The Future of Psychedelic Medicine: Insights with Mark Haden

This comprehensive discussion delves into the world of psychedelics and their potential in therapeutic settings, particularly for treating mental health conditions like depression and PTSD.

Danna & Megan explore the work of Mark Haden, a prominent figure in psychedelic research, who shares his extensive experience and the promising results of using substances like MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine in clinical trials.

Haden discusses the current legal landscape, the importance of set and setting in therapy, and the future of psychedelic therapy, including the idea of regulated access for both therapeutic and personal growth purposes.

The conversation also covers the stigma around psychedelics, their historical use, and the concept of microdosing. Additionally, Haden offers insights into how psychedelics could be integrated into society, touching on topics like spirituality, the impact on physical illnesses, and the potential to change the narrative around these substances.

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• Mark Haden

00:05 Welcome to the Psychedelic Discussion!

01:12 Introducing Mark Haden: A Psychedelic Expert

02:51 The Basics of Psychedelic Therapy

03:13 Exploring the World of Psychedelics: From MDMA to Magic Mushrooms

07:26 The Stigma and History of Psychedelics

12:09 The Importance of Setting in Psychedelic Therapy

14:28 How Psychedelic Therapy Helps with PTSD

22:04 The Transformative Power of Psychedelics: A Skiing Analogy

26:33 The Success Rates of Psychedelic Therapy vs Traditional Methods

29:39 Addressing the Accessibility and Cost of Psychedelic Therapy

35:10 The Potential Side Effects and Addictiveness of Psychedelic Therapy

44:12 Exploring the Risks of Recreational Ketamine Use

44:44 The Social Acceptance of Alcohol and Its Risks

45:24 Self-Medication and the History of Prohibition

46:15 The Shift in Perception Towards Psychedelics

46:59 Analyzing Drug Harms and the Safety of Psychedelics

48:46 The Low Harm and Infrequent Use of Psychedelics

49:45 Personal Experiences and Seeking Advice on Psychedelics

50:09 The Low Addictiveness and Social Benefits of Psychedelics

50:58 Psychedelics and Physical Health: The Case of Ketamine

53:17 Exploring Psychedelics for Alzheimer's and Dementia

56:06 The Ethical and Effective Use of Psychedelics

01:08:49 The Future of Psychedelics in Society and Culture

01:13:34 Final Thoughts and Resources on Psychedelics

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Speaker: 00:00:00

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Hey Donna, how you doing today?

Speaker: 00:00:02

Danna Levy Hoffmann: I am good, Megan.

Speaker: 00:00:03

How are

Speaker: 00:00:03

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: I am also good.

Speaker: 00:00:05

So a couple weeks ago, we were chit chatting and you?

Speaker: 00:00:09

were like, let's do something with psychedelics and I was like, sure, if you can go find an expert, we'll talk about psychedelics.

Speaker: 00:00:17

And what did you do?

Speaker: 00:00:19

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Found an expert, actually a really big expert on psychedelics.

Speaker: 00:00:24

Yes, I am very curious about it.

Speaker: 00:00:26

I've been reading up and studying up about when it comes to helping with fighting with depression and all the things that I always talk about on these forums.

Speaker: 00:00:39

I mean, poor listeners, they just have to be my, my therapist and you, Megan, I'm sorry.

Speaker: 00:00:44

But yeah, I did delve into just, you know, learning about it.

Speaker: 00:00:50

And because I'm a geek about these things, I need to know everything there is to know, and talk to as many people and as, as many experts

Speaker: 00:00:58

I got ahold of Mark and , I'm pretty excited about this actually today.

Speaker: 00:01:03

So.

Speaker: 00:01:05

I'm ready

Speaker: 00:01:05

go right into

Speaker: 00:01:06

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: cool.

Speaker: 00:01:07

So, today's guest is Mark Hayden, who's based out of Vancouver in Canada.

Speaker: 00:01:12

And Mark, why don't we just start with telling us, why should we listen to you?

Speaker: 00:01:18

When it.

Speaker: 00:01:19

comes to psychedelic therapy.

Mark Haden: 00:01:20

Well thank you for the invitation to participate in this discussion with you.

Mark Haden: 00:01:25

I have been involved with psychedelic research and psychedelic therapy for decades.

Mark Haden: 00:01:30

, technically I'm an adjunct professor of UBC school of population and public health, but , I worked originally in the addiction services.

Mark Haden: 00:01:38

My first job was supervising therapists and I realized that we.

Mark Haden: 00:01:42

Had inadequate tools for the job and psychedelic research was just starting back then and I looked at what they were doing and I said, we need to bring this into our field and was unsuccessful at persuading my employer, the large health authority that manages all the health dollars in Vancouver.

Mark Haden: 00:02:02

to take psychedelic seriously.

Mark Haden: 00:02:04

So I quit and I started an organization called Maps Canada, which is the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies.

Mark Haden: 00:02:10

It's a large organization in the States and I brought it to Canada.

Mark Haden: 00:02:14

So I worked in the context of psychedelic research for quite a few years and I decided to go back to my roots and now I run a ketamine clinic that provides psychedelic services.

Mark Haden: 00:02:26

And I'm once again, supervising therapist, but it's a completely different ball game because we have tools that we never had before to work with.

Mark Haden: 00:02:34

It's, it's very exciting for me.

Mark Haden: 00:02:36

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Oh, very cool.

Mark Haden: 00:02:37

, just to start off with, because I'm, I'm, I'm not, I did not do a bunch of research and I'm not interested necessarily in, in partaking in psychedelic therapy.

Mark Haden: 00:02:46

So for our listeners who are in my area, could you start off with what are some of the common psychedelics that are used in therapy and how do those.

Mark Haden: 00:02:56

Differ in what effects and applications that you use those in therapy, and then I think Donna's gonna jump in at some point here because she's got a lot of good questions, but we'll start with just the very basics for our audience.

Mark Haden: 00:03:08

Well, the front runner, the molecule that has been researched throughout 30 years that is about to become legalized by that.

Mark Haden: 00:03:14

I mean, the FDA in the United States, Okay.

Mark Haden: 00:03:17

is predicted to approve MDMA on the street is known as ecstasy.

Mark Haden: 00:03:22

Methylene deoxymethamphetamine is the long and complicated title for the use in therapy for post traumatic stress disorder.

Mark Haden: 00:03:29

That research has gone on for decades and they've gone through in order to turn a molecule into a medicine, you have to go through stage one, two and three clinical trials and maps.

Mark Haden: 00:03:39

In the States has done that they've submitted their data and we believe that it'll actually be legalized by that.

Mark Haden: 00:03:45

I mean, a doctor can prescribe it and then maps will sell it to trained therapists and hopefully the Canadians will have the same access.

Mark Haden: 00:03:54

Hopefully health Canada will follow the FDA.

Mark Haden: 00:03:58

and then that will be available completely legally through a doctor's prescription pad.

Mark Haden: 00:04:03

So that's the front runner in terms of new psychedelics becoming legalized.

Mark Haden: 00:04:09

What's currently legal is ketamine.

Mark Haden: 00:04:11

Ketamine at a lower dosage is Also a psychedelic, a higher dosage is an anesthetic dose and anesthesiologists and surgeons noticed that it was helpful for people's mental health and now it's widely available at a lower dose in a therapeutic context.

Mark Haden: 00:04:27

That's why I run a ketamine clinic.

Mark Haden: 00:04:29

But there are other ones coming down the research pipe.

Mark Haden: 00:04:31

Psilocybin is common for researchers.

Mark Haden: 00:04:35

Now curiously, a slight tangent, the reason why Researchers have been focused on psilocybin, which is sometimes called magic mushrooms.

Mark Haden: 00:04:45

Psilocybin is used in pure forms in research context, but people talk about it as being mushrooms, but it's used by researchers.

Mark Haden: 00:04:54

I think not because it's necessarily more effective than some of the other psychedelics.

Mark Haden: 00:04:57

It's just that, regulators didn't know what it was.

Mark Haden: 00:05:00

And so it was easier to pass regulatory hurdles.

Mark Haden: 00:05:03

And once they had proved safety, it made it easier for other researchers to start looking at it.

Mark Haden: 00:05:09

So psilocybin for depression, psilocybin for end of life anxiety are the two big, most common ones that will probably be the ones that follow up MDMA in terms of simply being legally available through the context of a doctor's prescription pad.

Mark Haden: 00:05:25

But there are many others.

Mark Haden: 00:05:26

I mean, what, what I find interesting, and I think we'll add a nuance to our discussion is both looking at current research.

Mark Haden: 00:05:34

And what's happening above ground, but also looking at what's happening in the underground because the underground learns from researchers and researchers learn from the underground.

Mark Haden: 00:05:45

So the kind of things that are coming down the pipe are through, research interest, because they've looked at the underground are things like three MMC, three metal methcathinone um, is a little different from MDMA.

Mark Haden: 00:05:59

We could look at the different classifications of drugs.

Mark Haden: 00:06:01

There's the traditional ones.

Mark Haden: 00:06:03

The LSD, DMT are the classics, the four classics.

Mark Haden: 00:06:08

But there's also another group called empathogens that work very differently from the other ones.

Mark Haden: 00:06:15

And, uh, 3 MMC is an empathogen that is.

Mark Haden: 00:06:19

It's very, very popular in the underground world.

Mark Haden: 00:06:21

And I believe that when all psychedelics are legalized, it will be used frequently.

Mark Haden: 00:06:25

And then there are some exotic ones, things like five M E O D M T.

Mark Haden: 00:06:29

I love these strings of numbers and letters that you use to describe these things, but five M E O D M T is also being popular in the underground and has attracted research interest.

Mark Haden: 00:06:40

There's another one out there, called M E A I, which is five methoxy to a minor Lindane that is, uh, Full self disclosure, I work for a company that is promoting that, but it has shown to be of great interest for as an anti addictive molecule.

Mark Haden: 00:06:59

It was a novel psychedelic that was sold on the Internet and then noticed to have this interesting anti addictive quality.

Mark Haden: 00:07:07

And so a company was formed around it, and it's also going to be, . It's working the clinical trial pathway,

Mark Haden: 00:07:13

Danna Levy Hoffmann: this is amazing to me because there are, there's so much there.

Mark Haden: 00:07:17

to discover and to actually be taken, taken advantage of in a way.

Mark Haden: 00:07:21

But word psychedelics has been vilified

Mark Haden: 00:07:27

you eighties, definitely sixties, you know, definitely before I know their research started probably in the thirties, if I'm not mistaken already about psychedelics.

Mark Haden: 00:07:37

And I fear that some of the people that are listening have grown up with that, Mind set that psychedelics equals, you're going to go crazy, you're going to have a bad trip, you're going to jump off a window, you know, if you grew up in the States in the 80s, you went through there, they scared the living crap out of you when it came to psychedelics.

Mark Haden: 00:08:02

And now we're talking about psychedelics being used by My question is this, how do you even.

Mark Haden: 00:08:11

to someone, , why there is a difference between sitting with a therapist and doing this therapy versus going to a party, a non, controlled setting.

Mark Haden: 00:08:24

but it's interesting to reflect on history because psychedelics have been used by indigenous groups actually for centuries.

Mark Haden: 00:08:30

The cure and arrows in Mexico, the Iowa scarrows in South America, and there are some Russian folks who have been using a manita mascara for a long period of time.

Mark Haden: 00:08:39

The peyote folks, the native American church up and down the west coast are all examples of indigenous use that has actually been going on before recorded history.

Mark Haden: 00:08:49

And it was interesting because back in the sixties, what happened is that the hippies discovered LSD and mushrooms and a few other psychedelics and cannabis.

Mark Haden: 00:08:59

And then the cultural context of the time is they were against the Vietnam war,

Mark Haden: 00:09:03

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Yeah

Mark Haden: 00:09:04

and the status quo really wanted the Vietnam war, and they wanted these younger folks to sign up and pick up a gun and go get themselves dropped off in a jungle and fight.

Mark Haden: 00:09:13

And the hippies couldn't see any logic in that at all.

Mark Haden: 00:09:16

And so there was a cultural battle and there were a lot of hippies.

Mark Haden: 00:09:20

It was the baby boom.

Mark Haden: 00:09:21

There was, they had, they had clout and they scared the folks in power.

Mark Haden: 00:09:26

And so the folks in power did everything that they could do to exert power.

Mark Haden: 00:09:31

And prohibition is a technique that has been used against many people that the folks in power have been afraid of.

Mark Haden: 00:09:39

And we could look at that, look at the history of that from cocaine to cannabis, but in this context, the folks in power said, we need prohibition and we need to target these people.

Mark Haden: 00:09:50

We need ways of putting them in jail when we don't like them.

Mark Haden: 00:09:53

And psychedelics was a convenient way of doing it.

Mark Haden: 00:09:55

Psychedelics and cannabis.

Mark Haden: 00:09:56

And so the history of it really had nothing to do with the harms and benefits of psychedelics and everything to do with this cultural context and the propaganda was woven and all the stories that you finished saying were spun and offered to the culture and unfortunately the culture bought it, which was unfortunate because it could have gone very differently.

Mark Haden: 00:10:16

So the, the hippies could have, and admittedly , the hippies didn't embrace indigenous use.

Mark Haden: 00:10:23

What they did is they had somewhat out of control use.

Mark Haden: 00:10:25

They were, they were partying with psychedelics.

Mark Haden: 00:10:27

It could have gone differently.

Mark Haden: 00:10:28

The hippies could have said, Hey, let's embrace indigenous use and see if we can find a context to create a safe container for these very strong experiences.

Mark Haden: 00:10:38

And then the powers that be could have seen that and supported it.

Mark Haden: 00:10:42

So it could have gone completely differently.

Mark Haden: 00:10:45

But the way it went, it was prohibited and the hippies were targeted, the war did end and decades went by and then the research that had been flourishing in the 50s and early 60s started up again and there were folks in the FDA that allowed it to happen.

Mark Haden: 00:11:07

Which was an interesting statement in itself.

Mark Haden: 00:11:09

And so the research started to percolate and then it grew and it grew and it grew.

Mark Haden: 00:11:14

And there was no reason to stop it because what was being demonstrated was that these medicines were effective in ways that many other medicines haven't been.

Mark Haden: 00:11:23

Post traumatic stress disorder is really, really hard to treat and it's awful.

Mark Haden: 00:11:27

And it affects a population that has a lot of sympathy for Americans, soldiers.

Mark Haden: 00:11:33

And so when this therapy comes down the pipe that can treat.

Mark Haden: 00:11:38

Soldiers who then step up on the podium and speak to his benefit, that has a completely different cultural context.

Mark Haden: 00:11:45

And so the door of acceptance to these new medicines has been opened largely because the research has shown they are so effective.

Mark Haden: 00:11:53

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Okay.

Mark Haden: 00:11:53

that's, that is super interesting, but what I hear you saying is that it doesn't actually necessarily matter what settings you

Mark Haden: 00:12:01

these medications,

Mark Haden: 00:12:04

the settings are crucial.

Mark Haden: 00:12:05

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Okay.

Mark Haden: 00:12:06

Yeah.

Mark Haden: 00:12:06

The statement that echoes with truth today from the sixties is the greatest determinant of a positive outcome from a psychedelic experience are two things, set and setting.

Mark Haden: 00:12:19

And then I would add the umbrella term of safety.

Mark Haden: 00:12:22

If you want to guarantee yourself having a bad trip, I can tell you how you do it.

Mark Haden: 00:12:26

You go to a party, somebody hands you a bag of dried material that looks a bit like mothrums.

Mark Haden: 00:12:31

You take a handful, and then somebody says, hey, let's go get a pizza.

Mark Haden: 00:12:34

You jump in a car, and you drive, and then you go to a pizzeria, and you sit it.

Mark Haden: 00:12:40

This is a really horrible way of taking psychedelics, and that's why It's unfortunate that we didn't honor the indigenous use, because the indigenous use was all about a very, very carefully woven container of safety.

Mark Haden: 00:12:55

And so , researchers pay a lot of attention to set and setting.

Mark Haden: 00:13:00

So set is what are the expectations that you walk in the door with?

Mark Haden: 00:13:06

Who are you?

Mark Haden: 00:13:06

What are you expecting?

Mark Haden: 00:13:08

How are you planning on having this experience?

Mark Haden: 00:13:11

When I see patients and we, in my ketamine clinic, we, have people state an intention and we prepare people.

Mark Haden: 00:13:18

We spent actually hours in preparation before a medicine session with people.

Mark Haden: 00:13:23

And then there's the setting.

Mark Haden: 00:13:25

What is the environment that this is taken in?

Mark Haden: 00:13:27

You know, how, how does that work?

Mark Haden: 00:13:30

What does, what does it look like?

Mark Haden: 00:13:31

What does it feel like?

Mark Haden: 00:13:32

Is it, is it safe?

Mark Haden: 00:13:33

Is it predictable?

Mark Haden: 00:13:34

Does the person have to manage anything?

Mark Haden: 00:13:37

Dosage is also crucial.

Mark Haden: 00:13:39

What substance are you taking and how much and larger dosages can be destabilizing for some people.

Mark Haden: 00:13:45

So you have to find the right dosage.

Mark Haden: 00:13:47

So the right dosage at the right time and the right place with the right supervision.

Mark Haden: 00:13:52

And, and the supervision is actually really important.

Mark Haden: 00:13:55

We, we sit down with people, we prepare them for the experience.

Mark Haden: 00:13:58

They lie down, they put on eye shades, they put on headphones with a very, very specifically, carefully curated music list.

Mark Haden: 00:14:06

And then they, we guide them through the experience and then they emerge and we talk about what it was like for them.

Mark Haden: 00:14:12

They don't have to handle anything when they're immersed in the psychedelic experience.

Mark Haden: 00:14:17

So, set, setting, safety, dosage are the crucial.

Mark Haden: 00:14:20

determinants of a positive outcome.

Mark Haden: 00:14:23

. megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Could you talk about how maybe somebody with PTSD, how this therapy is actually helping them versus a traditional psychologist or what other?

Mark Haden: 00:14:37

I'm not, I'm not really versed on the therapies that are used for PTSD, but maybe you could talk to the differences on why sometimes this works and traditional therapy doesn't work.

Mark Haden: 00:14:48

Well, traditional therapy for PTSD.

Mark Haden: 00:14:50

Often involves psychiatric medications and psychiatric medications tend to sedate people and they take, they blunt everything and they blunt their lives.

Mark Haden: 00:15:00

So traditional therapy that involves psychiatric medications is problematic and you have to take it for a very, very long period of time.

Mark Haden: 00:15:08

Psychological therapy for PTSD.

Mark Haden: 00:15:11

The primary one is called flooding or prolonged exposure.

Mark Haden: 00:15:15

So what that means, if you take a, let's give the example here of a young man who's come back from battle and he's repetitively going through the trauma of the battle in his head again and again and again, he's hearing the bombs go off.

Mark Haden: 00:15:28

He's hearing the bullets.

Mark Haden: 00:15:29

Wasn't by him.

Mark Haden: 00:15:30

He's seeing the blood around him.

Mark Haden: 00:15:32

He.

Mark Haden: 00:15:34

is traumatized and replaying.

Mark Haden: 00:15:36

It's called flashbacks.

Mark Haden: 00:15:37

So he's replaying that trauma in his head constantly.

Mark Haden: 00:15:41

Very emotionally distressing.

Mark Haden: 00:15:42

You add the layer of, I'm supposed to be a tough guy and I'm not in control of my life at all.

Mark Haden: 00:15:47

That particular tape lope is also really horrible for these guys.

Mark Haden: 00:15:51

So then you go to a psychologist and they say, well, we need to desensitize you.

Mark Haden: 00:15:57

to that experience.

Mark Haden: 00:15:58

So they recreate the trauma every way they can and they sit the person in that environment long enough that hopefully they will desensitize.

Mark Haden: 00:16:07

Now the technical term for researchers when they look at that is the dropout rate is high.

Mark Haden: 00:16:14

People don't want to be exposed to their trauma again and again and again and again.

Mark Haden: 00:16:20

It's actually an extremely difficult thing to go through.

Mark Haden: 00:16:23

So prolonged exposure is very, very challenging.

Mark Haden: 00:16:26

It isn't particularly effective and it's, it's very difficult to go through psychiatric meds or just dull your life.

Mark Haden: 00:16:34

And that's a problem.

Mark Haden: 00:16:36

So along comes MDMA.

Mark Haden: 00:16:37

So MDMA known on the street as ecstasy, but that's something else entirely.

Mark Haden: 00:16:43

We're just going to call it MDMA and MDMA.

Mark Haden: 00:16:47

The experience of it.

Mark Haden: 00:16:50

I mean, again, you set people up for the experience.

Mark Haden: 00:16:52

There's tons of preparation, but then during the medicine day, let's see, let's go back a notch.

Mark Haden: 00:16:57

So what is.

Mark Haden: 00:16:59

PTSD, what, what actually happens?

Mark Haden: 00:17:01

So let's think about the difference between the conscious and the unconscious mind.

Mark Haden: 00:17:07

And I'm going to give you an example to help us understand the distinction.

Mark Haden: 00:17:11

When you're learning to drive a car, you slide in behind the wheel of the car and your conscious mind looks at the complexity of the knobs and the buttons and the levers and the pedals and you go, Oh my gosh, in your conscious mind and slowly one of it, one at a time, you figure out all the different knobs and buttons.

Mark Haden: 00:17:29

And you think about it, what does this do?

Mark Haden: 00:17:30

And you twist and you go, Oh, that's the windshield wipers.

Mark Haden: 00:17:33

So your conscious mind thinks about it again and again and again.

Mark Haden: 00:17:37

And then you drive out into traffic and you're consciously thinking about the distance from that stoplight.

Mark Haden: 00:17:42

So a lot of conscious activity.

Mark Haden: 00:17:45

Later in life, that conscious tape loop, that driving tape loop drops into your unconscious mind.

Mark Haden: 00:17:52

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Silence

Mark Haden: 00:18:02

think that, because that's unconscious, that driving tape loop has dropped into your unconscious mind, so with PTSD it's the same thing, all of these conscious things that soldiers were doing during battle, then drop into their unconscious mind, and it's an unwanted thing.

Mark Haden: 00:18:18

Unconscious tape loop.

Mark Haden: 00:18:19

Driving tape loops are wonderful to have in your unconscious mind because it means you can drive and think about sandwiches and the radio and the meeting you're about to have.

Mark Haden: 00:18:27

So it runs your life when you're driving in a way that makes your life a lot easier.

Mark Haden: 00:18:32

But when a PTSD tape loop is in your unconscious mind, it's usually problematic because how do you access it?

Mark Haden: 00:18:38

How do you get into your unconscious mind and change stuff that's down there?

Mark Haden: 00:18:42

Well, that's really hard.

Mark Haden: 00:18:44

MDMA allows for access.

Mark Haden: 00:18:46

It reduces the permeability between the conscious and the unconscious mind.

Mark Haden: 00:18:51

So somebody will take MDMA in a very, very carefully constructed context.

Mark Haden: 00:18:57

They've been prepared.

Mark Haden: 00:18:58

They lie down, they take the MDMA, the permeability between their conscious and their unconscious mind goes down so they can take their conscious mind and go and find the tape loop.

Mark Haden: 00:19:09

Now, there are some therapies that find ways of doing this, but what happens is when they find the tape loop, there's a fear response, a huge fear response, and then they, the therapist has to deal with lots of fear and defenses.

Mark Haden: 00:19:22

With MDMA, the fear response.

Mark Haden: 00:19:25

It's quieted, so it feels safe.

Mark Haden: 00:19:29

You now have access to the unconscious tape loop and you don't get a fear response.

Mark Haden: 00:19:35

So you can go to the unconscious tape loop and kind of unravel it and release the energy that's there.

Mark Haden: 00:19:40

So it's still there.

Mark Haden: 00:19:41

The soldier doesn't forget the battle, the battle is still there, but the emotional charge and the pain and the suffering and the repetitive nature of the PTSD dissipates and they get their lives back.

Mark Haden: 00:19:53

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: So it's kind of taking the adrenaline that goes with the experience that's driving the fear and kind of lowers that.

Mark Haden: 00:20:02

But I'm assuming this is something that needs to be done multiple times.

Mark Haden: 00:20:06

Or is it something that's so effective that after one time of doing this kind of therapy, they have immediate relief and, and what does relief look like for someone that has PTSD?

Mark Haden: 00:20:20

Well, the research on your first question is actually very clear.

Mark Haden: 00:20:23

The first treatment is the most effective.

Mark Haden: 00:20:25

The second is almost as effective.

Mark Haden: 00:20:28

The third is still effective, but less so.

Mark Haden: 00:20:31

And then it reduces fairly substantially from there.

Mark Haden: 00:20:34

So the ideal number of treatments for somebody with severe PTSD is three.

Mark Haden: 00:20:39

With a lot of support before and after.

Mark Haden: 00:20:42

It's not, you can't see this just as MDMA therapy.

Mark Haden: 00:20:45

It's MDMA in the context of a large therapeutic process that involves a lot of debriefing as well at the end.

Mark Haden: 00:20:51

MDMA by itself, going to a party and dancing with MDMA is not going to help PTSD.

Mark Haden: 00:20:57

It's MDMA assisted therapy.

Mark Haden: 00:20:59

And the therapy is actually quite specific.

Mark Haden: 00:21:02

That was your first question.

Mark Haden: 00:21:03

You had two

Mark Haden: 00:21:04

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Oh yeah.

Mark Haden: 00:21:05

The, the second part of that, sorry, I have a bad habit of asking two part questions and I need to, I need to stop doing that.

Mark Haden: 00:21:13

, the second part of my question, is what is the relief?

Mark Haden: 00:21:17

That they feel like What is the before and after for the patient, after doing such a therapy?

Mark Haden: 00:21:24

By, by having this permeability and being able to address that in a controlled environment where they're not going to have fear, what's the outcome on the other side?

Mark Haden: 00:21:34

Silence Silence Silence Silence

Mark Haden: 00:21:59

the left of the gondola and it just happens kind of automatically because there's this kind of way of getting down the mountain that's well worn and your skis just kind of automatically get into that rut and you go down the mountain and then you take the gondola back up again and exactly the same thing happens again and again and again and you decide you don't want to ski.

Mark Haden: 00:22:19

that particular rut.

Mark Haden: 00:22:20

So you take the gondola up and again, you're pulled.

Mark Haden: 00:22:22

And as you're being pulled, you're fighting it, you're fighting it and you're fighting it and you're fighting it and you're struggling with it and you don't want to be in the rut, but you're still in the rut.

Mark Haden: 00:22:30

And that struggle of not being in the rut happens again and again and again.

Mark Haden: 00:22:35

And then you hear about psychedelics and you take the gondola up the mountain.

Mark Haden: 00:22:39

And instead of going in the rut, You take a little time out.

Mark Haden: 00:22:43

In fact, you wander over to the ridge and you sit down and you look at the view.

Mark Haden: 00:22:47

You have a big picture view of everything.

Mark Haden: 00:22:50

You can see the village below, you can see the mountain, you can see the old rut that's very much there.

Mark Haden: 00:22:56

And you can see the new fresh powder that's possibly different ways down the mountain.

Mark Haden: 00:23:00

And you have an opportunity, you have time out.

Mark Haden: 00:23:02

You have time out from skiing.

Mark Haden: 00:23:04

And life generally, and you get to consider the big picture and as you're sitting there, it starts to snow and you notice as you look over at the right now.

Mark Haden: 00:23:16

But it's kind of getting filled up with snow, and so it pulls you less.

Mark Haden: 00:23:22

And then with your conscious mind, you say, I want to ski down the mountain in a different way.

Mark Haden: 00:23:26

And as you get back up on your skis, you realize you don't have to use the right anymore.

Mark Haden: 00:23:32

And you ski down the mountain in a different way.

Mark Haden: 00:23:34

Using fresh powder, you go back up the gondola.

Mark Haden: 00:23:39

And now you can still see the rut, it's still snowing, the rut is there, and you still feel some pull to the rut, but you now have been down the mountain in a different way, and you consciously choose to go down the mountain using the fresh powder again.

Mark Haden: 00:23:53

You go back up the mountain again, and it's snowing heavily.

Mark Haden: 00:23:57

The rut is now almost fully obscured, but it never goes away.

Mark Haden: 00:24:03

The rut will always be there, you'll notice it, you can see it, it's there.

Mark Haden: 00:24:08

But you stop, you think about it, and you choose to constantly go down the mountain in a different way.

Mark Haden: 00:24:14

And then you develop new ways to go down the mountain that are through the fresh powder and the way that you want to go.

Mark Haden: 00:24:20

And those too can become ruts because you're using them all the time, but they're ruts that you have chosen.

Mark Haden: 00:24:26

So That's what happens.

Mark Haden: 00:24:29

Essentially, psychedelics give you an opportunity to take a break, rethink the decisions and not the patterns of your life.

Mark Haden: 00:24:39

Depression patterns, anxiety patterns, PTSD patterns, whatever the things that people come to therapy to deal with get to be reconsidered in a different way.

Mark Haden: 00:24:50

It was interesting.

Mark Haden: 00:24:51

I, without any identifying details.

Mark Haden: 00:24:54

I'll tell you, I ran a psychedelic session just this last weekend and there was a, an individual who had come to our session who had had a big trauma history and she believed that she, her manifestation of her life was anger.

Mark Haden: 00:25:11

She was angry all the time.

Mark Haden: 00:25:14

And so she believed she was going to come to the session and thrash out all of her anger.

Mark Haden: 00:25:18

And curiously enough, she had a psychedelic session and she sat up and she said, I'm not an angry person.

Mark Haden: 00:25:24

Why would I want to thrash out my anger?

Mark Haden: 00:25:26

I'm not angry.

Mark Haden: 00:25:26

That's not who I am.

Mark Haden: 00:25:28

My fundamental soul is not angry.

Mark Haden: 00:25:30

I'm actually this other thing and she described who she was in this world and we worked a little bit at manifesting that and, and she, it was, it was a transformative experience because she redefined who she was in this world.

Mark Haden: 00:25:43

She went down the mountain in a different way very, very quickly.

Mark Haden: 00:25:45

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: hmm.

Mark Haden: 00:25:46

Wow.

Mark Haden: 00:25:46

Danna Levy Hoffmann: sounds like a dream to honestly for someone who's suffering from depression and has been my whole life.

Mark Haden: 00:25:54

It just sounds like, first of all, it's very frustrating that this is not something that's happening already,

Mark Haden: 00:26:02

legally

Mark Haden: 00:26:02

and everything.

Mark Haden: 00:26:03

also

Mark Haden: 00:26:04

me like they're, A, again, the stigma that has been around psychedelics unfortunately slowed things down, as you explained, you know, the use of it in the Western world, as always,

Mark Haden: 00:26:19

ruin things.

Mark Haden: 00:26:21

know, it's, it's very frustrating to hear that there is something that is more promising.

Mark Haden: 00:26:28

I mean, let's talk numbers because I'm sure some people like Megan and I will also geek out about numbers.

Mark Haden: 00:26:35

What's the success rate of SSRIs, antidepressants, uh, versus, you know, therapy versus all of them versus psychedelics.

Mark Haden: 00:26:45

I don't know.

Mark Haden: 00:26:45

Give us some interesting numbers.

Mark Haden: 00:26:48

Silence

Mark Haden: 00:26:51

people that are selling the program, the, the PTSD programs, I, I went to a conference,, in Vancouver.

Mark Haden: 00:26:59

It was called the Simbra conference.

Mark Haden: 00:27:00

It's a national conference for the military.

Mark Haden: 00:27:02

A lot of the people were talking about PTSD.

Mark Haden: 00:27:04

That was kind of the theme of the conference.

Mark Haden: 00:27:07

And so I wandered around and I talked to all the people running the booths and I said, how effective is your program?

Mark Haden: 00:27:11

And I asked that of many people.

Mark Haden: 00:27:13

So the people that were selling the program, we're talking about it between somewhere between 10 and 20%.

Mark Haden: 00:27:19

They're selling the program.

Mark Haden: 00:27:20

The research says it's closer to five to 10%.

Mark Haden: 00:27:24

So not very effective.

Mark Haden: 00:27:27

The first round, the first round of research with MDMA and PTSD.

Mark Haden: 00:27:33

That study showed an 82 percent level of effectiveness.

Mark Haden: 00:27:36

Now, it's really curious, because pharmaceutical research happens all the time.

Mark Haden: 00:27:41

And so people are constantly introducing new drugs and comparing them to old drugs.

Mark Haden: 00:27:46

And the difference between new drugs and old drugs is usually 1, 2, 3, 4, maybe 5%.

Mark Haden: 00:27:51

It's very, very narrow windows of effectiveness when people get really excited.

Mark Haden: 00:27:55

So the idea that it would go from, let's say 10 to 20 percent effective to 82 percent level of effectiveness.

Mark Haden: 00:28:01

Anybody that knows numbers and research in pharmacology.

Mark Haden: 00:28:05

We'll say that the, that person is lying.

Mark Haden: 00:28:07

They're falsifying their data.

Mark Haden: 00:28:08

That cannot be true.

Mark Haden: 00:28:10

And so the way to prove that you're not lying is you have to have the FDA watching you.

Mark Haden: 00:28:15

You have to have university ethics review boards watching you.

Mark Haden: 00:28:18

You have to do it repetitively.

Mark Haden: 00:28:20

You have to do it at multiple sites with other oversight.

Mark Haden: 00:28:23

You have to show them your data.

Mark Haden: 00:28:24

You have to show them the source documents that you collected your data from.

Mark Haden: 00:28:27

You have to have somebody going in and watching you very, very carefully and you have to do it repetitively.

Mark Haden: 00:28:33

And that's exactly what the MAPS folks did in the States.

Mark Haden: 00:28:36

And then they did it up here.

Mark Haden: 00:28:38

They did it with health Canada oversight.

Mark Haden: 00:28:40

Now that the 82 percent level of effectiveness was massive.

Mark Haden: 00:28:44

And to some extent, based on the highly skilled therapists that were doing it.

Mark Haden: 00:28:49

So when they did it with less trained, less skilled therapists, they wound up with a 60 some odd 65 approximately level of effectiveness.

Mark Haden: 00:28:57

They could train it.

Mark Haden: 00:28:59

Relatively inexperienced therapists to do this a way more effective level than any traditional treatment for PTSD.

Mark Haden: 00:29:09

So those are the numbers for PTSD.

Mark Haden: 00:29:12

Danna Levy Hoffmann: That's insane numbers.

Mark Haden: 00:29:13

I mean, like,

Mark Haden: 00:29:14

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Yeah.

Mark Haden: 00:29:15

Danna Levy Hoffmann: actually mind blowing.

Mark Haden: 00:29:16

I didn't think it would even be that high.

Mark Haden: 00:29:18

I thought it was more towards the 60, 70, but that's so bloody promising.

Mark Haden: 00:29:24

That's insane.

Mark Haden: 00:29:25

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: So as you were talking, mark, , my blood started boiling a little bit when we start talking about healthcare and making money.

Mark Haden: 00:29:34

, especially in, in, in the US because we all know that the healthcare system in the US is broken.

Mark Haden: 00:29:40

Insurance charges way more than they need to.

Mark Haden: 00:29:43

Comparatively to European similar systems, and what they would charge for the same procedure here versus there and, and so on.

Mark Haden: 00:29:53

So, and I'm not an expert, but I think anybody knows that It's not.

Mark Haden: 00:29:58

Well done.

Mark Haden: 00:29:59

So with that in mind and what you were just talking about like these companies that are selling these programs Where does this fall into how it's covered by?

Mark Haden: 00:30:11

insurance or private Organizations, private companies ramming up the prices for this kind of like, what is the price structure?

Mark Haden: 00:30:21

Can people actually afford this?

Mark Haden: 00:30:23

Is this going to be available to the people who need?

Mark Haden: 00:30:26

Because unfortunately, also in the States, a lot of our veterans are under the poverty level or, or homeless or other things, a lot to do also with mental health issues and not being able to hold a job because of The impact of being in, in severe conditions.

Mark Haden: 00:30:42

So, that, yeah, kind of got me thinking, like, what is the access level for people who really need this, who maybe don't even have health insurance?

Mark Haden: 00:30:54

That's a complicated question and has many layers.

Mark Haden: 00:30:58

So layer number one is to what extent will this be covered by insurance?

Mark Haden: 00:31:01

And that that question has not yet been answered.

Mark Haden: 00:31:04

Now, it's interesting.

Mark Haden: 00:31:05

I work in, I'm a Canadian, so we have a very different healthcare structure.

Mark Haden: 00:31:08

So the, uh, we have a.

Mark Haden: 00:31:10

Single payer system and health care is free for Canadians, Americans wave their flags, Canadians wave their health care cards.

Mark Haden: 00:31:17

So it's not as much an issue here.

Mark Haden: 00:31:20

We're hoping that it will be taken under the health care system as a normal treatment and it will be available in Canada.

Mark Haden: 00:31:27

The americans as you say, um are all about insurance.

Mark Haden: 00:31:31

And, and I have no idea how that's going to play out in the future, whether insurance companies will take this on or not, but, but there is an argument.

Mark Haden: 00:31:38

In fact, a number of papers have been written that there is an argument for this to be insured.

Mark Haden: 00:31:43

And really it comes down to, is it cheaper to treat the people than not treating?

Mark Haden: 00:31:49

And at the end of the day, if you do a big picture analysis of a cost over many years, it is less expensive to have healthy people.

Mark Haden: 00:31:57

And specifically with Veterans Affairs, you know, the costs of long term disability are prohibitive.

Mark Haden: 00:32:02

And so it's relatively cheaper to put the money in to heal people than it is to support them in long term disability for the rest of their lives.

Mark Haden: 00:32:11

So you can make economic arguments, but then there's a challenge to those arguments, just to look at it from both sides, because the upfront costs are not insignificant.

Mark Haden: 00:32:20

Because really what you're talking about is highly trained people that have a lot of skill and it takes time, you know, these, these, the medicine session itself is eight hours.

Mark Haden: 00:32:28

You have to prepare people for many hours in advance.

Mark Haden: 00:32:31

You have to debrief people afterwards.

Mark Haden: 00:32:33

It's called the integration session.

Mark Haden: 00:32:35

And that also takes many hours.

Mark Haden: 00:32:37

And you're talking about highly credentialed, highly skilled people.

Mark Haden: 00:32:40

And the way the research was actually done is actually two therapists is often in a male and a female dyad.

Mark Haden: 00:32:47

Now, whether that would unfold in the actual world, I don't know, but that is the ideal therapy and that is expensive.

Mark Haden: 00:32:53

You know, people have a right to be paid.

Mark Haden: 00:32:55

You know, that's just they had, they have their visa bills and their kids that they have to go home and take care of.

Mark Haden: 00:33:00

So the cost of the, the treatment is expensive, but it's less expensive than long term disability costs.

Mark Haden: 00:33:07

Insurance companies have to do that math.

Mark Haden: 00:33:09

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Mm

Mark Haden: 00:33:11

Danna Levy Hoffmann: I mean, and it sounds like anyways, you know, you did mention the productivity of these substances and how after about the third time,

Mark Haden: 00:33:20

uh, of, you know,

Mark Haden: 00:33:23

getting

Mark Haden: 00:33:23

less,

Mark Haden: 00:33:24

still high success, than antidepressants

Mark Haden: 00:33:27

stuff like that.

Mark Haden: 00:33:28

I assume the three first ones are the most powerful ones that someone can utilize the medication to their benefit.

Mark Haden: 00:33:37

And when it comes to being on drugs your entire life, you know, and, and going to checkups and doing this and that, like for, for those topics, I think at the end of the day, am I, am I the idiot one?

Mark Haden: 00:33:51

Or like, is it really just very clear, but for some reason is being fought off?

Mark Haden: 00:33:58

Well, yes, antidepressants when people are antidepressants.

Mark Haden: 00:34:01

There's multiple challenges with antidepressants.

Mark Haden: 00:34:04

Well, one is it takes a long time to work It doesn't work immediately Two is it takes a lot of tweaking, you know, try this one It doesn't work try that one change the dosage back and forth back and forth so it takes a long time to adjust and if you look at the The, it's called systematic reviews.

Mark Haden: 00:34:21

So in the, in the research world, there are researchers who go in and look at other research and then make statements about all kinds of different research.

Mark Haden: 00:34:29

They try and do a systematic analysis of all the research.

Mark Haden: 00:34:33

When systematic reviews occur with antidepressants, what they conclude is antidepressants don't work

Mark Haden: 00:34:40

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: hmm.

Mark Haden: 00:34:40

Mm

Mark Haden: 00:34:40

Um, they're in fact they're similar to placebo.

Mark Haden: 00:34:42

Now, curious enough, placebos actually do work, but antidepressants are actually similar level of effectiveness to placebos.

Mark Haden: 00:34:50

So that's a challenge and they don't work for everybody.

Mark Haden: 00:34:52

And then you're on this thing for a long, long period of time.

Mark Haden: 00:34:55

So that's a relatively unattractive outcome.

Mark Haden: 00:34:58

I think, um, a short, intense therapeutic approach is, is way better.

Mark Haden: 00:35:04

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: hmm.

Mark Haden: 00:35:05

And what are the side effects of this kind of treatment?

Mark Haden: 00:35:10

Because I feel like there are a lot of side effects for most drug therapies that people just accept because they, you know, they need it to cope and get through life.

Mark Haden: 00:35:21

So they accept these side effects with such a short duration, one to three sessions of psychedelic therapy or psychedelics used in therapy.

Mark Haden: 00:35:33

Are there any.

Mark Haden: 00:35:34

side effects with such a short usage?

Mark Haden: 00:35:37

I mean, and is there possibility that someone would get addicted to something after these therapy sessions that might also impact, especially if they have an addictive personality,

Mark Haden: 00:35:48

Danna Levy Hoffmann: So basically

Mark Haden: 00:35:49

get.

Mark Haden: 00:35:49

Danna Levy Hoffmann: gave us the good, give us the bad and the ugly,

Mark Haden: 00:35:52

we're ready Okay

Mark Haden: 00:36:01

the other one?

Mark Haden: 00:36:02

Addictive qualities.

Mark Haden: 00:36:03

And let's actually talk about a third thing.

Mark Haden: 00:36:06

So side effects, addictive qualities.

Mark Haden: 00:36:07

And when I, when I look at the third one, I'd like to talk about is how I describe To our clients, when they come and ask me, will this work for me, what I say is there are three types of categories of people that approach us and do the treatments that we offer.

Mark Haden: 00:36:28

One is it's transformative.

Mark Haden: 00:36:30

So that means there's a huge aha.

Mark Haden: 00:36:33

And something shifts in the person and they walk out of the experience and they don't need to come back and they have resolved their issue.

Mark Haden: 00:36:41

Now, admittedly, that is not common, but it does happen.

Mark Haden: 00:36:45

And then there's the second, I'm talking about the ketamine clinic that I run.

Mark Haden: 00:36:48

And then there's the second group of people that see it as being hugely beneficial and very helpful for the treatment.

Mark Haden: 00:36:53

Commonly, it's for severe depression.

Mark Haden: 00:36:55

That's our most common population that we treat.

Mark Haden: 00:36:58

And so they say their, their, their depression lifts and it lifts for quite a long period of time.

Mark Haden: 00:37:03

They're functional again, but a period of time later, a few months later, they need to come back and do it again.

Mark Haden: 00:37:11

So those are the folks for whom, for whom it is helpful, but not transformative.

Mark Haden: 00:37:18

And then there's the third population.

Mark Haden: 00:37:20

And we tend to ignore the third population because that third population exists in all pharmaceutical research.

Mark Haden: 00:37:26

And that's the population for whom it does not work.

Mark Haden: 00:37:29

And there's no medicine that I know of that's a hundred percent effective for everybody.

Mark Haden: 00:37:34

There's always that third group for whom it simply doesn't work for whatever reason.

Mark Haden: 00:37:39

That population may be small, but we need to talk about that population as well.

Mark Haden: 00:37:43

Because people come to us with this huge expectation, you know, this hype, this, this podcast that we're doing right now is a typical example.

Mark Haden: 00:37:51

When you listen to this, you go, Oh my God, this is fantastic.

Mark Haden: 00:37:54

And so you walk into a clinic program and you, you have huge expectations.

Mark Haden: 00:37:59

And what happens if you fit into that third category of the type of person for whom it does not work and you've been struggling with depression, for example, for years and years and years, and you take this therapy and it doesn't help.

Mark Haden: 00:38:13

What actually happens is you are extremely disappointed.

Mark Haden: 00:38:17

And in that extreme disappointment, quite frankly, to be completely blunt with you, suicidality rates go up.

Mark Haden: 00:38:24

Danna Levy Hoffmann: I

Mark Haden: 00:38:24

kind of get that.

Mark Haden: 00:38:25

I mean, again,

Mark Haden: 00:38:26

from someone who's suffered from depression, like if that one thing that 82 percent of, you know, success rate and blah

Mark Haden: 00:38:34

if that doesn't work for me, like what the fuck, right?

Mark Haden: 00:38:37

so

Mark Haden: 00:38:38

that like something that is totally understandable, but

Mark Haden: 00:38:42

what about.

Mark Haden: 00:38:44

Numbers there again.

Mark Haden: 00:38:45

So you're saying there is a small amount

Mark Haden: 00:38:48

well, it's different with the different psychedelics.

Mark Haden: 00:38:49

You know, it's like 40 percent approximately with the MDMA or PTSD.

Mark Haden: 00:38:53

Danna Levy Hoffmann: before, sorry.

Mark Haden: 00:38:54

So that brings me to the next question

Mark Haden: 00:38:57

you even answer that.

Mark Haden: 00:38:58

I know I'm confusing.

Mark Haden: 00:38:59

I'm sorry.

Mark Haden: 00:39:00

But you're saying it depends on, but if we constantly try antidepressants just to find the right one, should we then also try the psychedelics?

Mark Haden: 00:39:12

I'm ready for an answer.

Mark Haden: 00:39:13

I'm sorry to cut you off.

Mark Haden: 00:39:14

That's a complex question.

Mark Haden: 00:39:16

So if you're that, that question, if I'm going to interpret that question is if you're on an antidepressant, should you try psychedelics?

Mark Haden: 00:39:23

Is that the question?

Mark Haden: 00:39:24

okay.

Mark Haden: 00:39:25

Danna Levy Hoffmann: I meant you, when you mentioned the problems around antidepressants, you mentioned also something that I went through a lot, which is try this

Mark Haden: 00:39:34

doesn't work.

Mark Haden: 00:39:35

try that one.

Mark Haden: 00:39:36

And not for days.

Mark Haden: 00:39:37

Let's try for a month or two.

Mark Haden: 00:39:40

Yes.

Mark Haden: 00:39:42

Yes.

Mark Haden: 00:39:42

Absolutely.

Mark Haden: 00:39:43

Danna Levy Hoffmann: So

Mark Haden: 00:39:43

Yes,

Mark Haden: 00:39:44

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Does that apply also to psychedelics?

Mark Haden: 00:39:46

Because you said, well, it depends on the psychedelic.

Mark Haden: 00:39:49

Does that mean that if doesn't work for me, if I should maybe try MDMA again in a controlled setting, in a therapeutic setting, is that something that makes sense around

Mark Haden: 00:40:02

as well?

Mark Haden: 00:40:03

so we can't answer that question through a research lens because the research has not been done Researchers choose a psychedelic and they choose an indication and they walk through a population of people through that Psychedelic for that indication and then they say this is the outcome they never switch They can't in a research paradigm.

Mark Haden: 00:40:20

You can't switch and say okay, which right in doesn't work that way But I'll give you my opinion and my opinion is absolutely.

Mark Haden: 00:40:26

Yes, you know, there are the the type of therapy And the experience of MDMA is completely different from the experience of psilocybin.

Mark Haden: 00:40:36

And the classics, I also want to throw sort of LSD in the pile.

Mark Haden: 00:40:39

Now, LSD was certainly, marginalized, targeted, and stigmatized.

Mark Haden: 00:40:44

But as I said before, psilocybin is only researched.

Mark Haden: 00:40:47

Because regulatory authorities didn't know what it was, I think when these things all become legalized, which I believe will happen when LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, 3MMC, 5 hemiodmT, all of them become legalized, I think therapists will do exactly what you're saying.

Mark Haden: 00:41:05

They will try one, they will try something like MDMA or 3MMC and it will work or it won't work.

Mark Haden: 00:41:12

And they will have access to other ones.

Mark Haden: 00:41:15

So that for those folks who are the non responders, they could say, well, let's try it this way and give them a completely different experience.

Mark Haden: 00:41:22

And see, I think if you work your way through multiples with the non responders, the non responder groups get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

Mark Haden: 00:41:31

So I think that is a reasonable approach that we would have as therapists later when they're all available.

Mark Haden: 00:41:39

Do

Mark Haden: 00:41:40

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Can we,

Mark Haden: 00:41:41

You want to go back to the

Mark Haden: 00:41:42

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: I, that's what I was going to, I was going to circle back.

Mark Haden: 00:41:44

around because, because, because, uh, I know we kind of got off on a tangent.

Mark Haden: 00:41:48

So, so to bring us back, you talked about the three different kinds of people, you, you talked about the three different kinds of people, transformative, it works great, but they might need to come back and the people that don't work.

Mark Haden: 00:41:59

So we kind of went off on there, but back to the, yeah, side effects and potential addictiveness of the therapy.

Mark Haden: 00:42:10

piece, the, that is a question that is asked.

Mark Haden: 00:42:13

And it's asked by researchers.

Mark Haden: 00:42:16

And so I'll give you the research answer, and then I'll give you my answer.

Mark Haden: 00:42:21

Which is probably slightly different from the research.

Mark Haden: 00:42:23

So the researchers do ask later, you know, have you, would you ever consider using this recreationally?

Mark Haden: 00:42:28

And the answer is an overwhelming no.

Mark Haden: 00:42:31

And the reason why is if you're a traumatized soldier and you involved yourself in this therapy, you have no interest in the medicine.

Mark Haden: 00:42:41

You're trying to get your life back.

Mark Haden: 00:42:43

That's the issue for you.

Mark Haden: 00:42:45

You're not, nobody's dancing.

Mark Haden: 00:42:46

This is not a fun experience.

Mark Haden: 00:42:48

In fact, quite frankly, it's a very, very challenging experience to go and deal with your PTSD.

Mark Haden: 00:42:53

And when they emerged from the experience, the majority of them, when they emerged from the experience with no more symptoms of PTSD, the, they don't want to go back there.

Mark Haden: 00:43:04

There's absolutely no way they're, they want to get on with their lives.

Mark Haden: 00:43:08

So the addictiveness through the lens of researchers.

Mark Haden: 00:43:11

Is, is virtually zero now.

Mark Haden: 00:43:14

I, I, I have a slightly different opinion.

Mark Haden: 00:43:17

Um, if you look at, I run a ketamine clinic and so there is re the research that says that ketamine can be addictive when used recreationally.

Mark Haden: 00:43:27

And so there is an ability to, to have a problematic relationship with ketamine.

Mark Haden: 00:43:33

We know that.

Mark Haden: 00:43:34

In fact, I used to work in the addictions world, and I would have clients showing up in my office and talking about their addiction to a whole variety of different things and ketamine was certainly sometimes on the list.

Mark Haden: 00:43:44

So, so when these things are all legalized, will there be a blur for those folks who.

Mark Haden: 00:43:52

Can't afford it.

Mark Haden: 00:43:54

You know, they can't afford these.

Mark Haden: 00:43:55

These treatments will be expensive.

Mark Haden: 00:43:57

The underground exists.

Mark Haden: 00:43:59

So I could imagine myself being a person who's struggling with depression saying I can't afford the traditional therapy.

Mark Haden: 00:44:05

Why don't I just go and get some ketamine?

Mark Haden: 00:44:07

And go find, you know, you know, somebody who knows somebody, I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, right?

Mark Haden: 00:44:12

If you just start poking at all your friends, sooner or later, you'll find somebody that will sell you ketamine.

Mark Haden: 00:44:17

And so now you're taking ketamine outside of a therapeutic context.

Mark Haden: 00:44:22

And you might find it to be enjoyable.

Mark Haden: 00:44:24

So I think in that kind of scenario, you actually do have a risk factor.

Mark Haden: 00:44:27

And I think as, as psychedelic therapists, we need to talk about this.

Mark Haden: 00:44:31

And we need to talk about the potential risk.

Mark Haden: 00:44:33

And that is a risk.

Mark Haden: 00:44:35

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: But I mean, I feel like that's a similar risk.

Mark Haden: 00:44:37

to alcohol, right?

Mark Haden: 00:44:39

, people can use alcohol recreationally because they want to loosen up after a long day or because they're with a group of friends.

Mark Haden: 00:44:46

And this is.

Mark Haden: 00:44:48

socially acceptable nowadays, but you can also abuse alcohol, become addicted and, you know, need it to, to, to live every day.

Mark Haden: 00:44:55

So I feel like this is in the same classification of that or nicotine or caffeine, which are all, you know, open, open for use.

Mark Haden: 00:45:06

I do know that I, let's say I feel like people who have anxiety issues or depression might be more predisposed, I'm just guessing, to search out for something that will help them cope.

Mark Haden: 00:45:19

Whether that's a bit of pot every day, or, uh, sorry, marijuana, or, uh, mushrooms that they grow in their basements, I mean, I feel like that is already happening, and that people are basically self medicating anyway, so wouldn't it I feel like like the same thing with alcohol, you know, prohibition didn't really work.

Mark Haden: 00:45:43

Everybody just went underground.

Mark Haden: 00:45:45

So it's kind of repeat, you know, history repeating itself.

Mark Haden: 00:45:49

So that's why I feel that also when we did our pre interview discussion, one of your objectives is to start to have that conversation about, hey, this is happening anyway, even if you in your, you know, two bedroom suburban house don't know about it, it is happening.

Mark Haden: 00:46:05

And there are people that need it.

Mark Haden: 00:46:07

And You know, like medical marijuana.

Mark Haden: 00:46:10

I feel like now people are kind of like their threshold is getting better and better when it comes to tolerance around things that they grew up thinking were bad as Donna talked about earlier.

Mark Haden: 00:46:24

Um, I don't know if I have a really, a good question there is mostly like, I just see history repeating itself.

Mark Haden: 00:46:31

And do you think that, how, how long do you think it's going to be before these kind of psychedelics?

Mark Haden: 00:46:39

Really become something like, oh, he smokes pot.

Mark Haden: 00:46:42

It's Okay.

Mark Haden: 00:46:43

He drinks a drink in the evening and he smokes a cigarette.

Mark Haden: 00:46:45

Like this kind of casual use becomes kind of mainstream for North America.

Mark Haden: 00:46:52

Well, there's many questions in what you said.

Mark Haden: 00:46:54

So the harm research has is, is quite nuanced.

Mark Haden: 00:46:58

It's there's a lot of information that is available to researchers on drug harms.

Mark Haden: 00:47:04

And the skillful researchers break down drug harms into a whole variety of different types of harms.

Mark Haden: 00:47:09

There's physical harms, there's social harms, there's harms to self, there's harms to others, the psychological harms.

Mark Haden: 00:47:15

And so the skillful research, the, the, the analysis of the drug harm research is that.

Mark Haden: 00:47:21

Some of the most harmful drugs are the legal ones.

Mark Haden: 00:47:24

You know, alcohol is actually a really nasty drug.

Mark Haden: 00:47:27

It's actually toxic.

Mark Haden: 00:47:28

It's, it's, it's a fact.

Mark Haden: 00:47:29

Canada produce some new drinking guidelines relatively recently that said, you know, if you want to reduce harm, if you want to not have a harmful relationship with alcohol, I think as one or two drinks a week, max, absolute max, like one or two beers.

Mark Haden: 00:47:44

A week maximum.

Mark Haden: 00:47:45

So essentially, the best way to have a harmless relationship with alcohol is not to drink it.

Mark Haden: 00:47:50

an alcohol specifically causes physical harms to oneself, but it also causes social harms.

Mark Haden: 00:47:55

You know, I actually have used to train the Vancouver Police Department, and one of the things that they would constantly tell me is the most harmful drug from a police point of view.

Mark Haden: 00:48:06

If somebody going to start taking a swing at a cop, a drunk.

Mark Haden: 00:48:08

It's alcohol.

Mark Haden: 00:48:10

Social harms, physical harms are huge with alcohol.

Mark Haden: 00:48:13

So we, there are legal drugs.

Mark Haden: 00:48:15

Tobacco is a nasty one.

Mark Haden: 00:48:16

It's really hard to quit tobacco.

Mark Haden: 00:48:18

The psychological addiction to tobacco is absolutely massive.

Mark Haden: 00:48:21

Um, caffeine, people see it as harmless, but it actually is an addictive drug.

Mark Haden: 00:48:25

The head, the withdrawal from caffeine is headaches and it's a diuretic.

Mark Haden: 00:48:29

It makes you pee a lot, you know, so it's actually a rather strange drug.

Mark Haden: 00:48:32

If you really think about.

Mark Haden: 00:48:33

You know, our collective relationship with caffeine.

Mark Haden: 00:48:36

So our legal, socially acceptable drugs are actually quite harmful.

Mark Haden: 00:48:41

And Psychedelics are way less harmful.

Mark Haden: 00:48:44

All of the harm research says that the psychedelics are some of the least, least harmful drugs that are available to the human species.

Mark Haden: 00:48:53

So the harms are low.

Mark Haden: 00:48:54

Even if people are using them regularly, the harms are low.

Mark Haden: 00:48:57

It's interesting when people talk about their things like their LSD usage, they're inevitably sporadic.

Mark Haden: 00:49:04

You know, if you think about alcohol, often people will come home.

Mark Haden: 00:49:06

Not an unfamiliar pattern is people will have multiple drinks a week, sometimes multiple drinks a day regularly over a period of time.

Mark Haden: 00:49:15

Nobody ever does LSD multiple times a week.

Mark Haden: 00:49:18

, it just doesn't happen that way.

Mark Haden: 00:49:20

There's nobody that has that relationship with it.

Mark Haden: 00:49:22

It doesn't work that way.

Mark Haden: 00:49:25

So even people that are using.

Mark Haden: 00:49:26

Psychedelics recreationally tend to use them very, very infrequently.

Mark Haden: 00:49:31

So it's a very different kind of relationship.

Mark Haden: 00:49:33

Just the nature of the experience doesn't pull one to do it repetitively in the same way that it does with currently legal drugs.

Mark Haden: 00:49:40

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Right.

Mark Haden: 00:49:40

Megan, I can tell you actually,, that I spoke to, including Mark, many, many other,

Mark Haden: 00:49:46

people who this world that say from experts and doctors to, to shaman, to people who are just users.

Mark Haden: 00:49:53

they would say, yeah

Mark Haden: 00:49:55

once, maybe twice a year, they would repeat an experience.

Mark Haden: 00:49:59

and, some

Mark Haden: 00:50:01

I haven't done it in four years.

Mark Haden: 00:50:03

So the addictiveness is extremely low.

Mark Haden: 00:50:07

The.

Mark Haden: 00:50:09

Desire to repeat it.

Mark Haden: 00:50:11

The experience is also, even if you're not addicted, the, I'd like to do it again is extremely low.

Mark Haden: 00:50:16

The social and health harms for psychedelics are also extremely low.

Mark Haden: 00:50:21

So given in a wise society, we're not talking about regulation yet, but in a wise society.

Mark Haden: 00:50:28

These things would be available and people would self regulate and people don't tend to want to do them frequently.

Mark Haden: 00:50:34

And certainly when you're involved with them with therapy, you don't tend to want to go back because it's just, you're done, you're fixed.

Mark Haden: 00:50:40

You don't really want to have that experience again, because it was all about your trauma or your depression or your anxiety.

Mark Haden: 00:50:46

So people want to get away from that as quickly as they possibly can and not repeat the experience.

Mark Haden: 00:50:52

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Have

Mark Haden: 00:50:53

seen, or is it common or not, is my question, to see going through this kind of therapy, and also seeing physical illnesses or chronic issues dissipate as well?

Mark Haden: 00:51:08

Well, it's interesting, the College of Physicians and Surgeons in British Columbia, Canada, released a statement on ketamine that was, it can be used for mental health conditions and chronic pain.

Mark Haden: 00:51:22

So that's interesting because ketamine has a really interesting history.

Mark Haden: 00:51:25

It was first used as a disassociative anesthetic and surgery.

Mark Haden: 00:51:30

And it's a relatively easy anesthetic to work with because if you take too much of it, it doesn't kill you and regular anesthetics do.

Mark Haden: 00:51:38

So it's, it's helpful in surgery.

Mark Haden: 00:51:41

And so it was used in surgery, but surgeons came along and They would want to talk about the knee, you know, how's your knee doing?

Mark Haden: 00:51:48

And the person would say, well, this is how my knee is doing, but I'm not depressed anymore.

Mark Haden: 00:51:52

And they would repetitively say that to enough surgeons that the surgeons all got together and say, Hey, we should think about this.

Mark Haden: 00:51:58

That seems to be the side effect of it being an antidepressant.

Mark Haden: 00:52:01

And so then the college of physicians and surgeons said, okay, we're going to make it available.

Mark Haden: 00:52:06

In hospitals, we want to be careful.

Mark Haden: 00:52:07

So it was now available for severe depression in hospitals.

Mark Haden: 00:52:11

But then somebody came along and said, why is it in hospital?

Mark Haden: 00:52:13

We don't need hospital.

Mark Haden: 00:52:15

We don't need, to have emergency availability because it's a relatively harmless drug.

Mark Haden: 00:52:19

It's harmless.

Mark Haden: 00:52:20

At a higher, a much higher dosage, about five times the dosage, five times the therapeutic dosage is the anesthetic dosage.

Mark Haden: 00:52:27

So you're taking one fifth of an already safe dosage.

Mark Haden: 00:52:32

So why do we have to have this in hospitals?

Mark Haden: 00:52:34

Well, actually we don't.

Mark Haden: 00:52:35

So they said you can now use it in community, and you can use it for mental health conditions.

Mark Haden: 00:52:40

And I find that language really interesting.

Mark Haden: 00:52:44

Because that the word diagnosis isn't in there.

Mark Haden: 00:52:47

It's mental health conditions.

Mark Haden: 00:52:49

I see did my interpretation I see the term mental health conditions as being broader than just specific diagnoses So they say mental health conditions and chronic pain.

Mark Haden: 00:53:00

So yes, there are other things that wind up being treated sometimes

Mark Haden: 00:53:08

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: hmm.

Mark Haden: 00:53:09

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Amazing.

Mark Haden: 00:53:10

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: I have a question to follow up on that one.

Mark Haden: 00:53:12

Is there research or is there anything around, use of psychedelics for people with Alzheimer's or dementia?

Mark Haden: 00:53:20

Yes.

Mark Haden: 00:53:21

And so far it's inconclusive, but the kind of the principle that researchers are often adopting is this concept of neuroplasticity.

Mark Haden: 00:53:32

You know, the brain can rework the, the ski analogy that I used, you know, you can ski down the mountain in a different way.

Mark Haden: 00:53:37

A neuroscientist would say new connections get formed.

Mark Haden: 00:53:41

I'd say there's two things to neuroplasticity.

Mark Haden: 00:53:43

New connections get formed.

Mark Haden: 00:53:45

And cells actually change, they grow.

Mark Haden: 00:53:49

So the growth of new cells and the reconnecting of existing cells, those sort of two elements to neuroplasticity.

Mark Haden: 00:53:58

And so brain researchers are really, really interested in that.

Mark Haden: 00:54:02

And so certainly Alzheimer's is a brain problem.

Mark Haden: 00:54:06

So what happens if this neuroplasticity piece could be applied to people with Alzheimer's.

Mark Haden: 00:54:13

So Alzheimer's is certainly a great research interest.

Mark Haden: 00:54:16

Um, the outcomes are not conclusive yet.

Mark Haden: 00:54:19

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Okay.

Mark Haden: 00:54:19

Yeah, and my follow up would be, what are the long term, like, do people who take or do the psychedelic therapy in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, it would be also interesting to see if they have a less Prevalence to dementia or Alzheimer's later on because of this neuroplasticity availability at a younger age.

Mark Haden: 00:54:41

I'm always interested in this because I feel like I have, you know, that's like the one thing that really scares the shit out of me because I feel like there's, like, very little control.

Mark Haden: 00:54:51

Yeah, okay, you take your omega 3s, you know, do all the brain health stuff, but in the end, it can just sneak up on you and then, and then you have it.

Mark Haden: 00:55:00

So, for me, it's one of those big unknowns,

Mark Haden: 00:55:02

well, I have the same issue.

Mark Haden: 00:55:04

My mother died of Alzheimer's and it was a very, very long, slow death.

Mark Haden: 00:55:07

And I held her hand throughout the whole experience and, and it's challenging.

Mark Haden: 00:55:11

So it's in my genes.

Mark Haden: 00:55:13

So I, I have the same fear.

Mark Haden: 00:55:16

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Yeah

Mark Haden: 00:55:16

And the answer is to your question specifically is we don't know, you know, that research has not been done.

Mark Haden: 00:55:22

I mean, it's a great research question.

Mark Haden: 00:55:24

But it hasn't been done.

Mark Haden: 00:55:26

Danna Levy Hoffmann: I know that

Mark Haden: 00:55:27

a whole book about this and I know that we're running out of time.

Mark Haden: 00:55:31

I wanted to know about, go back a little bit and dig deeper into Are people risking by, or maybe not risking, what should they be on

Mark Haden: 00:55:44

lookout for

Mark Haden: 00:55:46

they yes, you know, I'm

Mark Haden: 00:55:48

in a country that does not help terms

Mark Haden: 00:55:51

of access to anything?

Mark Haden: 00:55:54

And I need to go underground are things that I need to kind of keep in mind

Mark Haden: 00:56:01

Let me answer the question tangentially.

Mark Haden: 00:56:04

So, in my world of Maps Canada, I was a public figure, you know, people would see me talking at conferences, my name was out there.

Mark Haden: 00:56:13

And so, the underground world is thriving.

Mark Haden: 00:56:15

Lots of underground therapists provide psychedelic therapy for people.

Mark Haden: 00:56:19

And What would happen is some of them were just incredibly unskilled.

Mark Haden: 00:56:23

They would do it really, really badly, like really badly.

Mark Haden: 00:56:26

And then I became the community complaints department.

Mark Haden: 00:56:29

Who do you go to if you're unhappy with your underground therapist?

Mark Haden: 00:56:31

Well, me seem to be the answer.

Mark Haden: 00:56:35

And so I would listen to both sides and try and come up with a solution that would , allow for.

Mark Haden: 00:56:43

This thing to move forward.

Mark Haden: 00:56:44

But what I was acutely aware of through that process is some people just don't know what they're doing.

Mark Haden: 00:56:49

They have no idea how psychedelic psychotherapy works.

Mark Haden: 00:56:53

So, and nobody had written a book of how you do it.

Mark Haden: 00:56:56

That information was not out there.

Mark Haden: 00:56:58

So I wrote a book.

Mark Haden: 00:56:58

It's called The Manual for Psychedelic Guides.

Mark Haden: 00:57:00

It's on Amazon.

Mark Haden: 00:57:01

It's, it's a relatively quick read because there are very, very specific steps.

Mark Haden: 00:57:05

If you're going to be a psychedelic therapist or psychedelic guide, there is a way of doing it.

Mark Haden: 00:57:10

There's a way of setting people up.

Mark Haden: 00:57:11

of screening people, of preparing people, of running a session of integrating and debriefing people afterwards.

Mark Haden: 00:57:17

There are a series of steps that are actually well known to researchers, completely unknown to the rest of the world.

Mark Haden: 00:57:24

And so I believe that information should be available.

Mark Haden: 00:57:26

So I wrote the manual for psychedelic guides, partly for the underground, but also anybody that's now studying this stuff in any kind of formal academic institution.

Mark Haden: 00:57:35

Because really nobody else has written that book yet, , it's, it's commonly used as the textbook for how you do it, in the above ground as well.

Mark Haden: 00:57:44

Danna Levy Hoffmann: When you talk to people on the streets, , they talk a lot about microdosing and some even take it, just get a hold of it and use it.

Mark Haden: 00:57:54

Some don't.

Mark Haden: 00:57:55

give us a little bit of the rundown of what is microdosing?

Mark Haden: 00:57:58

Yes, so micro dosing is defined in Both the research and the street world as one 10th of a regular dose and it's done fairly regularly.

Mark Haden: 00:58:09

So let's talk about LSD for a second.

Mark Haden: 00:58:11

So a standard street dose of LSD is about 100 micrograms.

Mark Haden: 00:58:16

So micro dose would be 10 micrograms.

Mark Haden: 00:58:19

So you can look at a standard street dose of mushrooms, LSD, anything.

Mark Haden: 00:58:22

And you say you take one 10th of that dose and you take it fairly regularly.

Mark Haden: 00:58:27

Now, what does that actually mean?

Mark Haden: 00:58:28

The, the most common is about once every three days.

Mark Haden: 00:58:33

Some people microdose every day.

Mark Haden: 00:58:35

So there's some different models out there and The idea is it's available.

Mark Haden: 00:58:40

It's cheap.

Mark Haden: 00:58:41

It doesn't have a therapeutic component and It's something you don't have to have a huge investment of your time with and people who talk about it enthusiastically talk about, , managing depression.

Mark Haden: 00:58:55

They talk about increased creativity.

Mark Haden: 00:58:57

They talk about increased focus.

Mark Haden: 00:58:59

There's a book out there that I really appreciate.

Mark Haden: 00:59:02

So I'll mention the title of it.

Mark Haden: 00:59:03

It's a really good day by Alec Waldman, who is a wonderful author and had a long list of psychiatric diagnoses and Used LSD, which is, I think, one of the most common ones different researchers come up with when they do survey data, observe different drugs, but it's either LSD or psilocybin are the 2 most popular ones.

Mark Haden: 00:59:25

And I think LSD is the front runner because it's very easy to dose.

Mark Haden: 00:59:30

Mushrooms are much harder to dose and it lasts longer.

Mark Haden: 00:59:34

So LSD, I believe, is preferred as a micro doser as a micro dose experience.

Mark Haden: 00:59:39

And The most common way of doing it is every three days.

Mark Haden: 00:59:42

There are other models as well.

Mark Haden: 00:59:44

The research on it says when you do survey research and you ask people about it, they really like it and they appreciate it.

Mark Haden: 00:59:52

But when you give a microdose to people, It's often no better than placebo.

Mark Haden: 00:59:57

So, the data on micro dosing is not in yet.

Mark Haden: 01:00:00

I think we need to do a lot more work to understand the effect of micro dosing.

Mark Haden: 01:00:05

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Right.

Mark Haden: 01:00:05

I mean, what I found curious is that people and honestly, whether it's placebo or not, I'm like, if they're feeling better, who the hell cares?

Mark Haden: 01:00:13

But,

Mark Haden: 01:00:14

do say that they've gone on microdosing for a certain amount of time and then naturally felt that they did not need it anymore.

Mark Haden: 01:00:23

Which I think is also beautiful because if it's a substance that lifts you up in any way, shape or form, really, who doesn't want to be a little bit happier, even if it's 5%, right?

Mark Haden: 01:00:33

And

Mark Haden: 01:00:34

does you good, but you choose to come off of it.

Mark Haden: 01:00:37

I feel like that's just the perfection of medication.

Mark Haden: 01:00:42

Yeah, I think at the end of the day, when all of these things are legalized, that will be something that some people do and will find and certain population will find benefit from it.

Mark Haden: 01:00:52

And again, these, these substances are so non toxic that it would be hard to imagine any harm coming from that.

Mark Haden: 01:00:59

And it's something that should be available to people.

Mark Haden: 01:01:01

that leads into a question I would like to ask myself, which is, um, how should psychedelics be regulated?

Mark Haden: 01:01:08

Would you guys be okay diving into

Mark Haden: 01:01:09

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Yes.

Mark Haden: 01:01:19

And so I would like to put on my academic hat.

Mark Haden: 01:01:23

And say , how should these things be regulated?

Mark Haden: 01:01:25

Now I've written a paper on it.

Mark Haden: 01:01:26

You can go into my website, markhagen.

Mark Haden: 01:01:27

com and you can find the paper and read it.

Mark Haden: 01:01:29

So , it's available if you'd like to check this out.

Mark Haden: 01:01:31

But what I observe going into the discussion is that psychedelics can be really helpful in people's lives.

Mark Haden: 01:01:36

And the harms are incredibly low.

Mark Haden: 01:01:39

So given low harms and significant potential for benefit, but not not zero harms.

Mark Haden: 01:01:47

So we need to kind of manage that in a regulatory model.

Mark Haden: 01:01:51

So in my.

Mark Haden: 01:01:53

Recommendation recommend two tracks or two streams or two ways that psychedelics should be regulated.

Mark Haden: 01:02:00

There is the paid professional track.

Mark Haden: 01:02:03

People should be able to access a supervised psychedelic experience.

Mark Haden: 01:02:07

And professionals should be trained and able to be paid for them in that context.

Mark Haden: 01:02:14

Now, in my ideal model, There should be a variety of different contexts that psychedelics should be available in in the paid professional track There should be therapy of a variety of different sorts from anxiety to depression to PTA the whole thing So all the therapeutic things should be paid professional and should be a service available to people But to be honest with you, I expand that into couples as well couples counseling.

Mark Haden: 01:02:38

I think psychedelics It can be incredibly helpful for psychedelics in

Mark Haden: 01:02:43

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: mm,

Mark Haden: 01:02:44

or, or to even improve a couple's relationship.

Mark Haden: 01:02:48

So even a healthy couple could have a better relationship with a very, very skillful planned intentional use of integrating psychedelics into their relationship.

Mark Haden: 01:02:57

Psychedelics can also be helpful.

Mark Haden: 01:02:58

We know this through the lens of research.

Mark Haden: 01:03:00

For spirituality.

Mark Haden: 01:03:02

So people who are paid professionals, you know, chaplains, reverends, priests, whatever, all of these shamans, all of the spiritual folks should have access to psychedelics, not for the intention of healing anything, but allowing people to have profound spiritual and mystical experiences again.

Mark Haden: 01:03:20

Paid professionals for healing, spirituality, and then just celebrating transitions, you know, puberty, seasonal changes.

Mark Haden: 01:03:28

You know, the old indigenous way of seeing psychedelics is they're used for celebratory things to help people to move into different stages of life and different parts of seasons and everything else.

Mark Haden: 01:03:40

So the celebration of transitions should also be available through paid professionals.

Mark Haden: 01:03:45

So one track is the paid professional track for a whole variety of different contexts, and the paid professional is responsible for the person for eight hours after ingestion.

Mark Haden: 01:03:57

Now, I said that at many conferences, and somebody would inevitably stand up at the back of an audience and loudly condemn what I just said.

Mark Haden: 01:04:07

And they would always say the same thing.

Mark Haden: 01:04:09

They would say, basically, I love psychedelics and what I do with my partner under the influence of a psychedelic, I do not want supervised.

Mark Haden: 01:04:15

Danna Levy Hoffmann: manager

Mark Haden: 01:04:19

is actually true.

Mark Haden: 01:04:20

So why don't we have a second track?

Mark Haden: 01:04:23

So recognizing that psychedelics can be used by people in a way that is, has a very, very low risk for harm.

Mark Haden: 01:04:30

We just need to have trained people who understand how to do set, setting safety and dosage issues.

Mark Haden: 01:04:36

So my second track is people should be allowed to purchase psychedelics.

Mark Haden: 01:04:40

But there should be a restriction, and the restriction is they should have some knowledge.

Mark Haden: 01:04:45

So it is reasonable to sell psychedelics to people who've been

Mark Haden: 01:04:49

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: mm,

Mark Haden: 01:04:50

So I define training as two weekends.

Mark Haden: 01:04:53

The first weekend is knowledge.

Mark Haden: 01:04:57

You know, what is 100 mics of LSD going to do to you?

Mark Haden: 01:05:00

What is 600 mics of LSD going to do to you?

Mark Haden: 01:05:02

So dosage questions.

Mark Haden: 01:05:04

What's 10 grams of mushrooms going to do to you?

Mark Haden: 01:05:07

What does set mean?

Mark Haden: 01:05:08

How do you think about, the expectations as you're walking into the experience?

Mark Haden: 01:05:12

What does setting mean?

Mark Haden: 01:05:13

What does safety mean?

Mark Haden: 01:05:14

All of the things that researchers who are interested in containers of safety talk about should be part of the first weekend.

Mark Haden: 01:05:23

Understanding safety.

Mark Haden: 01:05:25

The second weekend should be an experience with a paid professional who understands how to give people a very skillfully run experience with careful attention to set, setting and safety and dosage issues.

Mark Haden: 01:05:37

At the end of that, the person should be able to answer some questions.

Mark Haden: 01:05:41

What's the experience of 600 mikes of LSD is a reasonable.

Mark Haden: 01:05:45

Expectation that somebody should know when they walk out of , the training that they've had, if they can answer 10 or 20 questions with the correct answers, they should be candid.

Mark Haden: 01:05:55

A little card with their photograph on it allows them to walk into a shop and buy.

Mark Haden: 01:06:02

Known dosages of psychedelics.

Mark Haden: 01:06:04

One of the problems with the illegal markets is people buy stuff and they don't know how strong it is, but they'll be able to buy no dosages of psychedelics.

Mark Haden: 01:06:11

They will be trained on how to use them.

Mark Haden: 01:06:14

Yes, they'll be able to use them for their own mental or social health or with their partners to improve their relationships.

Mark Haden: 01:06:20

And these things could be woven into our society in skillful ways.

Mark Haden: 01:06:24

shamans would be encouraged, you know, indigenous folks would be encouraged to offer their services in trained, skillful ways, and they could be embedded in our culture in a variety of different ways.

Mark Haden: 01:06:37

I mean, I would love to see existing churches that are.

Mark Haden: 01:06:39

Massively losing their congregations to include psychedelics in their services as a way of bringing people back into these beautiful buildings that shouldn't be abandoned and that congregation should be revitalized with these powerful spiritual experiences.

Mark Haden: 01:06:55

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Yeah, that's beautiful.

Mark Haden: 01:06:56

Danna Levy Hoffmann: That is such a beautiful idea.

Mark Haden: 01:06:58

I

Mark Haden: 01:06:58

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: going to say the same thing.

Mark Haden: 01:07:00

Beautiful, because, yes.

Mark Haden: 01:07:02

Yeah, it's like,

Mark Haden: 01:07:03

Danna Levy Hoffmann: but, but how do you see, I mean, like, do you see that happening?

Mark Haden: 01:07:07

Cause I feel like this world is.

Mark Haden: 01:07:09

It's just run by stupid people, honestly, but

Mark Haden: 01:07:12

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: it's kind of like

Mark Haden: 01:07:13

Danna Levy Hoffmann: know, not

Mark Haden: 01:07:14

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Donna.

Mark Haden: 01:07:14

I mean, at some point people were, people were with the horse and buggy.

Mark Haden: 01:07:18

There was no driver's license with the horse and buggy.

Mark Haden: 01:07:21

And then the car came around and still no driver's license.

Mark Haden: 01:07:26

People just said, it's electric, you know, it's electric buggy.

Mark Haden: 01:07:29

It's a steam buggy, you know, without a horse, horseless carriages, right?

Mark Haden: 01:07:33

So I feel like that is the progression.

Mark Haden: 01:07:35

It's like, okay, I completely see what Mark's getting at.

Mark Haden: 01:07:40

And actually, that was exactly what I was hoping he was going to say, because it's like getting your driver's license.

Mark Haden: 01:07:45

Nobody's going to hand you the keys to a car that can kill somebody or yourself without a little bit of training.

Mark Haden: 01:07:52

And honestly, there's a lot of training when you go to get your driver's license.

Mark Haden: 01:07:55

So I think two weekends, if you

Mark Haden: 01:07:58

Danna Levy Hoffmann: lot more than Mark's idea.

Mark Haden: 01:07:59

I mean,

Mark Haden: 01:08:00

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: why I feel like

Mark Haden: 01:08:01

Danna Levy Hoffmann: fully honest.

Mark Haden: 01:08:01

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: the best of both worlds.

Mark Haden: 01:08:02

It's like here, you can do it on your own, but we would really like you to not kill yourself or somebody else.

Mark Haden: 01:08:08

So let's teach you how to use it safely.

Mark Haden: 01:08:11

Know that, you know, you have that experience with a trained professional because then you know how you're gonna feel.

Mark Haden: 01:08:18

So that you know, okay, I need to be in a safe space.

Mark Haden: 01:08:21

Maybe we need to have some friends come over , to spend the day.

Mark Haden: 01:08:24

So , you know, if we have kids, you know what I mean, I could see like parents and then they're like, Oh, it's not going to be too bad.

Mark Haden: 01:08:31

We can watch the kids.

Mark Haden: 01:08:32

We don't need babysitters.

Mark Haden: 01:08:33

No, you probably need babysitters or they need to go to somebody else's house.

Mark Haden: 01:08:36

I mean, there's a lot of things to consider, I think.

Mark Haden: 01:08:39

So I, I'm 100%.

Mark Haden: 01:08:42

I love these two tracks.

Mark Haden: 01:08:43

This is awesome.

Mark Haden: 01:08:45

Well, let me gaze into my optimistic crystal ball, given that we recognize I have a bias and my bias is optimism.

Mark Haden: 01:08:53

So psychedelics are becoming legalized and they are becoming legalized to the therapeutic track.

Mark Haden: 01:08:59

Ketamine was the first one.

Mark Haden: 01:09:00

MDMA will be the second one.

Mark Haden: 01:09:02

Psilocybin will be the third one.

Mark Haden: 01:09:04

I'm guessing LSD will be the fourth one.

Mark Haden: 01:09:06

And so as we.

Mark Haden: 01:09:08

Increasingly become aware as a whole society that my uncle Ed, who is miserable and depressed and been struggling with this thing for a long period of time is now presence in our family in a completely different way because of his psychedelic medicine and treatment that will make a difference.

Mark Haden: 01:09:26

And when the fact that soldiers are talking about it through PTSD, soldiers have a lot of credibility.

Mark Haden: 01:09:32

Frankly, in the ketamine program I run, we put together a program called helping heroes.

Mark Haden: 01:09:37

As I said, I used to train the Vancouver police department.

Mark Haden: 01:09:40

I know them.

Mark Haden: 01:09:40

So I called up my old supervisor and said, we have the best treatment for PTSD.

Mark Haden: 01:09:44

Are you interested?

Mark Haden: 01:09:45

And now I'm engaged with a discussion around providing psychedelics for police officers, helping heroes, fabulous name for a program.

Mark Haden: 01:09:53

So when you have.

Mark Haden: 01:09:54

Police officers who are talking about psychedelics as being helpful for them.

Mark Haden: 01:09:58

When you have soldiers talking about psychedelics being helpful for them, that makes a difference to our society.

Mark Haden: 01:10:04

It shifts the discussion significantly.

Mark Haden: 01:10:07

So when we have those folks leading the charge, public communion changes.

Mark Haden: 01:10:12

And when you have, you know, multiple healing things that have happened all over the place, people say, well, hang on a second.

Mark Haden: 01:10:19

How about using it as a larger context?

Mark Haden: 01:10:23

And then the larger context is spirituality.

Mark Haden: 01:10:25

Oh, end of life.

Mark Haden: 01:10:26

Anxiety is huge.

Mark Haden: 01:10:28

We all have to die.

Mark Haden: 01:10:30

You know, that is actually non negotiable.

Mark Haden: 01:10:33

It's going to happen to all of us.

Mark Haden: 01:10:34

And so watching and Emma, who has cancer, who's really, really suffering, having this profound experience.

Mark Haden: 01:10:42

And then looking at the family around her and saying, it's okay now, I'm ready to go.

Mark Haden: 01:10:48

And a skillful death doula, somebody who's working with people in the dying process, who's using psychedelics, will include family members in the experience.

Mark Haden: 01:10:57

So it won't just be the person dying who's taking the psychedelics, but they'll take it with their family members.

Mark Haden: 01:11:03

So profound, intense family experiences as somebody leaves is also a psychedelic offering.

Mark Haden: 01:11:11

The people who are left behind will be profoundly changed in their experience of the value of psychedelics being a connecting experience and allowing people to deal with really, really difficult issues like dying.

Mark Haden: 01:11:24

So all of those things together have impacts and the impact will be the recognition that psychedelics can be helpful.

Mark Haden: 01:11:32

And hopefully the indigenous voice will continue to be strengthened and then people will, that will be available and people will go to a shaman and take peyote and Um, ayahuasca and all these other things, you know, curanderos take, psilocybin mushrooms.

Mark Haden: 01:11:45

so those will be available in a variety of different ways.

Mark Haden: 01:11:48

Through all of that, eventually the folks that have run all of these churches will say, hang on a second.

Mark Haden: 01:11:56

Everybody's going off to those other spiritual experiences.

Mark Haden: 01:12:00

My congregation is leaving me.

Mark Haden: 01:12:03

This doesn't make any sense.

Mark Haden: 01:12:04

I have a gorgeous building here.

Mark Haden: 01:12:07

It just makes economic sense.

Mark Haden: 01:12:09

To get my congregation back.

Mark Haden: 01:12:11

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: hmm.

Mark Haden: 01:12:11

And so, starting to offer psychedelics in that context.

Mark Haden: 01:12:15

That's my optimistic crystal ball.

Mark Haden: 01:12:18

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Well, Donna, do you have any other questions?

Mark Haden: 01:12:20

Danna Levy Hoffmann: You know, I'm thinking we learned so much, so we definitely know why we want to make this happen, why we want to support such, know, organizations and movements and doctors and studies that are going towards the psychedelic route, because it sounds very promising.

Mark Haden: 01:12:42

I also feel like although we're far ahead, we're still, there's still a bit of time until we get there, unfortunately.

Mark Haden: 01:12:51

Yes.

Mark Haden: 01:12:51

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: Well, cool.

Mark Haden: 01:12:54

Donna's both, uh, happy and sad at the same time.

Mark Haden: 01:13:01

Danna Levy Hoffmann: No, I think this was really enlightening.

Mark Haden: 01:13:03

I think this was really great to give, the people who don't really know what we're talking about the rundown of what are psychedelics, what does it look like in the world that we heard about in the six, the wild sixties versus the real true studies and research that's being done around psychedelics.

Mark Haden: 01:13:24

Mark do you have

Mark Haden: 01:13:25

any other plug that you want to let us know about?

Mark Haden: 01:13:29

Except for definitely read Mark's book.

Mark Haden: 01:13:31

I highly recommend it.

Mark Haden: 01:13:32

It's quite an eye opener in general,

Mark Haden: 01:13:35

Well, the book is called The Manual for Psychedelic Guides.

Mark Haden: 01:13:38

It's available on Amazon.

Mark Haden: 01:13:39

The clinic I work at is called Qi Integrated Health.

Mark Haden: 01:13:42

It's called, it's Q I is how Qi is spelled.

Mark Haden: 01:13:46

Um, and it's in Vancouver, it's a ketamine clinic.

Mark Haden: 01:13:49

And I have a website, markhaden.

Mark Haden: 01:13:51

com, H A D E N, there's no Y in that, and I give away tons of stuff.

Mark Haden: 01:13:55

You can go find all my papers and everything else and people go just read about what I've done and it's um, it's a free website that I give away stuff at.

Mark Haden: 01:14:02

Danna Levy Hoffmann: Tons of stuff.

Mark Haden: 01:14:03

I mean, I was submerged in that website for, for a good week straight, just looking at videos that you have on there and articles and stuff like that.

Mark Haden: 01:14:12

So definitely recommend

Mark Haden: 01:14:14

checking Mark out

Mark Haden: 01:14:16

I appreciate your interest in this important topic.

Mark Haden: 01:14:19

Thank you for this discussion.

Mark Haden: 01:14:20

megan-j--mccrory_1_03-05-2024_170237-1: you

Mark Haden: 01:14:21

Danna Levy Hoffmann: you for all, doing all the hard work for us.

Mark Haden: 01:14:23

I know that me and a large community of us, are highly grateful to, you

Mark Haden: 01:14:29

to that hopefully will help most people.

Mark Haden: 01:14:33

holding on to that 80%.

Mark Haden: 01:14:34

I know if it had nothing to do with depression.

Mark Haden: 01:14:37

I know, but in my head, I'm like 80 percent chance.

Mark Haden: 01:14:41

Thank you