Inner Peace and Power

78: Uncovering the Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelics with Dr. Lynn Marie Morski

• Rashmi Schramm, MD • Episode 78

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This is a very special episode, friend! We're joined by Dr. Lynn Marie Morski—MD, JD, president of the Psychedelic Medicine Association and host of the Psychedelic Medicine Podcast. 

Dr. Lynn Marie joins us to explore the misunderstood and transformative world of psychedelic medicine. From her unconventional path through medicine and law to her personal healing journey, Lynn Marie opens up about quitting what no longer serves you, the science behind psychedelics, and the role of clinician education in this growing field.

We unpack the therapeutic potential of Psilocybin, Ketamine, Ibogaine and MDMA, tackle common myths, and offer clear guidance for those curious about safe and ethical use. Whether you're a clinician, seeker, or skeptic—this conversation is for you.

What You'll Learn:

  • Why psychedelics are not “just recreational” but powerful therapeutic tools
  • The difference between legalization, decriminalization, and medical use
  • How clinicians can talk to patients about psychedelic options
  • Red flags and best practices for choosing safe facilitators or retreat centers
  • Why quitting can be a radical path to inner peace and power

Dr. Lynn Marie Morski

Psychedelic Medicine Association:

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Psychedelic Medicine Podcast is available on all major platforms.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hello, hello, dear listener, dear friend. Welcome back to Inner Peace and Power. Y'all, we're going to have the best time ever today, literally ever. And that is because our guest today is, hold on to your horses, Dr. Lynn Marie Morski, who is an MD and a JD. She is the president of the Psychedelic Medicine Association, of which I've been a proud member for two years, and the host of the Psychedelic Medicine Podcast. which is Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions and the Ketamine Task Force. She is a physician at a ketamine clinic and also works in psychedelic research. Welcome to Inner Peace and Power, Dr. Lynn Marie Morski.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm so thrilled to be here. I am as stoked for this conversation as I could be. Yes. Can I start by saying thank you for being a Psychedelic Medicine Association member for two years? We love our dear members and it is just such an honor when anybody joins us and gives us that vote of confidence that they are here and ready to be educated by us. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. It's actually a great organization and we're going to get to that for sure. I've really enjoyed the educational information you guys provide. It's a great community. So I really appreciate you. Would you mind sharing your story with us, Lynn-Marie?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. And I know in chatting beforehand that we can start the story anywhere. And usually I would start it right before leaving clinical medicine. But since we're talking inner peace and power, I'm going to back just a little because I know you have a lot of physician listeners. And before I worked in psychedelics, I had written a book called Quitting by Design. And because my whole pre-psychedelic life outside of medicine was trying to help people quit what wasn't working for them so that they could find their inner peace and power, basically. And the reason that I wrote that book and that I was speaking kind of on the physician circuit of conferences was my path has not been traditional. I was a multimedia designer first, and then I left that and did med school. And I didn't have this yearning to go into medicine. It was not something like I didn't grow up thinking I was going to be a doctor and didn't even think I could stand on the side of blood. It was never in my thought process. But at some point I was working in multimedia and my brother called me and he said, you know, our parents like don't have a lot of retirement, right? Like, and my brother was working front desk at the Westin and I was making 24 grand a year as a multimedia designer. He's like, we need to do something. So my brother went to law school. And I went to med school. And it was one of the reasons that I did is I was like, he and I are going to have to, in case they need some money in their later years, we need to be making more than we currently are. So I was just like, well, if medicine is what I'm going to do, because I was surrounded by a lot of doctors at the time, because I was swing dancing and my swing dance partner was a urologist. And I thought like, I'm going to have to find an area of medicine I really like. And the only thing that sounded remotely appropriate desirable to do was sports medicine. And the reason is because I'm a dancer and I thought, oh, I could do dance medicine. Like, that's a thing, right? That's a thing that I'll make all this money from to support my parents. Spoiler alert, it is not really that. It's actually not when I tried to do it initially. But luckily, I got into med school and I got into family medicine residency at Mayo. And from there, like, got a sports medicine fellowship. And the entire time I was in all of that Pre-med med school residency fellowship, I just kept thinking at some point when I'm getting to do the sports medicine, I will be happy. Light at the end of the tunnel, right? I was miserable the entire tunnel and the light at the end was very dim because I realized somewhere in my sports medicine fellowship, you have to work all day in a clinic and then you have to go to the sport at night. Like, That's all day, every day. No, like I don't work to live, you know? So here I am,$250,000 in debt, medical school, and 10 years of time, and I was not happy with my decision. Oh my God, what am I gonna do? And so what I did at that point was just decide I was not going to take a full-time job. I was not gonna work in sports medicine. That was first off, I was not. What was I going to do? Well, I guess I'll just like work in an urgent care a little bit. Like I was this was a quarter life crisis. And I happen to be on very early Twitter. This is like 2009. And there was this get physician jobs Twitter handle and I followed it. And it was like there was this tweet that was like do exams a few days a week. No call something. And I was like, well, this is mysterious. But I applied and it was the V.A., And the job was to do compensation and pension exams. And you made your own schedule, basically. And there was no call. And you weren't writing any prescriptions. And I was like, oh, all the things I was too afraid to do. Like, because this was opioid crisis, like, is bad at this point. People, because I was working at urgent care, people are coming in at five minutes before five with their tooth pain and all they want is opioid. I was like, I don't want to write prescriptions. I don't want to take call. So I did that at the VA for nine years. And that's what allowed me to go to law school because I made my own schedule. So I worked 10 hours a week. You know, I... Why law school? Well, at this point, I'm feeling really bad about myself and my cognitive abilities, too. I wasn't great at medicine. It didn't really work. I mean, I wasn't great at med school. And I had tutored people on how to take the LSAT for a long time, even though I'd never taken it. And I thought, like, I just need some confidence back. And so I was like, I'm going to see if I can get into this law school for free, because again... And I did. And I loved law school, but I didn't want to practice law either. So here I am, I've got like, oh, I'm like hemorrhaging degrees with no idea still what I'm going to do. And I wouldn't say that that has changed to this day, to be very honest. I am a daily work in progress of what like the grown up me looks like. And I am three years from 50. So anybody out there feeling behind, I just want to put that out there because, man, I don't know about you, but I go into these Facebook groups of like the doctors who are investing and all that stuff. And like, man, they make me feel like a pauper who has no idea and has failed in every possible way. So in case you are not those super wealthy investor docs, you know, with the coaching business and the seven figures, I'm with you. That's what it looks like to sometimes when you are more interested in your mental health than making money. Because had I been interested in making money, I could have worked more than 10 hours a week at the VA. I could work 40 hours a week at that VA job, paid off all my loans and been the most miserable person you've ever met. But I was like, that's not for me. So as far as psychedelics go, somewhere in that nine years at the VA, I found out that psychedelics were a thing that was used medicinally because I'd never tried them. I was like from this kind of conservative upbringing. I tried them for myself, to be very honest, and had these realizations that were more effective than anything in therapy. And when I found out, oh, this is a field of research, I got very interested. And the more that I dove in, the more I was realizing that the veterans I was seeing every day could definitely benefit from this, but I wasn't allowed to tell them. And, you know, first, do no harm. I definitely felt like I was being harmed by omission. So after nine years, I decided I'm just going to leave the VA. And by that time, my mental health was suffering, too, because that's not the easiest environment. And so I just said, well, my mission is going to be to spread education about psychedelics to clinicians. I didn't know what it was going to look like still to this day. It is not a full-time job because that is a very niche thing to want to be doing, but that's what led to starting first the Psychedelic Medicine Podcast. Then I realized that's not how physicians learn about medical things. So then a year later, I started the Psychedelic Medicine Association. And four and a half years later, we have about 1200 members like you, my dear friend. Thank you so much for joining. And, you know, we've got we've put on three conferences. We've got a CME course. You know, we are doing what we can in a very rocky industry to educate mostly like the referring population, because that's what was important to me as a trained primary care person is, you know, PCPs are writing 80 percent of anti And as I was going to conferences talking about, you know, quitting things, I was just on the side, ask if anybody knew about the availability of even something like ketamine as an antidepressant. And the psychiatrist did, but the PCPs did not. And so I'm like, we have a need right now to get PCPs up to speed on something that is legal. And so that has been my guiding light, you know, to increase access through clinician education. And so I think that somewhat brings us up to today.

SPEAKER_00:

That's an incredible story. And you're right. I think the theme, if I were to say, is there a theme, is this sense of self-trust. It's a sense of curiosity. It's a sense of knowing that we're always evolving. We're never done. And that is an exciting way to live.

SPEAKER_01:

It's also like, man, if I had a different nervous system, maybe it'd be totally fine. But like my nervous system does not love uncertainty. And then if you look at that, like the amount of times I've quit things, restarted, tried this new thing, you know, it's a balance. It's a difficult balance. And that's why, like, you know, things like you speak about with mindfulness and and finding ways to keep yourself, keep your nervous system regulated amongst all that chaos. It becomes really important.

SPEAKER_00:

It really is. I love that reminder. I think whenever we're at our growth edge, it can feel so uncomfortable. And so it's like, where can I be comfortable in discomfort without feeling like I'm breaking? And I think that's different. This is a different place for every single one of us. And nothing that you described is sounded boring or mundane or, you know, like, so yeah, your nervous system is going to be on the lookout for some danger, which may or may not be around the corner. But yes, yes. So, you know, I joined PMA a couple of years ago because even three or four years ago, one of my meditation teachers, who I respect very much, said, look, the psychedelic renaissance is here. And if you are interested in the expansion or the expanded state of consciousness that we're working on within our meditation practices, you really need to educate yourself about psychedelics and what they're capable of doing as far as their entheogenic properties. And that's how I started to get really curious about it in a place where I, too, you know, was like, you know, I was sort of like I came up in the war on drugs and had a lot of misgivings and wasn't someone who was willing to try any drugs at all. And so I think most people, when they hear the word psychedelics, they may think of recreational stuff. They may think Thank you so much. And so, Lynn-Marie, would you help us sort of define, A, what psychedelics are, and then sort of even further from there, like people might think of peyote or ayahuasca or psilocybin. Those are kind of those traditional entheogenic ones, right? And then you've got the empathogens like MDMA, and then, of course, ketamine. So I wonder if you'd kind of give an overview of psychedelics.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. And I'll try to start by the most simplistic view, because like you said, they fall into different categories. There's basically no agreement on what constitutes a psychedelic for the conversation that we're having, right? There's the classical psychedelics that we tend to agree on, but then all these other ones. And then we have, to make it more confusing before I simplify, listeners, sorry, we're getting into the simple part, but they are building new psychedelics that are not at all hallucinogenic or trippy in any way. And so then like, are those psychedelics? Are they not? And so let's just say for right now, when we have this discussion, we are generally talking about medicines that in some way or another lead to an altered state of consciousness. And that altered state can be somewhere between 10 minutes and 36 hours. There's such a wide range of medicines here. There's a wide range of ways that they are taken. But when we're talking about, when I say, you know, psychedelic medicine or psychedelic therapeutics, generally, it's a group. It's the use of these medicines, one of these medicines with the following things. Preparation beforehand, hopefully, right? Like this, ideally, somebody prepare you beforehand. Ideally, also, there is somebody there, a facilitator during the experience, and then somebody after with whom you are doing what's called integration, where you take the lessons or take maybe what you saw or felt during this medicine, what came up, and then you work on integrating those into your psyche, integrating those lessons into your daily life. And I'd say that's very general. And the other thing that is applicable to most of these medicines is that they are aimed at getting to the core of the issue, whatever the issue is, you know, like let's not say diagnosis, but let's say what, you know, maybe there's a core limiting belief you have or a core trauma or something like that that's behind the depression or the PTSD. And so that's what makes psychedelic medicines so different from traditional, you know, take a pill every morning medicines, which again, I will just start by saying, I am never going to pill shame. There is a place for every medicine. There are, I mean, one of my favorite podcasts that I've done on mine was Ending pill shaming. And we had a very wise doctor come on and she talked about using both in her clients. You know, there's a place for the SSRIs. There's a place for psilocybin, right? Like there's a place for one to taper off the other. I mean, there's so many ways to use different medicines. And so I will never shame the use of Western medicines. Big fan of Western medicine. But this is a yes and situation, as most things should be, instead of an either or. So though I think what makes those two different is that generally these are aimed at the clients core cause whereas the others are generally aimed at kind of abating symptoms so that you can continue your daily life and again roles for both but how amazing would it be to get to the core and address things at that root level instead of trying to just chase the symptoms and for the rest of your life. So, you know, we're not just giving like cancer dampening symptoms. We usually go and we try to dig out the cancer, right? Why are we not doing that with mental health? Well, there weren't generally ways to do it before. Psychedelics seem to be uniquely positioned to address

SPEAKER_00:

that root cause. That's a beautiful way of saying that. And I wholeheartedly agree. I think this is a yes and situation. What do you think some of the more common myths are that you've heard over the years about psychedelics?

SPEAKER_01:

Easily that the two most common things I hear are that they are addictive and that they are unsafe. And I'll address each of those. Addictive, most of the psychedelics that we are talking about are not addictive. Like we'll use psilocybin mushrooms, that's magic mushrooms as an example. If you do them too frequently, they stop working. That's anti-addictive, right? Like you just can't be addicted to a thing that's going to stop working. Ketamine, more potential for addiction. MDMA, more potential for addiction. But most of the classic psychedelics, psilocybin B1, LSD, et cetera, not addictive, do not have that addictive potential. And I think the jury is still kind of out on exactly what the addictive potential is. Of those other two that I mentioned, it may be somewhat physiological and it may also be a psychological, you know, kind of like a compulsion misuse situation on those other ones. But so number one misconception is that they're addictive because not only are they not addictive, but most of them are being used to combat addictions. So kind of the complete reverse of that. And that's where when uneducated people come at this and they say, you're addicted to something like opioids and you're going to go do a psychedelic. Aren't you just replacing one drug with the other? The drug very often used to address opioid addiction is Ibogaine. It is a 36-hour, extremely let's say, wild, like can be traumatic, just extremely intense journey. Nobody is addicted to doing Ibogaine. You have to be hooked up to like an EKG machine to make sure it's safe for your heart. Like this is not a recreational drug. And so it's just a fundamental misunderstanding when a person suffering from an addiction uses one of these. They are not replacing one for the other. Have I seen people in an attempt to treat an alcoholism start to misuse one of these, yes. And that's why I think it's so important that there be medicinal settings for this because those people who are struggling from addiction should not be maybe having access to, whether or not they have addictive properties, something else that they can just replace one high for another, right? That's why I firmly believe that There should be the yes and, there should be traditional ways of obtaining these, but also medical ways so that people can have it in a safe way if they are struggling from addiction. But so many of these are being shown to be helpful for addiction. Even the ones that, like ketamine, that have addictive properties are being found to be good, especially for something like alcohol addiction. So that was misconception number one. Misconception number two, you know, comes straight out of the yes, just say no, and all the things that you talked about, and this is your brain on drugs. And stuff like MKUltra from the 60s, where... you know, somebody took LSD and then jumped out of a hotel room, right? We are not talking about the unsafe use of psychedelics. Those experiments on people, they didn't know they were given psychedelics, right? Like, of course you think you've gone crazy. You might jump out of a thing. As opposed to I'm sitting here with a facilitator in a doctor's office. I'm being monitored. I know I've taken a thing. There's always, there's an entire team dedicated to my safety. And so that's a lot of what we teach. That's why I have the podcast and the association. The association is clinician-focused. The podcast is patient and layperson-focused who might be using these medicines and trying to focus on harm reduction and that kind of thing, because inherently, most of these drugs are not dangerous. There have been people who've accidentally done 500 times or something like that, the dose of LSD, and we're still fine. Like, Overdoses on most of these are like, I don't know that there are cases if the person didn't already have some underlying condition where these have been fatal. So it's not that these have an inherent lack of safety. They can be done safely or they can be done in an unsafe manner. And so I'd say those are the two most common misconceptions.

SPEAKER_00:

That's great. And Right off the bat, what occurs to me is, you know, the dichotomy of this idea of just a one-size-fits-all versus how psychedelics sort of work. And they can be an enormous boon to folks suffering from things like PTSD, from chronic depression, where traditional SSRIs haven't worked. I mean, I wonder if you'd share a story or two from your experience in therapeutic uses. Sure. I

SPEAKER_01:

mean, this is a recent story. I now, in the past few months, have started working at a ketamine clinic, as you mentioned. And what I love about that is previously, this was something I was educating on, and I had been a, I don't want to say patient, so I mean, I had gone to a ketamine clinic and done ketamine that way, you know, so a little bit on the patient side, but... I'd not been on the prescriber side to see anybody else's journey outside of just stories I would be told. And there's lots of stories, right? We love, you know, evidence plus anecdotes seems to be a very effective way to drive home points about psychedelics. But to see a specific patient, so in ketamine, what we very often do is a series of six. And it's generally two ketamine sessions a week for like three weeks. And there was a patient who I saw who was struggling so much and had tried everything, that kind of thing, right? It was in an intense outpatient program. You know, we weren't even sure that like ketamine might be safe for this person, for their history. Was there a history of mania? Couldn't be sure. And then six sessions later, this person is telling me, I know they're not gonna have any of, she literally said all the negativity has been replaced by positivity. And it was six sessions. It was just incredible. And just the amount of times also that I see patients who come in with suicidal ideation, always in their head and say, That's gone. I may not be, you know, completely cured of my depression, but just to not have the constant suicidal thoughts like that is something I had heard for years. Ketamine is great for acute suicidality. I had not seen it. And now the amount of times that I have seen patients who tell me that that's, you know, with suicidal ideation, do we have six weeks for an SSRI to start working? We might not. Right. Right. Do you have ketamine that generally after one session, that suicidality is decreased? After six, it might be, you know, even I'm seeing it in less than six, maybe gone, right? Like these are life-changing medicines. And we're just talking about one of them, the one that's legal right now, right? So yeah, just incredible strides in improving different aspects of mental health. And like I said, that's ketamine. And that ketamine is like the lowest hanging fruit at this point And we have so many other psychedelics that hopefully are coming down the FDA pipeline that can

SPEAKER_00:

add to that. Absolutely. Yeah. And I too have sent patients and clients to ketamine clinics who are suffering from sort of the depths of some of the depressive symptoms that we don't have two months, three months to wait for a medicine to work because of the acute suicidal ideations. And it works. It works every time. And I think that we can't emphasize that enough that this, yes, of course, if it's misused, anything can be misused. And in this case, it has a deeply therapeutic use that we cannot ignore. So you sort of, I'd love to make a little bit of a segue into a couple of these ideas of legality, because you mentioned ketamine is legal. I am deeply interested in psilocybin magic mushrooms and their therapeutic effects. And right now we've got Oregon, Colorado, and very recently New Mexico saying, okay, I'm not even sure if I'm going to use the word legal. Is it legal? Is it decrim? How do you describe this?

SPEAKER_01:

Great question. So to start off, the difference between legalization and decriminalization is just for like the easiest way to think about it. Can you sell it and tax it and all those things? So if you're in a state like California has legal cannabis use, there's a 30% tax on cannabis, right? Like it is sold legally. It is being monitored, et cetera, et cetera. When you have something that's just decriminalized, you are not allowed to sell it. It is not being taxed. It is not being regulated. However, if you are pulled over and found to have it with you, generally it's like some smaller amount, right? Because you're still not allowed to like run a full-scale operation, you know, of LSD or something like that. But if you're found with generally like a personal use amount of it in a decriminalized place, you will either get no criminalized, like no sequelae happening there, or maybe you get something like a traffic ticket as opposed to a... And incarceration. It depends on what jurisdiction you're in. Decriminalization looks very different, but very often it's given something like lowest priority in law enforcement. And that's what it looks like. And so decriminalization is a great start because we don't need to have people incarcerated for drugs. Legalization is an improvement on that. There are some states that have both, like Colorado now has We'll call it the legalized half. We'll call it a regulated model because the legalized portion is very regulated. And then they also have decriminalization. There's two options there, which we love having all the options. And in these regulated programs, like the ones in Colorado and Oregon currently, and then New Mexico is going to look a little different. And New Mexico is actually going to be more medical, which is going to be a very interesting addition to this mix. So, you know, all of you prescribers in New Mexico, keep your ears open for this. But in those regulated programs, Every piece of it is regulated. So the growers are regulated. Then the testers who test what is grown, regulated. The programs teaching the facilitators, regulated. The facilitators themselves, regulated. The service centers, regulated. Like everything is regulated. What is very cool about the Colorado program is that they have specifically built-in protections for people with letters after their names, right? Doctors, psychiatrists, therapists, all those, to be able to make referrals and also to be facilitators in these programs. while wearing their initial hat. Because in Oregon, if you were a doctor and you were going to facilitate, and they're trying to, I think, fix this now, you have to take off your doctor hat and then facilitate. And that's a little confusing for people to do. If somebody codes, you're like, oh, I didn't notice you were coding, so I don't have my doctor hat on, right? Like, that's just not a thing that is functional. And so I think Oregon is addressing that, but Colorado has it built in. And so, like, we're getting more and more incorporation of medical practitioners into these models. And like I said, New Mexico is a medical model. You have to have a diagnosis of a certain list. So far, that's what was passed. We'll see what happens when it rolls out. But yeah, so there are now multiple different avenues on the legalized, regulated side.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's really cool. It sounds like we could all learn a lot from Colorado and how it's kind of rolling some of these things out. Are there any more states that have legislature or kind of votes coming up? So Probably.

SPEAKER_01:

And I sound always very dismissive because I live in California. We've had so many and none have passed. So I don't get excited about them until they pass. Literally, they could be like, we passed another Senate floor. I'm like, tell me when it's passed, passed. Because my state has had, we've had decriminalization on the ballot. We felt like it was working toward the ballot, didn't get enough signatures. And we had something that literally just needed, I think, Newsom to say yes, but he said no. So many times we get close. So it's one of those things where if, you know, you happen to be on LinkedIn and, you know, you follow anybody psychedelics, you'll know every state that's going through it. And lots of them have started things like Texas has a psychedelic research program up. Like a lot of them have okayed research. That's kind of like the entry point for a lot of places. And then, you know, we've got Massachusetts, which you might think is a pretty liberal state, and it didn't pass there. It was, you know, first state to go to a vote that did not pass. And it's interesting because so far now we've got three states that are on the west half of the U.S. that passed and Boston didn't. And there's, you know, it would be interesting to kind of, I'm sure people have done exit polls on to why it did or didn't pass. But yeah, so it's really hard to keep track of. Decriminalization is even harder because that can change by the day. You know, like a city council can go to their chambers, vote amongst themselves, and then we've got decrim the next day, which is Amazing. But like a lot. And then Oregon had an entire statewide decrim and they've rolled it back. They reversed it, not on the basis of psychedelics, but on the basis of more things like fentanyl. But psychedelics just get swept up with it, which is unfortunate. So, yeah, the legal landscape is like a moving target that It would take my entire like day long focus to keep focus on it. So I just say like, tell me when it's passed and I'll get very excited and start creating education based on it.

SPEAKER_00:

That's amazing. Love that. And you know, what's so interesting is you're right. These states are all these different stages, it sounds like, and back and forth and all the things. And a couple of weeks ago, maybe this was three weeks ago, I heard an interview with Michael Pollan. And he felt like, I mean, and what I think is here now for the use of psychedelics is about 89 to 90 percent of all of the use is still underground, whether it's decrim or legal or regulated in the country, at least from my understanding. And according to Michael Pollan's sort of prediction, he thought there just wouldn't be enough. There's so much need for the therapeutic use of these that we just couldn't get ahead of it from like sort of a regulated standpoint. What are your thoughts on this?

SPEAKER_01:

He's probably right. Like think of all of medicine, right? Just think of how many people need to see a PCP today and can't get in for four months. Well, this is going to be worse because we have currently trained PCPs. You know, we have to get people trained in psychedelic therapy, which people are trained, but we don't, to this point, have like the same kind of accreditations for those training programs, et cetera, et cetera. Trust me, I've been working on these things, but the infrastructure piece is, are not in place yet. And so for us to get infrastructure in place and then to get it covered by insurance and all the things, this is going to be an uphill battle. And the entire time we still have people who need them, who can't wait for that battle to be fought and won and settled. And so they're going to still go to the underground or out of the country. And that's why, you know, on the podcast, we talk a lot about harm reduction and how to choose a retreat center or a facilitator, the most important decision. And I'm just going to say a very difficult thing to do because, man, the amount of things you would have to know is hard and your PCP cannot guide you to one because that is aiding and abetting at that point. Like I had a patient say, do you recommend I go to Oregon for psilocybin? And I said, well, I'm discussing with you that it exists. He's like, which center should I go to? And I said, again, I'm not telling you not to go to Oregon. I'm just like, you know, you just have to say it. And then through my podcast, hopefully I can say like, no, you know, maybe check on my podcast and see some episodes about choosing a center, right? Like just all we can do is educate from our standpoint. But basics, if you know, you're telling somebody who you know is going to go to the underground, because maybe as a clinician, they're telling you, I want to go to the underground. I mean, it's such a difficult line, but if you think about somebody who was going to do heroin and they told you they're going to do heroin, would you do your first do no harm, be able to say to them, go to a clean needle site and a clean needle exchange site if you're going to do heroin? Like, I think that that should be an allowed thing to say, right? Like, and even as a lawyer, I know that until something is like specifically brought to court and then there's case law on it, Everything's a gray area, right? And so I think that harm reduction principles should be able to be discussed. And in those, you say, if you're going to go somewhere to do this thing, please make sure that they are doing a medical intake. They are asking what medicines you are on. Please make sure they're doing preparation and integration. Please make sure that they have a facilitator there and they have a good facilitator to participant ratio. There's just a list of things. And like I said, I've done episodes of the podcast on this. But yeah, so I do agree with that there's still going to be. And that's why this is a yes and situation. Because in Colorado, for example, I know that they are having decriminalized psilocybin ceremonies, even outside of the upcoming legal medical model that they have, because there's a need. And because, hey, if it's at least decriminalized, we're not going to be in harm's way doing this important work. And so that's why there is definitely a place for both decrim and legalization.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think that's a really important point as well. And so anytime there is something like the underground, that's totally unregulated. There can be, as always in every field, some not so great players and people with really high integrity, like they can all be in that space together. And so I wonder if you'd address how, and you already kind of did, you said, hey, make sure they're doing a medical intake, make sure there's prep, make sure there's integration. Is there anything else that you want to add to that?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, to say this as bluntly as possible, like your spidey senses about this person, right? Because as you alluded to, there is some psychedelic narcissism and psychedelic guruism that can take place. And facilitators can be extremely charismatic. And they can fool you. I mean, myself included, right? I'd say some things to look out for. Is this person calling themselves a healer? Issues with that, if they are your healer, then you're dependent on them. If you will have an innate healing mechanism that psychedelics is helping you unlock, then you are not dependent on them, right? Like I'd say that's some ego. I mean, there are MDs in this field calling themselves healers in the psychedelic world. And I'm, oof, you know, I've had my thoughts on that. And also I've learned lots of things over doing a podcast and having people, like that thing I just told you, somebody commented to my Instagram at some point. I was like, brilliant. I hadn't thought of that before. You know, I was not, so like aware of people calling themselves healer and how that could be problematic. Thank you for sharing that, right? So I'm hoping that by sharing these ideas, you know, some people maybe change their thinking about things. So one, how much is this person claiming that they are going to heal you versus they are going to be there and facilitate your healing? What are their policies like? This is my favorite one. If you goes there and you decide you are not going to and this is something I would ask up front if I show up to your facility and for whatever reason I'm not feeling comfortable or if I'm for some reason that day my health is off in some way or another that's going to be detrimental what kind of refund do I get because if the answer is none I would not go because I mean I have been in situations where I was maybe not feeling like ready to do a medicine and I I said to the facilitator, but I've already paid. And he said, we'll give you money back. If this doesn't go through today, we're giving your money back. The amount that that took the pressure off me, right? And I can only imagine people who've saved up their hard-earned money to go to one of these things, feeling like I got to go through with this. Like we did an entire episode on when to not proceed with the psychedelic journey, one of my favorite episodes. And so when you're talking to a facilitator, ask them ahead of time, if I get there and I'm not feeling it, what does, you know, what the refund process look like? You want people who have your health, your psyche in mind much more than their bottom line. And I would just say overall, like, do you get narcissist guru vibes from this person? This is, you know, it's like, do you get, especially if this, you know, and this is what's so hard to say, but same sex versus opposite sex, right? Like I remember being the same person who said they would refund me. He had said at the beginning of the thing, I am not going to touch you unless you ask, please touch my hand. Like if you ask exactly where to touch, I will touch that, you know, hold your hand. He's like, because, you know, I am not going to violate any of your boundaries. And like to have somebody put that fine a point on their consent and touch policy, right? Like those kinds of details, like, Again, when you first get into it, that's why I said it's so hard because you don't know what you don't know when you're first getting into this. And that's why, like, thank you for giving me the opportunity to share kind of these finer points of things. Like, ask them, what's your refund policy? What's your therapeutic touch policy? Your consent policies? Those kinds of things. And again, just find somebody that you feel comfortable with. Maybe it's your, you know, if we've got a lot of women physicians on this, maybe like, is it an all women's group with a woman facilitator? Because I will tell you, I was telling this story to somebody yesterday, The first time I did a certain extremely powerful psychedelic, it was me and two male facilitators. I took the world's most powerful psychedelic and nothing happened. And it was because my body was like, yeah, this doesn't look safe, you know? Right. So if you want this medicine to be as therapeutic as it can be, set yourself up for success by being in the most safe way. And also, couples, I would not... unless you do this for a couple's therapy reason and then go to like a ketamine therapist where you're doing this or an MDMA therapist trials there here in San Diego. But I know that like there's been a couple that I knew and the man could not release and let go in the ceremony because he's always protecting his wife. Right. So he could never be his own to do his own healing with the wife there. Same thing. It's maybe the wife is more concerned about the husband, right? Like This is a thing that I think is best done without your partner or without a child or a parent. I mean, maybe after you've done it a few times and you want to share it with a family member, maybe you take a lower dose and then the family member does the full dose kind of thing. Fine. But I think if you're really going in for deep healing, best to not have other people that you may be distracted by or worried about or vice versa in the room.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, or already have like certain patterns, like you mentioned, you know, ways of being that you're not able to separate from in order to have the experience you're supposed to have. These are really great kind of guidelines and a framework for folks who are, you know, become deeply interested and called to this work. I really appreciate you being so generous with your time. We're definitely going to put in the links for your podcast, as well as, of course, the Psychedelic Medicine Association. Would you tell us a little bit about PMA and why everyone listening today needs to be a member?

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much for that. And by the way, I will also send you a discount link you can throw in there so that anybody can get a 20% discounted link. And also I want to throw in there that if you have an organization, if you have a ketamine clinic or some other type of organization, we have sponsorships that, you know, you can get your organization in front of our clinicians. So, you know, I'll have you throw my email in there and all the things. But so the Psychedelic Medicine Association's mission is to educate clinicians across the spectrum. So we're talking doctors, nurses, PAs, NPs, social workers, counselors, therapists, anybody to whom a patient may show up with an issue that may be served by psychedelics and anybody to whom a patient may show up and start asking questions about psychedelics. I remember being deer in the I didn't know about in clinic. It's a terrible feeling. And especially when that person, if they're coming to you as psychedelics, they're probably really struggling with something and they probably tried all the things you've given them, right? And so we wanted every clinician in that situation to have a baseline level of knowledge. So we are not, by bringing people into the Psychedelic Medicine Association, teaching you how to be like a ketamine clinician. We are teaching you about psychedelics enough so that you can have the conversations with your patients. We also happen to have so many people that join and then want to start becoming practitioners that will throw in a webinar here and there every once in a while about how to start your own practice, et cetera, et cetera. But the vast majority of what we do is to get you up to speed to discuss psychedelics with your patients. If they come in and they are struggling with something and you know that there's a current clinical trial going on for psilocybin or LSD, then you know enough to discuss it with the patient and to say, here's clinicaltrials.gov, check out to see if there's a trial that you may be able to drive to, et cetera. Like there are so many trials going on that there are avenues for patients to be having access to these legally in a number of locations, but you need to know enough to know what things might address them so that you can direct your patients that way. And then also, now that we have a few states that have these legal psilocybin programs, We started creating courses for the clinicians of those states because imagine you're a PCP in Oregon, patient comes to you and says, I can go legally do this psilocybin, but I'm on lithium. I have a first degree relative with schizophrenia. Is this safe for me, right? Your average PCP, we weren't taught this anywhere, right? And so like we were making these responsive courses to what's happening in the world, like so that the PCPs and other referring practitioners of those states can feel more confident at least doing, you know, we don't have clinical practice guidelines set up yet, but we're, so we called our course managing medical risk. Like as best we can, here's some risk factors and how to manage them and give your patient idea of whether this will likely be a safe option for them. And so what we do is every month we send out Like the five most clinically applicable new findings in psychedelic research. And then every month we have a webinar with a deep dive into a different topic. We'll do what's latest in the ketamine field. We did last month psychedelics for pain. We've done psychedelics for eating disorders. We'll do a deep dive into ayahuasca. You know, like... Any, we've done deep dives into harm reduction. We want to have experts from the field come and speak directly to our members about these. Members are able to ask questions. A lot of great relationships have been formed there. We also have an online community where members can meet each other and I'll see somebody be like, Who's doing research in this? We've got, I've got a patient who needs to be plugged into this. Who's got a ketamine clinic in Georgia? Like a lot of sharing of knowledge, even to, I'm running a psychedelic research facility. What malpractice should I use? You know, just, I mean, just the gamut of people having these interactions. And a lot of them have started, you know, they were doing a paper together. They're doing research together. Lots of great relationships have formed. We've even started doing local chapters. It's difficult because you've got to get like a critical mass in local chapters. But I got to tell you, shout out to Iowa. Their local chapter is killing it. They have like a meeting every month. And then all of a sudden, you know, Iowa's got this potential thing going through their legislature. So then they've got, you know, a set group of doctors and nurses and clinicians ready to go to Capitol Hill if they need. So that's the kind of thing that the PMA is doing. We want to get you up to speed on psychedelics because the patients, I went to the American College of Physicians conference last year and every person who came up, I said, have your patients started asking you about psychedelics? And I would say 99% said yes. Absolutely. And I bet that of those, you know, definitely not 99% of the doctors felt comfortable to have those conversations. And we want you to feel comfortable having those conversations. So

SPEAKER_00:

that's our mission. What a great mission. And I think maybe you found what you want to do when you grow up, Lynn Marie, because you sure did come

SPEAKER_01:

alive. I mean, let me tell you, if this paid the bills, I would absolutely do this. And this is why, you know, like, just to be honest, like in nascent field like this, it's difficult, right? Like we, only survive on like membership dues. So that's why I'm so grateful when anybody signs up because that keeps our lights on, right? We didn't have investors investing in us in the beginning. We... didn't have a nonprofit beginning to take donations. We formed a nonprofit to try to create some of those pieces of infrastructure. But when MDMA was not approved by the FDA in August, the industry was a little bit in a tailspin. And so funding has been very difficult to get. So we haven't gotten any. And so like, yes, if when I grow up, this is a fully funded thing, it would absolutely be a fulfillment of a life's mission to be getting to do this full time. Yes. I mean, I could light up all day about it. And someday, hopefully the funding will follow my passion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and it's a crowdsourced thing. And I think the more people who hear about it, because my guess is everyone listening on the podcast today probably did not know PMA existed. And so I don't even remember how I came across it, but I went looking for what looked like high integrity led by physicians. I really went looking for some of that information a few years ago, and they're hard to find. And yours is certainly one of those. And I think it's such an important and necessary contribution Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I love it so much. Yeah, they make me so happy because I remember like always when I used to, you know, kind of initially pitch the PMA is I would say like, you know, yeah, I'm in California. Clinicians here have a better idea. But what about your rural medicine doc out in Wichita? And I was not so far from that. Right. And no, they are so on the front line. It just takes a few impassioned people. to really spearhead something. And so I just, you know, tip my hat off to the docs in the Iowa chapter and the social workers and everybody in that chapter who's really, you know, taking the bull by the horns. And when I pop up, when I open LinkedIn and I see one of their meetings pop up, I would, in fact, the first time I saw it, I literally thought that there had been a separate Iowa Psychedelic Medicine Association started because I like, it did not occur to me that, oh my God, our local chapter is doing something this amazing, but no, it was us and just props to them. So yeah, if you think like I'm in a random place where there aren't any of the doctors doing this, you may be wrong. Like we have, we're a global organization. We have people all over the world and in all the states. So it's spread faster than you think. And thank you for putting a point on the fact that like your average doctor does not know we exist because it's hard to go looking for a thing you don't know exists, right? Like, And if you just type in psychedelics, you're going to get a million things before you get us. That's why I call it psychedelic medicine. You know, the biggest favor you could do for me besides joining, obviously, is telling your friends who are anytime they, you know, discuss a patient. Oh, man, I've got this patient with depression. Who is it? Do you know about psychedelics? Maybe ketamine and send them to the psychedelicmedicinessociation.org. And then, you know, from there, we will take the education from there. But anytime that you can help spread the word, I am just that's why I'm so grateful that you have me on your show today to speak to your clinician listeners, because a lot of when I finally did a poll of PMA members, like, how did you find us? third came through my podcast. So they were, you know, like the way that I thought nobody, no clinicians were listening to the podcast. Apparently they are. But yeah, it's a struggle to get the word out because it's hard to educate people to join a thing they don't know exists on a topic that they are just starting to find out about. So yeah, any word of mouth, like even my, let me tell you this, my very old Trump voting dad, tells all of his clinicians about the Psychedelic Medicine Association. And it's so, you know, this does go across political boundaries, right? You know, the veterans have been huge in helping us move the needle on this. And so people you might think would be closed off to it, they may surprise you.

SPEAKER_00:

That's so interesting. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. We're going to have all the links in, dear listeners. So you've been so generous. I don't want to keep you too much longer, Lynn Marie, but you know, I always have this deep curiosity about how people practice what I kind of say, lightness of being, right? There's so many difficult, heavy things in our lives, and we don't discount those. We don't pretend like they're not there. And at the same time, we each have our own practice in a way of bringing in some lightness or lightness of being. I wonder what your practices are.

SPEAKER_01:

So one of them is playing the drums. I play the drums and I play like my favorite things to play like ska core from the 90s, which is like the last time that I didn't have to be adulting. And I think it brings me back to that time. And so I'm just banging on the drums and rocking out. And that's definitely one of those ways in dancing. I'm a dancer, as I said. But one of the things that I recently experienced that I remember, like I am happy in this moment. Remember this moment is I was snorkeling. And I have the very large privilege of living very close to an area where sea lions You can snorkel with sea lions and it's not like you pay for it. You just go in the ocean and they're there. And I'm just there watching the sea lions play underwater. And I was like, this is incredible. Like underwater, everything stops, right? Like there's nothing but you and these beautiful animals and beautiful scenery and seaweed and all the things. And like, so if anybody lives anywhere near a coast and you're looking for a way to just like put yourself in another world and just experience joy, I highly recommend grabbing a, you know, learning to scuba or grabbing a snorkel or something. Wow, that's

SPEAKER_00:

amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. This has been so incredibly helpful. And dear listener, I know you're going to want to share this episode with five or six friends and certainly join PMA as well. Is there anything else that I should have asked you about, Lynn Marie, that I didn't?

SPEAKER_01:

I would just say if you are a person with a patient population who's interested, you can send them to the Psychedelic Medicine Podcast. Like I said, that's my kind of patient focus. And so we are not one of those rambling four-hour podcasts, bless them all, but like these are so specific. So we'll have psilocybin for depression, ketamine for alcohol use disorder. Like our episodes are very clearly labeled and they're 35 to 45 minutes long because I want to respect the patient's time. And I want them to, you know, if they're frustrated, we want them to not be like, oh man, I listened to four hours of this and I didn't get the answer I want. It's very like encyclopedia labeled out so that they can find hopefully exactly what they're looking for. And again, that's the Psychedelic Medicine Podcast. We have over 170 episodes on a wide range of topics. So hopefully that can be a resource as well.

SPEAKER_00:

I follow your podcast. It's incredible. I think it is so precise and it is so targeted and it is so useful. So 100% agree.

SPEAKER_01:

I appreciate it. And I really appreciate, again, this opportunity to share with you. Grateful for you to be a member. And thank you for letting me share about the Psychedelic Medicine Association with your listeners.

SPEAKER_00:

It's been an honor, Lynn Marie. Thank you so much. And I will see you, dear listener, on the next episode of Inner Peace and Power.