In this episode, Christina P. Kantzavelos, LCSW, MSW, MLIS joins to discuss the use of psychedelics to address chronic illness. Christina is an international psychotherapist, coach, writer and artist, who specializes in treating clients with chronic illness, and complex trauma utilizing various modalities, including psychedelic assisted therapy.

In this conversation, Christina overviews the complex mental and physical health impacts of chronic pain conditions and shares her expertise on psychedelic and non-psychedelic treatments for these conditions. Christina mentions that chronic pain can put one’s body in a state that encourages fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses which can disempower the patient’s efforts to address their condition. She also explores the intersection of identity and chronic pain conditions, discussing how that while receiving a particular diagnosis can be helpful and affirming, taking this as a core part of one’s identity can also be a major roadblock to healing. In closing, Christina emphasizes that pain starts in the brain, so leveraging neuroplasticity through psychedelics and other means can be a particularly powerful way to address both physical and mental health aspects of chronic pain conditions.

In this episode you'll hear:

How Christina got involved in working with patients with chronic pain

The common mental health presentations in those with chronic pain

The importance of addressing physical health and mental health concurrently

Why psychedelics may be helpful for addressing chronic pain conditions

The immunomodulating effects of psychedelics

The power of neuroplasticity for addressing chronic pain

Utilizing neural retraining and microdosing in conjunction to prepare for more successful higher dose psychedelic experiences

Quotes:

“I use all kinds of modalities and I don’t just treat someone’s depression or anxiety or complex trauma—I see it as everything is interwoven and related to each other. And it’s important that we look at the entirely mosaic piece rather than just focusing on one area.” [5:20]

“There is a state of empowerment versus disempowerment in identifying with our chronic illness. I’m not saying that it is not real and it's not happening to you but it definitely is not you. It’s something you are experiencing. Even if it’s chronic and lifelong, it’s still something you are experiencing—it’s not you as a whole.” [17:48]

“I’ve noticed that any of my clients who have gone through neural retraining have had little to no bad [psychedelic] trips which is amazing and I feel like that’s partly because they worked so hard to resource themselves in advance.” [25:19]

Links:

Christina on Instagram

Christina on LinkedIn

Begin with Today website

When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Maté

PMA CME/CE accredited course: Managing Medical Risk in Patients Seeking Psilocybin Therapy

Search for providers on the Psychology Today website

Psychedelic Medicine Association

Porangui

In this episode, Jerónimo Mazarrasa joins to discuss how to interpret visions and insights disclosed during ayahuasca journeys more effectively. Jerónimo is Program Director at ICEERS, founder of ICEERS Academy, and creator of AyaSafety, an online course for people interested in increasing the safety of ayahuasca ceremonies.

To start, Jerónimo emphasizes that answering the question of whether ayahuasca visions originate in the plant medicine itself or if these are just disclosures of one’s own subconscious is actually not what's most important. Instead, he suggests that in either case, what is crucial is spending time carefully considering how one should respond to these disclosures. Jerónimo shares insights from expert facilitators on how one can best go about interpreting and responding to such experiences, suggesting that an important aspect of this process is that participants feel comfortable taking personal responsibility for whatever decisions they eventually decide to make rather than thinking of these major life changes as necessary consequences of the psychedelic experience itself. In closing, Jerónimo discusses the tension between externalization and psychologization of psychedelic experiences and why both of these can lead to issues.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• The common experience of feeling as though the ayahuasca has communicated something to you
• Examples of where taking an ayahuasca vision literally can lead to problematic outcomes
• The “three confirmations” one should look for before making a major decision based on a psychedelic experience
• The metaphor of ayahuasca as a microscope
• How skilled ayahuasca facilitators ensure proper psychological hygiene with participants
• Judging the validity of potential repressed memories that seem to surface during psychedelic experiences

Quotes:

“The way that ayahuasca becomes useful for people, I think, is that it shows you—it amplifies and shows you—what is already inside of yourself. Now, this is very useful for certain things but one has to understand the nature of the language.” [9:23]

“Facilitators should instruct their participants that one rule is that you shouldn’t make any decisions during an ayahuasca ceremony—unless they are decisions related to taking yourself out of danger.” [14:42]

“Ayahuasca is not a shortcut for personal development—it’s just a flashlight that can help you shed some light on some darker parts of [your] issues and problems, but it is not a shortcut.” [35:47]

“The main contraindication of psychedelics is not wanting to take psychedelics. You should absolutely never ever ever ever ever take psychedelics if you don’t want to because it is going to be horrible. It’s like a kiss—when you want it, its beautiful, intimate, gorgeous; when you don’t want it, it's the most intrusive, disgusting, blech thing ever.” [50:27]

Links:

Jerónimo on Instagram

Jerónimo on Facebook

ICEERS Academy website

ICEERS Academy on Instagram

AyaSafety course

Previous episode: Guruism and Cult Dynamics in Psychedelic Practices with Joseph Holcomb Adams

Previous episode: Can Psychedelics Lead to False Beliefs? with Hugh McGovern, PhD

Psychedelic Medicine Association

Porangui

In this episode, Hugh McGovern, PhD joins to discuss his research on the impact of psychedelics on beliefs. Dr. McGovern is a Research Fellow at the School of Medicine, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.

To start, Dr. McGovern introduces the inference or predictive processing framework utilized in his paper “An Integrated theory of false insights and beliefs under psychedelics”. He explains the role of prediction in cognition, showing how insights occur when our existing perspectives are unable to make sense of our experience. In this vein, Dr. McGovern discusses how the psychedelic experience disrupts our normal modes of prediction and perception, leaving room for greater influence of environmental factors on insight production. In closing, Dr. McGovern shares ideas on further clinical directions for this research that could give guidance for helping patients more effectively integrate insight experiences.

In this episode you'll hear:

• The research into how psychedelics can influence and change beliefs
• The role beliefs and insights can play in psychedelic journeys
• How false insights can be experimentally induced
• The connection between prediction errors in our cognition and insight experiences
• The hippocampus, memory, and psychedelics
• The association between insight moments and increased mental health following psychedelic experiences

Quotes:

“[In psychedelic experiences] your expectations are no longer helping you make sense of your current sensory experience. And so you’re uniquely susceptible to environmental input under psychedelics—which would account for things like visual hallucinations [and] these novel insight moments.” [18:30]

“When you have really really strong prediction errors or really really strong insight moments, they can have a disproportionately important influence on your worldview going forward.” [20:03]

“Psychedelics, from a few different studies, show they can impair the formation of hippocampally dependent memories but they can perhaps even enhance the formation of cortically dependent memories. So what that means is you come out of the experience with this sense of knowing but it's in some sense lacking in details.” [29:04]

Links:

“An Integrated theory of false insights and beliefs under psychedelics” by Hugh McGovern et al.

Dr. McGovern on Bluesky

Previous episode: Guruism & Cult Dynamics in Psychedelic Practices with Joseph Holcomb Adams

Psychedelic Medicine Association

Porangui