- It can be a little scary,
you know, knowing that you're kind of
at the forefront of new treatment methods.
- 'It is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.'
- People have been, you know, effectively brainwashed—
I was one of those—
to believing that any drug was just inherently bad.
- We've been taught all drugs are bad.
But what if we're getting it wrong?
Isn't it possible psychedelics
could be more than a party drug?
And I think we're just afraid
of anything that's like really, really, really powerful.
Anything really powerful, like splitting the atom,
can be harnessed for massive destructive energy
or massive benefit, like a nuclear power plant.
And so I think psychedelics
are like splitting the atom.
- Dylan is trying to push the way
that we think about our mental health.
So, maybe it's time we rethink
our relationship with psychedelics.
- It's this wildly powerful neurotechnology that can
rewire people's entire patterns
of thinking and behaving and being.
And so that's just going to inherently be very, very scary.
And it should be very scary.
Like, these things are really, really powerful.
And they need to be treated with a lot of
intelligence and respect.
- This is a show about founders
challenging the status quo.
- I thought I had it all figured out.
Type A, achieved in school,
had friends and a girlfriend,
but I started realizing that I was, like, deeply unhappy.
I did not have a positive relationship with other people
and the world around me.
- Dylan isn't alone.
Exacerbated by the pandemic, the mental health crisis is on the rise.
One in five Americans are currently seeking treatment,
and there's a good chance that you know
someone who struggles with their mental health.
- When you dig into the clinical research around
existing treatment options
like antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, and talk therapy,
you see like a really bleak picture.
- Mainstream antidepressants actually only work for
40-47% percent of people.
They're a daily medication
and can take four to eight weeks to work.
- And so from there, I started exploring different routes—
and we have one medicine
that is clinically shown to be significantly better
than all existing treatment options,
and that's ketamine therapy.
Ketamine is like utterly fascinating for a lot of reasons,
but its history is one of the most interesting parts about it.
Ketamine was FDA approved in 1970 as an anesthetic.
And since that time, it has become
one of the most ubiquitous anesthetics in the world
because it's such a safe anesthetic.
It's one of the only ones that doesn't
depress your breathing and your heart rate.
Well, about 20 years ago, we started to discover
that at really low subanesthetic doses,
it has these incredible antidepressant properties.
- Mindbloom's research into their ketamine therapy has shown to
get a clinically significant result in just a few sessions.
That's 80-90% faster
compared to common antidepressants,
and only 5% of users report any kind of side effects.
- And because it was FDA approved in 1970
as a safe, efficacious medicine
that means today it is legally prescribable.
- When you think about ketamine,
it's sort of like trying to explain the cosmos
by just looking at the stars.
- It's very dreamlike.
It feels like you're entering a place
internally that you can't necessarily access all the time.
I've been doing ketamine treatments
for about five months now
and in that time I have quit drinking,
I have quit smoking cannabis,
and I have been able
to eliminate three psychiatric medications.
- Psychedelics gives the person the opportunity
to heal in many different levels.
- The effects of ketamine on the brain are complex.
One of the things ketamine does
is enhances brains' neuroplasticity—
that's its ability to create connections.
It lets you more easily learn
and change your patterns and behaviors.
- I kind of get to see my mind from a bird's eye view,
but if you go into ketamine thinking it's
going to be a silver bullet,
that is going to fix you,
you're going to be disappointed.
- We're not talking about people just
hanging out doing MDMA in a rave.
We're talking about people
doing some very solid and deep trauma work
where most of it is experiencing painful material.
- Incorporating psychedelics into therapy,
is allowing for a change in the way we approach treatments.
You're not just taking ketamine
and going about your day.
It's an active inner exploration.
Some best practices are intention setting and journaling,
so you can carry your insights
into your daily life.
- It can be a little scary knowing that you're
at the forefront of new treatment methods,
but overall, I wouldn't change a thing,
and I know that I'll be continuing in the future.
Thank you.
Bye.
- Ketamine is currently
the only legally- prescribable psychedelic,
but in the next three years,
we're likely to see MDMA and psilocybin
get FDA approved.
- If you told me we would be where we are today
a couple of years ago, my mind would explode.
I grew up with a family just annihilated
by mental illness,
like schizophrenia in my family,
mother was an addict.
Ultimately, we lost her to it
and she spent 15 years homeless
before dying of a fentanyl overdose.
And through those experiences, I came to really
prioritize my own mental health and well-being
because I was so afraid of falling
into the path that she fell into.
Like, how do we live happy, fulfilled lives?
And you look around
and just see that there's a problem.
- The promise of psychedelics is exciting,
but with more companies like Mindbloom entering the space,
things like rare negative cases and supported versus
unsupported experiences need more research
before we see them fully accepted.
- Psychedelic therapy for me
helped catalyze a fundamental transformation
where I was able to connect with other people,
connect with humanity as a whole,
and shift from being a pessimist
to an optimist.
And so one of the things
I'm really excited about isn't just
destigmatizing mental health and well-being
and psychedelic therapy and ketamine therapy,
but it's helping to be a part of
shepherding in this movement
that I'm seeing around a transition
from old medicine to new medicine.
And I think we are on this precipice
where, as a society,
you can see that people are really starting to
internalize and understand
that your mental health and well-being
is just as critical
as your physical health and well-being.
And it's clear to me as day that
ketamine is going to utterly change, you know,
how we think about mental health
and how we treat it.
- It's hard to know what the future
of our mental health care will look like,
but perhaps psychedelics may help us rethink
how we approach our mental well-being.