TREAT California: A Historic Psychedelic Ballot Initiative

Podcast Highlights

• Dr. Abedi’s journey from conventional medicine to psychedelic healing.
• The TREAT California ballot initiative.
• TREAT Initiative's path to holistic healthcare in California.
• Dr. Abedi’s experience as a facilitator of psilocybin clinical trials.
• The opportunity to bridge old institutions with new psychedelic paradigms.
• Nature’s role in modern healing.
• Exploring low-dose psychedelics for healing & spirituality.
• Dr. Abedi’s work with TREAT.
• Envisioning an integrated psychedelic healthcare model.
• Dr. Abedi’s desire to do healing work in her homeland of Iran.
• How to connect with Dr. Abedi.

Show Links

1. TREAT California
2. Onea Health
3. TREAT California on Instagram
4. Dr. Abedi on Instagram
5. Article: Iranian Religious Authority Considers Psychedelic Medicines Halāl
6. Psychedelic Science Conference
7. Magi Review: Rediscovering a 4000 Year Old Spiritual Elixir
8. Coaching Certification Program
9. Ultimate Guide to Psilocybin Mushrooms
10. Episode 190. Jonathan Lu & Shauheen Etminan, Ph.D. - Ancient Psychoactive Potions: Beta-Carbolines & Syrian Rue

These show links may contain affiliate links. Third Wave receives a small percentage of the product price if you purchase through the above affiliate links.

This episode is brought to you by Psyched Wellness. Their product, Calm, is an over-the-counter Amanita muscaria extract that may help to reduce stress, ease muscular tension and promote restorative sleep. Their team of leading scientists and wellness professionals has managed to successfully distill the restorative and healing elements from the Amanita muscaria mushroom. To be one of the first to try this breakthrough product, go to shop.psyched-wellness.com and use the code THIRDWAVE23 to get 15% off when ordering.

This episode is brought to you by Apollo Neuro, the first scientifically validated wearable that actively improves your body’s resilience to stress. Apollo engages with your sense of touch to deliver soothing vibrations that signal safety to the brain. Clinically proven to improve heart rate variability, it can actually enhance the outcomes of your other efforts like deep breathing, yoga, meditation, and plant medicine. Apollo was developed by a friend of Third Wave, Dr. David Rabin M.D Ph.D., a neuroscientist and board-certified psychiatrist who has been studying the impact of chronic stress in humans for nearly 15 years. Third Wave listeners get 15% off—just use this link.

Podcast Transcript

0:00:00.0 Paul F. Austin: Welcome back to the Psychedelic Podcast by Third Wave. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Sarah Abedi, an emergency medicine physician and psychedelic clinical trial facilitator.

0:00:11.9 Sarah Abedi, M.D.: As we're writing this legislation, we want to be very careful about preserving the sacredness of this work and trying to be a little bit more on the offensive to help shape this in the most positive way possible instead of just sitting back and maybe letting some special interest create the ecosystem, so I encourage anyone that feels a resonance to this to come join us, work together. We need everybody for this, we need to do this together.

0:00:45.4 PA: Welcome to the Psychedelic podcast by Third Wave, Audio mycelium, connecting you to the luminaries and thought leaders of the psychedelic renaissance. We bring you illuminating conversations with scientists, therapists, entrepreneurs, coaches, doctors and shamanic practitioners, exploring how we can best use psychedelic medicine to accelerate personal healing, peak performance and collective transformation.

0:01:17.9 PA: Hey, listeners, we're excited to announce Psyched Wellness as our newest podcast sponsor. Their product Calm has been developed by leading scientists and wellness professionals, and is an over the counter Amanita muscaria extract that may help to reduce stress, ease muscular tension and promote restorative sleep. For the first time in history, they've managed to successfully distill the restorative and healing elements from the Amanita muscaria Mushroom. Their lab tested Amanita muscaria Extract is detoxified and safe for consumption. If you'd like to be one of the first to try this breakthrough product, you can go to shop.psyched-wellness.com, that's shop.psyched-wellness.com, and use the code Third Wave 23, to get 15% off when ordering. That's Shop.psyched P-S-Y-C-H-E-D psyched-wellness.com, and use the code third wave 23 to get 15% off when ordering.

0:02:30.8 PA: Hey listeners, this is Paul Austin, founder and CEO of Third Wave, and I'm so excited to have Dr. Sarah Abedi on the podcast today. Sarah is an emergency medicine physician and facilitator for psychedelic clinical research trials. She's also the Chief Medical Officer for TREAT California, which we talk about a lot in the podcast today. An initiative aimed at creating a $5 billion funding agency in California to support psychedelic research, education, training and access. She has completed training at the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research at CIIS and is certified as a maps MVMA assisted therapist. She's also the co-founder of the Integrative Mental Health Institute, ONEA, which we also talk about in the podcast today. So in our podcast today, Sarah and I go deep into the topics of the TREAT initiative and getting the state of California to help, to support psychedelic research and access. We talk about why this is so important. We talk about some of the pros and cons of regulation, FDA approval versus state by state legal access.

0:03:43.5 PA: We talk a lot about Sarah's personal experience at psychedelics, her experience being a facilitator in clinical trials and what that was like, and we recorded this live at Psychedelic Science, the MAPS Conference in June, 2023. So you may hear a little bit of background noise, because we did record this in one of the main areas and overall, I had such a pleasure getting to drop in with Sarah. We've known each other for just under a year now, and I believe that especially as a emergency medicine physician, the work that she has chosen to get involved with psychedelics has been really impactful for a lot of people. And this TREAT initiative through California is huge. Imagine if California puts $5 billion towards psychedelic research and access. That would be phenomenal. So anyway without further ado, I bring you Dr. Sarah Abedi. We're sitting at the Psychedelic Science Conference.

0:04:42.6 SA: Yes.

0:04:42.8 PA: It's June 23, 2023.

0:04:45.7 SA: That's right.

0:04:46.3 PA: June 23, '23. And here with Dr. Sarah Abedi, who has been working on the TREAT initiative...

0:04:54.8 SA: Right.

0:04:56.2 PA: In California...

0:04:58.8 SA: Yes.

0:05:00.1 PA: Has helped to facilitate clinical trials with psilocybin...

0:05:01.0 SA: Right.

0:05:01.9 PA: I believe.

0:05:02.0 SA: Yes.

0:05:02.9 PA: And also helped to start an integrative mental health non-profit charity?

0:05:08.8 SA: Yeah, it's a non-profit, a mental integrative mental health institute called Onea.

0:05:14.2 PA: What does Onea mean?

0:05:15.9 SA: Onea, I just like the sound. We liked the name [laughter] It just felt calm and soothing, but there's not a meaning behind it.

0:05:23.3 PA: There's no meaning behind Onea?

0:05:24.6 SA: No meaning. But don't you think there should be?

0:05:26.1 PA: Absolutely.

0:05:26.6 SA: I mean [laughter]

0:05:28.7 PA: Is there any etymology or...

0:05:30.0 SA: Nothing.

0:05:30.4 PA: Is it literally just something that...

0:05:34.6 SA: No, I don't think there is anything.

0:05:36.1 PA: Oh that's beautiful.

0:05:39.1 SA: Yeah.

0:05:39.1 PA: ONAYA, O-N-A-Y-A.

0:05:39.2 SA: O-N-E-A.

0:05:39.2 PA: O-N-E-A.

0:05:39.3 SA: O-N-E-A.

0:05:39.3 PA: And it's not an acronym. It doesn't...

0:05:40.3 SA: No. No.

0:05:41.5 PA: Wow.

0:05:41.7 SA: But it maybe could be. You're inspiring me. Maybe... [laughter] Yeah.

0:05:47.3 PA: So what brought you to the MAPS conference? You spoke here if I'm not mistaken?

0:05:52.7 SA: Yeah, yeah. I spoke with Dave Esselman. We spoke about how practitioners can get more involved in the space. My conventional background, I had trained in emergency medicine, and once I finished my training in residency and I actually finished in the height of COVID, so I was a fourth year resident there at UCLA's County Hospital, which was pretty rough. And I realized once I finished my training and I started to see patients, as in attending the type of work I was doing, the way I was helping in treating patients, it wasn't the deep healing I thought I would be a part of in medical school. And so for the first part, the first talk that I did was just how I had to take a little bit of a step back, and heal that I think profound disconnection I felt in myself, which was necessary to survive. But now, realizing that I am not at all aligned with what I was supposed to do, and just a sense of how dysregulated my nervous system was, and taking that as a clue instead of just trying to push it down and suppress it, that again, there's something not aligned. And so taking a step back, doing a little bit of healing and starting that journey more seriously, it just led me into all the stuff that I've started to do.

0:07:13.0 SA: So the clinical trials, the private practice, and now a big part of the work I do is just policy and advocacy work. So I spoke about that. And then the second talk was about safety and accountability in the psychedelic space. Sometimes I think we have a way of thinking about medicine in the West can be a little reductionistic, and mechanistic, has incredible wisdom. But when we're working with these types of medicines, do we need to have a little bit of a different understanding in framework? So I was kind of touching a little bit on that.

0:07:49.7 PA: What would be that different understanding in framework?

0:07:51.9 SA: Yeah. I think when we look at where these medicines come from, this indigenous wisdom, these curanderos, these shamans, they... Their understanding of health and healing is material, mental and spiritual. We can't, we don't even have the word for energy, energy work in western medicine. In traditional Chinese medicine, it's called chi. In Ayurveda, it's called prana. And a lot of the work as especially the more we talk with these elders and indigenous wisdom keepers, this is energy work. It can be. And so what does that look like? What does that feel like to be able to sit when people are having maybe mystical like experiences or these spiritual experiences, and how to connect with them if we don't have that language that we probably haven't really been taught in Western medicine. But it doesn't mean that we can't bring those two worlds together. They're not mutually exclusive. They can be incredibly powerful together.

0:08:56.3 PA: I interviewed Jeremy Narby, who wrote the Cosmic Serpent, and Intelligence in Nature.

0:09:02.4 SA: Yeah.

0:09:02.7 PA: He is an anthropologist, West Anthropologist. And he was talking about this on our podcast together where I think it was in Quechua, they have specific language or words, or even Shipibo, very specific language or words that describe these other worldly experiences.

0:09:19.2 SA: Exactly.

0:09:19.3 PA: And they even describe how they relate to nature, how they relate to the world around us. And he was essentially Zane in English. We don't have a lot of this...

0:09:29.4 SA: Right.

0:09:29.5 PA: Terminology, and language creates our reality.

0:09:29.4 SA: Exactly.

0:09:29.5 PA: So part of what seems to be emerging and that it's a good tie back to this concept of Onea.

0:09:35.8 SA: Yeah.

0:09:39.1 PA: Because it was an interesting reflection, and we were like, "This is not an acronym, and I actually don't know what it means."

0:09:43.0 SA: Yeah.

0:09:44.4 PA: It's something sort of emergent that came through.

0:09:46.0 SA: Yeah.

0:09:47.4 PA: And it feels like there's even, as more and more of us work with psychedelics or in these, let's say mythical, mystical spaces.

0:09:52.6 SA: Yes.

0:09:53.8 PA: There's sort of an intelligence that's coming through that's maybe helping us to learn how to better articulate and talk about these altered states.

0:10:02.0 SA: Absolutely. And I think a big part, even for my journey is the more I dug into my healing and I went on that journey, I found there was something that really strengthened, and that was my intuition. And I feel like there was parts of my intuition that I had to suppress a bit. Especially, I would say maybe in my medical education, you do 28 hour calls, and your intuition is like, I wanna sleep, I'm tired, I want to eat. And you have to disconnect from those parts. And then you show up in full service to care for another person. And I sometimes worry that that intuitive healing ability gets a bit dampened, but it never goes away. And so I feel like a big part of even how I got into this was reigniting that, finding that, connecting to that again. Yeah, no, it was a big part of it.

0:10:54.6 PA: Tell us about the TREAT Initiative in California.

0:10:57.8 SA: Yes. So the TREAT Initiative, so this is a voter-driven ballot initiative. It'll be on California's 2024 ballot. Yeah. And it will be an initiative that will create a $5 billion funding agency to support the psychedelic ecosystem. Now, the way that it works is in particular states, they have this voter-driven pathway. So if we feel like the legislation isn't doing something that the voters want, we can go through this particular pathway. And the founder and CEO behind the kind of the visionary behind this, Jeannie Fontana, she's an MD-PhD that was part of two other ballot initiatives that successfully raised $8.5 billion to create a stem cell agency called Serum. And that actually made California the leader of stem cell research in the world. And so, Jeannie found that what are we lacking in this space? We don't have a significant enough funding source to be able to support everything. We're lucky enough to have had philanthropy get us this far, and we know we're so grateful that we're standing on those shoulders. But now, to really get it to the next level, I think we need an initiative like this that will help elevate everybody and everybody's work.

0:12:18.4 PA: So it's about, just to clarify funding from the state.

0:12:21.0 SA: Yes.

0:12:22.9 PA: For psychedelic research?

0:12:23.9 SA: Right. It would be a lot of things. Psychedelic research would be part of it, so funding the large scale clinical trials, funding some of the clinical trials for unpatentable psychedelics, as well as funding a lot of other research. I just went to this incredibly beautiful talk about the work being done at Imperial College of London with Israelis and Palestinians. This money does not necessarily have to stay in California. It can go globally, especially to support projects that might not... We're not doing that kind of work in California. And the other, so TREAT is an acronym. So it stands for a bunch of things that we'd like to cover. So research, education, access, treatment.

0:13:07.3 SA: A big part of this, especially for Jeannie, is that the access component, that we want to be able to try to create some sort of system to help every Californian access this who is eligible and wants to, regardless of their ability to pay. And another component of this is, what do the training programs look like? They're pretty expensive now. A lot of facilitators can't afford that. How can we help support that. And also, we see that there's so many different types of trainings that are gonna exist with the different models. There might be a little bit more of a medical-leading model, but that's not the only way to administer or give these medicines. We need to understand the indigenous model and support that more. What is maybe the more spiritual divinity pathway look like. Maybe the two are a little bit similar, but some of the work coming out with Tony Bossis and Roland Griffiths, I'm really looking forward to reading that research study where they give these medicines.

0:14:03.8 PA: With the spiritual leaders.

0:14:05.5 SA: Yeah. And when I was talking with Tony, I was like, what does that look like to create those training programs for spiritual leaders? So, how can we support that? Just given the number of facilitators that we're gonna need. And there's a whole host of other things. Another component of TREAT that I actually really resonate with is that, how can we support the wellness? This is not just someone that has the "medical pathology" or a "medical disorder." How can we elevate the wellness space of this just for a "healthy normal", which again, I don't know if it exists, but we use that term in research. But there's just so many indications. And so how can we use this as a way to rise the tide for every ship in this ecosystem.

0:14:56.0 PA: How would this overlap with the bill that was recently passed through the California Senate? I believe it's in the state assembly now.

0:15:01.3 SA: Yeah.

0:15:02.9 PA: They don't think it's likely to pass through the state assembly, unfortunately.

0:15:06.0 SA: Right.

0:15:07.5 PA: Maybe just tell us a little bit about from a political perspective, I'm hearing that your, the TREAT initiative is more voted on?

0:15:15.0 SA: Exactly.

0:15:15.7 PA: The other initiative is being passed through a legislative perspective.

0:15:15.8 SA: Exactly, right.

0:15:23.9 PA: And the aims and intentions are, I mean there's overlap, but there's also different aims and intentions.

0:15:27.0 SA: Totally. Right. That bill is a decriminalization bill of particular plant medicines. And we are not really a decriminalization or legalization bill, but I think a lot of what we will end up funding will get us there and will actually probably even with FDA approval of some of these medicines, make them federally legal at a much faster rate. But I actually see a lot of these things very mutually supportive because whenever there's decrim, I mean that's a beautiful first start. No one should be going to jail at all or criminalized for using these medicines. But then what's the next step? What's the education? What's the support structure? What's the infrastructure that is needed to get people access to these medicines? So I believe that might be a first good step, but we're doing something a little bit different, but I see it very synergistically.

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0:18:09.6 SA: Colorado has an interesting model. It's part of the reason why MAPS chose to host the conference here is because with Prop 122, they've, some would call it decriminalized, others would call it, they basically legalized all plant medicines because now ceremonialists can host experiences and they can be paid for those ceremonies. They can't be paid for the... They can't sell the mushroom or sell ayahuasca, but they can facilitate and host and be paid for that.

0:18:39.3 PA: There's in a way a legal model, it's not regulated by the state. And there's all these pros and cons with regulation. On the one hand, regulation helps to ensure safety, accessibility through potential healthcare insurance. It ensures that there are credibility standards and ensures that people who wouldn't normally access this could potentially benefit from it. The challenge with it is that it's incredibly expensive and a lot of bureaucracy and it lends itself as a system to monopolies like Compass and Atai. Whereas in the decrim landscape, it's much more diverse and there seems to be this capacity for people, like we've trained in our program 150 practitioners at this point.

0:19:21.5 SA: Wow.

0:19:22.0 PA: And a lot of them are doing underground work and a lot of them are facilitating incredible experiences. And then they've been really looking at the church model. The challenge with the church model is, most aren't fully legal. It can provide a little bit of protection but it's not airtight.

0:19:40.3 SA: Right.

0:19:41.3 PA: So what I mean, I'm just curious your thoughts on... Especially coming from a medical background and your own frustrations with some of the healthcare system as is. Do you think that psychedelics can change the healthcare system from within? Or do you believe that we need to create an entirely new paradigm that is totally questioning everything about that current system?

0:20:00.8 SA: Yeah. [chuckle] I think the answer is probably a little bit of both. So a friend, Tony Bach is doing some great work in Washington where he's giving first responder physicians and healthcare workers psilocybin. And a part of me when I thinks about that I think there are systems that we should work within and try to create new structures, try to bridge some of these worlds that need to speak together and change them. Because a lot of people will only access it through that way. And then there's the other side where it's how can we just build something completely new? And what I actually really appreciate about the TREAT initiative that some other states might not have is that there's funding behind it. So we're actually really supportive of all of those other ways of accessing this medicine. It's by no means just the medical model. There's so many other ways.

0:20:58.3 SA: But what I like to do, what I think about when I'm trying to conceptualize TREAT is, how can we let every citizen in California know these are the different modalities? This is what you have. And how can we empower them to know, okay, this is where I am in my current healing space. I feel a little bit more comfortable accessing this way. Also knowing that all of these other ways of accessing the medicine exists. But I think that there... I don't think there's a one size fits all for anyone. We sometimes use that in medicine and I hope and encourage that we start changing that behavior. And again a big part of what draws me to this is that, there's beautiful wisdom in Western medicine but there's a lot we still have to learn.

0:21:45.9 SA: And I would love to see how we can combine the indigenous wisdom into this and see if we can shift some of the paradigms. Because for me if we don't really acknowledge the human being as a whole and we only look at it as a sum of its parts like we sometimes do. We have a specialist for every organ. Are they really talking to each other? Are we really looking at everything that goes into someone's healing? Not just their biological function but their nutrition, their circadian rhythms, how they're connecting with each other, what's their purpose? How are they connecting with something bigger than themselves? Do they feel this deep interconnection that I think indigenous wisdom naturally touches on? I think that would be an incredible powerful combination.

0:22:33.3 PA: Yeah. It feels like a lot of unlearning in some ways, right?

0:22:36.1 SA: I see that all the time. So when I was sitting as a facilitator... So I started doing facilitation or research clinical trials with Pacific Neuroscience Institute and the first time I sat with a patient I remember I felt like I had to unlearn everything. There's this acronym we had learned in training. WAIT, Why Am I Talking? Because as a physician I feel like you're always trained to know the answer. And the more I do this work, the more I'm like, "There's a lot I don't know." And I'm humbled constantly about how especially this process, this inner healing wisdom, it far can outweigh what I think I know with all the wisdom I've learned from my 12 years of training to become a physician. And so I don't know. I appreciate that. I appreciate that humility.

[chuckle]

0:23:26.8 PA: It's like the plants have an intelligence to them.

0:23:29.9 SA: Big time. Yes.

0:23:30.8 PA: And so the humility I think comes from some would call it the ego death or some would just call it the downloads or the insights or the messages. But that's what I've learned as well. It's like, in doing my fair bit of facilitation you create a really good structure and system. You help people to feel safe and calm by going over practical sensibilities.

0:23:54.0 SA: Yes.

0:23:54.8 PA: And then you just give them a bunch of mushrooms and see...

[laughter]

0:23:58.1 PA: See what happens. And it's been a journey and l love that WAIT, Why Am I Talking? 'Cause a lot of ceremony is silent.

0:24:09.0 SA: Yes.

0:24:09.7 PA: And a lot of what people need is to be able to go deep within and really open up these channels of intuition and inner healing. 'Cause in a way that's what will help to guide them. Now with that being said, I think it's also important we're talking about... I don't know if the words come up yet but precision medicine. And as we look at precision medicine, more and more people are looking at... Like even functional medicine or integrated medicine has been aware of this, less and less the healing the sick model or the fix it model. 'Cause the whole metaphysics of fixing...

0:24:46.5 SA: Yes.

0:24:47.2 PA: Is very rooted in us as machines and industrialism.

0:24:50.1 SA: Right.

0:24:50.5 PA: And I think part of what you're speaking to is, as part of de-industrializing our souls for lack of a better term these plant medicines really help us to re-indigenize...

0:25:00.5 SA: Yes.

0:25:00.6 PA: And get back in touch with some of these ancient archaic ways of being.

0:25:03.0 SA: Oh, yeah. I just feel like prevention is key. And then I think sometimes we wait until there's a disease component. But I think when we look at it and when I'm looking at it now I feel like there's almost decades of time when I look at patients where I'm like, "We had a moment to intervene there before this became disease." And it's a completely different way of thinking. And I think the most important part of all this work, is how can we empower the patient to realize it's all within them, every part of this. And a good healer, a good person that's facilitating any of this helps someone shift that back. And sometimes in Western medicine I feel like we give the power to the physician. You are in charge of my healing. And that's what I'm really hoping we can shift out of because it's just not a sustainable model. And nobody knows your healing journey or what you need better than yourself once you really connect intuitively into your body, into your mind, into your spirit to know.

0:26:03.6 PA: Yeah, Gnosis is big in that way. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the phase two clinical trials. Because I don't think we've had a facilitator of those psilocybin trials specifically in the podcast before. So I'm curious, what is that like? What's the setting like? What is that relationship with the patient like in terms of prep and integration support? As you're stepping into a facilitator role in those clinical trials, what is it that you're doing? What is it that you're holding?

0:26:31.0 SA: Yeah, so we spend hours of time doing preparation and hours of time doing integration after. And then I think probably the dosing day I wanna say is about six to eight hours. And yeah, I think what's interesting sometimes with the preparation, a lot of it is not only preparing them for what they're about to do, but also answering a lot of misconceptions about what they think this is gonna be because of all the things that they've heard. [chuckle] And then just the sheer shock of once they are done in their integration process, how different it was than what they expected it was. But I remember when I was doing my first facilitation, I quietly sat and cried I wanna say most of the time because I was so grateful and honored that I had finally found a space that I could... I felt like this is why I went to medical school, is to be in this type of situation and in this type of room. And the luxury, I don't know, that's the word I could think of to spend that much time with one patient in their healing process, it was just so healing for me.

0:27:45.8 SA: And I was just thinking how incredibly necessary. I wish my colleagues in emergency medicine or really any field we get limited with 15-minute, whatever constraints to see patients. And I felt profound gratitude to have that exposure. And then it just really made me think that this mass exodus of physicians and a lot of people in healthcare, there's this almost misconception that we're burned out, we need more wellness, we need more Pizza Fridays or yoga. And it's just like, that's not it. There's so many invisible forces that keep us from practicing the way we wanted to. That we knew the desire that made us go through that crazy amount of training to sit and be there in someone's healing just... I can talk about what all those invisible forces felt like for me, but once I started peeling it back and realizing, no, I don't wanna leave medicine. I wanna create a new form of medicine. A way that I don't feel drained after a shift. I feel energized. And even after we had that facilitation session, it was a bit, I would say mildly taxing, but when I left just physically to be there in one place. But when I left, I felt the sense of euphoria and energy that I had never felt in any other time in my practice. And that's what really led me to be like, "What would this look like in private practice as well?"

0:29:22.3 SA: And wanting to combine particular modalities like ketamine and maybe some breathwork preparation before. And again, using the intuition and a little bit more of the flexibility to be like, "What could this look like?" And it doesn't really fit in that really neat 15 minutes I got with you. And so, that's what I encourage a lot of us as providers to start questioning what is that thing. Because I think the deeper knowing and the deeper desire to heal will always be there, but let's identify those invisible forces that are stopping us from showing up as the healers that we want to be.

0:30:04.7 PA: Beautifully said. Thank you.

0:30:05.8 SA: Thank you.

[chuckle]

0:30:08.0 PA: That was a nice gift. So with these phase two clinical trials, what's the dose level that people are taking?

0:30:13.1 SA: Yeah, so it's 25 mg.

0:30:16.5 PA: Which is equivalent to?

0:30:17.9 SA: About 4 1/2 g.

0:30:19.4 PA: Of Golden Teachers or cubensis or?

0:30:22.6 SA: Good question.

0:30:24.5 PA: I think it's something like that. Like a pretty...

0:30:24.7 SA: I think it's cubensis. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:30:26.1 PA: I only ask 'cause as I've got deeper into mushrooms, which has happened the last few years, there's all these strains.

0:30:30.8 SA: Yes.

0:30:31.7 PA: So ghost, for example, is a new strain that's come online. Maybe you've heard of it. More MDMA like, the psilocybin content is two times as much as Golden Teachers.

0:30:43.1 SA: Right.

0:30:44.0 PA: And so, this nuance of... This is a slight tangent, but I'll do my best to bring it back. The nuance of like ghost and Enigma, we've heard of Penis Envy, there's Golden Teachers. That is something that I think because of the natural restrictions that have to be put into place for clinical trials, you can't have much variability, you have to have the synthetic. I imagine you're... Are you doing breathwork and all these things with clients in the preparation phase to bring them into it?

0:31:13.0 SA: In my private practice, I do.

0:31:14.0 PA: But not in the clinical trials?

0:31:16.1 SA: I think there can sometimes be...

0:31:17.0 PA: Is it all the same? Is it talk therapy only in terms of...

0:31:20.0 SA: Not necessarily. Yes. Sometimes you can do guided meditation or grounding breathing exercises, probably not like a holotropic breathwork or we haven't done it, or I personally haven't been part of that. But in my private practice, if I feel that someone hasn't had a non-ordinary state before and there's just resistance there. And again, it's just an intuition that knows, let's start with breathwork. And sometimes that's all they need for their healing and...

0:31:51.5 PA: I've had plenty of people who have been like, "Breathwork has been way more powerful than even taking mushrooms."

0:31:52.8 SA: Yeah. That's it. No, I know. Right. And I remember even from my healing journey, when I had finished residency, I had these wild somatic things going on in my body. I had this numbness and weakness. And immediately I went to... This is pathology. I have some sort of neurodegenerative disorder and I had gone to the doctors. They had really ruled everything out, but I was just like, "No, I could not." There was this reflex loop that was driving me crazy. And I actually realized the only thing that released that was breathwork. And I remember that my breathwork teacher or the person that I had done it with was like, "This is not disease yet, but if you don't know how to release this, then it could become in the future." And there was something about that that resonated so deeply with me. And I just really loved how empowering that was. You're not ingesting anything. It's just your natural... The gift of your breathing.

0:32:57.8 SA: And so, I feel like sometimes even more powerful than any ketamine work... Ketamine work can be incredibly powerful. But I've seen some of the most incredible transformations with breathwork. And that would be, again, something that with the TREAT initiative, I would want to put research behind and understand. Because I understand right now why we don't have a lot of research for it. There's not really a financial incentive. So how can we support those things for the good of humanity?

0:33:27.4 PA: Yeah. And there's a significant amount that can be done through philanthropy.

0:33:31.2 SA: Right.

0:33:31.5 PA: Like you talked about. And why not utilize the structure of this sort of federal system or big state system...

0:33:39.7 SA: Exactly.

0:33:40.2 PA: That has a ton of money and start to shift that. I guess I'm just a little anarchist and...

0:33:45.2 SA: No, I totally get it.

0:33:46.1 PA: I'm a little... I'm skeptical of anything with big government in a way.

0:33:51.9 SA: Absolutely. No, I understand.

0:33:52.8 PA: Especially when it comes to psychedelics. 'Cause my lens is somewhat like psychedelics and modern industrial capitalism do not go together at all. And yet there is this sort of like... The metaphor I like to use. Have you seen that mushroom video where the mushroom injects the ant...

0:34:14.2 SA: No.

0:34:14.7 PA: And then explodes out of its head?

0:34:16.0 SA: No, I gotta see it.

[laughter]

0:34:17.2 PA: Oh, so it's this...

0:34:18.9 SA: Send it to me.

0:34:19.0 PA: I think it's cordyceps maybe. Even as a mushroom, there's also a psychedelic mushroom where it takes over the body of a dead ant or a live ant. And then, or a dying ant or something like that, and then kinda shoots out new life through it. And I think that's kinda my... It's a good metaphor to describe it.

0:34:33.6 SA: I like that.

0:34:33.7 PA: I think if we can get mushrooms supported by federal governments and these big state governments. These things that are very not conscious. These things that are very divisive or...

0:34:42.8 SA: Right.

0:34:43.8 PA: Maybe there will be some new sprouting from that that will be much more aligned with everything that we talk about, breathwork and community and...

0:34:51.4 SA: Absolutely.

0:34:52.1 PA: Holistic living. And I'm really inspired by these models. We have as part of our practitioner training program, we do retreats, what I'm calling intensives 'cause they can be intense in a center called Tierra Valiente, Brave Earth. It's two hours from... No, 45 minutes from La Fortuna. And they bought this land in 2017. They built on it, and finished in 2020. And it's all natural.

0:35:17.8 SA: Wow.

0:35:19.5 PA: The maloca is beautiful. It took them a year and a half to build the ground of the maloca, 'cause it's made from eight layers of dirt. Everything's made out of bamboo and wood and Aircrete and everything. And their vision is, it's like, this is going to be a center where we live in community, where we have a governance that is very distributed where we help to re-indigenize, bring in indigenous elders from other aspects or areas of Costa Rica or Central America and have them teach here and be here. And for me, I'm really... That model's not accessible for most.

0:35:50.7 SA: Yeah. But that resonates with you.

0:35:51.8 PA: But it creates a vortex of these sort of new lights of consciousness that are emerging, that I think when I'm there, I just got back from being there for six weeks and when I'm there you feel the healing of being in nature and in the land. And out of very urban industrial sort of decaying, dying, sick environments.

0:36:12.3 SA: Yeah. And I think that kinda touches on what we were talking about before. It's like, do we go into these old institutions and try to change them within? Or do we try to build these new beautiful communities? And you're right, that might not be accessible to many, but they are stunning and they should be done. And on the other side, what does it look like to try to use these current systems and try to make the change and at least try. I think that's what we're trying to do here. 'Cause I never in a million years thought I would ever get involved in policy or advocacy work. I think I'm the same as you where I'm just like, "I'm a skeptic." I'm like, "This ain't gonna work for me."

0:36:50.4 SA: But I realized, if we are not sitting at that table and helping these change, or these legislator, or whoever it is that has the power and the money really to make some of these things come to fruition, then we're doing a disservice. Because they have this 30,000 ft vision of what they think it looks like. But I can tell them that this is not what it looks like at a county hospital at Harbor-UCLA. And so, how can we be those bridge builders? And at least try. And I think you're right. Maybe the spirit of the plant or the medicine is, it has its own will. And so how can we try... I mean, for me, the goal, the ideal situation is bridging these worlds. We have just been so... I feel like we think that these are mutually exclusive, but again, I think together are more powerful than we can imagine these different ways of thinking. And I'm curious, we'll see. We'll see what happens.

0:37:51.0 PA: What do you think about the role of nature in healing and how maybe that could be better weaved into...

0:37:57.1 SA: Oh, big time [laughter]

0:37:58.2 PA: It could be clinical institutions or it could be even clinics and healthcare and medicine. Like, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

0:38:05.4 SA: Well, I think some of the most profound, like healing work I've ever been a part of has been in nature. And I was... Actually, I know a lot of spaces are trying to move into nature to be able to do this work. 'Cause I just feel like nature is our original home and there is something that happens that completely regulates your nervous system. And even we now have these terms for it called forest bathing. Like in Japan where you go into nature, I think it's like 10 minutes and when they, check biomarkers after your cortisol level is lower, just simply being in nature. And that's how physiology is we are in tuned to being in nature. I don't think we really understand the repercussions and impact of not being in a natural space. Especially us people that live in these urban areas. And so I just feel like that is the absolute next step for research. Again, something I'd love to put funding behind, now I think me and you probably...

0:39:11.9 PA: Hiker-dosing, I'm all for hiker-dosing, Sarah.

[laughter]

0:39:15.1 PA: I think we should take mushrooms and go for walks in the woods. Not high doses. Not high doses.

0:39:20.4 SA: No. No I hear you. But yeah, I just feel like, let's support that. Unfortunately, I bet for me and you, that feels so intuitive. But sometimes if we want the vast majority of people to be like, oh, okay, yeah, let's tune to nature, what wisdom do we have to use to show it to them? And it's sometimes research. And I'm like, fine, if that's what we need to do, let's do that because I'm very confident, and we'll see, the research will show. But let's have the research show to us.

0:39:51.1 PA: There has been some research from Ros Watts...

0:39:52.0 SA: That is incredibly promising.

0:39:53.1 PA: And Sam Gandy. And I think it's out of Imperial College, I believe, on the relationship of psilocybin and connectedness to nature and how that amplifies a lot of the benefits.

0:40:03.7 SA: Absolutely.

0:40:04.7 PA: So the more we can do that type of... And that's what I noticed even in hosting these intents with the practitioners, it's like being in the land itself in nature is medicine enough.

0:40:14.2 SA: It's incredibly grounding.

0:40:15.7 PA: When you're surrounded by all green and trees and crickets and birds and snakes and sloths, and it's like epic. And so that's what we teach them. It's like the medicine is the land, it's the nature. We do Temescal, we do a hiker-dose, we do a high-dose ceremony. Have you, do you know this term? Is this the first time you're hearing it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is, yeah. A few years ago, I was doing an acid in Berlin.

0:40:42.0 SA: Yeah.

0:40:42.7 PA: And it was with a buddy, he actually came up with it, who works for our organization. I was like, oh, that's brilliant, I'm gonna take that. But we really bring them into the elements. The fire of the Temescal, the water of the hot springs, the earthing of the nature walk, and then the air, the transcendence of the ceremony to weave together a really, and that, like, the mushrooms are nice, the psilocybin is helpful, but what I come back to, it's like, if you eat well, if you sleep well, if you move a lot, and if you spend a lot of time in nature, like...

0:41:13.7 SA: That's prevention.

0:41:14.3 PA: Mushrooms are just a bonus at that point.

0:41:16.9 SA: And that is prevention. Like, if we teach people how to care for themselves, wellness, healthcare, it's 99% what you do every day. It's really not what you do when you go to your doctor's office. And I find that whatever is happening in nature, it's just that pure grounding. And what I didn't realize, as I had finished my training, and when my nervous system was profoundly dysregulated, you can't think your way into a safe nervous system. You have to do very different things. If you could, then, if our prefrontal cortex could think our way out of anxiety and all those things, our society would be a very different place. And so I even remember that I had to, like, just kinda get out of my head and understand what all those things were that helped ground you, whether it was meditation, humming. A big part of it for me was just walking in nature for hours. The practice that I still keep now is just sometimes 30 minutes, one hour, just walking. Oh, now there's a dog here. [laughter]

0:42:22.7 PA: You're so cute. This is Jeremy Gardner's pup. The cutest dog ever.

0:42:25.0 SA: Oh, come back. Why are you leaving?

0:42:28.3 PA: He is so, what dog is that again? What type of dog?

0:42:30.9 SA: I don't know, but it's so cute.

0:42:32.0 PA: It's a little Japanese, like, cute, ador...

0:42:35.8 SA: Shiba Inu.

0:42:36.0 PA: A Shiba Inu?

0:42:36.9 SA: Yeah.

0:42:37.1 PA: You are so cute. [laughter] Oh my gosh, adorable.

0:42:39.8 SA: Come join and see, this is grounding.

0:42:41.9 PA: It is grounding. What a cute dog. So nature walks are healing.

0:42:45.9 SA: It's incredible.

0:42:46.8 PA: Nature walks are super healing.

0:42:47.2 SA: Incredible.

0:42:47.3 PA: I heard about a friend that I knew from when I lived in Oakland, he's leading now nature walks with mushrooms in Oakland. Where they're going out to the redwoods, which are right there, and they're doing smaller amounts of mushrooms. And he's like, sometimes we'll have 70 people who will come and join us for these experiences.

0:43:04.1 SA: What is that like? [laughter]

0:43:05.8 PA: Which is fantastic. And one thing I've talked to quite a few people about at the conference, and I've talked about this extensively in the podcast, is I'm a really big believer in low doses. So a lot of the clinical research is on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, a high-dose mystical experience, prep, integration. Big shifts and changes. We know there's been, in the 60s and 70s, in Europe more so, a lot of research on psycholytic therapy, which is lower doses done maybe once a week with talk therapy. And so I've been continuing to hold that pillar. And I think there's a real lack of research on that. So maybe a plug.

0:43:44.0 SA: Yeah. [laughter]

0:43:45.9 PA: That for the TREAT initiative, looking at lower doses combined with things like breath work and cold plunge, sauna, and hiking, and meditation, and this will come as a surprise to you, but not to the listeners, ketamine and body work. So I did rectal ketamine with body work with a phenomenal 75-year-old master up in Gualala. And it was... And yet none of these, these are not data points, or these are data points, but they're not, we can't fund research in every single... Like if we had research in every single modality combined with every single type of psychedelic, that would be a lot of research that could never happen.

0:44:30.4 PA: So I think that's also part of what I'd like to see more of. It's like low doses of LSD, low doses of psilocybin. Low doses of Wachuma as well, 'cause Wachuma is very anti-inflammatory, and inflammation is a core thing in chronic disease to help to eliminate and reduce.

0:44:47.6 SA: It's huge chronic inflammation.

0:44:51.0 PA: So, and that physiology, that physiological focus, I think the psychedelic space broadly could use, 'cause there's a lot of people who are overly, I think, academic, or maybe in their head, or like just not, or the focus is like mental health, mental health, mental health. And I'm like, everything comes back to the body. Physiology is of the utmost importance.

0:45:15.0 SA: It's all connected. Yeah, and then sometimes it's like, I can't wait for us to like mental health, or, you have a, like you have your psychiatrist again, like you have your cardiologist, your internal medicine doctor, all of it is connected. And I'm really excited for us to maybe shift away from, again, a little bit of that reductionistic model and realize mental health is physical health is interconnected, spiritual health, whatever you wanna call it. Because if you have the other two maybe in perfect harmony, but the third is not, you're not in health, you're not in harmony. And actually, I really agree with you about the low doses, I use that a lot in my practice. And I just find that like I would like to find the lowest dose possible and then if I need to and if I feel like the person also agrees, maybe we'll do a booster or something during the session. But I found the most profound insights with the lower doses.

0:46:10.0 SA: And some people, I understand why they do the higher doses, but I sometimes really like to have a more gentle relationship with the ego of... And 'cause I feel like it's absolutely necessary why it's there and how we can more gently work with it and have it know that it's in a safe place. And that's what I'm actually really excited to do, and even some of the work I know people do now with microdosing, with using incredibly low doses having profound experiences, but with the right preparation. So it's like, what are all the ingredients that go into that? And I just feel like the lower dose, you can almost maybe even hold on to so much more, and you can drive it even more. But different experience, but something that I personally love working with my patients.

0:46:55.0 PA: Yeah. My sense is like the vast majority of people who work with psychedelics will do so in a low dose format. Now that could be a microdose or that could be perceptible, experiential, but not mystical experience.

0:47:16.0 SA: Right.

0:47:16.2 PA: Level, right? And that the intervention of a high dose mystical experience is great for many.

0:47:24.3 SA: Yeah.

0:47:25.9 PA: MDMA especially, psilocybin I'm skeptical of like 30% of the population doing five grams of mushrooms.

[laughter]

0:47:34.8 PA: I think you're asking for it at that point.

0:47:36.1 SA: No, you're right. Yeah.

0:47:37.3 PA: Which is, it's an imbalance. Terence McKenna would always say five to 10%.

0:47:41.0 SA: Yeah, yeah.

0:47:42.3 PA: And Ken Wilbur talked about this parallel between the enlightenment and what's happening now, right? So the parallel press or the printing press leading to the enlightenment, 10% of people became literate.

0:48:00.0 SA: Yeah.

0:48:00.6 PA: So, can read and write.

0:48:04.0 SA: Totally.

0:48:04.8 PA: And what he talked about now, it's how can 10% of people become spiritually literate and this goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation, right? What does that language look like and how do we develop that vortex.

0:48:15.0 SA: Exactly. The words.

0:48:16.2 PA: Through these psychonauts.

0:48:17.3 SA: Yeah, totally.

0:48:17.8 PA: Huxley would say we're exploring the inner antipodes of the mind, we've done a lot of the outer exploration, we've globalized our entire. Now a lot of the exploration is actually the inner.

0:48:25.5 SA: Let's go within. Totally.

0:48:27.1 PA: Yeah.

0:48:27.8 SA: I like that. Yes. [laughter]

0:48:31.6 PA: Thank you for holding that.

[laughter]

0:48:34.3 PA: So what projects do you have coming out? What do you... Are you spending most of your time in the TREAT initiative at this point in time?

0:48:40.3 SA: I am. I am. Yeah. Because I think at least personally and what I just kept witnessing is just the need for money for everything, for, not only the research end but all the diversity, equity and inclusion pieces. How do we pull in that indigenous voice well, with funding behind it. Like every single aspect of this to me, everyone's looking for that funding. And so what could be that thing that answers a lot of the questions, at least for me, that's why I was like, this resonates the most with me, I resonated really deeply with Jeannie on this project. And it was just that feeling, it was that intuitive feeling that I've used to guide every path of this and so most of my time I'm doing this. I do a little bit of clinical trials and private practice still, and then hopefully once this is done, I'll go back and do a little bit of that. But right now it's TREAT.

0:49:38.1 PA: What's your day-today like? Brings us through kind of what that looks like.

0:49:40.6 SA: Yeah, so day to day. Yeah. [laughter] It's... I've...

0:49:44.3 PA: I feel like you do a lot of things and you have a lot of...

0:49:45.7 SA: I know, I've learned so much about just campaign and policy work and politics. So right now we're in the coalition building. We're gonna get to the point where we'll need signatures. So in order to get this on the ballot we'll need about a million, a little bit more than a million signatures, and then the beginning of next year is when the campaign will start where we will educate the voters of California on this initiative. And so right now we're building the coalition, so we have this really powerful veterans coalition, we have a union coalition, we'll have the university coalition, we'll keep working and building on the psychedelic coalition, as well as...

0:50:26.0 PA: Biotech coalition.

0:50:27.7 SA: Yep. We're gonna be embracing industry as well.

0:50:29.9 PA: Okay.

0:50:30.1 SA: Yeah. So that's gonna be a big part of this. So they absolutely will... I think for me everybody needs to be at this table, because this is for everybody. There is wisdom and good work happening in every sector here and we need to hear each other's stories and understand where each of us come from. I sometimes feel like this space can get, it can get a little tribal, like it has to be my way and I cannot see your way. But how can we sit at that table together, you share your stories, I'm gonna share mine and we just meet a little bit more in the middle. Because the current reality, the current climate of what we live in, like, yeah, I wish it was different, I wish we could build those beautiful communities in Costa Rica and have us all go and live there. But the reality is we all still live here, [laughter] in these worlds, in these societies and we need to embrace everybody and have those conversations together. So continuing with my day-to-day, a lot of it is just building those coalitions and separate from that is getting, kind of the political, more the Democratic party kind of on board with what we're doing. Because again, they're a little bit part of it as well.

0:51:43.2 SA: And yeah, once we get our legislation in, there will be about a month where everybody can review it, and I really encourage everyone to let us know what we can improve on. We're gonna send it to a bunch of people and this will be public on the Attorney General's website. And then from there once it's called title in summary, we'll have 180 days to collect signatures and so that's really where our coalition will come in.

0:52:09.6 PA: And how many signatures are you looking for?

0:52:11.0 SA: It's a little bit over a million. Yeah. So kind of around a million registered voter signatures in California.

0:52:19.0 PA: Fantastic.

0:52:19.8 SA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:52:20.9 PA: Well, if you need any support on amplifying that, especially like we can be of better help when it comes to getting the word out.

0:52:28.4 SA: Yeah.

0:52:30.8 PA: Because getting this passed through California in the way that it is, would be...

0:52:37.5 SA: It would be big.

0:52:37.6 PA: A good first step.

0:52:38.3 SA: It would be a good first step.

0:52:39.0 PA: It would be a good first step.

0:52:39.5 SA: And I encourage, like, we want like that skepticism that you're talking about, a lot of us have it. And that's why as we're writing this legislation we want to be very careful about preserving the sacredness of this work, and trying to be a little bit more on the offensive to help shape this in the most positive way possible instead of just sitting back and maybe letting some special interest create the ecosystem. So I encourage anyone that feels a resonance to this to come join us, work together, we need everybody for this, we need to do this together.

0:53:21.0 PA: And I've been living in San Diego the last, almost a year now.

0:53:26.0 SA: Yeah, yeah.

0:53:26.8 PA: A year and a half on and off and it feels like the funding possibilities, the bi... The interest from biotech organizations, that to start to do local, I don't know if it's like a city council or town hall or even events inviting people of influence.

0:53:51.2 SA: Right.

0:53:52.0 PA: And that would be a really...

0:53:53.9 SA: Oh yeah.

0:53:54.1 PA: 'Cause there are plenty of people in San Diego for it.

0:53:55.8 SA: Yes.

0:53:56.0 PA: And the true, same is true of course for LA, but to really get out...

0:53:58.0 SA: And a few of our team members are in San Diego. Yes, yes.

0:54:02.8 PA: It's a great vibe for that.

0:54:03.0 SA: Find me. Yeah. Find me, let's co-create, let's build this together, I would... That would be my pleasure.

0:54:10.2 PA: Great. Thank you for that.

0:54:11.8 SA: Yeah. [laughter]

0:54:12.5 PA: Okay. Let's zoom out 10 years from now, right? I'd be curious, having worked in medicine and been involved in clinical trials and having practiced this yourself, where do you think this industry, this landscape, what do you think it'll look like 10 years from now?

0:54:30.4 SA: Yeah. I think if, again, we're trying to build it, we're a little bit more on the offensive. What I dream is that we are able to shed light to all the different ways we can access all of these medicines and understand, what are the contraindications for some people. So that they just know this information going in, a big part of TREAT will actually be to create a bioinformatics bank, so that each person might really understand what is the best Psychedelic for them, for their body. If they have some sort of underlying current contraindication, what can we learn about that? 'Cause maybe there will be a Psychedelic that works well for you then. But, having all of the education and as much research as possible to give that to the person, empower them to decide, actually I'm a great candidate for the Psychedelic medicine or I'm a great candidate for breath work. Or I'm a great candidate for all these other healing modalities that we have yet to research because there hasn't been a financial incentive to. And what I'm really hoping for is that we just make healing a little bit more, just all encompassing, we see the person as a whole and we empower them, again, they are in charge of their health and healing.

0:55:51.6 SA: And anybody that holds that space as a healer of facilitator is just to coach, to remind them if they're a little bit out of alignment here, here, here, here these are the tools, but you know how to process this and hold this and integrate this into your life for a really happy, balanced, healthy life. And I'm also just really... My background is Iranian and I feel a very strong, I have to do work there. And so I don't know what it will look like, but I want to do a lot of this work in my homeland. 'Cause I think there's a beauty about connecting back to the ancestral roots and even in the Psychedelic, the spiritual components of where our lineage comes from for everybody. Sometimes we borrow and I'm so grateful to borrow other indigenous culture's wisdom, but like really understanding my own and how we can help people connect back to that. So not only do I wanna learn it from my perspective, but also try to help bring a little bit of that.

0:56:54.4 PA: Do you know Shauheen? Have you met Shauheen...

0:56:56.0 SA: Nope.

0:56:57.1 PA: From Magi.

0:56:57.4 SA: Please introduce me. No, I don't know him.

0:57:00.6 PA: He's a whirling dervish.

0:57:01.0 SA: No.

0:57:01.2 PA: From Iran.

0:57:01.9 SA: No, I would love to know him. [laughter]

0:57:03.0 PA: And they're selling Haoma, which is the...

0:57:06.2 SA: Is he here?

0:57:07.1 PA: The Syrian Rue. He's here.

0:57:07.9 SA: Okay. Alright.

0:57:08.0 PA: Yeah. I'll bring you after we talk now.

0:57:09.6 SA: Okay.

0:57:09.8 PA: I'll bring you into their...

0:57:10.0 SA: Thank you. Perfect.

0:57:11.9 PA: Their booth and we had them on the podcast a couple weeks ago.

0:57:15.0 SA: Okay.

0:57:16.0 PA: And they're basically trying to bring back the Zoroastrian.

0:57:19.4 SA: Oh wow.

0:57:20.4 PA: Like wisdom.

0:57:21.5 SA: That's a beautiful culture.

0:57:22.1 PA: Of plant medicine. 'Cause it is I think the most ancient religion in the world.

0:57:27.0 SA: It is.

0:57:27.8 PA: That is still practiced today.

0:57:30.0 SA: Yeah.

0:57:30.7 PA: And the sacrament that was used in Zoroastrian is something called Haoma.

0:57:34.2 SA: Wow.

0:57:34.7 PA: Which is Syrian Rue and MAOI. And they would combine it with acacia, which is a...

0:57:39.1 SA: Thank you for educating me right now. [laughter]

0:57:40.6 PA: A type of bark, a tree that has DMT in it.

0:57:43.2 SA: Wow.

0:57:43.7 PA: So they made their own Ayahuasca.

0:57:45.0 SA: Wow.

0:57:45.3 PA: So Moses and the burning bush, a lot of people think he was just on acacia Rue.

0:57:49.8 SA: Wow.

0:57:51.1 PA: With Syrian Rue.

0:57:51.2 SA: S1: Wow.

0:57:52.0 PA: So, there's deep, deep lineage, deep history there, and such a deep spiritual gravitas.

0:58:01.4 SA: Right.

0:58:02.0 PA: In Iran specifically.

0:58:03.1 SA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:58:04.3 PA: And it's so unfortunate, what's occurred there, the last basically 40...

0:58:08.9 SA: I know.

0:58:09.0 PA: 40, 50 years.

0:58:09.7 SA: I know.

0:58:10.0 PA: It's just very unfortunate.

0:58:11.0 SA: Yeah. But the energy is shifting, I read somewhere and I need... I was trying to find the guy that wrote this article. But it had said that one of the Ayatollahs, the leaders felt that Psilocybin is not...

0:58:21.8 PA: I saw this.

0:58:22.1 SA: Haram, it's not illegal in the holy book. And I'm like, what a great opportunity, I'm gonna take that and run with it. [laughter]

0:58:29.5 PA: And in fact they just did a I think a Psychedelic summit of sorts, not they, Marik and Maria in Dubai.

0:58:37.5 SA: Alright. We're getting closer.

0:58:38.7 PA: So we're getting closer.

0:58:39.0 SA: We're getting closer.

[laughter]

0:58:40.9 PA: And it's... I was even I was on retreat with a couple people from Dubai last month and they said plant medicine is becoming a big thing here.

0:58:49.5 SA: Wow.

0:58:49.8 PA: Not a huge thing, but a big thing.

0:58:49.8 SA: Wow.

0:58:51.0 PA: Of course it's much riskier.

0:58:52.6 SA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:58:52.8 PA: In that part of the world, but it's...

0:58:53.7 SA: Yeah. Absolutely.

0:58:54.0 PA: The medicine is finding its way.

0:58:56.4 SA: It's finding its way. Slowly we're finding each other.

0:59:00.0 PA: We're finding each other.

0:59:00.1 SA: We are.

[laughter]

0:59:00.9 PA: That's right. Okay. Doctor, can I call you... What?

0:59:03.8 SA: Call me Sarah.

0:59:04.4 PA: Sarah. Dr Sarah Abedi, thank you for joining us.

0:59:07.4 SA: Thank you for having me.

0:59:08.7 PA: On the podcast.

0:59:09.6 SA: Thank you.

0:59:10.2 PA: Do you have a website, social? Like if people want to reach out, have questions, get in touch.

0:59:16.3 SA: Yeah. So for TREAT, it's treatcalifornia.org and my email is [email protected]. So, or you'll find me on LinkedIn and or...

0:59:24.9 PA: So if you're interested in supporting or collaborating, you're on Instagram too, I think.

0:59:29.1 SA: I'm on Instagram too.

0:59:30.0 PA: Which is less professional but...

0:59:30.8 SA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sarah Abedi MD. But in whatever way, find me, we find each other.

0:59:35.5 PA: We'll find each other.

0:59:36.0 SA: Whoever's meant to find each other will. So, yep, yep.

0:59:37.8 PA: Yeah. Exactly. Great. Thank you so much.

0:59:39.8 SA: Thank you.

[music]

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