The Psychedelic Therapy Podcast

As the Psychedelic Renaissance blossoms, many healers and business leaders are rightly looking at environmental conservation and reciprocity with Indigenous wisdom keepers. Joseph Mays is Program Director for the Chacruna's new Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative (IRI) . On the podcast, he shares some powerful ways for the psychedelic community to cultivate a healthy relationship with Indigenous peo...

Today’s episode is a repost from my personal podcast,  Life is a Festival , where I interview cultural pioneers about living a more openhearted life. Today’s guest, Sutton King , lives a life full of joy and service and she is also the Head of Impact at Journey Colab a major psychedelic drug development company. Journey Colab just raised 12 million and Sutton’s important work in reciprocity i...

Named one of Time Magazine’s most influential people of 2021, Robin Carhart-Harris conducts some of the most impactful psychedelic research in the world. On the podcast, we review Robin’s early research with MDMA and his involvement with the first fMRI and MEG studies of LSD. We talk about his 2016 study of psilocybin’s efficacy with treatment-resistant depression and his most recent head-to-head...

Whether psychedelic therapists should have their own experiences with these compounds as part of their training is a passionately debated subject. Dr. Elizabeth Nielson , cofounder of Fluence , one of the foremost organizations training psychedelic therapists, has been pondering this for sometime, including how we ask the question itself. Her recent paper in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology ex...

The world of digital therapeutics is booming just as fast as psychedelic therapy. Today’s guest, Lyle Maxson , is resolutely optimistic about the positive synthesis of the two. On the show, we discuss the science of Lyle’s software SoundSelf, which uses voice to generate a hypnotic world of light, color, and sound. We review his business partner Robin Arnott’s  Technodelic Manifesto  and...

Lisa Dannen, our colleague at Maya, recently experienced her first Ayahuasca retreat in Peru. Today on the show, she shares all the preparation and integration that went into her experience. On the podcast, we discuss about Lisa’s work with Maya, and why she wanted to experience Ayahuasca for healing and personal growth. We discuss her 10 day experience in the Sacred Valley of Peru as well as her...

Building a psychedelic company is a lot like creating a healing container. It starts with really understand your own role as Martijn Schirp, founder of Synthesis — a psilocybin retreat center and institute in the Netherlands — discovered. On the show we discuss Martijn’s initial roles as facilitator and then CEO of Synthesis and the value of having a comprehensive team. We compare ketamine and psi...

A difficult psychedelic experience once meant a hospital visit… or worse. Now, in the spirit of the Zendo Project and other psychedelic peer support organizations, we have a new hotline called the Fireside Project (call or text 62-FIRESIDE) and there’s a lot that psychedelic therapists can learn from leaders like Hanifa Nayo Washington and Adam Rubin . On the show, we discuss the influence of cere...

There are only a few places in the world which offer legal access to high impact psilocybin retreats. MycoMeditations , stewarded by today’s guest Justin Townsend, is leading the way in sustainable, ethical psychedelic healing that takes into account the unique environment and needs of Jamaica and its people. On the show, we discuss Jungian-depth psychology and other therapeutic modalities used at...

Today on the Psychedelic Therapy Podcast, for the first time, we are discussing a firsthand account of a patient’s experience of psychedelic therapy. Sydney Bergen received six ketamine infusions administered by Noemi Toth. On the show Sydney and Noemi share their experience working together. The conversation starts with Noemi’s work with the Aspen Ketamine Center and Sydney’s reasons for pursuing...

A hot topic in the world of psychedelic medicine is whether ketamine infusion therapy is as effective as ketamine-assisted therapy (also called KAP). Today’s guests Dr. Steven Mandel and his son Sam Mandel have administered over 13,000 treatments at their Los Angeles-based clinic and they are passionate about the power of intravenous ketamine treatment. On the show we discuss the efficacy of IV ke...

From reggae and cannabis to the icaros of an Ayahuasca ceremony, sound has a huge impact on altered states of consciousness, but what’s actually going on scientifically and how can we use this to improve the outcomes of psychedelic therapy? Today’s guest, Mendel Kaelen founder of Wavepaths , has researched the subject extensively. On the show, we discuss how music and psychedelics reinforce each o...

What if you could have a more potent mystical experience than psilocybin in a quarter of the time? 5-MeO-DMT could be the future of psychedelic medicine, but as Dr. Joseph Barsuglia explains, this would require a complete redesign of our current model of care. On the show, we discuss the nature of mystical experiences as well as our current understanding of the science of 5-MeO-DMT. Joseph reveals...

Today’s guest is a legend in the field of traumatic stress studies. Dr. Rachel Yehuda has been researching stress and PTSD for 30 years and now with the promising results from MDMA clinical trials trials, she and her team have founded the Mount Sinai Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research . On the show, we discuss the four pillars of Mount Sinai’s new center. We go deep into the history of...

When ancestral wisdom is missing from modern psychedelic conversations, the Black-led Sabina Project is there to educate, reduce harm, and facilitate ceremony. On today’s episode of the Psychedelic Therapy Podcast, Charlotte James and Undrea Wright invite us to reconnect to Sacred Earth Medicines. We begin the show discussing Kambo, a healing ritual using the poisonous secretions of the giant monk...

If there was ever a people who understand the importance of evidence-based healthcare, it’s the Germans, and they are starting to get very interested in psychedelic medicine. Today our guest is Dr. Andrea Jungaberle, co-founder of the MIND Foundation , a research center and nonprofit advocacy group for psychedelics in Berlin. On the show we discuss the current landscape of psychedelic-assisted the...

Equal access to psychedelic medicine is a huge issue in this burgeoning field. Today’s guest, Genesee Herzberg has prioritized ethics in founding Sage Institute , a sliding scale clinic that offers psychotherapy and psychedelic-assisted therapy and is also supporting the proliferation of ethical clinics through a new consulting group, Forth Road Health . On the show, we discuss how Sage Institute...

Jonathan Sabbagh is building a space and solution for independent therapists who want to provide Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) by offering a prescription service, a medically supervised location, and a community. On the show, we talk about Jonathan’s startup Journey and the tools he is creating to democratize access for independent psychedelic practitioners. We discuss set and setting and...

Today on the podcast, I'm speaking to Dr. Molly Maloof , a concierge and lifestyle medicine practitioner who has developed a comprehensive protocol for Ketamine-assisted therapy. On the show, we talk about Molly’s professional journey from burning out in residency to concierge medicine to Stanford professor and Ketamine practitioner. We discuss her protocol in detail and why one shouldn’t try to t...

Before today’s conversation I didn’t know much about Celtic Shamanism. Today’s guest, Darragh Stewart is a shining beacon of knowledge and joy. As a PhD in plant molecular biology, he has gone all in on plant medicine to support his psychedelic Irish brothers and everyone else who needs to break through the blockages in their lives. On the show, we talk about how Darragh blends science and spiritu...

Today on the Psychedelic Therapy Podcast, I am interviewing my colleague at Maya, Jessica Cadoch, our Research Manager for Public Health.  On the show, we discuss Jessica’s master's research in psychedelics and addiction. We talk about the paradigm shift in care she sees between the concept of the "powerless addict" and the idea of the empowered inner healer. We also discuss psychedelic socie...

Have you ever wondered what it would take to create a psychedelic therapy clinic? Today’s guest, Veronika Gold , co-founder of Polaris Insight Center in San Francisco has done just that. Our conversation starts with Veronika first meeting Stanislav Grof at 16 years old in the Czech Republic and we follow her journey from studying at CIIS (California Institute of Integral Studies) to founding Polar...

Wise psychonauts have long known that the real work of psychedelic healing is in the post-experience integration and there is no one more renowned in this field than today’s guest Deanne Adamson, founder of Being True To You. We spend the first third of our conversation discussing preparation for psychedelic healing, including how to anchor an experience as it happens. We talk about integration as...

How will doctors who don’t know about psychedelic therapies, learn to be receptive to these innovative compounds as valuable tools for their patients? Dr. Lynn Marie Morski, host of the Plant Medicine Podcast , has a brilliant idea–to form an association dedicated to educating medical practitioners about psychedelics. On today’s episode, we discuss why Lynn Marie created the Psychedelic Medicine A...

This week’s guest, Belinda Eriacho , brings powerful insights from her lineage as a Native American woman and her life experience as a powerful healer and public speaker. We start the show with a land acknowledgment honoring Indigenous land rights, before exploring key aspects of Belinda’s worldview, including the importance of humor and the principle of "hózhó," which means to walk in h...