How MDMA Is Transforming Mental Health - Dr Dan Engle | Modern Wisdom Podcast 367

1. 0:00 – 0:27

   Intro

   1. DEDr. Dan Engle0:00

      The most exciting thing in mental health care right now is psychedelic therapies, because for once we have really strategic, pretty consistently successful therapeutics that get down to root cause issues versus treating the symptoms.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:17

      (wind blowing) Dr. Dan Engel, welcome to the show.

   3. DEDr. Dan Engle0:21

      Ah, it's good to be with you, Chris. Thanks for having me on, man.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:24

      I am very, very happy to have you here. How would you describe what you do for

2. 0:27 – 6:46

   Dr Engle’s Work

   1. CWChris Williamson0:27

      work?

   2. DEDr. Dan Engle0:29

      Uh, these days the conceptual frame of that is transformational medicine, which incorporates a lot of different things and we could dissect that out, but I'd say that's the gist of it.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:40

      All right. How many MDMA-assisted psychotherapy sessions have you done, like, that you've sat with or facilitated?

   4. DEDr. Dan Engle0:47

      Oh. On or off the record? (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson0:51

      Uh, well, we're- we're definitely on the record now-

   6. DEDr. Dan Engle0:53

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson0:53

      ... um, but you can incl- you can include whatever you want.

   8. DEDr. Dan Engle0:56

      Yeah. Um, I've facilitated, I don't know now, uh, several hundred different medicine sessions, and I don't know if I've even kept a track of which ones are which different medicines. Um, historically I've facilitated with quite a few different medicines for people in different contexts, sometimes individual, sometimes group, um, sometimes in the States, sometimes out of the States. Um, there's a variety of different contexts where we can do that legally, whether it's in a religious context or if it's in a retreat context in places where medicines are legal and used. Um, I lived down in South America outside of Iquitos, Peru for about a year studying with ayahuasca, uh, in a apprenticeship, and that was 15 years ago when there wasn't much really known or understood or appreciated about ayahuasca. And at that time, I really started to get into the- the curiosity and the- the fascination with how you have different levels of people who can be supportive to another going through a process. You have sitters, you have therapists, i.e. facilitator, facilitators in more of kind of a Western psychological framework, and then you have trackers, you know, trackers that be- that really can pick up the subtle nuances of the landscape and help people rescue those lost parts of themselves.

   9. CWChris Williamson2:25

      What are your credentials?

   10. DEDr. Dan Engle2:27

       A medical doctor. You know, I've gone through, um, medical school here in the States, uh, my- so that was in San Antonio where I grew up. Uh, I did my psychiatry residency in Denver, uh, that was three years. Then I did, uh, two psych fellowships, one in forensic psych and one in child psych, and finished that up in Portland. And I've medical- I've been the medical director for, let's see, eight different centers, um, up to now and to the eve of what we were just talking about, launching Kuya in about two weeks.

   11. CWChris Williamson3:04

       Is it rare for somebody in the plant medicine world to have this degree of Western clinical credentials as well?

   12. DEDr. Dan Engle3:16

       Historically it's been very rare. Uh, thankfully it's growing, because two, uh, in my experience, um, and- and when you go through medical school and residency, you end up studying all the variety of fields and then you specialize. And in the different specialty fields as I was vetting what I wanted to get into, in my experience, two of the most pessimistic fields are neurology and psychiatry, and those are the two fields that I ended up studying in because they're the most fascinating. And they have really revolutionized since my medical training 20 years ago. And the most exciting thing in mental health care right now is psychedelic therapies, because for once we have really strategic, pretty consistently successful therapeutics that get down to root cause issues versus treating the symptoms, which has its place too, for sure. It's good to be able to support people easing their suffering, but we also want to be able to use the therapeutic tools that really get down to the causative root factors.

   13. CWChris Williamson4:23

       The symptoms would be your Paxils, your Zolofts, your SSRIs.

   14. DEDr. Dan Engle4:27

       Yeah. Yeah. And with the medical model that we have, uh, psychiatry, you know, psyche means soul. It- it translates to that terminology historically. It means mind too, and there are various aspects of the mind, one of which is this connection with soul, and, you know, the- a soul is to spirit as a drop is to the ocean, you know. We all have this underlying experience of what animates our being, and we as a field of psychiatry and psychiatrists have largely sold out to our role as a spokesperson and a physician for the soul to the pharmaceutical industry. And it's not to make that wrong, it's just to say that that's a particular orientation we've kind of maxed out the benefit, at least when you look at the numbers and the data. Um, and if somebody's standing on the ledge and all they have is antidepressants and antipsychotics and neuropsychopharmaceuticals available to them, I say, "Well, use the medicines." Those are medicines. Every medicine has its place. Pharmaceuticals have their place. Um, just like going to the ER has its place and going into the OR if you need to get under the knife or in that kind of Western triage care, like, "Let's put you back together." We're really good at that. That's what we do really well. In Western medicine, however, we're really shitty at preventative care and chronic care management. And so we're seeing this whole reclamation of psychiatry as this deeper aspect of getting to know the- the root cause issues and having tools that can get into the nitty-gritty, ideally being facilitated with people who are good...... trained, experienced facilitators and to let the medicine work its magic. Because oftentimes as facilitators, if, if we create the safe environment, the safe se- setting, and people can really relax into it, trust it, surrender into it, then w- we offer the medicine and the medicine does its magic. And th- and then it's as much of the facilitator's role to not get in the way (laughs) -

   15. CWChris Williamson6:36

       Yeah.

   16. DEDr. Dan Engle6:36

       ... to not try and mess with it, or think that they need to do something, 'cause the medicine's pretty phenomenal at being able to help people get in touch with the deepest aspects of their being.

3. 6:46 – 24:26

   Outlining MDMA

   1. DEDr. Dan Engle6:46

   2. CWChris Williamson6:46

      The medicine that we're going to be talking about today mostly is MDMA. What's the story of that? How did it come about?

   3. DEDr. Dan Engle6:54

      Yeah, it's a fascinating one. MDMA has followed the trajectory of many different medicines. Um, you know, this whole field of psychedelic therapy is now gaining more and more traction, and we could talk about the different pantheon of medicines. You have level one medicines, level two medicines, level three medicines. And just like you wouldn't go into the gym and put 300 on the squat rack un- unless you had worked up to that, it's also advisable to not start at a level three medicine until you-

   4. CWChris Williamson7:21

      Oh, okay. So what's a, what's a one, two, and a three? What would be some examples of what sits in those brackets?

   5. DEDr. Dan Engle7:26

      Yeah. Um, so before even that, it's good to set the foundation, right? Get your stance correct, really understand your posture (laughs) , alignment and, and that would look like meditation, and that would look like self-regulation.

   6. CWChris Williamson7:41

      Level zero.

   7. DEDr. Dan Engle7:41

      And that might... Y- y- that's ground zero. That's the solid foundation. And that might look like going into a float tank and seeing if you can hold your stuff together in a float tank. 'Cause if you can't hold it together in a float tank, it might be pretty hard (laughs) to hold it together in a ceremony. And so what does it look like when we find our conscious ability to chase our growth edge and lean into our fear and get intimate with that fear and breathe through that and learn self-regulation in the midst of fear and in the midst of our core wounding? It's hard for us to do our tracking on our own. Like, we don't self-observe super well as a species. We're good at... well, relatively, depending on training and kind of our gestalt or our constitution, ability to be able to do that for others. But traditionally, it's we're, we don't do that super well for ourselves. And part of that's because we have these awesome ego defenses that keep our wounds kind of at bay. And when we start to learn that the, the things that... the core wounds and the things that we've really walled ourselves off from, they're actually available to become our teachers. They're, they're assets to us as our, as our weaknesses become our best strengths, et cetera. And so this foundational experience setting the, the firm, um, ground matrix, so to speak, so that the new growth can happen is oftentimes through these neuroregulation, self-regulation practices. Meditation is just one example of that. And so once we start to be able to self-regulate, then we can opt in to having more altered state experiences and still be able to find our center or maintain a, uh, a state of available curiosity in the midst of the, the ego's reflexive position to move away from that which it fears.

   8. CWChris Williamson9:38

      What would be an example of some of that?

   9. DEDr. Dan Engle9:40

      Trauma, right? So eventually... This is part of the preparation. So MDMA, to answer y- your question would be a level one medicine.

   10. CWChris Williamson9:49

       Okay.

   11. DEDr. Dan Engle9:50

       Maybe I can share a little bit about m- some of the others. And in that preparation process, we can onboard the person going through that to understand that trauma can be a gateway to transformation. Like Barbara Marc Hubbard says, "Crisis precedes transformation every time." And when we go through this experience of being reclaimed into wholeness, which means bringing all of these separate parts home, like the traumatized parts of ourself that might have been s- locked away after trauma... And trauma doesn't have to mean, like, being in, in war and on the battlefield or having a near-death experience in a head-on collision or a variety of other, like, very obvious life-threatening experiences. That's classic PTSD. But there's also this growing awareness now over the last couple of decades of what we would call complex PTSD, which is more of the accumulation of adverse childhood experiences from very young, oftentimes which are before memory, right? So we don't really consolidate language with memory centers until we're like four or five, six years old. So, so much that happens before that we're, we're still configuring our identity and persona and, and view of ourself in the world happens in these early formative years and we might not have access to it. So that's a, a-

   12. CWChris Williamson11:17

       So you're saying that, y- you're saying that we can have something prior to our ability to recall it-

   13. DEDr. Dan Engle11:22

       Totally.

   14. CWChris Williamson11:22

       ... as a child which has impacted us in terms of our trauma-

   15. DEDr. Dan Engle11:26

       Totally.

   16. CWChris Williamson11:27

       ... throughout the rest of our lives?

   17. DEDr. Dan Engle11:28

       Totally.

   18. CWChris Williamson11:31

       How much of the trauma that you see with the people that you work with comes from that pre-memory phase versus the post-memory phase?

   19. DEDr. Dan Engle11:43

       70... Well, part of it's a selection bias, because I don't only work with veterans. Um, but if I was to take a random sampling of the population, I'd say it's about 60 to 70% complex PTSD versus classic PTSD. And th-

   20. CWChris Williamson11:58

       Presumably, the complex PTSD is not just the pre-memory phase, though. That there will be this small eroding and chipping away over time that contributes-

   21. DEDr. Dan Engle12:10

       Right.

   22. CWChris Williamson12:10

       ... to that too.

   23. DEDr. Dan Engle12:11

       Right. And, and that small chipping away oftentimes is the ero- that's a good term, the erosion of a sense of safety and security in the world, a sense of being able to trust our, our caregivers, whoever th- that was, if that was our parents or our grandparents or however we were raised. Can we trust the bigger people? When we're a little person, the bigger people just seem like gods. Can we trust those gods? Can we trust a god? What's our relationship with God? What's our relationship with life? What's the relationship with the planet? These are the s- the factors that go into establishing a sense of safety and security, and that can get eroded through these experience. And so it doesn't all have to be, like, in the first four, four or five formative years. It can be later too, like for example, say I'm in elementary school and I have a pretty safe, secure, uh, uh, sense of my family and, um, my attachment style, and, uh, haven't, uh, been exposed to a whole lot of trauma, I've been loved a lot. Say my family moves to a totally different culture, totally different community, and, and maybe I'm on the smaller side, and now I just start getting pummeled by the, the guys at school. That's gonna leave a mark, right? So, but maybe it wasn't like I got so thrashed that I almost died and there was obvious trauma. Maybe it was just bullying. And, and, and, and not to say just bullying, not to mean that bullying is just this oh, piddly thing that doesn't have consequences. That can be significantly detrimental to a growing person's sense of themself in the world and how they trust themself. And, and maybe if, if that gets utilized as a platform, like maybe I come home and I tell that to my parents and then my parents are like, "Okay. Yeah, I can see that that sucks. You know, tell us about it. How does that feel? Let's get you into self-defense classes. Let's get you into martial arts. Let's get you..." Maybe it's, it's another initiation, right? Crisis precedes transformation every time. So maybe it was able to get worked through and dealt with then, but maybe it didn't. Maybe I didn't feel like I could tell anybody or my parents were thrashed themself because they moved and then we lost all of our money or they were having trauma too. And so we can just see all the d- different radically complex and beautifully intricate scenarios and characteristics of life that would help us evolve into a particular experience of ourself.

   24. CWChris Williamson14:53

       So that's level one.

   25. DEDr. Dan Engle14:55

       So MDMA would be a level one medicine. And this is not an exhaustive list, but if we think about level one medicines versus level two versus level three, basically the differential would be, in part, level one medicines are typically easier to navigate and with a higher likelihood of having a positive experience if you only had a sitter supporting you. In a safe environment, maybe you had facilitation or maybe your sitter knew how to support it more than just helping you stay safe, which is the minimum viable product, so to speak, to entering the space is make sure that you have safety, make sure that you know... And by, you know, I, I should probably off- also preface, like, not everybody's r- ready to have a medicine experience. Not is r- and ev- not everybody's ready to have a psychedelic process occur. And that might be for a variety of reasons too that we could speak about, like what are the contraindications? So ease of entry into the space, ease of experience of the space, high likelihood of a positive outcome, relatively short process, uh, I'll speak about that a little bit further, and relatively low need for potential intervention by those that are helping to hold the container. So level one medicines, MDMA, ketamine, psilocybin.

   26. CWChris Williamson16:23

       Psilocybin would be in that list.

   27. DEDr. Dan Engle16:25

       S- d- dose dependent.

   28. CWChris Williamson16:27

       Yep.

   29. DEDr. Dan Engle16:28

       Yeah. Dose dependent LSD. And, and-

   30. CWChris Williamson16:31

       That would be on the longer side, I'm gonna guess. We're talking sort of upwards of maybe 10 hours there.
4. 24:26 – 28:32

   How MDMA Can Help Trauma

   1. DEDr. Dan Engle24:26

      than MDMA.

   2. CWChris Williamson24:27

      Why?

   3. DEDr. Dan Engle24:27

      Because it's so phenomenal. So the way it works in the s- in, in neurochemically, neuroanatomically, um, psychophysiologically, it stimulates certain areas of the brain as well as creating this awesome, um, opening process through, uh, the neuroendocrine cascade, so the neurohormonal cascade. It releases and floods the system with something called oxytocin. Oxytocin is our bonding hormone. It's the hormone that mothers secrete in breast milk when they're lactating and breastfeeding their children, and, and, and they're in this unification experience, this union experience. So oxytocin is very much a hormone of union, union with ourselves, union with the divine, union with others. And it also creates this, this neurochemical cascade through s- primarily serotonin and norepinephrine that allows the fear center to relax. That's also part of the oxytocin effect because when you're flooded with union, fear typically is, uh, relaxed and vice versa. It's hard to be flooded with union when your fear is really heightened. And so the amygdala starts to relax, the ego defenses start to relax, so our fear centers start to relax in the middle of creating this really hyper-alert state. So the neuro- th- the norepinephrine neuroendocrine experience of the prefrontal cortex allows this, like, supreme witness to come on board, and you can track really well. I mean, you've experienced, like, it's a very energizing medicine, so it brings energy into the s- it's also an amphetamine derivative, so (snaps fingers) it, it tends to kick up the, the energetic profile. It feels like you've had a couple of shots of coffee. And it also helps to impregnate a greater connection neuroanatomically that, that behaviorally expresses itself as improved memory because you get a really heightened connection between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, where we hold our memories.

   4. CWChris Williamson26:40

      So what's a-

   5. DEDr. Dan Engle26:40

      So three things just happened. I've r- I've relaxed my fear center, the amygdala's downregulated, I have a better witness 'cause the prefrontal cortex is online, and I have a better memory because the hippocampus is more online. So in the midst of all of that with, with my ego defenses now relaxed and my unification, that bonding hormone, alive, now you've created this amazing neurochemical soup that allows the curiosity and the investigation of the things that we've held back, that we were scared from, maybe that we didn't even know was there. The trauma starts to naturally bubble to the surface, and those things that I wouldn't have let myself acknowledge or become intimate with before are now coming up, and we can work with it.

   6. CWChris Williamson27:30

      It creates a very appropriate environment for a therapist to work in.

   7. DEDr. Dan Engle27:34

      Bingo. Especially for trauma. I mean, pretty much for anything because MDMA's an amazing m- medicine for communication. It was in the early '80s used for couples therapy pre- predominantly because it's just so good at helping us drop our bullshit meter and get real, but also speak from a place of truth without so much defensiveness or animosity or, um, y- the, the, the subtle communication factors that maybe that's passive-aggressive, maybe they're barbs, maybe they're subtle sabotage, maybe it's like ... All of that starts to now also relax. All of those historical ways that maybe we were sideways or distorted in our communication, now we have the opportunity to speak with more truth, clarity, and love. And so it's a great couples therapy agent.

   8. CWChris Williamson28:27

      What about the story of MDMA? How did it get created?

   9. DEDr. Dan Engle28:31

      Yeah, so

5. 28:32 – 37:58

   MDMA’s Creation

   1. DEDr. Dan Engle28:33

      ... And then we'll come back and I'll say more about level two, level three, et cetera. So, um, I think it was 1912, methylenedioxy, um, methamphetamine, so that's what MDMA stands for, and it wasn't used for 50 or so years until, uh, 50s, 60s it started becoming more widely used and appreciated, uh, and it became a s- a, a strong psychotherapeutic tool in the '70s and into the '80s.

   2. CWChris Williamson29:01

      Wh- why was it created in the first place?

   3. DEDr. Dan Engle29:02

      Um, it was created ... Yeah, I, I don't know what initially the impulse was that we're going to create this particular molecule, and it wasn't for a psychotherapeutic aim back then in the early 1900s. We weren't really looking at psychopharmacology at that time as a tool into, like, doorways of the mind, so to speak. And then it got resurrected, uh, and that has its own kind of colorful story that I'm probably not the best to describe because there's a lot of, um, circumstance and a lot of iterations to that story of, like, how it just magically kind of came back onto the scene. And as I understand, once it became more widely used and appreciated psychotherapeutically, that was also in parallel late '50s into the '60s coming into our curiosity in the psychedelic revolution that was happening at that time, psychedelics in general, and it, it didn't get as much appreciation as things like, you know, LSD was the front runner, um, of the counterculture movement in the late '60s. And then kind of backdrafting all o- off of LSD's kind of entry into the space was MDMA.... as not so much a psycho- psychoactive, psychedelic experience. Like L- LSD is a classic psychedelic, psilocybin is a classic psychedelic, uh, DMT-based medicines, ayahuasca is a classic psychedelic. Uh, MDMA is not. MDMA is described as an empathogen or entactogen, which means it engenders empathy and it has all of those neurological and neurochemical aspects and kind of attributes that I mentioned. And because it's so fascinatingly powerful in its ability to help people speak their truth from a place of being unguarded and essentially more open and available to contact that truth and then communicate it, it's an amazing psychotherapeutic tool. So it was being used more and more by the psychotherapeutic community in the '70s and into the early '80s, um, and never should have been in Schedule I. Schedule I means, that's our, in the United States, classification of, of medicines that have no known benefit and they're highly addictive, and those would be also what we could call street drugs like heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine. Um, but now we're talking about only a few iterations off of the classic meth or crystal meth, which just wrecks a lot of people's lives. You have, not so far away from that, something like MDMA, which is saving a lot of people's lives. So medicines oftentimes have not only their sacred place at the table, like all medicines, once we get to understand what it's for, then we can understand how to use it in a good way. And we can also start to not just bastardize something like heroin, which is very similar to morphine, which is very good for helping many people with intractable pain syndrome. Like I, part of my background is in neurology, and I've had a host of concussions and I've, I help people with traumatic brain injuries in some of the centers I've run in the past, that's been our focus, and neuropathic pain sucks. Having a chronic nerve injury, like a structural nerve firing that is like an itch you can't ever scratch, it's this constant pain. Like sciatica is a common experience of a neuropathic pain and most people who have sciatica are like, "Yeah, that really sucks." Well, if, if you have that ongoing all the time, it's a really rough day. And so that can be another aspect and a potential trajectory for transformational experience in being able to work with your mind, and it's also helpful to do that with an opioid pharmaceutical like morphine. Morphine was the first one on a battlefield medicine, it was very good. But then you have something like heroin that's just a little bit different, right? And now we have the difference between a medicine and a drug. Or if you look at something like cocaine, R- Ritalin is pharma- pharmacologically very much like cocaine, right? And we give that almost like M&Ms to youth to help them sit still. Little Johnny in the back who's just got a lot of mental energy, maybe a lot of physical energy, and he learns by moving his body in space. Everybody learns a little bit different. There is like s- at least seven different primary learning styles. So when we have a one-size-fits-all educational model and we make kids the problem because they're not just going to sit there like little minions and stamp widgets for an hour at a time, because that's not how they're geared, then we start to drug them with things that aren't that pharmacologically different than the things that we are bastardizing and putting people in way, in, in pr- a privatized prison system for long periods of time. So then we just start to see how all of this is going through this massive transformation. It's not just the medical industry through psychedelics, it's also the privatized prison system and going through a justi- social justice reform. It's also the political system, it's also who's, uh, right? So there's a lo- a large downstream effect. When we have something like the reclamation of truth-telling in what the war on drugs was actually about, then it calls us into action to make sure that we're doing our due diligence to make sure that that doesn't happen again, to the best of our ability. Because it's very clear that the Nixon administration, public enemy number one was the- w- was drugs, but that was still s- smoke and mirrors and kind of like the front story for the fact that they wanted a control mechanism for the minorities, and they knew that they, if they could connect the black community with heroin and they could connect the hippies with cannabis and make both of those illegal, then they could marginalize both of those communities and continue to control, like, status quo. And so this whole war on drugs was not based in data and science, it was based on political motivations, and we're seeing something similar in the c- in, in, in the current global crisis with COVID, or with the last political election. It's hard to know which data to trust, on which p- side of the pole, because you can have really good data that sounds like legitimate truth and you can have, on one side you can have really good data that sounds like legitimate truth on the other side. And so this is where so much confusion a- and a sense of paralysis can happen. It's like, "Fuck, I don't know now who to trust and where to go," and like, what, what are your, and people like yourself doing podcasts and like giving information to the masses, this is where it's a grassroots movement to start, um, en masse demanding more truth-telling and then finding those o- if we can't trust the, the political leaders and those that are quote-unquote "above us" or "in charge," then we'll go to one another.And so MDMA, just like most of the psychedelics, is coming online right now, as one of my teachers would describe them as clarigens. So MDMA now is going through this legal, um, how would I describe this? It's k- uh, it's own transformation. It's own-

   4. CWChris Williamson36:59

      Like a legal renaissance?

   5. DEDr. Dan Engle37:01

      Yeah, yeah, we could call it a, a renaissance. Yeah, psychedelic therapy in general is going through a renaissance for sure. MDMA is even going through something interesting because it is such a, a North Star, way shower of what's possible. Because the medicine that-

   6. CWChris Williamson37:17

      Because it's so effective, it's very safe.

   7. DEDr. Dan Engle37:20

      Right. Yeah. Right. It, though, you just hit it on the head, those are the two prime factors. It's so effective, so people hear the stories of transformation. It's so safe, so it's so clear that MDMA doesn't belong in Schedule I. It's saving people's lives. It's helping people reclaim their trauma so as to be able to grow from it and through it and with it, to become more whole humans. Uh, that's exactly what the field of psychiatry is meant to do. So it is this way shower of what our potential is in this renaissance. So I think that's a great word to use.

6. 37:58 – 53:09

   Different MDMA Levels

   1. DEDr. Dan Engle37:58

   2. CWChris Williamson37:58

      Let's get back to level-

   3. DEDr. Dan Engle37:59

      And-

   4. CWChris Williamson37:59

      Let's get back to level two and three.

   5. DEDr. Dan Engle38:00

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson38:01

      I want to, I want to find out-

   7. DEDr. Dan Engle38:01

      And so what-

   8. CWChris Williamson38:02

      ... what's in them.

   9. DEDr. Dan Engle38:02

      Yeah. Where we're going to go is legalization with MDMA. Uh, it's scheduled to become legal in the next 18 to 24 months, largely-

   10. CWChris Williamson38:11

       Legal for clinical use?

   11. DEDr. Dan Engle38:14

       Therapeutic use.

   12. CWChris Williamson38:14

       Yep.

   13. DEDr. Dan Engle38:15

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson38:15

       Yeah, you're just exciting a lot of people there-

   15. DEDr. Dan Engle38:17

       Largely-

   16. CWChris Williamson38:17

       ... thinking that it was going to be sold at the corner shop.

   17. DEDr. Dan Engle38:20

       (laughs) Right. And that's a totally different orientation, right? Because usually drugs, they go to, uh, legal therapeutic use and then potentially legal recreational use. Cannabis did that, right? No one can use it, and now you can use it if you have a diagnosis, chronic pain syndrome, uh, uh, and now a lot of people are using it recreationally because there's a lot of money in it. So-

   18. CWChris Williamson38:42

       Does this mean that there's going to be loads of dodgy street vendors on Venice Beach flogging MDMA cards? Like, "Oh, come get your-"

   19. DEDr. Dan Engle38:50

       I certainly hope not.

   20. CWChris Williamson38:52

       "Come get your MDMA therapy card here."

   21. DEDr. Dan Engle38:55

       I certainly hope not. It, the, I think there's going to be a much more concerted roll out with MAPS and MAPS' relationship with the feds, and, um, th- that you can, uh... Because people won't ha... Like, in order to sell it on the streets you'd have to have it, but nobody's going to be able to have it outside of a licensed facility, so it's going to be under, under high regulation.

   22. CWChris Williamson39:18

       Yeah.

   23. DEDr. Dan Engle39:18

       And to, to an extent we want that because we don't want to give any ammunition to the feds to prove their doubt that we're not ready for this, at least as a therapeutic tool. And then we can solidify that safety and then talk about recreational further down the road. So that's where we're headed. Um, we mentioned level one. Level two, typically a bit more variables to take into consideration, a bit more of an intense process with even an entry level experience, um, can bring up more shadow work to be able to do internally.

   24. CWChris Williamson40:01

       What does that mean, shadow work?

   25. DEDr. Dan Engle40:03

       Um, so if your, if your trauma started coming into the space, and part of this is because how the medicines are facilitated, the three level two medicines, ayahuasca, peyote, San Pedro, they're not typically done individually. They're usually done in groups, like peyote's in a group setting, ayahuasca, San Pedro. It's not typically oriented for a person in the same kind of MDMA framework or therapeutic setting to do one-on work with, with those tools. You can, but historically that's not its cultural context, and that's not the religious context that the UDV and Santo Daime and the Peyote Way Church, they don't hold it in the same kind of context. And you don't necessarily have to hold it that way in order for it to be a legal sanctioned, um, church, um, congregational ceremony, so to speak. Um, but recognizing the lineage that these medicines come from are, are procured and offered through a tapestry and a technology of consistent facilitation. So there's a reason why those medicines are facilitated that way and have been done that way for hundreds and hundreds of years. So something like ayahuasca, because it translates into the vine of the soul or the vine of death, um, and that's more of an ego death, not a physical death, so people typically going through an ayahuasca experience won't die. Um, but that's another indication too that we have to be even more clear in our contraindications because level two experiences can bring up a lot of intense stuff, and if a person hasn't done a level one process or if they haven't kind of gotten their sol- solidification of being able to regulate their nervous systems and they just pop in an ayahuasca ceremony, a lot of people have bad trips. It really depends on the setting, the facilitation, how much they're given, all of that. Um, and same thing with peyote and San Pedro because they're so strong and they last so long, it could be an uncomfortable experience if people are having a, a rough time and you just have to sweat it out for a good eight to 10 hours because you might not have a facilitator immediately right there that you can just pull on, like is usually how MDMA has worked. Usually, it's in a group setting. So if you're having a hard time, you're typically gonna have to just sit with it and be with it. And that's part of the benefit because it's like resistance training. Over time, we get better and better at being able to sit with our discomfort.And ayahuasca's my prim- I would call her as my primary teacher, the medicine that's had the strongest influence on my life. And when I came out of my psychiatry fellowship, had a clinic, it was open for a couple of years, we were doing integrative psychiatry, helping people come off of psychiatric medication, so we were doing good work, but there was still a little bit of like the depth of it missing. And I was introduced to ayahuasca circle underground. It was about 15 years ago and it ... I learned more about myself in one weekend with ayahuasca than I had in one decade of psychotherapy. (laughs) I was like, "Holy shit. Where the fuck has this been and why haven't I heard about it?" I was both fascinated and pissed because I had spent t- close to 20 years studying the mind and never come across this. And so I closed up my clinic and moved out of the jungle just because I was fascinated As you do. Yeah. (laughs) Totally. Um, so that I, level two to the extent that if you're a facilitator entry level, uh, if you're a sitter or an entry level facilitator, you can support people through a level one process pretty routinely, pretty successfully. But to facilitate ayahuasca, peyote or San Pedro, usually my teachers would go through a decade of training before they ever worked on behalf of another just consistently apprenticing, consistently learning, understanding the medicine, understanding the astral plane, understanding the energetic profile, understanding how to go into a person's field to be able to track what they're not able to see on their own, come back, present that, help them integrate it, and then dust off, clean off so that we're not taking on their residue or the same, I'm not influencing their im- th- their experience with my own impact. So there are so many different nuances is that this kind of work and doing that level of curanderismo or vegetalismo or, you know, the ... My teachers wouldn't even describe themselves as shamans because it's a turn from a different culture. Um, but the healers of that traditional path or those that know how to make a right relationship with the medicines and, and the, the herbs, the plants and be able to work side by side, hand in hand with that technology on behalf of a client or a group of people, that is next level mastery. So that's why I put that in, those in schedule or, uh, level two. So then we have level three, DMT and iboga. DMT because nothing will invite your ego to die quite like DMT will, especially if it's in the smoked version of either N,N-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT whether it's synthetic or organic like from the Sonoran Desert toad. It's so fast, it's so strong, it just catapults your, your ego straight out of your body and it can happen so fast that it feels really freaky. And I worked with clients who had their first psychedelic state with a 5-MeO experience and, and were shattered for months afterwards.

   26. CWChris Williamson45:50

       What does that mean shattered?

   27. DEDr. Dan Engle45:50

       Because it just ... It just blew their doors open. Like if we use that same kind of like gates of perception, doors of perception, well, you can unlock the door or you can dynamite the door.

   28. CWChris Williamson46:01

       Blast them off the hinges. Yeah, exactly.

   29. DEDr. Dan Engle46:03

       Right. And so that has a particular psychological, psychic and energetic impact. It really frays the energy body and this gets more into like Ayurveda if you're talking about the nadis or like the energetic body, um, or like astral tear in the field, so to speak. Like it requires surgical intervention of a particular like now we're s- now we're being interventionists to the mind and to that degree of trauma. But it's not just psychological. There's a neurological, there's a neuro-energetic experience too. So we ... In the worst case scenario, somebody gets their doors blasted open and they can get psychotic or have intractable insomnia. Intractable insomnia will lead to psychosis eventually. And so we might need to use a psychopharmaceutical like antipsychotic like Zyprexa, S- Seroquel, um, and the list is long but just I- as examples. And that's where a g- that's a good example of if we need to shut down the symptoms that we can, and so we have tools for that kind of intervention. Ideally w- if we come back to the rubric, you don't start at level three. If I walked into a g- I can't squat 300 pounds. I used to be able to do, but I'm just not in, I'm not doing those kinds of exercises like I did before. I can perform in ways now that I didn't do before, but you have to understand where you're at and you have to work up to that level. So DMT because it's so strong and it has that impact for creating trauma, and the last thing we want to do is that. We're actually wanting to heal trauma. And iboga because it lasts so long (laughs) and it's so arduous.

   30. CWChris Williamson47:41

       How long is iboga? What's an iboga trip like?
7. 53:09 – 1:05:59

   MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy

   1. DEDr. Dan Engle53:09

   2. CWChris Williamson53:09

      Talk me through what an MDMA-assisted psychotherapy session feels like-

   3. DEDr. Dan Engle53:15

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson53:15

      ... from someone arriving at the place to getting in the chair to taking the drug. How is it administered? What happens? What are the sort of conversations? Take me through that.

   5. DEDr. Dan Engle53:24

      Totally. Well, that's why I wrote the book 'cause there's a lot of information in there. (laughs) But the Cliffs Notes version is... So, the way that Maps has done it, and I think they've done a good job, they've essentially set the, the process platform for how MDMA's gonna get rolled out. And, and the success rate's phenomenal. If you look at phase one trials, 80, 83% success rate cure for chronic severe PTSD. Nothing like that on the planet. You look at phase two trials and it's like 60, 65% cure rate. Still pretty good. A little bit lower. And then you're looking at phase three trials and it's about in the middle, 75-plus percent. So, we're, we're looking at like two-thirds, three-fourths of all people with chronic severe PTSD go through two to three sessions and they're done. They-

   6. CWChris Williamson54:21

      This is compared with a 34% improvement rate, which is-

   7. DEDr. Dan Engle54:27

      Right.

   8. CWChris Williamson54:27

      ... the other alternative.

   9. DEDr. Dan Engle54:29

      Standard of care. That's the standard of care. Standard of care is psy- psychopharmaceuticals, talk therapy, and that has a 35, 40% improvement rate. So, we're not... We're talking about a differential in cure rate versus improvement. So, the numbers are even differential, but the, they're exponentially different because we're talking about improvement versus cure. So, the reason I say all of that as a prelude to your conversa- your question is because the, the data and those numbers are largely not-... just because of MDMA, because MDMA is so amazing, it's how it's offered and what's happening around the sessions too, because it's not just the sessions. You have 12 psychotherapy sessions interwoven with three medicine sessions, right? So you have three medicine sessions, you have three therapy, three therapy, three therapy, three therapy, before, interspersed, and then after the last one. So you have 12 psychotherapy sessions around three medicine sessions. So you have 15 sessions and those medicine sessions are with both of your therapists because it's a dyad, man and woman ideally. And the therapy sessions are oftentimes with dyads too. So but not, it doesn't have to be. Uh, it's either your primary therapist or the dyad therapist. So now you've got so much investment and involvement in people like really in your business, but also helping you get clear on reg- self-regulation, expectation, setting the stage, understanding what the process is going to be like. That's why I'm going to answer your question, but I want to just set the stage too, like it's important for us to realize that when this medicine goes legal, it's going to be mandated to have that degree of psychotherapeutic engagement before, during, and after. And unfortunately, because insurance companies are not reimbursing for this right now, it's going to be like $10,000 to $12,000 out of pocket. And now all of a sudden you've just now made this a very rare medicine that a chosen few are going to be able to pay for. So we're in the midst of rehabilitating the entire medical reimbursement system to be able to support those that need it the most to be able to have access. That's going to roll out over time but there's a concerted effort to doing that right now.

   10. CWChris Williamson56:46

       I'm going to guess that that cost can't change a massive amount because you require two people who are very experienced for a significant amount of time over 12 sessions plus presumably background checks, testing, checking in with the clients, so on and so forth. So the only way really that that cost can be brought down significantly is with adding more trainers in or more facilitators and more therapists into the system so that you can actually have a little bit more, um, employment competition or it being just an assistance by insurance companies.

   11. DEDr. Dan Engle57:20

       I think both are going to happen.

   12. CWChris Williamson57:21

       Yeah.

   13. DEDr. Dan Engle57:22

       And I think, I think also the cost is going to come down because some of that cost includes, um, payment for research. And-

   14. CWChris Williamson57:31

       Oh, so there's contribution to research from everybody's session.

   15. DEDr. Dan Engle57:36

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson57:36

       That's kind of cool. That's kind of like a by, by taking on the therapy yourself you contribute to the benefit of other people getting it in future. That's quite altruistic and cool.

   17. DEDr. Dan Engle57:45

       Right. It's kind of like phase one, two, and three studies have had that same kind of ethos and that's what we do for, for the benefit of medical knowledge and research. So that's the framework. What does, what does it look like, feel like? So when you go through a MDMA session, it feels like, you, you have the felt experience of remembering what MDMA is like, right? It feels like a few Red Bulls or a lot of coffee, like your system's amped. Uh, your heart rate and blood pressure knock up about 20 points each. So one of the contraindications is heart disease. Um, another contraindication would be intractable epilepsy, um, people on psychopharmaceuticals already, so you can't be on psycho- psychiatric medications when going through MDMA. It's contra- clear contra-indica- indication. Um, people with, uh, history of psychosis or mania, not a good idea to open up the doors of perception even further. So there are a few cardinal contraindications. So the felt experience, it comes on, um, you get really aware and you start to feel what we could essentially describe as love. Ease, comfort, safety, bonding, curiosity, openness. Maybe a more neutral word would be open versus love. I think they're very synonymous. Um, so that opening feeling with the alertness and the curiosity with the facilitator who knows at least some of your background and trauma narrative-

   18. CWChris Williamson59:19

       Well, at least three sessions, right, before the first time that you do it?

   19. DEDr. Dan Engle59:23

       At least three sessions.

   20. CWChris Williamson59:24

       Yeah.

   21. DEDr. Dan Engle59:24

       Ideally longer, ideally more. Ideally people have a therapist or, or a coach, mentor, guide, some kind of elder or somebody that they're able to talk with that knows them, that's here for them, that consistently offers that safety and security in a connective, supportive, positive relationship to be able to be the person to help them land the plane, so to speak, after all this. So when that's all in place then you have the ability to go even further and deeper and wider and know that you're going to be held on the other side. So you can get really open and you can get really radically vulnerable with whatever's just right underneath the surface. So we don't really have to go as facilitators fishing for what we think is the deeper material. Like, let's trust the process. It's kind of like peeling back the curtain and seeing what's right there. It may be-

   22. CWChris Williamson1:00:24

       Do you find a lot of the time that your patients are bringing up the most pertinent, most important stuff on their own?

   23. DEDr. Dan Engle1:00:34

       It may be. It may be the core wound is right under the surface. It may be that the core wound is expressing itself through something more recent or maybe even something a little less intense. Like let's just test the waters and make sure that this is safe to get through. Like can you hold me through this? If you can hold me through this, I'm not ready, you're not ready, we're not ready to get into the trenches and, and really dredge the, the river banks.And in my experience, once we've done the preparation work, it's usually pretty close-

   24. CWChris Williamson1:01:13

       Right there.

   25. DEDr. Dan Engle1:01:14

       ... to the source. Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson1:01:15

       Yeah. Okay, so somebody's lying there. You have this dyad, this dialogos that's going on, which is typically masculine and feminine to reflect masculine and feminine energy. Is the person lying eyes closed with a towel on? Are you allowing them to intersperse talking with you with music? What, what's happening there?

   27. DEDr. Dan Engle1:01:33

       Yeah. Yeah, great question. So because the medicine has a little bit of an arc to come on, comes on over the course of about an hour, depending a little bit on the dose and the med-

   28. CWChris Williamson1:01:45

       Depends, depends if you get shitty drugs from a guy-

   29. DEDr. Dan Engle1:01:48

       (laughs)

   30. CWChris Williamson1:01:48

       ... in an Ibiza nightclub. Sometimes it doesn't come on all night.
8. 1:05:59 – 1:22:09

   Aftermath of MDMA Use

   1. DEDr. Dan Engle1:05:59

   2. CWChris Williamson1:05:59

      It's a little bit like being a book stop. You know, you have Corey, mutual friend of ours, he talks about, um, when someone gets angry at him, and he often thinks of it like a virus. So he thinks, "I wonder who gave you that anger, and I wonder who gave them that anger, and I wonder who gave them that anger," and it gets passed down and passed down and passed down. And he talks about it in a mindfulness setting, and he says, "The mindfulness gap, the beauty of being able to have a beat, pause between stimulus and response to choose whether or not you want to take that anger and then pass it down to the next person that you see that day that cuts you up in traffic or serves you the wrong drink in Starbucks, that's your choice." And you are right. There, there, there is a, a degree of privilege there that you think, right, there's this virus, this whatever, this transgenerational trauma which is being passed down. My mother's mother and her mother and the mother before have all been like this, but I'm not going to be like that.

   3. DEDr. Dan Engle1:06:54

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:06:54

      And I have the opportunity to take the bait, to use this mindfulness gap or to use some psychotherapy assisted by a medicine to, yeah, to stop that. Yeah, it's a, it's a beautiful opportunity to have that. This may be, um...... my party background talking, but my recall from times on MDMA has been sketchy, to say the least.

   5. DEDr. Dan Engle1:07:20

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:07:20

      Is there a difficulty with integrating the lessons that people learn whilst they're on MDMA-

   7. DEDr. Dan Engle1:07:26

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:07:26

      ... because of the fact that, I mean, I, f-, how much of that's because of the fact I was drunk?

   9. DEDr. Dan Engle1:07:32

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson1:07:32

       Um, and, and is there a difficulty with recall?

   11. DEDr. Dan Engle1:07:35

       For sure. It's a great question. And you're highlighting one of the, the beauties and the challenges with this kind of work, because it, it engenders an altered state. So by definition, we're not in our usual kind of frame of mind. And so all of the experience is cataloged through a different veil and energetic of consciousness, so to speak. So we have to pierce that veil and be able to access those files. It's kind of like, it's kind of like that experience is held on an external hard drive, and we have it on the hard drive. We just have to know how to, like, wormhole back to it. And so I think a few things are relevant to your question and your experience. Alcohol has a huge impact on memory. We know that. And I imagine there wasn't just, like, a swig here and there. There was probably a f- a, a healthy drink. (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson1:08:32

       I was, I was sunning it. I was fully sunning it. Yeah.

   13. DEDr. Dan Engle1:08:34

       Right. So that's gonna have an effect. The setting is gonna have an effect. Particularly in a party setting, there's so much energy and it- attention outward. And the feedback experience is very much in the middle world, in the outer world, right? And in a therapeutic setting, it's very much in the internal world and in the curious landscape, where you're actually having... The input that's coming towards you is one of facilitating awareness. Versus in a party scene, oftentimes the input that's coming in isn't facilitating inner awareness. It's facili-

   14. CWChris Williamson1:09:18

       The, the thing, what people are looking for when they take MDMA at a party is to enhance that collective effervescence, right?

   15. DEDr. Dan Engle1:09:24

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:09:24

       That's exact, they're looking to... You hear people use the terminology, "I lost myself in the music."

   17. DEDr. Dan Engle1:09:29

       Right. Which is banal.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:09:31

       As oppor- as opposed to finding yourself in you-

   19. DEDr. Dan Engle1:09:33

       Right.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:09:33

       ... which is what you guys are trying to do. So that, the framing, the set and setting, um, focusing the attention inwardly or outwardly, that's, that's an interesting insight.

   21. DEDr. Dan Engle1:09:46

       Yeah. Because it's a, it's a medicine of opening, right? So you're gonna open to something that's happening externally, the, the, the collective, the music, the vibe, that energetic, or are we gonna open to what's internal? And when you have a facilitator that's constantly referencing you to the internal, it's really helpful. And oftentimes helping you get back on the track, because it's like you can be open and get down a wormhole of your mind that's not super helpful or it's not, like, getting to the root cause of the issue that you've come in for. So the therapist can, and, and guide can oftentimes, like, bring it back to that common thread. And so the experience with MDMA is usually around four to six hours. Um, if you level up again, t- the entry dose is usually around 120 milligrams. The, the level up after two hours is about half of that dose, and then it turns into a six to eight hour experience. So it depends on the time signature and how much there's, there is to go through. Most people will re-up. Um, particularly a l- a lot of important work is, is getting done. Like, "I've, I've done all this prep work to get to here, so I'm going to get as much out of it as I can."

   22. CWChris Williamson1:11:00

       Yeah.

   23. DEDr. Dan Engle1:11:00

       And oftentimes it can feel really pleasant. Especially if somebody's been really walled off and gartered, i- i- and guarded and the psychic armor has been heavy. Not to say that trauma work is pleasant, but there's, uh, an experience that can, that can feel affirming and, and strengthening.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:11:24

       Liberating as well-

   25. DEDr. Dan Engle1:11:25

       Like, wow.

   26. CWChris Williamson1:11:25

       ... I imagine. Yeah.

   27. DEDr. Dan Engle1:11:26

       And liberating. Yeah. Like, wow. It oftentimes doesn't feel liberating in the moment. Well, cancer clear, it, it very much can. Especially if you're, if you're consciously engaging the process of recognizing the lightness that comes from shedding the old story and being able to see it in a new light. So that can feel both not only strengthening, but very much liberating. Yeah, totally.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:11:50

       Talk to me about reintegration and the end of it, because I've had some fucking brutal comedowns in my time.

   29. DEDr. Dan Engle1:11:58

       (laughs)

   30. CWChris Williamson1:12:00

       And I, I don't want to be, I don't want to be ordering a Domino's to the MDMA center and asking them to turn off the lights and, and send me, uh, like a packet of Coca-Cola in or something.
9. 1:22:09 – 1:26:30

   When MDMA Might Fail

   1. DEDr. Dan Engle1:22:09

   2. CWChris Williamson1:22:09

      What would be some of the characteristics of the type of person who wouldn't succeed at MDMA-assisted psychotherapy? What would be the sort of things that they would do afterward? How would they integrate s- suboptimally? How would they enter the session suboptimally? What would be some of those things?

   3. DEDr. Dan Engle1:22:31

      That's a r- phenomenal question. Um, if I was to recognize, if I w- if I was to like translate your question into a way that I could make more context and answer more clearly, I would say like, what might be the factors that would set up a less than optimal MDMA experience to happen and then to get integrated? And I would say, okay, the facilitation is lousy, right? So they're not gonna be able to hold a strong acco- accountability structure. Like, if I go into the gym and I know I want, I'm, I'm working on performance measures, I want a coach that's going to hold me accountable, that's gonna help me see like where I was and where I'm getting to. Um, and but most facilitation with MDMA, because of the legal structure, they have to be good-

   4. CWChris Williamson1:23:18

      Yep.

   5. DEDr. Dan Engle1:23:18

      ... i- in the States. All of it right now is happening with clinical trials. But there are a lot of underground facilitators who aren't that good. Maybe they're good sitters, but they might not be, not be very good facilitators. So if s- if deep trauma comes into the space and the, and the container can't hold it, and the facilitation can't hold it, then it can get messy, and now you've got all this trauma we- re-wounding in the space, impregnating the field, but (laughs) it's not getting worked through. So it's like, well that's great, now I'm just left with all this mess and now (laughs) you're like, who's going to help me clean it up? So that can be a factor. Another factor can be, um, the expectation that the medicine is going to fix something, because the medicines are not here to fix anything. They're here to show us truth, and they're here to help support us do our work in order to become more whole humans. And if a person thinks that they're going to go through a process and they're just going to magically pop out the other side awesome, and life's awesome, and they're not willing to put in the work, then that expectation can be a handicap. Uh, and that expectation can also potentially look like they thi- they think the work is going to be easy. Sometimes the work's not freaking easy. Like, what started me on the ayahuasca path was a prayer that, that helped me out, open up my heart. I was going through a separation and divorce and I couldn't feel it, and I didn't want to live that way. Um, so I didn't realize the answer to that prayer was going to be eight years of going through all the trauma that had shut off my heart in the first place (laughs) . So there were times in the integration where I thought like, this isn't supposed to be happening (laughs) . This wasn't in the fine print. Fuck. So, you know, so- I blew a fuse, something's off, we're, we're you know in a nosedive. And that was just an expectation of what I thought was gonna happen didn't happen. It happened in a different way. It happened in a better way. It happened in a way that I wouldn't have chosen, but was orchestrated for my best outcome.And it's helpful to have a validation team and community to lift each other up, to reference the growth that we're doing together, to be a middle cheer, to be able to cheerlead each other on, because this isn't easy work. There is a massive amount of global calamity and crisis and pain happening that's not just current, that's mountains of unhealed residue from past traumas, from past cultural traumas, global traumas. A ton of trauma is getting brought current right now. So by no means is this easy work and we need to be in communities where we're lifting each other up in order to do the good work so that we can unburden our children and the coming generations from having to carry our shit, because they're going to have a lot on their hands without carrying our stuff too to deal with.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:26:21

      You're gonna have your work cut out over the next few years then?

   7. DEDr. Dan Engle1:26:25

      I think probably so.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:26:27

      What is the roadmap for the next... I think it seems

10. 1:26:30 – 1:29:19

    What’s Next for MDMA?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:26:30

       like the next 18 months or so are going to be pretty exciting. What's the roadmap that you see from here on out for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy?

    2. DEDr. Dan Engle1:26:37

       Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think your point's a good one. We've got a lot of good work, uh, and ideally fun ahead too. Um, I do have a very clear sense that if, if, if this isn't fun, then, then we're missing some of it (laughs) because being in a body-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:26:52

       Fuck me if you can't make MDMA fun.

    4. DEDr. Dan Engle1:26:54

       (laughs)

    5. CWChris Williamson1:26:54

       Just give up.

    6. DEDr. Dan Engle1:26:55

       Right. You know what I mean? It's a pretty forgiving medicine. It, it has a phenomenal success rate. Um, it's amazing to see people go from being really walled off and hurt and in the somatic experience of trauma to being really free and really released and really available to work through that trauma. Not to say, again, that it's fixed and done, but it's, it's pretty magical to help people go through these kind of processes. So I think we're going to train. Uh, I am not... I'm, I'm a spokesperson, an educator and an advocate for this work. I'm not formally affiliated with the Maps organization that's, that's involved in doing the majority of the training. Uh, I support their organization for sure and without them, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Um, so they're in charge of training as many facilitators as possible and we're going to need somewhere on the order of 50 plus thousand facilitators over the next five to 10 years and we're going to have five to 6000 centers doing this kind of work over the next five to 10 years. We're going to gradually roll out this medicine and this next wave of the psychedelic and psychiatric renaissance with medicine work. We're going to continue to roll that out as the new growing standard of care. I see allopathic Western medicine has turned largely into functional medicine when it's done well, but it's still relatively reductionistic. And now functional medicine is turning into transformational medicine, which is n- now we're going to have the data to show. We already have the data, and when we start bringing the, the software sciences, mind and soul with the hardware sciences, body and brain, right? You got psychology and neurology. You bring those next level medicine practices, so regenerative medicine with the psychedelic therapies. When you bring those together, now you've just created a whole new medical framework that actually gets to the root cause issues and starts to help us transform better than we ever thought imagined.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:29:10

       Sick. Absolutely sick. Dr. Dan Engel, ladies and gentlemen. A Dose of Hope: The Story of MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy will be linked in the show notes below on Amazon.

11. 1:29:19 – 1:30:25

    Where to Find Dr Dan Engle

    1. CWChris Williamson1:29:19

       And if people want to keep up to date with whatever else you're doing, where should they go?

    2. DEDr. Dan Engle1:29:24

       Uh, yeah, you can, uh, go to my website. That's one. Drdanengel.com. Full Spectrum Medicine, I mentioned. Um, again, it's a free platform. I just want to give people information on this kind of work. And then Kuya, our center that opens in two weeks is, uh, kuya.life.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:29:39

       How do you spell that?

    4. DEDr. Dan Engle1:29:41

       Uh, K-U-Y-A.life. L-I-F-E. Kuya means love in Quechua. And so we want to continue to give, um, just mad respect to the origins of a lot of these medicines and, and the communities where they've come from and, and have a good reciprocal relationship to be able to give back to the communities where a lot of these medicines have, have come from and make sure that we're working with these medicines in sustainable ways. MDMA because it's, it's a synthetic. We can make that in a lab and scale that in mass. Um, but many of the other medicines, peyote, ayahuasca, San Pedro, 5-MeO-DMT from the Sonoran Desert toads, iboga, these are all natural medicines that take a long time to grow and we're harvesting at accelerated rates that are stripping out our supply.

Episode duration: 1:32:27