Power of Psychedelics and Healing Arts for Mental Health
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Welcome to Wise Health for Women Radio with Linda Prater. Women are pressed daily to give more, learn more, and be more, often at the expense of mind, body, or spirit. Each week with intriguing guests and topics, we'll bring you fresh ways to view your limited time, encouraging a shift to new, healthier perspectives. Wise Health for Women Radio, helping women thrive. And now here's your host, Linda Prater.

Good morning and welcome to Wise Health for Women Radio. I'm Linda Crater. We're going to be talking about a topic today that has gained a lot of headlines recently, is used throughout the country. And we're talking about the use of psychedelics for mental health disorders and psychosis.

help and anxiety and PTSD. I know with my work in the veterans advocacy area that veterans are using it for PTSD and depression. And more and more it's coming into the mainstream. So we're going to be talking today with Mary Burnett and talk about the work she's doing. Talk about what it looks like to take therapeutic

psychedelics and coupling that with energy therapies and other more traditional therapies. So it's a collaborative effort because often we find that these singular efforts

get out of control or don't give the results that you're seeking. And so we're going to hear today about the best way that so far that she's looking at and her company to take a look at how to best apply this because substance use without proper therapy can be very risky. So Mary, welcome to our program. Hi, I'm so happy to be here.

I think it's a very interesting topic and it is coming under a lot of discussion. I think in the beginning it was psychedelics. You know, are we are we talking back to the LSD days and is this just regressing? But this is a different use for these and it's being proven to be very effective in many ways. Correct.

Yeah, it is. And I think what a lot of people don't realize, unless you're kind of really following how the industry is developing, is that this is becoming a, you know, a...

a real growing market. There's been billions of dollars invested into research over the past, specifically like 10 years. It's really ramped up. But then even in the past two years, there was 62 million in 2019 that was invested. And then by 2022, over 570 million invested into this market. So we're seeing real money come in from the pharmaceutical industry.

um, because the science is showing how effective these compounds are on the treatment of mental health disorders. Well, one thing that brings up is you're talking is the pharma industry is very interested, but one of the things they often do having worked in the pharma industry for decades is that they take a substance, but they add things to it or they give it

different time releases or different dosages. They want something that they can patent. And so that can take it into a totally different direction. So I don't mean to take you off on a tangent, but big pharma getting behind it, is that a plus or is that a minus for the general practitioner? Well, I don't see it as a plus.

Well, let me back up for a second. So the pharmaceutical industry as a whole, I mean, we've seen a lot of kind of the same patterns of them, you know, releasing these. Sorry, I could not hold back the chuckle. Okay.

Yes. How can how can we synthesize these naturally occurring chemicals and compounds and like you're saying, to be able to patent them and scale them? And that to me is, you know, is in my opinion, it's.

you know, recreational use under the guise of medicine. And we've seen that with the opiate epidemic and we've seen it with the development of the marijuana industry as well. And that's, you know, why I feel really passionate about getting the word out, but also like doing research in a different way so that we can show how important it is to combine the substance use with these other therapies.

And that really the substance is just a amplification of other healing modalities that are honestly less researched and less invested. And I think because it is harder to scale, it is harder to regulate. But my point in bringing up the degree of investment that's going into this space is to just say that like,

Like, you know, even though it might seem now because the industry isn't in its infancy that people are still a little bit like, wait, psychedelics? Like that, my perspective of that is, you know, LSD in the 60s and 70s. But really what we're going to see happen over the next few years is that this is becoming a more and more and more legitimized modality for addressing the mental health crisis that we're in.

Well, I tend to agree with you because it is so interesting to me that most pharmaceutical compounds start out in the jungles, in nature. If you go back to the Native American culture, peyote was there. There's all sorts of substances that go traditionally back, you know, centuries. And so we've always had these things, but I think they were used in moderation. Right.

And then it became not using it in moderation. It became a use of a means of escape as the world became extremely complex. But I know that the use of psychedelics now is more for the use toward helping with managing PTSD and depression, things that the general pharmaceutical industry has not been able to help with.

The side effects have been worse than the depression themselves. And let's face it, Americans want something simple. They don't necessarily even want talk therapy or CBT or EMDR or any of these other things. They just want a magic pill. So how are you all approaching the careful, responsible use of psychedelics? And in what form will these be?

So the model that we're excited about taking to market is specifically leveraging psilocybin in a microdose capacity in conjunction with

Other healing arts modalities specifically, we're putting a lot of emphasis on hypnotherapy because hypnotherapy has a lot of research behind it. Neurolinguistic programming and hypnotherapy are kind of a similar modality. And it also kind of overlaps with the EMDR. Explain what that is to our listeners.

Sure. So EMDR, and I'm not specifically certified in these modalities, so I'm going to give my best kind of general overview of it. But EMDR is eye movement therapy. Okay.

And it is sort of a behavioral modification. Yes, it's all about how do we reprogram the neural pathways and the mental constructs around how we interpret reality and that what that does is when we do it in the present, it also helps us reinterpret our past and that

gives us new emotional responses to past events that we may be, you know, holding these, these like deep fear patterns and everybody has some degree of trauma. Obviously some people have significantly more impact on their day-to-day life and

than others. And, you know, when we talk about post-traumatic stress disorder, that's really what we're looking at is like, what are the symptoms that are appearing right now? And hypnotherapy has been proven to be really, really effective for this. So when we combine it with, like I was saying before, what we're interested in mostly is the microdose

in conjunction with this, it, what it does is it creates more availability of the mind, more receptivity of the mind to rebuild these coping mechanisms and these new neural neural pathways to, you know, re almost like recreate the perspective on reality to make it easier to, to emotionally process

what's going on. And, you know, what, what I have found in my own journey with this is that, that process can unleash, you know, a lot of emotional debris. It's like, there's hard, it's hard sometimes to package it in a language, but what comes, it can trigger emotions.

deep emotional responses, let's just say. Um, and that's why another, another layer to this that I found the most success in is pairing that with energy medicine, which works more on a molecular level. It works with the chi of the body and how we're actually, because our mental structures are stored in our cells all throughout our body. It's not just in our brain. Um,

When we make these big changes to our perception, our whole body changes. And that can be a taxing process. And the energy medicine really aids in that.

the smoothing of that embodiment process and it makes it a less, I don't want to say risky, but a less difficult transition and helps you kind of integrate and make the transformation more permanent.

So I'm sure it's not a one time thing. What is a typical therapeutic dose? And I'm not talking about a dose of the micro dosing of the psychedelic. What I am asking is what is a course of therapy look like?

Sure. When we do journeys, it's a one-on-one experience and you're looking at one to three grams, depending on the weight of the person and that kind of thing. And then when we do a microdose, we're talking more of like 0.1 to 0.5. So is this on the same lines as homeopathy, which is...

In ancient days, you had a small dose of something that was toxic or poisonous or whatever, but it was manageable at a lower level and your body was able to then take it and go in different directions, whereas a full dose could kill you.

And so is it something along the lines of giving you a little bit so that it helps with the energy and the talk therapy or the EMDR that you're using with it or the hypnotherapy so that it's a collaborative therapy that then leads to opening pathways, perceptions, new neural pathways? Would that be accurate to say? Yeah. And I think for specifically psilocybin therapy,

We're both have value, right? There is value in having a full psychedelic experience. And for some people it can create. That terrifies me. I'll be frank. I mean, it does the micro dosing less so, but you know, I do know people who have suffered for years and years with PTSD or childhood trauma that they cannot release. And it's,

Energy medicine is still really becoming known. We've done several shows on that, so for listeners who aren't familiar with it, it's basically cellular healing. It's very gentle and non-intrusive, but it really helps. I think that part of what you have to do, and that's what you're doing today, is getting beyond the old mindsets of what this means. Yeah.

Am I right? So much of it has to do with the quality of the facilitation. And that's really what I want to drive home in the development of this from a policy perspective. And just the type of research that's being done, studying the compound in isolation, in my opinion, whether it's synthesized or organic, is important.

almost irrelevant because again, what this is doing is it's opening up the brain. So if you're opening up and then you're having a negative experience, you can actually create more trauma. In other words, don't experiment. Yeah. And that's what the risk is like recreationally, you know, it's,

You're putting yourself at risk because you're making, you're opening up your subconscious to become more vulnerable to the environment. And if we combine that with really positive experiences, it can have a huge benefit to your day-to-day life. But, you know, the opposite is also true. So, yeah.

It's just the emphasis cannot be overstated on the importance of the facilitation and the environment that these substances are being used in. So what do you say to someone who knows, I don't know, groups of people, because I know people who are taking psilocybin gummies and really having almost out-of-body experiences and

And then it's not really for any therapeutic use. It's recreational use. But is that wise to even experiment given today's environment of you don't know what's pure and what is adulterated?

I can't speak as specifically to the differences in the different kinds of products that are being manufactured now, but just overall, and if you're taking a psychedelic, I mean, in my opinion, even marijuana, you know, if you're going to use it personally, I think there are therapeutic ways to do that. Yeah.

For instance, the way that I approach it is in my own, you know, space if I'm doing a meditation or I'm doing a recorded hypnotherapy session or I'm doing, you know,

you know, just, just a personal or emotional, spiritual development exercise in conjunction with use of any form of psychedelic. I really am intentional about, you know, laying a candle, playing some soft music, making sure the space and the energy is really safe. And when we, when we don't do that, I think again, we're just setting ourselves up for taking unnecessary risks. Obviously some people don't,

Some people thrive on risk. Sure. That's where we get addictions. In terms of psychedelics, does it have an addictive factor to it? It's an interesting question. The research is suggesting that it's, that's not what, what people experience. However, I think there are elements of it that can be addictive as there are of many things that are even not substance related. Yeah.

In just the sense that it does open you up to a profound experience of love that can be very attractive as a lifestyle. And I've seen people just in the more extreme psychedelic communities, like using ayahuasca, for instance. What is ayahuasca?

So ayahuasca is an extremely potent psychedelic that has been used for, you know, as millennia in the jungles of the Amazon and throughout South and Central America. It's a vine that's distilled and it's made into a tea and it's consumed typically in like a ceremonial setting. Okay. Yeah.

And it can create, you know, extremely powerful experiences for sure. However, I've seen people get kind of addicted or addicted, I guess is a strong word, but swayed culturally into kind of like these cult-like environments. But is it, you say, you know, can open a profound experience of love. Does, do psychedelics also have the capability to take you to the dark side?

I believe that most drugs can. And so that's why I'm wondering. Yes, I believe that that is true. And that's why, again, we're putting so much emphasis in our, in our organization that we're not, our objective is never to just sell the compound in isolation. We'll always sell it in a container that is, that provides support through these other modalities to help build, you

build the basis for experiencing positive emotions and coping mechanisms that help us experience more peace in our lives, which is the objective for most people, I think, going into this path. However, there are a lot of, and, you know, this is kind of like, it's very fringy, but there are people who, you know,

I guess you could call it witchcraft or, you know, some other kind of like just spiritual. I think you're giving it too much credit to some of the people that I'm thinking of. They just want to have an interesting, fun, fun night. Sure. The fact that doing this, pairing this with energy medicine, which for people to clearly understand too, we've all now heard about the dangers of electromagnetic fields and

grounding ourselves with bare feet in the grass or on the ground, we are made of energy. And so as we are working together to regulate with natural energy,

The earth and energy work can also help you if you're taking this natural compound. I hear you say that it could be synthesized or natural organic. I'm still guessing that organic would give you a more anticipated experience, or is that not correct? You know, I have never personally taken a synthesized version of psilocybin. I don't

feel the need or desire to do that. I've heard that it's very similar in the experience. But well, you can also eat a hamburger from McDonald's or you can take grass fed beef and

And make yourself a hamburger. So that's what I liken it to. And I like to hope, and I'm seeing it more on social media, a real emphasis on as natural as possible for anything is healthier. Exactly.

And what we're talking about is like ingesting the mycelium. Like we're talking about the mushroom itself and the spirit of the mushroom. And it has this massive connective effect.

in the natural world. And I think that's part of why it brings that energy to us. And we feel this deep sense of connection with nature when we're, you know, even the people who take it recreationally, I think attest to that reality is that, you know, taking- I will do an informal test after this show and ask a few people that I know who did this.

and couldn't drive their golf carts home about what they thought about it. But again, I think that whenever you take something that's mind-altering, you're right to do it in environments that are a little bit more controlled so that it doesn't turn into bad experiences. So let's go... We've unfortunately run out of time, but let's go with...

Actually, I think we have a few more minutes. Let's go with the fact that you're working with psychedelics, but you're also psilocybin in particular, but you're also working with these various modalities. Are you trying to do that so that you find that hypnotherapy works best here? Earth energy work works best here. And how do you differentiate that? Are you doing studies with this?

So our intention, yes, is to do research. And what I think that this studying the healing arts modalities in conjunction with the psychedelic compounds actually gives us a pathway to deeper study of the effects of the healing arts modality because

In order for any of these modalities to be effective, I would say aside from the nature element that you just mentioned, it really is a decision process of the individual to kind of come to the place where they're in a state of allowing. And that's why it's hard to study

the results or to get consistent results from, from different types of therapies, because obviously not all of the individuals are starting in the same place and their receptivity levels are going to be very different. Um, so the, the psychedelic compounds in some ways mitigate that and they make the person more receptive. So I think it's going to show the outcomes of these therapies in a more profound way. That's my hypothesis. Um,

So what is your primary condition that you're looking to alleviate through the use of these psychedelics and therapy?

We're definitely starting with trauma, so post-traumatic stress. Good, because that's super important. I know the VA is doing studies right now, the Department of Veteran Affairs, and everybody is looking for answers because life can be hard. And if nothing else, there's a raised level of anxiety and depression in this country overall. And the pandemic certainly...

takes responsibility for some of that. But as we come out of it, I am seeing a good move toward healthier nutrition and exercise and all the things that I wish had been emphasized during the pandemic, but were not. Well, my company's name is Wise Health. So clearly I was looking for that and it was not happening because when you, fear doesn't bring out the best in people, let's put it that way.

Went the other direction. Yes. Well, the country did. I did not. But most people did, at least to a certain degree. So it's nice to come out of it. If people want to know more information, we're going to send them to earthtone, one word, .org. You are a co-founder with Becca Bartlett. And you're working on making this more widely available, more better understood,

And that's too much coffee, by the way, on a snow day. And at any rate, responsibly and legally incorporating psychedelics into sound medicine. Did I say that in a way that works for you or would you like to rephrase it? No, that was very eloquent. I appreciate your support. Oh, of course. Of course. So earth tone psychedelics.

is E-A-R-T-H, earthtone, one word, dot org. And you'll find out more information there. And I think this is a newly opening field. I think the things that I take away from your discussion, Mary, are take care to do this in the right environment. Take care to do this with people who are practiced and understand what the

repercussions might be if we open you up and make you feel vulnerable, let's have it be in a positive direction, not a destructive or negative one, that you don't really want to be experimenting with things because there is no regulation in this market at this point. So your microdose might be someone else's full dose. I mean, you just don't know. And that's where the experimenting friends are

taking a risk. But I also like that therapy with it requires collaboration. So you have a unified mission when you're talking with someone who you're trying to help. And I think that makes for a better outcome and better expectations. Yeah. It's so much about intention. Is it life? Yes, everything is. Yeah.

It is. Well, thank you for your time today, Mary. I really, really appreciate it. And we will be posting the show and the website for you to go to to find out more.

And I find this a growing field of interest. And so I really feel like this is a big help to come on our program and give us a better background on what this is, because it still sounds a little like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds if you go way back to the 70s. And yet it's not. It's turning into real science. And what we are finding is organic compounds have wonderful uses in

when used properly. So thank you for your time and wisdom. Thank you for tuning in today. You can find more shows at wisehealthforwomenradio.com.