Ep 151: Psychedelics, Healing Trauma and Sexuality with Dee Dee Goldpaugh

artwork by the talented @muhammedsalah_

Can psychedelics be more than a party drug? How are they used in therapy and why are they so effective? What does it take to get into a psychedelic treatment program? 

Effy and Jacqueline are joined by Community Support and Integration Director of the Hudson Valley Psychedelic Society, psychotherapist and clinical supervisor Dee Dee Goldpaugh to discuss her work with psychedelics and their effective use in treating and healing trauma psycho-chemically as well as spiritually.

More about Dee Dee
Dee Dee (they/them/theirs) is a psychotherapist, educator, clinical supervisor, author, and activist. They have taught and published widely on the topics of psychedelics, sexuality, trauma, gender, and spirituality. They have been a leading voice in the development of Psychedelic Integration Psychotherapy techniques, specifically with survivors of trauma and have published the first article to appear in an academic journal, Sex and Relationship Therapy, exploring the intersection of sexuality, spirituality, and psychedelic healing. Dee Dee is a Clinical Supervisor for the CYB003 clinical trial sponsored by  Cybin using a psilocybin analogue to treat major depression. They offer Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy as part of the team at the Woodstock Therapy Center and are part of the Relationship Resources team leading ketamine-assisted therapy retreats for couples. They have also completed the MAPS training in MDMA-assisted psychotherapy.

Instagram @deedeevega
Website: deedeegoldpaugh.com

TRANSCRIPT:

Effy

Welcome to the Curious Fox podcast for those challenging the status quo in love, sex, and relationships. My name is Effy Blue.

Jacqueline

And I'm Jacqueline Misla. Today, we're diving into our archives to bring you an episode that is very close to my heart. I've explored many healing modalities from traditional talk therapy to moving meditation practices, from the womb to the most high tech. I've traveled to the other side of the world spoken to priests and sorcerers and shamans and doctors and philosophers and homeopathy and I have medic doctors, and the list goes on. Some of these encounters have been potent and life altering, while others have made for good stories. When I look back at my healing journey, some of the most impactful experiences have been with psychedelics which are having a welcome renaissance right now. In this episode from 2021 We're joined by Dee Dee Goldplaugh, who in my eyes is the most lucid voice when it comes to psychedelic therapy. Dee Dee is a psychotherapist

Jacqueline

and a clinical supervisor and private practice specializing in sex and relationship therapy, trauma, spirituality in psychedelic integration psychotherapy. They're also a member of the Woodstock therapy center ketamine assisted psychotherapy team did he is written presented widely on the topic of psychedelics and spirituality, queer identity, trauma, spiritual practice and pleasure. And it just published an article in psychedelics and sexuality in the Journal of sexual and relationship therapy and the queering psychedelics book. Didi is a community support and integration director at the Hudson Valley psychedelic society and has clinical training background in sex therapy, EMDR, internal family systems therapy, and psychodynamic psychotherapy. They're an artist and a musician and have additional training and shamanic healing and bio regional herbal medicine. Their approach to psychotherapy embraces body and sex positivity and spiritual growth as a tool for self actualization.

Effy

Psychedelics have historically been associated with party kids and hippies. And most recently, the perception of them swung hard the other way and hit the mainstream with Gwyneth Paltrow talking about psilocybin on goop and ayahuasca ceremonies becoming a casual topic of dinner conversation. So we were curious, how did this happen? Let's not forget that

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

these medicines are nothing new. For the most part, you know, the history of psychedelics go back centuries in indigenous use, but what we commonly think of psychedelics is more in the camp of LSD, which is a synthetic substance that was synthesized first in the 1940s. So throughout the 50s, and 60s, you have this emergence of psychedelic research, and they were looking at substances like peyote, LSD, to treat mental health disorders, depression, and alcoholism, there's actually quite a lot of robust study happening, then psychedelics sort of enter into the counterculture in America, right. And, and you have the blueprint that we think of which is what epi was referencing, like the hippie, hippie, culture, party, Kid culture. And, you know, psychedelics get folded into this idea of kind of peace and love and free love countercultural all of that stuff. So it's that that really sends psychedelic research which had been on a promising trajectory in the 50s and 60s crashing to a halt. The Controlled Substances Act gets signed into law by Nixon. And this really just brings all of the scientific research screeching to, you know, a conclusion. So it's not really until the 1990s that very slowly, timidly and cautiously, scientists begin to again look at psychedelics for mental health purposes. So now we're in what many people consider to sort of be a renaissance of that kind of research. And the pendulum has really swung the other way. Psychedelics now have not only do you see them on, you know, goop episodes, or whatever, but the idea that they are really in service to making us more functional and productive people is very much part of the clinical research, like the federal government just approved funding for the first ever study that has federal funding. So I should back up and say that There's been robust study of psychedelics that has happened in the past 15 or so years, it's all been privately funded, the US government has stayed far away from funding any kind of research into psychedelics, but the first ever government funded study is getting off the ground. And that's looking at psilocybin mushrooms for smoking cessation. So we see that it's come very far from the world of counterculture to the world of these things can be used in these intensely practical ways, in order to help people with things like quitting smoking. So you know, we've seen a real arc from party to very practical health focused types of applications for psychedelics. And what I hope to do in my work is find some middle ground in that.

Jacqueline

Has there been research that's happened in other countries? Like is, are we further along in the United States? Or is this something that you've seen kind of across the globe, where there has been this up and down of interest in research and understanding around the power and use of psychedelics?

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

Well, I mean, the US has been the focus of most of the research, although there's also very strong research that's coming out of particularly Imperial College in England. So I mean, that's another research center that's been contributing massive amounts of useful information to the field. But I think we also want to be really careful to not be only rooted in a western white medical paradigm, because of course, in indigenous contexts, psychedelics have had continued use, right. So in countries like Ecuador and Peru, where there are shamans who have been part of shamanic lineage practice where that goes back in generations of family have worked with psychedelics for healing their own communities in an undisturbed way, you know, for some cases, centuries, in Mexico, same thing. So, I mean, yeah, whereas there has been this kind of re emergence in a western white medical context. Indigenous people have held the wisdom of these medicines in an uninterrupted way for hundreds of years.

Jacqueline

Yeah, appreciate you naming that and saying that, that makes sense.

Effy

Yeah, it's important, right? Yeah. So for those of us who only know psychedelics as a party drug, can you give us a little bit of just like a bit of a one on one, like, what are psychedelics? How do they work in the body? And why do they have healing potential?

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

Well, you know, it seems like what are psychedelics is a pretty 101 question. Actually, it's, it's a fairly complicated question, because what we're talking about when we say psychedelics is actually a wide range of different substances that have now been placed under that umbrella, which may or may not be thought of as what we used to think of as psychedelics at all. So our most basic building block of the question, right, or psychedelics are plants, fungi, or chemicals that we take that alter our conscious consciousness in some significant way that you know can be used for personal enrichment for spiritual exploration for for their healing potential. The category that we think of as the classic psychedelics, those are the ones that are like LSD, or psilocybin mushrooms, and they basically induce a state in the user. That's what we think of as tripping, right? They have a kind of visual distortions are seeing beautiful colors are having kind of profound inner insights. And that's what we think of as the classic psychedelics. Now, there's some very important substances that have now gotten grouped in with psychedelics that don't really act in that way at all. One being MDMA, which is kind of now under the psychedelic umbrella. But, you know, MDMA is more of it's a synthetic chemical that creates a neural hormonal response in the body and allows for incredibly deep feeling states allows for us to access and reprocess trauma and I can talk more about how that looks, and also allows for a feeling of connection and love. Then there's ketamine and ketamine is not in any way a psychedelic it's a dissociative anesthetic that has always been prescribed bubble, legal to be prescribed by a licensed physician and ketamine at a certain dose induces a psychedelic like experience, and at the same time causes changes in the brain that can significantly reduce depression and users in a clinical context. So, you know, we have all these things that we think of as being under the umbrella of psychedelics that are not quite psychedelic at all. The answer to what they do in the body is just as varied right. So if I were to just speak in broad strokes, psychedelics bind to certain receptors in the brain, causing us to have a distortion in our usual experience of our thoughts and feelings that can have profoundly positive impacts on our day to day lived experience, when coupled with either support psychotherapy or coaching or personal work that helps us to make sense of the material and feelings that we experienced in that altered state?

Jacqueline

I don't think I've ever heard such a succinct definition. No, though, I think that that I think I need to sit with that. Because not only did that feel incredibly clear, it felt important.

Effy

And I think also legitimate, right? Because we don't have it ever spoken in that way. So now you're like, oh, okay, can this what we're talking about can sit next to, you know, any other medicine that we talk about in a legitimate kind of way?

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

Yes, because these are medicines, these are legitimate medicines. And every in every respect, there is a lot of research out there. If your listeners have interest in the specific neural chemical actions, there's a lot of research out there about what each different psychedelic does and how it does it. But that would be the whole podcast if we got into, you know, the specifics of that. So I'm giving you sort of the broad strokes.

Effy

I mean, we often we speak to guests, and we're like, you have to come back and tell us more about that thing. So we might at some point be like he did he come back and explain to us like one, you know, one psychedelic at a time. So that's, that's super interesting. I think something that you said earlier that stuck with me, actually, which is like the first thing that they've allowed psilocybin is for giving up smoking. Isn't that is that what you said? Yes. Which I find fascinating of all the things that that's like the thing that managed to make it through all the paperwork, which, you know, it's an interesting thing to me. What I'm really interested in is I know that psychedelics have been used in healing trauma for a long time, it's they've been really effective in in healing trauma. Can you tell us a little bit about why specifically trauma, and how and why psychedelics are effective teaching tool?

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

Well, you know, the answer to why psychedelics might help people quit smoking, and why they treat trauma are not that far from each other. With a psychedelic like psilocybin. If we think about psilocybin mushrooms, which for many people is their first entry point into psychedelics, right? Like tripping in college, on mushrooms or whatever. You know, we know that within American culture, these these substances are often used recreationally. And there is tremendous healing potential, because at certain doses, in certain specific kinds of contexts, a substance like psilocybin mushrooms can induce what we call a mystical experience. And so the mystical experience gives us a sense of wonder of connection to something greater ineffability. And there's something about having that kind of immediate felt experience. So outside of our normal consciousness, that helps people with things that range from saying, I no longer want to damage my health by smoking cigarettes, I've had this connection to something that's so much greater than myself. And that allows me to stop this habitual behavior that's harmful to my body. And that spectrum extends all the way to healing trauma, we can think of it in various ways. So the trauma healing aspects of psychedelics and I can speak a little bit about my own work specifically. So I am a psychedelic integration therapist and I also do ketamine assisted psychotherapy, which outside of research context is the only kind of legal therapy that psychedelic like that a client can have at this time, specifically, the population I work with, or people who who have trauma who have had previous psychedelic experiences, and they're trying to use that experience with psychedelics to play some role in their healing experience, their experience of healing trauma, so particularly sexual trauma, a client might have the mystical experience. As I've mentioned, another thing that psychedelics can do, MDMA is quite notable for this type of experience, is bring the user into a capacity to see and experience their previous trauma, while not being in the triggered or activated state that the memory of the trauma evokes. So an MDMA session, and this has been studied very widely for the treatment of trauma. There's phase three studies right now, or actually, phase three has been wrapped up by maps. That's the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies. And they're into the expanded access phase. So we're looking at MDMA being rescheduled in the next couple of years to be a prescribing herbal medication for treating trauma in the way it works is that there's this cascade of normal, normal hormonal responses in the body, that allow the person taking it to have these kind of feelings of well being feelings of connection and love, and with a therapist guidance and with proper preparation. A person can then confront previous trauma, let's say childhood sexual abuse, and be able to look at that and reprocess it. from a safe distance, so the body is not getting into this activated and triggered state that would be common of a person being flooded by traumatic memories, not in a psychedelic state. So that is one way that trauma and psychedelics work together very well. And aspect that gets really less talked about. And something I'm very interested in, in my writing and in my work with clients is actually just embodied feelings of pleasure and joy. You know, research does not do a very good job looking at how we heal through feeling good. There's a lot of emphasis on confronting trauma, there's a lot of emphasis on how our symptoms rate from the beginning to the end of looking at, you know, trauma therapy, and what they don't do a very good job that is emphasizing that we can heal, just by getting back in touch with a feeling of pleasure and joy, and my own story of trauma healing. I did not experience psychedelics in the context of a research study, I went to Peru several times looking to heal PTSD that I experienced from childhood abuse. And my experience was not being thrust into memories of my trauma, it was actually being in this beautiful environment and feeling completely without any of the burden of trauma in my body. Right, it was being able to feel my whole body for the first time being able to kind of have this embodied sense of joy and connection. And those things Joy connection, embodiment, they wither when we're in a traumatized state. So you know, I just think that there's many, many paths to healing trauma that are offered to us with psychedelic medicine. And of course, you know, in clinical contexts, they're focused on getting very specific outcomes so that these substances can have credibility and get rescheduled and be legally accessible to more folks. And I think they have often stayed away from some of the most deeply healing parts of psychedelics which are the pleasure joy, eroticism, embodiment.

Effy

Oh, yeah, that piece I, I, you know, as Jackie would say, I have to sit with that. You're right, that anytime we talk about trauma, we are looking at how to get through it, how to talk about it, how to process it, and it's very trauma focused, rather than what I'm hearing you say is, Well, okay, let's do that. And let's also imagine what it feels like not to have trauma and somehow get our nervous system through psychedelics or any other methods to go just to remind our system, that this is what it feels like not to have trauma, this is what it feels like not to be activated and sort of almost create new memories of feeling feeling well and joyful. Is that is that that's kind of what I'm hearing you say, yeah,

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

yeah, I mean, that has been my experience. And that as a modality doesn't really get explored very much in the clinical psychedelic world.

Unknown Speaker

I'm interested. So Fe and I have different journeys and experience with substances of all kinds. I think for the majority of my life, stayed awake grew up in a really religious environment. And my vices were more about food and sex and less about things like drugs and alcohol, and so experienced it minimally as a young adult. But really now into my 30s and 40s. I have thought much more deliberately and intentionally about how to utilize substances to help connect me to my body because my particular childhood experiences resulted in a real disconnect, and me just wanting to live in my brain at all times. And then once doing the work with within therapy, to try to connect with my body and then feeling all those things and then be like, No, get out of there. Like, first I was not connected. Then when I was connected, I was like, what is happening in here? Why am I crying all the time, this is terrible, who wants to be in their body. And so then have have been able to utilize particularly smoking weed, I've done micro dosing and some other experiences to say, okay, I can now experience my body and almost kind of glow and step around all that's happening in my mind, like quiet that noise to experience my physical body in a different way. And I feel like I've only cracked the door and like seen a little bit of what's possible. And I feel like incredibly drawn to wanting to see more of the power of that. And so the I'm kind of approaching this from that space of really brand new wanting to experiencing, wanting to understand how to do that in a way that feels healthy and safe and accessible and interested in your experience. Because I know, on the opposite end you have you've had opportunities to be able to connect and explore and do all these other things. And so I'm wondering what your experience and thoughts around psychedelics are.

Effy

Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I like you said I did the party kid version of it for for a long time and then I stopped and you know, was a sensible adult for a hot minute and I barely and I value a wink of an eye. And then I went back to exploring because after years and years and years and years of talk therapy, I felt like I hit a wall that, that I just felt like I was using the thing that gets in the way to try to get through to the other side. So I was like, Okay, I can't do any more talk therapy, there isn't anything else to explore, talking about it. And it actually is just now at a point, it's reinforcing the thing that gets me stuck anyway. So I was like, What are my options, right, and that's when I'm, I learned about embodiment, and like body memory, and how traumas kept in the body and all that kind of stuff and, and realize that things that I can't get to, or things that just get reinforced by me talking about it, I need to get into my body and find those things, the way they sit in my body, and kind of expel them from a process and expel them in that way. And that's kind of where I was like, like, that's what I was seeking with psychedelics. And I feel like the things that Didi said like an MDMA experience is very different than a psilocybin experience, which is very different than a ketamine experience. And I've done pretty much all of them almost clinical in almost in clinical situations, like with somebody who knows what they're doing medicinal use, and they've all had different experiences. So yeah, I think you know exactly what DD saying, kind of just like connects you into your body and puts you in the driver's seat, that you're like, you're in your body and you're in the driver's seat rather than the way that I experienced it, which is like that. I'm like, I'm a little person in my brain that's like driving my body like little levers. And I find actually two things maybe like psychedelics and dance like dance therapy have been like the two things that allow me to get into my body ideally in combination, by the way, allow me to get into my body and helped me like process things.

Jacqueline

Can you talk through then dd The distinction between kind of having an experience of psychedelics like you describe being maybe going to Peru or Mexico and doing that on your own, versus it happening within a therapeutic experience? Like what does psychedelics assisted therapy look like?

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

Well, I'm gonna build off something Fe said to sort of bring us into the answer to this question. So yeah, you are fe, the driver, the pilot, I can't remember what languaging you use of your body, but you have a very good copilot. What I'm interested in, in my research is also looking at another aspect that gets sort of left out of the therapeutic paradigm and that is the role of the sacred in psychedelic healing. I want to be very clear, before I go into this, I am a white person. I am not a an indigenous person. I don't speak for indigenous people. And indigenous practices around psychedelics are not one monolithic thing. Right. So I'm speaking from an academic perspective, and also someone that has benefited greatly from receiving healing from genuine shamanic practitioners who are indigenous people. So you know, before I go on, I want to just like give that caveat, the shamanic approach to psychedelic healing is that the plant has its own sentience and its own spirit. And that spirit joins with you so that it is there as a guide and ally in your healing process. So yeah, you are the pilot and you have this plant spirit or plant ally that is with you, guiding you through that process in offering you healing. And that's a pretty profound thought. Now, Jacqueline, to get more into your question about how is that different from the clinical context. So clinical context, by and large, are using synthetic versions of any kind of psychedelics. So you think of psilocybin as being a mushroom, right, it's substance that grows out of the ground, but psilocybin mushrooms are actually extremely varied in terms of how much psilocybin they have the strain to strain, what types of effects that they have. So in a research study, what a person is getting is a very precise dose of the synthetic psilocybin. And generally what they're receiving is preparation for the experience. And then non directive psychotherapeutic support, generally with two therapists that stay with them, and in a supportive capacity during the psychedelic experience. So when you encounter psychedelic healing, say in a more indigenous contexts, with a shamanic practitioner or a NEO shamanic practitioner, there is this idea that the spirit of the medicine is involved in your healing process, and that the shamanic practitioner is in some way offering through their singing or through their healing practices, channeling that Spirit so that it can enter your body and join with the shaman and doing healing work. Now this is obviously very, very different than what we think of in the clinical world, which is that the experience of the substance itself is creating these effects right. He's certain substances like ketamine, for example, have a an observable anti depressive effect in the brain. That's just Through MDMA, as we were saying, has this experience of being able to create this cascade of different effects in the body that allow for us to get more in touch with difficult materials like that's chemically observably true. So there's this idea of the medicine doing the heavy lifting, combined with the therapy in the clinical world. Whereas in the shamanic world, it's more of this kind of relationship between the spirit of the plant, the shamanic facilitator and the person that's receiving the healing. So

Effy

whatever would you say is, you know, in the shamanic in the the original kind of application of medicine work, this kind of psychedelic medicine work, the shamanic experience has a spiritual, very spiritual secret aspect to it. And that gets folded in and it's a part of the experience, the part of the healer is your copilot that takes you towards healing. And then, of course, because we can't quantify that, we have, you know, we do this, like clinical version of that. And so we sort of synthesize these these otherwise Sacred plants and use that. Do we know that if there's a difference in that, like, do we know that if it's, if it works differently? Like is, are they research in like, seeing whether that has directly different impact on the person who's using them?

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

It's a hard question to answer, right? Because all of the research that we have, that's clinical is has intensely rigorous protocols, that are often looking to answer very specific questions like a reduction in symptoms, or your remission of a certain kind of diagnosis. Now, what we can do more through the anthropological research is look at the impact of communities that have, for example, used ayahuasca for an entire lifetime, we do have research more through the anthropological rather than the psychological, of what do communities look like, when they have a ritual sacred ritual around plant medicine healing, and people may start using these medicines at a young age and use them into old age. And what we know about those communities is they tend to have intense well being, they tend to have very low rates of alcoholism or substance use, they tend to be quite harmonious, they people tend to have a high degree of psychological well being and harmony in their lives. So you know, we do have some sense of what it might look like if psychedelics were integrated into community. And we have a sense of what psychedelics look like in a clinical context. And there's a lot to fill in, in the in the spectrum in between my work is really transpersonal in a lot of ways, I'm very interested in talking about spirituality with clients are very interested in bringing their own unique spirituality in as an a tool into their healing practice. And there's other you know, very strong voices in the psychedelic science world that thinks spirituality has no role whatsoever in psychedelic healing. But psychedelic science is science and spirituality and science don't meet. That's not my view. But there's there's an awful lot that will emerge here. And I think the missing piece, maybe Fe getting more to the heart of your question is what would a decriminalized world look like? So another strong movement that's happening right now is drug decriminalization, and the substances that are sitting at the forefront of that movement are psychedelics simply because many people are coming around to the fact that psychedelics are not addictive, largely safe when used responsibly by most people? And you know, the idea that anybody should be criminal criminalized for the use of these medicines is kind of absurd, right? So there's been many, not many, but several cities in the United States that have now decriminalized psychedelics, and it begs the question of like, what might it look like? If we have something that sits between the shamanic and the clinical, what could it look like instead of psychedelics being relegated into a world of party in which I'm not even saying I necessarily oppose. But if we had community based spaces with peer leadership, where you could go and say, have a psilocybin experience with a trained person that could be there to support you that might reflect the norms of your community, like this, I think is particularly important for communities of color in the United States for queer people that are really really underrepresented and have been traumatized and are not well understood in clinical contexts. Because most of the people who have designed these protocols are white men, for the most part, right? So I have this vision of this space that could exist in between where a trained facilitator might be able to work with people of your own community, in a legal capacity that are not being treated necessarily for mental illness but are saying looking for, you know, to do spiritual work on themselves or looking to have something that's just a support and understanding themselves more deeply. I think creating legal access to that type of experience is it's Not gonna happen anytime very soon. But I hope I live to see that future. So research studies are very, very difficult to get into, they're looking for people with very specific kinds of symptoms and expression of mental illness or physical illnesses. And that's because they're studying things in a very, very narrow lens. And, you know, my understanding is when Maps was enrolling people into their phase three study, they had a waiting list of people in the 10s of 1000s, that wanted to get into it for hundreds of spots. It's just not realistic. People do get into research studies, I'm not saying that they don't like somebody is being researched. But it's like, you know, a drop of water in an ocean of trying to get one of those slots if you're a person that's just experiencing distress. So this leaves people in a predicament right? Because everybody is not cut out to go into a shamanic context. It's just not appropriate for all people. And the idea of leaving the country. And where do you start with that? Like, where do you find a reliable shaman in Peru? I'm not saying that it can't be done. And I have done it right. And at the same time, one needs a lot of privilege to be able to, to undergo something like that financial privilege, physical ability, you know, contexts like that are not always comfortable for queer, gender non conforming, folks, there's a lot of different issues that get packaged around. And not only that, but there's a lot to be said about being a white person and just waltzing into somebody else's culture and being like, Here I am, heal me. You know, I think that we need an intense amount of scrutiny around are we is that exploitation? Can we do that, in a way that's respectful of other people's cultures and traditions? are indigenous people being supported in those communities like are these communities receiving direct support when we show up and ask for their healing, there's a lot of questions around that. And what it leaves people with is either self administering psychedelics, or seeking out underground facilitators. Now, I have met people who do underground work, who are some of the most caring, well trained, experienced facilitators out there, I am not in any way putting down people that are literally risking their freedom to offer this work to people. And at the same time, we see the intense drawbacks to a criminalized underground with psychedelic healing. Because right now, the psychedelic community is in a massive moment of reckoning around sexual abuse that was perpetrated by facilitators. And like, we cannot ignore that when someone has an intense amount of power over you. And you're in an altered state. And there's no real substantial system of accountability that exists if you're harmed, that that is a very vulnerable position to be in. Now, I want to make clear, like the vast majority of people who do this work, that is not going to happen to them, but it has happened and it's, it's when you are already traumatized, and to think of being further violated in such a vulnerable state. It's unthinkable, unthinkable to me. So you know, I think the closer we get to decriminalization, and the closer we get to a broadening of clinical services around psychedelics, the safer these substances will be not only safe to the physical body and, and psychologically safe, but also greater systems of accountability around the person actually being safe while they're taking the substances.

Effy

First of all, I can't even imagine the damage it can cause to somebody who's trying to heal from trauma to be further violated, and traumatize on that journey. So that's huge. I'm curious to what if people are gonna find listeners or kind of have taken this on? And you know, and they're looking for someone to heal them? And what are some of the things they need to watch out for? What are some of the due diligence? Do you suggest they they do? How can they protect themselves? How can they ensure that they connect with somebody who truly wants to, to help them to

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

heal? Yeah, I mean, listen, it's very complicated. In my clinical work, I don't make any time of referrals whatsoever for people to do underground work, because I think it becomes incredibly complicated between therapist and client, I strictly work with people in an integration capacity or an illegal capacity. So I mean, these are great questions, Fe and you know, unfortunately, there's no easy answers. But if a person if a client came to me, and they said, for example, I would like to do an Ayahuasca ceremony. I'm going to be curious about that. What do you want from that experience? How could you access it? Like what in what ways are you considering trying to access a, an experience like this? So one thing that a person can do is ask a lot of questions about the person that might be facilitating this. How are they trained? What kind of background do they have? Do they have psychological training? Do they have shamanic training? What exactly is the context going to be like, Are there going to be other people, they're often going with a friend and having somebody else present that is, you know, not just you and the facilitator for some people, that gives an additional sense of, of safety, for traumatized women, often they might opt for going to contexts that are female, lead or female only. So you know, that can be a safer context for some people. And I think we want to just continue to remind ourselves that as long as these things are illegal, we're taking a risk about the quality of the substance we're receiving, we're taking the risk legally about engaging in something that is potentially a risk to ourselves, or to the person that's facilitating the ceremony? You know, it's it's a difficult question to answer. But again, I would really be thinking about, do I get the feeling from this person, that they're transparent with me that they're asking for a fair energy exchange in terms of the financial commitment that they're asking for? Is the relationship clear of any kind of conflicts of interest, like if somebody is asking you for, for example, like a work exchange or trying to have a co occurring sexual relationship with you? Those might all be really red flags that this might not be a person that you want to work with?

Jacqueline

How can folks engage in some advocacy around this? Because what I hear is, there's incredible potential and power for the use of psychedelics within a healing experience within a spiritual experience, and access to those things are incredibly limited. And so how can the lay person be engaged in helping to change some laws and policies around access and accessibility?

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

Well, the decriminalization movement is quite organized in many places around the country. Also, psychedelic societies are popping up all around. So I am the community support and integration director at the Hudson Valley psychedelic society, near where I live in Woodstock. Basically, what we do, you know, we have very hard lines about we don't refer people to underground practitioners, we don't do anything that's outside of legal limits. But we see ourselves mostly as a social justice organization that steps in and tries to organize around contacting local politicians, drafting resolutions that can be looked at on on local and state levels, to change laws around accessibility of psychedelics, you know, Oregon is is an interesting example, because they also, in addition to their decriminalization movement, have a psychedelic therapy bill, where they're actually carving out a legal avenue for people to receive psilocybin therapy with trained facilitators, that's going to be in addition to decriminalization. So there's like, really interesting and creative things that are happening in more progressive spaces. But yeah, I mean, getting involved on a local level is probably the best thing you can do. Because I don't see a world where we're have massive de decriminalization on a federal level anytime soon. So really, what we're looking at is like, how do we support equity and clinical spaces? And by that, I mean, how do we move towards having more people going into the clinical side? who are people of color? who are queer people who are trans people? Who can begin to ask questions about how we've always done these types of healing work in the clinical arena, and bring more perspective to it. And people getting involved more in their local scenes, and how you can begin to talk to local politicians and change drug laws on that level.

Effy

I imagine that the cannabis world has paved the way and how to do that, as they're sort of tackling local politicians and you know, legalizing sort of a patch at a time to push that movement forward. I imagine like that's a good playbook to take a look at.

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

You know, cannabis is the people who have been involved in sort of cannabis legalization and in the cannabis world, it's a very specific niche, and not my expertise. But what I can tell you from my colleagues who have worked in that arena, is that they their view of how the direction that cannabis has gone is a very mixed bag, right? Because cannabis was very corporate very fast. And, you know, there's been a lot of critique about how communities of color who have been most impacted by the drug war will really benefit from cannabis legalization because the bars to setting up any kind of dispensaries or legal stuff around cannabis is so incredibly high, you know, and I think we're still seeing like what's going to play out in terms of dealing with reparations for people who have been imprisoned incarcerated for drug crimes involving cannabis, it's very complicated. Looking at it, like we're going to have a multi tiered approach. And one of those tiers is going to be the clinical right and in the clinical realm, what we really want to look at is how to prevent psychedelic healing from going in the direction of $15,000 Boutique treatment to actually being like access To build treatments that are competent for a wide range of identities, and then in the decriminalized world, I think what we really want to look at there is how to avoid this just becoming like a corporate overthrow of psychedelics like how do we actually create a world where we can cultivate on our own where we can grow plants and fungi and learn how to responsibly use it in our own homes and with our own families for healing, you know, and then there's always going to be the recreational world of psychedelics as well.

Effy

This is such great information. Thank you. And I also just want to put a little bit more before we jump into the rapid fire questions. I know that you recently very, very recently published an article specifically looking at treating sexual trauma with psychedelics. Could you touch? Can you speak to that

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. So the article was just published two days ago in the journal sexual and relationship therapy, the topic that I really wanted to tackle is what is the role of spirituality or sacredness in the healing process and doing psychedelic integration work with sexual trauma survivors? So really, what I'm looking at is how and in what ways does a person heal from having sacred experience. And my interest in that is more about how we change our perspective, after having these mystical experiences around how we think of ourselves. So for example, people who are sexually traumatized in childhood, often have low self esteem, have a lot of difficulty in relationships, carry around a lot of negative self referencing beliefs, like I'm unlovable, I'm broken. I mean, these are pretty ubiquitous from people who are traumatized as children. And in my work, what I'm really seeking to do is challenge those assumptions about self, by exploring with the client after they've had a psychedelic experience of what it feels like to actually be in that state where you felt connected to the Divine, how could you be broken or unlovable if you can also feel this sense of inner divinity? Right, this expanded sense of self. I work in that way. And another facet of my work is really somatic. And so it's how to retrain the traumatized body, to be able to come back online safely and feel eroticism, feel sexual sensation after abuse, or sexual trauma. And in what way do can we incorporate spirituality into into that, and I've developed a whole series of techniques that I can that I work on with clients, where of course, they're doing this in a self directed way at home, not in front of me in my office, but it involves erotic self touch, and mindful masturbation techniques that are pairing sexual stimulation, with these feeling states of being connected to the divine. So you know, you can certainly read my article and see more about what those specific techniques look like. But my objective is really folding in our spiritual selves into not only our healing, but bringing together some marriage of our spiritual identity and our sexual identity.

Effy

And it makes so much sense. I mean, the thinking about how powerful sexism sexuality is, and how that that energy sits in our body, and how that can just be paired up with, you know, a sacred energy to then heal kind of, even for me, the most sort of pragmatic and nerdy brain. I'm like, Yeah, that makes sense to me. Yeah, it's

Jacqueline

interesting because I continue to become confronted through this work with with my religious upbringing and continue to want to sit with and indulge and engage in the spiritual and the sexual in the same space, and recognize that each time that comes up, like what happens inside of me, where my every, you know, years and years of training, like no, possible, you can't do that. And feeling drawn to saying no, actually, that feels like the only way for that to feel safe and good and whole.

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

Yeah, I mean, those are the clients with strong religious upbringings, or really sex negative religious upbringings. Or there's a sex therapist named Peggy Klein plots, and whose work I really admire. And she I'm, you know, not quoting directly, but she had just this really brilliant thought about that, you know, we're raised to believe that self respect is about withholding. And then as adults, we're trying to retrain ourselves to understand that self respect, it has to do with asking for our desires to be met. And you know, that is an extremely complicated thing when we had a religious background that our you know, exploring our body is bad or sinful sex is bad and sinful. Bringing spirituality into that as an adult is you really a challenging and rewarding,

Unknown Speaker

I appreciate this conversation I appreciate I mean, personally, I appreciate it because I think I named in the beginning that I am curious and know that I need to continue to be on the journey of connecting with my body and, and moving past my mind to be able to heal trauma. And it is both helpful to see what is possible and accessible. And frustrating to understand the blocks that get in the way. And so my the community organizer Spirit inside of me is, is ready to be on the on the supporting end of advocacy. And so I appreciate you giving us some some channels to that. And we'll include the links to what you've shared not only the article, but the organizations that you work with in our bios that this way folks can can get engaged.

Effy

TD so amazing, so informative. I'm I'm actually kind of enthralled. I've just checked in with myself. And then as I was listening to it, I just realized how much I've been listening. And normally we're taking notes where you know, we're managing things in the in the back end, what I've noticed is like, I'm just like, enthralled by all the things that you're saying. And like I'm you know, I'm looking forward to listening to this, like again and again, as we have to do for editing. And there's just like, such good information there. And it's so clear and so accessible. It really legitimizes his work. It's hopeful for me to sound so hopeful, like, here's another way of looking at trauma, some of the darkest traumas, like sexual traumas, there is treatment that is not only like, scientifically sound, but also comes with, you know, spirituality and connectedness and, and all those things that we don't forget about those things. That is a holistic, fully integrated approach that feels so helpful. So thank you. Great, I'm so glad and connected

Jacqueline

to the generations I think that's the other thing that continues to sit with me is to think about, you know, my my indigenous and say, you know, ancestors like leveraging this and feeling connected to my ancestry and feeling connected to history. And so absolutely,

I think I'm walking away with that same sense, I think I feel a sense of, of joy, of hope of frustration around lack of access and joy. And yeah, what is possible in the future? Yeah.

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

Well, yeah, I mean, the access thing, we didn't say this in the main bulk of the recording, but ketamine is what we do have a lot of protocols around and accessibility. So there are some people who are doing fantastic work, bringing trying to bring low cost ketamine treatments, ketamine is becoming much more accessible via services where you can be evaluated online, and I'm not necessarily endorsing that, but they're trying to build an infrastructure as MDMA and psilocybin get rescheduled. That's what a lot of people are trying to do is use ketamine as the jumping off point, to build the infrastructure to be more psychedelic oriented clinics. So right now, there is a lot of ketamine work. Yes, no, I

Effy

have had an experience with a clinic that specializes in this work. And I have been surprised at how automated it was. Yeah, you know, whether it's good or bad? You know, that's a question mark. I was just surprised to how automated and kind of my experiences came with instructions and playlists and prompts that were all online and ensure I had access to coaches. But a bulk of the work was done through like a system, a very comprehensive system, which I found surprised that I wouldn't say self service. But it was it was it was interesting that it was it just once you found your way, it was very accessible, and very easy to get through. Thank you to you so much for your time. And I imagine we'll have you back on the show again, and to sort of delve more into this stuff going forward.

Dee Dee Goldpaugh

Amazing. Thank you so much for having me.

Effy

What an amazing conversation, just so much information. So clearly laid out, I loved it. And the things that really the two things that really stood out for me, one is a personal reflection, I am a nerd, and we know this and sometimes I overdo it. And this topic has been one of those that I really, really overdone the nerdiness I've been so focused on the science of psychedelics, and like how how they're like, what they're made of how they react in the body, the way that it activates our nervous system and, and all the things all the science or dosage and how the resources are being done and all these kinds of things for such a long time, and how they how they apply to my healing and all those things for such a long time. What I hadn't connected with is the spiritual and the secret side of the psychedelic experience for healing, that, that especially the plant based the fungi based psychedelic mushrooms, and the pod is and the Ayahuasca is an oldest, they're ancient, and they were around before we were around, and they have their own sacred spiritual energy that really helps guide the healing which, you know, I just, I just hadn't really thought about that. And or at least I should say, it wasn't really presented to me in this way that just like clicked like, I had a proper lightbulb moment. And I was like, yeah, like I don't really think about that, yet. I I know that I've experienced it. So that was like a big takeaway for me. Yeah. Also just a note to self to like, turn down the nerd every now and then.

Jacqueline

But let me say, first of all, I think that makes sense, because particularly in the United States, that is often our focus, right is in a very clinical kind of perspective, and what is it doing? And what does it mean, and what's the dosage and all those things. So it makes sense that their brains would go there. And I had a similar reaction, I think that I was drawn to the idea of what that means in a secret space, I think there are some debates and around the idea that potentially our ancestors 1000s of years ago, their access to psychedelics is part of what helped create community part of what it created, and sparked imagination that helped create tools and help create societies. And so from that perspective, number one, realizing that that is a big part of our roots, but also just personally thinking about my indigenous heritage, and thinking about the communities that my my ancestors were in and how this was a part of their life. Like, I don't know if I connected those dots until this conversation as well, which made me even more interested and excited.

And that I can't access it in a way that feels that feels simple.

Effy

Yes, no, that's, that's, that's correct. That's true. Yes. And then I think that the next piece, right for me was I was really inspired by DDS vision of this, you know, legal community based psychedelic rituals, and what that would do to the fiber of our society. You know, I thought that was a really interesting exploration, about what could be possible if this stuff was available. And when I reflect on it further, I mean, community ritual spirituality, and something that makes you feel good and connected to your fellow humans. You can't really go wrong with that. Right? I can see why you're in Ecuador and Peru that this has been a way of life for in Mexico, it's been a way of life for so long. And the things that you were saying about how these communities have higher well being and more connectedness and just feeling just generally feeling good and joyful. I, you know, once you have community, ritual, spirituality is something that gets you high in it, and in a good connected way. Of course, people are feeling good, you know, like sign please sign me up. So I know that was, you know, that was like, that's, that's huge. And I share that vision. Now. That's like, that's been put in front of me as an inspiration. I'm like, Yeah, let's make that happen.

Jacqueline

Yeah, particularly now, I've been thoughtful about that as a relates to our, you know, post pandemic life, where prescriptions of Xanax and Klonopin and Wellbutrin and Lexapro and like like they're out of stock on shelves, right, because everybody is on something, and yet, cannabis, mushrooms, other things that are literally grown from the ground are not accessible, but things that are made in labs and made to make pharmacies and insurance companies lots and lots of money. Of course, those are widely accessible. And that feels really frustrating everything, even as a parent who is navigating the mental health journey of my daughter and thinking about ways in which I want to support her in that journey. I do wish, honestly, that there were some other more natural remedies, more natural tools available as a parent to support her in that journey. Because certainly, there's lots of advice about other kinds of prescriptions that I'm getting. And so I really am interested in what you described above have a community where those things are possible, where we're our ability to connect with each other and with nature Sure, does not feel so regulated.

Effy

Exactly. And how quick how quickly are to prescribe pharma, like psychopharmacology and like that is that is that's like, Oh, this one track one note. It's not even a treatment. It's like management really, we know this like psychopharmacology is management's and so one note management tool, where what what they're describing in the psychedelic what they're what they're sort of painting, the vision of, is this like, here's your here's your chemical support, which is you know, nature's your nature's gift, by the way that comes with a spiritual experience so that you have another note another layer, and you know, it's offered to you in ritual, right, you're not popping a white cap of an orange, you know, like popping a pill, but it's offered to you in community in a ritual that is so much more of a holistic grounding connecting experience that feels so much more healing, just even in theory just even just in my mind, then snow a piece of paper with with you know, some chemical written on it that I go and get in my pop Every morning and you know, cross my fingers and hope that I feel better, you know,

Jacqueline

it's completely true. Yeah, I so I'm on Wellbutrin and I take it in the morning when I take my vitamins, so they're all like lined up in the counter my multivitamin, my vitamin D, my fish oil, you know, my probiotics, my Wellbutrin, like just any drinking water and keep it moving. When I was doing micro dosing, that was a ritual experience, I would make some tea, I would create some space in the morning, I would think of an intention, like just the experience, as you noted, was just so different. And it didn't feel like maintenance. It felt like checking in with myself. And I think this conversation helped me realize like I need more of that I need to figure out more ways to incorporate that into my life. The other thing that this was, you know, this topic was interesting, and I was drawn to because I am continuing to think about ways to heal my body and to connect with myself. And I think that the closest that I've been on a real trip is my Netflix binging recently. It's interesting, you know, Netflix has now the fantastic fungi and have a good trip adventures and psychedelics. And the goop lab with Gwyneth Paltrow did an episode on psychedelics. And so you know, we talked about it really psychedelics being something that was discussed only in relation to party kids and hippies. But now it also feels really mainstream. So I continue to be annoyed because now I just keep watching on Netflix binging thing upon thing that's like, look how great look how great I am and then you can't sign up. I used to pray. You can't have it unless you're Gwyneth Paltrow and her team. Yeah.

Effy

Right. Exactly. It's the same and and I love I love that one of the things that did you have to defer to you? I love that how aware they were of the limitations, the bureaucracy that's around it and sort of frustrated by it as well and legalities so, so get involved, figure out what you can do and, and do it.

Jacqueline

We're gonna put the links in our in our bio, I think because I am now feeling that sense of I need to advocate we need to do something we need to connect. And so I think DD gave us a few different references. But it sounds like within each of our local communities, there are some spaces and places that we can link folks to in order to do some advocacy. And so if you want to find out more ways to be involved to be informed, number one, we'll put some links in our show notes. But too, you can go to DTS website at DD goalpara.com. That's degoldpaugh.com Did he's also written an article many articles actually, including the one that they referenced on the episode, finding the divine within exploring the role of the sacred and psychedelic integration therapy for sexual trauma and dysfunction, which can be found in the Journal of sexual and relationship therapy. to tap into the community and resources and fun that is found here within curious Fox. Then you can visit our website and we are curious foxes.com or visit us on Instagram and Facebook. We are curious foxes for photos and articles and conversations and sneak peeks and to support the show and to indulge in your curiosity. Join us on Patreon. At we are curious foxes where you can find behind the scenes footage, many episodes over 50 videos from educator level websites. Go onto Patreon. We are curious foxes, and we're increasing our listenership that is a focus of ours for this year moving into next and we need your help. So please share our podcast or this episode with a friend quickly rate the show, leave a comment, subscribe on Apple podcast or follow us on Spotify and Stitcher. And then let us know that you're listening by sharing a comment or a story or question by emailing us or sending us a voice memo to listening at wearecuriousfoxes.com

Effy

This episode is produced and edited by Nina Pollock, who is a real trip to work with. Our intro music is composed by Dave Sahar. We are so grateful for their work, and we're grateful to you for listening. As always stay curious friends. Curious Fox podcast is not and will never be the final word on any topic. We solely aim to encourage curiosity and provide a space for exploration through connection and story. We encourage you to listen with an open and curious mind and we'll look forward to your feedback. Stay curious friends.

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