Ketamine, Magic Mushrooms, Ibogaine & the Truth About Depression | Dr. Amy Price Neff | Wait What?!

Ketamine therapy. Magic mushrooms. Psychedelics. Treatment resistant depression. Matthew Perry. And a mushroom that naturally produces ketamine. This episode covers all of it.

Dr. Amy Price Neff is a Nashville physician, founder of MindStream Integrative Medicine, trained at the University of Virginia and University of Arizona, and certified in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

We go deep on what ketamine therapy actually feels like, how it rewires the brain, why it works two to three times better than antidepressants for most people, and how psilocybin mushrooms compare. We also cover what really happened to Matthew Perry, whether mushrooms can help with grief, why cannabis is Schedule 1 while opioids are Schedule 2, and what to say when someone you love makes comments about not wanting to be here.

Aimee also shares something she has never said publicly before. That she attempted suicide at 19 while on antidepressants that were later pulled from the market because of exactly what they did to her.

This episode is for anyone who has tried everything and still feels hopeless. For anyone who lost someone to mental illness. For anyone who is just trying to feel better and keeps hitting a wall.

Not medical advice. Always talk to your own doctor. But this conversation might change how you think about what healing actually looks like.

Aimee's Social's:  https://linktr.ee/WaitWhatPod

Transcript

Content Warning And Personal Context

SPEAKER_03 0:00

So about 60% of those after one solo time at touchment really lose their fear of dying.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

I think that's one thing Hadamin does is to let you go back and change the story a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

That visual image might actually be a metaphor for something else.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

We didn't know what we were doing and we were like pulling shit like the bottom of this thing.

SPEAKER_03 0:24

You know, we get this out like Andy, right? There had been a story for a long time. You know, I the healthy skepticism is what I love. The joy on her face and the lightheartedness. Like we're just like amazing.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Whatever happened with Matthew Perry, just took it back about a hundred years. I think mental illness is getting more common.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

You're fixing helping them change their lives. For about 80% of people that have ketamine treatments, they get at least 50% of that.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

What do you think they should know about it?

SPEAKER_03 0:58

First of all, it's a legitimate medical treatment. If you've had a surgery, chances are good you've had ketamine already. Right?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

It's just like such a rabbi's piece of just not my stuff. Right. I just don't like the only demonized things that help people. I need some help. Right? The worst thing is like when I just don't care about any people with that position, I think they just want to help. I just want to tell everybody that this episode gets kind of deep, and we talk about addiction, and we talk about suicide and suicidal feelings, and I'm hoping that this is gonna help people, but I also want you to know I'm not a doctor. I'm a songwriter and an author, but it's really close to my heart mental health stuff, but everybody's different. You gotta go talk to your own doctor, and you gotta trust yourself about what you should be doing. But my prayer for this is it helps people, but it's really good.

What Ketamine Is And Why

SPEAKER_00 2:20

It's Amy Mao with Wait for what? And I'm excited about this episode because I think we're all gonna learn a lot. I'm with Dr. Amy Neff, and she does a lot of things, but we're talking today about a few different things, but one of them ketamine. That's what we're talking about right now. So that's where I want to start if that's good with you. That's good with me. Let's start that. Um, yeah, because like I think people are interested and curious, but they don't know anything. Like, what is ketamine? What does it do? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

So ketamine is a drug that was synthesized in the early 1960s. It is synthesized, made. It was made. Yep. It was created in a lab.

unknown 3:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

And fascinatingly, we now know there's a mushroom that makes ketamine.

unknown 3:08

Are you serious?

SPEAKER_03 3:09

I'm serious. I can't remember the exact name of it, but there's a mushroom. I freaking love mushrooms. I'm fascinated by mushrooms. Yeah. Right. So ketamine, you know, was a follow-up drug to another drug called PCP or fincyclidine. Is that natural too? No.

unknown 3:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:27

I don't think so. But anyways, PCP was the one angel dust, right? That you know was causing like a lot of psychiatric symptoms. Yeah. So ketamine is a kind of a cousin. Okay. But the whole purpose of them was not to get people high or to cause psychiatric symptoms or hallucinations. It was to be able to anesthetize people without having to intubate them. Okay. Okay. So you could perform surgery on somebody without them needing all the equipment to do it. And so pretty soon after ketamine was made, it was deployed by the US government in Vietnam as something called the buddy drug. Oh my gosh, what does that mean? Well, so the GIs that were injured in the field were given ketamine to give their buddies. And this was where the term the K-hole. Oh my gosh, from from Vietnam. From Vietnam.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

I mean, I love the history of this. I love this stuff too. I love this stuff. Yeah. And I can't believe the thing about the mushroom. So there's ketamine in a mushroom?

SPEAKER_03 4:35

It's making it, right? And the the mushroom is making ketamine. Well, why? Yeah. Right. Yeah. So probably because it can defend itself from attackers.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:48

Yeah. And so I think the product that this mushroom substance which has some ketamine in it is used agriculturally. And it's um something that combats nematodes, which is another word for like a parasitic

Vietnam Origins And Mushroom Surprise

SPEAKER_03 5:05

infection of a you know, of a crop.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

What was the moment you thought, okay, I want to know more about this, like with ketamine therapy? Right.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

Well, I mean, my history with ketamine goes back into the early 2000s. So we, my family used to live in Virginia, and I was practicing at a psychiatric practice in Virginia. And um, one of my patients came to me and he said that he had met this neurologist who was going to treat him with ketamine for his severe depression.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

And I knew this neurologist, I knew he was like very much like a cutting-edge, you know, person, a little quirky, you know, but like so the best people are a little quirky. Yeah, yeah. Well, the story doesn't end that well. So he, this patient of mine, you know, had a complicated life. And the one person that he was really close to was his grandfather, who ended up dying.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

And shortly after that, he took his own life. Oh gosh. Oh my gosh. It was really terrible. And I always linked those things in my mind, this ketamine. Yeah. And then his death. And so, so my kind of relationship with ketamine as a treatment, I came like with the full pumping of the brakes from the beginning. I was like, I don't like this.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

You know, I mean, it's traumatic for any doctor to lose a patient. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Anyways, fast forward to I don't know, maybe 2017, but it gets to the point where in the literature, when we're right, when, you know, kind of talking about treating depression, anxiety, PTSD, they're so common. And they're so common. So common. And there's this phenomenon called treatment resistance, right? Where it's like people are taking medications and they're not working. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, it's like hitting me in the face. Like, I need to know about this treatment because it appears to be at least twice as effective as regular medicines. And in some studies, three to five times and faster too, right? I mean, like it is the most rapid-acting antidepressant we have in healthcare.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

So is ketamine the most rapid one or the most legal, like the most rapid one that's legal?

SPEAKER_03 7:24

You know, I think it's actually hands down the most rapid acting. Is it better than mushrooms? It is. So the difference, we can kind of we're gonna go off-road here a little bit into kind of what the difference is. So, like here's a vocabulary word, affect, right? Like how I'm showing up to you, right? Like, so

Early Skepticism After Patient Loss

SPEAKER_03 7:45

my affect is like Is it your bob? Well, I mean, it's a good like descriptor, a good adjective, right? It's like how I'm showing up to people, right? So there's depressed affect, yeah, you know, there's anxious affect, right? And so this thing that determines affect is really like complicated. And with psilocybin, for about a week after the kind of mushroom experience, most people's affect is a little down. And then it gets much better. Yeah. Right. But that's what makes psilocybin a little bit more challenging when we're talking about treating people who are like actively depressed. Yeah. Right. Because it might make it worse before it gets better. Yeah. Whereas ketamine typically very rapid acting and we can repeat it. So every time you give ketamine kind of in in short succession, like every other day for Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

How often most people don't know anything about it. Okay. So how often, like, if you're gonna sign somebody up for ketamine therapy, how often do they come in? How long does it last? What happened? You know, people are so curious. Like, as I was asking some questions, like people are kind of scared what's gonna happen too. Right. Like, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna like revert to some memory that's gonna scare the hell out of me and traumatize me more?

SPEAKER_03 9:14

Right, you know? Well, so let's talk first about, you know, kind of how ketamine gets taken. Ketamine is given a few different ways. Okay, so we know it's an anesthetic, but we don't in mental health, we don't use the same intense doses that they use to fully put someone to sleep.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 9:36

Okay. So it's lower doses. And we start out kind of like at the bottom of that low dose. And over successive sessions, we're gonna kind of arrive at a at the dose that seems to be the best fit for the patient. Yeah. Okay. And then we give it in different ways. So we can give it an IV form. And the IV form, I kind of think about it, it's like you're walking into the shallow end of the pool.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 10:03

Like you walk in and then you get to where you're treading water and then you walk back out, right? Yeah. So it's pretty even. And ketamine's really advantageous through an IV if you're concerned. Because if we just turn the IV off, the half-life of the drug is about seven minutes. Okay. So it's like after seven minutes, half the drug's gone. Another seven minutes, half the drug's gone. So you're just coming out of it really quickly.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:28

Okay. And then another way we can give it is just an injection, like in the arm, in the muscle. Okay. And that, so we talked about like IV ketamine's like walking into the shallow end of the pool, right? The intramuscular injections, like boom, you just got pushed into the deep end of the pool. Okay. So ketamine is really interesting as a drug because it's dissolvable both in water, like in your blood, and in fat. So within two to five minutes of getting that injection, it's pretty much in every cell of your body. It just goes right and spreads out everywhere. Yeah. And so that one you can't take back. Yeah. Right. So it's like what's done

Ketamine Versus Psilocybin For Mood

SPEAKER_03 11:10

is done.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

How do you do it most of the time? Do you do the shot or the um IV?

SPEAKER_03 11:14

It really varies. So some people just love that sense of safety.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:19

Right? Like I can turn this off.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:21

And then other people don't want an IV. Like getting medical procedures is traumatic.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

And it would be better for them, you know, to just make it like a, you know, it's like you're just getting a B12 shot.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Right. How drastically different do people respond to it?

SPEAKER_03 11:38

I kind of know the answer to that a little bit, but when you say that, like one person has one experience and another.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Well, okay, like with Chris and me, like we couldn't even have had more different experiences. Like, right, but I have my own opinions. I'm not a doctor, but I have my own opinions of why. Like for him, he just wants to be like in control. So somebody that wants to be in control, if they're gonna hallucinate, they can't be in control and hallucinating at the same time. So to me, I always felt like with Chris that first of all, I think he just bottled so much up, you know, and it kind of it was almost, I think, like somebody just broke the bottle. Yes, you know, and then he didn't know what to do. Like, I mean, nothing bad happened, but he didn't know what to do because he keeps all this all bottled up and then he tries to stay so in control, and then he just cried like crazy. He just cried and cried and cried and cried, but he said it was like a purge that it was a good thing that needed to happen, right? But it freaked him out too. But see, for me, that was his experience. Mine couldn't even have been more different. Like I talked the whole time I was on it. I like mine was actually great. I've did it, you know, a few times and it was great every time. And I remembered the last time I did it. It's been a couple of years ago, but I remember right when first of all, we couldn't get the music right because being a songwriter, I got so many issues with music that took a minute and it would the medicine was kicking in and the music wasn't right. And I was just like, we gotta get this music right. So then we got the music right, and I remember like, um, I remember feeling like I was going up a roller coaster. I got in the click, click, click, got to the very top, and then I was like, here we go. And then I remember you laughing because you were in there with me. Right, right. And then I was in this mailbox and it was raining paint, and like there were all these childhood things. There were a lot of toys. And then it was really wild because it like reverted me to being a little kid. And I just was so resilient as a little kid, and I don't know where that came from, but there were some moments in it. I'm not exactly sure what was happening, like, but there were some moments where like I was like, don't do that, I don't want you to do that. I was like in my childhood bedroom, yeah, and I was like, don't do that, I don't want you to do that. And then one of the coolest parts is this like quartz, like crystal shot up around me, like protecting me. Like, and then up through this hole at the top, I could see like nebulas in the universe, and it was beautiful. And like, so mine, I had a couple weird things too, because I did it like two or three times, but I didn't really understand everything that happened. But for me, it was all good. Right. Like it was all good.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

Yeah. So you're just describing, you know, kind of some classic experiences of people. And one of the ways I like to present it is, you know, ketamine typically brings up what you're ready to work on.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Yeah. Are people afraid that it's gonna bring up these like memories they don't want? Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_03 15:00

That's what I would think they'd be afraid of. And, you know, it's also true that if you start to think about like memories you don't want to think about. Yeah. Then you start to think about how much work it is to not think about something you've just thought about. Yeah. Right. And there's a whole field of of therapy called acceptance and commitment therapy that's kind of talking about this.

Dosing And Routes Of Use

SPEAKER_03 15:20

It's like rather than resist, uh-huh. You know, maybe we could start to accept.

unknown 15:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Is that better?

SPEAKER_03 15:27

Well, it takes a lot less energy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

You know, but you're doing it every day if you're doing the other, like trying to not think about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

You know, think about not thinking about a bright yellow Jeep.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:38

Yeah. You know, that's a good one. Right. That's a classic acceptance and commitment therapy kind of suggestion.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

I can't imagine what you see. Like, do you see major transformations in people?

SPEAKER_03 15:53

It's not like you take some ketamine and you come out and you're like, you're all good. I'm good. Right. It's not typically like that. I have had one patient who literally said, like, kind of on a baby dose of ketamine, she kind of like got what she needed. And she's been fine ever since. You know, and that's been like three or four years.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

That's another question somebody had to people. Like, if you're getting your hair colored, you got to go back and get the roots done. Do you have to go like do touch-ups or whatever?

SPEAKER_03 16:21

You do. I mean, for most people. So, and I think that's just kind of a larger kind of awareness of like what our mental state is like, right? It's dynamic, right? It's not like you cut your arm and we sew it up, and other than the scar, you never hurt that spot again unless you go do the same thing. Like we live in a matrix of other people and relationships, and and so we can have a breakthrough. Right. And then we go back to our same pattern. Yeah. And then all the forces that kind of got us back into that space, like they work on us.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

And so it's hard to kind of like kind of come out of it unless you change a lot, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

And that is something that I think sometimes people come to us, you know, depressed or anxious or with a history of trauma. And they kind of know something's not right in their life. Right. But it's almost like they want like a big peak experience to kind of help them shake the cage. Yeah. You know. And we generally recommend people not act on that like within a day or two of taking ketamine. Because the mind speaks to us in metaphor. Like you could think about your own experience, and it's like your childhood bedroom, and you know, kind of like a feeling of a lack of safety. And then you have this like structure that comes up and it like protects you.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

And that's like a beautiful example of the brain kind of getting a redo or a do-over.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yeah, that's right. Actually, you're taking me back to that. I think that's one thing ketamine. Oh my gosh, I forgot about this. I think that's one thing ketamine does is it lets you go back and change the story a little bit. Yes. Right. And then when you think about this thing, it's not this weak person, or it's not, you're coming at it from a different angle. Like totally.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

Is that what you see? Totally. And that's what they say about memory. It's like every time you remember something, you edit the memory. Yeah, you rewrite it. Exactly. Right? It comes up, you rewrite it.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

And like if there's a big thing like a shooting, like that thing in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay, everybody said the shooter was somewhere different. When when you have something like that, everybody remembers it different. And then every time they're telling it, they tell it a little different. And you can't get a good feel for what even really happened because everybody remembers things different. And people swear, no, it was over there. And then somebody else will be like, no, it was over here. Right. And it and memory's crazy too to me, like because it's like I heard something once, like you're walking along the beach, and memory, it's like the little stones it picks up. It's like, you know, why do you remember? And what makes your first memory? Right. You know, and why do you remember? I've had major things I don't remember. You know what I mean? And then like I've had things that I don't even know why I remember. Right.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

And, you know, there's kind of a gift as a human of forgetting. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Like if we remembered everything we did and experienced. Yeah. Like there'd be, you know, I'd be dead now because I'm 54 and there's just like a lot of miles on this ride too, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Um yeah, it's true. Like, you know, I look back on things, like it's sad to me. I don't know where this is coming from, but I was thinking about my dad the other day, and he's been gone. Like, I I had a podcast with um his best friend. Oh, wow. And he was there like the night he died. And like it was, it was an emotional podcast. But like, you know, it's so sad when you lose somebody, like, and then it's been a while, and then you just don't want their memory to go away. You know what I mean? Like, you don't want it, and I guess because you know, you have these stories, there's stories the whole family tells, and everybody remembers, but I heard a voicemail of my dad and almost didn't even recognize his voice. It kind of freaked me out a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

And I I guess like when you're doing this, people are having all kinds of memories coming back up. Some have memories, and then some experiences are like totally different. Yeah. What yeah, okay. How like what's a variety? Yeah, a little variety of experiences. Because Chris and me, we were both so different. We were so different. Right. So different. Right.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

So, you know, one example, kind of like on one end of the spectrum, would be that some people get a dose of ketamine and they feel nothing. Is it because it's too low or well, one of the things that happens is if you don't have a sense of safety, right? Even with ketamine. So it's like we can look at them and it's like they're like clearly on ketamine. Yeah. They're pupils dilate. Yeah. And just, you know, kind of like movements are a little bit different, and they're like, no, I don't feel a thing. And it's like, you know, kind of like, I don't feel a thing, right? And we're like, okay, you know, but that's what feels safe for the psyche.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

Right. Yeah. And so that's fine. And so we've had, you know, several people now dose one, nothing, dose two, nothing, dose three. And what we're doing is we're forming that safe container.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

Right? Of like, you know where you're coming, you kind of know the drill, the routine. It's a ritual now. And even though you felt nothing, at the end, you're like, well, it's not bad. I've just laid here for, you know, an hour and listened to good music. Or then it's like we get to that fourth or fifth session, and suddenly it's like, It goes, right? Yeah. And we haven't really changed the dose much, you know. So it's really just the psyche kind of letting go.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yeah. I think that's it. You gotta let go. Yeah. And I think that was Chris's deal. He couldn't let go, but you're gonna have to let go. You know what I mean? It's like trying to jump in a pool and not get wet. You know, it's like that's how I felt with him. And he kept saying, I fell in the K-hole. I'm like, this is what's supposed to happen.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

Yeah, so can you just like be curious about it?

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Yeah, you gotta be open and you gotta think, okay, this is gonna give me what I'm supposed to get out of it. Right. Right. Even if it's a

What A Session Can Feel Like

SPEAKER_00 22:40

little bad or scary a little bit, when you get through it, like it's gonna give you what you're supposed to get. That's how I feel. Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:47

And I think a super important piece is that you have the medicine. And as with most psychedelics, we say that the work begins when the medicine ends. Oh, that's good. Right? Yeah, I like that. Yeah. So, you know, typically with ketamine, there's even this phenomenon called night school, you know, where the night after you have ketamine, maybe your dreams are really weird or oh wow, I didn't know that. Like it's a little hard to sleep. And, you know, and again, the brain has just had like a couple of really important things happen with ketamine.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

The the medicine do to the brain, that was a big question.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Right. So it is a super potent anti-inflammatory for the brain.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Oh my gosh, real?

SPEAKER_03 23:29

That makes perfect sense. And so the kind of the stress hormones like adrenaline, yeah, drive up a particular kind of neurotransmitter called glutamate. Yeah. Glutamate is like excited, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yeah. I think my my scale of that is way up, yeah, always.

SPEAKER_03 23:45

Right. And so this kind of just like really dials that down for the time that the ketamine's active. And it's kind of like literally, it's like taking a big backpack off. So you can really kind of have other, you know, feelings flood in.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

Sensations just, you know, it's a real different thing than that constant like drive feeling. And then, you know, basically it's causing some of the nerves in the brain that is responsible for learning in memory. It causes the nerves to grow new connections. So it's opening up like something that in childhood is very familiar to us called those critical learning periods. You might remember as a kid, it's like you can't get it, you can't get it, can't get it. And then you can tie your shoes. Yeah. Right. Or ride the bike or add eight. So it lets you do that as a grown-up. It does, right? Because, you know, basically, as grownups, we get we get really into our routines and we get pretty rigid in our thinking. Yeah, yeah. And it's hard to kind of reverse that. So, in that same way that you rewrite the story of a memory, you can kind of re-resource the mind to different parts that it's like the mind kind of as you get older, like one part doesn't really talk to the other part. Yeah. You know, even though they both have like a solution to a problem. And so psychedelics in general are kind of like reconnecting, making your brain work different.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Exactly. Right. I don't know. I've always thought that like this is so weird, but I swear, I think if you gave like these world leaders like mushrooms and dosed them in tea or something, didn't tell them, like, we would not go to war. You know, Amy, I wish that were true. But they actually did a study.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Really? Are you serious? Yeah. So there's this guy in London at Imperial College named Robin Carhart Harris. He's like the bigwig psychedelic researcher. And don't quote me, but I remember a specific conversation about them taking, you know, people who it's like we we want to think that these medicines can correct like aggressive thinking or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

What about ego death?

SPEAKER_03 25:56

If they have that, will that well, a lot of them, most of them, in fact, kind of come through these experiences more entrenched in their beliefs. Oh no. So there's kind of that idea that like be even worse than right. So it's a great point to make kind of early on in a conversation about ketamine, that it's not a cure-all, you know.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Yeah, I mean mushrooms though. I don't know. Ketamine to me, to me, mushrooms are so different. Do you think mushrooms are are different than ketamine? Like to me, totally, to me, mushrooms are more spiritual, right? And they often love that, the spiritual part.

SPEAKER_03 26:33

Right, but you kind of have to be ready for that.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah, no, I'll tell you one thing, I've done them a couple of times, and one of my friends, like, she just shouldn't have done them to start with. You know what I mean? Like, and if you're totally closed off, like, and then there was a big group of us, and we did way too many for starters. Like, we didn't know what we were doing, and we were like bull and shit and like getting sludge out of the bottom of this thing. And and then my publisher at the time, Ron, he was like, Everything's gonna be okay. And I was like, if everything's gonna be okay, Ron, why's your head getting really big and really little? Like, because it was freaking me out. And then we were at the lake and we went down to the water and we were on a boat. And so I had on a life jacket. I was on an inner, like a float thing wearing a life jacket, holding the rope. Like, because just I know the people next door had to think these people are crazy, but he was nervous about going out on the boat, which is probably smart. But so I remember I had that rope and I was like, hey, Ron, I'm at the end of my rope. And we left. We had so much fun. But my one friend, she was married, and her husband was like this guy that never talked. He turned into Mr. Personality on mushrooms, and that just made her even worse. Like, so, like with mushrooms, I guess you don't know what's gonna happen, like a lot of times. I would never recommend people to do them, like unless I think you gotta go with your own gut and feelings. Do you feel that way? Like, about if somebody almost like they could cause it their self, you know what I mean? Right.

SPEAKER_03 28:23

I mean, you know, kind of backing up to like who's a good candidate for this stuff. Yes, yes. So I think basics is you can't already have like a condition where you're hallucinating because it could make it much worse. Oh, you mean schizophrenic? Schizophrenia, or sometimes people with schizoaffective disorder, yeah, you know, can it hallucinate? The same's not true for there are types of severe depression where people can have some hallucinations, and that wouldn't be, you know, a contraindication to ketamine. When we're talking about psilocybin, you know, there's several things to kind of like unpack there. First of all, like it's not legal in this state.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Yeah. So in Colorado, is it legal in America somewhere?

SPEAKER_03 29:06

Colorado and Oregon. Yeah. There may be some potential use cases in California at this point in 2026. I've not kept up with their legislation. So picking, you know, kind of like the set and the setting, right? Those are like really important things. So mindset is what's being mentioned when it's like the set.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:26

And then the setting, like maybe not like driving a boat. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Just because, you know, you don't know where it's going. It's true. Yeah. Right. And so with mindset, you know, there's some really important things for any type of therapy like this. Like you can't go into it going, I never want to feel sad again.

unknown 29:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

Right. You're just burdening your inner healer. Okay. Yes. And we talk a lot about the inner healer in this kind of thing because basically we believe the inner healer, you know, has the capacity to help you. But, you know, typically with life, we get a lot of parts that come out that are trying to like protect us. Yeah. You know, and they're kind of obscuring that inner healer. And so, you know, they're like, get up, get dressed, you know, you're fat, you're stupid. And there's some part of that self-talk that is protecting you, right? Really? From something. Even the negative parts. Even the negative parts. It's an attempt. It's not a very like helpful attempt to help you. It's like a backwards thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:26

But it's protecting you somehow.

SPEAKER_03 30:28

Somehow, right? It may be keeping you from doing stuff that your system, yourself, you know, maybe at a point in your childhood, you were told, don't do that by someone. And they kind of like

Integration And The Mind’s Metaphors

SPEAKER_03 30:40

told you in such a way that you like maybe got even really scared.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:44

Right. Yeah. So there's a lot of ways that the personality, you know, kind of comes forth in life, right? And mostly the job of our personality is just to keep us alive.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Oh, wow. I never, I I love that. I never have heard that before. Right. I mean, because people have such different personalities.

SPEAKER_03 31:05

Right. And one way to know what the inner healer is, the inner healer calm, curious, centered, you know, not reactive. When you feel that way, you know you're kind of in your true self energy.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:20

Whereas if you're like, I'm mad at blah blah blah, or you know, I'm worthless or whatever, those are not lines that the inner healer would ever use. Yeah. Right. And when you feel like, you know, putting up fists, you know, that is classic, like, that's a part. And what I'm really explaining is some aspects of them being called internal family systems therapy. Okay. Yeah. I want to know about that. It's a basically originated through a man named Richard Schwartz. And so it's just talking about these parts, right? These parts of our personality that emerge in response to experience. So maybe as a sensitive little kid, you know, you're three years old, somebody's put you to bed, and you walk out where the adults are sitting and they are done with you. They're like tired of kids and want to do their own thing. And they're like, get back to bed. And so you kind of like in shock, you know, either get put back in bed or you go back to bed. And now you're like, you need some soothing, but you're not gonna go get it there because that's scary. Yeah. So what are the strategies that you as a person might develop to self-soothe? Yeah. You're gonna like start to bite your nails. You know, are you gonna rock? You know? Are you gonna start crafting narratives in your mind to distract you?

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Yeah, I think I might do that a lot. Well, and also I stayed grounded so much in middle school. I was stuck in my room. I didn't have anything to do but write, you know, like because there wasn't the internet or nothing. Like, and just so I filled up diaries full of stuff, which gave me a great head start at being a songwriter. You know what I mean? Like, but I think I just keep myself so busy I don't have to deal with anything. Right. And so that's a classic strategy.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Yeah. You you know, busy parts that keep you from feeling something deeper that's more painful.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

Right?

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

So their job is to keep that exiled part that's way deep from overwhelming you. Yeah. Right? Because then, you know, in the primitive understanding of your brain, you know, you'd die. Yeah. If that exiled part, you know, like got the bit.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Right. That's so wild. Like, and I I feel like people are so shaped by just how their parents talk to them. Totally. I feel like the parents the things they say to the kid becomes the kid's internal dialogue because I don't know who said it to me all the time, but I still hear it. Like, we went to see Tony Robbins, who I just love Tony Robbins. Like, and we went to see him, and like he really breaks down a lot of stuff. Like, he's just learned from everybody else, pretty much. But the thing, like, he says everybody has this like dominant question or thing they think about, like from childhood and stuff. And mine was, and it doesn't have to be a question, it can be a statement, but mine was you don't know what you're doing. So I sit down to do stuff, like no matter what it is. And that's that voice. I don't know who told me that or where that came from, but I feel that way all the time. Like, like I don't know what I'm doing. And I don't even know what that means exactly, but that's something I struggle with. So that would be actually a really interesting question to take into a ketamine session. Ah, that is good. That's right. Right. So when you do ketamine, like I didn't think about this before. Like you can just start off with an intention. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 34:59

Yeah. Right. And with intention, you know, kind of going back to the idea that it's really not helpful to come in with the intention being I never want to feel sad or depressed again. Yeah. But the intention to kind of like, I want to get to know this part of me that's I don't know what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

Yeah. Why am I doing that? Yeah. Where is that?

SPEAKER_03 35:16

You know, and you could start with questions like, where do I feel it in my body? When I think I don't know what I'm doing, where's it show up in this thing? Oh, wow. Yeah. Right. And sometimes if you can kind of figure out where you feel it, then you're like, oh, it's like a trailhead. You're like, oh, that's going there. Yeah. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. Because then you can kind of take care of the feeling. You can be like, oh, I always feel this heaviness. And address it. Right. So maybe you don't have to keep feeling it. Yeah. Well, in the parts language, we would say, does I don't know what I'm doing? You know, love their job. Would they like to change jobs? You know, maybe have more fun.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question. I feel like I don't know what I'm doing though, no matter what I'm doing. It wouldn't even matter. You know what if I switched? I think I just got told that about stuff. I don't I can't really quite figure it out because I've tried to dissect it before. Like, who was telling me this? It would have to be my dad. I can't, I mean, and he sure as hell didn't know what he was doing. I mean, like, I think like by the time I was six, like everybody was probably shocked I was still alive. Like just having him for a dad. Like he he just did the dumbest, most dangerous stuff. Like throw me up like 10 feet, you know, just throw me so high as an infant. No, people don't do that. Like, I mean, like everybody always taught about how crazy my dad was, but it's like when you get grown and you look back and you hear these stories and stuff, it's like, and he used to scare the shit out of everybody. I think he screwed my adrenal glands the time I was probably three. I mean, and and so I think it's real hard to shock me or anything, you know. And he scared everybody so much all the time for fun. I've never done that to our kids. Yeah, right. You're like correcting that wound. I have the urges sometimes, but I'd never do it. Yeah. Just because it really like it wasn't good for anybody, you know. He would just be under the bed. Well, no, he was too fat to get under the bed, but he would just be behind a door or something and grab you, you know, when you walked in and just scare you to death. That was his version of fun, huh? Yeah. And he shaved his head bald when I was three. And like he was doing it to scare my mom. But my world was so crazy that when I woke up first and tapped him, I was like, hey, I'm maybe what's your name?

unknown 37:46

And then it scared her.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

And then the bed broke and she started swinging and hitting him and it because he started laughing and woke her up.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

But yeah, I mean, just stuff like that. Because somebody bald looks completely different.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

She didn't know who he was, so it wasn't even that weird. I didn't know who he was. But I think he just shot off everybody's nerves all the time, you know, like to where you still have to deal with that forever. Right. Like we're all dealing with stuff somebody did to us, you know, when we were little.

SPEAKER_03 38:23

Yeah. So ketamine, I mean, one way that it can help is, you know, if you've done therapy before, you know, that kind of like in in traditional therapy, it's like you start to get to the point where you're feeling comfortable enough to share the story.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:37

And then it's like, well, our time is on. You know what I mean? And that's like, I mean, I've had so many patients say, I hear that one more time. Oh my god. Claw my eyeballs out, right? Just because it's like so frustrating to finally get there. And then you're like, uh it's gonna rinse and repeat next time, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Because it's probably hard to find a good therapist, too. I think I had maybe one good therapist. I've been to a few, but then Chris and me both went to this marriage therapist, and it got to the point all we did was talk about her dog. I mean, like every time we went in there, we never, or we'd get in a bigger fight in there and then leave. But I did have one therapist that was great, you know? Like she really made me think about things different, and that's what you want from a therapist. Yeah, you want to like change, you want to move and get them to show you and teach you how to give yourself some mercy, you know, and like or whatever your problem is.

SPEAKER_03 39:37

Yeah, I mean, for the most part, self-love, you know, can correct a lot. Yeah. Right. And then it starts to kind of translate to love.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

Do you think ketamine does that, helps people with self-love?

SPEAKER_03 39:48

You know, so process-wise, if if the work begins when the medicine ends, yeah, you know, and then you kind of spend the night, usually within a day, there's like a time set aside with a therapist to do something called integration. And so integration is really just listening, you know, from a therapist's perspective. It's like, okay, Amy, so you know, you described the, you know, kind of the scene in the bedroom and then the crystal structure coming up around you. Like, tell me more about what that means.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Like, oh yeah, okay, yeah. That's why this would work so good talking about it after.

SPEAKER_03 40:25

Yeah, right. You know, because you're kind of loosened up, but sometimes what ends up happening is that that visual image might actually be a metaphor for something else. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:38

You know, so one client, you know, basically spent the whole ketamine session feeling like she was just looking at a brick wall. And she was just getting madder and madder. And she comes out of it and she was like, Oh, that was the worst thing I've ever done. You know, I just sat there. And then the next day when we talked, you know, it was like night school that said, Hey, you know, actually, it was perfect because that's what I do to myself. I park these brick walls in front of myself. And she was like, you know, I noticed after thinking about it for a while that I could see the edges of this brick wall. And if I'd wanted to, I could have just walked around it.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's awesome. Right? Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 41:21

Yeah. So again, just kind of like thinking about how the, you know, kind of the mind speaks to us in metaphors and archetypes. You know, another experience.

Parts Work And Setting Intentions

SPEAKER_03 41:30

So sometimes people will think of ketamine as like, well, it's not LSD, it's not psilocybin, it's easy.

unknown 41:35

Right.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

It's what do you mean? Well, people might think that it's like, you know, not as intense of a psychedelic experience as as some other medications. And it's definitely not true. Like some people that I've worked with have had much more intense experiences on ketamine than on psilocybin or LSD or MDMA. So it's not like a just because it's legal, right? It's just it's not sloppy seconds.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Is it legal? Yeah. And mushrooms aren't legal.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:08

So that's a good question.

SPEAKER_03 42:10

That is a good question. So let's go back to the war on drugs. Okay. So ketamine has never not been legal, essentially. So it it is a drug used in anesthetic, you know, oh yeah, to put people to sleep. Yeah. Every day. World Health Organization lists it as one of the 10 most important medications for mankind.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_03 42:31

Right. So ketamine, always legal, but this use of it to treat mental health is still not FDA approved, except for one drug, and that's called spravado, which is a nasal spray. So a lot of that kind of regulatory stuff has to do with how we make money as an industry. Yeah. Okay. So go back to the war on drugs, and that was like President Nixon. You know, I'm from Memphis. And so that picture of like Nixon and Elvis shaking hands. It's just like, yeah. Oh my gosh. Because I mean, poor Elvis. Like, poor Elvis. That whole thing is crazy. It was crazy, right? It was a PR.

SPEAKER_00 43:15

It's all PR, I feel like. All of it, like, right. Isn't it crazy that government gave it to people first? Yeah. I mean, that's how straight up the government is.

SPEAKER_03 43:25

Right. One of my neighbors was actually a guy who in it might have been the Vietnam era or might have been a little bit before that. But, anyways, he was part of this unit that they experimented on by giving them hallucinogens, like over and over and over and over again. Yeah, Dennis Paul, lovely guy. You know, there's might be a documentary out about him. Okay. I want to lick that up. Yeah, yeah. And he's like a living legend right out there in Scottsboro, Davidson County, right? Yeah. But so, you know, they were just there was a lot of mystique around. These things, you know, and I think as we've come to understand just like consciousness a little bit more, yeah, we still really don't know much about it, but yeah, but a little bit more, right? You know, they're not like truth serums. Yeah. You know, yeah. And I think in the in these above-board, you know, well-intentioned use cases where people have the intention to heal their own inner wounds, you know, they've established track records as being really safe. So, but within the war on drugs, it feels like it was also the war on drugs was just a big distraction from hippie culture that was anti-authoritarian and you know, didn't want to join the military and that sort of thing. So they just kind of criminalized everything. And MDMA was one of the last things to criminalize.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

So I hear about it all the time. You know, and how's it work? Does it work quick like ketamine or is it the street name is ecstasy?

SPEAKER_03 45:00

Oh, I haven't done that, but yeah, I've heard of it. Yeah. So I'm not gonna butcher what MDMA stands for, but it is actually not a hallucinogen, it's something called an empathogen, and it's an amphetamine kind of derivative. Uh-huh. So just imagine kind of like focused attention, you know, for like three or four hours that's very narrative. Yeah. Right. So really different from like psilocybin, where, you know, a lot more loose, more spiritual.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

I love yeah. That's the part, you know what I mean? That like somebody told me I've done it a few times, and somebody told me that it was good to help with grief. And it really did. After my dad died, so shocking and so young. Like somebody told me that, and then I did it by myself. Like, I kept seeing these pink lotus everywhere. I didn't even know what that flower was. Oh wow. But that turns out it's one of the most spiritual flowers. There's meanings and stuff behind it, right? But like that, yeah, that was a crazy night. I was by myself. I was by myself and I recorded it. I don't know where the audio I recorded audio. I came across it about 10 years ago, and it was just like, oh shit, this is so crazy. And it was awesome.

SPEAKER_03 46:24

It was awesome. I mean, that's kind of like what we generally encourage is for people to have a guide. Oh, you yeah, you need a guide. I was by myself. Right. Yeah. And so, if nothing else, just to have somebody to kind of like hold that calm anchoring presence. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

So that you can kind of like go out into the cosmos, you know, and I remember I I Googled what to do when you're tripping on my shrimp. At least you could Google it, you know. I know. So it hadn't been, it's been about 20 years ago, but like it did help me with my grief, though. It really did. Right. But I think I went into it with the intention for that, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

So psilocybin's been really well studied, and probably the kind of the largest population that's been looked at is people with cancer. Yeah. And so people with cancer who have a fear of dying. Oh, wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

I've read about this. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:17

So about 60% of those after one psilocybin session really lose their fear of dying.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

I get it. I get it. I totally get it. I remember reading something about they were doing some kind of therapy with people who had like major unresolved issues with their family, but they were dying. Like, so say they're dying of cancer, but there's just some heavy, heavy shit between this family. And then they would do these therapies to make everybody be able to accept it and to heal. And it just worked wonders. Right.

SPEAKER_03 47:51

And the big cautionary tale that you have to kind of like think about before you go taking a bunch of mushrooms, yeah. If you're dying of cancer, yeah. Is you want to have, first of all, it's kind of an athletic event. Yeah. You know, to take some.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

You need to have a therapist or somebody to help you.

SPEAKER_03 48:06

You need to have help. And if it's going to really shake the snow globe, like in your matrix of the people and the relationships around you, you want to have enough time left in your life to resolve this.

SPEAKER_01 48:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:20

Right. Like that you have time and enough health, right? Mm-hmm. To, you know, kind of handle that extra work. Yeah. It's suddenly showing up. Totally. Right. When the medicine ends. So this is where I think ketamine, especially for people who are navigating life-threatening or life shortening illness, ketamine doesn't last as long. It's about an hour as opposed to suicide.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

It seems like there's they're totally different. Right. Like because mushrooms, they have to kick in like 45 minutes later or something.

SPEAKER_03 48:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:54

And then ketamine, I never really understood how it worked. You I didn't really understand how you can go in, like do the therapy, and then just get up and leave. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 49:04

It's like, what? I mean, I'm, you know, I grew up in the 80s, right? It's just like, I mean, every every day. I'm like, is this true? We really doing this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

You know, I love hearing your like thoughts too on the war on drugs. You know, the thing that made me think is well, there wasn't no war on drugs when it came to like opiates. That's the war that needed to happen on drugs. And they'd ignored it. They don't even care. That Sackler family never got in any trouble. I know. And they did it on purpose. Right. And so we're gonna outlaw mushrooms and then they're gonna let people do, you know what I mean? It's awful.

SPEAKER_03 49:45

Well, and that actually brings up just kind of the complicated nature of like, so the war on drugs is still going on. Yeah. Right. So we still have criminalized, you know, most things. And even here in Tennessee, like cannabis, everything's illegal in Tennessee. In general, the people that pay the price in the war on drugs are the poor. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then, you know, we do have prison systems that make money, and it's all just it's kind of challenging. Yeah. You know. But with how the FDA, right, is in charge of that drug schedule, the Food and Drug Administration. So there's schedules one, two, three, four, and five. So schedule one is thought to have no use in any way, shape, or form for a human. Okay. And so that's things literally like cannabis.

SPEAKER_00 50:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:32

Right. And psilocybin.

SPEAKER_00 50:35

They say it doesn't have any like good qualities.

SPEAKER_03 50:39

Well, exactly. And so those weren't declarations made based in science. They were declarations made, you know, politically. Yeah. And then schedule two are things like, you know, some opioids. Schedule three is like some other opioids. Schedule four is like things like, you know, some of the anxiety medications, right? And then schedule five is like basically not restricted. Yeah. Okay. So there have been several studies now that have been done with the intent to get the FDA to reschedule psilocybin, MDMA, and LSD.

SPEAKER_00 51:16

Where do you think the futures go in on psychedelics for? Like, because nobody really understands the brain that good. I don't feel like. Right. I see talks all the time. Like I if I was going to be in the medical field in any way, it would definitely be to do with the brain. Yeah. Because it's fascinating. It's fascinating how it works. And nobody, it's a mystery.

SPEAKER_03 51:38

But maybe now it's like we are aware that like probably a lot of our thoughts come from here. It's not even the brain anymore. I know. Right. And then it's not even like it's like the rhythm and the electrical forces. Yes. Right.

SPEAKER_00 51:53

Yeah, it's really wild. It is wild. You know, Einstein and Tesla both said that everything's frequencies. Right. That's what made that made me think of. Like that's how everything works. And those are like the two most smart guys that ever lived, you know. And they're trying to tell people. I don't know. Do you think it's gonna turn where like mushrooms and mushrooms grow out of the ground? Right. That's the thing that pisses me off. You know, people go make opiates like, and they know how addictive they are. You don't see people running their life on mushrooms. Right.

SPEAKER_03 52:27

So it's a really good point, Amy. The thing is, let's talk about cannabis for a second as a as an example. So there are kids that develop seizures that parents basically

War On Drugs And Access Barriers

SPEAKER_03 52:40

figured out they could use cannabinoids to treat their kids. I know.

SPEAKER_00 52:45

I deal my best friend's daughter. Right. They have to go buy weed illegally because it helps her seizures.

SPEAKER_03 52:52

Yeah, well, so there's a drug that is patented, you know, that's a patented cannabinoid for pediatric seizures. Okay, so the company had to figure it all out, do all the trials, do all the lobbying to get the FDA to approve it and that sort of thing. And, you know, I wouldn't quote me, but it's I'm in the ballpark. It's about $30,000 a month for this drug.

SPEAKER_00 53:18

I heard about that drug. That's why they were going and buying the weed because it's and I don't think insurance covered it either.

SPEAKER_03 53:26

Right. So if you're a parent facing this, you're like, it's a fool's errand and it's like it's humiliating. Yeah. Right to think, oh, what stands between my child's safety and well-being is this $30,000 price tag. Yeah. And that comes up again and again in healthcare, right? Yeah. So now we've got a similar situation with something that grows naturally, right? They're not hard to grow. Yeah. Okay. Weed is not hard to grow. Okay. Now, there are reasonable safeguards that should be in place for people who are seeking this out and don't know much about it. Yeah. You know, like your experience with mushrooms, like didn't know what you're doing, you're scraping the stuff out of the body, right? And, you know, riding in a boat. Yeah. And and we didn't get in the boat. Oh, good. Yeah. That's why I'm still here. But, you know, like if let's say I had a parent, I'm a parent of a 20-year-old who's, you know, dying of cancer. And they're terrified of dying. Yeah. And I read the study that says we have a 60% chance of relieving my child's fear of dying. Yeah. And I live here in Tennessee and she's, you know, she's not terribly sick, but to travel to Oregon is like beyond our reach. Yeah. You know? And I don't even know the first thing about how to find a person there. Yeah. Right. So, you know, these are the kinds of things that I think are really tragic in our system right now because the data is there. The safety, the dosing, you know, all the things are there. And so what's standing in the way, you know? And I mean, I'm just a pee on, but you know, generally, yes. It's like go where the money is. Yeah. Right. So how are they going to figure out, you know, how to fix this? And what are the drug companies, you know, doing who make the antidepressants that people, that's kind of like all there is now? Yeah. And we've got a thing that's like maybe two or three sessions and you don't need any medications anymore. That's, you know, a fifth of our economy is, you know, rooted in healthcare. And so like we don't want to like tump the apple cart there.

SPEAKER_00 55:34

It's so sad. It's just it is sad. It's so sad to me. It's like, I mean, even just like like people that go and fight for America, get hurt, get completely fucked in the head, like because they're doing things they wouldn't have done normally. Right. You know what I mean? And then they got to come back here and try to figure out how to live with it and deal with it and think about it. And they have like all these, you know, just problems they come back with. And then telling those people they can't do treatments that have shown to help. Right. It makes me sick. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:11

No, cures for moral injury. We need more of those. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, going back to what may happen is if if the drugs do get legalized, they get rescheduled and they get approved, and then there's a manufacturer, you know, I doubt it's going to be a small player.

unknown 56:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:31

Right. It's going to be like a big player, like Bear or Lily, or, you know, one of those multinational, vertically integrated entities. So what am I going to say to a a client of mine who's like, well, now a dose of psilocybin is $30,000. Yeah. Right. And so I mean, just speaking frankly and from the heart, I suspect it'll be just like the cannabis story, right?

SPEAKER_01 56:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:57

That people will continue to be resourceful, you know, and figure it out. And I'm sad about that because I wish that the healing arts, right? The profession could just fully embrace what our potential is. Yeah. You know. And we probably need to quit trying to be publicly traded and, you know, keep private equity out.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

It should just not even be legal that lobbyists can go talk people like just that job shouldn't even be legal. You know what I mean? That they that they what? That it doesn't make sense. You know, when you, I'm sure you have this experience, like trying to talk to your daughters, like and trying to even talk to my daughter about the government. She's just like, I mean, I can't even imagine what they really think. You know, it's so screwed up. And the things that like how people that should get in trouble never do. And the people that like they people get in trouble that didn't even do anything. Right, right. It's so crazy to me. But the lobbyist thing, like, I want to interview a lobbyist like that, probably isn't one anymore. Right, right. But to know more how that works.

SPEAKER_03 58:13

Yeah. You know, it was funny because a few years ago, I was involved in like some of the state legislation for the legalization of medical marijuana. And it's one of the things I love about psychedelics is it's like it really gets, it kind of dissolves political parties because everybody's affected by, you know, mental health and pain and difficult to manage illnesses that Western medicine really doesn't have like a great tool for, right? And so that was really beautiful. It didn't really get there yet. Where is Tennessee on that? Obviously, you see like billboards, you know, kind of advertising cannabis, right? But it has to be at the time of harvest below 0.9% THC content. Now it seems to me, you know, and again, I'm not as dialed in on this legislation now as I used to be, but it was, it's like they can still concentrate it after harvest.

SPEAKER_00 59:10

So is it like Well, we were in Chattanooga and there was like a shop selling all kinds of shit, you know, like and it was like, what Chris like was sending me pictures of this stuff, and I'm like, where are you? Right. Like I didn't because I didn't know you could buy that, you know, in the store.

SPEAKER_03 59:26

Yeah. No, and so I think it's basically just it's a it's a at harvest amount of THC, and then they can kind of manufacture or process it however they want since it's so crazy. And then Kratom, I don't even get get me started.

SPEAKER_00 59:40

I've already heard just some terrible stories about Kratom and how is that legal? Right. How is that legal? Yeah, like what is that? It's like fake pain pills or shit. It's an opioid, yeah. I can't believe that's legal.

SPEAKER_03 59:54

Yeah, and it's really been, you know, kind of challenging because people are coming to me and I I treat people with opioid addiction, and it's just like to me, it's just like part of good health care. And the hardest thing about Kratom is they had no idea like when they got started where this was going.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:11

I know somebody who had been to rehab, they were doing great. Somehow they started taking that Kratom stuff. Yeah, and then they started spending a bunch of money on it and then went right back to rehab, but it they got so sad just watching them. They were so I mean, it was it was so sad to watch. Yeah, right. I mean, it was heartbreaking. I can't believe that's legal. I know. So back to ketamine. Yeah, so does ketamine help people with addiction? Like, I've here's the weird thing. Okay, you hear things like it can help people with addiction, and then I think whatever happened with Matthew Perry just took it back about a hundred years because that's all people heard that word and it had to do with him. And I don't even understand how somebody could get that addicted to cat. To me, the thought, I don't even understand how you would function in life at all.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:09

Well, ketamine can be habit forming. Okay. And you know, we know a lot about that from ketamine's used vitamin K. It was a street drug, you know. I mean, it's been around for a long time. Oh, vitamin K is the name the name of the of the street drug. Oh, gotcha, gotcha. And and it's a pretty vicious one to get addicted to because you get tolerance really quickly. Oh, is that what was happening with him? Yeah, and with him, it was not just ketamine, it was like tons of other things. Yeah. You know, and and Matthew Perry had a history of addiction. So that's something that, you know, you're right. There are ways for us to use ketamine to help someone kind of rewrite the story of their own addiction. Right. So in early sobriety from alcohol, groups that are cohorted to kind of take ketamine together and then process their, you know, kind of experiences together, like a lot like an AA kind of circle, they really are able to maintain their sobriety much more effectively.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:14

That sounds like a great idea to me.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:16

Right. Like, like an AA therapy mixed together.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:20

Exactly. Like as a group. Yeah. Right. And we know that like AA, one of one of the reasons that it works is that community that gets formed, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:28

My brother, like, he's sober. I don't know that he's been sober since he was 14. And I'm so proud of him. I pray for him every day. I'm so proud of him because, like, you know, sometimes people get sober that you never dreamed would get sober. Like, it's those people. Yes, you know, and like I feel like he's just like a different person. It's amazing to me. It's it's really a beautiful thing. He's doing so good. Like, and I'm so proud of him. My mom is, he's so proud of himself because he's got a license, he's got a car, he's got all the stuff that he hadn't had for so long. But also, he was living in Alabama, and they'll put you in jail for chewing gum in Alabama. Alabama sucks as far as the jail system. Like, have you seen the Alabama solution? No. Oh my gosh, it's one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. Like, I need to look and see if it won an Oscar because it should have. Like, that documentary was made

Addiction Risk And Matthew Perry Fallout

SPEAKER_00 1:03:30

by prisoners like in jail, and they were risking their life to do it. These guards were killing people. It it's one of the most unreal things. Like, but it it kind of shows you like the thing with what you said, the war on drugs, how much of ketamine, like what people generally think about it, do you think has been spread like by the government or by people kind of trying to demonize it, just like weed a long time ago. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:57

I mean, I don't know that I have a good answer for that. I think that what is challenging for people, myself included, like when I started thinking, all right, I'm gonna give people hallucinogen in my office. Yeah, right. That feels weird.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:10

And there's like a lot of shame, there's a lot of baggage around the kind of it feels like we're doing drugs here.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:16

I mean, just quite frankly.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:18

Oh, yeah. That's good to, I think that's very important to talk about. Yeah. Cause I think that would stop a lot of people from doing it that need it.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:25

That's right. And, you know, and especially if you've kind of grown up and been terrified or mortified of any drugs.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:32

Like that fall into that war on drugs kind of like classification, right? And you're right. Like opioids, you know, we give those out like candy, like candy, right? Or benzos, Xanax, Atavan.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:45

And I've heard Xanax is so hard to get off of. I've heard it's a nightmare.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:49

Well, I mean, we have to do some pretty elaborate deprescribing to get people to come off of it that so that they don't get really sick. Come off of Xanax? Xanax. Yeah, it's weird.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:01

It's like Xanax really seems like uh something you just take. So every day you take the Xanax so you don't have to deal with anything and you never get anywhere. That's what it seems like. I don't really know.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:13

Well, I mean, there are some pretty good, legitimate, you know, kind of opportunities to use the medication. But but is it lifelong? Shouldn't be. Yeah. Right. Just to get through something, like a shock. Right. Like a shock, right? Or if you have really terrible panic attacks. Yeah. And while we're doing something else, you know, just to keep because panic attacks are like, you know, it's like a life or death. There's kind of a serious.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:40

I didn't realize how serious panic attacks are. Yeah. Like one of my sons has really bad panic attacks. Like for me, I'm just like, Well, you know this isn't true. You know, and he's they're just like, You're crazy. You don't understand how this works. You can't, you can't calm yourself down. That's the whole point. Right. It's a panic attack and you're not in charge of it. Right, right. It's like you're not deciding this. Yeah. And if you hadn't had that kind of experience and you think you're dying and they think they're dying, it's like you don't really understand it right. Right. You think you can talk yourself out of it, kind of.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:17

Yeah. And that's just kind of like the same old saw about like pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Yeah. You know, it's like, yeah, well, if there's no boots, right, yeah, we're not gonna get very far. Right. So yeah, just compassion around, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:32

What people like I'm curious, what do you think people should know? So if you got somebody who's like anti-drugs, they just like bad, bad, bad when they think about ketamine, what what do you think they should know about it?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:48

Yeah, that is a really good question. So I think that first of all, just the understanding it's a legitimate medical treatment. It's medicine. It's medicine. And if you've had a surgery, chances are good you've had ketamine already. Yeah, exactly. Right, you know, or versed is kind of a similar drug, that kind of twilight anesthesia. And so just kind of like debunking, right? That and then, you know, kind of going back to the cravings and the addiction and and then Matthew Perry's ultimate death, right? Yeah. That was tragic. And of course, he was surrounded by people who were using him. They didn't give a shit about him. They didn't, right? So that's not legitimate medical care either, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:32

Yeah, he never went to a doctor for ketamine. He just went, or maybe he did it once in the beginning. I don't really know.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:39

I mean, it could have started in a good way.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:41

Yeah. You know, but what we, you know, really kind of covenant around, like, you know, it's a sacred act, right? To kind of engage in healing with people, especially in these, like, you know, when you're on ketamine, as you know, it's like a very intimate thing. Yeah. And so we have all kinds of like moral and ethical kind of rituals and practices that we're doing, right? Yeah. We engage in safety. There's, you know, explicit conversations about safe touch, what constitutes that. Right. Because there are a lot of people who were touched in a very unsafe way in their life. And so we're going to talk about that when you're in your ordinary consciousness before you have ketamine, so that we never violate the sanctity of your, you know, kind of ordinary consciousness decision making about what constitutes safe touch. Right. Um, and I think this just, you know, kind of makes me want to go back to the history of psychedelics in general. There have just been some really unfortunate ethical violations within the psychedelic world. Okay. And, you know, between instances of people like Matthew Perry and then some of the psychedelic space ethical violations, it has set the whole field way back.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:58

It's so sad. It is. It is. It really to me is so sad because antidepressants, like, I mean, I think we might have talked about it. Like, I tried to kill myself when I was 19 and I was on antidepressants. And they later found that they cause suicidal feelings in teenagers. Yes. I mean, like, I wasn't suicidal. I was sad. I wasn't suicidal. And then I got on that medicine and it just it changed everything about my brain. Like everything, it just like I love that saying about that suicide is uh a permanent solution for a temporary problem. Right. That's one of the best things I ever heard about suicide. Like, and so, like, if somebody came into the office suicidal, I mean, I wouldn't think antidepressants were gonna help them much, you know. Like, you need to probably put them up somewhere for a little bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:54

And hospitals, you know, are not necessarily a great experience for someone who's very depressed.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:03

Right. Yeah. So, you know, that's one of the kind of the themes. Like, we will certainly refer people to hospital stay if they if that's the best place for them because they're not feeling safe from themselves. Yeah. But, you know, many people have had the experience where they go into the hospital and they need time. But the hospital and the way that medical economics work now, it's like they're gonna get three days, you know, or five days, and they're just gonna get plowed with medications.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:34

To the point that they're like, well, I don't feel anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:38

And then they come out and there we are, kind of trying to pick up the pieces again and adjust those medications and you know, figuring it out. And it's really not healing, you know. Yeah. It's why uh I think one of my favorite things that I'm so hopeful about, like this modern age, and don't bust my bubble. I gotta, I gotta believe in this. But it's like if information is cheap, right? With AI, we can just like access information like really quickly now. What we have to get good at, you know, as human healers, right? Is connecting.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:14

We've we've spent 25 years now not connecting.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:17

You know, it's like give me my Netflix and my DoorDash and like don't call me.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:22

And people are falling apart. Yeah. You know, we need connection.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:26

We do. And they say the people that live the longest, they've studied people, community.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:32

Right. Yeah. So if people are interested in longevity, like then we just got to do more together. And it's hard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:38

Especially since COVID, everybody's working at home. Right. And it's like people, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:43

I mean, I don't even like myself half the time. Right. And so, like, you know, being with others, like we we kind of bump up against each other. I just got back from spring break with my dad and my three daughters.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:54

Oh my gosh. Was it one car?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:57

Yeah, yeah. It was great. It was really great. Yeah, but there, of course, there's like, you know, like, what are you doing? Yeah. Just like horses do that with each other, you know, stamp.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:06

I love that. What do you do?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:09

I feel like that's that every time we go somewhere as a family.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:14

See, that's like you just heard it in a different way. I mean, it was like, you don't know what you're doing. And you're like, you turn it around, you're like, what are you doing? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:21

It's like, what are you doing? Like, I mean, because our kids just aggravate the shit out of each other. It's like, just stop. But they're having fun, you know, but it's stressing us out. Yes. But they enjoy it actually. Right. That's one thing I just figured out right now, talking about it. Yeah. So, like,

Who Ketamine Is Best For

SPEAKER_00 1:12:40

who do you think ketamine's best for? Is it good for like if you have PTSD or regular depression, or what if somebody's suicidal? Like all the different things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:51

So, you know, kind of most rapid-acting antidepressant that we have. Okay. And so if someone's suicidal, it can be an alternative to hospitalization, but there has to be kind of the perfect situation.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:07

Like you have to be watched a little bit. You have to have some support.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:10

Yeah. Right. And you kind of have to say, I don't, yeah, you know, it's like there's suicidality, you know, that's like active and just almost irresistible. And then there's people that are like passive, you know. And so this would be more of a situation where, you know, someone's like not dead set on harming themselves. Right. And close follow-up. So it's a pretty good thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:34

What if they just, you know, they always say if somebody makes comments, you gotta really listen if they're making comments about stuff like, what if somebody was doing that? Would you like say somebody had somebody in their family that had made a couple comments that made them nervous, like, and they were scared for them? Right. What ketamine, do you think that would be a good thing?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:56

I kind of hesitate to say, like, yeah, you know, a person that's having that kind of expression, like just needs a drug. Because everybody's different too. Everybody's different, right? So really it's like that expression says, I need some help. Yes. Right? Yes. I'm hurting in some way. You know, and so when people get to the point where they're like saying it out loud, that's really like a call. Like, does anybody listen? Is someone hearing me?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:23

Oh yeah, that's so true. That's so true. They're kind of just seeing if anybody cares. Yeah, right. Like fishing a little bit. Yeah. I never thought about that before, but that makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:34

Yeah. You know, so just kind of like pausing and saying, hey, I've I've heard you say that. You know, and I'm I'm really curious. Like, do you feel comfortable telling me anything else about that? Yeah. Right? Do you feel safe? Is there a way that you know I might be able to help you?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:49

You know. And then really it starts to get into kind of like what would be appropriate. So there's very few medical contraindications to ketamine. It's like active thyroid, you know, kind of stuff going on, or active liver disease, or, you know, but again, thinking about how ketamine's used in operating rooms around the world all the time. Like there's a lot of experience with ketamine compared to other psychedelics, right? That haven't been studied so much in people with chronic disease.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:20

Right. So ketamine's the best kind of studied. And then it also plays well with others. So you can be on an antidepressant. Whereas with psilocybin, you know, we're just starting to get.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:40

Right. Doing all there's a lot of things like they worry about with with that. Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:46

And so again, with ketamine, if a patient is bipolar but in a depressed phase, we can use ketamine. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:54

What if they're on? Somebody asked me, what if they're on antidepressants? Can they do ketamine? They can.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:59

Yeah. So like I said, it plays well with others. There's very few medications that you can't take and be on ketamine.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:07

Oh, wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:08

Yeah. And for most of those, we can just hold them for a little while. We don't have to have you taper off and, you know, kind of do a lot of prep and background work.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:19

Yeah. Right. How did you go from like you had that one experience, your very first experience that you ever had heard anything about ketamine and that patient, to like thinking this is helping people?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:33

Yeah. I mean, honestly, it was that I met people that had had, you know, been treated with ketamine and they were doing really well. And one of the things that I love about it is that, so, you know, I kind of put things into buckets of like there's daily meds for depression and anxiety and PTSD. And then there's non-daily meds. Right. And so these non-daily meds like ketamine, they really fix some of the problems that the daily meds bring people. So antidepressants have, you know, kind of two main side effects aside from not working very well.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:08

So one is like a reduction in libido. So a lot of people have sexual side effects from these drugs. And it's like maybe you're not sad or depressed anymore, but you're blunted. Like that affect we're talking about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:20

When I was on those antidepressants when I tried to kill myself, like the best way I remember describing it was like I was on a flow in the middle of the ocean. I just didn't care. I didn't care if a shark bit me in half. I didn't care about anything. Yeah. Like, so it made me not just insanely depressed, but I just didn't care. Right. But those got taken off the market. So, like, but I have tried other antidepressants, and like for me, they just I haven't found one that worked good. I like lamin, I'm on laminectal. Yeah. Like and laminectal has helped me. Yeah. They say it stops the firing of the neurons in your brain from, you know, like and slows it down a little bit. Slow it down a little bit. That's not even an antidepressant.

unknown 1:18:06

Nope.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:07

It's an anti-epileptic drug. Yeah. And then it's used as a mood stabilizer.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:12

But it that's the first thing that ever worked, a mood stabilizer. That's the first thing that ever worked for me for real. Like before lamyctal, I was walking around like looking, I just saw everything that was wrong everywhere I looked, you know? And then after a few days on l'amycdo, I was walking around. I'm like, oh, that's so pretty. You know what I mean? Like that might be torn up, but that's so pretty. You know, like I was seeing the good stuff again. Yeah. You know, like, but I think lamyctal is a tricky medicine too. You got to do a bunch of stuff to make sure you're doing it right and titrate and all that stuff. Exactly. But that probably helped me more than any medicine ever has. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:52

So ketamine and lamyctal, we just basically give, you know, ketamine at least six hours before you you take the lamyctal again. And so it works good with it. It does. And it's just one that, you know, it's like it's overlapping with the enzymes in the liver that metabolize the drugs, right? So we just try to space them out so that they're just like not interfering with each other. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So back to kind of who's a good candidate. I mean, honestly, I like people who are kind of curious about ketamine. Yeah. You know, because if we take someone who's afraid of it, we've had that before. And that's where the IV really comes in. Cause it's like if you're curious but still have a lot of like reservations, usually you one can be reassured by just saying, hey, you know, if we start and it doesn't feel right, we just turn it off.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:42

You know.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:42

And we can even do these little baby doses. They're called psycholytic doses, where it's just a like a tiny subcutaneous dose and keeping eyes open and no music, and we're just having a conversation. And typically like 10 minutes in, you're like, oh wow, this is like so fun. And you kind of have forgotten that you've had a dose of ketamine. Yeah. And then you're like, oh, if it's gonna be like this, this this would be okay. Yeah. Yeah. People are just scared. Yeah. So it's a legitimate medical treatment, you know. And I think that for people who have taken medications and they they just aren't working, you know, there starts to become kind of like that sense of desperation. I know, and it's so sad.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:25

It's so sad because you feel hopeless. Right. Yeah. And that's the thing, you know, so many people try things, they don't work, they feel hopeless, and then they feel like they're gonna go to hell for dinner. You know what I mean? Like people that are just

Expectations Mindset And Success Rates

SPEAKER_00 1:20:40

raised in a certain way where they're just taught things are wrong. It's like, I don't know, that's how I've always felt about like so many things. But then at the same time, like a lot of those people are eating opiates. It's the weirdest thing to me. Well, and I think you're right, it's about the cultural acceptance. Yeah, right. And they demonize it for a reason. Have you seen it not work? Have you seen it be like, have you seen it just be a disaster? Does that happen? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:09

Again, it's like we can't like sensationalize it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:12

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:12

Ketamine's not a cure all.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:14

You know, so for about 80% of people that have ketamine treatments, they get at least 50% better.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:22

Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:22

And that's like amazing. Like on a rating scale.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:25

I bet antidepressants aren't that good.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:27

No, they're about 35 to 40%.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:29

But don't they kind of wane out?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:32

It can, yeah. So to me, you know, kind of like having done this for a while, you know, 20% of people not responding is a lot of people. Yeah. Right. That's one in five.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:44

And so that's an important thing to convey. It's like, this is an experience, right? And we're going to be hopeful. You know, we say things like firm convictions loosely held. Right. Yeah. Like have an intention, but don't have a demand. Right. And in general, things go much better when it's like that. And to understand that it's a process. So what we're doing is like trying to re-resource the brain, help you change habits. You know, I'm really excited to actually start combining ketamine therapy with another treatment that we've found is super helpful. What is it? Ketogenic diets for mental health. What's that? Oh, yeah. There's this whole kind of like new landscape of metabolic medicine for pretty much all chronic illness, but like specifically with mental health. Right. It's basically not rocket science. It's like when your body's not working well, you know, metabolically, you're fatigued. You know, maybe you're not eating a very good diet, your sleep is off, your

Ketogenic Diets And Metabolic Mental Health

SPEAKER_03 1:22:50

brain's not working. Yeah. And the first symptoms of that are going to be mental health symptoms.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:56

So depression, anxiety. And yeah, so there are some wonderful voices, you know, in this landscape. So is that mostly diet? It is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:06

So like, you know, these this friend of mine that's a songwriter, he said that they got a nutritionist and it made the biggest difference of anything they'd ever done in their life for their whole family. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:18

So ketogenic diets, you know, basically are low carbohydrate diets. And they basically do to the brain the same thing that ketamine does, just to drop that glutamate.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:30

Oh, wow. So you're doing both together. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:32

And it's doing big things. It's definitely more effective.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:35

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, because you know, the carbohydrates, all that stuff, like it hadn't been around. I mean, people used to didn't eat that crackers. Right. They used to, you know, eat vegetables and fruit and like, like just the they say on the outside of the grocery store, that's the good sharp. And then the perimeter, the cookie crisp, and all that in the middle is the bad stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:59

Yeah. Yeah. So it makes sense to people that ketamine alone, just like any medication alone, is not going to fix the whole matrix. We got to work on everything. Gotta sleep better, gotta move. Yeah. Gotta eat better. You know, just eating like like you want to live.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:16

Yeah. Right. Oh my gosh, that's good. Aiden, like you want to live. I've been just I ate so many jelly beans today. I'm gonna ate a whole bag of those jelly bellies today. And I'm just like, I have not been eating good this week, you know, like just eating really bad stuff. I gotta get it together on that. Like, because I mean, it is fuel, you know, for your body. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:38

But it's the kind of fuel that can kind of turn into jet fuel, like in the brain, as opposed to like the slow burn.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:45

Yeah. Right. Do you think that has a lot to do with mental health, people's diet?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:49

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:50

How much percent? You know, I think different people have different tolerances.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:54

Okay. Yeah. But we know that mental illness is getting more common. I know, I know. It seems rampant. Right. And there's certain things that have happened nutritionally in the last 50 years in this country that are just like not like they're not okay. Yeah. You know, and so, and it's probably a combination. It's like, how many people spend most of their day looking at something that's about 14 inches from their face? Yeah. You know, not looking around, you know, not outside. People told me it snowed today. I was in my office all day. I was like, it did. Wait, I thought it was summer.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:29

Yeah, no. We went to a concert. Every kid had their phone. They weren't watching the stage, they were looking at their phone, right? Video, and it's like, you can do that at home. Yeah. Get in the middle of this, you know, like, but it's really wild. Like we were, I think it was a Taylor Swift show, and everybody's looking at their phone and not the stage. It was like, it's already virtual, like it if you're looking at the phone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:59

Like how different is it? And you know, and so that's like we've become observers, not participants. Yeah. Right. And that is actually something that ketamine kind of forces you to do. Yeah, it makes you participate. Exactly. You don't get a choice.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:12

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:12

It's for you, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:14

It's your own ritual. Yeah. So have people come in to do ketamine therapy and then been like, have you seen a difference in the um outcome if they came in scared of it and resistant? Like it have you seen a difference with that versus if they came in with the right attitude about it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:35

So in the people that are scared of it, you know, sometimes it's it's easy fix. It's like, oh, let's just explain. Like you said about the slow show you how it's done. Yeah. You know, and then they're kind of like relaxing about it. But sometimes that resistance, it's like they want to, but they don't. And that's actually a metaphor for a whole lot of other scripts that are running in their life. Yeah. Right. It's like I want to, but I can't. Yeah. And they're doing that in every part of their life. Yeah, right. And so just kind of like the experience being about navigating that successfully, you know, can be really therapeutic.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:09

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so you've seen it change lives.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:12

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:13

Like, what's the biggest thing you would say, the biggest example?

SPEAKER_03 1:27:17

Probably one of my favorite stories of kind of, I mean, honestly, I feel like it's a sacred act that I get to sit with people in this space. I bet. I bet.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:26

You're fixing and helping them change their life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:29

You know, and my nervous system gets to borrow their experience too. Yeah. Right. It's like, you know, better humans make better, you know, like make better everything. Better everything, right? So, you know, one of my patients had suffered some abuse as a child. And that abuse was really compounded by how her parent responded. Right. So that she'd gone to her parent with the story of the abuse, and then her parent accused her. That happens all the time. Right. And her The abuser and her parent were dead. And so there had been a story for a long time that's just like there's never going to be any resolution.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:10

Because they're gone. Yeah. And uh in this series of ketamine, the first session, this was someone who was really burdened by depression. And so she gets, you know, we get started and the ketamine kind of gets going. And the next thing I know, she is dancing and

Group Healing And Relearning Connection

SPEAKER_03 1:28:30

she just about dances off this couch. You know, and I'm like, the joy on her face and the lightheartedness, like, we're just like amazing. She just seemed like a different person. She did. And she kind of comes through it and she's just like, I haven't felt joy in so long. And we talk about how ketamine kind of like, I always say it's like a sunroof opening, and whatever's on top, you know, kind of gets dealt with first.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:55

And it was like she just had not had any joy or relief from this kind of like cloud of affect for so long that that's what wanted to happen. Yeah. And she was one of those that was just terrified going in that she was just going to relive a memory as if it was happening again for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:14

Well, I bet a lot of people are like that. I bet a lot of people, they're trying to deal with something that happened to them probably that they kind of know happened, but they're not sure and they don't want to know if they do, you know, but it's just like such a Rubik's cube of just nightmares, you know, like not knowing what they're gonna find out. What if it's even worse than I thought it would? You know, like the whole thing, like I love what you said about your brain and metaphors. Like um, I had this one thing, but it it's weird because sometimes things will just be kind of disturbing, but you don't understand them. But then in the big picture, they're good. Yeah, you know, right. I remember like when I was like right at the beginning of one of the ketamine things treatments, um, I saw like there was a conveyor belt. It was in the house, like my stepdad grew up in behind it in a greenhouse, because they had a greenhouse back there. And it was like in the greenhouse, there was like a conveyor belt, and it had all these little, they were about the size of school erasers, and there were little skeletons and boxes going down the conveyor belt. I don't know what that meant, but it did make me look at my stepdad different. I can't even explain it exactly, but you knew, but it changed something, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:30:38

Yeah, just some kind of insight, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:41

And I don't know if it's because like he had such a painful back history at that house, you know, or what I don't know why. I don't know any of it, but his dad wasn't a good character, you know, in the story. Like, but it did make me feel different about him. Right. I mean, we received so much from our ancestors, yeah, you know, generationally.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:07

We were learning more about that, this kind of field of epigenetics and kind of like how experience changes how your genes express themselves and like inherited trauma.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:16

Oh, totally. That stuff's right wild. Like how people, this kid was studying these butterflies. I'll have to send you the link. And and he was saying they were transferring memories like to the next butterfly. He's a 10-year-old that figured it out from a caterpillar to a butterfly, like just going through the thing. He's kind of like an autistic kid obsessed with butterflies. Well, there you go. But he figured out something huge. Well, we need that. We need that. Oh, yeah, big time. I think it's so crazy that most of medicine is like out in the woods, you know, like you just kind of sometimes I think, how did they ever figure this out? Like about any of it, you know what I mean? Just keep trying. Yeah, keep trying stuff. Like back a long time ago, like, well, somebody did this and it worked, you know, and then try it and it might kill some people, but they gradually figure it out.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:10

Right. Well, I mean, and people forget that, like, you know, one of the drugs we use in cancer all the time called taxol is derived from the Pacific U tree or bush, right? There's a U growing outside my window at my office, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:25

Oh, that's so wild, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 1:32:27

Yeah, right. And we forget that.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:29

It all comes from stuff like that, nature.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:31

Yeah. And even when we synthesize it, like we did with ketamine, you know, and then we later discover that actually, no, nature's already been there.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:39

It's so wild to me. I read somewhere, like the majority of dirt, the reason it's spongy is because of mushrooms, like because mushrooms are under everything. Yeah, they're ever mycorrhizal. Fascinated by them. I mean, they really like we had one that popped up, it looked like a brain. Then we had one that was like these balls, white balls. Have you ever seen oh yeah, right? The puff balls. Yeah, and we also have two fairy rings that come up every year, like just the rings of mushrooms, like around a tree or just in the yard, just random in the yard. Actually, we've had more than we've probably had five, but we have two that come up every year in the same place. And they just make a perfect ring. Awesome. Isn't that awesome? Like my mom, I got a picture of her like spinning around in the middle of the one in the backyard. But yeah, I think that like hopefully we're moving into age where people like I just don't like it when they demonize things that help people. That's what bothers me most, I think. Right. And and make people feel like they're doing something wrong. Yeah. When they're just trying to feel better.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:50

Just trying to feel better. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:51

And I mean, what's the real difference between taking antidepressants and trying going in and trying something different?

SPEAKER_03 1:33:59

Yeah. Well, I think people are rightfully suspicious of healthcare, right? If you just use opioids as an example, like I, you know, if we give people like a longer than a three-day course of opioids postoperatively, they're a dangerous thing. The the risk of addiction just goes up exponentially. And so for people that might have experienced that, now they're gonna come in and we're gonna like, you know, use ketamine on them. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's a reasonable suspicion. Yeah. You know, about like, what are you doing? Even to be started on an antidepressant and really struggle to get off of it. Yeah. Right. There are a lot of people that struggle to, you know, kind of stop something, not because they're high on it or enjoying it. Yeah. In fact, it's not working.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:42

And their body ain't gonna work right without it.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:44

Right. And it's hard to get off. Yeah. Right. And so I think that that, you know, I healthy skepticism is what I love.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:52

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:52

Let me make a good argument that your nervous system can relax around. And then also uphold a virtuous position. So what I love about ketamine, like for the most part, you're not gonna be taking as many meds. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:06

Right? Like, you come in and do therapy and take it. Yeah. Like, what do you think about people doing that nose spray?

SPEAKER_03 1:35:13

I mean, I think spravato is pretty good. And so one reason that it's nice is that it is covered by insurance.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:20

If you're in that's another sad thing, you can't go get the therapy. Right. If insurance don't pay for it. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:27

And that's to me, that's the missing piece. Yeah. So I think that the magic of ketamine is actually in the ketamine and the therapy. Yeah, together. Together. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:39

Right. I think that thing like that you said about the doing the, it's almost sounded like a mix of the AA with the ketamine, like, especially for people like soldiers or people who have been just through these horrible things. Yeah. And they get to talk to other people and have this therapy. Because it is true. Like with the ketamine, you it's not like you wake up, I'm all well, I'm all better. Right. You know, like you have to figure shit out after and think about it and process. Like you're talking about, it's good to come in and talk about it because that thing about metaphors is so true about the brain. It's not like black and white. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:17

And you know, one of the things I love about group ketamine is that when especially when kind of someone's sharing after the experience, it's not uncommon that people would say, well, that felt familiar. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because there's like a nonverbal, you know, kind of communication. And it's something about the experience. Our nervous system gets to borrow the experience of everybody else's.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:44

You know? So we are a narrative species, right? We love stories.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:50

We heal, we identify with it. We have these mirror neurons that, you know, kind of help us to, you know, kind of gauge and perceive others, but then also feel others' feelings.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:00

Yeah. Like, I mean, I was telling Chris the other day, like, say you're going into Starbucks or something, and there's some steps and somebody's sitting on them crying. It just will stop you cold. Like, I mean, we're connected. You know what I mean? It's like we're connected. It's like, I want to help this person. I don't want to freak them out. You know, like what should it just stirs up so much stuff in you because like we're starting to get so far apart from that. To me, I think that group therapy with it might be the best thing, especially if somebody's been through some traumatic thing. Right. Like really traumatic thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:36

Well, just to know that, like, I just did a a retreat with a really cool guy named Jerry Colonna. He's a Buddhist executive leadership coach. It was like the coolest thing I've ever done.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:47

I want to go to one of those retreats.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:49

Can anybody go, or do you have to be a doctor? No, anybody, I was the only doctor there. But, anyways, he he wrote this book called Reboot, and he talks about how your story is my story, right? And like all over the world. Like we could be the most different people on the earth, but we have we have a lot of shared stories. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so that group experience really comes out in Ketamine. And I think that one of the things it can do is like we're real out of practice connecting in a group.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:18

Okay. And so this kind of like drops the energy into kind of ground level really fast. Which is great. Like kind of a amplifier, just like takes time to get into therapy, you know, and kind of feel safe. You know, ketamine just like helps us get rid of that kind of speed bump quickly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:41

How much about the brain do you think we understand? Like hardly any. Like, yeah, like hardly any. Yeah. To me, it's the most fascinating of everything. Right. And you know, you're gonna hear stories that are scary and shocking. Like anytime somebody is in that place, you know, where they are a lot of times when they need help, whether it's antidepressants or whether it no matter what kind of treatment they're doing, anything, it's almost kind of like anything could happen.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:11

And you know, I've learned the hard way never to kind of look at a tool and turn it away, right? Yeah. So, you know, I've had patients that have done ketamine, that it's like they like the experience, but maybe kind of kept going back to that same place ultimately, like it just didn't stick. And then antidepressants worked. And they'd been very resistant to that. You know, because it's pretty common that we see people who've heard the stories and they're like, I don't want that. I know I need help, I need something, you know, but I don't want to take. I would say it's been pretty consistent, you know, like 35 to 40 percent of people get better on antidepressants, which is not nothing. It's almost half, right? And do they say better though? So one problem is that you know me, I I've seen people for a long time, you know, and so I get to watch people kind of like over the arc of time. Yeah. And it's really hard to say what's getting better, what's getting worse. Like life happens. Yeah. Right. And then if their mood's tanked, is that because of life? Yes. Or the antidepressants not working anymore, you know, that's such a hard variable.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:22

Because my mom's on an antidepressant and it's helped her. She's been on it forever. Right. But I just didn't do good with them. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:28

And so again, it's like everybody just gets to have their experience, right? Yeah. And the less we can judge about it and kind of project, yeah, this is gonna make you better. That's like the kiss of death. If I, you know, we kind of say like in our office, like if I have a dog in that fight, it's not gonna go well.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:46

Right. If I have too strong of an expectation this is gonna work, yeah. It's kind of like you coming in and saying, I never want to feel depressed again. It's that same kind of like overburdening, you know, the inner healer. Uh-huh. I have to kind of like back off, you know, be hopeful and be objective.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:04

Do you see a difference in the people who have good like outcomes from when they come in, what they expect to happen?

SPEAKER_03 1:41:13

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:14

Yeah. Like if they come in kind of resistant, like, I don't know. There's so much of that. That's another reason I'm so fascinated with the brain. It's like if they come in thinking, I'm gonna give this a shot, I've tried everything else, like it didn't work, and I just want to see what'll happen and they're open to it, then you're probably gonna get a better.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:34

Yeah. I mean, because going in with fear, you know, but I wouldn't say that's like something that would be a you know, to exclude a person.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:43

Yeah, but you can help them, like you said, if they're scared, you can grab do it gradual till they kind of get a feel for what it is. Totally. Yeah, and then and then they can like decide. Right. You don't have to come in full four, you know, like they're still coming like baby dose, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:42:01

Yeah, yeah. And that that's really helpful. I think the problem with that is that most people, you know, are kind of thinking about resources, right? Specifically money.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:12

And so people will have this kind of like, I gotta just give it, go hard. Just give me hard. Yeah. And again, that's like a common theme in life, right? It's like, doesn't matter how it makes me feel, just needs to fix me, right? And you know, so we really have to like rewrite the, you know, kind of the narrative here. It's like, no, actually, it does matter how you feel about this, right? Yeah. And in fact, that's the healing, right? 100%. You

Finding The Right Clinic And Closing

SPEAKER_03 1:42:40

know, that how you feel about it is exactly what we need to know, right? And that's precious.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:45

Well, so okay, if we close out, is there anything like if somebody's depressed and feeling kind of hopeless, they've tried antidepressants, they haven't worked. Like, what would you say? I'd say that, you know, it's worth a conversation. To go to find, like, how do they find the right doctor wherever they're at?

SPEAKER_03 1:43:06

Wherever they are. Yeah. So, you know, in general, like I said, people that combine ketamine with therapy. Yeah. Right. So think about your own experience. You got some information given to you, like written out, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:20

It helped me deal with some stuff, but I don't know how. You know what I mean? It wasn't like super specific. I just dealt with some things and they got better than they were. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:32

And so there's basically two different styles of giving ketamine. So there's some people that believe like ketamine's the magic, and we're just gonna put you in a room, hook you up to this IV, and we'll check on you every 15 minutes. Okay. And that's one model, but you can imagine something having a big experience and nobody's there. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:50

Yeah, that sounds like a it could be a nightmare, even.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:53

Yeah, yeah, right. And so that's something I would encourage people to do is just, you know, I do have patients that like they go on ketamine, they're very quiet. And, you know, one of the kind of the drawbacks of the ketamine plus therapy is you have to pay a licensed therapist to be with you. And they're expensive. Right. And so that just increases the cost of the treatment. Yeah. Right. And so sometimes we'll have people that, you know, we know that they're quiet and they just need a booster. Right. And so we have those kind of unassisted ketamine sessions with clients that have already kind of they know their work, they know the process, they feel safe and content.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:34

And this is the best thing we can do for them to decrease their financial burden.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:39

You know, yeah. But always, you know, kind of like if you don't know going in, like you, I would hate to kind of set that scene up, you know, for someone to have no no support person with. Yeah. Yeah. I would think they would need that. Right. And then that kind of after the ketamine session, that integration session, that's really where the gold is.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:58

Yeah. Yeah, big time. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait. The integration, you mean talking about it after? Yep. Yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:05

That's where I thought you so that's kind of like what you look for in a ketamine therapy practice is do you have therapists? How do you work with integration? To make sure they're like a serious deal. Exactly. Right. Because, you know, remember how like in Kentucky in the 90s, there was all these pill mills on every corner. Yeah, like I've seen all those movies about it. Right. And it's not as bad with ketamine, but there's a lot of practices that are just like about volume. Yeah. Right. And selling ketamine. I mean, that's a I'm sure that's out there too. It is, it is. And like we and so many people that I know, like in in the space of providing ketamine therapy, like we sh we strike that tone of like, I'm not here to sell you ketamine. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We want people to do better.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:51

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:52

So it might not be ketamine. Yeah. Which is why we happen to have like a lot of other tools, you know, because if that fails, like that's we're not done. Right. Yeah. Gotta keep that door open. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:05

I'm just so happy you came on here because I'm hoping and praying this will help people, especially there's nothing like the worst feeling is like when you just don't care about anything. Right. You know, like you just don't care. Like it when you can't think of anything that would bring you joy, when you can't even imagine something could bring you joy. You know, like people in that position, uh, you just want to help them so bad, you know, like that's that's gotta be so rewarding. So hopefully this will find somebody it's supposed to. Yeah, right. And connecting, you know, big time.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:42

Right. And you're so right. I mean, finding joy is really what we are all about. It's yeah, it's while we're alive. Yeah, yeah. Well, you you've given me a gift.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:53

Oh, you've given me a gift, and hopefully we'll help some people.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:56

That's what I'm hoping. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Thanks for having me on the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:01

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:03

You got thank you for watching.