I wish I had gone with my instinct
the first time I injected heroin.
I would tell myself, "Leave it."
I've hit 20,000 rock bottoms.
I have been as low as you
can go, and you can't go any
further.
I don't want to be that
example for my daughter.
I can't be dead on my bathroom floor
because that's not fair to her.
In 2020, Serene, who
asked that we not use her last name,
reached out to two brothers named
Rory and Ryan Van Tuinen.
Hi.
Based in Waterbury, Vermont, they
had started a nonprofit with the
goal of building a community that
can help people to overcome
addiction and improve their mental
health.
I contacted Rory and
Ryan as I had seen an
article called Cultivating
Connections, and I had
read both their stories.
Rory had taken the psychedelic drug
ayahuasca in 2019,
which was a last ditch attempt to
overcome a ten-year heroin addiction
that had derailed his life.
"Neither Ryan nor Rory believe that
hallucinogens are a cure-all."
But "without the ayahuasca,"
he'd either "still be using" or
he'd "be dead." The key was
to accompany the drug "with the
cultivation of meaningful human
relationships."
I'm at such a weak point because
I'm in so much pain.
Not so much, I mean, physical and
mental pain.
I really want to help.
Like, I don't, I don't know what I
can even help.
I don't know.
But I want to, you know, I have
that urge and...
Yes.
Psychologist Andrew Tatarsky is the
founder and director of the Center
for Optimal Living in New York City,
and he specializes in addiction
and harm reduction therapy.
What are the promises of
psychedelics when it comes
to treating things like addiction?
Our core beliefs, our behaviors,
our patterns of relating, our
patterns of coping get encoded
in neural networks, which is
why they're so difficult to
change. Psychedelic substances
have this really interesting and
unique capacity to
loosen those structures,
in some cases dissolve
them so that people
have the opportunity to
kind of rework their relationship
to themselves and the world and
develop new structures that
are more adaptive, more effective.
Rory and Ryan have not asked for
money for endorsements.
They expect nothing from.
I hope the ayahuasca will help me
find my center of self again.
But Tatarsky also warns that this
powerful tool is creating
new problems for some people
suffering from addiction or mental
illness.
When administered by untrained
practitioners, these drugs
can do more harm than good.
If you face a traumatic experience
and it is overwhelming to you
and you don't have the kind of
support to be able to
titrate and kind of
manage the emotional intensity
that comes up, it can actually
be itself another traumatic
experience.
But also, one of the ways
that people deal with overwhelming
emotional experiences is
by becoming psychotic.
And we've had a number
of people coming to our,
to us for therapy
following a series of psychedelic
experiences that left them
completely paranoid and psychotic.
How do you guys feel about doing the
ceremony next week?
Yeah, sure.
So I came to learn about psychedelic
medicine when I was 23
and had my first experience.
That really helped me with
depression.
In the following years, I saw Rory
really struggling with addiction,
and so I talked to Rory about
ayahuasca and psilocybin.
After the ayahuasca, I'd
stayed clean from opiates for 13 to
14 months, which was
by far the longest
clean time I'd ever had.
When your child has a
bad opioid addiction,
it wears you out and eventually you
realize you got,
you can't be attached to the
outcome.
You know, Rory's struggled with
addiction issues for a long,
long time.
He had tried rehab a number of
times, and he had
overdosed a number of times,
and he wasn't seeing any way out.
It's clear that that ayahuasca has
led to some real changes
in his ability to control
his addiction to the
opioids.
My main goal is to not have to be
on anything so I can be a better
mother for her.
Lily is the most important
person in my life, even above
myself.
If I did not have Lily, I wouldn't
bother.
I don't know how to get better.
You you know I've tried, you know
I've been...
You're doing the steps to get
better, you know.
You know how to get better.
You're doing it.
You're walking the path to get
better.
Yeah, but using it's still not...but
the methadone is clearly not helping
if that's, you know, I mean, like...
It's not helping keep me sober.
It's not helping with pain.
I gotta to say almost every dealer
I've met around here was through the
methadone clinic.
The wonderful thing about methadone
and similar substances,
buprenorphine, is that
if there is a physiological
depletion in a certain
brain substance that leads
people to need a drug in order
to stabilize and feel
normal, if you can replace that
with another drug that actually
meets that physical need,
you can actually help stabilize
somebody medically.
Medication assisted treatment
doesn't address the
complex, emotional,
relational, you know,
psychological factors
that may be expressed in
that addictive process.
And here's where psychedelics
can really powerfully facilitate
those insights.
I think this ayahuasca experience
can help open Serene up
to the possibilities for the future.
Serene. Hey.
The way I envision coming out
on the other side is like, like
caterpillars turn into the
pupa and then come out the
butterfly.
One of the dangers is
that people go into the experience
with unrealistic expectations
for a cure.
And I think this is a big problem
because of all of the hype about
psychedelics and go through
the experience feeling
no cure
and maybe feeling worse
and that that can really
precipitate, you know, profound
depressions and suicidality.
So proper preparation,
you know, measured expectations
or even no expectations,
that is to go into the experience
as an experience that,
you know, you know, discover what
it will be like.
You're going to have this sleeping
bag?
Sure.
I'll be here, Rory there.
OK
Thank you.
I don't know, how much I should say,
but I can see it in you.
Glad to be here.
Delish.
It's a bit astringent, eh.
...throw up
Oh.
Thank you.
Mm hmm.
It's all you, girl.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
When you look at that scene, how do
you respond as a psychotherapist?
My sense is that,
you know, they are
very, very well-meaning,
kind, supportive,
caring, seem to
have had their own experiences that
were very positive and
they wanted to pass this on
and share this with Serene.
But these guys
are not therapists.
I don't believe that they have any
training or any capability
of dealing with, you know,
serious, the emergence of serious,
painful experiences
that could be overwhelming,
retraumatizing and could even
manifest in a psychotic kind of
experience
and
really dangerous behavior.
So they are completely unequipped to
do that, A, B,
they were also taking the substance.
A lot of people will not say
these, these are powerful substances
with negative potential,
so they should be banned, but
rather they should be heavily
restricted to a
class of therapists or doctors
or authorities
who know what they're doing.
What do you think about that?
As a psychotherapist
and as a psychedelic
assisted therapist?
I believe that psychedelic assisted
therapy should be performed by
very well trained therapists.
So, you know, they weren't equipped,
they're not professionally trained,
they were themselves intoxicated.
But prohibition only
creates problems for people.
People are going to use drugs if
they want to use drugs, they'll find
them on the internet, they'll find
them in the park, they'll find them
with their friends.
So the more help
and support and information
we can make available to people, the
more we can reduce the risks
associated with that.
Me and Rory got kind of lucky with
it.
The experience that we had and then
we try to recreate that for someone
else. And it's,
it's not really, you know, just
a simple process.
Are you surprised to learn
that after this experience Serene
went back to using heroin?
No, not at all.
Reworking your relationship to
that substance means
understanding the relationship,
really making the connection between
that substance and what function
and meaning it's playing in your
life.
And gradually over time, kind
of letting go.
These are very, very exciting
times when
growing body of research
change the way that we
both look at psychedelics,
viewing them as potential
wonderful tools that
we can use for the benefit
of humans in many different
ways.
But also, I think it's, it's going
to challenge us as a society
to question the demonization of
all drugs.