Daily Archives: December 25, 2021

Inside the salt room, Scott Mickey flew above the bright expanse of his own consciousness. His eyes were closed. A weighted blanket pressed his body into a recliner. In his arm, an IV delivered a few dozen milligrams of ketamine to his bloodstream.

His mind was somewhere else.

"I ain't gonna lie, I was very skeptical," recalls Mickey, a 45-year-old business owner who runs a chain of head shops in rural Missouri. Before ketamine, the Rolla native had spent much of his life gripped by a deep social anxiety that made crowded indoor spaces, even a trip to the grocery store, intolerable to the point of breakdown.

He had gone to a psychiatrist. They prescribed him the antidepressant Xanax, but he says it felt like "wrapping your head in a blanket." So, one day this past October, he went to a different doctor, one located in a compact strip mall opposite the Saint Louis Galleria in St. Louis.

Ketamine is undergoing something of a renaissance. First synthesized in 1962, the substance has been used for decades as a surgical anesthetic, and not just because of its ability to safely render a person unconscious. For reasons scientists are still studying, the introduction of ketamine releases the mind to dissociate that is, to be blissfully unaware, in all sensation and memory, of the physical trauma happening to their body.

However, with smaller amounts of ketamine, a person can experience that disassociation without the amnesia. That experience, as shown in the growing body of scientific research and widening availability of treatment options, acts as a profoundly effective antidepressant.

But it's not just ketamine that holds such promising possibilities for treatment. Currently, a combination of state and federal laws block patients from using an even more powerful line of psychedelics, substances that have long been used in indigenous rituals and which are well known to the crowd of self-experimenting "psychonauts" for their mind-expanding effects.

For Mickey, attending music festivals in his twenties had brought him into contact with hallucinogens like LSD and magic mushrooms, but it had been many years since he had taken a psychedelic trip. That day at the clinic in St. Louis, as the salt vapors flowed, he found himself settling into a comfortable chair and listening to the music coming from the wall speakers, the melody soft and meditative.

"I was sitting there, they started the IV, and I just got this little bit of a tiredness that came over me," he says now. "It was like, 'Oh, I could probably lay back and get comfortable.' When I laid my head against the pillow, it was like a light switch. It was, boom, there I was, flying. And there was no fear to it."

He remembers looking down at an endless landscape beneath him. He says, "I started thinking about my anxiety why do I get uncomfortable in various situations? I flew close to the ground and saw this dark spot in the center of this snow-covered region. I instantly knew that it was either trauma or something that had happened in my life that created that inside of me."

As easy as thinking, Mickey flew down to the dark spot, and "exchanged energy." The spot turned light, and, he says, "as it happened, I would feel the release of this incredible weight."

Today, he describes it as one of the most powerful sensations of his life. He was sold.

"Once I had tried it once, I was like, 'Alright, I'll take the package.'"

After decades of legal restrictions and fear mongering, Americans are finally coming around to the notion that psychedelics are legitimate medicine. Even as the law and science lag behind, people in Missouri like Scott Mickey are already embracing ketamine; and these aren't hippies or followers of the sort of LSD utopia envisioned by Timothy Leary in the 1960s these are simply people in pain.

During a recent visit to the Radiance Float + Wellness clinic in Richmond Heights, psychiatrist Dr. Zinia Thomas walks through a short hallway to the salt room, the same room in which Scott Mickey tuned in, dropped out and started flying through his mind. The back wall, built of rock salt bricks, is lit with cool blue lights. A flier on a table features a friendly message, "Enjoy your K-Cation," beneath a photo showing a line of multicolored cottages on a perfect beachfront.

Thomas founded the clinic in 2017, one year before then-President Donald Trump signed the federal Right to Try Act that made some classifications of drugs, including ketamine, open to therapeutic use if patients had exhausted FDA-approved treatment options.

At first, Thomas says she considered ketamine treatments as an option of last resort. But two key events shaped her current stance that ketamine is for everyone.

First came Missouri's legalization of medical cannabis. In 2020, Thomas began prescribing medical marijuana licenses to hundreds of patients across the state through virtual appointments. Quickly, she says, it became clear that people were seeking more substantial relief than even high-potency cannabis could offer.

"They wanted it to cure their depression, PTSD, their pain, migraines. They wanted it to cure everything," she says. "People put so much hope in it, but this is just a plant."

Thomas says she began suggesting ketamine as a possible treatment for her medical marijuana patients' more serious health needs. Around the same time, the pandemic hit and with it, the crush of isolation, job stress and the ever-present tragedy of the rising death toll. She believes the pandemic inflamed a mental-health crisis that was already burning out of control.

"Even high-functioning people have suffered so much loss in the pandemic," she notes. "I just thought, 'Why should you have to fail other antidepressants before trying something like ketamine?'"

Follow this link:

Ketamine, Psilocybin and the Rise of Missouri Psychedelics - Riverfront Times

This article by Kiki Dy was originally published on Psychedelic Spotlight, and appears here with permission.

Humans havewritten a lot about what we see and experience on psychedelics:mischievous spirits, stereotypical melting faces, even feeling like a butterfly in a wet suit.But what about animals that eat psychedelics?

What does a moose see after a heroic dose of mushrooms? What about a jaguar enjoying ayahuasca as an aperitif? Do they see their ancestors? Their birth?

Their inevitable death? Mr. Peanut holding an IV?

We can only wonder.

Some species find themselves intoxicated in the wild more than you might expect and many go straight for the most bizarre sh*t on the shelf.

Here are animals who enjoy a little bit of psychedelic strange every now and again to take their brains on a sojourn above the stratosphere.

Many categories of deer dine on psychedelic mushrooms, including reindeer, moose, andcaribou.

While foraging, the deer will sniff out fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) mushrooms frozen beneath winter snow. These red and white-flecked shrooms are closely related to deadly varieties like the aptly-named destroying angel and death cap. However, while they boast their own collection of toxins, theyre not harmful like their other agaric counterparts.

They contain muscimol, a compound that induces a sedative and hallucinogenic effect in mammals. Humans (like the Siberian tribal societies who drink the psychoactive urine of agaric-eating reindeer) report a dream-like state under the influence.

Observers report that after eating the fungi, deer often act drunk by running around aimlessly, twitching their heads, and making noises.

Eating these mushrooms infuses the caribous urine with psychoactive agents, meaning that the urine can, and is, consumed for a high. Caribou will battle each other to earn access to the urine of a herd mate that has fly agaric in its system. In noticing this, Siberian tribes realized that they too could benefit from drinking this spiked caribou urine.

After passing through the reindeers system, the psychoactive agents of the fly agaric are even stronger with the added benefit of the chemicals that cause undesirable side effects being filtered out. Any species, whether deer or human, that drinks the psychedelic pee will experience a more potent high than the original shroom-muncher.

Jaguars are the largest cats in the Americas, roaming everywhere from Southern Arizona to the warmer pockets of South America. While they usually take their role as an apex predator seriously and stalk around confidently as a cunning mass of muscles, teeth, and claws they also like to party.

From time to time, jaguars will munch on the leaves of the yag vine (Banisteriopsis caapifor all you botanists out there). The vine grows abundantly in the Amazon Rainforest and takes jaguars from intimidating to delightfully intoxicated. Perhaps youve seen this clip of a jaguar acting like a big, tipsy, goofy kitten fromBBCsWeird Nature.

Humans have also been known to enjoy a Banisteriopsis caapi cocktail now and again: the vine is the primary component inayahuasca, a psychedelic spiritual aid used by both indigenous Amazon people and aslew of celebrities.

Ayahuasca is most known for containing the hallucinogen DMT, but contrary to popular belief, that ingredient doesnt come from yag. Instead, the harmala alkaloid compounds from the vine make the DMT from another ayahuasca ingredient orally active. Because of this, the jaguars are more likely tripping on harmala alkaloids that, while intense, are probably not comparable to the effects of a full ayahuasca cocktail.

Scientists dont have a solid hypothesis why jaguars drug themselves like this (Im no scientist, but I think the video makes it pretty clear that they enjoy it). However, some South American tribes believe the effects of the vineimprove hunting skillsin animals. Experts also dont know the exact effects on the big cats brain, but any observer can conclude that if its enough to make a jaguar wriggle on its back and stare at trees with intense fascination, it must be pretty powerful.

Iboga (Tabernanthe iboga) is a shrub native to the tropical rainforests of Central Africa. Aside from bearing long,bright orange fruit, it containsibogaine: an often overlooked psychedelic compound. Ibogaine is most concentrated in the roots and bark of the iboga, and many different types of wildlife are known to indulge in its effects. But of these many species, one, in particular, appears to use it for premeditated purposes.

Mandrills a more colorful cousin of baboons in Gabon and the Congo are believed to use Iboga roots as a performance-enhancer indominance conflicts.

In his bookAnimals and Psychedelics, Italian ethnobotanist Giorgio Samorini narrates a conversation with a Mitsogho shaman in Gabon. The shaman describes how male mandrills, which routinely compete for dominance over their meandering bands, use iboga root to hype themselves for competition.

According to the shaman, the primates seek out iboga, pluck it from the ground, eat the roots, wait for their high to settle in, then prepare for battle. Its unclear whatperformance-enhancing benefitstheyre experiencing, but its possible that the psychedelic could induce a pain-killing effect and improve reaction time.

The three above are only a small sampling of potential animals that eat psychedelics. Its often cited thatbighorn sheeppursue impossible-to-reach psychedelic lichen off the Canadian Rockies to get that Rocky Mountain high.

Moreover, lemurs and other types of monkeys rub toxic millipedes on their bodies to apply a mosquito-killing pesticide. They also nibble on the millipede, which appears to give them a little high. Whether that high is hallucinogenic or not is unclear.

But, what is clear is that the animal kingdom certainly has its fair share of fascination with altered states and chasing the dragon, proving once again that humans arent as unique as we often like to think.

Read more:

Animals That Eat Psychedelics And Enjoy The Trip - Benzinga - Benzinga

Mind. Body. Control. Uncover the dark truth inPower Trip, a new investigative series with original reporting fromNew YorkMagazine.

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images

On this weeks episode ofCover Story,host iO Tillett Wright and collaborator Lily Kay Ross look at the practices of Salvador Roquet, a Mexican psychotherapist who is known as the master of bad trips. By understanding how Roquet influenced Franoise Bourzat and her husband Aharon Grossbard, we realize that boundary-crossing may be inherently baked into the psychedelic guide training that caused harm to both Lily and Susan, and that they are far from alone in experiencing abuse at the hands of those who are supposed to be their therapists and guides.

Mind. Body. Control. Uncover the dark truth inPower Trip, a new investigative series with original reporting fromNew YorkMagazine.

To hear more about Roquets methods and the moment Susan decided to leave the psychedelic community, listen and subscribe for free onApple Podcastsor wherever you listen, and find the full transcript below.

Just a quick note: This series deals with sexual assault, so please keep that in mind when you decide when and where to listen. As in previous episodes, weve changed the names and voices of some of the people that weve interviewed to protect their identities. Also, at the very beginning of the episode, there are brief sounds of porn and violent war scenes.

iO Tillett Wright: Imagine youre lying on a floor. Lights are flashing and projectors are playing movies on all the walls. The Mexican psychiatrist Salvador Roquet has given you LSD, maybe mescaline. Youre tripping your face off.

The projectors start playing porn and murder and war scenes from The Dirty Dozen. You put a blindfold on and you get hit with ear-bustlingly loud music. Theres a classical piece from Debussy with a Japanese synth cover of the same song by Tomita layered over the top, just slightly off enough to feel fucked up. Then Balinese chanting starts, layered over the classical, then dad rock Quicksilver Messenger Service and Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead, all at once. Then Ravi Shankar comes in, like auditory whipped cream on your nightmare sundae.

Then Roquets assistants start walking around banging pots and pans, for some god-awful reason, holding live microphones up to you while you freak the fuck out. Hours later, youre still high as a kite and one of the assistants comes up and says, Cliff, were going to give you a shot of ketamine. Would that be okay?

Were talking about the conductor of this chaos orchestra, one of the founding fathers of modern psychedelic therapy And also, one of Franoise Bourzats teachers.

In the 70s, Salvador Roquet was called a master of bad trips. Those bad trips, horrifyingly, were by design, to help people get past their deepest primal fears of death and sex, and mommy. We called up a guy who worked closely with Roquet for a long time to understand what the fuck.

Dr. Abraham Sussman: His model came from the realization that just below the surface in most human beings is a roaring river of instinct and feeling and wild capacity and terror. From his point of view, in giving up our access to this primal stew, many people in the modern world have given up their feeling, their heart, their sense of life, their sense of discovery, their sense of amazement, and that intention of therapy is to help people recover that sense of amazement.

Wright: Roquet gave people high doses of psychedelics, blasted music and disturbing imagery at them, and observed as they completely began to crumble.

Dr. Sussman: He took lots of risks with everyone, which was his genius and his brilliance

Wright: Cliff Bernstein, the guy who got that surprise ketamine shot, says that it probably wasnt a great thing to offer him while he was super high, but overall, he still had a positive experience.

Cliff Bernstein: My ego, gone. I did not know I had a name, I didnt know I had a history. I was flying above highway 580 in Oakland. And I could feel the wind somehow. I remember the headlights of cars down below.

Wright: To help his clients come back to earth Roquet ended his sessions with something like group therapy, where everyone re-integrated and talked through what happened for them.

At other points in his career he was different. In 2002, Roquets name came up in a lawsuit. A former student dissident named Federico Emery Ulloa accused Roquet of using some of the same techniques from his psychedelic sessions to torture detained activists in the 60s. Supposedly, Roquet was trying to treat them, make them better citizens. Although Sussman says he had another motive.

Dr. Sussman: Ive talked with Salvador about that. He was in a bind, the authorities were going to shut him down. They were going to put him in jail.

Wright: But Emery has described the torture in detail. In interviews and testimonies, he said Roquet drugged him against his will, blasted him with pornographic films at full volume, and then participated in an interrogation that left him in his own words in a state of terror. Emery Ulloa later called it psychological torture and said it affected him for the rest of his life.

Dr. Roquet himself ended up going to jail twice in the 70s. Once in Mexico, and again in the U.S., for giving people drugs during sessions. So he developed a drug-free version of his practice, where psychedelics were replaced with things like breathing techniques and fasting and sleep deprivation

Franoise Bourzat: drama therapy and artwork and ritual and bioenergetics and

Wright: When we talked to Franoise Bourzat, she said she and her husband Aharon Grossbard hes the one who introduced her to Salvador actually ran these drug-free Roquet-style retreats for a good ten years.

Franoise Bourzat: And he called that Convivencia.

Wright: Like, convivium. The name that Lily remembers floating around at the underground meeting of guides that she went to. They were a bunch of renegade healers, passing down their methods including their work with psychedelics and adapting them along the way. It was Roquet, Franoise, her husband Aharon, and another important mentor of theirs, named Pablo Sanchez.

Franoise Bourzat: The mushrooms and the LSD, and then the ketamine and the music for eight hours and all this preparatory work, the long integration after and the no sleeping all that was Salvadors style.

Wright: Twenty-plus years later, Lily and Dave get on the phone with Susan, this woman whod been enrolled in Franoise and Aharons underground training to become a psychedelic therapist.

Lily Kay Ross: One of the things that I asked Susan about pretty early on was whether Salvador Roquet had come up in the training. The reason I was asking her was that I had stumbled on his name in Franoises book and then Id been on this week-long, obsessive bender trying to scoop up everything that I could find about this guy.

Wright: Susan showed us the hand-written notes she took at the training. Theres a whole section on lineage, where Franoise and Aharons ideas come from. And Salvador Roquet is central. Susans fast cursive says, Father of our work. But when she talked to Lily, Susan told her she was a little disturbed by the readings about Roquet.

Ross: Its starting to shake her confidence in the underground training.

Wright: Why?

Ross: Part of the issue is that before the training, the things that had upset her about her therapy with Eyal, she thought were just because it was Eyal. She thought that hes an outlier. But now shes starting to wonder whether some of these practices might be baked into the therapy and the history. The music and the way they talk about primal instincts and directing the psychedelic sessions like hes a movie director or something rather than just letting people have their own experiences. So at the training, Franoise goes on to speak about Pablo Sanchez, whose teachings shes also held up as important of her lineage.

Susan: And then, one of the guys in the group yelled out, I heard that you had a relationship with Pablo Sanchez! to Franoise.

Ross: Ive asked Francoise and she told me that her mentors did not cross boundaries with her. But I can say that Dave and I have now talked to 8 people who say that Franoises mentor Pablo Sanchez was having some sexual contact with women he was treating in his psychedelic therapy sessions. Almost everyone we spoke to told us that Franoise was one of the women that Pablo Sanchez had a sexual relationship with. I talked to one man who had been very close to Sanchez for about a decade and he also confirmed witnessing the relationship. So Susans second weekend of training comes up. Franoises husband Aharon arrives and Susan says that she sees scratches on his face.

Susan: So one of the men in the cohort, I was talking to him on the break and he was like, I did a journey with Aharon last night and I attacked him.

Ross: So this gets at the idea that in this group, sometimes people are encouraged to fight with their therapists as though thats healing.

Susan: He was like, I was already on a really high dose of mushrooms. And then he had me snort 5-MeO-DMT and I attacked him. But after that, I saw him as God. And then it was like, okay, break over. I remember I was like, okay, thats weird.

Ross: So it was around this time that Susan started hearing first and secondhand accounts of men who were struggling to figure out whether the kind of touching that had happened in their psychedelic sessions including sometimes touching of genitals and anal areas was okay with them.

Wright: What did they tell people was going to happen in regards to touch? What did people consent to?

Ross: Theres no reality in which a client could possibly consent to something like that.

Wright: Im currently reading a web page called Therapy Never Includes Sexual Behavior. Its from the California Department of Consumer Affairs, and it says: Sexual contact of any kind between a therapist and a client is unethical and illegal in the State of California. And this is even for two years after therapy ends. The site lists warning signs. They are unwanted physical contact, telling a client that they are special, or that the therapist loves them, excessive out of session communication, inviting a client to a meal, dating, isolating a client from friends and family, and fostering dependency on the therapist, and so on and so on. The site also says: It is always the responsibility of the therapist to ensure that sexual contact with a client, whether consensual or not, does not occur. So, like Lily said, consent does not apply here.

If you read Susans notes from her training with Franoise and Aharon, they also, by the way, say no sexual touching is allowed. But in their training manual, they suggest students may seek further education in techniques like sexual healing work with substances. Which may include, sexual contact between client and guide.

Ross: By the time Susan gets to her 3rd training session, shes getting pretty freaked out. Aharon starts talking about what he calls borderline people. Referring to Borderline Personality Disorder.

Susan: Youre always going to get those borderline people that come to you and will claim youre not doing the right thing. Or if someone criticizes this work, its because theyre borderline. (giggle)

Ross: And at another retreat, Susan says Aharon brings it up again.

Susan: He said, weve been sued multiple times. And then I raised my hand and I was like, well, what do you do when you get sued?

Wright: Heres what we know: theres one lawsuit from a former client that Franoise and Aharon settled. And another instance where they say they paid money to a former client who accused Aharon of inappropriate touch. In both cases, they denied any wrongdoing. After this one retreat that involves taking MDMA, Susan is driving home and has this run-in with an angry driver. Where they pull over and the guy comes up to her window and is carrying a gun. And Susan says that shes weirdly isnt afraid.

Susan: It got me reflecting on how much I wasnt having normal reactions to the things going on.

Ross: And in the thick of the confrontation, she realizes she doesnt have a fear response to whats happening.

Wright: Wait, wait, wait. This is not a hallucination? This is a real thing?

Ross: Yeah.

Wright: Jesus Christ.

Susan: It made me start to think about how my perception was altered so much and my reaction to things was maybe dulled down. You dont want to just eliminate fear. Fear serves a purpose for us as human beings. Its important to be afraid when there is danger.

Ross: So Susan is finally like, Okay, something is wrong here. And shes been working with this new mentor for a while, a woman that she likes. She goes to her and she tells her about all the stories shes heard about people being touched in ways that bothered them. And then, evidently, her mentor goes to Franoise.

Susan: She wrote back to me an email and it said, I spoke with Francoise this weekend. All of the things you shared with me are incorrect.

Ross, reading the email: Hi Susan. I did speak with Franoise this weekend and it seems that most of the information you were given was not correct, which can be a danger if it does not come from the people who are directly involved in the situation.

Susan: And you should tell the person who told you to stop telling people about them.

Ross: So its around this time Susan decides to get the fuck out. Thats when she makes the call to this other podcaster and eventually, she gets sent to us. And we started doing video calls.

Susan: I was searching all podcasts for anything because I wanted to see if there was something about the way psychedelics can be used for mind control and manipulation.

Ross: Its one of the things I think about a lot that people take a certain refuge in the idea that theyre immune.

Susan: Yeah, people think like, oh, youre dumb or you fell for this thing or that wouldnt happen to me.

Ross: Uh-huh.

Susan: I was realizing this, this potential of this openness that Id read about in the scientific literature that psychedelics provide. Flip the wording on that and its suggestibility. I think the psychedelics put me in a really vulnerable state and suggestible state. A porous state. If youre using marketing tools on someone on psychedelics, its going to work.

Ross: Susans experience before she met us was pretty isolated. Like why am I the only one thats so alarmed by this? But ever since Susan contacted us weve been digging.

Wright: What have you found?

Ross: Have you buckled your second seatbelt?

Wright:Were talking about Franoise Bourzat, the psychedelic guide who, when I first talked to her, made me feel like I wanted her to guide me.

Franoise Bourzat:We have trained hundreds of people, And were doing that in Jamaica. And were training people in Canada. We have been training trainers here.

Wright:So shes been a trainer of trainers. But Lilys now got a different picture.

Ross:So in the last 20 months, weve spoken to about a dozen people who say they felt harmed working with Franoise or Aharon or one of the people that theyve trained. And weve talked to another half dozen people who say that they have witnessed harm or have been told about it directly from a person who was hurt.

Wright:Oh fuck.

Ross:I think one of the refrains that comes up a lot, that Ive been thinking about a lot, is that this isnt bad apples, this is bad ideas. Dangerous ideas.

Wright:Sorry. But it sounds like a bad tree.

Ross:Or maybe a whole orchard?

Wright:Mmm.

Ross:Of course, the problem is the same as its always been in this world, which is that if you say something is dangerous, people are really quick to be like, shut the fuck up. Were trying to get these drugs legal. Youre gonna mess it all up. They make it out as if talking about real harm is more of a problem than the actual harm thats being done.

Wright:I want to just clarify something, I dont hear you saying that psychedelics are bad. Is that correct?

Ross:Yeah Like its not the drugs, its the people.

Wright:Right.

Ross:I appreciate you bringing it up because I dont want these drugs to be illegal. I think if youre going to market them as a therapy to people who are suffering from PTSD or depression or conditions they havent been able to kick, people whove experienced sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape those people are the most vulnerable to the things that can go wrong and can be the most hurt by it. Thats part of why I think its so important to talk about.

Wright:Tell me your stories.

Ross:So one of the first things that we found is a lawsuit that was filed against Franoise and Aharon more than 20 years ago in 2000. My friend put in a request for the court records, but we had to wait a couple of weeks because they had to pull the physical court records out of a warehouse somewhere. The man who sued them had gone to them for therapy. Were not going to say his name to protect his privacy. But the case was settled and he signed an NDA.

Wright:What did he say happened?

Ross:So the first thing I want to say is that Franoise has denied the allegations that he makes. She has said that these are false claims and that they only settled the case to protect her work and their children. And I have spoken to Francqoise about this, but well get to that later. The initial complaint is over 40 pages long, and were pretty disturbed by it.

Wright:Wait, thats a really important factor to me, because if theyre saying that its patently made up, thats a lot of made up.

Ross:Yeah. The lawsuit says that Franoise supplied him with various drugs that she said would open him up during their sessions. It says she told him that he needed to fall apart. So theres that idea of breaking people down or breaking down their resistance to heal them. Salvador Roquet rears his stroboscopic light head again.

It was 1994 when he first came to Franoise for help. By the next year, the suit says that Franoise began having sexual contact with this man and it lasted for almost five years. It says Franoise was kissing him and encouraging him to kiss her. She told him that their kissing was therapeutic. The lawsuit says she had harmful and offensive contact with his sexual organs, groin, and buttocks, and that she told him that their actions were necessary for his emotional health, healing, and growth. And that his, and this is a quote, passion needed awakening.

Wright:What?

Ross:She told him that her love would heal him.

Wright:Oy.

Ross:Yeah, it looks like youre having that moment where its like you can talk to Franoise and then you get this other information, and suddenly a bunch of things she says mean very different things.

Wright:Yeah, especially when its presented through this lens of we are here for healing, we take care of each other, we heal each other.

Ross:The case also outlines a really important point that comes to bear in a lot of these cases. The lawsuit says that he had begun to see Franoise as an all-loving mother figure and that with the drugs and their practices, he was in a regressed, childlike state. That made consent impossible. The lawsuit does a really good job of explaining how a therapist can abuse the childlike trust that people might have for them. Are you familiar with the idea of transference?

Wright:When you misplace something on someone else, right?

Ross:Like transferring the feelings that you might have towards a parent onto the therapist. I think it is a thing that happens and that professionals are taught to work with. Its like, if youre projecting your mother feelings on me, why dont we unpack what thats about? And that could even include if theyre expressing sexual feelings, but it can go bad where the therapist exploits those feelings.

Wright:Yeah, that seems pretty bad.

Ross:So this client alleges that Franoise gave him drugs to help him break down his inhibitions and amplify his sexual feelings. And instead of helping him understand those feelings, the lawsuitsays that she attempted to fulfill his infantile fantasies and desires as well as her own. These kinds of experiences make it really hard to trust a future therapist. How do you trust a therapist again, after your therapist does these things to you?

I think its worth pointing out too, that like all the while, as this lawsuit alleges, this man was getting worse, not better. And the lawsuit points out that Franoise isnt even a licensed psychotherapist, even though she presents herself as one.

Wright:Shes not?

Ross:No. She is working under the supervision of her husband, which is why he is also part of the lawsuit. And all this time, theyre both having him do various little side jobs for them, so hes gardening and hes babysitting their kids. Under the care of Franoise and Aharon, he gets more depressed than ever. He loses a lot of weight and develops asthma. He starts having anxiety and panic attacks and at a certain point, becomes suicidal.

Read more here:

Bad Hug - The Cut

Beautiful sunset in Menorca Island, Spain with the sunraysrays of the sun coming through the clouds and falling towards the sea

During Seth Wilsons last ketamine treatment, he set an intention to see his late mother. Wilson, a 41-year-old sommelier who owns a wine shop in Chicago, has been dealing with depression and anxiety since he was 13 years old and sought psychedelic-assisted therapy to get better. Coincidentally, this session happened to be on what wouldve been his mothers 77th birthday. He put on eyeshades, headphones and sat back in a leather recliner as he was injected with 110 milligrams of the dissociative anesthetic ketamine.

Within seconds, he was blasted into the cosmos and felt her presence. His mother took him to experience her birth and showed him the afterlife.

I can remember being part of this liquid world and as we're in this space together, she said, your birth is my birth, and we are the same, Wilson recounts.

He says the experience helped him deal with the trauma of his mothers death and helped him manage his anxiety and depression by showing him there is more to life than the physical world.

This is the answer; this is what it feels like to be beyond Earth, his mother said to him. It was an incredibly profound and moving experience.

Humans have used psychedelics in cultural and religious rituals for thousands of years. Over the last 80 years, these powerful substances have been adopted for self-help, mental health, and recreational purposes. At the same time, Americans are becoming less religious. In 1999, 70% of Americans said they were a member of a church, synagogue or mosque but that number fell to 47% in 2020. The number of people affiliated with any religion has plummeted: 29% of Americans identified as agnostic or atheist in 2021, up from 18% in 2011, according to thePew Research Center.Now that the psychedelic renaissance is underway and companies and nonprofits are racing to get these molecules approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as medicines when combined with therapy to treat depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, one question seems important: Is it the drugs, or is it divine experiences thats making people feel better?

In our apostate culture, could the secret be that we just all need some spirituality, and these molecules are helping?

For Wilson, he says the divine experience, coupled with multiple sessions of therapy over three weeks, gave him the breakthrough that decades of anti-depressants and traditional talk therapy couldnt.

Were all searching for the ineffable and its so deeply personal, he says. I think the word God can be triggering for people, but its about this trust and faith that there is something bigger and grander than ourselves. And that this physical world doesnt matter, and all our problems dont matterthere is something greater.

Alex Belser, the chief clinical officer of Cybin, a Toronto-based psychedelic therapeutics startup, has been studying psychedelics for two decades and has conducted clinical trials of psilocybin and MDMA as potential treatments for depression, substance use, post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Belser says eliciting mystical-type experiences is one of the prevailing theories about why psychedelic-assisted therapy reduces symptoms in patients with depression, anxiety, and other conditions. During many clinical trials, patients are given the Mystical Experience Questionnaire,a 30-question self-report that is used to measure the effects of hallucinogens. The questions a patient answers are rather woo-woodid you have a profound sense of unity, a strong sense of awe, a feeling of interconnectedness with other people and all things, a sense of ineffability, a sense of timelessness? but he says for many studies there has been a correlation between high mystical scores and greater reduction in a patients symptoms.

This is a strong predictor of effectiveness in psychedelic medicines, says Belser, who is a licensed psychologist and a psychedelic researcher at Yale University.

Belser says definitive conclusions cannot be drawn yet as the mechanism of action for psychedelic drugs is still a black box and too much weight should not be given to divine experiences.

Florian Brand, the CEO and cofounder of Atai Life Sciences, a publicly traded German biosciences company focused on psychedelics and mental health, says its still speculation but the mystical experience does seem to have some significance in patient outcomes.

There might be benefits [from the mystical experience], Brand says. I think there are multiple factors that could contribute to the efficacy, yet it's still early days to say that it's the divine experience.

I do think for many people the connection to spirituality and the divine often plays a very powerful, interesting role in the healing.

Atai is the largest investor in Compass Pathways, a U.K.-based clinical stage company that is developinga patented form of psilocybinthe active compound in magic mushroomsto be used in conjunction with therapy to treat depression. Having undergone a psychedelic-assisted therapy session with psilocybin, Brand says the mystical experience he had helped him.

From a spiritual perspective, I personally can say that I wasn't religious or spiritual at all before undergoing my very first psilocybin-assisted therapy session, says Brand. Coming out of it, I definitely have a different access to spirituality compared to going into the session.

Lars Christian Wilde, the president, chief business officer, and cofounder of Compass Pathways, says patients have different ways to describe a mystical experience but no matter the description an intense experience correlates to a positive therapeutic outcome.

Some people say, Wow, I met God, while others say, Wow, I understood that my ego is an illusion, says Wilde. Depending on what your cultural anchor you have a different way to describe that experience, but indeed, it seems to be critically important for the therapeutic effect of not only psilocybin, but probably many of the serotonergic substances.

In November, Compass Pathways published data from its much-anticipated phase 2b clinical trialon psilocybin-assisted therapy for treatment-resistant depression. The study found that patients who took a single psychedelic dose of psilocybin, 25mg, in conjunction with therapy reported almost immediate and significant reduction in depressive symptoms that lasted weeks compared with patients who were given a placebo dose.

Wilde says more research needs to be done but it seems that when a person has an intense psychedelic experience, they have a bigger reset effect on the brain.

The reason psychedelic drugs have been found to alleviate symptoms of depression and PTSD in clinical trials, it is thought, is due the signaling of the 5-HT-2A receptor, which sparks whats called neuroplasticity.Neuroplasticity helps the brain form new neural connections, which is believed to generate rapid and sustained positive mood effects. In a slate of studies, psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy and MDMA-assisted therapy have provided almost immediate reductions in symptoms of depression and PTSD after a single high dose. The effects last months in some patients.

Prescription sales for depression is estimated to be $50 billion a year globally, while the mental health market is worth about $100 billion in annual sales. Biotech analysts say that FDA-approved psychedelic-assisted therapy could seize billions in annual sales if approved by the FDA.

Natalie Ginsberg, the global impact officer of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, says there is a great history of the intersection between psychoactive drugs, religion, and healing. From medicine healers in indigenous cultures to the role of cannabis in Judaismthe drug is mentioned in the Torah and was found at an altar outside of Jerusalem from 800 B.C.

I do think for many people the connection to spirituality and the divine often plays a very powerful, interesting role in the healing, says Ginsberg.

Psychedelic research pioneer Rick Doblin, who founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in 1986,has dedicated his lifes work to psychedelic drugs. MAPS is currently trying to bring MDMA-assisted therapy to market as an FDA-approved treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. In May, his organization released data from its phase three trial on MDMA-assisted therapy with shockingly positive results. The double-blind, placebo-controlledstudyfound that 67% of participants who received MDMA combined with psychotherapy no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis, compared with 32% in the placebo group. Doblin is hopeful that FDA approval is within the next couple of years.

But Doblin says at least for patients with PTSD undergoing MDMA-assisted therapy, there is no connection between mystical experiences and better therapeutic outcomes. It doesn't seem to show up and be important to reduce PTSD symptoms, says Doblin.

Master of Molly: Rick Doblin, the founder of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. MAPS is likely to become the first company to gain FDA approval for MDMA-assisted therapy to treat PTSD.

Doblin says the mystical experience does seem to have some benefits, especially for people with depression, but he is cautious to give these types of experiences too much credit.

There are people that get better without having a mystical experience and there are people that have a mystical experience without getting better, says Doblin. Correlation is not the same as causation.

Doblin says it is important to realize that the drugs are not the therapy, but that the drugs enhance therapy. The risk of pinning too much on achieving a mystical experience, Doblin explains, is that you can avoid dealing with and working through the problems that brought you to therapy in the first place. The point is to deal with your problems, not avoid them.

You [dont want to] just talk about, how, Oh, I'm all one with the universe, but then you come back down and yell at your wife, Doblin explains.

The best way to look at it is like the spectrum of the rainbow, Doblin continues. There's all these different colors, and these are all layers of consciousness, and you need all of them together. If you focus on just biography, like Freud did, and you ignore spirituality, it's incomplete. But if you focus only on the spiritual and not on the biographical, it's similarly incomplete.

More:

How Seeing God Might Be The Secret To The Most Cutting-Edge Mental Health Treatments - Forbes

December tends to be a time of reflection, and despite all the ups and downs of the stock market (and our sanity) over the last 365 days, The Dales Report is chalking it up to a good yearnot just for psychedelics, but for our team and our platform.

In 2021, we ramped up our efforts considerably to bring our audience more of what we want to see, welcoming new writers and hosts and covering additional verticals to keep up with the latest market trends. We also worked hard to connect on a deeper level with our audience this year, through new podcasts, more activity on social media, and a handful of contests.

After a year and a half of Zoom meetings, the year brought some fun IRL opportunities our way. The TDR team made trips to Las Vegas and Miami for two of the biggest cannabis and psychedelics conferences of the year, MJBizCon and Microdose: Wonderland, where we finally got to meet the people (and not just pixels) behind so many of the companies we cover from week to week.

The Dales Report wouldnt be where we are without our audience. Every tweet, like, and share helps get our work in front of more eyeballs, and for a small media company with just a few team members, that goes a long way. Whether youre a day trader, a self-identifying psychonaut, or a retail investor with a growing curiosity in cannabis or psychedelics, we count ourselves lucky to have you.

To our clients and interviewees: making sense of the capital markets is one thing, but a whole new layer of nuance is introduced in the cannabis and psychedelics industries, where the body of science continues to grow but policy has yet to catch up. Were grateful to our various guests for the insights theyve shared with us and for the opportunities we get to look under the hoods of some of the fastest-growing companies in the space.

From all of us at The Dales Report (and the executives who were kind enough to send in video clips), thank you for your support during what has been a challenging year in more ways than one. Wishing you and those you love a safe, peaceful holiday and all the best for 2022.

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Happy Holidays From The Dales Report Team - The Dales Report