PTSF 34 (with Craig Heacock)
In today\u2019s Solidarity Fridays episode, the typical Solidarity Fridays format is switched up again, this time with Joe interviewing podcast host and psychiatrist specializing in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, Craig Heacock.\xa0
Will Hall's 2 recent SF episodes spurred a lot of conversation, and led to Heacock reaching out to Psychedelics Today to counter some of Hall's points, and stand up a bit on behalf of psychiatry. He feels that while psychiatry isn't perfect, saying to replace it isn't helpful, and doesn't feel that anyone in psychiatry is saying a pill will fix anything, but rather, that if psychedelics can help people get in touch with buried trauma (something that typically takes a lot of time and relationship/trust-building and often still doesn't work), then shouldn't we not only be treating them like medicine, but also learning as much as we possibly can about them?\xa0
He points out some of the most obvious flaws with our model of psychiatry (and how we deal with mental health in general), discusses the barriers stopping physicians from learning more about ketamine, looks at the "spiritual emergency vs. psychotic break" argument from a different perspective, talks about what he sees in his practice and how much ketamine has helped his clients, and really brings home one of Will Hall's main points from a different perspective- while Hall talked about how science isn't always the answer because of how much nuance there is from person to person, he points out the amount of nuance in how mental health physicians treat clients, how clients arrived at their mental state in the first place, and how differently they respond, both with or without psychedelics.\xa0\xa0
Whether you felt Will Hall brought a lot of interesting ideas to the table or hated those episodes, this is the yin to those episodes' yang.
Notable Quotes\u201cI think a lot of psychiatrists are just trying to keep their head above water, which, I think, they would much more enjoyably keep their head above water if they would use ketamine in their practices.\u201d
\u201cWe may never understand the mind-brain connection fully, but don\u2019t we want to try?\u201d
\u201cWe\u2019re finding with ayahuasca work (a lot of psychedelic work) that some people are going to these sessions and their conscious brain is saying \u2018oh yea, there\u2019s no trauma,\u2019 and we\u2019re finding out that there\u2019s some serious trauma that\u2019s just underneath the surface. And again, if we don\u2019t know that, how can we get to the roots of anything? ...Almost like we use a CT scan to see what\u2019s happening in your innermost self, it\u2019d be interesting to think of using psychedelics as sort of a psychological diagnostic tool to say: 'Is there trauma in there?'\u201d
\u201cWhen Will is saying, \u2018Why are we trying to address trauma with a pill?\u2019 I don\u2019t think any of us are. I don\u2019t think anybody on the MAPS study or I don\u2019t know, people in the psilocybin studies- I really don\u2019t think anybody is thinking, 'Ooo we\u2019re going to fix PTSD with psilocybin!' or 'We\u2019re going to fix trauma with this 150 mg MDMA capsule!\u2019 Nobody\u2019s thinking that. What we\u2019re thinking is: this is a catalyst, [and] resources are limited. ...We need to get in there quickly and get working on this, and that\u2019s what\u2019s so exciting to me about psychedelics coming online with mental health, is that we can get down to business quickly and not have to spend so much time trying to get past these defenses.\u201d
\u201cCapitalism is messy and psychiatry is messy and psychedelics are messy and people are messy, and isn\u2019t that ok? Can\u2019t we just accept that and not default to this sort of pan-negativism and finger-pointing and blaming? Because, again, we\u2019re all on the same team. We want the same thing. We want people to thrive and we want to dial down psychological despair as much as we can.\u201d
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