In this episode, Dr. Roman Palitsky, a clinical psychologist and Director of Research Projects at Emory Spiritual Health, discusses the connections between spirituality, meditation, and mental health. He highlights the lesser-known risks of meditation and psychedelics, practices often celebrated for their benefits but not thoroughly examined for their challenges.
The buzz about psychedelics is everywhere these days, especially in the mental health space, where these compounds are being hailed as the greatest potential therapeutic breakthrough of the last 50 years. What was once elemental to the hippie movement of the 60s and then stigmatized and forgotten is now all over the news. Billions of dollars have flowed into companies wanting to cash in on the financial potential of new miracle cures for mental illness. The drive to get psychedelics into use is so intense that states are beginning to bypass the rigamarole of FDA approval and are directly legalizing psychedelics for both personal betterment and to treat the current epidemic of mental illness that is afflicting the United States. And eager not to be left out, clinicians of all stripes are paying significant fees to receive training in “psychedelic-assisted therapy” even though none of the extant programs—of which there are many—can in any way guarantee that program completion will be of any practical import whatsoever in either FDA approved or legalized psychedelic treatment contexts.
Into this heady mix comes Chantelle Thomas, PhD, Executive Director of Windrose Recovery & Integrata, a substance abuse program that uses ketamine-assisted therapy as a strategy for helping individuals recover from drug and alcohol use disorders. In addition to her many years of working with ketamine as a psychedelic agent, Dr. Thomas has spent the last 10 years delivering psychedelic-assisted therapy in the context of clinical trials of both psilocybin and MDMA. Most recently, she has taken a leadership role in psychedelic-assisted training programs sponsored by Usona Institute, a non-profit medical research organization conducting studies that, if positive, will support a “new drug indication” from the FDA for psilocybin as a novel treatment for major depression.
This podcast will be of huge interest to anyone who wants to get an insider’s view of the current psychedelic world in general and the risks, challenges, and deep satisfactions that can come from working with psychedelics in a therapeutic context in particular. You will never look at psychedelics the same after listening to our discussion with Dr. Thomas. And for more from Dr. Thomas, check out her podcast at: https://windroserecovery.com/podcast/
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