Mushroom Therapy with Psychedelic Therapist Clayton Ickes
Curious about psychedelic therapy and how it's becoming legal? Join Julian Royce in this eye-opening conversation with Clayton Ickes, Colorado's first licensed psychedelic therapist, as they explore the changing landscape of mental health treatment.
In this episode, Clay shares his personal journey to becoming a pioneering psychedelic therapist and breaks down what's happening with legal psychedelic therapy in Colorado right now. You'll learn about natural plant medicines, specifically psilocybin (the active compound in magic mushrooms), and how the latest science shows it can help with mental health and overall well-being.
What You'll Discover:
Clay explains how psychedelic therapy works differently from traditional talk therapy and psychiatric medication—it's not just about treating symptoms, but creating deep, lasting change in how we see ourselves and the world.
We dive into Colorado's current laws and regulations around psychedelic therapy, including what's legal now and what might be coming. Whether you're considering this type of treatment for yourself or just want to understand this new frontier in mental health care, this conversation offers practical insights without the confusing medical jargon.
Clay shares the science behind psilocybin therapy in plain English, including how these sessions are structured, what to expect, and why the therapeutic setting matters so much. You'll also hear about the real differences between going to a traditional therapist and working with someone trained in psychedelic-assisted therapy.
This is essential listening for anyone interested in alternative mental health treatments, the future of therapy, or understanding how ancient plant medicines are being integrated into modern healthcare.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Welcome to A State of Mind, the podcast that brings together ancient wisdom with cutting edge science, psychology, creativity, and so much more in service of this mystery we call life. This is Julian Royce. Today's episode is a really good one. I'm really excited to be bringing it to all of you. It is on something that is transforming the landscape of mental health care and also of human potential. Our approach is the spirituality and I believe our culture and society and that is psychedelics, in particular, psychedelic assisted therapy. And in this episode we're specifically talking about psilocybin assisted therapy. Psilocybin is the main active ingredient in magic mushrooms. But for someone to tell you about a new online group I'm launching, it's starting November 11th and it's called Life Integrated, where self-awareness becomes transformation. It's a space designed to support deep personal growth, healing, and integration. And this group is really for those who want to feel more grounded and connected with your authentic self, your true self. In internal family systems, that's called Self with a capital S, and in other traditions and systems, it's called something else. But we're going to be supporting each other in living and coming from our true self. We are going to be working to transform patterns that hold you back in relationships and in life, and you'll receive insight, feedback, and support in a safe, growth oriented community. We'll also be learning advanced skills and practices, including different forms and approaches to meditation, breath work, and visualization. And as part of the course, you'll get recordings of all those practices as we move forward together. So it's starting November 11th. It may be possible to join after that date. So whenever you're listening to this, please send me a message if you're interested and I'll be happy to tell you more. So for today's episode, we're going to be doing a deep dive into psychedelic assisted therapy, specifically psilocybin, and I'm going to be talking with a fellow psychedelic therapist named Clay Ickes. In our conversation, we talk in depth about the legalities and laws in Colorado, which I wanted to share with people. I get a lot of questions and inquiries around what's legal or not, and I hope that this podcast conversation really answers those questions. I will link to resources in the show notes below so you can learn more. But the state of Colorado is at the forefront of psychedelic existed therapy and making these natural medicines legal. So we talked about that. We get to hear about Clay's long journey to do this work, how he moved to Colorado specifically for that reason to become a psychedelic therapist. So before we get to the conversation with Clay, I want to share with you some relevant science here. Psilocybin is the active compound found in what are sometimes called magic mushrooms. I don't know if I never hear anyone actually say that, but if you read articles and go to conferences on this kind of thing, that's what everyone always says. Let's call them what they are, psychedelic mushrooms. They've been used by some Indigenous groups and people and communities for thousands of years in rituals of healing and transformation. And in the past 20 years or so, there's been a huge increase in modern scientific interest in these and other psychedelic compounds. Now, as some of you know, in the history of this, these were studied scientifically in the 1950s and 60s. That research then went underground with the war on drugs. And there's been a resurgence of that, which we've called the psychedelic renaissance, however you want to talk about it. But there's been a massive, massive growth and interest in psychedelics. And a lot of it has scientifically has been looking at how it can help with mental health. I have learned so much about psychedelics over the years, including what the best practices are for minimizing potential risks and for really maximizing the potential benefits of insight, of wisdom, of healing, of transformation. And I was reflecting on this. It's been 8 1/2 years since my first official training in psychedelic assisted therapy, and this is a topic that is personal to me. I'm really grateful and inspired to be working in this field and to be here in Colorado where these laws have been passed to make them more legally available. I think that is wonderful and there's a lot of responsibility there to hold them in the right, right energy and to care for them the right way. Psilocybin for me in particular has been an incredible teacher and ally and guide and spirit and it's been a source of inspiration for me. And I would, I would say, if I'm honest, the single most powerful psychedelic experience I've ever had in my life was with psychedelic mushrooms. And it was in the deserts of Canyonlands many years ago with my friend Steven Johnson, who's also featured on this podcast. So I think I will wait for another time to share more about that. But I can say that it proved to me, at least in my own experience, that changing our own consciousness in the right set and setting. First of all, it proved to me the importance of set and setting because with Steven there, we created an incredible ceremony based on ancient Buddhist practices and principles, and that actually served us really well. But one take away from that, that early experience all these years ago for me was it really proved to me, and I don't expect you to agree with this just because I say it, but for me, it really proved that when you shift your consciousness on a deep level, it will affect the world around you. You know, the so-called external world isn't something separate from our internal consciousness. They are of a piece, they are of related. They are deeply interconnected, interrelated, perhaps at a deeper level, the same thing, the same substrate of fundamental awareness. And so again, maybe I will share more about that in the future, but for right now, I want to just share with you some relevant science on psilocybin therapy. So in 2016, there was a landmark study at Johns Hopkins University, which found that a single high dose of psilocybin given in a carefully supported therapeutic setting produced large and sustained reductions in depression and anxiety in people facing life threatening cancer. And that was from Roland Griffiths, who was a great scientist. I got to see him in person in 2023 at the MAPS conference here in Denver, and it was a great honor to get to have dinner with him. I will link all these studies in the show notes below, so please check those out if you want to learn more. There's a ton of information out there, and again, I'm just highlighting some of the most meaningful studies that I've come across personally. In 2020, there's a randomized clinical trial at John Hopkins University, which showed that psilocybin assisted therapy produced rapid and robust antidepressant effects in adults with major depressive disorder with the facts, with the effects lasting at least four weeks. Remarkably, 71% of participants had a clinically significant response and more than half were in remission at the four week mark. So this is really interesting and important. And psychedelics have been a game changer for people, especially with people with what's called the treatment resistant depression, meaning that they have tried other approaches and treatments to helping heal and get over their depression, get to a new place with it. And for treatment resistant people, ketamine therapy, psilocybin therapy has shown remarkable promise. And then in 2021, a large multi center study published in the New England Journal of Medicine compared psilocybin to a leading antidepressant, which was an SSRI. While both groups improved, psilocybin showed greater effect sizes on secondary outcomes such as well-being and the ability to experience pleasure. And that was with the scientist Carhartt Harris. And yeah, these results are just extraordinary. In a field where conventional treatments often take weeks to work, they may only help partially, especially when we're talking about psychiatric medications like SSRS. And then one last point. Psilocybin therapy is not just about healing depression or anxiety. It can also unlock greater levels of well-being for everyone, and more and more people are using it in their own journeys of self discovery, growth, and spirituality. Research has shown that psilocybin can reliably occasion what psychologists call mystical type experiences, moments of profound unity, transcendence of time and space, deep insight and a sense of sacredness. And I would also add to that a sense of oneness, a sense of connection. These experiences are strongly correlated with lasting increases in life satisfaction, purpose, and positive relationships. And that's citing a study from Griffiths again in 2006. Even in healthy volunteers, psilocybin has been shown to increase openness to experience, which is a personality trait linked to creativity, curiosity and flexibility. And for that increase in openness to still be there one year after a single session. So whoever you are, whether you're someone struggling with what could be called clinically significant depression or anxiety, where you're a seeker of truth wanting to live a full good life, psilocybin invites us to slow down and remember we are more than our fears. We are more than our wounds. We are beings of vast potential, capable of healing, of love, of awakening, of connection, and of living lives of purpose and meaning. And I want to do something I have never done here on the podcast before, but I've had the privilege to work with a number of people, especially over this since this summer, who have travelled to see me. I'm just going to share a couple testimonials that people wrote after working with me. So this first testimonial again was from someone who travelled a long distance to be with me and we got to have effectively a long weekend together. And they write. My whole experience with Julian has completely transformed my entire being. As a lifelong seeker of truth and years spent striving to be the healthiest version of myself, I had exhausted every mode of healing available. And then I found Julian through a trusted friend. My intentions for the sacred ceremonies were to release my fears and to find a way to feel the freedom and peace within myself. I longed for it. With Julian's highly skilled and compassionate guidance and support, I received everything I asked for and so much more. So, yeah, it's just so meaningful for me to get to do this work in the world and to receive feedback. And I'm not. I'm not going to be the best person for everyone, but really appreciate that they shared this in writing and I just wanted to share it with all of you. So this is another person I had the great privilege and honor to work with and after our work together, they wrote the following. I've had the support of several skilled therapists over the past 19 years after witnessing the results of the amazing experience my wife, who had experienced childhood trauma, had in working with Julian. I met Julian via Zoom several times and then traveled over 800 miles to meet in person. Using a previously untried process involving my spirituality, I was able to experience a new understanding of myself and my past experiences, resulting in growth and healing beyond what I could have imagined. I look forward to my journey with Julian's ongoing guidance. So again, such an honor to get to work with people like that. I just wanted to share some of that with all of you. And now for my conversation today with Clay Ickis. Clay is a licensed psychedelic therapist. He uses therapeutic tools and plant medicines to help struggling people with healthier and happier lives. He specializes in supporting those who continue to suffer from traumatic events and has served over 150 journeyers through psychedelic experiences. So without further ado, I bring you this conversation with Clay. So I'm here today with Clay Ickis. Clay, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 2
Absolutely. It's a pleasure. Very excited.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm excited to have you and excited for this conversation. I know you've been working with psilocybin therapy and psychedelic therapy and fellow therapists on the path here.
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, it's really nice to be here with you. I feel like we've been in sort of social orbit for a while, and so it's nice to actually connect with you and Vener space.
Speaker 1
Absolutely.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And so I'm kind of thinking our conversation like I'm going to get to know you and your journey and share a little bit about psychedelic therapy in general and psilocybin therapy, psilocybin therapy in particular. And then I wanted to talk with you about the new laws that have been passed in Colorado legalizing psilocybin therapy licensure process, kind of a legal framework. And so I get a lot of questions, people asking about questions about that. So I thought this could be a great time to just share some good, helpful information about that. And if you're listening or watching from another state or country, I think it's cool to share. What's happening here in Colorado is that we're kind of really at the breaking edge of psychedelic therapy, and I love that.
Speaker 2
Absolutely, yeah. It's a really unique situation that we find ourselves in as Coloradans with the passage of first Initiative 3 O1, which decriminalized psilocybin in Denver 1st and now more recently Proposition 1/22. It gives us an opportunity that we don't. Nobody else in the country really has. So yeah, I'm happy to explore that with you.
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, it makes me happy to be in Colorado.
Speaker 2
Yeah, Truly. Truly. Yeah.
Speaker 1
Good. Well, do you want to share with us a little bit about who you are, where you're coming from, what's motivated, what's inspired you?
Speaker 2
Yeah, happy to. So my journey has been sort of long and and arduous and winding. I actually enlisted in the Air Force when I was 17. I moved to New York City, Manhattan, like a block away from Ground Zero in 2002. And I was really motivated by what I saw there. I remember being a little child, like 8 years old, and walking through this hallway, and there were all these faces of, like, people who were missing from Ground Zero. And I saw that it was like, I need to join the military, and I need to sort of like, be a part of solving this problem. So I enlisted to the Air Force when I was 17 and I ended up getting kicked out before even going to basic.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
No, it didn't last long. I've been using substances. I was a drug user. In addition to this desire to sort of serve the country and, and like, fight terrorism, as I understood it back then, I had this pattern of relational wounding that was playing out of my life that led me to substances I didn't really have. I moved 10 times by the time I was 13. And it was a lot, you know, very tumultuous. And so I didn't really have an identity. I really had to grow an identity. So my young fractured identity was very attracted to substances. And as a result of my interest in substances, I started using psychedelics, sort of discovered psychedelics, and they've revealed themselves to me as categorically different than the other substances I was gonna say.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I would agree. But a lot of people make that discovery and I can remember a time where I wasn't aware of that difference either. And we get the word drugs, like drugs are bad or drugs are maybe cool, whatever messages you get. But this word drugs is not very helpful because they're so different and to recognize the differences is so important. So when you say substances like, what kind of things are you talking about?
Speaker 2
So mostly, mostly cathinones and amphetamines when I was young, yeah. So I spent like 1716 to 17 using cathinones. What?
Speaker 1
Is a cathinone.
Speaker 2
Cathinone like they are now people know them as bath salts, but this?
Speaker 1
Is a bad reputation.
Speaker 2
They have a very bad, very bad reputation. Mephedrone and MDPV where the substance is there.
Speaker 1
How did you get exposed to that at such a young age?
Speaker 2
So they weren't scheduled. MDPV and mephedrone got scheduled in like 2012. And so for a while, you could just like go to the store. There were sort of like, there was this head shop light in the town that I grew up in. I didn't know this. Yeah. And you could just go and buy it.
Speaker 1
I had no idea. Yeah. So just I mean, when you say bath salts, my mind goes to news story of Florida man eats someone's face. Am I taking a leap here?
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 1
It's a terrible story, but it happened, right?
Speaker 2
It's awful, yeah. I mean, as a class of compounds, they're definitely less useful and helpful and productive than psychedelics. I am not a psychedelic exceptionalist. So I what that means is that I believe that psychedelics are indeed drugs like all other drugs and belong to a larger cultural context of the war on drugs that we but we actually can't talk about psychedelics without talking about the war on drugs. They belong to the same category. We can address that in a moment, but but in terms of my story, so pattern of wounding and addiction, I was arrested several times. I went to rehab. My life was kind of just not really going anywhere, living as an expression of pain and trauma and one day and.
Speaker 1
This was like teenagers.
Speaker 2
Yeah, like I got out of juvie on my 18th birthday and I went to rehab and I was on house arrest for a while. Continued a pattern of problematic use for a while. I was on house arrest for six months in 2011 or 2012 and I had nothing but an Internet connection and a fascination with drugs. And what I found as a young person with an Internet connection and a fascination with drugs was the darknet Ross Albrecht Silk Road and I ordered LSD, among other things, from Ross Albrecht Silk Road.
Speaker 1
Amazing.
Speaker 2
And I had this experience.
Speaker 1
Did it come? It did in the mail.
Speaker 2
From the Czech Republic, Oh my.
Speaker 1
God, that's wild, right? And our great, fearless leader Trump has now released him from jail.
Speaker 2
Right. I'm so happy. I'm so glad that he's out of jail. Me.
Speaker 1
Too. Actually I met it was a good move.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I met his mom at a drug policy reference a couple years ago. Super sweet woman, like crusader for his release, and it's really justified that he's out, Albright. So I ordered this LSD as like a 18 year old and I had this experience that just got my attention, right? Nothing else really did. So I've been arrested three times into rehab and juvie and I still was in this pattern of use. And then I had this LSD experience and I won't go into the details of it, but it was so profound and bizarre that I, it just lit this fire of like, what was that curiosity, right? It sparked this like little ember of self in me, and I had never had that before. I didn't care about much, right? And then I found LSD and I started to care about like reality.
Speaker 1
But opened up the sense of caring is something you're interested in. Curious. And yeah, you were. You were in a dark place.
Speaker 2
Truly. Yeah. Yeah, I was. Yeah. And this experience, it lit this sort of fire in me, and I've been tending it pretty much since then. Like that, that experience at 18, it's hard to believe that that was 14 years ago began my path and I kind of committed my life to psychedelics since that moment. Like I don't know what this is, I don't understand it yet, but it's clearly the most powerful and meaningful thing that I've ever personally experienced. And so I began to sort of read about it and wonder and ask questions, and that led me to, well, I found Ramdas.
Speaker 1
Oh amazing.
Speaker 2
And I found Timothy Leary. Oh cool. And I found the work of maps.
Speaker 1
OK. And.
Speaker 2
I found the Zendo project and is.
Speaker 1
That is that largely through the Internet you're researching and finding things. OK, Yeah.
Speaker 2
Amazing. Exactly. I found Buddhism great and I found the Dalai Lama and I found all these books and I started reading and like, I could tell that there was this path of practice and discipline and focus and study that was legitimate in the psychedelic world. And nobody around me could see that, but I could see it. And so I was just like, this is what I want to do with my life. Beautiful. And that's, I've been doing some version of that since, you know, it's, I've followed that.
Speaker 1
You've followed the thread, yeah?
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, in hearing your story, it's almost like that LSD trip. It certainly changed your life. It potentially saved your life.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, it's like a really common story and I don't want to like claim that because it's hard to say where things would have gone or what what would have happened. I feel that way. I feel like I owe, I owe my life and who I am to, to these medicines. I've had a lot of experiences over over many years. And it's like it's been this gradual process of honing and shaping and they continue to hone me. But it was that early experience and then one other that really like sparked my path and and sparked me like initiated what I'm still working through.
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, like that word spark or ignition or Yeah. Where the fire got you going. Yeah. You know, it's interesting, fascinating history with spirituality and psychedelics and it's evolving and developing and. But it used to be not talked about much, but actually many great meditation teachers and yogis and people who went on to study Eastern spirituality and do a lot of really serious practice in very sober settings, you know, in monasteries, in retreat centers, had that initial spark of interest lit by a psychedelic experience. And for a long time that was. Wasn't ever talked about that much, but a lot of the. 60s generation, hippie generation, you know, they had these psychedelic experiences. They realized that there was something a lot more here than just the material world. And it sparked their interest in spirituality. And then it went pretty underground for most of the 70s, eighties, 90s, first sector of the 2000s. And now we're in this age where it's really coming out of the closet, you know, and people are talking about it and sharing the stories more. But certainly a lot of people out there have a story of a powerful psychedelic experience that changed the course of their life, the direction what they thought was possible, what they put their time and energy into. And things like meditation and mindfulness movement really came out of that in some ways, in a kind of underground way. But then there's other people who have engaged with psychedelics more ongoing and it's been more a part of their path in a more consistent fashion, whatever that looks like for them. So there's been like different paths that have emerged and we're just in a new age where there's people are talking about it more openly, experimenting in different ways. And I'd like to hold an open perspective. I don't, I don't judge. I ask the question, what's working for you? And I've worked with people who are really benefited from taking a break, probably from minor altering substances because the the openness has increased so much. And there's a possibility of not having the integration piece and not being as grounded, you know, but other people where it's like, you know, I've had some people come to me who are in their 60s, seventies, and they had an experience with psilocybin or with psychedelics a long time ago when they were 20 or 18. And it's been 20-30 years. And they want to experience that again in a new context, in a new way, with guidance, with support. And I think that's beautiful. I think it's amazing. So yeah, it's such a varied landscape of how people are engaging with these things.
Speaker 2
Yeah, Hugely, hugely varied. So many threads and and strands there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I also see a lot of people who sort of come with this curiosity or that desire. I recognize it when people come to me wanting to have a psychedelic experience or wondering if it might be right for them because I had that same curiosity. And in a lot of ways, my my professional path has sort of been shaping myself into being who I really needed and didn't have.
Speaker 1
Because.
Speaker 2
It took me, it took me 10 years to integrate that that one LSD experience. It was not necessarily an easy path because I didn't have therapist. The field of psychedelic therapy wasn't wasn't as accessible as it is now. That's right. And so I feel really honoured and humbled to be a part of the construction of this new path from kind of ancient bricks.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. And you also mentioned the Air Force. You know, there's a surprising connection with the armed forces, military veterans and psychedelic therapy and psychedelic healing. And one person I went to Graduate School with actually started a veterans for psychedelic like Helium. And he's taken a lot of veterans to ayahuasca ceremonies. And he's done a lot of advocacy work for the legalization and having it be an option for people to heal from trauma in particular. But that's an interesting connection. It sounds like your time in the Air Force isn't last long. It's just, it's kind of like the Air Force, the Army, the Marines, the Navy. It's like, on the one hand, it's kind of the most conservative part of our culture, but on the other hand, they've been at the forefront actually of seeking treatment that works for trauma. And this has been a great, you know, it's, there's a lot of potential here for helium that they're not finding in other ways. So it's interesting how some of the old divisions between left and right, conservative, liberal drug war, this that have actually radically changed in the last few years. And the change has been profound and it's happened really quickly.
Speaker 2
Psychedelics as a fielder, this amazing watering hole where you have different species, like people who are fundamentally from different philosophical, political, ideological perspectives all looking at this well of of resource of sort of nourishment of healing of hope and drawing from it in some way. And that's one of my favorite things about it is that it's not, it's really expanded from this counter cultural, you know, antithetical type of field of information and study and interest to something that is really becoming popularized. And I'm happy to see that. I'm really happy to see that there are more conservative people that have involved. Rick Perry, for example, the governor of Texas. He's great example. Yeah. Really deeply involved himself in the psychedelic movement because they don't just belong to counterculture. And counterculture, I think has actually been counterproductive, right? Like.
Speaker 1
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2
So the the criminalization of psychedelics initially was because of the positioning of them as belonging to the counterculture.
Speaker 1
With Nixon and all that.
Speaker 2
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Nixon and the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, the war on drugs. You know, there. I don't know if you've ever heard that quote by Ehrlichman, John Ehrlichman. I'd like to share this one.
Speaker 1
Sure.
Speaker 2
So Ehrlichman was an advisor to Richard Nixon in the 1970s and he's got this quote. He was interviewed about the war on drugs and the quote is almost verbatim. The war on drugs was about hurting the anti war left and black people. We knew that we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by criminalizing the substances that the groups used, we could vilify their leaders, we could break up their meetings. Right? Did we know that we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. That's an almost verbatim quote from.
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, I know that quote.
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. So that's sort of like you've.
Speaker 1
Seen that quote in different contexts then. Yeah, Nixon was the author of the war on drugs. Really created that.
Speaker 2
Right. Yeah, yeah. So that's good of the the like cultural baggage of the psychedelic renaissance and of drugs. There's a lot there.
Speaker 1
Yeah, there's a lot there. There's a lot we could say about that. Let me I have a huge soft spot in my heart for the counterculture and the hippies. And so it's it's not their fault, obviously. It's not the fault of black people that mix and whatnot. I mean, they were, they were actually on the right side of history in that case in a lot of ways, you know, protesting the war in Vietnam and all that. It's a terrible work and it's hard to say much good about it, that good that came out of it. But but yeah, that is the cultural baggage. And we're we're in a new place where we can transcend that. And we can, I mean, my hope, like I think you're Speaking of this. So they could help healing for a whole society, help us heal these divisions. And I like the metaphor of the watering hole. I love that so.
Speaker 2
Yeah, there, there are so many lines in culture these days that divide people. And so anything that brings people together where we can have a common conversation, we can meet from a place of mutual understanding. I think that's that's healing and helpful. And psychedelics do appear to be that sometimes when we step just outside of that, we get divided again. But there is this sort of merging, forming, unification in the in the field of psychedelics and that that makes me helpful and grateful to be involved.
Speaker 1
So.
Speaker 2
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1
I am a little concerned about the potential for a backlash, but but right now they seem mostly to be bringing different people together in different ways, so that's great, yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah, Well, it's really special here in Colorado for a lot of reasons. I mean, this place, since Amendment 64, which was the amendment that legalized cannabis in Colorado, like we've had really incredibly progressive drug policy. And I kind of recognize that about this place. And it's a part of what brought me here initially. Like I moved here to Colorado about 10 years ago to be involved in the psychedelic.
Speaker 1
Program. Oh amazing. So that actually is what brought you here.
Speaker 2
Specifically and explicitly, yeah, yeah, I, I transferred to CU in 2015. It's you older and because they had a Students for sensible drug policy.
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah, I was a part of that group. Oh, you were participated in that a little bit. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2
Amazing.
Speaker 1
There was a chapter at Neuropa University where I was going to school and we did some stuff at CU.
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, and Neuropa had naps, right? The yeah, Neuropa Alliance for psychedelic Yeah, yeah, yeah. So desire to be involved.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And actually, when I was in university, grad school for psychology started about 2016 to 2018, and it was like, right at the time when this, like, sea change was starting to happen. And there were professors there who were like, very wary about drugs, psychedelics, psychedelic therapy, didn't want to talk about it. And that attitude, in fact, you know, affected me too because like, part of my Graduate School training was being evaluated for professionalism and for, you know, integrity. And I didn't want a reputation as, you know, the drug druggie person or whatever. But in that time there, it was like the sea change happened. And in 2017, I went to the MAPS conference in Oakland. We were talking about before we started recording. And that was such a big event in my life where thousands of people gathering all these scientists talking about all these research projects and research findings showing how things like psilocybin were helping with anxiety, with depression, with trauma, with PTSD, and all these all these great inspiring speakers. You know, Stan Groff was there and, you know, some of the creators really of gestalt therapy, You know, what is his name? Claudio Naranjo give an amazing talk. And I think it was one of his last public talks before he passed away, actually. And I actually have a recording of it on my phone. And I listened to it a while ago and it's like, it's so beautiful. And they were all the, you know, 60s counterculture figures, but then all these scientists and then like, more kind of people advocating today. Anyway, that 2017 conference like just opened my mind to like, wow, things are changing. There's this coming revolution in psychedelics for mental health, for for healing. And I went back to school with a sense of empowerment and a sense of direction. Like, I want this to be part of what I'm doing too. And then I, I saw the teachers and professors and administrators shift their attitudes. And now in the university has its own psychotherapy program. You know, I didn't have that when I was there. But so, yeah, there was like part of the cultural issues we're speaking to. It's like that counter cultural thing, the war on drugs in Europa University and and all the other institutions and universities, they didn't want to be associated with that. They rejected the research of LSD and suicide and they left it in the dustbin of history, so to speak. And then they came back to it in this last few years, the last 10, whatever ever many years. But like that old school attitude of not wanting to be associated with that stuff and it being kind of underground. And like, yeah, maybe, maybe that's maybe they had psychedelic experiences, which is why they became a therapist, but they didn't want to talk about it publicly or talk about it in a classroom. And that's all shifted so much in just a few years. So yeah.
Speaker 2
Institutionalized and internalized stigma about drug users, right? And Neuropa University and it's amazing. I was the first full time psychedelic employee on Neuropa.
Speaker 1
Oh my gosh, yeah. I didn't know that I was there. What?
Speaker 2
Does that mean psychotherapy's program coordinator? No, quite the opposite. Quite the opposite. So many things that I could say. So this this idea that it's that fundamentally that drug users are bad.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
That drug users are bad people and morally reprehensible wrong. And this this sort of bleeding over into institutions. And we're now in this place where we're sort of sorting that out and parsing that. But there's still a little bit of confusion even at the institutional level, even within organizations like Europa that should be sort of spearheading activism and reclamation of the identity of substance users, the acknowledgement of the effect of institutionalized stigma and racism along substance lines. Like, it's not necessarily along class lines, but it's along substance lines.
Speaker 1
Like different kinds of substances should be looked at differently.
Speaker 2
If I ask you to visualize your average heroin user, right? If I ask, you know the audience, visualize your average heroin user. There's probably a particular image that comes to mind.
Speaker 1
Kurt Cabin sure where you're homeless person with long hair, right?
Speaker 2
Yeah, right. And now, yeah.
Speaker 1
What the stereotypes out there?
Speaker 2
And then to visualize your average psychedelic user.
Speaker 1
That's become harder for me because I'm in this field, but if I wound the clock back a few years, it would have been like a hippie or guy with another guy with long hair.
Speaker 2
Totally.
Speaker 1
Something I don't know. Yeah, some kind of hippie or party person for sure.
Speaker 2
Yeah, but like a lot of the sub, like the difference between PCP and MDMA pharmacologically is not that different really. Not that big, actually.
Speaker 1
Don't know much about like the the.
Speaker 2
Structures are not that, not that dissimilar, right? Even MDMA is meth, methamphetamine, methylene dioxy, methylene dioxide, methamphetamine, right is what MDMA means. And so it's it's an amphetamine.
Speaker 1
PCP is also an amphetamine.
Speaker 2
PCP is I believe it's a phenethylamine.
Speaker 1
OK, that sounds right.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I believe it's in the same category.
Speaker 1
Yeah, you can look that up later, but they certainly have a very different reputation. Exactly. I've never touched PCP or been around it or I don't know anything about it.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I've never used it either. And the point that I'm trying to make is that we still sort of suffer from these this problem with, like, mistaken identity and confusion around what substances are and what it means to be people who are in relationship with substances. And that just sort of feels important for me to mention around this. Like when we're talking about psychedelics and we're talking about drugs, and we happen to be in a cast of people who have become, you know, fascinated with psychedelics and are benefiting from their use and researching their use. But I sort of look at psychedelics. I sort of look at psychedelics as belonging to this larger disease that I call the war on drugs. You know, the war on drugs is a collective cultural disease that affects the body of culture and is hemorrhaging lives, right? There are there are people who are dying every day as a direct result of the war on drugs, as a direct result of the opioid crisis and overdose. And that is the result of drug policy. And so we're celebrating in the psychedelic world like, oh, we've changed drug policy. We've passed the Natural Medicine Health Act and I, I benefit directly from it. I'm a psychedelic practitioner. I get to live the manifestation of my life's dream as a result of the passage of Proposition 120.
Speaker 1
2.
Speaker 2
And I'm so happy and I'm so grateful that I get to work with this medicine. And at the same time, the series of policies that created the circumstance that prevented access to psychedelics is the same series of policies that is continuing to kill black people and poor people and people of the lower caste, right. And I just, I like to inject that into the space because the war on drugs still goes on. There's an internalization of the narrative of the war on drugs which says that our drugs are better than yours, right? And very close to that is, and we're better people. Very close to that is, and we're superior. And you deserve to die because you're a heroin user. You deserve to die because you're a drug user. That's the kind of implicit narrative around the world, yeah.
Speaker 1
Thank you. I think you're speaking to that.
Speaker 2
And so I think we have a responsibility like the field of psychedelics as a responsibility not for not just for like indigenous reciprocity, not to just recognize that we owe something to the cultures from which we we discovered these medicines and who have stored these medicines for a long time. But that we also owe a responsibility to acknowledge the horrible, horrible policy and the horrible thinking about other human beings that got us here in the first place. You know, and these, when I work at Naropa, I had supervisory conversations for talking about ayahuasca. I got in trouble for talking about ayahuasca.
Speaker 1
With who? In what context?
Speaker 2
With somebody was like a supervisor of the program, somebody was working at the program. Yeah. And so even in organizations that we would think would be very progressive, there is an internalization of a narrative, which is a drug war narrative. Like the the narrative of War on Drugs has seeped really deep into our culture at the level of like implicit racism, or it's an implicit bias that a lot of us hold about what it means to be a drug user.
Speaker 1
Why? Why did the administrator get angry at you? Or why did you get in trouble if you're talking about ayahuasca?
Speaker 2
Well, because ayahuasca is illegal.
Speaker 1
Oh, I see. And versus psilocybin in Colorado now being decriminalized, is that the distinction? Yeah, Yeah, that would be interesting. I'm surprised the reason wasn't that ayahuasca should be the realm of indigenous people who've had it for thousands of years and that we shouldn't be, you know, because that's another attitude that if you want to, and I, I agree with that, but if you want to be a space holder or a facilitator for that, you should train with the people who've held that medicine for a long time. I guess that's a different discussion. There isn't a lot of really important points, I think for most people. My sense is they do make a distinction between different classes of drugs and something like heroin or crack cocaine or PCP. Most people, if we, you know, if it was on the ballot in November, whatever, most people in America would probably vote keep those illegal. You put psilocybin on the ballot. I don't know. I think it would probably be passed, but it might be kind of close, might be 5545%, you know, in favor or against, you know, So people do think about them differently. And I think I, I take your point. There's the mentality of the war on drugs. It's been used by cynical, manipulative politicians to control certain groups, especially with cannabis, especially with psychedelics, but also with things like heroin. There's also a way in which we don't trust ourselves and we think if something is really addictive, like cocaine, like crack cocaine, then people can't be trusted to walk into CVS and pick up a pack, you know, with a pack of 6 pack or whatever that would look like. And so that they should be illegal because they're too addictive or they're too powerful. And I think it's an important conversation to have. I don't know where I land on it all. I think we should look at each thing separately maybe. But I do agree we should be decriminalizing. We should find other solutions other than jail. We shouldn't be demonizing groups of people. And interestingly, Hunter Biden went on this podcast. Did you hear about that? And he was like, he's like, yeah, I smoked crack and crack's not that bad. And we should destigmatize crack, OK. And I was like, you know, props to you, Hunter Biden. I know you've gotten so much. I know the right wing has like done everything they can to demonize you and actually respect the balls it took for you to just go on a podcast and talk about your personal experience with it. And I think with a lot of these things, it's really the human that makes it good or bad. And they can be used in responsible ways where not depending on the human and where they're at, rather than the substance itself. The substance itself, it does have power, but if you have a pure, clean version, like if you have totally pure cocaine and you used it in the right sudden setting and you took care to not overdo it, I imagine there could be a responsible person who could live a normal life doing that. That's not my choice as someone I'm doing, but I wouldn't demonize someone who was able to do that. So yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, if people are interested in this field of information and study, there are maybe like 3 books that are relevant in what we're talking about right now. One of them is called Drug Use for Grown.
Speaker 1
UPS Yeah, I love that. I know that. I saw him speak a few times.
Speaker 2
Amazing human being Drug Use for grown-ups talks about how it's possible to have a non problematic relationship with any substance. Yeah, there's also Chasing the Scream by Yoel Hari.
Speaker 1
Oh yeah, I've heard that one too.
Speaker 2
That's a good one. Yeah. Chasing the Scream and then the new Jim Crow. Michelle Alexander.
Speaker 1
I've not heard that one.
Speaker 2
That's basically how like the the war on drugs is basically a a new expression of slavery and racism creates this pipeline of suppression and oppression for for Black Indigenous people of color. Yeah, I just think that's an important thing to mention in the context as privileged people who have the incredible honor and the amazing opportunity of working with these very, very useful, very beautiful substances like psilocybin.
Speaker 1
Yes, yeah, yeah, I want to honor. I want to really want to honor and respect what you're saying. And I don't like to identify as being on either the right or the left. But I think since I just mentioned it, I think the Hunter Biden example is an example of someone with privilege. Yeah. I don't want to just attribute that to his race, but also his money and family and blah, blah, blah, doing something like crack or cocaine and not having the punishment that so many other people have been impressed with. So I take your point. It's a good one. Yeah. We should change. We should change these attitudes. I think this kind of conversation hopefully will help in some way. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Involvement with the psychedelic movement, whether at any level as a practitioner, as somebody who's involved in an organization, as somebody who wants to be a, a therapist or a facilitator, or even somebody who wants to grow mushrooms. I think it necessarily and inherently involves a sort of degree of cultural awareness and contextual awareness. Like right relationship with this medicine involves an awareness of the soil within which it grows the the collective cultural substrate within which this is emerging.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And and that kind of awareness is necessary so as not to repeat the harms of the past.
Speaker 1
Yeah, yes, yeah. It's well said. That's true of so many things in life and we need to have good understanding of culture and history. I I, I 1000% agree. I think another related piece here for me is the hippie movement, the counterculture, the the scientist now and the psychedelic movement. Like that's its own kind of culture. Like what you experience at something like the MAPS conference. What people get an experience of when they go to something like Burning Man, what people are experiencing when they go to Grateful Dead shows or fish shows or people even people who are signing up for research in the psychedelics now and getting a PhD in chemistry and looking at the, you know, all the chemistry of it and looking for new compounds. Like all these pieces are part of the new evolving culture that we get to be a part of that we can create and we can be informed by history, but we can also honor something new here is happening and we can trying to make it the best that we can make it. And we're going to make mistakes and our kids and our grandkids can learn and do it better. But there's, there's a culture here in America that I actually want to honor and respect as much as I want to honor and respect ancient Amazonian cultures or ancient cultures in Mexico or in Tibet or in India or wherever you go in the world. It's like we too are human culture and we're creating that now. And it's just, I think that's important too, because sometimes in this kind of space, it's like white America gets kind of talked down. It's kind of demonized or like, oh, you did the war on drugs or you did that, or you're privileged to this or you're, you know, that there was so much of that in European university. And I don't want to knock the gun on this subject too much, but like, it's, it's not helpful to demonize your own culture. It would be helpful to try to make it better. But there's a certain amount of healthy sense of self, Like we talked about an internal family systems like our self, our culture, our ancestors that we need to honor here too. And I just, I like to speak to that when I can because it's important. Like, we're not gonna, we're not gonna make progress by demonizing ourselves. Yeah. And we're not gonna make progress by tearing everything down and saying that this is the worst country ever. Like, that's not gonna. To me, that's not the answer. Sure. And there's too much of that on the left, and too much for that, unfortunately, at a place like university.
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1
I wish it wasn't, but there it is.
Speaker 2
I love that awareness, like the impact of speech and the impact of expression. Yeah. It's my hope and intention to sort of invite and to inject and, and to bring awareness to a larger, like field of information so that we can maybe make it better. Because we do. We are in possession of this incredible opportunity. Yeah. Of this moment. Yeah. Like this collective cultural moment that we live in is unlike maybe any other that's existed. That's right. Right. And we have this sort of, it's this responsibility, burden, opportunity, the gift of this moment. And I, I say these things with a sort of fervor and with a kind of passion because I feel like it's really important to do this the best that we possibly can.
Speaker 1
With what?
Speaker 2
We have and, and we're well equipped. You're right. There's a lot to honor about this culture. There's a lot to honor about who we are.
Speaker 1
Yeah, you know, and I think I think one of the most powerful, perhaps radical things I do with someone when they come to see me will often do a mindfulness of practice. And it's just a few minutes, you know, simple. And, you know, it's feeling the breath, feeling the body. And at the end I'm, I suggest I invite, can you feel gratitude and appreciation for yourself for showing up here today, for doing this work, for doing this practice? Can you think about all the good things you've been doing in your life that you've been telling me about all the efforts you've been making and, and appreciate that and respect that and love that. And can you love yourself? And I've had people break down in tears when I say that because there's this epidemic of self hatred in our culture. And even people who are doing so many good things and trying to eat the right foods and caring for their family and coming to therapy because they want to be a better person. And yet it's so hard for them to actually love themself.
Speaker 2
Right.
Speaker 1
You know, and that's what I want. That's what I'm trying to speak to here, yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah, on the on the personal level, that is really important. Yeah, yeah. That sense of self love and appreciation and the recognition like though we belong, we swim in waters that have been poisoned by people who are not us, right. We we exist in a collective cultural framework of of macro level trauma.
Speaker 1
And.
Speaker 2
Pain. There's been pain that's been inflected at so many levels, first towards so many people. And as a practitioner, I sort of speak to the larger level of that pain on that podcast and like on this podcast in this moment. But on the personal level, you're so right. That's not necessarily something that we need to take upon ourselves or internalize or look it as a reflection of, of who we are. That it would be a, it would be a misperception to look at the flaws of the world and say that that must reflect the flaws of who we are as an individual, as an individual. It's like, oh, that that must be because I'm bad or I'm wrong. And, and so many of my clients also carry that, that wound like the internalized voice of an abuser, whether it be an individual abuser or a collective larger level abuser, an internalized voice. And so I appreciate you naming that there are different levels that we're talking about and working with here as we explore this.
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. And so that is the personal level and then and the collective level to have a sense of the goodness of our ancestors and culture is also important. So that's what I'm I think. I think they're the same, you know, they're related. They're the same kind of thing. Yeah. It takes, I think it takes more courage to look at our history and our past and, like, learn from it and acknowledge the bad and appreciate the good and see how we can move forward. That's actually it takes more work than just labeling all bad or all good, which is what the kind of our politics seems to devolve into, right?
Speaker 2
It does, yeah. There's not a lot of nuance in the conversation these days. It's a lot of triggering, a lot of like, trauma glasses. Yeah, pain glasses or ideological like, oh, you're in this camp. And so you must automatically be wrong or automatically do that. And it breaks my heart a little bit. I I really love human beings and I love people. And it hurts me to see us so, so divided with each other. The things that are happening in the world in this moment bring me, bring me some degree of pain.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And yeah. So hopefully psychedelics in this movement can help with that healing and us having a sense of connection as well as on your differences and kind of want to bring it back to some of the science and then want to talk about the laws with you here in Colorado. But the science with psychedelics has been awesome, right? I mean, it's, it's not, it's not a magic bullet and it's not going to fix everything. But just going to read a little bit here. In 2016, there was a study at John Hopkins University that found a single high dose of psilocybin given in a carefully supported therapeutic setting produce large and sustained reductions in depression and anxiety and people facing life threatening cancer. And then in 2020, another study, John Hopkins showing that psilocybin assisted therapy produced rapid and robust antidepressant effects in adults with major depressive disorder with effects lasting at least for four weeks. Remarkably, 71% of participants had a clinically significant response and more than half were in remission at the four week mark. And this thing around clinically resistant, sorry, treatment resistant depression is huge. Anything we can do to help someone with treatment resistant depression is, is huge. It's, it's potentially saving someone's life because obviously suicide is a high risk for someone who has had depression for years. But it's, it's saving their life in the sense of giving them their life back that they, that they feel they've been missing. Because when you're in that kind of depression, life doesn't feel worth living. That's why it's called major depression and it's called treatment resistant because no other treatments that worked have helped. And so, and then there's one last piece here, another study showing that comparing psilocybin therapy for depression with a more traditional antidepressant. And both groups improved, but psilocybin, the psilocybin users showed greater effects on secondary outcomes such as well-being and the ability to experience pleasure. And one of the main downsides and negative side effects of SSRIs and the more traditional antidepressants is a reduced feeling to feel pleasure, a reduced sex drive rate. It's, it's a lot of people talk about like a safety blanket. Everything feels kind of evened out, but as we know as therapists, if you can't feel the lows, you can't feel the highs. Like you got to be able to feel the good and the bad, however you want to talk about it.
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. So many things there. Yeah, how I put it is the denial of anyone. Emotion is the denial of all of them.
Speaker 1
Yes.
Speaker 2
The practice, the practice of denying emotions is non directional. And so when we practice and we cultivate inside of ourselves the ignorance or the suppression or the repression, the turning away from an emotion, we're also turning away from every all the joy and the pleasure and the beauty that is ours, His birthright, just by virtue of being a human being. Yeah, some of these studies, you see the Prolam study, the SSRI that was Robin, Robin Carhartt, Harris and the secondary outcomes, I think is is really significant to talk about this in research. You know, they use like outcome measures like the Columbia Depression scale and these kinds of outcome measures and that's been spearheading and is responsible for the the modern Renaissance and psychedelics by and large. And there are so many things, so many aspects of being a human being that aren't really captured by like a 15 question, 15 question questionnaire.
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's the truth.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And so I love that this study that Carhartt Harris included these sort of secondary measures because we're talking about things like life satisfaction, like he's a pleasure and joy, the ability to hold positive feelings in the body, the the ability to feel connected to other people and to feel seen and known and heard. And I think those are really important sort of almost more qualitative things that don't often get get measured and the things that I see in my clients all the time. And like those are the things that are that are therapeutic. If depression is this sense of hopelessness pervading sense of hopelessness and lack of self worth and pneedonia, right And abolition like the lack of pleasure in the body and the lack of volition. And you can have a moment in a psilocybin experience that is magnetically polarized to that emotionally, like a single moment of like, Oh my God, I, I love myself. I feel like I've long, I feel like the world is a beautiful place. And my recognition of the beauty of the world spills out onto me. That's the medicine. That's that's how psychedelics heal by providing A corrective internal relational experience, by providing. And I've seen it. You know, there was a woman that I worked with her whole life thought just like I'm ugly, I don't love myself, depression, low self worth, low value. And in a psilocybin experience, she I in psychedelic work, when somebody gets up and goes to the bathroom, we have touch contracts. And so we only touch in certain places, like hands or shoulders or feet. If somebody gets up and goes to the bathroom, then we can offer a hand and and help them because sometimes psilocybin will sort of impair your ability to walk. And so I helped this woman to the bathroom and she looked in the mirror and you know, like when you're traumatized or when you're depressed, you're looking through these glasses, you're looking through this lens. This is everything is ugly and everything is horrible. And so am I. And psilocybin brings this sense of, Oh my God, I can't believe how beautiful this world is. Wow. Aw, aw, aw, absolutely. And I want to talk more about aw, but that all lens was brought right back to her, right? She looked in the mirror and she said, wow, look at you. Oh my God, look at you. You're so beautiful. You're an amazing, miraculous being. I can't believe that you're. I'm like, there was this moment where that awe and that appreciation for the beauty of the world was reflected right back at her. And it it's my sort of sense as a practitioner that at those moments, it's those that felt sense of the opposite of whatever we've been experiencing that is the healing for, for a lot of people, a sense of longing, connection, awe and beauty.
Speaker 1
I love that. Yeah. Can agree more. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah. So that is important, those sort of secondary things that aren't necessarily measured in an outcome. Something funny about this research is like the the durability of the antidepressant effect seems to keep getting pushed out.
Speaker 1
Oh yeah, you were saying that too. It's.
Speaker 2
Fascinating. So like the there was like the six month follow up study where they said like, oh wow, the reductions in major depression are lasting and durable for up to six months. That's cool. And then there was like a year study year follow up, it said like, oh, people still aren't depressed a year later from one psilocybin experience, like what's happening there. And I read 1 recently that was two years, two years no longer qualifying for a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, two years after a single psilocybin experience, single psychedelic assistant therapy session with psilocybin. And there's some confounds there, confounding variables like they might have been engaged in other work, but and I have some theories and ideas about about that.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, and one piece that I want to speak to in case it's not clear, is all these studies are being done. You know, we're talking about psychedelic assisted therapy. So it's not a high dose psilocybin experience at the Grateful Dead concert. And it's just, you know, I'm not saying 1 is ultimately better or worse, but I want to appreciate the difference. And so when you know, when someone comes to me and is interested in this kind of work, we have at least three, usually more sessions, hour long sessions, intake sessions, process. They talk to their doctor. There's a lot that goes into it, a lot of training and holding the space. And I think anyone listening can appreciate the difference between a high dose psilocybin experience being held by a skilled therapist practitioner in a safe space where it's just you and just your experience. It's gonna be different than a concert setting. It's gonna be different than a social setting. It's gonna be different than an experience with your lover or partner. As beautiful as those are. It could, this could be your enlightenment experience. I'm not saying they can't be, but we want to. What I want to do, I think what you want to do in terms of this kind of work is, is set it up for the highest potential for long term.