Dr. Sandra (Sandy) Newes, PhD, is a licensed psychiatrist and the Co-founder and Programming Director of Living Medicine Institute. With over 25 years of clinical experience as a psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist, she specializes in anxiety, chronic stress, trauma, and recovery. Dr. Newes has provided ketamine-assisted psychotherapy through Concierge Medicine and Psychiatry since 2019. She is also an educator and speaker offering workshops, events, and education on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and the intersection of nature connection, trauma, and mental health.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [1:25] What is psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, and how does it differ from traditional psychotherapy?
- [3:17] Early research and cultural history of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy
- [8:54] How ketamine benefits psychotherapy treatments
- [12:39] Psychedelic-assisted therapy as a treatment for trauma
- [16:54] The typical treatment process for psychedelic-assisted therapy
- [19:56] Ensuring client safety during psychedelic therapy sessions
- [24:17] Dr. Sandy Newes talks about post-treatment integration
- [27:55] Living Medicine Institute’s mission as a training and research facility
In this episode…
Various psychedelics like ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin were used as treatment forms in ancient cultures. Scientific studies into the use of these drugs — namely ketamine — for mental illness began as early as the 1950s. What’s involved in modern psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy practices?
Trauma-based psychiatrist Dr. Sandy Newes provides supervised ketamine-assisted therapy treatments for treatment-resistant depression and other chronic mental health conditions. This involves using the ketamine drug as a supplement to traditional therapy practices by placing the patient on an IV drip in a controlled therapeutic environment to observe behavioral shifts. Alternatively, medical approaches entail collaborating with a physician and using ketamine as a single source of treatment. During sessions, professionals monitor the patient’s vital signs and emotional distress levels, adjusting the IV drip based on their responses and experiences. Following the session, key insights from the altered state of consciousness are integrated into further treatment sessions.
Join Dr. Sandy Newes in this episode of Living Medicine as she’s interviewed by Chad Franzen of Rise25 about the cultural history and proven benefits of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy techniques. She discusses its use in trauma treatments, Living Medicine Institute’s function as a psychedelic-assisted therapy training and research facility, and the typical process for this treatment form.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Quotable Moments:
- “Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is more like a traditional therapy process, with the psychedelic experience embedded within it.”
- “What we’re doing is revisiting ancient wisdom to help humans explore consciousness in a different way.”
- “The more clinically complex the issues, the longer it will take, and the more skilled the provider is required.”
- “We need to temper this excitement with discernment, science, skill, ethics, and standards.”
- “We want to provide resources for professionals at all levels in the growing field of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.”
Action Steps:
- Educate yourself on the history and current status of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy: Understanding the evolution and scientific backing of these treatments empowers individuals to make informed decisions.
- Consider the importance of set and setting in psychedelic therapy: Addressing environmental and mental preparedness enhances the safety and efficacy of the therapeutic experience.
- Embrace a holistic view of healing, acknowledging both ancient wisdom and modern research: Integrating various perspectives enriches one’s understanding of mental health treatment modalities.
- Advocate for regulation, training, and ethical practices in the psychedelic therapy industry: Engaging in advocacy supports a framework for safe and effective treatment, ensuring patient welfare.
- Seek out and engage with communities and professional networks dedicated to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy: Building connections with like-minded individuals and professionals fosters a collaborative environment for learning and growth.
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by the Living Medicine Institute.
LMI is a training, resource, and membership program educating providers about the legal and safe use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
To learn more or participate, visit https://livingmedicineinstitute.com.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Living Medicine podcast, where we talk about ethical medical use of psychedelic psychotherapy, teaching skills, examining the issues and interviewing interesting people. Now let’s start today’s show.
Dr. Sandy Newes 0:18
Hello. It’s Dr Sandy Newes your host for Living Medicine, where I interview mental health and medical professionals who break down the evolving ketamine and psychedelic assisted psychotherapy space. Recent interviews that we’ve done have been with Dr Ron Siegel, Dr Dick Schwartz and Dr Michael and Annie Mithoeffer. We encourage you to check those out, as well as others that are on our YouTube channel. This episode is brought to you by living Medicine Institute, a training content and resource hub for the psychedelic assisted psychotherapy community. For more information, please go to livingmedicine institute.com. So I have Chad here from rise 25 he’s done 1000s of interviews with successful entrepreneurs and CEOs, and we have flipped the script, and he’s going to be interviewing me today. So welcome Chad, and we really appreciate this. Hey,
Chad Franzen 1:07
it’s great to be here. Thanks so much. Dr Sandy, I’m looking forward to talking with you today. Why don’t we just kind of dive right into it? Tell me what? What is psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, and how does it differ from kind of maybe the traditional therapy that most people are used to or have heard of, great.
Dr. Sandy Newes 1:25
So psychedelic assisted psychotherapy kind of has a lot of different meanings, a lot of different contexts. So I really want to specifically focus this to a clinical and a medical context. And what that means is the first big difference is that it’s medically supervised and that it is run by a licensed psychotherapist. So, you know, people have therapeutic experiences in other contexts. What that means is, they might have big aha moments or things that really change their life, but that is not psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. Okay, so we’ve got clinical and medical supervision and oversight and involvement and psychedelic assisted psychotherapy is really a it’s more like a therapy process, a traditional therapy process, than not where we actually embed the psychedelic experience that might be ketamine, which is legal, and that is primarily what we focus on now, really for that reason, as well as the fact that ketamine is really potent and very powerful, and fits easily within to that context, but it may also include things that are emerging as potentially approved for therapeutic use, such as MDMA, psilocybin, LSD or Ibogaine as part of an established psychotherapy program. And what that means is that we’ve got all of the different elements of that. So we’ve got we’ve got intake, we’ve got assessment, we’ve got preparation, we’ve got integration. And preparation and integration look a lot like a traditional psychotherapy process, and the medicine session is embedded within that. So the medicine session is actually a part of the process, but it is not the process, and that is one of the common misconceptions, that it’s all about the medicine.
Chad Franzen 3:06
So speaking of possible misconceptions, you know, maybe people might think this is some new fad or something like that. How long has this kind of, this psychedelic assisted therapy, been researched
Dr. Sandy Newes 3:16
so awareness of psychedelics as potentially having profound therapeutic effects really began to emerge in the 50s, and so kind of throughout the 50s and the 60s, maybe even into the early 70s. I don’t know exactly when the prohibition happened, but there was a developing body of well controlled research, scientific research that was really showing varied market impacts for well entrenched mental health issues, depression, anxiety. There were studies done on alcoholism and other forms of addiction, and they were run at reputable institutions. Harvard had a had a program, I think Johns Hopkin had a program like it wasn’t fringe at all. They were well established academics and scientists who were really excited about the profound effect that these medicines could have on people’s mental health and well being. And then what happened is kind of a combination of cultural factors, regulatory factors, governmental factors ultimately led to that being shut down, and all of the psychedelics were put on a scheduled restriction, which meant that it was at the highest level of scheduled restriction that it had absolutely no clinical or medical utility, and therefore research was not allowed. And that really went on until the 90s, when Rick Doblin and the maps group Michael and Annie Mithoefer became involved, and they worked really, really hard to begin to chip away at that, to craft well designed research proposals to try to get the FDA to allow at least. Research, and so MDMA research ultimately is what began to open the door, and they did such well controlled research that they were able to run three rounds of clinical trials, which ultimately opened up the door for research and other medicines that have been done at such institutions as, again, Harvard and McLean Hospital and Johns Hopkins. So there is a an emerging body of extraordinarily well controlled research that is really driving this. And there have been some recent bumps in the road, kind of about that with the FDA. That might be a separate talk, but that science is very well established, and it’s going to continue to grow so, so really, this is a a movement in a major shift in mental health that’s being actually driven by the science, and that’s super important for people to understand, yeah,
Chad Franzen 5:55
and the and, as you mentioned, it really has some history to it. Maybe even, it even has some cultural roots or some historical roots. Can you kind of explain how, how those you know relate to use of psychedelics for healing? Sure.
Dr. Sandy Newes 6:10
I mean, you know, first is to embed psychedelic experiences within the broader expanse of non ordinary states of consciousness. So plant medicines, other forms of medicine really take place within the context of mindfulness, ceremony and ritual nature, connection. There is a variety of different activities that the human, that human, humanity, has been engaging in for all of recorded history, 1000s and 1000s of years to shift consciousness and to affect change. Through that affect change at the community level, at the individual level, at the you know, physiological level, medicine, ceremony and ritual, and indigenous people and people in different contexts have been using medicines to introduce non ordinary states of consciousness in a more direct way for as long as we are aware of. So this is not a new thing. In fact, there are more parts of the world that actively engage in this than that, don’t
Chad Franzen 7:16
Oh, really interesting. Yeah. I
Dr. Sandy Newes 7:18
mean, it’s really, it’s really found worldwide, in communities worldwide, again, non ordinary states of consciousness and medicines that help induce that is, you know, as old as humanity right to be able to use those to affect change. So we’re really just revisiting ancient wisdom and what that means to help humans get out of the kind of default mode of functioning and explore consciousness in a different way.
Chad Franzen 7:48
So you you mentioned earlier that you use primarily ketamine. Is that right? Mm,
Dr. Sandy Newes 7:53
hmm, yep, that’s what we use at our clinic. Again, there are a variety of different reasons, but one just being that it’s the only thing that’s legal. There are different states now that have different legalities, moving specifically with psilocybin. But ketamine has never been illegal. It has a it’s very, very safe. It comes out of the comes out of the ER. They use it like, you know, we had a trainee say, we use it like water in the ER. It’s extraordinarily safe. It’s on the UN list of necessary medications. So it’s not illegal, and it’s never been illegal, and so we focus now on that. We have a training program, which I think we’ll mention. But you know, the skills that we use there are applicable to all forms of medicine. So it’s not just specific to ketamine, but, yeah, that’s what we use. It’s also, we’ve also got a lot of data to show that it it works. And we’ve got anecdotal data that we use with ketamine assisted psychotherapy showing that we’re having really significant effects.
Chad Franzen 8:47
So in what ways would you say it’s beneficial for psychotherapy? Like, how does it work? Well,
Dr. Sandy Newes 8:54
I mean, I think that, as I mentioned, you know, putting it kind of in the context of a therapeutic sort of course of treatment is important. Um, although with ketamine, there are really two tracks, there’s ketamine treatment alone, where there is no therapist, and we actually do that as well. That is medically supervised, where people are doing that, um, kind of under in collaboration with a physician. There is also at home use of ketamine that’s really controversial, and it’s not necessarily something that we support, although it does give ease of access because it’s more affordable. So once again, kind of a separate conversation there. But the two tracks, ketamine treatment and ketamine assisted psychotherapy. With ketamine treatment, really, the ketamine itself really is the primary focus. So people come in often for what are called infusion series, which is six sessions over three to four weeks, used primarily, originally for treatment resistant depression. But as those of us in the clinical world know, treatment resistant depression is often just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that is often anxiety, developmental trauma, chronic stress that’s leading to more of a kind of a frozen depressed presentation. In. And then there’s also the ketamine assisted psychotherapy track, which is, again, as I mentioned, where it’s embedded within the therapeutic like a whole course of therapeutic intervention, and the medicine becomes one part of that. But what it really does is that it, you know, one of the kind of popular terms these days, is the default mode network. And that really explains that. It really puts people into an altered state of consciousness. And it takes the default mode, which is just your like, general everyday way of being and your way of interpreting the world, and it kind of puts it aside so it really allows different material to emerge, different imagery, different realizations, different thoughts. We kind of talk about the triangle, the thoughts, the emotions in the body. It allows for a different experience on all of these levels. There’s a we have a very strong belief in the subconscious, and that what is often referred to as inner healing intelligence in the psychedelic world, and that that kind of takes away these defensive holds on it, and it also really allows those parts of oneself to emerge. And then what we do as clinicians is our job is to track that. Our job is to be able to be mindful of that and to notice what’s actively emerging. So during that time, I’m actively, I’m actively taking notes, and then my job at integration about the content that comes up for the client. And then during integration, we revisit that. We embed that within their treatment goals. We help them understand and make sense of that. Ultimately, with the goal being, how does this impact the rest of their life. So, yeah, so, so ultimately, one more piece of that equation is, really, I work a lot with trauma and and one of the terminologies and trauma is body armoring, so your body kind of holds and tightens against it, right? So against the difficult things, against the difficult material, against the different things that are happening. And what I think really happens with ketamine is just this profound softening, so the body softens, the sense of self, kind of shifts. The mind opens, the emotions flow more freely, and that just allows kind of a more naturally occurring, less defensively held process that gives us access to things that we just never can get to in traditional psychotherapy, or that might take years.
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