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.

• Qi Integrated Health
• Home - MAPS Canada
• Manual For Psychedelic Guides (Third Edition) – Mark Haden
• Mark Haden

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Organilicious - Danna, Functional Medicine Health Coach

Hey, Donna, how you doing today?

I am good, Megan, how are you?

I am also good.

So a couple weeks ago we were chit chatting and you were like, let's do something with psychedelics.

And I was like, sure, you can go find an expert.

We'll talk about psychedelics.

And what did you do?

Found an expert, actually, a really big expert on psychedelics.

Yes, I am very curious about it.

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

I mean, poor listeners.

They just have to be my, my therapist.

And you, Megan, I'm sorry.

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

And I got a hold of Mark and I'm pretty excited about this actually today.

So.

Okay, I'm ready to go right into it.

Cool.

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

And Mark, why don't we just start with telling us why should we listen to you when it comes to psychedelic therapy?

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

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

Technically, I'm an adjunct professor of UBC School of Population and Public Health.

But I worked originally in the addiction services.

My first job was supervising therapists and I realized that we had inadequate tools that 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, to take psychedelics seriously.

So I quit and I started an organization called MAPS Canada, which is the Multidisciplinary association for Psychedelic Studies.

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

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.

And I'm once again supervising therapists.

But it's a completely different ballgame because we have tools that we never had before to work with.

It's.

It's very exciting for me.

Oh, very cool.

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.

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 differ in what effects and applications that you use those in therapy?

And then I think Donna's going to 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.

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

By that I mean the FDA in the United States is predicted to approve MDMA on the street.

That's known as ecstasy.

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

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 in the States has done that.

They've submitted their data, and we believe that it'll actually be legalized.

By that, 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.

Hopefully Health Canada will follow the fda, and then that will be available completely legally through a doctor's prescription pad.

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

What's currently legal is ketamine.

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.

That's why I run a ketamine clinic.

But there are other ones coming down the research pipe.

Psilocybin is common for researchers.

Now, curiously, a slight tangent.

The reason why researchers have been focused on psilocybin, which is sometimes called magic mushrooms.

Psilocybin is used in pure forms in research context, but people talk about it as being mushrooms, but it's used by researchers, I think not because it's necessarily more effective than some of the other psychedelics.

It's just that regulators didn't know what it was, and so it was easier to pass regulatory hurdles.

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

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.

But there are many others.

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

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 3 MMC, 3 methyl meth, cathinone is a little different from MDMA.

We could look at the different classifications of drugs.

There's the traditional ones, the lsd, psilocybin, mescaline and DMT are the classics, the four classics.

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

And 3 mmc is an empathogen that is very, very popular in the underground world.

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

And then there are some exotic ones, things like 5meodmt.

I love these strings of numbers and letters that we use to describe these things.

But 5 Meo DMT has also been popular in the underground and has attracted research interest.

There's another one out there called Meai, which is 5 methoxy 2aminoidane.

That is 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.

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

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

This is amazing to me because there are, there's so much there to discover and to actually be taken advantage of in a way.

But the word psychedelics has been vilified since, you know, 80s, definitely 60s, you know, definitely before.

I know their research started probably in the 30s, if I'm not mistaken already about psychedelics.

And I fear that some of the people that are listening have grown up with that mindset 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 dare.

They scared the living crap out of you when it came to psychedelics.

And now we're talking about psychedelics being Used by therapists.

My question is this, how do you even explain 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?

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

The curanderos in Mexico, the ayahuascaros in South America, and there are some Russian folks who have been using amanita mascara for a long period of time.

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.

And it was interesting because back in the 60s, what happened is the hippies discovered LSD and mushrooms and a few other psychedelics and cannabis.

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

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

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

It was the baby boom.

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

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

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

And we could look at that, you could 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.

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

And psychedelics was a convenient way of doing it, psychedelics and cannabis.

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.

So the hippies could have.

And admittedly the hippies didn't embrace indigenous use.

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

They were partying with psychedelics.

It could have gone differently.

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.

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

So it could have gone completely differently.

Right.

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, which was an interesting statement in itself.

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

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

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

And so when this therapy comes down the pipe, the contrite soldiers who then step up on the podium and speak to its benefit, that has a completely different cultural context.

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

Okay, that's.

That is super interesting, but what I hear you saying is that it doesn't actually necessarily matter what settings you use these medications.

The settings are crucial.

Okay, yeah.

The statement that echoes with truth today from the 60s is the greatest determinant of a positive outcome from a psychedelic experience are two things, set and setting.

And then I would add the umbrella term of safety.

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

You go to a party, somebody hands you a bag of dried material that looks a bit like mushrooms, you take a handful, and then somebody says, hey, let's go get a pizza.

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

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.

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

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

Who are you?

What are you expecting?

How are you planning on having this experience?

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

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

And then there's the setting.

What is the environment that this is taken in?

You know, how does that work?

What does.

What does it look like?

What does it feel like?

Is it safe?

Is it predictable?

Does the person have to manage anything?

Dosage is also crucial.

What substance are you taking and how much?

And larger dosages can be destabilizing for some people.

So you have to find the right dosage.

So the right dosage at the right time, in the right place, with the right supervision.

And the supervision is actually really important.

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

They lie down, they put on eye shades, they put on headphones with a very, very specifically, carefully curated music list, and then we guide them through the experience, and then they emerge and we talk about what it was like for them.

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

So set setting, safety dosage are the crucial determinants of a positive outcome.

Could you talk about how maybe somebody with ptsd, how this therapy is actually helping them versus a traditional psychologist or what other?

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.

Well.

Traditional therapy for PTSD often involves psychiatric medications, and psychiatric medications tend to sedate people, and they take.

They blunt everything and they blunt their lives.

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

Psychological therapy for ptsd, the primary one, is called flooding or prolonged exposure.

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.

He's hearing the bullets whizzing by him.

He's seeing the blood around him.

He is traumatized and replaying.

It's called flashbacks.

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

Very emotionally distressing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So prolonged Exposure is very, very challenging.

It isn't particularly effective, and it's very difficult to go through.

Psychiatric meds are just dull your life, and that's a problem.

So along comes mdma.

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

We're just going to call it mdma.

And the experience of it.

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

There's tons of preparation.

But then during the medicine day, let's see, let's go back a notch.

So what is ptsd?

What actually happens?

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

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

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, and you think about it, what does this do?

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

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

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

So a lot of conscious activity later in life, that conscious tape loop, that driving tape loop drops into your unconscious mind, and later you slide out.

You don't think about where the key slot is.

You just put it in and turn the key.

You don't think about where the pedals are.

Oh, my gosh, where are the pedals?

You don't 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 unconscious tape loop.

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.

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

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

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

Well, that's really hard.

MDMA allows for access.

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

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

They've been prepared, 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.

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 the therapist has to deal with lots of fear and defenses.

With mdma, the fear response is quieted, so it feels safe.

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

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

So it's still there.

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.

So it's kind of taking the adrenaline that goes with the experience that's driving the fear and kind of lowers that.

But I'm assuming this is something that needs to be done multiple times, or is it something that's so effective that after one time of doing this kind of therapy, they have immediate relief?

And what does relief look like for someone that has ptsd?

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

The first treatment is the most effective.

The second is almost as effective.

The third is still effective, but less so, and then it reduces fairly substantially from there.

So the ideal number of treatments for somebody with severe PTSD is three with a lot of support before and after.

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

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

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

It's MDMA assisted therapy, and the therapy is actually quite specific.

Okay, that was your first question.

You had two questions.

Yeah, 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.

The second part of my question is, what is the relief that they feel like?

What is the before and after for the patient after doing such a therapy 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?

Let me answer that question with an analogy that I find incredibly helpful, and I use it all the time with our patients.

And the analogy is you're a skier, a downhill skier in a mountain with a gondola.

So you take the gondola up, and what you find is you get pulled into this rut on 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 wor.

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 that particular rut.

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

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.

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

And then you hear about psychedelics, and you take the gondola up the mountain, and instead of going in the rut, you.

You take a little time out.

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

You have a big picture view of everything.

You can see the village below, you can see the mountain.

You can see the old rut that's very much there.

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

And you have an opportunity of time out.

You have time out from skiing 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 rut now that it's kind of getting filled up with snow, and so it pulls you less.

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

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

And you ski down the mountain in a different way using fresh powder.

You go back up the gondola, 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.

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

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

The rut will always be there.

You'll notice it, you can see it, it's there.

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

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

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

So that's what happens, essentially.

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

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.

It was interesting.

I.

Without any identifying details, I'll tell you, I ran a psychedelic session just this last weekend, and there was 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.

She was angry all the time, and so she believed she was going to come to the session and thrash out all her anger.

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

Why would I want to thrash out my anger?

I'm not.

That's not who I am.

My fundamental soul is not angry.

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 she.

It was.

It was a transformative experience because she redefined who she was in this world.

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

That sounds like a dream to.

Honestly, for someone who's suffering from depression and has been my whole life, it just sounds like, first of all, it's very frustrating that this is not something that's happening already legally and everything.

It also sounds to me like there a.

Again, the stigma that has been around.

Psychedelics, unfortunately, slowed things down.

And as you explained, you know, the use of it in the Western world, as always, we ruined things.

But, you know, it's.

It's very frustrating to hear that there is something that is more promising.

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

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

I don't know.

Give us some interesting numbers.

Well, let's talk about the PTSD numbers first, because the people that are selling the program, the PTSD programs, I went to a conference in Vancouver.

It was called the Simva Conference.

It's a national conference for the military.

A lot of the people were talking about ptsd.

That was kind of the theme of the conference.

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

And I asked that of many people.

So the people who are selling the program were talking about it between somewhere between 10 and 20%.

They're selling the program.

The research says it's closer to 5 to 10%.

So not very effective.

The first round, the first round of research with MDMA and PTSD, that study showed an 82% level of effectiveness.

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

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

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

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

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

Anybody that knows numbers and research and pharmacology will say that that person is lying.

They're falsifying their data.

That cannot be true.

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

You have to have university ethics review boards watching you.

You have to do it repetitively.

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

You have to show them your data.

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

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

And you have to do it repetitively.

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

And then they did it up here.

They did it with Health Canada oversight.

Now, the 82% level of effectiveness was massive and to some extent, based on the highly skilled therapists that were doing it.

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

They could train relatively inexperienced therapists to do this at a way more effective level than any traditional treatment for ptsd.

So those are the numbers for PTSD that's insane numbers.

I mean like, yeah, that's actually mind blowing.

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

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

That's insane.

So as you were talking, Mark, my blood started boiling a little bit when we start talking about health care and making money, especially in, in the US because we all know that the health care system in the US is broken.

Insurance charges way more than they need to comparatively to European similar systems and what they would charge for the same procedure here versus there and so on.

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

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 insurance or private organizations?

Private companies ramming up the prices for this kind of like what is the price structure?

Can people actually afford this?

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

Because unfortunately also in the States a lot of our veterans are under the poverty level 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 severe conditions.

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?

That's a complicated question and has many layers.

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

And that question has not yet been answered.

Now it's interesting.

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

So we have a single payer system and healthcare is free for Canadians.

Americans wave their flags, Canadians wave their healthcare cards.

So it's not as much an issue here.

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

The Americans, as you say, are all about insurance 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 there is an argument, in fact a number of papers have been written that there is an argument for this to be insured.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

You have to prepare people for many hours in advance.

You have to debrief people afterwards.

It's called the integration session.

And that also takes many hours.

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

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

Now whether that would unfold in the actual world, I don't know.

But that is the ideal therapy and that is expensive.

You know, people have a right to be paid.

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.

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

Insurance companies have to do that math.

I mean, and it sounds like, anyways, you know, you did mention the productivity of these substances and how after about the third time it kind of, you know, we're getting less still high success than antidepressants and stuff like that.

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

And when it comes to being on drugs your entire life, you know, and going to checkups and doing this and that, like for those topics, I think at the end of the day, am I, am I the idiot one or like, is it really just very clear but for some reason is being fought off?

Well, yes, antidepressants.

When people are antidepressants, there's multiple challenges with antidepressants.

One is it takes a long time to work.

It doesn't work immediately.

Two is it takes a lot of tweaking.

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, it's called systematic reviews.

So 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.

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

When systematic reviews occur with antidepressants, what they conclude Is antidepressants don't work very well.

In fact, they're similar to placebo.

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

So that's a challenge.

And they don't work for everybody.

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

So that's a relatively unattractive outcome.

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

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

Because I feel like there are a lot of side effects for most drug therapies that people just accept because they can't, you know, they need it to cope and get through life, so they accept these side effects.

With such a short duration, one to three sessions of psychedelic therapy or psychedelics used in therapy, are there any side effects with such a short usage?

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

So basically, you gave us the good, give us the bad and the ugly.

We're ready.

Well, let's go for side effects.

You said two things, side effects and addictive qualities.

Addictive qualities.

And let's actually talk about a third thing.

So side effects, addictive qualities.

And 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.

One is it's transformative.

So that means there's a huge aha, 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.

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

And then there's the second.

I'm talking about the ketamine clinic that I run.

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

Commonly, it's for severe depression.

That's our most common population that we treat.

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

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

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

And then there's the third population, and we tend to ignore the third population because that third population exists in all pharmaceutical research.

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

And there's no medicine that I know of that's 100% effective for everybody.

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

That population may be small, but we need to talk about that population as well, because people come to us with this huge expectation.

You know, this hype, this podcast that we're doing right now is a typical example.

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

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

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.

What actually happens is you are extremely disappointed.

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

I kind of get that.

I mean, again, coming from someone who's suffered from depression, like, if that one thing, that 82% of, you know, success rate and blah, blah, blah, if that doesn't work for me, like, what the fuck, right?

So.

So that does sound like something that is totally understandable.

But what.

What about numbers there again.

So you're saying there is a small amount.

Well, it's different with the different psychedelics.

You know, it's like 40%.

So that brings me to the next question.

Even before.

Sorry.

So that brings me to the next question.

Before you even answer that.

I know I'm confusing.

I'm sorry, 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?

Now I'm ready for an answer.

I'm sorry to cut you off.

That's a complex question.

So if you.

That.

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

No.

No.

Is that the question?

No, no, no.

Okay.

I meant you.

When you mentioned the problems around antidepressants, you mentioned also something that I went through a lot, which is try.

This one doesn't work.

Okay, try that one.

And it's not try for five days, it's try for a month or two.

So it's a long process.

So if.

Does that apply also to psychedelics?

Because you said, well, it depends on the psychedelic, does that mean that if psilocybin 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 psychedelics as well?

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, you can't switch and say, okay, we try and doesn't work that way.

But I'll give you my opinion, and my opinion is absolutely yes.

You know, there are the type of therapy and the experience of MDMA is completely different from the experience of psilocybin and the classics.

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

Now LSD was certainly marginalized, targeted and stigmatized.

But as I said before, psilocybin is only researched 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, 3 MMC, 5, Meodmt, all of them become legalized, I think therapists will do exactly what you're saying.

They will try one, they will try something like MDMA or three mmc and it will work or it won't work and they will have access to other ones.

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.

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.

So I think that is a reasonable approach that we would have as therapists.

Later, when they're all available.

Can we wanna go back to the addicted?

That's what I was gonna, I was gonna circle back around because I know we kind of got off on a pet tangent.

So to bring us back, you had talked about the three different kinds of people.

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.

So we kind of went off on there.

But back to the.

Yeah, side effects and potential addictiveness of the therapy.

Addictiveness.

So with the addictiveness piece, the.

That is a question that is asked and it's asked by researchers.

And so I'll give you the research answer and then I'll give you my answer which is probably slightly different from the research.

So the researchers do ask later.

Do you know?

Have you.

Would you ever consider using this recreationally?

And the answer is an overwhelming no.

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

You're trying to get your life back.

That's the issue for you.

You're not.

Nobody's dancing.

This is not a fun experience.

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

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

There's absolutely no.

They want to get on with their lives.

So the addictiveness through the lens of researchers is virtually zero.

Now, I have a slightly different opinion.

If you look at.

I run a ketamine clinic, and so there is the research that says that ketamine can be addictive when used recreationally.

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

We know that.

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.

Yeah, so.

So when these things are all legalized, will.

Will there be a blur for those folks who can't afford it?

You know, they can't afford these.

These treatments will be expensive.

The underground exists.

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

Why don't I just go and get some ketamine and go find, you know, you know somebody who knows somebody.

I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.

Right.

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

And so now you're taking ketamine outside of a therapeutic context, and you might find it to be enjoyable.

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

And I think as psychedelic therapists, we need to talk about this, so we need to talk about the potential risk.

And that is a risk.

But, I mean, I feel like that's a similar risk to alcohol.

Right.

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

And this is socially acceptable nowadays.

But you can also abuse alcohol, become addicted, and, you know, need it to live every Day.

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.

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.

Whether that's a bit of pot every day or sorry, marijuana or 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, everybody just went underground.

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

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 two bedroom suburban house don't know about it, it is happening and there are people that need it.

And like medical marijuana.

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, I don't know if I have a really a good question.

There is mostly like I just see history repeating itself.

And do you think that how long do you think it's going to be before these kind of psychedelics really become something like, oh, he smokes pot, it's okay, he drinks a drink in the evening and he smokes a cigarette.

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

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

So the harm research is quite nuanced.

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

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

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

And so the skillful research, the analysis of the drug harm research is that some of the most harmful drugs are the legal ones.

You know, alcohol is actually a really nasty drug.

It's actually toxic.

It's in fact Canada produced 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 it's one or two drinks a week, max, absolute max, like one or two beers a week maximum.

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

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

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, if somebody can start taking a swing at a cop, they're drunk, it's alcohol.

Social harms, physical harms are huge with alcohol.

So we.

There are legal drugs.

Tobacco is a nasty one.

It's really hard to quit tobacco.

The psychological addiction to tobacco is absolutely massive.

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

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

It makes you pee a lot, you know, so it's actually a relatively strange drug if you really think about, you know, our collective relationship with caffeine.

So our legal, social, the acceptable drugs are actually quite harmful and psychedelics are way less harmful.

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

So the harms are low.

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

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

If you think about alcohol, often people will come home and not an unfamiliar pattern is people will have multiple drinks a week, sometimes multiple drinks a day, regularly, over a period of time.

Nobody ever does LSD multiple times a week.

It just doesn't happen that way.

There's nobody that has that relationship with it.

It doesn't work that way.

So even people that are using psychedelics recreationally tend to use them very, very infrequently.

So it's a very different kind of relationship.

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.

Right.

Megan, I can tell you actually that I spoke to, including Mark, many, many other people who are in this world, let's say from experts and doctors to shaman to people who are just users.

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

And some said like, oh, I haven't done it in four years.

So the addictiveness is extremely low.

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

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

So given in a wise Society, we're not talking about regulation yet, but in a wise society, these things would be available and people would self regulate.

And people don't tend to want to do them frequently.

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

It's just, you're done, you're fixed.

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

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

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

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.

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

It was first used as a disassociative anesthetic in surgery.

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.

So it's helpful in surgery.

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?

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

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

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

And so then the College of Physicians and Surgeons said, okay, we're going to make it available in hospitals.

We want to be careful.

So it was now available for severe depression in hospitals.

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

We don't need hospital.

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

It's harmless at a higher, a much higher dosage, about five times the dosage.

Five times the therapeutic dosage is the anesthetic dosage.

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

So why do we have to have this in hospitals?

Well, actually, we don't.

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

And I find that language really interesting because the word diagnosis isn't in there.

It's Mental health conditions.

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.

So yes, there are other things that wind up being treated, sometimes intentionally and sometimes inadvertently.

Amazing.

I have a question to follow up on that one.

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

Yes, and so far it's inconclusive.

But the kind of the principle that researchers are often adopting is this concept of neuroplasticity.

You know, the brain can rework the ski analogy that I used.

You know, you can ski down the mountain in a different way.

A neuroscientist would say new connections get formed.

Actually, there's two things to neuroplasticity.

New connections get formed and cells actually change.

They grow.

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

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

And so certainly Alzheimer's is a brain problem.

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

So Alzheimer's is certainly of great research interest.

The outcomes are not conclusive yet.

Okay.

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.

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

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.

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

Well, I have the same issue.

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

And I held her hand throughout the whole experience.

And it's challenging.

So it's in my genes.

So I have the same fear.

Yeah.

And the.

And the answer is to your question specifically is we don't know.

You know, that research has not been done.

I mean, it's a great research question, but it hasn't been done.

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

I wanted to know about.

Go back a little bit and dig deeper into what are people risking by, or maybe not risking.

What should they be on the lookout for if they decide, yes, you know, I'm living in a country that does not help in terms of access to anything, and I do need to go underground.

What are the things that I need to kind of keep in mind?

Let me answer the question tangentially.

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.

And so the underground world is thriving.

Lots of underground therapists provide psychedelic therapy for people.

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

They would do it really, really badly.

Like, really badly.

And then I became the community complaints department.

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

Well, me seemed to be the answer.

And so I would listen to both sides and try and come up with a solution that would allow for this thing to move forward.

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

They have no idea how psychedelic psychotherapy works.

So.

And nobody had written a book of how you do it.

That information was not out there.

So I wrote a book.

It's called the Manual for Psychedelic Guides.

It's on Amazon.

It's.

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

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

There's a way of setting people up, of screening people, of preparing people, of running a session, of integrating and debriefing people afterwards.

There are a series of steps.

They're actually well known to researchers, but completely unknown to the rest of the world.

And so I believe that information should be available.

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, because really nobody else has written that book yet.

It's commonly used as the textbook for how you do it in the above ground as well.

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.

Some don't.

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

Yes.

So microdosing is defined in both the research and the street world as 1/10 of a regular dose, and it's done fairly regularly.

So let's talk about LSD for a second.

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

So a microdose would be 10 micrograms.

So you can look at a standard street dose of mushrooms, lsd, anything, and you say you take one tenth of that dose and you take it fairly regularly.

Now, what does that actually mean?

The most common is about once every three days.

Some people microdose every day.

So there's some different models out there.

And the idea is it's available, it's cheap, 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, they talk about increased creativity, they talk about increased focus.

There's a book out there that I really appreciate, so I'll mention the title of it.

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 two most popular ones.

And I think LSD is the front runner because it's very easy to dose, mushrooms are much harder to dose and it lasts longer.

And so lsd, I believe, is preferred as a microdoser, as a microdose experience.

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

There are other models as well.

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

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

So the data on microdosing is not in yet.

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

Right.

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?

But they 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, 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, and it does you good, but you choose to come off of it, I feel like that's just the perfection of medication.

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

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

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

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

Would you guys be okay diving into that question?

Yes.

So my perspective, I'm an adjunct professor of UBC School of Population and Public Health.

Now, curious enough, public health people are often about regulation.

And so I would like to put on my academic hat and say, how should these things be regulated?

Now I've written a paper on it.

You can go into my website, markhaden.com and you can find the paper and read it.

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

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

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

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

So in my recommendation, recommend two tracks or two streams or two ways that psychedelics should be regulated.

There's the paid professional track.

People should be able to access a supervised psychedelic experience and professionals should be trained and able to be paid for them in that context.

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, 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.

I think psychedelics can be incredibly helpful for psychedelics in conflict or to even improve a couple's relationship.

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

Psychedelics can also be helpful.

We know this through the lens of research for spirituality.

So people who are paid professionals, you know, chaplains, reverends, priests, whatever, all of these shamans, all 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, paid professionals for healing spirituality and then just celebrating transitions, you know, puberty, seasonal changes, 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.

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

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.

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.

And they would always say the same thing.

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

So I took a long, slow, deep breath and I realized that is actually true.

So why don't we have a second track?

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

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

So my second track is people should be allowed to purchase psychedelics, but there should be a restriction.

And the restriction is they should have some knowledge.

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

So I define training as two weekends.

The first weekend is knowledge.

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

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

So dosage questions, what's 10 grams of mushrooms going to do to you?

What does SET mean?

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

What does setting mean?

What does safety mean?

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

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.

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

What's the experience of 600 mics of LSD?

Is a reasonable 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 handed a little card with their photograph on it that allows them to walk into a shop and buy known dosages of psychedelics.

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 known dosages of psychedelics.

They will be trained on how to use them.

Yes.

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

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

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.

I mean, I would love to see existing churches that are 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 congregation should be revitalized with these powerful spiritual experiences.

Yeah, that's beau.

That is such a beautiful idea.

I was going to say the same thing.

Beautiful, because.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's like.

But, but, but how do you see that?

I mean, like, do you see that happening?

Because I feel like this world is just run by stupid people, honestly.

But it's kind of like, you know, cyber licenses, Donna.

I mean, at some point, people were.

People were with the horse and buggy.

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

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

People just said, it's elect.

You know, it's electric buggy.

It's a steam buggy, you know, without a horse, Horseless carriages.

Right.

So I feel like that is the progression.

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

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

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

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

So I think two weekends if you.

A lot more than Mark's idea.

I mean, that's why I feel like it's like it's the best of both worlds.

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

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

Know that, you know, you have that experience with a trained professional because then you know how you're going to feel so that, you know, okay, I need to be in a safe space.

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

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.

We can watch the kids.

We don't need babysitters.

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

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

I.

I'm 100%.

I love these two tracks.

This is awesome.

Well, let me gaze into my optimistic crystal ball.

Given that we recognize I have a bias, and my bias is optimism.

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

Ketamine was the first one.

MDMA will be the second one.

Psilocybin will be the third one, and I'm guessing LSD will be the fourth one.

So as we 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 present in our family in a completely different way because of his psychedelic medicine and treatment, that will make a difference.

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

In the ketamine program I run, we put together a program called Helping Heroes.

As I said, I used to train the Vancouver Police Department.

I know them.

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

Are you interested?

And now I'm engaged with a discussion around providing psychedelics for police officers.

Helping Heroes, fabulous name for a program.

Yes.

So when you have police officers who are talking about psychedelics as being helpful for them, when you have soldiers talking about psychedelics being helpful for them, that makes a difference to our society.

It shifts the discussion significantly.

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

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

How about using it as a larger context?

And then the larger context is spirituality.

Oh, end of life anxiety is huge.

We all have to die.

You know, that is actually non negotiable.

It's going to happen to all of us.

And so watching aunt Emma, who has cancer, who's really, really suffering, having this profound experience, and then looking at the family around her and saying, it's okay, now I'm ready to go.

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.

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

So profound Intense family experiences as Somebody Leaves is also a psychedelic offering.

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 really, really, really difficult issues like dying.

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

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 ayahuasca and all these other things, you know, curanderas, take psilocybin mushrooms.

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

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

Everybody's going off to those other spiritual experiences.

My congregation is leaving me.

This doesn't make any sense.

I have a gorgeous building here.

It just makes economic sense to get my congregation back.

And so starting to offer psychedelics in that context, that's my optimistic crystal ball.

Well, Donna, do you have any other questions?

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, you know, organizations and movements and doctors and studies that are going towards the psychedelic route.

Because it sounds very promising.

I also feel like, although we're far ahead, we're still.

There's still a bit of time until we get there, unfortunately.

Yes.

Well, cool.

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

No, I think this was really enlightening.

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 with the wild 60s versus the real true studies and research that's being done around psychedelics.

Mark, do you have any other plug that you want to let us know about, except for?

Definitely read Mark's book.

I highly recommend.

Recommend it.

It's quite an eye opener in general.

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

It's available on Amazon.

The clinic I work at is called QI Integrated Health.

It's called Q I is how QI is Spelt.

And it's in Vancouver.

It's a ketamine clinic.

And I have a website, markhaden.com H, A, D E, N.

There's no Y in that.

And I give away tons of stuff.

You can go find all my papers and everything else, and people go, just.

Just read about what I've done.

And it's.

It's a free website that I give.

Away stuff at, tons of stuff.

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.

So definitely recommend checking Mark out.

Cool.

I appreciate your interest in this important topic.

Thank you for this discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you for all doing all the hard work for us.

I know that me and a large community of us are highly grateful to, you know, to find something that hopefully will help most people.

I'm holding onto that 80%.

I don't know if it had nothing to do with depression.

I know.

But in my head, I'm like, 80% chance.