This Past Weekend - E341 Ketamine Doctor Jason Pooler

Episode Date: May 21, 2021

Dr. Jason Pooler is the founder and medical director of the Chattanooga Ketamine Center. He and Theo discuss how ketamine therapy benefits people with addiction and trauma, the cultural stigmas and misconceptions of the substance and what Theo is hoping to achieve through his own recent ketamine therapy. Chattanooga Ketamine Center: https://www.infusionketamine.com Music “Shine” - Bishop Gunnhttp://bit.ly/Shine_BishopGunn​ Support our Sponsors Mack Weldon: https://mackweldon.com/TheoUpstart: https://upstart.com/TheoLiquid Death: https://liquiddeath.com New Merch: https://theovonstore.com​ New Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tourPodcastville mugs and digital prints available now at https://theovon.pixels.com Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to [e-mail]. Hit the Hotline [phone] Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: http://bit.ly/TPW_VideoHotline Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEKV_MOhwZ7OEcgFyLKilw Producer: Nick Davis https://instagram.com/realnickdavis Producer: Sean Dugan https://www.instagram.com/SeanDugan/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's episode is brought to you by Liquid Death. You know, it's good. What's up, guys? I want to let you know that I will be touring in St. Louis. We've added a show. Cincinnati, Charlotte, Durham. We've added a show. Chattanooga, Knoxville, Wilmington, Wilkes, Barr, Minneapolis, Charleston, Richmond, Baltimore, Albany. We've added a show. Buffalo, New York, and Columbus, Ohio. Columbus, we will be adding a show if we haven't already. Theovon.com slash tour. The only place to get tickets, all other sites, they're going to jack up the prices. So go to the links through Theovon.com slash tour. And thank you for supporting me in my dream. Recently, I've undergone ketamine therapy. And I wanted to speak with someone who is an expert

in that field and to learn more about my experience and learn more about the therapy overall. Today's guest is the founder and the medical director at the Chattanooga Ketamine Center. It is Dr. Jason Pooler. Dr. Jason Pooler, thanks for being in here today, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. And so you're a doctor of... Well, I'm an MD. So I'm a physician. And I'm... And a physician is what? Just a doctor? A medical doctor. Like you go to four years of medical school after college.

And that's sort of like Dr. Dre. That's not a doctor. No, it's like the... In the United States, the MD is sort of what people think of when they think of physician. Those are... That's the standard process. You go to medical school. And you usually do a residency to sort of subspecialize into a different area of training. And then you go to work. And so these days, you're working in an academy. How did you get working in the ketamine therapy and where are you at with it right now? Are you actually practicing it? Are you running a practice that provides the therapy to people?

So both. I was... It's kind of one of those long routes to get back to where you started. And I originally trained as a general surgeon a long time ago. And then I went into anesthesia and I did that for about a decade. And ketamine therapy sort of became more studied as a result of its use in anesthesia. And because it's an anesthesia medication, but it had some interesting side effects that they look at over time that they couldn't explain. And that research is what has brought us to ketamine therapy today in the use of treatment resistant depression and other mental health problems. What exactly is it used to treat the therapy? So you can use it to treat a lot of

different things. It depends on what you're doing with it. The way it is used most often is to help people who have had a lot of problems with depression who have failed a lot of other therapeutic approaches. And so what ketamine offers is a new tool to help people who are still suffering tremendously kind of springboard back onto the road of life. And it's really interesting that the way it works, it doesn't work like normal antidepressant medicines. It has nothing in common with them. It's almost a new technology then I guess in approaching treating depression. So the easiest way to describe it is why they started studying it to begin with. And that was back almost 20 years ago. Oh dang. They realized that when they gave ketamine to

patients getting operations, they required less narcotic pain medicine during the operation in the hospital and after the hospital stay than other patients. And they said, why are they having less pain? They had no explanation. So they looked at it and what they discovered was that what it does is it changes your perception of pain. So you can see something that you've experienced as less painful. Hence you don't need as much medication to cover your pain. I see. So you're not feeling as much pain because you're not seeing it. You're not seeing the seed of whatever it was as painful. So therefore the growth of the pain isn't as severe? At that time, the best way I like to describe it to people is I have two daughters and say we go get flu shots and one

daughter gets a flu shot and she's like, ow. And my other daughter, she gets a flu shot and she's her response is much more. We know that the shot is the same, but the response is different. So one is perceiving something with more distress than the other. And the way ketamine works is it helps your pain sort of shift from that more visceral response to a more that hurt but I'm okay response. It's like changing the lens on how you see pain so that you can see things and you can kind of look at them from a distance and sort of go around things that have happened to you and you can kind of connect to yourself from those places. And it's not spiritual, but it's not far from it. Right. Do you feel like it gives you like a look at yourself,

like you kind of see yourself? Whereas a lot of us have a tough time seeing ourselves because we're in ourselves, you know. Exactly. Yes. 100% because it's like if you're on the playing field, you can't really see what's going on and it sort of puts you up in the stands of your life. That's interesting. And you have a lot of places in your past or a lot of patients that have come to me is you're living your life and life's hard and people get hurt and depending on where they are in their life, they sort of package that up and they put it away because they don't want to feel that anymore. But it doesn't really go away. And so those, let's call them firewalls, there are no go places in your brain, but they're still sort of resonating through your existence.

So they're shaping typically your relationships and your career. Right. And that's like that that, what is that movie Kung Fu Panda? You know, I was thinking of Master Oogway in his, we often find our destiny by trying to avoid it. Oh yeah, interesting. Yeah, I was thinking of that movie where that boat gets stuck in Boston, I'm talking about where they go fishing, you know, I'm talking about. And there's all the storm, perfect storm. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. That didn't have a good ending though. Yeah, it didn't. But so I see what you're saying. So yeah, it kind of gives you an experience to step outside of yourself. So were you able to see that whenever you was working in anesthesia, were you able to see people having that experience? Like were you

able to visually see that? Or were you not able to grasp kind of the concept of it, of exactly that until I'm guessing later, which we haven't discussed yet, until you got into actually experience in using ketamine. When I was, when I was practicing anesthesia, I used that hit man, anesthesia guys, that hit man that rolls in there. That's the guy, a lot of people, some people don't even need, they'll be like, they just want the anesthesia. Some people, I have a buddy who's addicted to, he was addicted to inoculations. And he's breaking into Walgreens and doing all the damn, whatever it is. The COVID. I don't know if it was COVID is before this. So it was just doing flu shots, you know. But that's, you know, people get, people get, people get into certain

things, you know, but um, anyway, I don't know why I told you that exactly. But um, what I'm trying to tell you right now is just that, okay, so yeah, so were you able to see stuff whenever you were working in as an anesthesiologist? Were you able to see some of that? Or was it more like that you got a, a stronger idea to work with ketamine like and understand it later on. What I noticed was that when we used it, and we didn't use it a lot. I mean, you just give them it as part of anesthesia, they did better. So everything seemed to work better. They just sort of seemed more functional. They had, what we saw was they just, they felt better. They, they came out of it better. They, they got up, they got around. And um, and that was sort of how the ball got rolling on. Why is this

happening? And then, you know, then they started figuring out that, Hey, this is actually doing something in the brain for real, not just some accident. And then they started experimenting, not experimenting, but they started, you know, using it in a more of a clinical sense for people who are really struggling. Because before ketamine, the really the only thing that they had was, um, ECT, you know, putting electricity through your head. Right. And I have taken care of a lot of patients with that. And they did not like that. And I can see why. So what, did you ever have to do that to people? I did actually. Um, not, not as, I'm not even familiar with that. Yeah. I, I did it when I was an anesthesia, uh, resident, um, about a decade ago, they, they'd bring us a bunch

of patients from the, uh, psychiatric hospital and they'd line them up and we put them to sleep and the psychiatrist would shock their heads and we were like wide eyed and like, is this real? And I guess it helped. So you would put them to sleep first? Yeah. Very briefly. So you just, with, with, uh, like propofol or something. Okay. So you just, you would just make them unconscious just for a few minutes. And I remember this, this, the psychiatrist, she had like this head of hair that was like huge. And it was like gray and kind of like, uh, back to the future style. And, uh, and she would, she would put these probes on this guy, on these guys heads and like, and, and, you know, we're kids and we're just like, okay.

Wow. Is that them decently? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Cause we had to paralyze them because when you, when you shocked them, they'd be like, and what was supposed to be happening? So my understanding is kind of bootleg, you know, my understanding is it actually helps a lot of people. Um, but it is not readily accessible. So we were doing this in a hospital, in a recovery room with an anesthesia team, um, in sort of the critical care area of the hospital. So that's not something that is accessible to 99% of the population. Right. Any given day. And, and so that's sort of the problem. So, so, so this electroconvulsive therapy, this, uh, and with small electric currents are passed through the brain, triggering a brief seizure, changes in the right chemistry, quickly

reverse symptoms of certain mental health conditions. So this was, this was almost, this was kind of like a ketamine. This is, ketamine's kind of like that. No. Okay. No, that, um, this is what they were doing early on. This was the only alternative. Okay. So you go to provide what? Uh, relief from depression. Okay. I see what you're saying. Because they still have a therapy. I have friends that go and get electrocuted a little bit every day. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that is sort of like the, um, oh yeah, there's a good one. See that guy right there on the left? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. He's going deep. Yeah. That's what they did. And candle in his mouth. That dude's, that's, that's so when he bites down from the electricity, he doesn't

break his teeth. Oh my God. Yeah. Right. You know, so it's hard to, it's hard to get a lot of people to sign up for that. Cause I mean, you Google it and you see that and you're like, no, I'll pass. Yeah. They're grilling that brother up, man. Unfortunately, that's pretty heavy. It seems like to me. Um, so, so, so how did they evolve out of this? So this isn't really practiced readily anymore. It wasn't easy. You said there was, you had to have a lot of people on site to do it. So ECT is still used in limited form today. The, the problem with it is it's a pretty big deal to do. And so you don't have doctors offices doing ECT. These are special circumstances, usually with patients who have profound problems, usually patients who are in, uh, inpatient psychiatric

hospitals. These are not people who are out walking, trying to hold jobs. So this is a different level, different level, you know, people who come and seek care for depression, they, they, you know, get talked to by their doctor or their provider and they get, you know, put on a medication or something and they, they go to a therapist and they try and work through that. And usually at some point, um, some people sort of hit the wall with that. Uh, not everybody, but a lot of people are hitting the wall with it. And what they do is with ECT, uh, no, with just, just going to, um, so almost no one gets referred for ECT. Yeah. That's, I mean, because that seems like, yes, you're saying that's more like in psych wards and stuff like that, like bottom of the barrel, really, they're

trying to jump start. I mean, that looks like the damn Lord's jumper cables. It literally is. It's like you're, you're trying to jump off the brain, trying to get it hit to fire again. Yeah. And so that's like people who are like, you know, in, in hospitals, mostly people who are not holding down jobs, people who are not having relationships because they can't. Okay. Right. So, so, so the rest of people who are struggling, you know, they go to their doctor, they get put on antidepressants, they go to a lot of therapy. Right. That's me. That's been me. I'm an example of that. Yeah. Yeah. And so, so you're, you're sort of chugging along and, and you're existing, but you're not really, you know, if you look at like the road of life,

you want to be on the middle of it and you want to be comfortably cruising down it, you know? And these are the people who they're like on the shoulder or they fall off into this, they go off and on the side of their shoulder and they, they have a hard time pulling themselves back up. And it's because they're, the, the medicines, they help, but they don't necessarily get people to a place of wellbeing that they're seeking. You know, there's, there's existing and then there's like really living. Right. Yeah. I think I can definitely test testament to that. Yeah. I kind of feel like, like I don't understand. One of the reasons I went to get the ketamine therapy is because I didn't know why I'm still on antidepressants. It's like one of the

weirdest medicines that, you know, I was having a tough time when I was like 20 and I went in, they put it on, they put me on it or I agreed to be on it. You know, I mean, I took part in it and, and then now 20 years later, I'm still on it. So it's kind of like, like if you broke your leg, you wouldn't have a cast on forever probably. So some of that to me is like, what's going on here? Like, is this something I need to be on forever? So that's one of the reasons that I went in, probably to check it out, you know? And, you know, it's the, the work that is being done in this is, is amazing. I mean, there are some very smart people who sort of helped shape this sort of treatment path. And the way I look at it is I look at people who come to me and they have

all these symptoms. They're, they're depressed, they're anxious, they can't sleep. They're, they have like attention problems. They, they, they zone out because they can't zone in. Then you have people who are like trying to kill themselves or they're addicted to things. And what it really is, is somewhere within them, they have a lot of pain. Okay. They have a lot of distress. Something is primarily wrong. And that is not going away with the antidepressants. They're just more like a bandaid to it. They're covering the symptom as opposed to addressing the symptom. So the driver is usually pain that is from somewhere in that person's past that they have not been able to truly grieve over and feel like sort of reconnected to

themselves. And, and as you probably experienced to some degree, when you went into the ketamine room, you could see your pain, you could see around in yourself, and you could kind of go places, those, those firewalls, you could kind of look in places that you couldn't look in before, because you had the capacity to, you were sort of protected by the ketamine. So you could look around corners in your mind and see, oh yeah, that's there. You know, I wish I'd had a better, I was in there with a therapist. And I think they were just more of like there if I had an issue. I sometimes wish that somebody would have been like prodding me more or telling me how to, it's almost like when you go snorkeling. That's what it kind of felt like a

little bit. It was like, I'm looking at a lot was going on, you know, if I felt like I'm a roller, I'm on a roller coaster, I felt like the world is kind of, I felt like I was on Space Mountain sometimes with my eyes closed, you know, just kind of like moving through like, Did you have the round shapes or the square shapes? I mean, I, I mean, I think there was a turf war going on because there was a lot of, there was some real, I think it was a lot of shapes out there, you know, it was definitely like somebody was, I mean, if I remember one time literally yelling out that I was a cryptocurrency, I thought I was like, I went, it got pretty gnarly, you know, like it got pretty gnarly.

Like I remember one time thinking, there's no way I'm going to end up back in my chair in this therapist's office. I don't know how I'm going to get there from where I am. Yeah, I had some fun, you know, so that kind of stuff was kind of exciting. And I think sometimes I got too caught looking at the, the, the experience and not using the experience. Right. So that's why I wish that there had been more before I went in to get it that I had had more of an understanding of how to navigate the universe a little bit and how to use the experience. Yeah.

Because that I, that I didn't have. That, that's sort of a, so we're learning as we go. Right. And so what, and this, this is relatively recent ketamine assisted psychotherapy. So what is it? And, and that's exactly what we're talking about is we know ketamine helps, we know it works. Do we know exactly how it works? People are debating it because you have competing interests, you have competing ideologies, but we know that people feel better. Now, what we want to try and do is make that a more durable state, not you come in and get

your ketamine, you feel good for a couple of days and then you, you come back a month later and you get more ketamine because that's going to present a societal problem in time. If you're, if you're always on ketamine, you know, we've kind of done the opiate thing. So that, that's one thing that, that is, we don't want to do because you have some places that are like giving you to go home with. And that is sort of like, um, you can do a lot more with ketamine assisted psychotherapy. You can use that place you're in to visit the pain that has brought you to this distress state. Yeah. There was a moment, I remember there was a moment where I got to see my dad be around my dad,

right? And I'd never, my dad died when I was like 16 and he was really older, man. He was 86 when he passed away and I was 16. So he was older when I was born. He was an adult, you know, he was senior citizen, but, um, I got to have like this experience around him. And it was like a real, like it felt like I was around him and I got to let him, I got to, you know, I felt like my dad never knew how much I loved him. I felt like I had just never gotten to an age where I could tell him that I loved him, you know, and I didn't realize how much that was kind of haunting me, I think somewhere inside of me, you know, like, um, exactly. I just never knew like that. That was such a big thing going on underneath me somewhere. And, uh, and I literally got to have a moment or

a little bit of a couple of moments with him in a emotional state kind of, it felt like anyway, to me, it felt very real to me that I was letting him know, uh, how much I loved him. Yeah. And that, and that's priceless because there's no, there was no other way to do that. I mean, there may, there may have been, but I hadn't found that yet. Yeah. And that, that is like core to what, um, ketamine is psychotherapy gives people access to. It's like those little gaps, those little holes in our heart that, that happened to us when we're young shape a lot of our life. And so to be able to reach back in time and, and find yourself then and there and that, that that sort of that grief, pain of separation that you, you didn't get to have with him. You could

connect to yourself and, and sort of complete almost in a way like the grieving process. So you could release that tension from yourself. Yeah. That, that, that distress that's, that's like, that's in there and it's always in there. And it's, you don't know how to get it out. And you're pushing through life and a couple of decades go by and you're like, I'm still haunted by things. And some people are not able to even see some of those things because I've taken care of people. I mean, I've taken care of some pretty funny people, you know, like I have trees on my, in my room where I do it. And they're like sitting there and they're, you know, they're giggling and, and you know, they're like, oh, that tree just got up and ran out of

here. And I'm like, okay. And, but then some of them started singing for me. And then some people start like trying to do yoga poses in their chair. Really? And I'm like, I'm like, hey, you can't quite do that right now. Right. And they, you know, no, I mean, it's, it gets a little wild. Well, I remember even being a child, I remember getting something was wrong with my penis when I was young and they had to like, like I had like a small urine hole or whatever. I mean, I could pee probably 11 feet. You know what I'm saying? Like I could really pee. And it was people were like, oh, he's magic and stuff. People, you know, small town people think you're, you know, with a rival church or something, you know, all kind of shit. But so anyway, yeah, they said they had to cut

the whole larger on my urethra. I think it's good. So I remember we went in and they put me in anesthesia. And when I came out, I asked where all the big black women are at. And I remember the doctor telling my mom that like, we thought it was just the craziest thing. And my mom had said that before when I was even younger, I'd had a surgery and I had a large, a big black nurse was my nurse was the nurse. So I wonder if maybe there was just some moment that was like stuck in my head, like through those little kind of deals. But but anyway, I don't know why I went off on this tangent. But I guess I just wanted to know like, yeah, I guess is there what's happening during the experience when somebody gets the ketamine? What's happening? So the way the way I do it is I put

an IV in them so I can like turn it up and turn it down so you can slow down if they start getting overwhelmed. Okay, because sometimes people you can you can see it, you know, they're like, because it's like, there are lots coming at them. And and I'm sitting there and and you they tend to start having like their blood pressure and heart rate go up because they're getting like they're seeing stuff. And so you want to kind of try to minimize that you want to make it constructive, yet sufficient to like have the experience, it can't be so low that you're like, I didn't feel anything. Right. But you don't want to like, you know, ruin them. I mean, not ruin them. But you don't want to make it so overwhelming. It's no longer useful.

Right. I see what you're saying. Yes. So you want to kind of have a find a balance. And yeah, that's what the one I did, the place that I went, they they did it. And then they kind of just it was a low dose until they kind of got to a level where they could where it seemed like it was manageable and effective, I guess, to communicate with the therapist. Yeah. Because what I do is, you know, the way the research was done is you do six, six infusions. And I like to have them come in. And I don't usually have somebody start ketamine right away. I usually want to talk to them because I want to know like their life narrative to some degree. And then you kind of get an idea where where the boundaries are, like, you can tell like, I go through this

thing where I'm like, okay, how was, you know, where'd you live? Where'd you move? How was that place? How was this place? How was first grade? How was second grade? And you keep going through it. And things start popping up pretty fast. And people don't realize what's in their head. And then they're like, Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. And but you can kind of tell, and this is not in ketamine, this is just sort of getting to know them, because you got to know what are you going to do with the ketamine experience. So I want to have like a roadmap. Right. And and then as we do this, the first couple of sessions, you want to get there, they're sort of like get everything chugging, you just want to get them into a better state of well being so that their

capacity to examine some of these long standing things is available to them. Okay, you don't want them to not be able to to sort of explore this. You want them to be in fighting good enough fighting shape that they're like, I can do this. And we go through it. And I've had people who couldn't remember entire years of their lives. These are smart, very successful people who who have been, it's like something's been wrong their whole life. And, and you start going through it with them. And it keeps going back further and further and further and sort of like the, the beginning of the flick of the wrist on that little thread of pain. And, and a lot of times these little firewalls conceal it. And then they have their ahas and they remember more and more and

more. And I'm not telling them what to remember. I'm just listening. And so what are examples of some things, right? And what are some examples of so, so, well, what are some examples of things that people could remember kind of, if you can share and that you don't have to be specific to that person, obviously. Right. So I had a patient who had a series of moves that were sort of stressful on him as a child. And it's one of the, after one of the moves, he was very seriously disciplined by his, by his dad to such a degree that, that he didn't remember it until we sort of toggled the switches around it. And we started sort of gently like, how is this location? He was like, that was warm. That was nice. How was this location where you moved to?

I didn't like it. How was this house you lived in, in this place? I don't remember. How was this house? I remember not being happy. So already we're pointing to narrowing it, narrowing it. Yeah. And he didn't remember in the ketamine session. And then later that night, he did. And so then we came back around the next time and we talked about it. And we sort of work into the, and you know, I, I, I approach this with, I guess the right word is like a great deal of reverence. You know, these people are, are sharing with me their emotional pain. And I'm helping or trying to help them connect to themselves so they can feel whole. Because all this, all this distress that people have in a way, it's like incomplete

grieving. Yeah. And people can't cry that much. And so they, they sock it away. And, and what the ketamine does is it allows you an opportunity to kind of go back in places that you can't do awake. You just can't. Yeah. And I've seen that. I've seen patients, I start talking and I'm, you can tell they're like, they don't want to talk about it. You know, I had a lady who I took care of who, I was the first person she told in 40 years that she was raped in high school. And she's, you know, she's in her sixties and her life has been tough. And, you know, so her life has been shaped by fear. Right. Yeah. I'm sure fear, probably feeling like she couldn't tell people things, shame. And it shaped her relationship. So she was in, you know, not the best relationships

because she was put in this state by this experience that had shaped her ability to interact with life. Right. And here we are 40 years later. And she's a wonderful lady. And, and I'm, it's, that's why I mean, it's like, I feel, I approach it with a great deal. I think the right word is reverence because it's, it's not sad, but it is, it is like a very important, meaningful and tender thing to do. Yeah. 100% man. Yeah. I feel sometimes like I'm trying to make rope out of like the tattered, the very frayed pieces of like, of my youth kind of, as I get older, you know, you know, and not very frayed. I don't want to, I'm not trying to have any self pity or something, but I feel like that that's what you try to, as you, as you get older, you're just still

trying to make this rope or make a knot out of this, make different knots out of rope that was kind of like ramshackley kind of tied to the beginning of the foundation at certain points. Yeah. The underpinnings of wellness start early. Yeah. And, and usually attachment, feeling, you know, attachment injury is, is no joke. So most children, what I mean most in 99.999% of kids are loved by their parents. Okay. But what happens is parents can show this much love and the child actually needs more love than, than they get. And it's not that there's a malicious thing, it's just there's a mismatch. Right. And that, that mismatch creates this like this emptiness, the start of loss or grief or, or not being cared for.

And depending on how it gets nudged in life, it starts showing up as, you know, how they choose, you know, relationships, how they try to navigate life. And, and if it's really bad, then they start having other things pop up and, and they get on medicine and it works or it doesn't, you know, medicines do work. So let's, let's not say they don't work, but, but they don't work great. Debt can often feel like an uphill battle. If you're carrying a credit card balance and you keep chipping at that little daddy and you keep chip chopping at it, but you can't really get a big chunk, you only chip chopping and not chunking. Well, upstart can help you. Upstart is the easiest and fastest way to pay off your debt with a personal loan all online. Whether it's paying

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it on right now. For 20% off your first order and to support the podcast, visit Mack Weldon.com slash Theo and enter promo code Theo. That's M-A-C-K-W-E-L-D-O-N.com slash Theo. That's right. 20% off your first order, Mack Weldon.com slash Theo, enter promo code Theo. Yeah, I notice, I start to notice that the behaviors that I feel like affect me when I was young are behaviors that I now exhibit and ones that I imitate towards others that kind of keep me in a place that is comfortable, even though it's not the best place that I want to be in a lot of times. The devil you know. Yeah, it's interesting, man. So when people go under the under the solution under the ketamine therapy, right? Right. So I remember like, I mean, I remember

like I would, yeah, I wish I'd had, I think when I went and met with the therapist, we started the same day that I went. So I do wish that I'd had a little bit more of a breadth of communication with them. So I'd have probably had just so that there was a better, so that we're like, okay, these are five points that we want to try and attack, you know, or meander around or things, because sometimes I felt like, not that I was wasting my time, but that I was wasting the experience. And I may not have been, it could just be me being judgmental, but because I think it was helpful, but there were times where I felt like, like I was just kind of swimming through some of the same waters without really knowing what we were looking for trying to do. That's

sort of the- But that may be okay. Maybe that's just what you do sometimes with it. Well, and that's why, you know, this is an ongoing evolution and care, because ketamine assisted psychotherapy really hasn't existed very long, because you're right. People were like, okay, what are we doing with it? And then as we started to, you know, explore what we could do with it, we realized that, hey, we can do a lot more than we thought. When did it start? Ketamine assisted psychotherapy? Yeah, even just ketamine assist, like, when did ketamine start? I mean, everybody's always called it a horse-tranq all the time, you know? Well, ketamine was originally, I think it was invented in what, the 50s or 60s? And it is, it's an anesthesia medicine.

So horse-tranquilizer anesthesia, it's an, it's a dissociative anesthetic by definition. Okay. So you use it to put, help put people to sleep for operations or procedures. And is it found in nature or no, it's not? No, it's made, no. Not that we know it, it could be out there. Do you think it could be or no? Probably not. But yeah, there are other things that are sort of like... Synthesizing 62 by professor who's testing on animals, which provided promising results. It was used for testing on human prisoners in 64. There you go. I didn't know that. Proofs act faster and reduced toxic behavior, which made it the preferable anesthetic choice over

PCP. Damn. It's interesting. It's amazing how many drugs used to be just available. Like I remember I was working on, I was working in Mississippi on a farm for a while and the man said that they used to buy ecstasy at the bar. They had it like in a jar on the bar and you could go buy it. You could buy a tab of ecstasy. Like before it was, I guess illegalized, you know? Like there was a brief time where it was a legal drug you could buy. Prior to like, I think it was 1970, the LSD and all that psychedelic research was actually going really strong. And what happened was, I think the government finally said enough because it was recreating too much. That was when you had sort of like the hippies and LSD and all that stuff. And so when they shut it down, they shut down all the research

too. So it clobbered the ability to investigate all these kind of interesting substances for real clinical aid use. Rolled the ball forward 20, 30 years and now you actually have like, the government is very interested in some of these therapies. And the real reason is the state of veteran health. You have so many veterans that are struggling and they have these organizations that are trying to reach out to veterans, but the suicide rate among veterans is just really horrible. Wow. I didn't even know that. Yeah. I saw a metric a while ago. It was like more combat veterans from Afghanistan have killed themselves than have died in the line of fire. So you think about the, they're that distressed and then they come back here and they just go back

to work and it doesn't work that way. Yeah. And so the government's funding research on this stuff because they got to figure out how to help people. Yeah, it'll help save them money too if they can not put it right there, but also yes. It is, but it's actually providing the gas for helping actual therapies that work as opposed to just throwing dollar bills at things. Yeah. So that's, you know, I'll take it, you know, if we can help get serious about it. Yeah, for sure. And so those are types of people. So can people really use this therapy to get off of antidepressants? And how does that work? Short answer is don't know. What I have seen and like I said, this is sort of on the fly. Like this whole body of knowledge has grown a lot is people who have

profound distressors in their life that are under addressed are going to have probably pressure to have symptoms. So they're going to be in depressed states. And if you can help people through something like ketamine, this is psychotherapy, resolve those longstanding pains of emotion in them, then it stands to the reason that the odds of them finding a way forward are better. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's sort of a wishy-washy statement, but it's the same thing. It's like, like, you know, at my place, we sort of break down why people are depressed. And it's and you sort of break them into these categories where you have your groups that's more like serotonin. And then you have your dopamine people. So I actually asked my

patients, I'm like, what gets you high? I'm like, what's booze do for you? Or what's cocaine do for you? And or shopping or gambling or because you're trying to stratify them. Like, what's goosing them? Right, right, right. And so that helps you pick like your therapy. Because if you got a guy who can't stand cocaine or stimulants like that, then it's probably he's probably needs more serotonin. So you can sort of shape what you do for them to help them with that. And you can mix it. So it's all becoming like this basket of ketamine sits alongside a lot of other tools. And if you're using all of them together, and you're helping this person who comes to you unpack what you're carrying, and you give them better tools in their pack to go on, then the odds of

them staying on the road are better. Right. And that's sort of like how like integrative psychiatry works now. It's like, you don't just say, hey, here's your prescription. Get out of my face. You actually sit down and you talk to me and find out why they're suffering. Yeah. Not, oh, you have depression. It's like, okay, what's wrong? What hurts? When did it get started? Right. How's it shaped you? Can you talk about it? And what level of detail can you talk about it? And that's why I mean, it's, it's a very, like, almost, it's a very intimate conversation. Yeah, you know, that's a great, that's a great word, intimate. I felt, it felt really intimate. You know, I remember, I mean, right when I started to go under, I just

started tears just like rolled out of my eyes, you know, like, I don't even know what was going on really. You know, I think it could have just been like, I mean, me, I'm always probably 30% sad. So who knows what it was, you know, but, but I remember it just being pretty emotional right out of the gate. And the first day I was dehydrated, literally just from like crying, I think half of the whole session, like, in some of it, I didn't even realize I was crying, like I didn't even really feel it because I was kind of also, you get kind of your kind of anesthetized in a way. So the main part of me that's still awake is kind of this kind of that all knowing place inside of your head where you have ideas and stuff, you know, like whenever you're thinking

about something, you envision something like that place, you know, I have had quite a few patients that I tell them this, I'm like, Hey, you know, they a lot of them tend to feel pretty quiet. Like they have like all the the mental movie is sort of taking a break when they're when they're done for their session for the day. And they kind of like that. I'm like, Yeah, just roll with that. Don't do any homework. Just sort of like try to, you know, I try to keep them on zero. And I say, it is, you know, very possible that if you just start burst out into tears later tonight, that's normal. Yeah. That means like you're, you've connected to something. And that's like an overdue release. And so I remember I was talking to this, this young lady and she was, she was

upset. She was like, What am I crying? I can't stop crying. I was like, I was like, you're going to hate me for saying this, but this is very good. Yeah. Because she was just releasing all this thing that she had packed up in her. And in the next day, she kind of like, you know, it's like after a good cry, you like, but she cried, you know, a big chunk of her life out in a night. And yeah, yeah, that's, that's a great way to say it. I think it felt like that, like just a lot of stuff that was going on. You kind of got to like take the pressure valve off a little bit in some ways. But yeah, I would like to have another experience with it in the future and be able to know going in, have more of a game plan going in so that I can, but then one of my

issues sometimes is controlling things. So it's interesting. So I don't want to go in sometimes to that and try to manipulate, you know, control the situation, you know, so which might not even be possible under that. It kind of depends on your mindset on it. You know, I think what I try to do is I try to give people a lot of sort of neutralizing information so that they understand exactly what's, you know, the more you understand what's going on and why we're doing this, they sort of their, their, their guard starts to come down because really, if you don't want it to work, it's not going to work. And so you want them to be like, okay, I understand why this is going to happen. And so one of the best things I like to do actually is, is find out

what they can do with it. So I do this thing where I give my patients a, it's a, it's like a butcher paper. It's, you know, it comes off a ream, but it's actually graph paper and I haven't put it up on the wall. And we do these five columns and it's your age down the middle, then where you lived, what your relationships were, what your activities were, and what your substances were. And you just sort of write it down from zero to today. And if they can do that, then you can kind of get a, they can sort of look at their life. And if they can't do that, that sort of shows me where we need to sort of use ketamine to examine some things that are like sort of like they're no go zones. And I got a number of guys who they can't finish it because it's sort of like,

you can't finish it. And if you can't finish it, then, you know, I, you know, I don't know how we're going to finish it in this context without it being emotionally brutal on you. Right. And that's what the ketamine allows is it takes the edge off looking at things that you can't look at. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was interesting. Like, I wonder if there were things where maybe my, my being or whatever was just afraid to, to unwind them or just couldn't, you know, or couldn't find like the key, the way into them. Sometimes it's so, it's such a small opening into getting into like an old feeling or an old way. I see that pop up all the time. Yeah. It's pretty fascinating. We got a question that came in right here from a young gentleman right here.

This seemed like a decent guy right here. What up? I got a question for Dr. Poole and for Theo. So I wanted to start off, Dr. Poole, what is the negative connotations with the ketamine therapy and then what would be your argument against that? Theo, what was your favorite thing about ketamine therapy versus regular therapy? Gang, gang. That's a good question. What you got, Dr? So the negative connotations, I think the, the societal thing is there's sort of a societal sort of frown against like psychedelics in general. And, you know, it got started back probably with like the hippies and LSD. And so you kind of get this blanket, oh, this is that psychedelic hippie trippy stuff. And so it can marginalize its actual utility as a real medical

therapy. And there's an organization called MAPS that is dedicated to doing high quality research to counterbalance that notion that this is like, you know, step into my van type stuff and to make it legitimate and the proper studies and the proper funding from, you know, like the DOD and things like that, because they want it to be as legitimate as possible. Yeah, it's interesting. You almost, you really have to, like, there has to be a group kind of monitoring that branding and how that really, how it hits the public and stuff like that. It's a little wild Westie right now. They've even said it in some of the publications because the, you know, all the ketamine right now, it's technically off-label the way everybody's using it. Not a lot of medicines

get used off-label all the time. So is that a problem? No, but it needs to be looked at down the road because, you know, it's like those side-out life skits in the 80s where, you know, you go to your doctor and you get a, hey, doc, I got a, I got a, I got a, you know, a pinky hurts. You go, oh, here's a prescription for some weed. You know, remember those skits that, that were like that? And it's like, you got to, you got to be careful. You don't have the slippery slope because I get, I get mailings from places. They want to ship me. I'm like ketamine lozenges and stuff. And that's, that's not going to, it's not going to go well. Yeah, I don't, I had six infusions, like you're talking about, like you, like you mentioned, is probably the

protocol, probably protocol, not protocol, but it's the best. No, it's the best. That's the research. That's the research. That is what they fared it out in the research was the most legitimate and best way to proceed is, is what you did. And after four, I felt good after four. The last two, I felt a little, it got a little griswally, you know, I felt like I was on a, you know, it felt like I was just on a kind of a gnarly vacation, you know, it's like, I don't really know if I needed the last two or, or maybe I did. I don't know. I just, I think at that point, I started to think, I wish I had a better game plan going into this so I could use it to the best of my ability. I didn't know if I was using it to the best of my ability. The therapist was saying,

and it was a great, it was a great place and everything, but he was saying that it work, it'll work kind of no matter what there is. Is there some truth to that that it'll work no matter what? Yes. So we know it works. Okay. The question is, is how long does it work? Right. And, and what the sort of like the industry, the professional side of this industry, industry is trying to do is make this a, a very serious one time attempt to get as much utility out of it so that, that the effect is very durable. And that's why you got to do all the side work with it. And that's why you want really, really good assisted psychotherapy because you can sort of unwind things that are still sort of in the background if you're, if

you're sort of poking around. And the, and the more things you can resolve, the more your heart can be at rest. The odds of you needing more of it are less. And that's very desirable. So, you know, like at my place, I've only had one patient ever need a booster. And he was a, he's a veteran. And his, there's some, you know, there's some confounders with that. But, but most people are, are, and I don't let them go either. I don't like, when they come to me, I take them on and, and we get to know them on the front end and we're following them on the back end. And I'm taking care of all their other sort of issues. I don't, I don't like send them to places to, you know, you, you come to me and I work with you. And the idea is that

we're here to get you into a better place of durable well-being. We're not here to give you ketamine. Right. It's not, you're not like a sawmill. You're doing actual boarding kind of, you're actually bringing them on. What is the number one thing that a lot of veterans struggle with or what is, what is the, so some of that trauma you always hear about the PTSD. There's two things actually that, and it's actually interesting the way this is starting to pop up. So PTSD and actually concussions. So traumatic brain injuries. If you take somebody who has been in combat and has had ordinance exploding around them and they've been taking those shock waves to their head, even though they look fine, it's, hasn't a pretty serious

depressive effect. Right. And it's, I talked to a guy out in Colorado last week about this. They're, they're trying to find ways to heal these guys because they tend to be like very sensitive to emotional dysregulation because you think about, you take a fishbowl and you put, you cook up like 30, 30 bags of ramen. Okay. And you, and you put it in a fishbowl. How big a bowl? Like, like a goldfish bowl. So it's like completely full of noodles, right? Okay. Say that's your brain. And then you hit it with a bat. The noodles are going to move. So if you're taking concussions repeatedly, it's going to scramble your noodle. Yeah. And so those are nerve connections that, that are responsible for your daily function. And as

those get ripped apart and try to heal, they don't necessarily get it right all the time. And so like people are, they're, they're, they're hurt in a way that's hard to address. Interesting. Yeah. Because it doesn't seem like we're meant to be bad at around that much, you know? No, not at all. So those are some of the most common things you see as far as veterans is like stuff from concussion stuff. That's, that's one. Okay. The other one is, is frankly, the, the grossness of war. I mean, you see two of your buddies incinerated in front of you. And that gets on a record that won't come out of your head. And, and that's all they can see. So then they get like super, super sensitized. So, so they're stuck in this place in their mind

where they're still driving down that road when that car bomb went off. And so when they hear a door slam or something, that, that's a neural circuit that got burned in in the strongest of ways. So they have this, they have this nerve pathway that, that's just seared into you. And so it's on alert because it's still there. And so your neighbor, boom, closes the door, you're like, and, or you hit the deck, or you do those kind of things. And so that's one of the things that, you know, they're proposing that they use ketamine to work with, you know, patients on. And why does trauma create such strong like neuropathways or like connection? Does that make sense? The, and does it, it sounds like it must, right? It does because

so it's, it's post traumatic stress. What, what happens is when something happens to you, you form a temporary memory. Okay. Like what'd you eat for dinner last night? You could probably tell me what it is. Salad. But, but two years from now, two years ago, what'd you eat for dinner? I have no idea. Yeah, I don't know. So intense experiences make different signals. Like, right, but I could tell you if I was on like a boat accident. Correct. Now ramp that up to about 11. And, and we're Andrea Gale. And yeah, then it gets pretty deep. And then, then you can't forget about it because it's, it's, it's sort of your, your, your neurochemistry has decided that this needs to be a permanent reminder, probably from a more. For safety, probably. Yeah. More of a

like fight, flight or flee type thing. And so given where we are in the world today. So it's inflammation kind of then. Yeah. So those are, yeah, because that's the craziest thing about it is, is the way the immune system works with your mind is, is phenomenal. Like, you can even measure it now. Like, you know how when you get the flu, you, you feel crummy, you don't want to get off the couch. Food doesn't taste good. Sex isn't interesting. All that stuff goes away. Right. Imagine being like that, walking around, living life like that. That happens because your immune system knocks out your dopamine system. So you don't have access to your dopamine system because you're sick, because of your immune system, because you're supposed to be healing under a tree.

But if you're walking around and you have your immune system activated, you begin to look like somebody who doesn't have access to the feel good. Wait, explain that to me again. Sorry, I got lost. So, so your immune system, when you're sick, takes your, your dopamine system offline. Oh, that's just what it does. That's what it does that on purpose so you can heal. Oh, because they don't want you trying to feel good because then you're not going to heal. Correct. Right. Got it. But if you're walking around, interesting, if you're walking around day in and day out, year and year out, and your immune system is slightly activated, and your dopamine system is always offline, then life is flat and feeling good is inaccessible to

you. And are you depressed or do you just not have access to your dopamine system? Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, that's a great question. And you can check that with, it's actually pretty straightforward to check now. Now, you got to get a simple lab drawn to see if your immune system is activated. And that helps point therapy. So like what I do is when people come to me is I, I check some labs on them, I get to know them a little bit in ways that I do my thing. And so I kind of want to know where they're at. Amen. So we can start shaping what comes next. And that's before we take them in the room because I look at it as I want, I want this to be as useful as possible.

Right. And then so that when we get to the other side of it, we still are learning things, but like I had a patient who he was done. Okay. But something else popped up in his mind because he was having this problem where on a regular basis, he would have panic attacks at a certain time of day. Okay. Like clockwork. And I talked to him and I was like, what time of day did your dad get home when you were a kid? And he just stopped at the same time of day all his life. Wow. That's crazy. But he was able to see it then because before he couldn't even see it. But now we could talk about it and resolve it. And so he was able to see it when he was under the therapy.

After, afterwards. So we were done. This popped up even later because he was saying, you know, I'm doing pretty good, but I still have this one thing that's popping up on me. And I said, well, what is it? We talked about it. And I asked him and he's like, yeah, yeah. What, um, what could you give a question that came up Sean? Sorry, let's get to that. Oh, actually, this is a comedian friend of mine, Shane Moss, who he is a psycho knot. So he's like a man who he's a very funny man. And he also is a man who has experimented with different psychedelics and stuff over the years to have experiences just like an astronaut would with like outer space. Right. He's kind of done them with like inner space. So awesome to have this from him.

Theo Shane Moss here in case you can't recognize me. I hear you're getting ketamine treatment. I think that's fantastic. Very, very worth exploring. See if it suits you. Psychedelics are not always the most linear thing in the world compared to other medications or drugs or what have you, but mental health isn't a linear thing either. And so I wish you the best of luck. I hope it shows some improvements. Thanks man. And my question for your guest is I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about experiential versus chemical change rather than taking say antidepressant every day and altering your chemical imbalance or whatever. A psychedelic journey is a lot more about using that temporary chemical chemically induced change to have more

kind of personal breakthroughs and insights. And those insights are kind of what leads to the personal growth more than some permanent chemical change that you're doing or a long-term change that you're doing to your mind. Oh yeah. Thanks brother. So this is like a two-headed animal here because you have like the neurochemistry of what happens. And then from there you have what you experience as a result of the neurochemistry. And he hit the nail on the head with that is therapy like this allows you to have... So you're getting therapy or you're getting mood elevation from either therapists or from like a medication you're on regularly. Yeah. Well, you have this thing where it's called a rapid gain. So you're cruising along and

all of a sudden you have something that goes way up. You're like, oh man, I figured that out and it goes like that. But it doesn't work like that. You actually have to go for a long time and you don't have those very often with therapy. Right. So what ketamine does and psychedelics is it's like a lot of access to rapid insight for a prolonged period of time relative to say going to therapy for five years. Right. And it could be a couple hours, a couple minutes, actual portal. Is that what you mean? Kind of like that? Well, that's where you talk about what happens is we know that ketamine helps nerves grow. So if you have nerves that are firing in a way that is causing you to have a depressed mood state or anxiety and you basically

soak those in ketamine for a say a period of a couple of weeks with six infusions, you can get some plasticity in how those nerves work. So you can change how those nerves are connected. They grow a little bit. They actually like they've seen it on the under microscopes. These nerves actually grow little sprouts and they can change. And so you're enhancing your ability to change at like a microscopic level. Amen. And that translates into like a change in perspective on things. Yeah. Sort of metaphysically. I mean, this is kind of like we're going into the realm between electron microscopy and spirituality. You know what I mean? But it is. So if you look at how a person experiences it is that they can see what they've experienced. They can find things

that they've experienced and connect to themselves more fully. And if they can be a more full person and have less pain carried in them because they were able to have an emotional release by connecting to a loss from the past, then they're probably going to walk away from it feeling better about life globally. Hmm. Yeah. You know, I think that's a good summation a little bit of just what I felt. I felt like there were new ways to connect. Yeah. Kind of. And I couldn't describe it exactly. And I couldn't manage it. But I felt like it was helpful. I felt like when I knew more tricks and how to almost use the controller better, I would go back and play the game again. If that makes any sense. It does.

So what's Shane is saying is that so you're saying that so ketamine is more of like an experiential type of thing. It's both. So so so to to the person who's experiencing it, they're gaining sort of a they're gaining like this alternate or this this additional view of things. They're they're gaining insight. They're like they're up here and they can look around themselves more like like not like they're not in the game and sort of like they're looking at the game. And from that, they can be like, you know, that really that doesn't hurt as much as I thought. And they can see like, oh, I can see that. Yeah. I never really got over that. That's been sort of haunting me. And I like, okay, I'm okay. And and so that's what it can provide. Now, the nice nudge

is when you can have somebody like say, well, you remember you mentioned this and let's let's explore this a little bit and see how those decisions sort of were pushed by emotional distress or pain and rolled the ball through this event. And then you kind of see, try and sequence it through through life. So you don't want to miss things. Right. It's the gaps. The gaps are the key. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah, I wish I yeah, in hindsight, I would go with like a timeline kind of a little bit of like a plan. I like I like doing the school thing. Like yeah, the grades, you know, the one question I like to ask people is when was the last time you felt whole? Jesus. And then what was it that began to separate you from that feeling?

Yeah, I don't even know, man. I probably was a damn and a zygote. Yeah. And then and then you go back to if they can't if they can't dial it back that far, you go back to like whenever like five, four, three, when did they feel love to one blast off is when I probably felt it. Maybe I don't even know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I know you're not asking me, but it's just yeah, it's interesting for people to think that the place I was at the therapist hadn't done the experience. Does that matter if they've done it or not? I don't know. Maybe it doesn't. It's kind of one of the things that depends on on where the therapist is. What made you care about this? How did you get into this whole universe? You know, I did anesthesia for quite some time. And you

were a real doctor then? Yeah. Yeah, I have an MD. And I saw Academy work pretty well. And because I was I did anesthesia, right? Was it fun doing anesthesia? It was interesting. It was fun. And it was crazy. And it was but it was a, you know, I mean, you listen to music and stuff where you go in there, nothing like that. You know, we had a actually we had a surgeon who who would get noise complaints from the other ORs because he would listen to death metal all day and he would turn it up all the way. And so he sort of had like a his own little crew because you kind of have to be like the right being the right mindscape to go in there and listen to mega death for 12 hours at, you know, ADDB all day long. Yeah, that's crazy. You're cracking up a rib cage and you're

all hopped up. Well, the surgeons next door in the rooms next door would complain. You know, it's like being in a hotel. They'd be like, dude, tell them to knock it off. But it was I mean, it was it was it was crazy. I mean, it was it was good. But it was it was like super busy, super high intensity. Yeah. And you have to stay the whole time you just hit them with that dose and you roll out. It depends. Okay. But the way our model was we had a nurse anesthetist and and so we would we worked together with them and they would stay the whole time and I would I would come in and troubleshoot things and get the get the ball rolling and and you know, we were at a place where we took care of really sick people. So it was, you know, it was but you sort of

acclimated to it. And then you look around and you look at what you acclimated to. And but but for me what what got me turned into the corner of this is is sort of my understanding of suffering has evolved a lot. And I had a brother and he died last year. He was injured as a child terribly. And he never could get the help he needed. And so he he did a lot of drugs. He tried to take his own life several times. Oh man. Sorry to hear that. He did all these things and and I was sitting there and and he knew he was dying. He was in hospice. But I was, you know, looking at what was coming down the pipeline, I was like, you know, if if we can help people who've been traumatized, like it's

sort of like for me, it's like if this would have been around 20 years ago, maybe I'd still have a brother because he he was sexually abused as a kid and they never tell anybody nobody. The only reason we found out about it is because our our pastor was imprisoned after the fact by somebody else. Dang. And so I couldn't figure out what was wrong with him his whole life. And I asked him one night and he goes, yep. And I was like, and but the damage was just like, yeah, how much that shapes somebody that's young. That's man, that's heartbreaking. I'm sorry. Yeah. So and I'm sorry for him. I'm sorry that, you know, it's heartbreaking to see, you know, I've been, you know, a lot of my family and being in recovery and struggling through those, you know, struggling through trauma

and stuff like that childhood trauma, not like that, but different types of trauma and stuff has been pretty prevalent in my family. And it's heartbreaking to see the effect that it has on people, you know, it was, you know, the last six months of his life, I finally got him to say, because he was like, he was a he was a crusty guy. Was he? Yeah. Yeah. And the last, were you guys pretty close? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. And he knew he was, he knew he was dying. Was he drinking himself to death? Yeah, he did. And he had the operations and he kind of stopped actually. But the problem was, is the damage was done. And but like, you know, one of the last times we, we spoke, I was sitting with him in the hospital, he was on hospice. And for the last six

months of his life, I got him to tell me that I told him I loved him every day. And he was like, I love you too. And like, just for him to be able to express emotion was priceless. Yeah. And then, you know, one of the last moments we spoke, I said, I love you. And he said, I love you. I love you too. And then he goes, he flips me the bird. And I was like, that's, that's Mike. And, and so it was like, you know, I, he knew at least he was loved. Yeah. And, and that was in, that's important. Yeah. I think a lot of people's life, if they struggle with trauma, I think some of it is just, yeah, thinking that people don't care, people that think it unable to feel love, it's weird how a traumatic event can block off other

things, you know? Yeah. He couldn't, he didn't have the capacity. And he never, so he, he was stuck and he could never get out of it. And you kind of wonder or hope that if somebody else comes to me and who's a little younger and hasn't burned themselves physically, like, like damaged themselves enough that you can help them turn the corner. Yeah. And get healing going in a way that they, they can get back on the road of life. And, and that's sort of, that's to me is a very rewarding way to interacting with life. You know, I can look over my shoulder and be like, I am okay with what I'm doing. I'm helping people find peace. Right. Yeah. It's, man, it's so fascinating how like if you, if you don't feel loved or if something

makes you feel so unloved or so damaged that then you, it's very hard to feel love after that. Because I think there's just receptors in you that just do not trust it or just do not trust the world almost in a weird way. And I don't even think you can access it sometimes. Like that's the, that's the such hard thing is to be able to access why or what or how to change it to get the clay in your hands, you know, it feels like you just can't find it, you know. So it's fascinating to hear that there's opportunities that this could be a way where people can, you believe it. I believe it. I do. I really do. Cause I've seen it work. I've seen it work on a lot of people. And it, it's one of those things where it's, it's like, you get to see these people come to you

and they're, they're just broken. And, and the first time you hear them laugh and or smile. And you're just like, it's, it's, it's, I'm in the right place. Yeah. That's fascinating, man. Yeah. I noticed after a couple of treatments, I'd had an idea. I was running one day and I just had like a good idea. And I used to have good ideas all the time. I mean, I'm just, I'm judging my own ideas, but I thought they were pretty good. But, but I used to have ideas a lot. And I just for like a year, I just hadn't even gotten an idea. Like I've just been kind of living with the pieces of every day, you know. And it's been fine. Life has been fine. I'm not, I'm not complaining. I'm not asking for any pity. I'm

just explaining where I'm at, but, but I hadn't found it, gotten anything new to come out of my brain, you know. And so I noticed that I was running by some turkeys somewhere at this park. And then I don't know. I just got like an idea that was like fun. And it made me laugh. It made me smile. And I was like, Oh man, what a gift. Like when something's able to just kind of travel through us and make us feel good, which is how we probably should be a lot of times, you know, is to be a conduit for joy to at least pass through instead of being kind of a place where something has put up a fence or something has put up like a firewall or, you know, different elements like you're saying. What are the, what are, what are some of the side effects

that we honestly do not know about? Cause just to be very honest and transparent with people who are considering this treatment. So there, there's, there's, there are limitations. Like there are actual limitations. Like you can't really have problems with like psychotic type problems or schizophrenic type problems. It doesn't see that. It's like, it doesn't work. That wouldn't be cool. Yeah. No. And if you have a, if you have problems with seizures, you really got to look into that because it used to be that ketamine was an automatic no, if you have a seizure disorder. And, and depending on what's going on with that, they're looking into it. But the other things is like sometimes what you get is, is patients actually vomit and, and it happens and I can

almost see it coming now. It's almost like a, the physical need to expel bad. Oh, interesting. So, so like, I've taken a couple of patients very recently and they were super overwhelmed, like way overwhelmed, crushingly. And, and, and they, they just started vomiting. And I knew it was going to happen and it wasn't a problem, but they didn't understand it. I was like, yep. It's like, you needed to get it out. Wow. It was like a, it was like a metaphysical expulsion of badness from them. Oh yeah. And, and so that, it doesn't happen very often though. I can see that. I can really see that. Sometimes I think all types of things like that are a mole or something. You see somebody with a mole and say, that's a bad, somebody, you know,

that's a bad idea or something you had, or that's a something, you know, that's something bad that happened to you, you know, or sometimes you see like someone like, I'll feel sometimes like when I'm really going through therapy and it's going pretty good, I'll get pretty close to this feeling like there's something in my throat that I never was able to say or like to talk about when I was young or I was afraid to talk. And so I can almost feel the mass, whatever. It's not, you know, it's all probably in my head, but it feels very real. It's all those connections from your, you know, your core emotional centers are, they're reaching out into everything. And, you know, if you think about a nerve connection, think of like a thread of hair from an experience to

somewhere else in your brain, it's still there. It's just how often it lights up and it starts pushing on things. And, and that's, you know, like post traumatic stress is the hair is the size of my, you know, pinky. Yeah. And so it's, it's got domain over your operating system, so to speak. Yeah. And what's the question that came in for? Give me another question that came in, Sean. I know we have one from a young, uh, yeah, let's play this fellow right here. So what is going on, my brother? I just got a question for Dr. Ketamine as he's in the house. This is Sam from Sydney here. And, you know, down in Sydney, we, we're team Ketamine down here, you know, we got that special K on deck, I would say. My question for the doc is,

is this an addictive substance? And will there be lasting effects from this kind of therapy? Because I could tell you from second hand right now, I got some friends that could argue there are some little more long term effects from this substance and it could be quite addictive. Some fellows getting banged out out there in Australia. Yeah, what are some of those, what are some of the effects? So it is addictive. It is not that addictive, but I have talked to somebody who was completely addicted to Ketamine. Now the problem with Ketamine is, it's unclear, but this is what the best sort of notion on what's going to happen to people is if you're always taking a substance that causes neural growth and neural change, we'll keep that ball rolling and

see what happens to your mind. So, so if you're always changing it and you're always growing it, your ability to be you is going to be called into question if you're always abusing it. It's not like, you know, opiates, you can take opiates for 20 years and come out of it and still be your person. Ketamine is putting like putting your brain in a grow box and you're trying to grow all these new sprouts and all these new connections so that you can connect in a healthier way to traverse injuries from the past. Okay. Now we know this is happening at the microscopic level physically. So if you keep doing that all day long for years, where's, what's going to end up? Remember that bowl of ramen? You keep putting more ramen in there. I don't know what's going

to happen, but I can probably reasonably predict that these people are not going to be the same and not in a good way. That's why, again, you know, the research was a set of infusions in order to diverse something that is essentially beleaguering you in a way that's preventing you from having access to wellness. Long-term dosing of it, at a lower level, I'm not sure if that is going to, I don't do it. You don't prescribe it? No, I don't because I have seen a lot of things and I want it to be done in front of me. I want the, like the chat from earlier, you want the events to be very meaningful. You want the sequence of events to be very enlightening and very meaningful and connecting to yourself emotionally. You want those six

sessions to be sort of like a time of introspection and healing that's been brought to an immensely higher level because you're seeing ketamine a lot. I don't want that to be wasted. So I want to do it right from before beginning to afterwards, but I don't want to be picking up that tool very regularly because I don't want to use that as the crutch because we've done that crutch with other substances in the past and it hasn't worked out so well. Yeah, it gets bad. It gets, and then people also have to make their own choices, but if there's some addictive nature to it, then yeah, it can be tricky. And that's what I want to say. Like, I'm not telling anybody to go get this therapy or saying that this is, you know, I want to do have an experience with it because

I'm going to try to get off of antidepressants. So I'm working with my doctor now and trying like slowly wean myself off, which is some, which is cool. The place that I went, they have like some follow through there with like trying to help me like do that and manage that. So I'm excited about that. And I'm still working with my regular therapist. But yeah, I definitely wanted to have the experiences. So I knew kind of what it was like and what's possible. You know, I love to kind of figure out how I'm thinking and feeling and why and stuff like that, you know. So it's nice to kind of see if what things I can get through and get away from and I find that like anchors I can pull up kind of find that, you know, in my practice, about half my patients don't get

ketamine. Like we, you know, it's sort of like, why are you here? And they're more like, they don't know why they're there. They're like, they want access to wellbeing. They want relief from distress. That's what they really want. Right. But they come in with like diagnoses. I'm like, well, let's talk about what's really going on. And then, you know, we talk and we gotta, you know, it's like, we got to get to know each other. It's not like I'm like, Hey, yeah, here, get out. And they may turn into ketamine patients once we find like hard stops places that are, you know, like I shared earlier, I had that lady, she wasn't a ketamine patient. Okay. And as we got to know each other and I was sort of helping shape her therapy using other things, we, she felt comfortable

sharing me with some pretty disturbing stuff. And then she shared some even more to start and then she couldn't, she stopped. I was like, um, yeah, it's sort of like, let's, let's change gears because we're running into some very emotionally distressing things that she couldn't articulate at that point. And in order to get through those, I wanted to protect her. So that's when we slid over into the, the ketamine room. And now she's, she's about, she's in process and she's, oh, you can just see the light in her eyes now. She's, you know, it's like, it's like, it's not just like go get ketamine. It's like, why are you here? Right. And, and that's why we, we talk about what's going on. And well, there was an experience, one month, I had an experience at one point where

I felt like I ended up like in a corner of the world kind of, it was kind of like, I felt like you ever been in like a video game and you get stuck somewhere on it and you can't even move like your guy gets stuck and you're just, I felt like I got stuck at like the edge of the universe, like where the universe, like we, like I finally found like the two walls of the universe, like the ends of it. And I got stuck like in the corner. And I don't know what was going on. Were you, were you leaving the chair or coming back to the chair? I was on my way back to the chair. Okay. Yeah, it's interesting. Like, you know, because like, did you feel like you were like getting light in the chair and then like your

fingers started to get all. Yeah, you know, I didn't even notice that. I just remember kind of talking in a conversation. Then next, you know, I go on this ride. And I'm not even talking that much anymore. I'm just kind of on this journey. People are, so I talk to my patients a lot and they, some of them remember, some of them don't, but they come in different, they come in different like personalities. Like you can kind of, there's, I'm starting to get a, there's different types that come in there. Like I got my musicians and they start singing for me. And you know, they're belting it out or they're composing right there in front of me. And I'm like, this is cool. And then, you know, you got the guys

who are, my trees are running off the screen and my one kid who tried to hop up and run out, but he forgot he was on ketamine and you can't move. And he didn't even get out of the chair. You can just see it. He was like, oh, no, no, no, no. And I was like, it's okay, man. And that's crisped out, man. He was probably all crisped out. Yeah. He, he added some issues. It gets, and I mean, it's definitely gnarly. I was, I didn't feel like, I guess in some ways it felt like a drug. It felt like an experience to me. Right. You know, I felt like I was kind of grateful for the experience. I was grateful to be back from the experience whenever I got back from the like trip or whatever you kind of go on during it or whatever, like the visual, the experience,

the out of body kind of experience. I felt grateful whenever I got back to my chair because there was moments where I was like, I am never, you know, I don't care. I'll never, they'll never find me. Yeah. It's like, I'm lost. Like, where am I in the world in the universe? That will never find me. I was at like, I was in Atlanta. I was in Castlevania, that video game for when I was a kid. I was in some, I was on the back of someone's neck. I was, there was a lot, it was, I was sliding down stuff, a lot of like moving along huge, I don't know if it was like electronic land, sides of walls. And a lady recently, she could hear, I got like these pictures of a forest or in my,

one of my rooms and she could hear the forest. Wow. And then she was like, then she could hear lawn mower. Like, and I was like, that's pretty cool. You know, cause it was, she was not disturbed. She was just like, oh yeah, I can hear the forest. And I was like, that was a first. Like the auditories were, were, are not as common. That's strong. Is there a reason why do we all need therapy now? What's going on? Have we got, are we weak people? Do you think, are we, you know, it's funny because I'll talk about therapy and stuff with my mother and she doesn't, she doesn't not believe in it, but she's just like, you just keep moving on, you know, you keep going. She's more of like you tough it out type of vibe.

And I come from more of like a, well, why, well, what's going on? Like that kind of type of vibe, you know? I think, you think it's an American pro like not problem. But do you think it's like a, I think it's a, there's like a, there's a couple of things resiliency. Okay. People, people don't bounce back very, as well as they think they do. And the other thing is, is like, how, how old you are and how like, I'm sorry, young and having problems happen to you when you're young is very problematic. And because if you look at like, say you're writing a program, okay, I got a coder here in Nashville, actually, you're writing a program, okay, the earliest code you're writing, okay, is sort of goes through everything. Okay. So when you're, when you're a child,

that's your earliest programming. So it tends to resonate through your life. And if you're not being shaped with sort of like a good societal structure, good parenting structure, you know, they talk about keeping people out of the system. Or once they're in the system, the system doesn't work. Okay. Well, how did they get in the system? Right. So where do we, where do we set the boundaries from the get go? You know, they used to have TV shows, like, leave it to beaver and things like that. It was like, sort of like showing you how people are supposed to behave. And Andy Griffith show, they were very like structured on this sort of false reality of how people are supposed to conduct themselves. But it was very civilized. It wasn't dysfunctional. It was based on like love,

authority, respect, and things like that. And then as you sort of, everybody does their own thing now, well, they sort of do their own thing and everything. And so the underpinnings of youth have sort of gotten more flexible. But that also means that their emotions are also more flexible in all directions. Does that make sense? At the end part doesn't. I don't know. Like, I mean, I know it probably should. I just don't know. If I was different person, I would understand it, I bet. Like, the way I grew up is like, you do X, Y, Z, and you chug through and you, everything was supposed to be fine. But as we've moved forward as a society, like, my parents and a lot of people's parents, they had jobs where they had pensions and they had

more stability. Right. And it's less stable now. Now you have more flexibility, but with more flexibility comes more uncertainty. Yeah. So people are like, More questions. People are feeling less secure in the world. In reality, they're probably more secure, but they don't feel that way. And like after 2020, you know, 2020 is like a rubber band, you know, the suicide rate actually came down. Okay. Well, what's going to happen? Right. I don't know. Because I have people shown up in my office now that are like, they're beginning to cope with what happened to them in 2020. And, you know, yeah, that's why we're here. Yeah, it's interesting, man. I mean, you know,

I had like during the pandemic, I had like five friends that overdosed and died like that just because they couldn't get to recovery meetings, I think, I think it's, they didn't ever say that they're dead. But they, you know, I believe if they still had opportunity to get to meetings, which were closed, it would have just been helpful to some of them, you know, just to still have the ability to go. Like once you lose that connection, you start to isolate more than so much stuff happens. You get stuck in your own world. And yeah, I think some of that, too. I think we also are out of time where there's just so much technology now and we get such a quick reflections of us that are like just out in the world that aren't, that aren't like rooted

in ourselves. I think that that can be very unnerving to people. The, you know, I share with patients, I'm like, you know, being connected, being connected, the feeling of being connected, it's not the icing on the cake. It is the cake. And you see that we're an incredibly disconnected society. You go into any city and nobody knows anybody, even though they're living next to a million people. And you can look at the history of like Earth, you know, you go to these blue zones where people live unusually long, right? Okay, you go to like Okinawa, Costa Rica, like I think Sardinia, Croatia, these places are not terribly affluent, but people are like really happy and they live a really long time and they are like, why? You know, a big chunk of it is

they have this thing with community. Like they're all connected. They're all part of, they're together. And so when you, what's the opposite end of that is everybody's alone. And when you're isolated, bad things happen. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that happens to our brain. Our brain is a, is literally a piece of machinery that's has the ability to connect with other people. And it's like, so when we take our brain away from that and we're not doing it, of course, our brain is going to get sick. You know, it just makes sense. It's like a plant, you know, it's not like a plant, but it's like something. Being connected is, is, is crucial. Yeah. And, you know, my, our, our family,

my wife's grandparents are still with us. So, so they're, you know, in their 90s and and some of their brothers and sisters are still with us. And so last year, it was like awful because these are people we would see every week. And we, I mean, all the time we would see and they'd show up to like events and, and then for like a year, they disappeared. Yeah. And like they'd stop and you'd wave at them because you were so afraid to, you know, because I worked, I'm doing my thing and, and I hadn't been vaccinated yet. And so everybody's living in fear and everybody's isolating and you're just like, this is awful. And then you see that, you see that, you know, that you see that match.com commercial with the Satan dates 2020, you know, a match made

in hell. It's the funniest thing. But it's, it's, it's a, it's a great sort of representation of how bad last year was. Damn. Yeah, I believe in Satan though, but I would like to see the commercial, but I'll probably see it. We can watch it later on. Any other questions that came up? So there was one from a young lady that came up. Do you want to play that real quick? And then we'll get you, and then we can close it out. We've gone almost two hours. How's it going? Hour and a half. Okay. Cool. Cool. Hi there. My name is Courtney. I actually have my first ketamine therapy appointment scheduled for next month. And I've had some prep appointments, but I just wanted to get your point of view as to the potentials for how ketamine therapy can

benefit people with complex post-traumatic stress syndrome. I know there's a lot of information going around right now. And I am just really interested to hear your thoughts on it. Thank you so much. Gang, gang. Thanks Courtney. And we may have answered that really, didn't we? Or did we not? I can, I can answer it in a way. So ketamine therapy is a more genuine or credible way to look at what ketamine therapy does. It allows you access to healing, to reconnecting with yourself from seeing pain that you have in a different way, like at a more ethereal way. So a diagnosis is not really a description that is what we're trying to do. Why the diagnosis is a better way to look at what we're trying to approach.

I have people who kind of move head very bad things happen to them. And so I want them to be able to reconnect to that part of them that's stuck in there. And if that part of their emotional baggage that's sort of pinned to that moment, if they can connect to it and grieve and get that release, that emotional release of connection, then they can begin to feel better. And it's not like we're checking off anxiety check, PTSD check. It's more like, what's, why are you hurting so much? And how does that show up in your life? Because you can take somebody who's struggling with something and somebody will have insomnia and you can take somebody who's struggling with something and they'll have depression. And so it's like, what really is the distress? What really is

the root of their pain as opposed to like a diagnosis? And it's more fundamental. It gets back to what's wrong. Yeah, you know, as I'm hearing you say that, I felt like sometimes when I'm in therapy, it's hard. Sometimes it's like, if my mood is in that great that day, I won't even want to talk to my therapist. I won't want to share with them. Sometimes I want to be like, you know, I want to be kind of, I don't know, sometimes I won't really be in the mood. Sometimes I'll keep information from them because I'm scared to share it or because I don't feel comfortable. You know, but this kind of, I felt like this kind of takes away some of that. For me anyway, it took away some of that, my own thoughts, my own bullshit, whatever I'm attaching

to whatever is bothering me in my life. And let me kind of just see what was bothering me. Yeah, a little protection. Yeah, it just kind of like, it didn't even, it just, it felt like I was just there to get some help. It was like, it was almost like going in for like a deep, deeper deal. Yeah, all your normal defense mechanisms are sort of taking a break. Yeah. And you can be more genuine with your emotional state. And in that state, you can be like, what really hurts versus what have I convinced myself as my problem versus what is really bouncing around in the back that I don't want to look at. And it's just, it's a, yeah, it's a much more like rich sort of conversation with yourself. Yeah.

Yeah, man. It was, it was definitely, it was, it was really interesting. You know, I would like to get some more tools so that I go, when I go back, what are some tools you think that I could use when I go back to, or what are tools that someone can use when they go into their ketamine therapy after they've met with their therapist and stuff like that? What are things that they, you feel like they can do to best get the most effectiveness out of their experience? Well, so a couple of things are is kind of getting some information on where you are. So what I, what I like is I want patients to get a couple of labs because I want some, I want some pointers. I want some data to show me where they are. So I get them,

have them get a vitamin D. I have them get a high sensitivity CRP test. CRP is like a test for inflammation. I do some brief questionnaires. So we have this little online thing. They're a little, and they get these health questionnaires, but it's like, it generates a number. It's like, how distressed are you? Okay. And then we start sending that to them every week or so. So we want to see what we're doing. We want to see the baselines. Where are we starting? Because what are we doing? And so we get some data on the front end and I get to know them on the front end. And then as you go into the ketamine, you sort of organize your, I think I mentioned that I got this big

thing of paper and, and I want them to like look at their life because that's how you sort of want to like, what are we doing? Where are we going with it? Where do we propose that your distress is sort of seated? You know, what happened? Right. And, and so then you kind of know where to toggle it. And what can they do? If they are, if, if the patient is sort of, like, how can they best help you and the medicine or the therapist and the medicine? Uh, usually it's, it's just, I got to get to know them a little bit. So, so it's like, I got to, I got to know what brought them to me, right? Like what really brought them to me as opposed to a diagnosis. I see. Is there a state that they can be in? Is there an attitude that they can have?

Or is there? Yeah, absolutely. So, so we know now that a, a predictor of failure is resistance or the inability to accept it. So if you're, basically it's, if, if you're not willing to let go into it, it's not going to work that well. So we know this. It's actually a study popped up. I saw it a month ago. I can't remember what it was, but they actually have some predictors now. And the resistance to the process is, is going to keep it from working for you. Okay. So if you're like, I don't want to do this. I'm not ready to let go. I would get yourself into a better headspace first. And that's why we like, we want to get them into a better headspace going into it. Like I got to get them sleeping first. If you're not sleeping,

you can't do anything. So first thing I do is get people sleeping because then you can, you got to be able to sleep to do anything. And so I, I try to get my patients sleeping first. Oh, you do? I mean, like when they come in. So like, I, I usually see my patients for a couple of weeks, at least before they come in. So I want to get them sleeping on a regular schedule. Oh, sleeping on a regular schedule. I thought you meant put them asleep when they get there. No, no, no, no. No, I'm sorry. Like, like, so prep work is I want to get, they're sort of their life sort of moderated to some degree so that the process is far more useful. Right. Unless they're in like really bad shape, and then you just do it because it's,

it's harm reduction. That's a different category. Yeah. My comp, dude, I had to go to a comedy show one night after it. And that was pretty good. Jesus Christ. How'd it go? It was okay, man. I mean, it was pretty good, honestly, but it wasn't top notch. You know, I just felt a little glitchy. I had a, I was, I'm not, I felt like I was about two centimeters off of my regular skin and, and, and I'm in this, I'm in this fellowship of people out of the integrative psychiatry Institute out of Boulder. And we had a little get together, like a Zoom session. And there was one of the psychiatrists, she had just gotten back from surgery on ketamine. And she was like talking to

all of us. And we were like, and it was, it was fascinating. I mean, she was like fresh. And she had gotten like something done to her. And, and we're just sitting there watching this. And I was like, wow. And she was having like insights about her relationship with her mother. And that went back like decades. And, and, you know, it's, it's, it's fascinating. I mean, you stick around, you just hang out in the, in the, in the areas where people are doing this. And you can really, you kind of get an idea of what this is doing to people. It's just the insights and the perceptions and the healing that, that are sort of swimming around in this whole thing. It's not covered by a lot of insurances, right? Not yet, not yet. So, so it depends on

where you are, you know, where I am, not so much. But my understanding is if you kind of like the further west you go, the insurers are, are, you know, more friendly to it. However, interestingly, because of 2020, mental health is actually getting much more, it's being considered much more important historically in, in sort of all the industries. And so that is good because A, as long overdue and B, it means that people can really get access to kind of healing as opposed to limping. And it's sort of like, it's the hope of everybody who's in this is that when you have somebody who's been harmed in a way that they are not able to interact with the world in a way that is peaceful, you want to do everything you can in a way that is safe and sort of research-based

to get them on the road again. Why not? Well, I'm sure that 30 years ago or whenever there was a conversation between two people about like antidepressants that was just like this possibly, you know, it's like, you never know, like something new is always coming along, new things are always coming along and we're always evolving and stuff in different spaces. And yeah, I'm certainly curious. I love the idea of actually trying to find some healing as opposed to getting a crotch every day, you know, because that starts to be ridiculous. When I think of that every day, I have to take a pill right when I get up, just that my mind has to even think about that. Instead of being able to be in this free space where I can just wake up, like it's kind of crazy to me. You know, it almost

wonders how much of a hitch in my vibe is that overall, just that my brain knows right when it gets up that it has to remind me to go take a pill. It's like, it's kind of weird, you know, it kind of feels very unhuman. What actually happens to your brain, to the parts in your brain during the ketamine therapy? So what happens? There's a bunch of, there's actually two things that happen. The receptors get tagged that are responsible for your like anxiousness and depressive symptoms. But the other cool little thing is there's a triggering cascade from a, it's called BDNF. And what it is, it helps your neurons like sort of change, like grow little sprouts and the synapses, the little ends can sort of become plastic and make changes to your

nerves and they grow a little bit. And you can actually see it. They've imaged this. You can Google it and find pictures of dendritic sprouting or dendritic spines that have been exposed to ketamine. And so that's like actual growth. So if you think like, if you're growing things in your head, you know, you can do something with it. And that's like that cyborg stuff. Like you could have a new garden. Well, you can just slide an electrode in there. And all of a sudden you can like grow connections into different things. And you know, you're going to have high def out the rear no time on the back of your head. And have a backup camera. I mean, you think about it. I mean, we didn't have cell phones 20, you know, we didn't have an iPhone 20 years ago. So we're

going to go to the moon every day in 10. I would bet we're going to be pretty augmented kids don't have any problem wearing electronic gear on their heads now. Yeah. So I don't know. I'll have neurons growing onto a chip out my ears pretty soon. It'll be Hey, be pretty freaky. Look, let me know how it goes. Okay, I'll call you. I'll call you. As long as you're the guinea pig first, man. I think that'll work out. Dr. Jason Poole, thank you so much for being here with us today, man. You bet. Thank you. We really appreciate it, man. I've been moving way too fast. Don't run away train with the heavy load and My hands

And these wells that I've been robbing on They want so thin that they're damn they're gone Now girl, now they just won't let go