Dr. Rick Barnett is the Owner and Clinical Psychologist at BPS Health, LLC, a private online and in-person CBT practice. As the Co-founder of the Psychedelic Society of Vermont, he has been trained in psychedelic therapy and research, focusing on MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine. Dr. Barnett is also an alcohol and drug addiction counselor.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [2:28] Dr. Rick Barnett discusses his interest in psychedelic medicine
- [5:55] The interdisciplinary nature of psychedelics
- [12:29] How to differentiate between various psychedelic treatment options
- [15:31] Dr. Barnett shares his perspective and experience with psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy
- [20:44] Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy training strategies for clinicians
- [26:53] The role of psychedelics in addiction treatment
- [34:56] How ketamine can limit addictive behaviors
- [39:14] At-home versus in-office ketamine treatments
- [45:42] Dr. Barnett’s research and training programs on 5-MeO-DMT
- [51:29] Dr. Barnett talks about his personal experience using 5-MeO-DMT
In this episode…
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in psychedelic drug uses for mental health and addiction treatments. With evolving perspectives and beliefs about its use in psychotherapeutic settings, many clinicians are at odds about the potential benefits and risks. How can you navigate therapeutic use and potential misuse of these treatment methods?
With personal and professional experiences with psychedelics, Dr. Rick Barnett maintains that these therapies can facilitate profound personal growth, trauma integration, and addiction recovery in both clinical and nonclinical settings. By creating curated and safe environments with trained professionals, individuals can navigate deeply impactful experiences, often achieving shifts in awareness and healing. When utilizing psychedelics for addiction treatments, Dr. Barnett advocates for a balanced approach that blends harm reduction and abstinence-based philosophies to redefine recovery.
Tune in to the latest episode of Living Medicine as Dr. Sandy Newes hosts Dr. Rick Barnett, the Owner and Clinical Psychologist at BPS Health, LLC, to discuss psychedelic’s evolving role in addiction treatment and recovery. He shares his thoughts on at-home versus in-office ketamine treatments, his in-depth research and personal experience with 5-MeO-DMT, and how to leverage various psychedelics for separate treatments.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Dr. Sandra (Sandy) Newes on LinkedIn
- Dr. Signi Goldman on LinkedIn
- Living Medicine Institute
- Dr. Rick Barnett: Website | LinkedIn | X | Instagram
- BPS Health, LLC
Quotable Moments:
- “If it wasn’t for my psychedelic experiences, I would not have become a psychologist.”
- “Psychedelics reveal the interconnectedness of all things, from philosophy to biology, showing how everything relates.”
- “There isn’t one way to do it. Psychedelics don’t care about our systems; they just provide an experience.”
- “Ketamine transforms individuals from drinking 2-3 bottles of wine daily to achieving total sobriety.”
- “5-MeO-DMT is a unique psychedelic experience, short-acting yet extremely powerful.”
Action Steps:
- Engage in safe and well-curated psychedelic experiences: Participating in well-structured psychedelic sessions can reveal the interconnectedness of various domains like psychology, spirituality, and art. This provides an opportunity to explore human connections and personal growth safely and meaningfully.
- Understand and respect the integration of various disciplines: Learning about the cross-disciplinary nature of psychedelics can broaden your perspective and deepen your understanding of the world. This approach promotes a holistic view that includes philosophy, engineering, and beyond.
- Explore psychedelic sobriety as a new recovery model: Consider the concept of psychedelic sobriety, which blends harm reduction principles with traditional abstinence-based models. This innovative model can address the challenge of maintaining sobriety while benefiting from the therapeutic potential of psychedelics.
- Participate in community support systems for addiction recovery: Building and engaging with supportive community networks can enhance recovery. This can provide ongoing support and prevent isolation, a common challenge in addiction recovery.
- Educate yourself on the ethical and safe use of psychedelics: Stay informed about the legal and ethical considerations of psychedelic therapy, especially if you seek to incorporate these into personal or professional practice. This knowledge is crucial in addressing challenges related to safety, legality, and efficacy in the evolving field of psychedelic therapy.
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 0:03
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 0:19
Hey everybody. This is Dr.Sandy Newes, and I am excited to be with Dr. Rick Barnett today, and we’re here on the Living Medicine Podcast. And Living Medicine, just to tell you a little bit about it, it’s a we we would provide training and content and resources for licensed mental health and medical professionals who want to stay cutting edge and get training and really become heavily involved in the ketamine and other psychedelic assisted psychotherapy spaces. So I’m excited again to have Dr. Rick Barnett, and just to give you a little bit of an introduction first. So I met Rick because he’s the organizer of the Soulquinox Conference, which takes place in Vermont in June, and have been following you, Rick ever since, paying attention to the things that you post on LinkedIn and in other places, and just really respect you. So I’m happy to have you here. And just by way of introduction, he is licensed in Vermont in New York, and co-founder of the Psychedelic Society of Vermont. He’s also Legislative Chair for the Vermont Psychological Association and former chair for the Vermont Psychedelic Therapy Advisory Group. Rick has been trained in psychedelic therapy and research with a focus on MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine and 5-MeO-DMT has a private practice in Vermont focusing on depression, anxiety and addictive disorder. Rick is in long term recovery from addiction, and he is passionate about helping people achieve and maintain freedom from addiction. So welcome again, and thank you so much. Have you here? I’m
Dr. Rick Barnett 1:53
happy to be here. I’m happy for this looking forward to this conversation.
Dr. Sandy Newes 1:56
Wonderful. Thank you. So I really would love to just hear first about, you know, what is your interest and your journey into psychedelic medicine like? I mean, from what I can see, you’re one of the people who has really just done a deep dive, right? That this kind of world has kind of captured you as it captures many of us, myself included, and we just keep going deeper and deeper into the space, and it seems like that’s been your journey. So I’m curious what you’d be willing to share about that, or interested in sharing about that?
Dr. Rick Barnett 2:28
Yeah, I think for me, it’s really coming home. What happened in 2018 2019 when I realized that psychedelic research and therapy was getting as much attention and traction as it was. I was like, holy cow. This is, this is like a coming home for me, because when I was younger, I used a lot of psychedelics. I used them what I thought at first was spiritually and it was life changing, very, very profound. And then after a little bit of time, it became self destructive. But after I changed my wayward ways as a youth, I got into trouble with alcohol and other drugs, and psychedelics were part of that. When I went to treatment and got into recovery and maintained my sobriety. I never forgot the profound nature of those experiences when I was younger. And I say to people that you know, I haven’t been saying this for publicly, for a long time, but more recently, I feel comfortable saying it is that if it wasn’t for my psychedelic experiences, not withstanding their destructive nature for me, I mean their healing nature and self destructive in ways for me, I would not have become a psychologist. So here I am. You know, almost 20 years into my career as a psychologist, and psychedelic research and therapy is becoming quite a thing, so for me to do a deep dive into that world, starting in 2018 2019 was seamless. It’s felt very natural. It felt very fulfilling. Is like, this is what my so much of my life has been about, but not really, not really outwardly, you know, like inwardly, it was a big part of my life, but I would never share so it gave me an opportunity to train in psychedelic therapy, to learn all about it, to meet people you mentioned Soulquinox, one of the, one of the whole reasons for Soulquinox, the conference that we put on here in Vermont every year, is because Bringing people together around this very important subject that frankly, expands well beyond psychedelics themselves, but just what it means to be human, to be connected to one another, to travel this, this journey together while we’re here, given everything that’s going on in the world, whether it’s, you know, present day or what happened 500 years ago. Or what life is going to be like 500 years from now, to be part of that whole thing and to connect with each other is really important to me, so that’s why Soulquinox has been going on for three years now. And I love the subject, and I love the ways it can help people, and that’s how I got here. I love
Dr. Sandy Newes 5:18
that you mentioned, you know, kind of your own experience, and how it branches into other areas, that it’s not just, you know, psychedelics, and I’ll just add, it’s not just about being high, right? I mean, that’s what I hear you saying, and, and kind of, you know, branching into these other areas, and, you know, bringing that kind of across disciplines is not the word you use, but I use it. I’m just curious, kind of, how do you see that? Like, what? How do you see it? Kind of crossing across domains. What domains do you see it crossing? Like, I feel like a lot of us talk about that, but I think it might be useful just to name that for people.
Dr. Rick Barnett 5:55
Oh yeah. I mean, one of the, one of the ways it crosses disciplines. I mean, it really psychedelics or the awarenesses or experiences that they can offer people tend to reveal the interconnectedness of all things. So across disciplines, there are, there’s a relationship between psychedelic experiences and philosophy. There’s a there’s a relationship between spirituality, religion and psychedelics. There’s a relationship between that and psychology. There’s a relationship between that and physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, art, teaching. There’s so many ways in which the things that can be revealed or experienced through a safe and well curated psychedelic experience. There’s so many, you know, so much interweaving going on there that it’s really again, it becomes less about the psychedelic itself and the realization of how a lot of things are connected and relate to one another. And so that’s, I think that’s what I found in my experience. And you know, there’s even, I don’t know if you heard of the infinite potential, there’s a famous physicist named David Bohm who who connected with Krishnamurti, who’s Indian mystic philosopher guy, and here we have a hardcore science scientist, physics person, and a spiritual guru type person, like having fascinating conversations about the interrelatedness of physics and spirituality. And, you know, psychedelics can be sort of part of that conversation very, very easily. So that’s, yeah, cross disciplinary is, is definitely something that’s always top of mind for me.
Dr. Sandy Newes 7:46
Well, that’s so interesting. So this, this might feel a little bit out of left field, but it seems like a, you know, like a natural follow up to what you said. I was just recently having a conversation with, actually, somebody who’s part of our team, who brought a like some an interview with somebody to my attention that they seem to be kind of like taking psychedelic, assisted psychotherapy and making it all about symptom reduction. And the person was like, Can you believe it? It’s like, as if they’re just like, leaving the fact that we’re, like, looking to expand consciousness, just like, off the table. And I, you know, I’m just kind of curious if you have any thoughts about that, like that kind of reductionism. And, you know, how do we, how do we kind of hold those balances?
Dr. Rick Barnett 8:26
I have a lot of thoughts, but, you know, it’s interesting, because our Western medical model and our sort of scientific materialism, reductionistic way of being in in modern society, is something that, on the one hand, it would be natural for us to want to break down psychedelic experiences into, you know more, you know concrete parts and utilize them in ways to help with symptom reduction and specific things. There’s even the idea and that the efforts that are going on, as you know, around taking the mystical experience out of the psychedelic and creating drugs that are next generation SSRIs. So there’s no, there’s no psycho spiritual experience associated with it, just a, you know, take a medication every day that acts on serotonin receptor sites and changes the way we think and feel in positive ways, but but different than our current psych meds. And that’s all fine. That’s all fine. And I think there’s also an effort to remove the psychotherapy part out of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, because of what happened with the Lycos maps trials and the and the FDA, rejection of MDMA for PTSD, which I know you’ve talked about a lot on your on your podcast, but you know, I try to remain somewhat agnostic about that, in that, of course, you and I are both psychologists. We believe in what we do, psychedelics or not. We believe. That talk therapy, meeting with people, one on one or in groups, and being curious and asking questions and being present and being witness and listening and engaging in ways to help people. We believe that as a as a very useful tool for people with or without psych meds, with or without psychedelics, so the fact that we absolutely have to pair psychedelics with psychotherapy. Seems a bit rigid. As far as I’m concerned, we know that there are plenty of shamans and guides and facilitators out there who do great work. They’re not doing psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. They’re holding space for people in the way that they hold space for people. So to think that psychedelics can only be taken in the context of a psychotherapeutic or Western medical model, I think, is very, very short sighted, although it is the system that you and I both work in. And so I support efforts to combine the two. I support efforts to decouple them and still offer the psychedelics in some way, shape or form, to people with support or guides or whatever. So there isn’t, there isn’t a there isn’t one way to do it. What we do know about psychedelics is that they’re great disruptors, and they don’t give a shit about how we construct whatever systems around their use that we’re going to construct there. They just, they just provide an experience. You ingest a molecule that changes the way you think about yourself, the world, other people in very, very profound and mystical ways. And if there’s psychotherapy as part of that great in a lot of cases, it’s needed to help people get through and really optimize the experience. And in a lot of cases, it’s not needed, it’s not required. So it’s kind of a both.
Dr. Sandy Newes 11:44
And I think that’s interesting. This is, this could go on for hours, I’m sure. But I am curious, do you think that that’s that, that there could be differences between different types of medicine, you know, like, for example, like the Sacred plants come from ancient traditions, right? Like we didn’t, you know, the therapist didn’t invent that, the researchers didn’t invent that. There’s, you know, like, as long as there is known human history, there is traditions of working with sacred plants and non ordinary states, then we have other medicines that have been developed more into the modern world. And, you know, it’s a big thing in the field, right? Like which medicine for which and is that even relevant? And so I’m just curious if you have any thoughts about that.
Dr. Rick Barnett 12:29
I think so. I mean, I think a lot of the work that’s been done by maps over the years for post traumatic stress disorder using MDMA, is, this is specifically, you know, ripe for, it’s unfortunate it wasn’t approved, but it’s specifically ripe for, certainly, today’s day and age, all of the information we’re learning and hearing about trauma, trauma, this trauma that we’ve just gone through, COVID, everybody’s got trauma, you know, we’ve got Gabor Mate and and Bessel van der Kolk and the Body Keeps the Score and trauma, trauma, trauma. So everything’s about trauma, trauma informed therapy. And here we have a medicine, MDMA, that specifically can be can be catered to all the stuff that we associated with trauma, the activated amygdala, the fear response, the lack of safety, all this stuff that that MDMA seems to target specifically and done in a curated psychotherapeutic environment. It just makes a lot of sense. Now, contrast that with Ayahuasca, I don’t think of like Ayahuasca assisted psychotherapy. That just sounds like a wild thing to me. Like, how does that even How does that even work? I think of Ayahuasca as, you know, a month long diet, you know, certain foods, you choose a plant, no sex, like a very curated thing, and then you travel somewhere. It could be in it could be in the United States, but you travel somewhere. It’s usually in a group, and it’s usually held by not a psychotherapist or medical person, but someone who’s experienced with Ayahuasca. Why is Ayahuasca or something like that? So, you know, I think molecule specific, yes. And then you think about, like, 5-MeO-DMT, which is, you know, we can talk about some more, and maybe I’ll just pause there, but 5-MeO-DMT is a unique molecule in and of itself that one could make an argument for both sides, I think,
Dr. Sandy Newes 14:20
right? So I want to, I want to put a bookmark on the 5-MeO and get to that, I want to ask you one specific question about psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. So you’re, you know, you’re a clinician yourself, and as you said, You’ve had lots of psychedelic experience. I don’t know for sure, but I’m assuming it sounds like you’ve been in, you know, ceremonial situations. And, you know, I know you’ve done that work with 5-MeO and and you’re also a therapist, and you, you know, facilitate this conference. So I’m just curious about your thoughts about psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. Is it effective? Is it useful? How you know. Any concerns with it, like, you already named one that let, like, let’s not just assume it has to be a part of the process. And then there’s the research piece that, you know, I’m super interested in. But, and have you know, where it’s like, can we compare the two? Like, you know, could we take a medicine and do it with or without therapy? But I’m really talking more kind of about the applied clinical pieces of that or non clinical pieces, the growth oriented pieces. What are your thoughts? And again, positives, negatives, concerns, popes, excitement.
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