Phil Wolfson has been a friend of mine for over a decade. In addition to being an absolute genius and one of the most generous people I’ve ever met, Phil has been at the forefront of the psychedelic psychotherapy world for the better part of 50 years. We go into his work with MDMA with couples during its legal period, his use of Ketamine and some general history on the use of psychedelics in psychotherapy both legitimate and in the underground.

You can find Phil on the web at:

https://ketaminepsychotherapy.com/
https://theketaminetrainingcenter.com
https://ketaminepsychotherpay.com

Transcript:

[Jon Dabach] 00:00
Today on the relationship Revival Show, I am excited to have a guest that I have the honor of calling my friend for well over 10 years, Dr. Phil Wolfson, Dr. Wolfson began practicing psychotherapy in 1966, psychiatry in 1972. He’s taught at three different graduate schools in psychology and was formerly Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Francisco.

[Jon Dabach] 00:24
He practiced MDMA ecstasy psychotherapy during its legal period and published writings on its use in psychotherapy. He is a founding member of hefter research institute. He’s a principal investigator over at maps sponsored MDMA and life threatening illness study.

[Jon Dabach] 00:42
He’s a writer has numerous articles on psychedelic spirituality, Buddhism, progressive politics, violence, he’s the founder of the ketamine training center that trains and promotes the use of ketamine and other psychedelics by practitioners all across the world, and teaches in fact, how to administer it in a very structured and well respected way amongst his peers.

[Jon Dabach] 01:09
And he also started and founded the nonprofit ketamine Research Foundation. And more than that, he’s one of the smartest and most generous and giving people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. And I know, I’m going to be in for a real education and a real treat here as you are.

[Jon Dabach] 01:26
He’s just one of my favorite people in the world. Dr. Phil Wilson, you’re listening to the relationship revival podcast with Jon Dabach, also known as mrSpirituality. That’s me. I’m your host giving you insights and guidance from over 10 years in the field of this amazing journey we call romance on this show, I go over everything you need to know about how to get into a relationship, how to get the most out of a relationship, and sometimes even how to gracefully end a relationship without pulling your hair out and going crazy.

[Jon Dabach] 01:57
And occasionally, I’m even joined by new and old friends who are also relationship experts to bring you guidance and wisdom with new perspectives. Thanks for stopping by Phil Wolfson, Dr. Phil Wilson, thank you so much for being here. I, we’ve been friends for I think it’s been about 12 years now. 12 years, something like that. Yeah, no time, it’ll

[Phil Wolfson] 02:22
Be even happier.

[Jon Dabach] 02:26
And, you know, I’ve, I’ve been grateful to be part a small part of your work in the ketamine space and the psychedelic space. And, you know,

[Phil Wolfson] 02:38
I would just break in and say you’ve been an essential part, we wouldn’t be here without you.

[Phil Wolfson] 02:44
Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I’ve, for people who don’t know I, I’ve helped Phil just with some of the marketing and digital tech to kind of get the programs up and running to train practitioners of ketamine psychedelic psychotherapy.

[Phil Wolfson] 02:59
And I believe in websites you build your websites for right? Urge Foundation are nonprofit for international organization, you’ve been a mainstay.

[Jon Dabach] 03:11
Thank you. Thank you. I, you know, for me, I’ve been I’ve been really diving deep. I don’t know if I ever told you I went down the path where I almost became an orthodox rabbi. I mean, you knew me when I was a little more religious. And so I’ve always kind of done this couples counseling quietly in the background, and I’ve taken it on much more fervently lately.

[Jon Dabach] 03:32
And, you know, the I, there was a guest on my show out of New York that mentioned that she’s studying MDMA, as a form of couples therapy, obviously, it’s not available anymore. So it’s just theoretical to her and I thought, well, why not go to the source? I know that you had some experience doing it back when it was permissible. Can you can you walk me through the history of when that was and what that looked like?

[Phil Wolfson] 04:02
Well, I mean, in truth, it’s still going on, and certainly underground maps, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, has been pursuing really since 1999. But since MDMA became illegal by, you know, bogus scheduling by DEA in 1986.

[Phil Wolfson] 04:26
You know, MDMA has been at the forefront of news around it being the first psychedelic rather than ketamine and marijuana, really, because we shouldn’t put those aside. You have the potential for being prescribed trouble by physicians and practitioners under a very strict regimen that FDA is yet to release the results of. That’s all complex story about MDMA and we illegality and the rest. So when we honor your request and step back a moment. Sure.

[Phil Wolfson] 05:04
MDMA was first made in Germany. And it was cast aside it was alongside in 1912, or 14, depending on who you go to a weight loss drug. The Germans were experimenting with what later became or what became at that time, amphetamines and methamphetamine which became the bulwark of the Nazi onslaught, the Blitzkrieg was fueled by cocaine, but especially by methamphetamine.

[Phil Wolfson] 05:34
And there, there’s a wonderful book about that. But anyway, ketamine came to life and in and was dormant, was put on the shelf. Then a wonderful psycho chemistry in some ways, the psycho chemist, or within a spectrum of three or four people, including Albert Hoffman, we invented LSD and synthesize psilocybin. Amongst that small group of people, Shogun, who is a very close friend of mine, had worked for Dow Chemical and lived in Berkeley and started, be a became psychedelic in his own way.

[Phil Wolfson] 06:18
And he began as a chemist to do substitutions on molecules and they’re really two, maybe three essential molecular structures that are psychedelic that we rely on. One is called phenethylamine, of which is a core structure. Within that framework we have with substitutions, a variety of related chemicals that are familiar to us mescaline is phenethylamine.

[Phil Wolfson] 06:49
MDA, which was very popular in the 70s, is still around to CB, which is popular still now, MDMA, MMDA, a host of hundreds of chemicals. And Sasha began to create those He created much of that chemical why the second group just to be complete as a tryptamines that people know about DMT, which is the core principle of ayahuasca and people know about mushrooms psilocybin, which is a tryptamine. Five Meo DMT is in popular use.

[Phil Wolfson] 07:27
So those are, you know, another kind of core nucleus with substitutions. So around 77, Sasha hit about hit on MDMA, and he tastes it everything personally, and then he would work it up. And he had a research group, I was in the tail end of that research group. So the process was he would carefully workup for toxicity and affect a new chemical personally, he kept diligent journals that were, that are the source of a whole new company now related to him.

[Phil Wolfson] 08:00
He’s no longer with us, called the Alexander Shogun Research Institute, exploring chemicals that aren’t patentable that he made that can be psychoactive so anyway, comes across MDMA works it up. And he says, this is a beautiful substance. This really is heartfelt and warm, not particularly psychedelic in the sense of illicit Natori. But within the framework, it’s often cast aside is not psychedelic, but it is, they work in a different way, if it’s mind manifesting, which is what psychedelic means.

[Phil Wolfson] 08:35
Then this is a molecule that is mind manifesting, it changes our minds, broadens our view opens our heart to ourselves and others opens our hearts to be able to tolerate our suffering and examine our behavior. So he worked that up, and then he gave it to the research group and his wife, I think, I don’t think he had been married to an Shogun and you also just died recently.

[Phil Wolfson] 09:00
He has had a wife who died of cancer before and, and, and then he gave it to a guy named Leo Zeff, there’s a wonderful book called The Secret chief about wheels F wheels. F was a military, he was an Army psychologist, a little diminutive guy. And he had a group in Berkeley underground, called the family.

[Phil Wolfson] 09:22
And that was hundreds of people. You know, doing underground work, really not so much underground at that point, because most things were still legal. We didn’t have the analog drug bill, we didn’t have a variety of other things. So we started seeing what would happen in the family.

[Phil Wolfson] 09:41
And he got a lot of data. And when I came along in 1983, and I had a session with my then wife, Alice, was Sasha and man. It was a remarkable experience. Now I was not naive. We were not naive to psychedelics, but it this was a different kind of experience it was warm, heartfelt, conversational. Sensual, and not particularly sexual, though can be sexual.

[Phil Wolfson] 10:11
Some people are sexualized, some people were sensual and it’s always sensual. Meaning it’s warm, intimate, and evokes connection and intimacy. So everything was legal at that point, we formed an informal organization called the rubra, association, responsible use of psychedelic agents. And we had sponsorship down at Esalen, because one of the owners was very psychedelic, he died, unfortunately, in a terrible accident, where we don’t have to talk about it, but it was on the land.

[Phil Wolfson] 10:46
And our sponsorship ended. But for a period of time, we would go for a week or so twice a year free. And we had this amazing group of people, many of whom are still around those who are of us who arrived. Rick Doblin was in that group was founder of vamps, and that’s how we became close, many famous people, that founders of hefter, were the in that group.

[Phil Wolfson] 11:13
So the psychedelic organizations that came out of it, especially in a period when things were illegal. That was the formative. It was really like a, you know, an ovary, it just things came to life from it, including myself. And so in that framework, I was the pioneer and in working with families, and in doing couples work on couples work was a lot of what we did, why did we do couples work because it fosters the intimacy between people. And you could do conflict work.

[Phil Wolfson] 11:49
And you can send couples to their room and let them find each other. And it just fostered a sense of, of conflict, openness, conflict, examination, love, openness, love examination, basically, reducing senses of differences, two, that have been exploited by relationship and two senses of compatibility or not. And it tends to give a glow.

[Phil Wolfson] 12:19
So a lot of people in that period, I did hundreds of couples between 83 and when it was made illegal 86 I was doing two or three couples a day, six hours, it was a lot of work. Beginning we actually took medicine with people because the feeling was and some people still do this.

 

[Phil Wolfson] 12:38
So it consumes you if you’re a practitioner, the feeling was that you won, which is essential Academy now that if you give people a substance that you don’t know about that psychoactive, you’re really not able to can confer with them, you’re really not able to bond, you don’t know what they’re going through.

[Phil Wolfson] 13:00
So an essential point coming out of that period and applicable to the ketamine period is that if you’re going to use a powerful psychedelic and MDMA is one Academy is extraordinarily powerful, that you as a practitioner should know it. So these programs you’ve been, you know, confecting for us online, on programs in which people have that experience deliver we groups of 30 to 40, people have two kinds of experiences in the ways in which we as a group,

[Phil Wolfson] 13:34
Administer ketamine but back then that’s what we were doing a little bit, but you burn out. So we didn’t do that very long. We did couples, I still have some friends who were married during the glow of that period.

[Phil Wolfson] 13:47
But yeah, to question people, because they get so excited about each other, ultimately, and they would do get married or you know, and then it would reality would die eventually, and you would have couples breaking up. So that wasn’t bad. That was pretty good. And then along comes the DEA 1986. Before the DEA and this is an interesting point that I’ll allow you to ask me a question to get through. So

[Phil Wolfson] 14:15
I mean, you’re answering questions I have in my head before I ask them, so that’s why I haven’t interrupted you.

[Phil Wolfson] 14:22
Appreciate that I’m trying. So in 1985, the DA comes along at that point, maybe there are 10,000 people using MDMA. There is a number of practitioners a small, you know, maybe they’re 500 to 1000. Across the United States. Nothing bad is happening everything we know now about MDMA.

[Phil Wolfson] 14:44
We weren’t then other than the neuroscience which is progress, but really not contributed at all to the use of MDMA and the Amaze, use application in humans is the same now was that with modifications Due to FDA controls on the studies being done, but in any event, DEA comes along and decides to split to schedule and the MDMA. And they have a schedule one, which means you can touch the stuff.

[Phil Wolfson] 15:15
LSD is in their heroines in their MO, most of the psychedelic molecules are in there now. And if one escapes, they have an analog drug bill, which came in the 1990s. That said, if there’s any analog, remember, we talked about phenethylamines, and tryptamines.

[Phil Wolfson] 15:34
These are all analogs of those two core structures. If you get if you have one of those related to those cost structures, you know, don’t think you’re getting away with it, it’s going to be scheduled. If a case comes up, you lose. So, you know, they covered their, their selves with that, okay, so we actually win. While we go to court, we had an international national, kind of following on it, I testified on my video, we they appointed an administrative law judge of their own.

[Phil Wolfson] 16:08
And the administrative law judge did exhaustive hearings, he was a very honest guy. And within the DEA classifications, he found that MDMA could be abused, but also had clinical utility, which would keep it out of schedule one, we go within probably scheduled to, you know, which is probably where this drug will go. Now, once it passes FDA, which looks like it will. So we could have kept it.

[Phil Wolfson] 16:40
But the DEA said thou with you, our judge, we’re going to dismiss you our judge. And we’re going to schedule it as scheduled one, the end of MDMA as prescribe a bolt open thing. And I just want to make one more comment about when we look at that period, people are very worried about making drugs illegal, I’m very worried about keeping drugs, illegal haul countries have destroyed this whole immigration for accept, we see from Latin America, the destruction of Honduras, Guatemala, you know, Mexico and a large number of ways.

[Phil Wolfson] 17:19
Country, if the country because of our consumption, remember where the consumers, we drive the market. So the stuff coming up, cocaine, etc., which is, you know, creating the whole culture of gangs and dissolution and lack of civilization, and misery and countries and criminality, is because of our own criminality. So if you go back to that period, there were no controls.

[Phil Wolfson] 17:46
There was nothing on cocaine. People were doing cocaine, for example, you know, it was 100 bucks, a gram. And there was a driven money economy, which wasn’t good. Cocaine, for instance, in that period of time in the 60s 70s, was seen as a good thing.

[Phil Wolfson] 18:04
There was a fine book, extolling its virtues called Snowblind. But if you took MDMA, in that period, there was you know, there was people doing it, we got people called recreational sometimes it is, I call it exploration of people exploring the nature of the substance, and doing it and people using it clinically, like we were at low cost. So one of the things that’s happening as an aside on this coming out under the under FDA, successfully for MDMA is a cost of the of the drug itself.

[Phil Wolfson] 18:43
And the cost of the program is prohibitive. Its story is an it’s not defined, but it seems to be that a three session MDMA experience under clinical circumstances will be 15 to $25,000, or there’s no insurance, and if there is insurance is not going to cover that. And so and you have to sit with people for six or eight hours, they have to decide, so you’re going to do one a day.

[Phil Wolfson] 19:12
So the cost is, is going to be an extraordinary barrier to use. Okay, so what does that do? So if you take the legal period, you had kind of basically three four types of experiences. You had people buying the stuff and using it, it was available, hard to get, because people weren’t making it, but there was an explosion in production as you can imagine, it was really cheap.

[Phil Wolfson] 19:38
It could be five bucks 10 bucks in that period of time for those real ghosts. And, and that was one kind of way in which was used it was used socially, venturi went into the rave culture that was actually in the illegal period. And people would use it at party and dance. So socially, and then people we’ll do it underground.

[Phil Wolfson] 20:01
But it wasn’t called underground because there was no reason to be underground, people would come up, who were practitioners who felt they had the capacity to administer this to couples or individuals. And then they were the critical people who licensed who thought or felt we knew what we were doing in terms of working with people in a way that was helpful, especially to depression.

[Phil Wolfson] 20:27
PTSD, you know, we focused a lot on depression, and relational aspects and spiritual aspects, couples, relational couples was big, because it’s so social. So there was no, there was no particular abuse, okay, 1986 happens, and the door is closed, and 3 million people are using it by the end of the year. Wow. Now you make something illegal.

[Phil Wolfson] 20:53
And this has been true throughout, you make something illegal, illicit, a few things happen, there’s a, it raises the cost of the drug, right. So why when you raise the cost of the drug, the production cost is pretty much the same, you raise the cost of the drug, you’re really dealing with an economy being created, you know, like the marijuana economy, if you look at that, and its failings, or difficulties, or any of the economies of substances, you bring in people who are, you know, under the, under the radar, trying to be poor manufacturing this stuff and making a lot of money on it.

[Phil Wolfson] 21:32
And so, the money driven, driven aspect of forbidden fruit aspect, and the wonderment of the substance, I mean, you’re prohibiting a substance that in the majority, nothing is perfect, is good for human beings. And when you do that, and people become aware, this is good for human beings. A they’re either ignorant, they just want to try it, or be they know it’s good for human beings, and they want to get into it. And they get it.

[Jon Dabach] 22:01
Let me ask you about what it actually what administering it and what a session looked like. So you were doing today, were they three hours long?

[Phil Wolfson] 22:09
No, I was doing one a day, sometimes two, I would make them know, the minimum was five hours, six hours. It depended, you know, yeah, different schemas for it, we still do. If you could go to someone’s house, you could leave at a certain point. And you know, it’s an intimacy drug. So basically, five, six hours. So you could do in a day, but that was a lot of work was 12 hours.

[Phil Wolfson] 22:32
Yeah. Yeah. And what is what does that look like? Is it similar to what ketamine is, is there like an hour in and then so let’s

[Phil Wolfson] 22:45
Hear you depending on dosage and how much you’re giving, ketamine is a peak drug. So it’s a peak, and then it declines rapidly. And it’s, you know, it’s, it’s mostly over an hour, 15 minutes, and then that you have a tail. So it adapts well, to a clinical situation, we do three hour sessions, as psychotherapy, the IV people do nothing of that sort, they just pump you with a bit of ketamine, and you’re done in 50 minutes, and then they send you home.

[Phil Wolfson] 23:18
And we we’ve been, we could talk about that in terms of why we’re, we’re not for that kind of work. But ketamine allows us to do at least two sessions a day because it spectrum even within the intensive psychotherapeutic realm is allows us to, to have period of three hours with recovery, etc.

[Phil Wolfson] 23:41
And then I had homework, but MDMA is much longer. And you know, a when we when we do an MDMA study in this home that you’re in, in my home, for maps with people with life threatening illnesses, and that was FDA approved, and we had people sleeping overnight here as part of the FDA protocol, and you had a 12 hour, definitely eight hour mandated period.

[Phil Wolfson] 24:10
And that may well be what comes down when the FDA schedules MDMA, hopefully soon, that the mandate will be for eight hours. And that will mean you know, the expense that we talked about, because people conditions, there will be two of them will have to remain with the patient for eight hours. But in the good old days.

[Phil Wolfson] 24:37
If you did someone at home, and this still happens, you could leave in an appropriate point. 3453 would be early in LA which was much more expensive in your neighborhood. It was people off and left for three to four hours we didn’t we stayed five to six hours. But going back to the question of how you are on it.

[Phil Wolfson] 25:01
Well, not just how you are but what’s the clinicians’ role? Are they? Are they just an observer? Are they talking?

[Phil Wolfson] 25:09
No, you’re in interactive. So there are two streams as I describe it in my talks. Here we are. In psychedelic work, one stream that emanated from LSD work and Stan Grof. And those people where you had very intensive altered states that, you know, could be paranoid or not. And what they did, and we often do it, we do it with ketamine is we will have people were eyeshades and listen to music, but those were very long experiences.

[Phil Wolfson] 25:43
And the interaction was just supportive. There was no psychotherapy, really. In those frameworks, there was follow up, but not really psychotherapy. And then, so that’s one model. It’s a model and widespread use in your in a way the iOS. Oops, so I thought as well.

[Jon Dabach] 26:03
I think a lot of psilocybin has that kind of effect.

[Phil Wolfson] 26:08
Mushrooms, we don’t have suicidal. Well, you know, people taking mushrooms known as psilocybin as research. Yeah, so mushroom. Mushroom work has also been that way though. Mushroom work lends itself more to interaction, but MDMA, MDMA and low dose ketamine, because ketamine has a spectrum of those leads, leads to what’s called psychotic experiences that was done with low dose LSD by Sidney Cohen, in which you have interaction.

[Phil Wolfson] 26:38
MDMA is an interactive substance. So you, you could have a session, as we’ve had, for six to eight hours, someone talking the whole time. MDMA is on a nucleus of methamphetamine. MDA is on MDA is on a nucleus of amphetamine. So there’s a stimulant property to it, which you know, makes people arrive at Dark lands various things energetic, so, but you tend to have people go in and out on the streams or write dreams, their trips, but they’re not, you know, vividly hallucinogenic, like ketamine or LSD, etc.

[Phil Wolfson] 27:23
So it lends itself to psychotherapy. It’s a brilliant substance for psychotherapy, as his ketamine when you use it in a way that allows for that, and you wrap methodologies around any substance, which has its own particular what we call a signature.

[Phil Wolfson] 27:40
Got it? What was when you were practicing it with couples? What was the typical aftermath? Like? Did they you know, because it’s obviously sounds like it’s a huge aid in helping bond and helping create that intimacy. How long before it kind of that feeling tapers off? I mean, obviously, if the couples doing the work, you know, then they can keep it up. But it’s when did you find that reality sinks in? Did you have couples coming for yet another treatment because they wanted a boost?

[Phil Wolfson] 28:13
Well, that’s a great question. But it’s a broad spectrum answers. So you know, some couples would realize that they don’t belong together. And they would say, Okay, we’ve checked this out, we really have checked ourselves out. We’ve looked in when even in with MDMA, it ain’t no hope. Maybe it didn’t make it right. Different still much. And that’s a Great Good Thing saves a lot of time, right? Oh, yeah.

[Phil Wolfson] 28:41
One small part of it. Another part of it would be that you would end up with a glow and really happy and how long that glow would last was indeterminable. It could be a lifetime. It could be three days, you know. And so in terms of repetition, how often we do a couple session.

[Phil Wolfson] 29:02
If we were ending up in a couples process with a couple that was involved with us. I was doing a couple session repeating it once a week. So there we’ve gotten confused by the FDA strictures on how often to do it with maps. But MDMA tends not to be a substance that you can repeat within a day or two, because there’s a loss of both whether it’s serotonergic, whatever it is, that’s all other level of neuroscience. It’s not as strong you can pump it people bump it try to do it more often.

[Phil Wolfson] 29:42
But once a week for depressed people or for people really wrangling with each other, either people come out and spend a month out here or I’d see them and they were you know very, very great difficulty divorcing hating each other. And I would you know, they wanted a shot. Oh, did we have it? We’ve been together for 20 years, what do we got? And so we would do that or, or the treatment of depression, which I would still do with, with MDMA.

[Phil Wolfson] 30:11
And I would put the ketamine and if I had, ideally, a psychotherapeutic regimen together, I would use those two substances I put in marijuana within that framework, because marijuana has its place. You know, I’d like one, one other kind of psychedelic like mushrooms. That’s why I think we see these out there now, because they’re ideal. I’d really like Ayahuasca to be legal.

[Phil Wolfson] 30:36
But again, these are experiential inputs. So if we just stick with the, the relational impact of the substances with dark, the MDMA, ketamine, there are other relationships, that and pathogens, I don’t like entheogens, I’m not. I’m a non-theist, as some of us call ourselves, rather than an atheist or a non-theist, so protect your Buddhist in my view. So I think

[Phil Wolfson] 31:08
I actually, while you’re on that non theist, I had a question. The experience of psychedelics is so intense for people, especially if they haven’t had it before. What is the role of the practitioner to not assign any kind of spiritual practice? Because I have a feeling you’re incredibly vulnerable and susceptible to kind of ascribing or assigning some kind of a spiritual meaning to the experience? And doesn’t, you know, does the clinician sometimes get into a compromised kind of position there?

[Phil Wolfson] 31:38
I think that’s a very good question. There are two parts to it one, people often feel and why they would become known as an N theologian. So religious people or people of a spiritual bent, saw the substances that bring them closer to God, or the sense of the Divine, or metaphysical space or, or, you know, interplanetary or psych, psycho physicist physicalist, where, you know, you see all matter embedded with spirit.

[Phil Wolfson] 32:11
People have a variety of experiences that because of the awesomeness, and the connection to all, with internally, there’s a sense of, I’ve seen something different I have that, you know, it’s certainly been part of my life. Does that make me believe that there is a personal creator?

[Phil Wolfson] 32:31
No. So I’m left you’re not left with, you know, stupidity, really, you’re left with inquiry if you’re, if you’re going with it, and you tend to, you know, reform. So, you know, if you’re a Down Home Catholic or down home Jew, and you do this, I just did a training in Israel, you know, it either brings you into a sense because you’re primed for it of the Divine, or it makes you question your values and who you are and what you really believe in.

[Phil Wolfson] 33:00
So that’s that, then you go to the practitioner side, which was your question, and the practitioner should be neutral. You know, in our, in our clinic, which I have designed in love, there is a feeling of spirituality as certainly Buddhist iconography, which most people don’t understand or relate to, and I don’t try and push it, but there’s a sense of candles of, of, you know, Buddha there and the flowers and of, you know, softening, because I’m trying for the softening, right, I’m not trying to, you know, people have used LSD especially to create combativeness.

[Phil Wolfson] 33:40
So the substances are not neutral. Can you make MDMA, combative, pretty hard? I haven’t really seen it. Two people fight on MDMA, they argue sometimes sure. Some of the common joke is, you know, why do they call this ecstasy? You know, right. I’m not really ecstatic, I’m having trouble, may have trouble and psychedelics are not designed to not look, they opened the doors to looking at what you’re really about and how you behave towards people and where, where you’ve messed up and who you are and who you’ve hurt.

[Phil Wolfson] 34:15
And you know, who’s been hurting you and, and your illusions about things. MDMA is great on that. And when we did this study here, we were seeing people every two weeks with MDMA, with people who had life threatening illnesses, and that was, you know, sometimes three, but basically two weeks that was better than a month apart, you know, and if I were using MDMA and you know, and ketamine as well, we do frequent sessions with ketamine.

[Phil Wolfson] 34:44
The role of my role is not to tell people what to think. My role is to help people come to knowing what they’re about, and to explore and because ketamine and MDMA but ketamine, we’ll talk for a moment It opens you up. Excuse me to seeing your attachments, and where you’re where you’re where you are. I’m really a depressed person. Well, I have a ketamine experience, and I’m not depressed.

[Phil Wolfson] 35:15
Ketamine is very positive on average. And I come back from that. I said, well, and this is where we do influence people, we say, Are you really a depressed person? If you’ve had the experience of yourself as a not depressed person? Or is your essence is your sense of self? And such that you believe you’re a depressed person?

[Jon Dabach] 35:38
Is there anyone?

[Phil Wolfson] 35:39
I think we should be value neutral?

[Jon Dabach] 35:41
Yeah, I agree with that. I think that there’s you know, especially if you have someone who has a bias that could be quite dangerous in the, in the wrong,

[Phil Wolfson] 35:50
People who were practicing from a religious perspective, you know, as

[Phil Wolfson] 35:55
Long as it’s transparent from the start, I think that can be okay. You know,

[Phil Wolfson] 35:59
Well, it’s cultural. I mean, we have private people in our International Academy in psychotherapy associates, we just did a talk from Texas, rural Texas, and they have to conform to the values of the area, we’re not by promoting them, but by accepting them.

[Jon Dabach] 36:19
That makes sense. What is there? Is there anyone practicing couples work with ketamine? Is it possible?

[Phil Wolfson] 36:29
We do it all the time? No kidding.

[Jon Dabach] 36:31
I didn’t know that. Yeah. And, and so there’s enough interactivity possible on ketamine to have an effective session with a couple.

[Phil Wolfson] 36:41
Ketamine is a substance administered in various levels. A dose, we don’t do micro dosing with ketamine, because that’s all other issues, where we do low dosing, and we do it in groups. And there interactiveness, there’s, there might be a period where people are not very interactive, but that could be short.

[Phil Wolfson] 37:04
And then sharing of that, we’re doing a practice, we’re doing a group in, in May, called Dharma K, where we’re exploring the effects of ketamine, on practitioners ourselves. It’s a non-hierarchical program, no one’s ever done it, to look at if you do ketamine in various ways, what’s the effect on your spiritual contemplative practice and your use of psychedelics, so, that’s going to be a lot of fun. So, you know, it’s, it’s a very flexible molecule, in terms of the depth of water causes.

[Jon Dabach] 37:45
If someone’s listening, and they’ve never thought about psychedelics, what would and they’re curious, what would be your kind of guidance to them? Is it something for curious minds? Is it something when nothing else has worked kind of where you fall in the spectrum in terms of your guidance?

[Phil Wolfson] 38:06
exploration of consciousness, soul in mind, is a vocation, a vocation, legitimacy of exploring molecules that affect mine is, you know, as legitimate as exploring meditation, or religiosity, or yoga, or, you know, travel, you know, I didn’t mention, ketamine is terrific substance when use for intimacy and sexuality emerges out of that, and we’re just starting to really teach people about that. Sexuality is, you know, an exploration as well, in a good way.

[Phil Wolfson] 38:47
So, I think this is part of the availability of, of us looking at ourselves, and growing. I mean, I would say, in my life, and it’s not true for everyone, some people have, you know, hit the rocks on substances. And then we have addiction issues, and we have overuse issues with psychedelics, so they’re pretty safe on the average. I would say that my whole life’s been changed by that, but in within a framework of general exploration of consciousness and relationship and activism.

[Phil Wolfson] 39:25
You know, trying to be a whole person.

[Jon Dabach] 39:28
Thank you so much. I can’t thank you enough for being here. I if you want to look more into Phil’s work, I’ll put all the links in the show notes, but there’s the ketamine research. Foundation.org There’s also the ketamine training center.com He’s doing incredible work.

[Jon Dabach] 39:45
I am honored to be a part of it, just you know, whatever in whatever capacity I can be. And I think anyone listening can see why you’re just a vault of knowledge in this area and one of my favorite people on the planet If you’re interested in learning how to get the absolute most out of your romantic relationships then you’re in luck because I have put together a free workshop or masterclass if you will about three secrets that people in happy relationships have discovered.

[Jon Dabach] 40:18
You can view the workshop and mrspirituality.com/three secrets again, it’s completely free. Just go there and watch it. It’ll help you on your journey give you some wisdom. Some things to think about. The website again is mrspirituality.com/three secrets. That’s mrspirituality.com/the Number three, the word secrets. It’s all yours. Enjoy.