Shane LeMaster - Ketamine

Hey everybody, welcome back to Psychedelics Today. I'm Joe Moore, your host, coming at you from Breckenridge, Colorado. Today on the show we have Shane LeMaster. He's been on the show a few times in the past and Kyle and I get to talk to him today about his experiences with ketamine, ketamine as a therapeutic agent, and some of his experiences with ketamine, pretty wild stories. I'm convinced that this is a really breakthrough drug that we probably should be talking about more in the psychedelic world. Phil Wolfson presented at Horizons recently and got into a lot of the ketamine data. I believe there was another person presenting on ketamine there as well. And it's just something that we in the Psychedelics Today have been talking about for a long time. And I think the psychedelic movement can learn a lot from because, you know, it's not necessarily just you give the drug and the person's fixed, though that does appear to be the case for shorter periods of time. But doing high-dose sessions with therapy attached seems to have incredibly great results. So kind of permanent sometimes too. And there's a lot of ways it could be integrated into someone's healing approach. And we get into some of that in the show. So I hope you enjoy it. Again, Shane LeMaster, mindops.com. I miss his practice. You can check out the links in the show notes on our site. I also have a link in the embedded in the MP3 here. A little bit of business. We are still trying to help promote Eric Osborne from MycoMeditations with his upcoming retreat in Jamaica, which includes Shane Moss, Catherine McLean, and others to kind of round out the experience of being in Jamaica and exploring psychedelics. So Eric does kind of a therapeutic process. He does a lot of down there. And I believe he's one of the only, if the only, kind of gringo white guy doing mushroom sessions legally anywhere in the world that I know of, at least not in Europe. I'm sure there's some folks doing it in the Netherlands, but I'm not aware of those folks. Very great guy. He seems incredibly skilled. People come back and give great testimonies. So check that out. MycoMeditations Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff. You'll find plenty of info. And we have some past podcasts with him. So if you want more info on that, check them out. We also are still offering our course, Navigating Psychedelics. You might really appreciate doing a lot of harm reduction, education around psychedelics. Consider it a 101, 102 of psychedelics. It's like you taking a college class or a set of classes that will keep you out of harm's way. The number one and two most important things, keeping you out of the hospital and keeping you out of jail. And we teach you a lot of that, teach you how to do some grounding, integration, and give you some context around what it might look like to go to an ayahuasca session in Peru or some other work that might be of interest to you and available somewhere in the world, if not legally, locally. Check it out, navigatingpsychedelics.teachable.com. You can also get the link off of psychedelicstoday.com. So we're doing, oh, just today we launched the ultimate psychedelic book giveaway. We're giving away like 13, 14 items, including a seat to Navigating Psychedelics. Let me read you a list of the books we're giving away here. Giving away stuff by the Shulgens, plenty of Groff books, Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss by Dennis McKenna, LSD, My Problem Child, Reflection on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism and Science by Albert Hoffman, Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, James Pical by the Shulgens, Dirty Pictures About the Shulgens, LSD, Doorway to the Numinous by Groff, The Adventures of Self-Discovery by Groff, Healing Our Deepest Wounds by Groff, Ultimate Journey by Groff, When the Impossible Happens, Holotropic Breathwork, and also a Psychedelics Today t-shirt and mug. You can check out all this stuff at psychedelicstoday.com. We'll link a, we'll link you to it in the show. Notes for the episode and have a link on the main site too. So yeah, check it out. The more you share it, the more chances you have to win. So share far and wide forums all over and we love you for sharing. So I think that's it for now. We'll see you on the other side of the show. Thanks again for tuning in. Welcome back to Psychedelics Today with Kyle and Joe. We are here with Shane LeMaster. You might remember Shane. He was previously on our show talking about Mike was saying martial arts and flow states. So I know Joe and I talked a little bit about wanting to get somebody on the show to talk about ketamine in a past episode and Shane reached out and said he wanted to chat with us. So here you are, Shane. Thanks for coming back on. Thanks guys. It's good to see you. So, so, um, I guess for any listener that doesn't know your background, they could backtrack and check out, uh, our previous episodes. Um, so let's just jump right in and, um, ketamine. What is it? Um, yeah, we haven't had too many people on, on the show to talk about. I think we had Lex on the show, but, um, yeah, he talked about it a little bit. Um, but it was more in the context of like, uh, maybe a safe thing to do at home. Uh, because, you know, a lot, a lot of people say psychedelic therapy is really inaccessible. And, um, I think Lex is making the argument that if you have the skills or, uh, willingness to do it, you could use these substances at home in your bed or something, minimize harm, you know, assuming you're doing it for the right reasons. And you're not just looking to party. You're probably not going to end up in a bad state, but you know, get educated first, but that that's kind of where he was going. So what, what are your kind of initial impressions or like things you like to share Shane about ketamine when, when someone starts asking you about it? Um, well, I'll tell you this much, not many people asked me about it. Um, so it's, it's fantastic, to be here today with you guys and have, um, just a venue to be able to talk about this. Um, first impressions. Um, if I could sum it up, uh, I would say, you know, ketamine is a hell of a drug. Um, it's pretty amazing. Um, in, you know, it has a very wide range of applications, um, for therapeutic purposes. Um, but it's, it's a very interesting drug in that it's different than other psychedelics in some very distinct ways. Um, but still able to produce, um, you know, very strong hallucinogenic type effects and transpersonal experiences. So, um, ketamine has always kind of been, um, one of my, I guess, favorites, um, for journey work that I've done. Um, I first started experimenting with it in, in high school as a recreational additive to my, to my, uh, my drug arsenal when going to raves and things. So, um, I've been doing it for a long time. Um, I've been doing it for a long time. Um, you know, having experienced, you know, the K hole back then and, um, you know, taking it very much like, like your other guests was, was mentioning, you know, laying in bed at night and developing actually a ketamine addiction at a, at one point, but having, you know, those were my first, um, astral projection experiences were on ketamine. Um, and then now later in life, um, having more experience with ketamine after a long break, um, you know, realizing the full, full transpersonal and psychological potential of this drug, but still, um, technically legal right now. Right. Yeah. It's a, what is it? A schedule two drug schedule three, I believe it's schedule three schedule three. And so ketamine is a dissociative, correct. And it is, uh, it was originally used as an anesthetic. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's considered either a disassociative anesthetic, um, and, uh, or a disassociative hypnotic also, it's been called that as, um, and yeah, it was developed. Um, you know, there's a big rumor around ketamine and it, it's a horse tranquilizer or it's, or it's a cat tranquilizer and it is, you know, it's used as an anesthetic in veterinary medicine, but it was developed for human beings. Um, you know, the U S military loves this drug for their use on the battlefield, as well as, you know, in, um, treatment resistant PTSD therapies for vets. Um, the VA actually funds treatment for vets through ketamine. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah. One of my friends, and we can talk about that too. One of my friends who's, who's a, a PTSD sufferer, um, long time, uh, 10 years of flashbacks and, you know, uh, really horrible things going on in his life after combat service, three ketamine treatments later. And he's an entirely different man. He's, he's, um, he's, you know, he's come out of that dark hole. Um, that's outstanding. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's interesting that we're not talking about that too much because everybody's kind of all about the MDMA PTSD connection. Um, but the fact that it is currently being used with, um, or treated with ketamine is fascinating and the VA is funding it. Yeah. And if you guys have any listeners who are, um, vets or, um, you know, sufferers of PTSD, I know for, for a fact that there's a VA clinic in, um, San Antonio, Texas that does ketamine therapies. and the VA will pay for veterans to fly all the way out to Texas. They'll pay for the treatments. They'll pay for them for housing and, you know, hotel room while they're there. So the military really loves this drug, and they love it too as, you know, a battlefield medicine too. You know, if you think about it, you know, someone maybe loses an arm during a firefight. If they give that person morphine to deal with the pain, that person's not walking out under their own power. They have to be carried out by two other guys, and, you know, that takes three men off the battlefield. Whereas if you give the same guy, you know, a shot of ketamine, he can walk himself off the battlefield. He doesn't have to have two people carry him, and his pain level is similar to that of morphine. That's amazing. I'm actually just on Wikipedia right now. And, you know, I think you always. I take Wikipedia with a grain of salt from time to time. But it says it's on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines, the most effective and safe medicines needed in a health system. Interesting. Yeah. With my surgeries, I've had it as part of my anesthetic cocktail a number of times. So I didn't realize it was a ketamine user until after I got the drug report. Do you remember any of your anesthetics? The surgery? No. No. Apparently, they're great with anesthetics up here. But, yeah, it was like a whole cocktail of fentanyl, ketamine, all that stuff. It was like a really quick out and then back in. I'm sure it was like a five to seven drug cocktail. Yeah. What I've read in the literature is that for opiate addicts who can't necessarily have normal anesthetics or else it kind of reinvigorates their addiction, you know, ketamine can still be requested as an anesthetic for surgeries. So that's pretty cool that we can use that. And it was initially developed, from what I'm reading, in part for use in anesthetics for infants who need surgeries. And the reasoning being is that ketamine is one of the safest anesthetics because it does not depress the respiratory or the heart rate systems in the body. Those stay completely normal even on high doses. Yeah. Whereas with normal anesthetics, there's a lot of, you know, overdose or people dying on the table because their heart stops or they stop breathing. I don't have a citation on this, but from what I recall, doctors became uncomfortable with the stories patients would come back with after the surgery. Say, I don't know that I like my patients telling me about astral projection or, you know, being way deep in a K-hole for, you know, six-hour surgery. Like, that's a lot. And it's, I think, a lot for the doctor to handle, kind of extra baggage. So they kind of shifted away from it in adult use as like a primary. At least in, like, the regular medical system. Makes sense. Yeah. So we have been, so I talked to a couple clinicians at the Recent Horizons conference. And what they were saying, one was actually a ketamine provider, but she exclusively does it intranasally with a spray. And she was actually kind of critical of the infusion marks. Especially when we're seeing a lot of that given to people intravenously, but without any kind of support or therapeutic context around it. It's kind of just like a factory, like you're in, you're out, kind of like DaVita for ketamine. I never thought about that before. It's interesting. But I don't know. Do you have any experience with people who have, like, been to treatment centers and, like, had a good time versus a bad time in terms of, like, therapy being provided? Or just turn and burn? Yeah. I have, you know, a few friends who have gone to a variety of different ketamine clinics. Like I was mentioning before, my VA friend went to a VA clinic. And therapy was a part of the protocol. You know, pre-integration and, you know, psychotherapy around the PTSD as well as post-integration therapies. And that, you know, showed great success right away. Even after. Even after the first session. And lasting results, too. You know, he hasn't had it for a while, but his depression has been gone and zero flashbacks and nightmares since he had it. But I've also had friends who have gone to, you know, other lesser-known centers that don't have therapy as part of their protocol. And when I talk to them, you know, they still report a highly beneficial result as far as, you know, opening themselves spiritually and transpersonally. But also on their mental health and addiction, you know, they're showing positive results, too. Just maybe not to the same level of effect as when the therapy is involved. And I guess that's what I'm most interested in when it comes to ketamine because I'm a therapist. I'm an integration, a psychedelic integration therapist as well. And that's kind of my primary interest is how can we make these medicines most effective and use them for, you know, all sorts of different things. Can you describe why this is being used in therapy? Like, what's your interest in it? How can it be, like, the clinical application? Sure. Like, kind of why I'm interested in using this. Yeah, and why it's starting to pick up speed as, like, a clinical intervention, what it's being used for. Yeah, so I think, you know, I'm interested in using almost any psychedelic. In psychedelic-assisted therapies. But right now, ketamine is so interesting to me because it is still Class 3, Schedule 3. It's not, you know, it's not as closely regulated as the Schedule 1s. So it's more readily available. You know, these clinics are around where clinical work could be implemented. But there's a number of studies that are showing great clinical results when integrating it in with psychedelics. Psychotherapy, especially for treatment-resistant disorders. So I have a number of articles sitting here in front of me. And just off the top of my, you know, off the top of my list, you know, my personal interest right now, because I work in an opiate addiction clinic, is combining ketamine therapy and ketamine psychotherapy with some of the more well-known medication-assisted therapies, specifically Suboxone, and, you know, there has been research published recently talking about how the combination of Suboxone treatment with therapy and ketamine-assisted therapies show much greater results for long-term abstinence from opiates. You know, there's studies coming out from Russia saying that ketamine is an effective way to curb alcoholism. Which is huge in my addictions field. And I'm also an ex-alcoholic myself. So, you know, I have a strong passion for helping these people, this class of people. But we're looking at, you know, helping heroin addiction, helping, you know, people break through spiritually, helping with treatment-resistant depression, helping with treatment-resistant depression related to bipolar disorders. And also, I've read some things on how clinicians use it as a means to partially understand the schizophrenic mind, which is pretty interesting as well. So, the clinicians are taking it to understand the states better? Yes. Yes. It's kind of like the early LSD research. Absolutely. There was a great talk at Horizons talking about, like, what therapists don't talk about. And it's kind of the history of therapists using these substances. For their own psychological training and to maybe understand different states of consciousness and whatnot. So, that's cool. I also, I think, have read some studies about ketamine being really good for, like, almost like an intervention for severe depression and suicidality. Kind of can take somebody out of that state quickly. Do you understand, like, the mechanism that is, like, why it's so, like, there? Why it's being examined so, like, therapeutically and has these clinical applications? Like, what makes ketamine, like, a special intervention for some of these, like, disorders? Sure. And that's not, you know, my expertise. So, I'm going to try and do my best. But I'm sure I'm going to butcher it. I apologize to any of your listeners who are more knowledgeable on the chemical makeup. But as far as I've read and understood, it works within. Some of the same NMDA antagonist receptor sites as some of the, you know, other clinical drugs that help with opiate addiction, like methadone, suboxone, subutex, things like that. And, you know, I've read studies that suggest that maybe there's some actual brain rewiring going on while under the substance. But, you know, it starts to get a little technical and might. My interests are more in some of the psychotherapeutic or psychological effects. Yeah. So I don't spend as much time reading and trying to memorize and remember the specific pathways. I believe that the mechanism of action is still being researched at this time. There's a bunch of different theories as to how it may be happening, kind of like with LSD, but no one has really a firm grasp on it yet. What about the psychological aspects? Like, man, do you guys have any experience with it? I've never used, well, never experimented with it outside of a hospital, for sure. Like that disassociative, so the story is your mind disassociates from body and you have this kind of pure mind thing happening. So, yeah, what is that? And it's kind of interesting. It sounds like you kind of have this total decrease of anxiety as a result of that. So you have a period of time to be with your mind, with no anxiety. And that's as far as I get conceptually with it. Yeah. I think that's great. I think you're right on target. So how I would describe it is exactly that, with maybe a few more details. So, you know, because it is an anesthetic, but it keeps the mind pretty active, you know, someone could take a dose, a higher dose. Hopefully, higher doses are showing to be more effective therapeutically anyway. So taking a higher dose of an anesthetic, closing your eyes, laying in a soft, comfortable area, you know, your mind does disassociate from your body. Your senses, because it's an anesthetic, kind of go away. You can't feel. Your body, it's totally numb. You feel like you're floating, kind of like if you're in a float tank, to the point where I believe your mind is no longer picking up sensory information from the exterior world. So with your eyes closed, with earplugs in, you know, you're not taking any touch sensory information, tactile. You're not taking any auditory. You're not taking any visual sensory information. And this allows the brain or the mind. To access a whole lot more free space to kind of work with itself. So usually we're taking in information all the time from all five of our senses. But with, you know, with four of our senses gone, you know, that one sense gets so much more working memory to put it in computer terms to work with. So that's what I've found anyway. I can go really deep into my mind to places where I couldn't if I was otherwise. Otherwise distracted by external stimuli. And that's different from other psychedelics. Because I'm still taking in external stimuli, even in a closed-eyed therapeutic LSD session or something. The ketamine just kind of cuts that off, which is something I really enjoy. And that anxiety piece, you know, we hold a lot of anxiety in our body somatically. So when that connection is severed temporarily and the body is kind of shut off from the mind, all that anxiety that's held in the body. Is no longer playing a role, playing an impact on the mind. And the mind is allowed to, you know, really look at itself without this lens of anxiety to look through. Is it like sensationally similar or substantially different? Like the anxiety part to like a benzodiazepine type anxiety reducer? I would say it's actually pretty similar. Because those benzos, they tend to give users the perception of a bit of numbing in their body. Not like a tactile numbing, but kind of like an internal sensory numbing. You know, difficult to describe. But when you feel the anxiety inside your body, it's a very, you know, somatic sensory experience. And that's what's kind of numbed with the benzos. Whereas with the ketamine, definitely numbs those internal feelings. But it also, in my experience, has numbed external, you know, tactile stimulation too. So I can be touching my own skin or I can be touching the wall and not, literally not feel it on my fingers. Or be standing on some grass or a different kind of surface and not feel it under my feet. Yeah. That's where it's different from the benzos. Interesting. And now, are there visual hallucinations that come with this? Are you kind of. I don't know, sort of detached, like, outer body where you're not, where you don't remember anything? Or. So I've had, I would say, three distinct types of experiences. And the set and setting has been different. And the intention has been different for these two. So that may have played a factor. On high doses of ketamine with eyes open, so you have an eyes-opened experience. Yes, you know, I have. Definite visual hallucinations. Things that I've seen and then also looked into and that other people are reporting from their trip reports too. So there seems to be some consistency here. One of the most interesting things I've seen is when the world turns into sort of a Lego world. So you look at any surface and people and you look at their faces and everything seems to be made out of these little tiny building blocks that seem to fit together very harmoniously. And. And move as, you know, as objects move. So that's very interesting. I've also, you know, been able to see, you know, looking at my fiancee under the influence of high doses of ketamine. You know, she resembles a very much, you know, a close depiction to, like, Gaia or Mother Earth. You know, I see her motherly or hopefully future motherly nature. You know, her spirit. You know, it's very hallucinogenic for me with eyes open. Another experience I've had is the astral projection experience. This has primarily been closed-eyed sessions laying down or with my eyes open. Maybe with the setting being black lights and, you know, stargazing, things like that. I'll have an out-of-body astral projection experience. And my third type of experience I've had with ketamine is a completely closed-eyed session more in line with psychedelic psychotherapy protocols with proper invocative music, nice safe setting, you know, making sure I control for temperature, intention setting, all that kind of stuff going into it. And I have very distinct, very, very profound internal. hallucinations. Much more so profound in my experience than other substances like LSD or psilocybin, where that is more like working through trauma, whereas ketamine kind of transports me to a place where I get to see, you know, all of reality as the machine that it is and get to see my part in that. You know, it's much more transcendental for me than the other ones. Fascinating. Do you think you could give us, like, I guess, like a report on maybe what, like, one of those therapeutic sessions was like for you? Yeah, absolutely. So, I will describe my last one, and it was one gram of ketamine intranasally done all at once, half a gram per nostril, intention setting, and set and setting. And we're, you know, we're set. Being an integration therapist, I kind of know what I particularly like in those settings. So, it was set to my needs. Your listeners will need to, you know, know themselves pretty well to set it for themselves. But, yeah, it was pretty profound. So, there's a few things that happened in my trip. One of which that I commonly see is I'll get this feeling that I'm sitting on a chair, I'm sitting on the edge of a waterfall, and I believe it's called a colanderra, those 360 waterfalls. You know what I'm talking about with the big sinkhole. So, I get the feeling that I'm kind of sitting on the edge of that, kind of floating. And then, all of a sudden, I get asked the question, do you want to go in? Do you want to go deeper? And I, you know, I assume this is, you know, the ketamine asking me if I want to go into the K-hole. And so, I say yes, and I let go. The next thing I feel is, you know, I'm laying on my back floating down the river towards the edge of this waterfall. And then, my body elongates and my legs go over the waterfall and reach all the way down to the base while my upper body is still at the top of the waterfall. And then, the rest of my body falls in. After that, you know, it shows me any number of things. But, in my last trip, it showed me kind of the deconstructive or spiraling nature of reality. I got to see. all of life in the cosmos to my family, my friends, little microcosms and little organisms, all kind of spiraling down in this life and death cycle towards a singularity. And in past ketamine trips, I'd always kind of resisted going into the singularity for, you know, out of fear, fear of actual death, you know, fear that if I believe in the power of the mind and I let go completely that my heart will stop or something. And so this time I went in with courage and, you know, I had the same fears came up and I just said to myself, well, if this is time for me to go, this is the time and I'm ready to see what's through the other side of this singularity. And, you know, I spiraled down kind of like a drain does in a shower and then was sucked through to the other side. And it seemed kind of like some of the theories on what black holes might be. And I do like a wormhole. So I popped through the other side. And then what I saw was exactly what my setting was initially. So, you know, I was in this therapeutic space with my computer and, you know, my altar and things like that before I'd gone into the trip. And then on the other side of the singularity, I saw the same space, exactly the same, except everything was patterned. And all of a sudden I had this ability to move. Objects and move matter in my space with my mind and having having an ultimate connection to all these objects around me that that in my normal waking life, you know, most of the time I think in a dualistic way because of how I was raised. I try not to, but I do. But all of a sudden I had complete control over over matter and over my future and over the direction of my life. And I realized, you know, I can do anything I want as long as I put in the effort and put in the time. And put in the intention. And that was a message I brought back for myself. Another significant thing that that happened during that trip, I asked this this entity, this voice that I was hearing, which I assumed to be, you know, the collective ego, the collective consciousness. I asked it to be able to be shown what the end looks like. And by the end, I was able to show what the end looks like. And by the end, I mean the end of everything, the end of all existence, the end of this cycle of expansion and contraction that the universe is is unfolding in. And I really wanted to see the end. And so it showed me and what it showed me was kind of like this, you know, it zoomed me out to an objective third person perspective and showed me that this kind of like this this consciousness decided that it wanted to experience itself in an infinite, infinite number of physical ways and that this was why, you know, consciousness in every single person is experienced as subjective, but is just this larger consciousness experiencing itself through an infinite number of scenarios and an infinite number of potentialities in in multiple dimensions all happening at once. And that that was its its purpose. And that that was its purpose in creation was to experience that. And I thought that was I thought that was amazing. It gave me a brand new respect for, you know, other people's experience that we're all, you know, experiencing the same thing. And it fed into, you know, the simulation theories that I've been reading about how these, you know, these simulations are being played out in in an infinite number of ways towards, you know, a larger programming. And it showed me kind of it's itself folding in on itself. And it told me, you know, that it had a contract with itself that I'm going to experience my myself in an infinite number of ways. But as soon as that infinity is done and I've experienced myself every which way I can, I make a promise to just blip out and to not exist anymore. And I've made this contract and just kind of been OK with that. And I was like, OK, that makes sense. You know, you can only experience this reality as much as you can. And then it's then it's over. Wow, that is fascinating. How long did that last for you? Oh, man, I think I was probably under for six hours. Wow. Is it typically that long or was that because it was a high dose? Well, the higher dose puts me under for longer. But no, usually it's around four to six hours. Oh, no. I thought it was a little bit fast acting. I've been around people that use ketamine and I thought they would just kind of stay in those little K holes for maybe like a few, I don't know, like 30, 40 minutes or so. Well, part of my intention going in was to stay in it as long as possible. And I believe that my meditative practice and my mindfulness practice helped me to sustain that a little bit longer. I know that on smaller doses, you know, back in the day when I was partying, you know, little bumps of ketamine. Um, would wear off within like 45 minutes to an hour. Um, but I wasn't very mindful at all with the youth. It was a party drug. Yeah. Wow. That sounds like a really amazing experience. Um, so after having an experience like that and, um, you know, being a clinician, like how do you think, or why do you think an experience like that is therapeutic for somebody? Like for me personally or for anybody? Yeah. Like, you know, just like your subjective, subjective experience. Um, I think it's, it's really important to have an experience of experiencing that and then applying that to like, therapeutically, like why having an experience like that, like why would that help somebody with PTSD, depression or anything along those lines? Um, well for other people, I would say, and for me too, you know, I would say that having these transpersonal experiences, whether it's with ketamine or, or any other psychedelic, um, you know, it kind of just lets you know that everything's going to be okay. That your, your daily troubles, your daily problems, your daily worries are really not that important in the global cosmic scheme of which you are a part of and which you will return to, you know, um, you know, making a mistake in this life. Um, you know, it may haunt you for a little while, but you know, things are going to be okay. And this is just the smallest little sliver of existence. Um, so then returning back to life, it kind of gave me, um, the ability to, to let go of, of the small things that were bugging me, even let go of some big things and just realize, you know, it'll work itself out. It'll be okay. You know, we're all collectively as a species moving towards something. Um, we think we're individuals moving towards individual goals and we are, but all of our individual goals are playing into one larger human goal. And, um, you know, um, everything's going to be okay. So I think that helped with depressive symptoms. Um, it also has helped me, um, get over fear of death and, and being able to see that, um, you know, death is not an end to anything, but is simply a doorway to something much larger and greater, um, that I've done it before and I'll do it again. And, um, you know, that the death is nothing to be feared, but it's something to be celebrated just like birth. You know, it's a passageway into, um, a new, a new experience in a, in a new dimension, new universe. Cool. So, uh, Joe just cut out. So I'm going to re-ask you this question. Uh, so people describe the, you know, it's pretty common that people talk about a K-hole. Um, why do you think people use that term and what does that really describe? Um, okay. Um, so, uh, I don't really know where that term came from or, um, why people might actually use it. But, um, I think, um, you know, from my own subjective experience through my ketamine use, um, you know, as I described just before with, you know, going over the waterfall into the caldera and, um, or going down this drain, um, you know, it definitely feels like one is dropping into a hole within themselves. Um, it feels like a definite drop, uh, kind of like, you know, when you're riding in a plane and you, and you hit some turbulence and your stomach goes up to your, you know, throat. It, it feels, literally. It feels to me like that. Um, so that may be where the, the name came from. Um, but for me, you know, part of my objective with all my ketamine use has been to get into the K-hole space. Um, that's where I find the most insight, the most, um, therapeutic benefit. Um, the lower doses, um, that don't produce the K-hole effect, um, you know, they have shown in studies to be, uh, effective for, you know, minimal change, um, short-term change. In some, uh, mental health, um, issues, but the, the research is very clear showing that higher doses of ketamine, um, the ones that do produce the K-hole, um, full hallucinogenic effects are much more, um, effective for long-term recovery from mental health issues, addiction issues. Um, they've also shown through good science that, um, that repeated sessions, particularly three, um, ketamine, high-dose ketamine sessions. Um, they've also shown through good science that, um, that repeated sessions shows a lot more effectiveness than just one, uh, high-dose session, um, indefinitely. that um you know psychotherapy is integrated with all these sessions has been shown to be much more effective as far as um for the the subjective user to be able to use the insights and integrate it into their daily life do you know how long um the infusion experience is when they're when they're getting an iv um well i i spoke with a clinician uh who does ketamine therapies here in my hometown and um you know we were just discussing his methods versus my methods and i prefer intranasally for a variety of reasons which we can get into um but he prefers the the iv or intramuscular method intravenous or intramuscular method um he's a psychiatrist and that may just be his affinity for that but um it tends to last from what he said from like an hour and a half to two hours so it's it's pretty quick you know you're in and out of the clinic within a couple hours um with some some therapy um some grounding stuff before and after as well um i personally don't mean to get sidetracked here but i personally like the intranasal method especially for its use in the addictions field because if it is is useful for um for addicts to decondition themselves and to get rid of the addictions and to get rid of the addictions themselves from taking a pill or taking uh intravenous drugs by doing um you know these medications intranasally where that may not be a trigger for them i feel like it could be more effective whereas if an addict was was uh their preferred mode of administration of their drug of choice is intranasally then we might want to check uh into intramuscular intravenous treatments um for these types of clients so i think that the method of recovery is also um pretty important and probably hasn't been studied to the extent that it needs to be joe you you're saying something uh somebody at horizons brought that up um yeah so the clinician actually that i was talking to said that um in her practice she's actually using intranasally um she's not doing high doses uh it's kind of like a saline solution um it would be really interesting to see like you know obviously people are typically putting it in their nose as a powder but um the saline solution method would would seem like a really interesting dilemma she her only criticism was that like the turn and burn aspect of it um and kind of you know maybe there being some sort of market abuse in those segments um but uh we didn't talk for too long it was only a couple minutes so i didn't get like more in depth with you know the major differences um you know typically i think uh what's it called encephalation is that the day yeah encephalation encephalation it doesn't sound like uh it doesn't sound slow it sounds like onsets really quick i know ivy onsets really quick as well um in a lot of ways i think like if you don't have to put a needle in someone's arm you know why why go through that kind of thing i don't know i don't know i don't know through with that um there is it's not risk-free um even doing a blood draw that's not risk-free so you know if it's do no harm like that's the first thing then let's start with the least harmful administration methods um it'd be interesting to see how you could you know are you familiar with uh shane so a saline solution ketamine mix so instead of like the powdered solution um for insufflation right no i'm not familiar with that just uh just with the powder solution right but i know with the uh with the ivy methods with using you know those high-tech anesthesia machines um that the the doctors can um control the the level of ketamine in the bloodstream a lot more easily and a lot more calculated than you could if you're if you're doing intranasal um i know that the onset from my intranasal experiences is pretty quick within five to ten minutes i'm already beginning to feel effects right yeah part per million you can really dial that in with those uh i would love to get the technical term for those machines i've been kind of struggling with that for a while i feel like it's an infusion device or something um you know like anaphyresis machine or i don't know we're totally butchering it right now yeah so someone send us a message on that because i know at least one of you knows the answer on that um so are do you see any pitfalls in this ketamine world like i so it is the addictive psychedelic yes i'm seeing it a lot in the party world i think people are having a lot of kidney issues uh is it kidney or bladder bladder usually bladder yeah sorry i take that thing back about kidney bladder it's also something you want to hold on to just like your kidneys is it like uh from what i recall it was like some sort of it's the excretion pathway and it crystallizes in the bladder causing damage is that way off um i'm not sure about the uh you know the specifics around that but um it's well documented that long-term high dose ketamine use um and i need to define that first so long-term consistent ketamine use uh at high dose means uh over one gram per day over the period of years um whoa that's intense and that's yeah that those high levels over that long period of time does cause serious urinary tract issues to the point where some um some addicts have had to have their entire urinary tract and bladders removed yeah and um you know then they're you know they're peeing into a bag for the rest of their life because of this and it's irreversible um so yes there are some significant dangers associated with um inappropriate use of ketamine illicit use is mostly where these these issues happen um but you're right ketamine is the addictive psychedelic um it does have a higher addictive profile than any other psychedelic it still doesn't have the same addictive profile as say heroin cocaine methamphetamine um alcohol drugs like that you know um tobacco but um it is the most um addictive of the psychedelics and it can be abused um they're finding a lot less abuse if people are seeking it out for therapeutic means through the appropriate channels like um like these ketamine uh assisted psychotherapy clinics um and more problems are coming from people getting their drugs off the streets but i feel like that's an issue with any drug that you know um in the research it can be great with mdma and with lsd and stuff it's great but um you always take a risk um of you know potential negative consequences if you're getting your drugs off the street there's a behavior associated with with that sort of uh drug seeking yeah so i just saw this article today um on medscape and it's just about the concerns and uh it was written by dr jeffrey lieberman of columbia university and uh the article just said like my comments today could be called when clinical practice leaps ahead of research and evidence so it was really kind of calling out some of these uh questionable ketamine clinics and that um you know what's going on there could kind of damage uh the field of psychiatry if we're moving ahead of the research and just kind of jumping on these bandwagons right away um but yeah i think it's it is interesting like you know it seems pretty safe besides like the high dose kidney or um bladder bladder thing but also um yeah it's interesting when this new research comes out and people want to jump on board and maybe not really fully understand it sure um and you know when we're talking about it being um uh the of the more dangerous uh psychedelics um i feel like you know we're we're still painting it with a negative picture um and we need to clarify to your listeners that even though it's on the higher end of of danger in the psychedelic scale um when compared to all drugs of abuse and all drugs of addiction it's still on the lower end of that um it's just you know one of the more um dangerous psychedelics um much less dangerous though than like i said before any other anesthetic because uh it keeps your heart rate and keeps your your breathing normal uh at that very high dose um so it is one of the safest anesthetics um but it's also one of the more dangerous psychedelics but it's also one of the most safest addictive substances you know so you have to make sure that that the entire context is is presented there so that people can can have you know a good impression of what ketamine is and what it what it can do what the potentials are with it if not abused so it's really it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's dangerous than ketamine on this scale. GHB, cannabis, amphetamine, you know, re uh, Adderall, uh, tobacco and alcohol, all more dangerous than ketamine, less dangerous cannabis. Really? Oh, on his scale. Yeah. Um, you know, might impact your salary, stuff like that. Just kidding. Oh, just kidding. Um, less dangerous. Um, butane. That's crazy. I didn't know people were abusing butane, uh, anabolic steroids, ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms, buprenorphine, buprenorphine. Is that buprenorphine? That's, um, suboxone. That's, uh, that it's, it's, uh, opiate antagonist medication. That's what we use in our clinic here. Medication assisted therapy is a subutex or suboxone, um, which is buprenorphine. Mm. Cool. It's a, yeah, it's a partial opiate antagonist. So it helps block some of the opiate receptors and fill those up. It helps people with, with acute withdrawal and, um, uh, you know, uh, in our clinic anyway, coupled with a behavioral component, uh, we're trying to get these, uh, opiate addicts off, off the drugs longterm, including off the buprenorphine. Absolutely. Yeah. I really like the idea of this being able to pull somebody out of the depressive state so you could actually begin to do work with them. So like, uh, say for instance, you were at a week long retreat or something, they could get it like twice at the beginning maybe, and then do a bunch of breath work and talk therapy or something. And, and, um, you know, maybe some group therapy work and maybe one final treatment at the end. And then, um, you know, good luck. Hopefully there's some followup after that, but it seems like something that could work. Um, I don't know if that would be a great idea. Um, yeah, I wonder, you know, it'd be interesting if there are some sort of, um, retreat clinics, if not in this country, maybe in some other country being that, um, the world, uh, health organization, or I don't know if that was the organization you mentioned, but, um, I don't know if that was the organization you mentioned, but, um, yeah, that would be a great at the World Health Organization. I don't know if that was the organization you mentioned earlier, but they recognize it as one of the most beneficial treatments. It would be interesting. I wonder if they have retreat centers kind of like the ayahuasca centers and things like that where you can go for a week and get your ketamine infusions. That would be really interesting. I think I found a place. Yeah, it was the World Health Organization. Forty-five miles out of Nashville, so fun on both sides. So interesting. Yeah, they have other places too. But yeah, so it seems like somebody's on top of that, which is great. So yeah, somebody with really acute symptoms, and I think that would be really an interesting way to go about it. Yeah, well, the research is extremely clear on those, particularly that treatment-resistant mental health disorders, you know, ketamine helps with an immediate breakthrough. But also I read last night in an article that it's also very effective in engaging clients. Clients who are extremely defensive around their treatment. So if they have very strong defense mechanisms up and, you know, a psychologist or a psychotherapist like myself cannot get through to that individual to begin the healing process, sometimes, you know, a ketamine therapy session can help just shatter those walls of defensiveness and open these people up, back up to themselves, but open them up to the clinicians too so they can accept that help. Fascinating. Yeah, you guys know we get in our own way most of the time. That's our biggest issue. We get in our own way. We prevent ourselves from living our own potentials. Definitely, yeah. We definitely do do that. Sorry, just based on what I was going to say or ask. If any of your listeners are interested, there's a great book out called The Ketamine Papers. I just picked it up a little while ago and I've been reading it. It's a fantastic overview of ketamine. Not only its history and its clinical use, but it goes over, you know, some very interesting trip reports from, you know, first-person journey accounts from people like Dr. Stan Groff, Dr. Ralph Metzner, you know. It talks about the abuse history with ketamine with some of the more famous abusers. There's actually some famous ketamine abusers out there. If you guys have heard of John Lilly and his kind of journey through ketamine and his journey into psychosis, or some people would say psychosis, where he felt he was communicating directly with dolphins and, you know, getting premonitions of future. Historical events and things like that. So I think it paints a very, very good picture, a broad picture of ketamine and kind of where it's come since its inception. That just came out in the past year or two, correct? It's a pretty new publication. I think about nine months ago, if memory serves me. Yeah, it says 2016 maps, so. Yeah. Yeah, you're listening. Senators can get it through the maps website. Probably at a discount too. Yeah, we'll link to that. It's, yeah, I think it's pretty groundbreaking work. I feel negligent for not having read it yet. And I had no idea Groff contributed, but that makes a lot of sense that he did. Yeah, the more I looked into it, you know, the Esalen Institute out in California, they were experimenting with such a wide range of therapeutic methods. And I think that's one of the things that I think is really interesting. Especially back in its early days, you know, I would have loved to have been at that place. Have you guys, either one of you guys visited the Esalen Institute or? I've driven by it three times on the Big Sur coast. I never had the guts to go in because I didn't have an appointment. Kyle, you've been though, right? I did. Yeah, I've been there before. I went for a weekend workshop for spiritual emergence. I forget what the actual title was, but it was with David Lukoff and Michael Cornwall. So we had actually went over a little bit of history of like the spiritual emergence topic of how it kind of formed there. And like some of these cool studies that kind of came out of Esalen. Esalen, I believe like helped fund or was part of this huge coming off like psych med study. They're just showing like the, I'm butchering this right now because I forget. I don't know what it was about, but just showing that like the difference between people on medication for schizophrenia versus off of it. It sounds to me to be like almost kind of setting up the premise for that spiritual emergency network concept or like setting up. That's where it started. Right. Yeah, they started out with the retreat model. People could go and get their spiritual treatments through a variety of methods. And then they would go and get their spiritual treatment. habits and patterns and kind of provide a non-drug safe landing space before they go home yeah so we have um we have models like that in the addiction field right now um kind of like transitional or halfway houses um you know in my own treatment experience i went through a 30-day inpatient followed by a 90-day um uh again i like a follow-up uh treatment out in california and um you know a third stage of that program is to go to a like a transitional housing it's or sober house where everyone in the in the house is sober you're all learning how to pay bills again you're learning how to go grocery shopping uh you know you're learning you're relearning how to live life sober around other sober people um that sounds great and you know um i think we need more um you know um i think we need more um centers like that in vegas because i've been hearing a lot of people coming back from those ibogaine or ayahuasca um uh ceremonies um and then not being able to integrate uh very well in back into their their everyday life so having that sort of transitional space um i mean that sounds very promising to have that formalized yeah absolutely the guy um that runs it we're going to have him on the show in the near future i hope he's a uh he's been a dj for hbo forever with the boxing matches in vegas like i think that's his professional gig and um which is interesting and yeah as a result you know he's he went through the the ringer himself and i think he's pretty public about it and uh now he's yeah doing the work with other folks which is pretty cool you know a real convert to ibogaine um really tangential to ketamine but it's uh it's just this interesting idea of you know a nice safe landing space and not not as tangential as you may think you know these substances are are all uh i mean they're they're showing great effectiveness with with all sorts of addictions um and for some people the ibogaine experience which is extremely intense and extremely taxing on the body lots and lots of purging you know very uncomfortable for people who may not want to go through that type of experience may not want to go through that type of experience they may find um you know a different avenue in ketamine assisted therapies um uh there can be some nausea and stuff associated but not at the level even close of ibogaine and um you know some of the other psychedelics where would somebody find uh ketamine assisted therapy for like addiction would it be any type of like um ketamine clinic around the country or are there do you know of a specific place that's doing that and offering those services um i don't know a specific place that um is targeting just addiction the places here around me are targeting um any number of things they're targeting addiction they're targeting uh mental health disorders they're targeting spiritual disorders um they're targeting just the general public for for people who want to keep their spiritual practice um you know um very very present very um salient in their life right now um but i do know that um it is a very important place for people to be able to it is being used for addiction um specifically with opiates and uh alcoholism um that's where most of the studies that i've found are coming out for um and showing great results um so if anyone wants to know um where ketamine assisted therapies would be for addiction i would probably just google it i'm sure that um that uh you know there there are these um sort of in and out type places um and i think that's a good place to start um and i think that's a good place to start clinics i would do your research if you're looking into it and i would definitely highly suggest as a clinician and as a practitioner with ketamine i would highly suggest that um if you're interested in getting ketamine therapies go with a model that is more closely related to the psychedelic therapy model where there's pre psychotherapeutic sessions um to set your mind up and get it ready for this experience because it's extremely powerful um that it has a good uh clinician that you've built a rapport with and that you trust while you're under the influence of ketamine and then that also has uh post session therapy uh as part of whatever package they're offering um the integration piece um with the psychotherapy in my opinion as a clinician is as important if not um more important than the psychedelic experience itself um you can have the most mind-blowing psychedelic transformation experience in the world but without um learning how to integrate that into your daily actions to improve your life it's just going to be a memory it's just going to be a forgotten experience so please people find find the right models these uh these models are based on evidence yeah and i think going back to that article i brought up about like concerns with ketamine it's was really just based around some of these clinics that are popping up that are doing like um really quick doses in a time so it's like probably i think it's like 10 and like a couple weeks and not i don't think like doing any sort of therapy just kind of getting people in and out um so um yeah i think that that doctor is kind of calling out those clinics sure and it's interesting right because it is it is still effective in that context right it's just a little it could be disruptive to the person's life like by having a super strange experience and then all of a sudden come back to it um but yeah it's it's it's something we do need to discuss because like shane said at the beginning this is about optimization of treatment it's not necessarily about turn and burn and i think it's really like applicable to the psychedelic movement i mean we could see stuff like that happen if uh some of these substances get rescheduled like maybe you could see some uh centers pop up that just give you an experience and let you go without like say that therapeutic approach where you're doing all that stuff yeah so we're at about time uh shane is there anything else you want to throw in um no i just want to thank you guys again so much for having me on uh it's always a pleasure to not only speak with you guys and your audience through uh through this but um to be able to see and with you guys in person um you know when we meet up in boulder or whatever um and happen to see each other at events um i want to thank your audience for listening and continue to listen and um you know encourage them to reach out if they have any additional questions i'm sure you know there's a lot more questions left unanswered um so these guys will will put up some of my information you can contact me through my website or through my email um and uh i'll do my best to answer questions from my own experience but i'm not an expert by any means i'm hoping to become someday but not yet and what's your website really quick so my website is uh www.mindops.com so it's m-i-n-d hyphen o-p-s dot com and on there you'll find um you know my private psychotherapeutic practice where i do addictions counseling um sport and performance optimization uh through mental training um and also do uh my general psychotherapy practice um but if any of your listeners are interested in um psychedelic integration therapy i also offer that it's just not advertised on my website i am on the maps um official list for that so um you know i just want to thank you guys and and um thanks for for providing this this sacred space to be able to talk about um a medicine that isn't talked about as much as as it should be well thanks for your time shane we really appreciate it it's a lot of valuable insight and um you know firsthand opinion matters firsthand accounts matter i think a lot of the value in these in this work gets lost in the numbers this isn't necessarily just a numbers game i've been reading a lot of oliver sacks lately there's so much story and humanness to the stuff that we can um bring to the table here so thank you i hope you really enjoyed that episode with shane lemaster shane is awesome and he's really helpful for us to to provide some firsthand information clinical experience kind of journey work experience sometimes and really happy to have him as a friend of the show and really look forward to collaborating with him more in the future so yeah if you have any questions about that for us about that episode for us you can reach out to us psychedelics today email at gmail.com psychedelics today.com contact us so yeah feel free to reach out and we're happy to talk and we always are looking for suggestions for the show if you want to support the show give us a review on facebook itunes tell your friends maybe check out some of our t-shirts we got at psychedelics today shop.com and yeah we got all sorts of stuff there so check that out you might like some of the stuff there's stickers available all that kind of stuff um we also have a patreon we're launching so if you want to contribute two bucks a month or more that would be super helpful because we are trying to keep the lights on over here and be able to afford to keep this show going so really hope you enjoyed the episode everybody let us know what you think tell your friends love you bye Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.