Psychedelics Today

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In this episode Joe interviews, Richie Ogulnick, a long time Ibogaine provider and enthusiast. During the show they discuss Ibogaine and Addiction-Interruption Therapy.

3 Key Points:

1. Ibogaine is a compound found in the Tabernanthe Iboga plant that has been used to treat opioid and other addictions.
2. Ibogaine has shown to have the power to reset the biochemistry of a person to a non-addictive state, and reduce/eliminate the agonizing symptoms of withdrawal, allowing a person to heal from an addiction.
3. The combination of Ibogaine, relocation and integration therapy is the best scenario for healing someone and preventing them from relapse.

Support the show

• Patreon
• Leave us a review on iTunes
• Share us with your friends – favorite podcast, etc
• Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community.

Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes About Richie

• In 1989 he was Introduced to Ibogaine while visiting family and friends in New York
• Its an alkaloid extracted from a West African shrub
• He was ready to fall in love with doing something with purpose
• He came across an article about a corporation called NDA created by Howard Lotsof
  • When Howard (a heroine addict) was 19 years old, a chemist gave him a dose of Ibogaine
  • A few days later, he realized he “wasn't afraid” and then he realized he wasn't having opioid withdrawals
• In “Needle Park”, a park in New York, heroin addicts come there for free needles
  • Richie’s dream was to dose all the addicts with Ibogaine, and that only a quarter of them would show up to Needle Park because they were not addicted anymore
• He brought 13 grams of Ibogaine back from Africa with him
• He received a chapter from a book (Healing Journey) called Ibogaine: Fantasy and Reality by Claudio Naranjo
• People were coming from all over the world to receive Ibogaine treatments
• It was 15 years where he conducted over 750 psycho-spiritual and addiction-interception sessions underground
• Upon training people, those people would then go and open their own treatment centers in Mexico, abroad, etc.

What is Iboga

• Tabernanthe Iboga is the plant
• Ibogaine Hydrochloride is the best product to use to interrupt addiction and symptoms of withdrawal from an addiction
• Ibogaine is safe as long as someone has had an EKG that has been looked at very closely for any red flags
• Other than cardiac risk and previous suicidality, schizophrenia, psychotic breaks there aren't many more threats to being treated with Ibogaine

The Miracle Compound

• “There is a miracle compound in ibogaine. There is nothing I have come across on the planet that can reset the biochemistry to a pre-addictive state, that can bring a person to make a choice without the agony of the symptoms of withdrawal.” - Richie
• There is a 36 hour window where a person has a life review, what brought them to the addictive process in the first place, the person's willingness and maturity
  • It creates a symbiotic relationship for a person to explore themselves with insight
• Relapse is possible if they don't work on the reason they became addicted in the first place
• It's the witness component that Ibogaine delivers that helps people process through their addiction
• Ibogaine as a molecule has a really pharmacologically complex, alien like structure

Relapse

• Justin Hoffman, a DJ in Las Vegas runs Holistic House, a facility where people get to relax and get out of their previous context for a week or two after treatment
• If a family wanted to help out their family member who is addicted to heroine, Richie says that he asks the family about relocation because it's a big part of reducing relapse
• He also says that finding a proper therapist to help afterward is huge too
• The combination of Ibogaine, relocation and integration therapy is the best scenario for healing someone and preventing them from relapse

Big Pharma’s Impact

• Joe says how he got a message from Dana Biel, talking about how the harm reduction movement has been manipulated by the ‘Big Pharma’ industry, especially suboxone
  • Richie says that drugs like suboxone are prescribed to be used everyday for the rest of someone's life, and Ibogaine is a “one-time-only” style drug that doesn't require alot of money to heal people
  • Ibogaine is not profitable so its not attractive to Big Pharma
  • “Ibogaine will never hit the streets like LSD did. It's not a recreational experience, it's a long, daunting 3 stage process.” - Richie

Use Cases

• He knows of a story where these two ladies took Ibogaine daily for their Parkinson's, and as soon as they stopped taking Ibogaine, they got their symptoms back
• He knows of another lady who had been walking with a cane and upon taking Ibogaine she was walking a mile around her neighborhood without her cane

Final Thoughts

• Joe asks if Richie thinks we are over harvesting Iboga
  • There is the Wakanga tree that contains a small amount of Ibogaine, so he thinks we are okay
• Ibogaine is an important subject because a lot of people are dying from opiates
• Ibogaine is available in Portugal but it hasn't had much activity
• It can be used for therapeutic use as well as addiction-interruption

Links

website

Richie Ogulnick is a long time Ibogaine provider and enthusiast Over the course of fifteen and a half years, he conducted about 750 sessions, including addiction-interruption treatments. He spent the next several years referring close to 1,000 more people to other ibogaine providers. During that time, he also trained doctors and ex-addicts who opened ibogaine centers throughout the world. Richie feels a pull to focus again on the more therapeutic and psycho-spiritual treatments where he is able to offer his expertise in ibogaine treatment along with his knowledge of reintegration with individuals who are looking to deepen and enrich their life experience.

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In this Episode, Joe interviews Brad Burge, Director of Strategic Communications at MAPS. In this episode they discuss the Phase 3 Trial for MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy, contradictions and Expanded Access.

3 Key Points:

1. MAPS is about to run Phase 3 Trials of MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy
2. If MDMA passes this third phase, it will still be tricky to get insurance involved. But the cost of one series of MDMA Therapy is much cheaper than a lifetime of typical pharmaceutical drugs and therapy sessions to heal PTSD.
3. The only reason for-profit companies haven't gotten involved before was because there wasn't a promise on their investment. Finally, for-profit companies (like Compass Pathways) are interested in advancing these medicines (Psilocybin and MDMA).

Support the show

• Patreon
• Leave us a review on iTunes
• Share us with your friends – favorite podcast, etc
• Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community.

Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes MAPS

• Brad Burge is the Director of Strategic Communications at MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
• MAPS started out as just a few employees in 2009 and has grown to over 40 now

Phase 3 Study

• They are now in Phase 3 Trials
• They started recruiting at 14 sites (US, Canada and Israel) and are recruiting 150 volunteers with severe PTSD
• Participation

The Future of MDMA Assisted Therapy

• Breakthrough Therapy Designation
  • The FDA categorized MDMA as a breakthrough drug for PTSD
• After phase 3 trials, if all goes well, it would mean that MDMA would be the drug to be used (only) alongside Psychotherapy
• MAPS is training therapists, counselors and social workers
  • One way to get more people educated who are interested in this would be taking therapy interns in and having them gain credits for interning and learning alongside trained therapists

Access

• Expanded Access is known as 'compassionate use', a program by the FDA that allows people to receive a treatment that is still in trials
• In order to administer the therapy you are required to get a DEA schedule 1 license
• "If there's one thing that changes public perspective on psychedelic therapy, its individual stories of people who have been healed, transformed by or positively or even negatively affected by them in some way" - Brad
• They have published many studies of the trials
  • The most recent was the Boulder study, 76% of people didn't have PTSD a year after MDMA assisted therapy
• Insurance won't cover expanded access, it will have to pass Phase 3 trials until insurance can be used in MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy
• The MDMA is a very small cost (fraction) of the total cost, it's the hours on hours of psychotherapy that cost so much
• But the cost of one MDMA Therapy Session process is much cheaper than a lifetime of pharmaceutical drugs and therapy sessions to heal PTSD

Argument

• Joe says he hears this strange argument that people say "giving soldiers MDMA just makes war easier"
  • Brad says it's not about putting these people back into war, it's about healing the retired veterans to help them adapt back into their everyday life
  • "MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy is going to make them a better lover not a better fighter" - Brad
  • "If there's one commonality in psychedelic experiences, its that things are connected." - Brad

Compass Pathways

• Joe mentions that people are scared to see a business come in that's acting like a normal pharmaceutical company
• MAPS is not tied at all with Compass Pathways
• Out of the top two things Americans are mad about, at least one of them is the Pharmaceutical Industry
• Finally, for-profit companies are interested in advancing these medicines (MDMA)
  • The only reason for-profit companies haven't gotten involved before was because there wasn't a promise on their investment
  • Capitalism has a tendency to put profit first
  • "Money can be used for good as well as evil" - Brad
• MAPS has raised over 70 billion dollars all from donations
• Compass owns its own safety data
• Part of the goal of a patent is to protect the investment

Zendo Project

• MAPS Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Peer Support resource
  • Tim Ferriss has volunteered for Zendo
  • They are always looking for new volunteers
  • They offer trainings on site at the events
  • They will be hosting a harm reduction webinar right before festival season

Rave Act

• The Department of Justice announced that providing free water and harm reduction education are not violations of the rave act
• Amend the Rave Act

Pharmaceutical MDMA

• The pharmaceutical grade MDMA costs 800,000 for one kilogram
• It won't be available in bottles, it will be available in bubble packs
  • More than one is never needed

Involvement

• 2021 or 2022 is the next Psychedelic Science Conference
• Joe is starting a Psychedelic Club in Breckenridge, CO

Links

Twitter Facebook Website

About Brad

Brad Burge is Director of Strategic Communications at the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Brad earned his B.A. in Communication and Psychology from Stanford University in 2005 and his M.A. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego in 2009. He began working with MAPS in 2009, where he engages daily with journalists and media producers around the world to enhance public knowledge about psychedelic research, while also helping develop and evolve MAPS' brand and outreach strategy. Brad is passionate about finding healthier, more effective, and more compassionate ways for humans to work with the pharmaceutical and digital communications technologies of the 21st century. When he's not plugged in, you'll find him in the mountains, carrying a backpack, somewhere down a long trail.

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In this Episode, Joe interviews Brad Burge, Director of Strategic Communications at MAPS. In this episode they discuss the Phase 3 Trial for MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy, contradictions and Expanded Access.

3 Key Points:

1. MAPS is about to run Phase 3 Trials of MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy
2. If MDMA passes this third phase, it will still be tricky to get insurance involved. But the cost of one series of MDMA Therapy is much cheaper than a lifetime of typical pharmaceutical drugs and therapy sessions to heal PTSD.
3. The only reason for-profit companies haven't gotten involved before was because there wasn't a promise on their investment. Finally, for-profit companies (like Compass Pathways) are interested in advancing these medicines (Psilocybin and MDMA).

Support the show

• Patreon
• Leave us a review on iTunes
• Share us with your friends – favorite podcast, etc
• Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community.

Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes MAPS

• Brad Burge is the Director of Strategic Communications at MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
• MAPS started out as just a few employees in 2009 and has grown to over 40 now

Phase 3 Study

• They are now in Phase 3 Trials
• They started recruiting at 14 sites (US, Canada and Israel) and are recruiting 150 volunteers with severe PTSD
• Participation

The Future of MDMA Assisted Therapy

• Breakthrough Therapy Designation
  • The FDA categorized MDMA as a breakthrough drug for PTSD
• After phase 3 trials, if all goes well, it would mean that MDMA would be the drug to be used (only) alongside Psychotherapy
• MAPS is training therapists, counselors and social workers
  • One way to get more people educated who are interested in this would be taking therapy interns in and having them gain credits for interning and learning alongside trained therapists

Access

• Expanded Access is known as ‘compassionate use’, a program by the FDA that allows people to receive a treatment that is still in trials
• In order to administer the therapy you are required to get a DEA schedule 1 license
• “If there’s one thing that changes public perspective on psychedelic therapy, its individual stories of people who have been healed, transformed by or positively or even negatively affected by them in some way” - Brad
• They have published many studies of the trials
  • The most recent was the Boulder study, 76% of people didn't have PTSD a year after MDMA assisted therapy
• Insurance won't cover expanded access, it will have to pass Phase 3 trials until insurance can be used in MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy
• The MDMA is a very small cost (fraction) of the total cost, it’s the hours on hours of psychotherapy that cost so much
• But the cost of one MDMA Therapy Session process is much cheaper than a lifetime of pharmaceutical drugs and therapy sessions to heal PTSD

Argument

• Joe says he hears this strange argument that people say “giving soldiers MDMA just makes war easier”
  • Brad says it's not about putting these people back into war, it's about healing the retired veterans to help them adapt back into their everyday life
  • “MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy is going to make them a better lover not a better fighter” - Brad
  • “If there's one commonality in psychedelic experiences, its that things are connected.” - Brad

Compass Pathways

• Joe mentions that people are scared to see a business come in that's acting like a normal pharmaceutical company
• MAPS is not tied at all with Compass Pathways
• Out of the top two things Americans are mad about, at least one of them is the Pharmaceutical Industry
• Finally, for-profit companies are interested in advancing these medicines (MDMA)
  • The only reason for-profit companies haven't gotten involved before was because there wasn't a promise on their investment
  • Capitalism has a tendency to put profit first
  • “Money can be used for good as well as evil” - Brad
• MAPS has raised over 70 billion dollars all from donations
• Compass owns its own safety data
• Part of the goal of a patent is to protect the investment

Zendo Project

• MAPS Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Peer Support resource
  • Tim Ferriss has volunteered for Zendo
  • They are always looking for new volunteers
  • They offer trainings on site at the events
  • They will be hosting a harm reduction webinar right before festival season

Rave Act

• The Department of Justice announced that providing free water and harm reduction education are not violations of the rave act
• Amend the Rave Act

Pharmaceutical MDMA

• The pharmaceutical grade MDMA costs 800,000 for one kilogram
• It won't be available in bottles, it will be available in bubble packs
  • More than one is never needed

Involvement

• 2021 or 2022 is the next Psychedelic Science Conference
• Joe is starting a Psychedelic Club in Breckenridge, CO

Links

Twitter
Facebook
Website

About Brad

Brad Burge is Director of Strategic Communications at the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Brad earned his B.A. in Communication and Psychology from Stanford University in 2005 and his M.A. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego in 2009. He began working with MAPS in 2009, where he engages daily with journalists and media producers around the world to enhance public knowledge about psychedelic research, while also helping develop and evolve MAPS' brand and outreach strategy. Brad is passionate about finding healthier, more effective, and more compassionate ways for humans to work with the pharmaceutical and digital communications technologies of the 21st century. When he’s not plugged in, you’ll find him in the mountains, carrying a backpack, somewhere down a long trail.

Download In this episode, hosts Joe and Kyle sit down and engage in conversation together, covering topics such as Kyle's capstone project, Trauma and Breath: A Clinical Approach to Trauma Resolution Utilizing Breathwork, current events, upcoming plans and the hurdles as a Psychedelic education and information company in a space of both ethical and unethical findings.

3 Key Points

1. Kyle will be soon finishing his capstone project, Trauma and Breath: A Clinical Approach to Trauma Resolution Utilizing Breathwork.
2. The project is on the clinical application of Breathwork Therapy. The goal will be to use an Integrative Breathwork Therapy model that can be used adjunct to Psychedelic Therapy.
3. Joe and Kyle find out about a lot of things that are potentially harmful in the psychedelic world. They are "journalists", but without money for legal defense. It's a difficult time, where a lot of unethical stuff is happening around psychedelics, and Joe and Kyle feel responsible for the safety of the community.

Support the show

• Patreon
• Leave us a review on iTunes
• Share us with your friends – favorite podcast, etc
• Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community.

Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes Kyle

• Kyle's been doing an internship a few days a week and has been doing undergraduate student counselling
• He's been working on his capstone project that has consumed a ton of his time and energy
  • He wants to thank Elizabeth Gibson and Alan Davis who have been reviewing his capstone project for him

Breathwork Therapy Capstone

• Writing the capstone in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program means it needed to have clinical applications
• Kyle went to the MDMA Training in 2016, and he talked to Michael Mithoefer, who told him that if he wants to get involved, to figure out something that can be an adjunct to psychedelic therapy
  • Kyle thought that he could use an Integrative Breathwork Therapy model that could then be used adjunct to Psychedelic Therapy

Styles of Breathing

• A deep, slow belly breath can be very activating to the parasympathetic nervous system that calms the body down
• A fast, intense breath can be more active and can bring out traumas

The Phases

• Phase 1: Grounding and Emotional Regulation (slow, deep breath, the therapeutic alliance)
  • They screen for people that have had a traumatic experience, spiritual emergence or psychosis in the last 6 months so they know where to start with a patient
  • They use a capscore (a test that looks at the severity of someone's PTSD) to determine where to start in therapy
  • Joe mentions that it would be beneficial to see what level of capscore a patient responds positively or negatively to a Breathwork session
• Phase 2: Using Breathwork in a somatic processing phase
  • Stage 1: Somatic experiencing (helping people breathe into the sensations in the body)
    • The body has a 'secret language', of how our body holds onto trauma
    • Turning inward and being more in touch with inner sensations (tightness, heat, etc)
  • Stage 2: A more activating of "blockages" by intensifying or speeding up the breath
• Phase 3: Outside of the clinical scope, placing someone in a full group, 3 hour Breathwork that might bring up collective traumas or spiritual experiences
  • The goal would be to get people through therapy to get them to the larger group process, create community and form social connections
  • It needs to start with the clinical space, one-on-one to generate trust. Once they have that trust and confidence, they can go out and explore the more transpersonal and spiritual aspect of themselves

Bandwidth in Communication

• We have modems, cable, fiber optics, 3g, 4g, 5g cell networks, etc.
• Video communication, phone conversation is great, but it's 2D
• When its in person, depth of field kicks in, you're able to see body language and intonation
• Living in a tribe of 150 people and creating community, we'd be using our full bandwidth, bringing the human organism back to its full capacity
• "Therapists get taught clinical practices, but they aren't taught about theory and practice of trauma" - Joe

Psychedelic News Responsibility

• MAPS just published an article about an online Breathwork workshop
  • Joe says its not a bad thing, but there are risks by not having an in person facilitator
• "We find out about a lot of things that are potentially harmful in the psychedelic world, our relationship to coming out about that stuff is tricky. Yes, we are "journalists", but without money for legal defense." - Joe
  • Joe says he feels responsibility for safety in the community
  • Kyle says the psychedelic community sometimes feels like the wild west due to the lack of education. "When unethical stuff arises, what is our responsibility?" - Kyle
  • "We are trying to understand our future, and not put ourselves in a bad place, all while keeping you all safe and continuing to serve the community" - Joe
• How LSD alters our consciousness

Psychedelics Today Books

Trip Journal Integration Workbook Both books will be on Amazon for purchase in the next few weeks

Arizona Psychedelic Conference

• Arizona Psychedelic Conference
  • Joe and Kyle will be guiding 2 Breathwork workshops
  • They are excited to connect and meet people
• Kyle and Joe will be going to another conference in March
  • The title of the conference is "Can Exceptional Experiences Save Humans, from Ecological Crisis"
  • "If were going to survive on earth, we've got to be a little more global. We are all linked to this spaceship that we are traveling through space on, and there are limited resources on this thing. We are answering a lot of these questions through psychedelics" - Joe

About Kyle

Kyle's interest in exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness began when he was 16-years-old when he suffered a traumatic snowboarding accident. Waking up after having a near-death experience changed Kyle's life. Since then, Kyle has earned his B.A. in Transpersonal Psychology, where he studied the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness by exploring shamanism, plant medicine, Holotropic Breathwork, and the roots/benefits of psychedelic psychotherapy. Kyle has co-taught two college-level courses. One of the courses Kyle created as a capstone project, "Stanislav Grof's Psychology of Extraordinary Experiences," and the other one which he co-created, "The History of Psychedelics."

Kyle is currently pursuing his M.S. in clinical mental health counseling with an emphasis in somatic psychology. Kyle's clinical background in mental health consists of working with at-risk teenagers in crisis and with individuals experiencing an early-episode of psychosis. Kyle also facilitates Transpersonal Breathwork workshops.

About Joe

Joe studied philosophy in New Hampshire, where he earned his B.A.. After stumbling upon the work of Stanislav Grof during his undergraduate years, Joe began participating in Holotropic Breathwork workshops in Vermont in 2003. Joe helped facilitate Holotropic and Transpersonal Breathwork workshops while he spent his time in New England. He is now working in the software industry as well as hosting a few podcasts. Joe now coordinates Dreamshadow Transpersonal Breathwork workshops, in Breckenridge, Colorado.

Download
In this episode, hosts Joe and Kyle sit down and engage in conversation together, covering topics such as Kyle’s capstone project, Trauma and Breath: A Clinical Approach to Trauma Resolution Utilizing Breathwork, current events, upcoming plans and the hurdles as a Psychedelic education and information company in a space of both ethical and unethical findings.

3 Key Points

1. Kyle will be soon finishing his capstone project, Trauma and Breath: A Clinical Approach to Trauma Resolution Utilizing Breathwork.
2. The project is on the clinical application of Breathwork Therapy. The goal will be to use an Integrative Breathwork Therapy model that can be used adjunct to Psychedelic Therapy.
3. Joe and Kyle find out about a lot of things that are potentially harmful in the psychedelic world. They are “journalists”, but without money for legal defense. It’s a difficult time, where a lot of unethical stuff is happening around psychedelics, and Joe and Kyle feel responsible for the safety of the community.

Support the show

• Patreon
• Leave us a review on iTunes
• Share us with your friends – favorite podcast, etc
• Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community.

Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes Kyle

• Kyle’s been doing an internship a few days a week and has been doing undergraduate student counselling
• He’s been working on his capstone project that has consumed a ton of his time and energy
  • He wants to thank Elizabeth Gibson and Alan Davis who have been reviewing his capstone project for him

Breathwork Therapy Capstone

• Writing the capstone in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program means it needed to have clinical applications
• Kyle went to the MDMA Training in 2016, and he talked to Michael Mithoefer, who told him that if he wants to get involved, to figure out something that can be an adjunct to psychedelic therapy
  • Kyle thought that he could use an Integrative Breathwork Therapy model that could then be used adjunct to Psychedelic Therapy

Styles of Breathing

• A deep, slow belly breath can be very activating to the parasympathetic nervous system that calms the body down
• A fast, intense breath can be more active and can bring out traumas

The Phases

• Phase 1: Grounding and Emotional Regulation (slow, deep breath, the therapeutic alliance)
  • They screen for people that have had a traumatic experience, spiritual emergence or psychosis in the last 6 months so they know where to start with a patient
  • They use a capscore (a test that looks at the severity of someone’s PTSD) to determine where to start in therapy
  • Joe mentions that it would be beneficial to see what level of capscore a patient responds positively or negatively to a Breathwork session
• Phase 2: Using Breathwork in a somatic processing phase
  • Stage 1: Somatic experiencing (helping people breathe into the sensations in the body)
    • The body has a ‘secret language’, of how our body holds onto trauma
    • Turning inward and being more in touch with inner sensations (tightness, heat, etc)
  • Stage 2: A more activating of “blockages” by intensifying or speeding up the breath
• Phase 3: Outside of the clinical scope, placing someone in a full group, 3 hour Breathwork that might bring up collective traumas or spiritual experiences
  • The goal would be to get people through therapy to get them to the larger group process, create community and form social connections
  • It needs to start with the clinical space, one-on-one to generate trust. Once they have that trust and confidence, they can go out and explore the more transpersonal and spiritual aspect of themselves

Bandwidth in Communication

• We have modems, cable, fiber optics, 3g, 4g, 5g cell networks, etc.
• Video communication, phone conversation is great, but it's 2D
• When its in person, depth of field kicks in, you're able to see body language and intonation
• Living in a tribe of 150 people and creating community, we'd be using our full bandwidth, bringing the human organism back to its full capacity
• "Therapists get taught clinical practices, but they aren't taught about theory and practice of trauma” - Joe

Psychedelic News Responsibility

• MAPS just published an article about an online Breathwork workshop
  • Joe says its not a bad thing, but there are risks by not having an in person facilitator
• “We find out about a lot of things that are potentially harmful in the psychedelic world, our relationship to coming out about that stuff is tricky. Yes, we are “journalists”, but without money for legal defense.” - Joe
  • Joe says he feels responsibility for safety in the community
  • Kyle says the psychedelic community sometimes feels like the wild west due to the lack of education. “When unethical stuff arises, what is our responsibility?” - Kyle
  • “We are trying to understand our future, and not put ourselves in a bad place, all while keeping you all safe and continuing to serve the community” - Joe
• How LSD alters our consciousness

Psychedelics Today Books

Trip Journal
Integration Workbook
Both books will be on Amazon for purchase in the next few weeks

Arizona Psychedelic Conference

• Arizona Psychedelic Conference
  • Joe and Kyle will be guiding 2 Breathwork workshops
  • They are excited to connect and meet people
• Kyle and Joe will be going to another conference in March
  • The title of the conference is “Can Exceptional Experiences Save Humans, from Ecological Crisis”
  • “If were going to survive on earth, we've got to be a little more global. We are all linked to this spaceship that we are traveling through space on, and there are limited resources on this thing. We are answering a lot of these questions through psychedelics” - Joe

About Kyle

Kyle’s interest in exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness began when he was 16-years-old when he suffered a traumatic snowboarding accident. Waking up after having a near-death experience changed Kyle’s life. Since then, Kyle has earned his B.A. in Transpersonal Psychology, where he studied the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness by exploring shamanism, plant medicine, Holotropic Breathwork, and the roots/benefits of psychedelic psychotherapy. Kyle has co-taught two college-level courses. One of the courses Kyle created as a capstone project, “Stanislav Grof’s Psychology of Extraordinary Experiences,” and the other one which he co-created, “The History of Psychedelics.”

Kyle is currently pursuing his M.S. in clinical mental health counseling with an emphasis in somatic psychology. Kyle’s clinical background in mental health consists of working with at-risk teenagers in crisis and with individuals experiencing an early-episode of psychosis. Kyle also facilitates Transpersonal Breathwork workshops.

About Joe

Joe studied philosophy in New Hampshire, where he earned his B.A.. After stumbling upon the work of Stanislav Grof during his undergraduate years, Joe began participating in Holotropic Breathwork workshops in Vermont in 2003. Joe helped facilitate Holotropic and Transpersonal Breathwork workshops while he spent his time in New England. He is now working in the software industry as well as hosting a few podcasts. Joe now coordinates Dreamshadow Transpersonal Breathwork workshops, in Breckenridge, Colorado.

Download

In this episode, Kyle and Joe host Rebecca Ann Hill and David Jay Brown, Authors of the book, Women of Visionary Art. The book showcases the work and inspiration of female artists such as Josephine Wall, Allison Grey, Amanda Sage, Martina Hoffman, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld and many others.

3 Key Points:

1. Rebecca Ann Hill and David Jay Brown are co-authors of the book, Women of Visionary Art, which includes discussions with 18 female artists.
2. The book and the episode are an exploration of the role that dreaming, psychedelic experiences, and mystical visions play in visionary art.
3. There is a strong need for a balancing of masculine and feminine energies. Females tend to be more nurturing and more cooperative, and it's exactly the factors that are missing in our current world and are causing problems of greed.

Support the show

• Patreon
• Leave us a review on iTunes
• Share us with your friends – favorite podcast, etc
• Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community.

Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes About David

• David's background is in Psychobiology, the interface between psychology and biology
• He spent 10-15 years working in neuroscience and research labs
  • His interest in Neuroscience came from his experience as a teenager, experimenting with psychedelics
• He wrote his first book, The Science of Psychedelics, about 10 years ago
• David mentions that the psychedelic renaissance has allowed him to write openly about psychedelic topics that he's been preparing his whole life researching for

About Rebecca

• aka Molly Moon Sparkles
• She has a huge creative drive
• She is currently studying psychology and is playing in the art program
• She is fascinated by entheogens, plant medicines and psychedelic compounds
• She is a painter and is working on the Molly Moon Magick Series that focuses on the divine feminine
• She wrote and illustrated the book Ecstatic Love, Lost Dreams and Mystic Visions

Psychedelics and Creativity

• There is strong evidence that psychedelics improve creativity Music, art, technology, so many great things are influenced by psychedelics

Putting the Book Together

• David was so fascinated with the visions he would see on psychedelics and wished that he had the talent to portray it through artwork, and then he began to see artists bring these visions to life
• He also saw a lot of gender inequality, that there were more men than women in the visionary art space
  • It urged him to highlight the under recognized women in visionary art
• Rebecca was experimenting with other realms with plant medicines and psychedelic compounds
  • She says her consciousness was so drastically different from any other time in her life, and she started painting her psychedelic experiences
  • This led her to begin building community with other artists who shared the same 'vision' as her
  • She said that the psychedelic experience has so much feminine nature to it that wasn't being voiced
  • "We are going through a serious ecological crisis right now and the teachings behind the psychedelic experience is to heal the collective and help climate change" - Rebecca
• Stanley Krippner conducted a survey of artists and psychedelics

The Imbalance of Masculine and Feminine

• There is an uprising of feminism with the "Me Too" movement, women in congress, women's marches
• Our species has been so dominated by men and we need the nurturing and caring aspects of the feminine perspective

Surprising Aspects of the Women

• The most surprising aspect is how much in common the women had
• David says it was beautiful how well each artist was connected to each other through their stories
• Laura Holden is completely self taught
• There were two women from the book that had never touched a psychedelic substance
  • They were inspired through dreams and daydreams
• The psychedelic experience not only inspires the artwork, but it creates a new way of viewing artwork
• Kyle mentions that he always wished he could record his dreams
  • Joe says he has been seeing research around capturing visual or imagined imagery

Discovering the Artists

• David discovered most of the artists that he had not previously known through the community Rebecca had been a part of as visionary artists

COSM and Entheon

• August 3rd, Rebecca and David are giving a presentation as COSM in New York
• Entheon, the Sanctuary for Visual art may be open by them
  • Entheon will have workshops, painting classes, rooms to stay in, full moon ceremonies, etc.
  • It will be an art sanctuary, a church with a spiritual and psychedelic essence
• Visionary art is getting into museums and becoming a recognized art form

The Desperate Need for Balance

• Terrence McKenna told David that early on in human civilization, men didn't understand the role that sex had in creating babies
  • The power of reproduction was within women and sex was something else
  • Once men began thinking that they were responsible for the generation of life, they starting saying its "my baby" its "my wife" instead of 'our' baby or the community's baby. It kept developing into "my child" into "my country", "MY".
  • Then people started using less psychedelics and started consuming more alcohol and now everything is an over exaggerated male dominance
  • "Females tend to be more nurturing and more cooperative, and it's exactly the factors that are missing in our current world and are causing problems of greed. It could be balanced and harmonized with more feminine energy." - David
• There is a crucial imbalance from male and female in history alone
  • But more than an imbalance between just males and females, it's about an imbalance of masculine and feminine energies
  • Each of us, male and females have both a masculine and feminine energy
  • We can see the masculine and feminine imbalance in the world and our planet right now. We don't need to shift to a goddess worshiping planet, but we just need to be back in balance and bring more feminine energy of nurturing and compassion and caring and healing
• Penny (an artist highlighted in the book) mentions about Sandos giving LSD to researchers who gave it to artists

Getting Involved

• "If you want to get involved in painting, dancing, making jewelry, clothing, gardening, don't wait. Do it. If you are true to yourself and your own inner visions, you will succeed" - Rebecca
• One thing all artists have in common is fear and insecurity, so you can't let it hinder you from beginning

Final Thoughts

• Artists like Android Jones are doing visionary artwork in virtual reality mediums
• David thinks visionary artwork will become only even more interactive and immersive spaces
• We need to find a more yin-yang balance between masculine and feminine

Links

Women of Visionary Art (Amazon) Women of Visionary Art (Inner Traditions) David's Site Rebecca's Site MollyMoonSparkle blog

About Rebecca

Rebecca Ann Hill (AKA Molly Moon Sparkle), is a visual artist with a wide range of experience in different creative mediums. She is the co-author and illustrator of "Ecstatic Love, Lost Dreams & Mystic Visions", as well as "Women of Visionary Art." Primarily a painter, she is creating a new series entitled "Molly Moon Magick," and her other projects include dancing with "Gold Town Burlesque," writing a blog -"Go Ask Molly"- and working on a new book about her spiritual awakening.

About David

David Jay Brown is the author of Dreaming Wide Awake: Lucid Dreaming, Shamanic Healing and Psychedelics, and The New Science of Psychedelics: At the Nexus of Culture, Consciousness, and Spirituality. He is also the coauthor of five other bestselling volumes of interviews with leading-edge thinkers, Mavericks of the Mind, Voices from the Edge, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse, Mavericks of Medicine, Frontiers of Psychedelic Consciousness, and of Women of Visionary Art. Additionally, Brown is the author of two science fiction novels,Brainchild and Virus, and he is the coauthor of the health science book Detox with Oral Chelation. Brown holds a master's degree in psychobiology from New York University, and was responsible for the California-based research in two of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake's books on unexplained phenomena in science: Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and The Sense of Being Stared At. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Wired, Discover, and Scientific American, and he was the Senior Editor of the special edition, themed MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) Bulletins from 2007 to 2012. In 2011, 2012, and 2013 Brown was voted "Best Writer" in the annual Good Times and Santa Cruz Weekly's "Best of Santa Cruz" polls, and his news stories have been picked up by The Huffington Post and CBS News.

Download

In this episode, Kyle and Joe host Rebecca Ann Hill and David Jay Brown, Authors of the book, Women of Visionary Art. The book showcases the work and inspiration of female artists such as Josephine Wall, Allison Grey, Amanda Sage, Martina Hoffman, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld and many others.

3 Key Points:

1. Rebecca Ann Hill and David Jay Brown are co-authors of the book, Women of Visionary Art, which includes discussions with 18 female artists.
2. The book and the episode are an exploration of the role that dreaming, psychedelic experiences, and mystical visions play in visionary art.
3. There is a strong need for a balancing of masculine and feminine energies. Females tend to be more nurturing and more cooperative, and it's exactly the factors that are missing in our current world and are causing problems of greed.

Support the show

• Patreon
• Leave us a review on iTunes
• Share us with your friends – favorite podcast, etc
• Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community.

Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes About David

• David’s background is in Psychobiology, the interface between psychology and biology
• He spent 10-15 years working in neuroscience and research labs
  • His interest in Neuroscience came from his experience as a teenager, experimenting with psychedelics
• He wrote his first book, The Science of Psychedelics, about 10 years ago
• David mentions that the psychedelic renaissance has allowed him to write openly about psychedelic topics that he’s been preparing his whole life researching for

About Rebecca

• aka Molly Moon Sparkles
• She has a huge creative drive
• She is currently studying psychology and is playing in the art program
• She is fascinated by entheogens, plant medicines and psychedelic compounds
• She is a painter and is working on the Molly Moon Magick Series that focuses on the divine feminine
• She wrote and illustrated the book Ecstatic Love, Lost Dreams and Mystic Visions

Psychedelics and Creativity

• There is strong evidence that psychedelics improve creativity
  Music, art, technology, so many great things are influenced by psychedelics

Putting the Book Together

• David was so fascinated with the visions he would see on psychedelics and wished that he had the talent to portray it through artwork, and then he began to see artists bring these visions to life
• He also saw a lot of gender inequality, that there were more men than women in the visionary art space
  • It urged him to highlight the under recognized women in visionary art
• Rebecca was experimenting with other realms with plant medicines and psychedelic compounds
  • She says her consciousness was so drastically different from any other time in her life, and she started painting her psychedelic experiences
  • This led her to begin building community with other artists who shared the same ‘vision’ as her
  • She said that the psychedelic experience has so much feminine nature to it that wasn't being voiced
  • “We are going through a serious ecological crisis right now and the teachings behind the psychedelic experience is to heal the collective and help climate change” - Rebecca
• Stanley Krippner conducted a survey of artists and psychedelics

The Imbalance of Masculine and Feminine

• There is an uprising of feminism with the “Me Too” movement, women in congress, women’s marches
• Our species has been so dominated by men and we need the nurturing and caring aspects of the feminine perspective

Surprising Aspects of the Women

• The most surprising aspect is how much in common the women had
• David says it was beautiful how well each artist was connected to each other through their stories
• Laura Holden is completely self taught
• There were two women from the book that had never touched a psychedelic substance
  • They were inspired through dreams and daydreams
• The psychedelic experience not only inspires the artwork, but it creates a new way of viewing artwork
• Kyle mentions that he always wished he could record his dreams
  • Joe says he has been seeing research around capturing visual or imagined imagery

Discovering the Artists

• David discovered most of the artists that he had not previously known through the community Rebecca had been a part of as visionary artists

COSM and Entheon

• August 3rd, Rebecca and David are giving a presentation as COSM in New York
• Entheon, the Sanctuary for Visual art may be open by them
  • Entheon will have workshops, painting classes, rooms to stay in, full moon ceremonies, etc.
  • It will be an art sanctuary, a church with a spiritual and psychedelic essence
• Visionary art is getting into museums and becoming a recognized art form

The Desperate Need for Balance

• Terrence McKenna told David that early on in human civilization, men didn't understand the role that sex had in creating babies
  • The power of reproduction was within women and sex was something else
  • Once men began thinking that they were responsible for the generation of life, they starting saying its “my baby” its “my wife” instead of ‘our’ baby or the community’s baby. It kept developing into “my child” into “my country”, “MY”.
  • Then people started using less psychedelics and started consuming more alcohol and now everything is an over exaggerated male dominance
  • “Females tend to be more nurturing and more cooperative, and it's exactly the factors that are missing in our current world and are causing problems of greed. It could be balanced and harmonized with more feminine energy.” - David
• There is a crucial imbalance from male and female in history alone
  • But more than an imbalance between just males and females, it's about an imbalance of masculine and feminine energies
  • Each of us, male and females have both a masculine and feminine energy
  • We can see the masculine and feminine imbalance in the world and our planet right now. We don't need to shift to a goddess worshiping planet, but we just need to be back in balance and bring more feminine energy of nurturing and compassion and caring and healing
• Penny (an artist highlighted in the book) mentions about Sandos giving LSD to researchers who gave it to artists

Getting Involved

• “If you want to get involved in painting, dancing, making jewelry, clothing, gardening, don't wait. Do it. If you are true to yourself and your own inner visions, you will succeed” - Rebecca
• One thing all artists have in common is fear and insecurity, so you can't let it hinder you from beginning

Final Thoughts

• Artists like Android Jones are doing visionary artwork in virtual reality mediums
• David thinks visionary artwork will become only even more interactive and immersive spaces
• We need to find a more yin-yang balance between masculine and feminine

Links

Women of Visionary Art (Amazon)
Women of Visionary Art (Inner Traditions)
David’s Site
Rebecca’s Site
MollyMoonSparkle blog

About Rebecca

Rebecca Ann Hill (AKA Molly Moon Sparkle), is a visual artist with a wide range of experience in different creative mediums. She is the co-author and illustrator of “Ecstatic Love, Lost Dreams & Mystic Visions”, as well as “Women of Visionary Art.” Primarily a painter, she is creating a new series entitled “Molly Moon Magick,” and her other projects include dancing with “Gold Town Burlesque,” writing a blog -“Go Ask Molly”- and working on a new book about her spiritual awakening.

About David

David Jay Brown is the author of Dreaming Wide Awake: Lucid Dreaming, Shamanic Healing and Psychedelics, and The New Science of Psychedelics: At the Nexus of Culture, Consciousness, and Spirituality. He is also the coauthor of five other bestselling volumes of interviews with leading-edge thinkers, Mavericks of the Mind, Voices from the Edge, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse, Mavericks of Medicine, Frontiers of Psychedelic Consciousness, and of Women of Visionary Art. Additionally, Brown is the author of two science fiction novels,Brainchild and Virus, and he is the coauthor of the health science book Detox with Oral Chelation. Brown holds a master’s degree in psychobiology from New York University, and was responsible for the California-based research in two of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s books on unexplained phenomena in science: Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and The Sense of Being Stared At. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Wired, Discover, and Scientific American, and he was the Senior Editor of the special edition, themed MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) Bulletins from 2007 to 2012. In 2011, 2012, and 2013 Brown was voted “Best Writer” in the annual Good Times and Santa Cruz Weekly’s “Best of Santa Cruz” polls, and his news stories have been picked up by The Huffington Post and CBS News.

Download In this episode, hosts Kyle and Joe interview Balázs Szigeti, PhD and David Erritzoe, PhD to discuss the self-blinded microdosing study in collaboration with the Imperial College London. In this episode, they explore the self-blinding study and it's pros and limitations, with the aim to collect data on microdosing and its possible benefits.

3 Key Points:

1. Microdosing (LSD) has the least amount of research so far among research on drugs like Psilocybin, MDMA and Ketamine.
2. This microdosing study includes a procedure on how self experimenters can implement placebo control. This will help determine whether microdosers feel benefits due to the placebo effect or because of the pharmacological action of the microdose.
3. Just because microdosing may have a placebo effect (the way a user feels while taking it) it may actually have benefits that one cannot necessarily 'feel' (users may become more creative, have better problem solving skills, etc).

Support the show

• Patreon
• Leave us a review on iTunes
• Share us with your friends – favorite podcast, etc
• Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community.

Navigating Psychedelics

Show Notes About Balázs

• Balazs attended his undergrad in the UK at Imperial College and studied Theoretical Physics
• He moved to Scotland to get his PhD in Computational Neuroscience
• He became interested in psychedelics via the Global Drug Survey
• He was doing MDMA research and then the microdosing project came to him

About David

• He is a medical doctor and works in clinical psychology doing research
• He does brain imaging and his background has been in addiction, depression and schizophrenia
• He did his postdoc at Imperial and worked with Robert Carhart Harris
• He worked in a clinical trial working with people of treatment resistant depression
• He is currently working on an online survey for microdosing

Psychedelic Medicine

• MDMA for PTSD is the most advanced in terms of available scientific evidence for psychedelic medicine
• There is already a big gap in psilocybin vs MDMA for treatment
• There isn't much research on microdosing yet
  • In order to do research on microdosing, you'd have to bring in a 'patient' and have them in the lab for many hours at a time, very frequently, and it's not practical

The Microdosing Study

• In this microdosing study, they are testing cognitive function
  • The user will have to fill out a questionnaire throughout the duration of the microdose
• There were a lot of things, very political for the downfall of psychedelic science
• When the double-blind method was introduced for science, it used methods that would have compromised the 'setting' of taking psychedelics
• There is a manual that the users have to follow for the setup process
  • Its a semi-randomized process where they take the microdose over 4 weeks and it may be either the psychedelic or a placebo
  • It works on a method of a dose hidden in a capsule assigned to a QR code, where the user doesn't know what they take until the end of the study
• This is a study inviting people that plan to microdose a blotter based psychedelic
  • Its a hands-off study of observation, based on a users own plan on taking the substance

Limitations of the Study

• Its half-way between a clinical study and an observational study
• They aren't sending the users the LSD, they are just providing the platform for the users to share their experience on
• In this trial, the flaw is that the research team doesn't know the dose size of the blotter the user takes, it could start as a 100mg, more, less. Its a variable that cannot be controlled
  • The fix would be to have the LSD sent to the lab, tested for dose size, and then sent back to the user (anonymously), but since it's illegal it cannot be done
  • It's also hard to determine even distribution of a blotter into microdose size
  • They don't know if the user is cutting the blotter paper like a pie or in squares
• Also, because the drug is being bought on the black market, they wont know if there are adulterants in the drug unless the user tests the drug themselves
  • David and Balázs also say that based on current findings, most LSD tested is pure LSD, where a drug like MDMA is more common to contain an adulterant
• They do have plans to extend the study to include plant based psychedelics and volumetric dosing

What is a Psychedelic Microdose?

• Psychedelic microdosing is not the same as Pharmacological microdosing
• A microdose in pharmacological context is 1/100th of a dose, where a psychedelic microdose is more like 1/10th of a dose

Is Microdosing Worth it?

• People like David Nichols and Ben Sessa think microdosing is pointless
  • It could be that microdosing is a glorified placebo effect
• Most people who are microdosing have had previous experience with psychedelics
  • People are doing it because they believe there is a benefit that comes from it
• The placebo control is the most important component of this self-blinded method
• People say that microdosing stimulates their creativity, but creativity is hard to measure
• One thing they could measure is personality through a personality assessment
  • One thing that has been studied is an increase in the 'Openness' personality trait after psychedelic use
  • The flaw is that a personality test is a person answering questions about themselves

Current Findings

• The benefit of this study, is it doesn't take people out of their natural, personal setting
• Based on the feedback already received, the users are getting their guess right only half of the time, on whether it is the microdose or the placebo
• Just because microdosing may have a placebo effect (the way they feel while taking it) it may actually have benefits (users may be more creative, have better problem solving skills, etc).
• Homeopathy is widely believed to be a placebo effect in the scientific community, but the homeopathy is continuing to grow

Links

Self-blinding Microdose Study

About Balázs Szigeti, PhD

Dr. Balazs Szigeti has studied theoretical physics at Imperial College, but turned towards neuroscience for his PhD studies at the University of Edinburgh. His main work is about the behavioural neuroscience of invertebrates, but he has a diverse scientific portfolio that includes computational neuroscience and driving forward the OpenWorm open science initiative. Balazs is also the editor of the Dose of Science blog that is published in collaboration with the Drugreporter website. Dose of Science discusses and critically assesses scientific studies about recreational drugs. Recently Balazs has started a collaboration with the Global Drug Survey to quantitatively compare the dose of recreational users of various drugs with the scientific literature.

About David Erritzoe, PhD

Dr. David Erritzoe is qualified as a medical doctor from Copenhagen University Medical School and currently holds an Academic Clinical Lectureship in Psychiatry at Imperial College London. Alongside his clinical training in medicine/psychiatry, David has been involved in psychopharmacological research, using brain-imaging techniques such as PET and MRI. He has conducted post-doc imaging research in the neurobiology of addictions and major depression. Together with Prof Nutt and Dr Carhart-Harris he is also investigating the neurobiology and therapeutic potential of MDMA and classic psychedelics.