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13. Psychedelic Therapy and Cannabis with Daniel McQueen
80 Plays3 years ago
Daniel is a psychedelic specialist, who professionally holds space for psychedelic assisted therapy journeys. He specializes in harm reduction, transformational breathwork facilitation, ceremony and mindfulness coaching, Ketamine assisted therapy, and cannabis assisted therapy. Daniel wrote a wonderful book outlining the science, methods, and philosophy of deep psychedelic work using cannabis in a safe, contained space which is called Psychedelic Cannabis, and can be found anywhere you consume books.
Center for Medicinal Mindfulness
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https://medicinalmindfulness.org/
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Daniel McQueen
- Page: https://www.facebook.com/danielkmcqueen/
- @danielkmcqueen
- @DanielKMcQueen
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Transcript
Introduction to Pursuit of Infinity Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of Pursuit of Infinity, podcasts where through conversation we explore the edges of our phenomenological predicament as individuals, as well as the collective. Our guest today to aid us in our journey is the great Daniel McQueen.
00:00:15
Speaker
Daniel is a psychedelic specialist who professionally holds space for psychedelic assisted therapy journeys. He specializes in harm reduction, transformational breath work facilitation, ceremony and mindfulness coaching, ketamine assisted therapy, and most prominently discussed in today's episode, he specializes in and basically discovered cannabis assisted therapy.
00:00:39
Speaker
Daniel wrote a wonderful book outlining the science methods and philosophy of deep psychedelic work using cannabis in a safe and contained space, which is called psychedelic cannabis and can be found anywhere you consume books. Speaking with Daniel was a true pleasure. He is a pioneer and warrior of the psychedelic resurgence.
00:01:00
Speaker
You can find him at medicinalmindfulness.org and on Instagram and Twitter at Daniel K. McQueen. All of his links will be in the show notes below. But first, if you'd like to support this show, the easiest way to do that is to subscribe and leave us a five star review on your platform of choice. If you're feeling extra altruistic, you can also visit our Patreon at patreon.com slash pursuit of infinity. We're also on Instagram at pursuit of infinity pod.
00:01:30
Speaker
We have some exciting stuff coming, including our YouTube channel, so stay tuned for that. But without further delay, thank you so much for listening and help me welcome our guest, Daniel McQueen.
The Psychedelic Potential of Cannabis
00:02:07
Speaker
Hey Daniel, welcome to the show. Hey, happy to be here. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. So as everyone listening will have heard in the intro to this episode, you wrote a brilliant book about the use of cannabis as a psychedelic sacrament, which is titled Psychedelic Cannabis. And I'd like to start by reading a quote that was sort of tucked away in the later chapters, but to me was like the clear thesis of the book. And it is,
00:02:34
Speaker
I believe psychedelic cannabis has the capacity to transform our personal and collective crises by providing us an opportunity to develop a solid resilience to big experiences through the ongoing resolution of trauma and the exploration of transpersonal experiences. Now, some people, including myself, when I was first introduced to this subject, might think that cannabis really is that a substance that can produce
00:03:00
Speaker
the same types of big experiences as like mushrooms, DMT and the classics, like Adelix. So why in your view has cannabis been minimized in comparison to these other drugs?
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really great question. It's the most common and we're used to the skepticism, so I think it's totally normal to be skeptical about this. The more I do this work, though, the more I'm more and more solid in my understanding that cannabis is a classic psychedelic, as potent as these other medicines.
00:03:33
Speaker
There are some traits to cannabis that are unique to cannabis that just as there are traits unique to psilocybin doesn't make it not psychedelic, right? So let's dive into some of the distinctions and such if you'd like. Yeah, for sure. But one thing, one thing why it was minimized is that just in the last five, 10 years, I mean, even the last 10 years since I've been working with this, cannabis is a substantially different medicine than it was
00:04:02
Speaker
you know, in the past. And so, and also legalization has made it so that we can dial in the different effects of cannabis and have some, you know, some capacity to standardize the experience. And so if you're used to underground medicine, you know, illegal pot, right? Like ditch weed from Mexico or from some underground grow that's not very well
00:04:32
Speaker
nourished, then you're just not going to reach these psychedelic states with the smoked version of cannabis. With edibles, you know, even those, you know, like pure THC is a full, you know, is a psychedelic. But with that, you know, so you can reach them with edibles, but they're often accompanied with pretty significant side effects, most notably panic, anxiety, you know, or severe nausea.
00:04:56
Speaker
you know, to reach those psychedelic states. So it's paired with a negative experience. And so people don't identify it as other psychedelics that don't have those. But when you're getting fresh medicine that's well-grown, high THC content with a nice terpene profile, meaning like a nice fragrance to it, this medicine is intrinsically psychedelic.
00:05:22
Speaker
And it just required us learning how to reuse it. So that's one factor is when, and so if somebody smoked long time ago, 10, 20 years ago, getting it from an illegal source, it's just not gonna be the same thing.
00:05:38
Speaker
You can't research it or we're just now starting to get into the space of where we're able to research cannabis as a psychedelic, but the FDA approved DEA approved medicine from Mississippi was so low grade that it wouldn't elicit these results either. So that's those are two clear factors and then the other factor is.
00:05:57
Speaker
The war on drugs and cannabis are, you know, being mislabeled as a gateway drug for political purposes was really damaging to our understanding of the potential of this medicine and so we're constantly working to help people heal that trauma of in their belief systems around cannabis, you know.
00:06:19
Speaker
And then what I found is that some people don't believe they can go as deep as they can with cannabis, so they don't even try. They'll smoke enough to have a deep meditative experience, but don't realize that they can smoke more and have a psychedelic experience. So cannabis is dose specific, just as all the other psychedelic medicines are dose specific. So if you're used to smoking a lower dose joint with your friends or whatever, you're just not going to reach these states.
00:06:48
Speaker
The quality of the medicine would be the other factor as well, but it's just dose specific.
Crafting Psychedelic Cannabis Experiences
00:06:52
Speaker
It's, it's pretty simple. So the stronger the dose, more likely you are to have a psychedelic experience with this medicine. So in terms of dosage, you go into the blends that you make in the book. So how important is it to have control over the blend in terms of whether or not you're going to have a psychedelic experience using cannabis?
00:07:16
Speaker
So in my book, I talk about creating what we call these chemical blends of the medicine. And the idea of that is you're mixing different strains that affect different aspects of your experience. And the strains are dependent on what's called our terpene profiles in the medicine. Basically terpenes are just a fancy way of saying essential oils and fragrances. So think of like lavender as an example, it helps relax people.
00:07:44
Speaker
while the same terpenes are in cannabis. So if you smoke a strain with, I think it's a linalool in there, lavender, essential oils, then you're going to have a relaxing experience. If you're smoking medicines that have other terpene profiles like limonene and activating pinene,
00:08:06
Speaker
medicines are going to have more of an activating, elevating, kind of a more of an upper experience. And so when we combine these strains together, they balance themselves out. So you can tolerate a stronger dose of a high THC experience when you put when you use strains with the right terpenes and such.
00:08:25
Speaker
It's not 100% required, you know, like we used to do before COVID, we would do what we call conscious cannabis circles and invite people to just bring their favorite strain and people would have full blown psychedelic experiences. Set and setting is obviously a factor, but it's not the only factor, you know, like the medicine is a factor here.
00:08:45
Speaker
But when you get a good blend and you dial it in, what happens is the negative effects associated with a psychedelic level cannabis experience like the anxiety or nausea usually disappear and you're just left with a really awake mind state that's hyper creative.
00:09:05
Speaker
can be hyper visual to the point of like psilocybin, ayahuasca level, even DMT visual like experiences at times, but you don't have any of the like activated physiological effects, the racing heart or
00:09:22
Speaker
Panic, anxiety, paranoia that's commonly associated with high dose THC experiences. So not fully required, but there is a factor here that we want to acknowledge that when you do create a right blend, you can dial it in and get the most out of these psychedelic experiences.
00:09:42
Speaker
You know, so it's opposite to the typical research paradigm where you're looking for that one variable and testing that one variable. With cannabis, we're exploring the entourage effect in a, like a natural gestalt in the medicine itself. It's not just THC. It's THC with other cannabinoids, with other terpenes that makes like the really amplified experience possible.
00:10:09
Speaker
So that's what you mean by entourage effect, right? Like the mixing of different types of chemicals being greater than the sum of each individual.
00:10:18
Speaker
That's right. Yeah. So it's not just THC. It's other cannabinoids as well. Specifically, CBN is a major cannabinoid we use with these psychedelic blends because CBN is a sedative and it's deeply relaxing. But when you pair it with a strong dose of THC, you get all the relaxing effects without the heaviness or like the dullness that sometimes the indica can create in the mind.
00:10:47
Speaker
And then the, not just the cannabinoids, but the terpenes. Terpenes, this is new technology, you know, understanding the terpene profile. So again, like, you know, like you eat them with mangoes, eat them with black, you know, like smoke it with black pepper. You know, people are putting frankincense oils in their, in their cannabis and stuff like
00:11:08
Speaker
People are starting to really understand that these terpenes are like a navigational toolset. So if you want to go into a relaxing experience, you add relaxing terpenes, you want to go into an elevated creative experience, you choose medicines that have elevated medicine and terpene effects. And so it's like dialing it in.
00:11:29
Speaker
And so with the psychedelic cannabis blends, we just look for an all of the above, right, like dial it into all of the traits of all the different terpenes and it creates this entourage gestalt, you kind of trans trans cannabis experience. You know, it's something different than just different strains or outside of a psychedelic set and setting, you know, it's it's intrinsically different
00:11:57
Speaker
Can you talk a little more about CBN and the concept of aging cannabis? Sure. Yeah. So this is something that kind of discovered, um, uh, unexpectedly, uh, uh, somebody in the very beginning had gifted me some really good medicine, but it was older, you know, it was like from a previous harvest or something. And it felt intrinsically different. There was something deeply.
00:12:22
Speaker
soft and gentle and relaxing about it, but it also seemed to amplify the psychedelic nature of it. It's like the visual experience was more three-dimensional, you know, it had more depth to it. And then I made another blend with another person's medicine that was, some of it was also a little older and it had the similar effect. So I started to research it and realized that when you age cannabis, like if you have some old medicine somewhere
00:12:51
Speaker
THC turns into another cannabinoid called CBN. And CBN is normally used as a sedative, as a sleep aid. We have products here that we offer our students and our clients to help them with their sleep.
00:13:08
Speaker
And so typically, it's a deep tissue relaxing medicine. And basically, you just age it. And there's ways to age medicine to keep it fresh and not moldy and all of that. It's like aging a good wine or something. It gets better over time if it's aged correctly. Basically, it turns THC into CBN.
00:13:32
Speaker
Mostly CBN is used as a sedative, helps people sleep. But if you pair it with a strong dose of THC, it takes, because it's a sedative, it takes all of the anxiety out of a typical high dose THC experience. It relaxes the body in a really deep space, which allows for trauma resolution, which we can talk about too.
00:13:56
Speaker
but it takes the anxiety out of the THC. So the person can tolerate a stronger dose of THC and therefore reach those psychedelic dose levels without the panic, without the paranoia, anxiety and panic that's commonly associated with like taking too much of an edible or something like that. And so the THC keeps our brain awake, the CBN lets our body kind of go to sleep in a way. So we're kind of enter these,
00:14:25
Speaker
um lucid waking dream states when you that are psychedelic the imagery is psychedelic but it's almost loose like a lucid dream you know like people can see memories and go back in time and have imaginal experiences that are very vivid um
00:14:43
Speaker
visually speaking. Of course, not always, right? I'm not saying it's always visual, but now there's still excitement. So people don't have visual experiences on other psychedelics too. So that doesn't disqualify it for being a psychedelic. There's something else. And then the CBN does appear when you stay awake, it does appear to have a psycho
00:15:06
Speaker
you know, like a psychedelic effect, right? It does appear to affect the quality of the visualizations. So a full blend would have stage cannabis in it. And this is something I talk about in depth in my book and how to make it and how to use it, how to blend the medicine and the right ratios and such. It's not that complicated, you know, but it is, you know, it's nice how to, you know, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. It's all written right there.
00:15:36
Speaker
we were saying, um, before we started recording, I had started to, in preparation for this, along with reading your book, I had tried to implement some of these practices into my meditation. And I have, um, some cannabis that I have been aging for quite a while. Um, so I started to experiment with blends. And as I understand, and as you lay out in the book, it's, it's a process of finding the blend that works for you, right?
00:16:04
Speaker
It is, you know, like you can't go wrong with if you have access to a dispensary and things as to pick the favorite strains that work for you. You know, there's something like intrinsic about that. Like it's your favorite strains for a reason. Um, but you know, so there are certain objective qualities of the cannabis that you want to explore to like having a certain percentage of THC, if you, if you can make that available. So it's like a both in there.
00:16:31
Speaker
Some people are more drawn to indicas and some are more drawn to sativas. And so you can dial in your blend to work for you. I use the same strain or the same blend with all my clients and it just seems like what they need to have happened because all the terpenes and all the cannabinoids are present, what they need to have happened happens in these experiences. So it works really great. But yeah,
00:16:59
Speaker
And then every location is different, every geographical location, even if you get the same strain from the same seed or from two different grows, same seeds and such, just even the growing variables make a difference. So it's a really dynamic.
00:17:20
Speaker
living organism that you kind of have to develop a relationship with to talk to it in a way, figuratively speaking, to get to know it and understand how it's going to affect you. As I understand, you'll be celebrating the 10th anniversary of your practice next month, right?
Daniel McQueen's Journey and Practice Expansion
00:17:41
Speaker
Yeah, April 20 is our 10 year anniversary and that was totally by accident. We started our psychedelic harm reduction program through our psychotherapy program when we were first graduating from Naropa, my wife and I.
00:17:54
Speaker
So it's been 10 years now that we've been leading groups and training people how to do how to be psychedelic guides. And then when cannabis became legal a few years after that in 2014, we immediately started bringing cannabis as a psychedelic into it.
00:18:14
Speaker
At that time, we thought maybe it would be sort of like a psychedelic or, you know, a training tool that would give people an opportunity to have some sort of altered states experience and training program, but it became really obvious that cannabis was a psychedelic and that we could develop a whole psychedelic therapy training program around it. And so that's what we've been doing these last 10 years.
00:18:35
Speaker
Uh, we're celebrating just, I don't know if this is going to be out before then, but we're celebrating with some free events online so people can learn more about that on our website, medicinalmindfulness.org be hosting a free cannabis circle. Um, and you know, but given the technology, there's limited number of spaces. So if people are interested, they can just sign up for it. Give it a try. So did you stumble upon the psychedelic nature of cannabis by accident or was it like a slow process of testing?
00:19:06
Speaker
You know, I think I had the same belief systems everybody else did that minimize cannabis as a psychedelic, even though in my, even before that I had very clear psychedelic experiences with cannabis, it just didn't click.
00:19:21
Speaker
But my friend John, who I credit for giving us this idea, he helped me start our first circles with cannabis as a psychedelic. He's like, hey, I know you're interested in psychedelic therapy. Have you ever considered using cannabis as a psychedelic? And I'm like, no, I hadn't really, to be honest. I was more interested in MDMA and psilocybin like everybody else.
00:19:44
Speaker
And he's like, well, you do realize it's psychedelic, right? And I was like, yeah, I guess I do. I just never connected it. And I was immediately intuitively drawn towards blending. Like, oh, if we make a sativa to the syndica, maybe that'll do something. And so the blending was my contribution, I guess.
00:20:08
Speaker
And so I guess maybe I lucked out or something with this idea of blending, but when we first offered it to our groups. These were friends of mine, we were experimenting with and.
00:20:20
Speaker
right as cannabis was becoming recreationally legal. They were jokingly accusing me of putting DMT in the mix. And I knew I hadn't put DMT in the mix. And they knew I hadn't either. These are my friends. But they were like, what the hell was that, Daniel? That was way more intense than I anticipated. And to be honest, it surprised me as much as it did them.
00:20:42
Speaker
So it took a couple of years to get comfortable with the realization that it was reliable. It was actually a reliable psychedelic. And I could induce these experiences in a way that ensured a certain quality of care. And we built the whole program from that. So it was very obvious at the very beginning, but it took years to grow into the potential. And I still think we're a fraction of the potential of what this medicine can really offer the world.
00:21:10
Speaker
So we just kept going, you know. Now I have a full-time private practice as a psychedelic cannabis guide and facilitator. And I have an office. I have two suites here in Boulder, Colorado, where we have a group space where we can hold about 12 people comfortably in a circle. And I have four therapy offices that provide cannabis experiences. A team of 10 people, you know, and a research team that's coming online.
00:21:38
Speaker
training teams, you know, so this is like a real thing that we're doing now. Just surprised me as much as it did everybody else, to be honest. It's amazing. Yeah, going back to your practice, what is the protocol, like the set and setting for your patients?
Cannabis Therapy Session Dynamics
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah. So imagine a typical psychedelic guide space there, you know, instead of a couch or with the couch, we have a folding bed in these spaces so people can lie down comfortably. Music is a huge part of these experiences. We have nice speaker systems in all of our rooms.
00:22:17
Speaker
And you know we're transpersonally oriented, you know we honor like the word transpersonal comes from Stan Groff's LSD experiments and it's the study of psychedelics and psychology and spirituality so we're we identify with that aspect of the movement, we're transpersonally oriented.
00:22:35
Speaker
So we bring in ceremony and meditation and tension into the taking of the medicine. It's not just clinical, so to speak, where, you know, they're provided a substance and ignoring the spiritual dimensions of this work. So if, you know, like the stereotypical underground practitioner, you know, we brought in, you know, that kind of
00:22:56
Speaker
a lineage and identity into this work. So the rooms are meditation rooms with, you know, they're not medically, you know, they're not sterile, they're medical, like some of the medical clinics are. And we have small altars, meditation altars in all the rooms with candle lit and maybe some incense going and such, music in the background.
00:23:19
Speaker
Um, so the protocol itself, though, you know, uh, I do five hour psychedelic cannabis sessions, but we can do a three hour experience as well. Within that five hours, we chat for about a half hour and get people ready. There's bathroom break. And then I invite them to take the medicine through a, either a mindfulness or a meditation or like a ceremonial prayer, kind of depending on the orientation of my client.
00:23:48
Speaker
And they take a good amount, you know, like I'll always ease new users or people who aren't accustomed to cannabis. They'll just make smoke a few puffs, make sure they're
00:23:59
Speaker
You know, we don't overdo it, but some people will take seven or 10 inhalations within about a 10 minute period. So it's a good strong dose. And then after that, when they're ready, I invite them to lay down and I will guide them through a gentle body scan meditation to help them kind of reset in this internalized space and get their body relaxed.
00:24:21
Speaker
And then there's something about laying down with cannabis and relaxing the body that amplifies the psychedelic nature of the experience. That's one of the traits that's a little different than other psychedelics. And then the journey itself will last about three-ish hours long. For those, there'll be a break in the middle where people will smoke more to keep the journey going.
00:24:44
Speaker
But there's a typical cycle for a cannabis dose, smoked cannabis dose. It's about an hour and a half. So we'll do like two of these cycles in the journey where people are invited to smoke again. The journey itself is really dynamic. Cannabis can show up as MDMA-like. It can show up as a plant based in pathogen.
00:25:06
Speaker
And so sometimes they can be very conversational and people are going into their memories and exploring kind of a life review process. And then other times it shows up more like psilocybin or ayahuasca where the person is quiet and not communicating. And I just play really great music for them as they go on their journey experience and support them if they need it. So some of them are super dynamic and others are sitting quietly and meditating while they're going through their inner experience.
00:25:36
Speaker
And then when the times, when it's like, you can kind of see it when somebody's starting to come down from the experience or when the time's up, we'll gently bring them back. And we'll spend about a half hour to an hour checking in and having some snacks and kind of reorienting to consensus reality, so to speak. And then with our protocol, we do two days in a row, which is another little unique difference between cannabis and other psychedelics.
00:26:06
Speaker
And we do two days in a row, because the second one is often a completion process of the things that occur in the first day. So it's really great. I love it. The secret, the funniest open secret in that psychedelic therapy is already legal in the United States if we use cannabis. And cannabis is legal in 70% of the US population, either under a medical model or recreational, adult use legal.
00:26:35
Speaker
And we know how to work legally with both paradigms, you know, so it's the funniest thing, you know, to like, like, I've been working as a psychedelic guide legally since cannabis was legal here and for eight years now, you know. So I'm trying to get the word out. I'm glad.
00:26:51
Speaker
glad to be on your podcast and other folks to help get this word out. I'm glad to contribute. It's such valuable information. And as someone who's been steeped in the psychedelic community for years now, I didn't even hear about this until recently. So yeah, I definitely am happy to be part of putting the word out. I appreciate that. In terms of other legal psychedelic
00:27:15
Speaker
uh, therapy modalities, um, specifically ketamine. How does your practice differ from that of like the typical ketamine clinic?
Comparison of Cannabis and Ketamine Therapy
00:27:24
Speaker
No, that's a really great question. I'm glad you're answering it or asking it. Um, so ketamine, so we work with both ketamine and cannabis in our, in our clinical office and, um,
00:27:35
Speaker
And we have, like I said, licensed psychotherapists and as well as medical doctor that administers the ketamine. We do provide lozenge
00:27:46
Speaker
prescriptions for some folks, you know, and so there's a lot of psychotherapists out there that are providing ketamine experiences with lozenges. So that's something that we offer. However, our specialty is intramuscular injections. And so we identify as a psychedelic therapy center providing
00:28:06
Speaker
ketamine, psychedelic ketamine experiences under that orientation. With ketamine, we go pretty deep. We're providing breakthrough psychedelic experiences.
00:28:20
Speaker
And the other thing we do is we provide support. The medical doctors, they're the first hour of the session to provide medical support just in case there's ever any issue. We've never really had any sort of medical issues. It's a really safe medicine, but we provide a lot of medical support in these sessions.
00:28:42
Speaker
And then the psychedelic guide, either a psychotherapist or minister or whoever it is, is there for a full three hours with our clients. And so we've heard that like a lot of ketamine clinics are an hour long or even maybe two hour long sessions with no medical support. They're providing low dose intravenous experiences, just hitting the button, leaving the patient in the room and then coming back when they're in to turn it off.
00:29:12
Speaker
Typically those much lower doses they might be psycholytic your person's going to feel them but they're not going to have like ego dissolution, flying through the cosmos experiences. And unfortunately what we're hearing more often than not with typical ketamine clinics is that if somebody has a breakthrough experience, and they get loud, or you know, or, you know, have a
00:29:34
Speaker
breakthrough where they might start scrying or vocalizing that the clinics don't know how to handle that. And so they're shutting the experience down, they're turning the experience off, shoo-shooing them and sending them out of the trip, out of the experience. And we consider that like a missed opportunity at the very least, you know, it might be traumatizing for some folks to have their experience shut down like that.
00:30:00
Speaker
But from our perspective, if somebody has like a release or breakthrough, we're right there to support them. We know how to handle it, if we normalize it. It's just part of the experience. Sometimes we hear people yelling in our other offices when we're in sessions and stuff and we just normalize it. So I think that's a real significant difference in how we work with ketamine then.
00:30:23
Speaker
uh like the clinic like the medical clinical model out there um and I think that's relevant here you know um the other thing uh I'll say about that is like cannabis and ketamine we don't work with them at the same time uh that's a legal edge that we're you know we just haven't chosen to jump into yet uh but ketamine and cannabis are good
00:30:48
Speaker
like a polarity. Cannabis brings us into our bodies, and as a somatic psychedelic, it brings us into relationship with our bodies, whereas ketamine gives us an opportunity to take a break from our bodies. It's a dissociative psychedelic.
00:31:05
Speaker
And so we found that that dissociative quality of ketamine and somatic felt body sense of cannabis really work well together as a therapeutic modality, kind of balance each other out, kind of bring somebody back out of that dissociative state, so to speak. And that's relevant here too.
00:31:25
Speaker
Yeah, you had brought up, um, like somatic experiences, people crying and screaming and things of that nature. Do you find that that is something that happens often or is that like with a certain depth of the experience? Will you see that?
00:31:44
Speaker
you know, it's happening more often. I'm wondering if like, you know, so when I, I've been doing this for a little while. And so I have a real strong capacity to go as deep as my clients need to go, you know, so I'm not the check might like my capacity to handle something isn't, doesn't slow somebody's process down. And the more I found the more I'm able to hold the deeper my clients are able to go into. And I think that's, you know, it's a factor I'm really noticing and paying attention to here.
00:32:13
Speaker
And sometimes when people go really deep and have an ego breakthrough, ego dissolution or breakthrough release, or finally get that defended part to let go enough to finally surrender into a process, it can get pretty loud. You know, like I've had clients wail, I've had clients sob and cry. And I've also had clients roar, you know, like they find their
00:32:38
Speaker
deep inner and personal empowerment and they roar like a lion, you know, so it's just like this vocal deep release. And I've heard it though with my other team members and stuff so, but it's not that common, you know, but we create a space for it we normalize it.
00:32:55
Speaker
And we just, my team, you know my staff here, you know in their offices they know how to handle the energetic discharge of hearing somebody in another room have a big release you know, so we've, we've learned to work with that.
00:33:11
Speaker
uh in a way because it's either somatic more somatic or we're smoking there's our clients are smoking it one of the primary differences between cannabis and other psychedelics is that there is a still a sense of agency personal agency that's retained and so i've never had an experience with cannabis where somebody's just totally out of control um and that could happen with say psilocybin or
00:33:37
Speaker
even MDMA or the DMTs, you know, so I've never really had someone like, just out of their mind out of control. You know, so even when they're vocalizing or screaming or yelling or whatever it is, like, it's intentional. It's like, I need to say this, I need to get this out for my healing and, and they choose to do it. And, and so there's a felt sense of safety with cannabis. That this is, you know, even though this is big, it's still in the realm of this person is
00:34:07
Speaker
safe and in control. I've learned to really appreciate that with this medicine. So you have a training program. So how do you toe the line of or how do you teach someone to
00:34:27
Speaker
not interfere with someone's big experience because I know that it's got to be hard. And from the experiences that I've had with other people, you know, while we were taking psychedelics together or whether I was sitting with someone, it's really difficult when you see someone having a hard time to not want to jump in and, you know, give them a hug or help them out in some type of way. Yeah. So how do you balance that?
00:34:53
Speaker
I think their experience, I've just learned to trust the process and that they need to go through whatever it is they're going through for the release of healing.
00:35:05
Speaker
So in Transpersonal Psychology and Stancroft's work, he came up with this idea called the Holotropic Principle, which is when we remove all obstacles from ourselves, we human beings naturally turn towards healing and self-actualization. And I've just learned that that is what that looks like in the world. It's just a real broad range of what would be considered normal. And so it might just look like them laying there, or it might look like they're like literally shaking
00:35:34
Speaker
like they're having seizures or it might look like they're having an emotive release. So my general assessment is, is this person hurting themselves? I'm not going to let somebody hurt themselves. Are their hands moving around in a way that they might hit their hand on the wall or hit themselves? And so instead of stopping that, I would just help direct the energy of their hands and ensure that they're safe.
00:36:04
Speaker
Are they rolling around and are you know and making sure they're not going to roll into something on the floor roll off the bed.
00:36:11
Speaker
So that's my general assessment is I will let them stay in the process if they're not gonna harm themselves unintentionally. The other thing is like, you know, and this is, I have an eye for this now as like, is this person totally overwhelmed by their experience and needs support or and help titrate? Like, are they outside their window of tolerance so much that it's scary to them? Like, you know, so I'm gonna be,
00:36:40
Speaker
in that space, not fixing or trying to shut it down, but letting them know I'm there, helping them, reminding them to stay regulated and to breathe in their bellies to explore, to be with whatever it is, but at a distance that works for them. So I'm just helping them stay regulated.
00:36:59
Speaker
And if a person, even if they're having a really hard time, but I'm like sitting there listening, you know, paying attention to them and they're like fully present and engage the process, I'll let it unfold. Because this is what healing looks like sometimes. This isn't just psychotherapy. This is something else. I mean, it's like, I don't identify as a psychotherapist anyway, you know.
00:37:21
Speaker
We want people to have these breakthrough experiences because that's what it takes sometimes for them to finally let go of whatever it is they've been moving through their whole life or whatever mindset they've been stuck in. Sometimes it takes some energy to release. And then you've got to remember also, we're not just tripping with our friends here. We're not just at a concert. We're not worried about the police coming and interfering and all of that.
00:37:49
Speaker
So the set and setting is a major factor here you know like I have a doctor down the hall I have two people on staff outside if I needed support. And that person knows it too you know so they feel safe enough to go into it so it's very contained you know it's not like.
00:38:06
Speaker
Like if somebody were having a big moment at a concert, I wouldn't be like, okay guys, we got to get you out of here. You know, like I'd be like playing buffer for security and all of that and reassuring everybody around us and making sure they're not getting tranquilized and stuff are held down by the medics. This, I don't have to worry about any of that stuff. So we just let it unfold.
00:38:31
Speaker
Because as you said, I think it is really important that someone is able to have the experience and that the experience can conclude itself as opposed to being stopped.
Handling Intense Psychedelic Experiences
00:38:43
Speaker
That's a super, you know, so that's a major factor here. And again, Stan Groff talks about these things, too. But if you tranquilize somebody in the middle of a breakthrough experience, it kind of freezes them in that space, and it can be detrimental and retraumatizing. You know, it's one of the reasons we quit working harm reduction at festivals is we just kept seeing things that we wouldn't have we wouldn't want to do otherwise, and in the harm that it was causing. So I just had to like step away from that
00:39:12
Speaker
that work at this point, like I don't recommend people take psychedelics at festivals and stuff, or take low dose or quarter dose or just smoke cannabis or something you know.
00:39:23
Speaker
because of some of the harm I've seen in people being held down or tranquilized in big breakthrough experiences. I'm not okay with that. And this is what's happening in ketamine clinics right now too. It's important to name this piece and that these ketamine clinics hopefully will get the training they need when they realize what they're doing and stuff. And that people freak out or breakthrough is not the same as out of control or unsafe.
00:39:51
Speaker
And that those are the moments that are like the most healing for mostly like that releases the most healing. So why would we shut it down, you know, out of my out of my own anxiety of like, Oh, I don't want other people to hear this. It might sound weird. You know, so
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, going, going back to your book for a minute. Um, I forget who introduced me to, it may have actually been Joe Moore. He said that this book is, it should be a staple on any Psychonauts bookshelf. And I didn't fully understand that. Yeah, it is, isn't it? And I didn't fully understand that until I really got into your book and realized that it's not just about describing how cannabis can help with
00:40:38
Speaker
with therapy methods. What it also is, it's a guide for meditation. It's a guide for any psychedelic experience. And I thought that was one of the most valuable portions of your book was describing exactly how you can have these experiences through different modes of meditation. And that the body scan has been so amazing for me. I've been using that specifically and it's been fantastic. So can you talk a little bit about some of those? Yeah, yeah.
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah, you know, so what you're talking, we have a media page on our, on medicinalmindfulness.org and on that there's some recordings. So you can download or just play a body scan meditation off of that site. So you smoke a little herb and do a body scan. You know, the cannabinoids and the cannabis are gonna relax the body more than they would normally without the medicine. And if you smoke enough, it's gonna create an inter-visual experience where you can literally see inside the body.
00:41:36
Speaker
and engage tension in a way that's real skillful. Yeah, so you're right. We talk about cannabis there.
00:41:45
Speaker
One, I wanted to introduce cannabis as a psychedelic. I think that's really important. And these practices didn't come from just working with cannabis. They came from my experiences and my work and training at Naropa as a mindfulness-based facilitator. I've worked with underground practitioners and apprenticed with them. So I learned a lot of strategies and skill sets and such too.
00:42:11
Speaker
help people navigate these spaces. But then I also learned working with cannabis, that agency and our capacity to stay lucid and engage with skill is something that can be cultivated and developed using cannabis. So like inter-navigational mindfulness techniques to promote healing, transformation, self-actualization,
00:42:37
Speaker
exploration of whatever that inner realm or that psychic realm is, you know, the collective, whatever word we use, collective unconscious, spirit world,
00:42:46
Speaker
whatever, those are skill sets that can be developed. We don't have to just surrender into the space. We don't have to just let it happen to us. Cannabis taught me that. And then the other thing that what I realized more I worked with cannabis was that those skill sets get translated to working with other medicines. So you learn how to fly, so to speak, with cannabis. Then you take psilocybin. You have more agency in the psilocybin experience to engage it as well.
00:43:12
Speaker
And so all that, you know, like how to set up a space, the initial rituals and ceremonies to create the right mindset, the completion ceremonies to tie it all up, how to handle difficult experiences. It's all in the book and those aren't cannabis specific.
00:43:31
Speaker
You know, um, they're useful for all of the journey to, you know, skill set. So, you know, with the teaching, with teaching it, I've learned, I've worked hard to like, okay, how do I teach this? How do I make simplify it? How do I create structure that people can live into and grow into? Um, you know, it's not just about taking a medicine and laying down and hoping for the best. Like what if we could do more than that? And, um,
00:43:56
Speaker
That's what the book is about. It's like all the things you can do and skill sets you can cultivate using cannabis as a tool. It comes from working with other psychedelic medicines and all of it translates back to working with other psychedelics.
Broader Psychedelic Practices and Skills
00:44:12
Speaker
Just to give a little bit of context, my book was written a few years ago so some of this is still being developed but
00:44:19
Speaker
You know the book talks about something called cannabis assisted psychedelic therapy, you know like using cannabis as a psychedelic tool, but that's part that's a specialty that's part of a larger modality that I call
00:44:32
Speaker
mindfulness-based psychedelic therapy. And that's an umbrella for working with all of the psychedelic medicines. And we're working on creating retreats on, okay, here's how to bring these practices in working with psilocybin. Here's how to bring these practices in working with DMT. We learn the foundational skill sets with cannabis and that those can then translate when you have the right
00:44:59
Speaker
training to work with particular substance, all of them are relevant. So I really like the way we work with it. It's structured, it's simple, and it's super effective. Reliable, it's totally reliable.
00:45:14
Speaker
Yeah, I found the book was in my opinion perfect for somebody who is just beginning in need to get these kinds of thoughts and to navigate these kinds of realms, but it's also just as useful for someone who has already been.
00:45:30
Speaker
you know, in huge psychedelic experiences, but wants to hone their abilities and hone their so-called use of psychedelics skillfully, which you do go into in the book. Um, so could you just kind of talk a little bit about some of the, the skills that you would need? Sure.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah, so we play with this. So, you know, you've heard the same set and setting, right? Like that's like almost a dogma in the psychedelic community, right? The central importance of set and setting. So mindset, right? What's as a factor in your experience, setting where you do it, right? And you want to have some congruency with your mindset and setting, but they completely forgot about adding skill set.
00:46:14
Speaker
to this, and to this saying, and I don't I think in back in the early days was psychedelics people didn't like the only skill set that we had that people talked about was surrendering and allowing the experience to unfold right like that's it.
00:46:29
Speaker
Um, because it's so overwhelming. Like these are like back in the day, like, you know, these early practitioners were taking like a thousand mics of LSD and stuff, right? Or heroic doses of psilocybin. Like that's all you could do is fully surrender into it. But surrendering and allowing, accepting, that's just one skill set that we can, we can bring into these experiences. Um,
00:46:56
Speaker
Another one would like so this is so I work within a model associated with the cardinal directions and mysticism. This is based on. Alchemy transformational alchemy, but also I've studied with indigenous communities as well, you know so. So, but it's it's appropriate. It's OK to like what we do is we bring it into skill set development paradigms so that we're not.
00:47:26
Speaker
culturally appropriating, you know, images and symbols. So we come from a skill set paradigm. So one would be surrender and allow, right, just fully accepting that this is what's happening and I'm
00:47:41
Speaker
and I'm turning towards it, right? And that's congruent with the holotropic principle, right? Like it just let it unfold, it's going to heal, it's going to help you heal and wake up. But the other one would be the opposite, which is like focused awareness, right? Like, and so being able to stay focused in these inner spaces is a skill set that can be developed, maybe more akin to like Zen meditation practice, where you're keeping like a
00:48:07
Speaker
point of focus. And something significant about that is like focus awareness allows you to stay with the process long enough for it to complete and resolve. Whereas if you're constantly dancing and flying around and have no focus, it's a great experience, but there's not a lot of resolution. So there's something about this staying focus capacity. Another one would be
00:48:32
Speaker
letting yourself experience excitement, joy, and creativity. Curiosity, play in this inner space. There's something very, like psychedelics and cannabis are totally interconnected with creative functions, art, music, but also problem solving, like creative problem solving. So there are techniques and strategies you can do of like, I'm going to come into this session with a real specific question that I cannot
00:49:01
Speaker
figure out the answer to. And something about curiosity in play and exploring can just elicit the answer to the problem. And then there's this whole other thing of discernment, which is another skill set that can be developed of understanding the psychedelic experience itself, understanding the phenomenon, being able to map out where you are in the experience,
00:49:27
Speaker
instead of just being like spirit world right or imaginal space or hallucination, it's like there's actual structure and like location within the psychedelic states and so bringing in education and training on what is this and where am I at in this allows for us to have like a
00:49:48
Speaker
Okay, if I'm here, then I have these particular strategies and techniques to engage this particular terrain that I'm in right and then we have and then and then breaking down those certain capacities, then we go into like.
00:50:04
Speaker
Well, there are certain strategies and skill sets we can do to heal trauma, you know, like real specific strategies. And so bringing focus awareness to attention in my body while relaxing all around it, being curious and remaining in contact with it and understanding and discerning that what's emerging is a holotropic principle. And I can accept and relax and allow this process to do it. All of a sudden, there's like a whole new realm of resolution of
00:50:34
Speaker
past injuries and things that spontaneously emerge that just wouldn't if you hadn't brought in these ways of being in skill sets. Psychonauts can learn these skill sets and do them on their own. When you have a guide, they're there to hold the scaffolding of those skill sets to support their clients and engaging what is emerging.
00:51:01
Speaker
being able to fly, uh, inter visual, like having a capacity to have inter visual experiences. These are all skill sets and you can develop them. You know, um, it's fascinating surrendering into ego dissolution. What if that's a skill set that can be developed and it's not as scary anymore. You know, it's just a transition that occurs. So I think that's a major
00:51:24
Speaker
factor here. And then just to go back to cannabis is, again, you can learn these skill sets with cannabis. There's something about agency and cannabis that's unique as a psychedelic. And then from that, you can have more agency with the other medicines, maybe not as much, right, especially on a high dose thing, but you can cultivate that. I really learned to appreciate that.
00:51:46
Speaker
Speaking of other substances that you're involved with, I understand you're involved with the DMTX program, which is a research program for extended state DMT experiences.
Exploring DMT: DMTX Program and Beyond
00:51:59
Speaker
How far along has that gotten?
00:52:03
Speaker
Yeah, you know, COVID knocked it sideways for a little while, but we were going to head to Costa Rica for some DMT retreats and that all got canceled. So we just hit the pause button for a little while and kind of started working behind the scenes to keep it going.
00:52:21
Speaker
So DMTX, it's a model based off Andrew Gallimore and Rick Strassman's work. This idea of DMT is such a fast experience. Is there a way to stabilize and remain in that state for longer periods of time? And Andrew Gallimore came up with this idea of using infusion pump technology to do that. Excuse me.
00:52:45
Speaker
So, you know, you can look, check out that info on dmtx.org if people are interested. We're about, we have a new video that we made that's going to come out soon that Andrew Gallimore narrated, which is extraordinary. I'm super excited about what he created for our program. So we're about to start a fundraiser for that.
00:53:07
Speaker
Um, with that, and we have a, our whole team is set up. We have the medical doctor. We have the clinical practitioners. We even have a sketch artist for someone to come and, you know, help people sketch out their experiences. We have a writer, you know, to help with the trip reports and stuff. So we have a full team. Um, we have allies in Jamaica and Canada.
00:53:31
Speaker
and are now coordinating with DMT manufacturers like legal DMT manufacturers. And so right now where we're at is we're navigating the export import process. I have a legal team helping us with that question and we're going and under research paradigms it's possible that we'll be able to import the medicine or we'll work with other research teams to import the medicine to Jamaica.
00:53:59
Speaker
And so that might happen next year, it might take a little longer. It's a major unknown. And so what we're doing in the meantime is we already have access to natural DMTs and that's legal to work with in Jamaica.
00:54:16
Speaker
And so we're starting to initiate changa, smoke, DMT retreat experiences for both training purposes, people who want to learn how to facilitate, but also just folks who want to have a couple of DMT experiences. So it's, it's engaged, it's fully active and we're making big steps towards implementing it. My feeling is.
00:54:43
Speaker
All psychedelic medicines are becoming more and more commercially available anyway. DMT is no exception to that. So it's really a matter of when it'll happen, not if. And so we're just going to keep cultivating the protocol, building what we need to do, and when we're able to access the medicine legally.
00:55:04
Speaker
it'll just land and we'll do it. So I would say we're maybe a couple of years out at the most, but of course there's factors, global legalization and other things, other factors that are bigger than us.
00:55:20
Speaker
And when I hear Andrew Gallimore talk about this process, he tends to use a lot of mystical overtones and he, and this is what is really intriguing to me is that it seems that the philosophy behind DMTX is really to go into a DMT experience and be able to stay there and map out
00:55:42
Speaker
the landscape and sort of understand maybe what these entities are or where you're going or if you can have shared experiences and things like that. So is that accurate in the philosophy? Yeah, all of that. So the big question is, is this real? Is this just happening in our heads or are we able to tap into
00:56:03
Speaker
a reality that's bigger than us and objectively real and can two people in DMT, in two different DMT experiences have a similar enough experience that it's like, you know, a little more obvious than not that something else is going on and just an hallucination in someone's head.
00:56:23
Speaker
The problem with, you know, just smoking DMT or ejecting it, like, you know, again, Rick Strassman started old, you know, psychedelic renaissance with these programs. They're super short. They're like the peak is four to seven minutes long. So as soon as you and it's overwhelming, like these medicine experiences are like, you know, like very overwhelming in their intensity.
00:56:44
Speaker
So as soon as you start getting your orientation, remember that focused awareness capacity to surrender and allow the experience, all that takes time. And as soon as you land in it, you're coming out of it. So that entity you're speaking to that just showed up to tell you the secrets of the universe or that new terrain that you land in and you want to look around in, it's fading away as soon as you land in it. And so it's really hard to have an extended conversation with that entity to see if it's useful in some way.
00:57:14
Speaker
Rick Strassman talks about this in the DMT and the Soul of Prophecy book in that like comparing DMT experiences with like religious visionary experiences and his general assessment was it was the person's capacity to stay focused and made it less random. So we're teaching our
00:57:35
Speaker
Psychonauts or DMT psychonauts how to stay present in these states, the other thing about extended state DMT is that we can dial we can dial the intensity down so we're looking for like a threshold breakthrough experience and.
00:57:50
Speaker
stabilizing that point and that might be lessened. But the problem with a threshold in an injection or smoking is that it lasts maybe a minute or two. It's just not that long. But if you can stabilize it at that threshold point, then maybe a person cannot be overwhelmed by it and then have some time to look around.
00:58:10
Speaker
So that's the big debate. You know, Dr. Gallimore is a firm believer in this idea that we are contacting other like a higher dimensional reality. And my personal experiences with DMT point to that as well. Rick Strassman talks about how do you assess something that feels more real than real.
00:58:31
Speaker
When you're adding, it's like a higher dimensional perspective. So when you're adding extra spatial dimensions to something, it just feels beyond real. So can we develop an experiment that can prove the objective reality of it? Like what if we have two sessions going on in two different rooms and we're trying to get two different people to communicate together? Is that something we could do?
00:58:58
Speaker
The other question, I'm curious. I like these ideas, and I think it's fun. I'm really inspired by other dimensional reality and this idea of other entities. My personal worldview has a space for archetypal and spiritual dimensions that are beyond us, so it's not outside my worldview. But I feel pretty grounded in this too.
00:59:23
Speaker
And I think even if we can't prove it, my big question is, can it be useful to us? Can we benefit from it in some way? And so that points to like advanced scientific problem solving questions. Like who cares if an entity told you how to solve this big problem or you were able to look at it from a different perspective and solve the problem. Like we can come up with like a world transforming technology that can help heal our planet or
00:59:52
Speaker
help us understand something scientifically that we're struggling with. I think that's just as useful as understanding the nature of reality or whatnot.
01:00:03
Speaker
So that's kind of where my focus is. Again, this is useful, you know? What happens when you put somebody like a scientist, like a PhD level scientist working on a complex problem, nobody's fault solving it, you know, like has been able to resolve in the world. What happens if you put somebody into that experience with that background? Talk about a mind state, right? A mind setting that
01:00:29
Speaker
mindset that can be really beneficial, you know, like our iPhones came out LSD experiences, you know, the nature of our genetic structure came out of like working with psychedelics. There's a lot of scientific breakthroughs that have occurred using psychedelic medicines by scientists. What if you could
01:00:50
Speaker
Um, make a protocol around that and you just, you know, induce like scientific breakthrough after scientific breakthrough. That's kind of where I'm going with it, you know.
01:01:02
Speaker
Yeah. And it does feel when you're in those experiences that it is a landscape that you can navigate and it is something that is quote unquote real or realer than real. Um, I've heard the, the late Kalindi who if people don't, um, know who he is, he would take.
01:01:21
Speaker
like 50 gram dried doses of mushrooms and He would explore DMT realms very very deeply and he spoke of creating communities within the DMT realm which seems quite interesting to me and he said there were people out there currently that are
01:01:39
Speaker
Traveling to these realms and extended states and they're creating like community park type places for everyone to go and meet. So it does seem like that is a potential possibility for something like the DMTX program to explore.
01:01:56
Speaker
I mean, I've heard stories of people having second families and, you know, like DMT states, like indigenous communities, like, you know, they have family members that they return to again and again and connect with. And I've had, I always have, like, it's been a while since I've taken DMTs because it's such an evocative experience, but
01:02:14
Speaker
I have the same entities show up and they've flashed the same color patterns to let me know that they're there and they feel like family. They feel like it's like a returning to a spiritual family and again that feeling of more real than real
01:02:30
Speaker
makes it super lucid. It's like hard to hard to discount when you have such a deeply meaningful experience. So yeah, these are really legit questions. It's like, can we create a machine that can help us actively and reliably enter a new realm of
01:02:54
Speaker
aliveness, you know, in that that that space is objectively real and still exists, even when we're not aware of it.
01:03:04
Speaker
It's a legit question. And they're like, it's not just me, Daniel, you know, smokes pot all the time talking about these things, right? Like these are like MD, PhD level research scientists who are having extremely esoteric conversations about this. You read Rick Strosman's Interpath to Outer Space. They're trying to outline the biological mechanisms of multi-dimensional communication, you know, like, like they're really smart people exploring these questions. And
01:03:32
Speaker
Dr. Gallimore is probably one of the smartest people I know, and he thinks we're tapping into Kardashev level six civilizations, and I think there's something to that. What are the implications?
01:03:47
Speaker
Yeah, I've always thought, you know, I've always thought that's, that's where the aliens are in the DMT realm. That's where I've seen them. At least I've never seen a UFO, but I've, I've seen some aliens, you know, alien type entities are in those States. Yeah. And like, they're like super smart, super, a lot of them, like some of them, you know, like, like this objective reality is like, not all of them feel safe or want to hang out with, but.
01:04:12
Speaker
A lot of them are super cool beings here to support us in our evolution and they're like showing us secrets of the universe and showing us secret like resolution of like real big problems in our lives that are helpful. And so what if that's real, you know, that's big news.
The Future of Psychedelic Movement and Community Building
01:04:31
Speaker
Have you heard of the Fermi Paradox, like this idea that the universe is so old and so expansive, why don't we have access to, or why aren't we seeing
01:04:46
Speaker
What's the word I'm looking for? Not symptoms, but evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations. We should be able to see that. Why aren't we is a big question. Andrew Gallimore and I thought about this as a solution to the Fermi paradoxes. We're just looking in the wrong direction. It's through these molecular interventions that allow us to give direct access. This is the crazy thing with DMT, it's not just
01:05:15
Speaker
direct access on occasion or randomly. It's like every time people are making contact with these beings, you know, and like you said, developing relationships with them, you know, it's fascinating. It is. It really is. Um, I definitely want to be respectful of your time here. So, uh, as we wrap up, um, is there anything else that you'd like to get out there? Anything else you want to cover?
01:05:43
Speaker
Gosh, psychedelic movement is huge and constantly evolving, and it's the future of society, I think, in a way. We have a lot of work to do to bring in safety and accountability, but it's worth the effort. For those of you in your audience who are interested in becoming psychedelic guides, we have a whole training program for it, and that you can start working as a psychedelic practitioner legally.
01:06:12
Speaker
a lot of the world right now without having to wait for psilocybin or MDMA to come online. So if it's okay, just share some websites for people to get connected to. Is that all right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So psychadelicsitterschool.org.
01:06:29
Speaker
in that sitter school with the like plural sitters and then medicinalmindfulness.org and you can search these and they'll come up but you know we're really inspired by this work we identify as
01:06:45
Speaker
members of the transpersonal orientations, spiritual orientations of the psychedelic community. But we honor the research and the medical safety side is just as much and the creative side. So we have a whole community around this work. And so if people are interested in finding a tribe that, you know, actively engaged and trying to do it in good right relationship, just invite everybody to come check us out, you know.
01:07:13
Speaker
And psychedelics are coming, you know, they're already being legalized and things. So now's the time to
01:07:23
Speaker
to dive into it. I work with a lot of people who are transitioning from other professions to help them with this work, and so I have a specialty around that now. And then on our center side, I just want everybody to know that we really can help with fear PTSD and trauma resolution and help people reset their whole systems to
01:07:46
Speaker
finally get back on track. Like if generally people come to us when they get stuck in psychotherapy and we're able to break through those areas of stuckness and they can keep their healing work going. So I get to see transformation all the time and it's such a blessing and a privilege and truly honored to be in that space with folks and that this is all I've got, right? Like this is what I do in the world and I want to share it with people.
01:08:14
Speaker
And thank you for sharing it. And thank you for coming on the podcast today. I really appreciate your time. Thanks, Josh. Thanks for having me.