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This episode is sponsored by Bubs Naturals, yet another company that I track down to bring

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on as a sponsor because I myself love their products.

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They are offering you, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast, a 20% discount.

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But before we get to that, I do want to highlight a few of the products that I use myself.

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Firstly, collagen.

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I am about to turn 50 and so my hair, my skin, my nails, not really a big concern when I

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was younger, definitely a lot more of a concern now.

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However, where I've really seen the impact is joint health and gut health and I've been

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blown away that when I'm consistent using collagen, Bubbs collagen in this case, I see

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a massive improvement in both.

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Another area I drink coffee, love coffee and in the morning I use the Halo Creamer.

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Now originally I used the MCT Oil Powder but now they have the Halo Creamer which has also

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got grass-fed butter in it, a lot more creamy if you're not trying to go for the vegan option

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that they have as well.

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Now it's important to mention as well the altruistic element of Bubbs Naturals.

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The origin story involves Glenn, Bubb, Doherty, one of the two Navy SEALs killed in Benghazi

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and a good friend of the founders, Sean and TJ.

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So 10% of every single sale goes towards the Glenn Doherty Foundation.

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Now as I mentioned before, they are offering you, the audience, 20% off your purchase if

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you use the code SHIELD.

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That's SHIELD at bubbsnaturals.com.

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And finally if you want to hear more about their products and Glenn's powerful story,

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listen to episode 558 with co-founder Sean Lake.

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This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.

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I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and have used their products ever since.

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From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female

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responders, I found them hands down the best workwear in all the departments that I've

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worked for.

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Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything and I travel a lot and they

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are also now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around the world on the Human Performance

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project.

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We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier.

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I ended up buying real ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates and that has been

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my ride or die through Murph the last few years as well.

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One area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous sponsorship spots is their brick

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and mortar element.

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They were predominantly an online company up till more recently but now they are approaching

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100 stores all over the US.

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My local store is here in Gainesville, Florida and I've been multiple times and the discounts

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you see online are applied also in the stores.

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So as I mentioned, 511 is offering you 15% off every purchase that you make but I do

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want to say more often than not they have an even deeper discount especially around

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holiday times.

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But if you use the code SHIELD15 you will get 15% off your order or in the stores every

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time you make a purchase.

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If you want to hear more about 511, who they stand for and who works with them, listen

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to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with 511 regional director Will Ayers.

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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.

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As always my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on

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the show anesthesiologist and the author of the revolutionary ketamine Dr. Jonathan Edwards.

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Now in this conversation we discuss a host of topics from the suicide in his personal

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life that sent him down the journey of mental health, riding motocross, the origin story

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of ketamine, the application of ketamine in suicide ideation, ketamine in children, addiction,

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first responders, post-traumatic growth and so much more.

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Now before we get to this incredibly powerful and important conversation as I say every

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week please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the

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show, leave feedback and leave a rating.

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Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for

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others to find and this is a free library of over 900 episodes now.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so

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I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.

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So with that being said I introduce to you Dr. Jonathan Edwards.

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Enjoy.

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Well Jonathan I want to start by saying firstly thank you to the IHMC team that's how you

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and I met initially and secondly to welcome you onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.

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Wow thanks it's an honor thank you for having me it's a special one because it's something

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near and dear to my heart and something I've written a lot about so this is yep let's

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do it.

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Absolutely well we exchanged books when we were there your book is phenomenal and we're

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going to get into that but clearly reading it you know you really are well versed in

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not only you know the mental health crisis in the country but also some of the people

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listening that are in uniform as well so I'm excited to get going.

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Yes yep.

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All right well very first question where on planet earth are we finding you today?

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Right now I'm in Las Vegas Nevada.

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The place of you know endless gambling and you know the Super Bowl was just here and

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Formula One and right now the weather is actually exactly as it is in Florida for a minute you

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know until it becomes hot like much like Death Valley is.

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We're going to get into the whole mental health conversation but when I think of Vegas which

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I've never actually been to yet there are a lot of one what one would describe as unhealthy

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coping mechanisms in some of the business models of that city particularly.

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What is your perspective of the overall mental health of that region versus maybe some of

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the other places you've visited?

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That's an excellent question and actually goes into the reason I've been kind of relocated

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you know.

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So yeah I practiced anesthesiology here for 20 years and as you know I mean it was the

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fastest growing city for decades and you know grew from like 500,000 to well over 2.5 million

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as it is today and I've seen it grown.

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One of the things that got me into the whole question of what can we do about mental health

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and suicide was because of what I experienced in Las Vegas.

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Five of my colleagues all had children under the age of 18 who had committed suicide and

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that was just in my medical field right and that question always just burned at me.

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I was like how is this?

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These kids have everything anything you could imagine.

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I mean these are all well to do people.

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They're in the best schools.

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One of the things that was obviously missing I think for those people is parents weren't

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at home as much but what lends into the question you asked is Vegas is a dangerous place.

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It's a 24 hour town.

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It is endless.

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If a kid goes off of the deep end here they can get lost in the underground here that

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does not stop and that's what's so dangerous I think about this place.

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I mean there's Fremont Street and all these underground places that a kid could literally

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get into drugs everything for 24 hours and you won't find them and I know many police

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officers and firefighters who know of these systems and they work hard to protect their

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kids so anyway that's why we relocated to France for my daughter Charlotte her first

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grade.

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She did three years of internal and a full first year one year of first grader in France

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and then we had to make the decision.

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Do we go back to Vegas or no we went back to Florida where her cousins are and family

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is even though it's smaller and it was harder for me to relocate and practice medicine but

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that in a nutshell is why we relocated from Vegas.

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That's not to say you can't raise a kid here and do well but personally after experiencing

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that and that all went into the book on the Revolutionary Academy and I read a lot about

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that but I think that's a good answer for what you're asking.

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Well it's an interesting perspective because we were just talking about obesity and one

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of the things that I'd written and we shared the same frustration that both of our professions

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we lose so many people who are dying from disease just through simple inactivity and

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the wrong foods.

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I've talked about this many times there's a lot of standing in ivory towers of some

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people when it comes to the obese population saying well if they just had discipline and

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they woke up and they ate salad and they ran just like me then they'd be fine.

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The reality is a lot of us are products of our environment and I think this is an interesting

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perspective that you just brought when we're talking about the mental health crisis when

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we're talking about the opioid epidemic and some of these other factors that we're seeing

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in a country where we have and we're going to get into this obviously prohibition of

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addiction, so it's illegal to be an addict in this country.

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In my opinion you've created an environment that sets people up for failure rather than

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success if they are born into some of these dynamics.

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Yeah, wow, eating every other just dying with every bite they take.

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Just as we discussed I think a good way to open that is I've experienced many of the

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same things you guys do out on the field trying to do CPR on that obese individual knowing

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that their chances of survival on the operating table when that happens can be so small and

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it's frustrating because you can't produce the hemodynamics necessary to sustain life

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only because of what they've done to themselves before they got there.

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How this country is so obese in the US is just mind boggling but it's not when you just

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consider the factors behind that and I'm sure you're well versed into that, the money and

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the profits and the motivations just like everything else is so strong behind what addicts

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people.

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I mean just the fact that you have scientists who are paid to study the addiction of how

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addictive they can make their foods to go in the mouths of people every single day in

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a fast food restaurant is crazy and these people are paid hundreds of thousands or who

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knows to do this and some of them regret it.

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You can read about their regrets later in life but it's true.

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The food is made to do its job and it has done its job at half the population being

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obese and then I'd love to hear your perspective on growing up in Europe, how it's different

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from what I've experienced in Europe and that'd be something I'd like to get into.

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Yeah well I'm gonna flip it on you and we'll go to France in just a second but just to

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throw it in.

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Again environment, so had I grown up in inner city London or Manchester or something, my

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experience would probably be a little less healthy but again going to that environment

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piece, I grew up on a farm in rural England where we had vegetable gardens and an orchard

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and we slaughtered our own meat and so there was that very holistic element.

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I was so fortunate I fell into genetically a family that had that environment.

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Conversely and I always talk about this, now you've got a kid that's in Brooklyn or wherever

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where their closest store might be a bodega, they've got a concrete landscape to play in.

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Maybe if they're in inner city and they've got high rises everywhere, that's a very different

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environment to get a kid to be able to understand the importance of exercise and good nutrition

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and what foods even look like and how to prepare them and some households do it incredibly

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well despite their environment but the same with the mental health conversation.

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It's all very well saying these broken homes and rolling your eyes and all that stuff.

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But if there's multi-generational trauma in inner city families where there's addiction

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and gang membership and other things, that is very different than the environment that

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I grew up in.

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Yeah, yeah, wow.

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Where to start with that one?

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I actually grew up on a, my uncle had a farm growing up so I was privileged to see kind

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of how it started from a young age.

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But that being said, we moved to the, my own personal experience, we moved to the Southern

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California from Northern California and that was more desert so there wasn't much farming

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there.

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And yeah, we grew up near California where the gang problem was very prevalent.

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So we had a lot of crime and drugs and you know, I mean, by the age of 16, I had already,

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yeah, I'd already been held up with a gun.

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I've already been, I don't know, beat up, almost killed by a gang and then I was actually

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held up with a machine gun against a wall for one hour.

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I mean, I look back and I just go, wow, I mean, how did I survive some of that stuff?

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And it wasn't like I was a bad kid.

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I was just going to, these were just house gatherings sometimes.

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But I say all that because the, what else, you know, they're a product of their environment

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and there aren't the resources that you have when you grow up in the country and drugs

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are so prevalent and it's so easy for them to make their money and eat fast food every

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day and everybody around them is unhealthy and obese and that and it doesn't, yeah, it's

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just part of the problem.

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And many of my life experiences right there is what helped shape me to want to care about

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this even, you know, to go into medicine and then to stem off from medicine and write about

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mental health and actually treat mental health.

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And I'd say where I'm going with this is like food treats mental health, you know, and if

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you have the wrong foods all the time, you're eating all the fried oils that have been in

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the fryers to cook the chicken for two weeks at a time and you get those chemicals.

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I mean, it's no doubt you're going to have a mental disorder, you know, or at least have

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a good chance of it.

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And I think that's a lot of what we're seeing today, especially in America anyway, you know.

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And then I recently met with Chris Palmer at the Metabolic Health Conference and many

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others who and Georgia Eads, for example, Dr. Eads, she's a psychiatrist who goes into

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the, you know, how you can actually help mental health disorders just through like cutting

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out the oils and the carbs and the processed foods.

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And, you know, I have several I have several directions I could go with that, but I'll

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leave it.

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I'll leave it at that for now.

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Yeah, no, we'll definitely I'm sure we'll unpack some more as we go on.

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But you mentioned Northern California.

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So let's walk in, walk you from your early life forwards then.

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So tell me where you were born, but also tell me about your family dynamic, what your parents

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did, how many siblings?

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Yeah, I was born in San Jose, California.

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We lived there until I was seven.

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My father was a truck driver.

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You know, just meager means my mom was a homemaker until we were until we were seven, I think

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we relocated when I was seven years old to Southern California.

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And we lived in the high deserts called the Hisparia, California, which is a Mojave Desert.

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Think of Joshua trees, you know, those Joshua Tree National Park, we were all near that.

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Yeah, we we were poor.

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Grew up on food stamps.

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I remember several times, you know, same foods every night, usually just what you know what

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my mom would cook.

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And it wasn't necessarily I think back, it certainly wasn't the healthiest stuff.

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And yeah, the you know, we worked our way up.

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My mom became a real estate agent and a teacher.

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My dad started driving tractors and then he owned his own business and excavating.

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And then anyway, that's that's kind of how I how I grew up.

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And yeah, I turned out turned out to be I was the first kid out of almost 50 cousins

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to go to college.

224
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And that in that in itself was a big deal.

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And then I let alone go to medical school.

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And and then the other thing, you know, growing up in the desert, I aspired to be a professional

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motocross racer.

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So I broke.

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So I had many, many run ins with the ambulances taking me to the hospital.

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So I guess that's how I got, you know, the notion that if I if motocross didn't work

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out, I was going to become a professional like a doctor or physical therapist or, you

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know, EMS or whatever.

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And it just turned out I just I went for it and became a doctor.

234
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Yeah, yeah.

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When I was probably about 10, I remember coming home one day and my mother and father were

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in tears, which I didn't see my dad cry very much.

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And it turned out that his best friend, who actually was an MP, a member of parliament

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back then, had taken his own life.

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Now I know that there was a suicide early in your life that kind of impacted you.

240
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Yeah.

241
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Yes.

242
00:20:17,160 --> 00:20:24,000
My grandfather, so there it was one of the first years we moved down to Southern California.

243
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You know, all my aunts and uncles were in the same place pretty much.

244
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And then my grandparents were there.

245
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You know, and it's interesting.

246
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My grandfather was born on a reservation.

247
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So it's good to preface it, preface the story with that.

248
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You know, he was very Indian.

249
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I mean, you know, born on a reservation in Tennessee, didn't talk much.

250
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And I remember my mom and dad just saying, we got to go to grandma and grandpa's house.

251
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I'm only seven years old.

252
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And I was the only one who was who went.

253
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I remember getting there and just seeing everybody just crying at once.

254
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And I was, man, what's going on here?

255
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I still didn't know.

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And then I looked at the couch and then I saw a big blood stain and I was, man, what

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was that?

258
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Then I saw my grandmother just crying.

259
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And then they told me what had happened, that grandpa had passed away.

260
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And I remember vividly looking at that couch and then seeing that, you know, his body in

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the other room.

262
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And yeah, it was a lot for a seven year old to take in that, you know, my grandfather

263
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had taken his own life and he had been put on oxygen.

264
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He had to survive on oxygen because of his years of smoking.

265
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And without warning, he just, yeah, he sat on that couch, put the shotgun to his chest

266
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and abruptly ended everything.

267
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And it sent the family into a spiral in ways that, you know, I still think about it every

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day.

269
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You know, even if it's just a little bit, you still think about that every day.

270
00:22:20,680 --> 00:22:26,160
And it's, yeah, and I write, that's what I opened the book, The Revolutionary Ketamine

271
00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:32,160
with and I did that speak event, Ted Talk kind of thing.

272
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And I opened the story with that too.

273
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It was interesting.

274
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:39,960
So yeah, it started young for me and I'm still going with it.

275
00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:42,560
Well, firstly, I mean, it's a tragic story.

276
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I'm sorry to hear about that.

277
00:22:43,560 --> 00:22:47,400
Obviously it was a while ago now, but still, you know, a loss of human life.

278
00:22:47,400 --> 00:22:53,440
I mean, twofold, the cigarettes first and then, you know, the suicide itself.

279
00:22:53,440 --> 00:22:58,000
I've had a few conversations with people and, you know, they're from the Native American

280
00:22:58,000 --> 00:23:02,960
background and one of the things that really kind of made me step back and think was, you

281
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know, we know in these uniform professions that the identity piece is a big part of mental

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health or ill health, depending on if we still see ourselves as the human being, the person

283
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who does this job, or we've kind of morphed into no, I am a firefighter.

284
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And then we transition out and it becomes a big struggle.

285
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When you think about a tribe who was deliberately dismantled their identity, their language,

286
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you know, their practices, it really kind of makes you reflect on how horrendously detrimental

287
00:23:36,280 --> 00:23:40,080
that must have been to the mental health of some of our indigenous tribes.

288
00:23:40,080 --> 00:23:46,360
Yeah, the suicide rate is the highest period in indigenous tribes.

289
00:23:46,360 --> 00:23:52,760
If you look at the Alaskan suicide rates, you look at the suicide rates on Indian reservations,

290
00:23:52,760 --> 00:23:57,640
they are among the highest percentages, even though they represent a small percentage of

291
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the population of the United States.

292
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When you look at how, you know, the suicide rates there, they're higher than just about

293
00:24:06,440 --> 00:24:07,520
anybody else.

294
00:24:07,520 --> 00:24:12,640
And part of it goes into their heritage.

295
00:24:12,640 --> 00:24:21,380
As you can read about many old Indian stories, when a person thought they were no longer

296
00:24:21,380 --> 00:24:29,200
meant to be here on this earth, whatever that means, they define that, yeah, they would

297
00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:37,640
often just walk away from the tribe and wander into the forest or the desert and just let

298
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themselves die, you know, and just because they were going to pass on.

299
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:50,040
And it was kind of understood, you know.

300
00:24:50,040 --> 00:24:56,360
There's several pieces of literature out there that are pretty easy to find and you'll understand.

301
00:24:56,360 --> 00:24:59,320
I mean, there's a whole psychology behind it.

302
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:01,640
I don't know if that had something to do with my grandfather.

303
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:04,960
I mean, he was, you know, Americanized and all that kind of thing.

304
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:08,480
But he's still very Indian.

305
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:09,480
I don't know.

306
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:11,920
I don't think he had a problem with Indian his life, though.

307
00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:12,920
I really don't.

308
00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:18,200
That actually is an interesting perspective, because one of the real kind of awakenings

309
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:22,680
that I had as I start interviewing all these people and a lot of whom have been there,

310
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:27,800
I mean, I would say probably God, I should really count, but more than 50 percent of

311
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:33,080
the guests I would think have been at that point of either about to take their own life

312
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:37,120
and two cases actually went through their suicide attempt and survived.

313
00:25:37,120 --> 00:25:41,600
Kevin Hines jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, Emma Benoit shooting herself.

314
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Now she's an incredible advocate for mental health and just a beautiful soul.

315
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:52,080
But what was glaring that you never heard mentioned and actually counted a lot of the

316
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:57,080
prejudice that we had against that kind of thinking before was this feeling of being

317
00:25:57,080 --> 00:25:58,080
a burden.

318
00:25:58,080 --> 00:26:03,960
And that you could imagine is probably courageously, heroically what a lot of our Native American

319
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:04,960
elders were doing.

320
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Like, I'm no longer contributing to the tribe.

321
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I'm going to remove myself from that.

322
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:16,400
But now you take a young person and anyone who's really not at that point yet and you

323
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:21,920
add in all the unaddressed childhood trauma and sleep deprivation and organizational betrayal

324
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:26,280
and all these little kind of pieces of the pie chart that we know now contribute.

325
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:31,560
And now that miswired brain appears to trick the person that they are a burden.

326
00:26:31,560 --> 00:26:36,120
And what's so crazy about that is firstly, people with a healthy brain struggle to understand

327
00:26:36,120 --> 00:26:37,120
that.

328
00:26:37,120 --> 00:26:43,680
But secondly, that now it flips it on his head because at that moment, their suicide

329
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:47,580
is selfless and courageous, not cowardly as a fish.

330
00:26:47,580 --> 00:26:48,580
Now it's their truth.

331
00:26:48,580 --> 00:26:50,380
It's a distorted truth.

332
00:26:50,380 --> 00:26:54,680
But then when you tell someone, think about your kids, think about your wife at that moment,

333
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:55,680
they are.

334
00:26:55,680 --> 00:27:01,400
And so it's this tragic distortion from a healthy mind reality to an unhealthy mind

335
00:27:01,400 --> 00:27:02,400
reality.

336
00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:07,000
But the more guilt and shame we add into the suicide conversation, the worse we're actually

337
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:08,000
making it.

338
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:09,000
Yeah, yeah.

339
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:16,800
You bring up a good point in the third chapter, I actually define what really triggers suicide.

340
00:27:16,800 --> 00:27:22,120
And like you said, being a burden is one of them.

341
00:27:22,120 --> 00:27:33,600
Being a burden, isolation, severe isolation, hopelessness, those horsemen of the apocalypse,

342
00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:41,240
all in a situation where you have means to end your life.

343
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:47,000
That's by definition what the ingredients of a successful suicide contain.

344
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:52,760
And we saw that during the pandemic, man.

345
00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:55,760
That's what the lockdowns were all about.

346
00:27:55,760 --> 00:28:02,460
If somebody went to the hospital, they went alone and you didn't get to see them.

347
00:28:02,460 --> 00:28:08,640
Both parties were isolated to the max.

348
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:18,720
And it's no wonder that many people just gave up their lives in the hospital.

349
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:21,560
A lot of people didn't fight for their lives.

350
00:28:21,560 --> 00:28:24,600
You see people, you've seen it and I've seen it.

351
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:27,840
You see people fighting for their lives.

352
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:34,280
I saw less people fighting for their lives because they were isolated.

353
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Nobody could come see them.

354
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:45,520
So in a sense, I feel society killed those people or at least helped do so.

355
00:28:45,520 --> 00:28:51,240
And they had a chance to go out because they were isolated.

356
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:53,400
They'd become a burden.

357
00:28:53,400 --> 00:29:00,760
They lost hope and their lethal means was being in a hospital.

358
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:06,680
It's a different way to look at it.

359
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:13,400
I can't help but think the people who had to respond to the houses and us who'd taken

360
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:16,480
care of them in the hospital saw all those things.

361
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:21,040
Well, you wrote a book on that, the pandemic itself.

362
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:24,480
I would love to just unpack a couple of things.

363
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:31,200
Firstly, the event itself, the virus, when it was happening, like most things, I think

364
00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:36,520
80% of us find ourselves when we're not being triggered and made anxious by governing bodies,

365
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:38,440
we find ourselves somewhat in the middle.

366
00:29:38,440 --> 00:29:43,520
And the reality seemed to be that the virus was real, but it was also an opportunistic

367
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:50,480
virus and your survivability depended also on your inherent health at that time.

368
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:55,720
So the takeaway should have been, in my opinion, let's do everything we can to give people

369
00:29:55,720 --> 00:30:01,680
autonomy, improve their own immune system, health, lose weight, move more, get day light,

370
00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:06,840
sleep better, for everyone will have a better outcome.

371
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:10,920
So I had people on the show who have been terminated because of vaccine mandates, but

372
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:16,520
I've also had ER physicians that were there and firefighters that were there where there

373
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:20,680
were those hotspots where they were losing a lot of people in ICUs and ERs.

374
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:28,400
So firstly, talk to me from an anesthesiology perspective, what were you seeing medically

375
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:29,400
through that?

376
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:35,320
And also were there any commonalities in contributing factors or underlying diseases?

377
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:43,320
Yeah, it was an interesting time because I mean, without a doubt, I saw people dying

378
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:45,680
who shouldn't have died.

379
00:30:45,680 --> 00:30:57,680
You know, I've run ICUs my whole career, you know, and I've seen even oncology wards,

380
00:30:57,680 --> 00:31:06,080
but the thing about early in the pandemic, I just remember seeing people who were just

381
00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:11,240
dying in their 50s that I was like, man, these people should be surviving this.

382
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:17,120
And then, and that's why, you know, and that's why I actually, I took the vaccine at first,

383
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:22,280
you know, just because I thought like, man, there's something I don't know here.

384
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:28,560
And you know, you know, and I didn't do it after that.

385
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:34,400
But that was the biggest thing that struck me was that discrepancy that I wasn't used

386
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:36,480
to seeing.

387
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:43,160
And then we come to find out later, you know, a lot of it's because we didn't get them healthy

388
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:51,520
or they weren't healthy to begin with, but we didn't pretreat the disease and no other

389
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:59,760
disease known to man did we tell anybody, wait till you're blue at home and then come

390
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:00,760
in.

391
00:32:00,760 --> 00:32:01,760
None.

392
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:05,680
I mean, you got rheumatoid arthritis.

393
00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:07,400
You start diet and lifestyle.

394
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:11,120
You start taking some anti-inflammatories.

395
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:15,800
You do the things, physical therapy, you do all these things before it gets worse.

396
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:16,960
You have cancer.

397
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:22,600
You know, you do all these things before it gets bad and kills you.

398
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:26,080
This pneumonia, I mean, take antibiotics at home.

399
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:31,480
I mean, we weren't even telling people to take vitamin D or antibiotics or steroids.

400
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:37,800
I mean, that was the nuts part that I got pissed off about, you know, as I learned more

401
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:42,760
and more and more about it and how we arrived there.

402
00:32:42,760 --> 00:32:48,200
You know, I hope we never arrive there again.

403
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:52,360
And I hope we...

404
00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:56,400
That's the other thing, you know, when I wrote about that first book on the suicide COVID-19

405
00:32:56,400 --> 00:33:01,120
and ketamine, I actually talked a little bit about that, about, you know, get your brain

406
00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:05,520
healthy, get your mental health in order and get your own health in order.

407
00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:09,800
So if this ever comes again, you'll know what to do.

408
00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:14,480
You'll have the medicines at home even, or know who to work with to give you options

409
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:20,120
because so many people were left without any options except to get blue at home and go

410
00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:24,240
wait for ambulance to pick them up and go to the hospital alone.

411
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,880
Oh, God.

412
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:28,520
What about from the intubation side?

413
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:32,760
It seemed like early practice was to intubate these patients and there seemed to be a kind

414
00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:37,200
of pivot where they were realizing that on a lot of these, it was actually detrimental

415
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:38,680
to intubate early.

416
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:41,240
Oh, that's what killed a lot of people.

417
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:42,760
I mean, there's no doubt.

418
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:48,960
We were just, you were just ventilating dead space because it's not the pneumonia, the

419
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:50,600
physiology of the pneumonia.

420
00:33:50,600 --> 00:33:56,180
And this is, admittedly, I'm not an expert in pulmonology, but I do.

421
00:33:56,180 --> 00:34:03,280
But what I've learned enough from my pulmonary colleagues is that the pneumonia caused by

422
00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:18,560
COVID and even other viruses cause like almost a micro coagulation phenomena where the delivery

423
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:27,720
of CO2 and oxygen is inhibited by coagulating the microvasculature going to the lungs.

424
00:34:27,720 --> 00:34:33,960
So we're not, in addition to all the mucus and blockages it did, it also did that.

425
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:43,160
So by ventilating, in many cases, depending on how severe it was, you could deliver all

426
00:34:43,160 --> 00:34:55,280
the oxygen you want, but you weren't optimizing the oxygenation of the body, which also got

427
00:34:55,280 --> 00:35:04,120
me interested in the inflammatory treatments like using, believe it or not, ketamine was

428
00:35:04,120 --> 00:35:08,600
used in a couple of trials to see if it would knock down the inflammation enough to improve

429
00:35:08,600 --> 00:35:13,760
these people on while they're intubated and sedated in the ICU.

430
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:17,720
So it's, yeah, so I think we missed the boat there.

431
00:35:17,720 --> 00:35:23,960
And obviously the market spoke for itself because the market on ventilators has decreased

432
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:25,780
dramatically.

433
00:35:25,780 --> 00:35:29,480
And I think people realized that was the wrong way to go.

434
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:38,580
And this whole craze behind the ventilators and then, you know, and I guess you can also

435
00:35:38,580 --> 00:35:44,000
get in, I mean, it's true, hospitals were incentivized to ventilate these patients at

436
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:48,560
the tune of $30,000 per patient in most cases.

437
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:55,440
And yeah, I mean, I witnessed that and there's no question about it.

438
00:35:55,440 --> 00:36:00,360
The hospitals were subsidized to put patients on ventilators, you know, thinking it was

439
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:06,080
the right thing to do, of course, because I was involved in some of that.

440
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:10,560
And I remember thinking, but we didn't know what else to do early into it.

441
00:36:10,560 --> 00:36:17,140
And then it became obvious, you know, later on that ventilating the patients was probably

442
00:36:17,140 --> 00:36:22,220
the wrong thing to do in most cases.

443
00:36:22,220 --> 00:36:28,640
One of the most infuriating things, and I've talked about this a lot, to me was addressing

444
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:34,400
the underlying issues, like I said, the preexisting illnesses and just the overall ill health

445
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:36,200
of a lot of people.

446
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:42,120
And we had a captive audience for two plus years and an amazing opportunity to really

447
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:47,120
educate the masses, to bolster some of the things that would start reversing the trend

448
00:36:47,120 --> 00:36:51,040
of obesity and the overweight that we have, I think it's 70%.

449
00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:53,640
Those two combined now, Americans are overweight or obese.

450
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:59,040
And sadly, every time I go back to England, I'm seeing it getting bigger there too.

451
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:04,480
But there was this kind of, you know, chest beating about always saving lives or saving

452
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:07,320
lives, but nothing changed.

453
00:37:07,320 --> 00:37:10,320
Schools are still serving processed food delivered by Cisco.

454
00:37:10,320 --> 00:37:13,680
There's still soda machines in all these schools.

455
00:37:13,680 --> 00:37:17,280
Local farmers aren't getting incentives to grow, you know, local healthy food, despite

456
00:37:17,280 --> 00:37:20,400
obviously seeing a huge bottleneck in our supply system.

457
00:37:20,400 --> 00:37:25,640
So all the things that would actually truly be about lives, and just because COVID is

458
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:30,040
done, doesn't mean that we're not still losing genocidal numbers in cancer and obesity and

459
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:32,720
all the other things in the fentanyl crisis.

460
00:37:32,720 --> 00:37:37,240
So I feel that it was such a disservice and anyone that said it was about health is just

461
00:37:37,240 --> 00:37:38,240
lying.

462
00:37:38,240 --> 00:37:41,600
Anyone in those circles that were on the screens.

463
00:37:41,600 --> 00:37:44,440
As they say with a tree, the best time to plant one is 20 years ago.

464
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:46,640
The second best time is now.

465
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:49,920
We get to reflect now if nothing else.

466
00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:55,120
What do we need to change having learned the lessons of those two or three years that we

467
00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:57,440
can apply today in 2024?

468
00:37:57,440 --> 00:38:06,800
I mean, that can go so many directions, but I mean, you know, I think if we just learn

469
00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:10,640
to eat at the dinner table, and I'm going to go back to where I learned in France, you

470
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:14,240
know, I was a typical American before I went to France.

471
00:38:14,240 --> 00:38:19,080
It was always I was a different American in the sense you might appreciate.

472
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:23,640
I grew up in America and all I ever heard in America was like America is this.

473
00:38:23,640 --> 00:38:24,640
America is the best.

474
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:26,280
America is the greatest country.

475
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:27,480
There is nothing.

476
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:29,040
No one else is better than us.

477
00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:31,840
You know, living somewhere else is not like America.

478
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:37,200
And I just heard that all through my, you know, adolescence in high school.

479
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:41,340
And I told myself one day, I said, you know, I'm going to go live in another country for

480
00:38:41,340 --> 00:38:45,640
one year and just see what that what it's really about.

481
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:52,760
And that and then when I got that chance after medical school, I moved to France and I got

482
00:38:52,760 --> 00:39:00,240
I luckily met the ambassador of science and he put me in Lyon, France.

483
00:39:00,240 --> 00:39:03,640
And I remember getting there and I didn't I knew some French but not not enough.

484
00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:07,000
And then so six months go by and I really learned French.

485
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:13,520
But and at that time, I had had a French girlfriend and I started eating with them and I started

486
00:39:13,520 --> 00:39:14,720
being in the family.

487
00:39:14,720 --> 00:39:17,840
The father didn't speak English, so I have forced to speak French.

488
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:20,720
I was sitting at these three and four hour dinners.

489
00:39:20,720 --> 00:39:26,680
And then in the point of where I'm going at this, I learned to eat at the table.

490
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:29,200
I learned what it meant.

491
00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:32,080
And and and many European cultures are like this.

492
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:34,560
And even in England, I think they have this importance.

493
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:41,900
But the importance of eating at the table, where so many problems are discussed, so many

494
00:39:41,900 --> 00:39:47,420
so many things that happen to you that are good or bad or whatever.

495
00:39:47,420 --> 00:39:52,240
And just the way the food was prepared and most of its local, right, the importance of

496
00:39:52,240 --> 00:39:58,520
local food is huge, at least in France, where I was.

497
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:03,800
And I'd have to say, as an American, I learned what that meant.

498
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:11,520
And the power of that, if you wanted to change something about America, what if all Americans

499
00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:16,240
learn to eat at the table and really sat down and did it?

500
00:40:16,240 --> 00:40:18,320
What would that change?

501
00:40:18,320 --> 00:40:22,840
I could only imagine people would solve a lot of their problems.

502
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:24,980
They'd care about more about what they ate.

503
00:40:24,980 --> 00:40:26,840
They wouldn't be watching TV.

504
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:28,720
They would have less fast food dinners.

505
00:40:28,720 --> 00:40:35,280
They would, you know, and I think nutrition is what you put in your mouth.

506
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:39,740
You know, it's it's you can't live on supplements.

507
00:40:39,740 --> 00:40:43,160
And that's I don't know that I'm proud.

508
00:40:43,160 --> 00:40:51,160
I'm proud to be raised by the European system in that regard and bring it back to America.

509
00:40:51,160 --> 00:40:57,160
And so if you ask me, you know, what could what's one thing you could change?

510
00:40:57,160 --> 00:40:59,840
For me, that's that's it.

511
00:40:59,840 --> 00:41:00,840
That is a big thing.

512
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:05,220
Well, I couldn't agree with you more about the chess beat and being the greatest country

513
00:41:05,220 --> 00:41:07,640
in the world, because as I always say, firstly, we're not.

514
00:41:07,640 --> 00:41:09,920
And secondly, it's not a competition anyway.

515
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:14,200
We do some things in this country that, you know, are better than anyone else in the world.

516
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:19,720
But it's that rising tide lifts all ships and mentality have the humility to look around

517
00:41:19,720 --> 00:41:21,920
and look at the different countries.

518
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:25,600
And I just heard about Japan and rope rescue in the fire service.

519
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:30,800
They went from almost having none at all to apparently being the absolute, you know, spear

520
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:34,780
tip of the spear now when it comes to that, because they had humility to take the best

521
00:41:34,780 --> 00:41:38,100
of every other country and put it in their own super system.

522
00:41:38,100 --> 00:41:41,200
And I've had people on here, you know, the guys that the guy that helped decriminalize

523
00:41:41,200 --> 00:41:47,080
addiction in Portugal, prison governor from Norway, a teacher from Finland.

524
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:51,800
I mean, all these different places where in that area they are doing it better than the

525
00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:52,800
rest of us.

526
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:54,520
And they're out there sharing their knowledge.

527
00:41:54,520 --> 00:42:00,000
You just have to have the humility to ask, hey, can you teach me how you did that?

528
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:01,000
Yeah.

529
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:05,680
Yeah, that's I'd say that's yeah, that's an important thing.

530
00:42:05,680 --> 00:42:11,840
You know, and I'm I, yeah, I pound that message everywhere I go.

531
00:42:11,840 --> 00:42:16,280
You know, people ask me why, you know, why, why did you go to Europe or this?

532
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:17,960
And, you know, that that's why.

533
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:22,560
And that's why did it's also the reason I raised my daughter there, you know, until

534
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:24,160
at least first grade.

535
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:29,440
And, you know, and it's true when she's told to come to the dinner table, it means something

536
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:33,600
else, you know, than say, than her cousins understand.

537
00:42:33,600 --> 00:42:36,640
It's it's pretty funny to watch.

538
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:37,640
So yeah.

539
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:38,640
Yeah.

540
00:42:38,640 --> 00:42:43,360
I mean, I grew up in a large family in a farm, like I said, and now, you know, I was a single

541
00:42:43,360 --> 00:42:44,360
dad for a while.

542
00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:49,260
And then, you know, my wife now, she had a little boys who have a blended family.

543
00:42:49,260 --> 00:42:52,840
But it was really hard because they were very much, you know, throw the food down your throat

544
00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:56,080
and then go back into the room and then corral them in.

545
00:42:56,080 --> 00:42:59,200
You know, even tonight, we're doing a three course dinner with the boys just so we can

546
00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:02,520
spread out the food a little bit more and take more time.

547
00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:07,200
But the irony is this is what Americans did as well.

548
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:11,040
All we're asking really is, hey, can we go back to 100 years ago?

549
00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:14,440
That would solve, in my opinion, 90 percent of our issues.

550
00:43:14,440 --> 00:43:15,440
Yeah.

551
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:20,400
I mean, it's thing if you started adding liver and, you know, high density foods, you know,

552
00:43:20,400 --> 00:43:27,600
there's everything, you know, the you know, the there's a reason you added my even my

553
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:34,160
mom fed us liver once a week based on the traditions of the early 1900s, you know, because

554
00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:38,960
you had to avoid the diseases of rickets and, you know, measles and all that.

555
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:47,480
And by having, you know, high density nutrition is I think that's another if I had to say,

556
00:43:47,480 --> 00:43:50,200
you know, what's another thing besides eating at the table?

557
00:43:50,200 --> 00:43:57,200
It's the you know, the the the nutrition density of what we're actually giving ourselves is

558
00:43:57,200 --> 00:43:58,200
poor nowadays.

559
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:01,920
You know, I mean, a chicken is not a chicken, right?

560
00:44:01,920 --> 00:44:03,080
It's raised in eight weeks.

561
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:06,420
It's not it's not meant to be a matured in eight weeks.

562
00:44:06,420 --> 00:44:12,000
That might be big enough, you know, for the hundred and forty million chickens that are

563
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:18,000
killed each day just, you know, for the chicken industry, fast food industry, you know, but

564
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:20,320
it takes twenty six to thirty six weeks.

565
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:22,560
I actually went to Joe Salatin's farm.

566
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:25,160
I had him on the show a couple of times.

567
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:27,080
Yeah, I did a personal tour with him.

568
00:44:27,080 --> 00:44:32,720
You know, I just wanted my daughter to see how it's really supposed to be done.

569
00:44:32,720 --> 00:44:38,040
And I have to say, you know, I know Joe from a couple of conferences and we've we've spoken

570
00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:41,400
and it was just great to see him in action.

571
00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:43,800
And then, yeah, it was interesting.

572
00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:50,440
One of his interns who gave us the tour, it was she'd been vegan, Colorado person, you

573
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:51,600
know, for years.

574
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:56,460
And then she got sick, you know, predicted predictably ill.

575
00:44:56,460 --> 00:45:01,000
And then she came to Salatin's farm and as an intern.

576
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:07,120
And she said she was able to overcome her fears of, you know, of consuming animal products

577
00:45:07,120 --> 00:45:15,640
through what she learned of Joel's farming practices and just the humility he brought

578
00:45:15,640 --> 00:45:18,360
into how to raise the animals and all that.

579
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:27,260
And, you know, but anyway, my daughter got she her and my she personally, you know, espouse,

580
00:45:27,260 --> 00:45:29,560
you know, everything to my daughter at a young age.

581
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:30,920
And that's what I was so happy about.

582
00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:35,000
You know, I was happy to pay the hundreds of dollars just to go see it.

583
00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:41,920
And then, you know, it's you know, it I have to say, I can't say enough about what he's

584
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:43,480
done in that whole movement.

585
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:46,320
And, you know, and that's another point.

586
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:54,640
I mean, if America went even 20 percent back to that, I think we'd see an improvement

587
00:45:54,640 --> 00:46:02,420
from the obesity, you know, crisis we're seeing, you know, now just just from that, you know.

588
00:46:02,420 --> 00:46:07,720
So it's a you know, it's a shout out to support the local people and farmers as much as you

589
00:46:07,720 --> 00:46:08,720
can.

590
00:46:08,720 --> 00:46:13,560
And and then and I don't something else I'm sure you could relate to.

591
00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:18,200
It's the amount per capita that we actually invest in our food.

592
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:21,440
America has one of the lowest.

593
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:30,160
Dollar spent on our nutrition of what we serve at the dinner table compared to other countries.

594
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:35,600
In fact, we're we spend less than half of what a typical French family puts to their

595
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:37,560
food.

596
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:43,920
And I think, you know, most of Europe, I don't know about England, but I know France, Belgium

597
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:51,280
and those countries in Switzerland put a lot more of their capital, their money they spent

598
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:55,320
of what goes on the dinner table than we do as Americans.

599
00:46:55,320 --> 00:46:56,320
Yeah.

600
00:46:56,320 --> 00:46:57,320
Yeah.

601
00:46:57,320 --> 00:47:01,720
And you know, Joel has one phrase he said, you think food's expensive, try pricing cancer.

602
00:47:01,720 --> 00:47:04,320
It's a great way of putting it.

603
00:47:04,320 --> 00:47:06,000
You're going to pay one way or the other.

604
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:12,320
And I think as well, if if we got we eliminated all this unethical farming practices that

605
00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:17,040
allow some of these products to be so inexpensive, which is obviously also government subsidies

606
00:47:17,040 --> 00:47:23,020
that should be going to our holistic local farmers, you wouldn't then be eating meat

607
00:47:23,020 --> 00:47:27,160
three times a day, you know, which is so I mean, I'm just a big believer in just

608
00:47:27,160 --> 00:47:31,360
looking at the evolution of man, that's going to give you a pretty good indicator of what

609
00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:33,360
kinds of eating patterns should you do.

610
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:35,560
And it's obviously, you know, based on geography as well.

611
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:42,840
But overall, there's no ancient, you know, element of mankind like ancient, that would

612
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:46,160
have been able to catch enough meat to eat three times a day.

613
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:47,640
I just don't believe that's the carnival.

614
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:52,360
I mean, each of their own, but the carnival, for example, to me, smacks against evolution

615
00:47:52,360 --> 00:47:58,400
a little bit, where all the effective diets seem to overlap, though, is the removal of

616
00:47:58,400 --> 00:48:02,980
processed food, whether you're vegan, whether you're carnival, whatever it is, that's the

617
00:48:02,980 --> 00:48:04,720
secret sauce.

618
00:48:04,720 --> 00:48:09,840
But if you actually paid for good quality meat, you would find yourself eating meat

619
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:14,720
less, not eliminating it, just eating it less because you're investing in and that meat

620
00:48:14,720 --> 00:48:18,440
would actually nurture you rather than poison you as we're getting at the moment.

621
00:48:18,440 --> 00:48:24,920
So, you know, going back again, a hundred years, there's no way in hell that our great grandparents

622
00:48:24,920 --> 00:48:28,200
were eating, you know, pounds and pounds of meat every day.

623
00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:33,560
There was probably a lot of, you know, freshly made bread and, you know, fruits and vegetables.

624
00:48:33,560 --> 00:48:37,920
And then the meat would be kind of like the thing that you look forward to maybe in an

625
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:38,920
evening meal.

626
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:44,020
Yeah, yeah, you're eating twice a day, probably, you know, I mean, a lot of eggs and things

627
00:48:44,020 --> 00:48:45,020
like that.

628
00:48:45,020 --> 00:48:48,440
No, there's no doubt about that, I agree with that completely.

629
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:55,080
Yeah, there's no reality to anybody who hunts that you can just, you know, there were times

630
00:48:55,080 --> 00:49:04,520
you over consume food to gain weight to survive the winters where you could, you know, it's

631
00:49:04,520 --> 00:49:06,520
predictable you weren't going to have food.

632
00:49:06,520 --> 00:49:10,600
And my, you know, my grandma's from Poland and she told me about those times.

633
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:16,680
You know, she said there were times, yeah, they just, all they could make was, yeah,

634
00:49:16,680 --> 00:49:22,720
I think porridge and yeah, some of those foods you read about in the old classics, you know,

635
00:49:22,720 --> 00:49:25,000
there's a lot of truth to that stuff, right?

636
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:26,000
Yeah, no, exactly.

637
00:49:26,000 --> 00:49:27,000
That's feast and famine.

638
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:30,640
But then again, you know, there's this whole thing about ketosis and fasting.

639
00:49:30,640 --> 00:49:33,920
It's like, well, yeah, that's being a human back in the day.

640
00:49:33,920 --> 00:49:36,240
Sometimes you found a lot of food, sometimes you didn't.

641
00:49:36,240 --> 00:49:38,160
It's not that, you know, again, mystical.

642
00:49:38,160 --> 00:49:40,760
Well, I want to go back to your timeline.

643
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:46,240
So we left off, you're a young motocross competitor in the high desert.

644
00:49:46,240 --> 00:49:52,080
Walk me through how that young man finds himself in the world of medicine and ultimately anesthesia.

645
00:49:52,080 --> 00:49:57,760
The, so the, you know, all I ever wanted to do, I mean, I was one of those kids that was

646
00:49:57,760 --> 00:50:03,600
so determined to become a professional motocross racer since I was young, seven, eight years

647
00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:07,440
old that I mean, that's all I did every day.

648
00:50:07,440 --> 00:50:12,280
I practiced hours a day, I worked out, you know, and I, school was very secondary for

649
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:13,280
me.

650
00:50:13,280 --> 00:50:20,000
So I'd have, so that determination I put into motocross and it developed me as a human being,

651
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:25,640
you know, just developed my mindset, you know, as, you know, as I'm sure you can relate.

652
00:50:25,640 --> 00:50:31,600
And so I went up, I took that path of motocross until I was 19 years old.

653
00:50:31,600 --> 00:50:35,880
But I remember getting hurt so many times that, like I told you, if I always knew if

654
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:41,920
motocross didn't work out, I was going to do school or, and as it turned out, I got

655
00:50:41,920 --> 00:50:42,920
severely injured.

656
00:50:42,920 --> 00:50:47,640
I think when I was 18, I busted my knee, they had to reconstruct it and from bone from my

657
00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:51,440
hip, tibial plateau fracture.

658
00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:55,560
And I remember my mom saying, well, you're out of high school now son.

659
00:50:55,560 --> 00:50:59,080
And if you want to stay in the house, you can pay rent or you can go to school.

660
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:03,320
And I was like, oh, I guess I have to go to junior college then.

661
00:51:03,320 --> 00:51:10,760
So I go off to junior college and, and I was like, you know, pissing the kick, this chemistry

662
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:13,400
teacher named Dr. Chimichlis.

663
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:18,800
I was pissing her off because I do okay on some tests and get Fs on others because I'd

664
00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:22,960
be traveling, you know, to motocross races, you know, across the country.

665
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:29,640
And then, and one day when I come in with crutches, she just looked at me and just said,

666
00:51:29,640 --> 00:51:31,040
oh, what happened?

667
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:32,200
I said, well, I broke my knee.

668
00:51:32,200 --> 00:51:35,440
I got about four or five months now before I go and go back to motocross.

669
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:36,800
And she says, oh, good.

670
00:51:36,800 --> 00:51:42,440
I've got you now, you little son of a bitch, and you're going to learn how to study.

671
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:47,000
I was like, I had that just hit me from left field.

672
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:49,640
She must've saw something in me.

673
00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:53,560
And anyway, she took me under her wing, taught me how to study.

674
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:58,960
I stayed with her every night after class and I made up all the bad grades I did and

675
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:01,240
eventually got A's.

676
00:52:01,240 --> 00:52:06,640
But it helped me get A's in other classes and just the study habits.

677
00:52:06,640 --> 00:52:11,480
And if it wasn't for her, I have to say, I'm not sure I ever would have got to medicine.

678
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:15,480
You know, I had the determination, but it's one thing to have the determination, but you

679
00:52:15,480 --> 00:52:18,200
got to be taught the proper skills.

680
00:52:18,200 --> 00:52:22,640
And she taught me the proper skills, bless her heart.

681
00:52:22,640 --> 00:52:25,640
And darned if I didn't make the Dean's List.

682
00:52:25,640 --> 00:52:31,040
And then that got me to UC Davis where I was a physiology major.

683
00:52:31,040 --> 00:52:36,080
And that was equally as hard as a stepping stone.

684
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:42,240
I got mediocre grades at first, but then I figured it out quickly.

685
00:52:42,240 --> 00:52:50,960
And just, I mean, we're talking studying until 11, 12, 1 a.m. at night, waking up at 6, getting

686
00:52:50,960 --> 00:52:52,080
back to the studying.

687
00:52:52,080 --> 00:52:57,200
And I just applied myself and didn't fool around and got back on the Dean's List in

688
00:52:57,200 --> 00:52:58,200
UC Davis.

689
00:52:58,200 --> 00:53:05,760
And that's what allowed me to get into medical school there in Eastern Virginia Medical School

690
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:07,920
in Norfolk, Virginia.

691
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:16,880
So it was, I attribute it to some lucky meetings, lucky chances in life.

692
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:22,680
But at the same time, I made those chances through my determination that I grew up, that

693
00:53:22,680 --> 00:53:26,360
I applied from racing motocross.

694
00:53:26,360 --> 00:53:33,520
I tell that story a lot because, you know, a lot of I think if you can learn the determination,

695
00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:34,680
you can apply it.

696
00:53:34,680 --> 00:53:38,120
Those are the tools you need to apply and succeed anywhere.

697
00:53:38,120 --> 00:53:40,120
Yeah.

698
00:53:40,120 --> 00:53:42,200
As you said, she obviously saw something in you.

699
00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:46,160
She seemed to be the right fit of teacher for you at that moment.

700
00:53:46,160 --> 00:53:52,840
What were some of the study habits that allowed you to go from struggling to thriving?

701
00:53:52,840 --> 00:53:59,600
Specifically, she made me get last year's, the year's previous notes to her lectures.

702
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:03,880
And she'd make me study those before class or before her lecture.

703
00:54:03,880 --> 00:54:08,920
So she would say, okay, I want you to study these last year's notes so you have an idea

704
00:54:08,920 --> 00:54:11,920
of what we're going to do.

705
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:15,760
And then I would write my notes during the class.

706
00:54:15,760 --> 00:54:22,800
And then she had me take the old set of last year's notes and the notes that I had had

707
00:54:22,800 --> 00:54:27,000
had in that class and put together a new set of notes.

708
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:31,560
So I saw it one, two, and then three times.

709
00:54:31,560 --> 00:54:39,240
And when you do it that way, at least for me, it kind of branded it in your mind.

710
00:54:39,240 --> 00:54:44,960
And I almost didn't have, I could do that for all my classes and be efficient about

711
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:45,960
it.

712
00:54:45,960 --> 00:54:50,400
And then when the final exams or midterms came, all I had to do was go back to my perfect

713
00:54:50,400 --> 00:54:55,160
set of notes, review those, make sure I had those solid.

714
00:54:55,160 --> 00:55:00,280
And that system worked for me, I mean, even into medical school.

715
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:05,920
So I'd have to, that was pretty, you know, I had no idea about doing that kind of stuff

716
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:07,800
because I'd never been in AP classes.

717
00:55:07,800 --> 00:55:11,800
I mean, I kid you not, in high school, the best class I got in, the highest class I got

718
00:55:11,800 --> 00:55:14,600
into was geometry.

719
00:55:14,600 --> 00:55:18,120
And I missed like 40 days a year of high school.

720
00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:22,920
They wanted to kick me out actually.

721
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:28,240
A funny story is when I went to my 10 year reunion, one person had become a doctor and

722
00:55:28,240 --> 00:55:32,100
they said, oh yeah, we had one person go to medical school.

723
00:55:32,100 --> 00:55:37,360
And the guy sitting next to me goes, looks at somebody else and then he looks at the

724
00:55:37,360 --> 00:55:42,200
goes, what about Jonathan Edwards?

725
00:55:42,200 --> 00:55:43,200
Who's that?

726
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:48,320
And then everybody looks at me and go, you became a doctor?

727
00:55:48,320 --> 00:55:54,640
Like I mean, people were just dumbfounded, you know, it was a funny moment in life anyway.

728
00:55:54,640 --> 00:56:01,120
So beginning back, those were some of this, if I had to say anybody struggling with that,

729
00:56:01,120 --> 00:56:07,320
that's one way you do it, you know, get the old notes, put them together with the new,

730
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:10,080
make a perfect set, practice perfect.

731
00:56:10,080 --> 00:56:12,120
And that's what she did to me.

732
00:56:12,120 --> 00:56:17,320
And I mean, that's not all, but it just also sparked my interest.

733
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:19,560
I just like in calculus.

734
00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:28,960
I remember, I mean, it might be a geeky way to say it, but I salivated to go home and

735
00:56:28,960 --> 00:56:31,000
get my calculus homework done.

736
00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:34,720
I mean, I just couldn't wait to see what was next.

737
00:56:34,720 --> 00:56:43,000
The adventure of calculus was just something that was so neat to me that for the first

738
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:46,640
time in my life, I couldn't wait to go home and get the homework done and like see what

739
00:56:46,640 --> 00:56:48,360
it was going to become.

740
00:56:48,360 --> 00:56:50,360
It was just a neat adventure of life.

741
00:56:50,360 --> 00:56:54,000
And you know, I embraced it that way.

742
00:56:54,000 --> 00:56:58,480
And that's when I knew I'd wanted to keep going in academics.

743
00:56:58,480 --> 00:57:04,680
And it was just a, it was a neat, it's a neat story, but that's what happened to me.

744
00:57:04,680 --> 00:57:05,680
That's amazing.

745
00:57:05,680 --> 00:57:07,520
It's funny with the reunion story.

746
00:57:07,520 --> 00:57:08,920
I had one of my friends on the show.

747
00:57:08,920 --> 00:57:11,600
It was supposed to be my very first interview, but we had technical issues.

748
00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:17,000
He ended up being, I think it was like a hundred and something, but he said to me of all the

749
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:21,280
people in our school year, you were the last person I think I would thought would have

750
00:57:21,280 --> 00:57:22,280
become a firefighter.

751
00:57:22,280 --> 00:57:25,200
And I was like, Oh, thanks a lot.

752
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:27,720
Because I was very small and kind of gangly when I was little.

753
00:57:27,720 --> 00:57:29,240
So it was funny hearing that.

754
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:30,400
So a similar story.

755
00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:31,400
All right.

756
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:36,200
So now you find yourself in USF here in Florida in the world of anesthesia.

757
00:57:36,200 --> 00:57:41,120
So walk me through that specialty and then let's kind of start unpacking your exposure

758
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:46,560
to ketamine and then how, you know, what, what you saw the other benefits of that drug

759
00:57:46,560 --> 00:57:48,160
would become.

760
00:57:48,160 --> 00:57:49,460
Yep.

761
00:57:49,460 --> 00:57:55,960
So I went, I mean, yeah, just, I told you, so I was in France.

762
00:57:55,960 --> 00:57:58,040
So at first I did internal medicine.

763
00:57:58,040 --> 00:58:00,020
Then I did, I did a year of that.

764
00:58:00,020 --> 00:58:03,840
Then I did physical medicine and rehab, which is basically non-operative orthopedics and

765
00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:06,280
sports medicine.

766
00:58:06,280 --> 00:58:11,760
And then when, and then I went to France, did a year of neurology research, and then

767
00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:16,400
I had to decide on a full, you know, what my real special full-time specialty was going

768
00:58:16,400 --> 00:58:17,400
to be.

769
00:58:17,400 --> 00:58:18,480
And that was anesthesia.

770
00:58:18,480 --> 00:58:24,040
So I went to Tampa, Florida, USF, did three years there.

771
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:30,760
And yeah, I did a lot of research, you know, a lot of trauma, lines.

772
00:58:30,760 --> 00:58:39,560
I mean, with the cardiac transplants, liver transplants, I worked the burn units a lot.

773
00:58:39,560 --> 00:58:45,680
And so I bring up burn units because that's where I learned to use ketamine.

774
00:58:45,680 --> 00:58:48,560
And we, I mean, we use ketamine for everything there.

775
00:58:48,560 --> 00:58:50,040
Why did we use ketamine?

776
00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:54,640
Because you know, as you can imagine, people who got, as you know, very well, you get burned

777
00:58:54,640 --> 00:58:56,040
in the face, guess what?

778
00:58:56,040 --> 00:58:58,220
They become a difficult airway.

779
00:58:58,220 --> 00:59:03,200
So you have to do everything to preserve the airway in the burn unit, especially, you know,

780
00:59:03,200 --> 00:59:06,540
especially people who have been burned, you know, with their mouths and you can't get

781
00:59:06,540 --> 00:59:11,040
their mouths open, you know, but you have to do dressing changes.

782
00:59:11,040 --> 00:59:14,480
So we use ketamine for all that.

783
00:59:14,480 --> 00:59:18,280
And so you became very good at sedating people with ketamine.

784
00:59:18,280 --> 00:59:23,960
And then as I pointed out, I point out in the book that, you know, ketamine is still

785
00:59:23,960 --> 00:59:31,020
the most used anesthetic in the world because it's on the WHO essential list of medications

786
00:59:31,020 --> 00:59:36,800
because you can do anesthesia with it without the need of oxygen.

787
00:59:36,800 --> 00:59:42,760
In most cases, without the need of monitoring, you know, their blood pressure and oxygenation

788
00:59:42,760 --> 00:59:44,680
and heart rate is going to be fine.

789
00:59:44,680 --> 00:59:49,880
If you're going to set a bone or do some stitches or sutures, I mean, you could even take an

790
00:59:49,880 --> 00:59:58,480
appendix out on ketamine if you had to, you know, it's just that kind of drug, you know,

791
00:59:58,480 --> 01:00:05,040
the unlike propofol, penethol, all the others that just are fentanyl that just completely

792
01:00:05,040 --> 01:00:09,240
take away your respiratory drive.

793
01:00:09,240 --> 01:00:12,640
And that's the, you know, and that's the power of it.

794
01:00:12,640 --> 01:00:18,920
And so when I learned to use ketamine, I wasn't even aware in the, you know, the research

795
01:00:18,920 --> 01:00:23,640
that was being done at Yale about how it could stop suicide and mental health.

796
01:00:23,640 --> 01:00:29,160
It wasn't some years later that I became privy to that and just, it just, it clicked for

797
01:00:29,160 --> 01:00:32,840
me, you know, I was like, oh, wow, you know, so.

798
01:00:32,840 --> 01:00:38,000
You do, you know, one of the opening chapters of the book, you talk about the kind of metamorphosis

799
01:00:38,000 --> 01:00:39,000
of ketamine.

800
01:00:39,000 --> 01:00:43,720
I love to hear that because it was a pretty, you know, interesting lineage that it's got.

801
01:00:43,720 --> 01:00:48,960
So talk to me about the kind of inception, you know, the highs, some of the lows, and

802
01:00:48,960 --> 01:00:50,480
then kind of where we are now.

803
01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:51,480
Yeah, yeah.

804
01:00:51,480 --> 01:00:58,000
The, you know, in the sixties, it was a, phencycloidine was the precursor to ketamine, which is angel

805
01:00:58,000 --> 01:00:59,800
dust.

806
01:00:59,800 --> 01:01:02,880
And they used it in the surgeries.

807
01:01:02,880 --> 01:01:08,560
It was a Wayne State University researcher who discovered it.

808
01:01:08,560 --> 01:01:14,480
And it was discovered because the anesthesiologists were complaining about the postoperative delirium

809
01:01:14,480 --> 01:01:16,000
from phencycloidine.

810
01:01:16,000 --> 01:01:24,280
It was so bad that, I mean, people were just sent into, you know, trips that they needed,

811
01:01:24,280 --> 01:01:28,160
you know, I guess psychological help from that was that bad.

812
01:01:28,160 --> 01:01:31,680
So ketamine was the answer to that.

813
01:01:31,680 --> 01:01:40,040
Now ketamine was produced in the sixties and it was first tried on prisoners.

814
01:01:40,040 --> 01:01:44,360
And then that's when they found that like, oh, ketamine not only produces dissociative

815
01:01:44,360 --> 01:01:48,300
anesthesia, but it preserves hemodynamics.

816
01:01:48,300 --> 01:01:56,720
So it became an ideal drug for, you know, to pentothal and methohexatol and some of

817
01:01:56,720 --> 01:02:00,640
the older sedatives that were once used.

818
01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:07,180
So fast forward into the Vietnam War and it became a buddy drug.

819
01:02:07,180 --> 01:02:11,920
And that, it still wasn't FDA approved at that time, but when they saw that it could

820
01:02:11,920 --> 01:02:20,060
be used as a buddy drug, meaning your soldier who's your buddy and you're injured could

821
01:02:20,060 --> 01:02:29,540
give you this drug intramuscularly and get you to safety somehow, you know, whatever

822
01:02:29,540 --> 01:02:31,600
they did.

823
01:02:31,600 --> 01:02:36,160
I mean, you could even give a dose where you could technically walk with it, you know,

824
01:02:36,160 --> 01:02:38,840
if you had to with assistance anyway.

825
01:02:38,840 --> 01:02:41,560
Did that replace morphine that they used to carry?

826
01:02:41,560 --> 01:02:44,960
No, they used both, you know.

827
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:54,040
I think it became, yeah, I mean, as you know, in the Vietnam veterans morphine was still

828
01:02:54,040 --> 01:02:57,840
used a lot and I'm sure they used both in tandem.

829
01:02:57,840 --> 01:03:02,640
I don't know if they were privy to just using ketamine alone.

830
01:03:02,640 --> 01:03:07,000
I'm sure they found out very quickly that when they combined the two, they saw a decrease

831
01:03:07,000 --> 01:03:08,120
in respiratory rate.

832
01:03:08,120 --> 01:03:12,440
So I can only imagine that the doctors were saying, no, use the ketamine first, get them

833
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:15,280
to safety, then give them the morphine.

834
01:03:15,280 --> 01:03:17,760
I'm sure that had to have happened.

835
01:03:17,760 --> 01:03:23,240
So anyway, the FDA saw how effective a drug it was in the war.

836
01:03:23,240 --> 01:03:29,480
And so about the same time as when the FDA approved it for use in hospitals and immediately

837
01:03:29,480 --> 01:03:34,920
the anesthesiologist grabbed onto ketamine as a use in pediatrics, for example, you know,

838
01:03:34,920 --> 01:03:40,080
where the airway is so important to do sedations and then also to use as an operative room

839
01:03:40,080 --> 01:03:48,520
anesthetic because remember, paralytics were still in their infancy, really.

840
01:03:48,520 --> 01:03:55,880
I mean, compared to what they are now, the paralytics used back then were long acting,

841
01:03:55,880 --> 01:04:03,960
you know, non-reversible in many cases and just caused a lot of problems, you know, sometimes

842
01:04:03,960 --> 01:04:09,940
allergic reactions, those kinds of things when you go back to atracurium and those ones.

843
01:04:09,940 --> 01:04:21,000
So ketamine really gained favor in the 70s and then other things became available like,

844
01:04:21,000 --> 01:04:24,880
you know, improved versions of penethol and then propofol came on the scene and those

845
01:04:24,880 --> 01:04:28,240
were better induction agents than ketamine were.

846
01:04:28,240 --> 01:04:36,120
But the problem with ketamine is that it became a drug of abuse and so the story around ketamine

847
01:04:36,120 --> 01:04:44,400
became inundated through its abuse, which happened a lot in Russia, India, Asia, you

848
01:04:44,400 --> 01:04:51,400
know, in other places.

849
01:04:51,400 --> 01:05:00,480
So that was kind of the negative part and so ketamine use became less and less, as you

850
01:05:00,480 --> 01:05:04,640
would say, because there were other drugs to use.

851
01:05:04,640 --> 01:05:09,640
And an interesting story, you know, like in Russia, for example, Vladimir Putin in the

852
01:05:09,640 --> 01:05:18,240
80s or early 90s banned ketamine outright for animals and humans and Brigitte Bardot

853
01:05:18,240 --> 01:05:23,840
was an animal activist and she actually wrote Putin and said, at least give it to the animals,

854
01:05:23,840 --> 01:05:27,360
they need it, you know, for veterinary services and he did.

855
01:05:27,360 --> 01:05:34,400
He reversed it for animals but still prohibited for humans because of the abuse, you know.

856
01:05:34,400 --> 01:05:41,680
So anyway, then other drugs of abuse became, you know, more prevalent like cocaine and

857
01:05:41,680 --> 01:05:44,160
heroin and all that kind of stuff.

858
01:05:44,160 --> 01:05:54,420
So ketamine kind of decreased in that sense, you know, from the abuse it was experiencing

859
01:05:54,420 --> 01:05:57,840
and other drugs took its place.

860
01:05:57,840 --> 01:06:04,360
And so ketamine has always been a good anesthetic, you know, but people didn't understand how

861
01:06:04,360 --> 01:06:09,280
it could like stop depression and suicide until...

862
01:06:09,280 --> 01:06:16,640
The first studies actually were in England where they did it on patients who had bulimia,

863
01:06:16,640 --> 01:06:26,920
you know, and anorexia and they actually gave the drug to young kids and they found that

864
01:06:26,920 --> 01:06:28,640
it had a benefit.

865
01:06:28,640 --> 01:06:38,640
And these were, I think Manchester, if I recall, the studies are there but that was 1997-98.

866
01:06:38,640 --> 01:06:47,120
And then in 2000, the researchers, John Crystal and I believe Robert Berman and others said,

867
01:06:47,120 --> 01:06:52,280
okay, if it does that, let's see what it does to suicide and depression.

868
01:06:52,280 --> 01:06:58,120
And they did this study called the Will to Live and the Will to Die.

869
01:06:58,120 --> 01:07:01,960
And these, you know, obviously suicide patients have the Will to Die.

870
01:07:01,960 --> 01:07:03,280
Do they have the Will to Live?

871
01:07:03,280 --> 01:07:08,240
And they found that ketamine put more patients than they ever could have thought in the Will

872
01:07:08,240 --> 01:07:10,360
to Live category.

873
01:07:10,360 --> 01:07:18,120
And so they, you know, they saw, they did the initial studies, they repeated them and

874
01:07:18,120 --> 01:07:25,840
found that, wow, this drug can stop suicide in its tracks.

875
01:07:25,840 --> 01:07:31,160
And that's where, you know, where we were, where we are today.

876
01:07:31,160 --> 01:07:32,160
But let's back up.

877
01:07:32,160 --> 01:07:37,240
In the 70s, we already knew ketamine could stop depression if you read some of the studies

878
01:07:37,240 --> 01:07:45,580
or some of the, I should say, commentary articles about it.

879
01:07:45,580 --> 01:07:50,200
There were abuse clinics for phencycloidine and ketamine in the 70s.

880
01:07:50,200 --> 01:07:57,240
And one patient, I recall, and I wrote about this, I read about this in the book, she said,

881
01:07:57,240 --> 01:08:00,240
the doctor asked her, why aren't you taking your antidepressants?

882
01:08:00,240 --> 01:08:03,000
And she goes, oh, that's easy, doctor.

883
01:08:03,000 --> 01:08:05,760
Because ketamine works so much better.

884
01:08:05,760 --> 01:08:07,840
It just doesn't last as long.

885
01:08:07,840 --> 01:08:15,440
So already we knew there were some hints that ketamine stopped depression in the 70s.

886
01:08:15,440 --> 01:08:24,280
And I guess one other piece of the puzzle of why we didn't know about or develop the

887
01:08:24,280 --> 01:08:32,540
potential for ketamine to stop suicide and depression is because of the ban on psychedelics,

888
01:08:32,540 --> 01:08:34,720
you know, that happened during the Vietnam War.

889
01:08:34,720 --> 01:08:39,960
So in a sense, I mean, think about it, we lost, you know, if the 2000s were the first

890
01:08:39,960 --> 01:08:47,720
time, you know, we lost almost 50 years of psychedelic research to be able to discover

891
01:08:47,720 --> 01:08:58,280
and put into mainstream practice things like ketamine, ayahuasca, DMT, and MDMA, and all

892
01:08:58,280 --> 01:09:06,120
those other medications that can actually have an effect on suicide and depression till

893
01:09:06,120 --> 01:09:07,280
now.

894
01:09:07,280 --> 01:09:14,880
And that was thanks to people like, you know, not just Timothy Leary, but others.

895
01:09:14,880 --> 01:09:20,200
And the government's perception of what harm that was causing.

896
01:09:20,200 --> 01:09:27,980
And they took a, yeah, I think they did a detriment to us all.

897
01:09:27,980 --> 01:09:34,160
And we could have been stopping suicide a lot longer, a lot, like in a lot, 20 years

898
01:09:34,160 --> 01:09:37,480
ago had this not happened.

899
01:09:37,480 --> 01:09:40,240
This is a conversation I've had with so many people now.

900
01:09:40,240 --> 01:09:44,120
It's been absolutely fascinating because it's seven years now this podcast has been going

901
01:09:44,120 --> 01:09:49,800
on and I've watched the shift with especially the law enforcement community.

902
01:09:49,800 --> 01:09:53,520
You know, I mean, these men and women were told these are the laws enforce it at the

903
01:09:53,520 --> 01:09:54,520
end.

904
01:09:54,520 --> 01:09:56,920
So of course they're going to be the hardest kind of nuts to crack.

905
01:09:56,920 --> 01:10:00,060
And, you know, early on it was like, well, it is what it is.

906
01:10:00,060 --> 01:10:02,840
And then this is slow unraveling that I'm seeing.

907
01:10:02,840 --> 01:10:07,960
And even in this is really interesting in the special operations community were very

908
01:10:07,960 --> 01:10:12,840
tight lipped about, for example, opium in Afghanistan.

909
01:10:12,840 --> 01:10:16,540
And then about three or four years ago, they were like, let me tell you about the opium

910
01:10:16,540 --> 01:10:20,220
fields and how that's funding terrorism and all these things.

911
01:10:20,220 --> 01:10:28,840
And so what we're seeing is again, the challenging the entire idea of, you know, the war on drugs

912
01:10:28,840 --> 01:10:33,680
air quote, and you look back even to the thirties with Harry Anslinger, the real inception of

913
01:10:33,680 --> 01:10:39,400
it, the reefer madness time, it was coming off the biggest failure, which was drug alcohol

914
01:10:39,400 --> 01:10:40,400
prohibition.

915
01:10:40,400 --> 01:10:44,000
The only reason we know Al Capone is because of alcohol prohibition.

916
01:10:44,000 --> 01:10:48,340
And then literally, I think it was a year later that failed.

917
01:10:48,340 --> 01:10:49,880
He's put in this position.

918
01:10:49,880 --> 01:10:54,460
He himself is a screaming racist with a huge mental health problem himself.

919
01:10:54,460 --> 01:10:56,160
And he's trying to justify his position.

920
01:10:56,160 --> 01:10:59,280
And I think it was the version of the ATF back then.

921
01:10:59,280 --> 01:11:01,280
And so they start adding marijuana.

922
01:11:01,280 --> 01:11:04,840
And as you said, you know, psychedelics and it goes on and on and on.

923
01:11:04,840 --> 01:11:10,600
So fast forward to 2024, what is beautiful is now the very men and women that fought

924
01:11:10,600 --> 01:11:18,180
for this country were having to go overseas to find effective treatment for their trauma.

925
01:11:18,180 --> 01:11:22,640
And now with the Navy SEAL community and especially with Ibogaine, you know, and some of these

926
01:11:22,640 --> 01:11:27,960
other communities, the mirror is being turned around and I think people are finally seeing

927
01:11:27,960 --> 01:11:30,880
the ridiculousness that is drug prohibition.

928
01:11:30,880 --> 01:11:34,360
Now, when you talk about that, people are like, oh, so you can just buy crack in the

929
01:11:34,360 --> 01:11:35,360
store.

930
01:11:35,360 --> 01:11:41,360
No, we're talking about decriminalizing addiction, which then frees up all the law enforcement

931
01:11:41,360 --> 01:11:48,320
resources and legal resources to get the smugglers, the dealers and the criminals associated with

932
01:11:48,320 --> 01:11:50,000
that, you know, off the streets.

933
01:11:50,000 --> 01:11:55,600
But by taking these people who are struggling, some are in uniform, some are not.

934
01:11:55,600 --> 01:11:59,880
But that's the irony is that the very officers that are arresting people, a lot of them have

935
01:11:59,880 --> 01:12:05,840
their own challenges and are using behind closed doors, taking them into the, you know,

936
01:12:05,840 --> 01:12:12,080
encircling them in the medical community compassionately and giving them addiction counseling, mental

937
01:12:12,080 --> 01:12:16,800
health counseling, of which that could include plant medicine, ketamine therapy, et cetera,

938
01:12:16,800 --> 01:12:21,720
and job creation, you're now taking people that are hurting and you're healing them,

939
01:12:21,720 --> 01:12:26,680
which is actually the answer to addiction, because we know, I mean, we're almost at a

940
01:12:26,680 --> 01:12:30,320
hundred years now of drug prohibition, 80 something years.

941
01:12:30,320 --> 01:12:32,000
We know that was an epic failure.

942
01:12:32,000 --> 01:12:38,240
So taking that model that Portugal and some of these other countries have done so well,

943
01:12:38,240 --> 01:12:43,760
now ketamine, all these conversations that were so vilified before and now on the other

944
01:12:43,760 --> 01:12:47,720
side of the fence going, these are actually the things that are going to help you.

945
01:12:47,720 --> 01:12:48,720
Absolutely.

946
01:12:48,720 --> 01:12:49,720
Yeah.

947
01:12:49,720 --> 01:12:55,120
Yeah, I think it's so ironic that you can buy lethal amounts of alcohol, you know, and

948
01:12:55,120 --> 01:12:58,720
we're allowed to judge how much we should take or not take.

949
01:12:58,720 --> 01:13:04,800
And then, you know, and Joe Rogan's brought this up quite a bit, you know, and I completely

950
01:13:04,800 --> 01:13:05,800
agree with him.

951
01:13:05,800 --> 01:13:06,800
I love how he puts it.

952
01:13:06,800 --> 01:13:07,800
You know, he goes out.

953
01:13:07,800 --> 01:13:14,400
I mean, you can buy any amount of alcohol you want and we're allowed to dose ourselves

954
01:13:14,400 --> 01:13:17,880
appropriately or inappropriately.

955
01:13:17,880 --> 01:13:22,400
And it doesn't matter what drug you make available to humans.

956
01:13:22,400 --> 01:13:27,920
Humans are going to dose themselves appropriately and they're going to dose themselves inappropriately

957
01:13:27,920 --> 01:13:34,520
no matter what you do, whether you make it controlled, prescription, you know, prohibit

958
01:13:34,520 --> 01:13:40,400
its use or even, you know, it doesn't matter.

959
01:13:40,400 --> 01:13:46,560
You're always going to have that subset who abuse it and, you know, that's another problem.

960
01:13:46,560 --> 01:13:50,340
But you need to, that problem has to exist.

961
01:13:50,340 --> 01:13:57,600
You know, there's no utopia in the usage of these kind of drugs.

962
01:13:57,600 --> 01:14:01,000
And we can deal with that.

963
01:14:01,000 --> 01:14:07,520
And if you let it fall naturally, it's still a small subset of the population in comparison

964
01:14:07,520 --> 01:14:12,400
to the large majority that it helps.

965
01:14:12,400 --> 01:14:17,760
You know, and so, yeah, I agree.

966
01:14:17,760 --> 01:14:22,380
To have people, you know, in jail solely for marijuana possession is just mind blowing

967
01:14:22,380 --> 01:14:25,080
to me nowadays.

968
01:14:25,080 --> 01:14:30,080
You know, and I think, you know, at the same time, you know, I wrote about the whole Oregon

969
01:14:30,080 --> 01:14:34,520
experience and the revolutionary ketamine and, you know, I kind of, you know, and that,

970
01:14:34,520 --> 01:14:41,000
you know, they were actually legalizing everything and now they have, you know, they now they

971
01:14:41,000 --> 01:14:45,400
have an epidemic of fentanyl deaths like everywhere.

972
01:14:45,400 --> 01:14:52,840
So I think it's education, you know, it's not, it's not, it's not like throwing the

973
01:14:52,840 --> 01:14:56,280
arm of the law to control everything.

974
01:14:56,280 --> 01:14:59,320
It's like, how do we take these things sensibly?

975
01:14:59,320 --> 01:15:00,840
How do they help?

976
01:15:00,840 --> 01:15:02,880
You know, how do they hurt?

977
01:15:02,880 --> 01:15:06,000
And those are the things, you know, you teach from a young age.

978
01:15:06,000 --> 01:15:09,880
You know, I don't know.

979
01:15:09,880 --> 01:15:16,640
I have to say I didn't learn all this in America because all I saw was, you know, my alcoholic

980
01:15:16,640 --> 01:15:19,200
father abusing alcohol.

981
01:15:19,200 --> 01:15:23,880
And then I have a good, you know, two interesting stories about that on my perception as an

982
01:15:23,880 --> 01:15:24,880
American.

983
01:15:24,880 --> 01:15:29,040
You know, I grew up with, you know, my father was an alcoholic and all that kind of stuff.

984
01:15:29,040 --> 01:15:32,760
And you know, when he was off alcohol, what a, you know, awesome man he was.

985
01:15:32,760 --> 01:15:36,960
And then, you know, but on alcohol, on this never forget, you know, the terror he put

986
01:15:36,960 --> 01:15:37,960
through the family.

987
01:15:37,960 --> 01:15:40,800
And, you know, and I learned from that.

988
01:15:40,800 --> 01:15:45,920
And then I'll never forget, you know, I didn't go out often, but I remember I went to the,

989
01:15:45,920 --> 01:15:51,520
you know, the spring break tradition of a, of young Americans, oh, just go and drink

990
01:15:51,520 --> 01:15:53,520
as much as you can and that kind of thing.

991
01:15:53,520 --> 01:15:56,960
And I'll never forget waking up one day.

992
01:15:56,960 --> 01:16:02,280
I was in the hotel room and, you know, and all, I woke up and I saw that beer can next

993
01:16:02,280 --> 01:16:06,680
to me and I was like, I want that.

994
01:16:06,680 --> 01:16:14,480
And I caught myself and I said, oh my gosh, that's, that's my path to destruction right

995
01:16:14,480 --> 01:16:15,480
there.

996
01:16:15,480 --> 01:16:20,920
And I just, I never, I, that, that I controlled myself ever since then.

997
01:16:20,920 --> 01:16:29,480
And then, so that's one experience I had as a young child that greatly, you know, etched

998
01:16:29,480 --> 01:16:34,960
into me that, you know, you cannot be, you cannot be addicted to alcohol.

999
01:16:34,960 --> 01:16:41,000
And, and then the other thing is like when I was in France, all these kids were drinking,

1000
01:16:41,000 --> 01:16:44,440
you know, they're, they're allowed to drink a little bit, right.

1001
01:16:44,440 --> 01:16:48,200
And there's taste and be part of the family and all that kind of thing.

1002
01:16:48,200 --> 01:16:55,160
So, so this idea of drinking a six pack or taking shots is completely foreign over there.

1003
01:16:55,160 --> 01:16:56,680
Like it's not even a thing.

1004
01:16:56,680 --> 01:17:02,680
Like, like they look at Americans like, why, why wouldn't you enjoy that little drink you

1005
01:17:02,680 --> 01:17:09,000
have, you know, that, that, you know, or, and, and, and the, this idea of drinking six

1006
01:17:09,000 --> 01:17:16,240
beers and saying, oh, I downed a six pack is just absolutely mind blowing over there.

1007
01:17:16,240 --> 01:17:20,800
Yet as an adolescent in America, that's how you're raised.

1008
01:17:20,800 --> 01:17:26,960
And it, and it's, that's, I think we need to get over that.

1009
01:17:26,960 --> 01:17:31,200
You know, you, as you know, you go to Belgium, you know, you might have one beer because

1010
01:17:31,200 --> 01:17:34,720
it's so heavy and tasteful that that's all you want.

1011
01:17:34,720 --> 01:17:40,640
Or you go to France, you know, they make their little poivre or the little pear strong alcohols.

1012
01:17:40,640 --> 01:17:45,960
Well, that's a digestif to be consumed only in small amounts, you know.

1013
01:17:45,960 --> 01:17:53,120
And, and I, as you know, as a living in America so long, I, you have without doubt seen that

1014
01:17:53,120 --> 01:17:54,120
difference.

1015
01:17:54,120 --> 01:17:57,600
And, and I don't think many Americans appreciate that point.

1016
01:17:57,600 --> 01:18:03,960
No, it's, I've talked about that several times and, and the UK is obviously one click further

1017
01:18:03,960 --> 01:18:08,560
towards America than France, for example.

1018
01:18:08,560 --> 01:18:12,000
But I remember I did an exchange with a kind of family friend.

1019
01:18:12,000 --> 01:18:17,520
I think I was about 12 and I was gone for a couple of weeks or something.

1020
01:18:17,520 --> 01:18:21,040
And then, and then the family kind of drove all the way back to, to the UK and came to

1021
01:18:21,040 --> 01:18:22,200
visit and everything too.

1022
01:18:22,200 --> 01:18:26,720
But before I was going to leave, I remember going in and buying my parents a bottle of

1023
01:18:26,720 --> 01:18:30,560
wine from France and I walked out and went, Oh shit, I'm 12.

1024
01:18:30,560 --> 01:18:34,160
How did I just buy this bottle of wine?

1025
01:18:34,160 --> 01:18:36,240
But you know, that is the, is the difference.

1026
01:18:36,240 --> 01:18:40,760
And then the UK, I grew up kind of with that French mentality where we had watered down

1027
01:18:40,760 --> 01:18:43,440
wine, you know, when we were really young and then it became a glass of wine.

1028
01:18:43,440 --> 01:18:46,760
I remember one of the big things is on Christmas Eve and I was a little bit older and we're

1029
01:18:46,760 --> 01:18:52,800
talking again, right when you're almost learning about, you know, Santa and kind of getting

1030
01:18:52,800 --> 01:18:56,320
to that point where you're questioning it, I would still be excited.

1031
01:18:56,320 --> 01:18:59,320
So now I'm in my, you know, 11, 12, whatever it was.

1032
01:18:59,320 --> 01:19:05,120
And now I'm allowed to have a beer on Christmas Eve, you know, to quote unquote, help me sleep.

1033
01:19:05,120 --> 01:19:08,760
But it wasn't demonized and don't get me wrong, there is alcohol abuse in England.

1034
01:19:08,760 --> 01:19:13,920
There's pubs in every town, village, and we have, you know, people that frequent it,

1035
01:19:13,920 --> 01:19:18,720
that, you know, there is alcoholism there, but there isn't a demonization and that the

1036
01:19:18,720 --> 01:19:24,880
age, you know, isn't as, yeah, my opinion, ridiculous as the U S because, you know, we

1037
01:19:24,880 --> 01:19:29,320
can allow our children to go and get killed for their country at 18, but they can't drink

1038
01:19:29,320 --> 01:19:31,120
till 21.

1039
01:19:31,120 --> 01:19:38,280
And so to me, I parallel to when I lived in Japan and what I saw with the Japanese culture

1040
01:19:38,280 --> 01:19:42,600
was there was so much respect and hierarchy in Japanese culture.

1041
01:19:42,600 --> 01:19:46,800
You don't question your, you know, you're the person above you and whatever rank that

1042
01:19:46,800 --> 01:19:47,800
is.

1043
01:19:47,800 --> 01:19:53,640
So there's a lot of repressed emotion, but then when they drink, they fucking drink,

1044
01:19:53,640 --> 01:19:58,360
you know, I mean, you know, I mean, they are doing shots and of sake and all that stuff.

1045
01:19:58,360 --> 01:20:03,480
But, you know, and again, even with their, the anime and everything, it's a very peaceful

1046
01:20:03,480 --> 01:20:08,000
culture now, but the violence of their history, I was talking to this to my son, cause he's

1047
01:20:08,000 --> 01:20:09,760
a big anime fan.

1048
01:20:09,760 --> 01:20:13,080
Their comics are extremely violent and extremely sexual.

1049
01:20:13,080 --> 01:20:18,100
And again, it's that repression now in Japan, that's not so unhealthy, you know, but when

1050
01:20:18,100 --> 01:20:25,200
you tell a, an American child, you can't drink till you're 21, you're drawing back that bow

1051
01:20:25,200 --> 01:20:29,000
and then they hit whatever age they decide to start drinking.

1052
01:20:29,000 --> 01:20:35,400
They're not having an aperitif or enjoying a sherry or they're upside down with a hose

1053
01:20:35,400 --> 01:20:39,920
pipe in their mouth while someone's pumping a keg, you know, or you know what I mean?

1054
01:20:39,920 --> 01:20:41,600
And nowhere else in the world does that.

1055
01:20:41,600 --> 01:20:43,480
And this is what America doesn't understand.

1056
01:20:43,480 --> 01:20:48,720
I think a lot of it comes from again, demonization, that kind of Victorian mentality, same with

1057
01:20:48,720 --> 01:20:50,240
sex in this country.

1058
01:20:50,240 --> 01:20:55,200
You watch Rambo kill a million Viet Cong and that's fine on cable television, but they'll

1059
01:20:55,200 --> 01:20:57,520
blur out a nipple of a woman.

1060
01:20:57,520 --> 01:20:58,600
It's the same thing to me.

1061
01:20:58,600 --> 01:21:03,180
If you create stigma around it, you draw people to it.

1062
01:21:03,180 --> 01:21:08,040
And so, you know, Amsterdam and some of those places, the actual Dutch people themselves,

1063
01:21:08,040 --> 01:21:13,040
I'm pretty sure you'd find that there's not that many that are smoking till they're high

1064
01:21:13,040 --> 01:21:16,440
as a kite, that it's probably just, yeah, well, it's, you know, it's what we do.

1065
01:21:16,440 --> 01:21:17,440
It's how we unwind.

1066
01:21:17,440 --> 01:21:18,440
Yep.

1067
01:21:18,440 --> 01:21:19,440
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1068
01:21:19,440 --> 01:21:20,440
That's for it.

1069
01:21:20,440 --> 01:21:21,440
Yeah.

1070
01:21:21,440 --> 01:21:24,160
I hope people listening to this kind of explore that.

1071
01:21:24,160 --> 01:21:25,160
That would be cool.

1072
01:21:25,160 --> 01:21:30,240
It's, it's, you can only get that if you, if you kind of like have, like you said, you

1073
01:21:30,240 --> 01:21:35,200
have the humility just to like go see what other places do it, how they do it and not

1074
01:21:35,200 --> 01:21:41,320
question it at first and then really get the education and then make your own judgments.

1075
01:21:41,320 --> 01:21:48,680
Well, I want to get to ketamine assisted psychotherapy, but before we go there, the drug itself, talk

1076
01:21:48,680 --> 01:21:55,120
to me about the physiology, what is happening with that drug versus an SSRI or an opiate

1077
01:21:55,120 --> 01:22:00,320
or some of the other, you know, drugs that are included in this conversation?

1078
01:22:00,320 --> 01:22:01,880
Yeah, yeah.

1079
01:22:01,880 --> 01:22:08,340
I mean, at its, I mean, to easy, to understand how ketamine works on the brain, it, it does

1080
01:22:08,340 --> 01:22:10,400
several things.

1081
01:22:10,400 --> 01:22:12,200
It works on the neurotransmitters.

1082
01:22:12,200 --> 01:22:15,560
So these, you know, we exist on neurotransmitters.

1083
01:22:15,560 --> 01:22:25,080
Neurotransmitters are secreted from every neuron brain cell and that's what makes us human.

1084
01:22:25,080 --> 01:22:29,920
And two of those neurotransmitters are called glutamate and GABA.

1085
01:22:29,920 --> 01:22:35,960
So GABA stands for gamma, GABA are gamma aminobutyric acid.

1086
01:22:35,960 --> 01:22:40,680
So one is kind of like, you know, the, if you will, the autonomic nervous system.

1087
01:22:40,680 --> 01:22:42,120
It's kind of like the yin and the yang.

1088
01:22:42,120 --> 01:22:45,040
The glutamate is the excitatory neurotransmitter.

1089
01:22:45,040 --> 01:22:47,600
GABA is the inhibitory neurotransmitter.

1090
01:22:47,600 --> 01:23:01,480
And you got, so ketamine and other psychedelics will increase glutamate and we'll have a modulatory

1091
01:23:01,480 --> 01:23:04,680
increase in GABA to that increase in glutamate.

1092
01:23:04,680 --> 01:23:10,800
And that's what creates the loss of inhibition because the reason you and I are having this

1093
01:23:10,800 --> 01:23:16,880
conversation in the sense we are having it now is because our brains are blocking out

1094
01:23:16,880 --> 01:23:20,040
enormous amounts of sensory information.

1095
01:23:20,040 --> 01:23:21,040
Enormous.

1096
01:23:21,040 --> 01:23:29,240
I mean, the gates, you know, are just so close to all the sensory things that actually exist

1097
01:23:29,240 --> 01:23:31,080
in our environment.

1098
01:23:31,080 --> 01:23:40,320
And so when you take a psychedelic and any of them, and they all work a little differently,

1099
01:23:40,320 --> 01:23:44,940
you get this flood of sensory information and it's that flood that puts you in this

1100
01:23:44,940 --> 01:23:48,980
different state of consciousness in a sense.

1101
01:23:48,980 --> 01:23:53,800
And it's only at that sub anesthetic dose where this occurs.

1102
01:23:53,800 --> 01:23:57,720
Because if you give too much ketamine, it becomes an anesthetic, right?

1103
01:23:57,720 --> 01:24:01,440
And you know, and you black out and don't really recall anything just like most other

1104
01:24:01,440 --> 01:24:03,920
anesthetics.

1105
01:24:03,920 --> 01:24:10,080
So at the sub anesthetic dose, which is about a half a milligram per kilogram intramuscular

1106
01:24:10,080 --> 01:24:24,120
or intravenous, and we can go into that, you get this increase in neurotransmitters.

1107
01:24:24,120 --> 01:24:34,360
And then that causes neuropathways to be created called neuroplasticity or gets you out of

1108
01:24:34,360 --> 01:24:36,640
what's called the default mode network.

1109
01:24:36,640 --> 01:24:40,800
And that's that, you know, easiest way to think about is the rut of depression that

1110
01:24:40,800 --> 01:24:45,600
you find yourself in every single day.

1111
01:24:45,600 --> 01:24:54,880
So depression is defined by always being in the default mode network, meaning you can't

1112
01:24:54,880 --> 01:24:59,520
stop thinking about those thoughts that send you into depression and eventually sometimes

1113
01:24:59,520 --> 01:25:01,960
lead into suicide.

1114
01:25:01,960 --> 01:25:10,760
And ketamine immediately puts you in your own mind and lets you safely look at those

1115
01:25:10,760 --> 01:25:14,780
traumas that used to trigger you before.

1116
01:25:14,780 --> 01:25:24,360
So it actually helps you not have those triggers and say, I don't know, you know, let's, you

1117
01:25:24,360 --> 01:25:30,740
know, take somebody from the Iraqi war who saw, you know, their soldiers die, their colleagues

1118
01:25:30,740 --> 01:25:34,280
that they were in that tribe, and you know, and you know, and you know the power of that

1119
01:25:34,280 --> 01:25:35,280
tribe.

1120
01:25:35,280 --> 01:25:41,320
And, but now, and every time they thought about it before, they felt so, you know, completely

1121
01:25:41,320 --> 01:25:48,720
guilty and completely just inhibited, and they would be in a sense shell shocked is

1122
01:25:48,720 --> 01:25:51,760
where the term PTSD came from.

1123
01:25:51,760 --> 01:26:00,080
And imagine being able to go into a state of mind where you can examine that exact situation

1124
01:26:00,080 --> 01:26:08,240
and be calm about it and be able to see the bigger picture of it that, you know, in a

1125
01:26:08,240 --> 01:26:12,680
sense most people come out of a ketamine treatment knowing that they're just a speck of energy

1126
01:26:12,680 --> 01:26:17,440
in the whole universe and the whole universe is way bigger than you and I ever could have

1127
01:26:17,440 --> 01:26:22,080
imagined, you know, in our current reality.

1128
01:26:22,080 --> 01:26:23,440
So that's that.

1129
01:26:23,440 --> 01:26:28,200
And then the other thing is I like to say is Lori Calabri, she's a ketamine researcher,

1130
01:26:28,200 --> 01:26:36,960
she's done a lot of great research on suicide and ketamine and is that ketamine is fertilizer

1131
01:26:36,960 --> 01:26:37,960
for the brain.

1132
01:26:37,960 --> 01:26:44,600
I mean, it increases neuroplasticity and it increases the proteins of called mTOR, which

1133
01:26:44,600 --> 01:26:54,280
is the, you know, the, it's a protein of rapamycin, you know, the mechanistic target of rapamycin

1134
01:26:54,280 --> 01:26:55,480
is what it stands for.

1135
01:26:55,480 --> 01:27:00,960
And it's just, no, it's a protein and then along with BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic

1136
01:27:00,960 --> 01:27:05,840
factor and those two proteins are increased during most psychedelics.

1137
01:27:05,840 --> 01:27:12,960
And that's what helps your brain respond to say like cognitive behavioral therapy or other

1138
01:27:12,960 --> 01:27:17,600
types of therapy in the proper dose, in the proper environment.

1139
01:27:17,600 --> 01:27:21,440
And that's what's so important about this is to distinguish it not as a drug of abuse

1140
01:27:21,440 --> 01:27:24,760
but a drug of treatment.

1141
01:27:24,760 --> 01:27:30,960
And when used in those scenarios, that's why it can stop suicide in its tracks because

1142
01:27:30,960 --> 01:27:35,360
it changes the hopelessness equation.

1143
01:27:35,360 --> 01:27:41,720
You know, I like to say it's almost impossible to come out of a ketamine treatment and not

1144
01:27:41,720 --> 01:27:46,200
have some change in your hope.

1145
01:27:46,200 --> 01:27:49,520
And that's probably what stops people from committing suicide.

1146
01:27:49,520 --> 01:27:54,400
It doesn't stop it permanently, by the way, but it at least stops it during that time.

1147
01:27:54,400 --> 01:28:01,400
So say if you give it, it gives that person time to get help, the proper help.

1148
01:28:01,400 --> 01:28:07,280
And so there's so many things that go into it, but I hope that's a nice explanation in

1149
01:28:07,280 --> 01:28:10,400
a nutshell of what ketamine does.

1150
01:28:10,400 --> 01:28:12,400
No, it is.

1151
01:28:12,400 --> 01:28:15,300
I want to circle back to something you said earlier because it was such a great point

1152
01:28:15,300 --> 01:28:22,060
and I meant to kind of revisit, but the will to live versus the will to die.

1153
01:28:22,060 --> 01:28:26,080
This is something again, going back to that broken brain, I've used the analogy of, you

1154
01:28:26,080 --> 01:28:31,960
know, if you and I went to the top of a 20 story building right now and we went walk

1155
01:28:31,960 --> 01:28:37,520
towards the edge, there's that invisible hand pushing you away from the edge.

1156
01:28:37,520 --> 01:28:41,520
You get that kind of pain shooting in your stomach and you know, the body is inherently

1157
01:28:41,520 --> 01:28:46,960
saying no, no, no, no, no, bad edge bad, you know, roof good.

1158
01:28:46,960 --> 01:28:51,800
But then when you have this crisis, that hand goes behind you and it starts pushing you

1159
01:28:51,800 --> 01:28:54,560
towards the wall, but towards the edge.

1160
01:28:54,560 --> 01:28:56,440
This is the broken brain now.

1161
01:28:56,440 --> 01:29:02,120
And so knowing that we are all inherently born with that will to live, that's literally,

1162
01:29:02,120 --> 01:29:07,880
you know, our goal is to obviously grow ourselves and then reproduce and protect our offspring

1163
01:29:07,880 --> 01:29:11,800
and feed them and clothe them and shelter them until they're able to go off and do their

1164
01:29:11,800 --> 01:29:12,800
thing.

1165
01:29:12,800 --> 01:29:15,760
And then as you said, with the Native American example, there might be a point where you

1166
01:29:15,760 --> 01:29:17,700
feel like my work here is done.

1167
01:29:17,700 --> 01:29:21,760
Most of us, I think we'll probably just pass away in our sleep, but even so, you know,

1168
01:29:21,760 --> 01:29:29,040
there's no more tragic example of the broken brain when it comes to suicide ideation than

1169
01:29:29,040 --> 01:29:35,200
the young Florida law enforcement couple we had probably about eight months ago now.

1170
01:29:35,200 --> 01:29:41,480
The boyfriend took his own life first and then the girlfriend took her life, I think

1171
01:29:41,480 --> 01:29:46,120
it was like a week later and they left behind an infant child.

1172
01:29:46,120 --> 01:29:52,320
So that goes so far against our very, as you said, will to live and this I think really

1173
01:29:52,320 --> 01:29:58,000
illustrates what we need to do to pull these men and women back from this crisis where

1174
01:29:58,000 --> 01:29:59,920
they're not able to think for themselves.

1175
01:29:59,920 --> 01:30:05,400
They're so far gone, the reality is so distorted to believe that that little child was a burden,

1176
01:30:05,400 --> 01:30:08,720
they were a burden to that very thing that relied on them.

1177
01:30:08,720 --> 01:30:14,400
So ketamine, I want to get to the long-term benefits too, but with this, just pulling

1178
01:30:14,400 --> 01:30:19,680
someone back from crisis back to, as you said, being able to have rational thought and then

1179
01:30:19,680 --> 01:30:25,520
progress down a treatment plan is an essential part of the suicide conversation.

1180
01:30:25,520 --> 01:30:27,560
Oh, yeah, yeah.

1181
01:30:27,560 --> 01:30:32,760
You know, I think things like ketamine and other psychedelics help you realize what the

1182
01:30:32,760 --> 01:30:34,800
greater good is about.

1183
01:30:34,800 --> 01:30:47,360
You know, we've gone so far away from, you know, whether you're religious or not, we

1184
01:30:47,360 --> 01:30:51,880
all have, we all look up, we all like, what's the greater good?

1185
01:30:51,880 --> 01:30:53,080
What are we trying to serve?

1186
01:30:53,080 --> 01:30:55,240
How are you trying to better ourselves?

1187
01:30:55,240 --> 01:31:00,200
Whether it's your family, whether it's your career, whether it's, you know, we're all

1188
01:31:00,200 --> 01:31:07,320
trying to better something about the world we live in for ourselves and others.

1189
01:31:07,320 --> 01:31:14,440
And when you lose sight of that, that's, you know, in the right combination of isolation,

1190
01:31:14,440 --> 01:31:20,200
hopelessness, burdens, you know, with the lethal means available, you know, in a period

1191
01:31:20,200 --> 01:31:28,960
of intense vulnerability, that's where suicide happens.

1192
01:31:28,960 --> 01:31:37,160
And I guess, you know, it becomes a philosophical question at that point, you know, of what

1193
01:31:37,160 --> 01:31:42,440
good are you and how can you change that equation?

1194
01:31:42,440 --> 01:31:45,920
And don't get it wrong, you can change that equation through therapy.

1195
01:31:45,920 --> 01:31:49,280
You know, most therapy changes that part of the equation.

1196
01:31:49,280 --> 01:31:54,200
It takes somebody like kind of, you know, looking at you, squaring the eyes and going,

1197
01:31:54,200 --> 01:31:55,420
you are good.

1198
01:31:55,420 --> 01:32:00,920
You know, there is use for you in this world.

1199
01:32:00,920 --> 01:32:05,860
And you have a lot of people to help and a lot of people who depend on you.

1200
01:32:05,860 --> 01:32:11,120
And sometimes I think it's the case where you need things like psychedelics to help

1201
01:32:11,120 --> 01:32:12,800
you with that.

1202
01:32:12,800 --> 01:32:21,320
You know, so I hope, you know, the question you're asking, that will to live and the will

1203
01:32:21,320 --> 01:32:28,960
to die, you know, you've got to be in a space of intense vulnerability to pick that will

1204
01:32:28,960 --> 01:32:29,960
to die.

1205
01:32:29,960 --> 01:32:36,760
You know, it's kind of like, I'll give a story of a patient I talk about in the book.

1206
01:32:36,760 --> 01:32:39,040
He, you know, he's an aerospace engineer.

1207
01:32:39,040 --> 01:32:46,080
I mean, an extremely smart individual, you know, educated doctor and all that.

1208
01:32:46,080 --> 01:32:51,760
He's in a bike crash, you know, gets a Lafort fracture basically and has a traumatic brain

1209
01:32:51,760 --> 01:32:53,360
injury.

1210
01:32:53,360 --> 01:32:57,240
And never had a history of suicidal ideations before that.

1211
01:32:57,240 --> 01:33:05,000
Six months later, he finds himself in the desert planning how to fall on his knife next

1212
01:33:05,000 --> 01:33:08,080
to a tree in an exact manner.

1213
01:33:08,080 --> 01:33:10,120
And why do I say that?

1214
01:33:10,120 --> 01:33:13,400
Suicide is an engineering problem.

1215
01:33:13,400 --> 01:33:20,760
People engineer their deaths and then people engineer their deaths to the point that not

1216
01:33:20,760 --> 01:33:22,160
just any bridge will do.

1217
01:33:22,160 --> 01:33:24,760
It has to be the Golden Gate Bridge.

1218
01:33:24,760 --> 01:33:27,120
It can't be any other bridge.

1219
01:33:27,120 --> 01:33:32,640
So going back to this patient, it was his second attempt and he called me and he goes

1220
01:33:32,640 --> 01:33:35,120
and he says, Dr. Edwards, do you have 30 minutes?

1221
01:33:35,120 --> 01:33:36,120
And I said, sure.

1222
01:33:36,120 --> 01:33:38,920
And so he explains the whole thing.

1223
01:33:38,920 --> 01:33:46,960
And he'd been engineering this solution to his suicidal ideations for months.

1224
01:33:46,960 --> 01:33:51,640
And this was the second time and he almost pulled it off.

1225
01:33:51,640 --> 01:33:57,600
And that's when I said, okay, you know, we need to, you know, get you the right therapy.

1226
01:33:57,600 --> 01:34:01,680
But I said, this is clearly a case, you know, I think you're going to benefit from taking

1227
01:34:01,680 --> 01:34:02,920
ketamine.

1228
01:34:02,920 --> 01:34:13,400
And so we got it to him, a couple treatments in addition to the therapy and all that.

1229
01:34:13,400 --> 01:34:14,400
And he was good.

1230
01:34:14,400 --> 01:34:20,260
I mean, he kind of came back to his self, but I mean, it highlights the problem after

1231
01:34:20,260 --> 01:34:23,680
traumatic brain injury.

1232
01:34:23,680 --> 01:34:29,280
Somebody who you never thought would ever want to take their lives is at risk of suicide,

1233
01:34:29,280 --> 01:34:40,080
you know, and TBIs are, you know, prevalent in wars, sports, firefighting, you know, all

1234
01:34:40,080 --> 01:34:41,720
that, right?

1235
01:34:41,720 --> 01:34:46,760
And so we don't think about suicide in the terms of preexisting conditions sometimes,

1236
01:34:46,760 --> 01:34:51,960
just, you know, you think it's all, you had a bad, you know, bad life traumas.

1237
01:34:51,960 --> 01:34:52,960
It's not just that.

1238
01:34:52,960 --> 01:34:56,400
It can also be brain injury.

1239
01:34:56,400 --> 01:35:02,800
And so for this gentleman to help him with the will to live, you know, it took a psychedelic

1240
01:35:02,800 --> 01:35:09,560
and therapy, you know, because I'm telling you, he said his mind was hijacked.

1241
01:35:09,560 --> 01:35:14,680
He described it as a complete hijacking of his senses.

1242
01:35:14,680 --> 01:35:20,780
He walked through the desert furiously ready.

1243
01:35:20,780 --> 01:35:29,120
And the only goal in his mind at that moment was to fall on the knife and end his life.

1244
01:35:29,120 --> 01:35:36,040
And he said it was like somebody had hijacked his brain and that's it, you know, and that's

1245
01:35:36,040 --> 01:35:40,880
what I, when I did the, the Ted, the speak talk, speak event talk, it's a break off of

1246
01:35:40,880 --> 01:35:42,360
Ted talks.

1247
01:35:42,360 --> 01:35:48,140
And I like to say it's like a suicidal patient or, or a major depression is like walking

1248
01:35:48,140 --> 01:35:56,720
through the fog with lead boots and not having any sense of the direction you're headed.

1249
01:35:56,720 --> 01:36:02,680
You know, so, so that's, that's where I think that gives a good description, you know, at

1250
01:36:02,680 --> 01:36:07,080
least, you know, I like to, I always like to tell stories about that, to try to explain

1251
01:36:07,080 --> 01:36:12,920
that concept and, you know, hopefully that, hopefully that, hopefully that does it for

1252
01:36:12,920 --> 01:36:13,920
you.

1253
01:36:13,920 --> 01:36:14,920
No, that's, that's great.

1254
01:36:14,920 --> 01:36:15,920
Great.

1255
01:36:15,920 --> 01:36:20,880
I think stories is the way that we understand these concepts and that's a great story to

1256
01:36:20,880 --> 01:36:23,440
kind of bring us into that.

1257
01:36:23,440 --> 01:36:30,000
I just had the incredible good fortune to connect two firefighters, one, a good friend

1258
01:36:30,000 --> 01:36:33,840
of mine with an ayahuasca retreat.

1259
01:36:33,840 --> 01:36:38,280
The first one, he went in full bore and he's, you know, two very different cases.

1260
01:36:38,280 --> 01:36:45,420
The one Tom, 30 plus year firefighter ended up walking from Key West to Tallahassee after

1261
01:36:45,420 --> 01:36:49,280
like myself being so disgusted at how many, you know, of our brothers and sisters that

1262
01:36:49,280 --> 01:36:50,280
we bury needlessly.

1263
01:36:50,280 --> 01:36:51,280
Yeah, needless.

1264
01:36:51,280 --> 01:36:56,160
And this ends up having a couple of strokes, you know, gets back in the gym.

1265
01:36:56,160 --> 01:37:01,960
I mean, just an amazing guy, but, you know, there's, there's multi layers of healing

1266
01:37:01,960 --> 01:37:05,280
that needs to go on from, you know, regulating his hormones all the way through to his own

1267
01:37:05,280 --> 01:37:06,320
mental health struggles.

1268
01:37:06,320 --> 01:37:11,200
And there was sexual abuse early on as well.

1269
01:37:11,200 --> 01:37:17,000
And his psychedelic experience, you know, he did a couple of ayahuasca because he was

1270
01:37:17,000 --> 01:37:22,000
unpacking so much hearing, I'm going to get him back on, you know, when he's, he's fully

1271
01:37:22,000 --> 01:37:25,840
on his feet to, to storytell his journey, but incredible.

1272
01:37:25,840 --> 01:37:26,840
But then I was connected.

1273
01:37:26,840 --> 01:37:30,880
I was on another podcast and this is how the universe is so beautiful.

1274
01:37:30,880 --> 01:37:35,200
The host after we recorded said, Hey, I've got a firefighter and she's a Canadian veteran,

1275
01:37:35,200 --> 01:37:36,200
the host.

1276
01:37:36,200 --> 01:37:37,920
So she said, I've got this firefighter.

1277
01:37:37,920 --> 01:37:39,080
He's going through some stuff.

1278
01:37:39,080 --> 01:37:41,840
You know, I don't really know where to, where to send him.

1279
01:37:41,840 --> 01:37:42,840
Can you help?

1280
01:37:42,840 --> 01:37:48,800
And so I sent him to the same guy, Sergio out on the show, the Agape church in outside

1281
01:37:48,800 --> 01:37:50,520
Houston.

1282
01:37:50,520 --> 01:37:55,440
But what was interesting about his story is he said he tried ketamine and I asked him

1283
01:37:55,440 --> 01:37:56,440
about it.

1284
01:37:56,440 --> 01:38:00,360
I think I told you about this IHMC, but I said, well, you know, tell me about it because

1285
01:38:00,360 --> 01:38:04,920
I've heard it seems to be a common denominator between the ones that are successful and the

1286
01:38:04,920 --> 01:38:05,920
ones that aren't.

1287
01:38:05,920 --> 01:38:10,320
So this was very much, he went into, I don't know if it was one of those men's clinic type

1288
01:38:10,320 --> 01:38:14,120
place, you know, the recharge or whatever it was, but anyway, he went in, they stuck

1289
01:38:14,120 --> 01:38:19,200
an IV in his arm, they hung a bag of ketamine and then he walked out of the room and he

1290
01:38:19,200 --> 01:38:20,960
just, that was it.

1291
01:38:20,960 --> 01:38:23,280
Now I had, yes.

1292
01:38:23,280 --> 01:38:27,280
And so I had Katherine Walker on the show, who's a nurse anesthetist who actually ended

1293
01:38:27,280 --> 01:38:32,680
up creating this series of clinics called a revitalist and they use, you know, ketamine

1294
01:38:32,680 --> 01:38:38,320
therapy, so obviously same journey as you first in the OR and then carrying it over,

1295
01:38:38,320 --> 01:38:40,920
but adding that psychotherapy elements.

1296
01:38:40,920 --> 01:38:45,960
So you're on the ketamine, but as you said, now you need to start infusing the actual

1297
01:38:45,960 --> 01:38:47,540
psychotherapy as well.

1298
01:38:47,540 --> 01:38:50,240
So talk to me about those different roads.

1299
01:38:50,240 --> 01:38:55,080
You talked about someone in crisis and how that immediately can have an impact on suicide

1300
01:38:55,080 --> 01:38:56,880
ideation.

1301
01:38:56,880 --> 01:39:03,640
What are the applications of using ketamine whilst going through psychotherapy to dampen

1302
01:39:03,640 --> 01:39:09,800
some of those kind of knee jerk psychological reflexes and allow you to actually start unpacking

1303
01:39:09,800 --> 01:39:12,320
some of the things that have been bothering you?

1304
01:39:12,320 --> 01:39:16,680
So it depends, you know, so there's two ways to go there.

1305
01:39:16,680 --> 01:39:20,740
You know, you mentioned ketamine assisted psychotherapy and then there's ketamine with

1306
01:39:20,740 --> 01:39:21,740
psychotherapy.

1307
01:39:21,740 --> 01:39:23,460
There are two different things.

1308
01:39:23,460 --> 01:39:32,160
So we kind of already defined, you know, ketamine with psychotherapy means you're having psychotherapy

1309
01:39:32,160 --> 01:39:37,240
with the psychiatrist or psychologist or therapist before and after the ketamine treatments.

1310
01:39:37,240 --> 01:39:45,340
You know, the ketamine treatments are probably too deep to do any therapy during.

1311
01:39:45,340 --> 01:39:48,560
So that's not done.

1312
01:39:48,560 --> 01:39:52,920
The importance is that, like I said, ketamine is like fertilizer for the brain and that's

1313
01:39:52,920 --> 01:39:59,520
when you're most susceptible to benefit from psychotherapy in most cases.

1314
01:39:59,520 --> 01:40:03,440
So that's ketamine with psychotherapy.

1315
01:40:03,440 --> 01:40:08,400
So if a patient comes to me and they don't have a therapist, I work with a psychiatrist

1316
01:40:08,400 --> 01:40:17,820
named Dr. Sam Zann and some others who will put you with the therapist right away.

1317
01:40:17,820 --> 01:40:18,820
And that's important.

1318
01:40:18,820 --> 01:40:22,320
I don't, you know, I always make sure that is done.

1319
01:40:22,320 --> 01:40:25,360
I don't believe in just doing ketamine alone.

1320
01:40:25,360 --> 01:40:29,920
And I've had many patients come, can I just do the ketamine and let it help?

1321
01:40:29,920 --> 01:40:32,800
Yeah, not really.

1322
01:40:32,800 --> 01:40:34,400
That's just not the way it is.

1323
01:40:34,400 --> 01:40:46,140
So now for ketamine assisted psychotherapy, that's, you're talking like a known anesthesiologist

1324
01:40:46,140 --> 01:40:48,160
named Dr. Richard Wolfson.

1325
01:40:48,160 --> 01:40:50,760
I may get his first name wrong.

1326
01:40:50,760 --> 01:40:58,680
Dr. Wolfson will put you under a light dose of ketamine and at the same time, they will

1327
01:40:58,680 --> 01:41:05,720
give you the smells of alcohol while you're lucent enough to recognize them.

1328
01:41:05,720 --> 01:41:12,400
So you're not as deep under the sedation or psychedelic effect of ketamine.

1329
01:41:12,400 --> 01:41:15,360
You can actually kind of talk and respond.

1330
01:41:15,360 --> 01:41:22,880
And I mean, these sessions are like three hours long, you know, versus 30 to 60 minutes.

1331
01:41:22,880 --> 01:41:31,280
And so they're actually giving you suggestions and, you know, like they'll say, you know,

1332
01:41:31,280 --> 01:41:37,000
here's the pugnant odor of alcohol and then boom, put the alcohol to you and let you smell

1333
01:41:37,000 --> 01:41:43,520
it while you're, you know, you're just slightly under the influence of the psychedelic, in

1334
01:41:43,520 --> 01:41:48,200
this case, ketamine.

1335
01:41:48,200 --> 01:41:56,440
And that's the difference between like say for alcohol addiction using ketamine assisted

1336
01:41:56,440 --> 01:41:58,320
psychotherapy.

1337
01:41:58,320 --> 01:42:03,360
And mind you, ketamine assisted psychotherapy can be used for alcohol addiction, cocaine

1338
01:42:03,360 --> 01:42:05,720
addiction, heroin addiction.

1339
01:42:05,720 --> 01:42:10,800
So you know, it's ironic that ketamine can be a drug of addiction, but at the same time,

1340
01:42:10,800 --> 01:42:17,360
it can be a powerful therapy for addiction itself.

1341
01:42:17,360 --> 01:42:23,520
So that's the difference between, you know, the two.

1342
01:42:23,520 --> 01:42:28,960
And there's, yeah, and I mean, the success rate for how it can help people abstain.

1343
01:42:28,960 --> 01:42:33,840
And we're talking serious alcoholism here, you know, people, you know, who meet the definition

1344
01:42:33,840 --> 01:42:41,320
of addiction where, you know, the drug alcohol has, you know, changed their lives and become,

1345
01:42:41,320 --> 01:42:46,760
their masters, you know, their master has become alcohol and it disrupts their financial

1346
01:42:46,760 --> 01:42:50,480
lives, their family lives, you know, everything about it.

1347
01:42:50,480 --> 01:42:58,560
You know, they're no longer able to drink alcohol reliably in a controlled manner.

1348
01:42:58,560 --> 01:43:03,720
And so these are the people benefiting and it's had better percentages than something

1349
01:43:03,720 --> 01:43:06,760
like Alcoholics Anonymous, you know.

1350
01:43:06,760 --> 01:43:12,200
And a funny thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is that actually the guy who started it all

1351
01:43:12,200 --> 01:43:15,840
wanted to use psychedelics in addition.

1352
01:43:15,840 --> 01:43:23,320
But it was during the time, you know, when psychedelics had a bad name.

1353
01:43:23,320 --> 01:43:31,080
And so he, you know, so the 12 step program all got, you know, done without psychedelics.

1354
01:43:31,080 --> 01:43:36,960
But if you read about the beginnings of it, the guy, I don't recall his name exactly,

1355
01:43:36,960 --> 01:43:41,920
but you can read stories about how he used psychedelics himself.

1356
01:43:41,920 --> 01:43:45,560
And then I think in those days it was LSD and all that kind of stuff.

1357
01:43:45,560 --> 01:43:50,680
But yeah, that's, that would have been an interesting, you know, using the 12 step program

1358
01:43:50,680 --> 01:43:56,840
along with psychedelics, you know, and therapy, I think would have been powerful.

1359
01:43:56,840 --> 01:44:01,960
Yeah, Bill W, it was a good documentary on his story.

1360
01:44:01,960 --> 01:44:06,720
Actually, I can't remember if they talked about that in it, but it makes perfect sense.

1361
01:44:06,720 --> 01:44:08,760
And I guess it's a 13 step program really.

1362
01:44:08,760 --> 01:44:13,440
Step one is, you know, take ketamine or LSD or whatever it is and then progress through

1363
01:44:13,440 --> 01:44:17,440
because all the other ones are unpacking, you know, your trauma.

1364
01:44:17,440 --> 01:44:22,040
Basically they're addressing your shame and your guilt and relationships that you've broken

1365
01:44:22,040 --> 01:44:25,680
down and, you know, looking in the mirror and understanding your addictions.

1366
01:44:25,680 --> 01:44:30,920
And so you do that alongside ketamine or MDMA or whatever your particular therapeutic of

1367
01:44:30,920 --> 01:44:31,920
choice is.

1368
01:44:31,920 --> 01:44:37,760
It does sound like a great combination because the 12 step program already has a great, you

1369
01:44:37,760 --> 01:44:40,760
know, success rate compared to other things.

1370
01:44:40,760 --> 01:44:46,080
So the couple two things that we know that work together, I mean, why not?

1371
01:44:46,080 --> 01:44:47,080
Yeah.

1372
01:44:47,080 --> 01:44:52,400
And I mean, you know, and, you know, suicide and first responders and firefighters, as

1373
01:44:52,400 --> 01:45:00,160
we learned, you know, at the IHMC Blue Sky meeting, it just doesn't involve depression.

1374
01:45:00,160 --> 01:45:07,040
It never involves just mental, you know, burdens.

1375
01:45:07,040 --> 01:45:12,880
There's always, you know, an element of abuse, whether it's, you know, drug abuse, alcohol

1376
01:45:12,880 --> 01:45:16,480
abuse or, you know, other things.

1377
01:45:16,480 --> 01:45:22,240
Every story we listen to, with the exception of one, I think, involves some sort of alcohol

1378
01:45:22,240 --> 01:45:23,640
and drug abuse.

1379
01:45:23,640 --> 01:45:25,200
Yeah, absolutely.

1380
01:45:25,200 --> 01:45:30,960
Now, what was your perspective of, you know, the way that that was presented as far as

1381
01:45:30,960 --> 01:45:31,960
the fire service?

1382
01:45:31,960 --> 01:45:38,920
Because, you know, being in that profession myself, I see resistance to some of the things

1383
01:45:38,920 --> 01:45:40,120
that we've talked about today.

1384
01:45:40,120 --> 01:45:45,000
I see immense resistance to the courage to actually address the work week, which is obviously

1385
01:45:45,000 --> 01:45:48,480
evident in what I was passionate about in that meeting.

1386
01:45:48,480 --> 01:45:54,320
But, you know, knowing what the tools are, knowing the pillars of health, what is your

1387
01:45:54,320 --> 01:46:02,720
perception of the fire service kind of culture towards what would actually move the needle

1388
01:46:02,720 --> 01:46:05,760
in the mental health conversation in our profession?

1389
01:46:05,760 --> 01:46:10,000
Oh, I was blown away.

1390
01:46:10,000 --> 01:46:14,120
First thing I'll say about the Blue Sky IHMC thing, I didn't know Ken Ford was going to

1391
01:46:14,120 --> 01:46:16,120
work us that hard.

1392
01:46:16,120 --> 01:46:19,920
Kudos to him, though.

1393
01:46:19,920 --> 01:46:22,080
We got a lot done, I think.

1394
01:46:22,080 --> 01:46:26,800
But that being said, I think it's pretty obvious.

1395
01:46:26,800 --> 01:46:37,320
It kind of goes into many professions, whether it's doctors, firefighters, police, even soldiers.

1396
01:46:37,320 --> 01:46:46,000
The stigma of saying you have a mental health issue is looked down upon automatically.

1397
01:46:46,000 --> 01:46:47,000
That's obvious.

1398
01:46:47,000 --> 01:46:53,760
And it's still present in most firefighting communities.

1399
01:46:53,760 --> 01:47:00,240
You know, if you see a traumatic thing, well, here's a beer and welcome to the club.

1400
01:47:00,240 --> 01:47:04,400
So you get that a lot.

1401
01:47:04,400 --> 01:47:13,560
But the biggest thing is access to appropriate mental, even just talking about it, mental

1402
01:47:13,560 --> 01:47:14,560
health care.

1403
01:47:14,560 --> 01:47:17,720
It's like, it's just not there.

1404
01:47:17,720 --> 01:47:25,360
Nobody wants, there's a resistance to admitting there's a need for that.

1405
01:47:25,360 --> 01:47:31,560
There's a resistance to, hey, maybe we should hire a full-time psychologist just for these

1406
01:47:31,560 --> 01:47:32,560
things.

1407
01:47:32,560 --> 01:47:38,040
Maybe we should have a, designate somebody who's thrilled about talking to their fellow

1408
01:47:38,040 --> 01:47:49,880
firefighters and just anonymously having a gathering or drinks or just a meeting about

1409
01:47:49,880 --> 01:47:58,880
the traumas they've experienced seeing a family of five all perish in a fire in front of them.

1410
01:47:58,880 --> 01:48:01,920
It's like, who's doing the recourse?

1411
01:48:01,920 --> 01:48:06,440
And as you know, there's people who kind of handle that okay.

1412
01:48:06,440 --> 01:48:11,360
I'm not going to say anybody ever handles it okay.

1413
01:48:11,360 --> 01:48:15,840
But there are people who handle that better than others.

1414
01:48:15,840 --> 01:48:19,960
And identifying those is the first step.

1415
01:48:19,960 --> 01:48:28,640
But the mechanisms in first responders itself doesn't exist there.

1416
01:48:28,640 --> 01:48:37,920
It's starting, maybe the culture's starting to change, but man, saying that really bothers

1417
01:48:37,920 --> 01:48:46,000
you and then having somebody to go to, as we discovered in the Blue Sky meeting, are

1418
01:48:46,000 --> 01:48:55,560
the two big factors that are missing from almost all first responder communities.

1419
01:48:55,560 --> 01:49:04,280
And then going a step further, which we can get into receiving mental health care, whether

1420
01:49:04,280 --> 01:49:17,560
it be from therapy or psychedelics or anything really, is kind of you're on your own.

1421
01:49:17,560 --> 01:49:23,900
And it's not a situation where you should be on your own.

1422
01:49:23,900 --> 01:49:33,560
So that's as an outsider from the firefighting community, though I've written about it and

1423
01:49:33,560 --> 01:49:38,880
I know more than most, more firefighters lose their lives to suicide than in the line of

1424
01:49:38,880 --> 01:49:40,760
duty.

1425
01:49:40,760 --> 01:49:48,080
It's a fact year after year after year, even this year.

1426
01:49:48,080 --> 01:49:52,520
I think that's what blows most people away when I start talking about the first responder

1427
01:49:52,520 --> 01:49:55,000
crisis.

1428
01:49:55,000 --> 01:50:00,640
They all have this idea of superheroes, oh, they put themselves in danger and they risk

1429
01:50:00,640 --> 01:50:03,160
their lives and then they're blown away.

1430
01:50:03,160 --> 01:50:07,960
It's like, well, more of them take their own lives than die doing that.

1431
01:50:07,960 --> 01:50:08,960
Absolutely.

1432
01:50:08,960 --> 01:50:13,840
I think the other thing, and I touched on this when we were in the meeting, is at the

1433
01:50:13,840 --> 01:50:15,560
front door as well.

1434
01:50:15,560 --> 01:50:26,520
We were talking about the MMPI, the Minnesota multi-phasic personality.

1435
01:50:26,520 --> 01:50:27,720
As the, that's it.

1436
01:50:27,720 --> 01:50:32,480
That is your mental health evaluation to see if you're a good firefighter candidate or a

1437
01:50:32,480 --> 01:50:33,480
bad one.

1438
01:50:33,480 --> 01:50:34,480
That's it, black and white.

1439
01:50:34,480 --> 01:50:38,880
And having this realization of like, well, what if we shifted again to a compassionate

1440
01:50:38,880 --> 01:50:44,320
lens where we took the money from the MMPI and the polygraph, both of which I think are

1441
01:50:44,320 --> 01:50:50,360
ridiculous and instead gave five sessions of counseling to new recruits.

1442
01:50:50,360 --> 01:50:55,920
And it could be simply just chewing the fat and having nothing really to say, or it might

1443
01:50:55,920 --> 01:51:01,160
open the doors to some things that happened that ultimately sent you into a line of service.

1444
01:51:01,160 --> 01:51:06,040
Because so many of us, I think on the ACEs score, on average, we're six when they've

1445
01:51:06,040 --> 01:51:08,920
done studies, same as prisoners, which is interesting.

1446
01:51:08,920 --> 01:51:16,960
But there's usually a lot of unpacking to do, so what better way to really kind of reinforce

1447
01:51:16,960 --> 01:51:22,600
our foundation than have that conversation on day one so that we can actually start working

1448
01:51:22,600 --> 01:51:27,600
on that if it needs to happen, immediately have a relationship with a counselor, and

1449
01:51:27,600 --> 01:51:33,020
then, that mental health conversation be a cultural element for every new hire.

1450
01:51:33,020 --> 01:51:36,140
And it wouldn't cost any more money because the money they're spending on the polygraph

1451
01:51:36,140 --> 01:51:39,160
and the psych test, you just put into this instead.

1452
01:51:39,160 --> 01:51:44,240
And like you said, hire a counselor to be on staff, a psychiatrist, a psychologist,

1453
01:51:44,240 --> 01:51:45,920
and that's your go-to person now.

1454
01:51:45,920 --> 01:51:49,280
So before anyone reaches crisis, they have some of these calls.

1455
01:51:49,280 --> 01:51:50,280
It might not bother them.

1456
01:51:50,280 --> 01:51:53,840
This is the problem we have is they do it immediately after, but it might be a month,

1457
01:51:53,840 --> 01:51:57,320
a year, five years later that it starts to creep out.

1458
01:51:57,320 --> 01:52:02,200
But you have that person to go to and you've already laid the foundation of...

1459
01:52:02,200 --> 01:52:07,240
Because my philosophy is this, we look at childhood trauma sometimes as like a victim

1460
01:52:07,240 --> 01:52:13,320
element, I think, and please correct me if you think differently, but I think that trauma

1461
01:52:13,320 --> 01:52:17,480
that has been addressed, that has been worked through becomes resilience.

1462
01:52:17,480 --> 01:52:18,880
It becomes a superpower.

1463
01:52:18,880 --> 01:52:20,720
And so there's that hope story.

1464
01:52:20,720 --> 01:52:25,340
But if we just bury it down and hide it at the front door of a first responder profession,

1465
01:52:25,340 --> 01:52:26,340
it's the opposite.

1466
01:52:26,340 --> 01:52:28,080
It becomes a cancer instead.

1467
01:52:28,080 --> 01:52:29,080
Yes.

1468
01:52:29,080 --> 01:52:30,660
Yeah, no, I can't...

1469
01:52:30,660 --> 01:52:32,480
I would agree with that.

1470
01:52:32,480 --> 01:52:42,080
How it grows and becomes a cancer is an interesting psychological thought experiment.

1471
01:52:42,080 --> 01:52:47,240
You can go into Nietzsche and Jung and all those kinds of things.

1472
01:52:47,240 --> 01:52:55,400
And I think what you just said is great about it becomes those traumas become a cancer to

1473
01:52:55,400 --> 01:53:02,920
your soul so bad that they become those shadows that you don't want to look at.

1474
01:53:02,920 --> 01:53:09,520
And then when you start looking at them, they take you straight down to hell.

1475
01:53:09,520 --> 01:53:11,000
That's straight from Nietzsche.

1476
01:53:11,000 --> 01:53:13,480
Yeah, it's amazing.

1477
01:53:13,480 --> 01:53:15,360
It's so pertinent.

1478
01:53:15,360 --> 01:53:19,400
I want to hit one more area in this conversation, then go to your latest book and then some

1479
01:53:19,400 --> 01:53:23,800
interesting totally different conversations.

1480
01:53:23,800 --> 01:53:31,040
Just before we do, obviously the older we get, I would argue probably we're more apt

1481
01:53:31,040 --> 01:53:39,000
to finally sit down and unpack, especially my age group, late 30s through to 50s-ish

1482
01:53:39,000 --> 01:53:43,120
is seem to be when a lot of the responders really start struggling.

1483
01:53:43,120 --> 01:53:48,740
And at that point, you might have hit whatever critical mass, okay, I'm going to start unpacking

1484
01:53:48,740 --> 01:53:50,120
it now.

1485
01:53:50,120 --> 01:53:56,200
You talked about five of your medical professional friends losing children under the age of 18.

1486
01:53:56,200 --> 01:54:00,080
That's a place where emotionally they might simply not be able to unpack.

1487
01:54:00,080 --> 01:54:06,040
I just finished watching Leaving Neverland and these two boys that finally came out,

1488
01:54:06,040 --> 01:54:10,000
it took them to be in their 30s before they were able to actually process and unpack and

1489
01:54:10,000 --> 01:54:11,420
talk about what they did.

1490
01:54:11,420 --> 01:54:15,640
And that's a story I hope I'm going to be able to tell on here because that's a whole

1491
01:54:15,640 --> 01:54:16,640
other can of worms.

1492
01:54:16,640 --> 01:54:18,040
So I'm just going to put that to the side.

1493
01:54:18,040 --> 01:54:24,920
Talk to me about ketamine and our youth that are struggling because I would imagine there

1494
01:54:24,920 --> 01:54:30,040
was probably a very powerful element there because maybe they're not able to access some

1495
01:54:30,040 --> 01:54:35,320
of the other areas that we as adults can.

1496
01:54:35,320 --> 01:54:42,220
The language you use to talk about trauma and death, the hardest thing for a kid ever

1497
01:54:42,220 --> 01:54:49,640
is to lose a parent and they don't have the language developed yet to really talk about

1498
01:54:49,640 --> 01:54:50,640
it.

1499
01:54:50,640 --> 01:54:56,960
All they can just say is like, I feel sad, I feel this or that.

1500
01:54:56,960 --> 01:55:05,520
They don't have the language to say that this person meant this to me and this is the effect

1501
01:55:05,520 --> 01:55:08,320
it has on me now and that they're missing all that.

1502
01:55:08,320 --> 01:55:13,880
So that's part of like, and we're talking like eight, nine, 10, 12 years old kind of

1503
01:55:13,880 --> 01:55:21,560
thing and you don't really come into your being of adolescence until later.

1504
01:55:21,560 --> 01:55:29,040
So I think that's what's going on when we're young and experience trauma.

1505
01:55:29,040 --> 01:55:32,520
And ketamine has been shown to help kids.

1506
01:55:32,520 --> 01:55:39,200
So those research still needs to be done, but Laurie Calabrese has done some research

1507
01:55:39,200 --> 01:55:41,680
on this, others.

1508
01:55:41,680 --> 01:55:50,720
And most of the data that we have on ketamine in adolescence is actually done in the adolescent

1509
01:55:50,720 --> 01:55:55,800
cancer research where they get ketamine often.

1510
01:55:55,800 --> 01:56:04,240
And ketamine helps kids in this sense, not all the time, but I think it's a powerful

1511
01:56:04,240 --> 01:56:09,760
tool to consider.

1512
01:56:09,760 --> 01:56:14,160
And I think the most pertinent story is the one I wrote about in the adolescent chapter

1513
01:56:14,160 --> 01:56:24,240
four there where in Las Vegas itself had during the pandemic in the year 2020, during the

1514
01:56:24,240 --> 01:56:30,320
lockdowns when they were the worst, 18 school-aged children took their lives.

1515
01:56:30,320 --> 01:56:36,560
Now the Nevada's always had a high adolescent suicide rate, one of the highest.

1516
01:56:36,560 --> 01:56:43,400
And everybody was trying to say, oh, it's just the suicide rate we've always seen.

1517
01:56:43,400 --> 01:56:44,920
It's not getting any better.

1518
01:56:44,920 --> 01:56:48,180
And I vehemently disagree.

1519
01:56:48,180 --> 01:56:55,620
These were 18 school-aged children who didn't have a history, or at least most of the ones

1520
01:56:55,620 --> 01:57:03,820
I was able to research, a history of mental, like bipolar, depression, or things like that.

1521
01:57:03,820 --> 01:57:14,480
One kid who tried to commit suicide in his life in Vegas asked, and by the way, he looked

1522
01:57:14,480 --> 01:57:22,800
up how to do it on his school-issued iPad, as many of these kids did.

1523
01:57:22,800 --> 01:57:27,660
And when asked, he just goes, I don't have anything to look for.

1524
01:57:27,660 --> 01:57:29,440
I don't have any friends.

1525
01:57:29,440 --> 01:57:31,760
My dog just died.

1526
01:57:31,760 --> 01:57:33,080
What else is there?

1527
01:57:33,080 --> 01:57:38,400
So from a kid's point of view, they were a burden.

1528
01:57:38,400 --> 01:57:40,380
They are isolated.

1529
01:57:40,380 --> 01:57:42,220
They lost hope.

1530
01:57:42,220 --> 01:57:44,920
They're in an extreme moment of vulnerability.

1531
01:57:44,920 --> 01:57:51,960
And they looked up a way of lethal means on their school-issued iPads.

1532
01:57:51,960 --> 01:58:02,660
And to think about, 18 kids did this in one year in Clark County, Nevada, is just, what

1533
01:58:02,660 --> 01:58:07,800
if one of their parents just could have recognized the signs?

1534
01:58:07,800 --> 01:58:10,600
And you have to remember, that was a time you couldn't just take your kid into the

1535
01:58:10,600 --> 01:58:14,840
doctor and get counseling.

1536
01:58:14,840 --> 01:58:20,440
If it was my kid, I would have been giving them something, ketamine, if I knew about

1537
01:58:20,440 --> 01:58:21,440
it.

1538
01:58:21,440 --> 01:58:24,520
And that was part of the genesis of this whole book.

1539
01:58:24,520 --> 01:58:29,760
When I was talking to Gavin De Becker, who wrote the full word, and he was the one who

1540
01:58:29,760 --> 01:58:33,800
gave me the initial push to write this book.

1541
01:58:33,800 --> 01:58:36,160
He's a big advocate of ketamine therapy.

1542
01:58:36,160 --> 01:58:44,360
And a little background on Gavin, he does the most elite protection, including the likes

1543
01:58:44,360 --> 01:58:47,360
of Robert F. Kennedy right now, the Bezos.

1544
01:58:47,360 --> 01:58:50,800
He has many people he does protection for.

1545
01:58:50,800 --> 01:58:52,280
You can look all this up online.

1546
01:58:52,280 --> 01:58:54,600
And he's been on Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson.

1547
01:58:54,600 --> 01:59:00,800
But anyway, he's been a big mentor of mine for this.

1548
01:59:00,800 --> 01:59:09,320
And it was a privilege to have him be able to write the forwards for my books now.

1549
01:59:09,320 --> 01:59:17,840
So anyway, to go back to adolescence and ketamine, I mean, if you were a parent and you knew

1550
01:59:17,840 --> 01:59:28,920
about this, the evidence is there to use ketamine now, not wait for the research.

1551
01:59:28,920 --> 01:59:30,840
Absolutely.

1552
01:59:30,840 --> 01:59:31,960
I appreciate that as well.

1553
01:59:31,960 --> 01:59:33,640
I mean, this is such an important conversation.

1554
01:59:33,640 --> 01:59:37,280
As I mentioned, one of the two people that went through with their suicide attempt was

1555
01:59:37,280 --> 01:59:38,280
17.

1556
01:59:38,280 --> 01:59:44,920
And so we're seeing it over and over and over again with our young men and women, especially

1557
01:59:44,920 --> 01:59:46,640
after COVID.

1558
01:59:46,640 --> 01:59:49,340
We all enjoyed it.

1559
01:59:49,340 --> 01:59:50,340
Maybe not everyone enjoyed it.

1560
01:59:50,340 --> 01:59:55,680
I didn't absolutely love my high school experience, but we had the opportunity to be in classrooms

1561
01:59:55,680 --> 01:59:58,720
full of our friends and play during recess.

1562
01:59:58,720 --> 02:00:01,160
And there was two years where that was stolen from our children.

1563
02:00:01,160 --> 02:00:02,760
And then they were thrust back in.

1564
02:00:02,760 --> 02:00:07,500
And then also, the ones that graduated, you graduate into COVID, no jobs.

1565
02:00:07,500 --> 02:00:13,840
And then you get ridiculed for being unemployed or on government handouts a year later when

1566
02:00:13,840 --> 02:00:16,620
you didn't choose for the world to shut down either.

1567
02:00:16,620 --> 02:00:20,040
So there's been some compounding areas.

1568
02:00:20,040 --> 02:00:24,840
And then you look at the domestic abuse side from some of the people that I know in that

1569
02:00:24,840 --> 02:00:25,840
field.

1570
02:00:25,840 --> 02:00:29,760
And our teachers are more often than not the ones that are reporting abuse.

1571
02:00:29,760 --> 02:00:33,880
And now these children are locked in their homes, some of which they're locked in with

1572
02:00:33,880 --> 02:00:36,080
predators or domestic abusers.

1573
02:00:36,080 --> 02:00:41,320
So there's all these layers that we need to be thinking about to protect our children

1574
02:00:41,320 --> 02:00:42,640
as well as the tools.

1575
02:00:42,640 --> 02:00:46,480
And if ketamine is a tool, it should be part of the conversation.

1576
02:00:46,480 --> 02:00:49,160
100%.

1577
02:00:49,160 --> 02:00:51,360
That's why I wrote the book, to be honest.

1578
02:00:51,360 --> 02:00:54,920
Even if it just saves one life in that manner, I don't care.

1579
02:00:54,920 --> 02:00:55,920
It's worth it.

1580
02:00:55,920 --> 02:00:56,920
Absolutely.

1581
02:00:56,920 --> 02:01:00,440
Well, I want to go to, like I said, one more area and I'm going to hold up my notes so

1582
02:01:00,440 --> 02:01:02,920
I don't butcher the name.

1583
02:01:02,920 --> 02:01:05,880
Percutaneous hydrotomy.

1584
02:01:05,880 --> 02:01:10,160
So I have no understanding or concept of this whatsoever.

1585
02:01:10,160 --> 02:01:12,120
So this is your latest book.

1586
02:01:12,120 --> 02:01:17,440
Talk to me about the issues of this helping with what it actually is.

1587
02:01:17,440 --> 02:01:19,660
And then we'll talk about the book as well.

1588
02:01:19,660 --> 02:01:27,160
So the title of the book is Stopping Pain and it's percutaneous hydrotomy.

1589
02:01:27,160 --> 02:01:32,120
It's a revolutionary approach to beating pain and increasing function.

1590
02:01:32,120 --> 02:01:37,800
So it's one of those French things again that when I trained in France, I learned about

1591
02:01:37,800 --> 02:01:42,400
it and then over the years I've known about it.

1592
02:01:42,400 --> 02:01:44,600
Percutaneous hydrotomy is exactly what it sounds like.

1593
02:01:44,600 --> 02:01:50,280
It's through the skin and it uses water, among other things.

1594
02:01:50,280 --> 02:02:00,040
And as you may know, as a European, mesotherapy, meso is skin, therapy is to treat, is a huge

1595
02:02:00,040 --> 02:02:03,080
thing in France and always has been.

1596
02:02:03,080 --> 02:02:13,560
So all, and mesotherapy was first designed by Dr. Pasteur, Michel Pasteur, and to treat

1597
02:02:13,560 --> 02:02:16,720
musculoskeletal problems.

1598
02:02:16,720 --> 02:02:21,640
One of his students was Bernard Ghez, Dr. Bernard Ghez.

1599
02:02:21,640 --> 02:02:30,520
And he expanded upon the idea of using mesotherapy to treat musculoskeletal pains, arthritis,

1600
02:02:30,520 --> 02:02:37,100
things like that, using what he coined is called percutaneous hydrotomy.

1601
02:02:37,100 --> 02:02:41,040
And I get it's in a, it's kind of a complicated word and all that.

1602
02:02:41,040 --> 02:02:51,320
But just, you're just basically using the subcutaneous tissue as a depot for physiologic

1603
02:02:51,320 --> 02:02:58,960
saline, which is water contains salts, trace minerals, vitamins, anti-inflammatories, other

1604
02:02:58,960 --> 02:03:00,760
medications.

1605
02:03:00,760 --> 02:03:06,480
Sometimes you might use a dilute dose of even corticosteroids, but very dilute.

1606
02:03:06,480 --> 02:03:09,040
You might use amino acids.

1607
02:03:09,040 --> 02:03:16,920
You use anti-inflammatories like Toradol, some others, and all, and local anesthetics.

1608
02:03:16,920 --> 02:03:18,200
So what does that do?

1609
02:03:18,200 --> 02:03:23,040
It creates, let's say you have a knee pain or back pain or shoulder pain, like frozen

1610
02:03:23,040 --> 02:03:25,440
shoulder, it works wonderfully.

1611
02:03:25,440 --> 02:03:34,720
And you actually, you might put like even up to 50 milliliters or CCs or even, you know,

1612
02:03:34,720 --> 02:03:40,880
maybe a couple hundred over the area of pain, and it blows up the subcutaneous tissue, which

1613
02:03:40,880 --> 02:03:44,280
takes it no problem.

1614
02:03:44,280 --> 02:03:50,440
And it slow releases over the localized lesion.

1615
02:03:50,440 --> 02:03:57,560
And it's just, I mean, and it's not the end all, but it always helps pain and it always

1616
02:03:57,560 --> 02:03:59,560
increases function.

1617
02:03:59,560 --> 02:04:01,440
You know?

1618
02:04:01,440 --> 02:04:02,440
And it just depends.

1619
02:04:02,440 --> 02:04:07,320
I mean, if you're bone on bone arthritis, it's going to help for a minute, you know,

1620
02:04:07,320 --> 02:04:12,480
for some days, weeks, months, but eventually, you know, you're probably going to need that

1621
02:04:12,480 --> 02:04:13,920
surgery.

1622
02:04:13,920 --> 02:04:20,040
But depending where you are on the spectrum, like I've used it in many athletes like TJ

1623
02:04:20,040 --> 02:04:26,400
Dillashaw, UFC fighter on his shoulder injuries and stuff, and it was part of the solution

1624
02:04:26,400 --> 02:04:29,840
that allowed him to compete.

1625
02:04:29,840 --> 02:04:40,520
So, anyway, it's a, in a sense, it's a minimally invasive tool that uses a very tiny needle,

1626
02:04:40,520 --> 02:04:48,720
the mesotherapy needle, and to place that combination of elements that allows the cells

1627
02:04:48,720 --> 02:04:52,440
to heal in a sense, you know, and then you get in a can of worms.

1628
02:04:52,440 --> 02:04:57,280
Like how can you prove that, you know, this therapy heals the cells?

1629
02:04:57,280 --> 02:05:03,400
Well, and it depends if you go back to the, you know, are you trying to treat the pathogens?

1630
02:05:03,400 --> 02:05:08,520
Are you trying to treat the terrain, the terrain as the French say?

1631
02:05:08,520 --> 02:05:15,520
And you know, are you trying to make the pasture healthier or are you trying to kill the microbes

1632
02:05:15,520 --> 02:05:18,080
that attack the pasture?

1633
02:05:18,080 --> 02:05:23,120
And so instead of using antibiotics, you know, you're using nutrients for the cells, which

1634
02:05:23,120 --> 02:05:31,040
is water, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, in some cases, you know, you're using anti-inflammatories

1635
02:05:31,040 --> 02:05:38,880
to just decrease these inflammatory neurotransmitters and other things like bradykinins, tumor

1636
02:05:38,880 --> 02:05:43,280
necrosis factor, interleukins, all these kinds of things.

1637
02:05:43,280 --> 02:05:46,080
And then, what about the local anesthetics?

1638
02:05:46,080 --> 02:05:52,200
Well, the local anesthetics are a great tool to break the pain cycle, you know.

1639
02:05:52,200 --> 02:05:55,720
And you can even use ketamine in this sometimes.

1640
02:05:55,720 --> 02:06:00,280
Like for neuropathic pain, you would add ketamine to this kind of treatment and it's already

1641
02:06:00,280 --> 02:06:01,280
done.

1642
02:06:01,280 --> 02:06:04,900
I mean, we do this in pain medicine all the time.

1643
02:06:04,900 --> 02:06:10,000
When you can break the pattern of pain and the patient can have like even a minute without

1644
02:06:10,000 --> 02:06:19,360
that pain, it gives them hope that, wow, something just put me back into the place where I didn't

1645
02:06:19,360 --> 02:06:22,920
feel this pain at one time.

1646
02:06:22,920 --> 02:06:30,440
And that's, you know, in a sense, that breaks the psychological brain pattern of pain.

1647
02:06:30,440 --> 02:06:34,000
And so there's, yeah, so there's a lot to it, you know.

1648
02:06:34,000 --> 02:06:40,200
So that's in a nutshell, that's what percutaneous hydrotomy is.

1649
02:06:40,200 --> 02:06:41,200
And it's, yeah.

1650
02:06:41,200 --> 02:06:42,200
Brilliant.

1651
02:06:42,200 --> 02:06:43,800
Well, I appreciate that.

1652
02:06:43,800 --> 02:06:45,480
So your latest book is on that.

1653
02:06:45,480 --> 02:06:49,640
The one before, the revolutionary, excuse me, let me get, let me hold it if I get the

1654
02:06:49,640 --> 02:06:51,480
right full title.

1655
02:06:51,480 --> 02:06:56,680
The Revolutionary Ketamine, the safe drug that effectively treats depression and prevents

1656
02:06:56,680 --> 02:06:57,680
suicide.

1657
02:06:57,680 --> 02:07:01,000
So just give people listening, obviously, you've pulled some excerpts, some stories

1658
02:07:01,000 --> 02:07:03,440
and some principles from there.

1659
02:07:03,440 --> 02:07:06,920
What made you write the book and then tell people what they can expect behind, between

1660
02:07:06,920 --> 02:07:08,920
the covers?

1661
02:07:08,920 --> 02:07:10,920
Yes.

1662
02:07:10,920 --> 02:07:13,760
It's just that, that ketamine can be revolutionary.

1663
02:07:13,760 --> 02:07:20,200
It might be, it might be that thing that saves you or your loved one from those grips of

1664
02:07:20,200 --> 02:07:22,560
depression and suicide.

1665
02:07:22,560 --> 02:07:27,680
It's something that can stop, ketamine is something that can stop suicide in its tracks.

1666
02:07:27,680 --> 02:07:33,120
And in the book, you kind of, we go through the, you know, the genesis of how it became,

1667
02:07:33,120 --> 02:07:40,880
you know, a research drug to a legitimate FDA approved medication to a party drug to

1668
02:07:40,880 --> 02:07:44,560
something that can stop depression and suicide.

1669
02:07:44,560 --> 02:07:49,400
You know, and then we go, then there's chapters dedicated to who it affects.

1670
02:07:49,400 --> 02:07:55,120
There's a whole chapter on first responders, police officers, firefighters, veterans.

1671
02:07:55,120 --> 02:07:59,440
There's a whole chapter dedicated to adolescents, children.

1672
02:07:59,440 --> 02:08:03,980
And then it goes into, well, why does ketamine work?

1673
02:08:03,980 --> 02:08:06,880
Why does it break up the default mode network?

1674
02:08:06,880 --> 02:08:09,620
What's really going on in a psychedelic treatment?

1675
02:08:09,620 --> 02:08:14,600
And then at the near the end, how do you choose somebody to give you ketamine?

1676
02:08:14,600 --> 02:08:15,760
What do you look for?

1677
02:08:15,760 --> 02:08:17,200
What kind of clinics?

1678
02:08:17,200 --> 02:08:18,200
What kind of therapy?

1679
02:08:18,200 --> 02:08:19,200
Where are the options?

1680
02:08:19,200 --> 02:08:21,840
Who are some people who do it?

1681
02:08:21,840 --> 02:08:24,120
How would you prepare for a ketamine treatment?

1682
02:08:24,120 --> 02:08:26,200
All of that's in there.

1683
02:08:26,200 --> 02:08:30,800
And, and the, and that, that's what the book was designed for.

1684
02:08:30,800 --> 02:08:35,200
Well, like I said before, what was so good about it is it's very readable.

1685
02:08:35,200 --> 02:08:38,960
You know, you infuse all these case studies and stories in with the science.

1686
02:08:38,960 --> 02:08:43,080
So by the time you come out the other end, you've learned what you want us to learn,

1687
02:08:43,080 --> 02:08:47,240
but it threw what, you know, obviously I adore this forum, the art of storytelling.

1688
02:08:47,240 --> 02:08:49,960
So it was, that's what I do.

1689
02:08:49,960 --> 02:08:51,200
That's what I do on all my books.

1690
02:08:51,200 --> 02:08:53,880
And then I should also back up and then stopping pain.

1691
02:08:53,880 --> 02:09:00,700
There's a complete chapter of case reports and just how stories of people who've overcome

1692
02:09:00,700 --> 02:09:05,440
their chronic pain through percutaneous hydrotomy type treatments.

1693
02:09:05,440 --> 02:09:10,940
And then, and that's, you know, I kind of, that's my style of writing books actually.

1694
02:09:10,940 --> 02:09:16,760
So hopefully that's, hopefully people who read it, you know, will appreciate that.

1695
02:09:16,760 --> 02:09:17,760
Thank you.

1696
02:09:17,760 --> 02:09:20,240
And where can people find all your books?

1697
02:09:20,240 --> 02:09:23,040
The on Amazon, they're all on Amazon.

1698
02:09:23,040 --> 02:09:25,320
They're all on my website.

1699
02:09:25,320 --> 02:09:29,360
And as you know, as you know, after reading your book, which is great by the way, I loved

1700
02:09:29,360 --> 02:09:30,360
it.

1701
02:09:30,360 --> 02:09:31,360
Thank you.

1702
02:09:31,360 --> 02:09:33,960
That first, that first chapter was riveting.

1703
02:09:33,960 --> 02:09:40,200
Anybody, if you read, if you read the first chapter of your book, that's, that's a great

1704
02:09:40,200 --> 02:09:41,200
read.

1705
02:09:41,200 --> 02:09:42,200
I loved it.

1706
02:09:42,200 --> 02:09:43,760
And then, you know, it sets the tone for the whole thing.

1707
02:09:43,760 --> 02:09:51,120
Anyway, as you know, buying from the author themselves, from author copies gives us the

1708
02:09:51,120 --> 02:09:57,040
most, you know, bang for our buck and book profits and keeps us doing what we're doing.

1709
02:09:57,040 --> 02:10:03,160
So you can always buy it on my website, but you can easily find it on Amazon.

1710
02:10:03,160 --> 02:10:09,080
And also, as you know, please give reviews because, you know, it's just the, it's the

1711
02:10:09,080 --> 02:10:11,840
Amazon monster.

1712
02:10:11,840 --> 02:10:17,640
If you, you know, if you don't do that, the algorithm, things I don't understand, but

1713
02:10:17,640 --> 02:10:18,640
I just know it's important.

1714
02:10:18,640 --> 02:10:21,600
And I always ask people to please leave a review.

1715
02:10:21,600 --> 02:10:23,880
It's a, takes, takes a few minutes.

1716
02:10:23,880 --> 02:10:24,880
Absolutely.

1717
02:10:24,880 --> 02:10:25,880
I need to leave one for your book.

1718
02:10:25,880 --> 02:10:26,880
I'll do that today.

1719
02:10:26,880 --> 02:10:27,880
All right.

1720
02:10:27,880 --> 02:10:32,420
Well, then speaking of books, are there any books written by other people that you love

1721
02:10:32,420 --> 02:10:33,420
to recommend?

1722
02:10:33,420 --> 02:10:38,480
It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated.

1723
02:10:38,480 --> 02:10:51,000
Oh, you know, I think, you know, I, I put, I put a big plug in for Jordan Peterson's

1724
02:10:51,000 --> 02:10:52,080
12 rules of life.

1725
02:10:52,080 --> 02:10:57,920
I think that can set people on the right, you know, cause a lot of people don't have

1726
02:10:57,920 --> 02:11:02,400
access to good therapy, you know, and good therapy is expensive.

1727
02:11:02,400 --> 02:11:10,880
And I think he provides one way of being able to work with another therapist, but yet have

1728
02:11:10,880 --> 02:11:17,400
a lot of ammunition when you go into the, you know, what it means to like get better,

1729
02:11:17,400 --> 02:11:22,160
you know, or cleaning up your room, that kinds of things.

1730
02:11:22,160 --> 02:11:27,140
Mark Madsen, who was interviewed on STEM talk, writes a book about glutamate.

1731
02:11:27,140 --> 02:11:35,520
He was interviewed by Ken and Dawn and I, I think that is a wonderfully written book.

1732
02:11:35,520 --> 02:11:41,640
If you want to understand the neurotransmitters and why they are so important and how, why

1733
02:11:41,640 --> 02:11:44,480
somebody could be possessed to kill themselves even.

1734
02:11:44,480 --> 02:11:50,560
And in a sense, you can learn about what glutamate and how powerful it is.

1735
02:11:50,560 --> 02:11:57,480
And then, you know, and then after that, I think learning how nutrition affects your

1736
02:11:57,480 --> 02:11:58,480
brain.

1737
02:11:58,480 --> 02:12:09,040
You know, there's many books on this, like, you know, oh man, they're so, you know, the

1738
02:12:09,040 --> 02:12:13,000
EADS, the, what's the latest one called?

1739
02:12:13,000 --> 02:12:16,600
You know, brain, brain power.

1740
02:12:16,600 --> 02:12:25,720
I'm blanking on his name, the, Chris, you'll know it.

1741
02:12:25,720 --> 02:12:28,760
Anyway, I'll look it up.

1742
02:12:28,760 --> 02:12:43,160
And anyway, any of those brain, Chris, power, Chris Palmer, he has got a great, great book,

1743
02:12:43,160 --> 02:12:48,720
you know, on how to treat mental disease and Georgia EADS as well.

1744
02:12:48,720 --> 02:12:55,600
So anyway, I think those are some of the books to wrap your head around and go from there.

1745
02:12:55,600 --> 02:12:56,840
Beautiful.

1746
02:12:56,840 --> 02:13:01,320
So the next question, is there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast as a

1747
02:13:01,320 --> 02:13:07,320
guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professions of the world?

1748
02:13:07,320 --> 02:13:09,160
Yes.

1749
02:13:09,160 --> 02:13:15,840
I would say if you haven't had Dave Rabin, who was at the Blue Sky, I think he has a

1750
02:13:15,840 --> 02:13:25,800
great handle on psychiatric treat, you know, the psychology and psychiatric treatment of

1751
02:13:25,800 --> 02:13:30,240
first responders and ketamine and the different modes.

1752
02:13:30,240 --> 02:13:37,320
And, you know, I think he would be, I think he would be a great resource.

1753
02:13:37,320 --> 02:13:40,280
And he's an interesting, just so interesting to talk to.

1754
02:13:40,280 --> 02:13:44,560
I've been in touch with him since the Blue Sky.

1755
02:13:44,560 --> 02:13:47,040
So I would definitely reach out to him.

1756
02:13:47,040 --> 02:13:48,600
And if you need his contact, I have it.

1757
02:13:48,600 --> 02:13:52,400
I think you do too.

1758
02:13:52,400 --> 02:13:58,000
And yeah, he's one of the first ones to come up.

1759
02:13:58,000 --> 02:14:09,160
And then there's, yeah, he's the first one who comes to mind on that, you know, on the

1760
02:14:09,160 --> 02:14:12,360
wavelength of what we're talking about.

1761
02:14:12,360 --> 02:14:13,360
Brilliant.

1762
02:14:13,360 --> 02:14:14,360
Thank you.

1763
02:14:14,360 --> 02:14:15,360
All right.

1764
02:14:15,360 --> 02:14:18,280
Well, then the very last question before we make sure where everyone can find you, what

1765
02:14:18,280 --> 02:14:24,760
do you do to decompress?

1766
02:14:24,760 --> 02:14:26,840
Hyperbaric chambers.

1767
02:14:26,840 --> 02:14:33,240
So when I find myself in my hyperbaric chamber, I'm in a little cocoon and, you know, it takes

1768
02:14:33,240 --> 02:14:35,840
effort to get in there and it takes effort to get out.

1769
02:14:35,840 --> 02:14:43,360
So you know, you can't, I do, I have my own hyperbaric chamber at home and I, you know,

1770
02:14:43,360 --> 02:14:45,800
I use it with some oxygen and that kind of thing.

1771
02:14:45,800 --> 02:14:51,960
And I can say when my brain just feels fried, you know, at the end of the day from whatever,

1772
02:14:51,960 --> 02:14:58,160
doing a day of anesthesia or whatever, I get in that thing and I always feel better when

1773
02:14:58,160 --> 02:14:59,480
I get out.

1774
02:14:59,480 --> 02:15:09,040
And, but I have to say the power it affords me to decompress is really good, you know,

1775
02:15:09,040 --> 02:15:15,200
and I can go in there, listen to a podcast or listen to some meditation music or just

1776
02:15:15,200 --> 02:15:16,200
fall asleep.

1777
02:15:16,200 --> 02:15:23,960
And, you know, it's my own little space away from everything and I'm privileged enough

1778
02:15:23,960 --> 02:15:27,520
to have one, you know, but there are ways.

1779
02:15:27,520 --> 02:15:35,680
I think it's a great investment and I think it would be a great investment for any firefighter

1780
02:15:35,680 --> 02:15:39,260
because when you guys are in the smoke, you know, as you know, oxygen, there's no better

1781
02:15:39,260 --> 02:15:47,120
way to, you know, to rid yourself from all those carbon monoxide than using oxygen.

1782
02:15:47,120 --> 02:15:57,480
But I think in more ways than one, that kind of therapy lends itself to not only your mental

1783
02:15:57,480 --> 02:16:04,360
health but also your physiological health, which if I had to tell you to have, if I could

1784
02:16:04,360 --> 02:16:11,760
have you bring one more guest onto your podcast, it would be Dr. Scott Scherr, S-H-E-R-R.

1785
02:16:11,760 --> 02:16:18,080
He's an internal medicine doctor who is one of the world's foremost experts on hyperbaric

1786
02:16:18,080 --> 02:16:19,760
medicine.

1787
02:16:19,760 --> 02:16:21,960
And I actually reviewed his book.

1788
02:16:21,960 --> 02:16:32,120
He's got an upcoming book and I helped review it and he could go into, it's his wheelhouse

1789
02:16:32,120 --> 02:16:41,040
of how you could use HBOT applications, hyperbaric therapy applications to the betterment of

1790
02:16:41,040 --> 02:16:45,440
all first responders out there and especially in firefighters.

1791
02:16:45,440 --> 02:16:50,000
And I think, you know, I would be honored to put you guys together.

1792
02:16:50,000 --> 02:16:58,440
So I think between Dave and Scott, that would be a great way forward for you to get, you

1793
02:16:58,440 --> 02:17:02,040
know, I think they'd have some great conversations with you.

1794
02:17:02,040 --> 02:17:03,040
Beautiful.

1795
02:17:03,040 --> 02:17:06,480
Yeah, let's make it happen for both of them if that's okay.

1796
02:17:06,480 --> 02:17:09,700
Those are actionable items and I'll put that, I will make it happen.

1797
02:17:09,700 --> 02:17:10,700
Thank you.

1798
02:17:10,700 --> 02:17:14,240
One thing before we go to where people can find you, have you ever heard of the technology

1799
02:17:14,240 --> 02:17:18,560
called Nucalm?

1800
02:17:18,560 --> 02:17:23,800
I've heard of it, but I have to say I haven't looked much into it.

1801
02:17:23,800 --> 02:17:29,520
So it actually dates back like 35 years and the real cliff note story is there was apparently

1802
02:17:29,520 --> 02:17:36,680
one of the most intelligent people we've ever had here in the US that dove into the neuroscience

1803
02:17:36,680 --> 02:17:42,120
of frequencies that the brain is at during different emotional states.

1804
02:17:42,120 --> 02:17:46,120
And then after 20 years or whatever it took him to figure that out, he was like, huh,

1805
02:17:46,120 --> 02:17:50,280
well can we manipulate the brain to get into those emotional states?

1806
02:17:50,280 --> 02:17:54,720
I came across Jim Poole, who's the CEO, the actual scientist, actually passed away the

1807
02:17:54,720 --> 02:18:01,400
founder of this, but what it used to be was a $6,000 large machine that would sit in Napa,

1808
02:18:01,400 --> 02:18:05,800
Napa, excuse me, not a cabbage, in NASA.

1809
02:18:05,800 --> 02:18:11,520
I was thinking DARPA as well, but the Navy SEALs and some of the NFL teams and you'd

1810
02:18:11,520 --> 02:18:16,560
put on headphones and an eye mask and in 20 minutes you get the equivalent of like a two

1811
02:18:16,560 --> 02:18:21,840
hour nap and then there's all these kind of down regulation or up regulation settings.

1812
02:18:21,840 --> 02:18:27,840
Well about a year and a half ago, the smartphone technology got so advanced that they were

1813
02:18:27,840 --> 02:18:29,600
able to put this on an app.

1814
02:18:29,600 --> 02:18:32,680
And so when you're in your hyperbaric chamber, for example, I'm literally going to go and

1815
02:18:32,680 --> 02:18:34,160
do it now.

1816
02:18:34,160 --> 02:18:38,080
And so I'm a real kind of self-experimenter.

1817
02:18:38,080 --> 02:18:44,000
I'm not a big proponent of wearables and biohacks and all the kind of terms that we have now,

1818
02:18:44,000 --> 02:18:48,200
but I can tell you hand on my heart that this technology works.

1819
02:18:48,200 --> 02:18:53,200
Like when you do the down regulation ones, it is absolutely incredible.

1820
02:18:53,200 --> 02:18:55,280
And then the focus one I use when I'm writing.

1821
02:18:55,280 --> 02:18:57,520
So I know what you're talking about.

1822
02:18:57,520 --> 02:18:58,520
Yeah.

1823
02:18:58,520 --> 02:19:00,200
The whole 740 Hertz thing and all that.

1824
02:19:00,200 --> 02:19:01,200
Yeah.

1825
02:19:01,200 --> 02:19:02,200
There's a, yeah.

1826
02:19:02,200 --> 02:19:05,960
And I know what the, I know of the technology and research you're talking about.

1827
02:19:05,960 --> 02:19:08,360
I didn't just didn't connect it to the new com.

1828
02:19:08,360 --> 02:19:09,360
Yeah.

1829
02:19:09,360 --> 02:19:10,360
Yeah.

1830
02:19:10,360 --> 02:19:11,360
Yeah.

1831
02:19:11,360 --> 02:19:13,600
I highly recommend looking into that because I mean that if you added that to your hyperbaric,

1832
02:19:13,600 --> 02:19:17,600
now you're doubling down on the impact there.

1833
02:19:17,600 --> 02:19:18,600
Absolutely.

1834
02:19:18,600 --> 02:19:19,600
Nice.

1835
02:19:19,600 --> 02:19:20,600
All right.

1836
02:19:20,600 --> 02:19:22,400
Well then I'm sure people listening are fascinated.

1837
02:19:22,400 --> 02:19:27,120
We talked about where they can find your books, where are the best places to find you online,

1838
02:19:27,120 --> 02:19:28,960
websites and social media.

1839
02:19:28,960 --> 02:19:32,600
Just my website, Jonathan Edwards MD.com.

1840
02:19:32,600 --> 02:19:33,600
Most of it's there.

1841
02:19:33,600 --> 02:19:42,480
I try to maintain some presence on Instagram, Twitter and all that at John Edwards MD spelled

1842
02:19:42,480 --> 02:19:45,280
with an H.

1843
02:19:45,280 --> 02:19:51,120
You know, it's hard to keep up on the whole social media stuff, you know.

1844
02:19:51,120 --> 02:19:53,080
And then I'm searchable.

1845
02:19:53,080 --> 02:20:00,480
My email's on my website and you know, so I'm not, you know, I try to respond to just

1846
02:20:00,480 --> 02:20:04,760
about, you know, if I get a nice, you know, a neat message or something like that, I always

1847
02:20:04,760 --> 02:20:06,160
try to respond if I can.

1848
02:20:06,160 --> 02:20:11,840
And yeah, so I'm easy to find and you know, look it up.

1849
02:20:11,840 --> 02:20:12,840
Brilliant.

1850
02:20:12,840 --> 02:20:15,880
So you don't respond to like sup and then a winky face.

1851
02:20:15,880 --> 02:20:19,040
Yeah, I know.

1852
02:20:19,040 --> 02:20:20,840
All right.

1853
02:20:20,840 --> 02:20:23,880
Well, it has been such an incredible conversation.

1854
02:20:23,880 --> 02:20:28,320
Obviously, like I said, you know, hopefully the results of what we did together will be

1855
02:20:28,320 --> 02:20:31,040
published to the Fire Service when the time is right.

1856
02:20:31,040 --> 02:20:34,660
It's not quite there yet, but you know, we exchanged books.

1857
02:20:34,660 --> 02:20:39,600
We had a, you know, a short chat then, but it's been an incredible conversation and all

1858
02:20:39,600 --> 02:20:44,400
the different kind of arms to your work are so invaluable for the people listening.

1859
02:20:44,400 --> 02:20:47,480
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the

1860
02:20:47,480 --> 02:20:49,400
Behind the Shield podcast today.

1861
02:20:49,400 --> 02:20:51,280
James, thanks for having me.

1862
02:20:51,280 --> 02:20:57,240
This is incredible and I'm sure, you know, we have things in store for our future to

1863
02:20:57,240 --> 02:21:09,680
work together and let's keep doing it.