who I am, changing even like career, right? And then losing a loved one physically in the physical realm can be very, very challenging. And if we don't examine it at that level of which you just described from a soul level, it's very difficult to live this life. You know, there's a quote, um, we are spiritual beings living a human life, and we just forget that, you know, and psychedelics really help us connect with the spiritual side and say, So I'm very curious if um if you're open to it, to sharing some things that you want to share about your journey in Costa Rica and that connection that you felt with your mom. What was that like? Did you feel her? Did you see her? What was that like?

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah, yeah, it was as many would say, right? It's it's all indescribable unless you've experienced something like this. But for me, I really experienced my mom coming and joining this this ceremony with me. So it was a group, group ceremony that we were in, and you know, we had our our beds all outside in this beautiful hangar. And as we went into the ceremony, there was actually an extra bed that was there for someone who ended up not being able to come and join. And, you know, I had my blindfold and my mask on and everything, and I literally saw my mom like walk into this space and come and join me on this other mat that was open. Wow. The coolest part about it is that she wasn't in her human body whenever she passed away, which she passed away at age 59 from alcoholic liver cirrhosis. And so she went through four years of fighting that battle. And, you know, it it was horrible. It was absolutely miserable to be able to see her in this, like just absolutely beautiful, angelic form, right? Very much like her younger days, whenever she was probably in her 20s and 30s, she was six foot tall, long blonde hair, like a supermodel, basically. Um, and it was like that was like her spirit that she gets to live out the rest of her life in. And it was just amazing, right? And I, as I saw her, it was like she was doing all of this healing that she never got to experience in this lifetime. And we were really doing that together, right? Because of, like you said, the generational trauma, right? That gets passed down of being the child of a parent with alcoholism and trying to be a caregiver and all of these things, right? That had fallen on me as the eldest daughter. I was able to heal and realize just how much she had gone through when she was young that led her to survive for as long as she did, is honestly a miracle. And so that was really one of the things that I took away from that experience and that journey is that it's so easy for us to judge other people for their choices that they make, right? Especially it's heartbreaking as a healthcare provider. Even when we remove the judgment, there's still just that sadness, that frustration of why do they keep doing this? Right. Or whether it's a family member. How many of us have someone that we love that is in the throes of addiction? And we wonder, like, why can't they just quit? How come, you know, they can't get it together and to just see that they're doing the best they can? Whatever that substance is, while we might feel like it is harming them in many ways, it is the only thing in this world that is keeping them alive, right? Because what's the alternative?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Right. They're soothing that nervous system that was betrayed, that they didn't have the resources or the readiness to deal with whatever was handed to them at that moment of life. And I'm sure many, many of those moments that that she has had experienced in the in her childhood and who knows, adulthood and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Yeah. Yeah. So it was just this really amazing moment. And after that, you know, I saw her just sort of like get up and walk away. Like, okay, I'm done. This is it. You can take it from here. I'm gonna spend, you know, the rest of my time getting to just hang around and enjoy what is now. So it was just amazing. It was like all the grief and all of the anger and frustration and sadness and everything that I had been holding on to, you know, for nearly a year at that point. It just felt like it was all lifted away. And it's interesting, actually, the the timing of this particular podcast. Um, this September 12th will be four years since she passed away. And it's been very interesting year after year to just sort of revisit the grief is what I find I experience. And I'm sure for many people, right, you lose someone that's close to you and it takes time to kind of get back into a new normal, right? But I think for me, it's just been a reminder every year. I not in a sad way as much. Of course, I still miss her and I wish that she were here to get to see all the amazing things, but that that's it, right? She is here, she does get to see it. And the fact that I can take this time to remember and honor her legacy every year is just a reminder that makes me grateful for the life that I have, you know.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah, incredible. I that that wisdom is thank you for sharing it. Thank you for sharing it because a lot of people go through this exact thing, you know, and everyone in their own way, of course. Everybody's unique in their experience of life and experiencing grief and and connecting with it, but you know, so I'm also in the world of hospice and palliative care. So, you know, today, right before the podcast, I visited with a family whose um, you know, to wife and husband is dying from Alzheimer's, and he stopped eating and drinking the past few days, so we know you know he's gonna transition soon. And it was just so beautiful to sit with his wife and hit with his son, and they were phenomenal people where they're like, we're here for him to drive the bus, and we're gonna be on his bus. And just that was such a huge lesson for so many of the families that I also see because we try to hang on to, we try to lay on top of the person who's transitioning, and it's just a physical form, but there's more, right? That emotional laying on top of them and not allowing them to transition, there's a lot there to be healed, right? Instead, if we're in a space that we can lift them and allow them and hold their the back of their body, for example, and sort of on top of them, just these nuances and this spirit, the the energy that we have in us that's operating this meat form, you know, it feels all of it, even if it's not, you know, in the cognition space as we know it in the medical ways of oh, you know, they're non-decisional, but the spirit, that energy feels you, is with you. Um, and I love that you feel that and with her, um, and their lessons that are being learned still from your relationship with her. How beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much. May I ask how has your experiences of life informed what you do today with both the functional medicine side of things and also with the the pharmaceutical, the psychedelic? Tell me the name one more time.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yeah, so I'm a board member for the Psychedelic Pharmacists Association, which is a nonprofit organization that's really dedicated to helping pharmacists become more educated and literate about psychedelics as medicines. Like I mentioned, I think I had one lecture in pharmacy school in my mental health modules where they briefly ran down like all of these different drugs, right? And they were really viewed as like these are illicit substances, these are street drugs, these are the terrible things that can happen from them. And here's like the one or two possible studies that are being done that maybe in the future there could be a use for them. But by and large, it was like a very this is how to tell if someone's on PCP when they walk into your pharmacy type of thing, right? Just like not anything like what we're seeing now, with so much more of an openness and understanding the power of these substances to be able to work not just on the brain, right? And on the biochemistry, but really on the consciousness and on these, you know, things that we don't fully understand yet. And so the PPA is really here to help bring pharmacists together to be able to have more open dialogue and discussion and also to really think about the logistics of all of these things, right? Obviously, psychedelic medicines have been around for millennia and traditional indigenous cultures have been using them in their own ways. And yet here in the US or in other developed countries, not everyone would necessarily have access to those indigenous styles of healing. Or would they be open to them? I think when I look back at my own journey, and if you would have told me 15 years ago, whenever I was in pharmacy school, that someday you'll go to Costa Rica and you'll have this experience with these indigenous healers who will help you connect and communicate with your mom who has passed away. I would have been like, please lock me up in the psych ward, right? Like I have clearly gone out of my mind and I am crazy. But here we are. And so I think that we're really just starting to scratch the surface of mental health in this country. And I, for me, at least in my own experience, I I really believe that, you know, kind of going back to that idea that all of these different substances and chemicals, whether they come from a plant naturally, which is really the origins of pharmacy, pharmacognosy and all of these things, right, are what led to the pharmaceutical industry being developed and technology and science being able to study and mimic and mirror some of these different natural compounds, but then change them. And I think sometimes there's absolutely great use cases for that, right? Where we can develop medications that can be safer or more effective or more powerful for modern times where we have new disease states and new problems and challenges that we're dealing with. And you kind of loop that into the whole concept of, you know, functional medicine, longevity medicine, anti-aging medicine, right? And we're really living in a very different time period than our ancestors were. And we have all of this different technology now. And so, what does life look like for us? What does healing look like for us? And how can we really approach healing through that individual level? And so I think for me, I look at where mental health is now and the pharmaceutical approach that we've taken, which has saved thousands of lives, right? Absolutely. Like I personally know people who, if it wasn't for their medications, they would not be here anymore. And yet we also have many patients who have been harmed by these medications. My mom was an example of that as well. And so sometimes I wonder, right, like, gosh, if we could have just been like five years ahead, maybe, could she have had had access to one of these psychedelic medicines that could have helped her addiction more than the tools we had access to back then, right? We'll never know. But that's really, I think, what we're sort of approaching in these conversations with pharmacists to start considering in these modern times, what is our role going to look like? I think right now there's a little bit of involvement with medicines like ketamine and things like that. Pharmacists have been involved with more of the compounding side of things. But I think as we explore all of these different substances and, you know, look to the future when these might be available, is this something that's going to be stocked on your shelf? Are you going to be involved in the treatment plans for the patients? And I think one of the most common things that we think about is really for drug interactions, right? Because oftentimes patients aren't coming to psychedelics without being on other medications too. And it's not just the mental health medications interacting with a psychedelic. There's been some really interesting, you know, things with some of the medications like the GLP ones. And if you're taking a psychedelic orally, but you're on a GLP one and you have this delayed gastric emptying, and then all of a sudden you're not responding and someone sends you home because they just assume, oh, well, there's, you know, nothing happening. What happens when it kicks in later? So there's just so many seen that? There have been some case studies that I'm aware of that it was thankfully they did keep the person there longer, but it was like significantly, significantly delayed.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Don't even tell me about the GLP1s. I cannot. I cannot. It's such a multimillion dollar enterprise, right? That it's really difficult to reel it back in. But man, have I seen so many adverse outcomes with GLP1s for elderly. I have hospice patients who end up in unhospice, and I'm like, could that be one of the effects that it, you know, of course they come with other comorbidities too. But did that really take you down functionally? Because we also know hip girdle muscles, it goes after muscles before it goes after uh adipose tissue. And so if you're not really exercising significantly with, you know, high resist high resistance training or high high weights, then you see very bad, you can see very bad outcomes. My husband is a VA physician and he's like, man, do I see so many complications, especially patients coming in in DKA from GP1s? And you know, it's so interesting. I'd never thought about it from the angle of gastric emptying and ingestion of the psychedelic. That's wow. And so many cases have come out. Like I was reading this article, 25,000 individuals have filed um to, I think, sue some of these companies. I don't know exactly who's in in charge of it, but because of the gastric emptying issue and then the paralysis happens of the of the GI track, and then there's no going back. Yeah, we don't know, right? And they're new drugs. So thank you for that. And then do you see any interaction with hormones, with bioidentical hormones, anything like that? Like people who come in with estrogen, estrogen patches. What do you see there? Do you see any interactions there?

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Yeah, there definitely can be. Um, you know, everything in our bodies is connected. And obviously there's quite a big connection between our hormone systems and our neurotransmitters. Um, and so I think ultimately it it's a really personalized conversation. But oftentimes, you know, I like to think about how can functional medicine potentially prepare someone to have the best possible psychedelic experience, right? How can we optimize your physical body to have the best possible experience with this psychedelic compound of choice and looking at it through that lens? I think there are some cases where it might be the opposite, where depending on, you know, where that person is starting, if they are so depressed or anxious or traumatized that they physically just are stuck and can't move forward with any type of lifestyle changes or things like that, then sure, maybe we need to just jump right to it. But in an ideal world, in an ideal setting, right, we can really look at how do we optimize your health to make the most of this experience. I think the hormones can definitely play into all of that.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Yeah. And so the work that I do through conscious physician, I have a method, it's it's one of many, right? There are just as many people that there are on this earth, there are different methods that you can approach this with, but that optimization of the body, of the mind, and um, you know, our neurotransmitters, our physiology is really central to the work and also of examining our past traumas prior go to going into the session. I found that to be very important in the set, right? Your mindset. So getting our mindset also in an optimal place, as well as the physical form, I find that to be very important before going into, and of course, you know, through this journey, you also get to know each other, you build rapport, you build safety, the nervous system feels better than it has ever before. Because as we know, with trauma, our nervous system just doesn't trust anything. So you're most likely in the fight or flight. So to make the nervous system feel safe, then to make the body feel safe before going into session, I found that to be very, very important for a for a good session in a sense of having clarity, having not that there's good session and bad session. Whatever's coming up is gonna come up and you're ready to see it and you're ready to experience and you're ready to move through it. So those in the past, we used to call them bad trips. No, they're challenging trips, and at that, they are where the gems are. I would say they are the gifts. They're the gifts. If we're just having these trips, that journeys where it's just like colorful and beautiful, woo-hoo, you know, then what are we working through? If and we all have stuff to work through. It doesn't matter what part of your journey you're on, we're gonna have stuff to work through. So I love that you're bringing in the idea of how can I utilize functional medicine in order to optimize the person before going into space with medicine. And so I'm still curious, where are you guys in the PPA, like with your ideas or where you see the future of PPA, of just pharmaceuticals in general? Because this is so cool. Me as an internal medicine physician and my pharmacists, we're like this. Love my pharmacists. We were just like a team, and we go back and forth and we learn from each other and we treat the patient better that way, you know, through that collaborative effort. So I'm very curious where you all see it going.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Yeah. I mean, you nailed it right there. The teamwork is truly the dream. Pharmacy has been an interesting profession. And in the ideal setting, I would really envision every care team having a pharmacist as part of it, right? I think certain hospital systems do this well where you have a pharmacist rounding. You know, the VA is a prime example of this. And actually, pharmacists can be prescribers, they can have their own DEA license. And it's not that the pharmacist is just acting completely solo, it's a collaborative effort, right? Where the physician can really focus on the diagnosis and creating this really comprehensive plan, but then they can have the pharmacist really focus on what we are best at, which is managing the medications, so that you're not having to be caught in the weeds on all of that, right? I mean, medication management alone can take so much time and effort. And then, of course, you're trying to figure out what else they're on, where's it coming from, who's prescribing it right. And so you really have a pharmacist that can quarterback all of that. And so from, you know, the the psychedelic perspective, I think having a pharmacist on the team is so important. And, you know, the the teamwork again is going to continue to expand, right? There's there's so many different providers that are going to be involved in this, whether it's therapists, whether it's nutritionists, you know, physicians, nurse practitioners, PAs, like everyone has a seat at the table. And I think the most important thing we can do is just make sure that, you know, the patient is there in the center, right? And that as long as we are thinking about it through that lens and doing what's best for the patient, then that's amazing. With the PPA, we're really focused again on education. And that's starting kind of internally within the profession of really educating pharmacists on what are psychedelics and how do they work and getting really into the nerdy, nitty-gritty details and pharmacology of it that we love to geek out on. But then there's also this education around, you know, partnering with providers and understanding what can a pharmacist actually do for me? Uh, you know, how would I work with them? And, you know, again, what are the the practice models or settings that we can do? And so I just like to say, like, do you know your pharmacist on a first name basis? That's that's where to start. Like build the relationship, develop, you know, that that collaboration. And then there's also educating patients as well. A lot of patients, thankfully, are on a first name basis with their pharmacists and you know, might be coming to the same pharmacist every month, whereas they might only be seeing a physician once a year, twice a year if they're lucky. So leveraging that relationship as well is really important. Um, and then we're also looking at, you know, the larger pharmaceutical industry as well, of course. I think there's so much development that's happening so rapidly. And so pharmacists are taking a pretty crucial role in that as well, and kind of just looking at whether it's the drug development side, the policy and advocacy side. We're kind of trying to get the profession of pharmacy caught up because at this point there's still some limitations and restrictions, whether it's at the state level or even at the national level, pharmacists are not actually considered providers under things like Medicare. And so we're working, you know, in collaboration with other pharmacy organizations as well to say, you know, how do we really bring pharmacists into the 21st century and actually practice at the top of the license and training that we have because it's gonna take us all. It's gonna take everybody really working together to help solve the health crisis that we have in our countries.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, having, you know, for example, over the past five years, as I've been doing this work on my own, I I do all the things, right? I do all the intake, I do all the medications, I do all the interactions, I do all the, hey, you gotta come off. How do we wean off? How do we do this? How do we, which is great. It makes me really well-rounded, right? But having a team who can take that off your hands, say, okay, if you're gonna use cell 7 at this, this, this dose, you're okay for the most part. When you go over these particular doses, then we do need to have a weaning protocol. And I usually start a weaning protocol, especially with those, you know, psychiatric medications specifically. But it's it would be so nice to have that collaboration as I did in the hospital. You know, in the hospital, every team. We had a pharmacist, I'd call them with, hey, listen, like what are we doing with this? What dosage do you recommend? We would have a beautiful interaction and conversation. Now, what I'm seeing now, which you may be aware of or maybe not, I don't know, but in my palliative care patients, what I'm seeing, and this is strictly in the Western medical medical, the difficulty in giving them the opioids when they absolutely need it in the palliative realm. You know, I have like old people who have been put on the opioids, and I get the opioid switch that's happening with the pendulum going the other direction, because yes, I get all of that. Um, but then I'm like, okay, when my 88-year-old, big guy, horseback rider, farmer guy who has real freaking pain and seven fusions, and the pharmacists are not allowing us to give them, you know, an escalation of their opioid. They need it. I don't have anything else to give them. This is what they've been on, and we got to escalate, or this patient is gonna go off themselves, right? And I don't have also the um to give them psychedelics to say, oh, you're opioid addicted at age 88 when they're dying of the pain. So I'm trying to figure this out, right? You know, patient by patient, and it's becoming more and more difficult to figure it out. And I'm trying to bring in cannabis into the space, which is yes, of course, but then there's a ton of education that needs to go into cannabis because these older generations are also not very much open to it, right? And so, yeah, not that there may not be answers, but it's just a conversation, you know. But what are you seeing on a national level from the opioid side of things? Because I'm just trying to figure out how I'm gonna practice medicine because I can't give care to my patients. It was like, you know.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Yeah. Um, gosh, I'm really grateful that I no longer work in community pharmacy. I left two years ago. And when I was in that setting, I happened to be working back in like Metro Detroit, Michigan, uh, at like the peak opioid epidemic. And it was terrifying. I mean, the prescriptions that would come into the pharmacy, unfortunately, many of them were non-legitimate, right? There were pill m pill mills, there were, you know, doctors prescribing things that were getting paid under the table, like just the worst of the worst, right? And you again nailed it. The pendulum swung all the way the other way, where the authorities got involved, the boards of pharmacies got involved, the individual companies all got involved, right? And most of the large chain pharmacies were actually sued over those next couple of years for hundreds of millions of dollars because they had pharmacists who dispensed medications that ended up being inappropriate. And it used to be back in the day that, you know, you assumed you could trust, right? Like trust but verify, sure. And then it was like all of our own autonomy as pharmacists was stripped away and we were put into these very rigid protocols that we had to document, you know, what the MME score was and if it matched up with whatever board of pharmacy had policies in place for, and the quantities were limited and the maximum MME scores were dropped down lower, you know, all in the name of patient safety and trying to prevent addiction to these medicines. And to go outside of the parameters normally required a phone conversation with the physician, right? And I think that was where unfortunately people started butting heads because it was like, what do you mean you can't dispense it? And it's like, I have to have all of this documentation or else my license is gonna be under scrutiny, you know, my company's gonna come after me. And just the level of micromanaging was crazy. So it's really unfortunate because who got caught in the middle? The patients, right? They're the ones who were in pain. They're just trying to get their prescription that their doctor prescribed and get out of pain. And so again, yeah, it really comes back to the communication. Um, and ideally, right? Not working with a pharmacy that is being dictated by corporate medicine, right? If you can work with a local pharmacist that you know personally, that the patient knows personally, a vast majority of those challenges can be resolved pretty easily. But the other challenge with that then is do you even have a local pharmacist that you can work with? Does your insurance let you go to a local pharmacist? Or do they steer you to the larger chains, right? That are understaffed and that have all of this red tape in place. So that it just goes back to that whole, you know, like social aspect of medicine and health, right? Yeah, it is so much harder, but how do we make it human again? How do we come back to the relationships and the dialogue and the conversations to really understand the person that is in front of you and what they need? So yeah, that that's kind of now.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Thank you so much for shining light on that because I've been so perplexed, especially in the past months. You know, when I was so three years ago, I left academic medicine and big, you know, hospital practice, you know, because because of what you're talking about, right? Big systems, big can't practice medicine the way you need to. It's like, oh, these are the protocols. Why did you veer away from the protocol? You're like, because it's the right thing for my patient in this moment. Like, are you kidding me? Anyways, but what I'm seeing now in the now practicing in the community, because in the hospital, it's like an ivory tower, right? You do your thing, you write them medications, they go get it, you're done and gone. And you really never see the patient, or then the people who come through the revolving door and they're very sick or they're seeking or whatnot. But at the same time, you're never getting to the root cause, right? You're never getting to the source of the issues. And that's why uh it was multi-layered for me. Leaving was multi-layered for me. But one of them was that that I never know what happens with the patient, I never know where this all came from. There was the human aspect was gone. And then in the past month with our hospice and with our palliative program, and we're expanding to primary care because we don't have it. I mean, in New Mexico, we are severely underserved and under-resourced. And so we're we're helping. We're literally doing this work pro bono. We're not making a dime out of it. And we're like, but grandma needs somebody, right? To write them the prescriptions or to stop the prescriptions or to just help them say, This is how you navigate this medical industry, right? Because it's so complex unnecessarily. Um, and what I'm running into is is the opioids are a really big issue where I'm like, even with people who I've spent an hour and a half with patients in the past month. Each one, I've gone through their history, I've done the human work and the medical history and the and then the pharmacist in the corporate is like, nope, we can't. And I'm like, what do you mean, no? Like, I've never come across this where I, as a physician, cannot take care of my patients because of a pharmacist. You know, usually it's it's a conversation, right? As you said, and it's beautiful, right? So now it makes a lot more sense because they're also under so much pressure from their side of things that um that's so unfortunate. It's unfortunate. And today I was in my car driving to my next patient's home, and I was thinking maybe this is what we don't need to push us in a different direction, right? Close these doors just like amazed. You know, it's just like that pathway is closed, so I have to redirect, and now I'm gonna use a lot more cannabis, you know, a lot more CBG, CBD. So then we need to be a lot more educated in that. And hopefully soon we can use, you know, in the city of New Mexico, the psilocybin medical act just went through, being able to use that for chronic pain in addition to the other medications, maybe, you know. Yeah, yeah. So it's an interesting time. I what I'm ha I love what you said. Do we h hold these medi medicines on the shelf? But um, I think if you have a local pharmacist, that's a possibility. Like I work with Cana, I work with um blue lotus, I work with cannabis. If I could have all of those at a local pharmacist, you know, shelf because I have to tell grandma who's taking care of grandpa who's dying, hey, go to such and such dispensary, and this is what you get from them, and this is how you do it. But it'd be really nice if you know, we had an intermediary there who could help with that and also the educational part of it. You know, it's not it just takes a lot of time and effort and energy, you know, on one person.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's that's sort of the vision we have, right? Is how can pharmacists just be more involved in that plant medicine space, kind of getting back to our roots and understanding these, and again, how it's all going to interact and play together with the modern pharmaceuticals that we have, but also tapping back into a lot of these different plants that are just as powerful and can be, yeah, another option.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Another option, another option. No, and and then knowing these medicines at that level and having that expertise is so important because then you can modulate it, right? Okay, we start two and a half milligrams of CBG, we can go up, we can stay there, we can stop it, we can't, you know, that maintenance part of it is also so important. Just like you said, you're seeing your pharmacist every week, every month, you're seeing your physician once a once a year, twice a year or so forth. And just because the sheer volume of patients too makes it really difficult. But yeah, I would how cool to be connected in this way, Lauren. Yeah, it would be really cool to, I don't know, I don't know, just like idea exchange, like to see how we can make it better. Like how can we create those bridges that to care for our patients and in a wholesome way, where you as a practitioner also feel satisfied. I feel so dissatisfied that a lot of times I'm like, why am I even doing this work anymore? Um, when I'm not able to do the give the care that I really want to give. And now I'm a lot more hopeful. I'm actually enjoying practice of medicine again. But when these challenges come up, I'm like, oh my god. But then you know, I think about it, I'm like, no, let's redirect. Maybe this is the gateway into the next step phase, which is seated in collaboration and partnerships and thinking differently, not in those rigid ways. Those rigid ways are going to become obsolete soon. And that's what that's what the consciousness is taking us towards. We gotta be more malleable, we gotta be more we gotta think differently and not rigidly anymore. It just doesn't answer um to our needs anymore.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's what I really love about the functional medicine side of things, is that it really does teach you to think differently and to realize the interconnectedness of all of the things. And so I just find that such an amazing, you know, tool and option to be able to integrate in. And I think the psychedelics, you know, certainly are a part of that, especially when you look at functional medicine, is, you know, yes, the physical and the biochemical, but also the mental, emotional, and the spiritual. And I think that's that's where the psychedelics really come back in, is just to remind us like, why are we here? What what are we gonna do with this one life? If you were to live every day like it's your last, what would you do differently? And I think that really plays into the palliative care side of things and the older generations that we have and the baby boomers. And um, it's actually really fascinating because there's another pharmacy organization called the American Society of Consultant pharmacists. And so those are pharmacists who typically work in nursing home or long-term care settings, which is a completely different segment of pharmacy that is even more highly regulated than regular pharmacy. It is fascinating. But in those like long-term care facilities, they they are required to have pharmacists to do these monthly med checks. And so I just sort of see all of these things coming together, you know, around aging populations, functional medicine, chronic disease. And the longer you live, the more exposure you have to that, the polypharmacy and more and more medications that are often causing problems and more side effects, right? But then also just this crisis of meaning and this crisis of loneliness and this crisis of, oh, but everybody's, you know, trying to raise the kids and work their jobs, and then what happens to mom and dad? And just there's so many things, right? And then we as clinicians are sort of stuck in the middle trying to figure it all out and pull it all together. But I think that these newer medicines, these newer modalities that are really just a returning to what's always Been there, I think, is going to help to transform healthcare for the better.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

It's incredible. I love that. Thank you so much for that. And what a better way to end the conversation than what if today was your last day? How would you live it? How would you live it differently? Especially us being in the healthcare realm. We have such a great impact. I know we don't think about this, but we're influencers just by nature. Remember that our words matter, our actions matter, and we are agents of change if we choose to be so. So yeah, thank you so much for that, Lauren. And I look forward to just, you know, continuing this conversation. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 44:45

And how can people find you? Yeah, so you can find me, Lauren Castle, on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, social media, all the places. I have my own website as well, drlaurencastle.com. And then if you want to learn more about the PPA, just look up the Psychedelic Pharmacists Association. And then my functional medicine group is the Functional Medicine Pharmacist Alliance. So lots of places to connect and would love to stay in touch.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Fantastic. Absolutely. And thank you so much. We'll have all of this in the show notes also. Thank you for being here today with us. Thank you.