PT216 - Dr. Lynn Marie Morski - The Psychedelic Medicine Association
Release Date: 11/03/2020
PT506 – Decolonization, Difficult Conversations, and the Challenge of Merging Spirituality and Science, with Philip Wolf
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews Philip Wolf: writer, member of Rolling Stone's Culture Council, founder of Cultivating Spirits (the first company in the U.S. to offer legal culinary cannabis experiences), and founder of CashoM, an education company offering a certificate in cannabis stewardship. He discusses his recent Rolling Stone article about the need to divorce ourselves from the colonial mindset that pervades the psychedelic movement, and he talks about the difficult conversation that came about when he asked a very critical group of psychedelic leaders how they felt about the article,...
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PT505 – Bicycle day Reflections, Quantum Mechanics, and the Value in Studying Philosophy to Understand Psychedelic Experiences, with Lenny Gibson, Ph.D.
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe and Kyle interview Lenny Gibson, Ph.D.: philosopher, Grof-certified Holotropic Breathwork® facilitator, 20-year professor of transpersonal psychology at Burlington College, and the reason Joe and Kyle met many years ago. He talks about his early LSD experiences and how his interest in the philosophy of Plato and Alfred North Whitehead provided a framework and language for understanding a new mystical world where time and space were abstractions. He believes that while culture sees the benefits of psychedelics in economic terms, the biggest takeaway from non-ordinary...
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PT504 – Rethinking Drug Education: From D.A.R.E. Scare Tactics to an Evidence-Based Approach, with Joey Lichter, Ph.D.
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews Joey Lichter, Ph.D.: professor in the Chemistry & Biochemistry department at Miami’s Florida International University, and one of the few professors in the U.S. teaching a course about psychedelics at the collegiate level. He talks about his path towards the course, the challenge of creating a curriculum that covers everything in a few months, and the importance of teaching young minds about psychedelics the right away; shifting drug education from the “Just say no!” D.A.R.E. model to a more balanced, honest, and evidence-based approach. He aims for...
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PT503 – Updates from MAPS: Current Initiatives, Psychedelic Science 2025, and Music as a Bridge, with Devon Phillips
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews Devon Phillips: community & partnerships officer for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Phillips works on strategies to tackle the questions: How do we responsibly mainstream psychedelics? And how do we get culture engaged? He's focusing on being the bridge to psychedelics outside of research, facilitating workshops and psychedelic coming-out stories at music festivals and conferences. He talks about harm reduction and drug checking at festivals, the concept of training big names to become trustworthy resources, the differences...
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PT502 – Preserving Psychedelic Legacies: Shulgin Farm and the Shulgin Archive Project, with Keeper Trout
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews Keeper Trout: archivist, author, photographer, co-founder of the Cactus Conservation Institute, and creator of Trout’s Notes, a website compiling personal research and collected data to help ethnobotanical researchers. From an interest in cactus taxonomy, Sasha Shulgin urged Trout to go through his files, resulting in a friendship, and eventually, an 8-year project of digitizing all of these files into the ever-evolving Shulgin Archive. Trout discusses: His relationship with Sasha and The Shulgin Farm project, which aims to make the farm a community resource...
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PT501 – Women and Psychedelics, Microdosing, and the Challenges of Psychedelic Parenthood, with April Pride
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Alexa interviews April Pride: creative entrepreneur, veteran of the cannabis space, and now, founder of SetSet, an educational platform and podcast (picking up where The High Guide left off) for women curious about psychedelics. With Alexa about to embark on the journey of motherhood, she asks many of the questions parents working with psychedelics have to consider: How do you overcome the stigmas of being a psychedelic parent? How do you talk to your children about drugs? How do you know if a substance is ok to use during pregnancy? Pride discusses: Being dubbed “the weed...
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PT500 – Shulgin Farm and the Future of Psychedelic Drug Development, with Paul F. Daley, Ph.D.
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews Paul F. Daley, Ph.D., who worked with Sasha Shulgin in his lab for the last seven years of his life, helping him finish (and co-authoring) "The Shulgin Index, Volume One: Psychedelic Phenethylamines and Related Compounds." He is now the co-founder, Chief Science Officer, and Director of Analytical Science at the Alexander Shulgin Research Institute (ASRI), focusing on the discovery and development of novel psychedelic compounds. While Sasha was passionate about self-experimentation, the Institute is aiming for the next step for these drugs: FDA approval. ...
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PT499 – Osiris González Romero – Mesoamerican Psychedelics, Decolonization, and the Concept of an Ontological Turn
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, David interviews Osiris González Romero: philosopher and Postdoctoral researcher on cognitive freedom and psychedelic humanities at the University of Saskatchewan. Romero believes that our weakest point of research is our knowledge of Indigenous languages, and is focused on highlighting different cultural uses of psychedelics to better inform future drug policy. He’s currently studying more than 100 documents (including one over 400 years old) to establish an honest understanding of why peyote was ever banned. He discusses: Mesoamerican psychedelics and their relevance to...
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PT498 – Maria Mangini, Ph.D., FNP – Traversing the Psychedelic Landscape: From Esalen and Millbrook to the Future of Shulgin Farm
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, Joe interviews Maria Mangini, Ph.D., FNP: researcher, educator, and midwife who has worked closely with many psychedelic innovators and was part of the original social network at Shulgin Farm – where this episode was recorded. She traces her journey from the influence of pioneers like the Wassons, Shulgins, and Grofs, and historic places like Esalen and Millbrook. She discusses: Her early experiences with the Grofs at Esalen and how she met the Shulgins Gregory Bateson guiding her to become a midwife The similarities between midwifery and psychedelic facilitation The unsung...
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PT497 – Wendy Tucker – Reflections from Shulgin Farm: Psychedelics, Legacy, and the Spirit of Discovery
Psychedelics Today
In this episode, released on Ann Shulgin’s birthday, Joe interviews Wendy Tucker: daughter of Ann and stepdaughter to Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin. Recorded in Sasha’s old office, she recounts her formative years, giving an insider’s look into her Mother’s openness about psychedelics, working with Sasha in the lab, how the Shulgins made a perfect team, and watching a close-knit circle of self-experimenters start to form at Shulgin Farm – and keep coming back over the years. She talks about the energy infused into the property from the decades of research and gatherings, and how she...
info_outlineIn this episode, Joe interviews MD, attorney, host of the Plant Medicine podcast, and founder of the Psychedelic Medicine Association, Dr. Lynn Marie Morski.
She talks about her time working for the United States Department of Veteran Affairs and how her frustrations with not being able to recommend medicines she knew would help people led to her creating the Plant Medicine podcast, and how realizing that the podcast wasn't reaching enough doctors led to her creating the Psychedelic Medicine Association. She discusses their goal: to bring organizations, corporate entities, lawyers, and practitioners/therapists (really anyone in the medical field responsible for the wellbeing of another) together through forums and newsletters to bridge the enormous gap between those on the cutting edge of new medicines and modalities of healing and the more traditional doctors who don't know nearly enough about this emerging world.
She talks about her podcast and dedicating 4 full episodes to each drug, common misconceptions about doctors and healthcare, what it's like to be both a doctor and a lawyer, doctors who judge patients for using cannabis and the disservice that is, the complications of what comes after the FDA approves a drug, what’s necessary for getting psychedelics more into mainstream culture, and the silver lining that could come from COVID and COVID-related trauma.
Notable Quotes
“It should not be weighing job security vs. saving veterans’ lives, but that’s really the position a lot of us are put in, and I couldn’t take that anymore, and so I left the VA and made it my mission to undo the years of silence by speaking out a whole lot about it.”
“FDA approval, for example, of MDMA or psilocybin, is just step 1. What do you do when you’ve got a medicine now approved that doctors are afraid to recommend or prescribe because it came out of nowhere? They’re like, ‘Whoa, psychedelics were Schedule I and extremely dangerous and ‘Don’t do drugs!’ and now I’m supposed to be giving it to a patient?’ That is a barrier.”
“We’ve known about the 22 veteran suicides, and somehow, still, things haven’t gotten done in mental health. Maybe because, again, that’s ‘other.’ We have this whole issue with others, right? ‘That’s happening to these other people over here.’ The pandemic is one of the first things in... ever that has happened to everybody. It’s not ‘Oh, only the poor get this.’ Nope. Poor and rich. Tom Hanks got it right off the bat. Everybody’s getting it. Prime Ministers get it. And a lot of people are suffering the same mental health issues from the quarantine and so, it’s no longer where we can say ‘Oh, mental health struggles are for others.’ This has hit everybody. ...The suicide rate is rising for everybody. Mental health issues are rising for everybody. Is this the tipping point where the mental health system looks around and says ‘Ok, our tools aren’t sufficient. Can we start looking at these other modalities, including psychedelics, because we’ve got a second epidemic on our hands here?’”
“It should be absolutely crucial for anybody on the front lines of patient care to know at least the basics of these medicines. We’re not trying to get doctors to all want to do psychedelic medicine at all. That’s not our goal. If people learn about it and get excited and want to get trained and do that? Fantastic. But we just want a basic level of knowledge, and like you said, if just 20% of doctors knew, that’d be great. And then those doctors can talk to their colleagues in other areas. But that’s essentially the way that we’re impressing it on people: ‘This is coming. You, as a professional responsible for other people’s health need to educate yourself on this.’”
Links
Psychedelicmedicineassociation.org
Psychedelic Medicine Association twitter
Plant Medicine Podcast: Microdosing Q&A with James Fadiman
Psychedelics Today: Spiritual Emergence or Psychosis course
Plant Parenthood podcast with Dr. Lynn Marie Morski
About Dr. Lynn Marie Morski
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