Trigger Warning: discussions of suicidality

Pedram Dara is an Iranian-born refugee to Canada and a former MDMA-assisted therapy clinical trial participant who has turned his experiences into founding and directing the Psychedelic Lived Experiences initiative, a patient-led movement advancing lived experience expertise in psychedelic research, treatment, and policy. In our conversation together, we talk about how his current advocacy work is built off of his early experiences as a child growing up in Iran. We explore some of the confusing messaging that surrounded him about drugs as he was growing up, before eventually talking through what led him to having his first therapeutic psychedelic experience to help heal his PTSD in a clinical trial setting.

A reminder that this episode contains mentions of suicidal thoughts. This warning is meant to empower you with the knowledge you need to make healthy decisions about how and if you should consume this podcast content. We invite you to practice self-care and do what feels right for you. And if you need support, please connect with someone who can help: family and friends, professionals, or a crisis line. There are both Canadian and international recommendations in the show notes below. You are not alone-- not in your pain, nor in your healing.

Shownotes

• Psychedelic Lived Experiences initiative that Pedram has built
• The upcoming Psychedelic Lived Experiences Summit, a free online event happening November 2025
• The FDA decision on June 4, 2024 to reject the initial application for MDMA therapy: https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/06/04/nx-s1-4991112/mdma-therapy-ptsd-fda-advisors
• MK Ultra experiments that happened at McGill in the 1950s and 60s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_experiments
• FDA Advisory Committee Meeting on MDMA Approval (U.S.) On June 4, 2024, Pedram spoke at the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee meeting during its review of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. As a public hearing speaker, he shared insights from his firsthand experience as a Phase 2 clinical trial participant, highlighting both the benefits and limitations of the treatment.
• Psychedelic Science 2025 Conference (U.S.) On June 19, 2025 Pedram led a self-organized panel at Psychedelic Science 2025, the first ever by MDMA-assisted therapy trial participants. The session brought together diverse voices who found benefit, faced challenges, or experienced harm, offering a rare, unfiltered look into the real-world complexity of psychedelic treatment and patient experience.
• Breaking Convention 2023 Keynote Presentation (Exeter, England) On April 22, 2023, Pedram delivered a keynote at Breaking Convention, Europe’s largest psychedelic conference, held at the University of Exeter. He shared insights from his own MDMA therapy experience, four years after participating in a Phase 2 clinical trial in Canada and discussed how to improve patient outcomes. He also joined a panel with renowned policy advocate Amanda Feilding.

Below are some Canadian and international mental health resources to access if you are in distress or need support:

• • Crisis Services Canada: https://988.ca/
  • Befrienders Worldwide (crisis lines serving 32 countries): https://befrienders.org/
  • International Directory of Mental Health Helplines: https://www.helpguide.org/find-help.htm
  • The Fireside Project (US-only psychedelic-specific support): https://firesideproject.org/
  • Psychology Today (to find a therapist in North America): https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/therapists

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

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Dr. Monnica T. Williams is a board-certified licensed clinical psychologist and Professor at the University of Ottawa in the School of Psychology, where she is the Canada Research Chair in Mental Health Disparities. She is also the Clinical Director of the Behavioral Wellness Clinics in Connecticut and Ottawa, where she provides supervision and training to clinicians for empirically-supported treatments. In our conversation together, we sit down outside of the professional context and talk a bit about her personal journey towards psychedelics for healing, and how her relationship with these substances evolved into what has become an important part of her career unfolding. We talk about what she learned in that first journey in a well-supported clinical environment, and learn more about how her evolving dance with psychedelics has impacted not just her career path, but just as importantly, her relationship to herself. 

Shownotes

• Monnica's professional website: https://www.monnicawilliams.com/
• Monnica's upcoming retreat on Psychedelics and Racial Trauma in Mexico in November: https://www.mentalhealthdisparities.org/retreats.php
• Links to a few of the studies back in 2015 that opened her mind to the potential of psychedelics:
  • The safety and efficacy of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamineassisted psychotherapy in subjects with chronic, treatment-resistant posttraumatic stress disorder: the first randomized controlled pilot study
  • Durability of improvement in post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and absence of harmful effects or drug dependency after 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted psychotherapy: a prospective long-term follow-up study

Monnica’s Social Media links: 

• X: @DrMonnica
• Instagram: @drmonnica
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/monnicawilliams

Trainings she offers: 

• http://www.racialtraumahealing.com/certification.php
• https://ebtrainingsolutions.com/event/2026-03-19/treating-racial-trauma-anti-racism
• https://bewellct.com/ketamine-retreat.php

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

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Jaz Cadoch is an Amazigh Moroccan Jewish woman dedicated to rebuilding a relationship with her lineage, and a cultural and medical anthropologist who has spent the past nine years studying the integration of psychedelic medicines into modern Western policy, medicine, and culture. Jaz also serves as a co-steward of the Global Psychedelic Society, a role which is deeply connected to her psychedelic roots, in which she experienced loneliness and disconnection in childhood, eventually finding solace and purpose in her shared experiences supporting others and being supported in kind. In our conversation together, we also explore her spiritual foundations and how the acts of rejecting religion and subsequently 'remembering' have helped her integrate her lineages, curiosities, teachings and experiences of psychedelics and of the divine.

Shownotes

• Jaz's personal website: https://jazcadoch.com 
• The Global Psychedelic Society (GPS): https://globalpsychedelic.org/ 
• Terence McKenna books that Jaz was impacted by in her teen years: True Hallucination (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114867.True_Hallucinations) and Food of the Gods (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51660.Food_of_the_Gods)

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

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Myriah MacIntyre is a Ph.D. candidate studying clinical psychology at the University of Ottawa, focusing her research on the impact of traditional medicines and psychedelics on healing racial trauma. In our conversation, Myriah shares about her own lived experience as a Black Caribbean-Indigenous lesbian woman, and how her identities have intersected with her research choices, but also with her own personal psychedelic unfolding. Growing up in a small Canadian city and attending a Lutheran private school, she felt isolated due to her race and sexuality. As she shares in this episode, what carried her through then-- and continues to now-- is her connection to spirituality and to music, which is a special relationship she talks about with us, both as a musician and as someone who has experienced chromesthesia from a very young age.

Shownotes

• Info about Chromosthesia: https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/
• Girls/Womxn skate group in Ottawa (Instagram @): girlsskate613
• Calm/comforting frequencies: 528 Hz Spotify playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWTvEFX6xtoQd
• Information on racial trauma: Racial Trauma resources http://www.racialtraumahealing.com/client-worksheets.php
• The Lab for Culture and Mental Health Disparities website: https://www.mentalhealthdisparities.org/
• Myriah's personal links
  • LinkedIn: Connect on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/m-myriah-macintyre-106bb2197/
  • Instagram: Myriah MacIntyre IG https://www.instagram.com/myriahmacintyre/
  • Research Gate: Myriah MacIntyre Publications https://www.researchgate.net/profile/M-Macintyre

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

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Bonney Elliott is a dual-licensed registered psychotherapist and nurse practitioner based in Ottawa, Canada. Working in private practice and group retreat settings, she has a decades-long career supporting people grieving loss and chronic illness, people recovering from trauma and those navigating significant life transitions. As we will hear in this episode, Bonney is also a person learning to caretake herself and find her own joy. After a childhood peppered with references to psychedelics in the 70’s and 80s, and a difficult first encounter with mushrooms in her early 20s, Bonney’s interest in psychedelics lay dormant but was eventually reignited by a CBC radio piece a few years ago about the connection between end of life distress and psilocybin mushrooms. From there she made her way to her first supported experience with psychedelics, and was able to experience some of the care and joy that she had been providing others throughout her life.

Shownotes

• Bonney's professional website: bonneyelliott.ca 
• A link to the CBC Tapestry podcast on psychedelics and end of life that inspired her re-engagement with psychedelic curiosity: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/can-psychedelic-drugs-help-ease-the-fear-of-death-1.2992608

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

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Doris is a neuroscientist who has over 25 years of experience working in the field of substance use and addiction. She has worn many hats over the years - from rave kid and community harm reduction advocate in the 90s, to becoming an academic research scientist using brain imaging to understand addiction, to serving as knowledge mobilizer supporting evidence-informed policies, programs, and decisions. However in our conversation together, we dive deeply into her personal journey with psychedelic substances, and how her evolving relationship to them has impacted not just her career choices, but perhaps more importantly, her relationship to herself, her psyche and her spirit.

Shownotes

• DanceSafe, a community dedicated to promoting safety within the rave and nightlife community, where Doris started and led a chapter in her early years: https://dancesafe.org/
• The Beckley Foundation: https://www.beckleyfoundation.org/
• Two of Doris' favourite raver songs: 'Knights of the Jaguar' by the Aztec Mystic (https://youtu.be/lLq8c2xuL6E?si=RrhrJUSYgseUgFMc); and 'Revolution 909' by Daft Punk (https://youtu.be/Wtd6DvLoCsU?si=dEmujAYAa0-LHyao)
• And a shout out to the Arboretum crew and the Konfused? Krew, which she didn't do by name in the podcast episode but wished she had!

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

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Yamina Abassi is a lover of life, a psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist, and she makes sense of the how's and why's of life through relationship and connection. Her journey with psychedelics began as a young adult in recreational settings, and she quickly became fascinated with its potential to offer new ways of understanding herself, others, and the world around her. This curiosity and love for people, along with a near-death experience at the age of 25, led her to pursue academic avenues of connection and support to be able to continue to engage in this space in professional settings. In this episode, Yamina shares her early childhood experiences trying to make sense of herself in relation to the rest of the world, her first psychedelic experience, as well as her near-death experience at age 25 and the mystical spiritual opening she went through after the accident, which factored prominently in her psychedelic unfolding.

Shownotes

• Flow State, the clinic where Yamina works in Ottawa: https://www.flowstatetherapy.ca/
• Finding the 'others' with the Ottawa Psychedelic Education Network: https://www.ottpsychedelic.ca/

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

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Judith is a New York-born-and-bred naturalized Canadian mother of two young adults. She is a technical writer and trainer, and like many folks curious about psychedelics, also a life-long learner. She came to the psychedelic community in 2018 as she was seeking relief from overwhelming grief, depression, and anxiety. As we hear in this episode, Judith took a measured approach to her entry into the psychedelic space, coming to psychedelics seeking healing, and ultimately finding that and much more. Our chat wends its way through her childhood in Brooklyn and how her family played a role in her eventual first psychedelic encounters, and takes us into her first solo and supported experiences, all of which played an important role in shaping some of the guiding values that she continues to embody in her life.

Shownotes

• Kelley Brogan (https://www.kellybroganmd.com/) and her book on gut health for mental health (https://www.kellybroganmd.com/books/a-mind-of-your-own)
• Ayelet Waldman (https://www.ayeletwaldman.com/) and her microdosing book ‘A Really Good Day’ (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30212082-a-really-good-day)
• Adam Strauss (https://adamstrauss.com/) and his play “The Mushroom Cure” (https://www.themushroomcure.com/)
• A link to the Fadiman microdosing protocol (https://microdosinginstitute.com/how-to/microdosing-protocols/#fadiman-protocol)

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

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Raymond Feng is a breakdancer, writer, appreciator of life, and a self-described life-long learner. He discovered his passion for psychonautics through psychedelic medicine and spirituality, and has brought that passion into his life in a variety of ways. Academically, he has finished two Bachelor degrees at University of Ottawa, one in Biomedical Sciences and the other in Psychology, and recently completed a Master’s in Mental Health Counselling & Behavioral Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. Raymond ‘s balanced nature is on full display as he shares about his first psychedelic experience, which challenged him to trust his connection to self and others in some life-changing ways.

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

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Manzar Zare is a Muslim woman, mother, legal professional and PhD student who is conducting research on psychedelics and the mental health of people of color, with a particular focus on support to Muslim women. This research naturally played a big role in her decision to have her own experience with psychedelics, which she recently undertook in a well supported psychedelic retreat centre in Jamaica. This decision to have her own healing experience with psychedelics also came out of becoming a mother and navigating her own mental health struggles with postpartum depression. Manzar embodies thoughtfulness in all senses of the word: both in her caring for the lived experience of others, and in her long-standing desire to explore and understand the human experience with her whole mind, body and spirit-- all of which is on full display in this episode.

Shownotes

Manzar's most recent publication:

• Zare, M., & Williams, M. T. (2024). Muslim Women and Psychedelics: a Look at the Past, Present, and Future. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 22(2), 897–912. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-023-01108-9

Music credit: Music by Mass X Audio from Pixabay

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