A Trip Lab Thought Experiment: We will dive into an alternate reality where psychedelics can be used by anyone to explore their consciousness and place in the world (without having a mental health disorder like depression to make it legal).

Find out how psychedelics can help you understand the complex topics of quantum physics, string theory, the illusion of time and parallel universes.

We will also discuss exciting new research papers looking into how psychedelics have been proven to increase creativity both in an artistic and scientific discovery setting.

Last, we will see how psychedelics have shaped religions throughout the world and time-- from Christianity to Witchcraft.

Mentions:
- Psychedelics as potential catalysts of scientific creativity and insight
- Spontaneous and deliberative creative cognition during and after psilocybin exposure
- 'Dancing Naked in the Mind Field' by Kary Mullis
- 'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics' by Carlo Rovelli
- 'Reality Is Not What It Seems' by Carlo Rovelli
- 'The Order of Time' by Carlo Rovelli

Email me at: [email protected]
Follow The Trip Lab on Instagram @thetriplabpodcast 

We chat with Dr. Mark Braunstein about how he pioneered a new path in psychiatric care using cannabis, ketamine and psilocybin... in addition to integrating wilderness programming, exercise, diet and spirituality to treat depression, addiction, anxiety and trauma. He dives deeper into how cannabis works in the mind and the different ways he prescribes this to his patients. We also chat about the future of cannabis and psychedelic medicine-- both seeing it as an exciting opportunity to treat psychiatric disorders but also molecules that need to be taken with great care.

Mentions:
Sustainable Mycelium 'Leather' - Mylo Unleather
Dr. B's recommended CBN: Maven Hemp

Reach Mark Braunstein, DO:
Instagram @thecannabispsychiatrist
Reconscious Medical

Chronic low levels of inflammation is linked to at 8 out of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States. This, along with chronic stress, causes premature aging, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, cancer and a lot more.  This episode dives deeper into how this process happens... and what you can change in your diet to combat it. 

This episode rounds out our discussion on inflammation and stress, following episode #6 all about adaptogenics and the HPA access (endocrine stress response) and #7 all about mind body medicine and your autonomic (neurological) stress response. 

Mia Cara Cosco is the Creative Director of Psychedelic Salons. She has 10 years of experience in psychedelic medicine advocacy and has a really beautiful take on these plants and fungi as medicine.

We chat all about the work that she does holding space for people to experience psychedelics, as well as creating spaces to merge social venture capital with artists, business people, leaders and visionaries.  Mia is passionate about 'democratizing cognitive liberation' with psychedelics and has a very humble, artistic and intentional approach to doing just that. We also discuss microdosing and how she incorporates many different psychedelics into her life that way.

Get in touch with Mia:
Personal Instagram: @miacosco
Psychedelic Salons Instagram: @psychedelicsalons
YouTube Channel: Mia Cosco
Website: miacosco.com

Max C Wood is a graduate student studying developmental neuroscience and psychopathology at the Anna Freud Center in London. He is finishing his studies at Yale, studying the impact that attachment styles have on a psychedelic treatment design, using ketamine.  

We talk all about how developmental neuroscience came to be, and why this goes hand in hand with understanding the brain using psychedelics... in addition to using psychedelics to treat human suffering. Going a little deeper into the placebo response, we speculate why it works on both a neuro-biological level and a spiritual level. 

Then we dive a little bit into micro-dosing, speculating if the full psychedelic experience is actually necessary to healing or not which ultimately leads us to a discussion on the soul and the spirit and where that fits into all of this. 

Reach Max via email at [email protected]

Mind-Body Medicine was until recently, dismissed by modern medicine. The idea that the mind could influence the body was paradoxically deemed just not true--- it's no surprise the current data is saying otherwise. It is know widely accepted that increased stress experienced in the mind lowers the immune system and influences a wide variety of disease, most notably cardiac and metabolic.

In this episode we break down the autonomic nervous system (to round out the neurological side of the stress response we started in our adaptogenic episode when we talked about the endocrine side of the stress response).

This inflammation and stress response is also vital to understanding why COVID was so detrimental, and we will talk all about why.

We will discuss a range of mind-body therapies that have been proven to be beneficial in the literature, including breath work, mindfulness and medical hypnosis. We will also discuss some of the newer literature looking at hypnosis as a replacement for anesthetic drugs during surgery.

Inevitably we will hop down a few rabbit holes talking about out of body experiences, Jung's archetypes and his idea of the collective unconscious... and how that might relate to why occult practices like Tarot  and other religious texts like the Bible actually share a scary amount of similarities.

Mentions:
- Book: 'Woke. An Anesthesiologists  View.' by Madhava Setty MD
- App: Waking Up with Sam Harris

Adaptogenics and nootropics have become buzzwords in posh grocery stores-- on every botanical elixir and new sparkling water. But what exactly are they? Do they actually work? And what does the data tell us? Find it all out in the episode!

Adaptogenic herbs: panax ginseng, rhodiola, ashwaganda, licorice root, milk thistle
Adaptogenic mushrooms: maitake, reishi, cordyceps, lion's mane
Adaptogenic foods: ginger, garlic, green tea

Nootropics mentioned: caffeine, GABA, L-theanine

Mentions
Chicago Market - Foxtrot
Botanical Elixir - Kin Euphorics

The benefits of yoga have been proven extensively in the medical literature. We dive into the science of how yoga works to treat mental health disorders, musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular disease and even the cognitive decline that comes with age. 

Then, for our very first guest interview we have Shelby Caldwell here to answer all of our yoga questions. She is a certified yoga instructor and currently manages the Ritual Hot Yoga Studio in Chicago. We have an open and honest conversation about addiction and how that can look different for every person, we discuss the dichotomies of life and a new way of looking at ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and finally we get philosophical about the practice of yoga and how it truly invites you to choose to live your fullest life.

Mentions in this episode:

Yoga Studio: Ritual Hot Yoga

Yoga Teacher Training: The Yoga Teachers Lab

Book: ‘The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali’ by Sri Swami Satchidananda

Book: ‘Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve’ by Stanley Rosenberg

Book: ‘Between Heaven and Earth: A guide to Chinese Medicine’ by Harriet Beinfield and Efem Korngold

Social Media:
Shelby Caldwell - IG @shelbsyoga
Ritual Hot Yoga - IG @ritualhotyoga
The Trip Lab - IG @thetriplabpodcast

This episode is going to be all about MDMA (also known as Molly or Ecstasy). We will explore the history of this compound and it's use, the neuroscience of how it works, what the latest clinical trials have shown, and even look at the shadow side of these sort of therapy sessions. 

Mentioned Links:

Netflix Docuseries: 'The Business of Drugs'

Book: ‘The Gateway of the Heart: Accounts of Experiences with MDMA and other Empathogenic Substances’ compiled and edited by Sophia Adamson 

An overview of magic mushrooms and LSD (aka Acid). We will chat about the history of these compounds, why they were banned, why they are making a comeback, and how they are being used to treat anxiety, depression, addition and so much more. We will explain the neuroscience in an easy to understand way, and what this might mean for the future of psychiatry (and just life!). 

Book: 'The Immortality Key' by Brian C. Muraresku

New Neuronal Connections Depiction