Stand In The Circle

Dr. Franklin King joins Dr. Rosalind Watts for a wide-ranging conversation about the realities of psychedelic therapy, beyond the hype. They explore Franklin's research on psilocybin for IBS, MDMA for chronic pain and fibromyalgia, and group MDMA therapy for veterans with PTSD. The conversation challenges the "miracle cure" narrative around psychedelics and digs into how much actual work is involv...

In this week’s episode I talk to ACER members, Sin and Indira about their personal experiences with anxiety, and how, in different contexts, psychedelics can either ease or amplify it. Indira has lived with IBS-D for thirty years. She now believes that, for her, the condition was rooted in years of pushing anxiety down rather than feeling it and listening to it. After trying many treatments, it wa...

This week Ros answers the question: "I have incredibly supportive friend relationships with five people, but none of them know each other. It feels like individual community, because I am the link to everyone, each from different parts of my life. Does this count as a circle? How do I move from this to a true circle to stand in?”  Ros explains how circles contain two key ingredients, fun and suppo...

Emma, Margot, and Hattie.  Emma talks about  navigating perimenopause and autism. She lives in Canada where microdosing is legal, and found support through the careful use of tinctures.  Margot had almost ten years of perimenopause before menopause, in a new town, sent from doctor to doctor with nobody telling her what was going on. Her medicine was finding a circle of crones. Hattie is near the e...

Melissa Whippo is a psychedelic psychotherapist and founder of Deva Collective. Their 1st study is a naturalistic observational survey of perimenopausal women who microdose San Pedro. We also talk about PMDD, late ADHD diagnosis, rage, and the crone. Dr Grace Blest-Hopley is a neuroscientist and founder of Hystelica, the 1st research organisation focused on women's biology and psychedelic use. She...

Most of us reached perimenopause with no idea what it was. In this episode I go through what's actually happening, tell my own story:  BRCA, surgical menopause, PMDD, and a conversation in a taxi that changed what happened to my body. Content warning: the second half discusses violence against women, including sexual violence, and the Gisèle Pelicot case.  This podcast is first-hand experience: st...

The last episode of our month with cancer, where I answer your questions 1)How to find a circle. 2)How to get into the psychedelic field without lots of money. 3)How to choose a retreat safely.  4)And what non-psychedelic therapies are helpful when walking through cancer. With Christine Caldwell, founder of End of Life Psychedelic Care, and Dr Ellie Cavalli, clinical psychologist and founder of Af...

Katherine was a guide in the early psilocybin trials at Johns Hopkins.  Yvan Beaussant is a palliative care physician in Boston. We talk about the circles of care that hold people through serious illness and through losing someone. Katherine MacLean: https://www.katherinemaclean.org Midnight Water: https://www.katherinemaclean.org/midnight-water Being Ground, the forest sanctuary in Vermont: https...

We explore connectedness as medicine across 3 levels: connection to self, to others, and to the living world. In this episode we meet two members of the ACER community with two different paths and a shared truth: we are not meant to carry these things alone. Support: For families caring for a child with cancer: US: Momcology, peer support built by and for caregivers, momcology.org . UK: Young Live...

Nearly 1 in 2 of us in the UK will face cancer in our lifetime. This month, Dr Rosalind Watts opens the territory of cancer, not the medicine, but the loneliness, the fear, the missing village, and the connection that can hold us through it. In this first episode, Ros sets out the ground for the month and shares a personal story. Her cousin Tom was diagnosed with a rare cancer at ten and died at 1...

Michelle Baker-Jones is a relational psychotherapist and psychedelic guide who worked alongside Ros on the first Imperial psilocybin-for-depression trial. In this conversation: attachment, friendship and loss, the wounded healer, what's being lost as psychedelic therapy scales, and finding sanctuary in trees. The trials & the film Magic Medicine (2018, dir. Monty Wates)-  the documentary follo...

What does healing actually look like in the years after a psychedelic experience? Not a straight line, but a spiral. In this first guest episode, Dr Rosalind Watts is in conversation with Ruth, who took part in a psilocybin-for-depression trial and has spent the years since walking the long, slow road of integration. Ruth had lived with depression for most of her adult life, and had tried most of...

Psychedelic medicines can open a door. But what happens when there's nothing waiting on the other side to help you stay open? In this episode, Dr. Rosalind Watts tells the story of John, a participant in one of the first psilocybin trials for depression. Through John's story, Ros explores a question that sits at the heart of modern psychedelic care: what happens after the breakthrough? Along the w...

There's a lot to be angry about right now. But rage can't be the only thing we feel. This is a place to come for stories of people moving from disconnection to connection, numbness to feeling, isolation to belonging. In this first episode, clinical psychologist Ros Watts introduces Stand in the Circle. What it is. Where it came from. And the night she walked out in the rain and ended up with her a...