17. Psychedelic Science Recap: Research Updates, Biggest Takeaways, & The Intercollegiate Psychedelics Network

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to a chat with Uma, with me, your host, Uma R. Chatterjee. On this podcast, I bring together all of my roles as a neuroscientist, researcher, board certified mental health peer specialist, mental health advocate, community builder, and a survivor with lived experience to bring you honest and unfiltered conversations exploring our true human experiences in their fullest form. Every week, I'm bringing you conversations bridging the gap on all things neuroscience, psychology, mental health, lived experience, advocacy, psychedelics, and more. This is a space for raw unfiltered truth to truly explore ourselves for who we are and how we are. I cannot wait to connect with you, answer all of your questions and co-create this with you. Welcome to a chat with Uma. Hello, my beautiful friends, and welcome back to another episode of a chat with Uma. I am just so deeply grateful every single time I get to sit down and just hit record because I'm sure many people can relate, many of y'all can relate, but there's just so much fear, and tension, and stress, and just pressure that builds up, leading up to recording for me, especially when it's with myself, because I kind of have all the time to fuck around and record on my own time, versus at least with a scheduled interview, yeah, I have a deep amount of panic and fear, but I have to press record and just start because it's scheduled to someone, but when it's a solo, it's just like this added level of so much, just pressure, and I know it comes from, although it's likely unhealthy, and not something I enjoy experiencing, I know it's also hugely indicative of how much I care, and how much I love doing this, and how much I respect the time and space that y'all give me by joining in and like listening to this, and hanging out with me, so I just feel such responsibility to show up as fully and as supportively as humanly possible. Of course, that also means like putting a fuck ton of pressure on myself, and you know, all the fear that comes from living in my brain, nonetheless, as soon as I hit record, and I'm not thinking about doing, but I'm just doing, and I'm just talking for better, for worse, I mean, who knows how it turns out, but it just feels so connective, and liberating, and just like exactly what I want to be doing, it's just where I belong, and how I feel just the most supportive and of service and of purpose, and connected, at least one of the ways in which I do, which is just talking to y'all, and creating this space, this radically honest, and supportive and hopefully safe space of curiosity, and questions, and processing, and duality, and just letting human existence be what it is here, without filters, without the expectations that we subscribe to, or put on ourselves oftentimes, so to get by in the world, it's just a space to not, and just to be, and so, all that to say, I'm so grateful to be here with you, and to be able to just share and think and process, and just geek out at all the exciting things, and so in keeping with that today, I am so excited to give you a whole recap of Psychedelic Science 2023, you know, of course, from my perspective, as someone who attended, participated, presented, hosted things, exhibited, just like all the things, so of course it's my perspective, and everyone, every single human being, over 12,000 people were there, every single person that has their own experience of the whole conference, and this is mine, because I just, there's so many things that happened, and that, you know, I experienced, and I was updated on, and so many things that stuck out in my brain as something that is worth talking about, that's super exciting, that's, you know, super questionable, that I just want to share with you all, because I know so many people here, it's not everybody really listening, if you're not particularly, like, you're probably, you know, at least, a prize of Psychedelic Renaissance, and you're interested enough, at least, in what's going on and what's happening, and even if you're not, I know that most people here are deeply invested in mental health, mental illness, treatment, treatment, evolution, new things, and that's so much of, you know, the point of that conference, and at least in terms of the content shared, and all of the updates, and it's kind of like, almost everything going on around in the world in three days, so there's so much there, and of course, there's no world where I could cover everything, or even, like, everything important for that matter, and I'm not going to endeavor to it all, because, you know, all the abstracts are out there, on the internet, there's other people, who I'm sure are probably recapping it, and again, everybody has their own perspective of what they take away from that space, but for me, I'm really bringing to you, and I've had a few weeks to sit and process, and really, like, consider things, and there's just so much that happened, so I definitely needed a minute to integrate so much of it. But I'm really bringing to you, what really stuck out to me, the things that were really interesting, and revolutionary, and paradigm shifting, and just things that have really let my brain chew for a while, as well as just like, so much of the personal experience of the conference, and really a theme for me, and this whole summer has been really stepping into, really sharing all parts of myself, or at least many parts of myself in one space, and integrating all of my different identities into how I show up, and how I present, and what I contribute to the world, and what I contribute to the space, and of course, the podcast is the absolute epitome of that, because I mean, it's literally a chat with Uma, it's me bringing all of my identities, all of my interests, all of my experiences, into one space to talk as a full human, from my own vantage point, my own perspective, and that's really been happening in real life. I mean, this is real life. In life outside of my own like, safe space bubble of my podcast too, and a huge stepping into that for me was psychedelic science, and I know that if that can happen for me, that can happen for absolutely anybody here listening, who contributes to the world in any way, particularly probably related to mental health, but I just know that this is something I haven't seen ever people do in my life, and so if I can talk about it, and I can create a normalized thought, then I can't imagine how many people might feel empowered, just knowing that someone is showing up this way, and maybe they can too. And I know that because that's the feedback I get in person, and when people talk to me from the podcast, from my presentations, from all the things, and so I wanna bring that right back to you, where you're listening to me every week, and I get to reach you from everywhere, not just where I happen to present in person, so I'm so excited to recap all of psychedelic science for my perspective. (upbeat music) Okay, so before I get into the nitty gritty of the full recap of the conference itself, first, I just wanna set the stage for my background with the conference, because it's very extensive, it's really, really beautiful, and it just really helps frame the context in which I then participated in the conference and also all that I gleaned from it. So, my whole story, pretty much my whole story, is recapped on the podcast in earlier episodes. Definitely go check out if you haven't already, my full story, which is episode one, and yes, I've done psychedelics, that's probably, I think, the second biggest episode on the podcast, and I can only imagine why, and as well as my mental health journey, part one, two, and three, and I mean, if you're super interested in my actual psychedelic use, there's, again, my psychedelic, yes, I've done psychedelics, as well as my ketamine diaries, episodes for my clinical ketamine experiences, part one and two. So, all of that to say that those episodes really, like, in full, full detail, recap, like every single day, part of the context of how I got into psychedelics where I was in my life, the context in which they found me and how I've evolved into like doing research and everything in between. But the very summed up TLDR version for the context of this is you know I in 2019 was going through cancer I was 22. I was at one of my lowest points in my life because I was just completely broken purposeless confused obviously facing a life-threading illness and not only that but I had just been in a very downward spiral pretty much since birth but especially in my adolescent to adult years and beyond. I was just so broken and so dysfunctional I had I didn't have the proper diagnoses or treatment for most things going on namely severe OCD like lifelong severe OCD and PTSD from a very young age from a lot of life threatening and abusive trauma and of course severe major depressive disorder generalizing anxiety disorder panic disorder like all the things but namely speaking at that point it was just a cluster fuck like conglomeration of all of that and then going through cancer and not only that but again I've recapped the mid-degree details in the past but I was in music school I had left my first degree my first psychology degree with a 1.83 GPA because I was so debilitated and can function physically extremely ill with like four undyneus autoimmune diseases but nobody knew and I didn't know what to do and I didn't know and then I was in music school I was a professional singer songwriter and I thought I guess I'll do that because that came easy and I didn't I couldn't really do anything else but then through getting diagnosed cancer going through surgery going through treatment which was long winding and twisted and already kind of raised all of the post-traumatic stress and like the disorder became very very loud again on top of all that I also lost my singing capabilities like my vocal nerves are permanently damaged in the surgery for cancer and as a byproduct I for a while couldn't speak and I certainly lost ability to sing which meant that I had to leave my vocal performance degree and my perceived path in life of being a singer songwriter and that was super painful and there's so much there and again all recap in detail but the point of how it matters here is that I was at just rock bottom in so many ways and again the context is I didn't I did have a diagnosis of OCD but I did not have any perception of what true actual treatment was exposure and response prevention I was in very not useful and harmful treatments and I wasn't being fully properly treated for PTSD and because of the cancer because of all that it kind of raised the need to go and get help in general because already dealing with a life-reninialness at 20 to 22 years old is a lot but nonetheless like needless to say with the context of not being in like proper full treatment and all of that I and being at this very rock bottom broken broken place I for the first time started experiencing psychedelics and the amount the impact that those experiences and my intro facing my relationship with them just changed my perception on life and the amount of insights and just support that they gave me in again the context of not having those insights on my own and not having that support from therapy at the time yet like the amount that changed for me just from experiencing psychedelics that summer like it definitely didn't like forever in anybody any stretch of the word like hear me or like you know transform my life to the point where like I became a different person or anything like that but it I was just headed down such a very steep and there's just physics words but I suck at physics but what I'm trying to think of is like that word it's a lot of speed and it's just gaining gaining gaining momentum in a you know horrible direction like about to crash and burn I mean it kind of already crashed and burned but it was just so my my life was going one way and those experiences psychedelics just kind of pivoted me and like started giving me any level of like momentum and pushing me gently toward a different direction and there was so much more work after that went into my life completely changing but I definitely can tell you that psychedelics for me at least my perception of what happened at the time it just totally it just made such a huge difference in the in the direction and the insights that I experienced and to this day I get chills just reading the things that came out of my brain that I wrote down after those experiences because it was just I may still go back to them as touchstones too except in sand liberation and just humaning especially related to the therapy I'm in but nonetheless me this is say they were very profound for me and because of that also again I didn't know what I was doing with my life at all so lost and confused and like had no inclination of what to do for my vocation I had no purpose I had lost the one thing that I thought I was capable of doing or was supposed to do and I did I was just completely stalled and broken and also going through cancer treatment and then with those experiences with psychedelics and my very very acute interest in them because like how the hell does something just facilitate that experience for human being and of course I'm going off of my own experiences but also in doing psychedelics and you know preparing and experiencing them I took in so many different people's accounts both in person and online to really get a sense of at the very least even if people's experiences are different there's just seems to be a commonality oftentimes of such a profound shift and so I became fascinated with that and coincidentally very very serendipitously the psychedelic science 2019 conference was happening in Austin I am in Dallas I wasn't Dallas and about to move but I was in Dallas at the time and it was just three hours away from me and I mean I could definitely not afford to go and attend on my own but there was a volunteer application open and honestly like I was in no place to be able to volunteer for many hours a day straight and BMI feet and like be functional in the world like especially given just how physically ill I was as well as just how consumed in retrospect by compulsions and dissociated I was as a person like truly oftentimes associating for my body but you know didn't really realize that at the time other than I just felt like shit and decided to apply to be a volunteer and I got accepted by the incredible human who co-facilitates and co-runs so many of maps is maps is the multi-disciplinary association for psychedelic studies they are we'll talk more about them but they are you know the organization that has really spearheaded the like in large part the psychedelic Renaissance and psychedelic research they are the people doing the MDMA assisted therapy for PTSD trials that you probably have all heard about that are very very close to being FDA approved that's them and they put on the psychedelic science conference it's a maps conference really but anyway Rudy Maldonado who runs most of the volunteer initiatives and the you know volunteer side of events at maps was the person who except me is volunteer and I say that because he's a dear dear friend I am so grateful for his existence and we have you know it's it's been you know just a relationship far beyond the volunteer like volunteer coordinator situation but he at the time I didn't know him and he accepted me and I was really excited and I ended up volunteering for the conference and the reason that that's so important to me to talk about is because it's just number one that is when the last conference was now it is I mean the next one because of the pandemic and for many reasons was this past June in 2023 and that conference in 2019 it was an Austin it was in a literal barn like I love telling people that because it's hilarious in the like stark contrast to what this past one was with over 12,000 people at the Colorado Convention Center it's just wild but the last one isn't a barn I mean it was a really fancy barn don't get me wrong it's like one of those barns that people have weddings or whatever and but it was just like a barn with one set one massive session going on the whole time like just you go to it's just like you sit in a room and there's just talk after talk and you kind of I just don't pick what you're going to. It's just the one option. Then there was a big ass tent outside that was like, "We're food and grounding and drinking water and being outside was." There were some food trucks. That was so conference. I volunteered. I did most of the manning of the booth to get people's name tags to them and beyond volunteering. Anytime I wasn't volunteering, I was in the conference. I was listening, even when I was doing the volunteering, I could hear the conference. It's just so full circle for me because that conference was chock full of the psychedelic researchers out there and talking about their data, talking about the state of the field. This was all brand new to me and just completely fascinating. I couldn't wrap my head around as a newbie, which there's people who've been in the space for decades. Farer, longer than me. I was a complete newbie. I was so amazed by the fact that there was a field of medicine, of research, of psychiatry, of science that was looking at these compounds for their therapeutic benefit and at least, at the very least, looking at how they work in the brain. That was so huge for me because I had just, you know, I was completely lost. I had no understanding of what I was doing with myself. I had left school a while years before that with my psychology degree two years in with a 1.83 GPA. The last thing I thought I was ever going to do was go back to school. If I was going to go back to school, it certainly wasn't going to be that degree at that institution, UT Dallas, because I'd be returning back to my old GPA and I have an upward battle to climb rather than starting somewhere new and not having that GPA like on my transcript. I mean, it might be on my transcript, but it's like not factory into my current transcript. But anyway, the last thing I thought I was going to do was go back to school, but I didn't know what to do with myself. And I, for the first time in combination with the insights I was getting from the experiences I was having and just in general, like being in some level of like a starting to work on recovery and healing place and the immense amount of support from it and encouragement from my husband, my then partner, almost the same thing, honestly. Once the people around me, I started in that state of flexibility, I guess, like considering the possibility of going back to school and like I had no goal or no aim of like what I'm going to do with the schooling, but it was just a, like some innate challenge to face again of, you know, going back to that place, that exact place, UT Dallas where I was just so broke and I had the worst memories, like I, moving back, there was so hard just being in that same area again and revisiting all those memories and just the flooding of like the version of myself that existed back then and like all the beliefs I, I continued to carry about myself in that space. And nonetheless, I mean, I, for whatever reason, I went back, that spring, that January of 2020 and I went in large part because of that state of flexibility and because I became highly interested in these compounds and I had no idea how that interest is going to play into my education if at all, but it sparked a light in me in large part to go face of my absolute fears, do these exposures to perhaps start to engage with something interesting to me without some sort of end goal or aim. And I mean, long story short, but that entire, I mean, that was January of 2020 and we're now in July of 2023 and since then, I went back, finished my psychology degree, brought my degree up to a 3.5 applied to clinical psychology PhD programs because I thought that that was what I was going to do and that was my avenue of, you know, interacting with and supporting and changing whatever I can about human suffering and especially working with psychedelics. And then in the last minute, deciding not to do clinical psychology quite yet and instead doing a Master's in Neuroscience, finding my extreme profound passion for understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of our human experience and human suffering and particularly psychiatric illnesses and pursuing not only research in the lab to learn how to do neurobiology research, but also pursuing my own independent project and like, you know, all the things that you probably know about me and if you don't, you'll hear about it at some point. I don't need to make this about that, but so much has transpired and that largely is the context I'm bringing to how I participated in this conference now four years later, or I guess three and a half years later, technically, really well, like four years later from when I started my psychedelic experiences, but like three and a half since the last conference, but it's just such a full circle while moment. So with all that, I found out, as most people did, about the conference in 2023 that just happened, I found out about it around last year when things were becoming more concrete and settled, and I, I had at this point, like, presented several conferences in terms of my research and, you know, even other things like I've done keynote, I've done, you know, just talks in whatever, but something about this conference just felt very scary, intimidating, all the things, you know, it's not even the biggest conference, like, I, since I even neuroscience was like, to my knowledge, like 30 or 40,000 people, this is 12, which is huge, but I was like, that's not the reason that this feels like such grab, like so heavy for me, so nerve-wracking. I think it was really because of this like full circle nature of it, like holy shit, last time I went to this was the last time it happened, and I was just like a complete novice, and just fully there as someone interested as a volunteer, which, you know, starkly contrasts to contributing to the conference as a speaker, a presenter, as anything, and at that point, I did not know the extent of the involvement to which it happened the conference, but even just submitting to disseminate my research project was so wild to me, but I did, and that was for my research project I've been presenting and working on, was psychedelics, which is the potential effects of MDMA, assisted therapy for PTSD on comorbidocD, so I submitted that, and from there, I, for anyone who doesn't have contacts, I am also one of the co-directors on the board of directors of the intercollegiate psychedelics network, which is my baby, which is all of our baby. It is a nonprofit geared toward supporting the professional development and community and just creating resources for students and aspiring professionals who want to contribute their time and their careers and their energy to the psychedelic space across various disciplines. And so it's for people like me who want, wanted, and want to professionally like engage with psychedelics through my education, through my training, through my work, and like don't know how to and don't have the resources to figure out how to, because it's such academia as already academia and just like generally the professional space, it's still so much of a black box, but especially, especially when it comes to the psychedelic field, because as much as it's growing, and as much as you see, all these things outside on the internet and on the news and whatever media about the psychedelic space, yes, it's booming, absolutely, and it's still such a hard space to get involved with, especially, especially from a purely like educational research perspective, which is largely a huge number of students that we serve, and where I kind of fall in terms of my trajectory. And so IPN is really geared toward bridging that gap by providing a very like pretty much no barrier to entry. Once you join IPN for free, you get access to all of these amazing resources for students and aspiring professionals to learn more and to get opportunities and to find their place in the space. So we have these awesome seminars and webinars and lectures and panels and discussions all on different topics related to the psychedelic field and the research and everything going on and experts across the entire field come in and give their time to have these amazing events and talk to us, and then we get the opportunity live to talk with them and to talk about ideas, to learn from them, and it's really just getting master classes from. you know, the top people in the field, which is all recorded in a repository for anyone who joins, who was unable to attend the event. So it's there forever in perpetuity for anybody who, you know, joins. And it's just this growing library of amazing resources. And then there's also tons of other like versions of resources we have. So we have a conference tracker that is just super robust and basically has all of these like any event or conference virtual or in person that relates to psychedelics across any domain at all is likely on that tracker. And so it's not just the conferences, but it's you know, is IP and going to be there. Any events we're hosting, any presence we're going to have there. And then what I find to be really amazing about that is it also has any possible, you know, opportunity to present at that conference and any calls for papers or abstracts or talks or panels or, you know, posters or anything like that as well as any scholarship opportunities available, any volunteer opportunities available, any travel grant award opportunities, and of course, really awesome discount codes for tickets because like, or broke, where students inspire professionals. And oftentimes there's exclusive IPN opportunities and discounts on that tracker. So it's a really cool place for anyone to share their work to go to be able to see what's available as opportunities because we as the aspiring professionals and students absolutely need that to be able to get more opportunities. And IPN also has this like extremely robust job board, what's really jobs and volunteer opportunities, internship opportunities, anything falling under some sort of professional opportunity for some sort of, you know, vocation or position across all different disciplines and domains ranging from all different roles, just all in one place because it's really hard to find like everything related in one place. So we created that and what's super cool is that IPN has amazing relationships to be able to create very exclusive and really exciting, amazing opportunities specifically for IPN members. So different, you know, like internship opportunities, paid opportunities, volunteer opportunities, just things with organizations and academic centers that are for IPN members. So that's all in one place as well. And we also just have a really beautiful community of all of our members in our discord, which is all like part of everything I'm talking about right now. Once you sign up for IPN as a member for free, you just join and then you download our app or you go to the mobile app, but I have recommend downloading the app. It's completely free and you, you know, you join, you create your account and then you're in. And once you're in, you have access to literally all the things that IPN has to offer in one place forever. And it's all super intuitive. It's all at your fingertips. You can, you know, anything about your psychedelic experiences in terms of professional development and resources is all in one place. And we also just provide so much professional development to bridge the gap not only from education and knowledge, like I said before, but also just, you know, how to navigate different paths in the psychedelic field, which this is a little bit a huge part of how we engage psychedelic science, but at the conference. But in IPN, we do, you know, lots of different workshops and panels and webinars on, you know, ways to, you know, build your CV and ways how to apply to grad school for specifically studying psychedelics and the unique nuances and caveats and things to how to prepare the experiences to have, how to get those experiences, how to network, how to, you know, I hate the word networking, but like how to seek mentorship, development, it's just, it's just such a supportive space for students all around the world. I think we're in like 40 something countries at this point. It's amazing. And finally, I think one of the biggest parts of IPN, especially that changed my life as a member and part of why I am a co-director now, like in terms of wanting to give back and to amplify this and really what changed my career trajectory as a scientist and as a human is IPN's flagship initiative, which is called psychedelics, think like TEDx, but psychedelics. And it's this really unique form of a conference. So a high level, it's a conference. It's completely virtual. It's the premier global psychedelic student talk conference. And what that means is that every year, which this year, it's going to be next week from July 20 to 22nd, all of the details will be in the show notes, but a huge thing, I mean, basically it's a three day, completely online global, globally accessible conference. It's free and donation base to make it as accessible to people as humanly possible. And it features several talks across multiple topics and what's super unique about these talks are that it's also a professional student development program that goes for very long before you actually see the conference. So from the standpoint of someone participating, what happens is that there's a call for abstracts several months before the conference and people from all over the world, plots and lots of people submit abstracts and apply with their novel idea, an idea that has not been talked about that's something that they are either researching or in the process of researching independently or with a mentor, but really that they, it just hasn't gotten attention yet. And it's novel, it's in process, it's for people who have not gotten a chance to speak on a large platform about their idea and develop it on their own yet. And so people apply and then semi-finalists are selected. So the top, I don't exactly know how many people, but I would say around 20 people are selected to be in the actual conference. And so once people are selected as semi-finalists, they go through like months, like four months of mentorship, which is super cool because it's two kinds of mentorship. Number one, there are workshops for all psychedelics participants, which actually this year we've been starting to make more public to everyone because everyone can benefit from it in our community and then the psychedelics participants specifically are getting that for their participation. So those are very high level open to everyone workshops about different topics on how to communicate your science and how to develop research and how to make it accessible for people, how to make it interesting, how to refine it, how to leverage it for your own benefit as an aspiring professional and so many of your things. But what I think the magic of psychedelics is that each of the 20-ish participants are matched with a talk coach. So a talk coach mentor who works with them for several months to iterate their talk and to craft their talk and practice and really hone it down and really co-create their talk together and get experience and knowledge and support from the talk coach who is supporting them. And so from there after doing that they finally actually record their talk, which is meant to simulate doing a talk in person because you really can't like say your talk multiple times and you're doing it a person. So it's like recording it in one shot with an audience and then from there all the talks are sent for preliminary judging to determine the finalists. So there's the element of actually creating the talk which is all participants and then there's also the judging element to you know narrow down to like the most exemplary talks of the conference. And so there's an initial round of judging of more peers in the space, people in IPL leadership and from there I would say like five to six finalists are selected and those talks are all sent off to experts in the field, even expert panel of professional judges we call them who judge them all holistically and then there's winners. But then what the conference looks like is there's three days divided into three categories. I believe this year it's natural sciences, culture, art, philosophy and then clinical and psychological applications or something like that. And you know there's different talks on different days. They are all aired so all of the participants talks are aired as a conference. There's also key notes and seminars and workshops throughout the whole thing. It's just three robust days and at the end of each day there's a live Q&A with all of the days participants, the presenters and people attending to be able to talk through. And at the end of those three days the winners are announced. And so the reason that I talk Ed Link about that and I have such it has such a deep deep place in my heart is because I was a participant last year. I went through the entire psychedelics process with an idea that was completely novel like outside of the work I'd done in my lab at my school. I mean I pretty much fit the exact bill for what psychedelics psychedelics was looking for. And for whatever reason I ended up winning the entire international competition which completely changed my life because of the mentorship and support I received through the whole process and how that was such a springboard for me to then start presenting my work as an independent soul author at all of these legit you know research academic symposiums conferences all of the things eventually starting to give talks, winning awards, having a paper and process to publish and getting into grad school largely from the independent initiatives I had outside of like what I traditionally did in my academic career and that all came from psychedelics. So that's something I'm so passionate about in terms of IPN and this year it's happening again and this year in a full circle moment again I got to be a talk coach and I got to mentor two incredible humans. I'm gonna say their names because they're it's gonna come out and I mean it's already published and then you know you're gonna see them at the conference next week but Julia and Hannah I got to mentor both of them through their process and it's so amazing because they're both they're both finalists to like both my mentees are two of the five finalists and I have no idea like what's gonna happen and frankly like it doesn't to me as much as winning is amazing and like yeah I get to I did read benefit from that it was also like the experience itself and even had I not like placed or been a finalist or whatever like that would never it wouldn't you know like I still went through the whole process and it I still probably would have done everything I've done since then just from iterating that and having that talk out in the world forever so it's so full circle and so beautiful that my two mentees are there and their finalists and all of that to say number one come to psych a deluxe it's completely free unless you want to donate because we're a completely student volunteer on organization and like your donations are why we can do anything that we're doing um literally like paying for our zoo and all of that but also because it's fucking kick ass and there's so many beautiful like such incredibly diverse and interdisciplinary novel groundbreaking talks that are going to change the world and I know that because I've seen past talks do that so that's a part of IPN2 and that all lays the groundwork for how IPN and I as a co-director of IPN and a participant of IPN member like really interface with the conference itself too okay so at this point before I went off on describing everything with IPN I applied with my research to present it at the conference last year and then through IPN there was this amazing synergy with the conference to where there were conversations and we were reached out to to basically you know create resources and events and programming for students and aspiring professionals because it was not really addressed by the conference on its own and that's what we do so we had this really exciting opportunity to have a number of ways in which we showed up at psych an elixirance as IPN which was like hugely a part of how it was involved because I'm a co-director and a lot of it you know of course was my responsibility to organizing participated and create so that was a huge part of my experience so number one we had a booth at the conference which was our first booth to my knowledge at a conference at least like a first very official one and we were an exhibitor so we had like the whole like exhibitor sponsor thing and it was amazing and it really challenged us to be as creative as we could be to have the best booth possible with very very very limited means and two maps is credit they really supported us and basically making the booth like next to you know nothing to be able to do because once again maps really uplift our mission because we really address a key lack in the space and the ecosystem of supporting the students and people who want to join the field and how to do so so we had a booth in which we were sharing what IPN was and you know all of our initiatives why be exist how to join for free what you get for joining all of the programming that we have four people as all the resources what is coming up and all of that fun stuff so that was a huge part of already like an amazing reason to go to psychedelic science and then on top of that we were given a panel to facilitate which then we ended up also collaborating with the University of California Berkeley UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics to create even a more robust panel but originally we were basically given a panel to have a full blown session to address how it may really be were given carte blanche on like how to develop that panel and be decided to go with so you want to be a psychedelic professional and the background for that is that if you google on the internet to this day and hopefully changes soon with our work and our collaborations but when you google like how to become a psychedelic researcher or like how do I join a psychedelic field there's this really big well-known article that comes up from the maps website that is basically like it says so you want to be a psychedelic researcher and then TLDR the answer is like well sucks to suck and that came in 2013 so that was 10 years ago and it was a really long time ago and at the time it was true like to be to become like a psychedelic student or researcher and like join as a trainee and like join in early that was basically next to impossible and so the best thing that you know the article could advise us to do was to just you know go become go train go do what you need to do in a traditional sense and then once your you know full-blown professional highest state of like professional researcher or whatever then try to go embark on your own interests and the reality is like that valid for what was happening and now that's not it's not true anymore that's there are ways to do it and we have proof because we have done it and we are doing it and the times and landscape has changed for the better in my opinion so we decided to do a panel with that same title but kind of switched so so you want to be a psychedelic professional that way it opened it up to people who weren't just researchers and we just created this robust panel addressing many many different perspectives from different disciplines and different walks of life on how to join the psychedelic field and how to become a trainee how to you know pivot your contributions and your skills to the fields or to just develop them straight up through your education and training and so that was an amazing panel and I'll give you a recap on how it all went but in terms of you know preparing to go to the conference there was you know this you know amazing panel of people one of whom the people that I was me like I get I got to be a part of panel which was amazing because I got to share my experience as a very fresh trainee as someone who just started doing the research like kind of on my own and then applying grad school openly as someone who wants to study psychedelics who wants to do it now who intends to do it for a long time and you know specifically psychedelics in the context of what I want to study which is you know developing novel treatments and understanding further psychiatric illnesses that interests me like OCD and PTSD etc but anyway like it was just a very novel way of applying because you know from IP and programming and otherwise you'll learn that you have to craft in a very specific way and it's very new that you can even openly say that and you have to say it a very um contextual way to make sure it comes off correctly but nonetheless anyway I am someone who is you know a trainee an example of being able to do that to be able to apply how to pursue the path how I'm getting on the path how I've been on the path and everything that's contributed to set path as well as being an entrepreneurial student and having a very unique and windy twisted path to illustrate the point that it doesn't need to just be someone who is a traditional student who has been you know top grades completely in a tight knit like the typical schedule that a trainee usually follows like you can do it differently you can be older you can have um pivots in your experience and just like how to navigate that it include that and integrate that to just be a good candidate for doing what you want to do so that was my contribution it was incredible and that was another huge reason that I went to the conference and how I contributed as well and then finally iPian also was given the opportunity to host a event at the end of the conference as one of the options for people to go to after the conference formally concluded and so and that Friday and so that evening we had a students and rising professionals mixer so that was an awesome event that I'll get into the details of it basically the intent was to exactly what the title says create a event a mixer for people in the field from all different walks of life and disciplines to meet each other and connect and create community and just not be alone because it can be very isolating especially in places where it stigmatize like right then and really just develop connections and build collaborations and you know on a deeper level just again like have community and friendships and you know no people who are doing what you're doing or who support what you're doing so that were like the exhibiting booth thing our panel and our mixer were like three big reasons that I attended and how I contributed as part of iPian's leadership so that was super fun and that in conjunction with sharing my own research was really what shaped my experience coming to the conference and all that transpired the way I advocated it personally okay so the actual conference the actual psychedelic science 2023 recap at least my version of it so I should say that as I've described I had a lot of different ways of contributing to this I had you know multi two presentations in one day and I also. was at the booth quite a bit. Formally, you know, manning the booth is part of my shift, our examiner booth, but also like informally, because the reality was, we all were just there a lot to support IPN, support the people at the booth to help relieve people and just really connect with other people. So that took a lot of my time at the conference and then also just connecting with and meeting up with so many wonderful humans from around the world because we're all in one place together for a fine amount of time, including, and especially, IPN leadership members from around the world and, you know, other IPN members and just, you know, friends and colleagues and mentors and all of that, that takes up so much time in a conference and then what's left? Time to go to sessions and to try to, as a human and rest and like not completely employed. So I don't, I definitely did therapy at the actual conference. Like, there was like a room specifically for exhibitors and speakers. It was kind of like a exclusive room, but like really, it was just a bunch of seats that were slightly nicer than chairs outside and like some couches and actually oddly enough, these like little therapy pod things. So where it's like this kind of like cute little booth with bunch of chargers and stuff and then some snacks. And anyway, I really didn't wanna give up my therapy session. I felt like it was really important, especially because it was overwhelmed, it overstimulated, I was and like all of that was coming up for me and just the state I am in right now. So I definitely did therapy at the conference and I, there was a therapist and there were no free ones at the time and I definitely was just like, ask someone if I could sit with them and explain that I was gonna be doing therapy and like they could totally stay and I don't care if they hear it, it's fine and like, but I also don't think they're uncomfortable and then they were really nice about it and then eventually they did leave 'cause they were going to a session or so they said, but I did therapy at the conference. So anyway, all that to illustrate just like how intense the conference was and you know, for anyone who goes to conferences, there's usually the option of like either staying at or near the conference like right next to it at a hotel which is you know, really expensive but also valid and important especially to be able to tap out of the conference at any point and go like take a quick nap or change or just have your own space for a little bit and then come back, just be very fluid at the conference. But the sign that wasn't the case because we did something really fun and equally cool but everything has their pros and cons and me and I think eight other or nine other people from IPN leadership, most from IPN leadership and just people who are our friends, had an Airbnb like 20 to 30 minutes away but it was super beautiful and cool and very resource and the flip side of that was therefore we had to like drive together and back every single day or at least like some of us because some people did other events and then you know, it's not like tapping out in the middle of the conference every day or if you did you'd have to like do it on your own so really it was like pack all your shit up come in the morning, do your thing and then leave at the end. So there wasn't that whole tap out situation so all of that sitting stage for like the amount I did get to attend at the conference which I usually like put on myself to attend everything as much as I humanly can like every waking moment that I'm not doing something I have to be at a session and just taking more information and I try not to do that at this conference and yet also to go to things and to meet people and learn new things but you know, to be honest in terms of this recap, like what you're gonna notice is I'm really not gonna be giving you a whole lot of updates on the nitty gritty of like the science and the research because the truth is like there wasn't a whole lot new and I guess that's coming from my perspective as someone who goes to psychedelic science conferences and all the time and keeps up with the literature and the podcasts and the updates anyway and especially when it conferences and so like going through the sessions like I really didn't see much that was new or like not talked about recently except for a few which happened to also be things I was very interested in like the OCD's "Los I've been Trial" the like they were sharing preliminary like statistical results because thus far they've just been sharing like anecdotal reports and stuff so basically what I'm trying to tell you is my recap isn't like a whole bunch of like I there's this novel finding and like this trial's doing this because like the realities most of them are out there and notably for me many of those conversations are going to be happening on the podcast because they're from people who I admire who are doing really fucking cool work and have amazing trials and preclinical research and findings and those people are all the pipeline to be on the podcast. So I just feel like I'm repeating myself if I just summarize everything that they're saying 'cause they've already been saying it and I rather like have it in depth. So I'm really just gonna share these some of the really interesting things that I don't think people would find on the internet right now kind of like more meta things and like the gritty things and also like just conversations that are generally people aren't privy to via podcasts and stuff at least that I've found. So I think I'm gonna start with something that it sounds boring but actually it's really fucking interesting to me which is NIH funding and just like funding in general for psychedelic research. So there's a session, it was a panel with multiple different people who can speak to the experience of getting funding for psychedelic research both clinical and preclinical. And so there is the head of the Haftar Institute which is an amazing research institute for psychedelic work with very seminal people who run the place and then someone else from the Haftar Institute who used to be one of the top people at the NIH and still as an NIH investigator and notably investigated and was like part of the National Institute for Drug Abuse so the NIDA as part of the NIH and then there were two amazing researchers one of whom is one of my favorite researchers, Dr. Charles Nichols and they were just talking about the experience of like licenses and getting funding and at what stage and like for trainees what to do and there are a lot of takeaways from that part of the from that session it was so robust and so interesting. Again, sounds really boring but they're actually talking about like the landscape of soliciting funding, how that's changed, a lot of myths, a lot of misconceptions, you know, advice for trainees at all different stages including especially people like me who for those don't know or who don't know like you start begging for money really, really early and the more that you beg for money the and get money, the more people think that they should give you money and it's just really in my opinion not the part of research that I look forward to or enjoy but nonetheless like at this point is just like a part of your reality and so for PhD students it already starts with like soliciting different types of awards and external funding to basically pay for you and your work during your PhD instead of your actual institution and your actual mentors so that you know you could save your mentor money and it can go to more like other things and you know the government legitimizes like that your research is good and it's really really competitive and I'm very much something to get up for the layman's person, there's a lot more detail to it but anyway funding is a concern for like everyone but also beyond just like the personal incentive for funding, I think funding is really indicative of the support, like the motives and like the view of research and you know it's this notoriously unending point of contention and a bottle of like truly to equitable research in terms of like who gets funding who has the background to look like they deserve funding therefore who gets to do the research and what research is being done and what can be done given the reality of funding and the things that maybe should be looked at or that are very important but are not believed in or like endorsed or thought to be important enough by funders namely the government, therefore like what are the you know people all the time in the general community and like not in research have discourse all the time like criticizing research and what's being studied and what should be studied and like what not and you know the reality is like most researchers know that and they agree with you and that is like exactly what they want to do or part of what they want to do and they 100% think that that's important but guess what they don't get to do it because they don't have funding and they don't have funding because certain people in certain institutions, sorry don't mean it's their shade I'm just speaking impassionedly because I've seen time and time again the repercussions of this system in this way of doing things and anyone research has but most of the time it's completely at the behest of the people deciding funding and they decide funding from a various number of angles and ways and ultimately a large amount of it is feasibility and their perceived feasibility and risk versus reward and what they think is important and so I'm not saying that funding or funding indicates like an objective sense what's important, it's what people think is important and what they think is important and so that's an inevitably important conversation to have because it determines what the fuck is being done in research, right? So with that all being said, it was very, very, extremely interesting to attend this panel and here, a lot of what they were saying at least were myths and misperceptions and misconceived notions about the bottleneck of funding and the reality of what funding looks like right now for psychedelic researchers and what people, namely the NIH, want to fund. And probably the most mind-blowing thing I heard from all of this is this like a myth versus reality thing that the NIH is really afraid of psychedelic research in terms of inducing or propagating or making worse drug addiction when get this. Apparently the reality is that the National Institute of Drug Abuse not only is not thinking that at this point, but their top funding priority for drug abuse research is psychedelics as a therapeutic as a thing to help with drug addiction, which is wild to me because I've lived in a world where that is something so assumed by people and it's just something so talked about as a foregiver of inclusion, really like lumping into one category, all drugs including psychedelics is drug abuse, which is a very nuanced conversation and some of them do have addictive histories and properties, yes. Also many things can be drugs of abuse and then certain things have the pharmacological induction of abuse and addiction beyond like the experiential mechanisms and experience of addiction. It's very complex and very nuanced. However, the fact that the NIH, the NIDA, is so far beyond that narrative, or far beyond the parts of that narrative that would hold psychedelic research back or at least provide a lot of bottlenecks to be able to pursue it. The fact that they're so beyond it that they're top funding priority, like where most of their money is going is to psychedelics as therapeutics for drug abuse, for addiction is wild. It's not something I expected to hear and I don't know that I would have known that outside of attending this very specific niche panel at this conference, that was so cool and interesting and like really reframed my narrative and my paradigm for at least from this perspective, from hearing this from like a few people who knows how that plays out in reality, but it really just changed for me the notion of how to advocate for psychedelic research and the importance of it across in many different disciplines and domains and specifically the very granular parts of its mechanistic underpinnings, its mechanisms of action and putting in the context of just like human experience in a particularly different disorders, but anyway, I am going off on a really nerdy rant and yeah, you'll hear that from me more in the future, but to keep this general, that was really, really fascinating to me. And then also, they took a lot of time to bust myths in general about like the NIH's interest in funding and it's really like a lot of the bottlenecks of funding are not just like exclusive to psychedelic research, it's not like worse at least in their opinion or where they're trying to get across, but also like there's just happens to be a lot of necessity and preparation to be able to solicit this funding to make it even feasible. So like getting DEA licenses and approval to work with these substances, but like each and every one of them, so that requires a lot of protocol writing and like a lot of preparation that can take years of work to even get to a place where you can do the research when you get the funding. And that's just a huge call to action to us to be able to be proactive and do all the tedious annoying things we need to do to be able to do our research. And that leads me to another part of this panel that was so interesting to me, so formative and so just reinforcing to me as a trainee. And I think this can apply to anyone who is looking to do the research or getting into the research or even just a mindset shift about how to engage with this field. And when I say this field, I mean like the field of research because it's often just this culture and research to be very, very insular, to be like in your lab, in your department, in your university, but like really even just starting with your lab, like being in this very insular space of like everyone else's competition, everyone who's doing what we're doing is a threat, especially they can in very close reality, like scoop you, which in research world just means like they can take your idea and like steal it and go do it first or some nature version of that. And then it just very like we're all in it for ourselves. We need to like watch our back and be very like who can get to the end of the race first and we're all competing against each other. And like that's not invalid. It's just the primary perspective and what that does. Of course it's like protective and you know, has its merit and validity to a degree because of human nature and the way we work and funding and like whatever, it just being pinnig against each other. But also it really creates this again, it's like a horrible bottleneck in research of like creating this division amongst people so that we're like each trying to figure it out on our own, especially due to the part of research where like we don't necessarily like publish insignificant or results meaning that we have a hypothesis, we try something it doesn't work and most of the time doesn't make it to paper because that's not what journals want to publish and people just look better and get more funding and like the whole system runs on like people finding novel like significant results, put on quote. And so like with that with not collaborating with being in our insular bubbles and just trying to forge for like individually all toward the same goal or similar goal oftentimes in a certain subfield, like we just are all slower for it. We're all very like we're obviously pinnig as each other it doesn't feel like a community but also like we're slower for it our research is less efficient because we're not learning from each other, we're not collaborating to get somewhere faster which like intuitively also makes sense. And the reason I bring this up is because this panel really focused on the fact that especially in this very niche like very subspace of work and psychedelic research and you can get extremely granular and specific about like what discipline you're studying it from and are you preclinical or are you in pharmacology or are you in like systems neuroscience or are you in you know clinical research work are you doing trials or are you doing like FMRI like there's just so many subfields and get even more nitty gritty with that but you get the idea. They were talking about how it just because of the nature of the field and how insular the field already is and how much more complexity and nuance goes into like being able to do the work you need to do for example which is like a simple example is getting the proper licenses therefore having to rate the proper protocols and whatever like it's just so much more expedited and easier to do work together than separately and not only is it more efficient and productive for the research itself and like the output and moving the field further which is like the point of everything we do but it's also just very very specifically helpful in this space where it's already very much a black box it's already so hard to engage with like the unique legalities and stigma and like it's so new that only certain people have expertise and like to leverage those people's expertise and to you know trust them as people who want to support you and to like provide their unique skill set to your work so that you can provide your skill set and then it can just move forward in the most efficient way like these researchers were really trying to hone in on like they are so available for supporting other people we just need to reach out we just need to be collaborative and ask for help and help each other and be generous and proactive and it just felt very at least again from when I'm hearing and who knows how this plays out practically and I will totally report on my experiences you know as you move forward but it just felt very back to humanity and very supportive and it felt like where I want to be and I wanted to share that because it's such a counter intuitive narrative to look what's propagated both outwardly and hush-hush like the subtext of the field to be just like very vigilant and like yes I'm not saying you know like just have no vigilance at all and like don't expect anyone to screw you over like that's part of human nature period that could happen anywhere but that doesn't mean it needs to be at the expense of humanity and collaboration and nuance and doing things differently so that felt really important to share too one of the other big things that comes to mind from the conference was actually something that didn't expect at all to be talking about which was Dr. Andrew Huberman's keynote or plenary or whatever just like a big talk at the conference for obvious reasons. And so for anyone who doesn't know Dr. Huerman, he is a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Yes, I memorize that. He's podcast so much. And I'm introducing himself. But he is a neuroscientist and he runs a lab and interestingly I'm going to talk about like his transition in lab work that related psychedelics. But he runs a lab. He is a very, very accomplished, proficient, like highest level of the field researcher and employees, lots of people. It's amazing. And he started really engaging in science communication through his podcast, the Huerman lab podcast, which is so interesting, so robust, so supportive. It's really just taking a deep dive on many different topics that are really complex. And just using his skills as someone who consumes a shits on a research to be able to give him himself the exercise of going through a field, parsing through all of the publicate or many of the publications and really synthesizing it and make it make sense to the average person while still not losing the integrity of the research itself, which is a massive endeavor and no one is perfect. And you know, there's definitely people, you know, things people have to say about certain nuances of the way he communicates stuff. And that's because nobody can be the expert at everything. And part of research is like you become an expert at like one very specific, very, very, very specific topic because it's all generally someone has the bandwidth to become an expert at. And that's kind of the point of being an expert, like dedicating all your time to like one specific thing and contributing that way. And he is, he does a phenomenal job of being really, really good at for the most part, synthesizing a field. But of course, again, no one's perfect if you're not an expert, like there are things you might miss and nuance and whatever. But nonetheless, like people have different beliefs. I have the belief at this point in time that his work isn't that good. And he brings to me, which so interesting, he brings really, really cool conversations to the public. So people, like conversations with people he just had an episode with Dr. Rob Melenka, who is a seminal researcher in neuroplacicity. And at this now he's doing psychedelic work as well. But he just really, and he wrote the textbooks that I use for neurophromicology in my class. Like, I would never imagine being able to hear him talk for three hours about his work, his history, his background. And, you know, Dr. Huberman has access to these people because he works with them and he's their peers. And so he brings these conversations to the public. And it's so cool. And to me, it feels like a net benefit to people with, again, nuance and a lot of room to interpret and all of the things. But anyway, so he was brought to the conference to do like a keynote or plenary or whatever, it's just a big talk. And I wasn't really sure what it was going to be about because he doesn't actually do psychedelic research himself to my knowledge. So I figured it would be something about just commentating on science communication or the state of the field or his interactions with and conversations with psychedelic researchers of which he said many on this podcast so far. Or I did know he had some experience with psychedelics himself. Like he had mentioned on his podcast to my knowledge that he had participated in MDMA trials for PTSD. And so I thought maybe you'd be talking about that. But, you know, it was a really interesting conversation that kind of encapsulated a lot of what I thought would happen, but also like created narratives and threads that I didn't expect. And I thought it was really interesting to hear him talk about how through doing those MDMA experiences, he had the visceral realization to shut down his animal lab, his preclinical work that he had done for so long and he had accomplished so much in to pivot to non animal work to instead do or begin taking what he had done with his animal work and applying it to humans, which in the field of research is pretty not something people do. It's pretty unprecedented. I know like a few people have done it, but it's not common. And it's really interesting to hear the context of like what his experience at psychedelics, like the role it played in that transition. And I mean, he did a really, really great job of like re-emphasizing, especially to those who are like huge people for animal rights and are against animal research and whatever are people who just don't do the research that you know, like animal preclinical research at this point in the world and the technology we have is incredibly important to necessary and super, super, super, super, super like needed. He just didn't have to be doing it. And that was a really good distinction to make because you know, he, it had been something he had struggled with in his words like for a long time in terms of like being able to stomach it and do it and like the not necessarily ethics of it in like the grand scheme of things, but personally engaging with it. And he had done it for you know, the reasons he did and then he realized he didn't need to and didn't want to. So he stopped. And that was really cool to hear about as a researcher to pivot and as someone who is in preclinical research myself like I fully understand the and appreciate the necessity and importance of it for the foreseeable future. I'm going to be doing that too. But to hear not necessarily that exact pivot, but to more zoom out and realize that someone at that part of his career with those amount of credentials and you know, accomplishment can still take that perspective and pivot with their doing whatever that looks like and someone was really cool to hear. And I think even more profound to me beyond like him sharing a story and like almost the things that one would expect him to say in that setting, he closed out with the most interesting like rant or die like this this talk like this five minute it felt like thing about what he says someone asked or the person interviewing him asked him like what he wishes that people would know about the psychedelic field of people don't know. I think the actual question was what's a truth you wish people knew. And honestly that question annoys me because of like the it's just priming someone to be like what's the truth you wish other people knew like assuming that there is a truth and also what is truth and objective truth. But that's a whole other conversation for another year or 10,000 conversations. But anyway, you know how my brain works. But in that question, the answer was very unexpected. It was basically to sum it up this thing he wish people knew that the reason a field or that this field has survived and existed and thrived or any fields could exist or thrive. There are certain things that are required but not sufficient and those things are you know having really smart investigators, having funding, having an interest. Basic things one would think need for one would think is needed for a field. He said the thing that you absolutely need that is sufficient or that is necessary and that makes it necessary and sufficient that without it you cannot have a field are the students are the trainees are the people who work in his words. And in reality under minimum wage and dedicate their time and effort and so many years of their life to furthering the field as a student as a trainee working day and night in the he talked about pipetting which I'm very familiar with because that's part of preclinical work. Like just literally pipetting the shit out of things doing surgeries like working tirelessly just dedicating their training career their most important parts of their life academically to this field because it's so risky especially in the state of transition it's in and the stigma that still exists and the uphill battle that people have to climb. I mean PIs and top people in the field already have it uphill uphill battle to climb but trainees who have no leverage no power they are just in his eyes like the most brave the most dedicated people and they need to be recognized and supported and helped and that resonated me with me on such a visceral level because I am that person and to be recognized for my struggles and the things I'm signing myself up for the things I'm doing and the field I'm in and what I am embarking on and what I have been embarking on and what I've been doing as a human just felt very very validating from someone who is in a position of power who of course has gone through all of that but now lives on the other side ish and it also was even more so beyond me important to hear that because basically it was just enforcing the message of IPN and the point of IPN without him knowing because to my knowledge he doesn't know about IPN and I'm sure he will soon but and I hope he will soon but he was just talking about how important it is to invest in trainees and to support them and to create spaces for them to get what they need and to be able to get where they're going to go and without this group of people the field cannot exist it cannot grow and that's the only way a field can can can can be and that's what we're doing so that was so incredible and I really really hope he speaks a lot more and makes that more a part of his ad because he and platform because it's so important especially as someone in that position of power. Another part of the conference that was so special to me and just so unexpected and something that I don't think could ever be experienced or witnessed or fully understood outside of the conference is okay so long story short the Psychedelics and Pain Association was officially launched at the conference and the context behind how I became a part of that and got to and the sat was because number one, if you know my history at all, you know that I live with chronic pain. And I'm very invested in that being further understood and supported. It's debilitating and a huge reason why I did my ketamine treatments and totally just go listen to the past episodes to get context more on that. Also, in my master's degree, the work I largely did in my lab at UT Dallas in the Colbert lab was studying the cellular and molecular and systems level underpinnings that drive chronic pain, particularly bladder pain, visceral pain, and looking at the hemispheric lateralization of the amygdala, the central amygdala in particular, and how that contributes to driving or attenuating chronic pain. So, in some side note, this conversation will come later with my PI on the podcast, but the right central amygdala, different neuropeptide, and seeds to increase the experience of pain and the left seems to decrease it. Anyway, I'm very intimately familiar with pain research and the intersection of pain and psychedelic research is something that is growing and has a lot more room to grow and needs a lot more resources, but there are really brave and incredible people doing it. There's also people who are advocating for it and creating resources for people who live with it to be able to get the help they need or at least experience and explore other options as well as work with the research and develop the research and someone so near and dear to my heart. His name is Kourt Wing. He is the founder and runs remap therapeutics. He is a chronic pain survivor. He's an amazing human being and has supported me so much as a human, as someone who lives at the chronic pain, as someone who studied and continues to study chronic pain, someone who just supports everything he does. He has just been so uplifting of me and I work and has extended so many really generous opportunities for me to develop me and support me and has really shared my work with so many people and really just as one of the most beautiful human beings and speaking or hearing him speak is just something else. He's so eloquent. He's so passionate and he is such a accomplished human being and has really done so much of the legwork to create resources to synthesize the research in a very accurate way, disseminate it to not only people with lived experience, but to researchers to help expedite the process of getting in the path to do this work and through the support of other foundations and other allies, including John Moore from Psychedelics Today, who is also such an incredibly supportive, beautiful human being who has really uplifted me and my work over the last year. Them too, when other people started the Psychedelics and Pain Association to do exactly what the name sounds like. It is a coalition in a space for researchers and clinicians to come together, put their heads together, put the resources together and do more with the literature that exists and pursue trials and develop therapeutics and advocate for funding and all of the important things that are needed in the field. And so court invited me to the official launch of the association which happened at the conference and it was such an honor to attend and to be amongst all the people invested in this space, including so many of the seminal really brave researchers who are taking it on to further the field. It's a very uphill battle for so many reasons that I need to be addressed and it was just such a compelling and beautiful presentation from so many people with lived experience and people who were doing the work and everyone in between on the journey to get here and I learned so much about the field just from sitting in that room more than I knew and the history and how truly far back the work goes like far be out like during the first search of psychedelic research and even during the Renaissance and everything in between and just a lot of the history and misconceptions and stigmas that exist and how to address them and it was just so so wonderful to be a part of it and to watch and actually it's really exciting because so many of these people who are part of this association that are doing this work are putting on a psychedelics and pain symposium hosted by Remek Therepidics that is in the next two weeks. I'll have it all linked in the show notes because it's super super exciting. It has so many novel perspectives and just putting everyone together for like a very profound robust conversation that does not exist and again it's in the spirit of what it feels like a lot of people in this field and the psychedelic fields are going toward working together, putting people's heads together, sharing everything openly with each other with the public to be able to move forward faster and I attended the symposium last year and it was just so illuminating in terms of especially across different disciplines and bring them together to have like a cross-talk conversation about where things can go and since then super exciting papers have been published on case studies and actual clinical work being done namely one one name that comes to mind is Dr Joel Castellanos at UC San Diego who also spoke at this launch and it's just a beautifully ever growing field that is not going as much attention as psychiatric illness and it's equally valid is one of the most debilitating experiences to have is one of the highest indicative indicators and causes for dying by suicide. It's debilitating a terrific and there are so there's so much work to do and it's happening so I think the symposium is going to be so phenomenal. I can't wait to attend this year and I actually have a really exciting code for you if you would like to attend and you like a discounted code to attend the symposium take more accessible. I have an exciting offer from Core who is so generous and created a code called umapod20 to be able to get 20% off your ticket so just use that code and check out the link will be in the show notes and you can get yourself a ticket to be at the forefront of this conversation with so many amazing researchers some of the coolest people that come to mind are doctors, Goulddolen and Greg Cordor and of course Dr Joel Castellanos among so many other people. Oh Dr. Boris Hyffetz. It is just a nerd's dream and someone with lived experiences dream for chronic pains definitely attend that but yes that association launch gave me so much hope and it just like the ethos of the field and moving forward and really this humility of people who just have so much to lose in terms of all of the risks and the uphill battle of being in this field but being so deeply committed to mitigating human suffering and progressing science to actually help people and being around that ethos and that group of individuals who care so much like amongst many different disciplines including the pain one just really inspires me so much I'm in the right place and I it is hard and it's valid that it's hard but we're here for a reason and it's you're we're not alone and the last thing I'm going to get into in terms of conference content before getting into like my own presentations and all of that is of course you know I'm going to talk about it the psilocybin for OCD trials at Yale because it was so exciting to finally meet Dr. Ben Kultendee who has been by everyone's standard like at the absolute hell and forefront of psychedelic research for OCD but especially at Yale like he's and when he started it all there and who advocated for it as a resident which is unheard of but I also learned that he's actually of all people on planet earth he is the first person to ever receive NIH funding for psychedelic research and everyone really thinks that it's probably Johns Hopkins or like the entities and people who have been like long standing leaf famous and big in the field but actually it was Dr. Kultendee which is so special to me is you know for so many reasons being someone with OCD being in the field with them who who works with them and like collaborates with them and just like the fact that for OCD someone was that in passion to convince the government to fund the research in a time where it was so stigmatized and unfundable that's just so cool to me but anyway that presentation was so special for so many reasons to me number one to my knowledge it's the first time that OCD was talked about at a psychedelic science conference like specifically the maps one the only other time in general that it's been spoken at at a psychedelic conference at all to my knowledge was Dr. Chris Pitinger who is Dr. Kultendee's old boss now colleague and he presented this work in its earlier stages at Horizons in New York City which I was at last year but this was so special as well because they were sharing a lot more data and a lot more close to completion of the actual part of one of their studies as compared to just as just compared to sharing like anecdotes which were already really powerful but I mean the real takeaways are that it's still in process and this is also what Dr. Jamila Hockinson by the way who I got to present with at the International City Foundation conference she's so amazing and she's a psychiatrist on the project and we'll get into that when I talk about the IOCDF conference at another recap, but it was just really special to hear about the data and just really hearing, again, this is just the clinical findings and this is a no way a recommendation or anything but regurgitating information. They found and are going to be publishing on the effects of like when basically to wean off of SSRIs to be able to engage in this trial and therefore engage in this treatment because long story short SSRIs are acting on similar like the same receptors in different ways. Then psychedelics are partially and by being on an SSRI it just like blunts the effect of the actual psychedelic it down regulates receptors to be able to receive the psychedelic or so side by side in this case and so it's not only being off of the SSRI but being off of it long enough for those receptors to come back up to be able to then be integrated by cell size and intercellulose. So I think the data is somewhere around like 14 to 16 weeks. Don't quote me on that. The paper will come out and they will tell all but that was really interesting and like hugely informative in terms of how to move forward with research and patient protocols and just considerations for that in general as well as hearing about their clinical trial design and the involvement of a therapist or lack thereof and just people's anecdotal responses and their response rates and it's just so exciting and definitely the first of many studies it's becoming a multi-site trial to my knowledge and it's just fucking amazing. It brings me so much joy and hope and is like a huge part of what I strive to do in the field through different mechanisms but nonetheless like what I live for so it was really exciting and finally get to actually meet Dr. Cometi after talking to him for a while for our panel and also just admiring his work and the way he's pioneered the field and he's great, he's so funny and it was very exciting to hear OCD being talked about in this context of over 12,000 people who don't know about OCD which leads me to talking about how my own work played out at the conference. I think for me amongst all of the incredible things I shared so far I think the most meaningful part that I just if I had to pick like I just love the most or at least I had the most impact on me has to be the experience of advocating for OCD as a byproduct of sharing my research and sharing my work as a trainee and the panel I did and all of that because OCD advocacy has been so hugely in growth and has made you know such leaps and bounds for like in the last several years like absolutely 100% and what I think the opportunity is is to reach people who aren't in the OCD space so I think advocacy is largely able to be supportive to those who have OCD and their families and to create resources for them to share with their networks and communities which is so important and yet part of them impacted that model is that the people who are learning about OCD are generally someone who cares or has any interest in the person who's sharing the advocacy which is incredibly important and beautiful and it's still you know an opportunity to reach more people who may not be personally invested due to their own experience or their own you know their care for those like that empathy that like one-to-one empathy that people have right and so for me an invert in way of engaging in advocacy to communities and populations that just never would hear about it otherwise or at least hear about it in the correct way the destigmatized informative way is by this was never my intention but it's just kind of what happened like I have this research project about the effects of MDMA assisted therapy PTSD and comorbid OCD and therefore a large number of conferences and areas that I share it are people who are in the psychedelic space or in the mental health space or in the neuroscience space so I presented that psychedelic conferences various psychedelic conferences and society for neuroscience and the International OCD Foundation Conference twice which of course that one is OCD related so that's doesn't count this conversation and also just like mental health symposiums and the symposium and things like that right so this in order for me to explain my project to any of those other spaces I have to first define what OCD is and what it is not and I have to provide very comprehensive education on the training of treatment of ERP and on mental compulsions and just really like destigmatizing and taking correctly educating upon the disorder and so that requires me to then go into many different spaces like the psychedelic field like the neuroscience space like mental health spaces in general and actively advocate for and educate on real OCD to then describe my project and the how the research like what it is and why it matters and what it means so what has become so incredibly meaningful and passion driving for me is to do this work because I am bringing OCD education to so many people in this case a conference with of over 12,000 people who were walking past my poster and at some point may look at it and also like the countless people who I got to talk to presenting my actual research many times and also the panel of psychedelic or so you want to be a psychedelic professional that had around 600 people in the room where I had to describe my work and my trajectory and my experience to then talk about OCD and what it actually is and it's just so I mean it's really hard and I think I've talked about this in the podcast before like the number of people who still like don't want to believe what it actually is because it serves them to have a like mindset of OCD is just a form of trauma and it's just it can be resolved by trauma treatments which appear gluey know not to be the case and that's really difficult as well as people who don't seem to hear past the word OCD it immediately like be clouded by their juxtaminter stigma of what they think it's some sort of quirky like thing it's not really real it doesn't really matter and or I over identify with it saying they're so OCD because they love having their co-cans in a row in their fridge like it is that's the side that's hard and it can get really painful when people straight up and validated being a thing but far more often than not there are people who like at this point I honestly it's been thousands of people with the various conferences and conversations I've had and presentations I've done that have been educated on what OCD is and then talk to me about how to learn exposure and response prevention treatment and how to get resources about OCD how to educate their clients so many people have told me that from my presentation they realized their client in their PTSC treatment is actually dealing with also OCD and it's just so so meaningful to be able to raise such massive awareness for OCD in spaces that what maybe would never have heard about it like of what it actually is and to then also include in that conversation so many important parts of OCD that often take too long for people to realize like the correct treatment being ERP or at least a frontline treatment being ERP also that mental compulsions are a thing and can often look like PTSD and just bringing that all up front so that someone who then is going to be you know giving treatment for OCD or learning about it or receiving treatment for OCD or even researching OCD at least has a fuller picture of what to do and what to look for rather than a partial picture of just okay now we know what OCD is but we're still going to do psychodynamic therapy on it or just other things that are harmful for OCD so that is something that just brings me so much purpose and so much joy and drives me and is a huge gift to have amongst me able to disseminate my actual research and then also to actually disseminate my actual research is so so so meaningful but that's more obvious and that's you know yay it's really my lived experience which is so you know meaningful to me to be able to to keep raising awareness for and to make a difference in but ultimately the advocacy is what really really takes the cake for me and then the absolutely incredible panel the so you want to be a psychedelic professional panel that we had with five IPN leadership members and someone from the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics to just provide this really holistic interdisciplinary panel scratching the surface really of all that we could share on how to forge your own path in the psychedelic fields and become a professional and engage in education and training and all of the unique nuances that play into that and all of that actual content is available in IPN so just go there for that I don't need to regurgitate it here but I really want to talk about as like what was so meaningful to me was just cutting through all the bullshit and talking about being a human being who is marginalized who is who is not represented who is minoritized who is oftentimes excluded from research because of my lived experience because of my identities and how to incorporate all of that into the actual path and that if I can do it you can too and it's fucking difficult and it's painful and it requires so much facing of stigma and acceptance and you know figuring out how to share your story and what you're comfortable with and what you're willing to face in the name of integrity and getting the resources you need and being represented and particularly as a disabled person and someone who has limitations and has a very very very twisted and turning past academically I mean I had a 1.83 GP at a time and somehow with a 4.0 in a master's like it's hard to reconcile the two without context and just figuring out how to share that and how to join the fields and be someone older and be someone who's who doesn't fit in with the rest of your peers and who has not had a traditional path like that lights me up like no other and just bringing together my lived experience with my work to be able to empower other people to do so too and the number of people that came up after and that all number one that supported me through that presentation and my peers as well um that which is so vocally supportive in that packed room but then also after the presentation the number of people that you just sat on the stage like cross my legs at the front of the stage just like had so many people one by one come and shared their story and ask for support and just connect with me and like have that shared experience and talk about how they've never heard someone represent their story their experience of being a non-traditional student of being disabled of being not representative being utter privileged of just not fitting the mold and wanting to forge a path forward in the face of stigma and in the face of roadblocks that are unfair but you can do it and it's so valid to validate all the struggles and also to know that you can do it like that just meant more to me than anything and that's something I'm so passionate about and the number of emails I've received are like social media messages and whatever just like to know more about my story like obviously that means I'm gonna do a podcast episode on instead so that it can be so comprehensive and full and then just be shared you know to whoever wants to hear it that's definitely gonna be coming and I'm surprised I didn't think about that till now I guess I did I just still didn't realize like how many people live without reality too and it's it feels so alone because we don't talk about it I do but you know we don't talk about it at large so I don't know that if people have that going on for them and then talking at a panel I guess helps you see that other people are going through it and so that was just so so beautiful for me and kind of the most powerful thing I took away from that panel of course other than actually just supporting people who want to join the fields and being able to do so at that incredible scale and then also to lump in our mixer that was literally right after like that ended at like 430 and then our mixer started like I don't know 530 or 6 or whatever we had to like change and take down our booth and go so it was like right after and just having that experience of all of those people coming together and having that space to connect and just being in community and just seeing the literal future of the field like at our panel and at our mixer that is the next generation that is the next iteration of people working in and furthering this field and that was so fucking magical and it's just the most beautiful way to close out a recap of psychedelic science and of my takeaways and how I'm moving forward from it because yeah all the research is being done it's amazing it's really interesting it's all out there it's happening but like what are the nooks and crannies of how we interface with the research how we participated the research how we do the research who is doing the research what mentalities are we having as we do it how are we validating lived experience and inclusion and new perspectives and harm reduction and so many of the things that just you know are beyond the literal trials and studies itself and so that's how I take away from this conference that's how I come away with a lot of hope and also a lot of drive to further act on things and improve things and improve representation and continue advocating in a space that oftentimes it's receptive and to just be hopeful and also persistent and to be collaborative and to see the best in people and to really question the way we engage as humans and have that translates to our work and really for anyone who's not in this field who didn't necessarily like identify with the work of being a researcher it's just this more meta way of being of just uplifting each other and being curious and questioning things and doing things differently and that's that's what life's about at least that's what this base is about and if you're listening to this podcast I'm guessing or someone who is curious and open and wanting to just live for more authenticity and honesty and openness and curiosity and compassion and like all the values of this space and applying that to a conference in this space is what I'm doing this episode so thank you so much for being here thank you for being with me and I can't wait for you to keep joining for more episodes I have so many exciting interviews coming and recaps and topics and solos and rants and just never ending I mean the podcast recordings are endless editing them a whole other ballgame and one day I will have help but at this point it's me and so it's so much work but it's the most wonderful work I get to do and I'm so so grateful for you joining me and being in this space and as always if you love this episode if you love this podcast please do me a favor take two seconds of your time while you're on here just go to the podcast where you're listening right now and leave a five star rating and review 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