Altered States, Different Goals: Comparing Psychedelic Journeys in Ceremony, Therapy, and Recreation – Keith Kurlander and Dr. Will Van Derveer – HPP 141

Keith Kurlander [00:00:06]:

Thank you for joining us for the Higher Practice podcast. I’m Keith Kurlander with Doctor Will Van Derveer. And this is the podcast where we explore what it takes to achieve optimal mental health. All right, here we go. So it’s psychedelic week. So every last week of the month we’re going to be doing a psychedelic specific episode because we like psychedelics.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:00:31]:

Yeah, psychedelics are a big part of what we talk about day in and day out.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:00:37]:

Right. And we’re going to talk about considerations of ceremony, therapy and recreational use and the differences and when to consider which and things to think about.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:00:53]:

Yeah, we’re going to get into the details.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:00:57]:

So let’s start with defining these three areas, these three terms so that people know what we’re talking about. Some people know what we’re talking about, others don’t. So we have ceremony, therapy and recreation. So let’s start with recreational use, which is probably the widest use of psychedelics would be my guess by far. Yeah, yeah. Worldwide.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:01:19]:

Yeah.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:01:21]:

Right now at least at this point in civilization it’s the widest use.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:01:26]:

Yeah, yeah. Right. And yeah you’re right. It’s good to put it in the historical context where we think at least the hypothesis is that psychedelics were confined to a ceremonial context for millennia in many different cultures, east, west, north, south, all over the world. We don’t know that for sure, but it seems reasonable based on some of the things we do know, that there were elites in spiritual context like priests and so on, that shamans who took psychedelics, used psychedelics, healed people with psychedelics. But since at least the 1950s, and really the explosion was in the sixties, you know, psychedelics escaped from ceremonial and even early research contexts into a lot of personal use.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:02:33]:

Well I would say one distinction as we kind of go through this, a ceremonial, it looks like there are sort of ceremonial religious uses over time potentially. There’s also indigenous uses that we don’t know that they’re always inside of a ritual necessarily we don’t know. But it seems like there’s definitely sort of a lot of ceremony going on over time, like with ritual we should say right, in the context of some kind of ritualistic spiritual holding, right?

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:03:11]:

Yeah, yeah. I think it would maybe be fair to say there was a sacred reverence for plant psychedelics that were available to certain people.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:03:22]:

Right.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:03:23]:

It wasnt always people sitting in a temple or a hut or in a formal ceremony. There were hunters who used microdoses of psilocybin for example, to enhance visual acuity and so on. So, but in a sacred way, sacred relationship to the plant.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:03:42]:

Right. And then what you’re saying too, like turn 1950s, 1960s, we have an explosion where particularly a lot with LSD, psilocybin was used too in this explosion, among other things. But LSD was widely used in the sixties and really like the boom of recreational psychedelic use really happens.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:04:09]:

Right, right, definitely. And then there was a lot of fear, of course, about what the social and cultural ramifications could be of ongoing widespread use. And people really deeply questioning the Vietnam War and some of the other structural themes and culture in the sixties and seventies around racism and empowerment of women and so on. And so the counterculture movement became associated with psychedelic use. And then Richard Nixon put the kibosh.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:04:48]:

On everything with the Controlled Substances act. Was that 1970?

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:04:53]:

Yeah.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:04:54]:

Right. And then we start to see psychedelics slowly fading from that level of use recreationally. It’s still being used. And then we also see some more and more psychedelics are available over time recreationally, right?

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:05:11]:

Yeah. And then in the 1970s, I guess let me back up a step and say throughout this whole arc from the fifties until today, of course, there were still traditional indigenous uses going back millennia that are ongoing, that some people, including you and me and lots of other people have had the privilege to have opportunities to sit in those ceremonies over time. But then came along Sasha Shogun in the seventies, who was a chemist who synthesized more than 200 new psychedelic compounds that no one had ever seen or heard of before. He also synthesized MDMA, which had been synthesized before back in 1912. And so he and his wife and their inner circle of friends took it and felt that it was probably going to be really useful for therapy and started inviting their friends who were therapists to try it out and start using it with their clients. And it became widespread as a tool for therapy well before it got put on DEA schedule one in 1985.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:06:27]:

Right.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:06:28]:

Yeah.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:06:29]:

Well, let me also zoom out for a second. I think what we’re now, what I’m seeing is we’re sort of crossing the three categories. So recreational, you know, being. Well, however people define that, you know, you take it with your friends or you’re at a concert or out in public, either to have fun or maybe to have a big profound experience, but for recreation, essentially. But we also. So that’s recreational therapy is using the psychotherapy modality paired with psychedelics to have a psychedelic therapy session. So what we sort of skipped here, but we should say is this whole thing that happened in the fifties and sixties recreationally. There was also a movement with research in the fifties and sixties that also went away. That was going into the psychedelic therapy, more clinical dimension of looking at how does this help people with mental health struggles and things like that?

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:07:33]:

Yes.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:07:34]:

So we actually had sort of an interesting kind of parallel process happening here. Psychedelics were coming. There was a clinical, there was a clinical aspect being looked at as well as a recreational pathway. And then, like you said, always the ceremonial indigenous pathway has always been there. And then both of those, the therapy and recreate. Sorry. Well, mostly the therapy gets the kibosh really with the Controlled Substances act of 1970, where now it’s hard to do research because now everything’s schedule one. And then eventually MDMA gets on that schedule in the eighties. And so psychedelic therapy research really disappears for a while while recreational use, it’s still happening, but not as prolific as the sixties and early seventies. But it’s happening, right, right.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:08:32]:

I mean, the severe criminal penalties for possessing and distributing using psychedelics definitely deterred some people, but a lot of people kept using psychedelics, but because they were on schedule one and they were portrayed in a lot of government propaganda, frankly, as being as dangerous as things like heroin and cocaine and amphetamine abuse and so on. I think a lot of people who maybe would have tried it in the sixties didn’t do that in the seventies. But as you said, it continued underground.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:09:13]:

Right. So now we go mid eighties. MDMA is also now schedule one, very little psychedelic therapy research. Recreational use is not that big. Like maybe you knew somebody in the late eighties and early nineties, uh, that did psychedelics. Maybe it didn’t. I I did, but that was the nineties, um, when I went to college. But like I also, not a lot of people were doing it where I went to college. It was still sort of kind of fringe. And then we, you know, have of course maps. Rick Dublin starting to make some headway of like let’s get back to psychedelic research for therapy with MDMA. Starting to try and make that movement and then really takes off in the two thousands when we really start to see research again, really proliferate. And then we come to now where you have these three different pathways. You’ve got actual psychedelic therapy with ketamine. Potentially that could be a leading avenue if you know, it’s done correctly to be legal. We have other medicines. Hopefully going to have an FDA approval one day for therapy. It’s actually pretty popular right now that you see a lot of recreational psychedelic use. And then there’s this concept of ceremony and we should unpack that more too. In the current climate of psychedelics, what that means. So here we are. So let’s just talk about currently we sort of defined, I think, what psychedelic therapy is. It’s just paired with psychotherapy where you’re working on yourself, mental health stuff, or maybe personal development, but it’s with a therapist, and then we know what recreational use. Let’s talk about ceremony right now. What’s ceremony right now? Let’s talk about that for a second.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:11:12]:

Well, I think it probably should start with how the facilitator is trained. Might be a good place to start. When I think about ceremony, I think I take a more conservative approach to defining that. Where to me, the facilitator would be deeply trained by a tradition that didn’t start in the facilitator zone backyard last week or a year ago. The tradition started somewhere where people held the wisdom of that lineage for millennia. And there are legitimate holders of ceremony who have deeply studied with good teachers. And then there’s kind of a neo shaman movement where, and you know, I try not to be judgmental, but I think a lot of people, mostly with positive intentions, are stepping into facilitating what they call ceremonies without a whole lot of background, without a whole lot of training, where they haven’t been tested in terms of dealing with difficult situations, with a lot of hands on supervision, and know the development of that capacity to be a loving, connected, not intrusive support for people. So one thing is the training of the facilitator. I think the other one is what’s actually going on with the intention of the facilitator and the participants. You know, typically the intention is different from psychedelic therapy session.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:13:02]:

Right?

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:13:03]:

I think those are the two main things, yeah.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:13:05]:

And I think that, you know, I think ceremony is often in groups. Doesn’t have to be, but it’s often in groups. And sometimes there’s ritual inside of the experience by the facilitator or shaman. Or I think like you’re saying if it’s an intact ceremony that’s been passed down from a lineage or an indigenous lineage that has its own, you know, unique set of things that you’ll see could be everything from, you know, healing practices during it and singing and prayers. I’ve seen it all of that. And it can be everything from never talking where it’s like you just. There’s sort of an unspoken rule. You’re not supposed to talk at all during ceremony. Some you can, but it just depends on where you end up there. And there’s also a lot of, I think in the ceremonial circles there tends to be a lot of trust on the medicine doing the work. You know, the intention of like going in and the medicine’s going to do the work. And I with you versus like having an external therapist there that’s going to help support you in some way. There’s sort of less of that externalization of having someone to support you. Typically, I think from what I’ve seen.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:14:34]:

Yeah, I mean there’s just one nuance I would add to that, which is that at least in the ceremonies I’ve been a part of the rituals and the ceremonies. The songs, shipibo tradition, the Ikaros, the songs, healing songs, purification rituals with water and so forth and so on. The whole thing, the whole enchilada is considered to be the healing agent that I, you know, where I’ve been. And so then the medicine, the sacrament, what you put in your mouth, whether it’s peyote or psilocybin or ayahuasca or whatever the plan is, is a helper inside of that context. But theres much less of a focus versus say psychedelic research on the molecule is the answer. You ingest this compound and thats the whole thing. Much different.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:15:35]:

And theres also tends to be different frameworks on what’s happening in some like a. More of a ceremonial space versus a therapy space. I mean the therapy space we, you know, there’s. There’s a westernized psychotherapeutic philosophy embedded in the whole thing, even if. Even if it’s still different because we’re working with a psychedelic and there’s still this philosophy of mind and ego and trauma and mental health disorders and there’s this whole embedded thing inside of psychedelic therapy. Whereas in ceremony it depends where you’re coming from and who you’re working with. But it could be an energetic metaphysical philosophy of like we’re clearing the space of different types of energies and right, it could be that you’re working with the spirit of the plant right as well. So it’s like there’s. Even though some of that might kind of bleed into each other here, there is some distinctions of just that sort of philosophical piece coming into it and that kind of context and container which sets one up for different experiences. Imagine the impact you could have with your clients when you’re able to practice the most cutting edge modality available today. Psychedelic therapy is the future of mental health care. And the integrative Psychiatry Institute will empower you with the tools and knowledge you need to master this exciting modality. IPIs comprehensive training and in person. Experiential practicums will elevate you personally and professionally. This in depth curriculum is the gold standard certification in the field. When you join, you will step into a global community of thousands of innovative colleagues who are integrating psychedelic therapy into their practices. Visit psychiatryinstitute.com reply where you will find all the information you need about IPIs training. And when you visit psychiatryinstitute.com apply youll also receive IPIs free ebook getting started with psychedelic therapy so you can get the most up to date information immediately. Again, thats psychiatryinstitute.com apply to learn more about the training and to get your free ebook.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:17:58]:

Well, I think what you’re speaking to is, is critical, is that you know the human psyche, like the, the parts of our inner psychological world, our thoughts, our emotions. If you want to go into like a freudian frame, like our superego, our ego, our subconscious id, it’s like you’re, you’re, you’re coming to therapy and you’re bringing something that needs help. You’re bringing your kind of broken down psychology into the mechanic shop, and the mechanic’s going to put some fresh psychedelic oil in your engine and help your engine get back on the road again. That’s the model, in a way.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:18:42]:

Or you blow a new gasket. It just depends on the day.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:18:48]:

But the nature of what we, of what suffering actually symbolizes in a human being is a different symbol in a spiritual or a ceremonial context. Again, speaking only from my own experiences of those contexts, what I’ve seen is human suffering is not about having a broken psyche or an engine that needs fresh oil. The suffering comes from all kinds of what you might call spiritual illnesses or disconnections that maybe you feel disconnected from your family, maybe you feel disconnected from the environment or from what you might call divinity or spirit or God or the universe. And there are other kinds of ailments that are, so to speak, treatable through ceremony, through the eyes of a different framework. So even just the nature of, like, what does the symptom, let’s call it, let’s say depression or anxiety mean? Like, what does it mean? And so then what are we going to try and do about it inside of the framework? It’s a totally different setting and framework, right?

 

Keith Kurlander [00:20:04]:

And, you know, if you’re doing psychedelic therapy, hopefully you’re working with someone that has a pretty wide framework, because, I mean, any of these frameworks can get narrow for an individual human being, right? Like these are all just frameworks that were created by humans and there were other terms before that were similar presentations. Right? So. But these things matter, right? When we come to the table, let’s say if we’re coming as a person in whatever, whether we’re going into recreational use therapy or ceremonial, like, what we believe about ourselves and what we believe about mental health and what we believe about the mind, like, psychedelics are going to sometimes amplify all of that, all those beliefs, right. In any of these settings. And that’s where I think it’s teasing out these settings is so key because, like, you go into a recreational setting and you’re like, oh, I’m just taking this with my friends to have this great experience with the music. And, you know, I want to. And then all of a sudden, you’re starting to, like, be in a crisis there. You’re standing in, you know, a crowd of 10,000 people, and you’re all of a sudden the world. It feels like the world’s, like actually crashing on top of you and you’re panicking and you’re like, oh, my God, I’m broken. Like, something’s wrong with me. And it’s like all this amplification is happening in that setting. And so that setting can be great, and people have great experiences in those settings. And there’s a risk in that setting, which is you might see something about how you see the world or you see how you see yourself in a setting that may not be the best place to actually learn about yourself and for the first time in that way.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:21:55]:

Right. For sure.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:21:56]:

I mean, it happens, but, yeah.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:21:59]:

Or you could even just be having a. An experience, like at a concert, like you said, for example, where all of a sudden your personal point of view melts away and you’re having, like, a non dual, you know, no personality, nobody. Like, not just, what, who am I? But what am I, you know?

 

Keith Kurlander [00:22:19]:

Right.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:22:20]:

And these experiences when they happen inside of a setting where you’re safe and you have trusted people that you can connect with, who can hold you in that it can be incredibly beautiful and transformative, and it can also be really frightening. It can be frightening even in a therapeutic setting or a safe, quiet, somebody’s home kind of setting. But the kinds of folks that I think you and I have seen who have PTSD from a psychedelic, usually it came from having it in a setting where there was no support. There was panic. Sometimes law enforcement was involved because of weird behavior that was panicky or frantic or whatever.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:23:08]:

Totally could be the wrong type of support was available. Yeah, it could just been a hard session, but that’s, I think, even more rare if you had the right type of support, but you can leave a little fragmented. But with the right support, you have somebody helping you through that. Yeah. And so that happens. And, you know, I wouldn’t recommend anyone does psychedelics for their first time in a recreational setting. I think that’s a setup. Maybe it goes great and you have a great time, but I think I personally would recommend if someone has never done psychedelics, like, get a little, you know, get some. Either therapy or a good container ceremony that, like, feels right to you under your belt, where it’s like you have the right support because you don’t know what you’re going to see or feel before you start, you know, experimenting with, uh, settings that have very loose boundaries and loose containers. And so, I mean, I wouldn’t recommend people do that first as recreational experience. I think it’s. It’s just you throw. You’re rolling the dice a little bit more there.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:24:12]:

I agree. It’s. Yeah, it’s pretty risky. I think there are, um. I. When I was at burning man, I only went to burning man once in 2017, but incredibly transformative experience, and one of the most transformative moments for me was I was sitting on an art car, on the roof of an art car, and I was with a couple friends, and off to my right, there was a little circle of like 820 something year olds, young kids, like 22, 24, something like that. And they were all about to take psychedelics together, and I saw them. It kind of broke down my framework around recreational use. So I just want to offer this as an example of how sometimes therapeutic use and recreational use can have a little bit of a blend right.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:25:01]:

Where it may not be recreational anymore.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:25:05]:

Yeah. These kids were incredibly responsible, and, you know, they went around the circle. Everyone had some kind of psychedelic in their hands and what are you journeying with tonight? Your intention. How can I support you tonight? Where do you think you might get stuck with that intention that you just shared? It was incredible. It was like, oh, my, this is like, yeah, pure therapy, essentially.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:25:26]:

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s. I don’t. That’s probably not recreational use. Right. I mean, that’s. It’s definitely not taking the medicine just to just have a good time and have no support. And I think that sounds very intentional and kind of bleeds into this ceremonial therapy kind of category. Yeah. So that happens, too. I’m just flashing back, no pun intended. I was at a Steve Miller band concert in 1998 or something on LSD, and I didn’t know what I was doing. And I’m sitting there, and first of all, I’m all scared and freaked out and with my friends, and they’re all dancing, doing the Steve Miller thing, you know, like, waving their arms, and. And then I’m, like, sitting there, and I see this big, like, six foot five bald guy just, like, running toward me, and I’m like, what’s going to happen? You know? And he just, like, is running right at me, and he runs right past me and keeps going. And then for the whole rest of the concert, I was just flashing, seeing myself as, like, kermit the frog biting his nails, like, scared the whole time. And that’s, like, all I kept seeing who I was, and I was just in this nightmare of Kermit the frog. So there’s, you know, the recreational thing can go sideways is all I’m saying.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:26:57]:

But no doubt, no doubt.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:26:59]:

The therapy thing, you know, I think there’s a different framework here. Like, it’s like the therapy thing, it’s not. It can go hard.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:27:08]:

Yeah.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:27:08]:

You know, it could go really hard like that, where you’re, like, you’re. You can panic about your therapist. I mean, that happens. That happens. We’ve seen that.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:27:15]:

Yep.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:27:16]:

You start thinking your therapist is your enemy, you know, not here to help you. That could happen. Yeah.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:27:23]:

Yeah. I had a session once where I thought the therapist had poisoned me.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:27:29]:

Yeah, well, they did. It was just a bittersweet poisonous.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:27:37]:

Yeah, it took a. I mean, I guess it did. What is the difference between poison and medicine? Is the dose? Is that what they say?

 

Keith Kurlander [00:27:44]:

Something like that, yeah.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:27:45]:

Yeah. It was definitely over my head, but it was by far the most transformative experience I’ve ever had in a therapy situation. I think what we’re getting at here is that psychedelics open a door in your mind into territory that is already there. It’s like we have a, I think, in visual metaphors a lot. I think of it as, like, this kind of almost like a fairy tale landscape where, like, there’s a castle and there’s, like, a scary fire swamp down here below the castle, and dragons and monsters around. And when we sit inside our conventional mindset, our usual reality, we’re inside the castle, everything’s cool. There’s fresh bread being made, you know, there’s. Nobody’s throwing catapults over the wall. Everything’s fine. Maybe get anxious and somebody, you know, hits you with a catapult ball or something. It’s anxiety from the ego standpoint, I’m being attacked, but what happens. What’s. What’s so good and bad about having a psychedelic session is you might be, you know, you might be taken away to the fire swamp and left there for hours, and you’re dealing with rodents of unusual size and these jets of fire that come up and scorch you and stuff. And so, yeah, I think this is really important because it kind of illustrates the integrative perspective that you and I kind of founded the institute on. Is that a person who’s, well, is a person who kind of has the capacity or the willingness, let’s say, to be as uncomfortable as you get when you go into these scary places in your mind while at the same time recognizing that, you know what? I’m the whole territory. I’m not just the castle and ordinary states of consciousness like the one we’re in right now. I don’t know if you’re on a psychedelic, but I’m not.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:29:48]:

No. God, no, I’m not.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:29:50]:

Okay.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:29:51]:

I mean, I hope I’m nothing but.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:29:57]:

The ordinary states of mind. If you’ve never been out of your mind, so to speak, then you don’t realize that there are these scary places in your mind that already exist inside of you. And each time that you kind of set foot outside the castle, you might get really scared and really freaked out and think that something’s attacking you, when in reality it’s just like you’re getting a breath of fresh air from whatever’s going on outside of what you think is you.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:30:26]:

Yeah. And then if we go another step here is the difference between ceremony and therapy. You may have a therapeutic experience in ceremony, you may have a ceremonial spiritual experience in therapy. But one thing that’s typically different is the training of the leader, the facilitator in the room. And that, I think, matters when we start thinking about the complexity of mental health that someone might be dealing with. Understanding that complexity can often help guide people. If they’re going to do psychedelic therapy, there’s a lot of ways to hold it so that you can reliably produce better outcomes is the best way of saying it.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:31:17]:

Right.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:31:17]:

When people have complex mental health situations going on, and that’s where ceremony may not be a good fit. It depends on what that person is dealing with. But, you know, if they have a lot of complexity in history there, there’s a lot to consider. You know, everything from medications they might be on to their aftercare, to the trauma that might be coming up and how to work with it and not recapitulate it. And theres a lot there, right?

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:31:48]:

Absolutely. And I think one of the limitations, lets say, of traditional ceremony is the absence of this psychological nuance that youre talking about of how intense and how complex trauma, for one thing, can be. As you said, people can get re traumatized. I mean they can go further out, they can get more dysregulated. If they have a complex mood disorder that hasn’t been identified, then a serotonin stimulator like any of the classical psychedelics can really spin you out a lot further.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:32:34]:

Right. So I think the, and then, so there’s benefits and drawbacks to any way you go here, obviously. And, you know, like you and I have had amazing ceremonial experiences, life changing.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:32:49]:

Sure.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:32:50]:

You know, things that I’ll remember for the rest of my life as positive. And I’ve also had problematic experiences. And so I think it’s just there, there are obviously pros and cons and however you’re working with psychedelics and because you and I are mental health educators, obviously we have a, we probably know the most about the mental health part of the endeavor. Right. And so I think there are really fairly safe ways to do a psychedelic therapy experience for people with mental health conditions, um, when it’s indicated to actually have a great outcome, for sure, which.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:33:36]:

Is not reliably, that, yeah, reliably. And is not to say that, you know, I think it’s also important to point out that when you undergo psychedelic therapy, you can have a very difficult experience. It doesn’t mean you’re having a bad outcome. Right. You know, sometimes, as in my case personally, the, the most challenging sessions can lead to the most transformation in your life, but it just might take a lot longer to get to the other side of that. Right. It doesn’t mean that someone gave you the wrong psychedelic or that they didn’t do the session correctly or something like that, necessarily.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:34:15]:

I mean, psychedelic therapy, it’s interesting. I mean, from a research perspective, we’re looking for outcomes of symptoms going down, and that reliably happens is what we’re seeing. Yeah, obviously not always. There’s no miracle medicine here, but that does reliably happen. But what you’re speaking to is that’s not the only outcome that could lead to a positive outcome over time. Because there’s also the disruptive element of psychedelics. Right.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:34:51]:

Sure.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:34:51]:

Disrupting the entire internal experience that you’ve been stuck in, putting a wrench into it. And sometimes that’s really even more uncomfortable for a moment than what you were in now. It’s like you’re in this thing and you’re stuck. But you knew what you had, right?

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:35:14]:

Yeah.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:35:14]:

Maybe you’re really stuck and it sucks and it’s horrible. That’s a different thing. But, like, let’s say it sucks pretty bad and you’re just getting by. Like, well, I could just get by. It sucks. I hate it. But. But then you put a wrench in there and now you’re like really scrambled for a while.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:35:31]:

Yeah.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:35:32]:

Those experiences, often with the right support in the psychedelic therapy context, lead to a rebuild. A rebuilding that’s way stronger than what was prior.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:35:42]:

Right. Yep. Often it’s like a scrape off of a home and building a new home from the ground up.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:35:51]:

Yeah.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:35:52]:

Which is really hard to do. And, you know, can, as you said, I mean, it can lead to the most incredible positive outcomes, but it’s. You’re not going to get there if you abandon the remodel where there’s just a raw foundation there and there’s no house on top.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:36:10]:

Yeah.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:36:10]:

Or just blown up house.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:36:13]:

Yeah. And then I think coming back to something you said earlier, ceremony is a fantastic way to go, particularly when you’re seeking something spiritually. And, you know, you don’t. Maybe you’re not so complicated with your mental health, which probably doesn’t exist, but let’s just pretend it does.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:36:35]:

Well, there’s a special.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:36:36]:

There’s a spectrum. There’s a spectrum. Maybe you’re not that complicated and, you know, you’re relatively stable is another way of saying it. But you’re really seeking spiritual experience and the connection. And, I mean, that’s where ceremony can really shine for people. Right. And for some people, ceremony becomes a spiritual path. They’re in a church, they’re in a native american church, or they’re in Ayahuasca church and they go to church. Right.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:37:13]:

Right. And I mean, that’s a good segue into an update about our friend Joe Tafor, who is a physician who also spent a great deal of time in Peru, training under a traditional shaman there, and who recently won a case for religious freedom to use ayahuasca as a sacrament at a church in Arizona. So these things are happening. And in other words, there are above board, legally sanctioned settings where ceremony can occur in the US. It’s not clear. It’s not.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:37:55]:

You’ve got a, you’ve got a couple of places for ayahuasca couples. You’ve got Oregon passed through the supreme court. Was it Oregon or Washington that the ayahuasca church went through their supreme court? Yeah, that was a while back, which Ayahuasca church was that, do you remember?

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:38:18]:

It was the UDV.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:38:20]:

UDV, right.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:38:22]:

Yeah.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:38:23]:

And then Jota for as an example, there’s probably some others. And then also there are some others that are using the precedent of that as a church. They’re actually a church and they use that precedent with ayahuasca to say that they can do this. And then of course you have peyote in places, native american church.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:38:47]:

Yeah.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:38:49]:

And then you have now other things happening with psychedelics we just get outside of even the ceremonial context. You have plenty of cities that have decriminalization going on for psilocybin, for personal, you know, personal use essentially. And then you have state measures like Oregon and Colorado where you actually have psilocybin services happening. And Colorado is even potentially more expansive with their natural medicine health act. So theres quite a bit happening. And then with psychedelic therapy we have ketamine as a prescription and theres ways to do that. And then we have some medicines hopefully down the line here in a few years. So a lots changing, a lots happening in terms of the legal landscape.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:39:37]:

Yeah, its an ever evolving setting and it seems like its going faster and faster, it seems to me every year.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:39:48]:

Yeah, sometimes psychedelics will do that. Well, we could wrap up here maybe.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:39:57]:

Sure. I think we’ve had pretty good exploration here today of the headlines, if you will, the overview. There’s so much more to talk about. We’ll get into more nuances in future episodes around psychedelic therapy.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:40:13]:

All right, talk soon.

 

Dr. Will Van Derveer [00:40:15]:

Thanks.

 

Keith Kurlander [00:40:16]:

We look forward to connecting with you again on the next episode of the Higher Practice podcast where we explore what it takes to achieve optimal mental health.