Latest / Lucid Interval Podcast / Psychedelics Law, Neurodivergence, and the Zen Art of Being Human - Victoria Cvitanovic, JD

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Psychedelics Law, Neurodivergence, and the Zen Art of Being Human - Victoria Cvitanovic, JD · Lucid Interval Podcast

• Andrew Heacock: Victoria, thanks for joining me. Victoria Cvitanovic: I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Andrew Heacock: Thank you. ⁓ So when you are on an airplane and you're flying off to some city for a conference or another podcast and the person sitting next to you turns and says, so Victoria, what do you do? What's your answer? Victoria Cvitanovic: I am a psychedelics, cannabis, and AI attorney. Andrew Heacock: And when you just say it like that, is there usually a follow-up question? Victoria Cvitanovic: ⁓ yeah, immediately. I often get told, is that a real job? That doesn't sound like a job. Or, ⁓ my gosh, I wish that I had that job. Andrew Heacock: So what do you think about those questions? I mean, when people have those responses, all three of them are actually individually interesting to me. But I mean, what do you what do you think when you get those kind of questions? Victoria Cvitanovic: My first thought when someone says, ⁓ my god, I didn't know that was a job or I've never heard of that job is, yeah, me neither. I had no idea when I went to law school that this is what I would end up doing. And I've been following the course of my life to end up in this position with my career. So I really relate to people who are hearing about this for the first time and who don't know that this is a niche within the law and are excited or kind of questioning to learn about it. I also get really excited when people think that it's interesting or that it's really cool. As someone who grew up in the South, I remember a time when saying the word psychedelics or the word cannabis automatically meant something culturally to the person that you were talking to. Maybe that person thought that you were a criminal or that you were less intelligent or that you didn't fit into society in some way. And seeing that excitement reminds me just how far we've come. in embracing our rights as people to be autonomous in our own bodies, to seek the medical care that works for us, and to question whether or not the laws that are in place in our society are actually what's best for our society. Seeing that shift is really powerful. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, well, I imagine you kind of represent that ship, you embody it because you're a psychedelics lawyer. so by definition for that to be possible, there has to be legitimacy to at least the use of psychedelics and cannabis now is I think well ahead of psychedelics. But it's a fascinating thing. I imagine one of broken people's brains growing up, you know, in the South where you grew up and where I grew up to say that those two things is like, what, like how's that pod? You mean you represent people that have been accused of trafficking? in psychedelics, but that's not really what you do, it? Victoria Cvitanovic: It's not what I do at all. So definitely people do go to the criminal defense angle first. They're like, ⁓ you must be doing criminal defense. Absolutely not. I'm not doing any criminal defense. My average client is usually a business, a retreat center, a medical organization, a scientific organization, or a doctor or other medical provider who is working within regulated, legitimate channels to allow people to access psychedelics in a way that's safe for them. Now, yeah, we can talk about whether or not medical integration is ideal for every person, but when it comes to the people who are seeking out legal representation in this space, a lot of them are somehow tied to our existing either medical or technological establishments. Andrew Heacock: Because that's where the legitimate uses of them so far, quote unquote legitimate at this point, right? Listen. Victoria Cvitanovic: Exactly. And that's also where people are taking a lot of risk outside of just criminal liability. Most people who are operating under some sort of license, like say that they have a doctor's license, their MD, or they have a license to practice law or a license to operate in some other restricted industry. When those people start touching schedule one substances, most psychedelics are federally schedule one substances in the United States. those people are taking on not just the criminal liability risk, not just the reputational risk, but also the licensure risk and the prescribing authority risk. So those people who are used to kind of being integrated into the system are really concerned about understanding where the law is and how it's developed so that they can minimize those risks in a way that allows them to still work with their clients and still pursue the career that they were excited about when they went to school. Most people who are getting involved in the regulated side of psychedelics don't want to give up everything that they've learned before. Instead, they've encountered something new. They've seen something that either reinforced a thought that they had or that changed their mind about the way that society should work, and they want to incorporate it into what they're already doing. Andrew Heacock: So when you say people that are, the group of people you just described, people that are trying to incorporate it through the regulated system, what kind of professionals are they? Victoria Cvitanovic: So first we have our doctors and other medical providers. A lot of these people went to school with the idea that they were going to make a difference in people's lives. They were going to heal people. And then they got involved in the medical system and saw how the flow of money and the deployment of technology unequally across society can result in people who really deserve care not being able to access it. They also experienced shortcomings with some of the mental health treatments that we have access to or some of the systems that we have access to. And they started reading, they started researching, they started going back to the things that changed their lives when they had meaningful experiences and got interested in how psychedelics could supplement their existing practice if they were incorporated correctly. We also have our scientists. Those are people who typically have been working in labs or for pharmaceutical companies or other large industry individuals. And those people got curious. They got really excited about what they were seeing happen and they wanted to bring it to a larger audience and allow people to see that the things we've been told about treatment maybe aren't effective for everyone. And maybe there are more ways to expand what it is that we think of as medicine versus a quote unquote drug. We also have the technologists. This is a group that I love working with because I think it's inevitable that technology will continue to develop and I want to see it done with our values in mind. These are people who are ancillary to the psychedelics community. They're not necessarily touching a molecule or touching a plant or fungi, but they're interested in building tools that show governments and show other people in power. psychedelics could be integrated into our existing systems. So they build AI enabled tools or they build training tools that incorporate not only just AI but like biomimicry and other kinds of simulation scenarios so that therapists and other providers can be more trained before they walk through the door and talk to that first patient. They're showing people how we can learn about psychedelics while anonymizing people's data and keeping the exploitation of human-derived data out of a community that cares deeply about not exploiting the people that it's engaging with. We also have our churches and our social justice advocates, people who are fighting for their own freedom in a completely different way. It's always a privilege to get to represent one of those people because they are coming at it from a different angle. This radical freedom and this idea of self-determination is important enough to me that I'm willing to risk everything on it. These perspectives are diverse, but they all deserve someone who takes what they're doing seriously, understands the risk that they're taking, and is willing to hold that with them and help them figure out how to do what they're doing in the safest, most compliant, best way for them and the people that they encounter way possible. Andrew Heacock: So I'm wondering if maybe we should take a preliminary step of just defining what psychedelics are. I imagine a lot of people that are watching this might already know that, but for people that don't, maybe they think they know something that is not accurate. Could you just define what these are maybe from the point of view of like science or medicine as well as the law? Victoria Cvitanovic: Sure. So when we use the word psychedelic, what we're talking about is a substance that when ingested at a specific amount, which varies per substance, causes a psychedelic experience. Psychedelic experiences are characterized by changes in perception, which may include visual or auditory changes, changes in body temperature and feeling, and also emotional changes that can be long lasting after the experience. People sometimes describe this as an opening of their heart, a feeling of oneness, a feeling of deep truth. All of these things are happening at the same time. There are categories within psychedelics that are sometimes used in place of the word psychedelics. So for example, a classical psychedelic or a classic psychedelic is typically one that works via antagonizing the 5H2AR receptors in the brain. These receptors latch on to compounds in these psychedelics and cause these beautiful psychedelic experiences for a certain amount of time. However, you can experience something very similar that acts on a different system in your body. These are sometimes called non-traditional psychedelics, or even some people will call them disassociatives. And these compounds work on other systems. They work on systems like GABA or other neurotransmitters. to cause a very similar feeling experience through a different mechanism. Psychedelics can be natural, which means they're found in nature in a psychedelic state, they're psychoactive from the time that you pick them up. They can be semi-synthetic, meaning that they're from naturally derived substances and we create them through a lab or through some sort of chemical reaction. Or they can be fully synthetic, meaning that they don't exist in nature and we create them in a lab. Most natural or semi-synthetic compounds can also be fully synthesized. We can mimic them in a lab. But it's important to kind of think about when we're talking about psychedelics, we're talking about compounds that may come from a lot of different places and may work in a lot of different ways, but are tied together by this experience, by this change in perception, change in mind, change in emotions that often leaves the person who's experienced it changed after. They tend to hold on to these experiences and talk about them as if they were meaningful or true for them for a long period of time. When we talk about psychedelics in the law, we're also talking about chemicals that due to a number of usually political reasons have been criminalized via federal legislation and state legislation. many of the traditional psychedelics, things like psilocybin and ⁓ its main compound that it shifts into in the body, which is psilocin, those things are schedule one. We also see that with LSD. We see that with basically every compound that you would think of when you're thinking of a dares kit. Those things have been swept up into schedule one. There's been some confusion about that lately because of some executive orders that have given priority to breakthrough therapies. But right now, if it's a psychedelic that you can think of off the top of your head, it's probably still sitting on schedule one, even if it's being studied for its medical use. Andrew Heacock: Could you give us just a quick listing of drugs that you consider to be psychedelic? Victoria Cvitanovic: Sure, that's an interesting question. I would start with DMT because DMT is found in so many different things. And then I would say psilocin because of the way that it acts in the body. I would say psilocybin because it has the potential to convert into psilocin. I would then say LSD. ⁓ Those would probably be the main ones that I would pop off with as like a traditional psychedelic, but there are also a number of other compounds that have been discovered. Like if you read Shulgen's work, Then you think of things like mitosin or 5-MAT that some people would refer to as like research chemicals, but they do cause experiences in the body that are very similar to psychedelics. Then you have your intactogens or your empathogens like MDMA. Those things cause a lot of the same physical effects as what we would call a traditional psychedelic. So there is some debate as to what category they fall into. From there, you could go down the list forever. of different forms of the same thing, like have iboga and its alkaloid ibogaine, then we have ⁓ all of these pharmaceutical versions of psychedelics that we're seeing, like the methylated compounds that are being suggested as alternatives for MDMA and MDMA therapy. The point I'm trying to get across with this list is a definitive list of something that we call psychedelic is more culturally influenced. than it is scientifically influenced. We know lots of things cause these experiences in the brain, but when we think of especially in the United States, the 60s and the hippies and the colorful tie-dye and the music, those compounds tend to be the cultural reference for psychedelics. Andrew Heacock: And ⁓ does that have any relationship to how they ended up in schedule one in the first place? Victoria Cvitanovic: It does. So as many of you listening probably know, it's not like psychedelics have been criminalized from the moment someone figured out what a psychedelic experience was. These things have been used all over the world in various cultures in different ways for as long as we have written history. ⁓ What we do know is that during a time in the United States when people were really worried about the state of the youth, and we were seeing a lot of rebellion, were seeing a lot of anti-war protests, we were seeing people burn their draft cards, we were seeing people stand up to authority, these chemicals became associated with the desire to stand up to authority. There are also a number of high-profile incidents where people who were using psychedelics that were associated with someone in power had something bad happen to them. that person in power decided to blame the psychedelic rather than say mental health or other conditions that might have been more difficult to talk about at the time. So we have this confluence of great societal shame, people not wanting to talk about their children disobeying them or things going wrong with their younger children, and then we have this extreme political unrest where people are deeply, deeply unhappy with the government in some places and people are deeply supportive of the government and view that as what it means to be a patriot in other places. And this divide worked to convince hearts, minds, and the will of policy that psychedelics should be restricted in ways that resulted in criminalization. We can also talk about the power inherent in criminalization itself. It is very easy to delegitimatize what somebody is saying to you or what somebody is saying in contrast to what you want people to believe. If you can call that person a criminal, if you can call them a deviant, if you can call them a drug addict, while scheduling these chemicals that people were using for a number of reasons, fun, consciousness, expansion, meditation, all of these things, taking those things and calling them drugs, taking those things and saying there's no legitimate medical use and they have a high potential for addiction, which is our definition when we talk about schedule one, is a very easy way to then be able to point to a user who you might have otherwise not had political capital against and be able to dismiss them without having to engage with them intellectually. And I do think that there is some strategy involved in keeping these things prohibited. Andrew Heacock: There was an advisor to Richard Nixon. gave an interview to Playboy Magazine in the 80s. Do you know the interview that I'm speaking of? Do you know who this was? Yeah. Can you tell me what was his name and what did he say in that interview? Victoria Cvitanovic: I do. So I don't recall the name off the top of my head, but what he said was that it it... I'm sorry? Andrew Heacock: Ehrlichman. I think it was Ehrlichman. I think it was John Ehrlichman. He's one of the guys that went to prison for Watergate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Victoria Cvitanovic: ⁓ I think you're right. Yeah, yeah. But what he said is we couldn't make it illegal to be black and we couldn't make it illegal to be against the war. So we made cannabis illegal. I'm sure that's not a direct quote. I'm sure there's a modification there. Andrew Heacock: You said something like by associating heroin with the civil rights movement and psychedelics and cannabis with the anti-war movement and then criminalizing those substance very heavily, we could effectively disrupt those communities. That's basically what he said. He was drunk, I think, when he gave this interview, which is how these things tend to go. Yeah. Which is an interesting, an really interesting form of hypocrisy, but yeah. Victoria Cvitanovic: Exactly. Yeah, I think he was drunk. But it was... Yeah, it was a really moving interview for me to read as a young person. I truly believe. So I think I was 18, maybe 17. I was reading my senior year in high school. And I remember at that time, I was really struggling with this idea of I want to go to law school, I want to fight for what's right, what is right. And so I started reading a lot more of like how drug policy came to be. Andrew Heacock: When did you find that interview? Victoria Cvitanovic: And that interview was deeply confusing to me. Up until that point, I truly believed that substances were criminalized because they were dangerous. And I remember reading myths about people like walking off of roofs on LSD. And I remember reading these things about cannabis being just as bad as alcohol for families and for abuse and for driving danger. And then I read this interview and I was like, wait a second. They didn't even know that when they made these things illegal. How could that possibly be the reason? And that, when I look back at my life, is this very little seed of how I ended up where I'm at today. That little bit of doubt that didn't become anything at the time, that didn't really change my perspective at the moment, but gave me enough to question, started an entire process for me of deconstructing. this belief I had that the law was somehow moral and that moralities had been considered in every passage of every bit of the law. Andrew Heacock: And so you were 17 or 18 ⁓ at that time. That's interesting. I studied political science in college and, ⁓ but really it was when I went to law school and I learned fourth amendment law and criminal law that I saw that there's a huge Delta between the America that I learned to believe in when I read the declaration when I was in high school and the reality of how things worked. I saw the way that are, you know, half of the, the bill of rights is deals with the rights of the accused crime and punishment. And I saw how massively eroded those were by the policy necessities of the war on drugs. And it was interesting time because that was also when marijuana legalization started happening in Colorado. So it was kind of an interesting time to be studying the law. a lot of those things did happen for me as well, where it's like seeds planted, where I'm like, yeah, I don't think this is right. I don't think our founders would have agreed with this kind of intrusion of liberty just to kick in people's doors to serve low level arrest warrants for marijuana. Victoria Cvitanovic: Right. I remember in law school also reading about like the smell of marijuana cases and what counts as a reasonable suspicion when it comes to the smell of marijuana and thinking like reading those cases and then going out to say lunch or dinner or drinks or whatever and asking my friends what does marijuana smell like and asking them to describe it and hearing all of these different descriptions that you know they were they were hitting at the same thing. Andrew Heacock: Yes. Victoria Cvitanovic: But they were variable enough that it really made me question what reasonable means when you're talking about something as object or excuse me, as subjective as smell and how that had been used to erode rights that were so important that they were enshrined in some of the fundamental founding documents that gave us our government, that gave us our country. That for me was that second little step along the road of I'm now questioning whether or not this prohibition was based on true protectionism, true societal danger that had to be addressed, that our liberty had to be curtailed because this was just so dangerous, or whether this was always or at least mostly an attempt at getting around our rights. Andrew Heacock: Well, so when you came out of law school, you took an interesting path knowing that you had, it makes sense to me, but I wonder, I think the average person might be surprised to learn what you did out of law school. Victoria Cvitanovic: I was a prosecutor in New Orleans, Louisiana. I was a prosecutor and it was one of the most meaningful learning experiences of my life. ⁓ I think I entered being a prosecutor with the assumption that everyone who entered being a prosecutor really wanted to make the world a better place, that they were not only concerned about safety, but they were concerned about the person on the other side of the aisle and what was going to happen to them. And they wanted to make sure it was done fairly. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, where? Victoria Cvitanovic: really surprised me when I became a prosecutor that that was not the overall perception of why people became prosecutors. I slapped in the face a little bit with my naivete of expecting people to assume the best of someone for choosing to engage in government. And it was this great lesson in the way that power is perceived. That The second you've stepped into a role where how well you do your job in many ways determines what somebody's future is going to look like, you have to be so prepared for people to criticize you, criticize that system, criticize everything that you do, and you have to be open to it. I remember sitting down as I started to mature into the job and making this promise to myself that if I'm ever mad at whoever's across the aisle from me, if I'm ever mad at a defendant, done. And I remember making this promise to myself that if I ever feel that I'm being asked to do something that's not ethical, I'm also done. Enforcing the rules is one thing and taking criticism about those rules is one thing, but compromising my own conduct and compromising my own emotional stability as I'm assessing these cases was beyond what I wanted to do. I found being a prosecutor gave me a perspective that I didn't have as a relatively sheltered young person in the south about the actual consequences of the war on drugs. And the thing that shifted my perspective overall, and it took time, was the gradual realization that so many of the people I saw across the aisle from me should be patients, not prosecuted. These were people who had the great fortune to born into one of the most advanced medical systems in the world and the great misfortune of not being in the very small group of people within that system who can actually access it regularly. Those things just did not sit right for me. And I wanted to spend the rest of my career trying to understand how the intersection of finance and the way money moves and technology and the way technologies are deployed unequally. resulted in so many people who, in my opinion, should have been receiving medical treatment being prosecuted. Andrew Heacock: Did, as a prosecutor, think very few people ever get to actually meet a prosecutor or like learn about what the process of what they do is. What kind of ⁓ discretion did you have when you were doing with things like charging or with plea agreements? I I think that people would be very surprised to learn how much power an individual prosecutor has over an individual case. Victoria Cvitanovic: So I love that you asked this question because it is incredibly variable depending on the elected official and how they choose to run their office. And when you are electing ADA, you're not just electing the prosecutorial authority who's responsible for deciding whether or not to prosecute ultimately criminal charges. You're also electing a manager. And because no single human being could prosecute every case that comes into any city, Andrew Heacock: fascinating. Victoria Cvitanovic: their management skills and their management choices say a whole lot more about the kind of prosecutorial discretion people will have and the kind of DA's office you're going to be dealing with than anything else. I worked under two different DA's at two different times. I left the office for a period, came back for a period. When I worked under the first DA I worked under, this was a person who had very strong feelings about the concept of fairness. He believed that the worst kind of discrimination that happens in DA's offices around the country is not based on race or gender or some other protected characteristic. It's based on whether or not the prosecutor and the public defender you just so happen to draw had a decent relationship. Whether or not that public defender has ever lied to that prosecutor, whether that prosecutor's ever lied to that public defender, whatever history those two people have, whether or not they trust each other. you have no say over which public defender you got assigned and now you're buying all of the history that exists between them and the ADA that you had no say in being drawn to prosecute you. So that particular DA's strategy was we apply the law as written in every case even if it seems harsh because that is what the people have elected us to do and you have very little discretion. Every plea deal has to be approved by me or my first assistant. I'm going to be involved in every plea deal. I'm going to sign off on everything. I'm going to know what's happening in every single case to the extent that I can. This person was a very, very committed, almost workaholic in a way that allowed them to micromanage to an extent that most elected officials would not choose to do. So in that period of time, I think what the public saw was an extremely harsh, inflexible DA's office that was in many ways difficult to deal with or work with because one person or two people were immediately needed for every step of getting a case to finish, to an end. ⁓ Charging decisions were very similar in that office. ⁓ there was a lot of layers of approval and hierarchy with this goal because this elected official really did think that the public elected me, not you, I'm going to make sure that you are engaging in this office in the way that I want you to. Now, on the other hand, I worked under another DA who's a very different kind of manager. He spent most of his, I would say, time, energy, and thought process on who he was hiring and what positions he was putting them in, in an effort to be able to rely on more discretion. Charging decisions in that office, while there was review, while there were obviously people checking in on things, there was more discretion in how you read the facts or how you looked at the evidence that was in place. there was more discretion in the way that you might plea a case. Nobody's doing anything unapproved, but people have a lot more flexibility because the manager has chosen to execute the duties that they were elected to execute in a very different way. And so I encourage any of you out there, if you're involved in local politics or if you vote, if you go to any debates where you get to talk to someone who's running for DA, The best questions to ask them are not necessarily those about their philosophy, their personal philosophy. The best questions to ask are about their management philosophy. How much discretion do you think it's appropriate for an unelected city paid or municipality paid or state paid government employee to have over a citizen's life? And if so, if they get to have any. How are you going to police that discretion and make sure that it's applied in a way that is non-discriminatory? Andrew Heacock: And who's policing the prosecutors basically. Victoria Cvitanovic: Exactly. And there should be an answer. The fact of the matter is these offices live and breathe on organization. Somebody has to be able to take responsibility and be like, the buck stops with me. I am the one that signed off on that plea deal. I am the one that signed off on that indictment, or I am not. And the way that that person exercises that authority and how much they accept it versus how much they try to push it away and like, throw underlings under the bus when something's not politically popular tells you a lot about the administration of justice in your particular area. Those managerial skill questions are so important and I wish we saw more coverage of that in local elections. Andrew Heacock: There's an understanding of what they do, of what DAs do. I think that they've been a lot in the news. mean, the last 10 years, there's been a lot of discussion of criminal justice reform, obviously, starting going back to, I guess, Ferguson in 2015. And there has been this movement towards progressive policing, but also progressive prosecution. And there's a lot of noise and discourse, especially around, I think, some prosecutors in major cities in the West Coast that deprioritize certain kinds of offenses. Victoria Cvitanovic: Exactly. Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: Could you kind of just explain what the controversy is about? Like what those approaches are about and, you know, just any other kind of thoughts you have on how things went in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Victoria Cvitanovic: Sure, so the concept of progressive prosecution refers to a whole lot of things, but what we're really trying to get at is changing the purpose of the DA's office. The DA's office is not just society's punishment stick. It's not just the place we go to discipline people. Instead, it is part of reforming our communities to be healthier, closer, and better equipped to take care of each other. And if you change that philosophy, You ask prosecutors to start asking the question, is pursuing these criminal charges actually what's best for society? Or is it just what is required by the law? Is it just the letter of the law? That question in and of itself brings up a big ethical debate about the purpose of prosecutors. Like we said, in the DA's office, one person is elected, but it could be hundreds of people that are involved in the actual prosecution of cases. when you look at the statutes you are looking at supposedly what your elected officials have said is the will of the people to be criminalized conduct, to be conduct for which people are punished. And so when you ask a DA to start asking the question is bringing these criminal charges actually what's best for society, you're on one hand introducing an element of compassion that could be very good for our communities. On the other hand, you're introducing an element of discretion that leads to the question, well, wait, better in whose mind? Whose standard is being applied here when we're talking about deprioritizing this offense or not bringing these charges against this person? What is it that's persuasive or not? This goes back to the problem I originally brought up with discrimination happening in DA's offices, being tied to your relationship with the person that's telling you information on the other side. Can you really say if a lawyer has been dishonest with you before or been rude to you before that you're going to take the information they give you and apply these compassion principles in the same way you would with someone you've trusted for 15 or 20 years? Every time we introduce discretion, into the prosecutorial process, we introduce another point at which discrimination could happen. That is, for many people, deeply frightening and undermines a little bit of our trust in the ability of DA's offices to be a part of revitalizing and rebuilding our communities. That has worked out in some situations. There are definitely places where people have largely agreed. about deprioritizing, say, cannabis offenses. And we've seen these low-level prosecutions drop off without some major increase in crime. That's fantastic. On the other hand, we have seen real serious debates about whether or not introducing this kind of discretion into the process creates yet another opportunity for people who are dependent on, public defenders or who are marginalized or who don't speak the language. be discriminated against because they can't plead their compassionate case as well as somebody else might be able to. Andrew Heacock: That's a fascinating point and it's kind of runs counter to what I would think of with discretion, which is to me, I'm thinking someone has the discretion to be lenient. ⁓ It's something that comes up with like ⁓ federal sentencing guidelines. And I know you operated a different system than you operated in New Orleans, but I mean, I think if you can correct me if I'm wrong, I think we've eliminated almost entirely parole and federal sentencing and a lot of drug crimes are federal prosecutions under the Controlled Substances Act. And judges literally don't have much discretion to, you know, Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: with the number of years they're going to award from a conviction. And I've always thought of this problem in terms of an injustice where judges should be able to say, look, justice does not serve this person spending their life in prison. For this offense, I should be able to award less. And ⁓ that's how I've been thinking of it. So to hear you say, the more discretion people have, the more opportunity for discrimination. Well, of course, that does also make sense. And you do have this challenge. You've kind of had the two, and the two prosecutors that you worked for, I think it sounds like you saw. you know, both ends of the spectrum, both approaches. Do you have any thoughts on which one from your personal experience seemed to work better? Victoria Cvitanovic: say that I can't really give the conclusion that one is better than the other because once again it comes to like whose perspective is it better for? Is it better for me as an employee? Is it better for me as a citizen? I'm not really sure. But what I can say is it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If what you're trying to accomplish is even enforcement of the law as written without leniency but also without this increase in particularly serious cases or against people that just get under somebody's skin. If you're trying to get equal enforcement, that very tight control and discretion does make a lot of sense. However, I think what a lot of us are realizing as we live in society is that it's very difficult to change the law and that the law is often written hypothetically. It's written detached from a real life situation. the people who are passing these laws are very often not the people who are enforcing them. So when you live with this and you see the person on the other side of the aisle from you experience very serious consequences for an offense that only harmed themselves or an offense that didn't involve violence or involve hurting anyone, it can be deeply difficult as a human being to go, yes, fairness was the solution here. This is definitely what we needed. I understand deeply the argument that having the discretion to be lenient introduces the argument of why were you lenient to him and not to them. But I think it serves humanity better overall for us to focus in on creating a system where we can trust people to be lenient. And whether that means changing the way that judges are elected and appointed, whether that means changing the way that cases are presented, whether that means changing the law itself, I think our focus should not be on how are individual DAs running their DA's offices. I think it should be on creating a system where no matter who we have elected as DA, we trust the system to be resilient enough to deliver something closer to justice. Andrew Heacock: So ⁓ was there a particular event or case that caused you to make the decision to leave the prosecutor's office? Or what was that process like for you? What were you going through at the time and what did you do next? Victoria Cvitanovic: Yeah, so I mentioned that I left and went back and then left again. I'll focus on the second time that I left, the time that I was out for good. I had gone back and I had ended up being the chief of the juvenile division. And I was going through the process of working on internal policies for how children were to be transferred to adult court if they were ever transferred to adult court. There are a lot of people who are of the opinion that a child should never be transferred to adult court. And that is an opinion that makes a lot of sense to me. On the other hand, I repeatedly saw situations where due to sentencing caps and due to underfunded ⁓ administrative infrastructure, children were committing additional crimes that were very violent, that deeply hurt people, and that were very dangerous. but any sentence that they served would simply add on to what they were already serving. They weren't going to get any additional kind of punishment or instruction or work because of this additional offense. And that left me in a really complicated position. Something else left me in a really complicated position too. And that was the idea of designating certain crimes as automatic transfers and certain crimes as not automatic transfers. For example, think about an attempted murder. In an attempted murder, the offender does exactly what they would do in a murder, except for medical care, luck, intervention, the will of the victim, whatever it is, resulted in a different outcome. I think there's something deeply unethical about sentencing a child to an extremely long amount of time or a very short amount of time in a more rehabilitational focused facility. based on the outcome of their conduct and not the conduct itself. That outcome-focused justice started to really bother me and get under my skin. So I started working with my leadership and my fellow prosecutors on what can we do to address this problem with outcome-focused justice and how can we be pro-child, pro-rehabilitation, pro-family. while also addressing the fact that these were very frightening violent acts and we have to do something to make sure that the community doesn't experience this again. Where does the compromise lie? And when we started digging into this and looking at options for say bifurcated sentencing where a child serves part of their time in a juvenile facility and then does some additional time in an adult facility after becoming an adult, but then still has a reduced sentence over what they would have gotten in adult court. Are these things actually feasible? And what we were finding was that the system as it is set up right now is fairly inflexible when it comes to addressing these more complex ethical issues. And over time, I got to a point where I realized that it may not be the best place for me to address the issues that deeply bothered me. The things that I really cared about, I felt like I could do more as a private attorney to address and also could do more as an educator to address when I wasn't in such a position where every time someone heard me talk, they would associate me with a certain politician or a certain office. I needed the freedom to talk about these things on my own and I needed the ability to step back and go with some more perspective, with a little less adrenaline in my system and a little more time to think. What is it that I can offer people to help solve this problem? Andrew Heacock: And what was that? Where did that lead you? Victoria Cvitanovic: So at first it led me into being a private lawyer. I started focusing in on healthcare. That was really where I started. I saw so many people, so many kids especially, that should have had more medical intervention, should have had more support, should have had all of those things. And I just needed to understand. My professional curiosity and my personal morals got me to a point where I was like, I've got to get this. So I started working in healthcare and that led me to working in healthcare technology and starting to understand how the harvesting of data and the movement of money were influencing the ways that legislation got passed even in the criminal system. ⁓ I thought I would do that forever. I got to a point where I learned these things and I was starting to offer educational classes and I was starting to write and I was starting to talk to people. and go present on panels and ask more complicated ethical questions than I think most people think about the criminal justice system. And I thought that that was gonna be my whole life. Then I had my own experience with injury and I became disabled and my purpose changed. Andrew Heacock: What was that like? What was that event? Victoria Cvitanovic: So I got hurt at the gym. I used to do a lot of aerial sulks. It was super fun. It like the best ⁓ workout ever. And I was just in a freak accident. It was one of those things that would never happen again, you know? But I slipped and I fell the wrong way. And when I did, I seriously injured my back. And I was left with chronic pain, mobility issues, and a very long road to recovery ahead of me. As somebody who... Andrew Heacock: that sounds amazing. Victoria Cvitanovic: had been working in the healthcare system and in healthcare tech to then go from being someone who was supposed to be an expert in this field to someone experiencing it and someone at its mercy. ⁓ my gosh, my perspective just changed again. I thought that I was aware of the problems in the system. I thought that I was... advising people to move forward in a more ethical way, and then all of a sudden I was in the most helpless position I've ever been. And the world taught me what it's like to acquire a disability, and what it's like to then live as a person with an acquired disability who knows that they're going to be dependent on this system, at least in some ways, for the rest of their life. Andrew Heacock: Man, can't, yeah, I'm just wondering what that was like for you at an emotional level. mean, there's like a lot of identity comes from our ability, you know, and, or just the things that we're able to do and having then lost that. And then also having this professional identity around your knowledge and sophistication with which you understand these systems or, or, then to find, to find that to be challenged. I mean, what was it like for you just with your own mental health? I mean, to, be able to get through that. Victoria Cvitanovic: Sure, so I'll be very honest. ⁓ I'm sure it's not going to surprise anyone listening that a lawyer identified really heavily with what they were able to achieve. I really identified with what I was able to achieve. I loved doing difficult sports. was a big into aerial. I was big into like synchronized swimming. I loved pushing myself. And there was something about pushing myself that made me feel like me, that made me feel alive. At this time in my life when all of this was going on, I was starting to connect deeper with my Buddhist faith. I was becoming more observant in my Zen practice. And for whatever reason, I did not yet associate that feeling of achievement making me feel alive with attachment. It hadn't occurred to me yet that you could be attached to your own body or that you could be attached to a version of your own body. And then all of a sudden, I learned very quickly. very, very quickly, that ⁓ the version of your body that you're living in is temporary. Everything about it is temporary and everything about it is so incredibly fragile. I did not know until I got hurt that the average person will acquire a disability during their lifetime if they live long enough. Most of us are going to go through this experience, whether it happens slowly or quickly, of losing the ability to do something we could do before. Something that we maybe took for granted or felt like breathing. Learning that lesson was not easy. I went from being somebody who was surrounded by a good group of friends, I have a lovely, wonderful husband who is super supportive, I had these great hobbies that made me feel alive, to someone who was sitting on the floor of their house, unsure if they would ever be able to stand up by themselves again, sobbing, just grieving. Why did I never enjoy it before this? I remembered getting in the car after going to the gym and talking to my husband about how I hate that I have a lower stomach pooch or I hate that when I point my feet they don't look super pointed because my arches are really tight. I remembered all of those conversations and they all came flooding back to me at once in like stereo sound of, my god, I never appreciated it. I had all this stuff I could have been happy about. I had all these times I could have been proud of myself. I had all these things I could have enjoyed. And I never noticed. I let it all pass me by. And now, in that moment, sitting on the ground, knowing that I was about to have back surgery, I knew it would never feel like that again, that it would never come that easily, that I would never move that way again, and that I hadn't appreciated it while I had it. So my mental health took a turn. focused not only just on grief, the grief of losing the body I had, the grief of realizing I wasn't the person I thought I was, who appreciated it in the way that I thought I did, but also the grief of realizing that I now lived in a bit of a separate reality from most of the people I was closest to. It is very difficult for someone who's never had a long-term injury or been ill for a long time to conceptualize what it means when you say, it will hurt forever. and also I'm going to live a good life. That combination was also very hard for me to connect with people over. I struggled with my mental health the most in moments when people would look at me and say things like, I don't know how you do it. I couldn't do it if I were you. I didn't have a choice. And in those moments when people said that to me, all I thought was great. They don't think my life's worth living. Great. They don't think my body is worth being yet. this life that I have that I've managed to cobble together that I've gripped back from the brink of the worst pain I've ever experienced is not enough because every moment of it comes with pain. And so rectifying in my mind that not only could I have a life that involved pain that was good and not only could I tell people that them have whatever reaction they had to it and it wasn't mine and still be able to love myself and still be able to enjoy myself even though my body wasn't perfect or didn't fit this standard of healthy. It was just so confusing and it was just so much to take in that I felt like I lost a year just to processing what it means to become disabled and still love your life. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, there's so many things that I can relate to. I've had a similar experience with physical injury, more with psychic injury, but ⁓ the thing that stands out to me is the self-contempt, like you blaming yourself. I wasn't grateful enough for this body that I had, which is kind of from the outside, a really unhelpful way to think, but it's such a natural human response. And people just don't, if you haven't been through it, you don't understand things like that. And so people will say things like, I don't know how you do it. couldn't do this if I was you. And they say things like that that are, think, well-meaning and yet so counter, so counterproductive. And, ⁓ you know, people would ask me, why are you depressed? It's like the worst thing you can ask to someone who's depressed. They don't know. It's not like they're, not like they made the wrong conclusion about life. You know, it's just, it's this thing that you're going through. And, ⁓ I always wonder if I could go back in time and tell the people who are in my life, some of the right things to say, do I know what those right things would be now? And I'm wondering if, if you had the similar. Victoria Cvitanovic: think so too. Andrew Heacock: inside of like, if you could go back to that time and tell the people in your life, the right things to say to you, what would those things be? Victoria Cvitanovic: that all the time during that period of my life. And I think now, years later, when my life is much better and I'm looking back with a lot more clarity, the answer has changed from what I would have said when I was at the height of that depression and anger and sadness. At the height of that depression, anger and sadness, if you had asked me, what do you want the person across from you to say? I would have said nothing. I want them to listen to me. I want them to give me a hug. I want to be supported in this moment. Now, looking back with a little bit more clarity on the situation, I realize that sometimes people need to say something so that they know that you know that they care. And I wish that instead of highlighting my new injury or disability and almost fetishizing the ability to overcome and get past this, that they had said, man, this is really hard. That's really hard. I wish they had been okay with being uncomfortable. I wish they had been willing to sit across from me in reality, in the reality that I was living in, and say, man, that sucks. I'm really sorry. I wish that we could have avoided skipping all the hard parts and dressing this up like it was some sort of Hallmark movie that was going to end with me scoring a touchdown or something and get to the part where we were two people again, experiencing really different versions of what it meant to be in a human body and being okay with the fact that one of those versions was very painful at that time. I think if I could go back and tell people in my life This is what I want to hear. What I would say is the truth. I want to hear the truth. Andrew Heacock: For me, I've had the experience quite often, I used to be terrified of saying the wrong thing. And I'm the kind of person that can, that can kind of babble sometimes when I get nervous, I've gotten better at it. But there's that fear and I've sometimes I just don't know what to say. And so recently I've taken to saying, you know, I'm not really sure what to say. Like, I mean, just the most authentic thing I can say is like, this seems so hard and I, I don't know what to say, but like, I'm going to stand here and be next to you or whatever, you know, which I think probably matters more. Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. that. Andrew Heacock: you is just to be like the authenticity, the thing you said about scoring the touchdown. I would, that's what I kept thinking it was. It's like sometimes when people are trying to cheer you up, but like, you know, it's bullshit and they know it's bullshit, but like social niceties dictate that you're supposed to just pretend that you're grateful. And it's hard. Like when these hard things happen in life, we don't really have a good manual in our society for, for how to, how to handle these things. And if we ever did, think we've lost access to that, to that skill. Victoria Cvitanovic: think you're very right about we don't have a manual, but what we do have are a lot of like assigned societal roles that people are supposed to fall into. What I learned really quickly as like a high achieving career driven person who had this physical injury happen to them that was very like life changing in the moment and was very life changing very quickly was that I got assigned the role of you are supposed to be inspiring. You are supposed to be super positive. You're supposed to be inspiring. You're supposed to, you're supposed to remind people that if they ever end up in this horrible situation that they're very afraid of, because all of us know deep down that you could be me at any moment in time, that they could get through it. You're supposed to be this like shining beacon of hope in what is ultimately an uncontrollable and very frightening prospect of being human and being fragile. Getting assigned that role, from the person across from me took me out of my humanity. It reduced me down to something flat and a caricature of myself. And while I did also want to be positive, I wanted to live a good life after my injury and still be excited. And I recognized that I was lucky to have health insurance and a family that cared and friends that supported. I also was more than that. I wasn't just this inspiration for the person sitting across from me. I was a person. And the second that I saw that person flatten me into this societally assigned role, I couldn't help but feel disconnected from them. And that loneliness, that gap between who I was and who these people knew that I was, and who society had conditioned them to react to me as, that gap was loneliness. And that was what took the largest toll on my mental health. Over time, experiencing that loneliness over and over and over in conversation after conversation after conversation triggered me into this deep depression that had nothing to do with the amount of pain I was in and a whole lot to do with the fact that I thought that pain meant that I couldn't connect to people anymore. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, ⁓ I feel that. The loneliness is something I've experienced too. I mean, I had for years, I was basically disabled by what people kept saying was depression, but I now understand was PTSD, acute PTSD. And ⁓ one of the things that was so hard about it, and I've committed like I've studied filmmaking, I might make a movie about it, because I just want people to understand what it's like. It was so frustrating to be like, why can't I get people to fucking understand that everything is impossibly hard? and I didn't have any kind of physical manifestation, I didn't have a diagnosis, but that was the hardest part on my mental health to the depression because I think the depression and loneliness and depression and isolation and disconnection are basically synonymous for us as creatures. I you mentioned we started this conversation talking about psychedelics, they act on the serotonin 2A receptor, right? And a lot of people will say in medicine, oh, serotonin regulates mood. I don't think so because like plants have serotonin and I don't think plants have mood. and also like lobsters and other creatures have serotonin systems. I think it regulates social behavior. And because we're social creatures, we experience disruptions in our sociality as depression or mania or whatever. And ⁓ one of the most reliable ways to torture someone is to isolate them. You can probably attest to that from coming from criminal justice. And there is a kind of loneliness that if you haven't experienced it, it's hard to intellectualize of Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: being alone in a crowd of people. Like being feeling completely and totally alone everywhere you go, no matter how many people are around you. And in fact, the more people that are around, the lonelier you feel. And that's just, I've had that experience and it's coming up for me just hearing your story and saying like, that's the hardest part is just not being able to get people to understand and feeling like you're a burden for even wanting them to. Victoria Cvitanovic: Yeah, it's interesting to me that you bring it back to psychedelics right now, because that's actually what happened in my life. ⁓ At this point, when I was at my deepest, darkest place, I was in many ways in a crowd of people. I was attending temple and surrounded by other Zen practitioners. I had my friends, I had my family, I had my husband, I had all of this support and I could not connect with them. There's actually a client of mine that reached out to me and said, Victoria, you're suffering and you don't have to. I think that you should try psychedelic assisted therapy. And I laughed at her. And this is the sweetest person. This is somebody I had a great relationship with, but I was caught really off guard by the idea that this person who came out of criminal justice, this person who had this Zen practice and didn't even drink alcohol despite living in New Orleans would engage with psychedelics that seemed crazy to me, that seemed so far outside of what I would ever choose. And I just burst out laughing. It was the first time I'd laughed in a long time. really remember that. And she smiled at me, this like incredibly patient smile and said, oh, you will, you will. And just nodded and laughed while I shook my head no and hung up the phone and called my priest. So, in Zen for those of you listening who maybe haven't experienced that practice. Students often connect with a teacher who's maybe the head of their temple or maybe somebody that they practice with through a network of temples or something like that. And my teacher was somebody I met because he picked me up at the airport. He literally picked me up to the airport for a retreat. Our group of temples were going on a retreat together and we got into talking and I realized I really wanted to learn from him. And, you know, years had passed. I was in the process of studying for ⁓ receiving my Jukai at this time or formally taking the vows of becoming a Zen Buddhist. And I truly was not expecting the call that I got from this person who was in many ways my spiritual guide. He calls me and he asked me a question that changed the course of my life. And it was, Victoria, are psychedelics about connection or are they about escapism? And while I didn't answer the question at the time, something shifted in my brain in that moment that has stayed shifted ever since. All it took was a sentence for me to realize that, wait, my clients, my family, my friends are not telling me about this new therapy. They're not telling me about this new thing because they want me to go, quote unquote, get high and run away from my problems. These people miss me. They're feeling it too. They're feeling that lack of connection too. They see that something's changed. They see that I'm hurting. And while they might not have said the perfect thing at every moment, they recognized that this disconnect wasn't going to get solved by me continuing to wallow in feeling upset about it. I needed some chance to shift my thinking. I needed some help. And this person was here offering me an opportunity at help in a way that was different. I want to point out that at the time this question was asked to me, I was in therapy. I was on antidepressants. I was exercising and doing physical therapy. I was meditating every day. I was doing all of the stuff people tell you to do to work on pulling yourself out of a depression, and it wasn't moving. I felt incredibly stuck. And this path opened. Andrew Heacock: What was that like? You said it wasn't moving and I was kind of wondering, was it making any difference or was it making no difference? And you kind of said, you're saying things weren't moving with the depression, you're doing all these things. How did that feel? mean, what was it going through that? Victoria Cvitanovic: Yeah. As an achiever, it shook my underlying philosophy in a way that I don't think I've ever gotten back from. So I had always thought you work hard, you apply yourself, you check the boxes, you complete the steps, and you'll get the result that you were told that you would get. And it seemed really simple to me. ⁓ I'm depressed. Let me Google what depressed people are supposed to do to help. and I'll go talk to my doctor and I'll go talk to a therapist and I'll keep every appointment and I'll work out every single time they tell me I'm supposed to work out and I'll make sure I see the sun every day and I'll take time to watch the sunset and the stars. I'll journal, I'll write poetry, I'll cry, I'll say affirmations into the mirror. I went down the list and I felt the same. I didn't feel worse, I didn't feel better, I felt deeply disconnected. from the life that I had before, and I had no idea how to start building a new life. And ultimately, it was the recognition that I am not able to do this on my own. And my community has brought me an opportunity to try something different that led me to be okay with taking a step outside of my comfort zone and trying an experience that I hadn't had before. Andrew Heacock: What did that look like for you specifically? Did you go within the regulated system or that was that available to you at the time? Victoria Cvitanovic: It was. So actually started out with something a lot of people would not call psychedelic assisted therapy. I started out with ketamine assisted therapy or CAT. ⁓ Ketamine is often called a dissociative anesthetic, although that term actually comes from the wife of one of the first two people to synthesize it. It was a marketing term. Because ketamine was first synthesized around the time that political will for illegality of psychedelics was starting to start. Nevertheless, doesn't act like a traditional psychedelic. It acts on a different system, but it causes a very similar psychedelic experience at certain doses. So this therapist was offering intravenous in office off-label ketamine. Ketamine is a schedule three substance in the United States and off-label prescribing of schedule three substances happens when someone's condition and the medical literature line up such that it might be helpful for them in this non-FDA approved but still scientifically supported way. So I met with this doctor several times and we went through the process of talking about where I was at in therapy, what my medications were, the things I had tried, and ultimately this feeling of I am just stuck here. I've done all of the stuff. I've checked all of the boxes and like feel the same and I'm starting to feel like I'm never going to get better. So ultimately after that medical clearance and that screening, we decided to go through with treatment. And I'll never forget that first treatment. ⁓ As some of you listening might recognize from my mannerisms, I have autism. And because of that autism and because of this doctor's experience with working with women with autism, we decided to go in for a fairly high dose for a first experience for someone. And for me, it was truly earth shattering. I remember coming to after this experience and this practitioner was holding my hand. And I remember just holding her hand back and looking at her and saying, you have to let me look at your insurance right now. You have to let me look at your insurance. This can never go away. This can never go away. Somebody has to be offering this kind of help. And so my first ketamine integration session was me sitting down and going through this person's insurance policies with her. and showing her different ways that she could better protect her practice and protect herself because I was so moved by the fact that I could feel anything other than sad and that I could have this space to just grieve and be sad and be upset and there was nobody who was pressuring me to feel or look or perform one way or the other that I just knew it had to stay. So... We sat on her floor and we went through all of her insurance policies. And after that, we decided that like, look, you've got all these skills as a corporate lawyer, a criminal lawyer, tech lawyer, a healthcare lawyer. Why don't we see what that would look like applying it to people trying to work within regulated psychedelics? And so I started helping ketamine clinics and then it became cannabis medicine. and then it became researchers and people who were pursuing pharmaceutical licenses, and then it became practitioners and retreat centers, and it just kept expanding from there. And before I knew it, I was at a point where I had to choose between my then corporate job or focusing on this, focusing on bringing those skills to this emerging space. And I'm so glad that I took that leap, but I never would have without that first experience. Andrew Heacock: It's such an amazing story. I'm just thinking back now to what you were saying as you were feeling restless at your time at the prosecutor's office and really concerned with the way that technology interacts with data and capital and the way that it makes access to conditional for a lot of people. ⁓ I just think it's so incredibly you could, guess you could call it fortuitous fate, destiny, one of these things that kind of makes sense to you after you've had a psychedelic experience that you would find that in this practice in a way, I think at the time as you were a prosecutor, probably never would have considered didn't exist. It's not a path that existed. I think probably at that time and to find it through this terribly traumatic injury thing that you went through is Victoria Cvitanovic: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: one of these aspects of the human experience that again, like at least in English, we just don't have a word for this, but it's like you find what you're looking for through the worst pain you've ever experienced. And I'm just wondering, like when people, know, when we did our pre-interview, you talked about being invited on podcasts and people were like, how do I be a psychedelics lawyer? You know, do you ever, do you ever, it, does it ever like, are you ever tempted to say you can start by breaking your back? Like, you know, I mean like, Victoria Cvitanovic: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, I because because I'm sure that when you were in law school, you if you wanted to plot a course to where you are today, you couldn't. Victoria Cvitanovic: Absolutely not. Like I have not had a career I could have planned. And when people come to me and they say things like, oh, I want to be a psychedelics lawyer. I want to work with people who are in psychedelics. What do I do? The first thing I tell them is really explore why. You know, my why was I broke my back and this saved my life. You know, I hurt myself in this tremendously awful way that changed the course of my life. And these plants, these molecules, And more than that, these people really invested in giving me my life back. If you want to work in this community and you want to ask people who are going out on a limb, they're going so far past the normal amount of risk people accept in their lives to pay you money, to listen to your opinion, to engage with you at all, you better have a reason. There better be. not just something that you can offer the community, which is so much more important than just wanting to be here. But also there needs to be a why there needs to be a when people maybe don't trust you just yet. When you get extra scrutiny from officials or the government or your family or your friends, what are you what's going to keep you going when it's not ⁓ that's the cool job. What's going to keep you going when it's really scary? What's going to keep you going when it's really hard, there has to be an answer. And if the answer isn't tied to supporting the message that these plants and molecules and animals bring and supporting this community that so treasures it, then I suggest that you find another cool job. There are lots of cool jobs. Additionally, I think that often people think working in psychedelics or in cannabis means just knowing everything about psychedelics and cannabis. But the fact of the matter is when you're practicing in a highly, highly regulated space, you have to be so good at the basics. You have to know how to write contracts well. You have to know how to read contracts critically. You have to know how to engage with officials in a persuasive and also collaborative way. You have to be a great negotiator. You have to be good at anticipating risk. You have to be able to plan compliance. You have to have all of the same skills that would make you an excellent lawyer or an excellent whatever you are anywhere. So focusing on psychedelics is some sort of target without bringing with it everything that you need to actually uplift this community. think it's a mistake. I think it's focusing on yourself instead of focusing on what it was that made you interested in this in the first place. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, focusing on the cool job title without really considering what the work of doing that job would be like. Victoria Cvitanovic: Yeah, and it's scary for lawyers to take this stuff on. ⁓ There was an incident recently with a lawyer who I'm in an organization with around cannabis where this person not only was served with a subpoena by the DEA, but they had agents show up at their office and attempt to take not just the client files in the case that they were talking about, but every client's files. because they were alleging that this attorney was aiding and abetting in the manufacture and distribution of Schedule I substances. This attorney did not do that. This was just an attorney who's practicing law like anyone would practice law and zealously defending their clients. But because she worked in this regulated industry, this person was put under a higher level of scrutiny and they had to face more frightening consequences. risk is something that can't be understated. I know we see all the time people talk about like, ⁓ this is legal now or that's legal now. Look at the state of the actual law and then think about are you willing to advocate for a good faith change in the law? Are you willing to comply with the law as it exists right now knowing that you want it to be different? Knowing full well that by being involved in this field, by publicly saying you're involved in this field, by talking about what you've benefited from it, you are going to be viewed differently than other lawyers or other doctors or other whatever it is that you are. That kind of risk tolerance isn't of itself something that's only born of really pure motivation. And I hope that anyone who's considering calling themselves a psychedelics lawyer one day is thinking through whether that risk is right for them. Andrew Heacock: I'm reminded of a quote that, has stuck with me for a while since I heard it first. ⁓ someone asked the writer Christopher Hitchens, who's my favorite writer. ⁓ how do I become a writer? How do I be a professional writer? And what he said was if you can do anything else and be happy, do that because you'll fail. I mean, it becoming being a writer, there's such a high cost to it. And the probability of any kind of monetary reward is so unlikely, especially now. And this is, you know, that was in writing and publishing at that time, you could make good money. And it's not true of people that make art out of ⁓ recycled goods or things like that. I mean, any other kind of artist. And the only way to succeed is basically to have no other, to basically have no other choice, but then to do it because it's all you think about and it makes your heart sing and you're just dying to get it out. And I can relate to that in a lot of ways. This podcast is some of that for me. And also photography has been that in a different way because I don't have to use words, but, that's, that's satisfying. ⁓ and a completely different level for me. ⁓ it sounds like lot like what you're saying is that it's a passion. I mean, regardless of the fact that it's a career and that's a huge win. I know so many artists here that are so talented. I live in Nashville. So many artists are so incredible. The music people put out now with the technology available is awesome. And I know how badly they want to make it, not because they want the validation, but just because they want to not have to have another like a day job. You know, just the reward of this being what I do with my life. Victoria Cvitanovic: Yeah. Andrew Heacock: and I can support myself with it. And for most of them, that will not come. I mean, there are people with top 40 country hits that are driving for Uber in this town. And that's not uncommon now because of the way music royalties work or don't work. so it takes, I think what it, ⁓ it takes a certain amount of commitment to have a life that is exceptional. I just think there's a cost to being an exception ⁓ in any large group of people. And it sounds like that. there's a number of intersections in your life that you've mentioned that where, yeah, being, you know, not having the same story or path or interests as everyone else has left you in this position. And it is one of those things, it's like the feather in Forrest Gump, you know, it's just being blown in the wind and wherever it ends up is amazing, but that's kind of how life works. I think when we're doing it well, it's, we're allowing it to happen instead of trying to, trying to force it to a particular outcome. Victoria Cvitanovic: think so. And I think focusing on developing a skill was always a coping mechanism for me for being sad about something in society. Like when I went into healthcare law or when I went into technology law, it wasn't because I felt super passionately about technology or healthcare as a legal interest. It was because I felt like these systems didn't make sense and I didn't get it. And if I could just understand a little bit more. Maybe I could be a better advocate. Maybe I could be a better lawyer. Maybe I could force people into making some more ethical decisions. And so for me, it was learning one skill and then learning the next skill and then learning the next skill that landed me where I was. I was also incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by a whole lot of other exceptions. So my law firm, Rettick Law Group, is an all-female, all-plant medicine and emerging industries focused firm. that was born out of the legalization of cannabis in New York. They were building when equity licenses were coming online, and there was this grand attempt at having people who were affected by the war on drugs be the first ones to enter the legal cannabis market. it's a complicated time politically, complicated time legally, complicated time financially, and this firm was starting to build. They got to a point where they recognized that psychedelics are really different than cannabis law. And while a lot of people practice both, it's completely normal for a person to specialize in one or the other because fundamentally they are so different, they're regulated in such different ways. So when they got to a point where they wanted to add psychedelics into the practice, they did not just go to the website and do what a lot of people do and put cannabis, comma, psychedelics. They started looking for someone. who was working in this field and who understood how we had kind of gotten here with the emergence of ketamine clinics and the emergence of retreats that were booking patients in the US and then traveling and the emergence of these psychedelic churches. And they were finding people to talk to who had been involved in this work as a lawyer. And then when we found each other, there was this immediate, ⁓ we're supposed to work together. We have been the exceptions. We've all worked in the big law firms and we've done the big cases and we've had the ⁓ stability and the prestige that comes with quote unquote making it as an attorney. And we couldn't stop thinking about this. It didn't matter that we had achieved whatever we were supposed to achieve. We couldn't stop thinking about this. So I left my stable law firm where my husband still works and which was awesome to me and joined this group of women. who had that same level of, it doesn't matter. If I go to sleep and I'm not doing this, I can't sleep at night. If this is not what I'm thinking about or this is not what I'm pushing, I can't think at night. Then once we all got together, there was this real realization of, ⁓ we can do so much more together than we ever could alone. They didn't really expect, I think. that I would have this technology practice that focuses on AI developers and deployers in the psychedelic medicine space and in the wellness space. But when I brought that to them and said, is what I want to do, there was this freedom and flexibility and understanding of we can do this, we can figure it out. And that kind of commitment to a dream, it's just, it's holy to witness. It's something sacred. And I'm so glad that my work has become part of what is sacred to me. Andrew Heacock: I'm glad for you too. ⁓ It's a beautiful thing. I think most people, the idea that that's even a possibility wouldn't cross most people's mind. I mean, it never was for me. The idea that I would have a job that I enjoyed, mean, right out of high school, like if I'd probably done what I really wanted to do, I probably would have gone to LA and got into stand-up comedy or film or something like that. Something where I could just do public speaking all day. I thought I wanted to just be on to speak, to talk for a living. And I thought Fox News was going to be that. But then like Sarah Palin happened and I'm like, this is not happening for me. There's no way that I would make it like on there. I'm just not willing to lie about what I think is bullshit. So it was kind of homeless for that. And then podcasting has come along and it makes sense for me to have the, I keep the term creative freedom kept coming up when you're talking about like, I'm also interested in AI. Like you can, you can think about and work on the ideas and projects that are of interest to you. And you have other like-minded people. That's like, that's the dream for a lot of people. think for a lot of people, they're not even ambitious enough to have that dream because they don't know that it's available. Victoria Cvitanovic: Yeah, I was very lucky that I landed in this group of people that are just incredibly encouraging. When I was at my former firm, we were national counsel for certain lines of business for a really large technology company, one of the largest technology companies in the world. And I had this opportunity to work with world-class tech company litigators and start learning about AI defense and AI contracting and tech contracting. from these people who were doing it at a very high level. And I found myself taking night classes and working on the weekends and reading all of these books and getting certified and certified and certified because I loved the conversations I had with them and I just wanted to learn more. Then I had this tremendous moment in my life where my psychedelics and cannabis book had gotten to the point where I was getting pulled in two directions and I needed to choose. I was kind of getting shoved out of the nest as a little baby bird that had to make a decision to go be a big girl lawyer and handle my own book or stay in the safety of corporate America. And I allowed myself to be shoved. I allowed myself to kind of follow the feather, as you said earlier, of where my life was actually going. But when I landed here and we started doing this work, there was this immediate realization that I didn't learn all this stuff for nothing. There is so much data. being collected about people who seek psychedelic assisted therapy or use psychedelics, and not all of it is being collected with these people's sovereignty and individual rights in mind. The US is one of the few countries in the world, especially in what we would call the quote-unquote developed world, where data sovereignty is not automatic. We don't automatically have sovereignty over this information that we're asked about ourselves. And because of that, There's been a large acceptance in parts of society about collecting and using things for ⁓ tasks or for goals or purposes that maybe we didn't exactly consent to. And in psychedelic assisted therapy, we're seeing something happen that makes that very dangerous. A lot of states are considering state level psychedelic assisted therapy programs. where people can access psychedelic medicines, usually it's psilocybin or ibogaine that people are advocating for, in a medically integrated state legal way that allows them to work through the state's healthcare program to receive that care without traveling out of the US or doing something else. A lot of the programs that have been proposed, and the one that's been passed actually in the state where I live now in New Mexico, have qualifying medical conditions. that are required as kind of a gate for someone to pass through to access this level of care. That means the group of people that we're collecting data on for this therapy already are living with a stigmatized medical condition or mental health condition, a disability, something that is making it harder for them to participate in society. And so now we're collecting information in a program that gives away the fact that they're already dealing with that. And reveals that they have used a stigmatized, still schedule one in many cases, substance. So we now have this pod of incredibly vulnerable data from people who trusted us to engage in this novel therapy that might change mental health treatment forever. These are people who are pioneers, helping all of us live healthier lives, and we are collecting all of this data. And so the data attorney in me, the cyber attorney in me went, psychedelics practice isn't enough. It has to be a psychedelic cyber practice. It has to be a psychedelic AI practice because these people deserve their privacy and privacy has to be a community value or we are running towards a disaster. And I will not let my community be taken advantage of. Andrew Heacock: You know, hearing that sounds horrifying. And that's also like Tennessee, the state of Tennessee, the Medicaid program works its condition on having a certain condition. So if you're on Medicaid by definition that you had, doesn't, regardless of poverty, you also have to have muscle wasting syndrome from AIDS or cancer or some other kind of disability basically. And yeah, it's like a double stigma. Like it's a stigma that's dependent upon you condition on you having another stigma. And the thought came to me was I know so many people who probably will be listening to this to say, like why bother going through the regulated system anyway? Like what about there is this non-regulated system which we call black market or illegal ⁓ that is extant in the United States. A lot of it is involves or perhaps there's some gray area in there because you've mentioned churches and other organizations like that. Like what's the state of the law with regard to plant medicines and psychedelics outside of this specifically regulated ⁓ industry but that are also still for ceremonial or medicinal purpose. Victoria Cvitanovic: Sure. So I apologize if this is a little bit of a long answer because it's confusing, but I'll try to break it down as best I can. When we talk about most psychedelic medicines in the United States, we talked at the beginning of this about what a list might look like. Most of those things are going to fall in schedule one of the Federal Controlled Substances Act. That means from a nationwide perspective, the federal government is of the opinion that these things have no medical use, no recognized medical use, and a high potential for abuse. So those things are criminalized when we talk about possession of them, manufacture, distribution, or an attempt to do any of those things. You're going to face criminal liability either in the form of a fine, in the form of jail time, or sometimes both. That in and of itself tells a very distinct story that is far, far, far from the actual way that this works in society. We have this layer of criminalization happening at the federal level. But then at the state level, we start to see some movement because of the 10th Amendment. Under the 10th Amendment, we have something called the anti-commandeering clause, where the federal government cannot commandeer the resources of the state to make them enforce federal law. What that has developed into over the years is the ability of the states to pass laws that don't directly contradict, meaning they don't make a person break federal law to follow state law. They're allowed to pass these laws that don't directly contradict, but that allow people to engage in conduct that would otherwise be prohibited under federal law just in the states. We start to see this case law really develop around the time marijuana legalization becomes much more broad. And I do want to point out that I used the term marijuana there because that is the term the federal government uses, although I think cannabis is probably the better term for the plant. So we see this exception start to break out and people start to really push the limits of the 10th amendment. We start to see some cases about what a direct conflict is and then we start to see other broader challenges to this kind of blanket prohibition gain more ⁓ notoriety. we saw challenges begin with the Native American Church's use of peyote. And after the Native American Church's use of peyote was determined in one case to be a violation of the Controlled Substances Act, we saw Congress pass an act that, by the way, did not specifically exempt peyote or ⁓ benefit the Native American Church specifically at all. That would come later. But we saw them pass this act called RFRA. It's the Restoration of Religious Freedom Act. Versions of this have been passed in many state levels as well. Some of the states, though, I'll point out deliberately exempt entheogenic or psychedelic churches from their state level RFRA, but the federal government doesn't do that and most states don't do that. With the passage of RFRA and then later with the passage of other legislation that recognized legitimate use of peyote within the Native American church, people started to challenge prohibitions on possession and use of psychedelics in ritual circumstances or in ceremonial circumstances due to the fact that those prohibitions infringed on their sincerely held religious beliefs. There have been a lot of these cases and there have been hundreds more churches pop up than the cases themselves would even indicate. There is this widespread belief that if you call it religious use, you're legal and it's fine. That is not the case. What we have is Andrew Heacock: Thanks. Victoria Cvitanovic: Conduct that might be defensible under RFRA that you could still be arrested for and then you would have to prove and establish your RFRA rights. And then we have conduct that's actually been made legal because the DEA has granted an exemption petition, as well as in some cases, import-export permits, allowing certain churches to engage in very specific activity with these substances. Now... The last time I looked at the number of exemption petitions that had been granted, there were six. Think about how many psychedelic or entheogenic churches you see just on Instagram versus that low, low number of permits. A lot of Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Is an exemption position, if it's granted, is that a continuing exemption? Like an organization receives it and it's not for a specific use or do they need to continue to reapply? Or are you just saying there six organizations that can use it? Victoria Cvitanovic: So an exemption petition exempts very specific conduct when it's conducted within that organization as it exists. So if the organization were to close or to change or the conduct were to change, the exemption petition wouldn't apply. The way that this has worked in the United States so far is peyote churches and ayahuasca churches that have single substance use, very defined philosophies, a clear ⁓ ceremony associated with their use, diversion controls, all of these things in place have been the ones that have been granted exemption positions. We've also seen lawsuits about this. I very much encourage anyone who's listening to look at the singularism lawsuit that's currently happening in Utah. It's a very different kind of entheogenic church that is pushing the limits of rifer recognition that we've seen so far. The fact of the matter is simply calling something religious use may make that use defensible depending on how you can articulate it, but it's not going to automatically prevent you from being arrested or from facing consequences for possession of a controlled substance or the manufacturer distribution thereof. Those things are still going to be problematic. Andrew Heacock: So because you've got an individual prosecutor who could use their discretion, right? Or you've got a prosecutor's office that may say, we're going to take this approach to this. What is, when you say defensible and think, I assume you mean like in a criminal prosecution, you could, you could maybe raise a defense and maybe succeed on legal grounds. Get the case dismissed on religious grounds. What's the cost of that? Like, what does it cost to defend a prosecution for a controlled substances charge? Victoria Cvitanovic: Exactly. that's highly variable depending on where you are, but what I will say is that an affirmative defense like I have refer rights to use this and my use is religious are often far more expensive than a simple criminal defense. The ⁓ the affirmative burden that you take upon yourself when you say that yes I did do it but and then give your affirmative defense for why that conduct was not criminal That requires such a high level of research, often requires experts, it often requires significant discovery back and forth to establish those facts and a number of witnesses. Those things all add to the cost. Think about it, in the United States, if you are a criminal defendant in a case, you can sit and do nothing. You don't have to speak, you don't have to call a witness, you don't have to do anything. because the entire burden rests on the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you engaged in the conduct they have charged you with. If you do nothing and they don't meet their burden, it doesn't matter. They have not met their burden and you are not going to be found guilty. However, if you take the burden on yourself by depending on an affirmative defense, the one we're almost familiar with is probably self-defense, but RFRA ends up working a lot like this. It starts with an admission. Yes, the conduct that you have said that I engaged in is in fact something that I engaged in, but it wasn't criminal because, and then you have to establish all those facts. Think about how much more expensive it is when you have the burden, and then you have some understanding of how complicated this can be. Additionally, I want to encourage anyone who's listening to check out the US versus Cody case that's happening right now in Alabama. It's a really good illustration of how criminal liability in churches can intersect. In that case, the DEA intercepted a delivery of a DMT-containing substance to a woman, Ms. Cody, who was running an entheogenic church. After that controlled delivery, they indicted her for ⁓ possession and distribution of controlled substances. She chose to contest the indictment to attempt to get the indictment dismissed. That's a very early stage in litigation to start accruing these kinds of big expenses. And yet, she had to fight that soon, that early, and she wasn't successful. This person ran a church, their church was well documented, they had a whole lot of materials and formalities in place. But the fact of the matter was, for her, two people that had been to her retreats were subpoenaed and called to the witness stand, and both of them said, Andrew Heacock: Mm-hmm. Victoria Cvitanovic: wasn't there for a religious experience. I was there for, in one case it was PTSD and in the other case it was alcoholism. So that kind of intense factual defense can become so important so early in these entheogenic church cases that it can be a very expensive way of having defensible Andrew Heacock: Right. Well, and that's kind of like it's there's this term lawfare that's kind of in the news now where I mean, can essentially you can prosecute people spurious ly and just bankrupt them. I mean, and it's still like, or they just run out of money and they end up having to take a plea because they can't afford to mount a meaningful defense. And you see this a lot, I think of the federal prosecutions and things like Espionage Act. ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, I mean, it kind of goes back to kind of where we were about an hour ago. talking about justice being unequal because of these Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: because of the discretion that people have to make these charges or to really just reach extra hard on your aggressive interpretation of what conduct is legal and what's not, because you disapprove socially of what the conduct is. Victoria Cvitanovic: Yeah, and I'll also point out in the Cody case, there were a lot of attempts to compromise that I thought were very telling and interesting about the way that society's attitudes have changed around entheogenic churches. There was an offer for this person to go through the DEA exemption process and see what happened and put the charges on hold and be in diversion until the DEA comes with a decision. There was also an option to go into diversion while the ⁓ civil lawsuit about these rights were pending under Alabama's RFRA statute. Those options weren't taken and this person decided to go forward with challenging the indictment on their religious beliefs. It really goes to show even in the deep south, people have started to recognize that psychedelics can be legitimate part of someone's religious practices. And although in this case, thus far, We haven't gotten a recognition of that religious use as excusing this conduct. What we have seen are very telling, interesting ⁓ looks into the way people process how a jury or how a judge is going to react to psychedelic religious use. I think 10 years ago, that motion to dismiss the indictment would have looked a lot different than it did this time around. Andrew Heacock: Yeah, just because of, I I think that the cause of religious freedom generally is going to be very salient in Alabama. ⁓ But the thing that surprises me, what I think of your kind of implying is that ⁓ that usually would, and historically would be my religion, know, Christianity in general and, you know, Northern Alabama, I'm assuming. But I think the idea that... ⁓ a Christian conservative community might find common cause with people that are using these substances or also just sympathy for the fact that someone would say, no, I took it because I have PTSD. And then the idea that that makes it criminal ⁓ at that point when, you know, I mean, part of what heals the PTSD is that you have a religious experience, you know, I mean, that sounds, you know, basically there, it's kind of hard to separate the two. ⁓ And it's a fascinating, fascinating development in the area of law and ⁓ Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: I want to kind of show my cards a little bit as a host because we're running a little, we've agreed on two hours and there's a couple more things I was hoping to ask you about. ⁓ is it possible if we run over a little bit? Yeah. Okay. So the one thing I've been just curious about noodling over the whole time we've been talking is just the intersection between Zen Buddhism or Buddhism and meditation and psychedelics and why people that have experienced both have interests in both. And so I'd love to, if we have time, I just, from your perspective, since you've experienced both to share on that. Victoria Cvitanovic: Okay, yeah. Andrew Heacock: maybe from an experiential perspective, before, like what's really been burning in my mind for about an hour now is ⁓ you mentioned earlier when you're talking about your first ketamine experience, you said, I think people might be able to tell from the way I present that I have autism. And I found that statement very surprising ⁓ because in my opinion, I would never have guessed that you had autism now. ⁓ So, and I've been thinking about this since we talked a few days ago and you mentioned that you had this diagnosis that I realized like I, I have a bias about ⁓ autism and autism spectrum. And what I see is kind of diagnostic creep that is probably, sure because of ignorance, because I literally know very little about the science of it, the felt experience of living on the spectrum and how it's diagnosed, et cetera. And also because I grew up in the nineties and in Louisiana and people with autism by definition were not high functioning. I think probably at that time in our understanding of the science, you wouldn't get the diagnosis unless there was a severe Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: impairment and that's kind of the opposite of the way that you communicate is severely impaired. I mean, I find you to be an incredibly compelling and effective communicator. ⁓ So I just thought that statement was interesting and I wanted to reflect it back to you and just kind of ask, ⁓ what can you tell us about like, what is autism? What does it mean to live with it? How does it feel? And what is it like in your life, et cetera. Victoria Cvitanovic: Thank you for that question. That's a very good question. ⁓ I just want to point out that how autism feels for me is probably not representative of how it feels for everyone who's on the spectrum. But what I can say is I've known my entire life that I was easily overstimulated and easily exhausted by external sensory stuff and that it was essential to my ability to connect with other people and to function in society. ignore those feelings and stuff them down as deep as I possibly could and try to behave as if my comfort, ⁓ if my ability to feel present in my own body was not important and that I just had to be okay with it. I've heard now that I have a diagnosis that from the time I was really small, people who were close to me suspected that I might have some kind of sensory difference or some kind of sensory processing issue. because I would struggle so much with just sitting in a room with the lights on over my head all day, come home and be just so unbelievably drained. I felt compelled to express myself verbally, very precisely, in ways that didn't always match the way that other people communicated back to me. I felt constantly like everything was too open. and I found myself doing things like walking around with noise canceling headphones on or walking around with blackout glasses on just in an attempt to make the world not feel so intrusive into my body. We've talked a little bit about how I went through a period of depression after my injury. Shortly before my injury had happened, I had started therapy because this overstimulation and this constantly feeling like everything is so loud and everything is so itchy and everything is so bright was starting to affect my joy, my happiness when I was doing things I otherwise liked doing. ⁓ And I didn't know how to explain to someone that I hung out with on a regular basis that that pasta tasted really loud or that light was interfering with my ability to hear the person across from me. And so I'd started talking to a therapist and one day my therapist asked me, Victoria, do you know what code I use to bill your insurance? And I thought that that was so interesting. So it's like, no, I've never asked. I assumed it was like depression or anxiety. And she laughed and she goes, I'm going to send you to see my colleague and I want you to talk to them. And I want you to like go through the assessment that they offer and see if it teaches you anything about yourself. And I showed up at this office and the sign on the door literally said autism and ADHD therapy. And did not occur to me that I was there because I might have autism or ADHD. I just thought that that was the sign on the door. And walked in and met this woman who was like, hi, you seem like a very intelligent, engaging individual, but you also seem like you might be engaging in this Andrew Heacock: It's. Victoria Cvitanovic: behavior that we call masking, where instead of taking care of your sensory needs and getting comfortable in your own body, you feel pressured to act like other people and to be comfortable in situations where other people are. And she said, this is really common in women with autism. And once again, it went completely over my head that I might have autism. And she said, we're going to do some tests. I want you to answer them as honestly as possible, and I also want you to kind of flag me and let me know if you're feeling like there's an answer that I want and that you're feeling tempted to give me. She was actively trying to get me to slow down and recognize when I was masking. And so we went through these series of tests, and I caught on fairly quickly in the series of tests that I was not answering these things like, ⁓ like maybe a quote unquote normal person would, I was kind of seeing what they were testing for and I was seeing that I was responding in certain ways and I was like, ⁓ this might be a diagnostic. Like they might be looking for a specific criteria here. And we get about halfway through and we're having a conversation about word association. And I'm supposed to as quickly as possible name the things that I think of when they say a specific word. and we end up having to cut the test off because I'm naming way too many associations for every word. And the tester kind of laughs and she says, well, we know how this is going to go, but we got to finish everything up. And at that moment I was like, ⁓ I'm being tested for autism. Like, I get it. ⁓ Completed the tests and then afterwards we had this very long heartfelt discussion about what it meant to be uncomfortable in your body every moment. and to believe that that was normal. And then all of a sudden to have access to the information I needed about what might feel better and how to get it. So even though my autism didn't prevent me from getting through school or having a successful career, it did prevent me from having a lot of joy and connection and authentic enjoyment of my life in many ways because I felt like my needs were too big and my needs were kind of stupid, that I shouldn't bother anyone with the fact that, you know, it's too bright for me or too loud for me or whatever. And all of a sudden I had a word for it that I could use to explain why maybe I thought differently or why maybe I had different needs than you. And it was okay. It was just okay all of a sudden to have different needs. And so ever since then I've been working with Andrew Heacock: Thank Victoria Cvitanovic: therapist and also a support group of other women with autism to stop masking so much, stop trying to present as this perfectly neurotypical person, and instead really be myself and love the life that I get to have. Andrew Heacock: That's beautiful. That's beautiful. ⁓ This term masking, I think I've heard that. I never really understood the significance of it. That's common. guess it's a feature of living with autism, especially when you don't know it, is you're masking the differentness or the sensory discomfort that you're going through. that what that means? Victoria Cvitanovic: That's what that means, but it's also somewhat gendered in the research, at least as far as we know right now, because there is this emphasis from the time that you're really small for people who are assigned female at birth to be social and to emphasize the comfort of the group. Oftentimes, it is women that engage in like very high level masking behaviors. And it's often women who pick special interests like makeup or ⁓ having their hair done perfectly or aesthetics or whatever it is that are pro-social, such that their autism behaviors appear to make them more normal and make them fit in more. And so for women, especially, although it happens with a lot of people on the spectrum, there is this emphasis in autism therapy on is that really what you need right now? Or are you trying to ignore your body, ignore your mind, and fit into the group? We think, although there are still questions about this, we think a lot of the reason that there's so much sensory discomfort with autism is that autistic brains are really good at forming new neural pathways and they form new neural pathways really fast, but they're less good at pruning neural pathways and deciding which neural pathways are important to keep. So whereas a... quote unquote typical person might prune neural pathways really quickly and be able to filter out outside stimulation better. We might have more neural pathways and be processing more more quickly, but we also might be taking in a lot of irrelevant or otherwise unhelpful information. So while the condition is still being studied, and we're not exactly sure how these differences happen or why they happen or why they happen at such different severity levels. it is at least helpful for me to know that yes, all this overstimulation that I feel and all the struggling that I have to do to not take in outside stuff, other people have had that too, and they have figured out how to accommodate themselves and I can do that too. Also, I can use the things about my autism that I like to my advantage. I remember everything I read. I remember everything I listen to on tape. I can take in huge amounts of information really fast and I can focus in on things I care about and learn quickly. Those things are exciting and they're wonderful. I won't call them a superpower because autism is in many ways a disability. It makes it more uncomfortable for me to be in my body and it makes it harder for me to function in society. But there are parts of it that I love. I have the ability, now that I have the language, the information, and people in my life I can ask, to work on the hard parts and make them a little better for myself. Andrew Heacock: That's beautiful and so moving, like so many things that you've said. mean, ⁓ the intelligence thing is also, it's interesting. It's personal to me too. ⁓ Cause at one point being diagnosed with things psychologically or psychiatrically has been a major part of the trauma that I've experienced in my life. And ⁓ at one point, a friend who's a psychologist, ⁓ he gave me a book. He was the director of testing for Mensa for many years. He's a brilliant man. I've told you about him. He ⁓ gave me a book and the title of this book, it's a barn burner. You're going to love it. It's called misdiagnosis and dual diagnosis of gifted children and adults. And it's in the second edition now. It's actually a really amazing book because they'll take each of the diagnoses that people with that are gifted will either get confused with, or maybe also have, which is also a related problem. How do you differentiate as a, as a physician or a clinician? How do you perform a differential diagnosis when, you know, sometimes just gifted people will present this way. And it was so fascinating that they would break down the DSM criteria and explanation of each and then say like, this is what someone who's gifted that does not have autism would have this one who's autistic and not gifted with. And this is like a mixture of both. And so much of that came up. And ⁓ for me, when I was listening to your explanation, because it is this strange thing that ⁓ I've had for a long time, I've had a tremendous dread, ⁓ fear of being pathologized ⁓ for being gifted, you know, and there are interesting things, there are similarities. There's at some point I'm wondering, is there any difference between being highly gifted and being on the spectrum? Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: because ⁓ we know that like, know that people that are highly intelligent, there's a cortical thickness that is measurable of their gray matter. There's more neuronal density and that results in a sensory overexcitabilities. There was a Polish psychologist named Kazimierz Dabrowski, who was the first person to actually describe gifted people. Like rather than measuring it, he worked with ⁓ ballet dancers, elite ballet dancers in Warsaw, Poland and mathematically precocious children. And he observed that they're the same people. they're, you know, they're, they're, they have the same challenges, it's a special need and tags and shirts or like a little tick of that fan behind me that's running after turn it off at night because it makes a little tiny squeaky noise and I can't keep it out and it drives me crazy. ⁓ And, ⁓ you know, it's it's one of these things where it's it's all about the way you identify with these things and the way the the meaning that you make of those labels that for me has been very, challenging. And it's a really inspiring to hear you tell this story and to be able to claim these things as Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: kind of a part of your identity in a way that seems like something to be very proud of. That's my impression of just hearing the story that you've had telling about being neurodivergent or living with a disability that these things don't define you, they're part of you, but ⁓ they're to me seem like an almost a badge of honor. Victoria Cvitanovic: I really appreciate you putting it that way. I've had some difficult experiences since being diagnosed where people thought it meant something about my intelligence or something about my ability to achieve things. And while for some people, their autism is that disabling, it does change those things for them. For me, my autism is more evident in how I experience the world. And I've always known that this was going on, but I never had words for it. and not having words for something that's happening to you starts to create a little bit of distance between you and the next person. For example, I'm married. I'm actually married to someone you went to law school with who is one of the most amazing people in the world. He's so smart. But we communicate completely differently. And for years in our relationship, we've been together for 13 years, for years in our relationship, I did not understand why I would say exactly what I meant. and he would receive it as having some other meaning other than like the actual words. And I didn't have a word for I don't understand why you're not listening to what I'm actually saying, and he didn't have a word for I have grown up being taught to observe all of this subtext, and I am placing all of those observations onto your communications. So, I got diagnosed, one of the things that my doctor told me was autistic people who are married typically struggle with communication, especially when they feel like subtext is being applied to what they're saying. I was like, wait, this happens to other people? ⁓ my goodness. And so she was able to point me to resources and articles and books about how I might be able to understand his communication style better and he might be able to understand mine better. Andrew Heacock: Mm. Victoria Cvitanovic: Autism gave me the ability to explain, to close that gap between the way that I perceived myself and the way that someone else perceived me. And for that, I will always be grateful. I don't necessarily think that diagnosis and treatment is the right thing for every different person. But for me, it changed my life for the better. Andrew Heacock: It sounds like it. mean, I can imagine, I know how it feels to not have a word for something and then all of sudden find a word for it and people are like, oh, like for me, brain fog was the thing. mean, for 15 years I was telling people, or actually 25, 30, I mean, it's like, I'm tired and all I want to do is sleep, but I can't. I try to lay down, I can't sleep, but it's just like hammering pressure to sleep. People kept telling me I was depressed or lazy or whatever, but they're like, yeah, that's depression. I'm like, no, I've had depression. I know what that feels like. This is the other thing. This never goes away. Depression goes away eventually. And mainly I'm depressed because of this problem and you telling me I'm crazy for thinking it's real. And finally brain fog. Like in the last 18 months realizing like, ⁓ like, yeah, I'm not tired because I can't sleep. It's just this thing. It's a histamine reaction I now know. And so it's like it is a relief to be able to have something to tell people without necessarily having to be defined by it. Victoria Cvitanovic: Bye. Yeah. Yeah, and as you were explaining the brain fog thing, I kept finding myself like nodding and smiling and being so excited because this is what it was like to grow up being told you're just picky, you're high maintenance, you're too sensitive, that shouldn't bother you. Over and over again, your preferences are too much, your needs are too much, your discomfort is unimportant. And I now know, well, they were judging based on a completely different scale. way that somebody else experiences stimulus is not the way that I experience stimulus and that's okay. But having the language to say, I am experiencing this differently and it's a real problem for me, has just been so eye-opening. And I really appreciate that even though I have the same concerns you do about diagnostic creep, over-patholization, and kind of squashing the variety that is humanity into these little boxes. I very much appreciate the way our society has gotten better at giving people the language to connect with another person when their experience of being human is different from that person's. Andrew Heacock: When I meet people or I have friends mentioned to me that they have autism or that they're on the spectrum or that they're neurodivergent or my favorite, neuro spicy, when they say that, what's the best thing that I can ask them or say to them in order to support them better? Victoria Cvitanovic: you that's a really good question. So I think most people tell people that they're neurodivergent because they're worried that their needs and preferences or that their differences in behavior are going to be too much for the person that they're talking to. They're worried that they're going to be seen as different and weird and they're trying to kind of cut off any social punishment that exists for being different before it can happen to them. So I think the best thing that you could say or that you could do to be supportive is just, cool. Yeah, that's great. That's interesting. And let them be the ones to dictate how much their identity as neurodivergent plays a part in your relationship. That's a bid for connection more than it is any sort of declaration of identity. It's a way of saying, you're important to me and I don't want to lose you because I'm too much. you're important to me and I don't want you to leave because I might be weird or different than you. And whatever you do, signaling that that doesn't change your acceptance and desire to be around that person is the far more important objective than asking the right question or saying the right thing. Andrew Heacock: Again, it's just sometimes when you don't know what to say, you can just say, I don't know what to say. mean, when you were, you were saying some of the messages that you received as a child and it was kind of heartbreaking to hear. mean, you said too picky, too sensitive, too much. there's also seem like highly gendered things to say to someone. ⁓ and I'm just wondering if you agree with that and what, mean, being a woman with autism, where their differences in that as you see it. Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. think that there are significant differences in women pursuing being diagnosed and also in living with autism. First of all, there's a broad assumption that women are supposed to kind of keep the social peace and that women who demand something different than what's being given to everyone are needy, picky, or otherwise ⁓ too much to deal with. They're demanding something more than they're entitled to. This makes approaching the idea of diagnosis incredibly difficult because you're demanding some sort of care that would label you as different and that in and of itself can feel like breaking all of those social codes we learned about what it means to be a good woman. Additionally, it really affects the way people react to you when you tell them that you're diagnosed. ⁓ I get a lot of you're not Sheldon Cooper kind of comments or the assumption that it is somehow related to a desire for attention. I tell people I have autism primarily so they know that if I'm wearing headphones around them, it's not because I want to ignore them. That's, it's very practical for me. It feels like a, a check the box here so that you are comfortable and I'm comfortable even if we have to behave differently. But there is this perception that if a woman declares something about herself publicly, that she is asking for attention and recognition that she's not entitled to in a way that feels very different from how we treat men that talk about themselves. It seems like it's more acceptable and even less noticeable when someone tells you something personal about themselves if that person is a man. Additionally, when we get into diagnosis, part of the reason that I was sent to a specialist that focused on autistic women and not just autistic people, was that because of all these social pressures that we've talked about, where women are supposed to be keeping in mind the wellness of the group and the harmony of the group, often the main symptom for women is masking. And masking to the point where they've ignored all of their body and their feelings and their preferences for so long that they've become highly anxious or depressed or even developed physical symptoms. because they haven't been taking care of themselves and they're just completely burnt out. My therapist wanted to make sure that I talked to someone who was aware of high-level masking because she was afraid that if I went to someone who didn't work with people who were highly masked, they would just think that I was a high-achieving kind of nerdy woman and that that was that and that I might not get the help that I needed. Now that I've been in therapy for a long time for this, we've really focused on is masking here a choice you want to make or is it something that is depriving you of a need that needs to be met? And it's given me my autonomy back in a way that I'm not sure that someone who was socialized as a man in our society would need to learn. We all suffer differently. I'm not here to say that it's easier or harder for one gender or another, but I do think that we come into experiencing a mental health diagnosis and starting to work on those symptoms or behaviors with all the cultural baggage we already had. And for me, it was incredibly important that someone recognized that it's pretty common for an autistic woman to mask at a very high level and to need to be told what masking is and how to slow down and recognize that you're doing it. Andrew Heacock: This whole conversation about masking has had me thinking about ⁓ Carl Jung's idea of the persona and the shadow. This idea has been a lot in my own life and my own development and what this means. And it leads to a lot of the conversation we've had today, including about my interest in spirituality and meditation and psychedelics and the mind, is this question of like, who am I? Who is the real me? And what even is that? What is the self? Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Mmm. Andrew Heacock: And Jung had this idea of persona and shadow, which is, you know, that we have a sense of what we think is who we're supposed to be. And then there's who we really are. And whatever there's in incongruency, suppress the things we think are not consistent with this ideal self. And that's our shadow. And the kind of the antithesis of the shadow is the persona. And this word persona literally means mask. And integrating the persona in the shadow, that's what Jung would say. Like you don't want to eliminate the one and keep the other. That it's not possible because as long as you're investing energy into the mask, going to empower the shadow and it will show up in all these ways. And you know, live in unexamined light and eventually you call it fate. But ⁓ I've thought a lot about just the process of my life of just kind of allowing myself to become who I really am and all of the different ways, all of the different ways I have to work really hard to do that. All of the different forms of not being who I fully am that I've, and I'm Victoria Cvitanovic: I'm sorry. Andrew Heacock: I'm kind of chipping away at them. The way that this works is you tend to pick the low hanging fruit and then unless you're forced to start with the really hard things, unless life intervenes. But ⁓ I've just been reflecting on that of my own experience. So much of this conversation has been so personal to me ⁓ and how much I can relate to you in your story, even though maybe some of the super very superficial things are different. So much of your felt experience of being a human. ⁓ there are things that like, man, I know what that feels like. And I don't think I've ever had a conversation with someone else. thought, did know what that feels like. And there is the sense of like taking off the mask. And, ⁓ it's a beautiful thing that that's literally the therapy for people with autism is learning to take off the mask. And it's almost like, ⁓ in a way it is you're fortunate that you've kind of been given an immediate opportunity where you have to do that. Because I think a lot of people go their whole lives. without ever really being forced to confront the fact that they're masking something. And they just kind of live lives of quiet desperation, they say. And so I just wanted to share that with you and guess just ask for your thoughts on that. Victoria Cvitanovic: I just think that that's really beautiful. ⁓ I think feeling misunderstood is really common to like your level one ASD diagnosed person. Your person who can function in society fairly well, they may have some impairments, but they also have some strengths that help them get through those impairments. That person I think feels misunderstood a lot. And I think about when I started the unmasking therapy process, what was the first thing that came to mind when someone asked me, when in your life do you consistently react differently than you actually feel? And it was about how people sometimes think I'm joking when I'm just being blunt. I ⁓ have a very common experience of just saying exactly what I think and having people laugh and thinking it's some kind of like one-liner joke and I would laugh along but I had no idea what was funny. I had no idea what was funny. It was just like what I felt in that moment. And over time, this left me feeling disconnected, depressed, ⁓ confused about my friendships and how close they actually were. I was just doing this thing that had become automatic of like mimicking back somebody else's reaction. And it left me feeling in that shadow, left me feeling all of the hard, sad parts of being a person. And so when I finally just started asking people, ⁓ what was funny? And they would tell me like, ⁓ your tone or your facial expression or like the way that that was just so blunt was just so funny. That all of a sudden I didn't feel that immediate like loneliness in a crowd of people that I used to when that would happen. And all of a sudden this thing that I didn't even realize was a major stressor in my life was over. It was just over. And all I had to do was be my actual self. So I do think that there's something profound to be said about recognizing that whether we have autism or not, whether we share a diagnosis or not, we all in some ways are reacting publicly differently than we feel inside. And that over time that causes stress. And that by working to stop being inauthentic, working to let ourselves become who we really are, we do integrate our public-facing selves and our private selves in ways that make us happier. Andrew Heacock: That's the work also of trauma healing. like, mean, you can think of trauma, many kinds of abuse or trauma as spiritual trauma. But I mean, a profound sense of shame and, you I think you could apply this framework also to your injury when you hurt your back. ⁓ And so there's kind of a sense of like radical authenticity is the path out of healing from, you know, chronic trauma. ⁓ You know, before we are, you know, I was reflecting before this call started and I've just kind of been thinking the last couple of days, like there's a chance I'm going to come away from this conversation thinking I might have autism. And ⁓ there's some things that you've shared that I'm like, ⁓ man, that I know what that feels like. And the thing you were talking about Dominic talking to you about sub subtext. ⁓ And also the thing you just said about comedy, I just have to relate both of these things. One thing is I frequently have the experience of feel like feeling like people are mischaracterizing what I've just said. Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: or putting words in my mouth and I feel really offended by it because it feels dishonest. And this comes up a lot in a medical context when I'm speaking to doctors and they think they know what I'm talking about and that it always seems to be an interpretation that leads to me being crazy or stupid or whatever. And I'm like, that's not what I said. And I can see how now why it made me good for the study of the law because the law mostly is about linguistic precision. Words have a very specific, understood, defined meaning and you use those words very precisely. Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: And if people are not trained in that, they tend to misunderstand what you're saying. then you kind of, you know, I think that was part of why I gravitated towards that. Cause I just, after a while I got frustrated. It happens a lot with therapy too. There's it's been a struggle to find good therapists who can without where I don't have to feel like I'm constantly just trying to explain what I already said. ⁓ but the other thing too, you said about the comedy, ⁓ I say things all the time that people think are funny and that were not intended, but I just kind of go with it because I'm like, all right, they're laughing. I'm a, funny. And so I'm going to take the social value that comes from this. Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. I'm gonna take the social points. Andrew Heacock: And I've been doing standup. Yeah. I've been doing standup a little bit. It's just fun. I I love to public speaking. I love to get on stage, but I had this thing that I do. I started telling people and it's a serious thing. I, ⁓ I grew this beard three years ago and people after it started and I, got really long for a while. ⁓ and up until that point, I couldn't grow a full beard. And, you know, people would ask me like in the gym or whatever, a lot of men would be like, dude, how long did it take you to grow that beard? And this is the true answer that I would give. Well, ⁓ I, I went through psychiatric drug withdrawal for about four years and the last one I came off of was really bad and I laid in bed with crippling anxiety and depression for like four months. And when I got up, I had this beard and I figured I would keep it. And people think that's hilarious. Like people laugh really hard and I was like, it was never intended to be a joke, but now it's kind of like my opener when I do stand up. Cause people think it's really funny. I think it's kind of dark and sad that that's like the reality of psychiatric drug withdrawal that you won't be able to bathe if you're, depending. If you're lucky, you know, that's all you'll have to deal with. Um, but it's a strange thing when people will just, and I'll be like, was that funny? It would, didn't, I didn't mean it to be funny. And this was kind of a dark thing, but it is nice that at least people can laugh about it because they do still be like, Oh, well, what drug were you on? And it does open the door to conversation, but it's a strange thing. I don't think I've ever talked to anybody else that understood that experience. And this goes back to what we've been talking about, just having a word for something. Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: to explain an aspect of the human experience that you feel alone in. And it goes back to even the conversation we had around your injury and just the struggle to be like, why don't people just understand? Like, why can't I make people understand what it's like to be me in this moment? And why do I feel so defective because of that? And a lot of that, think that there are probably a lot of people who live behind a mask that are having this experience and maybe it's not as intense. Victoria Cvitanovic: Mm-hmm. Andrew Heacock: or is upsetting or ⁓ disruptive as it has been for you and maybe me. But I think that is something that we can all relate to and is the reason that so much of the things that people talk about in like psychedelic spaces is about becoming who you truly are or remembering to be who you truly are. So I just wanted to offer that ⁓ some of those, those thoughts about like, ⁓ yeah, I know what that's like. And I've just kind of been keeping a mental tally like, yep, yep, yep. And the subtext thing in the comedy, was like, I have to, I have to say something. Victoria Cvitanovic: That's really, ⁓ it's really interesting that you pointed out specifically like that because for me it very much is the same like blunt answer about my life where people are like, well, what did it feel like to ⁓ have like epidural shots with no anesthesia after you injured your back? And I'm like, it was horrible. I considered killing myself, but I had to stay alive to pay that medical bill. And that was just what I meant. And it's hilarious. Like, it's super funny to be truthful and blunt. Andrew Heacock: people because it's so shocking. Yeah. Shocking. Yeah. Victoria Cvitanovic: and I never understood, I never understood that telling the truth was humorous in a world where so many people were working on this layer of subtext that I never, it never occurred to me existed. I also remember finding out after I had been married for a long time that a lot of people I had dated in the past thought that I was like this horribly mean person because it never occurred to me that you might be mean to someone and then still want to date them. So people would like, get into an argument with me or they'd like, you know, skip out on a date or something like that, and I would just never talk to them again, because I assumed that they didn't want to talk to me. And it just never occurred to me that there was like anything else left there to resolve. But of course, people process things very differently than I do. And this really has given me some perspective on how different we are. I also have to say your last comment really brought me back to your question about Zen and why Zen and psychedelics tend to go together. there's this story in a lot of sects of Buddhism, but also in Zen, about the Buddha giving the sermon of the not-self, where the Buddha makes this declaration that there is no such thing as the self, and someone comes forth to challenge him and says, well, that's not true, of course there's a self. And the Buddha asks this man, as he often does in these stories, questions to help him process this perspective that the Buddha wanted him to consider changing. And the Buddha asked this question, like, is the body the self? And this guy goes, yes. And he says, well, can you will your body to change if you say, look this way or feel this way? Can you just make it so? And of course, the answer is no. And then the person says, well, the mind is the self. And he says, well, if you tell yourself to not think about something or to think about this, can you make the mind do that? And of course, the answer is no. You say, well, my emotions are myself. They say, if you say, you feel this way or do you feel this way? ⁓ Can you force yourself to have those feelings? And of course, the answer is no. And this goes on for a little while and hits to the end on the idea that we're experiencing a combination of causes and conditions, some of which we have control over, like who we're talking to or what we're saying, and some of which we don't, like our genetics, things that have happened to us in the past that we can't go back and change. all of that stuff. And so getting too caught up on the idea of a static self that must be molded into our image is another form of attachment in Zen that we try to recognize as a delusion. The self is constantly changing, it's constantly responding to what's happening around us, and if we want it to be a certain thing, it will have slipped through our fingers before we ever have it. I think psychedelics brought me closer the experience of understanding attachment, even to the point of being attached to the idea of a self. I describe myself lots of ways, all the time. My name is Victoria, I have this job, I really care about psychedelics and the legislation surrounding them, I am a person who worries about ethics and this and that. But when I look at any given individual situation and how I'm responding, I can't say that the way I responded when I was 12 is consistent with the way I'm responding now, which will be consistent with the way I'm responding when I'm 90. What happened to all those versions of me? Or is the self something a whole lot more amorphous? My psychedelic experiences have helped me get much more comfortable with the idea that I might not actually ever be able to answer the question, who am I or what is myself? But, I have this awesome opportunity to experience what it means to be connected to every other being I get to be on this planet with right now. When I think about how many ants were born the same day I was, when I think about how many particles of dust existed at the same time I existed, I stand in awe of the amazing auspicious opportunity that is a human life, and I stand in absolute awe the opportunity to have the awareness I get to experience as a human and try to make it better for all beings. Psychedelics really tied into my Buddhism in that they made me comfortable with not getting too attached to any one specific thing being right, but constantly pursuing a better, more just, more compassionate world. And I think that, at least I hope that, is what Buddhists who have experienced that release in meditation also experience when they experience psychedelics. Andrew Heacock: Thank you, Victoria. ⁓ That's easily the most elegant synthesis of those two ideas I've ever heard. And I've been ⁓ looking and thinking for that for a long time. So I appreciate that. ⁓ I have one more question, I guess. If a young person came to you now and they were in college or considering law school and they wanted advice from you, but instead of asking for advice on how do I become a psychedelics lawyer, they wanted your advice on how do I live a good life? What would your answer be to them? Victoria Cvitanovic: ⁓ that's such a good question. I think I would start by telling them that they're important and that if they've never heard that their voice or their feelings are important before, that living a good life requires a recognition that your needs, your feelings, and your experience are just as important as the experiences that everyone else are going through and that pure selflessness with no regard for what your experience is like is not going to be the key to living a quote unquote good life. I would tell them to pay attention to what their body tells them. And I would tell them to pay attention to their own discomfort, not in a selfish way, but in a way that acknowledges that these experiences are happening and they might be telling you something about your surroundings. I would tell them to start slow and then slow down more. I would tell them to try to do one thing at a time as much as possible. I would go back to the old Buddhist proverb of when you're having a feeling, stop. Whatever feeling you're having, the job that you have at that moment is to feel, not to react. And then if you don't want to be a reactive person, if you want to be a thoughtful, considered person, you have to start practicing that principle as early as you possibly can. I would tell them to enjoy the things that they accomplish and to consider enjoyment part of the achievement rather than the consequence thereof. I would tell them again to start slow and move even slower. I would tell them to not worry so much about building a good legacy in their life. but to worry about being a good person in the circumstances in which they find themselves today. I would tell them that the things they'll regret the most are the times when they were unkind to someone else. I often hear people talk about how the world's changed so much and everyone's so sensitive now and this is politically correct or this is not. Regardless of what you said and whether you used all of the right terms or words or whatever, the opinions you will regret folding. The things you will regret saying, the things you will look back and wish that you did differently are the times when you treated someone else as if they weren't also you. The sooner you can recognize that the greatest lie we have ever been told is that there is a such thing as other people, the sooner you will start living a good life. Andrew Heacock: Thank you. Thank you so much. ⁓ I appreciate so much your time. I'm so honored to have you on. And this has been one of the most important conversations I think I've had, not just on this podcast, but just in my life, definitely in last several years. And I'm really, really honored and grateful that I've gotten the opportunity to get to know you. And I'm sure we'll see each other again, probably soon, probably immediately the next time I come to New Mexico, which won't be long from now. And yeah, I'm just, grateful. to have had the privilege of being able to have this conversation and learn from you. Thank you. Victoria Cvitanovic: Thank you so much for having me on today. Thank you for asking thoughtful questions and for just engaging with this really challenging subject matter. I'm really proud of the opportunity that I had here today. Andrew Heacock: Thank you so much, Victoria. Victoria Cvitanovic: Thanks, Andrew. Andrew Heacock: Take care.