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Psychedelics Today

Psychedelics Today is the planetary leader in psychedelic education, media, and advocacy. Covering up-to-the-minute developments and diving deep into crucial topics bridging the scientific, academic, philosophical, societal, and cultural, Psychedelics Today is leading the discussion in this rapidly evolving ecosystem.
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Now displaying: September, 2018
Sep 27, 2018

In this episode of Psychedelics Today, Kyle and Joe dig into and create conversation over an email received about the cost of psychedelics, the facets of capitalism and about feeling isolated after a psychedelic experience.

3 Key Points:

  1. Capitalism in psychedelics is a complex topic and includes factors such as the schooling system, the medical system, monopoly, trade, and other facets that go into the cost of psychedelics.
  2. There are other forms of therapy that don’t have to involve psychedelics or lots of money.
  3. Feeling isolated after an experience is sometimes our own blockage, by refusing to create community because a person hasn’t had the same experience as us. Psychedelics aren't always needed for a psychedelic experience.

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Navigating Psychedelics

Navigating Psychedelics


Show Notes

Email concern: Some psychedelic experiences seem segregated by a price bracket.
Ketamine Therapy - believed it would help with their depression, but ended up spending a thousand dollars every two weeks.

Joe - curious that ketamine lozenges may be a cheaper option that could help.
Kyle - although the drug itself may be cheap, you’re not just paying for the lozenges, you're paying for a therapist or a psychiatrist.
Kyle - in America, healing is a privilege. We work hard to pay for health insurance, or even if we are insured through work or family, it gets hard to pay for because of the premiums.
“I would rather pay for taking care of myself, than going out and partying with friends.”
Healing may have to be a choice sadly, you may have to ask yourself “do I want this or do I need this?”
Joe - One treatment of ketamine is beneficial for a short-term intervention in an urgent state
One session of ketamine therapy helps the user understand the situation clearer and can reduce the thoughts of suicide
Kyle - “some of my greatest healing experiences were done through my own work, with myself or with friends”

“How do you feel about the resurgence of spirituality and psychedelics and it’s capitalism?”
Joe - Going from the states to Peru to do ayahuasca to reach spiritualism isn't the only means of spirituality. There are so many other options than capitalist outlets to find spiritual development.
Kyle - “I want to offer a lot of help, and do free workshops, but need money to survive.”
Joe - Jokingly “You’re three months behind on your rent Terrence!”


A person doesn't need hundreds of trips to be complete and happy, Aldous Huxley says you need three to four strong trips throughout your life.
“How do we protect the planet, and how do we maintain freedom?”

To talk about Capitalism and psychedelics, we are assuming that something needs to mediate the trade or exchange for therapy. Let’s continue to educate ourselves so that we don’t blame capitalism on the fact that therapy has a cost. It’s a hard conversation to have, it’s a complex topic.
Joe - pro-socialized medicine
$30,000 for a first responder to take an overdose death away
$20-$30 for a Narcan
Let’s prevent and heal more. Capitalism does incentivize doctors and healers.
Kyle - “how can we use these as tools and not toys?”
Medicalization of psychedelics may have a potential tie to capitalism
The difference between doing it legally for an extremely high price, versus paying the market price for a gram of mushrooms (illegally) and doing the work (therapy) on your own.
Joe - Monopoly=capitalism
Kyle - the Education system
Student loan debt can be a half a million dollars to be a doctor or therapist
That debt plays an effect on how much those doctors or therapists charge

“How do you deal with isolationism that certain psychedelic experiences bring forward?”
Kyle - “this has been a huge issue in my life, this resonates with me. After having my near-death experience, I didn't know to talk to people, how to function in the world. A near-death experience is one of the most psychedelic things. To slowly slip away and ‘die’, and come back to this place and not feel like this is where I belong, how do I exist here? It can lead to isolation. It can be extremely heavy.”
“We're all experiencing this reality through our own lens, so we have to meet people where they are.”
The reason these experiences can make us feel lonely is that of the lack of community. Kyle believes in not just constantly going into these experiences, but more about the integration of the experiences.
Joe - Tim Leary says “Find the others”. But there are a lot of psychedelic people out there who don't take psychedelics that can be a part of your ‘community’.
Kyle - it makes sense to feel like you need to connect with someone who has done psychedelics in order for them to understand, but we can connect with other people who may not have had psychedelic experiences.
The psychedelic experience isn't the only way. We can also experience spiritualism and healing without psychedelics, too.
Kyle - Experience in Jamaica, the Rastas talking about home and family, “if the oil splashes up and burns me, my family isn't here to help me, but you're here to help me, and you can help me.”
The people around me are family, they don't always need to have had experienced the same things as me in order to help me
Joe - group strengthens self
Robert Anton Wilson’s habit - he would order magazine subscriptions and most subscriptions aligned with his interests, and the other half were of subscriptions way outside of his interests, so he wouldn't develop a bias.


Check out this FREE online course, "Introduction to Psychedelics"Navigating Psychedelics: Introduction To Psychedelics (101)

Sep 18, 2018
Download In this episode of Psychedelics Today, Joe interviews Shane LeMaster, Therapist and host of the new Podcast, Conversations with the Mind. In this discussion, we cover personal journeying, changing behavioral processes, Jiu Jitsu and where we are headed as a collective consciousness.

3 Key Points:

  1. Psychedelics can be a helpful tool for personal journey work.
  2. Each type of psychedelic works as its own tool. They are all useful in their own context and should not be compared to each other as better or worse.
  3. Shane has used psychedelic therapy to help rewire past imprinted constructs of his mind to learn new behaviors in his Jiu Jitsu practice and his daily life.

Support the show

Navigating Psychedelics


Show Notes

Using Psychedelics for personal journey work
  • How we can enhance growth using these substances
Big journey work sessions bring large insights
  • “Recently, I’ve been working on softening my hard edges”
  • Construct – the scared child. Our childhood leaves imprints that effect our behavior as adults.
  • Hyper-masculinity is a result of repressing past issues.
Are there different messages after a journey in ketamine versus peyote?
  • Substances produce a different feeling as if there is an “other” or “entity” that sends the messages where with breathwork it’s more of a self realization
  • Drug chauvanism “my drug is better than your drug”
    • “Is lsd worse than mushrooms for spiritual development? Or breathwork? We can’t say yes or no definitively.” -Joe
    • Stan Grof – “why would you do breathwork if you have lsd?”
    • “There is something special about the group work process in breathwork, that deeper sense of connection is hugely valuable.” -Joe
  • Some substances are better when done alone in some circumstances, and substances used in a community setting as better for different circumstances. We have a choice in which tool
  • “You can’t build a house with just a hammer. If lsd is a hammer and ketamine is a saw, you can’t say a hammer is better than a saw, they are both essential.”
Ketamine in Fort Collins, CO
  • Dr. Scott Shannon
Shane
  • Therapist, making great changes but small changes, looking to make a greater impact through social work, helping people to better themselves.
  • Interest in mindfulness, positivity interventions, helping people see their power to fix their own issues
The changing landscape of how we understand consciousness
  • DMT vape pens
    • Make it more convenient for the consumer
    • Democratizes the experience, knocks down barriers to be able to have a profound experience
  • Podcasts – creating conversation about a shift in consciousness
  • Elon musk – our intelligence is heightened through proper use of the cell phone
  • Stan Grof – technology of the sacred (ex. Breathwork)
  • Tim Leary – “hedonic engineering” how to live a maximally more pleasurable life
    • Positive psychology meets wearable technology – developing the steps to the most enjoyable life
  • Tim Ferriss twitter feed - “Creation is a better means of self expression than possession, it is through creating not possessing that life is revealed.”
  • “Be a creative force in the universe, it feels so good to create, and bring something to fruition, and share it with everybody, not to possess it.” -Shane
Conversations with the mind – Shane’s podcast
  • “One mind having a conversation with another mind. Two minds interacting, sharing knowledge, sharing distress, sharing solution, and adding the sum of the two parts coming together, and sharing it with the collective mind.” - Shane on the purpose behind his podcast
  • Guests on the show
    • How psychedelics help in jiu jitsu
    • PhD credential people
    • PTSD patients
Advice from Stan Grof
  • 30-60 days without alcohol is needed before using Breathwork for therapy when treating alcoholism
Analogy – default brain behavior
  • like sledding down a hill, we always choose the same route. With psychedelics, it helps us see a new route. You stand up, and for the first time, you look up and take a 360 degree turn and see so many new routes that you have the choice to take.
    • Analogy used to reprocesses trauma, brings new options to think about the experience differently
  • Microdosing helps bring out new patterns of behavior to learn new skills
  • “In wrestling, the last place you want to be is on your back, that’s when you get pinned, that’s when you lose a match. In jiu jitsu, being in your back is a good place to be, because there’s a lot of options from there. So I had to unlearn the fear of being on my back. It’s all about retraining my neural pathways, retraining my thinking.” -Shane
Jiu Jitsu
  • It’s been said, earning a black belt is as much time and effort as earning a PhD
  • The transferable skills of Jiu Jitsu can be used in therapy, breathwork and integrating psychedelic experiences. It’s all consciousness work.

Link

www.mind-ops.com Conversations with the Mind - Shane's podcast https://anchor.fm/shane-lemaster

Check out this FREE online course, "Introduction to Psychedelics"Navigating Psychedelics: Introduction To Psychedelics (101)


About Shane

Shane LeMasterShane earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology from the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO, completed extensive coursework towards a Master of Arts Degree in Sport & Performance Psychology at the University of Denver, and earned his Master of Arts Degree in Sport & Exercise Psychology from Argosy University. Shane is nationally certified as a Sport Psychology Consultant and a licensed mental health clinician in the state of Colorado.  Having worked in community non-profit mental health since 2008, Shane has gained experience working with the entire spectrum of mental disorders and with all populations and age groups.  Shane plans on attending a Ph.D program in Counseling Psychology where his interest in Resiliency, Mental Toughness, and Mindfulness Training Program Development can be explored and further developed. He is a life-long athlete having competed at various levels in more than a dozen different sports.  Because of his passion for warrior cultures of past and present, Shane has been ardently developing his own “Warriorship,” training in various forms of Martial Arts for 25 years.  Shane feels that the self-discipline, the philosophy of non-violence, the innumerable mental and physical benefits, and the enjoyment that he gains from the Martial Arts is what helped drive his passion in the field of Psychology. His personal interest in Eastern Philosophy stems from his adoption of a Buddhist lifestyle and blends well with his training in Western Psychological Science.  Clients describe Shane as an out-of-the-box clinician that is easy to get along with, knowledgeable on a variety of topics, credible with lived experience, and as having the ability to make therapy fun and interesting.
Sep 11, 2018
Download In this episode, Joe Moore interviews Mike from the podcast "End of the Road". Its a great podcast covering psychedelic and spiritual topics that are probably of interest to you. Mike is an attorney and he joins us to share some insights around patent law in the psychedelic space. Kyle and Joe were even feature on the show a few months back. Disclaimer - This interview is for informational purposes only, not for obtaining legal advice. “Opinions expressed by me, at my own only, and not my firms.” 3 Key Points:
  1. Patent law is worth understanding and shouldn't be ignored in our current psychedelic era.
  2. It can be used to help protect inventions and innovations that took time and money to develop.
  3. Patents aren't all bad. They can help protect the small guy as well and large corporations.

Support the show

Navigating Psychedelics


Show Notes

Patent on Ayahuasca
  • 1986 Boston College Law review article (source) Warren Miller, scientist and entrepreneur obtained a patent on a strain of ayahuasca vine.
  • 400 indigenous tribes challenged the validity of the patent. Controversy over the patent created hostility between Ecuador and US.
  • Patent criteria
  • A patent must be a process, machine, or manufacture or composition of matter. A patent does not depend on whether a composition of matter is living or non-living, but rather that it is altered and is not a naturally occurring substance.
  • Taking a plant from South America, and not altering it should not receive a patent.
  • Organizations owning a genome?
  • Transgenic modification – able to be patented
  • Plant patent – specific category
Psilocybin
  • Compass pathways – applied for a patent for growing psilocybin – “good manufacturing practice” global standard for manufacturing pharmaceuticals, know your dose each time, etc
  • Compass Pathways applied for a British patent called the “Preparation for Psilocybin”
    • FDA requires that you meet certain standards when you test a product for purity.
    • Trying to patent a pure form of psilocybin. “Non naturally occurring”
    • Using the patent as justification to cover the cost for FDA trials.
  • Group of scientists who created a statement on open practice – 4 point manifesto. (Ram Dass supports it) Trying to make it non-capitalistic – so no one can create a monopoly on it.
  • Full rights can bring the risk of unfair pricing moves
    • Martin Shkreli – marked up a life-saving drug by 3000x
    • Previous groups have decades of open sharing. Compass does not have the same origins
    • Scare – Compass marks up psilocybin. Could be unethical things happening within Compass, but not much journalism done here yet.
  • Once a patent is made, harder to make a similar patent.
    • Broad-based patents make it harder to create further patents down the line since they have to be novel or significantly different and precisely new
    • The process Compass is trying to patent is not the only way to produce GMP psilocybin, there are many other ways.
    • May pull a move that gives them special access to administer
  • Paul Stamets – psilocybin patent application
    • Using psilocybin and niacin for neural regeneration – a neural regenerated composition  based upon constituents isolated from or contained within mushroom fruit bodies or psilocybin or the corresponding synthetic molecules combined with niacin
    • Google patents – US PTO 154914503 filing date April 23, 2017, another in 2018
      • Claims - Mushrooms have improved memory, cognition, motor skills, complex computer coding challenges, hearing, sensory, vision, learning, promote neurogenesis. Therapeutic applications of psilocybin.
      • A broad patent that covers a large variety of application for using psilocybin therapeutically, not approved yet.
      • Probably would capitalize on the patent. Keen for data sharing and being public with his work.
      • Previous patent: Pesticide replacement – fungi that infects ants and brings them back to their homes. More effective than pesticide.
      • Good he applied for a patent – it would mean that it wouldn’t block people from accessing it or developing their own
  • Andrew Chadeayne – inventor and patent attorney
    • Has psilocybin patent update blog
    • Applied for patents in the psilocybin space
  • Monopoly law
    • If there is a popular drug used in the market, a drug company wanting to capitalize – it will cover all their bases with a patent
    • Daniel Pinchbeck – theories that could work (Marxist society)
    • Cuba – healthcare model – government funds certain health care practices for the public good/applications that the US would not.
    • A model that Marxists could use to get these products on the market vs capitalist model
    • The basic idea of patents: Inventor – creates a patent to protect the invention, not to dominate the market.
  • International Administration of Ketamine to treat Depression – Yale
    • Method for treating depression
  • University of California – scientists using “compounds for increasing neural plasticity”non-hallucinogenic catalog of psychedelic compounds
  • Novel devices for administration
    • Intranasal or inhalant administration method for THC, ketamine, etc.
  • SYQE – developed method of a delivery subject for Patent Protection
    • Full spectrum whole plant extract – different from a vaporizer
    • Pctil 2015 050676
    • Syqemedical.com
    • Smoking – route of administration dosing precision standard is 30%, their dose delivery is at 70%
  • Tel Aviv Israel – producing the lowest price per gram in the world of cannabis   
    • All cannabis being researched in the country must come from one specific facility – set the US back
  • German patent – synthetic ayahuasca DE201610014603
  • Open source model
    • Common law copyright and trademark protection
    • Laws changed in 2013 – first to file the patent first, gets the invention
      • Important to get patent protection early in the process
      • Provisional, and non-provisional patent. Provisional gives a year grace period to file non-provisional without all of the details of the full application.
    • Infusion pump technology – method of delivery (ex. DMT) controls the level of a substance in the blood for an undefined, extended period of time.
      • Insulin pumps – monitor and deliver
      • Raspberry pie devices – can buy a computer and program it to do specific functions. Ex. automated brewing system with temp controls.
      • DMTx – same computer could be programmed and applied to control the levels of DMT in the bloodstream

Links


Check out this FREE online course, "Introduction to Psychedelics"Navigating Psychedelics: Introduction To Psychedelics (101)


About Mike

Exploring the Horizons we never touch, because we are already there....with Michael. Mike is a patent lawyer with a long history in trial law. He has a great podcast that you should check out - End of the Road  
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