Ask Dr. Drew - Ayahuasca & Medicinal Psychedelics with Physician & Comedian Dr. Priyanka Wali – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 114

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

Dr. Priyanka Wali – AKA "America's only Indian female stand-up comedian and physician" – joins Ask Dr. Drew to answer your calls LIVE. Dr. Priyanka Wali is a physician, stand-up comedian, and co-host of the podcast HypochondriActor. Her philosophical approach to medicine stems from holistic concepts, primarily that "Food is Medicine" and that many medical illnesses arise from the disconnection of natural-occurring phenomena. She maintains a research faculty position at UCSF's Translational Psychedelic Research (TrPR) Program. Follow her at https://twitter.com/WaliPriyanka and https://instagram.com/WaliPriyanka. Subscribe to her weekly show "HypochondriActor" anywhere you listen to podcasts. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (http://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. SPONSORED BY • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get 10% off with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew GEAR PROVIDED BY • BLUE MICS - After more than 30 years in broadcasting, Dr. Drew's iconic voice has reached pristine clarity through Blue Microphones. But you don't need a fancy studio to sound great with Blue's lineup: ranging from high-quality USB mics like the Yeti, to studio-grade XLR mics like Dr. Drew's Blueberry. Find your best sound at https://drdrew.com/blue • ELGATO - Every week, Dr. Drew broadcasts live shows from his home studio under soft, clean lighting from Elgato's Key Lights. From the control room, the producers manage Dr. Drew's streams with a Stream Deck XL, and ingest HD video with a Camlink 4K. Add a professional touch to your streams or Zoom calls with Elgato. See how Elgato's lights transformed Dr. Drew's set: https://drdrew.com/sponsors/elgato/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, welcome everybody. Very delighted today to welcome a peer, Priyanka Wally, who is an internist like myself, but she's also doing all sorts of interesting things, including psychedelic research, and she's a comedian in her spare time. We're going to hear all about her career. Excuse me. I am very interested in physicians that are doing other things than just practicing medicine. I've always said we should be sort of in,

we should be in the creative spaces all over the place to sort of put our knowledge base and, you know, sort of stamp on the material that's out there because there's so much false material that's out in the world these days. So we will get right to it with Dr. Willie in just a second. We will be taking your calls as well off Twitter spaces. Of course, we're streaming in all the usual places. So let's get right to it. Our laws as it pertain to substances are draconian and bizarre. A psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin.

Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for f*** sake. Where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying. You go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time.

Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want help stopping, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. We'll be right back. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM. A sportsbook worth a slam dunk.

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Thank you, BC Science, for making note of our cold open. Caleb, people like the cold open, so well done on that. And thank you all of you out there in Twitter spaces. As usual, if you raise your hand, I'll bring you up,

and you are streaming on multiple platforms if we give you a chance to ask your question. First, however, I'm going to welcome our guest. Susan, everything good with you today? Yep.

Excellent. Caleb, you're on board? Wonderful. I'm very happy with the response to yesterday's show. Yeah, yesterday was interesting. You asked me before the mic heated up here, did I see some Twitter response or something? Do you want to bring that up here? Yeah, I don't want to bring more attention to it, but my most common question whenever people start attacking us and saying that you're spreading

misinformation is I say, well, can you go and point out one to two timestamps of the show where there's misinformation or disinformation? And I literally have never gotten a single response from any of the four or five people I've asked in the past six months. So it's... So I saw that up on my Twitter feed where, in fact, I brought it up yesterday. I said, did you do this? And she goes, that's Caleb. I thought, okay, good. Touch my timestamp through the fence, everybody. Touch my timestamp moment. But there was also, I had a little back and forth with a pediatric cardiologist who had some concerns with some of Dr. McCullough's science, and I said, great, please,

listen to what we talked about, and please let me know. This is a guy that's doing the active research on the myocarditis, and I said, thank you for doing the research. That was our consensus. We need more science. That's what we all agreed on. Please do more science, CDC and academic medicine, and thank you for doing that. So go ahead, and he's going to listen to the, he said he would anyway, to our piece, and give me some feedback, and I'm delighted to have that.

That's how this should be done, everybody. That's how it's supposed to work. This is what I said when I tweeted it. Yep. It says, usually when someone accuses us of disinformation, they didn't actually watch the show. That's why I asked for timestamps. If it's factually false, we want to correct it. This is a novel virus. Even the CDC is still trying to understand it. Silencing debate between MDs won't help. No response. Yep. I thought it was quite appropriate. And again, it's not listening is the problem.

There was another criticism of Dr. McCullough accepting fees from pharmaceutical companies. And if you remember, he brought that up on our conversation where he said that he ran a large research group with, I think he said, four PhD programs embedded in it. And he accepted money from the pharmaceutical industry and government. And that's how you run those programs. Otherwise, there's no more PhDs. That's just how that works. So I don't know what we do with that criticism other than to say that that's our system, and it's flawed. I'll grant you that. Or something else that I noticed that might be relevant is that if you look at Or something else that I noticed that might be relevant is that if you look at how much money that his research was receiving

before he started speaking out about his concerns, it was almost double what he's been receiving recently. So it almost leads me to look at that and think he was being punished in some way, that he actually spoke up for something and lost a lot. Yeah. Tom Cigars is on the rampage out there but yes absolutely he he would his whole program was dismantled he was he was let go from an academic institution so i don't know how you maintain the program so let's um we're gonna talk about other things today by next week or do we have naomi wolf coming in i want to say is that All right. So next week when Dr. Kelly comes back, Naomi Wolf will join us. And as I said,

her book, which I'm just out of my reach right now, but I'm sure you have it, Caleb. I really enjoyed reading it because it was what happened to my friend Naomi Wolf. And she was somebody I've always admired as a writer and a columnist in the New York Times. And the whole experience of how she was drummed out of her profession is really quite breathtaking and it's called bodies of others um and uh she gets into some data that i don't agree with so we'll either stay away from that or maybe try to break it down a more uh active way all right let's get to dr priyanka wally she is an internist like myself you can uh follow her at Wally Priyanka, P-R-I-Y-A-N-K-A. Physician, comedian, also co-host of Hypochondriactor podcast.

It's at Hypochondriactor. And I love it. I want to hear more about what she's doing. And she's also interested in medicinal plant-based therapies for, I'm assuming, mental health issues. There is their... Put that up again. I want to see that.

I was looking at my screen when you had that up. Sean Hayes. Sean Hayes in the picture with her. It looks like he's on the podcast. I think it's his platform, but we'll get into it. Please welcome... I love that guy. Dr. Priyanka Ali.

Wally. Drew. Hey, there you are. Drew, thank you. Thank you for that lovely intro. And yes, just for correction, Sean is 100% on the podcast as well. He's my co-host actually. But before we get into the podcast stuff, Drew, I just have to just name, we were talking about this offline, but I think the listeners need to know that you actually spoke at my med school graduation in

2007. I remember nothing of what you talked about because I was super depressed at the time, but my brother who is now an aspiring neurosurgeon remembered your entire thing. And he, I remember he came up to me and he was like, did you listen to that speech? Dr. Drew? I was like, yeah, I don't, I don't, I couldn't, I couldn't remember anything. And he was like, it was, it wasn't boring. I wanted to pay attention. It definitely wasn't boring. It was a me problem, not a you problem, just to be clear. And my brother was like, he talked about authenticity, being authentic, being your true authentic self. And at the time I didn't have the capacity to receive that message. And it's only years later that I would think about it.

And I was like, damn, Drew was right. Yep, he was right. You know what's interesting? Authenticity has become somewhat of a rallying point for millennials, which I find so interesting. I did not know it was going to be such a thing. And I'm guessing also your brother is a fan of Ryan Holiday? Actually, I have no idea. No, I actually don't know if he's a Ryan Holiday fan.

You said he likes stoicism, so I guarantee you he likes Ryan Holiday. I'm going to give you a Ryan Holiday story for your brother. Ryan Holiday was a college kid at another thing I was speaking at. It was just some silly thing. And he came up to me afterwards and he goes, what are you reading now? He was just a curious kid. He was like maybe 19. And I go, look, I read lots of weird stuff. You never know what I'm going to be reading. I just read a lot of stuff. And he goes, well, what are you reading right now? And I go, I'm reading this thing called the En the incaridian by a guy named epictetus he's a stoic philosopher yes and ryan ryan grabbed that and he's made stoicism his entire career it's very bizarre to me he's a

good friend wow but he has had this incredible career you were the influence it was that was it that conversation that pushed him in that direction that's what he told me that's what it was that's what made him pick up epictetus and that was the moment that it started and he just kept going from there isn't that wild i think my brother would love to meet you he is all about that epictetus he's Epictetus AF. Oh, my God. Probably Seneca as AF, too. All of that. All of the above. It's just so interesting how people that don't understand or don't think about how we affect each other.

I mean, we can affect each other negatively, and we can affect each other. I mean, we can affect each other negatively and we can affect each other positively. And I don't know, I'm entering a phase of my life when the, I always knew the interpersonal was important for a lot of things, but I'm beginning to think it's pretty much everything. There's just so much. It's everything. Yes. And this can actually go back to the medical system and part of the issues that we're dealing with in the medical system. I think and I've talked about this on the podcast and on the air that we don't take the importance of emotions seriously enough in weighing in someone's treatment plan and how we approach medical illness. And these all come back down to interpersonal relationships and how we treat each other and you can i mean it impacts the entire world how we treat each other how we treat patients how the medical system treats doctors it's all connected right we're not in this mess just because that that's that's exactly right mean, it's the one thing about this crazy species,

the Homo sapiens sapien, which is that he or she would be helpless without the social context. And we look what we've accomplished because of our social bond. Absolutely. Absolutely. I recently came back from Egypt a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if you've ever been to Egypt and seen the pyramids and seen the temples and seen what we as human beings are capable of creating when we work together. Um, there words don't, there's no words to describe how profound of an experience it is. The photos don't do it justice. You have to go there in person to see for yourself the magnitude of what we are capable of if we put our minds together and work together. I mean, it's just mind boggling.

And did you do it all at Valley of the Kings and everything? Yeah, I did Valley of the Kings and Giza. We did a couple of the temples in oswan uh filet and yeah i mean yeah it's it's it's drool drool just like all of it um i you i need to go back i don't think one round was enough i mean i arrived and within two or three days i was like holy crap this is overwhelming the magnitude of this. There's so much to study. I mean, the fact that there's a career called an Egyptologist, like there's literally a specialist, someone who devotes their entire life to the study of Egypt.

There's literally way too much. It's information overload. And I'm definitely going to need to go back. Well, it's weird that you bring Egypt up. Because while we were talking about the interpersonal in medicine, I was thinking about how much they prioritize that in Egypt. All the way back then, they understood the importance of all this. And that we have actually taken the way the priorities of the medical legal system and the medical insurance system and now the employment of physicians, we have literally carefully extracted the interpersonal from the patient-doctor relationship. It doesn't even exist.

At least if it does exist, it's because both the patient and the doctor fight for it. But it's not supposed to exist according to the insurance resources and the efficiency monitors that are out there. Yeah. You know, I think this really comes back down to the spirit of colonization. The sort of colonizer mentality is that there's one entity that's in power and then there are these other entities that are sort of lower and they need to be disempowered. They need to be controlled. And so the moment you start disempowering the patient by telling them that actually whatever you're complaining of, whatever you're experiencing, because our system doesn't

have means to quantify that, your experience isn't valid. That is similar to what a colonizer type energy would do. You're sort of disempowering one entity to give another entity power. But what has happened in the process is that we've all fooled ourselves. In the process of disempowering others or taking control of others, you're disempowering your own self.

And what has resulted now is a system where people continue to stay ill regardless. Yeah, I've been very worried lately about the, you know, when you think about things that the medical bureaucracy has perpetrated, like the opioid epidemic, like the cocaine epidemic at the turn of the 20th century, like parts of COVID, when there are things that these authorities were just rolled over, common sense and physician judgment. I mean, I fought against the opioid epidemic like you can't believe. But let's – Susan gets mad when I revisit topics.

She gets mad when I revisit topics. We're supposed to keep this light, huh? Well, not only that, she gets mad when I revisit topics. She gets mad when I revisit topics. We're supposed to keep this light, huh? Well, not only that, she gets mad when I revisit topics that I, we'll get there, but the topics that I can't, I'm obsessed about, I can't help but getting back

and reviewing them. But let's stop there. Let's talk about depression. Let's talk about something really uplifting. I just want to say though, first of all, I think the listeners need to know what a huge fan I am of yours

and the work that you have put in as a physician, the sort of how you lead by example as a physician. And as one intern is speaking to another, I just want to say, I know very well what it's like to not be kind of your traditional physician. I understand it. And I respect it so much. And I'm just so honored and happy to be here. Well, thank you. And I feel the same way about you. That. And I'm just so honored and happy to be here. Well, thank you. And I feel the same way about you. That's why I'm so intrigued by what you're doing.

I know the pressure you're under to fall in line. You know, literally, your academic leaders and people in positions of professorial authority, they feel it's their privilege to do as they wish. Of course, they never would do these things, and they have no talent to do it. But when a lowly internist steps out of line and does something creative, how dare you? But okay, let's go back to the end of medical school for you and talk about depression. Because I had bad depression during college. I had panic attacks, depression, bad, bad, bad stuff and got through it. What was, what was your journey like?

Well, you know, med school was a time, it was probably one of the darkest times in my life for me. Very little support, tremendous amount of stress. And I was also a lot younger. I didn't have the coping skills that I had now, but there wasn't the kind of support that I think is necessary. And it wasn't until much later

that I ended up writing my one-person show about my experiences in medical training that I learned about the statistics in physician suicide. There's actually one physician suicide per day in the United States. So it became very clear to me that my experience wasn't a unique sort of one-off thing. It became very clear to me that there's a systemic problem here in the way we're thinking about treating doctors and the way we're treating physicians.

We are supposed to be the healers, and yet we're treating physicians, we are supposed to be the healers and yet we're one of the most sick people. So what exactly is going wrong? This is not right. But yeah, I became very depressed in med school. I was suicidal at a point I needed to get on antidepressants for about six months. I am very grateful for that, because I do believe that the antidepressants did help stabilize my symptoms so that I was able to eventually graduate. My depression would present as symptoms of pseudo dementia. I had trouble retaining information. In hindsight, it was actually, it's actually miraculous that I, I still passed all my classes.

I passed everything and I, I did okay. But, but my cognitive abilities were at the time I would say compromised. Um, and so it wasn't until I graduated medical school and was able to wean off the medications. Um, I started seeing a therapist for the first time when I was a medical student, and I knew nothing about depression. I actually diagnosed myself with depression during my psychiatry rotation. My third year of psychiatry rotation, I was interviewing these patients who were clinically depressed, and I realized there was very little difference between me and

the people that were being admitted here. And I remember very clearly reading about the treatment of mild to moderate depression and reading this line that treatment of mild to moderate depression includes cognitive behavioral therapy plus or minus the use of antidepressants, specifically SSRIs. And so that's how I remember calling the USC Mental Health Services. And I mean, it was so, I was just really like, hi, I'm a med student and I believe I have clinical depression and I think I need cognitive behavioral therapy. I didn't even know what that was. I just like, and I remember on the phone, they were like, okay, well, are you suicidal? I said, no, I'm not. And then they said, okay, well, if you're not suicidal, then we have an appointment in 12 weeks. And I was like,

12 weeks? Well, what if I am suicidal? Would that give me an appointment sooner? And of course, they were like, if you're suicidal, call 911. So I had to find a therapist outside of the school system. I started, you know, doing therapy and the therapy was helpful, but eventually the depression progressed to a point where I was having trouble retaining some of the skills I was learning in therapy. And it was the pseudo dementia really kicking in. And so at that point, then it was time to consider medications and the medications really helped stabilize things. I was able to retain information. And then eventually, once I graduated med school, the stress of that, you know, it was never as bad. And I never got

as clinically depressed after that ever again, I didn't need to get back on meds. And the rest, residency was fine. And at that point, I discovered stand-up comedy, which was a wonderful tool for keeping me in balance. And how did you manage to incorporate that into internal medicine training? That's a feat. So I was working. Yeah, I was in residency. I was working 80 hours a week. And there was this longing in my soul. I was like, something is completely missing

in my heart, in my soul. I'm doing all this medicine. I'm doing all this science, but I need art. I need theater. I need something. And stand-up is a solo art. So it's something you can do on your own schedule. It was also a sort of morbid fear of mine. You know, I had done a little bit of theater prior to that. And so I kind of just was on a kick and I thought, you know what, let me just go to an open mic. Let me just see what happens. I'll write some jokes. And I was just sort of intended to be something that was going to be a one-time thing to get it out of my system.

And then I would move back into residency life. But what happened is, you know, I wrote a couple minutes of jokes. They weren't funny. I swear to God, they were not funny jokes. I went to an open mic and this was in San Francisco at the time. And it was at this place that no longer exists called brainwash cafe. It was a laundromat slash open mic. So people were sitting there folding their laundry while you tell jokes. And I do my set three minutes set and people were laughing.

And this, this, this producer happens to be at this open mic, and he sees me, and he's like, you were really funny. I want you to come to my showcase in a month. I want you to do 10 minutes. And I tell him, okay, sure, no problem. And inside, I'm like, holy shit, I don't even have 10 seconds of material. So I started hitting up more open mics so I could prep for this showcase to build some time, you know, cause I, I didn't have anything to say. I wasn't funny. Right. And so what happened is I would go to these other open mics and I kept getting offered other showcases. Uh, and so the

next thing I know, I'm, I'm like doing all these showcases while I'm in residency. And so it became kind of crazy because I would be working in the wards during the day. And then I would like do showcases in the night and it got kind of crazy, you know? And I remember at one point my program director was like, what are you doing? And I was just like, YOLO, Dr. Edson, YOLO. Like, this is the happiest I've ever been. Like, yeah. Did he, how did he become aware of it? Was there like a small article or something posted about you?

Because that's usually what happens. Okay. I'll tell you exactly what happened. And I want to preface this by saying I am a double board certified physician. Okay, so I'm speaking as a board certified physician. But when you're in residency, there's this thing called an in-service exam. And it's this exam that you're supposed to take where they kind of can predict whether or not you'll pass the boards. Okay, and it doesn't count for anything, but they take it very seriously. It's like this exam that, you know,

you got to do well on this because if you don't, then they're very worried that you're not going to pass the board. Okay. So I wasn't studying at all. I was busy working on the words I'd study when I was on the words, but in order to do well on this in-service exam, you have to be studying for it. Right. And I would in the evenings, I would be doing shows. So I take this in-service exam and I, I don't pass. I, I get like probably the second lowest score in the entire program. And they pull me in and they say, you know, we're very concerned. You did not do well. We're very concerned. And I said, listen, guys, I didn't study for it at all. I'll tell you why I did so poorly. I've been I've been going to these I'm not going to stop doing the showcases. And I'll use my extra time and I'll study and I'll, I promise you, like, I just need to study. And so they were like, oh, we're worried. We're worried.

We're worried. Flash forward. I eventually ended up studying and I take the in-service exam the next year. I get like one of the top scores. The program director, he calls me. He says, never in my career have I ever seen such a jump in score before. And I was like, Dr. Edson, I told you, I just didn't study. So I did get a little bit of flack because they would be like, why aren't you studying? And I'd say it's because I'm outperforming.

And Dr. Edson would be like, why are you performing? And I'd be like, because it makes me happy, you know? Yeah, I know. I get it. Everything worked out, you know, it all worked out, but it's like the system is just not designed for student wellness, for resident wellness. You know, I had to take matters into my own hands. Not only that, it's a military style system. And so you're not allowed to step out of line and you're technically stepping out of line by doing anything other than the mandates of the authority structure. Right.

Oh, big time, big time. And for the record in, I got in trouble in med school, in residency for speaking up. Uh, I, I always got in trouble. You know, I would, I would say something and it would be the truth, but it would piss people off. And so I would get in trouble for that. And so it became very clear by the time I graduated residency, I remember one of my attendings came up to me at graduation. She really liked me. We really got along and she pulled me

aside and she was like, Priyanka, like, it was such a pleasure working with you. And I said, oh my gosh, thank you so much. Like, you know, I, I've always felt like I've felt like an odd person in this, in this program. And she's like, you know what? These aren't your people. It's not you. Just don't worry about it. Just nurture your own traits. These aren't your people. And when she told me that, I had never thought about it from that perspective. Like, oh, there are certain types of doctors that you can get along with. And then there are certain types of doctors that you can get along with. And then there are certain types of doctors that like you don't just jive with. And that's OK. It's not a statement about who you are as a person. Like we all have to just find our people.

And it wasn't until I started doing stand up that I realized the same principle applies as well. Like in stand up, you're going to find your audience. You're going to find your people. And it's neither good nor bad. But you see that even in the world that we live in now, right? Everything is so black and white. There's people that believe one ideology and then there's people that believe another ideology. And so it's like, we naturally just end up with our people. And that's neither good or bad. What needs to happen, though, is that we need to respect one another. So it's like, if there are going to be doctors like me who need to nurture their strong artistic tendencies, we should be respected in the same way traditional physicians are who are working in a classic hospital setting or whatever they're they're sort of like

come from a different model I think we need to understand that there's different types of people and we need to just respect one another instead of just shooting each other down. I completely agree. Susan, I think Priyanka and I were separated at birth or something, or she's a reincarnation in a later generation. What is your second board in? I'm a board certified in obesity medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine. I did know that.

Right. And I'm back when you said you'd done some theater, was that like high school or something? Is that where you got sort of the public-facing sort of instinct? And what I'm going to ask you is, did you enjoy that? And did your parents threaten to kill themselves if you didn't study science? And that's why you went down to medical school. So that's a lot to unpack.

So let me start with the first time. Yeah, I did theater in high school a little bit. And it was my first, I actually, first year of med school, I joined an improv troupe in Pasadena. At the time it was called Lizard Theater. And that was actually really beneficial for my mental wellness and keeping me in balance the first two years of med school. But then and, uh, that was actually really beneficial for my mental wellness and keeping

the imbalance the first two years of med school. But then I had to stop that once we started third year rotations. And I think that also led to my depression symptoms worsening. Um, no, my parents weren't supportive initially of my artistic, uh, you know, Englishling. Shocking. Full disclosure. Shocking. But here's the thing. I come from a, both of my parents are physicians. I come from a long line of healers. In fact, my great, great grandfather was one of the first anesthesiologists in Kashmir. If you look up the last name Wally under California medical license, literally every name that comes up is somehow related to me in some capacity, except for like one person who I'm sure I'll meet them at some point. Yeah.

So, but, but it's, yeah, I came out of the womb. I have kind of a similar thing. No, I, I, I, I sort of did too, but isn't it interesting that you have these other instincts that they, they just were just bubbling up. You, and you just had to express them some way. It they just were just bubbling up. You just had to express them some way. It's just so fascinating to me. And that's about that authenticity and about integrating parts of self. That should be encouraged. It should be celebrated. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think maybe if growing up that had been nourished and encouraged, I think maybe I wouldn't have had the self-esteem issues that I had had growing up, or maybe I would have had an easier time sort of accepting myself for who I am. Right. Um,

it could have been, it didn't have to be so hard. Right. Uh, but to your point, you know, you go ahead, go ahead. Yeah. Nope. To my point. Yeah. So to your point that despite growing up from a family of doctors and healers, you know, there was still this very strong, innate, creative energy, artistic energy. You know, I think we come onto this earth with certain, whether you want to call it karmic predilections or certain characteristics. We're sort of brought here on this earth to impart certain characteristics. I think all of us have talents that with the right nurturing, we can all share with the world. Yeah.

And I also think that, though, it's not like you can't be a doctor if you don't come from a family of physicians. But when you do, you're carrying the torch forward for another generation. And it really feels like what you're doing is very important. And I feel like, and it is important. That's the reality. And I feel like, I don't know, that spirit has been undermined quite a bit amongst your peers particularly and physicians that are being trained now that it's sort of, you know, it's a job as opposed to this very, very important calling.

And I've been sort of beaten down by having that feeling because I see so much of the system in medicine just making light of, or at least diminishing what it is we have to offer. Absolutely. And this is why the work that you do, for example, is so important because you, in embodying yourself by just existing, by just being, by speaking the words that you speak, by being you, that is a form of resistance to what you're talking about. That is a form of activism. engage in self-care, that we rest, that we take care of ourselves so that we don't get beat down because we have to go through this whole life, you know, work doing this kind of work. And you're absolutely right. There is so much heaviness right now, energetically within the medical system.

There is so much pulling us down, you know, and, you know, many people go into medicine trying to bring light to a lot of the shadow that is present. And it is critical that in order to do this work, we take care of ourselves. You know, I personally have to engage in a lot of somatic body-based practices in order for me to keep up the energy that I can keep up. You know, even in between patients, for example, I have a yoga mat set up and I will do stretches because keeping the body kind of in a channel of flow is a constant amount of work. It's constant, but it's also critical that it's done so that one can stay present and do the work that you're on this earth to do. So we're going to take a quick break and we're going to hear from the people that support us

and help us in keeping these things, this stream going. We have, of course, Dr. Priyanka Wally. You can see her podcast. She's co-host of Hypochondriactor and you can follow her at wally priyanka at w-a-l-i-p-r-i-y-a-n-k and there is the hypochondriactor that once we get back for the break that's what i want to get into i want to hear more about the podcast we'll hear more about sean hayes i'm a i'm an old sean hayes fan i he used to come on our radio show years ago and uh i've sort of followed his career on broadway and so many of the things he's done have just been very fun, good guy, and talented. And so we'll hear more about that when we come back. I think we have found the holy grail of skin care.

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But when I was introduced to GenuCell, I was so happy because it's so affordable and it works great. I was introduced to the Ultra Retinol Cream, which I love at night. All the eye creams are amazing. People notice my skin all the time and I'm so excited because it's actually working.

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all right thank you very much uh susan i'm a little confused by something on the Rumble Rants. Mackie wants my registration number. Would you like my license number? Would you like G55092 or my NPI? We're having a conversation whether or not you're a real doctor. 1-871-677-724. You can have all those numbers for me. Yeah, really. I'm also double board certified.

I also am in addiction medicine and internal medicine, much like Dr. Wally, who's double board certified. Yeah, he addiction medicine and internal medicine much like dr wally who's double yeah he won't give up that damn practice it costs us money for him to be a doctor they say oh doctors are just in it for the money but it costs him money because he he uh keeps an office open he has two doctors that work with him and they don't really we don't make them pay very much there. Because you know what? Doctors don't make that much money, internal medicine specialists.

It's not like, oh, you get a half million, $2 million a year. It's like $50 an hour. And then you have to pay for the office staff. And then you have to pay for, you know, if you want to be an internist, you do it as a passion. I've seen my husband do this as a passion. He was also an addictionologist. He worked at a psych hospital, worked with addictions over the years, as you all know. And honestly, I didn't know why he did that either.

And maybe part of the reason why he's on television is because I pushed him on television and I'm a good manager. So it's wonderful that he keeps it, his practice. He has people that have been with him for years and years and years, and they're elderly and they're still alive because of him. So don't, don't knock my husband or I will get you. I will get you. I will come out and get you. So, uh, Branka, you witnessed something that I've never seen medicine we will be talking about other complaints yeah all right the spouse's complaints what what do the spouses have to say about about the physicians her tears never dried they got quiet over there yeah yeah yeah

so okay so tell me about sean Hayes and how that happened. Oh Lord. I love Sean. Um, okay. So Sean is all, has always been, this is before I met him, but he's apparently always been obsessed with medical stories. He actually has quite a few, he's, he's actually experienced quite a lot of medical, um He's actually very familiar with the medical system. So he wanted to do a talk show where he can just talk about all of his stuff, and they wanted a real doctor. And apparently Ken Jeong wasn't available. So they asked me. And so, yeah, we hit it off. We met and it was just a really, we had a great chemistry.

And so we started recording the show and it initially started out with, you know, him telling me about his various medical ailments. And, you know, every episode, then we would bring on a celebrity who would talk about their medical ailments. And every episode then we would bring on a celebrity who would talk about their medical ailments. And slowly then we started getting callers and people calling in about their stories. And now it's just really grown. And so every Wednesday we release an episode on all the channels about a different celebrity with a different medical ailment. And then there's also a voice caller that I'll share. And it's been just absolutely

wonderful practicing medicine in this way. Obviously I'm not practicing medicine on the show or giving personalized medical advice, but it is using a different muscle. And I actually, at one point, while I was in the process of preparing for each interview, I think my agent sent me one of your, you were on the, I think the Jordan Harbinger show, you were doing an interview or you were interviewed about something. And I remember you said this line,

which I thought about, it was so well said, where you talk about when you listen, you listen with your whole body and the amount of active listening that is required on the podcast. I mean, like I really am listening with my whole body and it's incredible how your body will give you signals about where to take the interview next. It's something that I wish we would just do all the time, not just when we're live on the air or interviewing celebrities. This is something that one should ideally practice when you're with your family or your friends or with a patient in the office, truly being present in that moment. So it's been a real joy doing the podcast for those kinds of principles, yeah.

Yeah, two things. One is, think about how we learned in medical school. We learned by studying cases. We had a person who was attached to the stories and a real clinical manifestation of things you read about in a textbook. That's how the audience is learning too you've attached your information to a case you and i in a box with a

white coat on no does not maybe two percent of what you say gets received but when you have a story and a case and somebody for whom it's really important what's happening that that gets through but the the listening with the whole body thing is it happened to me for really kind of three reasons one like you and i did radio every night for years and years and so i had to really tune the ear you know and listen and be fast and sort of react to things so you sort of start learning you to trust what what your body's telling you but with drug addicts you can't believe whatever coming out of their mouth, don't start even listening to it.

Just first listen to your body. What does your body tell you is going on in this room? And there's a tremendous amount of diagnostic information you can get from addicts by not listening to them and just listening to how your body reacts. And, you know, having been also myself, the object of deep support, deep, uh, circuit dynamic psychotherapy when you're the object of that kind of scrutiny and, and careful listening, you sort of build the muscle to be able to offer it,

offer it to other people too. And so I, you know, I would be in rooms all the time where people would be talking about something and I would just go, no, no, what, what, what, you know, what's this? So it's something that occurs to me. I go, why, why am I hearing this music? Some music is occurring to me right now. And I, why is that, you know, something, something that I just learned to trust it. And it always is very meaningful when you bring that into the room. Absolutely. And there's also a process in which there might be some interference occurring in the sense that something is coming up for you in your body and you're noticing it, but you need to flesh that out from your own stuff, your own issues versus what's actually present from the patient in front of you.

And that has been a beautiful process for me personally and sort of fleshing out, oh, when I interviewed this person, I had a really interesting visceral reaction, even though there wasn't necessarily anything overtly triggering. And then fleshing through, okay, what was really going on there? And what's coming up from my path that led me to have that fear-based reaction? It's been a rich gift in terms of doing your own work. And this is something I feel very strongly about. Healers need to do their own work on themselves if they're going to hold space for other human beings. I think it should be really requisite.

Yeah. I couldn't have done it without psychotherapy. It really cleared all that up for me. So I was able to do it very, very efficiently. Let's talk for a few minutes about psychedelic psychotherapies and whatnot. What got you into all that? What is your position on that? Tell me more.

Yeah. So actually, it's such an interesting story. And you wonder if like, do all roads lead to Rome. I got into the world of psychedelics because of my work in obesity medicine. You know, I don't have to tell you, but obesity from a addiction model, it is a psychosocial response to childhood trauma. You know, there are some patients with obesity related issues. You offer them the right nutritional advice, and they follow it, and then they fly, and you never really hear from them again,

and they do well. But then there's always a subsect of people that continue to struggle with either losing weight or, and when I use the term obesity, I think it's really important from an anti-body shaming perspective that it's a medical term used to encompass other obesity related, uh, comp complications. So I'm talking about things like diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. It's not just, it's not just about what someone looks like. Um, so essentially if someone has obesity related issues and it's coming down to a behavioral issue, um, this falls under the addiction spectrum.

So I started to see that there were clear patients who weren't getting better. And when I would actually talk to them, they had very significant trauma histories. And so I was looking for treatments for healing trauma. And I came across the data behind psychedelics and I found it to be very compelling. I mean, you would read these stories of people who were clinically depressed and then they would go to Peru and they weren't depressed anymore.

Or individuals with complex PTSD who, after a few rounds of MDMA, no longer met the criteria for complex PTSD. So very compelling stories, very compelling data. And so I became quite intrigued. And so like any good scientist, I decided to figure out what this was all about. And so I went to Peru and I worked with Dr. Gabor Mate in Peru. We worked with ayahuasca with some of the indigenous Shipibo curanderos or shamans in the Amazonian jungle. And to put it very simply, it was one of the most profound experiences in my career. And I would say that my understanding of healing completely changed after that experience. And I like to think that my

career took a sort of a big left turn after that because the paradigm completely shifted in terms of our understanding of why we get sick and what keeps us ill. So it was very profound. So I came back to the United States sort of really changed by that. Um, you know, as you know, here in the United States, ketamine is really the only legal psychedelic that physicians can work with at this time. So I got trained, uh, to administer ketamine. Uh, I got trained at the Polaris Insight Center, um, and, uh, then eventually, uh, worked with, uh, Gabor Mate and his compassionate inquiry training Inquiry Training Program. And so I started doing ketamine-assisted psychotherapy in my private practice for my private practice patient.

And at some point along the way, UCSF caught wind of me. And they were starting to run these trials for psilocybin and depression. This is called the USONA trial, which recently just ended a few months ago. And so I've helped run those trials. I was involved in the psilocybin trials for depression and we dose patients with depression. And we also did a few dosings for a Parkinson's trial, people with Parkinson's. And I think there's a lot of profound therapeutic potential with these medications. I do not think they are for everyone. I do think we need to study these medicines more. But I can speak personal experience that there is, there is profound potential for healing here.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get nervous about it because how do you select the right patient? How do you know the exact dosing profile? How long the therapeutics? And I've seen repeatedly, the thing I get nervous about also, I've seen long-term neuropsychiatric consequence from hallucinogens

shows up 10 years later. And I've seen rather profound personality changes sometimes in people. And it's one thing when someone's in psychotherapy and in control of the changes moment by moment, over a long period of time, but taking a chemical that changes who you are, that's weird ethical territory for me. Sometimes it's worth it, right? Sometimes it's worth changing who you are, but that's a really serious thing, changing the person. So I have a question for you. And again, you do not have to answer this because I know we're live on the air, but have you ever worked with psychedelics in a ceremonial or ritualistic setting? I have not directly. I've been around it quite a bit.

I'm interested in it. I know it's going to have great value. It just makes me nervous. So I'm not able at this point to go down to Costa Rica. Let's do this. I don't know how to select the right patient and I don't know who... I'm developing a whole stable of people

though that I'm starting to turn to for these kinds of things. There's a whole side of this too on the indigenous people's side where they've been using plant-based therapy on this continent, in the reservations for quite some time with great efficacy.

Then there's, you know, I talked to a psychiatrist just the day before yesterday who was also a psychoanalyst. I knew immediately how well-trained she was. She was an exceptional professional. And her whole career is, based on her experience inside of all that training, think about it, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, like it's 10 years of training, whole career is focused on psychedelic psychotherapy. And so that catches my attention, let's just say. There's something real here. People don't make those kind of left turns unless there's something there. Drew, happy to talk to you offline. I would love to, if you want sort of some guidance, because as one interest to another, I don't come from

the psychiatry world. So there was a lot that I was learning. I can say sort of, there's a lot that I can say. And so I'd be happy to talk to you offline. But I do feel strongly that if an individual, if a practitioner is going to be advocating that a patient use psychedelics, I do feel strongly that they need to understand what the experience is like for themselves. Now, I'm not saying that they need to do psychedelics. Let me be clear. But they do need to be comfortable and familiar with expanded states of consciousness. So that

could be something like deep meditation or holotropic breath work, something that puts your nervous system in an expanded state of consciousness, not necessarily has to be psychedelics. But I do think that that should be a prerequisite for any practitioner whether it's a therapist or an md who is advocating for this and working uh to even use this as a therapeutic tool they need to understand what it's like to be in this state when you say to change your sense of healing i'm sure that's part of it can you put that into into words? Oh, absolutely. So, you know, I myself personally suffered from a diagnosis of complex PTSD. I'm Kashmiri pundit. We experienced genocide. I was in Kashmir at the age of two. And so I actually had some very early childhood trauma that was

significant. I mean, it wasn't until my 30s that I got diagnosed with complex PTSD and had the signs and symptoms. I did everything that one is supposed to do. I was in therapy. I did EMDR. I did all of the things. To be very frank, I reached a zenith in terms of what these modalities could offer me. It wasn't until I worked with ayahuasca that essentially after I came back from Peru, I no longer met the criteria for complex PTSD. I don't have complex PTSD anymore. And so I personally, from a personal perspective, I attribute my healing significantly to the use of this plant medicine.

There were also other aspects of healing in terms of the way the medicine worked that I observed there. The way the curanderos work in the Amazonian jungle, it's purely from an energetic and shamanic perspective. And this was something I was very new to coming from a Western model. You know, from their perspective, by the time a physical ailment arises, it is a sign that there has already been an energetic imbalance that has been present for much, much longer by the time a physical sign arises. And so that was a major shift in my thinking. As an internist, I think about things like preventive medicine, but seeing it from this perspective, it was like, oh, wow, this is like super preventive medicine if you're thinking about things from an energetic standpoint before even the manifestation of physical symptoms. So those are, so that's kind of the short answer

question of like my own personal healing as well as a more global perspective. I, I kind of feel like when we, when it really, all this gets sorted out, PTSD is going to be a major component of the therapeutic value in psychedelics i really i feel like you know because because we don't have there's so many ptsd syndromes that we just don't do well with and i've seen by the same token lots of people get well with ptsd with various kinds of psychedelic therapeutics well you know i don't know what your kind of view is on this, but I view a lot of mental health issues are secondary manifestations of PTSD. You know, there can, depression. Well, I think we, I think we have been through, if you listen to Loveline, every other call was

trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma. That's all we talked about every night. And I believe we have been through a pandemic of childhood trauma, mostly all kinds of horrible interpersonal. People that were supposed to keep children safe did not keep them safe. You had a large-scale trauma witnessing God knows what, you know, in a genocide. But our family systems are so out of whack, and the environment which children are being reared is causing horrible trauma. The manifestation that we're seeing, you mentioned earlier the different tribes that everyone is in, which is really the cluster B problem. People are developing cluster B personality disorders because, or traits at least, because of all this trauma. And yeah, it's the trauma. It's what's embedded in their body.

You might, there's a guy named Alan Shore that really has sort of worked out the neurobiology of all this. And it's really, and a guy named Peter, excuse me, Stephen Porges. These are really interesting neurobiological mechanisms for what this is in the human physiology. a significant childhood trauma there's sort of this pandemic of PTSD I think as healers we need to step up our game as healers in terms of what we can offer and you know I think I think psychedelics are are a huge tool that

will be used and are and I believe it's currently being used. I mean, there's a lot going on in the underground where people are using it. A lot. Yeah, a lot. That's why I've got my eye on it. Yeah, but what I do think is that we do need decriminalization. I don't think people should be put to jail for trying to heal their traumas. And I do think we need some sort of legalization, you know, what that will look like. I think we need to first legalize this so we can study it and decriminalize it so we can

stop punishing people for trying to heal themselves. We need to stop sort of this war on drugs so that we can just be really honest with ourselves about like, hey, okay, what is the group of people for which they should not take these medications? Like, what are the indications in which this is safe? You know, this is, it needs to be out in the open, basically. So what was Sean's trauma, give him all his hypochondria, his somatoform disorder. He's very open. He's very open about it on the podcast, but you know, um, he, uh, he had a significant childhood traumas. He grew up poor. His father was an alcoholic and left the family at a very early age. So, um, there, there was a lot of, of challenging circumstances. So, um, and he, he's fortunately very, very open about that on the, on the show.

And so it's, it, it's been actually quite a, an honor and a sort of a beautiful process and sort of gently each episode sort of touching along that, you know, it's, it's challenging because the podcast, the mood of the podcast is to be light and sort of airy and funny while we're also delving into heavier topics. You know, and, you know, I'm sure you know that, you know, when talking about trauma, one of the most important things when asking a person to share something that's quite vulnerable is creating that container of safety and really getting their permission to share those vulnerabilities. And so I'm always really mindful of whatever Sean shares that he does on his own accord, that it's something that he feels safe to share.

And then also when we bring on guests that are going to talk to us about heavier topics, that we're creating that container of safety so that you don't end up re-traumatizing an individual when they're talking about something that's quite vulnerable. Of course. And though the ability to be of service in that manner, to sort of share these experiences that are now so common is helpful to so many others who are listening. These people, when they've been traumatized, feel like they're the only one on earth. And it's, of course, exceedingly common right now. And the more we sort of- Yeah, you know, that's been one of the most meaningful parts

of the podcast is we'll get callers that come in and say, you know what? I thought I was the only person with that issue. And it was really helpful to hear someone else on the show talk about, you know, something very rare. We're more connected than we realize. Oh, my God. Yes. Well, that's that is for sure true. That say more about that. Well, you know, a lot of times if someone is experiencing a life-threatening illness or not even life-threatening, just a chronic ailment, it can be very isolating to think,

gosh, I'm the only person who is dealing with this. I know we had a caller who said, I thought I was the only person that I knew who had eosinophilic esophagitis. And I had no one else to talk to. And hearing someone else talk about their eosinophilic esophagitis was really, really helpful to just hear someone else's perspective. That it dissolves that thread of loneliness, that sort of spiral of like, oh, you're in this silo. But if you realize that we

are actually all connected to one another, and whether we're labeled with the same ailment, energetically, we are all connected to one another. In fact, there are early studies that show this. They did studies in depressed mothers who had babies. They would look at brainwave activity in the babies. They could tell just based off of the baby's brainwave which mother was depressed. So what this was saying was essentially the baby was so attuned to the mother that the mother's depression,

which her brainwaves would be impacted by, the baby would attune itself to the same brainwave of the mother to maintain the connection. So what that tells us is that even from a very young age, we are very energetically attuned to one another. And this is why things like collective trauma hurt so deeply. If you experience pain, it actually hurts me too whether or not i recognize it i love her yeah so i was susan you have some questions you want to you want to come in here because this is she's absolutely i mean i totally get it like i mean i got gave birth to triplets so

i had a lot of brains in the house at one time but um spiritually you know, connecting through the brain is something that like psychics do. And they somehow are able to speak to people in our past who are in, you know, are in the afterlife. And I totally get that because I think our brains are all connected that way. way and the trauma the collective consciousness that we can put together to build a better tomorrow maybe on rumble because we have a few people on there that are spreading some really weird shit and i just i don't want to read it because it sucks my soul out okay let tom cigar and caleb read it no but i know but i i would like to see and i don't mean to change the subject but i'd like to see a chat about questions about what we're talking about instead of somebody just putting stuff up over and over that is getting in the way of the chat.

And I'd like to have a collective consciousness on our stream so that we can hear people's thoughts. Because people are typing out their thoughts as we go along. And we try to heal people here. We try to give everybody an opportunity to say what they need or get their questions asked. So, you know, if it also connects, this is how we connect to the world now, Drew and I.

And I love that he has the ability to help people even on their computer or in their bedroom or whatever. So, but I also get what you're talking about and I totally believe it. And I am going to stop talking now. I know, do you have any questions? Yeah. Well, I just, listen, I, I think that a lot of people have trauma.

They might need ayahuasca treatments or ketamine and all that stuff. As long as it's in a safe environment and a medical environment, I would love, you know, to say that I don't know anything about it, but I do know a lot of the psychic mediums that I know have done that, and that's how they connect. They've done the psychedelics? Yeah, like Cindy Kesa and probably more LSD. I'm not sure, but I think so, yes. It's usually still a Simon.

Yeah, but it works for some people. They swear by it. It's a very interesting process. I would never do it because I don't like to vomit. But it's really interesting what you're... I had like bone cracking, large yawns and I shook a lot. My body shook a lot. So the somatic release happens in different manners. Not everyone purges. You know, they say the medicine gives you exactly what you what you what you deserve. But I never vomited. I just yawned a lot.

No, but I mean, I find it fascinating. And I also love talking to spiritual people because they really like to be connected on this level all the time with the meditation and the psychic mediumship. I'm into like being friends with clairvoyants and who can see my dead ancestors. So it's kind of the same thing. John, be careful. Susan's going to be knocking on your door. I know she'd be great on dinner. Yeah. I would love to continue this in, in another capacity. Yeah. There's,

there's so much that I can show abilities to, are you have any psychic ability, nothing better than a psychic doctor. So I definitely, I'm definitely an empath and I've definitely had some, some things that have happened. Uh, it's a longer, it's a, it's a much longer story and that's probably another podcast, but like, there's definitely certain, um, intuitive, I guess it would be like a, like a clairvoyance type type stuff. Uh, there's definitely been stuff that has happened where um there was this sort of knowing there was sort of knowing but i can share in more detail some of those

stories later it would take a it would take a while it'd take a while well when you when you deal with people for a living as an internist you see life and death a lot and not always because you want to. And you do get a feeling inside of your heart when you know that there's a presence of somebody that appreciated you or loves you or, you know, I always feel like Drew had like a lot of guardian angels floating over him over the years because of all the good he did for the patients who, you know, had to unfortunately leave this world. But they do still live on i think he doesn't believe that but i think i think it's really good to be helpful to others in this lifetime because it will pay you back eventually and you know you may not know it's coming but it

will well well you know on that note they actually believe that this realm this sort of 3D realm that we're in, all it was, was this preparation for the afterlife. They were the Egyptians were all about the afterlife. So like they were like everything we're doing in this life is just to get us ready for the other life, the afterlife. So that was their way of life. They were like your view, Susan, was totally on board with the view of the ancient egyptians so you're not like alone in this view at all like there were whole societies that believed this thing well you know i see in our future a lot of i'm having a knowing experience a lot of ancestor worship out in the world you know we i don't think we do that as much here i mean i guess

we do in christianity too but well not, you know, there is a God. I will say for sure, there's no doubt that there's a lot more information going back and forth between people than our little conscious mind sort of can keep track of at all times. There's just a lot going back and forth. And it's very much back to the conversation we were having about the bodily based experiences and we have these huge parasympathetic plexuses you know across our body you know no one knows how those are integrated or what they do you know the ones that sits on over our chest over our abdomen down our pelvis and what what is that doing exactly how is that integrating information and sending information out and and why is the sympathetic nervous system organized the way it is?

Why is it organized like that? Why are there ganglia along the spinal column? Why are they there? Why is that? What is the processing? How did that evolve exactly? And it's all very vague. And then the parasympathetic system has a whole socio-emotional,

social exchange system that it's embedded in through our brachial pouches. So there's just tons of stuff that our little conscious brain can only hang on to. There is a lot of sort of written information out there. You know, one of the most helpful textbooks that for me helped integrate scientific understanding of the human body with the more chakra-based system or sort of the energetic system. It's this book called Opening to Spirit by Caroline Shola Arewa, where she very clearly links kind of the scientific evidence that we have with sort of the energetic models that let's say the ancient Egyptians attributed to and that has been a very helpful textbook to go back to every now and then to look at things from a more energetic perspective what's it called

again write down it's called opening to spirit by Shola a ray wa yeah well listen I I promised I would let you go when you have a drop dead out and we're there when you have to get going but let's keep the conversation going this has been wonderful this has been wonderful yeah it's such a privilege to meet you and thank you for all the work you're doing and we i there's a lot more to for us to work on together here so uh yes and do check out the podcast hypochondriac door sean hayes and dr priyanka wally the uh twitter handle at wally priyanka and uh you and i'll talk soon great meeting you yeah this has been an absolute pleasure thank you so much for having me i had so much fun thank you pleasure thank you so much. And let me just look here how you guys are. Thank you. And

Susan, that's right up your alley. Yeah, I know how much you love that, but I think you kind of believe it a little bit. I believe that there's more information than our conscious brain. I've seen it. I've seen what it does. And what she was talking about from the perspective of sort of expanded consciousness, that's another way of thinking about these things looking at these things and working with these things and look if it works for people to get them better i'm all about it i i just you know like i always say the risk reward is always what's important in medicine and until we can really define the risks and really select the particular patient profile that the risk is worth taking for the reward we're looking for, well, then I'm completely in.

You're a hardcore scientist. I am a hardcore scientist, but I'm a hardcore clinician. Do no harm is so ingrained into my head. And I've seen harm. I've seen it. And I've seen lots of questionable ethical outcomes where when somebody is in psychotherapy and they change, their person changes, the patient is in control of that. The patient is making the changes all the time. When you take a medicine that changes who you are, that's totally outside of your control. And whatever you become is outside of your control and that is concerning to me now you know we went down susan and i went down to costa rica and

visited a place called rhythmia where they're why didn't you mention it to her i thought you i was afraid you weren't allowed to talk no no i can talk about it but but but you know the leader of the the sort of person that runs that program was a horrible drug addict, narcissist, maybe sociopath, and had tried everything. And he had this amazing awakening. He's a whole new person now. Yeah, that guy needed to change who he was. It was not working. He was going to die.

It made sense to change who he was, who he is, into something different. But for the average person who's a little depressed or have some complex PTSD, then you got to kind of struggle with it. Well, there's also that sort of spiritual gathering of a bunch of people. So you don't just go down and like to a bar and down some ayahuasca. You have a group of people, they do all the yoga,

they do all the spiritual chanting, they go through the day, they kind of all come together, they bond and then whatever comes out of it they they have sort of a therapeutical setting where they get to talk about their traumas and relive it it's just like you know really heavy intense from what i heard i didn't see it i heard about it and i remember like getting there and and just realizing it You could just feel the vibe. I talked to a lot of those people, and I talked to a lot of the shamans too. Yeah, and people love that stuff.

A lot of people do. They have a lot of anxiety. They have a lot of trauma, and they do something like that, and it feels like they're a part of something. It is so obvious that it's going to be of benefit to people. It's not something that's questionable. But not all. Maybe not everybody, but some really like it.

At what risk, and how much, and how long, and how often? to people it's not something but not all maybe not everybody but some really like it at what risk at what risk and how much and how long and how often yeah you worry about the chemical change in the brain right i worry about doing it correctly so it doesn't hurt anybody that's all well i feel like they had a good medical committee there of people that did it it's not like a reason it's not fully approved yet so we're not saying hey go out and get some ayahuasca and have fun on your weekend we don't have the science yet we don't we have the science for mdma and couples therapy i feel like that with lsd too though we have the science with i think lsd is going to get passed right up i don't think that's going to be that useful the plant stuff is really where it's at but but i will just say that you know uh mdma

for couples therapy and um ketamine for mood disorders and for psychedelic psychotherapy approved yeah everyone's signed off these things work and they have very limited risk we need more like that so so anyway thank you all for being here a different kind of show today we appreciate it i loved it uh hope you liked it as well. Kimberly is asking, as an addiction specialist, can psychedelic therapy become an addiction in and of itself? Psychedelics, ketamine is addictive, but psychedelics themselves do not seem to trigger addictive pathology.

MDMA can, but not typically. But again, most hallucinogenics or those classes of medication, certainly the plant-based stuff, doesn't really become addictive. People can do a lot of it, but they don't develop the addictive syndrome. And in fact, the addictive syndrome that using, going back and not being able to stop doesn't really happen with these substances. And in fact, it seems to break that cycle somewhat. Again, for whom and for what setting and how often and which drug,

it's a whole question that has to be answered there. There's stuff coming in. There's stuff, information coming in. But addiction is a very specific syndrome. It's a very specific thing. We need to go to Egypt. I know. I knew she planted that thought in your head.

That'll be the next trip. Yeah. I just, you know, people, I've spoken a little bit about the fact that I took a trip to the Middle East a couple months ago, and one of the cast members went on to Egypt. He went on to Egypt and hung out. I've been researching the travel, and I don't think we're going to have to get a vaccine booster. For?

For Portugal. Yeah. Because they don't need it there but spain will be i don't know i think if you just take get the covid test or whatever you'll be okay i have a feeling i'm but i'm going to keep researching just to make sure because it always scares me that things are going to change yeah i i would rather the cdc is really backing off on travel and here's the reason coming back to the united states you don't need the pcr anymore or the or the antigen hey did you have the reason. Coming back to the United States, you don't need the PCR anymore or the antigen test. Caleb, do you have the picture of my eye to put up by any chance? Oh, I can get it.

We don't want you to get. Again, this is the, when I took the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, I developed spontaneously a black eye, which is a really serious symptom. It's a sign of clot formation in the transverse sinus or something going on in something called the cavernous sinus. Your wife just popped you in the eye with her elbow. It doesn't work like that. And so the cavernous sinus or the transverse sinus, there may have been some clot formation in there that gave me this black eye. And that is very, very, very, very serious. That can be associated with strokes and all kinds of things and that's what johnson and johnson did to me i'm watching carefully what mrna vaccines are doing to

other people i think it's the spike protein more than anything that's harming people i might if i there's my black eye if you can see it that was how i woke up that morning there you go susan thinks that's so funny look at that sad look yeah i have a bad eyeball today i didn't feel great i know we had to cover it up with makeup you're on fox news and but i was sick sick sick from it too and so yeah so me that i shouldn't laugh spike protein was terrible for me from covid the alpha and delta omicron didn't bother me i've now been exposed twice i spent three days in a locked room, one bedroom with Susan while she had active Omicron. I got nothing. A month later, my daughter had active Omicron. I

was exchanging utensils and traveling with her. I did not get Omicron. So my immunity seems to be good in and of itself. So there's no compelling reason for me to get it. I don't really want you to get it, but I'm going to keep researching it and everybody can be sure that if we don't have to get the vaccine, we will not get it. Should have called me Emo Drew. That's very funny. That's very, very funny. But, you know, if I, you know, I just, I want to see some more vaccine options out there too. You know, I've seen, I've had a bad reaction and i have a reaction to covid yeah you've had yeah you're also a cancer survivor and you also are you know you have other immunity problems like you always get sick easily it's always been the case which i never do but now i'm getting sick all the time for some reason and i'm

starting to wonder you know but it just catching my immune system i know well you're starting to wonder if the the vaccines affected i get these weird infections all the time it's so weird i've never had that but you know i just be getting old too who knows but um no you have an adverse reaction to this vaccine. The boys did too. So Paulina and I did not. So we've got some super gene. But I mean, if I had to do it, I would, but I don't really want to. Do you want me to take a couple calls before we wrap up here? Sure.

Okay. Let's talk to Adam is a code. I think that's what that says. There you are. Adam, what's going on? Uh-oh, why don't I hear him? He's not muted. He's on. He's doing everything he's supposed to do. Anything on our end? Oh, Jim Jefferson. Is it on now? There you are, Adam. Hey, what's going on? Well, I'm having a lot of trouble, and I'm freaking out about it.

Okay. And I don't know what to do. All right. Keep going. What's going on? Well, I can't make contact with anybody, and no matter what I try to do to make contact with people, I can't get in contact with anybody. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Like you're contacting us. I know. I mean, sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't work. And,

and like when I say things, um, people don't believe me and I, and I have trouble responding to people. It sounds crazy, but I'm not crazy. Are you taking any drugs or anything? No, that would be, I am not. I'm not on anything. I'm not on any kind of medication. I don't have any kind of disability or anything. And you said people don't understand you.

I understand you quite easily. I know. Well, if I said I'm a multi-billionaire and I signed a multi-million dollar recording contract in Israel and I can't get in touch with anybody in Israel, would you believe that? Because that's the truth. Well, you're a billionaire, so why don't you fly to Israel? Because I didn't make any contact with the people who have access to my account. And if you're a billionaire, what do you care? You could say you could set up your own recording studio, do it yourself. I know. All right.

That's my problem. You do yourself. I'm in a, I know I'm in a situation where I can't do anything right now. Well, you just, you haven't told me anything that would prevent you from doing anything. I don't have any access to any of the money in the bank account that would uh i don't have access right now why would you not have access to your own money well that's kind of the disturbing part to me and why i don't have access what is your

what does your attorney say i haven't got one yet. I've been trying to figure out. Then you're not a billionaire because billionaires have teams of attorneys, period. And there's not a billionaire on earth that doesn't have lots of attorneys. No one has become a billionaire without lots and lots and lots of legal input.

So, Joey, I mean, Adam, Joey, I, uh, I mean, Adam, I would talk to somebody about all this, uh, maybe sit in a room with somebody who can listen and figure this out with you. Better help.com. Better help.com.

Can do it. You know, can do it through the internet. That's something you can have our sponsors on another podcast. Uh, Joey, what's going on here? Uh,

Joey. Oh, there we go. Hey, what's up hi so um so this is a complicated question um i've been having headache well i have two questions if that's all right yeah um so i have been having headaches frequently almost every day um and i have an extensive medical past with what what's the what's the past uh history of brain cancer uh okay hydrocephalus okay and so um we're trying to figure out if i should if i should uh get my vp shunt adjusted or if it's possibly just chronic migraines. So as you know, so he's talking about what's called a ventricular peritoneal shunt, which is a tube that goes into the center of the brain and runs down your neck oftentimes and

spills into the abdomen to sort of spill off the excess pressure that's clogged up from the cancer sort of a simple way of describing it and as you know you probably had other revisions of that shot right yes my latest one was in 2020 and was the the symptomatology then similar to this or did you get an infection or something um it the the uh the patient just stopped working and i developed a huge gigantic my or not migraine a headache but was the quality of the headache like this one no okay not quite and do you have migraines per se yes so i had a really bad one on two days ago where i was vomiting and stuff so that's what we're we don't understand because sometimes it does get bad do they you have a neurosurgeon watching all this yes okay i just wanted to get your opinion my opinion is if you don't respond to more standard kinds of anti-migranist therapies, you have tons of reasons to have a headache, right?

You agree with me on that? Yes. Okay. start working aggressively with the neurosurgeon to make sure that whatever residual tumor left behind isn't doing this that the pressure is not building up in the cerebral spinal fluid causing this uh you know there are ways to check for that plus you know i'm sure they look inside your eyes every time you get you get you know the optic discs change when there's increased pressure in the head and uh and then you know, if you don't respond to anti-migranous therapy, I would keep looking aggressively for an explanation for this. And

there's a lot of ways. Now, let me get him back. There's so much more information that we need, but the neurosurgeons know this. I mean, they know what they're doing. And so, you know, if you've not had a recent MRI, will they let... I'm going to get Joey back. Hold on a second. Did I lose him here? This is a really tough, tough, challenging problems. And there he is. I'm going to bring you back.

Joey, when was your last MRI? Or can you get MRI now with the kind of shunt you have in? Unmute yourself. I can't hear you oh yeah yes i i've uh i've been to the er like five times in the past week or so yeah two weeks and they've done i'm sure they've done cat scans right yeah they said i have slit ventricles so that complicates things and have you can you get an mri with the shot you have in yes oh if yes it does throw the the setting off but i have to go afterwards to my neurosurgeon and get it adjusted when When was your last MRI? January.

Seems like there's an MRI in your future. That'd be a really simple test to do, although you have special steps you have to go through to deal with it once you had the MRI. But that seems, because you can, there are changes they can, they can infer lots of things from the MRI that will be clues to what's going on here and it just seems like mr would be the way to go okay guys thank you so

much for uh hanging out with us we appreciate it caleb thank you i know you put the uh credits up there about a half an hour ago and i kept going uh thank you all uh uh anthony brown in the house now uh yep thank you anthony uh let's see we'll look everybody else i'm just looking at the stream here see if there's anything else we need to address on the restream uh clifton duncan coming in on 23rd amy wolf is next week right it says to be determined but she's coming wednesday she's coming wednesday oh so it's confirmed we moved her to next wednesday and then dr malone will be the following wednesday uh you and Kelly great so we're looking forward to those uh and is the 23rd next Tuesday is that we're looking at when Clifton's coming in Clifton I just saw him on

some internet posts and I just thought this is an interesting dude I want to talk to him he just seemed like a really a together dude just has just great clear thoughts and i just thought yep this is a guy i would like to talk to and see if he can help us all kind of get together uh and again naomi is you know naomi is their own kind of genius if you ever read she's written some very important books and then all of a sudden she is now unable to be uh you know it's so weird that her peers have drummed her out of the business. It's very weird. And Bodies of Others is that story. And so we'll talk about that.

And have a good weekend, everybody. We will see you back on Tuesday, 3 o'clock Pacific time. Ta-ta. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not practicing medicine here.

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