74 | Ketamine and Mental Health with Jay Godfrey

When the fog of depression and anxiety seems impenetrable, could psychedelics be the beacon of hope? If you've thought about or even HEARD of Ketamine being an option, this episode is for you. Join us as we sit with Jay Godfrey, the passionate co-founder of Nushama, New York City's psychedelic wellness clinic, who illuminates the path to healing with the help of psychedelics like ketamine. Beyond the substance itself, we delve into the vital importance of preparation and integration—a holistic approach that defines the true essence of patient care and the transformative power of these therapies. As we wrestle with the economic realities of health care, Jay's insights shine a light on navigating the financial landscape of psychedelic treatments and finding practitioners committed to a comprehensive healing experience.

Jay's own personal odyssey through the realm of psychedelic therapy undeniably reshaped his life, changing not just his perspectives but his very narrative. He was once a skeptic, anchored in convention and cautious of the unknown, but his voyage was catalyzed by the profound revelations found in Michael Pollan's work, leading to a cascade of transformations in self-perception, relationships, and spirituality. This episode is a candid revelation of that journey, an exploration of how the previously untapped therapeutic potential of psychedelics is fostering a community of converts and advocates, formerly critical of drug use, now championing its healing powers.

As we peer into the crystal ball of psychedelic-assisted therapy's future, we uncover the promising horizon of MDMA's possible legalization for PTSD treatment and its reverberating impact on mental health care. Nushama's vision, a sanctuary of psychedelic medicine, encapsulates the potential of MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and DMT treatments, reaching into the depths of emotional and psychological challenges. Woven throughout this episode is a tapestry of personal stories and insights that bridge the clinical with the spiritual, from the soul-enriching experience of ketamine therapy to the heart-opening wonders of MDMA. Join us for an episode that's not just a conversation, but a testimonial to the power of psychedelic medicine and the profound gift of being part of this transformative journey.

To learn more about Nushama and their services: https://nushama.com/

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:21

Welcome back, you guys, to another episode of See you on the Other Side. And, jay, you're our first guest in season three. We're coming back for the first time after like a long winter break and I'm excited to have you, because I actually just met you in person last month and I was like okay, we've got to have Jay on. Like he's such a good, like I love the way you store your stuff, I love the way you story tell, but you're so full of wisdom and one liners. I forgot to tell you that like he's full of one liners. I was like this guy's great, but why don't you go ahead and press yours? I know right, sorry about that. So you let us know who you are to Nushama, what Nushama is and what it means to you.

Speaker 2: 1:13

Sure, I'm one of the co-founders of Nushama. We are a large psychedelic wellness clinic in New York City. We're the first of our kind in that we've really invested heavily in setting and preparation and integration and you know, I walk into work every single day, including today, with such a profound sense of gratitude that I get to do this work. And it is the future. And using psychedelic medicine to help people transcend trauma is the gift of a lifetime for me and it's helped my life enormously, and so it's. I'm the lucky guy that gets to come to work every day and be part of an incredible organization that does this for so many people that are suffering out there. So I'm happy to be here and I'm happy to be on.

Speaker 1: 2:15

We're happy you're doing what you do, especially because I think this ketamine space we've said it before in an episode previously like it's the Wild West out there. I experienced ketamine for the first time back in August as a treatment with my therapist and it was a beautiful experience and what we realized after we posted a video of my treatment was not everybody gets that same experience and not all clinics are the same and not all ketamine treatment centers are the same. So one of my questions, or one of the questions that we get asked a lot, is like how to find the right place, and I guess my question to you is like what would someone who can't afford your treatment center or go to New York or who isn't in New York Like? What is something that they should be looking for on their own and what should they advocate for in a treatment facility?

Speaker 2: 3:22

Yeah, that's a great question. One of the things that, before we even talk about what people can and cannot afford, we always like to ask people, because we get that question a lot oh, wow, $4,800 for six treatments with preparation, integration, that's a lot of money and it is a lot of money, there's no question about that. But we like, or we kind of steer the conversation into well, you've got depression, you've got anxiety and it's been a long lasting condition for you. For many people it's a decade or more. Many people go to talk therapy once a week.

Speaker 2: 4:00

I know in New York City there's insurance really doesn't cover, you know, kind of talk therapy. Many people go to a therapist once a week, if not more, and spend $200, $300 a time, which can be $15,000 a year. So we always like to ask people when they're kind of flinching a little bit on the ultimate investment, which is, you know, you're going to invest in something that's going to make you more comfortable in your skin, you're going to make you more comfortable with your existence and not have to constantly be in resistance but rather in flow. But to answer your question, not answered by the one that I wanted- to know.

Speaker 1: 4:40

That was a great answer to a question we didn't even know we had.

Speaker 2: 4:43

I love that is look there's, there's many people who can't afford it, which is which is unfortunate. We do have a lot of different programs that we offer. We allow people to people to pay over time. There's kind of different, interesting, different no interest credit solutions out there.

Speaker 2: 5:00

But for people who aren't in New York City, and how do you pick a good place clinic doctor's office, practitioner to do ketamine therapy? And what I would always start with is are they using and incorporating what I refer to as the psychedelic framework? And what is the psychedelic framework? It is that ketamine therapy, just as psilocybin therapy and MDMA therapy, lsd therapy and any other psychedelic therapy, it is not about the medicine. In fact, it's 10% about the medicine, 10% about the diagnosis and 80% about preparation and integration. So question number one that somebody should ask is is the practitioner, clinic doctor's office that I'm doing do they incorporate preparation and integration into their treatment protocols? And integration for those who may or may not know Is the process. It's a form of therapy in a way, but it's a process of getting you prepared and and but also establishing a key takeaway and learning from your psychedelic experience that can positively impact your life longer.

Speaker 3: 6:17

I am so glad that you are saying this because, like Leah said, she shared I have not done ketamine yet, but she shared her ketamine journey on TikTok and the post did really really well. But we got so, so so many comments about people who did ketamine and they had terrible experiences.

Speaker 3: 6:40

And then it's like they felt good for a week or two and then they went back to their regular life because there was no integration work. And so when we saw all of these comments, we were like, okay, there is this problem here that we need to educate people on so they can go out and advocate for themselves when they are looking for treatment, because we want them to have the most long term results right. And so it is. It is like the Wild Wild West and we want, we want, we want our listeners to be educated for themselves so then they know the right questions when they're going out and looking for a clinic or looking for help, and I'm glad you shared that light on that. That is an amazing answer.

Speaker 1: 7:30

The way that you said the psychedelic framework. Like I'm really happy you said that because I feel like there are some ketamine clinics and I'm going to call them like clinics because I feel like they're like one in, one out, like money makers keep coming back. It'll help you feel good short term and that's our goal to have Drift clinics we call them. What did you say?

Speaker 2: 7:53

Drift clinics, drip clinics, drip clinics, oh, okay, just give you the drip when you're done.

Speaker 3: 8:01

Right. And then people they keep going back and keep going back and they spend a lot of money. And I'm like, but the point of this is like you want to get the most bang for your buck, right? And it's like how do you do that? And that is like the big question that we always get.

Speaker 1: 8:18

Yeah, the integration piece, I think, is like the thing missing. Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 8:23

It really is. You know, I can't tell you how many times. I mean, yesterday was a perfect example. We had somebody in who was probably two or three journeys in and had an extraordinarily almost like we've never seen somebody with a tolerance like this before. We were dosing well above what we normally dose and this lady still wasn't feeling it, still wasn't feeling it. And then finally, you know, it took a lot of collaboration with the medical team and the therapeutic team therapist team to establish that there's certain things that she should be doing and not doing prior to her journey.

Speaker 2: 9:03

In order to kind of drop into the experience, and you know, if you were walking the hallways of new trauma yesterday there was somebody who was. You know, this one person I'm talking about was having what I would refer to as a very challenging journey. There was a lot of vocalization, there was a lot of what sounded like pain that was being emitted, and but what was so special about this woman's experience is, yes, it was really challenging for her, but at immediately following the journey, she worked with one of our therapists and really sat and talked through. What was it that was so challenging? Was there anything? You know, has anything actually changed in her life by having that ketamine during that one hour, or was there certain things that she was resisting?

Speaker 2: 9:50

And what is it that she was resisting? Because in life generally, what you resist persists. It's not I didn't make that up, that's something that that that is in the annals of consciousness work for decades and if not hundreds years. So what you resist persists. So what other areas of this woman's life showed up during her journey, during her treatment, that she also resists in, that keeps her in this negative state, negative framework, poor outlook on life? Woe is me. I'm not good enough.

Speaker 2: 10:27

And once you see it, with proper integration, you cannot unsee it. So every time that lady, from here on in, sees that she's in a negative thought pattern and that she's making herself the victim, and that chooses words like it always happens to me this way, or I never do this or using the shoulds, these are all repetitive behaviors and patterns that keep people stuck where they are and if and with integration, especially the way we do it at a clinic, it's really about surrender, it's really about understanding. Okay, you had a tough time today. Does it show up anywhere else in your life? And then the floodgates really start to open. I don't consider ketamine therapy or, frankly, any psychedelic therapy in the absence of integration as any kind of treatment therapy at all. I use you know, I believe you absolutely need integration, even if you're going to a fish concert and you know drop a few tabs.

Speaker 1: 11:44

I mean, that's how I see it too. Like even the smaller journeys, like the integration, is like wow, I'm really feeling connected to the people around me and feeling really connected to nature and integration, can look different for larger journeys, and something Christine and I were talking about earlier was how sometimes the journeys that are positive are the ones that are, like, often harder to integrate than the ones with, like a profound, dark, challenging experience that comes along with it, because you just come out of it and you're like well, I feel good, what?

Speaker 3: 15:10

is there to integrate.

Speaker 1: 15:11

Yeah, I feel great Like my depression is lifted. My anxiety is, you know, not as loud and what? What do I need to do? How do you work with, with people like that, with those experiences, because I'm sure that happens more with well?

Speaker 2: 15:31

it's interesting for me because I've had many of those experiences, especially when I started this work. Every journey would be oh, love, love, love. You know, I love this person, I love that person. That person's my enemy, but I forgive them and I love them too, and it's a nice, and people refer to those. Oh, those are good journeys, but the work and the growth really comes when you're in the shit and when you see a part of yourself that you're just not happy with.

Speaker 2: 16:12

And really I try to keep this as simple as possible, but there's really two ways to almost binary ways. We can function as human beings. We can embrace our highest self godliness, generosity, compassion, love, charity, unity, joy or we can betray ourselves and embrace the embrace the opposite of those egoic things jealousy, competitiveness, anger, hate, pride and you're normally in one of the two. And when you're in the former, this higher self, godly, non-egoic, unified state things come easily to you, joy comes easily to you, and that is what I call not just me, frankly, but many call the natural state. We're born that way.

Speaker 2: 17:18

So if you ever see a baby, the only time that they ever cry, they're not upset with what they see on MSNBC or Fox. They couldn't give a shit. They're upset with simple things, biological things, it's time to sleep, it's time to clean my diaper, it's time to eat. But then they become conditioned over time and their egos develop, which is a protective mechanism, and we learn and become conditioned to get out of our heart and into our head. And the work of psychedelic medicine, whether it be at Nushama or anywhere else, is really to reverse that, to get out of our head and into our hearts. And another way of saying it is are you in fear or are you in faith? And that's a good question that I always ask myself when I'm at a moment. Yesterday I started sweating for a few minutes in my weight a second. Am I in fear or am I in faith? It was obvious that I was in fear at the moment and then, as soon as I labeled it and said, oh, that's what it is, I forgot.

Speaker 3: 18:32

So can I ask you your personal journey with psychedelics, if you have one?

Speaker 2: 18:41

Yeah, sure, you know I never tried any drug really. I smoked pot in college, three times I think. I inhaled once. Yeah, same, yeah. So I wasn't exactly a prolific drug user and certainly didn't know what psilocybin or MDMA or any of this stuff was. And I did go to.

Speaker 2: 19:11

But in about 2015, I had a situation in my last business which I don't want to bore people with, but it really involved a really rough situation that I took very, very personally. I took it as a failure and I was really upset. I really, you know, I really tied my net worth to my self worth, and many people do that, but I never had attendant therapy in my entire life. So here I am At the time I guess I'm 35 years old or so and I'm talking to friends and one of my friends says you know, you might want to speak to somebody.

Speaker 2: 19:59

So the idea of talking to a therapist my parents bless their heart, their amazing people, but like nobody went to therapy in my family so the idea of talking about your shit with somebody once a week and paying $300 was that's what weak people do, but I did it anyway. You know that was my rebelliousness. Don't say anything, I'm not going to tell my parents and my family that I'm going to therapy and I did it for three years and every single week for three years I paid 300 bucks a week. So that's about somewhere between I think it was somewhere between $45,000 and $50,000 of therapy over three years and my therapist at that point and she's still a therapist, but I don't go to see her anymore was an is and was an excellent therapist. I was the problem.

Speaker 3: 20:49

Which was.

Speaker 2: 20:51

My ego was so entrenched, I really was so addicted to this story that you know I wanted myself to look good and I was just paying $300 for somebody to listen to myself say you know good things about myself and it didn't seem that everything was so bad. So after three years and doing a little inventory and doing a little back of the envelope financial analysis of $45,000 at the door I said, well, there's got to be a different way. And a friend of mine gifted me how to change your mind by Michael Paul, and I almost didn't read it because I was like why am I going to read a book on drugs? I don't do drugs. Drugs are bad for you. They'll fry your brains, you know. You'll be like one of those junkies on the street before you know it. And I read it about halfway through I said to myself wow, yeah, this is how this is where psychiatry is going. You know this. One day people are going to come with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, bowel use disorder, opiate use disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and this whole frankly nonsensical set of diagnoses, which they're all based on a foundational idea that I am not good enough, sourced from some sort of traumatic capital T or lowercase T trauma, and I was wowed by this and I got introduced to plant medicine in 2019. And the rest is history.

Speaker 2: 22:29

I remember my first journey in August 2019 with a plant medicine called sassafras, which is MDA. Mda is similar to MDMA, but it's a plant used in shamanic work, a lot along with psilocybin, and my whole world was shattered in one evening, over five hours, six hours, maybe in the most beautiful possible way. All of my previous belief systems and all the things that I subscribed to were thrown out the window in one evening, which is? You know, the list goes on, but the typical ones, they're only as good as your bank account. You know, outward, it doesn't matter what's in the. You know, internal beauty isn't anything, it's all outward image. I was still a fashion designer at the time. I didn't mention that, but I was in fashion just prior.

Speaker 2: 23:32

I can see that. So like I was very addicted to this image idea and my first psychedelic experience kind of blew that to smithereens and look, the rest is history. And it's brought me closer to my family. It's made me a better father, a better husband, a better son, a more creative person. Psychedelic work has made me a more spiritual person I don't know how it could not and it's been amongst some of the greatest things in my life that have ever happened to me. Probably in this order and my wife would agree with me, so I'm not saying anything she wouldn't agree with, but having children being the first most important thing I've ever done. Getting married is probably the second most important thing I've ever done, and being in this psychedelic ecosystem as a person who's doing this work is the third.

Speaker 1: 24:35

I love that. It's interesting because I find a lot of people that we interview who are psychedelic guides, who own ketamine clinics, who are very much in this space. I feel like their stories always start out as like I used to be super judgmental, like I never touched drugs.

Speaker 1: 24:58

We were that way yeah we were that way four or five years ago. So it's interesting. You know the pipeline to where you end up and what you end up, the hill you end up dying on, like I've said that before like this is something I believe in, I stand for, and it's a hill I'll die on if I have to, like if I end up in. I mean I know you're not going to end up in jail or prison or anything. What you're doing is completely legal, but I'm like if I end up in jail doing something that I absolutely know is the right thing to do, like I'm okay with that. I'm not, but I am.

Speaker 2: 25:33

Yeah, I mean, the medicine does a wonderful job, regardless of which one it is.

Speaker 2: 25:40

Frankly, there's an inner knowing.

Speaker 2: 25:44

Some people refer to it as God, some people refer to it, as you know, the light, others refer to it as Christ consciousness, the Buddha nature.

Speaker 2: 25:54

This is something that most people eventually, when they work with psychedelic medicines at proper dosage, with proper supervision and screening, that they experienced that and, as I said earlier, you can't unsee it, you cannot unlearn it, and it becomes part of you. So you know, leah, you talked about conviction, this conviction that I'm willing to die on that hill, that is a conviction of a healed person, or a person that is approaching healing in a way which is, you know, as a Jewish boy, it's kind of funny for me to say this, but if you look at Jesus, jesus had like a very clear conviction about what was right and what was wrong, and, as the Buddha and Krishna, frankly, and Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, you know, and the list goes on and on and on of these very high consciousness people who knew right from wrong, and that is an embrace of the higher self, and that is something that comes to people when they, when they work with psychedelic medicine.

Speaker 1: 26:58

I just had a thought. This isn't a thing on our questions, but you know we're talking about integration being the most important part, and I think a lot of people think that this work is easy. You come out of it, it's all love and light. And I think the hardest part and the thing that, like we try to warn everybody about, like the shit's not easy, this is not the easy route, but the hardest part is that unlearning, and once you see, you can't unsee, and that's, I think, the hardest part to bring back into the real world and your family systems and your friendships. And you're like, oh my God, I just had this experience where everything I thought I ever knew doesn't feel right to me anymore. And how do I exist among people who still believe that way? Like, how do you support that with your, with people who come into you? Like, what is the support like after? Because I feel like that doesn't happen right away. It starts happening a little bit over time.

Speaker 2: 28:04

The support after what we refer to as aftercare is really important. I'll tell you how we do it here. In a clinical environment, what I think is incumbent on the journey or the patient, the member whatever you want to call them the person going through the treatment Aftercare here I mean, everybody gets integration after every single journey and preparation before. So that's so incredibly important. But we also give them homework. We give them books to read, depending on what their interests are. You know some people who are spiritual. You know we might give them or encourage them to buy a copy of the Bhagavad Gita or the Tao Te Ching or the power of Kabbalah, or the heart of Buddhist teaching. These are incredible books on higher consciousness, which is what we're after here. So, but in the broader sense, you know, andrew Huberman did this podcast on ketamine and I thought it was very, very informative and he said something very simple, which he usually says things pretty complicated because he's an incredibly smart guy. But he said if you go back to your depressive behaviors following your ketamine experience, your ketamine journey, you will go back to your old ways. So but what we find is, once people have touched that part of themselves, that that is the true essence. They don't see the need to numb themselves, to numb themselves into oblivion with either alcohol, or they see less of a need to smoke as much pot as they used to, or they feel the desire, as you said, lead to be more connected to nature, or, and so these are all part of aftercare. And you know, you see these incredible stories of people who barely couldn't get it. You know they couldn't get out of bed to come to the clinic and they cancel five or six appointments in a row just because they were in the dumper. And they go through the protocol and after they're, you know the writing books on consciousness and they're you know. You know moving out to the country and volunteering and giving charity and starting charities. It's really, really unbelievable. So aftercare never ends.

Speaker 2: 30:26

This isn't, you know, we are very used to in the kind of pharma industrial complex, thinking You're sick, here's a pill for your ill and it's done. That is a, frankly, a broken system and that is a system that's never worked, because all the pill for an ill model does is it takes whatever symptom you're experiencing and gives you something to make the symptom go away, but the underlying issue still remains. So imagine you carry a very heavy briefcase or backpack or satchel to work every day on one side of your body and it creates back pain. And you go to your doctor and say, oh doctor, I've got terrible back pain. And then they give you a painkiller and the pain goes away. If you continue to carry that same satchel to work every day, the back pain will come back, and that is the current medical system.

Speaker 2: 31:29

In a nutshell, how this paradigm of psychedelic medicine is different is okay, you're here, you have a symptom, and that symptom is called depression or it's called anxiety or it's alcohol use disorder. Now, it is a response fundamentally to this feeling, underneath it all, of I am not good enough, or the universe doesn't have my back, or God doesn't love me, or I'm just not worth it. That's the source of the illness right here. And once you get to the source of that and can show people that they're enough, that their essence which many people get to see in the psychedelic experience, is the unconditioned state which is generosity, love, charity, thoughtfulness, unity, then the aftercare looks like much of the same. The aftercare is how do I touch my essence? What reveals my essence? What activities reveal my essence? Does it mean if I was a drinker. I'm going back to the bar with my buddies. No, that hides the essence. So this work is fundamentally about continuing the behaviors that keep you in your heart and that reveal your essence.

Speaker 3: 33:20

I love that. I do too, so who would be a good candidate for ketamine treatment?

Speaker 2: 33:31

Well, there's the answer that we give everybody, and then there's what I think is the longer term answer. The answer that we give everybody is right now, there's about 40% of the country struggling in one way or another with an addiction PTSD, with depression, with anxiety, and that is what I would call the most obvious people who this is good for People who live in rumination of living in the past, which is depression. People who spend most of their time addicted to the idea that I'm worried about what's to come, which is anxiety. People who are addicted to control, which is OCD, or people who are addicted to substances like opiates or alcohol. They would be great, great candidates for this, and we've seen about 80 to 85% of the people have statistically meaningful, clinically meaningful responses to ketamine therapy when accompanied with integration on PTSD, which shares a lot of the same results, and it was the largest study of its kind.

Speaker 2: 34:36

So it's very, very exciting on that front. But, more broadly, right now ketamine therapy if it's accepted by the medical community and it's slowly becoming more and more accepted it's looked at as a last resort, and I believe it should be. We shouldn't have to wait till people have treatment, resistant depression. I don't think we should have to wait till somebody has PTSD and I don't think we should have to wait till somebody's drinking themselves blind every day. That is a disservice to humanity and unkind way of treating people. So I believe, as time goes by, two major developments are going to happen Ketamine and, more broadly, the legal stream of psychedelic therapy will become more of an earlier intervention and I actually think, as a father of two girls 113 and 111, I do believe we've got a crisis in this country of teen suicides and the fact that the ketamine is one of the most effective tools at eliminating suicidal ideation.

Speaker 2: 35:52

It is a travesty that we aren't being more open as a medical community to using these medications again, with medical supervision, with the proper screening, with the proper oversight on some younger people who are at risk of suicidal ideation. And sometimes I've said that and physicians have said to me, jay, you're absolutely crazy. And I said, but wait a second. Every single surgery in the United States and, frankly, the Western world, where a child under 100 pounds or under 12 years old they're being anesthetized using ketamine at doses four, six, eight times what we're using and people don't even think about it, don't bad an eye Because it's so safe, don't bad an eye, that's right. So it's important that we consider yes, there's got to be some proper clinical trials on this, but it's got. You know, we can. I think we can eliminate a big chunk of the teen suicidal, teen suicide problem by using ketamine, you know, in the right environments, with supervision.

Speaker 1: 36:59

You know, that's crazy because I never thought about that before. But they use ketamine in surgeries like all the time, all the time. I never even thought about that. So why is it so stigmatized when it could be something? I think there's just so much about it that people don't understand. I don't know.

Speaker 3: 37:22

Well, and I had a friend yeah she had.

Speaker 3: 37:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I had a friend. She had breast cancer and she had surgery and had like ketamine during her surgery and like 15 years earlier she had lost her brother and she had like this like healing experience that had to do with her brother from her breast cancer surgery. What I just thought that was wild. And so when she found out that we were doing the podcast, she messaged me and she's like I don't know anything about what you're talking about, but I have had ketamine and it was very healing for me, so good for you.

Speaker 2: 37:57

Yeah, it's fascinating and a lot of the early research on ketamine was done in hospitals in Russia actually, where they were still anesthetizing adults with ketamine, and a lot of lesser developed countries are still using ketamine to anesthetize people who aren't children.

Speaker 2: 38:17

A lot of the Western countries have moved over to more general anesthetics like propofol, but the research found that when you put a depressed patient through surgery with massive doses of ketamine, somehow they would come out and these symptoms of depression had lifted after they just got cut open in a surgery. And so it really, in the 80s it really led to. You know, dr Karpitsky, who was an advisor when we started in Shama, did some of the seminal work on researching anesthetic doses of this and it is fascinating and I would not hesitate. You know, thank God my daughters are doing very, very well and growing up to be beautiful young women, but I wouldn't hesitate if there was an issue and they needed it because that's how safe it is. It's used every single day in pediatric operating theaters, it's used every single day in adult operating theaters in many countries and it's a World Health Organization essential medicine.

Speaker 3: 39:31

I'm glad you said that. So you know we all have trauma, but we all have different coping mechanisms. It's like what you said Some people have depression, some people have anxiety, some people have alcohol addiction. Now all of these different people come in. Is the protocol the same? So is somebody who comes in and they have depression? Is the protocol going to be the same as somebody who comes in and they have alcohol addiction, or is there like a different Great question yeah, so we have two major protocols.

Speaker 2: 40:02

One is for the non so depression, anxiety, ptsd, ocd we have a protocol of six sessions over the course of three weeks that's accompanied. You start with a medical intake through one of our physicians or nurse practitioners. They go over your medical history. They talk about your contract, any contraindications Usually about 90% of the people. This is a safe treatment for, and for about 10% of the people it isn't. Then they don't make it through to treatment. Hence the importance of proper screening. People with schizophrenia, certain thyroid conditions, uncontrolled hypertension, certain cardiac issues, this is not a great treatment for, but for the rest of the population, which is about 90% of the people we see, it's a very, very effective tool For the six sessions, each one of those sessions over the course of three weeks. That's typically two a week. You know people are in clinic for about three hours. The journey or the treatment itself is just about an hour, and then there's therapy and on either side of that in the form of integration.

Speaker 2: 41:11

For alcohol use disorder We've licensed a protocol out of the UK which is in phase three clinical trials right now and most of the treatment for alcohol is outside of Nushama. It's, frankly, abstinence based. They basically say never touch this, ever again. And we've taken a different approach, which is we recognize that that's a very difficult thing. Abstinence programs like rehab have very, very low success rates. I've heard some rehabs have single digit success rates. I'm sure they're great business for repeat visits, but they're not effective, unfortunately. So what we call the care program at Nushama is three journeys but 18 hours of mindfulness based talk therapy.

Speaker 2: 42:02

That's really focused on getting the underlying craving to be understood and once people get an understanding of what the underlying craving and why it's there not that they shouldn't do it. Look, if I, if you were, if I was addicted to shopping, and you locked me in my apartment and you said I couldn't shop for one month, I'm not going to be able to shop unless it's online. But put that aside. But if I'm addicted to shopping and I'm not allowed to go and destroy, I can go to the shop. Rehab has the same idea. So we're gonna put you in this country club in this nice resort with no alcohol, so you're not gonna drink for 30 days, and we here with a lot of our patients who've gone to rehab prior to coming to us, they'll say it was great for 30 days, and then I got in the Uber and went straight to the liquor shop.

Speaker 2: 42:58

And so the care program for alcohol use disorder at Nushama is focused on what's behind the craving, what trauma led to this, and it's not about abstinence, it's actually about having a better relationship with the escape mechanism. So what does the data suggest? Well, the very best pharmacological intervention for alcohol use disorder is a drug called Vivitrol, and their results say that after about I think it's six months don't quote me on this, but after some protracted period of time, about one in four days 25% of the days are abstinent. So it means with Vivitrol, three quarters of the days are still drinking. With the alcohol use program alcohol use disorder program at Nushama 86% of the days are abstinent following. So we follow much more of a harm reduction type approach versus an abstinence one.

Speaker 3: 44:09

I love that and I love what you said about rehab, because there are more rehab centers than Starbucks. I had no idea until that got told to us and I looked it up and I'm like holy shit, there is, that's nuts. So obviously they're really not doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Speaker 1: 44:26

They're doing what they need to be doing to make money. Well, there you go, there you go.

Speaker 2: 44:32

Oh yeah, it's a $40 million industry in the end.

Speaker 1: 44:34

Yeah, the model works, oh yeah absolutely.

Speaker 1: 44:38

So this is a side note we had someone who really struggles with depression and anxiety and low self-worth and my husband was just like you should really look into maybe you should look into ketamine therapy, and their response was like I find that offensive that you would even suggest something like that. You're like, okay, well, do you get a lot of pushback with that? Because I feel like I don't know. I know that ketamine is technically not like a standard psychedelic, but it's like a cousin to psychedelics. But like, do you feel like that's still happening with ketamine in the way that it was that it is with other psychedelics?

Speaker 2: 45:28

It's an interesting question. We do get some responses like that, even for people who've called us and say, hi, I'm really struggling, I've got treatment-resistant depression, and like they literally went to our website and very clearly says, I think, discover the power of ketamine therapy. And they'll say, well, I don't want to go on drugs. And then you'll ask them are you on any psychiatric medications? And they'll say, yes, I'm on. Well, but you're trending.

Speaker 2: 45:56

I'm on Prozac and I'm on Xanax and I'm on, you know, trapezoa, all the whatever, the forget what that last medication is called. We were just talking about it earlier. But, in any case, don't list. It's like wait a sec. So you take you've been taking these four, five, six medications every single day for a decade and you don't want to try an incredibly safe, doctor-administered short-term intervention with an 80% effectiveness rate. So yeah, that is peculiar. You still have remnants of the drug war out there. Look, when Richard Nixon started the drug war, it started about 50 years and hundreds of billions of dollars of government-funded negative press on psychedelic medicine. So and the campaign worked. Oh, I mean.

Speaker 3: 46:59

Yeah, I did.

Speaker 2: 47:00

It's still working.

Speaker 2: 47:01

It's still working, it's getting better, but Right, but yeah, what I'll say is that the glacier is thawing and it's melting, which means that a year ago well, actually two years ago, when we started Nishama, it was really truly a very kind of female white upper East side of Manhattan early adopter. I called them the Birkenbag Moms, Like the ones who were willing to try anything to help themselves, and it's evolved a lot. Like you know, we have people from all different demographics, income, gender, socioeconomic backgrounds now, and that's just underscoring the idea that it's becoming much more well accepted. You know, if you look in the New York Times, about once a week or once every two weeks, there's an article on psychedelic medicine and we've been grateful to get a lot of that coverage based on where we are in New York and look every, it's kind of two steps forward, one step back with the thawing of this glacier.

Speaker 2: 48:11

You know, you have this, all this positive news about the power of psychedelics and how it's the next thing in psychiatry and that it's about getting to the underlying issue and bam, the Matthew Perry thing happens, which was a very, very sad and unfortunate thing, but he did not die from acute effects of ketamine. That is BS. You know, if you take any dissociative and, frankly, go with other medications and go into a hot tub alone. It's really just a bad idea in general. Hence the need for medical supervision. But you go through these cycles where there's two steps forward, tons of progress, tons of positive press, and then one step back, which is this Matthew Perry situation. But we continue to go forward and this is not a fad, this is not a flash in the pan. This isn't, like you know, the Ronco food dehydrator that you see late on night on an infomercial, that you have to have now and that you'll, once you buy it, you'll never use it again. No, this is an intervention that brings you in connection to your truest essence, and it's short-term and it's profound.

Speaker 1: 49:24

I love that. So I got to actually tour your facility Nushama last month and it was first off fucking gorgeous, like that's why earlier when you said you were in the fashion industry. I was like that makes sense. Like you can tell. It was like so thought out and it's gorgeous. I wish the podcast room looked like that, honestly.

Speaker 3: 49:48

And I wish you guys were just closer.

Speaker 1: 49:51

Right, right. Well, we just need to make a girl's trip to New York. But one of the rooms that I really loved and this is Kristine and I were talking about this like we got labeled in the first two years as the girls who talk about psychedelics and we do. We do because that was like our catalyst into this healing journey. But where we are now is so much more than psychedelics. We talk about breath work, we talk about meditation, we talk about cacao ceremonies, groups, group settings, somatic processing, embodiment circles Like it encompasses so much more than just psychedelics. But I think we're just adding tools to our toolbox, all of that. To say, one of your rooms was like this group meditative room and I think it wasn't clean at the time. Or Marissa was like don't get that into the room because it's not set up, but you guys do like cacao ceremonies and meditation circles I saw that on your website and breath work and I'm like I fucking love that because it's just kind of adding these other tools to your toolbox, not just ketamine.

Speaker 2: 51:00

We don't want people to be like you know, we don't want people to be the word isn't addicted, dependent is the word on having to come back. So we want to teach them other tools and those other tools, like we've had holotropic breathwork classes here that I've done and I'm like holy moly, that's a psychedelic experience, as almost anything else We've done crystal sound baths, where I swore I saw, felt, experienced God just from sound. So, and it even relates back to an earlier question, what does aftercare look like? Aftercare looks like taking care of yourself. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it includes, you know, reading, it includes journaling, exercise, getting in nature, eating, eating foods that make your body strong, doing breathwork, being in community and yeah, it's very, very much a part of what we do. As I said, the ketamine is such a small component of the work we do here.

Speaker 1: 52:12

Can I ask you? I did ask you this in person, but I want to ask on the podcast. You know MDMA is creeping up. It's like coming up for legalization. Do you think in the future you will be able to facilitate more than just ketamine journeys and you'll be able to follow that legal route into whatever else is next?

Speaker 2: 52:37

Certainly, mdma, I believe, is going in front of the FDA, I believe in August of this year. If approved at that time and there's no delays, the DEA still has to reschedule it or partially reschedule it, which I've heard can take a few months or longer. So we're probably into 2025 before this is being administered. We're very excited about it and I should tell you it is only for PTSD at this point. Post-traumatic stress disorder. It is a longer treatment. People have to be on in clinic eight hours. You have to have two people in the room with you at all times, a physician and a therapist. But it is an incredibly powerful tool and we will administer not only MDMA but, as the legal framework expands with psychedelic medicine, I do foresee Nushama being kind of. You know, like the hospital for special surgery is an institution that specializes in all these different types of special surgery.

Speaker 2: 53:42

I do envision Nushama being a multi-floor, multi-location specialist in psychedelic medicine where we'll administer, you know, again, providing the legal framework, is there MDMA for psilocybin Sorry, mdma for PTSD, psilocybin for depression, lsd for anxiety.

Speaker 2: 54:11

You know, DMT for a number of conditions, both mood disorders and other physiological conditions. So the landscape is incredibly exciting. What also doesn't really get talked about a lot is, once these medications or drugs or molecules become legal, it becomes very exciting to use them as they do in the shamanic world, which is typically an entheogen like MDMA or an pathogen like MDMA is often used as a heart opener, which is to allow your first part of your psychedelic journey to enter an expansive, loving compassion at space, at which point often what they call either candy flipping, in the case of LSD, or hippie flipping, in the case of mushrooms, or psilocybin, where they'll give you a booster of psilocybin, for instance, and you're able to navigate through the choppy waters of a psilocybin journey and the really challenging material that can come up with a much more compassionate witnessing point of view with the heart opener of the MDMA.

Speaker 3: 55:30

The way I say it because I've done the hippie flipping and I'm like it's like you know, you do a mushroom journey and you're staring into the abyss, but with the MDMA, the abyss is smiling back yeah that's kind of what it feels like, and I did mushrooms and MDMA with my partner and it was one of the most beautiful experiences that we had together. It was very healing, Like it is such an amazing form of couples therapy yeah. Now we're doing it the underground way but hopefully, you know, one day it can be an actual treatment. Because it was, it was very beneficial for the both of us. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 56:12

There's a researcher in Canada by the name of Candice Monson who is using MDMA for couples therapy as part of a clinical trial. And you know I think I mentioned Talia when she was here in New York. But you know I'm a very, very lucky man and I have a great wife and my wife before we did journey work, as I call it, we probably had a really solid eight out of 10 marriage, like that's pretty darn good, that's pretty good. And since doing this work yeah, no, it was really good before it's even better now, since we do this work together, because there's so much about each other's trauma, I guess, unfortunately, we haven't. You know, we're also lucky enough and there's no major capital T traumas in our life, but there's definitely lowercase T ones where we have a much greater understanding of where our pain has come from. So it creates a much more open and heart centered relationship.

Speaker 1: 57:18

Yeah, yeah, I think it like even helps me really relate to my kids a lot more, and I think it's been an incredible tool for like becoming a better parent. You know, I that's out that.

Speaker 3: 57:35

I think that statement blows some people's minds, but I absolutely agree, you feel me, I get it, jay gets it.

Speaker 2: 57:42

Yeah, yeah, I like, at risk of sounding crazy, you know you asked earlier who is this for, which is anybody who's really struggling, and I see a lot of friends of mine who are struggling with being parents. Yeah, and you know, at also risk of sounding like the guy in the big fat Greek wedding who thinks Windex is the. Windex is the solution for everything and I'll often say well, you know you could use a few journeys, because it's when you're struggling as a parent you're really struggling in resisting against yourself.

Speaker 3: 58:21

Because kids are mirrors. Yeah, there are mirrors to ours.

Speaker 1: 58:25

Yeah, outside of that, though, like I've risked myself sounding like that at times too, because I have a friend who is going through like a nasty separation divorce type situation and I'm like you guys could use some MDMA. I don't think she's like trying to like fix the relationship, but I'm like you could still leave it with love, like and have incredibly powerful conversations around the divorce. That would help support both of you and you would both feel understood and supported and your kids would be better off for it. So it's not like I'm not like pushing it to like get you to you know, get back with your husband. I just really think it would be a beautiful tool for making this an easier process.

Speaker 3: 59:12

There was. There was one time where my fiance and I we were in a huge fight and I'm stubborn and he's really stubborn, and we had planned to take MDMA and literally, like before it, I was like I'm going to take it, I'm still going to be pissed because I'm right and he's wrong, and like I am not buckling while we take it. An hour later and I'm like I want to hear your perspective. I totally see you. I get that. And once I put my like the medicine and like really put my ego aside and I'm like okay, like you don't have to be right. That's not the point. You're on the same team. You don't like. That's not how that works.

Speaker 2: 59:58

Yeah, I have, I can. I can absolutely relate to that.

Speaker 3: 1:00:01

Yeah, I have one question Can you share a story from a patient at new shama like share a success story, or share a story of their healing and, and you know, from their treatment?

Speaker 2: 1:00:21

I mean absolutely there's, there's, there's, a number of them, but the one that really sticks out to me a lot and I always preface this story by saying I'm not a physician like my partner. My business partner is a physician. I'm the, I'm the business guy and kind of you know the, the, the passion guy here about psychedelics. But I'm sitting at my computer one day in my office, which is at the end of a long hallway in in a fairly large clinic, and I hear a pretty loud scream that's repeating the words no and fuck, like somebody's having a really tough time. And the entrepreneur in me, who's sitting in front of my computer, you know, in front of my spreadsheet, is thinking oh shit, like something's about to go down and like I'm thinking liability and everything. And I peek out my office door and I look down the hallway and I see nurses are running into the room and the doctor's running into the room and it's like wow, something, something's, something bad's happening. And I run down the hallway because, even though there's nothing, literally nothing I can do as an entrepreneur to help this person, I really wanted to make sure that that, you know, the business wasn't in trouble and we hadn't, we hadn't accidentally done something bad. And I hear the guy saying am I dead? And Dr Attawitz is in the room with him. I'm hearing this through the wall. He's like, sir, you're not dead. And he goes how do you know I'm not dead? And I literally heard Dr Attawitz say I'm a physician. I'll let you listen to your own heartbeat if you want to hear that you're not dead.

Speaker 2: 1:02:10

And what was so fascinating about this story is this gentleman had a horrible divorce, a gut wrenching, terrible, terrible divorce, and his biggest fear in life was that if he died, that he one of his children who he had full custody of, for whatever extenuating circumstances that his ex was trouble, that the child would have to go back to his ex-wife.

Speaker 2: 1:02:43

And during the journey it was reported in his integration and this really underscores the importance of integration he reported that in the journey he witnessed he thought he saw himself commit suicide and show up to his own funeral in the journey and he, at his own funeral, he sees his child like standing there balling their eyes out in so much pain that and I should also tell you not only did this gentleman have treatment-resistant depression but major suicidal ideation and obviously he saw himself kill himself in the journey he saw his child at his own funeral and after he came out and yeah, it was a rough run but he had he said I can never kill myself now. Oh my God, it resolved in that particular journey and this was almost two years ago, right as we opened, and it was one of those reasons that I give that I continue to show up every single day to work, because here is somebody who might be dead right now from suicide, who might leave behind a child because of the darkness that they're facing. Ketamine, with integration and preparation, really helped this person.

Speaker 1: 1:04:03

Wow Saved his life Wow.

Speaker 3: 1:04:06

And his child and many others, holy shit. Wow, wow, wow, very cool story.

Speaker 1: 1:04:11

That's a beautiful story.

Speaker 3: 1:04:12

Totally random question. What does Nushama mean? Oh yeah, and like, where did you get that name?

Speaker 2: 1:04:19

Great question. So it's a take on the Hebrew word neshama, which means soul. This is soul work that we do, and it's a take on the words new shaman. And we don't fancy ourselves as shaman by any stretch of the imagination there's nothing worse in life than a faux shaman. But we do look at the work they do over the last I don't know 6,000 years as being important to the underpinnings of this psychedelic renaissance. And part and parcel of that, whether it's indigenous tribes or groups in South America or West Africa, we've used plant medicine in shabonic context to clean and rectify ailments of the spirit, and that's what depression, anxiety, ptsd are. They are ailments of the spirit. And so, as a little nod to the shamanic work that came well before us, we named ourselves Nushama.

Speaker 3: 1:05:24

I love that Fucking amazing. I was wondering where it came from and I'm like there's got to be a story there.

Speaker 1: 1:05:31

There's a story you know, it's interesting. I remember listening to a podcast years ago and I think I sent it to you to a clip of it where there are a lot of people who get triggered in this space because of what we look like and how. We're not like hippies or shamans and we talk about these things and we find it a lot on our Tik Tok, and it's usually from wounded men. But I'm like, doesn't everybody deserve to heal though? Whether you have money or you don't have money, or you're going overseas or you're going into the jungle to Peru to do ayahuasca, or if your access is New York City or Kentucky or wherever, don't you deserve that? Don't we all deserve that? Why are you gatekeeping this?

Speaker 1: 1:06:25

We hold reverence for where it comes from. We hold respect for what it is and that it's been around for millennia and the people who have been doing this for decades and millennia. What is the word I'm trying to think of? The hundreds of years, whatever, millennia. Thank you, I was doing it. I was doing it, but it just seems like it's crazy to think that we shouldn't have access to it.

Speaker 2: 1:06:54

That's what the podcast was about.

Speaker 1: 1:06:56

That's kind of what he was saying. He was like I don't think any shaman if they were a true shaman would be upset that people have access to it in other countries in that way.

Speaker 2: 1:07:06

You know how? One way I know shamans don't get upset Mic drop.

Speaker 2: 1:07:13

Shamans don't get upset. They're supposed to be enlightened beings, so why would they want to get in the way of anybody's path to healing? And I think, whether you follow Don Miguel Ruiz and the Four Agreements in the Toltec tradition or the Shepibo tradition in South America or something else, there are different pathways to enlightenment and to healing, and it is our birthright. And it's not a new story, it's an old story. It's the story of Buddha, it's the story of Krishna, it's the story of Jesus, it's the story of Moses.

Speaker 3: 1:07:57

Jay, you're fucking incredible, and hopefully one day I can come to New York City too and meet you. I told him this what if we do a girls trip and get some ketamine.

Speaker 1: 1:08:06

That sounds like a girls trip that only we would be into, right, 100%. No, I'm so glad we got to talk to you again today. I literally told her I was like this guy's incredible, like he's such a good storyteller. You're amazing. I also love where life has taken you into this space, because what you're doing is helping a lot of people and God, I would love to have a job like that. I would love to work in a clinic or something like that, just to see the beauty in it. So thank you for your work in this space.

Speaker 2: 1:08:45

Thank you. Thank you. It's great to talk to people who are so passionate about it as well and that are helping disseminate the truth and disseminate and help others have access to this information, because, as I said, there's been 54 years or so of government funded propaganda that it makes me sound like an anarchist. I'm nothing of the sort. I believe in our systems and stuff Like this is one area where we've missed the mark as a country, as a community, as a society, and there's no better time than now, with all that's going out there, with all the division, to heal, and this is one way that we know that works. And, as I said right at the beginning of this conversation, it's the gift of a lifetime to be able to do this work. I don't know how I got so lucky to be able to do it, but here I am.

Speaker 3: 1:09:42

Love that. Yeah, I do too.

Speaker 2: 1:09:43

All right.

Speaker 1: 1:09:45

Thank you again for our listeners. Stay tuned, be curious, stay open and we will see you guys on the other side.