Episode 5: Psychedelic Assisted Therapy - Out of the Shadows (A Jewish Approach to Mental Health)

[Music] there are problems that affect so many and yet so few talk about them which is why Rabbi F from Goldberg and Moshi yakness bring you out of the Shadows a Jewish approach to mental health Rabbi Goldberg and motion speak to leaders in the field and discuss contemporary challenges to help us better understand mental health and those who are struggling with it this month's topic psychedelic assistant therapy on this episode we are joined by Dr Jacob L Friedman a board-certified psychiatrist practicing medicine in both Massachusetts and the state of Israel where he maintains a private practice in Jerusalem and arid a humble individual who shares his story of significant traumas the consequences of those travels that he lived with and his ongoing journey of healing and self-discovery throughout his journey Arya has experienced many different modalities of therapy and psychedelic therapy and its tools have positively impacted his mental health there are sensitive parts to his story yet if anyone is interested to learn more Hari is available to share with those who are seeking healing of their own we you find this episode meaningful and helpful and be sure to check out the show notes for further resources we are excited to be back with the next episode of Out of the Shadows sorry it's taking us a little while but we are really committed to be able to consistently address this topic and meet our goal which is to take away the stigma from mental health issues and to empower people that we love to come out of the shadows and this this episode is a little bit of a controversial topic Marshall right I I didn't know much about it at all that you did and might even take some heat for it the topic of psychedelics so why is that a controversial area in mental health absolutely it's great first of all it is great to be back and always a pleasure having getting to work with you and see you again um yeah psychedelic Psychotherapy is controversial I think because it's unknown I think anything that's unknown and when there's a lack of clarity um people like to draw conclusions and make assumptions and I think it's a although it's been around for a long time and we'll learn more about it as we discuss it but it's an Innovative approach to an alternative approach perhaps to failed attempts with the traditional modalities of treatment and obviously there's a lot of dangers when it comes to drug use any type of medication specifically psychedelics if it's unguided and if it's not used in the context of a real therapeutic environment and um I'll just add that as we have this conversation and we continue to the dialogue one should not take a sound bite and you know misrepresent or quote because it's really the goal of this conversation is really to launch a deeper conversation is to have a conversation and to you know stimulate thought and dialogue around mental health issues across the board is presumptuous to assume that we're going to resolve an issue we're going to clarify a modality of treatment on a show like this or on a conversation with one or two professionals um but it's really you know if you're if you're intrigued by it if you are are unsuccessful in your you know attempt to find the happiness stability functionality then it may be worth something exploring I mean that's really the goal is conversation like all of our topics uh to to continue to learn together to explore together and hopefully um to heal together it's such an important point you made right because the fact that we are trying to discuss this on an episode of Out of the Shadows doesn't mean that you and I you or I we fully endorse psychedelics certainly not in a recreational setting certainly not unsupervised and dangerous it also means we don't reject it wholesale we're trying to learn and grow and be open-minded and intellectually honest about the treatment options that are out there and we encourage you to do the same so if there are people in your family you yourself people you know learn more about it but do it in responsible do it in a setting which is safe an environment which is safe and certainly we are not endorsing any recreational use of any of the parallels to these psychedelic drugs that are being used and I learned an enormous amount and I think that people who have an open mind and are looking to learn and and still to fall within both the halachic framework and a proper medical framework and a therapeutic setting we're looking to use whatever tools Hashem has gifted in our generation as we continue to reveal and advance and learn about more options to help people there are people as we'll talk about on this episode there are people finding enormous help in this in the right setting and from the right person we're really excited to bring this conversation to you thank you we're excited to continue this conversation and really educate ourselves and understand this topic with someone who's well positioned to teach us and talk to us Dr Jaco Friedman private practice psychiatrist out of yerushalayimia code shot of Israel and as well still out of Massachusetts still practicing out of the great state of Massachusetts I don't know if it's as great as it once was back in the time of Paul Revere but you know from time to time I try and help folks in Boston got it well we appreciate very much you're coming out of the shadows and helping us try to take the stigma away from the conversations in mental health and one of the hottest conversations in mental health is this topic of psychedelics so from a professional standpoint a Psychiatry standpoint you know many people are very familiar with it I'm sure tuning in eager to hear what sort of the establishment I don't know that we represent the establishment have to say but many are not as familiar to those who are not as familiar talk to us about psychedelics sure so the first thing I want to say is just the two of you are doing tremendous service to our community by having these discussions so a big uh I know about all the Fantastic things you do in the community I know about the patients that you support in their treatment the families that you support who are supporting their loved ones uh going through the treatment process you and I do have a beef though because you stole Donnie Silverstein from me he happens to be a very dear friend of mine and you commandeered him and moved him down to help the community which is a big loss for me but big game for you guys and uh ramosha I know you'll benefit from having him as a colleague and the tremendous work that you're doing out there as well I should just start off by saying that uh psychedelics are something that scared psychiatrists for a very very long time because traditionally we've Associated psychedelic drugs with people developing a very concerning psychiatric symptoms while they they were explored as treatment agents back in the as early as the 30s 40s and 50s we generally have Associated psychedelic drugs whether psilocybin Patrick mushrooms ecstasy MDMA or LSD with our patients developing psychotic breaks if you had asked me to give this talk 10 years ago I would have said y'all are crazy no way in a heck I'm going to go ahead and get out there and even have a discussion user user us or user if you had asked me about it two years ago I would have said absolutely not let's see where the research takes us in five years but here we are now and my response is psychedelics are very very dangerous to be used recreationally these are powerful substances that have serious risks associated with them but under the right circumstances I think these can be life-saving treatments for patients who have specific issues that they're dealing with and when they receive treatment in a safe and standardized treatment environment um what are psychedelics maybe that's a really important question we should be asking because maybe an outline correct if you can outline the actual you know drugs that we're referring to and of course just to you know reinforce our agenda here is to have the conversation to launch the dialogue to encourage people to do the research and and you know engage in a modality that perhaps can be helpful perhaps can be detrimental but it's it's really about having the conversation and to to come out of the Shadows like we always discuss yeah the list you mentioned of the examples it's like a Delux where lists that like I grew up saying stay as far away as you can those were called hardcore drugs those are called dangerous drugs those were the things that you know healthy normal well-balanced people don't go near and yet you've listed them under the umbrella or the title of psychedelics yeah talk to us more about it okay so psychedelics again it's a Greek word and basically we're talking about drugs that expand Consciousness uh According to some definitions the classic psychedelics all work through the serotonin 2A receptor and we're talking about things that change the way that we perceive reality in addition to changing perhaps things that we see seeing things that other people can't see and change the things that we're hearing perhaps hearing things that other people uh aren't hearing we're talking about things that change perception in terms of the space-time Continuum and the way that we understand it and Powerful substances that allow people to delve deep within themselves and to think about a lot of things that maybe they haven't thought of in a very long time here's a really important number or two approximately 10 million people have experimented with psychedelics that are living we're talking about 30 million people according to some estimates that have done them over the history of mankind so a lot of people have done this stuff if we want to look at the timeline in prehistoric times presumably people were using this according to Wikipedia and cave paintings what do I know about that I don't know it's too much I wasn't around but in 1912 MDMA was first synthesized that's what's often called ecstasy in 1938 LSD was first synthesized that's called acid in the 50s and 60s this was used and abused by various Harvard professors and gurus and members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and then in 1971 the War on Drugs basically said us or user we're done with this stuff you're not allowed to use it in 1986 the first big organization studying what psychedelic drugs can do in a beneficial fashion for mankind was created and that's called maps maps is the multi-disciplinary association for psychedelic studies so these are guys proper scientists one of whom many folks might have heard of named Dr Gabor mate who were studying how psychedelic drugs can help people dealing with medical conditions specifically with mental illness by 2006 there were already proper studies done for ketamine which is a dissociative anti dissociative uh anesthetic drug and for psilocybin which is the active compound in magic mushrooms studying treatment resistant depression and in 2006 almost 20 years ago we were already seen as a field that there was a role for these drugs with specific patients in specific circumstances in 2019 MDMA which is known to many people as a club drug called ecstasy or Mali was already being used for compassionate use in PTSD patients specifically veterans so now in 2023 we're seeing multiple countries Australia is the most recent one previously Israel also America and Canada where MDMA is used for people with severe TSD psilocybin is dozens of studies are looking into what mushrooms can do for patients with OCD for patients with treatment resistant depression PTSD studies of Ayahuasca which is another psychedelic for substance use ibogaine which is another substance used to treat substance use we're talking also about ketamine which used to be used as a horse tranquilizer and was called Special K when we were kids and folks who were struggling would try and buy it off the streets but now it has an FDA approval for patients with treatment resistant depression for OCD and for PTSD and under the right circumstances for the right patients people are getting better and it's remarkable because these are people who are otherwise stuck in the worst possible way so things are changing the field of a Psychiatry is very very excited about this albeit very cautious for good reason is it mainstream now would you say somebody who's a young person or any age who's in medical school now and studying to be a psychiatrist today or are we very close to it being incorporated into the curriculum of up-and-coming Psychiatry of medical students is it is it mainstream are these dispensed through pharmacies great questions so the biggest Journal Dr haliger New England Journal of Medicine is publishing studies of psychedelic drug treatment for mental illness so that is even better than mishpaka magazine or homodia by definition people are reading about this in medical school there was a big study recently that came out about ECT electroconvulsive therapy shock therapy think One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which is the most effective treatment in the history of psychiatry in some patient populations 90 percent efficacy for treatment resistant depression and ketamine was shown to be more effective for treatment resistant depression in certain subgroups specifically younger people with treatment resistant depression so the fact that this data is suggesting a usefulness and not just a usefulness but a necessity in certain situations with patients who are really really struggling means that this is a life-saving treatment and a medical school is all about learning life-saving treatments and frankly how we can Implement them so when you have FDA approval for the treatment of treatment resistant depression meaning patients who haven't gotten better with multiple antidepressants and therapy and the standard things out there when you have FDA approval for the treatment of PTSD and OCD with ketamine when it's given in a clinic by a doctor under specific monitoring protocols this is of course being studied in medical school and I think frankly it's a very exciting topic because this is where the future is headed in Psychiatry the majority of new and exciting things that are being published have to do with psychedelics the biggest universities in America whether it's Stanford whether it's the University of California whether it's Hopkins or Harvard Medical School are studying psychedelics and treatment resistant patients and one very exciting thing to note is that we're not just learning about how to help patients when we study psychedelics we're learning how the brain works because these are compounds that are tremendously powerful and when we watch them work we learn about how the brain is functioning when things are going well and how the brain is functioning when things are not going well and that is very exciting it's not just these drugs sorry sorry go ahead as an example no no I mean first of all thank you it was a tremendously clear overview of the history and and where we're at currently but just as an example simple example take trauma uh as a clinical presentation where a person can be stuck physiologically emotionally spiritually physically they're the trauma manifests itself in multiple dimensions and we know that um a person's reaction to trauma is very often um disinhibited by their natural defense mechanism by incorporating psychedelic Psychotherapy a person can essentially what they do is they they're blocking the ego they're blocking that defense mechanism allowing them to engage in the depth of that trauma work um and and I know I don't want to oversimplify it I know that's a very complex example over complexify it correct I mean it's a you know it's a very specific example but for somebody who has been unsuccessful in traditional trauma treatments um by incorporating psychedelic Psychotherapy and I'm very critical in saying the word psychedelic Psychotherapy because it does need to be folded into a curriculum into uh some type of medically guided process um very often it could allow a person to engage into some of that deep trauma PTSD experiences and process it so um there's you know there's a medical component to it and then there's the clinical therapeutic component to it um Dr Friedman can you talk a little bit more about the interplay between both of those absolutely I I'm first going to fight you for a bit because when you say there's a medical component and there's a therapeutic component therapy is medicine which is why you have to be a licensed clinician who has spent hours upon hours years upon years seeing patients under the direct supervision of an expert clinician in order to properly heal your patients so therapy is medicine we also know that just as medications will change brain function therapy will change brain function so that's clearly medicine just as exercises medicine just as healthy diet is medicine just as rookness is medicine because it changes brain function therapy is absolutely medicine so I'll just fight you on that for one second but I'm sure we're in agreement yes okay because frankly you're a professional which is why you do solid work out there of moisture um how does it work here's the question how do psychedelic drugs work there's basically two Venn diagram overlapping things happening number one is what you bring up this treatment whether it's with psilocybin MDMA LSD ketamine facilitates a very deep and relaxed state it facilitates access to feelings on the inside and specifically MDMA is also called an empathogen meaning that it allows a person to connect better with other people and with themselves so these substances allow people to connect with a very deep part of themselves that they don't always have access to which essentially can facilitate a very deep psychotherapeutic process there's an idea that ibogaine which is one of the ibogaine is a West African shrub that's been used forever uh to allow people to enter into a deep uh psychedelic State and it's used in traditional indigenous healing rituals to facilitate a spiritual state that allows individuals to correct uh whatever sort of aveiras they did somewhere in West Africa now for us we would say it allows a person to connect with the things deep inside of their kishkas and as part of that you can undergo a guided very spiritual meditative process to understand what are those thoughts and feelings that otherwise might be too painful to talk about might be too embarrassing to talk about or might just be buried so deeply that I don't even know they're there so therapy associated with psychedelics allows a person to access a very deep Place ibogaine Therapy is called the decade of therapy in one use now I think that might be just kind of an exciting terminology for it but people who have done proper psychedelic assisted therapy and clinicians who are trained and it's a specific training in this it's not just going to a Grateful Dead show and listening to a bunch of people talk about how tripped out they are when you train in a proper institution to do psychedelic assisted therapy of course you're already a licensed psychologist or a licensed social worker but when you train to do this you learn how to help a person who's in a specific neurological place to connect with their feelings and to process them so that is a huge part of this healing process is we've created a state that's in many ways similar to mindfulness mindfulness meditation deep trauma work as people like rev shim and Russell will call it is where the person is relaxed and they're able to access things deeply inside of them the mechanics of this are essentially that the patient gets high in the doctor's office so now they can begin the therapy I know I just I didn't mean to give anything they said no no no that's exactly what we're talking about this is a shortcut to that deep place right because it removes the self it removes the eye which is that defense defense person you're essential area of that almost natural defense mechanism through if you want to get shrinky sure if you want to get shrinky sure I mean I have a cigar and a couch you know we can do that but we could also just say it just relaxes you in the most deep and intense way so you're just there you know are you going to some other place that doesn't really represent or it's not an extension to you in the sense that what happens when you come down from this I've never taken a psychedelic that I know of what happens when you come off or you come down it if if it's what allowed you to be the most real and most uninhibited and remove the ego and the and the self so when the self and the ego come back does the positive outcome of the work remain or now you negated whatever you had accomplished unless you're going to be high on psychedelics the rest of your life I would say that for people who have not experienced this but are in our community and have had tremendous davening experiences the first time that you were on your ncsy Colo trip to Archie's role in your dominant Kabbalah Shabbos by the coastal you're to feel it one week later at minkua when you're diving on a bus because you're trying to get to your uncles in time for dinner is not going to be the same but the memory still stays with you because we're talking about a deep spiritual place and that's what happens with psychedelics it's the shortcut to it in many ways in a guided fashion but it's not just that because there's also a change that happens I have a colleague whose name is Dr Stuart seidman he's an incredible person he's really one of the gurus doing this and he has a ketamine Clinic here and Eric Cicero they do not do ketamine Psychotherapy they just do an infusion of the drug and they do it one two three times a week and then the person comes back make sure that they're okay they do another one and another one and another one and people also get better in a very profound way so you might say how is that possible and the answer is because these drugs create something which is called neuroplasticity so the neurons the cells in our brain talk to each other in a new way and new connections are built and old connections are broken down in the literature they talk about what's called the reset of the default Network which is where the way that our mind is just used to thinking on autopilot throughout the day is just shut off like a Nintendo game back in the day this is a brand new process so it allows the brain to reset to start from scratch and causes new connections through chemicals like bdnp brain derived nootropic factor which is the same chemical that's released after seizures when the brain is resetting an epilepsy which is the same chemical that's released during intense cardiovascular exercise which is why we feel sharper after we go for a run in the morning which is the same chemical associated with mindfulness meditation John Cabot Zen type stuff as well as with deep spiritual exercises and a good night's sleep of course chemical changes no no I'm sorry I'm listening to you and I'm saying to myself I'm in where can I get some I want to try that because what I'm saying to myself you know there's somebody that I've been trying to convince that there's a God or that their soul is worthy or that they can connect and surrender to Hashem and why do you have to have treatment resistant depression to take this if it's doing all the things you just described why shouldn't everyone say you know what we can have the greatest comes it's the greatest if I bring in the greatest Tish of all time we're gonna have the most incredible kiddish everybody take a psychedelic we're going to sit down and we're going to learn ravicha Meyer everyone take a psychedelic we're going to sit down and we're going to really experience ELO this year why why isn't it for everyone if it works in the way that you say everyone needs to remove their ego and their self a little but everybody needs to become a little more uninhibited everybody needs to be able to reach into the deepest part of themselves and their subconscious they may not even be aware of so is this for everyone or is it only for those subset who really need it and and how do we Define that that's a great question Arab and I would say that you're better equipped to philosophize on this topic of Le fun Sarah Agra in that when we train for a marathon it's a lot more exciting than just going and driving down the Boston Common and saying wow 26 miles has a lot of traffic okay the more that we put into something the more meaningful the journey is I would also say that there are a lot of the cedar sugar gurus and other type folks that run Retreats for spirituality in Mexico and other fun places where you can go ahead and take psychedelic drugs there and there are folks who think that that's mutter and folks that think that that's fun and then periodically people have psychotic episodes some folks might be unhappy to hear that there was a fellow who was having challenges with his marriage and he went to an unlicensed therapy location in the middle of Batar took a psychedelic drug back in 2021 returned to his home in kiriat Gat and stabbed his son 14 times to death and had no idea what happened he woke up in a psych hospital to hear that his son had died and he was not charged with murder because it wasn't his fault he had taken a substance that took away all rationality by him and who was charged the therapist with six counts of negligence there's a person who's dead because of this now obviously that's an extreme example but there are many people that have these stories so can you everything yeah can you share some other negative or you know some other dangers associated with um psychedelic assisted therapy or just with taking psychedelics in a recreational setting for sure because remember when you do psychedelic assisted therapy or when you take a psychedelic treatment as part of a medical uh treatment plan you know what you're taking because we know what the chemical is meaning it's not laced with fentanyl or something cheaper that just will change your brain pattern okay you know what dose you're taking meaning it's not too small that there's only a placebo effect and it's not too large that you can have cardiovascular instability associated with methamphetamines or LSD if you go to an emergency room in any big city you will reliably see one person each night who came in from a rave who's done way too much drugs and they're having something perhaps called serotonin syndrome or some other sort of serious complication that puts their life at risk I would also say that a review of psychosis associated with Ayahuasca back in 2017 showed that people with a history of serious psychiatric illness people with a history of a family member who had schizophrenia bipolar disorder are at tremendous risk of experiencing a psychotic episode and this is dangerous stuff oftentimes people will not just stom develop a mental illness they have a genetic predisposition and then an environmental stressor and what could be a greater environmental stressor than recreational psychedelic drug use and recreational psychedelic drug uses anybody who doesn't get it from a doctor in a controlled treatment setting because you don't know the dose there's no proper monitoring and frankly Terrible Things Can Happen not to also rule out the fact that if you really want to get better from this stuff you got to do it with trained professionals not just with some funny guy who went to India for a bunch of years and came back with the fact that this is the new thing to do that psychedelics might enable a shortcut to Discovery and to spirituality a it may not be authentic but B it's not it's not our task and our mission we're not we're not given the shortcuts we have to put in the hard work it's meant only to be a therapeutic response to help people but but here's my question Dr Friedman is that as you say that it should only be administered in a medical setting for medical professionals under medical supervision and medically indicated all that makes sense to me and of course I agree with wholeheartedly what would you say to the cynic who says is that the same medical community that denied the value of psychedelics all this year then now that they've tripped upon it pun intended now that they've discovered psychedelics they're the only ones we should trust wouldn't the cynic and sarcastic person say that people have been have been singing the Praises of psychedelics for years the medical establishment Western medicine said absolutely not and now that the Western medicine is on board now they're saying but we're the only ones who should determine and administer and what would you respond to a cynic who said that I don't think it's particularly cynical I think it's a very very good question uh and it's a very fair one frankly I we're yidden though and I don't know when this is going to air but presumably somewhere close to Owl so we believe in trueva there's nothing wrong with saying this is a terrible idea learning more about it and saying I'm sorry I think there's serious potential here and I think we've seen that with many things over the history of medicine I think that we have to be honest that we see this in many fields in general what was the best insulating uh method for keeping your heating costs down back in America 70 years ago it was asbestos and asbestos you know killed Warren Zevon via mesothelioma you know you can't just go around killing Martin zebun so you know the people realized they made a mistake and things change and hopefully uh it should not be done like that I will tell you these are serious compounds though every single night in the emergency room when I was a resident you would see a kid from any one of the 20 uh colleges within the Boston area come in and tell you he's talking to the plants he was brought in by uh the dorm dad and he's just there talking to the plants in the emergency room now I I guess you could say all of us can talk to the plants but when the plants talk back that's a bit of a problem you know folks would get admitted to the unit and psychedelics can and do unmask serious mental illness and people who have genetic predisposition and people with a genetic predisposition are most likely to be Risk Takers just by nature in general so this is something that requires support and again if you had asked me five years ago the answer was no no no no no no the answer a year ago was no no no but let's see and now the answer is no no but in certain circumstances absolutely and Emirates Hashem we're going to learn a lot more so as we go on we're always learning more things no matter what we do with Torah as well so Dr Freda thank you do you have any final thoughts around the very complex and um important topic here yeah I would I would tell you a quick story uh from my own life uh not related to psychedelics but rather related to uh going Quarry jumping so a bunch of my friends were literally jumping off of a bridge and my dad said to me uh you can't do that and I said why he said just cause all of your friends are jumping off of a bridge doesn't mean that you have to and I said yeah but some of them are landing okay so he said wait until a lot of them land okay meaning let's just wait until the data comes in because it's coming in MDMA is going to be legal in a treatment setting very soon and it's going to be safe and it's going to be done in a way where people can really benefit from it but you don't want to do this and be that guy who has a crazy episode uh you don't want to take the wrong dose of this because somebody just doesn't know how much to give you there is no data suggesting that micro dosing is associated with any significant change Beyond Placebo as of now so a lot of people are saying a lot of things and doing a lot of things I believe that many of us in the medical field are very open-minded but wait until the research comes in and when it does Emirates Hashem people can really benefit one more time I'd just like to State this is really exciting really dangerous in the wrong setting and really a life-saving treatment in the correct setting so I absolutely appreciate the two of you so much for the things you're doing in our community it bothers me that you stole Donnie Silverstein but I'm sure he's doing good stuff and maybe you can send them back eventually and uh if I can ever be helpful I appreciate it we appreciate it and I want to just say it's amazing to speak to two professionals who um have the intellectual honesty to to recognize and Dr Freeman the way you just spoke about the medical community and any Community that's willing to say you know we learned we made mistakes we grow but yet as you're describing the margin of error seems incredibly small for this so it's not the kind of thing that's like I had a friend or I heard or it could benefit or hey do you want to try it the margin of error is really really small so it's enormously high risk so it's really all about in the right setting in the right circumstances as benefits but just because we're now talking about and recognizing those benefits doesn't mean and that is a danger of this which you know we'll continue to talk about through this episode and Beyond is once we say ecstasy has a value do we now worry that you know the unsophisticated people who are not nuanced are going to just say oh I heard there was a podcast where people with yamaka said ecstasy is really good for helping you feel good and get over being down and depressed and that's this narrow place that we have to walk and being responsible with it but I learned an enormous amount and and we thank you for your time yesterday [Music] Ari we're really grateful to welcome you to Out of the Shadows thank you so much for the courage really it takes enormous courage to be willing to publicly share your experience in a way that can and we know from our previous experience and episodes that it absolutely will help people as the previous episodes have so tell us a little bit about yourself your story your background and and why you're part of this conversation absolutely thank you for having me and uh it's for me it's a privilege to share this uh as I've experienced my journey I've only reached the point uh where I'm at today because of the support of others that have been along and supporting me throughout my journey and therefore I consider it you know a kind of pay it forward uh to be able to share this with people um and for them to grow and learn from my experiences and uh um and and be able to share that with people as it's been shared with me so I appreciate that uh my background is I I grew up in Brooklyn with two Bali tuba parents and um so I kind of didn't have a conventional you know ffp from from birth experience growing up my parents progressively became more from as they went on and uh due to that there was a uniqueness in the way that I grew up so I I started by going off to uh Yeshiva and Flappers called is Rocky went in and I grew up you know doing the pledge of allegiance and uh as well as a tick on the morning from there my parents sent me to tarzana's commented so that was uh that that was a major you know change in approach I went to an elementary school called Taurus Ms and we did a club and we pledge allegiance to the flag morning yeah it was a different time and um and from then uh eighth grade I went to Scranton Yeshiva so I I really experienced at a very extreme level the yeshivas I said I bought into it I was you know at one point you know 18 hours a day of learning and really buying into the whole thing and it was a wonderful experience for me of that as well and then his life continued you know I had you know I had already starting from the age of 10. I had traumas you know starting to pop up in my life as we all do uh one of the big things I learned throughout my journey is that you know traumas happen to everyone and just because it's trauma doesn't mean it has to be traumatic and have a longer lasting impact and um but at the time I didn't have the tools my my parents didn't have the tools we didn't have the resources I I did I grew up with very very few resources I mean I would consider ourselves poor growing up you know credit card bills issues being able to make tuition and we felt that as a family my mother has been chronically ill since uh since before she got married so there was a component of having um having a physically debilitated mother in you know as part of the process and um when I was 10 years old we had a fire in my house and it kind of like upended everything and from that point forward you know as as you know stable things were up until that point like things really started to unravel my mother ended up in the hospital for about 10 months at a shot when I was in uh fourth or fifth grade you know after that happened and fast forward a few years while I was in Scranton my father um very suddenly and surprisingly got sick with cancer and uh he um and he passed away when I was in 12th grade and then I had uh you know I had an experience where I was the victim of of a sexual abuse and um it while I was in Scranton so once I was leaving my father had passed away like I couldn't stick with the yeshivish path anymore just wasn't working for me anymore so I kind of I just kind of left Scranton and I was floating for a while and as time went on I got picked up by different people there was a program in Lakewood called Cabrio Colo it was kind of a gathering place for kids throughout high school and post Israel you know trying to find themselves and um you know at that point I was very very money insecure they didn't really have any resources coming from my parents at the time and for my mom at the time my father my father's out of the picture now so I I would you know I've considered myself sort of self-sufficient since I'm 13 years old I truly became independent and self-sufficient at the age of 17 18. um and without going into all the details because there's a lot of stories I could tell along the way um things were difficult for a good seven eight years I was living in someone's basement out of the kindness out of his heart you know um doing odd jobs working in Judaica stores stocking shelves driving delivering cleaners to just to make it and then eventually I got married and um and I I started a job at uh you know and and I really started getting very very successful I've always been a hustler and um and and worked very very hard um thank God I'm I'm blessed to be smart creative a go-getter um friendly I connect well with people and my career really took off and I started a platform in a prominent firm and you know fast forward 12 years later um I you know I was an advisor in the healthcare space that had advised and transacted on 16 billion dollars worth of transactions and as time went on um I'm making more and more money and and and in my head having grown up money insecure and at times even food and secure you know in my head like in my mind getting all this and obtaining all this was the answer and the more money that I made and like year over year I continued to grow in my financial success but yet I you know I was getting like lost in the process and I didn't realize it I mean it's it's very you know at the time like this is what I'm supposed to be doing look how successful I am it's as cliche as it all sounds all those cliches are true I think in my experiences is you you have to experience the cliche for you to understand that it's not one and um so the money doesn't buy you happiness and all these accomplishments are not going to give you self-worth but I'd even know these you know the words that I'm using these buzzwords these therapy words that we consider them like I don't even understand them I ignore them if you told me this to share these things with me you know four or five years ago I was the skeptic working in New York City that would have looked at you and say okay you're the hippie and that's I'm sure that works for you but I live in the real corporate world and this is how it is and things came to a head I mean all the the childhood traumas I had you know I experienced a very very difficult marriage that you know admittedly I brought in a lot of my traumas into that matter because they were undealt with and I I started struggling over time I had been struggling with depression and anxiety at times when I fell into depression I mean I would consider it today what uh you know MDD major depressive disorder I mean it would I would spiral out of control and sometimes it could be you know weeks for me to get out of it and I thought that this was normal so I'm like yeah I gotta kind of like break through that wall and and just you know and just you know power through it because that's what everyone around you what would that look like for you you'd be under the covers come get out of bed would you be going to work what would it look like when you were in that state I mean at the at the worst of it and again I'm comfortable sharing these things because I I feel like you know I haven't spoken to friends and other people that have opened to me during this process I think a lot of them have had these experiences so a lot of people can relate I mean I I were at times at work feeling worthless about myself because the deal is going sideways and I go into one of the private bathrooms go into the closet close the closet door and cry to myself you know cry myself there for 20 minutes half an hour wipe it off wash my face off go out there and just muscle through yeah did you feel Ari you know part of obviously this this entire platform is to encourage and to stimulate dialogue across mental health issues anxiety depression did you feel like you didn't have a place to you know a community to speak to is there somebody that you would have loved to speak with while you were going through it or you were this you know corporate guy successful externally and and you didn't really there was no one that you can talk to about it definitely the latter and I I wouldn't say that it's because there was no one for me to talk to about it it's because I wasn't prepared to talk about it I mean you could have put the most understanding you know world-renowned therapist in the room with me or my best friend in the room with me and I like I mean when we talk about the flight or freeze part of the brain I was for the most part like in the the most traumatic moments I was a freeze guy and that that that came that came about in the in in the sexual assault story and that kind of that reaction stayed with me so if I was going through a particularly rough time and like I was just spiraling out of control in my head and someone would be like talk to me whether it was my ex-wife at the time or a friend or I just couldn't do it and I'd be like like I'm just telling myself like I'm just going to get through this like this is like like the negative toy I I I struggled a lot with negative ruminating to speak to myself so like it was a lot of like stop being so pathetic get out of bed like people have it worse than you like what's wrong with you and it was just like like it was really the negative and the fearful the fear the fear that came along with the with the money and security it was it was propelling me forward so as much as like sometimes I felt like I can't do this anymore like this is way too much but that but that money and security and you know would rear its ugly head as just one one aspect of this and it would just Propel me forward so my success was very much fear driven yeah and then did you attempt to to engage in therapy would you maybe talk a little bit about kind of the transition of initially working with the you know working with the therapist or going to some program and then how that moved into um you know this psychedelic uh assistant what and what stimulated the piggyback most of your question if you were trying to take care of yourself and if nobody there was no one who could say something that would make you listen what made you finally say I I've gotta I've got to treat this I've got to try to take care of this uh I mean due to the sensitivities of of some aspects of this that are confidential that would um affect the people around me I can't get into all the impetuses but about three and a half years ago some incidents uh occurred and I can share the parts that affected me so at that time I was advised uh to go to a program in Arizona called PCS Psychological Services uh it's a it's an intensive uh outpatient program specifically it's not an addiction program it's specifically for underlining traumas and the causation of depression and anxiety and um I I I basically was pushed into the door to go there it wasn't something because again I was still sitting there saying oh I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine people go through this all the time and you know it's it's it's it's almost like normal I did I I normalized even the attempt um at that point though it was it was known by too many people in my circle that said that wouldn't allow it to be ignored anymore so I went to this program it's an eight-day program in hours Zone it's 12 hours of therapy a day Midway through the first week you know I was being um I was being told by the therapist that if if you don't become more open to this process and accepted more then you really kind of wasted your time and you might as well go back home and you know the the one of the unique things and great things about me is that like I just won't give up on anything and at this point like when someone tells me like oh you're just wasting your time you can't do this it was like that's that's when it turned on for me I'm like well I'll show you and really I mean I mean there's so many pivotal moments uh throughout the journey but that was certainly a pivotal one because I'm there already I know I'm starting to break down like everything's starting to come out and and but for them to look at me and be like hey you have so much more work to do and you're really not open to it and I and truly at the time like I'm like I'm here like I I I I was offended I remember walking into my lead therapist office because you see you know 10 to 15 therapists throughout the week over there between group and individual and I'm like you know what if you're gonna treat me like this and talk to me about like you know like me to this way and like not recognize the efforts that I'm putting in that maybe I don't belong here and she's like okay if that's your choice then no one's spoken to me that way before like oh that's your choice like everything's a choice all of a sudden I'm like well if you're gonna put it on me I'm making my choice then I don't have an easy out over here I'm not gonna take that sitting down so I double down for the rest of the weekend two days later I I realized that they were right and I said like I don't think I've gotten enough out of the first week over here and I ended up extending to a second week which is very rare for the program it's very very intense it's very very difficult it's it you know after the 12 hours of therapy you're bringing a few hours of homework to your hotel room or wherever you're staying and it's really almost like when you add up everything you know 18 hours a day of therapy and work on yourself and then after the second week I extended the third week which is unheard of over there and by the time and I'm unpacking all these things I never I never disclosed to anyone in my life about the sexual trauma never it was the first time that I started opening up I had never really processed through my my father's death my mother's illness the food insecurities um the the loneliness that I experienced because I was on my own a lot I was I was independent I never moved back home after I left Scranton so from the moment I was 13 years old till today I've been under my own dominion um so at the end of the third week I said I'm not ready I want to say a fourth week and they're like all right you got to go out there and practice some of this stuff like you can't just stay in this cocoon and I was very afraid to go back and and I did go back and I started I went back to work I went back to the job and I started unpacking um I I started working through it again and um I went back to PCS for another week uh a year later in the next summer um and throughout this time when I went to PCS about the first time about two months prior three months prior is when I got my first therapist I had gotten the therapist after my father passed away it was uh it was a horrible experience and I wrote off therapists for the rest of my life and I promised I would never go back again and again the only reason why I went back is because I was really deteriorating at that point so I'm seeing my therapist I've gone through two rounds of PCS I'm separated from my wife at that point for about two three years you know leading up to it and in 2022 yeah I'm at the height of my career um and um the last year that I was there I I transacted on 5.6 billion dollars which was up year over year over year and I I got towards the end of 2022 the relationship with my kids were you know really not where I wanted them to be I was an absentee father for many years my marriage had completely Fallen apart at that point and I like there's something about me like you know I always come to the edge of the cliff but I I have a Baraka and uh and it's it's kind of like what I consider my hash Kaka which is there's always something about me that never lets me completely go off the edge and I just kind of knew for myself at the end of 2020 I'm sorry at the end of 2021 I'm sorry that I had to stop this so at the beginning of 2022 I decided that um I'm going to leave Meridian which was unheard of you know given My Success over there and I was 2022 was trending to be even better than 2021. um and I left and um I thought I was really really smart and I could kind of skip the system and and and just get ahead of everyone because I'm smarter than everyone so I had greased the skids to leave towards something while I was leaving Meridian and um so I did I left Meridian it was a very very difficult transition much you know no one I was not prepared for it at all I really didn't know I mean I was going to 20 hours a day so like when I started like pulling back it wasn't just the accomplishment of all it's like what I've learned is that people suffer being bored boardroom is torture for people and people don't talk like that but if you ask them boardroom causes us to do really uh make really poor decisions because the inability to be with ourselves because it's so uncomfortable um causes us to just do things for the sake of doing things and when you when you're doing things with when you're doing things without intention without a purpose without a goal without you know without thoughtfulness it just it just ends up being like a hamster on a wheel and running in one place but you're getting tired along the way it's tired to run it's tiring to keep on trying and doing and accomplishing um and looking for that validation and uh to yourself and never getting it and it just becomes exhausting so um after six months of trying this new Venture I realized I had once again gone into another partnership that didn't work for me I I walked away from that and for the first time in my life I had nothing going on when I was in Scranton after Scranton I was involved with causes I was I was the life of the party if anyone if you told anyone you know from that aspects of my life that they hear this that I was going through they wouldn't believe it I was I was a division heading Camp simcha I started the organization kids of Courage with a few other with Dr Dietrich and Haley CAF and a few Partners I was the guy on the stage programming doing the trips successful in business surrounded by friends but I was as lonely as as it could be and after the failure of this new Venture after I left Meridian I didn't have anything prepared anymore like this was it I had gone back to PCS with my at you know with my now ex-wife to work through the issues that we had so I can kind of have healing from that and you know this was in February so now I'm in the summer I have nothing going on and I just sat home for three months doing absolutely nothing and um it was torture to the max it was when I woke up when my eyes woke up in the morning I would beg Hashem like and myself to like can I go back to sleep because I don't understand the purpose of me being awake there's no purpose of me being awake because what am I going to do and that's what I mean like boardroom sounds like such an innocuous word such like a team word a power of words but really like the inability to get up every morning and it's it's it's worth getting up just because it's worth getting up life is great you know I I have money in the bank I have food in the fridge I have a hot shower waiting for me I have children I have three kids that love and adore me but it was never enough because it didn't feel like the type of accomplishment that I felt like I needed to vow to create validation and self-worth so when I didn't have any of those things I completely broke down I mean it was and the therapist you're seeing a therapist at the time but it wasn't a therapy two even three times a week I had done a number of different modalities while um I was in PCS you know EMDR guided imagery hypnosis all all sorts of of of of psychodrama I mean you name it I've done it uh I was on medications at the time I played around with the medications you know antidepressants mood stabilizers uh you know medication for anxiety uh throughout this process I'm doing a lot of work on myself so you know I I'm I'm I I stopped drinking alcohol two and a half years ago on my own because I realized that it was causing issues with my depression um but none of it was really helping to me because I was just suffering inside and you know throughout this period all this stuff that you know I kind of like had opened up the the can of worms by in a positive way by going to PCS by opening up to therapists but I truly wasn't really to ready to handle the the real consequences that came from this so like you know I was of the opinion that like you're gonna question how I talk to people you're going to question how I go about things or I approach things or I have or how I do business and and when people questioned me on those things it felt like it was questioning my Essence really was questioning my actions but by questioning my actions I felt like you were questioning me so I wouldn't want to change anything so sorry your attempting you're you know it sounds like you're you know really investing yourself and exploring these multiple modalities on an outpatient level inpatient level how did the transition go to psychedelic treatment what was that what was that like so yeah so about a year and a half prior to the breakdown in the summer of 2020 to I because medication wasn't working for me I had been um advising me to try ketamine so I had gone I had done about a year and a half worth of ketamine but not in the conventional sense conventional Academy treatments you know are you know six to eight treatments over the course of a few weeks um it's given IV you sit in a chair you have a mask on it's an internal process the way I did it was more of a journey and a ceremony so I got it I am which means intermuscular which means that you're not like once it's in your system you're along for the ride because it's not IV that you can regulate just stop it on a dime or not so and I was guided through it with um with the doctor that was administering it as well as a psychotherapist that was with me in the room so I had had a touch of experience with guided um journeying with ketamine and it seems like you're doing it in the right way meaning you had a medical professionals along with a clinical professional not to differentiate between the two but it was under a therapeutic structure it was very the the Doctor Who administered it is a is an MD yeah uh who had been practicing this for a number of years the psychotherapist had specific uh experience with ketamine I was very lucky my psychiatrist at the time suggested it to me almost as an optional Last Resort people talk about ketamine today very you know typical a year and a half ago ketamine was or two years ago even when I when I first started ketamine was at the at the beginning moments at its infancy of of being legal and proving as a treatment for this but people accepting it so it took me a month and a half of research before I got comfortable doing ketamine and it helped me along the way but I was still I was still really really struggling so at the end of the you know towards the end of the summer of 2022 I had had some people in my life that had that had experience Ayahuasca I was waking up every day you know fearful was the ketamine being administered in that way it was it different than what you had tried until then so I I had not gone back to ketamine at that point I mean the last ketamine treatment that I had gotten at that point was probably about four months prior and my uh a few friends of mine had experience Ayahuasca so I you know I I felt like I had nothing to lose at that point so I went down to Mexico and I experienced Ayahuasca which was my first psychedelic what was that like for you Ari Ayahuasca is is is a very very um I don't want to use the word tough because I I think people associate a negative connotation with it um it really uh it really tells you who you are at at the core of it whether you're ready to hear it or not and it'll go through your traumas it'll it'll rip apart everything and some people experience it in a way where it's very light um they they feel much more connected spiritually they feel much happier and joyous and that feeling can last I mean typically in in different psychedelics that period can last for a few weeks to even a few months there are other people that go to Ayahuasca um and it's a really really tough process because like for me the way I experienced it my anxiety just just hit it it blew the thermometer off my my my when I came back from Ayahuasca which was a week process um I had a breakdown the next day that I came back to the point where my therapist was asking on the phone does she need to admit me and uh and again you know never challenge me like that because I'm like no no no that now I'm gonna get myself in check and um after uh you know Ayahuasca was a very very tough process for me but it did it did wonders for me it really it really started like it made the um the anxiety so acute and so untenable to the point where I'm like you know what I have no other choice other than to work through this and it takes um people ask me like you know would you suggest Ayahuasca easily my answer is not for everyone in a lot of circumstances not because I think that there are psychedelics out there that um are an easier Gateway into the healing that can come from uh from psychedelics but Ayahuasca is a beautiful medicine that helps people and I've seen so many people grow from it including myself it's just not an easy Gateway into getting into this sort of Journey but that's my experience that's my journey and for me you know I I I've done so much work to live in the present today and living in that present moment and seeing what Ayahuasca did for me even if it was hard to see it then was it's what it was a game changer for me today so you're still engaging in that with therapy and how are you feeling today so today today I'm in a different place I the Ayahuasca was uh was the Kickstart to do a journey of psychedelics so over time I've done Ayahuasca I've done MDMA therapy I've done psilocybin therapy I've done a few that are not as uh known out there such as Kana um um and I've done really the most important thing about the the Psychedelic treatments and and why they work is all about the intention setting and and the processing after you do it the integration is what they call it I mean uh you know people from the late 60s and early 70s can Regal you with stories of psychedelics and the experiences that they have um and they probably took you know LSD and all these things for years but you look at them today they're not balanced people so it means that the medicine itself is not an antibiotic it doesn't just you don't take it and it works it's really about about what your intention with it so if you want to party with it it's going to be a great party drug but if you want to do therapy with it it really is going to open to you up to a world that you have not that that people have not experienced before that's a very that's an important point that we were you know we've been discussing here is that it's not you know an isolated experience but it really needs to be integrated into and guided into you know a therapeutic context uh yeah absolutely yeah absolutely so I I mean for for my first few treatments when I was doing psychedelic treatments I spent hours on the phone with the guys and again you have to be careful with the guys there are people out there that are unscrupulous with it and you know just you know they don't have the experience with it necessary the guys that I've worked with um across I have numerous guides depending on the medicines that I was taking um my my the the the the person who I experienced Ayahuasca with has been doing this for decades the woman who I did MDMA with have been doing this for over 30 years the woman who I did psilocybing with has been doing it for over 23 years so these are people that really really understand it and you know for for people out there who are listening to that while MDMA is not FDA approved yet as a treatment they're in clinical clinical three trials and projected to be approved FDA by the FDA to be approved as a treatment for PTSD uh in 2024. um so there are over 30 years of clinical trials that this works this is not you know this is not heebie-gb stuff that uh that that doesn't have kind of Western medicine and science behind it I mean they've done a lot of research in this I know that's safe it's been helpful for you in ways that other things have not that's not to reject those other modalities for other people that it could be very effective but for you utilizing this in a safe way in a supervised way has has been effective here uh absolutely absolutely I think um you know the medications and the modalities I went into psychedelics having done again I did pts at that point I was doing therapy two three times a week I was on medication so I was bringing in I I have three journals you know front to cover that are filled just for my notes from going to PCS um so I had done a lot of work so for me what the psychedelics did for me is is it kind of took away this barrier between the intelligence of understanding of the therapeutic intelligence and knowledge and wisdom that was handed over to me but for me the question had always been how do I internalize this it's great to academically and intelligently know that things are temporary things will be good things are good you have to let things through find gratitude in life but I didn't know how to do it I remember there was a moment in Ayahuasca after I had drank the first night and a lot of things come up and I'm speaking to um I did it with a with from uh with a from guy and his wife who do this who does this in Mexico and they do a lot of integration throughout the week and I remember him saying like Ari he said a human being is is a Kaylee and uh he's a vessel and the vessel can be full of expectations or it could be full of broccoli and the more we talk with expectations we're just a Kaylee where we are who we are and there's only a certain amount that can go into us and if we fill it up with expectation it doesn't leave room for the Baraka to come into so he's like Ari feel the Gratitude feel Hashem feel whatever it is for you he really doesn't push religion or anything it's really whatever you connect to but the point is stop thinking about it feel it and I remember looking at him and his wife I mean we would do this for hours and I remember him and his wife like telling this to me and I and I'd be like so what do I do do I think that do I think positive they're like no don't think positive feel positive I remember crying to them literally tears extremely down my face and I'm like I don't understand what that means you're asking me to do something that I don't have the capability of doing I don't know I don't even know what you're talking what do you mean to feel that I don't understand what you're saying and and I just had long walks on the beach in Mexico and then coming back from this you know when I came back from Ayahuasca and I was really in a precarious situation and I just and I needed whatever my own form of integration was I ended up doing hours a week of hypnosis hours a week of EMDR and on therapy and working and working and working through these things and it was just rungs on a ladder and then I went to my next psychedelic experience and I unpacked more and then processed through it waited a month month and a half then went back in and it's a difficult at sometimes painful process because really what they're doing is they're tearing apart all these walls that you put up you know at the essence we're all good people we're all good-hearted we all think positive when you know again it sounds cliche and I always try to um think of how to say things that are more relatable than the therapeutic ways that things are said where everyone's like nah I've heard that a thousand times before like when we're a child and we know nothing better it's just unbridled Joy it's we cry when we want to when things are bothering us we're happy when we're just happy sometimes you have to kid like what are you laughing about I don't know I just can't stop laughing I mean that is at the essence of who we are but then as we go through life we have these experiences and people will put us down we'll experience sadness we'll we'll experience grief and and without the proper tools which most of us don't have because it's life it's difficult to figure these things out these things start covering ourselves up and really what the psychedelics do more than anything else you can talk about it being trippy and seeing things and everything like that but what's not spoken about psychedelics Cuts away everything and tells you who you are and and it'll allow you to process through you know traumas that experience I mean the reason why uh MDMA is so effective for PTSD which is post-traumatic stress disorder so these are you know learned behaviors that are and negative behaviors that are coming as an effect of a trauma right what is there there's there is a logic behind why these medicines are working MDMA for anyone that you've ever heard of ecstasy or Molly the MDM pure MDMA is the active ingredient in these things so they you know on the you know as as a drug people will take that apart and think because they give them total Elation well what if you take that that medication medication MDMA under a guide with the intention of I have this terrible trauma in my life that I have always Associated a negative connotation with and then take this medicine and with the intention of re-examining this trauma and then all of a sudden realizing that what happened in the trauma is just a fact but our interpretation and what we learn from that trauma is the traumatic part so when I had the fire in my house you know to me this was like I felt unsecure where am I going to live I'm 10 years old I'm out on the curb watching my house go up into flames I'm seeing my parents freak out and like these are the strong people in my life they should be the ones knowing what to do and like telling me what to do and suddenly I'm scared because they're scared and that fear stayed for me the rest of my life unconsciously until in my I'm in my 30s and then consciously for the last three years as I started unpacking a PCS but I still don't know how to deal with it and my first time I'm MMD in MDMA this fire comes up I remember being transported back to the fire I'm back in my 10 year old body on the sidewalk on a cold December Shabbos day with my family standing behind me watching my house go up into planes and there's talk therapy going on you have a mask on so it's a very internal process and you're talking to the guide and processing through these things while you're on the medicine and I remember telling her I said Julia I said I'm you know hey where out on the curb and there's a fire going on but look it's 25 years later and all my siblings and I are married and we have kids and we're doing well and we're healthy and we made it out and we're fine and Julie is like yeah feel that feel that feeling and then I stopped for a minute and I'm like Julia I'm noticing the fire and the smoke I'm I'm there I'm re-experiencing I'm seeing the fire and the smoke going up and my house going up in flames and I'm like it's beautiful I've never seen fire and smoke like this in my life and I use that example which seems extreme and when I shared with people sometimes they're like what are you talking about you know and I get it I understand why it sounds unbelievable and I was the biggest skeptic about them all and this is the fact this is what happened to me this is what I experienced and having done the research for you know because I'm a very cerebral guy and I like to understand the things that I'm doing and I started reading into it and researching and talking to the Glock into the guides it's the fire happened and it might seem Preposterous to a person to look at a fire and say wow that's beautiful and amazing but guess what the same choice that we have even though it's the more common choice to say fires are terrible and look what it did to you and like it's terrible and it's so sad what you went through I have the same ability to make the choice to say that fire is beautiful and wonderful now I wasn't able to see that on my own but I discovered a tool called MDMA that allowed me to experience it that way and it's such a feeling experience going back to what I was being told in Ayahuasca don't don't make an intelligence don't make it knowledge feel it in these sessions and approaching it with the right way you can feel through it we could speak to you for hours and maybe we still will and need to in a future episode again your courage and your vulnerability and your willingness to share it's unbelievable you're still story and your experience and your knowledge and and thank you because it's going to empower others and and just to reiterate what you've said what we've been saying all along it needs to be supervised it needs to be medically mandated it needs to be after traditional modalities have been tried this is not something experimental or recreational or fun or something to do when you don't even know exactly what you're taking that's not what this episode is about but you really are an example of of somebody who has survived significant traumas and and discovered this amazing tool that that Hashem has given us to use and you've used in the most productive way so from the bottom of our hearts we thank you so much for for sharing your story with us thank you and I'm always happy to come back on and share more um there's so there there's I truly believe that there's so much for people to gain for to gain from this and um for me it's been an absolute Game Changer in my life I'm I'm so grateful which is a big thing in my life right now I'm so grateful that I got to experience this the way that I did and I continue to grow and I continue to work there's no destination for the stuff as you guys know and everyone you know everyone should hear you know it's it's a process of growth and I'm really grateful of where I'm at today beautiful story and thank you for for sharing it [Music] foreign I don't know that I ever got such an education in such a short time and I don't mean to say I'm educated on this topic I'm still an ignoramus and a novice but what a complicated important clearly positive breakthrough but also dangerous topic and I'm so grateful to you for for suggesting we tackle it too I think that there's so much talk and there's so much there's a lot of misguidance and there's a lot of curiosity um and that that's what we're doing here we're really just trying to take these complex topics and bring them to the Forefront encourage people to speak about them to explore them to navigate this entire you know mental health issues and that's that's the goal so we have to do it um we have to you know showcase that this it's a modality out there that is uh confusing to a lot of people and I think in time it'll become more clear and there will be larger just more research and um you know people will be able to add another tool to the toolbox of helping individuals heal um from a whole slew of issues absolutely and you know it for us it's an honor to create or provide the platform for these discussions and we get feedback all the time from people who say thank you thank you for eliminating the stigma thank you for letting us come out of the Shadows thank you for letting us feel normal and real and that this is life and you know here's another one of those topics Dr Friedman is incredibly knowledgeable and smart also funny engaging and he was great and the Ari's story you know we could spend an hour just unpacking our story of of these traumas in his life and how it shut down his capacity to feel and how this use and and we said it at the beginning we said it in the middle we'll say it again at the end we're not wholesale endorsing psychedelic use uh certainly not in a non-supervised uh indicated uh medically mandated or controlled way and we're simply trying to educate ourselves and others to have this discussion to be open-minded and have our eyes open to as medicine is embracing it to consider it as a tool in the tool belt as people can take advantage and use it to help them correct yeah and the courage um you know there's so many people that are going to identify with different parts of this story um and and that's the goal if you do find yourself um identifying with different areas on some level pick up the phone call somebody you know do some research yourself um reach out to either or you know a row of a mental health professional take the next steps because there's no reason to suffer for longer than you need to and there are there are solutions out there we have Solutions within our community that understand what our what our profile looks like our family systems and and that's the goal the goal is that to have you know help people understand that there is a solution a road map to to you know to recovery around these issues and it's important we don't close this conversation without also stating hopefully the obvious that psychedelics any drugs any medicines FDA approved or not should never be taken unless they're needed and prescribed and the notion that you know you can use some of these very same substances recreationally or to party or to enjoy or to escape or to numb is not the Jewish way it's not our value system it's not what we believe first of all it's incredibly dangerous we heard from the doctor about a terrible episode but but more in addition to that you know reality is something that we Embrace that we lean into that we make the most of that we transform we don't take shortcuts we don't experience a counterfeit spirituality we're supposed to do the hard work in life to be able to feel spirituality in order to feel in order to grow in order to engage the other modalities and the other and the other therapies so hopefully it doesn't need to be said or elaborated upon but any drug use or any use of any medications shouldn't be done recreationally or for fun or to experiment or out of the context of a supervised indicated environment absolutely just like all treatments and uh yeah just continue to encourage people to come out of the Shadows to share it don't fear it and uh we're looking forward to continuing the conversation and we have a lot more planned as far as different topics to really cover a broad a broad complex top um area of of issues and please share with us your ideas topics you want to hear feedback on this episode we'd love to hear from you and we continue to express our gratitude to the wine pearls and and all of these conversations are in memory of of Jonathan wine Pearl musher you are a real partner and I I count among my blessings and things I'm grateful for our opportunity to work together on this project and others so thank you so much likewise feels mutual and the BRS Community has been a host to our program onward living really giving the individuals struggling navigating their recovery a home literally a home table to sit at a community that's non-judgmental that understands that there are challenges and despite that with those challenges we will embrace them and it's such a beautiful partnership onward living in the BRS community so we feel equally as grateful and and appreciate the relationship thank you so much thank you everybody we hope you enjoyed this episode of Out of the Shadows to help bring the show to a wider audience please rate and review on Apple podcasts you can subscribe and find more episodes of Out of the Shadows on Apple podcasts Spotify YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts for further resources be sure to check out the show notes [Music] foreign [Music]