April Pride, host: Hi everyone and welcome to this episode on Healing Trauma with Psychedelics. Today we’re going to talk about the profound potentials of psychedelic assisted therapy in facilitating recovery and personal transformation from both physical and mental trauma. Over the years, I’ve found that cannabis is a godsend for managing symptoms stemming from a whole host of physical ailments migraines, insomnia, chemotherapy related nausea, pain related to endometriosis or menstruation, autoimmune diseases like fibromyalgia. It’s fantastic for soothing inflammation and really good for disrupting pain signals. But at the end of the day, cannabis is best at symptom relief. What really heals are psychedelics. Whatever unresolved emotional or physical trauma you’ve got going on psychedelics get to the root of that stuff, which sometimes manifests as intrusive thoughts or depression or anxiety, and sometimes even as chronic physical pain.
April Pride, host: When people work with psychedelics therapeutically, they’re able to disrupt that loop and move beyond their psychosomatic issues, because as we know, the health of our bodies is linked to the wellness of our mind. And I can attest to this personally. In the last five years of my marriage, I was in a lot of pain emotionally and physically. As I moved through it, I pursued psychedelic assisted therapy with ketamine and psilocybin to come to terms with the end of that partnership. And the more I healed my mind and my heart, my body seemed to respond favorably to. With ketamine especially, I noticed a difference in my physical pain levels after just one treatment. It’s kind of amazing. So let’s get into it and I’ll tell you more about why I’m such a big believer and advocate for psychedelic assisted trauma healing. And a quick heads up for our listeners. The recording you’re about to listen to has a different sound quality. This episode is going to be a little shorter yet chock full of ways to approach overcoming our collective trauma related to the pandemic. Whether you can remember back in March 2020, you had the same routine for a decade plus and it was completely taken off course.
April Pride, host: Or if you’re more like me and choose to live every day as if it’s a fresh adventure and found yourself living out a very grounded and consistent day to day. Our lives changed dramatically overnight, as did the lives of the people we love, friends and family, and how each of us chose to weather this nearly two year period is as different as we are. What I learned during this time is that my friends who have experienced past trauma were experiencing symptoms related to PTSD because the fear of uncertainty we faced from Covid 19 was a trigger for any horrifying event that felt unpredictable and uncontrollable. I watched friends become lost in a loop of OCD planning, adopt a victim mindset and start questioning everyone else’s life choices in order to ignore their own. Naturally, she got cray for us all and now we’re talking about it. So let’s also do something about it. If it takes the promise of consuming psychedelics to force you to face the irreversible ways the pandemic has evolved our inner and outer worlds, then do yourself a favor and give yourself permission to get high, to get comfortable with discomfort, because we’re going to be here a while, especially now that we know we were here all along.
April Pride, host: But with smoke and mirrors, of course, we created entrenched thinking and behavior to live comfortably amidst the chaos of our modern world. You can’t change the story if your body is still holding its trauma. To create a new story, you literally need to embody a new reality. Or so I heard while listening to a podcast host, Ezra Klein interview. The author of The Body Keeps the Score, and I’m quoting author Bessel van der Kolk. He says trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar and befriend the sensations of their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies. So this got me thinking that if we want to move past this place where we are and create life in our new reality, we got to face these fucked years. This information in this episode is for you to take in and use to create an intention for yourself the next time you find yourself under the influence of plant medicine and want to poke the tiger a bit. Revisit this episode following your trip to compare insights shared here with your psychedelic assisted insights to start to make sense of how you feel in your mind and body today.
Speaker2: I feel like my psychedelic experiences before the pandemic were almost like a training for for handling something like a pandemic with grace, if that makes any sense.
April Pride, host: That makes total sense. What other boot camp can match keeping your head game strong while uncontrollable external stressors are trying to fuck your shit up? Tripping Period. Throughout these integration episodes, you’re going to hear time and again great pride in conquering the invisible, emotional and psychic forces brought on by a particularly challenging psychedelic experiences like Natasha Leonard, who facilitated our last integration episode faced when she consumed psilocybin. She’s in conversation here with Emily McCarter on her podcast, High Minded with McCarter.
Natasha Lannerd, Psychedelic Facilitator: My mom died when I was a child of a brain tumor when I was six years old, and there was just a lot of other stuff that happened when I was 18. I had a really big experience and I never really cried from the time I like realized after the fact I had a huge cathartic moment and I realized I hadn’t really cried for the majority of my life from the time I was six years old until I was 18. Wow. And then I really realized in that experience that that the psilocybin and the mushrooms were an ally in accessing trauma, that I think that pretty much everyone has something. Yes, Right. And to get at that in a way and to move that more than even getting at it right. It’s not good enough to get at it.
April Pride, host: In the following tape from Natasha s integration with Colton Winger’s psychedelic experience for Journey number three, she offers a way for us to move past just getting at it passively like we would have as a scared child and rather go after it like a supported adult who can now intellectualize their experience when you.
Natasha Lannerd, Psychedelic Facilitator: Find yourself feeling separate or you find yourself your cup being empty or whatever it is. Just sit and just ask yourself, How old is this person who’s talking? Because we have all of this experience in our lives, especially as like just two humans coming from a very similar situation that is rife with trauma. That core wound of separation. For me comes from a very young place. Yeah, a very young place. And when I really hold into it. It’s around 5 or 6. And when I realized that that that version of myself, that young version of myself is the one doing the talking, I, as an adult, as a 36 year old adult, and sometimes, you know, my teacher has taught us to do it on one hand. On one hand, it’s the voice that’s talking that young side. And then I’m able to say like, what do you need? What do you need that that me as an adult can give to you? Because there’s no changing it. But what I can do is show you show this version of myself as an adult what self-love is. This is the difference between self care and self love. And one of the things that makes this very definitive is the control piece. The the way to balance that out or an exercise and balancing out and and kind of teasing through is what safety means to you.
April Pride, host: I want to take a minute to explain a term that might be new to you. Whole fruit bodies. Mushrooms have these amazingly intricate underground route networks that are a big part of what make mushrooms magical. The fruiting body is the part of the mushroom we see above ground, the cap and the stem. And those are the parts that make magical mushrooms magic. For the true romantics who want to experience the purest form of psilocybin or whole fruit bodies which are carefully dried and sold by the eighth of an ounce are the way to go. Of like minds. Fruit bodies are cultivated and sourced in Seattle, where of like minds is based. It’s important to us to work with trusted partners. That’s why our whole fruit bodies come from the same guy who helps us create our amazing caramels. All of our fruit bodies are cultivated in source in Seattle, where of like minds is based. It’s important for us to work with trusted partners. That’s why our whole fruit bodies come from the same guy who helps us create our amazing caramels. Now let’s talk strains. We’ve got three excellent varieties of magic and our whole fruit bodies collection. There’s the potent and intriguing penis envy, the gentle, inviting hillbilly and the captivating Ecuador. Each strain offers a unique experience tailored to different preferences and explorations that we write about in depth on our website. We do understand that not everyone wants to chew on a dried mushroom.
April Pride, host: Maybe you’ve got a sensitive stomach or you prefer a different taste profile to dried up dust. So I do want to mention that we also make scrumptious chocolate covered psilocybin caramels. We make microdose offerings. If you’re new to the world of psychedelics and just want a more subtle approach. So whether you’re seeking the purity of whole fruit bodies or the convenience of taste of an edible, or if you’re looking to take baby steps into tripping via Microdosing, the of like minds website is a place to go to get started. Explore a range of offerings. Read up on the experiences of others. And if you live in Seattle, you can of course purchase one of our educational PDF downloads and as your gift with purchase, you will receive shipped via third party carrier a gift from of like minds to you at your Seattle address. Sign up for the Ublic Minds newsletter and follow us on social media at Ublic Minds Co for all the updates to learn all the ways we are all of like minds. Early data suggests that women are more likely to turn to psychedelic assisted therapy to address trauma. Given that women are twice as likely to develop PTSD than men because women are more likely to experience sexual assault, which in turn is more likely to cause PTSD than many other events. So let’s start with our collective trauma, knowing that we live among women who’ve survived far worse for far longer.
Speaker4: I recall a lot of things from my birth with my daughter. I always felt like I’m dying because in that moment I was dying and I never got rid of that emotion. So whenever things stressed me, I went back to that stressful emotion. Yes, I’m dying and it just always would take over me. I would tell people it was like a wave and I would be sitting there gently playing in the water. And then all of a sudden it’s like, you know, I can’t get out from under this tide.
April Pride, host: You just heard from Sandra Gwyn’s, aka the Kushners, speaking to Kia Baker, the host of the Female Veterans Podcast. Sandra is a nurse with over 15 years of experience. Her story of finding cannabis to help the PTSD she experienced after a traumatic birth inspired her to help others find the right cannabis medicine. Kia and Sandra have graciously shared audio from a recent episode, and you can hear more of their story on the Female Veterans podcast. Women are twice as likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. The medications prescribed are intended for short term use, but women find themselves suffering side effects for decades rather than manage life without meds. Sandra continues talking about how cannabis for sleep helps her process the PTSD in her dreams.
Speaker4: One of the things about cannabis is with PTSD, it’s really helpful because it decreases your REM sleep cycle. So it decreases the ability for you to have nightmares. So with a lot of PTSD sufferers, that’s one of the biggest triggers is the nightmares and night terrors. Not the first time, but a few times after that, you’ll start to have some more side effects where you can like maybe recall memories and things like that, which is really good for PTSD sometimes because you’re recalling these memories. But the memories can be recalled in a way where your body is not in that fight or flight, you know, reaction.
April Pride, host: Her logic also applies to recalling memories while under the influence of psychedelics. Assigning new bodily sensations to the memory can neutralize our physical reactions. It’s up to us to manage our irrational, outward emotional reactions. Remember one of the behaviors I mentioned witnessing at the top of the show? Watching my friends with past trauma become super critical of others. And remember what I also added that usually it’s to distract themselves from facing their own discomfort. Doing so only prolongs our feelings of isolation. No matter how good it may feel to play the hater, studies show that dropping judgment can significantly reduce loneliness.
Speaker5: Everyone has trauma. Yeah. And you can’t compare trauma either.
Natasha Lannerd, Psychedelic Facilitator: No. And frankly, when people.
Speaker5: I see that still, people are always, you know. Well, I had a worse growing up situation than them. I just. I know it so they can’t, you know. Yeah. It’s just like, damn, we need to just all come together and help each other with plant medicine.
Natasha Lannerd, Psychedelic Facilitator: I don’t know about you, but I feel like after my plant medicine experiences, I love people more. Yeah, I feel way more tolerant. I have more people. I do empathy. Yeah. That I don’t agree with and I am more kind to myself. And what comes out of these experiences is so rich. Frankly, the integration of those experiences, especially if they’re really deep and impactful, take time.
April Pride, host: A New York Times article written by Dr. Jennifer Taitz, an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at UCLA, titled How to Reduce Your Risk of PTSD in a post-COVID-19 World. I’ll link to it in the show notes. Dr. Tate says, and I quote, I can’t emphasize enough that it’s normal to feel anxious now. Yay! We’re all finally normal to process thoughts about the pandemic that replay in your mind. She offers some techniques for when your thoughts aren’t useful. Engage in mentally absorbing activities like working on a crossword puzzle or just working or grounding yourself by noticing three sights, three sounds and three sensations in your environment. Again and again when ruminating starts, catch it and exchange it for gratitude. This advice also holds true when you’re tripping. If you’re prone to an OCD loop, when not under the influence of psychedelics, then you may be in a loop far longer than you realize before it dawns on you. Or if you, like me, were once prone to looping. But thanks to insert successful cocktail of tools to manage, then if you get stuck in a thought while tripping, start to listen and look more intently. Another thing I do to come back into my body when I’m too in my head is alternating, tapping my thumb to my pointer and middle finger. I can do it on one hand. Sometimes I do it on two hands. And according to Tim Howard, who composed Journey number two and number four, there is certainly useful advice to be found on this show.
Speaker2: Because of this podcast that you’re currently listening to. I decided that I would dabble again within with edibles with THC because I’d just have kind of a bad relationship with THC. It gives me anxiety and just kind of just doesn’t make me feel great. And I realized that was just a dosage issue really. So I just decided to take a quarter of what everybody else takes. And I started. Realizing that, Oh, I really enjoy this and it really relaxes me. But it’s as long as I don’t cross that certain threshold. So, yeah. Thank you, April, for that.
April Pride, host: The reason the High Guide has a podcast is because we understand that psychedelic assisted therapy isn’t accessible to everyone. We’re offering this show as a tool and to empower you to make inroads to your own healing. Even if you can’t access a therapist who does this kind of work. It’s possible to heal with these medicines at home or with a loved one, or with your trusted community. People have been healing in community forever, and you can too. If any of the topics we touched on here are of interest to you, we have a few other episodes that go further into this particular topic, including an episode devoted to ketamine and pain. We’ve linked in the show notes for you to listen to if you’re interested in learning more. Thank you as always for listening to the High Guide podcast and we’ll see you next time. A quick final thanks to our show sponsor of Like Minds, Seattle’s trusted source for psilocybin.
