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Cognitive Psychologist: How Lose Dose Ketamine Can Improve Your Life | The Mental Healness Podcast · The Mental Healness Podcast

• 0:00
  In this episode of The Mental Illness Podcast, Lee Hammock
• 0:04
  sits down with cognitive psychologist Dr. Sharon Neve to
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  explore the quiet revolution happening in mental health.
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  We talk about breaking through emotional walls, rethinking
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  anxiety and depression, and why ketamine isn't about tripping,
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  it's about showing up more fully to yourself.
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  You'll hear how this therapy is helping people process trauma,
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  build emotional skills, and create a new relationship.
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  With their mind. What is going on, beautiful
• 0:32
  people? Welcome to another episode of
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  the Mental Illness Podcast hosted by your favorite
• 0:37
  diagnosed narcissist, me, Mr. Lee Hammock, better known as
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  Mental illness everywhere. Today we have a very special
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  guest for y'all we have Doctor Sharon Nieve.
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  Almost, almost did it. Doctor Sharon Nieve who is a
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  cognitive psychologist that explores how contemplative and
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  therapeutic methods can reshape mental Wellness.
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  Her work expands mindfulness, cognitive science and the
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  psychology of consciousness with special focus on how altered or
• 1:02
  expanded states of mind can promote emotional growth and
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  resilience. In 20/22 she Co founded Joyce
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  PBC which is a public benefit company dedicated to making
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  mental health care more affordable which we which we
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  definitely need. Accessible through low dose or
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  psycholytic approaches to ketamine treatment.
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  Welcome Doctor Nieve, how you doing today?
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  Hi, Lee, It's good to be with you.
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  How are you doing? I'm doing very, very good.
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  Like I said, I just, I gave you a little introduction.
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  How about you introduce yourself to the audience and do you more
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  justice than I ever could? Yeah, that's right.
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  So I am a cognitive psychologist and that means I think about the
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  processes of the mind, processes of emotions, processes of the
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  body too. I mean we are A1 collective
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  system of course cannot really separate thoughts, feelings and
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  sensations and in 2022 I did Co found this company joyous public
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  benefits Corporation. Now what APBC means is it is a
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  signal to potential shareholders that we put our mission above
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  shareholder value. And our mission in particular is
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  mental Wellness, accessible, affordable.
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  And so we do prescribe a protocol of very low dose
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  ketamine. So people may have heard of
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  higher dosing ketamine, which is, I mean, it's a beautiful
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  thing. You can, you can do it with your
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  sublingual, you can do it with intramuscular or very commonly
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  people go into IV clinics and get it straight into their
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  bloodstream. And the higher dose stuff is
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  it's a journey. You are, you're not really a
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  participant. Your psyche is going to go where
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  it wants to go and you can get things out of it that it wants
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  to get. And that's great.
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  But this is a different animal. I actually have my little pack
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  here. I'm a patient as well as the Co
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  founder and so these are much lower doses.
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  This is what our medicine looks like.
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  It is placed between gum and cheek up here, kind of like
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  tobacco snuff I guess. But the the state that people
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  then achieve as you, you use the word psycholytic.
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  That's, that's exactly the right term.
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  It's not a psychedelic, it's a psycholytic state.
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  So the difference there is what psychologist or psychiatrist
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  refer to as being fully oriented.
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  You know who you are, where you are and what you're doing.
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  So the, the psycholytic ketamine state is 1 because it's a
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  dissociative that can be described as like specious.
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  It's almost bigger than your body.
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  All right? You have a, you have a sense of
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  who you are. And with this medicine, at these
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  doses, you can get to a state where you kind of feel like
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  there's a psychological distance.
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  And quite, it's quite literal. There's a distance between
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  yourself and the sensations of your bodies, the stations of
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  your nervous system. And as we've kind of come to
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  understand over the last 10 to 20 years, what negative emotions
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  are effects of trauma, effects of, of attachment wounding, they
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  tend to be carried in the nervous system and they manifest
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  as unpleasant bodily sensations, right?
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  And these are things that we want to avoid feeling.
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  When you feel depressed, it's like a feeling of heaviness and
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  sickness. You feel anxious.
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  It's a different kind of sickness, kind of, you know,
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  it's like a unpleasant buzzy sensation in your body.
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  You just kind of want to escape it.
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  And trauma, of course, whenever it's evoked through the concepts
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  that we associate with our traumas.
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  And we're talking about big traumas or little traumas like
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  little T traumas, developmental trauma, not being seen by your
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  parents, not being, you know, accepted by your, your grade
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  school community, whatever it is that really hurt you.
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  Even though it's not considered big T trauma, like abuse, like
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  assault, like war, it still makes a significant impact on
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  your well-being. So what ketamine allows is a
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  spaciousness from these experiences that leads to a
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  couple of different things happening simultaneously. 1 is
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  that we often understand that in order for a sensation to
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  resolve, like a sensation associated with our traumas,
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  with our psychological angst, it needs to be fully felt.
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  And as we said, there's like a resistance to feeling these
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  extremely unpleasant sensations. Most of the time with ketamine
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  and that spaciousness, you can feel them.
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  I had a psychologist that we work with, LCSW, actually a
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  social worker, a clinical social worker, say it's like a blanket
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  of safety that kind of covers my patients, my clients, as I work
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  with them and they're able to go there in a way that they can't
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  before. So we do a couple of things at
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  Joyous 1 is we just prescribe straight to the patient
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  themselves if they're a good fit.
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  We have the medical monitoring here, the medical verification
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  of any contraindications psychiatrically, medically, you
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  know, contraindicated medications that there aren't
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  too many by the way, it's, it plays nicely with a lot of
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  different medications. So you can take it straight as a
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  patient and do your own work. And recently we also decided to
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  launch this program Joy is for Therapist, which is a free
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  collaboration program with licensed clinicians who want to
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  understand how to bring this into their own sessions with
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  their patients. And what we've seen is is really
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  exciting, really huge breakthroughs in therapy.
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  So that's that's my overview. I'm sorry, I kind of like railed
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  at you for. No, I love it.
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  No, no, no, I love it. I love because you, you asked us
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  some of the questions I was going to ask anyway.
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  I was like, I was just, I was just checking stuff.
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  I was like, there you go, There you go.
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  So I'm glad you just mentioned the part about the joyous for
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  therapists, like how people can integrate that into their
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  therapy. So I have, you know, I've been
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  in psychotherapy myself for eight years dealing with
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  narcissistic personality disorder.
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  And I, you know, part of what you just said, you have to feel
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  things to actually go through them to, to deal with the
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  trauma, like little T or big T and whatnot.
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  I used to take shots of liquor before I went into therapy
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  sometimes just to, because I'd be so anxious and nervous about
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  stuff. I used to take shots and I was
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  just like, this isn't, this isn't healthy.
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  You know, I was just like, this is not healthy.
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  I wasn't trying to get drunk. I was just trying to take the
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  edge off so I wouldn't be afraid to feel.
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  Would ketamine be something that can take the edge off in that
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  situation right there to make you more open to the sensations
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  of therapy like that? 100% So first of all, like I
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  want to name that that is that's like your body's wisdom.
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  It's saying this is too intense, this is too overwhelming.
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  I need to take the edge off. I need to numb this a little
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  bit. That's that's body's wisdom.
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  Like we respect that. But yeah, absolutely.
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  Just like you said, taking this small dose of ketamine prior to
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  the therapy session can take the edge off in the same way while
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  keeping you present. There's this kind of ironic,
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  paradoxical thing where it's a dissociative.
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  So some people think like, no, you won't be present with a low
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  enough dose. So like with higher doses, yeah,
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  you may have a full ego deaths. Things can happen and resolve on
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  their own, but then you need to integrate them with these lower
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  doses. It's exactly that.
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  Like you are still oriented, like we said, you are still you
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  know who you are, you know where you are, you know where you want
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  to direct your own attentional system.
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  But there's this like nice spacious, you kind of feel like
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  you're both inside and outside your body.
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  You can drop into a state where it just feels safer.
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  Like instead of whatever anxiety is like taking over the whole
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  system, you're kind of like a big spacious room and the
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  anxiety is still there, but like now it's smaller because you're
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  bigger and you can work with it more effectively.
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  So I love hearing that though that sounds like literally, I
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  think my, the anxiety comes from a lot of shame with me, right?
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  So I'm stepping to the therapist's office.
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  There is some shameful topics that I'm about to talk about and
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  my body automatically was just wants to get rid of them.
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  So I used to take a shot to just like kind of force myself to go
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  through it because I know that's what I need to do because you
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  mentioned me an intentional. I like, I need to go in here.
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  I need to talk about this because what's the point, you
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  know? So I feel like if people were to
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  subscribe to it, what you're offering, like the Academy
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  stuff, I feel like that could be a a big step and a a big leap
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  into maybe combating that shame or just not even making it go
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  away. Of course, like you said, it's
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  still present. The anxiety is still present.
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  It's just smaller. You can probably like even when
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  I think the shots, I'll still feel it in my chest, but it's
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  just like it's I can deal with it as opposed to it just take it
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  over and just shutting me down and just making me steer clear
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  of what I actually wanted to talk about and discussed in
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  therapy session. That's exactly right.
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  It's, it's a, it's a safety aid that helps you go there without
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  feeling like it's it is taking you over.
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  That's exactly right, Will you all said.
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  Yeah, that's, that's good then, because that's really, that's a
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  really good thing right there. Because I, I, I don't, I used to
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  take a bunch of shots. I don't do it so much as
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  anymore. I knew who wasn't healthy and I
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  just needed, I know I needed to face what I needed to face, but
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  I can understand that if people were just getting into therapy
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  or people wanted to take the next step in their therapy
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  journey while they've been in therapy working, I feel like
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  that could be a a powerful, you know, and powerful aid in their
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  journey right there. But I do, like I say, when I
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  hear ketamine, I actually like I say, I was telling you, I
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  watched your, your ignite talk on YouTube and at the very I was
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  right now questions. And at the very end you showed
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  that the capture, the screen capture of Matthew Perry,
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  because I think that's what a lot of people think when you
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  come to ketamine, you're just like, Oh, I don't want to take
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  that and be in the hot tub and, and pass away and whatnot.
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  But you mentioned earlier it's low dose.
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  It's very low dose and manageable and whatnot.
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  Yeah, Matthew Perry is such a heartbreaking case.
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  I, I remember in his autobiography, he writes
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  something like, I've I was born addicted.
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  I don't remember the substance. I think it might have been
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  opioids that his in pregnancy, in utero, he experienced some of
• 10:43
  that and he was born addicted. And he says in that book, I know
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  the next time I, I relapse, it'll kill me.
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  And indeed it did not. I mean, just thinking about that
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  is like. But yeah, on on the Matthew
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  Perry front, he was found with what the New York Times
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  described as anesthesia level dosing of ketamine in his
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  bloodstream. That means that someone would,
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  you know, who was naive to ketamine, who didn't have a
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  ketamine addiction would be out. They'd be out for surgery.
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  It's a huge amount, something like 50 to 100 * a dose that we
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  would prescribe. We would still say don't, don't
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  take it in the hot tub if you think you're going to get, you
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  know, a little bit dissociated. It's not a great idea.
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  It's good to lie down. It's good to sit down.
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  It's good to meditate. It's good to be intentional with
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  with watching where your system goes with this medicine.
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  Yeah, regardless. 1 he drowned and to the amount of ketamine
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  plus it wasn't an opioid, but I believe it was like Suboxone,
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  which is that, you know, an opioid blocker found in his
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  bloodstream. It's just, it's just a different
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  dosing that we're talking about here.
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  It's sort of like taking a whole bottle of Tylenol will wreck
• 11:53
  your liver, but taking one Tylenol is fine.
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  OK, yeah, I was like I said, that's when I was like ketamine.
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  That's literally because I guess it was so publicized and he was
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  such a, you know, just a powerful figure in in media and
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  whatnot, so popular with friends and all the other stuff that
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  he's been in. And just his story about how he
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  was battling depression and what you said earlier about how he
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  said he was born addicted. And it's kind of like the that
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  Pat led him down that path. And he it didn't scared of me
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  wasn't what killed him. You know, I think that's what
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  people like. He actually drowned.
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  But, you know, the kid of me wasn't what took his life and
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  whatnot. I was just, that's what my mind
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  went to when I saw that. But you said so you said 50 to
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  100 times what you y'all were prescribed.
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  Yeah. To go into yeah, from a
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  psycholytic dose to go into surgical dosing is yeah, it is a
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  many orders of magnitude higher. Nonetheless.
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  I mean, you bring up a good point, I think about the
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  potential for addiction. We do know that ketamine
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  addiction is on the rise globally.
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  So it is something that we want to be very conscious of.
• 12:56
  There's no known addiction risk with these doses that we
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  prescribe. It's sort of like an alcoholic
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  would not become an alcoholic based on one shot a day, but it
• 13:07
  is, it is something that we're, you know, very conscious of.
• 13:10
  We try to screen out people who have a history of substance use
• 13:15
  disorder if they, if they're not very, very stabilized at this
• 13:20
  moment, because it is, it is still a substance.
• 13:24
  It is still psychoactive. And anything that helps you feel
• 13:28
  good can become psychologically addictive.
• 13:31
  And we, we don't want this to be a crutch.
• 13:33
  We want this to be a tool Yes right.
• 13:36
  We don't want people taking low dose ketamine for the rest of
• 13:39
  their lives. It's it's an interesting
• 13:42
  conversation that we have internally in that hey, some
• 13:44
  people need insulin every single day and some people experience
• 13:47
  such severe mental health symptoms that they do need more
• 13:52
  constant support. But our ideal happy path is
• 13:57
  someone who takes ketamine with us for 3 to 8 months and then
• 14:03
  feels so much more stabilized and has used the time wisely to
• 14:07
  skill build that they feel they're able to, you know,
• 14:11
  discontinue the medication, which by the way, is
• 14:14
  considerably easier than something like SSRI's.
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  There's no known withdrawal, no like brain zaps, no crashes that
• 14:21
  come after discontinuing ketamine.
• 14:23
  And so our our happy path is a patient who graduates and just
• 14:27
  feels better. They're they got new skills,
• 14:29
  they got new habits and they're able to approach their life in
• 14:33
  in like a re forced way. So.
• 14:35
  That's, that's like the, the common theme I saw from the
• 14:38
  reviews on your site, Joyous, that team where people, they
• 14:43
  were graduating from it, you know, they just say they like, I
• 14:46
  did it for five months and now I'm just, you know, my anxiety
• 14:49
  is gone or is, is way lower than what it used to be, Which I
• 14:53
  think, I think most people have anxiety issues or they deal with
• 14:57
  anxiety in some way, shape or form.
• 14:59
  But you know, and I think one guy on your site said he was
• 15:02
  actually battling other substance addiction issues in
• 15:05
  his past and he was able to to, you know, just used the Academy
• 15:09
  treatments for five months and whatnot, maybe 8 months, I can't
• 15:11
  remember exact timeline, but he said he was able to get off of
• 15:14
  that like no problem. He's had addiction issues in the
• 15:17
  past. I was like, oh, that's, you
• 15:18
  know, 'cause it's one of my questions I read, I wrote down
• 15:20
  was like, is it, does it have addictive properties?
• 15:23
  And then when he said he's like, I have had substance abuse
• 15:25
  issues and I was just five months and I was going, I was
• 15:27
  like, oh, interesting. So it's, you know, I feel like
• 15:31
  that's, and you yourself, you said you are, you were
• 15:35
  prescribed to it as well. So he's just like, hey, I can
• 15:37
  tell you exactly where you're coming from right now.
• 15:39
  So that's a good thing right there because like you, you kind
• 15:43
  of like your own billboard for right there in that situation.
• 15:46
  We call it dog fooding in the in the tech world, but no, yeah,
• 15:49
  it's it's kind of a joke. But yeah, I do actually also
• 15:53
  have my own prescription. I'm I don't take it daily
• 15:55
  anymore. One thing that we tell patients
• 15:57
  when they start out treatment is when you feel as though you have
• 16:02
  significantly improved your mental health, when you feel
• 16:05
  better, start spacing it out and see, you know, see how it goes.
• 16:10
  And I probably take my doses 2 to three times a week.
• 16:13
  Kind of depends on the stress levels, what's going on in my
• 16:16
  life. But I do find that it's a
• 16:19
  support during moments where I really feel dysregulated.
• 16:25
  And it's it's it will continue to be a tool in my toolbox as
• 16:28
  long as I need it. Absolutely.
• 16:30
  Oh hey, I love that. I love that in your toolbox as
• 16:33
  long as you need it, because you never know what you might need
• 16:35
  it. What drew you towards like the
• 16:39
  ketamine and the psycholytic medicine?
• 16:43
  So me specifically, I'm, I'm a meditator.
• 16:47
  I really find the question of consciousness fascinating.
• 16:51
  I it's a funny thing, you know, enlightenment is a real thing
• 16:55
  and we don't really know about it.
• 16:58
  It's a, it's a really, it's not binary, it's not either or, but
• 17:03
  it's a set of States and experiences that really can
• 17:08
  persist over time where one is not sort of ruled by the egoic
• 17:14
  narrative in the head anymore. There's a spaciousness, there's
• 17:17
  an observing stance. And for me, the hope was to
• 17:21
  bring as many people to the realization of this possibility
• 17:24
  as as possible. And I was like, well, if I can
• 17:27
  get everyone to meditate 2 hours a day, I would certainly do
• 17:30
  that. But that's probably unrealistic.
• 17:33
  What I can do is introduce people to kind of the shallow
• 17:38
  end of the psycho spiritual pool of the experience of what does
• 17:42
  it feel like to be in a quiet state where the constant running
• 17:47
  narrative in my mind is not ruling everything that I see and
• 17:50
  kind of placing lenses on the world that I, I see people as
• 17:53
  bad because I have a belief in my head that people are bad.
• 17:56
  Or I see the, you know, the world is unfair because that's
• 17:59
  how my, my childhood shaped my consciousness to, to experience
• 18:04
  life. But this low dose state can give
• 18:06
  you an alternative perspective. It's almost like a North star to
• 18:11
  what is possible to the kind of life experience that you can
• 18:15
  have. It's available to you and if you
• 18:20
  are smart enough about taking the learnings that you have on
• 18:24
  the slow dose stage, I'm just going to grab my guy again and
• 18:28
  learning what you can from this in order to bring it into your
• 18:32
  default state. Then you are going to find
• 18:35
  yourself closer and closer to a much more enlightened state,
• 18:38
  much more awakened state. When we first started ideating
• 18:42
  on Joyous, we thought, well, maybe we should go the high dose
• 18:46
  route. You know, it's, it's, it's
• 18:48
  effective, it's popular and we we're not enemies at all of the
• 18:52
  higher dose state of ketamine or psych or higher doses of, you
• 18:56
  know, other psychedelic, psilocybin, iboga, MDMA,
• 18:59
  certainly they all have their places.
• 19:02
  They all have their functions and their healing capacities.
• 19:06
  But low dose ketamine didn't exist as an offering.
• 19:11
  It didn't exist as an opportunity for people.
• 19:13
  First of all, it's far more affordable than the higher dose
• 19:17
  stuff at the moment. Unfortunately, like right now,
• 19:20
  there are a couple of options for people if you want to go
• 19:22
  into IV ketamine treatment. It's like $2000 for each
• 19:26
  experience. Not really affordable to people.
• 19:29
  Certain insurances do covers Spavato, which is Johnson and
• 19:35
  Johnson came out with a ketamine analog.
• 19:38
  Well, it's, it's, it's an enantiomer.
• 19:40
  I don't want to get too technical, but it's, they're
• 19:43
  like mirror images to the ketamine molecule and they took
• 19:45
  one, it's the S versus the R and they call that Spavato.
• 19:51
  And so that is available to some people through their insurance,
• 19:54
  but not everyone. And that's also a higher dose
• 19:57
  situation. You have to be in clinic, you
• 19:59
  have to be monitored by a clinician through that entire
• 20:01
  process. And again, it can be very
• 20:03
  powerful for people. We are, we are not here to take
• 20:05
  that down. But this is just a different
• 20:07
  animal. This is an animal that allows
• 20:09
  people to skill build. The people that I talk to every
• 20:12
  week are patients on our platform.
• 20:14
  We we lead to meditations, we lead discussions.
• 20:17
  Just really share with me. They are using this to skill
• 20:21
  build. It is a tool in their toolbox.
• 20:23
  They set an intention, they come to insights, they journal
• 20:27
  afterwards so that they can learn what it is that their
• 20:31
  inner wisdom has to tell them, what they can take away from
• 20:33
  that, how they can be the person that they know they want to be.
• 20:37
  And so this I didn't set out to do the low dose ketamine, but
• 20:42
  when it was revealed to us as an option and opportunity and we
• 20:46
  started to explore it and see its immense power with the
• 20:49
  patients that we were treating, we were just all in.
• 20:53
  That's that's good. That's that's amazing right
• 20:55
  there. So who would you prescribe it to
• 20:58
  'cause I was like, I was going to going through the, the joyous
• 21:00
  that team site and I noticed the anxiety disorder is part of it.
• 21:04
  And you know, and I, I not only do I, I have narcissistic
• 21:07
  personality disorder, but I also have general anxiety disorder as
• 21:09
  well, which kind of where it comes from.
• 21:12
  And it's just like, oh, that's, that's very interesting.
• 21:15
  So how would it help somebody with an anxiety disorder?
• 21:17
  I know it's kind of lower than when we had kind of crossed over
• 21:21
  it earlier, but what would they do for someone with an anxiety
• 21:23
  disorder? Sure.
• 21:24
  First question, I'm sorry, who would you prescribe it to?
• 21:27
  Then we'll get to the anxiety disorder.
• 21:28
  I got hit it myself. So right now our main
• 21:31
  prescription categories are for depression, anxiety, adjustment
• 21:37
  disorder, which is like you're dealing with something big and
• 21:40
  you're, you know, a loss, a loss of identity, perhaps you were
• 21:45
  fired from your dream, you know, whatever, a divorce, something
• 21:48
  that really riles you. And then the fourth major
• 21:50
  category is trauma, PTSD. And the way that we find that it
• 21:56
  works for people, say with generalized anxiety disorder, is
• 22:00
  so through that spaciousness that we described, a couple of
• 22:03
  things happen. One, we already described that
• 22:06
  the sensations of the nervous system become much more
• 22:08
  tolerable and you're able to sort of allow that to be felt,
• 22:13
  and then it kind of releases and resolves on its own.
• 22:16
  So a lot of people just kind of feel that this layer of anxiety
• 22:20
  that they live with all the time kind of lifts.
• 22:23
  Some people have actually said, this is the first time I
• 22:25
  realized how much of A layer of anxiety I have is when I, when I
• 22:28
  felt that it was gone for the first time.
• 22:31
  And that's just a beautiful thing to hear.
• 22:33
  The other maybe mate, major mechanism that we might mention
• 22:37
  is that because of the, again, the dissociative piece, but
• 22:41
  you're not dissociated, you are, we're calling it partially
• 22:44
  dissociated. You're bigger than your body.
• 22:46
  You also got a perspective shift.
• 22:49
  You're able to sort of spontaneously see your own
• 22:52
  situation a little bit from the outside, get some insights into
• 22:56
  it, be able to see some of your own behavior and be able to
• 23:00
  maybe reassess. How true is this?
• 23:03
  These beliefs I have that cause me a lot of anxiety, How true is
• 23:07
  that really? There is a one of the leading
• 23:11
  theories of how psychedelics in general work is called Rebus
• 23:14
  which is relaxed beliefs under psychedelics and it has been
• 23:18
  found that ketamine works in a similar way.
• 23:20
  So what that means is a human being experiences the world not
• 23:25
  just through its senses, but first of all through its belief
• 23:29
  system. We have ways in which we engage
• 23:32
  with the world around us. We mentioned a few earlier, the
• 23:34
  world is bad, people are bad. You know, I can't trust people.
• 23:38
  No one likes me. Or, you know, I have to, I have
• 23:40
  to win. I have.
• 23:41
  Whatever it is that got kind of lodged into your belief system
• 23:45
  tends to be the first lens through which we take in the
• 23:48
  world and we absorb the evidence that fits that and kind of
• 23:52
  discard the evidence that doesn't.
• 23:54
  Now, what ketamine does as well as other psychedelics under the
• 23:57
  Rebus model is it relaxes those beliefs and that's that you get
• 24:02
  more input from the bottom up, more input from, hey, what's
• 24:05
  actually going on right now? Can I reassess this?
• 24:08
  Can I reevaluate the truth of my beliefs about what's going on?
• 24:12
  And that process kind of happened spontaneously.
• 24:15
  Like we've now treated 83,000 patients.
• 24:18
  The vast majority of them had not brought it into therapy
• 24:21
  because our Joys for therapist program is, is is pretty, pretty
• 24:25
  new, only a couple of months old.
• 24:26
  We did some surveying. We found that about 15% of the
• 24:29
  people who responded to the survey already brought it into
• 24:32
  their therapy sessions, which is kind of why we founded the
• 24:34
  program. You're like, well, we might as
• 24:35
  well teach therapists what to do.
• 24:37
  So maybe, you know, maybe some percentage of our patients are
• 24:39
  already using it with a skilled clinician as well.
• 24:42
  But even without a school clinician, let's say 85% of
• 24:45
  people are not using this with a clinician.
• 24:47
  They're kind of either spontaneously receiving the
• 24:50
  benefits of these relaxed beliefs and the ability to
• 24:53
  reassess reality in a way that's, you know, less, less
• 24:59
  married to the anxieties that rule our experience.
• 25:04
  If it's not spontaneous, then they're doing it through
• 25:06
  journaling. They're doing it through the
• 25:08
  meditations that we provide. We built a system for, excuse
• 25:12
  me, a program for nervous system regulation.
• 25:15
  We're building other ones right now around self compassion,
• 25:18
  around understanding parts of yourself and being able to meet
• 25:21
  them with a self compassionate stance.
• 25:23
  I'm sure you've come upon like internal family systems as a
• 25:27
  framework and, and how that works.
• 25:28
  Yeah. So there are various frameworks
• 25:31
  that we're going to be teaching the patients as we go forward as
• 25:34
  well to give them skills and tools that they can use to start
• 25:38
  rewriting the anxious patterning that happens either
• 25:41
  spontaneously or deliberately, intentionally.
• 25:44
  And the more that people give their intentional attention to
• 25:49
  the process, the more they're able to maybe journal just for a
• 25:52
  30 seconds. What did I learn during this 40
• 25:55
  minute period with a medicine that helps bring that learning
• 25:59
  out into your default life? What we don't want is people
• 26:02
  getting stuck in state dependent memory where it's which like,
• 26:05
  well, I'm wonderful when I'm on my ketamine for 45 minutes a day
• 26:08
  and then I forget everything else.
• 26:10
  But the to the extent that people can really derive that
• 26:13
  wisdom, integrate it into their their being, into their nervous
• 26:17
  system, invite it in, they really, really see the results.
• 26:21
  That's that's amazing right there.
• 26:23
  You said 83,000. 83,000. You said 85% of those people are
• 26:28
  just doing it just on their own. As far as we know, I mean this
• 26:31
  is all an estimate. You we ask people, are you in
• 26:33
  therapy? And then you know some about 40
• 26:36
  to 50% in our intake do say I am in therapy.
• 26:39
  But of the ones who said they were in therapy, only about 30%
• 26:43
  had brought it in to their sessions.
• 26:45
  So we're estimating about 15%, maybe 10 to 20% have already
• 26:49
  brought it into their sessions. I can personally tell you I have
• 26:52
  brought it into my sessions. My gosh, you know the insights
• 26:56
  you get? Sometimes you're just floored by
• 27:00
  self love, by self understanding, by a real feeling
• 27:04
  of transformation. That's one of the questions I
• 27:07
  actually had written down right here was like what kind of
• 27:10
  results are actual therapists that have like integrated into
• 27:13
  their therapy sessions have have have I know you have some of
• 27:17
  your site, but do you have any other like examples of how they
• 27:20
  have, you know, had good results from including this in their
• 27:23
  sessions and what not now? Yeah, You know, I can speak to
• 27:26
  my own personal experience because we we like that, right?
• 27:29
  So I am, I've struggled with a phobia my whole life.
• 27:33
  And that phobia is of vomit. And using ketamine, I was able
• 27:38
  to come to a place of kind of working through some of the
• 27:42
  beliefs I had around vomit means, danger vomit means, and a
• 27:45
  lot of this is intergenerational.
• 27:47
  I had, I had some, some illness trauma in my, in my ancestry
• 27:53
  line, children dying of dysentery, children dying of, of
• 27:59
  cholera, things like that in my immediate grandparents lines.
• 28:03
  And I was able to come to a place of, of finding the part of
• 28:07
  me that already knows vomit in itself is not a problem.
• 28:11
  It just means the body is cleaning itself out.
• 28:14
  It's a function of the body to keep itself healthy.
• 28:17
  It's OK. It's just, it's just a
• 28:18
  cleansing. It's just a cleansing mechanism.
• 28:22
  And so I have two little daughters at home.
• 28:25
  And the degree to which I can now be present with them when
• 28:28
  they're sick is just so much higher.
• 28:31
  And you know what a gift that's been to, you know, be able to
• 28:34
  mother them in the way that I want to rather than get panicked
• 28:36
  and have to run out of the room. So that's, that's one example I
• 28:40
  can give. I can talk to other about about
• 28:42
  other patients anonymously if you'd like, but.
• 28:44
  I notice. That's fine.
• 28:45
  I feel like that's good right there.
• 28:46
  Just because you can take it into your real life experience
• 28:48
  right there. Like, like you just say, even
• 28:50
  with your daughter's in that situation, to have that phobia,
• 28:53
  vomit or what not going on and having two daughters, yeah, the
• 28:58
  kids will. That's something you're going to
• 29:00
  have to battle right there. You don't have to shut down in
• 29:03
  that situation right there. But also I was kind of looking
• 29:07
  on the site as well earlier. So I know, I know I mentioned
• 29:10
  general anxiety disorder, but also have depression as well as
• 29:13
  I have pretty much your site is me.
• 29:14
  I'm just like, oh, this sound like me too.
• 29:17
  So how does it help with people that are dealing with depression
• 29:20
  as they I know said treatment resistant depression?
• 29:22
  Is that specifically what it's for?
• 29:23
  Just depression in general? The scientific world is still
• 29:26
  kind of trying to figure out why it is that it works so well and
• 29:29
  there are a lot of theories about it.
• 29:31
  And I'm not, I'm not sure that we've really landed on the one
• 29:33
  true mechanism there. Probably it's like a complex
• 29:36
  system. It's probably a lot happening.
• 29:38
  One is it does seem to just soothe the nervous system in a
• 29:42
  way. I mean, we forget how somatic
• 29:44
  depression is somatic. I mean, depression just feels
• 29:48
  like your body's like something is wrong.
• 29:50
  I need to lie down in bed. I'm heavy, I'm aching.
• 29:55
  So to some extent it is just a somatic feeling of I feel
• 30:00
  relieved. You know, higher dose ketamine
• 30:02
  has been studied very extensively for suicidality and
• 30:05
  people who are extremely suicidal and nothing else works,
• 30:09
  one infusion of ketamine will will keep them away from any
• 30:12
  suicidal thoughts for upwards to two weeks.
• 30:15
  And this is like in cases where nothing else works there.
• 30:17
  There's something about ketamine being a neuroplastic agent.
• 30:22
  It does grow all sorts of new dendrites and connections in
• 30:26
  neural pathways as well. And that's, you know, that's the
• 30:29
  part where it's, it is still somewhat speculative.
• 30:32
  Why is it that it's growing positive new connections and not
• 30:35
  negative new connections Unclear with a higher dose stuff.
• 30:38
  I do think that there is a way in which the ego is the source
• 30:44
  of most of our issues. And by ego I don't mean like,
• 30:48
  you know, being full of yourself.
• 30:49
  I just mean like the, the narrative voice in your head
• 30:52
  that tells you what is wrong, what is right, what's wrong with
• 30:55
  you most of the time. So when we have a loosening of
• 31:00
  the ego with higher doses, ketamine, you could have an like
• 31:03
  an ego death, an obliteration of the ego.
• 31:06
  And that tends to be like very therapeutic for people.
• 31:08
  Just the experience of, Oh yeah, that that construct can be
• 31:13
  deconstructed. That is not like the end all be
• 31:16
  all, but that's the high dose stuff.
• 31:17
  So that's not necessarily what Joyce is offering with Joyous.
• 31:20
  We're offering a loosening of the ego, the ability to kind of
• 31:23
  see through all of these negative beliefs that color
• 31:27
  everything in life. When you are feeling depressed
• 31:30
  and when you have a little bit of you take those like you're
• 31:32
  taking the glasses off, they're still there.
• 31:34
  You know, you're, you're in the big room.
• 31:35
  You can kind of like see the glasses and you can see that
• 31:38
  through those glasses. Like there, there is that world
• 31:41
  that tends to get you down so much, but there's an alternative
• 31:43
  around it. And you can start to build
• 31:46
  connections between your sense of identity or sense of self and
• 31:49
  this other possibility, which is a truer possibility, right?
• 31:53
  Like our true nature is kind of like self from IFS and thrill
• 31:58
  family systems. It is compassionate, it is calm,
• 32:01
  it is curious, it is at ease, it is wise.
• 32:05
  And ketamine can really help you connect to that state and make
• 32:08
  it a lived reality that you then learn how to return to even
• 32:12
  without the medicine. So that's, that's really good
• 32:16
  right there too, because that well, you mentioned ego death
• 32:19
  and that's, that's typically what I heard when people are
• 32:21
  taking like psychedelics, you know, there's just because
• 32:24
  people ask me sometimes, like when I'm battling my own
• 32:27
  personality disorder, I was just like, have you tried mushrooms
• 32:29
  or the MDMA or what's the I cannot think of what it is.
• 32:36
  I cannot think of what it, it'll come to me in a little bit.
• 32:40
  Mushy iboga, ayahuasca, I don't know.
• 32:42
  Ayahuasca. That's what it is, That's what
• 32:43
  it is. That's what it is.
• 32:45
  They like, are you trying to air time?
• 32:47
  I see a video or something like it's people like crawling on the
• 32:50
  ground, throwing up, crying. I was just like, I don't want to
• 32:54
  do that, you know, and not realize I did it.
• 32:56
  You know, it's just like I think you said that's the difference
• 32:58
  between a psychoanalytic and a psychedelic is that you don't
• 33:03
  have that necessary that out of body experience with Academy as
• 33:07
  a. Policy like go low, go slow.
• 33:09
  It's so much gentler. It's gradual, it's skill
• 33:12
  building, but I think it gets a lot of people to the same place.
• 33:16
  Yeah, because people tell me that I see the videos, people
• 33:19
  throwing up in buckets like this is ayahuasca.
• 33:21
  They're in the woods throwing up in buckets and crawling.
• 33:23
  I was like, they don't, they don't look appealing to me.
• 33:27
  Yeah, that doesn't look appealing, but I like I like the
• 33:30
  people sitting on the couch saying, you know, I feel better
• 33:32
  right now. I like that image as opposed to
• 33:34
  the woods and crawling around. Yeah, So I was also looking.
• 33:39
  Your site is very well put together.
• 33:40
  I say it's a, but if you check out Joyous dot team, that's the
• 33:44
  correct site, right? Because I'm going through it and
• 33:47
  it tells how ketamine is made. I just, I had no idea.
• 33:50
  Like it's like the parasitic worms.
• 33:52
  I was like, wait, what? How do I get there?
• 33:54
  No parasitic worms there, but there is a there's.
• 33:56
  A molecule or something like that.
• 33:58
  Yeah, there's a naturally occurring fungus that can derive
• 34:01
  the same. Yeah, that's what it was.
• 34:03
  I was just like, that's very interesting.
• 34:05
  Even how it's made and how it like how people even figure out
• 34:09
  you can use this type of stuff to make you feel bad.
• 34:11
  It's just like, I'm just fascinated by how you get to
• 34:14
  that point right there and how it gets right there.
• 34:18
  But you also mentioned the neuroplasticity of how it can
• 34:21
  re. I can rebuild synapses and
• 34:23
  pretty much healed the brain. You thought?
• 34:25
  More on it right there. Yeah, absolutely.
• 34:28
  So it's I was saying a minute ago, we don't know why it is
• 34:31
  that this tends to go in a positive direction, but it
• 34:33
  doesn't necessarily go in a positive direction, right?
• 34:37
  Like you, you could take a bunch of ketamine, have a horrible
• 34:41
  experience, watch some horror films, get beat up and maybe
• 34:44
  that would, you know, get instilled into your brain
• 34:46
  instead. So it doesn't matter what we do
• 34:49
  when we're on the ketamine, we always ask patients to set an
• 34:53
  intention be with their experience.
• 34:55
  If you're just kind of, you know, you're popping it in and
• 34:58
  you're going to clean your house and that's probably fine.
• 35:00
  That's that's like neutral to positive is fine, but to the
• 35:03
  extent that you can sit down, set an intention, use it as your
• 35:07
  meditation period, even better. But yeah, so that the
• 35:10
  neuroplasticity is very real. It is one of the more
• 35:13
  neuroplastic agents that we know.
• 35:16
  There are studies looking at the little dendrites, which is like
• 35:20
  your your neurons make connections to other neurons
• 35:23
  through dendrites and there's a huge amount of dendritogenesis,
• 35:28
  which means dendrites are being born after ketamine.
• 35:31
  So the active period for the psychoactive effects is about 40
• 35:36
  to 60 minutes. Kind of depends on the
• 35:37
  individual, but for like 3 hours later you might feel some sort
• 35:43
  of like an afterglow of just feeling calm, at ease, relaxed.
• 35:48
  And that's also a highly neuroplastic period.
• 35:51
  But some, some studies suggest even up to two to three days
• 35:54
  after you are more porous. So taking in positive content,
• 36:02
  building positive habits, working through the stuff that
• 36:06
  is weighing you down in a skillful way, either with a
• 36:08
  therapist or if you're, you know, your own skilled
• 36:11
  practitioner of, of meditation, of, of certain self compassion
• 36:15
  practices, very, very effective. Whatever it is that you choose
• 36:18
  to do in that window after taking the medicine can really
• 36:22
  reap benefits for a long time. So I do I, I try to meditate
• 36:27
  right? Because I'm big into trying to
• 36:28
  meditate and stuff like that, but my mind wanders so much so I
• 36:33
  do what I call free thinking. I'll have these moments where I
• 36:35
  just sit down and just like try to let my mind flow.
• 36:39
  Would that be an optimal time to take my like?
• 36:42
  I don't try to hold any thoughts back.
• 36:43
  I just kind of like let them loose to see where they go.
• 36:46
  I have a couple of friends who've been, who've been on our
• 36:50
  protocol for about two years, one, one year and 1-2 years.
• 36:54
  And they don't take it daily. But when they do take it, they
• 36:57
  turn on their voice recorder and they do kind of like what you're
• 37:00
  thinking. They're they're with their
• 37:02
  thoughts, they're letting them wash over them, letting the
• 37:04
  insides come. And when something comes that
• 37:07
  feels significant, they speak it out loud and then they feed it
• 37:10
  into ChatGPT or they use clawed with the anthropic model and and
• 37:14
  kind of afterwards they talk to in Claude over time, tracks what
• 37:19
  it is that they're deriving and is able to connect back.
• 37:22
  And it's like, Hey, you know, you, you talked about how you
• 37:24
  feel in your relationship with your friend today.
• 37:26
  It reminds me of the way that you felt in your relationship
• 37:29
  with your mother the other day. Let's like, let's derive the,
• 37:32
  the, the insights that are mutual to there's a dog barking
• 37:37
  outside my let's derive the common, the common theme here
• 37:43
  and like outline to you how it is that you've grown over time.
• 37:47
  So yeah, I, I do think that letting your mind wander with a
• 37:50
  ketamine is a good way to get some insights rolling.
• 37:52
  And if you can record them to any extent so that again, they
• 37:55
  don't, they don't get stuck in that state dependent memory that
• 37:58
  you get those insights, that you integrate them into your inner
• 38:02
  wisdom, you can really stand to benefit from something like
• 38:05
  that. I, I really love that you added
• 38:07
  that part about talking out loud because I'll one of my main
• 38:10
  reasons for doing the free thinking it's just to have these
• 38:13
  ideas, let let them flow to get ideas to do like content and
• 38:16
  just let my just just a general release and I don't want to open
• 38:21
  my eyes and stuff like that. Like, well, if it's important,
• 38:23
  I'll remember it later. And I sometimes I.
• 38:26
  Don't. Yeah.
• 38:27
  Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, absolutely.
• 38:29
  I really don't remember. Oh gosh, you just wrote that
• 38:31
  down. So the talking out loud part is
• 38:33
  very interesting. I might actually have to add
• 38:35
  that to my my repertoire now. And I don't know if you have an
• 38:39
  iPhone, I, I, I don't know Samsung or, or Great.
• 38:43
  Well, if you have an iPhone, if you do the voice recorder, they
• 38:46
  now give you a transcript. Oh, I didn't know that.
• 38:49
  Yeah, now you got a transcript and you're like, all right,
• 38:51
  ChatGPT, tell me what my greatest insights were.
• 38:55
  Interesting that that helps out a lot because I I promise I
• 38:59
  like, that's a good idea. I I should open my eyes and
• 39:01
  write it down like, no, but then I'll break my state and then
• 39:04
  I'll come at the end. I was like, I had something, I
• 39:07
  had some fire and I just put it out, you know?
• 39:10
  Yeah, it's frustrating. I'm glad you added that part.
• 39:12
  Yeah, I wrote that down for later.
• 39:14
  Like I must, I must save that tidbit because that's going to
• 39:16
  help out later on. But also also wrote down this
• 39:21
  question earlier. Like who?
• 39:23
  Who wouldn't you recommend this to?
• 39:25
  Like who wouldn't this be? Who wouldn't be a good fit for
• 39:27
  this? I just recorded a module on that
• 39:29
  yesterday for the therapist training that we're doing.
• 39:33
  So 1:00 we, we will screen out the contraindications that are
• 39:37
  red flags on medical and psychiatric fronts.
• 39:39
  And that's stuff like uncontrolled high blood
• 39:43
  pressure, No good. If you've had like a history of
• 39:47
  cerebral hemorrhages, probably not a good fit.
• 39:50
  There's certain like liver and kidney disorders that we then,
• 39:53
  you know, ask for medical approval of stuff like that.
• 39:55
  But we'll take care of that psychiatric side.
• 39:58
  Past history of psychosis. Unfortunately probably not a
• 40:01
  good idea. Yeah, mania like bipolar one, we
• 40:08
  don't take bipolar one at this time.
• 40:10
  It that there's some mixed evidence in the literature on
• 40:12
  ketamine and bipolar one. Some, some studies have actually
• 40:15
  found that it's really beneficial, but that's such like
• 40:17
  a high, high acuity need that it's probably better to work
• 40:23
  directly with a psychiatrist to test it out, like have much
• 40:26
  closer observation of the patient then then we can do over
• 40:30
  telehealth. But we do work with bipolar too.
• 40:34
  We don't currently work with borderline personality disorder.
• 40:37
  Again, I think there's some, there's not enough research on
• 40:40
  how that might work, but we don't want to destabilize people
• 40:43
  who might be going into like severely dissociated states.
• 40:46
  So again, we're going to see that to working in person or the
• 40:48
  psychiatrist. Those are the major psychiatric
• 40:53
  and medical red flags. It might be also a question of
• 40:57
  timing is something I talked about in the module I recorded
• 40:59
  yesterday, which is like, OK, like are, are you stable right
• 41:02
  now? Do you have, do you have a
• 41:05
  support system? Even a few friends that you
• 41:07
  could call if something comes up for you that's like, oh, wow,
• 41:10
  that really hurts. I, I, I felt this blanket of
• 41:13
  safety on the ketamine state and I reached into some really deep
• 41:17
  traumas. But now, now they're up now I
• 41:20
  now I'm thinking about them. Do I have support system?
• 41:22
  Am I in a stable housing situation?
• 41:27
  Those, those are some considerations there.
• 41:29
  And there's some timing too, like if you really did just now
• 41:32
  lose your job, get divorced, death of a loved one, maybe
• 41:36
  stabilize first and then, you know, go work with, with the
• 41:40
  medicine later. Those are some things I might
• 41:41
  think about in terms of both like red flags and yellow flags
• 41:46
  and maybe just timing considerations as well.
• 41:48
  Okay, I understand that that's that's really good.
• 41:50
  So you had mentioned it you, so when you are getting a client or
• 41:55
  patient or whatnot you would require their medical history or
• 41:58
  to integrate that into that as well.
• 42:01
  We do a medical intake which is like a 15 to 20 minute long form
• 42:04
  that you fill out your medical history.
• 42:07
  We do medication checks on our electronic health records, make
• 42:11
  sure that there are no contraindication medications as
• 42:13
  well. We do, we don't request past
• 42:18
  history, but you know, it is, it is it behooves you certainly to
• 42:22
  tell us the truth. If you have a psychotic disorder
• 42:26
  that has not, we have not come upon that as a problem at this
• 42:29
  point. So it's not like we request
• 42:32
  medical records, but we do ask for medical organs.
• 42:34
  And then the the clinician, the prescribing clinician that works
• 42:38
  with us also does, you know, telehealth visits with you make
• 42:41
  sure that all the I's are daughter, all the T's are
• 42:44
  crossed and like they're no major contraindications there.
• 42:46
  This is a good fit for treatment and then you have follow-ups
• 42:49
  with that clinician as well. OK, that sounds, that sounds
• 42:52
  good. That sounds, it sounds in depth
• 42:55
  like what's needed because some people would like, I feel like
• 42:58
  some people could come in here and lie, you know, just like I'm
• 43:00
  I'm perfectly fine. I'm I'm perfectly healthy.
• 43:02
  No, no, no BPD, you know, just to have their fingers crossed
• 43:05
  behind their back or whatever the case may be.
• 43:08
  So what about someone with ADHDI feel like that's such a common,
• 43:12
  common, common thing that's throwing around.
• 43:14
  I have ADHD. How would that?
• 43:17
  How would this work with someone with that?
• 43:19
  You know my my friend Sarah is an ADHD coach who uses our our
• 43:26
  protocol. She has personally found it
• 43:28
  extremely helpful. I don't think it's ever been
• 43:32
  studied systematically, so I can't say for a fact.
• 43:35
  One thing that I do find I I also have ADHD.
• 43:39
  My brain is a little squirrely when I I take a very light.
• 43:43
  I take 2.5 milligrams of of Adderall These days.
• 43:47
  We do ask patients who are on stimulant medication like
• 43:50
  Adderall, like Ritalin, like Concerta to take it 4 hours
• 43:54
  apart, ideally first the stimulant and then the ketamine.
• 43:58
  So if you take, you know, you wake up at 7:00 AM, take your,
• 44:02
  take your Vyvanse and then by 11 you could potentially take your,
• 44:06
  your ketamine for that day just because they both do raise heart
• 44:10
  rate a little bit. So you don't want that coming
• 44:12
  together necessarily. I don't have like a cognitive
• 44:16
  mechanism explanation of how it might be helpful for ADHD
• 44:19
  serumite. She's she might be a fascinating
• 44:21
  person for you to talk about. She's thought about this pretty
• 44:24
  deeply and she she does sort of think that since it quiets the
• 44:29
  mind in general, that's squirrel mind, you know, might, might
• 44:33
  just have like a little bit of a quieter pool to wait around.
• 44:36
  And but that's, this is my sort of very dumbed down
• 44:41
  understanding of how it might be working there.
• 44:43
  I don't think there's been any real research on this.
• 44:45
  One really cool thing about Joyous is since we have the
• 44:48
  largest data set of any ever of any psychedelic or psychoactive
• 44:53
  substance ever, it would be kind of interesting to have
• 44:56
  researchers come in and take a look at some of our take a look
• 45:01
  at some of our findings. We built an anonymized HIPAA
• 45:04
  compliant safe data quarrying system for researchers to be
• 45:11
  able to come in externally and work with that.
• 45:13
  I would love to take a look at what we're finding with ADHD
• 45:16
  patients and there, there are other potential possibilities
• 45:21
  there. Like I, I had a clinician come
• 45:23
  to me as part of the Joys for therapist program who works with
• 45:26
  autism and she was like, I have found this medicine to be
• 45:29
  extremely helpful for certain facets of autism spectrum.
• 45:34
  She herself is autistic as well. And so she's creating some
• 45:36
  programs for us to take a look at how this stuff works.
• 45:39
  But right now the research is just not there to say
• 45:42
  mechanistically what's going on. But many people have been
• 45:45
  finding benefits from different conditions.
• 45:48
  And I think a lot of it is the neuroplasticity, a lot of it is
• 45:50
  the nervous system relaxation, and a lot of it is the ability
• 45:53
  to be in that spacious, quiet state and just be able to
• 45:56
  observe your experience with much more ease.
• 46:00
  Thanks for sharing that, because I feel like that when you said
• 46:02
  the quiet state, that made a lot of sense with a lot of people
• 46:05
  who might be battling ADHD or just autism in general as well.
• 46:09
  You know, autism is a spectrum disorder is so many is, is far
• 46:13
  reaching and whatnot. Because I literally was that's
• 46:16
  only the next question I was going to ask about the autism
• 46:19
  and whatnot. Because that's, you know, I
• 46:21
  guess it's more in the media now than ever and whatnot of how
• 46:25
  this could benefit or what kind of effect would it have of
• 46:28
  someone that is, you know, possibly dealing with autism
• 46:31
  special disorder or something, something along those lines.
• 46:33
  And when I like you just said you, you was it you?
• 46:36
  You say somebody that you. The the woman I was referencing
• 46:41
  is a woman in the Joys for therapist program.
• 46:43
  She a psychotherapist and is also autistic.
• 46:47
  OK. OK with some.
• 46:49
  Some guidances that she thinks are really appropriate for
• 46:52
  people with autism. That's good.
• 46:54
  So where do you see like the ketamine treatment therapy
• 46:58
  going? What do you, what do you see
• 46:59
  this in the next like few years? Because I felt like it felt like
• 47:01
  it's spreading. I know you said right now it's
• 47:03
  just based in the states or not based in the states.
• 47:06
  It's just the states is where it's located at right now.
• 47:09
  What do you see this at in the near future?
• 47:12
  We we would love to be able to treat internationally as well.
• 47:15
  We don't have the team size at this point to support that, but
• 47:20
  hopefully we will grow and grow and be able to do that.
• 47:23
  A couple of things that I would love to have happen on Joyous.
• 47:28
  I want content creators to create exercises to create
• 47:35
  guidances that they think are well matched to the psycholitic
• 47:39
  state. And perhaps we can like approve
• 47:41
  them, make sure that they're clinically sound and make them
• 47:44
  available as well. I would also love researchers to
• 47:47
  come in and be able to work with our huge data set and try to
• 47:51
  drive some, you know, real insights about how does this
• 47:53
  medicine work? Who is it good for?
• 47:55
  How do we optimize the treatment?
• 47:58
  And I'm building more and more sort of on the digital
• 48:01
  therapeutics front to educate the patients.
• 48:04
  What are the most helpful self conceptualization, other
• 48:08
  conceptualizations, world conceptualization, realizations
• 48:10
  and practices that can help really align yourself with your
• 48:14
  best self with your with your true nature?
• 48:18
  I would love. Yeah, I can see it going far
• 48:22
  because like what you just what we talked about so far is it has
• 48:25
  so many, it touches so many different modalities of therapy
• 48:30
  just in general in so many different mental health issues
• 48:34
  and whatnot as well. And I think that's because it
• 48:36
  like say I'm trying to do my own research before you hopped on
• 48:39
  here, but like you've opened my mind up and I was telling my
• 48:41
  wife earlier like I got talked about going to talk about
• 48:43
  ketamine and stuff in the shoe. Like I've been interested in it
• 48:46
  as well, like let me know how it goes.
• 48:48
  And I was like, yeah, I was excited when I saw it.
• 48:50
  I was like, that's interesting because I want to just I feel
• 48:54
  like Deck can help out because I'm trying to push this the
• 48:57
  mental health, you know, it's thing past just narcissism,
• 49:00
  because that's what I've been talking about from last five
• 49:03
  years and it's gonna make my head hurt.
• 49:05
  So I'm just like opening it up to helping more people that are
• 49:08
  battling their own kind of, I guess the operative word of
• 49:11
  mental health demons or whatever, right?
• 49:13
  To open it up to lower the shame, to lower the anxiety and
• 49:17
  things like that. Because I feel like that in and
• 49:19
  of itself could help out so many people.
• 49:21
  Because even the stigma or the shame that's attached to even
• 49:25
  going to therapy in and of itself, I feel like this could
• 49:28
  help out with that too, because so many people.
• 49:31
  Yeah, yeah, you stigmatize pain because we are all in pain.
• 49:35
  I feel like you should. Like.
• 49:37
  Crop dust. I feel like we should crop dust
• 49:39
  the United States with the with with a low dose just for just
• 49:44
  for a month. Y'all just calm down a little
• 49:48
  bit Yeah yeah. So I could just chill a little
• 49:51
  bit and whatnot. So do you have anything else you
• 49:54
  want to share? Any, any closing thoughts, any
• 49:56
  final thoughts about what do you want to do?
• 49:59
  Like any anything you feel like is pertinent.
• 50:02
  Yeah, I, I hope that everyone who feels may be called to
• 50:05
  breakthrough the plateaus they're on who want to
• 50:08
  experience like a shift in perspective and who wants to
• 50:12
  maybe experience more self love when when the egoic narrative
• 50:17
  quiets down a little bit and you're in that spacious place
• 50:20
  and you're able to see yourself with these new eyes, it can be
• 50:23
  just such a healing experience. Anyone who's interested, come
• 50:28
  check out the the program and any therapists who think that
• 50:32
  they might want to incorporate this into their toolbox.
• 50:35
  It is a really potent approach. The training required is much
• 50:41
  lesser than for psychedelic assisted therapy because the the
• 50:45
  psychiatric and medical emergency risk is almost
• 50:48
  negligible and we really want to hold your hand as you explore
• 50:52
  this as a Joyce for therapist partner.
• 50:56
  It is a free program. Reach out to me personally.
• 50:59
  I'm a therapy at Joyce dot team. Happy to discuss and really
• 51:04
  looking forward to connecting with anyone who feels moved to
• 51:07
  explore this option. Thank you so much.
• 51:09
  I'm actually going to mention to my therapist my next therapy
• 51:11
  appointment and whatnot, see what she thinks and whatnot.
• 51:15
  I'm open to trying anything, you know, I'm just about growth and
• 51:18
  openness and trying to reach more people and just trying to
• 51:22
  get more people help because I feel like we are in a mental
• 51:25
  health just, you know, it's just, it's just so tough out
• 51:28
  there for mental health right now.
• 51:29
  Just everybody's suffering in some way, shape or form.
• 51:32
  And I feel like everybody can't get to therapy.
• 51:34
  I feel like something get, do something, you know, doing
• 51:37
  something to help you is better than doing nothing at all
• 51:40
  because you're only just going to destroy yourself.
• 51:43
  But I'm going to put all your links here and I'm so, so
• 51:48
  thankful you decided to come over here and, and share.
• 51:51
  I've learned a lot. I'm pretty sure everybody else
• 51:53
  is going to learn a lot. This won't be the last time you
• 51:55
  hear from me, I promise. I want to put it everywhere.
• 51:59
  Thank you again, Doctor Sharon Nieve for joining us and we will
• 52:03
  chat later. Thank you, Lee, for everything
• 52:06
  you do. It's it's really a beautiful
• 52:08
  podcast. Thank you.
• 52:09
  Thank you so much.