TrueLife - Dr. Desmond Wallington

Episode Date: November 5, 2022

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Desmond Wallington, PhD, is a licensed psychologist who provides Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy at in Denver, CO. He found his way to working with Ketamine after working on the historic Initiative 301 campaign inDenver that decriminalized psilocybin mushrooms. His political activism in theDenver campaign opened the door for him to gather petition signatures for the 2020 Decriminalize Nature DC campaign to decriminalize entheogenic medicine in Washington DC for their November 2021campaign. Dr. Wallington earned his PhD in Counseling Psychology and MS in CommunityCounseling from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, OK. Prior to becoming a licensed psychologist, Dr. Wallington worked as aLicensed Professional Counselor. While at OSU, Dr. Wallington conducted research inforgiveness and American IndianEnculturation. Dr. Wallington's passion for working with entheogenic and psychedelicmedicine stems from his American Indian heritage, which fuels his passion on integrating his ethnic heritage with his professional training. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Heirous through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. We are here with Dr. Desmond Wallington, PhD licensed psychologist, provider of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. political activist, the individual who's got a very big proposition coming up in his state that we're going to get into today. Dr. Desmond Wallington, would you please be so kind as to maybe introduce yourself and fill in anything that I have left out?

Okay, yeah. I had been a licensed psychologist since 2011, 2012. You lose track of things eventually. 2019 So counseling psychology A lot of research on like post-traumatic stress disorder resilience that type of stuff blah blah blah

And in 2019 I just kind of like stumbled upon the 2019 campaign here in Denver To decriminalize psilocybin That just kind of put me on a different trajectory I guess in my focus and practice area. It shifted.

It went from trauma to trauma and psychedelics and depression and psychedelics and mental health and psychedelics. I'm a voting member of the local state and national Green Party. So I'm super. Oh, are we there? I'm to the love. And then I, that's how I got introduced into the psychedelic space. Are you there, George?

I am. I was kind of freezing up on me a little bit right there. Maybe it's the connection or something, but it's okay. I can hear you. It just kind of froze up on the screen for a minute. Let me see. Hello. Yep, I can hear you.

Oh, okay. Okay, there you are. Okay, perfect. We had a little bit of delay. And so I've been doing that, been working with ketamine since 2020 happening here in Denver. And we are this election day. We're all voting on that. And we'll see how those cards fall.

Yeah. So Prop 122 in Denver, it's a process of- Colorado. I'm sorry, Colorado. It's a process of deep criminal- decriminalization, but you have an interesting take on it. Would you be so kind as to maybe fill people in on what it's about and what you think about it? Yeah, so there's like maybe three different components to it. There's a statewide decriminalization. So possess and gift,

psilocybin, masculine, DMT, and ayahuasca. I don't think anything should be criminalized. I I think if you're caught with heroin or methamphetamines, like, gel is probably not the best thing for you. But it does decriminalize those plant medicines, I guess. And psilocybin's a fungi, not a plant, but you get where I'm going. Expungement, if you have any type of criminal history, just regarding one of those four substances, there's a way of getting that expunged from your criminal record, which housing food stamps, you know, if you're trying to get any type of social service or a job even, right?

Like, you don't need that shit on your record, right? That's bad news for you. So let's do that, all about that. And then it creates a regulated access model. which means that sometimes I hear people say like, I'm really interested in psilocybin. I see all the research that Johns Hopkins is doing. I did mushrooms in college, but I feel like I could use a therapist or some sort of facilitator guidance to do this work. and maybe I don't really feel safe doing it on my own.

Like, you know, like I want to make sure, like, like I have guns in the house. We're Colorado. We love our guns. And I don't want to do something to put myself at risk, you know, kind of thing. Or what if I walk and hit my head on the counter going to the bathroom kind of thing? It would just be nice to have someone there.

And so people do. value the role of a sitter or a therapist or some sort of facilitator during those sessions. And maybe those people doing those services should be licensed with the state. So you're not left to your own devices because there is a lot of issues within the psychedelic medicine space around like sexual predators taking advantage of people under the influence. and I had a patient point out to me the other day even like in the AAAA space it's like guys I'll go to AA meetings

and they're not alcoholics but they just want to meet vulnerable women and pray upon them so there are people who are in it for the wrong reasons and then what happens is like you you find one of these people

and they hurt you, and then you can't go to the police because the police are going to be like, what are you doing, you know, doing drugs with a stranger? You run off the internet kind of thing. So there does need to be some layer of like consumer protection in this space. And that's what I think proposition 122 does under-regulated access is provide consumer protection. Yeah. I would recommend everybody check out your article. And I'll link it in the show notes.

I liked the article for a lot of reasons. I thought there was some funny parts in there when you compared the Elon Musk's to the Maria Sabinas. For those who might not know, that was really funny. Well done. You're a good writer. Can you maybe explain to people what that little dichotomy is? Yeah, yeah.

Okay, yeah. So one of the concerns, too, about Proposition 122 is that, I remember when was it 2012 Colorado and Washington state were the first states to legalize recreational cannabis right and what happened was yeah a bunch of rich white dude just open dispensaries and they got all the money right and cannabis has been a multi-million maybe billion dollar I don't know A lot of white guys make money. Sorry, I'm not coming out. Yeah, not you. And that's a concern because there's the issue of equity and equality.

And then a lot of people who have been maybe or who come from marginalized backgrounds because you look at police records and if you're an African-American, caught with cannabis, you're more likely to be sentencing jail and get a civil sentence than a white person that is arrested with cannabis and sent to jail. So then if you have that certain record that a black person might statistically disproportionately have, that that excluded you from participating

in the recreational cannabis market. Because you had a criminal record, sorry, you don't meet the criteria to participate in that, uh, in the space of cannabis in Colorado, um, now that it's been legalized. Yikes.

Yeah, that's fucked up. Let's call a spade a spade. Um, so there's a concern that that's going, like this idea that, um, decriminalizing,

like psychedelics and creating a, a space for a regulated access to social, Saiban, is going to create another boondoggle for white men to come in and swoop in and and to galvanize the space and to financially benefit from it. Well, that's an interesting idea, and that's okay. Interesting to think about. I do think there's like maybe two different ideas that might be necessary to kind of think through to make that conclusion. One is the idea that like I said earlier, the Johns Hopkins research is already happening.

By 2025, my guesstimate is that like all their research is, like, all their research is, research will be done. psilocybin will be, the FDA will give its seal of approval to psilocybin-assisted therapy, which will be the first time the FDA ever approves any type of psychotherapy. Like going to graduate school, I learned about cognitive behavioral therapy, like, behavioral therapy. behavioral therapy, psychoanalysis, humanistic therapy, existential therapy. The FDA has never given their seal of approval to any type of therapy. But this will be the first time that they give their seal of approval to a type of psychotherapy because there is a medication attached to it.

So the first one coming down the line will be MDMA. And then the second one after that will be psilotherapy. And so that will create a framework where the pharmaceutical industry can come in. You know, we're developing synthetic psilocybin. I'm aware of like some companies developing like brainstormal psilocybin that might have like, look, it might not have the nausea effects and like the GI problems because serotonin is really similar to psilocybin. So it has so serotonin receptors in your gut gives you like cramps and, you know, maybe it might make you have to like GI problems kind of thing. Right. You know where I'm going with that. I know exactly.

MDMA is already synthetic. MDMA is a derivative of mescaline. Mesculin's been around forever. around the 20s, they developed MDA and then from a derivative of masculine. And then from MDA, they created MDMA. So even though it's not masculine, it does kind of, it is in that family tree of psychedelics. But that does create like a really exclusive space where, you think about how many people out of 100 people have graduate degrees that are licensed therapists and then how many of those people who are licensed therapists are trained to provide the specialized care of psychedelic therapy so again like only the richest of the rich

will be able to have access to those therapists. So that's a common. And then, and that'll be nationwide. Like from Maine to Arizona, California. So in Utah, Indiana, I'm a native Hoosier, retists of the red states. I know that it's just going to be accessible. And it's only going to be accessible to people who can afford those medicines.

It is foreseeable that a person in Utah will be able to get legal access to psilocybin assessed therapy. But they won't be able to have access to cannabis like they do in Colorado. So that's something to think about. I guess I'm a little, I'm thinking about. So it sounds to me like the federal law that there's a federal law coming through that's going to make it accessible. Is it going to be like a licensing thing? That seems to be what it's going to be.

It's going to cause the people that have the money to be the ones that buy the licenses and are able to distribute it. Is that versus the mom and pop shops that are going to get just wiped out because they don't have the money. They don't have the recess. They don't have the connection or the lobbyist to the centers to get in the corruption part of it. I guess on the topic of the on psilocybin, if they make psilocybin legal, does that make all the analogs legal, like the four ACODMTs and all these little analogs of psilocybin? Would those become legal because psilocybin's legal? Are those in a totally different area? Are you talking about in Colorado or like you saw?

I get, let's start in Colorado with the law and then we can move to the federal. Okay. So the Colorado law, it's very. Maybe you're rigid. Sillacin, mescaline, DMT, and Ivoigate. Okay. So none of the analogs then? That might be a little unclear.

Like, you know, and that's a valid question. Yeah. But, so I guess you think of, so the thing is, too, like, maybe one of the differences to think about is, like, people might not want the analogs. like maybe the like the thing that's really abrasive and uncomfortable for them is like yeah sure I could go to like a medical facility and I could do psilocybin there but it's a synthetic psilocybin and in that money is tied to big pharma like um like I said in the article in the 19 the 19th

50s, 1960s, um, Sandos pharmaceuticals held the patent to that. Um, now I don't know

who's making it. Um, but whoever is making it. Like my money is going to be going to some, um, pharmaceutical exec. Gross. Like how am I supposed to have a farm?

How am I supposed to have like a spiritual, yeah, kind of experience? Knowing that. Um, versus like, okay. like I found some guy who's advertised and he's got the credentialing, you know, through the state.

And I'm just eating like a mushroom that was grown like in the dude's basement or, you know, in a facility. I know I'm eating the mushroom. That's what I want. It is the actual like organic material of a plant. So I think that's where, like, the interesting thing is, is, like, giving people the option of, like, yeah, you can go to a medical space and get, like, a synthetic psilocybin. Or you can go to, like, some person who's taking courses and learned and passed a test. And they'll give you the real deal of mushrooms, and that's your option. I don't know which one's better.

But I do think the issue of supply and demand is an issue. Because I'll tell you like that my heart of hearts, I'm like, yeah, you probably do need the therapist. You probably do need the medical setting. But I understand, like one part of me understands like, yeah, that's like one person for 200 people. Yeah. Kind of thing. And the other one, it might be one person for 25 people, kind of thing. And when you look at, like, the potential for abuse and exploitation,

that if you really come through that, like, idea of, like, harm reduction, and maybe the person, you just want to reduce the amount of risk that you can cause for the general population. So I do think expanding the pool of providers out there and who've done the training and the education for the single mom who's trying to work through her trauma,

that she can she's not like on a wait list for three years for a treatment kind of thing because post-COVID we all know what the mental health issue is for everyday people

yeah I wish I wish everybody had a really cool friend because it seems like such a better setting if you have like a really cool friend who's done psychedelics or maybe a cool friend who's done a lot of them, then that cool friend could really grab your hand and walk you through the things you need to learn. And it makes me sad to think how many people are out there that are interested in this,

but don't have that connection or that cool friend that may have done this or may have access to it. Because I think that there has to be a line somewhere. Like clearly there's people that are on the, you know, there's people that have the possibility to really flip out of it, take psychedelics. But I think that that could be answered in a questionnaire. Like, have you had these different types of mental disorders in the past? Like, there's ways we could go

about clarifying or at least tightening down the group of who might be susceptible to, you need to see it in a clinical arena versus someone who is probably fine in a different sort of home setting or a different set in setting. And I wish there was some sort of questionnaire or something like that. Another thing that interests me. That's a good point. Yeah. That's like one of the things like I've been talking about, like I have friends working. in Oregon. And I know when the conversation's happening there is like, okay, so someone comes in and they want to do psilocybin.

Like if it's someone that has like a lot of trauma history, like how do we funnel that person into connect with a mental health provider? If it's someone, some rich like tech bro, he just wants to like expand his mind. and just he doesn't have trauma he doesn't have anything but he just wants to learn and have that experience yeah like how do we connect him with like the guy the really cool friend with the high school degree right like the guy doesn't need to have like a doctoral degree right you know to have an experience so like how do we like pair these people right i think you i think you give him a book i think we can make them read, ask him to read, like maybe read the island or maybe read Brave New

World and tell me your thoughts on it. And by reading those, what do you think about this book? And then you could probably put them in one category or the other. And I think it's a really good idea or this is a horror, you know, but I, and maybe not those books, but I bet you there's a questionnaire, I bet we could write a book just that told a story, a short story about something and then give people's reflections on it. I bet you Cole Butler would be awesome at this. But I think that there could be a set of short stories people read in conjunction with a questionnaire and then you could really get an idea of who people are. You could really do a personality test that way and be like, okay, this person is a little bit obsessive, compulsive,

there's a good chance that they're going to get stuck in some sort of time loop and freak out a little bit. Maybe their first setting should be here in this place or something like that. You know, I'm also, yeah, that's what we need to do. Exactly. Yeah, I think it sounds awesome. It's in a way, it's super exciting for me to get to be on the cutting edge and talk to people about what's happening here and what we can do to make a difference. And it's so amazing to me to see that people of all ages, all experiences and all education levels are at this junction where we can come together and make a decision going forward. Even though it seems to me Big Farmers poised to come in and do what they always do, it doesn't mean that we can't have some tributaries that kind of shoot off

the main river right there and really change things. It's a great analogy. Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah. Exactly. Because I know not everyone can have access to the big pharmaceutical model. And people who have mental health problems who are desperate will sometimes go and put themselves in really vulnerable situations. And there does need to be some sort of consumer protection in this arena, especially because you're, again, in a non-ordinary state of consciousness, you're vulnerable,

and you just don't want to, like, find some random person off the internet and just assume that you'll be safe with them. Yeah, I had a recent conversation with Dr. Rick Strassman, and I had asked him, do you think what's happening here with psychedelos could be shut down the same way it was in the 60s? And he said, without even blinking an eye, he goes, yeah.

He's like, don't think that there's not going to be another Jones Town Koolet event. Don't think that there's not going to be another Manson out there. Like, those people are out there. And just with the law of numbers and the law of vulnerability, like, it's a good chance. It could happen. And if it does happen, you could see the authorities or the people in positions of authority come in and try to close things down or clamp down really hard. So it's, what do you think about that?

That's a funny point that you cite those people, because if you, you go back and you look at like, there were kind of two major laws that happened in the late 60s and early 70s that addressed psychedelic possession. One was in 1968 under Lyndon B. Johnson and the senator was Thomas Dodd. I think he was like operating in the Senate subcommittee against like, against, like, juvenile delinquency, which was originally created to address like comic books, you know, once in a ton of time. And so they had this whole issue, like, like Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, had kind of let their patent laps, and they had kind of shut down their research around, like, LSD and psilocybin. For LSD, it was called

delisiod in psilocybin it was called endocybin um so that they had passed a measure in 1965 that created like a federal law around like if you were caught with any type of controlled substance that it created like a mandated um uh uh like treatment regimen or intervention. Like you had to go to rehab kind of thing. However, during that time, shortly after that time, Sandos had let those patents lapse. So people were making LSD and growing cellocybin like it was going out of passion kind of thing. Like you know, and Sandos never didn't have the patent on those drugs anymore. So anti-war movement, anti-Vietnam stuff was happening.

So they really had to buckle down because they were no longer protected under that 1965 legislation. So they had to expand it in 1968 to be inclusive of those. And one of the like interesting, so it's going to sound like I'm making this up, but I promise you, I'm not. So they had to bring in a doctor. And this guy, the doctor that they brought in was like a genetic specialist. And he said, so his main claim to fame was like in the early 60s, he impregnated the first male baboon. The baboon never carried the pregnancy to full term.

He said he aborted it and wouldn't ask for the research documents about it. He said he destroyed them. So this was the guy that brought in. And then there was a young woman who had given birth to a small day birth to a baby. And the baby had like underdeveloped limbs, you know, like not like a partial arm, partial leg kind of thing. And she said, oh, well, I did LSD during my pregnancy. And that's why my baby had those birth defects kind of thing. And so it's really important to kind of maybe understand because there were two things.

In fact, LSD is created from ergot. ergot poisoning has been an issue for a large portion of our like of history ergot grows on like rye and wheat crops and it does create like it can cause like spontaneous abortions you know there's a example of like an somewhere in Europe, like once upon a time, like a small village had like a lot of rye crops get like so much ergot that like it became airborne like seasonal allergies would. And all the pregnant women in that village like spontaneously aborted their children. Another side effect of it is called like San Anthony's fire, which, causes you to like your looms on the extremity turn black and it creeps up so you have to like

amputate the limb because if it gets to the chest you die kind of thing however ergot has been used for a significant history of time among among like midwives like because it does help to like stop postpartum bleeding because after the baby's born that was a frequent cause of death was women bleeding to death after the ergot intervention

helped to kind of freeze everything because when it causes like the spontaneous abortion it causes like the amniotic of fluid around the fetus to like turn into cement and the fetus, like, literally suffocates to death. So it's had a really kind of interesting history within pregnant women. And then there's an issue with, like, in the late 50s, there was a medication that was

FDA approved and causing a lot of birth defects, like deformed limbs, called thaliumide. which they were giving to pregnant women to help address morning sickness. So this guy was trying to make the case that LSD was, you know, it's made from Urgot, and we know Urgot causes like St. Anthony's fire. And remember, the FDA, like a decade ago, caused a loud Thaliumag to come out on the the market and it caused all these birth defects with children. And there was a lot of fear around that time because of that, those two things. And then, like, so that research never panned out, never be true, you know, and it was just based

off this, like, one anecdotal evidence of this one person. And then you, this guy, Cecil, Jacobson, just kind of the period of. disappeared off like the public radar for a couple decades until the late 80s early 90s he was arrested because he was a fertility doctor he's one of those doctors like that was using his own semen to like impregnate women um john goodman played him like in a saturnite lives get um melissa gilbert everyone's favorite 80s, like made for TV movie kind of thing. Seeds of

Deception, I think was the name of that TV movie. So this, so that guy created a drug law and we found out like 20 years later that he's a sexual predator. And then in the 1970s there was a you know, the controlled substance

abuse law came out and there wasn't one of the main people testifying about that was a guy named um dr levern i think it was alex leverne i'm blanking on it right now um but like l-a capital a capital l a capital v er n e um he he he was saying that like cannabis and psychedelics were responsible for the Miley massacre. You know, that all these kind of hippies were strung out. And they just killed all these poor people in Vietnam. And he later, again, he kind of fell out of the public eye for a little while.

And then in the late 70s, he emerged in everyone's favorite tabloid magazine, the National Enquirer peddling carbon dioxide therapy. He said he claimed he cured like depression, anxiety, autism, what they call it, like mental retardation at that time with carbon dioxide. Actually people died under his care because you can't be breathing in carbon dioxide. So we have these two really interesting people with like really questionable medical

um uh consequences to their career that have shaped our drug laws um in America and history and no one ever

it took me a little while because I did this research in 2019 I was like well why did these things become illegal and you have to like go back and find like the actual like screenshots of the um uh congressional records of the like the the testimony of these people and and then you like well let's google the person's saying you're getting kind of thing and then you're like oh my god why are we like why are these people still relevant right and drug law and drug reform so Like, it does maybe, as me as an activist really has me to like, yeah, maybe I don't like necessarily like believe like the experts that get called into these testimonies because psilocybin, DMT, ayahuasca, I have again, they've been a part of American culture, or not American culture.

but different cultures throughout the globe for hundreds of thousands of years and to deny the benefits and that they haven't been useful in different parts of the world. That is seeing drugs through a very white European lens that, yeah, maybe it wasn't relevant

to Western medicine, but these have been in use for a long, long time kind of thing. And why are those people's histories even less relevant than the white European history? Yeah. It dovetails nicely with,

first off, I bet you neither one of those guys did psychedelics. And that's kind of what scares me about the pharmaceutical or the, the, the, the people with all the money coming in and taking over. There's so many doctors. And it seems weird to me that we've gotten away from doctors using the substance on themselves. There was a time when doctors would have to be an expert in this particular substance to thoroughly understand what it does. And somewhere along the way, we decided that's not the thing to do.

But if you look back at different cultures, it's the person that understands the substance that can actually recommend it to you. And in some cultures, you know, the person would take the ayahuasca and then they would diagnose the person with the trauma. So, you know, in some ways, I think that when it comes to the idea of, you know, whether it's Prop 122 or pharmaceutical versus the individual, I think there should be some prerequisite for the person to have full experience with the psychedelic or the medicine that they're going to give to the person. Only then can you thoroughly understand what the person is going to go through. Only then can you understand how they may react or at least have an idea of how they may react. And then you can be such a better sitter. You can be such a better facilitator. If you understand the experience in which someone's going through.

And we look at trauma and you're someone who's dealt a lot with behaviors and psychology. If you've been through a traumatic situation, it seems to me like the person that grew up having a being abused, thoroughly understands the person who was abused in their office. And I just think that there should be more of that. Like, that should be something that this whole thing blows up. And it's like, we need to rethink medicine. We need to rethink counseling. We need to rethink these things that can help out the next generation.

And it's great to go to school and it's great to learn from a book or it's great to learn from a teacher who learned from a guy who knew someone who had a friend that went to the thing. But it's much more advantageous if you yourself have been through it. Like, there's a certain kind of degree that should come with that. I think that that is sometimes the purpose of tragedy is for you to come out of it and then to come through the other side and help someone up. And first off, I want to say thanks to everybody in the community for your activism because I think that you've done this.

You've gone out and that's why you were able to help change laws. And that's why you're so passionate about it. So thanks for that. Well, all shocks. Let me blush for a for a second. And I will tell you, like, working with cadamine. Like I have done like, I've seen how the sausage is made. I've done like an induction series and I found a great benefit from it and I've done several booster maintenance treatment.

When you're stressed, you get cranky. You shouldn't be cranky all the time when you're a therapist. So it's been really helpful for me. And I'll tell you like I've worked with other people coming into the cadamine space and they always ask like, well, have you done this? You know what kind of thing? I'm like, oh yeah, like I have kind of thing. And I'll tell you, like, that gives me a little bit more street cred.

You got your doggy? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. How does I know? And I was kind of tackling as you were talking about that, like saying, like, thinking, like, I remember a conversation I had. once with the person and was like, I wish, uh, like the doctor who put me on, like,

wrongly prescribed me lithium had done lithium before, you know, that kind of thing. Maybe they would have thought twice before, you know, just dispensing me lithium. Like it's has like from a pes sensor kind of thing. Um, so that, that does give me a little bit of credibility that like, you know, when I work with people with cadamine, then I can talk about my catamine experiences. And I know Maps has been doing the best they can of trying to let people doing MDMA therapy to have an MDMA experience.

Because you do want to relate with them. provider and the person prescribing the thing on whatever medicine they're working with you know on that level and that's like that maybe the thing big pharmaceutical big pharma has is that like you know doctors aren't taking lithium or sarahquil you know and all these like heavy antipsychotics and it's probably not appropriate for him yeah kind of thing but it does cause

a lot of issues for people and people do want something the evidence around like SSRIs and some tricyclots and other SNRIs and the traditional toolbox that

like regular prescribers have isn't the best you know tool for them and they've been through them all and they want something

that's a little bit more that's different I guess and the regular psych med intervention that you might get you know from your PCP and

the psychedelics you do want to the person to have a little bit of experience of what they're about to go through and to be able to hold space and to understand. I understand like, you know, like I wasn't in war in Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen or wherever, you know, the U.S. has been at war for the past 20. two years. But I might understand trauma and I might understand anxiety and I might understand depression. I might be able to help someone who's had those war experience. But just because I haven't had that same war experience doesn't mean that like that our relationship and our bond, that there can't be some sort of

therapeutic rapport there that helps to facilitate healing. So it does help to have a little bit of trauma and experience, but you don't necessarily have to have the same trauma and experience of the person, you know, that you're working with. That brings me to this other, and this is a, this is kind of a, an interesting question that's been on my mind. And as I'm curious to get your opinion on it, do you think that certain types of psychics, Pair better with different types of traumas. Like let's say, and I'm just throwing this out here, I have no idea.

And I'm not a doctor by any means. But I'm curious to get your opinion. Like, do you think maybe ketamine being a disassociative might be a little bit better therapy for someone who has had been abused sexually versus psilocybin being better for a different type of trauma? That is a great question. Thank you. And that is a common conversation and question. that I a lot of people have. And the honest question is no one knows because we haven't been able to do this research.

You know, maybe ketamine might be really good for OCD and maybe the MA might be really helpful for sexual assault or maybe it might be a thing like we start you off of ketamine and then we transition you to psilocybin and then we transition you just something else and it's a building process. That's a great idea. There's a lot of fun research questions here that no one just had. I would be an asshole if I claim to know which one was best. You always want to say it like, it's okay that I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. I try to keep abreast to the research. But I do think, you know, there's,

lots of interesting research around like alice like microdosing lc and like um alzheimer or parkinson's and there's like all kinds of there's research around like psilocybin and uh smoking cessation there's research around you know all these different substances with these different things and we really haven't because of all the research that kind of got shut down in the 50s and 60s We are in a stage of arrested development around all these medications. And we're really trying to play catch up right now because it's shameful we don't know more about these things than what we could have known had these trials and clinical trials been able to continue on, you know, in the 60s and 70s. you know, the pro-war kind of movement kind of derailed them, you know, at that time. Do you think maybe the introduction to some of the big pharmaceutical companies would bring more money into the system for these kind of studies?

Yeah, that's kind of the funny thing. I always laugh about this because, you know, this idea of like a psychedelic capitalism kind of makes me a chuckle just because I like going to. um um um uh just not like on the idea that like um i i have friends who go to the dispensary once a week and they buy all the cannabis they need for the week and they're happy and that really works well for the capitalist model of like more and more and more and more because they're always returning kind of thing right and then i have friends who have depression and they will use psilocybin once or twice a year how do you how the fuck do you build a business on that

like you you know you're consuming something once or twice a year versus like daily or weekly like you might with cannabis kind of thing so I do totally think that the pharmaceutical industry is always like vultures you know circling

like the dead carcass on the side of road. But are they really going to like, like, it's just really going to be profitable to them? Like, you know, the guy, like the, the guy that created like big razors and lighters and pens, he said, like, the best business model is creating something that people use all the time and that they need to replace all the time. Mm. Psychedelics, not really, not really like a, it's not like Zolok or POSAC where you're taking it every day, kind of thing forever.

Like they want you to. Yeah. It is a very dramatic, short-term intervention. and I can maybe anticipate like in the beginning there being like a lot of people doing this all at once but they're not going to come back

like it's not going to be a daily thing it's not going to be a weekly thing it's going to be a once or twice a year kind of thing and I don't like how does that look in your spreadsheet like I'm not like a business-made

or so I'm not going to pretend like to understand how that's going to work for them or the long-term benefits of that like just as an outsider like it like there's just like a big question mark in the back of my head around that so yeah seems a little seems a little bizarre I would I would I would you know history doesn't repeat but it rhymes and my good friend Benjamin George always says it's not so much that we're going in the circle is that we're going in this helical model. So we're always moving up, but even though we're going around. And I would forecast, and what's scary to me is that, especially in medicine, if you look at all these crazy commercials people have, they're like, you get a puppy and you're in the roses and this girl loves you.

Explosive diarrhea kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So if we look at that model of like it's all marketing, I think what you'll see when it comes to psilocybin is yes, you should do this. You can have great effects doing this twice a year. However, you may want to ask your doctor about a microdose sort of therapy that, where you take it every two days, and you take this patch every two days and this one every three days. It's like a nicoderm patch. Like, once the marketing gets involved, I think you're going to see an onslaught of sort of weekly dosing or biweekly dosing that, and then you're going to get into these different analogs. You get into this patch. And, you know, it's going to go from this ceremonial fashion twice a year around your friends and people that care about you to a wake up, slap on the patch and have a great day sort of a thing.

And it just seems that marketing, I think it was Steve Jobs who talked about, you know, the reason companies die is because the product, the engineers lose and marketing takes over. And the same thing can happen with drugs. If you look at the way the shot is rolled out. I look at the way the stuff's rolled out. That's kind of scary to me in some ways. Okay. So that kind of, let me backpedal a little bit about my academic upbringing. My one of the, I think like the first journal article I was published in was on American Indian inculturation scale.

and you know in indigenous cultures there's in the U.S., right, there's like peyote and psilocybin in ayahuasca, Southern America, right, Peru. And there's, okay, so there's this kind of experience that you go into in this kind of maybe religious, cultural experience that's kind of more collectivistic in nature. So, like, you have an ego death experience. You come out of it and your ego comes back in line. You know, it's like, nice, nice try, George. You tried to kill me.

I'm still here. I'm still here. You know, like, you got to go to work. You got family. You got bills to pay. Like, you got shit to do, George. And like, okay, like, I'm always going to be stuck with myself. Like, I'm always going to be there.

But you just had this really spiritual, magical, ethereal experience. And you kind of have to, like, maybe renegotiate your relationship with yourself and how you talk to yourself about yourself to kind of navigate. Like, it's hard to feel unworthy and, like, unlovable. after that kind of transformative experience. But if you're thinking about this to the lens of a

medical setting, so okay, yeah, so you go to a therapist office, you do psilocybin, and then you go back home. You try to talk to this about your neighbor about it, or your spouse, or your brother, or whatever, you're going to

say it like fucking crazy. Like, they're going to whatever like what are you talking about dude um and and then you think about how these things have been kind of part of the culture in different like indigenous settings throughout history these are often like a rites of passage situation where you it's like a bar mitzvah or something right you hit a certain age you go do the thing you come out you return to your community and everyone in your community has had that experience. So these things aren't necessarily helpful for like the traditional

Western European HIPAA model of intervention that values privacy and secrecy and confidentiality kind of thing. That there is kind of like you look at the more collection. kind of societies and how these things are kind of helpful and like, oh, yeah, we're all in this together. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't open that, you know, Amazon, Amazon facility, you know, facility were unpaid 80 times more than you are kind of thing, right?

because you do want to kind of think about the whole in the collective and the community that you're a part of versus like the Western medical things. So yeah, they might be able to take the trip out of a psychedelic experience and develop compounds where you don't have that kind of spiritual. kind of experience that and it can create like a medical access thing but like is that really what we're missing as a culture or are we missing the idea that we're all

in it together and that you know a rising tide lifts all ships like you know like that tombia bullshit right like we we we we got a um there is a value kind of difference between the two.

So, yeah, sure, go for it. Try to do, you know, when you're doing these things and do whatever

you don't expect that you're going to get the results. But I'm very doubtful. Yeah, I have a friend in finance that I was speaking to him about mushrooms

and psilocybin. And I was telling him, like, hey, I think maybe you might be able to benefit from this. And he told me, quote, like,

I can't do it. this because it just it really makes me realize what I'm doing is wrong. I'm like yeah, that's why you should do more of it, dude. Yeah, that's why I'm telling you you need it. And that's why maybe that's why people are going to gravitate towards the Maria Sabina's and not yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I agree. I almost in a way hope to see psilocybin as this trojan horse that gets into medicine. Like yeah, you guys pharmaceutical companies, you should definitely use this. And then all of a sudden, you know, it just opens up and the people that are in positions of authority like, what the fuck am I doing? God damn it. This is wrong. You know, and I think that on

some level, if we pan back and we take a look at the cultures that came before us, whether it's the Native American cultures or some of the cultures in South America or even some of like the tribal cultures that were in European back in the 1500s, like I think one thing we're missing that psychedelics shines light on is the, is the ritual use, like the ritual. The, like the Like the ritual of life in modern day has been just wiped away, wiped clean from people's lives. There's no more rites of passage. There's no more Elyssinian mysteries. There's no more participation in the ritual.

And that's the thing that binds us together as a community. Is this time of sacred time? And we can all experience the same time. If I go through my own Elyucinian mysteries at the age of 15 and then my kid gets to go through it, In a way, they're experiencing the same time that I did. And it's this idea of us connecting and sharing this time that we had. Even though we've moved past it, we can still revisit that time by watching our kids go through it. Or our grandparents getting ready to go through something that one day will go through.

And I think that that is one of the promises that psychedelics holds for me, especially the psilocybans and the ayahuascas and the, the, different types of organic, you know, organic things. Yes, thank you very much for that. Thank you very much for that. We got a question for you. We got a question for you.

They came up in the chat that they wanted to address you here, Desmond. Okay. I'll put it up on here. Ego, this is a messed up of terms, potentially the focus should be on integration of experience and putting your saddle on ego and your offensive bracket. Okay, yeah. So, like, yeah, ego death is kind of like a very, like, a term that's like, sure.

Subjective, right. So maybe, yeah, let me explain this a little bit. When I use the term ego death, I think about it as like, you know, our left hemisphere, our right hemisphere of our brains are always kind of communicating with each other. And we throw a monkey around chin up for an hour. and certain parts areas of our brain that aren't necessarily talking to each other are talking to each other and that's a very subjective experience and there's a lot of people out there who don't like the term ego death

I like it I get what you're going but I will tell you like there are been moments and like hearing like my ketamine treatments where like I had no idea what my soul security number was or what my, you know, where I was born, what my address was. And I was just kind of plugged into this existence of reality of thinking like, yeah, dude, like the energy that's running through the tree is the same energy that's running through me and we're all the same, you know, life is life kind of thing. That's what I mean, you know, by ego death. It's a very subjective term. You know, of course, scientifically isn't something you can, like, quantify.

It's a very qualitative kind of thing in the, looking through the lens of science. And that is the interesting thing, because this is a very spiritual kind of experience of, like, where you just kind of have to submit it and surrender in the phenomenal logical experience that you go through, that there's some sort of therapeutic thing happening there. And this is the same thing that we run into when we're studying, like,

the therapeutic relationship. It's like, you can't really quantify, like, do you like your therapist or do you feel connected to them or, you know, that kind of thing? And this is, like, what makes the social science. is so hard that you kind of do have to have like a mixed methods approach of the quantitative and the qualitative and trying to capture story and experience with some sort of objective like like like like um like PTSD assessment or anxiety assessment or depression assessment you know along with it so you can try to kind of capture the two realities happen happening all at once. I will say that I really enjoyed your metaphor, the Persian horse.

And that made me think of this, like that old curse. Like, may you always get what you ask for and always ask for what you get, that kind of thing. And I think that's a, yeah, like, what could happen with the pharmaceutical industry? They think that they can, you know, use these medicines and substances for their advantage. And a lot of money could come in flooding this research. And it's probably, if they do make money, it'll be maybe all up front. And then over time, it's not going to be that impossible growth model.

Yeah. capitalism kind of relies on. So it'll be interesting to see because we, this stuff is common. Yeah. There's a lot of money behind it. There's a lot of interests behind it. And I think people have really had their fill of the kind of the prohibitionist idea that really values. blah blah but like sobriety that maybe there might be something therapeutic in a non-ordinary state of consciousness that

and maybe temperance isn't the way to go kind of thing that you know when we turn off these parts of our brain and we have this kind of grand connection with a thing maybe that does keep me in check and keeps me from, you know, exploiting the working class people. Yeah, I really love the idea of as above so below. And I like to go way out on the woo-woo tree sometimes. And like I see the planet as a brain. And I, you know, if you think about the way in which my selium grows under the ground and it connects together the different trees and bushes and moves nutrients from A to B.

and it looks a lot like a neural network to me. When you look at a root structure, and I see me talking to you, and even in this conversation, it may not seem like we're having a huge effect on the pharmaceutical industry, but perhaps we go ahead and we're able to touch on some people that work in the industry or they hear this or they hear this thing. It seems like we are the mycelium growing

and introducing ourselves to new networks and changing this. And just our conversation and the amount of conversations had and the Proposition 122 and these different voting things that are happening, it almost seems that the same way psilocybin affects the ego, so too has it introduced us as its agents to affect the populace. And like we are changing. Like look at the world of, like at the world of ego that's slowly becoming ridiculous.

Like this, we're going to fight in the Ukraine about resources. We'll fight to the last Ukrainian. Like, what are you guys doing? Like just knock it off. Like there's so much more we can do. do and that people are beginning to wake up and see this, I think. And it just makes me thankful to know that we're moving away from Adderall and in the psilocybin. And you can feel it in a way. There is the Adderall. They're running out of Adderall.

Thank goodness. Thank God. I know, right. Yeah, legalized math. As far as an idea as that sounds, maybe that's not the best idea. And I will have, like, tell you stories of, like, people who started my for dosing psilocybin, and, like, I'm able to focus more. And, you know, I can actually go to sleep at a right time. And then I don't have that, like, horrific, like, hangover effect. Yeah. You know, like, it happens and then I'm done.

I'm at, huh, yeah. Wouldn't that be nice? You know, if you could stop a drug and not have, like, a, some sort of like dramatic physiological reaction to it. Wouldn't that be fun? Not the big pharma, but, but I do think that people want that. And there's a lot of interest in that. And that's what I do like about the, you know,

Proposition 122 and this kind of the, the, the criminalization aspect that you can grow and give and possess your own because maybe there is some sort of therapeutic value in being able to grow your own medicine. Yeah. Like, you know, you, like, I tried it once. It did not work for me. Like, the things didn't do, like it didn't turn white. I don't know.

And I just lost interest really quickly. But for some people, they really enjoy that. And that's part of their healing process. These mushrooms that I'm eating, I grew on myself. And I cared for them. I nurtured them. And now, you know, circle life, you know, like a Lion King thing kicks in for them. And that's very helpful for it versus just like, oh, yeah, I wouldn't get my

effects are from, you know, the corner Walgreens. and the person checking me out, you know, just was like, yeah, here's your drug, here's your thing. Yeah. And it's not a very intimate interaction, I guess. You know, you go to a doctor's office, a doctor, you're lucky to get like 10 minutes with the doctor. Remember that scene in Reckonium for the dream where the doctor comes in

and he barely makes eye contact with her and she's back on her. way, you know, with a stimulant medication. Yeah. There is not, like, really, people don't get that sense of community around, like, the pharmaceutical thing, which is what I think really makes the psychedelic experience different from going to cannabis. If I'm going to find a facilitator for a psilocybin experience, like, I'm going to, like, Hey, is this guy like on the up and up?

Is he nice? Is he comforting? Do I feel safe for him with him? Am I able to engage with him? Do I feel seen and heard? Do I feel connected to this guy? First is the experience of going to like the neighborhood dispensary where you walk in. It's a 15 minute experience.

You know, you get some random person behind the glass counter who, like what do you want and you look at it and you're like oh take an eighth of that they give it to you you're out the door you know a handful minutes later and then you don't go home thinking like oh I wonder how Cindy's doing you know she was a really good buttender yeah you know you don't really have to have that relationship with buying cannabis that you do like looking for a psychedelic practitioner that's going to hold space for you. Yeah. And I,

like, sometimes I romanticize it in ways. And in my mind, like, I know people that grow mushrooms and they're like, okay, this particular strain of white penis envy, every morning at 6 a.m.

I play all of my love, Led Zeppelin, you know, because I want this to go to a person who's going to get all of my love, you know? Yeah, there's something to be said. I know that's all subjective and whatever, but that's a cool facilitator that cares a,

enough about this thing to inject a little bit extra. Maybe they're getting a little more oxygen or something like that. And I think that that's the kind of love we need in order to help heal. And like that just plays into the ceremonial part of it. And there's so much that can go with therapy that is beyond the substance we're taking, but do affect the actual therapy you get. Because I think there is an emotional connection between facilitator and patient and brother and sister and brother and brother.

And I think a lot of that goes. I wanted to tap in, are you doing okay on time? Sometimes I can go along. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. Okay. So I want to kind of tap into your ideas of a Native American. And there's a question about society.

It's kind of been dogging me a little bit. I'd love to get your perspective on it. And that question is, when we look at demographics, there's so many of our older generation. In Hawaii, we call them our kapuna. There's this older generation that's passing on. And whenever, if we look at our planet like an ecosystem, this huge, huge generation that's, you know, the, the boomers are like two to one X and maybe two to one the next generation. And it seems to me like we're at this just build up of like everyone's so

on edge. And I'm wondering if that may have to do with the collective anxiety of this older generation facing death. And we know that psychedelics can help deep, can really help people with this idea of passing on to the next place. And Lord knows, there's a lot of us. And Lord knows, There's a lot of boomers that could benefit from helping this anxiety. But do you think maybe this giant anxiety we're feeling may be connected to the boomers who are facing death in the next 10, 20, 30 years? Yeah, it's a really interesting thing to think about, right? And I think there might be a lot of different things intersecting in this conversation. So I know I probably might get an American Indian slash indigenous culture that within a tribe or within a culture that the elders and the youngest are viewed as the most sacred because they're the closest to the next world.

right like the the the babies have just come from the spirit realm and then the the elders are like the closest to going their nights kind of thing right they're the ones going to die next right so they're going to go back there um yeah and i do think there's that's a really powerful interesting thing to think about because i know i can it's commonplace right for meal time for those two like you feed the old and the young first and then everyone else eats after them because they're the most sacred um which for me i think about it and that really resonates something like yeah i get that yeah let's do that um so cool there but then you you think about maybe like how um Maybe that value system is it always present in the lives of Americans?

You get to a certain age and then you go to a nursing home and let's keep our fingers crossed. Like the nursing home I go to isn't featured on like a segment of 60 minutes. Yeah. Kind of thing, right? And there's not really, it's not really value. and your value is placed on capital and work and production and income kind of thing. And you just hope that, like, that you'll be important, right, when you get older. And I don't, that's kind of a new phenomenon.

You know, when we look at, you know, the time span of history kind of thing. And it's really interesting too because we, you know, we look at the boomers and then, you know, the World War II greatest generation that came before them. And that was so much of their identity was like, like I was a veteran of this battle and I did this. and maybe the way our society was structured, right? Like, I know my grandparents and my parents in that generation, they could have three kids and not have a college degree and they could get good jobs and have a really good economic kind of history or future to look forward to.

And now we see a lot of anxiety around, that situation because now a college degree is kind of equivalent to a high school degree once upon a time kind of yeah and um I know I get like when I start talking about like student loan forgiveness and everything like people a couple three decades older than me they're like well I could pay for it and I was like well how much it where you paying for a credit hour, you know, like $5, right? Like college was so much cheaper and accessible then. So we are seeing a lot of kind of economic tension and stress and anxiety around that.

And when you come, maybe grow up in an idea of like, like, you work and you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and that you're kind of, you know, you're the dyshratio-alterm myth of you know if you just work hard enough that everything's going to work out for you people are having a lot more anxiety and skepticism around that

idea and there is going to have to be some sort of like collective awakening or shift out of this idea of like individualism, like, you know, you're on your own kind of thing because you're right. Like the baby boomers are getting old. I don't, and there's significantly amount less. Gen X, Gen Z, millennials. And it's not going to be like it was 40 years ago when there were a small

amount of like the greatest generation amount of people and so many baby boomers that were able to take care of such a smaller population before them now we're in a very top heavy top heavy societal structure and i'd be scared too if if i was a part of that generation um and they are going to be like sorry you're going to be dependent on our tariff as a younger generation, like when it comes to your well-being kind of thing. Like, I'm not saying, like, it's going to go to the idea, like, the extent of Soylent Green, but, but, but, but you better hope that we collectively, like, one of, that we value you, and that you, you maybe present yourself in a way that we do value you, because,

Sometimes the baby boomer population is very arrogant and very entitled. Yes. And they think that the younger generations are going to hand them the world on a silver platter like it was for the World War II generation. And you need to turn up the cuteness a little bit if you want that to pan out for you. you. Sorry. Yeah. There's a, I agree. And I worry because I, you know, my parents are boomers. And, you know, I, I think there's still a lot of boomers in positions of authority that are still holding on to, to whatever it is or holding on to. And I fear, you know, the attitude of the

oldest generation is this idea of just pull yourself up, just work harder. What's wrong with you? You can, you know. I know. Wouldn't that be fun if that worked? Yeah, look, it's not working. And this whole idea, you know what else isn't working? This idea that we farm off our grandparents to a home, the parents go to work and the kids go somewhere else. Like, we've destroyed the family. And when you do that, guess what?

When it's your time to be taken care of, that whole process has been destroyed. I think you can see, I really hope people in positions of authority and power begin to change their ways because I see a wave of elder abuse that could be breaking upon everyone. When all the wealth is locked up here, when all these old school's ideas of, well, I did it, you know, when there's no sort of looking down at people and saying, God, dang, I should be helping these people instead of just flaunting how much I have. Like, there's a real soil, soil, green aspect to it. And I, that part of the future, I think, is something that you can see it, but I think it can be avoided if we start to look at ourselves as more of a collective. than independence because that road goes down a road that is flanked on both sides by barbed wire and prickly berries and you know like mud bogs and stuff so it's a fun idea when you had the idea like ooh I'm going to be young forever kind of thing yeah yeah you know that's some other people that's not me

yeah it's it isn't it weird how there's this like there's so much money just being pushed into the world of of keeping people young forever. Like people are grasping at straws now. Like, yeah, we can live. We can't transhumanize this. We'll be forever. It's like, no you can't. There's no fountain of youth.

We figured that out in the 1500s. You might live to 80. You might get 100, but you're still going. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, there does need to be some sort of collective mass shift in consciousness and awareness and compassion. and I do think there is hope within the psychedelic space

that can be facilitated and nurtured in growing just because you know like my parents and aunts and uncles the boomers or whatnot like like they remember mushrooms they remember LSD they're not like now that they like know better They're more open to it. And they're, like, yeah, like, God damn it, Nancy Reagan take all our drugs away from us.

Like, well, we need to get that shit. Okay. So what can we do to do that? So let's, you know, I do think that we can have a trauma reaction, looking at, like, big tobacco and cannabis and just anticipate the worse in the people? Or we could maybe increase the access to psychedelics and maybe just take a leap of faith that like maybe this could be helpful and it can open like the floodgates of compassion and understanding and connection.

And that, you know, the asshole that's, you know, running like a marlborough. or Philip Morris or the Green Dragon or whoever, the cannabis people here won't be the same people like in the psychedelic space. And maybe they'll have our best interests in mind and maybe they'll want healing because maybe the people doing this work have had trauma and they've gone through their own healing.

And those are the people being called into this work. So you're going to have to have trust, like, because if you don't have trust and, like, the collectiveness of everything, right? Are you really advocating for psychedelics? Yeah, I like that. I think maybe we need the opposite of the just say no campaign. And maybe it could be the just say yes campaign.

Yeah. exactly and you know so i i gotta do my due diligence you know psychedelics isn't if you have like if you're at risk for schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder if you're like actively manic these are not the things for you it can make things worse so that's the other reason why we need regulation yeah is to you know do that education about like you know let let me let Let's figure out a different path for you, but I don't want to make you worse. Right. Desmond, you recently presented a paper at the Monas.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we talk about that a little bit? What was that paper about? Yeah, so that was about ayahuasca and mental health. Monis was a conference by the Colorado Arvadaic Medical Association, which I had never heard of Arabaitic medicine until like a year ago. They reached out to us, which is like an indigenous eastern Indian form of medical intervention. And basically, like my overview was just kind of giving a history of the psychedelic criminalization,

like I talked about with like Cecil Jacobs of. and Albert LeBern. And then kind of maybe what the ayahuasca experience is. And, you know, how it's more of a community-based collective experience versus kind of like the Johns Hopkins, Sillocid, the MAPS, MDMA, kind of more individualized, like HIPAA medical setting kind of thing. and how people might gravitate towards one treatment approach, towards the other treatment approach,

or they might want to kind of go back and forth between the two. And I think that we, it's okay that I don't know which one's going to be the best or the most affected. It's okay. But people do. deserve autonomy and and people have sometimes an intuition about which one's going to be which one they're drawn to and which one which experience they want and how do we get people you know to what's calling them and um and how do we make sure that the people that we're sending them to

were adequately trained. Yeah. You know, and how to prepare and what they expect. And then that are there for like the post-integration work. Like, yeah, okay. Yeah, so you had this really cool. You got to hang out with God for an hour. And now, like, it's Tuesday and you're going back to work.

And you want to flip off the guy next to you in traffic kind of thing. Like, what's going to change if you could? kind of thing. So there's got to be kind of, you just can't expect like to have like a, you know, three to eight hour psychedelic experience. And then that everything's just going to magically go away.

You know, you have to prepare for it. You have to have the experience. And then you have to kind of learn from the experience. talk to someone about it and work on developing behavioral lifestyle changes. Because after these treatments, you do have increased like neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. And your brain is a little bit more plastic or malleable for a handful of days. So any type of behavioral or lifestyle change that you want to make is more likely to become habit or routine.

you know like that an example I give is like oh yeah like I went to the gym the next day and I really didn't have that like oh fuck I don't want to go to the gym and work out kind of thing oh I went and I actually enjoyed it

it was nice so like it's helpful to be able to talk to someone and to kind of anticipate these things and like set your to have someone like a coach or whoever to set you up for success, you know, after these experiences. So you aren't dependent on them.

Like, you know, ideally, like, you know, they say, like, in a psychedelic community sometimes, like, you are the medicine, right? Like, you're your own medicine. You know, psilocybin and ayahuasca, yeah, they're medicines too, but you're your own healer. We all have our own natural propensity towards healing and growth. If I get a coat on my finger, I don't have to do anything for it to heal. You know, like I don't have to look at it.

Will it to happen? My body has a natural propensity for healing. That doesn't mean I won't ever get a wound if that requires medical attention. I might have to go to a doctor and you might prescribe me an antibiotics. to remove the infection. He might stitch the skin together. He might put a covering over it. The doctor doesn't cause the healing.

He just creates the conditions for the healing to happen. And if you can extrapolate from that, how this intervention works is it's not the ayahuasca that causes the healing or the psilocybin or the ketamine or masculine or whatever the substance is. Or it's not me as the therapist, you know, holding space for you. You're doing the healing. I'm just creating a safe container for the healing to happen within your thoughts and feelings and trauma. I can come up, like emotional debris and trapnel and I can pull it out here and there as much as I can.

And I can ask some really fun questions from time to time. But you're driving the car kind of thing. So, you know, it's part of this intervention, these interventions and medicines is kind of maybe keeping my ego in check as a person that I'm not the one. Like, you have to come to me or else. like, you know, like, I'm the only one that can do this bullshit kind of thing. No, it's the people I work with that are doing their own healing and their own work. And I'm just kind of like the, like I said, like the sassy coat, like person in the

passenger seat kind of thing. Like maybe turn left here, turn right there kind of thing. But they're also the one driving, you know, the direction of it. So that's the, I do think I'm always a little skeptical and hesitant of people who feel like they're the authorities and they're the experts in us. Yikes. Is it about you or is it about me, you know, the thing? So I do think that these conversations in these different medical communities can really help to kind of. Maybe keep our own egos in check and to kind of think outside of like the traditional Western point of thing where you go in and you spent 15 minutes with the psychiatrist and now you're on lithium kind of thing.

And like, oh, well, the doctor said I should take it kind of thing. Yeah, in some ways the doctors do that are harming their patients. than helping them. I really like the way you put that. That was beautiful. Like, maybe that should be the idea of medicine is to make sure this person never comes back to me instead of making sure this person always comes back to me. Like, in a way, the therapist is almost transmuting themselves as the medicine. I guess maybe that's where the ego comes in. Like, look what I did for this person. Like, you didn't do anything for him. You made them come back to you every single thing. You made them dependent on you instead of making them independent.

Yeah. And I will say, too, you know, like, I'm always like, sometimes I do cringe. Like, I'll be like in a meeting with the psychedelic community and there's like some, like, 28-year-old, 25-year-old guy walks in. He's like, hey, y'all, like, you're lucky on here. Last month, I did some mushrooms and they told me that I'm a shaman now. Like, I'm here. You're welcome. Like, and they expect, like, like, like, just to, like, like, like, the red, carpet to be rolled out for him.

And that's the tricky thing about this work is that, yeah, like, I don't know. Do I know anything more than someone else? I don't know. Yeah, I went to school for a while. Cool. But maybe I should be in the business of teaching myself out of a job or giving people the tools and, you know, the experiences. And, you know, it's that idea that how we get there and how, and what that process looks like.

You know, there's that old story about the, like, the Buddhist monk who was, like, living in a cage out, or not in a cage, in a cave somewhere. And he just spent his entire, like, day in, day out in isolation. every morning like the like a nun would come leave a bowl of rice outside the cave he'd eat the bowl of rice go back and meditate and then like he did this for 10 years day and day out and then like he heard like oh the buddha is giving a sermon out on this island so the guy gets all excited he wants to go see the buddha and hear the sermon and he starts to walk on the water to the island where the buddha's giving the sermon he gets halfway there and he sinks.

And he swims back to the shore, returns to his cave, does the whole thing for another 10 years kind of thing. Ten years later, he hears, oh, yeah, the Buddha's back on the island, you know, giving the sermon again. And this time, the guy gets excited, he does it again, and he actually gets there. And he sees the Buddha, and he's so excited. And he tells him, like, yeah, like, I've been at his for 20 years after the first 10 years. years, I couldn't get there. And then I turned it again this time. And I was so pure and clean, I was able to actually make it across the thing. And then the Buddha turns to him. He's like,

well, you know the fairy only cost five cents. You can get there. You don't have to like beat yourself or like to punish yourself. Like you don't have to see me for like 20 years. You know, maybe a psychedelic can help you get. to where you're going, you know, a little quicker than traditional talk therapy can't. Isn't that an interesting idea, right? Yeah, it's a great story. Yeah. Yeah, I think so much of us find ourselves holding ourselves back for whatever reason,

for self-loathing or it's an excuse of some way or it's we don't feel like we're, we don't feel like we're good enough to do it. You know, there's all this things that we have inside of us. that stop us from getting to a spot where we could be at tomorrow if we just let ourselves do it. And that's a big part of therapy, you know, and I, yeah, yeah, it's interesting to think about. I'm always curious as to the way we could be if we just let our, if we just got out of our own way. And in some ways, I think that's what psychedelics can do for you. Like there's, at least in some of my experiences, you know, whether I keep a journal and I write down my

intentions before an experience or sometimes I'll just go into an experience. Some of the, for me, the best ways I have found is to write down in a journal prior to my experience what it is that's been bothering me, what it is that I've been thinking about, what it is that I want to accomplish. And then if I find if I write that down, in my experience, I may not get the answer to all of them. I may get a roundabout answer to something, but I feel like it helps me. at least get on the right path to what I want to be about.

And coming out of it, I always do like a decoding or a debriefing on myself. And it may be take a day or maybe take a few days. But I always find some really good nuggets of truth. Even if it's not exactly what I talked about, it seems to be things that I can work on. And sometimes it's things I didn't even write down. And I'm like,

oh, son of a gun. You know, maybe I have been a little bit too much detail, oriented in my life lately. Maybe I should be pulling back and live the big picture, but yeah, it's an awesome therapy to think about it. So yeah, you're right. And I don't say what I said before to kind of minimize or to kind of undermine the importance of therapy, because I do find that people who have done a lot of talk therapy and that go into the psychedelic space, they often get more impactful outcomes than the people who've never done any type of dog therapy.

And when I talk to them, I'm like, you know, there's some sort of intellectual scaffolding. Yeah. That can happen. Right. You know, like intellectually, I can understand. Yeah. Like, I didn't deserve to be abused. Yeah.

Totally. Yeah, like, I deserve love. But that doesn't mean, like, No one's ever going to love me. And, you know, I'm always going to, like, end up in, like, the worst relationship. And, you know, my feelings might not necessarily drive with that intellectual understanding. And, you know, an example I give is in graduate school. I did that dissertation on forgiveness.

And I spent years researching, reading, writing papers. about forgiveness. And then at some point, I stumbled upon like psilocybin mushrooms, like my second or third year of my doctoral program. And I was in the ideal psychedelic psilocybin-induced space. And I had the right York song came on. It was very ethereal, very healing, very, like, angelic. And then all these thoughts and feelings about forgiveness came up.

And I could finally understand everything on an emotional level. Like I had that scaffolding there in place. And now I could understand it because I was thinking about like, you know, the indigenous culture, you know, that it came from. And my grandma's trauma and how her trauma impacted how she parented my mom. and how that impacted how my mom parented me and just this understanding and acceptance

of like not taking it personal and just kind of understanding that you know, there's a context that everything that, you know, all the struggles they put me through that they had their own struggles and I can't take that personal. And I don't know if I would have ever had that

without the psilocybin, experience. I sure, I understood things on a very intellectual, dry academic level. You know, my dissertation was, I graduated. It was good enough, I guess. The people reading it said I knew what I was doing. But I didn't have that kind of spiritual, phenomenological, subjective experience of it. and that is the magic of these interventions is that you know you do the work and you do the research

and you prepare and you bring in all the tools and all the knowledge that you've kind of accrued you know over the years into this moment and it is kind of like a roulette wheel to some degree you know, you're spinning the wheel and the ball is going to fall, you know, where it falls. But we can, how many tips do we have to put on the board, you know, for you? Because wherever that ball is going to fall, it's going to help you out, buddy. So the more tips we have to put on the board, you know, the lucky you are going to be going into this experience. Because, yeah, because sometimes people just have that experience. and I didn't feel anything kind of thing.

You know, and it's like that's just a word. Yeah. Well, it sounds to me like there's this integration of doing the work academically and then bringing it together with the spiritual side. And when I look at the world today, so much of medicine has become specialization. Like everyone wants to be a specialist because that's where the money is. And everyone has these in all kinds of life. It's just specialization. And we've gotten so specialized.

that this hand, it's not even talking to this hand, because it's almost different languages. We need that spiritual nature to combine them. And when you told the story about how you've done all this work, you've read the books, you've read the essays, you've talked to the teachers, you've got the academic down, and then all of a sudden you have this spiritual realization that connects them.

I think that where we're moving to, and I'm hopeful this is accurate, is the recombination or the rebirth of spiritual nature and academic nature coming down. back together. So it's like we're reconnecting. And we can have this idea of a really, maybe religious ceremony, but I like spiritual better.

Like the rebirth of spiritual and science coming back together allows us to become whole again. I feel like we've been so segregated and so split apart. And it's, I love the way you explained it, how all of a sudden you've got this spiritual side of. And I think that's what makes you a probably a good healer and an awesome person, at least in this conversation. I'm really getting to understand how cool of a person you are because you do understand. You have had these experiences. Hey, this happened to my grandma. It's happened to my mom. And now it happened to me. And now I can kind of let go. So sometimes you have to let go so that you

can understand. Like think about the words. Like you let go so you can understand and look. It's almost like you have to let go and drop down. Then you're understanding the situation that you can see. And like that's what healing's about. And I think that that is one place medicine is failing is they're failing to let go. And what does psychedelics do? They help you let go. Yeah, exactly. So there's an idea,

ideology that I kind of draw upon when I did this work with people is what sometimes called parts work. Right. And it's the idea that we have these different parts of ourselves that we're always kind of managing, right? You know, there's a part of me that wants to eat cookies all day and thinks that's a really good idea, right?

Yeah, that sounds like. like a really good idea. But there's another part of me too that wants to fit my pants and you know, live at the gym. And neither of those things are obtainable, realistic things that I can do. But I can, like, yeah, I can have two cookies a day and maybe run half a mile or something, right, and do, and be healthy. But I can learn to kind of moderate between these two different parts. of myself, right? And we do kind of have to think about things like on that level, like an integrative approach doesn't necessarily mean that we combine the two together. Like the two parts don't necessarily have to be one part at some point. Just like I have a heart and I have a

liver. I don't want to integrate those two parts because my heart does one thing and my liver does something else kind of thing and I need both of them and I'm a collection of parts, right? And yeah, okay, so I'm a male LGBT indigenous psychologist and this decade and I have this socioeconomic background and I have a lot of different parts. And there's a spiritual part and there's a part of me that wants to go watch comic book movies and everything, right? And I have to value all those things because they're all a part of my identity and I can't, you know, I have to manage them the best I can.

And that's the neat thing about this intervention is that it does kind of let those parts come up to you in a very upfront, sometimes abrasive, aggressive. Like, why did I say that to them? And like, why did I? Oh, that was so awful. I was so gross. And you have to look at those things. And you kind of have to work with them, grow with them. and renegotiate your relationship with them because it's like any type of family dynamic or

a group dynamic. Once your relationship with one part changes, it's going to change how your relationship with your other parts, your relationship with your other parts, just like, you know, if you're in a family system and son and dad team up against mom and mom's always never gets what she wants kind of thing and you know they go to pizza they like we're going to pizza hut and mom never gets to go to kentucky fried chicken or whatever right and then one day like son and lines with mom like no we're going to kentucky fried chicken right that changes your relationship with dad and his ability go to pizza hut kind of thing so it's that same idea like with the parts

you have within yourself like once i change my relationship with my angry you know you know, a bitter part of myself that's going to naturally impact my relationship of my forgiving, compassionate, understanding part of myself. And I'm going to have to work on that because I can't identify with the angry part of time. And so, you know, there is this kind of maybe shift that we need in the medical community of, like, wellness and wholeness kind of thing

and like you know you know your cardiologist has to talk you know if your dermatologist or the other

people who are helping manage whatever is going on with you and you're right this idea that

these two specialties can kind of operate independently from each other and that you're going to come out better at the end of it. Yeah, maybe that's something we need to think differently about. Yeah, I think we're, I really think we're on the cusp of fundamentally

changing the world in which we live. And I, there's so much, there's a lot of bleak news out there, but when I have conversations like this and over the last few years with my work with psychedelics, I really see a bright future emerging, and I do liken it to a birth. You know, birth, there's a lot of tragedies that happen in the birth canal. There's a lot of times when something new emerges into a new form and these things that we see dying around us, whether it's a lot of the boomer generation or whether it's these ideas of chaos and war. Like it really seems like a new birth is happening. And I believe it is.

And I believe it in the next 10 or 20 years, we're going to look back at this time as magical. Like, oh, my gosh, now I understand what was happening. Now I see. And just talking to you, I can see the revolution happening in medicine. And the Trojan horrors, like, you and I can see this image happening. And other people are like, yeah, we're business as usual. But I'm really looking forward. The earth is imploding on itself as we talk, as we're talking after this conversation.

Right. And if the shit doesn't happen sooner rather than like, hear like what's going to happen right um yeah so this is there is a sense of urgency behind this and hopefully you know we rise to the occasion and we meet the demand of the moment i guess right and yeah and i'm glad we stumbled upon each other and we got the um and you invited me to do this conversation today this is fantastic i'm having a blast and I got my goal is to have some more panels coming up where we do parts work with different people but as a whole so I'll invite you back and we can have some other discussions and um but before

we go because we're landing this plane here Desmond what do you have where can people find you what do you have coming up and what are you excited about um yeah I don't know like so right now I'm just like Tuesday like please just get here and end over this election cycle um um I really don't do, like, it's really embarrassing. I don't have a website. I don't advertise, like, I started working for myself, like, three or four months ago. I'm already, like, I'm not, like, I'm busy enough. Right.

So word of mouth has been really helpful for me. So you can email me, I guess. So my name's Desmond Wallington, growing up. everyone called me Dezzi, D-E-E-S-I. My email is Dezzi-D-E-S-E-L-I-C-S at Gmail. So if something I said was really interesting or profound to you, but that's how you can reach out to me and that's how you can find me. I don't have a website as embarrassing as that is

because I get that ass like once or twice of it. week and I'm like well I don't have time for a website and like I really don't like like business is business is healthy enough and that I don't have had to create a website that doesn't mean it's not coming or it won't ever come I just don't have anything you found me on LinkedIn yeah look for Desmond Wallington on LinkedIn you can connect with me there um so did I answer the question absolutely it was perfect and the interview was awesome I really thank you for your time and we'll talk again soon. I'll put all those links in the show notes for everybody to say.

And I want to say thank you to everybody that took a few moments to participate in the chat. Yeah. Really enjoyed it. And reach out to Desmond and ask him some questions and reach out to me and ask me some questions. And we really look forward to making the world we live in a little bit better. So that's what we got for today. Thank you, Mr. the full of Monte.