By Black Swan, MD – 7/3/2021
I’m on a plane in a viral pandemic headed for Rythmia, a life advancement center in Costa Rica, to drink the plants. I’m a physician, a specialist in infectious disease (ID), who practices evidenced based medicine and this voyage is therefore wildly atypical. If, as a resident, I proposed this treatment modality in morning report, I would be faced with a room full of eye rolling co-residents and a department chief shaking her head in disappointment, as there exists limited data to support this therapeutic approach.
Like the rest of us, I have had a difficult year. I treated many patients with COVID-19 and was the ID physician for anyone who knew me and then some. As the COVID hospitalizations and deaths mounted I have found myself with a front row seat of the mental health fallout of this pandemic and I’m suffering as well. My partner quit, my colleagues and I will never practice medicine the same way and we have varying degrees of PTSD, as do many healthcare providers who fought in this war. Yet, as COVID continues to ravage this country, a much less obvious simultaneous pandemic — mental illness, is waging war. Now, more than ever, we need a warp speed approach to psychedelic therapy as global mental health is just as important as the control of COVID-19 and these medicines can help.
The reasons behind why psychedelic therapies are illegal and haven’t been more aggressively studied until recently is beyond my comprehension. Politics, money, Big Pharma endeavors and the pursuit of undeserved patents are among them, I imagine. I’ve recently learned of the tremendous efforts and progress made by many pioneers in this field, notably the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), Rick Doblin, PhD. While these strides are remarkable, MAPS was founded in 1986. Thirty-five years later MDMA and psilocybin have entered clinical trials, yet still await approval. What’s important to highlight is that we have just proved with the COVID vaccine development and rollout that many steps can be done in parallel when trying to approve an intervention. The mental illness pandemic is raging out of control and deserves similar aggressive measure as case numbers of those with depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance abuse, suicidal and homicidal ideation are staggering. We need life support for the soul, stat.
I am not a spiritual person nor do I affiliate with any organized religion. I wish I did, because I know it would be easier to navigate this life with that in my armamentarium. I would love to be confident that there is something else beyond this but, for right now, in my plant medicine deprived mental state, I have no evidence. I have seen untimely deaths inside and outside of my work. I have felt incredible loss. I have felt abandonment and I am searching for a way to cope with these events and life itself. I need direction, instead of continuing to just remain in orbit, circling. Why are we here and what can I do to enjoy it without constantly thinking about how all of this will end in a lights out moment of silence, in the darkest darkness, in my final savasana with only a legacy left behind — if I’m lucky enough to have cultivated one. I have “everything”. Yes, I am privileged, yet my soul needs radical surgical intervention in order for me to enjoy my blessings and if people could benefit from this experience the world has to be a better place, right? Why is plant medicine so taboo? These are PLANTS. Why do I have to write this article under an alias? I firmly believe that access to my mystical consciousness is my right. My repressed memories are just that, mine and its time to unpack my baggage.
I have friends who have done ayahuasca, my brother has done it and most recently my 67 year old father drank the plants. My father called me from Costa Rica after his second ceremony. He lied there in the sun cradled by a hammock with his sunglasses on and donned a chain with an ankh charm around his neck (unusual for him) and he told me about a vision he had in which my mother was standing in front of him and he called out to her and apologized for leaving her with three children after 16 years of marriage. He told her he would call her once he got back and check in to see how she was doing and if she needed anything. He told me this as he wept like a baby. My father, the CEO, the man who never cries, a man everyone feared. I discussed my desire to pursue a similar experience with my therapist who has been using internal family systems therapy to help me with various struggles. He thought it could benefit me, which was reassuring.
Ayahuasca is a brew typically made from the shrub Psychotria viridis, which contains the primary psychoactive ingredient N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and the vine Banisteriopsis caapi. The vine contains several substances that act as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), which are required for DMT to be orally active. These plants are native to South America and are now used in hallucinogenic ceremonies all over the world. Ingestion of these plants can have unpredictable effects, but one can expect to experience a struggle, a death — the death of one’s ego, often followed by an overwhelming feeling of joy, forgiveness and healing of heart after being merged back with one’s soul. The journey is known to be challenging, physically and emotionally, riddled with purging in the form of vomiting, diarrhea, crying and yawning. Admittedly, this journey is not for everyone. This experience is often described as twenty five years of psychotherapy in four nights of plant based medicine. The limited data available suggests that this medicine is overall safe, yet large randomized placebo controlled trials to date are lacking.
I’m preparing to drink ayahuasca days from now because sometimes life doesn’t have time to wait for big data. I want to be a better mother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, wife, friend, physician and person finding my way in this world -now. I want to feel and be a willing participant of the human, plant and animal interconnection and explore the depths of my mind buried deep within the sulci of my cortex and beyond. I want to resurrect the repressed memories of my childhood that have rendered me a human less capable of happiness, love, connection and kindness. I want access to this for myself and for humanity because we all deserve this. Don’t wait for it to come to you. There’s too much bureaucratic noise in your way. If the plants are calling, you must go.
Source
https://medium.com/@dtllerman/life-support-for-the-soul-8f315557d66f