Back from the Abyss: Psychiatry in Stories | Psychotherapy, Trauma, and Psychedelics

Life would be so much easier if we each came with an individual instruction manual, to both guide us and also warn us of how our inherited temperament and predilections might cause us great suffering. The first page of Emily's manual would have started with a capitalized bold face warning: "You are a highly sensitive soul, you will feel others' hurt and anger and sadness as if it we...

Just after starting his career, Dr. H met Matthew, a middle school student in the midst of a horrifying psychotic break.   Here Dr. H sits down with Meg and Phil, Matthew's parents, to explore their 15 year journey of grief, acceptance, recovery, and eventually becoming a source of support, connection, and wisdom for other families on this brutal and often deeply isolating journey. NAMI Famil...

12 step programs have helped millions of people, but they can't address everything. Randy got clean and sober and found a supportive community in AA....yet something was missing. He couldn't find peace, he couldn't connect in intimate relationships, he felt deeply broken and spiritually empty.  It turns out that when Randy's little brother drowned when Randy was just 4 years ol...

We're back!! Sometimes it's irresistible, necessary even, to lose ourselves into the greater collective, to become a honeybee buzzing with the ecstatic singular purpose of the hive. In this season 3 opener, Jamie tells Dr. H her story of trying to save herself by losing herself, then finally coming to face the fact that she had to plumb the depths of her trauma alone, culminating in a hi...

In this final episode of season 2,  Chris and Craig explore the highs and lows of the last year and plans for season 3. Craig discussing the psychedelic revolution in psychiatry on the Modern Therapist Survival Guide podcast https://therapyreimagined.com/modern-therapist-podcast/psychedelic-assisted-therapy/ BFTA https://www.craigheacockmd.com/podcast-page/ Support the show

Antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, stimulants.....READY SET GO! Med cheat sheet SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors)-- Prozac, Lexapro, Paxil, Celexa, Zoloft, Luvox, Trintellix, Viibryd-- They are generally NOT antidepressants Mainly helpful for OCD, body dysmorphia,  panic (if not from trauma), depression if postpartum or fueled by neuroticism or rumina...

How do you show up for others when you are facing the loss of everything you have ever known and loved? Here Leah Barrett, a Colorado-based psychotherapist, opens her heart and shares her story of managing the careful dance of witnessing her clients' pain and trauma while she faces her own unfolding medical nightmare.  Leah and Craig explore this immediacy and the implications for doing the s...

What's the special sauce of psychological and psychiatric treatment? How do we change, particularly in relationship with others?  Here Dr. Hillary McBride, a psychotherapist, researcher, author, and podcast host (Other People's Problems) opens up about the details of her years of psychiatric treatment, what worked (often surprising!), what did not, and how she had to leave home to find a...

How can we stop the heartbreaking and horrific spiral of addiction? Dr. Jeremy Dubin, the Medical Director of Colorado's Front Range Clinic, sits down with Dr. H to discuss their top five things that actually work....and the five factors which most predict jails, institutions, and death. Dr. H and BFTA https://www.craigheacockmd.com Support the show

BFTA takes a wild ride with Colorado based artist, writer, and video producer Ian Jaydid as he tells his double abyss story of lucid dreaming, out of body experiences, REM deprivation and transient psychosis....which then led to the blissful but ultimately destructive salve of opioids and a life changing encounter with the African psychedelic Iboga (ibogaine). Ian Jaydid https://ianjaydid.com Ian&...

In the context of an increasingly severe shortage of psychiatrists,  Dr. H discusses some uncomfortable truths about why finding a good outpatient psychiatrist is even more difficult than ever. Psychedelics and Psychiatry-- Dr. H on The Third Wave Podcast https://thethirdwave.co/podcast/episode-112-craig-heacock/ BFTA and Dr. H https://www.craigheacockmd.com Support the show

The therapeutic relationship is built on trust, we come to therapy expecting that we are going to be heard and believed. Jeanine wasn't believed-- about her childhood sexual assaults, or the emerging psychotic symptoms, or her intractable suicidality....even after many near fatal attempts and over 40 inpatient stays. This episode looks at how and why we believe some people and discount others...

Some things in life defy explanation...like tripping on mushrooms and arresting the plunge into alcoholism. Here Stella shares her story of childhood abuse and neglect, her reenactment of the abuse through toxic relationships with men, and then her life-changing sessions with both psilocybin and MDMA. Stella and Dr. H explore how she was able to first bring her dissociated and numbed self back to...

Dr. H sits down with Dr. David Puder, a psychiatrist and host of the Psychiatry and Psychotherapy podcast, to explore the beauty and challenge and mystery of psychotherapy.  What are Chris and Craig wanting for Christmas...??? How about writing us a review! Dr. Puder and the Psychiatry and Psychotherapy podcast https://www.psychiatrypodcast.com Dr. H essay on psychedelic healing for CNN.com https:...

In most specialties of medicine, the dictum "Diagnosis guides treatment" is the law of the land. In psychiatry, however, most of what we treat are often overlapping syndromes, not actual diseases, and these syndromes involve hugely varying dimensions of symptoms with a vast array of potential causes and exacerbating factors. Maggie came to Dr. H with a challenging clinical presentation: ...

The podcast Psychedelics Today recently released a two part interview with Will Hall, an author, podcaster, therapist, and voice of the anti-psychiatry community. This BFTA episode came about after Dr. H reached out to the hosts of PT and asked for a counterpoint to Will's complete dismissal of psychiatry as a meaningful part of the mental health treatment community.  Here Dr. H  presents a m...

Dr. H sits down with his friend Brian, who watched his daughter, and then his wife, plunge into the depressive abyss.   This is the journey of a father and husband, of a "we can fix this" engineer trying to find a path through the ambiguity and uncertainty of psychiatric treatment. This is the second in an intermittent series of family members describing their journey of trying to suppor...

In this third of an intermittent series about therapists in the abyss, Dr. H sits down with his colleague  Dr. Elena Estanol, a Colorado-based psychologist, to explore Elena's "fourth dark night of the soul".  Her story serves as a springboard for exploring how to cope with the randomness of life,  learning to go inward to heal relational wounds, differentiating pain vs suffering, a...

Dr. H finds a trove of patient letters from the last 15 years and shares three of the most poignant, using each as a springboard for lessons learned. Dr. H and BFTA https://www.craigheacockmd.com Support the show

After a difficult final year of high school, Tessa hoped and prayed that her youngest son would make the transition to college and find a way to thrive. He would be only an hour away, he wanted to go, and she was hopeful that getting a new start there could reverse whatever was happening to him. Yet just two months into his freshman year, it was apparent that he was sinking fast into a maelstrom o...

Trauma embeds in the complex zone between body and spirit, deep within the realm of primary consciousness. The typical psychiatric approaches of meds and talk therapy rarely access these unconscious realms. In prior episodes of BFTA, we have heard accounts of healing these deep wells of trauma with EMDR, psilocybin, and MDMA-- this episode highlights the unexpected power of a loving teacher and a...

In the first half of this two part mini-episode, Dr. H explores the four stages where fully dissociative doses of ketamine can get a little rocky:  *reaching escape velocity *re-entry *dissociative shatter *post-session processing What if a psychiatrist were allowed to ask only one question at a session....what might that be? In the second part of this episode, Dr. H ties together sleep, mood, hor...

Saj Razvi (of Innate Path and Psychedelic Somatic Institute) returns to BFTA to help Craig do a deep dive into listener questions. Have questions you want us to address in a future episode? Email them via craigheacockmd.com   Psychedelic Somatic Institute psychedelicsomatic.org Video showing somatic/primary consciousness trauma work catalyzed by THC https://vimeo.com/442544334 Support the show

We typically think of addiction as a symptom of a deeper issue, such as trauma or a psychiatric disorder. Sometimes, however, addiction is the main event, and powerlessness is the starting point, not some ambiguous distant stop on the substance abuse train. Lena fell hard into addiction by sixth grade and by all rights should have been dead or imprisoned long ago.  Yet today she is fully alive, de...

Season 2 is here! We kick off our new season with Dr. H going deep into the immediate aftermath of losing four patients and his eventual path back into the light. Save this one for when you are in the right headspace. Dr. H and Back from the Abyss http://craigheacockmd.com On Twitter @bftapod Support the show