TrueLife - Psychedelic Medicine - Who Decides

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

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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. Hears 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 Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. The sun is shining, the birds are singing. I hope you're smiling. I hope you have someone to tell you how much they love you. I hope you have something to do, something to look forward to, and someone to love.

I want to talk to you today, my friends, about the psychedelic experience. I want to talk to you today about the times in which we live. And I want to talk to you today about the way in which you see these two things together. There is an incredible emerging, budding, new world. of psychedelic medicine. And this particular medicine, be it MDMA therapy or psilocybin or LSD or cannabis, all of these substances are beginning to be known for the healing agents that they can be. Does that sound right?

These substances are beginning to be taken seriously. by the medical communities. I often think of psychedelics, if you'll permit me a personification of these medicines, at least in the West, at least in the West. Most of us who are in their 40s or 50s or older remember hearing stories, or maybe if you're a little older,

maybe you actually lived in the times when psychedelics were introduced to the population. Back in the 50s, there was some research being done. Back in the 60s and 70s, when the psychedelics got away from the labs and into the general population, there was some irresponsible use. There was the use by people protesting the Vietnam War. And there was a lot of short-sighted irresponsible use. However, there was also an explosion of creativity. There was an explosion of insight.

There was an explosion of love. Long story longer, the powers that B decided that this particular set of substances could be used to bring people in. It was decided that these substances are dangerous. It was decided that these substances should be classified as dangerous. and so they were. Psychedelics were shelved and put away and treated as if they were a crack cocaine or heroin, completely ignoring the potential that these particular substances have for well-being, for health,

and being a agent that can help individuals cope with that which makes them suffer. Fast forward 20 years. In the 90s, cannabis became a thing that was somewhat mainstream. Fast forward again. Cannabis becomes legal. The next step is psilocybin becomes legal. In the last decade or so,

we've begun to see major institutions like John Hopkins University, UCLA, multiple well-known prestigious institutions have begun understanding how profound the psychedelic healing process can be. And that's where I want to begin our conversation is today, where we have seen this child or maybe adolescent form of psychedelics begin to bloom into a situation. adult. And I think it's an apt metaphor. If you think about your adolescence, if you think about someone who is really intelligent and an adolescent, they do tend to get in trouble. They tend to push the boundaries. They tend to walk right up to the line and sometimes cross it. I think that is the nature.

You know, maybe it's not the nature. Maybe it is our nature. Maybe it is our nature to test the boundaries. How many times have you heard that psychedelics are in fact something that causes boundary dissolution? It happens quite a bit. And when we find ourselves today, I see a very interesting dichotomy happening in the world of plant medicine, in the world of psychedelic healing, in the world of practitioners and doctors and suffering and PTSD and all the MDMA and all these possible therapies beginning to bloom and bud into our consciousness and our world. I see two camps kind of evolving. And one camp is the camp of scientism.

One camp is deathly afraid of psychedelics leaving the lab, leaving the practitioners, leaving the doctors, and going back out and reestablishing a connection with chaos. And so there is Very stringent Very strict guidelines from one camp To make sure that the Psychedelic experimentation remains

On the straight and narrow The sort of IBM business model Of wearing suits And this is something that must be documented And it must be utilized with logic and

reasoning and we must deduce these effects into rational numbers that we can then go and explain to people using formulas exactly what's happening inside the brain a very left brain

scalpel-like logical approach to dissect and then explain what is happening. And you can see their point. This particular group wants to heal. They want to help. But they are the left brain

logical, reduced down to the science, reduced down using the scientific method to explain exactly what it is that's happening. These are the people that believe science. Scientism is the answer. And there's plenty of validity to their point. The next camp is what I call the spiritual camp. And here's a camp of people that have embraced the creativeness that psychedelics allow them to enjoy.

This is also the camp that may not use the left brain logical scalpel-like intellect, but instead uses the right brain, the symbolic metaphor-forming creative side. And these are the people that have had experiences that sometimes scare the left side. They speak of rewiring the brain. They speak of mating God. They speak of other dimensions and aliens

and bejeweled, driven. machine elves. And while both camps understand the power of psychedelics and they want what's best for their psychedelic experiments, they want to help people. They are opposed in some ways.

One of those ways is who decides what the person that needs help should get? Let me try to clear that out a little bit. Let's say a man in his 20s who has spent time in Iraq or Afghanistan or even Ukraine, PTSD, maybe some horrible things happen, they're having nightmares. What should be the way in which that person is treated? Should they go to a regular doctor who prescribes them a set amount of psilocybin?

Hey, take two of these and call me in the morning. or should they sit down with a doctor who will sit there with them while they go through the process in a clinical lab in a doctor's office where they take their blood, they're hooked up to a machine, they've got an EKG, they've got a heart monitor, they're being tested while they are on the substance. blood work is done a background check is done a psychiatric evaluation is done during after

is that one way to do it that seems to me to be one way that the hardline scientific camp would like to document the process on the other side we have the practitioner group who maybe wants to have or understands better the set and setting.

Maybe a clinical hospital room is the wrong place to do something like this. Maybe the doctor who is used to being a general practitioner is not the same type of doctor that would be best for this young man's procedure or trip. And how do you decide who has the right to prescribe it? Because psychedelics are in this somewhat of a gray area. Should the patient be prescribed five different, should the patient get five sessions with a doctor? Or should the patient get one session with the doctor

where he learns to understand what the trip is. And then maybe the second time the doctor watches and then the doctor teaches the patient how to do it himself so that he can do his own work on himself or herself. It's interesting to think about. For me, I'm in the middle. I find myself on the right brain creative side. I think it's best for the individual to confront their own demons and or learn what it is that is wrong with them in their own way. Now, that being said, there's a lot of people that may need someone there in case they get scared. Perhaps there could be some sort of background check or some sort of checklist to look for at-risk behaviors.

On the side of the left brain camp, you definitely wouldn't want a patient to take it and then have some sort of adverse reaction that could derail the process. It's a fascinating thing to think about. And I think the more you look into it, the more you see these two camps, scientific and spiritual, kind of merging. And I think it's interesting to think about the left hemisphere of the brain is this logical

analytical scalpel the right hemisphere of the brain is this symbolic spiritual natural mystic and it's interesting to me that these are the two camps lining up

on the new battlefield that is the psychedelic medicine ultimately I don't think the scientific camp be able to get rid of that which they fear the most. And I think that what the scientific camp fears the most is this idea of spirituality. In the mind of the scientist, in the mind of scientism, there is no room for spirituality. There's only room for diagnosis and analytical

measurements. I do not think you can take spirituality out of science. I think you can try. However, when you do that, I think you take away the experience. I'd like to think of myself on a bridge, and on the right-hand side is the camp of spirituality, and on the left-hand side is the camp of scientism. And in the middle of the bridge, if you picture yourself in the middle of the bridge and extending your hands to each side, beckoning forth an ambassador from both sides, the spiritual side and the scientific side.

And there you are in the middle. I think that can be a psychedelic meditation to think about. You cannot take the spiritual nature out of science. And you cannot take the inquisitive questioning. out of spirituality. You need them both. And when you're only in one camp, you only get one side of the story. In some ways, I'm hopeful that psychedelic medicine has the ability to reunite both camps, to understand that we are part of the whole. And I think it is the psychedelic experience that in the future going forward will unite us.

I think for too long we've been divided. And I think the greatest leap forward for psychedelic medicine is this ability to open our minds and unite us as one. Be at MDMA or LSD or psilocybin, ketamine. They hold profound opportunities to heal us. And isn't it interesting that regardless of what side you're on, be it the scientific side, be it the spiritual side. Both sides see the promise. It's almost as if it's this fire in the minds of men that we are gathering around, this remembering

of who we are as a species. Psychedelics know no color, they know no, no. They have no preconceived ideas of race or gender. They are something that dissolves boundaries. And while we should be careful, you know, when you think of Chesterson's, Chesterson's fence, has everybody heard of that? Chesterson's fence or Chesterton's fence? It's this idea that if you're out in the middle of a meadow and you see a fence, be it an old bobwire, rusty, with some posts, you shouldn't tear it down because that fence was put up for a reason. Same is true of boundaries.

We should respect people's boundaries. We should respect the fence. Maybe we don't need to tear it down. However, maybe we need to do a lot of investigation as to why this boundary was put there. There's a difference between tearing something down and investigating. what it actually divides. I think there's a lot to think about there. And I think we're in very exciting times

in the world of psychedelic medicine. In some ways, we are still in our infancy. If you look at cultures in South America or the East, you can see that there have been millennia. I don't know of millennia, but there's been hundreds of years of use with these substances. and if you think about these plant medicines as a technology, those who have used the technology longer have a better grip on it.

There's another camp that's out there. Speaking of South America and some of the older practitioners, if you read the literature, you find that in South America, people would go to the shaman, or they would go to the medicine man with their problem. and those who were suffering never took the psychedelic substance. It was always the practitioner that took the psychedelic substance. It was the medicine man.

He would take it. He would think about what it was the people were suffering from, and then he would help them. I don't see that being discussed anywhere. Perhaps that's because there's a lot of money being poured in from pharmaceutical companies to patent or package and sell these as drugs or supplements to help people. And there's no money in that way of one individual taking it, the doctor taking it, and then explaining to the people what the problem is.

In fact, that might be a third option. You know, we said that if the individual comes and with the scientific camp does his sessions inside of a clinic. And if he comes and does it with the spiritual camp, he learns to do it on himself. Perhaps if a person is showing a lot of at-risk signs and it is not wise for them to be, maybe they have a condition like schizophrenia or they have some sort of mental condition where it's not advisable for them to do psychedelics. Maybe that's a case where the practitioner does the psychedelic substance,

spends time with them, and then comes to the ideas that may help that person, kind of a third way of doing it. Either way, I hold dear, dear the future of psychedelics and plant medicine. I think that we are on the cusp of helping lots of people from suffering, be it loneliness or end of life trauma or Alzheimer's or family issues or PTSD. I think the future for psychedelics is bright.

And I think that there are a lot of incredibly intelligent, helpful, empathic empathic people that are being called to help heal the world. What do you guys think? Let me know down. Let me know. Reach out to me in an email. It's G-E-O-R-G-E-P-M-O-N-T-Y at g-M-O-N-T-Y at g-mail. Let me know what you guys think.

I'd love to hear from you. That's all we got for today. Let's get up. Go and Don't know.