Beyond Healing: Consciousness Expansion With Psychedelic Medicine

Dr. Sandy Newes 13:09

Well, I mean to me, I mean, are you talking about the June meeting that you were at? Like, I was actually, interestingly, I had literally just finished my MDMA current training, and I was actually in Sarajevo, like we finished up, and then I went straight to, so, to watching that. So I was deep in the research. Couldn’t have been more in the research model, you know, like Bruce and Marcelo, you know. And you know, having been trained as a psychotherapy outcome researcher, you know, it’s like, it’s not an either or kind of situation. And I, you know, I mean, this is, again, that we could go into research methodology. But, like, why the lack, like, psychotherapy, Outcome Research is an actual methodological body, yeah? Like, it doesn’t not exist, yeah? Like, and it just again, no air. And I get that it’s separate from the FDA, but, you know, and some of those, you know, I get about the safety and things like that, and concerns about inappropriate, you know, yeah, of course,

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 14:12

legitimate issues, but nonetheless, and general, right? So, so I guess it’s on us too. I feel a little bit like it’s on us. You know, I spend all my time thinking about psychedelics at this point, and the it’s kind of like when I was first before the way I got into addiction was that I worked in harm reduction with needle exchange programs in New York City, we were working with people who injected barrel in and trying to prevent HIV and hepatitis. And, you know, after a while, you hang out at like a needle exchange program with with people. And you know, some extraordinary stuff is going on there, but you get kind of used to it. And then someone else, another a medical student, would come along with us and just be like, you know. It’s a shock to their system, and then you’re kind of reminded like, oh yeah, this is, I mean, this is kind of, I’ve been kind of used to this, but it is for the average person, perhaps a little bit exotic, you know. And so for psychedelics, also, maybe we’re just so accustomed to some of these things, but we need to do, you know, we need to, there were, there’s some people who are probably just like, you know, maybe have bad intentions, but I think it’s probably the minority. A lot of people just probably need to have some reasonable questions, and we should patiently answer them and keep a dialog going. And, you know, and some of their questions, like you said, are really good things for us to do research on that. They’re legitimate questions that we should, we should answer and, you know, but then give us some money to do the research, you know, right? So kind of can’t do it for free, and so it takes a lot of time, and people are out there dying from suicide, and so it’s hard,

Dr. Sandy Newes 15:52

well, right? I mean, there’s that piece about, you know, kind of cost benefit analysis, like, if you know, if we have some concerns that that could be an adverse effect. What is the adverse effect of, like, holding the treatment as well? You know? Yeah, yeah. And wagon is, don’t like, dismiss the research based on a methodological issue that has been well established in research about psychotherapy all along. And I get not their wheelhouse, and yet, right, they’ve been on, they’ve been on the ride for 20 years, like,

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 16:27

I think about, you know, again, from my addiction medicine experience, you know, buprenorphine, or, which is the brand name of Suboxone that people know about, was approved in in 2000 and we’re in 2025, and it still, like, you know, not necessarily mainstream practice. And you know, people are dying left and right of opioid overdoses. And there were a lot of, you know, legitimate concerns about doctors prescribing an opiate to opioid addicted people in offices. And that’s very reasonable concerns. But at the same time, you know, if you what, what we saw is that they put up a lot of hurdles for doctors to be able to learn how to use it and use it. And a lot of doctors said, yeah, no, I’m too busy. I got all these other things going on, right? So then the the access to the therapy, which is FDA approved and everything, was minimal, and people are still out there just using illegal drugs, you know. So there’s a sweet spot of, you know, oversight and caution and regulation and balancing that with need and access, but it’s a hard one, and I’m glad it’s not my job. I’m happy to to help out, but it’s a tough one.

Dr. Sandy Newes 17:36

Ketamine is a classic example of that, like you work with exactly the clinical arm of your clinic, part of what I understand, you’ve got trials ketamine, and I work full time with ketamine, doing very complex working with very complex clinical issues. And very clearly, like I, you know, I actually said meat and fruit like ketamine is addictive. Therapeutic use of ketamine and therapy like, you might get a therapeutic effect from using it recreationally that could actually change your life, but that is not psychotherapy, and don’t use it very often, like being addictive and their adverse effects, right? So, I mean, you know, like, Don’t shut down my profession, because you all are going to overuse it, because that’s not as what I’m wondering. Yeah,

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 18:22

and, I mean, honestly, it’s hard, because you see already that. And outside of, like, highly publicized cases with ketamine, of like, famous people, you know, the increased access, increased awareness, there are people who just will be like, Oh, I heard about that. I’m gonna go try it. Like, that’s the that’s always that, and those, some of those people in the past, like, got us to the moon, or, like, you know, discovering penicillin, right? I mean, that impulse can be really helpful for for humanity and the planet curiosity, but it can also be like, I’m going to just try this drug, or, you know, jump off this cliff. So, but, but, but you’re absolutely right. I mean, I think I said to you before I quit my job at UCLA, which, you know, most people, no one really quits it from UCLA. And like, most people were like, I kept telling people, you know, I think I’m going to take this other job. I want to. And they were like, is not gonna happen, you know. And I was, I’m pretty I’m gonna quit. You should listen to me, like, go do psychedelics. And then they were like, my god, you know, he quit, and what are we gonna do? And I was like, I’ve been telling you for three months, you know, so. But when I, when I moved to Pacific Neuroscience Institute, I said to my boss, like I didn’t quit my job to give people ketamine. I’m in ketamine, whatever right I want, LSD and like DMT, the good stuff. And thankfully, we’ve had an opportunity to work with a variety of the psychedelics. But I also came to realize quite quite quickly that it takes, like, a year to get a study approved. There’s so much paperwork and approvals, and then only about 20 or 25% of people who try out screen for a study determined up eligible and get in it. So we had all these people with depression who couldn’t qualify for their trial for one reason or another, and they actually turned out to be excellent candidates for ketamine assisted psychotherapy. So I wrote, not reluctantly, I just was like, Okay, I guess I’m supposed to do this. We started working with ketamine, and I’ve been, you know, found it to be, really it’s a workhorse of depression treatment. I mean, there are other excellent and TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation. There’s all kinds of exciting things happen. I don’t think ketamine is the only option, thank God, but, but boy, in the proper hands, used skillfully and artfully, as we say, It’s really remarkable, especially for depression, and I think some other conditions, probably alcohol use disorder, it may be helpful and but you know, you know this better than me. It’s going to be it’s not there. There isn’t a lot of there aren’t, like, huge studies we can show to the scientific people about what the added value of the assisted psychotherapy part is. We’re mostly doing it because we believe it’s important. And most of the patients who we presented to because in Los Angeles, there are many places you could go to get ketamine treatment spravada, which is the FDA approved nasal spray for suicidality and treatment resistant depression. We’re using ketamine off label, which means it’s not FDA approved for it, but there’s enough evidence for it to be legal, assuming that the patient understands, right? So we present to the patients our model, ketamine assisted psychotherapy in an intramuscular injection accompanied by psychotherapy and also, by the way, here’s a list of places you could get an infusion, you could get the nasal spray, you could get TMS. We’re happy if people go elsewhere. There’s plenty of patients, whatever they get, and people choose the ketamine assisted psychotherapy because it resonates with them. So, you know, it’s not just that we want to do this and make money or something. It’s, you know, it’s a, it’s a model that clearly, you know, resonates with certain patient populations. So, but I’d like don’t need to be more evidence better to justify the additional cost, and I’m happy, you know, I’d be happy to see that come

Dr. Sandy Newes 22:25

Yeah? Well, it’s interesting that it doesn’t exist. It seems like it’s because it’s exists largely in the private sector. And private sector people are not motivated to do research because it’s an ad, yeah? Without a clear added benefit, that’s immediate, yeah? So it’s Yeah. People are always asking me about that. I’m like, Well, we have this private sector issue. People don’t really get that. It’s not like, you just start gathering data. I mean, you can, yeah, it’s just that it’s hard any methodological things

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 22:50

with it, yeah, and even, even just from a you know, you can’t just ethically and legally, you can’t just, like, take people’s data without a bunch of approvals and precautions, which are all very necessary and important, but add to the burden that some clinician just can’t like up and do it willy nilly, unfortunately, so. But, you know, I’m just grateful. I mean, things are going fast and slow at the same time. It’s really weird, right? Things are accelerating and slowing down. There’s opportunities and there’s there’s barriers everywhere. It’s just like, like we were saying earlier. It’s really hard to to say that it’s one thing. It’s so I try to focus on the positive, and honestly, at this point, just kind of surrender to you. You know trust that we have intentions to help people and be of service to our patients and the community if we can, and the greater good of consciousness. And then just trust that, you know, if you’re put yourself in a position for things to go well, and you know that that’ll, it’ll roll out the way it rolls out.

Dr. Sandy Newes 24:03

No. So I want to just kind of plug so, you know, Dr Phil Wilson is one of the kind of, you know, elders in the community, and he’s been, he actually has developed a practice research network that, if you are part of his ketamine psychotherapy associates group, you I just found this out, you can actually access a database that people, that private clinicians, can actually use to begin gathering data with standardized as IRB approval and so, you know, just like plug for that, folks who are bigger than that,

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 24:35

yeah, well, we, I’m gonna consider joining, Yeah, it’s

Dr. Sandy Newes 24:39

actually, it’s affiliated with the university, like it’s, it’s a whole big thing, and I so I just found out about it myself, and so I want to kind of spread the word about this. Because, you know, people don’t, I mean, there that’s a whole data collection machine that people can get into that gets past that large. Sample data set, if enough people participate. So, beautiful, beautiful, yeah, so let’s switch gears. Let’s talk about consciousness, psychedelics, this whole paradigm shift that you’re talking about, you know, what do you think? How do we talk about it? Does consciousness expansion just sound too corny and new agey, you know, I mean, and the science of how that, like, how do we quantify that? And, you know, what’s the best place to start with that? Again, that kind of intersection between consciousness and, you know, healing, like, you know, yeah, therapy or symptom reduction. And yet, this new paradigm of, how do we get there?

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 25:40

I always start with, you know where I’m at and where I’m coming from, which is what you grace, you know graciously led me to start with at the beginning. And I like what we’ve talked about thus far, right? Like, I’m a physician. I have certain credentials. I’m a licensed physician, etc. I’ve got experience. I have a certain amount of authority that’s been given to me. It’s a privilege, but been given to be by my experience and by society and and, you know, I try to be pretty chill. Can doctors? A lot of times, they think they know everything, and we really don’t. And I try to be, you know, humble, even as a doctor. But, you know, I do has my job, right? If you ask me some medical question, I that will give you my authoritative answer. As a physician, you know, when it comes to consciousness or spirituality, I am just a student like everyone else. And I mean, quite frankly, probably the smartest people in the world that are, you know, researching or philosophizing about consciousness are really just students as well. It’s that level of a thing I would, I would imagine. So, you know, I don’t have any particular authority. I’m not like a teacher or a guru. I must. I’m right there with everybody else. But I do think that it’s, you know, if you work with psychedelics for for long enough, it’s hard to it’s difficult and kind of silly to ignore the aspects of of psychedelics related to the psychedelic experience, which, you know, many people experience as spiritual. And you know, I would go as far as to say, just from my own personal experience with patients and and outside of clinical settings that it would, I would feel comfortable saying that psychedelic experience is inherently a spiritual experience with a small s, not a religious experience. No particular, you know, flavor of spiritual experience, but that it involves, you know, interacting with and experiencing something that is beyond the typical physical realm, which is by definition, you know, most people would describe it that way. And it kind of forces you to, then, if you’re curious, or you’re a scientist, right, to ask, Well, what was that? Where was I was at all, just in our heads? Or was there something else? And that’s where it goes to metaphysics. And I think, you know, a variety of people could have very reasonable arguments that are different. But you know, for me, I feel like it’s hard to turn away from the the, you know, subjective, not objective, but subjective, repeated subjective experience of something that is beyond and behind the physical realm. That is, you know, probably what’s animating us to be alive instead of just be like a physical, you know, a rock, and Iraq might be alive for all we know too. We just haven’t figured out how to communicate with them. I don’t know. I just have no idea. So I’m open minded about it, but, but for us, you know, there’s clearly some, I mean, even Anyone, anyone probably could acknowledge there’s something there about being human. And when you start to really, you know, systematically practice, whether it’s meditation or prayer or ritual or using psychedelics or trance or whatever it is that puts you into this altered state. If you go there enough, you know, it’s a there’s stuff that’s replicable. You see things again and again. It’s really, it’s hard to discount it. And again, the medical model wants to just focus on which I don’t mind. Like, in a medical application, we could focus on one slice of the universe of psychedelics, but to say that that’s the only part that exists, or the only part that’s legitimate, or the only part that’s important is both silly and also just, I think, short sighted. Well, and it’s

Dr. Sandy Newes 29:43

interesting, because the same thing actually happened in psychotherapy, like where they you know, you get kind of into this mechanistic, like simple perception, you know, like CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, super well researched. Well, it’s well researched because you can actually document change in thought patterns. Yeah. And you can document symptom reduction, and you can look at the correlations between those. And then we theoretically grounded model, but it is still mechanistic. It’s just that it’s again, in psychotherapy, they’ve always talked about that, you know, like the relate, the relationship, the therapeutic relationship, is the single best predictor of outcome. So then when we get into scientistic, like mechanistically breaking things down, we leave out this consciousness piece and this subjective experience piece and the phenomenological piece of that, and the relational pieces of that, yeah, I can bring fear, right? And then there’s that contraction so, you know, and yet that is inherently part of the experience, yeah, and we also have symptom reduction so it, you know, we just kind of stick to that as an entry point,

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 30:51

yeah. And many people have said, This is not my my observation, but it resonates with me that, you know, modern science is based on measurement, objective measurement, and to measure, you need some sort of, you know, tool to measure, a machine or a sensor or a questionnaire or whatever it may be. But you know, the mistake that we make is thinking that if we can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist, that the universe of real things is is is circumscribed by what we can measure with technology in 2025 which, if you think about it, right, like in 20 in 2000 or 1970 or 1940 Right? Like, what? Like, things didn’t exist. Because, right, we can measure so many more things now with greater technology, those things didn’t exist before that. That doesn’t really make sense, right? So there’s a over emphasis, or there’s a strong bias towards objective measurement in the modern, psychic, modern scientific mind and psych me, which, you know, discounts the subjective experience. And I am a hunger. I love science. I love science. And I think science has got so much to offer for us. I do not want to go back to ancient ways. I mean, I think looking to the past and learning from the wisdom of the past makes total sense. And also, like, you know, respecting the past more, and you know, attributing, citing and attributing and giving, you know, thanks and honor to the people from the past, who, who, who figured these things out, of course, but I don’t want to go back to ancient ways, but, you know, bringing the those intuitive or more, you know, subjective ways of interacting with with reality, you know, to a separate standing so that they can work together to help us address the complicated problems we’re facing, like climate and, you know, resources and artificial I mean, you can just artificial intelligence. We just go on and on. There’s going to be so many of them, and science alone is not going to get us, you know, find us a peaceful existence, I

Dr. Sandy Newes 33:02

mean, and if symptom reduction alone, it was gonna work like, you know, people have been trying to figure that out forever, because, you know, what I see in my work is that the more that I open up with clients, kind of to possibility and curiosity and really, actually even kind of growing the good being able to kind of tolerate well being in the face of the fact that life is stressful. And how do we find our center within that which doesn’t really fit into the psychotherapy paradigm, it fits more into Buddhism and mindfulness based consciousness exploration. And why does it be either or is really kind of a piece. You know, one of the things I really respect you’re saying, Yes, we can be a scientist and a student of spirituality and consciousness, and what is wrong with merging those like, you know, as

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 33:51

long as we’re careful and still be a student. Yeah, and there are people you know, amongst you know, we’ve talked about this before, that in the scientific community, there is some apprehension about talking about spiritual stuff, and, you know, like we’re supposed to be just very rational and scientifically minded. But then, of course, we all have friends and we, you know, I go to meetings, and we’re just human. We talk about really interesting things about psychedelics that are not placebo controlled trials. I do think that if someone says to you, or said to me, listen right, like, if you want to do stuff with consciousness or spirituality or or healing with psychedelics, and you want to do stuff with science and medical model, you should just be careful that they don’t kind of like inflate or like the lines, there should be some intentionality about it, and even probably like separate lanes. And I’m very, very careful that, you know, when we’re doing science that we approach it appropriately as science. We’re not going to, you know, inject or interject spiritual. Quality into a scientific study. Now, could there be scientific studies of spiritual approaches with psychedelics? Of course, just specify that ahead of time and say, Here, we’re going to study that. Over here, we’re just studying a medical model. And I’m not going to, like, you know, you don’t want other things added to a study that will potentially cover up the effect you’re trying to do or confound the effect you’re trying to see. So we have to be, you know, just, it’s just, these are things that clinicians get taught about, boundaries and informed consent, and, you know, being mindful about, you know, what’s happening in the relationship between a patient and a doctor. And, you know, I’m not gonna, there’s some things that I’m not going to bring up in one setting, not because I’m afraid to, or because I think it’s wrong, but just it’s not the place. It’s not helpful to do it there. But there should be other places where it is, you know, a forum where you can, you can work that way, right?

Dr. Sandy Newes 35:57

I mean, the Emory, Emory is doing that, and some working, John Hopkins with spiritual org. Do you be super interesting someday to somehow, you know, get a core battery that covers the different domains, and yet, even that, for people don’t know, even that is a compounding variable, like, if you give somebody a pre test about spirituality, you’re essentially them. But then again, yeah, what point do we get enough evidence to suggest that even like, prompting that is a good and useful tool.

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 36:24

Yeah, I mean, I think that for me, and I’m, you know, I’m sure you have experience, right? You know, the people you work with, they’re just normal people you can actually just, like, get they give you feedback. So for the most part, I don’t think I’ve ever, like, had patients where, if they trust you, and they know that you’re trying to help them, if you ask them questions, and you you phrase it properly and say, you know, if there was a like you said, a comprehensive assessment, and all the different domains that might a human might exist in, and one of those was spirituality. Some people might say, you know, that’s not really my thing. And similarly, there may be questions about employment, and someone may not be working at that time, and then you say, Oh, those aren’t appropriate to you at the moment. That’s fine, but are, you know, don’t be offended that that’s in there. That’s just part of what we would do, right? So hopefully it would be that I think it’s important, I don’t, you know, every freedom to for people to make up their own mind and have their own agency and in spirituality there. I mean, unfortunately, there are a lot of cases of things going awry, or personalities and egos or even cults you know happening. So I think if you anyone who wants to talk, or you know, go beyond their own personal spiritual practices. So talking with other people about it, you really have to again, right? I’m just a student. I have no special knowledge or power at all. I And to the extent that I know anything, I’m just offering it humbly as best I can. You have to guard against that. But you know, there’s some really fascinating stuff there. And for me, I think, you know, the biggest, the biggest, like question that I’m thinking about a lot is, right? Like, it’s one thing to be, well, I’m, I’m spiritual in that I feel like there’s something behind the physical realm. And then another layer is to think, well, what’s behind there? Is there some overall greater intelligence there is there? Is there, like a arc of evolution, of consciousness beyond the, you know, the physical evolution through, you know, biological evolution. Is there? Is there some like, you know, greater some people would call them spirits or angels or entities. I’m scientific. I feel like it’s probably like a sea of consciousness, and they’re probably like, you know, concepts, ideas that crystallize and in fit together and you experience, and I’m not sure it’s like a person, like people say, and stories, but, you know, is there something behind there that we can understand and and contribute to, if we collectively, are working spiritually, or is that just us trying to insert our desire for like, structure and meaning onto like a universe that really just is kind of like, you know, random data, I don’t know, but it feels like there’s something there to mean more and more

Dr. Sandy Newes 39:23

totally well. And it’s interesting, because really, and you know, other traditions that are not focused on Western science, it’s, it’s much more common than not. You know, that understanding of some sort of force that is greater than human condition like that is more, certainly more widely accepted than not. And you know, one of the things I think is interesting, and you and I mentioned this before, is this ontological shock, like, if we prepare clients for this and people who are going into altered states, and it can happen with meditation too, like people have Yes, like. You know, like long standing, silent meditation retreats too, but we don’t prepare people for the possibility they can get really shook up too, and at that point you got an adverse event. So, yeah, you know, where’s the kind of door with that? Like, when does our responsibility to prepare people for the possibility without leading people there, and how do they scientific and human about it? Yes.

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 40:25

And I mean, I’ve said, I don’t remember if I said to you before, but like, this has come up before. And I’ve said, like, well, onto logic, shock. Like, shock. To me, that’s what I seek out of psychedelics and meditation, right? Like, for me, I’m like, Yeah, can we take it to another level? Right? You’re right. Another person that could be devastating, particularly if they’re fragile in some way, or have depression or, you know, something’s going on that can break you can break them. And the main thing, you know, one thing I’ve really learned from ketamine is just to be gentle and like you, don’t push people. You they will, they will do as much as they need to do in each session. They will inha, innately know they’ll go as far, right? And sometimes people are like, I don’t know, did I go deep enough? And you just say you did perfect. It was perfect, what you did. And next time, you will be perfect, and maybe you’ll go deeper. I don’t know. You have to trust that. You know, you just surrender to the process. And so, you know, that’s what I was saying before too. Like, I don’t know if there really is, like a grand plan, whether there is like a, you know, a one, you know, the Godhead, that is the single source, and everything’s emanating. I mean, honestly, if my experiences with the spiritual realm. I mean, I that’s not a bad I could see how that could be a description of it. I could see alternative descriptions as well. But one thing whether, whether I’m imagining it or wishful thinking, when you get to a place where you can be comfortable enough to kind of let go and surrender to the idea that you know there is some good out there that you can learn to connect to and put your, your yourself in, in the the hands of that, that impulse. And don’t, don’t worry, don’t threat, just it’ll, it’ll work out, and things will present when they are necessary. And and you’ll, you’ll do good, it can really help with well being and stability and make your life better and help you to be in a position to really be of maximal service. We’re all here for a certain amount of time. Maybe there’s reincarnation and we come back, but it’s still not this version of us. So we all, I think meaning a meaningful life is making an impact. And just like being able to connect to that, you know, whether it’s divine, sacred or consciousness or deep, or however you want to describe it, I’m completely open to the terms it is. It’s energizing and rejuvenating, and, you know, helps you. It’s it structures your own consciousness and energy to have a strong foundation so that when you need to go into difficult or challenging situations, you know, you can stay steady on track. And it’s a beautiful thing if you can, if you can have it well.

Dr. Sandy Newes 43:18

And I want to just comment on that. And then let’s switch gears, and have you tell us about the retreat, you know, in last couple minutes that we have. But sure, one of the things that I just, you know, feel strongly enough now to just begin to speak out loud is that this, you know, the term you use, is pushing back the veils. One of the things that I see that happens with psychedelics and really people who are working on expanding their own consciousness is kind of moving away from righteousness and into curiosity, you know. And I just think that we could all use a bit of that, you know, like, let go of this. I know you can still know. But like, about also being curious about what else there is like, and how do we hold that balance between yes to know and that, you know, the eternal curiosity, because, you know, kind of find that middle ground is one of the things that, I think, yeah, really interestingly, useful, you know, yeah, like, you know, so, so your retreats, you kind of, yeah, You know, this is beyond now, we’ve got Exactly, yeah, activation retreats that you’re running. So tell us about that. Thank

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 44:26

you. Thank you. This came from, I guess, two impulses. One was myself and one of my colleagues, who’s a psychotherapist and psychedelic researcher, Karina Sergey, who works with us, and one of the one of the directors at the trip center. US brainstorming about and by the way, right, healing is very important. That’s what we do for a living. We do our whole careers. Again, I’m not intending to suggest it’s not important, but working one on one, with each patient, he worked with this patient, then you. Go to a next one, right? So we were like, well, we’d also like to try to work at at a level that’s more, you know, like not just one patient at a time, perhaps on, like, the collective consciousness in the clinic, we might work with one person’s consciousness. We may do groups, small groups, but you know, even there, like, sometimes you’re working on each individual consciousness in one room at the same time. What about the collective consciousness? Are there things we could do to contribute to positivity there that may push the future of humanity towards a better place? The second thing was just curiosity, like you said about spirituality and and Karina was listening to a podcast, and a spiritual teacher named Robert Gilbert from the Vesica Institute was on the podcast, and I heard I heard it, and then we both were like, Who’s that guy that it seems really interesting, yeah. So we found out about him and took some of his courses online. And he’s a very scientifically mended guy. He has a PhD, and he’s also very careful. He’s just not want to be a guru. He’s very cautious about just presenting you with information and you can use it hopefully for good. But out of the blue, I was like, you know, we should email him and see if he wants to do like, a project with psychedelics. And I think Karina thought it wasn’t going to happen and but he responded, and actually he said, I’m gonna be in, I’m gonna be in Santa Monica. Let’s get dinner. And so we’ve been work. We’ve been working with him for about a year, and he designed a retreat that is in response to that. You know, if you look, most retreats with psychedelics are about healing, which is important, but you know, after you heal yourself, you can move to the next level, which we call spiritual activation, which is in our model using low to moderate doses of psychedelics. The psychedelics are not the emphasis. They are used to give you a better sense of the energies that you work within the meditative practices with the hope that you can better structure your energy and your consciousness again, to be of service in the long run. And that could be in your own home, in your own community. It doesn’t have to be a big grand thing. Could be very local. Or it could be maybe, if you’re in charge of a company or something, you could make an impact there, wherever, but just to to be of humble service. And so we’re having one in in April, and the the company that sponsors it is called Sky fire retreats, and that’s the sky fire retreats.com people can look at the website if they like, or they could message me, uh, anytime, or email me, or see me on LinkedIn. Uh, be happy to explain.

Dr. Sandy Newes 47:33

Great. Well, I looked at it, and I also saw that the medicine was de emphasized, but there and I, I love that because, you know, I personally the medicines are a tool, but they are not the same. And that people realistic expectations that, well, if I can just find just the right medicine, you know, maybe I should try five Meo, or maybe should be silly. Reality is, is that these things can also be damaging. They can be amazing set and setting is everything, the way in which you go into it, the community in which you’re held, like all pieces. So I love that you’re like, at least, you know, not just the retreat itself, but opening the dialog about maybe healing is a broader construct than just symptom reduction, any Yes, like, we all need that. And you know, to me, it’s like, well, what are really the mechanisms there? And it can healing go deeper, and that brings us back to that paradigm shift. I think that you

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 48:27

Exactly, yeah, and it is a cycle, right? Like after inevitably, you have do some healing, and then maybe you do some, you know, expand your consciousness from that platform, and then more things emerge. And you you could go back to the healing process, and that’s the evolution of life, and it’s a beautiful thing. And we’re not here to tell people. We’re not saying this is the only way to use psychedelics. I’m not saying it’s the right way. As a matter of fact, Robert, for a long time, was really not. He didn’t. He was like meditation, purely, I don’t want to be talking about psychedelics. But he, you know, relented a bit, because clearly, you know, so many people in his classes were using psychedelics, and some of them were just rocketing off left and right. And so he felt the obligation to say, you know, the people who figured out how to use plants fungi, right, they are sacred to those people. Since something that’s sacred, you don’t just like use randomly on a Friday night, right? So, and we’re not part of that lineage, we’re just trying to to come up with, you know, and none of this is original. It’s all, you know, long standing meditative practices and common sense about psychedelics. We’re just trying to put it together in a framework that’s useful to a modern, scientific person, and have an event where we could meet with like minded people and work, you know, collectively to try to advance, you know, humanity towards a better place. I

Dr. Sandy Newes 49:51

love that awesome well, and so it’s really for the audience that they can find out about that through you on LinkedIn or your website. Right? Is it on the trip website, or is it on the SkyFire website?

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 50:04

We just, like I was saying earlier, we keep the research and the treatment on, not on the Pacific, Pacifictrip.org. That’s my job, where I’m a doctor, and then the spiritual retreats and other activities are on Skyfireretreats.com.

Dr. Sandy Newes 50:20

Good. And do you see yourself doing the rewild ones, which, again, is, you know, more kind of nature connection and things like

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 50:27

that? Yeah. I mean, we’re not going to have we’re not going to have time to really go too deeply. But I’ll just say in 30 seconds, we did a study with a nature film made by Louis Schwartzberg, who made fantastic fun guy, where we showed that in a psilocybin session for treating alcohol use disorder, and that was kind of my first fora into the rewild medicine approach. And we did do one nature based retreat with ketamine in a beautiful setting in Malibu. And I hoped that we, I hope we’ll do a rewild retreat, perhaps in Mexico or Colorado, somewhere where we can operate within the confines of the law, which is very important. I don’t want people to people should follow the law wherever they are and not break the law. So maybe in Mexico, maybe Colorado, that’s oriented towards connecting specifically with nature, with the idea that people, may, you know, be more conscious and more, you know, mindful of protecting the planet and caring for it, because we only have one Earth. We may go elsewhere, I don’t know, but for the time being, you know, we gotta, we gotta take care of this one love that.

Dr. Sandy Newes 51:33

So anything else you’d like to share with the audience about any of these things, or yourself, or anything that you think is important also to put out there. Well, I

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 51:43

just want to first thank you for your energy and your commitment to doing this, and for, you know, bringing knowledge and wisdom and education to people consistently, like you have been doing and you’re continuing to do. It’s just we’re very grateful, and I’m honored to be here today, and also that it’s, you know, I feel like I have the best of both worlds, because I get to exist in the science world with a lot of hard facts, and, you know, really smart, confident people, and I’m a confident person, and then I can also, like, hang out with the Spiritual World, where there’s so much mystery and unknown and and people are comfortable with it. And I just want to try to, you know, connect with as many people as possible to keep learning and and evolving. And if I can contribute anything to support, you know, other good initiatives that people are doing that would be wonderful,

Dr. Sandy Newes 52:37

awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate your time, Keith. yeah, all right. Thank you so much. And we appreciate all this. This will be released for people who are interested in a couple weeks. So excellent.

Dr. Keith Heinzerling 52:50

Thank you, beautiful. Thank you.

Outro 52:55

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