EFR 535: What is Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy and Using Ketamine to Treat Mental Health with Ronan Levy

Chase: All right, all right. All right. Welcome back to the show. Today's episode is going to be a very, very unique conversation. It is going to be a very personal one because the subject matter is something that I am personally going through as we speak. As I am recording this as Ronan and I were having our interview I have been going through psychedelic assisted psychotherapy and while I'm waiting for the entire experience, particularly going through ketamine assisted therapy, because I just wrapped the protocol I just wrapped the ketamine sessions, I just wrapped the group and individual therapy sessions. I'm still unpacking a lot of it to be honest, and I want to completely just take a breath and recognize the gravity of what I just went through. This was one of the most intense, deeply emotional and profound experiences of my life, but not to give away too many spoiler alerts. I'm going to save that for an upcoming solo episode so stay tuned, I will be talking about my entire experience using ketamine assisted psychotherapy through Field Trip health here in Los Angeles. And today's guest is one of the founders of Field Trip. So he and I discuss really, what is psychedelic assisted therapy. What are psychedelics? Why is this kind of the hot shit on the block right now? Why is this kind of coming back this resurgence from the 50s and 60s, and specifically what hope does it have for our mental health, our emotional health, even our physiological. I have experienced not only incredible benefits, healing profound benefits mentally and emotionally this last year using psychedelics such as MDMA, psilocybin and now ketamine but my body has quite literally become better my HRV has improved by 40%. And it has stayed elevated. All the biomarkers that I measure using my Apple Watch and Whoop have just been through the roof. It's been very, very just eye opening, to say the least. So Ronan and I are going to break down exactly what are psychedelics? What is psychedelic assisted therapy? And there's an incredible explanation here of this that I have pulled directly from the Field Trip website. And if you want to learn more about Ronan, and the work that he does, and the work that Field Trip does, I will have all this information listed for you down in the show notes. If you want to get complete show notes, learn more just any calls to action and all of that jazz, I put a link to the main website where you can get expanded notes and really dive deeper into this stuff. So just check the show notes, go to episode resources, tap that link to today's podcast episode on the main site at ever bored radio calm, and boom, I got you squared away. But what is psychedelic assisted therapy? While psychedelics for therapeutic healing have only recently come back into western medicine they are increasingly well supported by research and scientific evidence, and also have a rich history in other cultures dating back 1000s of years everybody, leading research institutions continue to contribute to the growing body of medical literature. So it's a little bit of the old, a little bit of the new the past meets the present and in my opinion, this is the future of medicine, damn sure the future of mental health medicine. Field Trips approach and treatment programs are based on mounting evidence and also honor the rituals and wisdom passed down through the generations. Being a psychedelic assisted therapy program means that they have integrated psychedelic medicine, with psychotherapy to treat conditions like treatment resistant depression and PTSD. Full disclosure, I'm an open book in my healing and wellness journey the main reason I went into Field Trip for this psychedelic assisted therapy is to treat and work on my PTSD. I have diagnosed PTSD, and I am just finally in a place in my life where not only do I feel the most ready to address this and work on this, but I want to, but then the question that begs to be asked is why combine psychedelics with psychotherapy? Why are we bridging these two worlds? Why are we bringing psychedelic drugs to traditional therapy modalities? Well, here's why. Here's what Field Trip believes. And I get behind I support this. Psychedelics can be a powerful catalyst for self discovery in healing, and oftentimes will serve as memories, feelings, and thoughts that have been long buried or that simply enter the consciousness a new to be able to fully benefit from what surfaces, a structured approach is needed. And again, speaking personally, I've had nothing but high remarks to say about Field Trip, their structured approach is just that very structured, but very safe, very comfortable, and made me feel that much more prepared for what I was about to experience. This is the primary reason that Field Trip couples psychotherapy with psychedelic experiences and in doing so their therapeutic team support you and addressing, unpacking and understanding the thoughts and feelings that come up because a lot does. Psychotherapy provides both a structured way as well as a forum to process these thoughts and feelings. So that you can integrate the insights you learn into your everyday life towards deeper healing. So my goal for this interview here today is to just shed a light on something that has added immense value to my life and my healing and my wellness. And to kind of pull the curtain back a little bit on psychedelics they are, they are so much more than I thought. And this is my personal experience. And Ronan has a lot of professional experience in everything that he has done personally, that has brought him to founding such an incredible company like Field Trip health. And I hope that this empowers you. I hope that this pulls the curtain back a little bit for you on just what is possible. And if you're interested at all, in learning more about psychedelic assisted therapies, I encourage you to do your homework, do your due diligence, maybe even reach out to Field Trip. This is not a paid advertisement, I have no partnership here with Field Trip, I have no skin in the game, other than just sharing an experience that has helped me and I hope will help you do the same thing. But lets get ready to do the work. I'm so glad to have you here on the show today. And so glad to just be in the presence of somebody that is doing such phenomenal new pioneering tip of the spear in my opinion work in the world of emotional health, mental health, all forms of health and wellness. So thank you and welcome. 

Ronan: it is my pleasure and thank you for the kind words it really it does mean a lot every time you know people express the gratitude for the work we're doing it helps because I'd be doing this anyway but to know that it's actually reaching people and impacting people it keeps the motivation going.

Chase: or run I guess my first question is what is going on in the world of psychedelics right here right now in the world you know here August 2021? I don't know with my personal awareness theory, but just they seem so top of Mind and so prevalent. Is it cool is it trendy? Or are we finally just awakening? Or having this awakening to the healing potential?

Ronan: I think it's both. To be quite honest, it is certainly cool and trendy these days. I mean, psychedelics have become a very hot conversation, particularly the psychedelic Renaissance and we are in a renaissance there's no doubt about it pertaining to psychedelics. Scientifically, medically, culturally, you know, there's, there's so much happening, but at the same time, I kind of fall prey to that personal awareness problem, you know, recently, it's not a problem, but it struck me that being so encapsulated in the psychedelic industry and the psychedelic movement, everything that's happening here, I kind of think everyone's paying as much attention to psychedelics as I am and then, you know, I realized like, a friend of ours, this guy, Robbie Ben to who's been a great advocate for Field Trips.

Chase: He was recently on the show. 

Ronan: So like in a conversation with Robbie, indirectly, I was participating, like Robbie kind of said, like, yeah, most of my friends are not comfortable doing psychedelics, most of my friends are comfortable with ketamine, and we're just like, wait, what, probably best friends aren't comfortable doing this stuff. Okay, like, the world isn't quite as it as I thought it appeared to be. But we are definitely I would say, you know, the tip of the spear of what I think is going to be actually the most significant cultural influence, possibly in history. I know those are big terms. And I don't like to exaggerate. I try to be pretty grounded and measured in like what I say and how I communicate it, but I really do think like this, this is this is a turning point, right? Like this is a massive change and that like is global, I think it reflects a change in how we think about medicine. I think it reflects a change of how we think about emotions. I think it reflects a change in how we think about spirituality, and the wonderful effects of all that kind of stuff. We kind of got a taste for it in the counterculture in the 60s, you know, I did a podcast with Dr. Judy Holland, and she had this great line, she's like, the hippies were right. Right about so many things, like, you know feminism, environmentalism, consciousness, all those kinds of things that are now becoming mainstream and cool and accepted like they were talking about that in the 60s. And that was inspired a lot by psychedelics, and now, the counterculture was, in some respects, very small and very limited in the number of people involved, but the cultural impact, we're still feeling it today. Now take an environment that's much more receptive to what all the hippies were talking about in the 60s, and, and bringing all of that impact but with way more people with the power of the internet. God, it's like you just you start to do the math and the waterfall effects. And it's like, yeah, this is this is going to be truly game changing in the, in the kind of level of game changing as like the Internet has created or, you know, in talking about, like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and try to put people on Mars, it's like, that's, that's a level of impact I think we're potentially talking about right now.

Chase: Well, you know, running talk is one thing and I definitely want to get into the personal experience, the qualitative data and the personal transformational experiences that I've had through the use of psychedelics and I'm sure you as well, but to the novice, the new person, which I would even still stay say that I am what is the science showing behind the wheel? Why, why are we even considering psychedelics as therapy as treatment as medicine now, what is going on quantitatively? And you know, empirically?

Ronan: Yeah, I think it's important to clarify that we're not thinking about it this way that way, now, they're actually thinking about it that way in the 50s, and 60s, and then there's this kind of like political upheaval that led to the termination of research. But LSD was one of the most studied academic from an academic perspective molecules out there in the 50s and 60s, there were 1000s of papers written on LSD from the perspective of its medical and therapeutic applications. So what we're talking about now is not actually new, it's it really is a Renaissance, it's a rebirth of it. But what triggered it and why there seems to be so much excitement is I guess two things one is there's the massive unmet need consideration right? I think we all recognize there's a global mental health crisis happening there already was and then he later on all the impacts of COVID and we've got so that he did more significant thing and I think people are starting to understand that the impact of his mental health crisis isn't just like, oh, that sucks. It's there's significant humanitarian implications. There's significant economic implications like people forget that, like, depression and anxiety disorders are going to become the leading global burden of disease which means they cost the global economy more than any other disease out there primarily from loss productivity, right from people not being able to get up and go to work or not being productive and work because they're suffering with depression and anxiety. 

Chase: it's already been shown during the times of COVID that this is the second biggest co-morbidity for people that are getting COVID-19 and all these other variants, hospitalized and deaths. It's depression, fear and anxiety are all the all these secondary tertiary comorbidities.

Ronan: I hadn't seen that. That's interesting. Yeah, that's totally, totally on point as well. So why this what's happening right now is because there's this massive need, and we're just becoming aware of how important this conversation is. And then there's the science and the sciences is mind blowing. And I say that pretty consciously because it really is, I think, what we're seeing now there were a couple of impetus for it at the time. I don't know what the right word is two things. One is like Rick Doblin and maps the multidisciplinary Association for psychedelic studies. You know, Rick is a great guy, I've had the pleasure of getting to know him. But one of the things that has always really amazed me because he's been doing this since 1986, he's been trying to drive clinical studies for MDMA, which is the active ingredient in street drug ecstasy for, to kind of ground it in conversation that people may be more familiar with, since 1986. It's been almost 40 years of him trying to push a boulder up the hill. And he started to make real progress. So what happened is, but 20 years ago, ketamine, which is an FDA globally approved drug as an anesthetic, even though it definitely got a reputation as a party, drug and all that kind of stuff. It is an approved drug, it's an illegal drug. It's a legal drug, not the illegal drug. That is actually used quite frequently to the point where the World Health Organization indicated that it was one of the essential drugs worldwide because it is an incredibly safe anesthetic, when used as an anesthetic, such that if you have children, and your child breaks a bone and you take them to the ER, instead of giving other form of anesthetic often doctors will give ketamine because it's so safe because it doesn't depress the central nervous system. There's no risk of overdose really, with ketamine. And so it's been a drug that's been part of modern Western medicine for 60 or 50 or 60 years, right. So it's been an essential part of our medical system got a bad reputation because of party drugs. But what happened about 20 years ago is that doctors noticed that when they use ketamine as an anesthetic, there was a corresponding he used the term co-morbidity I don't know what the proper term is here, but there was a corresponding improvement in a person's mental health people who had received ketamine as an anesthetic also reproved that also indicated that their mental health improved significantly and so that spawned a whole bunch of research into ketamine as a mental health treatment and the research was so profound and so effective, that even Dr. Tom Insel, used to be the director of the National Institute of Mental Health in the US declared that ketamine is the most important breakthrough in depression treatments in the last 50 years, something like paraphrasing,

Chase: pause right there for me, please, because I really want the listener to pick up on that. ketamine was discovered having a secondary bonus effect, positive not a negative side effect, like a lot of other medications, like a lot of other things in general, for mental health, it's first noticeable positive side effects and side effects in general, was to the benefit of mental health.

Ronan: That's correct. Yeah. That got seen enough that it triggered a focus of research being into could this be used as a depression treatment or other mental health treatments and the success of that research, I think, was one of the big drivers of this psychedelic Renaissance. It wasn't the only thing that worked, Rick was doing pushing along those studies as well, was helping and then about 10 years ago or so. It actually, I didn't realize this, but someone educated me on this that a lot of research on psilocybin actually continued. So suicide and doing magic mushrooms was continuing in Europe. But because we have such a US centric worldview over here in North America, we obviously don't talk about that. But somewhere about 10 or 15 years ago, work at Imperial College in London, as well as Johns Hopkins led to an approval for using psilocybin in a clinical and academic clinical trial for treatment of depression. And so this research with ketamine, and this work with MDMA and psilocybin and the profound results of them showed has really led to this moment and what are the results that we're talking about, you know, with ketamine and ketamine assisted therapy, and I think it's really important Actually, I'll stop at this point, to make it clear about what we're talking about. We talked about psychedelics and that's kind of a lazy term of art in general. Truth is all of the research that we're seeing is about psychedelic assisted therapy, not psychedelics. It's not treating psychedelics like an antidepressant of like, here's your drug, here's your pill, take it, you'll feel better. This is a very different form of medicine, it's experiential medicine or contextual medicine where it's like active work, it's kind of like, you know, trying to draw a parallel even this is a terrible analogy. It's like, if you've suffered a physical injury or doing physio, then like taking steroids to build those muscles back is going to accelerate, you know that recovery and in the same kind of way that's what psychedelics do; psychedelics open people up to healing, but the healing really comes from pairing that with therapy, right? So it's psychedelic assisted therapy that's really generating all of this profoundly positive research. And so what are we seeing, we're seeing with ketamine and ketamine assisted therapy, you know, after a few sessions, with it, people can be, have substantially reduced depression symptoms from you know, severe to mild to nonexistent. And certainly that's what we're seeing in our Field Trip health centers that are opening up across North America. And those benefits can last for weeks or months at a time. So instead of taking a day to day SSRI, or antidepressant, which people typically report, you know, kind of dulls their perception, it causes weight gain and loss of libido, lots of negative side effects, and some having to do that day to day after a few sessions with ketamine, which tend to be profoundly positive and enjoyable. People can be depression free for weeks or months at a time. So that's the kind of research we're seeing with ketamine with MDMA, which is actually where the research is probably the most advanced maps in its first phase of its phase three, or the first part of its phase three clinical trial, looking at MDMA assisted therapy for the treatment of PTSD, found that 70%, seven 0% of participants in the trial, no longer qualified as having PTSD, following three MDMA assisted therapy sessions, according to the DSM criteria for PTSD, and those benefits were sustained for six months at a minimum. So we're talking about a near effective cure for PTSD. Not totally, it didn't work for everybody. And we don't know that, you know, in a year or two years, these people who no longer qualified as being PTSD patients didn't retro regressed into suffering those symptoms again, but for six months out, they no longer had PTSD, right. So these are amazing results, especially when you compare to the standard of care for treatment of PTSD, using antidepressants primarily, with seeking a 30% improvement in symptoms versus a 70% cure rate, you know, this is orders of magnitude more effective. And these trials had no significant adverse events, right. So these people went through these experiences, they're profoundly positive experiences, and there are no negative side effects, no serious negative side effects associated with this. So you have this profoundly effective medication with very little to no downside. You know, it's really amazing, with psilocybin, which is the other psychedelic that has been studied in earnest. Now, trials are happening with LSD and DMT, and other psychedelics as well. But psilocybin is the other one that's been studied, at least in the modern context very heavily, you know, we've seen clinical trials, where the antidepressant effects of a single psilocybin assisted therapy session can last for up to five years, you know, five years, one session. So again, game changing efficacy, in terms of treating mental health, and you talked about this in the conversation of healing. And this is very much what's happening. There's no doubt about that. But the other thing that people aren't talking about right now, because it seems almost too good to be true. And you know, anytime you hear something along these lines, it typically does seem to be too good to be true. But so far, this seems to be bearing out with psychedelics is that beyond just the mental health improvements, although I would argue it's probably correlated to the mental health improvements is that in addition to the significant improvements in the PHQ nine scores and the GAD seven scores and all of the other metrics of mental health, people report increased creativity. People report increased empathy, people open records, increased openness to other people's perspective and viewpoints, something that truly is sorely lacking in this world people report increased regard for the planet. So not only is their mental health significantly improved, the side effects of psychedelic therapies are actually really pro social, you know, people are basically nicer, more thoughtful, have greater concern for the environment and people around them. So you know, talk about a one two punch in terms of like, these are magic pills and I hate to say it, but it does seem In so many respects, like the potential of these is just extraordinary.

Chase: Thank you so much for the breakdown on those kind of three main psychedelics that are being looked at and studied and use and I really do love how you started off by saying assisted therapy, ketamine assisted therapy, psychedelic assisted therapy. What I love most about that is you know the holistic person in me and you know, what I used to strive for in my coaching practice was there a lot of things that we can use to help us get better to get well to treat an illness or disease an injury and even maintain wellness or even you know, prevent ideally, certain things from happening. But when it is coupled with support, when it is coupled with hey, here's a thing. And then here's the mental component that goes with it, here's assistance in navigating these new waters that you are about to set sail on. That I think is one of the most profound aspects that I hope the listeners picking up on what is so unique, and dare I even say, necessary in that experience that someone is not going to maybe not get in just using it on their own or just going into another type of clinic that doesn't have this assisted therapy coupled with it.

Ronan: Yeah. So if we talk about why psychedelic assisted therapy seem so effective, it's probably the best way to start to think about this. So it seems and no one has the perfect answer. But it seems that there are three things happening when we talk about psychedelic assisted therapies and this is true, but ketamine is true, but MDMA is truth psilocybin is true, but LSD is probably true and DMT but these three things happen. They hit the serotonin receptors and never say that we're gonna try they hit the cell, they basically cause a flood of serotonin right, which is immediately and very quickly causes a short term boosted mood so people have a very positive experience and feel better within about half an hour or 45 minutes and make a note to figure out how to pronounce the word properly before my next lecture.

Chase: I'm sure we'll have someone that will let us know that for sure.

Ronan: Yeah, certainly. So you have this. Just an immediate lift, you feel better, it almost immediately within like half an hour. Most people a significant improvement, and secondly, during a psychedelic experience, because when we talk about psychedelic assisted therapy, the way it's done, at least in a clinical setting is people are given eyeshades, people are have headphones put on and they're invited to go inward, right? It's not like walking through the forest or having a party, you shut your eyes, and you really let the experience come up. And people talk about setting an intention for their experience and trying to guide what they want to get out of it. The truth is, you know, your mind and the drug takes you where it needs to go by and large, and what comes up comes up with regardless of your intention, but by going inwards, what often people often experiences, they revisit past experiences, past traumas, past events. And you can start the emotional processing around those events. So in many ways, this aspect of it is just kind of like what people try to achieve through conventional talk theory, therapy, or cognitive behavioral therapy, but it takes years to kind of like, break down those defenses and really start to open up about what happens with psychedelics, people go from potentially never having done any therapy to doing the emotional processing that you get 10 years of therapy, but in a single session, right, so you start this work, that really therapeutic aspect of just processing your emotions. And then the third thing that happens, and this is where the therapy becomes most important, is there's evidence that psilocybin and ketamine and presumably MDMA, and all the other classic psychedelics actually cause new neural synapses to grow. So basically, the parts of your brain that talk like that enable cells in the brain cells to talk to each other, you start growing new neural synapses. And during this period, which is generally believed to be a period of neuroplasticity, people are much more able to make real meaningful functional changes in their outlooks, in their habits, in their worldview in their lifestyle. And that's where you get the sustained benefit, right. So if you think about, you know, people talk about how children have far greater neuroplasticity than adults. And that's why they're so quick to develop new skills. That's why they're so adept at learning new languages is because their brain is much more flexible, it's much more fluid and can to adapt to new circumstances. As we age, the kind of mental models in our ego becomes more rigid. And so learning new skills becomes more challenging. Following a psychedelic experience, your brain is much more childlike, in terms of its neuroplasticity. And so if it, if you start deciding that you're going to meditate every day, or go to the gym every day, or you know, wake up and have gratitude, adopting that as a new practice becomes much more entrenched. And so everything that you try and do through some cognitive behavioral therapy techniques like motivational interviewing, or behavioral activation, it sticks, right, it's not just like throwing a ball against the wall, you know, that ball, actually, it's like, you throw the spaghetti noodle, and it's stays and so

Chase: it's not just a temporary state of change state, it's, it's a change state that allows malleability and new learning and immediate application, at least in my experience.

Ronan: That's exactly right. And so you got this emotional processing, and then you've got this change lifestyle, right? So you've done a lot of emotional work. And then you've basically built skills and habits and knowledge and all this kind of stuff that enables you to live a happier life, you know, we know that. And this is what got me interested in psychedelics in the first place, don't we know go into the gym, and exercising makes you stronger and healthier, and helps you live longer and makes you happier, right? We all know that not everybody goes to the gym, but no one really debates that going to the gym is good for you. We don't think about mental health that way and we don't have to think about our emotional health that way, we're always super reactive when it comes to that kind of stuff. But if we became proactive about this, and started adopting those habits, and doing the work and all that kind of stuff with psychedelics, you know, greatly accelerate just kind of like drinking protein drinks after a workout will really accelerate your, your muscle gain, through psychedelics, if you start doing these things, and adopting them and making your lifestyle, one that supports great outlook, great mental health, great, you know, happiness, it's gonna stick and it's gonna last and then so I think, I think that's why we see these amazing results.

Chase: I want to take a moment and kind of just share with you in my audience. My very first experience using a psychedelic was with MDMA. And in total honesty here for my audience, that experience still is with me. So when you talk about the longevity of behavior, change in neurogenesis, and just your mindset, having long lasting ripple effects into how you behave and how you show up in the world. My very first experience was long story short walked into a situation last year. And someone that I knew, trusted, very closely offered me some. And up until that point, Ronan, I only recently started using cannabis like, just a couple years ago, I grew up growing up with certain belief systems and my household and religion and I was in the military. And so all these other things were very taboo and off limits for me, and something that I, you know, if I ever did, I would immediately become a homeless loser and amount to nothing in my life and burn in hell, my personal experience. And so when this person offered me, MDMA, I looked at this person, I looked around me, and I was surrounded by people that I trust I respected, actually, quite a few of them were doctors and medical care providers. And so I thought, well, if any of my worst case scenarios do come true, this is the place to have it happen with, you know, doctors, and all these other things. And that evening, I had one of the most profound realizations of getting out of my own way, that ego work, it showed me my ego in a way, that was a place of friction with me, and my wife was this kind of, on again, off again, argument, you know, friction area that I saw, for the first time ever, on her side, I could completely get away from my attachment to this topic. And I later shared with her, and I just completely broke down. I started crying, I realized I said, I'm so sorry, I am so sorry for my inability to not see it from your side. And I talked it through. And as I see this, I see point A, B, and C. And we have not ever had to bring that conversation up ever again. It wasn't anything major wasn't anything wild and crazy. But it was just something that was recurring. And the problem was me. And that experience allowed me to completely get out of my own head. And to see this other thing and where it came from, I don't know, it just happened the way that it did. And that was my very first ever experience. And I was with MDMA. And to this day, like I said, the profound effect is still with us here. So it not only got me out of that change state right then and there, but long lasting behavior change to my relationship health to my mental health, and how I interact with certain people. Is that fairly common in your experience?

Ronan: Yeah, that's definitely one I know, my first ever experience with psilocybin it gave me a sense of empathy, like myself, and my business partners were in a serious dispute, but you know, in a prickly situation with our former employer. And like we had, we felt like we had taken the high road and we had taken the high road. Like, if I go back and look at it, it's like, we did the mature thing. But I got this deep sense of like, oh, I understand why they're pissed off. It's like, I wouldn't have done anything different. But I could understand the emotional rationale why they felt like they had been, you know, mistreated, and I got it. And so like, that's MDMA is known as being a pathogen. That's exactly what you're talking about gave you a new sense of empathy. It enabled you to put yourself in your wife's shoes, and be like, Oh, I get it now. And what a powerful, powerful realization and then, you know, what, two thoughts that kind of love from that the other experience that people have, very often with MDMA, but all psychedelics, and we start to get into, like, the more spiritual kind of things, and I know that that like, turns a lot of people off, but that's where the conversation is going to end up. I think it has to end up there, but people are able to feel like love for the first time. Like, you know, the person I work with Irwin, Irwin Perlman, he talks about things like beauty being a transformative energy and like not aesthetic beauty, it can be aesthetic beauty, but like, when you have that moment of beauty, right, like when you experience I don't know, waterfall or, or like a magical moment between mother and child or whatever it is. It's like that changes. The world is fundamentally different after you've had that experience and it was before. And so particularly for people that have trauma, it's like they have problems feeling love like they have trauma. I think most people do certainly I did like I couldn't receive love. I couldn't actually feel it. It's like my this was not psychedelic this was perfectly independent of psychedelics, but it was a very psychedelic moment was like when I was 30-34 I realized I had this instance, where I had called a friend of mine, a good friend of mine who lives in Silicon Valley, and he hadn't called me back in about two days and I found myself doing the mental game I had always done in circumstances where I decided that I had done something wrong. He didn't want to be friends with me. And I started planning my life without my friend in my life. And for the first time I caught myself and I said, how fucked up is that, that I've always made the assumption that if someone doesn't call me back in what I deemed to be normal timeframe, they've decided they don't like me and moving on. It's like, they showed me how much I saw myself as unlovable, right? Like, wow, how could you possibly have like a real friendship or a real relationship, if you assumed everybody is going to abandon you at some point, it's not true. My friends weren't going to abandon me; this particular friend would never abandon me like we have such a deep bond. But I couldn't let that in. And so for a lot of people when they have a psychedelic experience, like I was able to get there, because I've done like 10 years of work with Erwin and all that kind of stuff. And I've finally had that click moment, but with psychedelics, people can go from having about their entire life and just being like, Oh, no, I am worthy of love. Oh, my friends actually do love me. I just couldn't let that in to me, right? And so that's the other experience, particularly on MDMA that people have, like they feel love, for the first time and in a much more visceral way that they like, Oh, yeah. My wife loves me. It's like, Oh, she really does love me. And I know what that feels like now. And then, you know, anytime things get hairy or challenging, it's like, you'd be like, oh, no, no, like, there's still love here, right? Like we're having a fight, we're having an argument. But, you know, for me, having a fight with became existential, right, because it's like, oh, we're disagreeing, you know, this is going to be the end of the relationship because love couldn't exist in my format. And it sounds like in some ways, that may have been something that resonated with you, but like that, that's what happens on psychedelics. These are the experiences people have on psychedelics,

Chase: it's funny, you bring up love, because any psychedelic experience I have had, at the end of the day, the end of the night, whatever the situation is, the setting is ultimately whatever work I go through whatever my intention was, ultimately always comes back to love. And for me what I want bring up love and psilocybin. So when I first tried psilocybin that was kind of like the inexplicable, experience, sensation that I didn't know I was experiencing at the time. But looking back, I was like, oh, my God, I was in pure, undeniable state of being thought, love. And I again was, I think there's something to be said here to have that set and setting are very, very important. I was again, in an environment with some of my favorite people in the world, some of the people that mean the most to me, very, very close relationships, friendships, acquaintances and I remember finally looking back and just like looking at everybody looking at the room. And just being in such ahh of the state of love that I was in for being grateful that I was there being grateful to these people in my life and then just the years and the Rolodex of things, places events that we had done together and just, it was an emphatic just state of love. And I've been in love I am in love. You know, I love people I love my wife, I love my dog, I love cold brew. But when you can, when you can experience from your head to your toe this state, I'm just sharing my personal experience of that psychedelic state of love. It is one of the most visceral sensations I have ever had in my entire life. So that's kind of more like the you know, we're talking earlier the woo there's a qualitative aspect that I think a lot of people have when they go on psychedelics or use them. But I want to shift gears if we could, to what really blew my mind the most when it came to psilocybin back in July I went on a 30 day microdose protocol of two days on one day off and I know I have all the ingredients I know exactly everything that was in there. And I'm a person my audience knows. I'm aware of a lot of things I track a lot of things I have Apple Watch whoop I you know have tracked My Fitness Pal for you know, a decade. I'm very, very curious as to what is going on in the world and what is going on in my body. And what makes me tick and how I can improve it. Ronan when I tell you nothing, I'm 35 years old, nothing 35 years old and 15 years of my wellness journey here nothing in my life has had anything close to the profound effect in mind and body and long lasting effects as that 30 day psilocybin protocol. And what blew my mind the most was I tracked it my every single biomarker on my Whoop device HRV respiratory rate, resting heart rate recovery sleep, every biomarker that we want to see improve, not only did almost immediately, but the benefits have stayed my HRV increased 40% in that 30 days, and my now lowest HRV heart rate variability score is what I used to dream of getting as a high, I'm getting in the 80s 90s in my new lows. Now I'm getting 120 40s 150s. That 30 day protocol I've been off now for about five weeks, almost six weeks, the changes were so long lasting, so profound that I couldn't refuse the data. I knew how I was feeling. But when I looked at those numbers, it just blew my mind. Is that is that a common trait when we're looking at things such as psilocybin?

Ronan: It's hard to say. So especially with micro dosing, there's not a lot of evidence for micro dosing right now. In fact, the evidence that does exist suggests that it's actually no better than placebo. Now, that's a very limited evidence, and so I wouldn't accept it as micro dosing doesn't work. I don't think that's true at all. You know, you can't hear as many stories as I hear about people having profound positive outcomes on micro dosing. But the evidence is in this, there's just not that body of evidence to support micro dosing as much as there is for the macro dosing with therapy approach. But, you know, just as a have to, I recently did the very intense psychedelic session for therapists with MDMA, psilocybin and 4HCL. And I've noticed that my HRV has basically doubled, you know, since then, like tracking way higher,

Chase: yeah, my highs used to be like, maybe like, 60-62 and like I said, now I'm getting in the 120s 140s and beyond.

Ronan: Yeah, for sure. So I mean that's exactly what I'm saying. My HRV is not as good as you, I guess I'm more stressed than you, but, you know, probably true about trying to do a startup and having kids and all that kind of stuff but in any event, I'm curious, like, what was your protocol with micro dosing, because you've actually inspired me to give it another shot to you know, I've always dabbled with it a few times, and then stop and dabbled with it. But it sounds like a committed 30 days is a worthwhile experience. 

Chase: I highly recommend I'll walk you through it. And for the listener, I'll link this down in the show notes. I recently I did a whole solo episode about this and I walked through my personal experience, I walked through the numbers, I shared my whoop, data and everything. So this protocol was a two day on one day off protocol. And this blend, I guess you could call it was the psilocybin strain point 165 milligrams, and then it had Lion's Mane cordyceps a little bit of niacin, longlac B complex vitamin B complex, I have all the ingredients. And so I did two days on one day off, and me, anytime I would try introducing something new to my diet or a new supplement, I applied that same protocol to this microdose protocol, meaning I would try it on an empty stomach, I would try it first thing in the morning, I would try it in the afternoon, I would try it with a meal after meal, I would try it with caffeine with coffee without caffeine without coffee, went through that for about the first week and I found that no matter when I took it, if I took it with something or not, it really didn't make a difference in terms of its effectiveness. I felt great all the time, no matter when I took it. I had no problems with you know, sometimes a supplement on empty stomach can upset your stomach a little bit. I had nothing. So it didn't matter when I took it, how I took it with whatever the same effect happened and it was a good effect. So then after that, I really started paying attention and I found Ronan and I was lit up in the most positive way, not tripping not out of my mind. I had never been more present in my mind and my body on that protocol when I my magic kind of formula was I would do a cortado and I cortado a double shot of espresso, a little bit of almond milk, a little bit of honey and some MCT oil powder that with my microdose I was invincible. I was so on. And I talked about this and so episode, I could up shift and downshift in my consciousness and my productivity what I wanted to do if I wanted to just floor it for the next two hours and just work my ass off and just be so focused and so diligent I could if I wanted to downshift and just chill and be present and allow the medicine to do its thing and bring up thoughts and emotions and work on that I could and I could come in and out just as easily as it was so conscious for me what I wanted to have happen that I could It was amazing.

Ronan: That's awesome. So is it point 165 grams of psilocybin? Okay. It seems really small.

Chase: Let me I can you know, let me I'll double check on that. I'll get back to you. And I'll double check on the show notes for everybody but I'm very certain .165. I can double check.

Ronan: Yeah, that's cool. I mean, that's amazing. And like the truth is, is like I've recently become vocal on social media about the idea that like the placebo effect is the wrong articulation of what's happening, right? It's like isn't the placebo effect actually something that's really magical it actually shows us that if you think hard enough about something, you can actually change your biology, right? Like it shows a thing of mine can heal your body. It's so I like to call it the actualization effect, because you're actualizing the outcome you want with your brain and it's something that we should be encouraging. I get why it needs to be measured in context of medicine, but so often people that cannot perform no better than placebo, like, who cares, right? 

Chase: if the same effect is happening, like Hello.

Ronan: Yeah, exactly. You know, it's like sometimes people get caught up in science for the sake of science and forget that the purpose of science, listen, there's no reason not to do academic inquiry for the sake of academic inquiry, I get that. But like when it comes to like medical sciences, the only point of that is to enable people to live longer, happier, healthier life. That's right. If you're not doing it for that reason, what is the point of it? Right. And, and so, yeah, if you've seen placebo that works really well. You know, my son likes to say if you see a duck, duck, but you know, it's just like, it's really powerful. And we shouldn't be afraid of it. But so often, it's just like, oh, it's just the placebo effect. Don't look at it that way. But yeah, it's the placebo effect and that's a great way to heal too.

Chase: Yeah. Did you heal? Did you reach the market for success you were after? Yes. Okay, great. That's ultimately what I'm after as well. Ronan, kind of beginning to get towards the end here I just want to say again, thank you so much for your time and expertise and being so open about all this. I know, I know, it's your work, but it's also your passion, and it very quickly is becoming a passion of mine. Where do you think us as the general public, the consumer, the user of psychedelics, where do you think we should really be more cautious? Do we need to be treading lightly with anything? Is there anything to do to worry about? I guess what I am really asking is, are we just latching on to another trend is it's just going to become the popular thing to do and people are maybe losing sight of the purpose and just not using it properly or not respecting the process?

Ronan: I mean, I think that's an inevitably always a concern. You know, we before getting into the psychedelics industry, I was in the medical cannabis industry in Canada, and like watching what happened with CBD, you know, I remember, I knew that CBD had sort of jumped the shark not to say that there are really incredible potential therapeutic benefits of CBD. But in terms of the weight involved, I saw a clothing line with clothing infused with CBD, and I'm like, oh my god, this has gone way too far.

Chase: that is Yeah, that's way too far. I'm a CBD advocate and user, but you're not gonna see me promoting a CBD infused clothing line. 

Ronan: it's just ridiculous. But there's that potential risk here as well, which is people are going to see psychedelics as a panacea. And I really do think there's a lot of reason to be very optimistic about the potential impact of psychedelics, both in terms of the treatment of mental health applications, but also in terms of, you know, really helping to open up meaningful conversations around some of the more vexing societal challenges, challenges that we face. You know, in many respects, I think they're pretty tightly aligned, right? Like, if you look at, you know the polarization in US politics, it's like, there's a lot of trauma on both sides of it, right? Like, you know, I did a podcast with the woman named Taren Young, who's the founder of black therapist rocks, as well as director x and both of them, you know, people of color, you know, recognize that, like, racists typically have their own trauma that causes them to be racist, right? Like bully these are often the result of bullying itself. Usually, you know, so if we start to address like, I just read that from the perspective of like, all of this healing and helping people process and all that kind of stuff and start to address some of those more vexing issues. That being said, without there's risks right and so with psychedelics, you know, there's different categories of risk. You know, some psychedelics are definitely they create more biological risks, like five Meo DMT, like the intensity of that experience has actually caused some deaths, you can overdose, it's very rare, but it does happen. So you know, that's not a risk I think most people don't need to worry about with ketamine if you're doing an episodic like we do in our clinics, ketamine assisted therapy, there's no risk of addiction. But if you're taking ketamine every day, there's a slight risk of addiction. So that's something I think people need to think about. But I think the biggest risks that people should keep in mind again, they're very easy to manage is that these are powerful psychotropic drugs, right. And you and I have talked about really positive experiences, but they can also bring out the very challenging traumas or past experiences that are nightmares, and in a controlled environment with a therapist who knows how to manage that those really challenging experiences that can actually be the most cathartic, and people can have the biggest breakthroughs. But if you're unsupported if you're doing it on your own, or you're with people who don't know how to support that, then that traumatic experience that challenging psychedelic experience can create its own instance of trauma, right, and there is such a thing as a bad trip. You know, the general conversation is there's no such thing as a bad trip per se, there's only easy trips and challenging trips, challenging trips can become bad trips, but it's not, it's not you don't go from, you know, a trip to bad trip instantaneously it's what happens around that and if you have the right support, that challenging trip can be really quite a positive experience. So that's one of the biggest risks. The other risk is that even though what we learned in high school was overblown and exaggerated, there are definitely instances of people getting high on psychedelics and doing stupid things like jumping off buildings, not common.

Chase: feeling a sense of invincibility, and kind of things like that. 

Ronan: And, and so that's a risk that has to be managed, again, if we look at this from a therapeutic application, and I really think that the future, at least for the next five, or 10 years is like legal access is going to be in controlled environments. Like if you look at what happens in what's happening in the state of Oregon, where there'll be legalizing psilocybin, actually legalizing psilocybin services. So it's not like you're going to a dispensary of drugstore and buying your mushrooms, you're going to an environment where there's a therapist who's going to oversee the experience and provide the mushrooms so you have that safety of the container. So you're not going to have the instance of someone jumping off a building. And you're not going to be in a place where if you do have a challenging experience of someone who's going to be qualified to help support that, make sure it doesn't have a bad trip. So those risks are really manageable, you know, but they are risks that do exist out there. I think people need to keep that in mind.

Chase: Thank you for kind of shining a light on that as well. I mean, anybody can become dependent on addicted to anything that could be deemed in most people's eyes as a positive thing. I mean, there is such thing as orthorexia. It's the unhealthy obsession with always trying to do the right thing, the healthy thing, eat the healthiest, cleanest, best food workout all the time. Anything can become a crutch, even if it is you know, on the surface level air quote here, you know, good or bad, positive or negative. So that's such a great point. And I was able to look up and confirm the psilocybin in my micro dose is 165 milligrams, not a point. 165

Ronan: Yeah, just going back to the other comment. Generally speaking, at least with the chip domains like psilocybin, MDMA or psilocybin, LSD DMT molecules of that nature are actually non addictive and in fact, the anti addictive so you can't develop a physical dependency, you can essentially develop an emotional dependency, but a physical dependency to tryptamines is almost impossible.

Chase: That's mind blowing.

Ronan: Yeah. And they were actually some of the earliest studies was looking at psilocybin to help people get off other addictions, like smoking or alcohol. In fact, Alcoholics Anonymous was inspired by the founders LSD experience. So talking about like addiction and psychedelics, it's actually there's a lot of reasons to think that psychedelics sorry, but psychedelics can actually be profoundly positive in helping people get over addictions, because often addiction is the result of trauma, you tend to heal the trauma, you tend to be able to heal the circumstances that create the addictive behaviors. The other thing that's also important to note is, again, at least with the tryptamines, it's virtually impossible to overdose. There's like at least a case study now it's a case study of one where a woman took I think, 10,000 micrograms of LSD, which is about 40 times

Chase: 4-0 times?

Ronan: she was sick for a couple of days, but no lingering effects. And in fact, she reports that her bipolar disorder disappeared after that. And unless the tryptamines can't really overdose, you have a really bad experience and, you know, a really crappy couple of days. But at least from that perspective, it's not like heroin, it's not like opioids are there's real risk of that, like, the, like I said, they're pretty safe overall psychedelics. And you know, in fact, there's a study conducted by Professor David Nutt, who used to be the, the chair of the UK, I forget exactly the title, but basically, Council on the misuse of drugs. So here's basically the drugs are for the UK. And he conducted a study saying, let’s not like that politics, run our drug policies, and let's let science run our drug policy. And his study found that of Canada looked at about 30 or 40 drugs, some of them licit legal drugs, some of them illegal and looked at the relative harm profiles of them. And number one was alcohol in terms of its damage to society and damage to self alcohol was the most destructive drug. You know, heroin and opioids are all up there. The very bottom of the list was psilocybin just above that was LSD, you know, two of that was MDMA. And like one of those that was ketamine, all of which were below cannabis. And most people generally regard cannabis as safe. You know, again, it's not perfectly safe, but it's generally speaking pretty safe for all the drugs that are out there and, and the classic psychedelics were all below cannabis and their relative risk profile. So we are talking about things that safe. So you know, it's, it's important to like mention that there are risks and you shouldn't go in blindly. I think these are panacea, everything's going to be great but there's also a good reason to like not go in hyper nervous and anxious that you're going to do something to ruin your life, because the likelihood of that is actually pretty low.

Chase: Running, kind of getting towards the end here, man, I just want to again, say thank you. And just the work you were doing in what Field Trip is doing in terms of educating and empowering the public in a way I've not seen in a long, long time. Again, it might be a little bit of awareness theory here of my own self, because this is where I am in my in my wellness and healing journey. But I truly do believe what we're talking about here today is going to be if not put us on the path to being and finding, I'm going to say the cure for mental health illness or mental illness, mental disease, and just radically revolutionizing and improving the mental and emotional state of mankind. And with that, I know there are just profound leaps and bounds of physiological states to change as well because, like I always say, on the show where the mind goes, the body will follow

Ronan: 100% Absolutely. And like one of the things I really like, I mean, I go to I have a family doctor who does conventional allopathic medicine, I also have an integrative medicine doctor, they really do think psychedelics are actually going to be very deeply integrated into integrative medicine, which is we stop focusing only on treating what's wrong but focusing on like amplifying what's right and optimizing and, and all that kind of stuff. And then so like the mind body connection, that we know more and more pretty, you know, like health and mental health are correlated. Psychedelics fit perfectly into that right he's not to mention, and this doesn't get discussed nearly as much, psychedelics are actually potent anti inflammatory molecules as well. So really thinking is, the mental health improvements are a result of the anti inflammatory effects of psychedelics to the point where I haven't validated this but the CEO Shlomi of a company called Eleusis, back in the day pod was certainly used as a sacrament as part of like a ceremony. But it was also used if someone had like, you know, injuries, I forget exactly which condition. So it was used as an anti inflammatory molecule as well. So that may be part of the reason that they seem to be so effective.

Chase: That actually gets me curious. I want to look more into. I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of reasons why my HRV went through the roof when I was micro dosing, but if that consistency in that dose of that psychedelic caused an anti inflammatory response long enough in my body that I mean, that promotes recovery, that is going to definitely improve your HRV allow you to sleep and recover better. That's very, very interesting to me. I got to look into that more.

Ronan: Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. So you can say to say again, it's like, yes, economics, mental health. But when you start to like put all these other pieces together, it's like, oh, no, it's not just mental health, it starts to affect physical health and effects worldview, and that affects politics and expects relationships and it's like, yeah, there's this amazing virtuous cycle that can come out of this.

Chase: Well, first step in any change we want to introduce in our life in the world comes with awareness. And I can definitely say for my personal experience that through the use and proper intention set and setting of psychedelics has radically changed my ability to have a higher state of awareness right then and there in the moment, but long lasting awareness, I honestly still feel alone in the effects that I had positive effects I had when I was on a micro dose protocol of just clarity, of just rapid inner monologue of deciding, you know, how do I want to respond? Is this my ego stepping in, you know, what is really going on, empathy is still there. And through this change day through heightened increase of awareness, this is how I say we can live a life ever for to become more clear on the things that we want to put a step forward towards our goals to changing our lives and changing the world. That is what it means to live a life ever forward in my in my perspective, and these are the types of conversations I have here on the show, but I always ask my guests I'm curious, what does that mean to you when you hear those two words? How do you grow and live a life ever forward?

Ronan: That that's a really big question. You know, I'm a big believer of like what George Burns said, if you remember who George Burns was, he was a comedian from like the 1940s lived into his 90s and he always said, what was the secret to longevity is like, I always had a reason to get up in the morning. And, you know, for me, it's like, just finding like that passion, like having a reason to get up every morning. It's like when you really stop to think about the world. And I know I've been told this many times, but I see it with my kids, it's like, there is wonder all around us, like there is enough to keep your mind satisfied and engaged in the one foot area surrounding you, if you really open yourself up to it. In fact, we had a patient who came through one of our New York clinic and did ketamine assisted therapy. And one thing she reported is that following your psychedelic experience, just like found a wonder in the mundane, you know, she looked at her finger and like, was just amazed by everything that was happening and going back to that conversation about beauty and love. It's like that sense of wonder, that sense of profundity it's really hard to be depressed or anxious, or in trauma state, when you're in that resonance of kind of wonder. And so I in my kids, like, took them for a walk today, and like just rocks, you know, rocks were enough. Like so much wondering.

Chase: oh the child wonders.

Ronan: I think part of what psychedelics does is help us to go back into that. I think that's part I think there's a whole bunch of reasons. But I think tapping back into that is part of the experience. And so trying to find that wonder in every day, is a great reason to get out of bed every morning.

Chase: I can certainly attest to that, personally, when I'm seeking more wonder in the world. When I want to just enjoy the one foot radius around me get out in nature, a little bit of psilocybin definitely helps that experience for sure. 

Ronan: It sure does. It opens up your perspective to seeing things that you just not paying attention. I had that experience last fall, and I was went for a hike, take a little bit of psilocybin and I remember stopped me, but did a tree and I'm sorry for running way long on your podcast.

Chase: I'm on your time now I'm good if you are.

Ronan: And I stopped and it was fall is the autumn and I saw one leaf kind of fall off a maple tree. And then I stopped to realize that like there are all sorts of leaves falling at once. But most days, I would ignore that one leaf, let alone all those other ones. But I stopped to like pay attention to the fact like all of these leaves were falling. It gave me this really intense awareness of how much of reality we don't experience, right? Like in this moment, I was trying as hard as it could take in everything that was happening, just in my mind of sight. And I realized I'm not even seeing like 1% of what's happening here. Maybe like a fraction of 1% is what I'm able to actually take in, there's so much happening around me. And then like my mind went to the next step of like, Oh my god, it's like any history book like if I couldn't possibly articulate even remotely what was happening directly in front of me when I was paying as much attention as possible like how can any history book actually ever reflect history. Like it's such a fractional thing, there's so much, there's so much in this world, there's so much and you know psychedelics help you open up to like appreciating just everything that's around you. And even then you're missing most of it.

Chase: Well, I feel like I could just keep talking to you for hours about this stuff, your experience, your journey, your personal and professional experience and journey is so appreciated. I'm definitely gonna have all of your information and Field Trip health information in the show notes for everybody to go check out please. If you feel pulled, if you feel inclined in any way if God the universe, your soul, your gut, your intuition is pulling you deeper into this conversation I promise you, there's a reason why. And I would encourage you to pursue it in always a safe way. But just there is a safe resource here with Field Trip health. And I'm just so looking forward to the future that you are going to help us all build Ronan, thank you.

Ronan: Thank you. Thank you for having me. And if I can just shamelessly promote a couple of things before we leave. We have our own podcast. It's called Field Tripping where I interview luminaries in the psychedelic space, both about their personal psychedelic experiences, the science, the implications, the cultural considerations, all that kind of stuff. So if you're interested in learning more, please tune into that. Fieldtriphealth.com has a lot of resources of a ketamine assisted therapy. But we also have our app called trip trip.app.co is the website which is really designed to support people in any consciousness expanding activities from meditations, music, content, information, and a process you know, for reflection and integration and all that kind of stuff. So if you're interested in just learning more or exploring that kind of side of things, please check out the app, for sure. And if you're interested in investing in the space and while learn more As a corporate entity of Field Trip, meet FieldTrip.com is the website for all of the fun stuff that we're doing. It's really been talked about that we've barely talked about our clinical infrastructure. But we're also doing some really cool drug development work as well. So lots of exciting stuff because we're in this conversation, we only scratched the surface of talking about the classics, right? There's a whole world of human ingenuity to apply to psychedelics that we're just starting to get into.

Chase: No doubt, no doubt, and whether it's you or somebody else from the Field Trip team in the future, I mean, hell, like at this point, could even be my wife, because she, she's the new family nurse practitioner and clinic manager here in LA for Field Trip health. Just I'm so excited just to have future conversations with you all about you all and just to share, share this journey. So I thank you for that.

Ronan: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you for the opportunity to share these thoughts and then raise awareness and start to educate people about everything that's going on. It's really important to be doing this work and having these conversations.

Chase: For more information on everything you just heard, make sure to check this episode show notes or head to everforwardradio.com