587: The benefits & risks of psychedelic medicine | Nick Brüss, EdD, LMFT
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Welcome to the My Buddy Green podcast. I'm Jason Wachub, founder and co-CEO of My Buddy Green and your host.

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Mental health treatments are evolving and psychedelic therapy is at the forefront of this transformation. Dr. Nicholas Bruce is here to explain how these powerful tools, when used in a safe, structured way, can foster deep healing. Dr. Bruce is a licensed psychotherapist specializing in integrative, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and internal family systems.

His work focuses on helping people move beyond trauma, limiting beliefs, and destructive patterns, guiding them toward greater connection, self-trust, and emotional freedom. In today's show, we dive into the world of psychedelic therapy.

what it is, how it works, and who is it for. We'll break down the three phases of treatment, discuss how medicines like MDMA, ketamine, and psilocybin differ, and explore why integration is the key to lasting transformation. Plus, Dr. Bruce shares his insights on how these therapies are being used for PTSD, depression, anxiety, and addiction, offering new hope for those who have struggled with traditional approaches.

If you're curious about the science behind psychedelics, the future of mental health, or simply looking for deeper healing, this show is for you.

So let's start with the basics of psychedelic therapy. Give us a primer of what psychedelic therapy is and the different types of psychedelics available that fall under the category. I think of MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine. What else am I missing here? Yeah, sure thing. So psychedelic assisted therapy is a structured therapeutic process. It

It combines a psychedelic, as you mentioned, the psilocybin, MDMA, or ketamine in conjunction with psychotherapy. And it's designed specifically for deep healing and personal evolution. It generally is in three phases. So preparation, navigation, and integration. And there's therapy throughout. So the preparation phase is

That's long before any medicine is introduced. And similar to typical therapy, a therapist is getting to know the client, where they're at in their current life, what they're kind of presenting with, what their current suffering is.

where it is they want to go, what are their goals and their aims, but also kind of where they came from. So of course, childhood, we're also getting to know kind of their parents, and we go at least one more generation back, because we're all part of systems, and we want to know the systems kind of that we're nestled in. So preparation is really about creating safety.

creating trust, kind of a therapeutic alliance that's going to really create a space for the maximum benefits. Next is navigation. So we're navigating a psychedelic experience in a safe container with ideally a highly trained and experienced psychotherapist who has training in trauma training, developmental psychology. This navigation, this is so medicine is, the psychedelic is ingested.

And for the visual, imagine a very comfortable therapy office. There's a couch. And then depending on the medicine and the dose, the client might be sitting upright and they might just be in a conversation, like eyes open and in a conversation while they're having this medicine interact and kind of open some doors for them. We'll talk more about that, I'm sure.

Other medicine sessions can be more internal. So a higher dose might look like a client lying down, eye shades, headphones with music, and the focus is on the internal experience and what's arising there. Typically, there's like inside going inside to be with that material that's arising and then coming out and taking the eye shades off, headphones off and then discussing what's arising.

And then the integration really begins at the end of that session. And integration is a key, key factor. This is really where I think the magic happens. So we've had this perhaps peak experience or novel experience, a healing experience with the medicine. And now we're going to integrate it. Integrating, integration means taking that information,

that came up during the medicine session and how do we bring that into our day-to-day life? How do we process it? How do we digest it? And if we want to make change, we need to incorporate intention and repetition. So the integration phase is a kind of a more than a debrief of kind of what arose. It's like how do we now take that information into our daily life? And then an example of

A client who, during a medicine session, realized that they have been being led by a people-pleasing part of themselves. They learned really early and they saw some images of where they really got this in their bones that they, according to part of themselves, needed to be a people-pleaser. And after the session, they were able to do that.

She was like, well, wow, I need to maybe get out of my relationship. I may probably need to quit my job. So we want to go, whoa, whoa, whoa. So there's one bit of the containment around integration is that we want to slow things down to really work at the roots of what's arising versus taking rash action. And so what her work was really being with her experience and being clear about what she's saying yes to and no to over a period of time.

Most people that have a psychedelic experience that are in this safe, responsible container are going to have a positive experience. So most of the work of integration is actually taking that and then finding how to work that into and learn and grow from that into their daily life. So it's less about kind of containment of rash decisions, more like how do we maximize the benefits of that? So we've got these three phases.

preparation, navigation, integration. And then if there's more psychedelic work, we go back to preparing for the next navigation, the next journey, and then integration after each one. And this tends to repeat. In terms of use case, it sounds like trauma is probably the number one use case.

What else can the therapy be used for? Wow. Yeah. I mean, you nailed it. And there's a lot of different symptoms that can kind of lead towards, wow, I'm suffering and I need some help. Traditional therapies have not been useful. So maybe the person has been open to or seen some headlines and doing some research that psychedelic-assisted therapy might be helpful for them. So they're willing to kind of open to that.

Trauma, we could call it whatever, but it kind of boils down often to trauma or adverse experiences in which we took on or parts of us took on kind of different roles or ways of being that are kind of stuck. It's limited patterns or strong beliefs that we're in reaction to in our daily life.

And these medicines help create a space, neurobiologically and even psychologically, to help us open, re-perceive, and even have healing experiences that we then kind of take into our day-to-day life. In addition to trauma, although this, I think you may agree, is also at the root of it is addiction, different addictions, trauma at the root of that helps us explore what's going on there.

I'll add one other, which definitely has to do with our kind of attachment styles or conditioning, is how we are in relationship, romantic relationship. So these medicines can help us relate more to what's going on inside of us, which definitely makes us or can make us more available to connect and relate more.

yes, romantically or having just deeper intimacy and partnerships, friendships, and also helps us in work relationships, our creative work as well. And so MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine,

Do all have the same use cases or is MDMA better for this specific type of trauma versus ketamine or this specific type of personality? How do you think about all three and how they differ? Yeah, great question. We're going to know a lot more in the years to come. Right now, it is still kind of the early or even the wild west of working with these medicines, given that we, they were developed

As your listeners may know, they were kind of shut down in the 1970s. Most psychedelics were made Schedule I, which means that the government here in the United States said that they had no medical use and they were prone to abuse, which is bananas. It actually can help people with addictions and they have a ton of medical, psychological healing use. So what we know now is

It's mostly through experienced practitioners and some research studies that have been dialing in. When you do a research study, you have to dial in on one specific kind of issue or indication. What we know is that MDMA is really helpful for PTSD. And then if we think about PTSD, that tends to be a combination of anxiety and depression, a number of other symptoms.

But MDMA can help us get to the core and a wound. So much of our kind of mental health system is putting a heavy bandaid on the symptoms, whereas these medicines,

MDMA, I can explain why, helps us get to the actual wound to heal it. As far as what else has been researched, ketamine has been shown to be really useful for treatment-resistant depression. Let's just call it depression. And also certain kinds of suicidal ideation. Ketamine can be really rapid and has a shelf life to help with

what tends to be really dense or heavy depression, it can help alleviate or lift it for a period of time. Psilocybin, there's been studies, Paracord College of London, Johns Hopkins, really studying, honing in on anxiety, different forms of anxiety, and how psilocybin, even one or two doses held in a therapeutic container has

has been really potent in alleviating symptoms. That's kind of the part we can study, are the symptoms there or not, alleviating symptoms for up to 12 months. And so can you walk us through each of these and what treatment may look like in terms of the setting, the experience? Am I going to hallucinate? How long is it going to be? Am I going to...

uh like what does it look like am i gonna have to sit in a chamber am i gonna have to who's like and and maybe spend time here and what it looks like so i think this is an important distinction in an appropriate medical medically supervised setting because i don't think we're advocating for you know signing up to hey you know i'm in mexico let's just go do this i'm here to have a good time or you know i'll mention you know as i mentioned before the show i'm

When I was in college, I went overboard on everything. And my experience with psilocybin was, you know, a Saturday afternoon in the off season in the spring, you know, drinking heavily and thought it was a good idea. Someone just bought mushrooms off the street. And this is like 1996, bought mushrooms off the street in New York City. And we

We thought it was a good idea and we just kept on consuming them and kept on drinking. And God knows what was really in those mushrooms. I just kept on eating them and kept on drinking and it felt really good. And then all of a sudden it didn't feel good. And I'm like, all right, I want this to end. Why isn't this ending? I would have given it. I could see why I had a very, you know, unfortunate experience. It didn't last very long, but seeing like, I want this to end and it's not ending. I'm starting to freak out here.

uh so have this like sense of bliss but also you know like okay this is turning into i want this over uh and then eventually it did end but that was my experience not exactly the ideal set and setting just to like prove a point and be clear like we're not advocating for people just going and experimenting for the for the sake of experimenting so i'll pause there

Great. Yes. Thank you for sharing that. I'm glad it sounds and feels overall kind of positive at minimum. Very memorable. Probably connected with some of the buddies. Memorable. We played the Grateful Dead. It was like memorable. I think it was the last time I experimented and I was good. Great. So Jason, you mentioned that set and setting. So that's a way to start. So set and setting.

It's the mindset. It's how we're entering this. And the main piece here is, are we trying to get away from something? Are we trying to move towards something? But towards something is like, what's going on in your actual experience? And then is the setting, the environment around you, is that supportive for you to kind of get to know? And essentially the big headline here is what feels safe.

And so a sober guide sitter therapist would be really helpful for this kind of set setting that we really are advocating for here, um, to set you up for the best possible outcomes and actually set setting. I'll add, um,

You mentioned that you got mushrooms. I'll just keep eating them. So having a sense of what the dose range is and then also kind of the timing of that. I'll speak to that in each of these medicines talk about. But the dose is a really important piece. And then this other clinically it's kind of called the matrix, but it's really like the outer environment in which you're living in. Like, are you is there a like what kind of world are you entering the universe?

experience from? Like, is there a lot of chaos in your life right now? Is there a lot of strife? And then what are you kind of going back to? So we just really want to take care and be thoughtful about the people that are coming in to do this work about the world that they're heading, they're coming from and heading into. So

Let's start with MDMA. So this is a substance that's created in a lab. It was created over 100 years ago, and it's had its, some people know it as ecstasy or molly, but in a clinical setting, it's pure MDMA. And the experience, the subjective experience of it, it's most often referred to as a heart opener. So imagine your good loving heart just opening

turned up a bit. So you're feeling trust and safety. And so your compassion tends to arise. It can be a euphoric feeling, but like a warmth and feeling like trusting and safe. So

As far as the container, I'll speak to the... I had the good fortune to be a therapist and supervisor on the MAPS, which stands for the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies. This is a nonprofit that was really... It's really leading the way to make psychedelic medicines available in a very accessible and even so much so that insurance companies will reimburse for it. That's what it's trying to do, make it legal.

And this MDMA medicine, the way it was delivered in a research study, it was about a three or four month study for each participant. And there's hundreds of participants.

And they would come in, they would get a medical eval, there was inclusion, exclusion criteria. The study was for the treatment of severe PTSD. So they had to have not only PTSD, but generally a severe amount of PTSD. And over the course of this research, which was, again, about four months or so, they would get MDMA three times, about a month apart.

and then about 40 some hours of therapy. So they would have the preparation, they'd have the navigation, they would have the medicine sessions three times about a month apart, and then they would have integration sessions. And these people that have been suffering

long time with PTSD, what the study found is that two-thirds of them, 67%, at the end of this study, no longer, they improved so much, they no longer qualified for having PTSD. That's very powerful, and I want to call out 40 hours of therapy because that is a commitment. And I think we have a tendency culturally to go straight to the shortcut.

Where people hear, okay, you know, MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine, I got some trauma, like, let's go. Versus, I think, but 40 hours of therapy. I think the key thing, it's this idea of rigorous therapy combined with this intervention.

is very effective. Jason, thank you. This, if there's one thing I would, I think I'd want people to take away, it's the point you're making now, that the medicines themselves are helpful. They can help alleviate symptoms, perhaps for a while, but they really, it leaves a lot of, if we leave it at that, there's a lot of therapeutic meat left on the bone. We can actually

In that space, or with the psychedelics on board or in our system, we can actually explore the roots of the wound, why we're suffering. So much is like, oh, you're anxious? Take this pill. It's going to help those symptoms go down. Whereas this is going to help us open to getting into the wound, the roots of the suffering. So thank you for highlighting. Yes, there was 40 hours of

of therapy and actually within this research was two therapists. I joke a two-headed kind of therapist for each participant. What I think is so attractive too is you have, again I'm going to make a huge generalization, but there are loads of people who are suffering and are just in therapy forever.

And it's just a recurring revenue stream for therapists. And this person's not really getting any better. And it's endless where not to say this is a silver bullet, but what's so promising is there seems to be an endpoint in that there is a significant benefit that is realized to this person suffering. And then they can almost like there's an endpoint, whereas therapy for a lot of people just seems like,

A recurring appointment. Yes. And I am a therapist and I agree. I have, when we talk about ketamine, I've shared how I've shifted my therapeutic model from kind of an open ended, okay, every week to a container so that we have a beginning, middle and end. And let's see, let's go for it. Let's see if we can get to these roots. Let's not see if we can't. Let's do it.

And then let's set you up for what's the integration? What are the ongoing practices that you'll need to do to maintain and deepen those games? So that's a good segue. So MDMA, to be clear, ecstasy, if those familiar with it, no hallucination. Yeah, thank you. So it's more of just a warm openness thing.

Imagine like the trust being turned up and the fear. So literally neurochemically, the activation in the amygdala, this fear center of our brain is turned down. The activation is turned down. You're more trusting. So you can turn towards that traumatic material.

Be more open to it and explore it from maybe more of a meta perspective, but also kind of feel the feels that come up that maybe have been very well resisted for a long period of time. Okay, understood.

Ketamine. Let's go there next. So ketamine, again, this is a synthesized medicine created in the 60s, approved by the FDA in 1970 for its anesthetic. It's

It's used in every hospital. It's tranquilizer, essentially. It can be for a veterinarian medicine. It's also used with infants. It's used with adults. It's World Health Organization's 50 most essential drugs. It's in every hospital around the world. It is safe.

So they got research around the safety profile of it, so much so that it's considered like the buddy drug, meaning in wartime, soldiers would have it on them. And if their buddy got half blown up and they needed to get them out of there, instead of morphine, that would require a lot of engagement to track their heart and their respiratory system, ketamine,

It doesn't impact that so much. So it's considered a much safer medicine, which alleviates discomfort, but also has this... Why it's considered a psychedelic is because it...

helps launch us into a non-ordinary state. So while it's an anesthetic, we're using it at sub-anesthetic levels. So you're not in a complete dream, that you're not completely anesthetized, but rather there's an alteration. So you can describe it as kind of dreamlike. You create some space between yourself and your experience, including your body. I've had one client who

long time suffering from chronic pain, minutes, 20 minutes into the session, she said, this is what my body's like without pain. And so just these kind of experiences that can help separate a little bit so that, this goes back to your earlier point, well, then it's not just about the relief. What do we do in that space? Okay, let's look at how we're dealing with that suffering. Let's look how we're carrying it and how it got started. So-

ketamine has a short half-life. Back to MDMA, you're in for about four to six hours.

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So long. Yeah. Generally, that's another one. I, you know, like a lot like when you said ecstasy, I'm like, Oh, yeah, I've done that too. But, you know, college partying, I'll try it. And that's another one. I didn't realize that the and I think your description is accurate to what I experienced, but I didn't realize four to six hours.

Or maybe I did. At the time. And there's an arc. There's, you know, a come up, there's a peak, a plateau, and then a trailing. And oftentimes in recreational, it's used in other areas.

with other medicines or drugs. And also there's what you're engaged in. So if you're that therapeutic container is the focus is on what's going on inside and you have support to work with that. So it can, it tends to feel like four to six hours. But ketamine much shorter. Ketamine much shorter. We're talking more like 90 minutes, kind of the full arc of that.

Different doses. So I work, as I mentioned, in kind of this three-month container where we will work with ketamine about six times. It'll be the preparation, the medicine sessions will be two plus hours where there'll be a little check-in.

And then we'll bring on the medicine. And during that medicine, depending upon the dose, a distinction here is psychedelic dose, which is a higher dose. It's more of an internal experience. You're working with the material that's arising.

or a psycholytic dosing, which is that's a lower medium dose where it stays conversational, stays relational. So it's essentially, and generally, psychedelic-assisted therapy is therapy enhanced with these medicines. So you're able to, with ketamine, people tend to experience it more as kind of a little bit more of a dream-like therapy.

and it creates a separation from their ordinary life, which can ease the body. And then again, kind of work with the material, connect some dots that maybe they weren't able to because they were kind of stuck in rigid kind of thinking. Depression has this experience. Part of the experience of depression is like the whole feeling system is turned down. This can alleviate that feeling.

for a period of time and then it creates this kind of working time so we can get really curious about which parts are really scared or essentially trying to keep us safe by depressing everything. I didn't realize that higher dosages, it would cause hallucination. Yeah, so really with ketamine, the higher doses, like the idea of a journey or going somewhere, kind of taking off is often the experience. I

remind everyone that these medicines, they're a journey, but they're a round trip, round trip ticket. Guaranteed, you're coming back. You're going to be back to your pre-medicine state at some point. And I let them know explicitly what that would be. And we're tracking throughout and they have someone there. They have with my clients, I'm there for the reminder of the container that they're in.

or in person, the power of a physical touch, of a handhold, a hand on the shoulder, to kind of remind them their body is here and it is safe.

Even if there's kind of a peeling away of their ego or their sense of self and there's more information coming in, oh, maybe I'm not as kind of this small sense of self that's having to fight to be in the world. Maybe I am part of something bigger and we can feel that.

And that actually leads to the psilocybin work, which tends to be a bit more kind of that medicine helps a little bit more kind of a unity or a meta perspective that we're a part of something natural. And psilocybin, you are hallucinating. Yeah. So hallucinations for people that have never worked with a psychedelic medicine. I remember when I would hear that, I'm like,

Thinking that I'm walking down the street and then almost like cartoon-like or special effects-like, there's things that are there that are not there. Correct. Was that your experience? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Mostly, and let me know how this sounds to you, mostly it's a distortion or it's an alteration of what's there. So you might look at a tree and see the tree breathing.

We might call that a hallucination, but there's an alteration of something that's there. So it's less likely that you're going to see a dragon in a room that nobody else has seen. Rather, you might look at a piece of art in the room and have a completely different take, understanding, felt sense or experience of that.

Right. Like I can, I'm going back 27, 28 years, like feeling colors, like very much this, you know, feeling of unity. But then also I would say, you know, 60% through. And again, I don't want to like, this isn't a comparison because like I violated, violated every rule of the intention set and setting and dosage.

there was this concern at a certain point, like, you know, I'm done. I want to come back. Why aren't I coming back? And that wasn't a fun experience at all. And I was like, all right, I'm done not doing this again. Yeah. I'm so glad you bring this up. Uh, that at first point synesthesia is what it's called. It's we experience our senses kind of, they, our senses kind of get seemingly kind of mixed or blended where we're

hearing colors or hearing something and feeling and experiencing it through a different sense store, which can be really interesting and playful and fun. I would say that's most of the time. To your second point is things can, during a psychedelic experience, we are more vulnerable. It tends to be outside of our ordinary experience.

So it can invoke fear when things aren't going the way we want them to go or really want to highlight here when we start to resist the experience. So part of you, something in you said, OK, I'm done. I'd like to talk about I'd like this to be over. I actually think of LSD, a medicine we haven't talked about yet, but that you're in for like eight years.

Yeah, 12 hours. And it said that, you know, LSD, you'll be done with LSD before it's done with you. So which is scary, I think, for many people. And I think of me and I've thought about this and maybe part of my personality. You know, we do our podcast under an hour. It's like, let's get to the core points and let people move on. You know, I think so with my experience in retrospect is OK, I got it. You know, all right, I'm done. I want to move on. Oh, wait, I can't move on. I don't like this.

Right. And so that actually, Jason, thank you for sharing.

as you will, but that might actually be part of a growth edge for you. It's like, wow, part of me is saying, I want this to end. What would it be like to continue to open to this? And this is really where bad trips, this very bad trip. So challenging, something's happening. It's no longer euphoric. It's like, no, I want it to be something else. So when we start to resist the experience, that's what

That's when it really tends to make it challenging. And when people start to push against, this is also why it's really helpful to have a sober, trained, experienced guide there to say, ah, maybe we can just breathe with this. Or what if we just took two breaths with this? And then add in life as in ordinary states and also non-ordinary states, if we can turn towards openness.

be with what's here, then that it shifts our experience from resistance to openness. And on that note, of the, you know, I do want to touch on who shouldn't experience, like who should not

Is it someone, you know, who maybe bipolar, schizophrenia runs in their family? Because that's real. Like, who shouldn't, you know, sign up for one of these experiences? And how do you think about risk versus benefits for individuals? You can look at genetics. Some people are more prone to certain things. Like, how do you think about that? Right. So...

What you named is also how generally research holds it or thinks about it at this point. Down the road, there might be more experiments with a wider range of people. But I mentioned exclusion criteria to a lot of research. It's just that it's people with schizophrenia currently or even in their bloodline, bipolar 1, any real psychotic disorders.

People experiencing active mania would not be a good candidate. Current substance abuse, not a good candidate. Anyone who's currently destable, you know, doesn't have a stable environment because these medicines can be destabilizing. I repeat that. These medicines can be destabilizing when they are held in a safe, responsible way that is unlikely.

But we do, as you're asking, kind of look into what it is that makes good candidates versus not so good candidates. And then how do you think about the developing human brain? And I'll call out, so marijuana, you know, kind of generally accepted culturally now. And look, there's good and bad to that. And I would argue that

and I think this is getting more light, people like Andrew Huberman, Daniel Amen have been calling attention to this, for the developing human brain, so essentially under 25 years old,

The data isn't good in terms of developing psychosis or like the brain is still developing. If you say like 25 and under, like you should probably avoid marijuana usage. Over 25, use case, maybe pain management, like different story. But under 25, like I think it's worrisome. And anecdotally, I've seen friends like kind of

fall apart mentally from marijuana and then it led to other things and so forth so like do you have the same view in terms of these therapeutics and developing brain at 25 versus 25 plus my brain is fully formed yeah i have a couple thoughts on this and this is coming from a guy who got his tattoos after the age of 30 so i want this capacity to kind of wait and some

somewhat conservative and just figure out what it is I really want to ink on me. So generally, yes, let these medicines be for people that have their brains quote-unquote fully formed, or at least what we know of that.

In part because it's a developing brain and there's so much that we don't know. Obviously, we wouldn't have pregnant women taking these medicines, but that also because of just kind of like life experience, like this can be profound experiences and we want them ideally in a container where they have a sense of how they want to guide themselves.

Having a big experience, as I mentioned before, someone can come out of like, wow, now I need to quit my job and become a psychedelic physical coordinator. So that's a piece of it. And I also think that these medicines can be, it seems to be easily prescribing to young adults

And to kids, you know, narcotics and opioids for certain things. And in my opinion, I could see a world where these medicines, psychedelic medicines are a better choice. Again, as we've been talking about, it's not an ongoing thing. We're not talking, and I'm, you know, thoughts on microdosing. This is not like taking a small dose just to kind of maintain something. This is like to have a container of

to help you connect with yourself more, to help connect with what's actually going on inside of you and help you see your world from a wider lens and help you engage with it, put you in that to help you engage with it. So I do think there could be, you know, those could be used in select situations, also kind of right of passage or connective experience. So kind of said a lot there all over the place, but yeah,

in that, yes, generally for adults and there might be situations for younger adults. So I like that you keep on mentioning container and you've talked about endpoint. And if I'm listening and I'm saying, you know what, this is something I may want to look into, you know, people could obviously see you. We'll put your information on the show notes on the website, but not everyone can get to you and you've got limited time. But if I'm going to look for a practitioner, if I'm going to look for a safe container,

what should one look for? Actually, what first comes to mind is how unfortunate it is these are not really accessible to a wide population of the medicines we've talked about: MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine. Ketamine is the only psychedelic medicine that is available by, is legal federally, by prescription by a physician.

That's starting to change. Oregon and Colorado have, voters have passed laws to make psilocybin with a plan for other psychedelic medicines more available for the people in those states. Right now, it's pretty limited to working with ketamine and outside of trials. So

There are governmental and other studies working with these medicines. I encourage people and I'll send a link for people to look into that.

But if you're working with someone and there's going to a lot, it sets up a lot of underground, meaning basically not legal. And there are well-meaning, super well-trained therapists that are risking their license. They have a governing board risking their license to help people. And it is sincerely the hardest part of my job is knowing these medicines exist and that they're not more widely available. So in working, whether it's a trained therapist or

or a practitioner who is not a therapist, there are some questions that you should ask yourself, that you should ask them, and that they should be asking you. Be sure. So the most important thing for you to ask yourself is do you trust this person? And if it's like, oh, we're doing this ceremony, just like show up.

You know, even if your friend had a positive experience, have a conversation and check, gut check yourself. Do you trust this person? Would you want them at your death or would you like them around in the middle of a crisis? Questions that you should ask them is about their training, about what it is you're working with. Do they have experience? What

What you're intending to work with, what's the first indication? And then what they should be asking you is about your history, any trauma, any medications you're on. It's red flags if they're offering quick path to enlightenment and they're not actually asking about you. Yeah, because it does feel...

that there's a lot going on on social media of, you know, I'm going with a shaman to Peru or Mexico or Costa Rica. And not to say, I'm like, there's a lot of, there's good there, but I do think, you know, you bring up like asking for one's medical history. That's a pretty important point. It feels like there's a little bit of this like kumbaya feel good, like, hey, sign up. We're all doing it. It's going to be great. We're in the jungle. The shaman's good. Trust me.

And I'm sure that drives you nuts because there is, you know, maps, and we'll talk more about that in studies, like there's some real science with real outcomes to address a major issue we're facing culturally. And they're almost at odds. You got like the old school wellness, which is like, let's wing it, feel good, all good vibes, man, versus like, let's take...

the medicine in a therapeutic dose in a medical setting in a controlled environment versus let's have fun in the jungle. Yeah. Wow. First, I want to be sure to mention some other modalities that are not psychedelics that lean towards kind of the outcomes of psychedelic medicine. But yeah, I took that big breath because it does drive me

Because I have friends personally that have had a psychedelic experience and then didn't sleep for six months. I had a really rough time sleeping for six months because of anxiety. I've had multiple friends, either a psychedelic experience or even a long meditation retreat that was destabilizing in some way. So we read the headlines, but we really need to bring care to people.

to support, again, preparation and integration around these medicine experiences. So what happened? I'm dying to, like, in that case, was this like winging it with friends in Costa Rica? Like what? In that particular case, they did a, this is a medicine we haven't talked about, 5-MeO-DMT, and it's known as code or frog medicine, and had a euphoric, incredible, expansive experience

but days and weeks and then end up being months after extremely disrupted sleep because of an anxiety. And interestingly, the anxiety wasn't throughout the day. It was only when she started to go to sleep or got tired to go to sleep. And then I have other friends that report back from decades ago where they had a psychedelic experience

And let's say if, you know, I'll keep it to that, a psychedelic experience, and then it felt such anxiety, but also shame, kind of around being destabilized by it, that they didn't tell anybody for a long time, and they just suffered with it.

So there's also this stigma. These medicines are not legal and the stigma around working with them. So I really encourage all of us to be really kind and compassionate. And part of that is really getting educated about what is a safe and responsible container or set up for you when exploring these medicines. And as I mentioned a moment ago, there are ways to kind of

Support yourself to open to working with medicine. Top of the list, mindfulness practice. Basic mindfulness practice. You might even get interested in kind of some non-dual practices or inquiry practices as well that can be really supportive.

holotropic breathwork. It's essentially women's breathing. Great. You're aware and your listeners are aware of that. But double click, can we double click on it? Because that could have the same, I know anecdotally, holotropic breathwork, if you're not prepared, could also have a significant impact. Not in the best way.

Not in the best way. And maybe even less kind of containment around is like, what do you, I just went off and I did some heavy breathing for a while. Why would I need any support after that? Or why would I want to check in or integrate any of that material? So absolutely right. Holotropic breath work, which briefly came from Stan Grof, who worked with, he's kind of the godfather of psychedelic assisted therapy. He, after working with like 5,000 people with LSD, he,

And that became illegal, so he developed holotropic breathwork, this way of breathing which invoked kind of the unconscious and brought up often a cathartic experience. It absolutely, I would say on the front end, needs a mindfulness practice, which is

I feel very fortunate to have had a long-term mindfulness practice before any psychedelic experience, substance experience. And then the care we bring in, literally setting up integration, setting up meetings to talk about with someone who's familiar with the space or is even better yet, who's there with you during the experience.

is pretty key. One other thing that so mindfulness, how to work or even just starting out with breathwork to kind of start to feel more in your body and notice that you can you have the capacity for big feelings. Most of us as kids, the reason we take on kind of these protector parts that push things away

It's because of an emotional intensity. So our system had to figure out a way to kind of shut that down. So breathwork to feel has a lot to do with our breathing, has a lot to do with feelings so that we can really connect with that. One other way, internal family systems, IFS. And I know, Jason, you had Gabby Bernstein on recently talking.

That's great. That's a great primer to get to work with kind of these protector parts. For you listeners that don't know, internal family systems, this evidence-based, very non-pathologizing, compassionate model of psychotherapy that holds that we are, we have a true self, a self-energy inside that has been witnessing our whole life and that we actually, that's untouched by our trauma, that we want that to lead.

It doesn't lead because we have parts of us, kind of subpersonalities, patterns, extreme patterns or kind of behaviors that kind of come up and may start to lead. So imagine, oh, I chose that out of fear. I chose that because I didn't feel enough. These tend to be parts of your inner critic. That's an example of a popular part. IFS by itself, and I've been certified in it for over 10 years, it is so synergistic with psychedelic-assisted work.

IFS in itself is a bit psychedelic, meaning a bit of a non-ordinary state. So I encourage people to even explore and get educated about that. Listen to your podcast with Gabby about that. There's books because that can help us open to whatever's arising. So if something scary shows up during a medicine experience, oh, well, maybe I can actually be curious about it instead of

kind of employing a defense around it and IFS can help with that. Where's the science headed here? How do we legitimize this these therapeutics from something in the jungle to you know how do we bring them to the doctor's office? Yeah we do that with gold standard research and I want to kind of go upstream here a little bit. Funding research costs money and so when we

are voting and we let our representatives know that we want more research in these potentially life-extending medicines. So we want to bring around federal, I'm hoping for more federal, state, and private funding for research. Research done well anywhere in the world

is impactful around the world. And I would like us here in the United States to really lead that, having seen, like, we have veterans that have fought in our wars, having to travel to other countries to get the treatment for PTSD that they deserve, that is illegal right here, let alone not being funded by the VA. That said, there is research happening at the VA with MDMA,

It's a multi-year kind of process, but it is happening. So we need more research. And what helps the research kind of get more ground? It's the science over the years.

over stigma. We are railing against an old stigma. It's the reason a lot of people don't share about their psychedelic experience unless it was completely miraculous for them. So if you've had positive experiences or even if they weren't positive experiences, let's start talking about it more. Let's get curious about what you were resisting or kind of what was going on if it wasn't a positive experience.

And let's share what you've learned or what you're learning even better, what you're learning from those past experiences. You bring up veterans. I think it's such an important point. You think of the mental health struggles, including PTSD, that so many of our veterans face. We've just kind of forgotten about them.

It's sad. I'm optimistic we're starting to take notice and maybe make some changes there. What are you most excited about, about where we sit today in 2025? It does feel like we've come a long way here, even though we've got a long way to go in terms of some of these interventions becoming more effective.

accepted culturally. You got some states opening them up. Feels like it's entering the zeitgeist. What are you excited about here? I'm excited about a lot. I love my work. I love what I get to do. I get to be a part of just these healing journeys. And I'm actually...

writing a book, demystifying the psychedelic experience and also alongside giving other ways to get towards those benefits without actually psychedelics themselves. So big piece that I'm excited about is the kind of rippling out effect. Somebody has, I work with a wide range of people and what I'm working with is

CEOs, founders, the impact that then ripples out can be huge. A lot of this work sounds like individual work, like personal evolution. And I see like when we're when we're when we heal and there's something that we integrate and we heal, I see that as evolution.

And meaning we have an expanded view and we acknowledge more of our capacity. And that comes out in relationships and how we lead and what we invest in. So it unfolds into more of a communal, societal, all ships rising as that tide lifts up. I'm excited about the research that will make these medicines available for a wider, I want

much wider range of people. People that I actually, my mind goes back to it's sad that because these medicines were kind of locked up or made illegal for such a long time, we've missed out on a lot of research. There are people that are suffering today that would benefit greatly from

a medicine that would have been available had the research happened years ago. And then outside of kind of the clinical container, I'm excited about consciousness exploration. Like we, these medicines are,

again, held safely and responsibly. They can help us know ourselves better, know the world we're a part of, know how integrated we are, and very much in line with your work, helping us notice, you know, food is medicine and our relationships, taking care of our body. Like these can have, while it starts individual, it has such big ripple impact.

impact into our world. I'm excited to be a part of it. Amen. And in terms of, we covered so much today. Is there anything we didn't touch on that you would like to mention before we wrap? I think the last thing is reiterating that used safely and responsibly, these are powerful medicines. Like you mentioned before, therapy can be kind of this ongoing thing

And think of that as kind of more of a traditional kind of screwdriver, if you will. Well, psychedelics can be like a power tool. So yes, it can speed things up. But in the same way, we need to pay closer attention to how we're working with a power tool than we are with a screwdriver, right? There's a machine moving faster here. Right?

I have said, you know, these medicines can really accelerate a healing process. Like you're in Miami, I'm in Los Angeles. We could pick a point and meet there in the middle. We could both walk there and we'd get there, you know, and it would take a while. Or we could take a jet and while walking,

As we've discussed, it's not for everyone and we want to bring the care along with this. This medicine can be rocket fuel for healing. Well said. And where can people find you? My website, apracticeoffreedom.com and Dr. Nick Bruce on Instagram. Awesome, Nick. Thank you so much. Really fantastic work. Thank you. Thanks, Jason. Appreciate it.