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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Oh. On or off the record? (laughs)

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

(laughs)

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

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.

What are your credentials?

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.

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