Speaker 1: Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: I always a quate sitar music to drugs, and in
Speaker 1: this context it's plant medicines, hallucinogens, psychedelic And it's really
Speaker 1: the format and the prelude to our program today, which
Speaker 1: is a different kind of application of psychedelics. We've had
Speaker 1: people like Graham Hancock and Bob Straussmann talking about DMT.
Speaker 1: We've talked about ayahuasca. Oh my god, how many people
Speaker 1: have we had on about ayahuasca. And I have to
Speaker 1: admit I have not used the drug, haven't tried it.
Speaker 1: I'm still in preparatory state. It may not be in
Speaker 1: this lifetime I try it. But these psychedelics are important
Speaker 1: for a number of reasons. They open up pockets in
Speaker 1: our brain for creativity, for healing, for vision quests, for
Speaker 1: spiritual growth. I mean, the list goes on and on
Speaker 1: and on. We've had people on the program presenting a
Speaker 1: variety of uses of psychedelic and if you've been listening
Speaker 1: for the last few years, you know how we can
Speaker 1: apply psychedelics to our daily life. Here in northern California,
Speaker 1: we're close to the Silicon Valley. There are engineers that
Speaker 1: are microdosing DMT, that are microdosing would you believe LSD
Speaker 1: and making fantastic claims about powerful creative energy visioning and
Speaker 1: using it to really further their careers. We come full
Speaker 1: circle today with psychedelics and sexuality, which is a really
Speaker 1: interesting topic, but not just pleasure sexuality, but healing trauma,
Speaker 1: healing trauma from abuse, sexual abuse, and perhaps relationship abuse.
Speaker 1: It can be a variety of things, and this is
Speaker 1: the topic today. Hey, this is Cliff, your host of
Speaker 1: Destiny and my guest today has been using psychedelics in
Speaker 1: a very very positive therapeutic manner and finding very very
Speaker 1: profound healing effects and also openings. When I say openings
Speaker 1: people who are blocked who have issues with creativity, because
Speaker 1: when you're sexual, you're expressing, you're expressing a form of
Speaker 1: creativity as well. And I've always said, and of course
Speaker 1: I wrote a book called Cannabis and Sexual Ecstasy for Men,
Speaker 1: when you have an orgasm, that is the epitome of creativity.
Speaker 1: And that's why there's a lot of people that say
Speaker 1: we have to have an orgasm like once a day,
Speaker 1: which is I think pretty tough if your working soul
Speaker 1: like me, because you know, you come home, you don't
Speaker 1: want to even think about and form of coupling or sexuality.
Speaker 1: You want to just decompress. So but you know, we
Speaker 1: want to consider these plant medicines. And we know that
Speaker 1: the indigenous people, the natives of various parts of the world,
Speaker 1: use plant medicines for uh spiritual awakening, for community with
Speaker 1: the higher levels of spirits we've heard, We've had people
Speaker 1: like Graham Hancock talking about connecting with various animal kingdoms
Speaker 1: while they're on ayahuasca, and so it makes sense that
Speaker 1: we would have a program on psychedelics and sexuality. So
Speaker 1: today's program is Embrace Pleasure, How psychedelics can heal our sexuality.
Speaker 1: And my guest is d. D. Goldpaw as the year
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Speaker 1: You deserve the mental health that works with you, not
Speaker 1: against your budget. We've had a number of different authors
Speaker 1: over the past few years talking about psychedelics, and we're
Speaker 1: talking journeying with ayahuasca. We have had people talk about DMT.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's been in the news lately with a
Speaker 1: number of people who are working with DMT and finding
Speaker 1: various entities and other types of phenomenon. Today we're talking
Speaker 1: about psychedelics and sexuality. We're introducing a new book called
Speaker 1: Embrace Pleasure, How Psychedelics Can Heal Our Sexuality in. My
Speaker 1: guest today is d d Goldpa, and let me tell
Speaker 1: you a little bit about DDI. She is a psychotherapist,
Speaker 1: an educator, a leading voice in the development of psychedelics
Speaker 1: or I should say psychedelic integration psychotherapy. We'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that. And I had a chance to
Speaker 1: look at this book, and I have to tell you
Speaker 1: it's very well written, not only because this is something
Speaker 1: that I have not heard about psychedelics in sexual healing,
Speaker 1: but also just for its general information and overview. So DEDI,
Speaker 1: welcome to Destiny. Great to have you on the program.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. Cliff, I'm thrilled
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: Here talk about psychedelics and sexual therapy, or I should
Speaker 1: say in therapy as a whole. I have understood that
Speaker 1: you can use psychedelics in microdosing, you know, so you're
Speaker 1: not too out of balance, But how do you integrate
Speaker 1: those two?
Speaker 2: Sure, well, I think I'll go back to sort of
Speaker 2: how you introduce this interview the topic of psychedelics, sexuality,
Speaker 2: and pleasure. Despite the fact that psychedelics have sort of
Speaker 2: emerged into the mainstream as something that's getting folded into
Speaker 2: acceptable medical treatment, is certainly part of our mainstream culture
Speaker 2: more than it ever has been. These are particularly taboo
Speaker 2: top and to my knowledge, my book is the first
Speaker 2: by a major publisher that addresses these issues right, how
Speaker 2: psychedelic impact, how psychedelics impact our sexuality, and how we
Speaker 2: heal through pleasure. So you started to talk about microdosing
Speaker 2: and perhaps other ways of taking psychedelics. So just to
Speaker 2: define this for our listeners, microdosing is not actually a
Speaker 2: new phenomenon at all. There's some evidence that this existed
Speaker 2: in indigenous cultures traditionally and was primarily used to heighten
Speaker 2: the senses for hunting. And there was a wave of
Speaker 2: interest in microdosing, I don't know, fifteen years ago, primarily
Speaker 2: coming on a Silicon Valley for exactly the opposite reason,
Speaker 2: which was to optimize performance in creativity. So it's a
Speaker 2: really interesting place to start the interview because whereas I
Speaker 2: cover microdosing in the book as a phenomenon, my approach
Speaker 2: to psychedelic healing is actually quite the opposite, and it's
Speaker 2: founded on this idea that the psychedelic experience has value
Speaker 2: in and of itself, that the ways we are impacted spiritually, emotionally,
Speaker 2: and physically by psychedelic experiences has the potential to profoundly
Speaker 2: change our relationship to our personhood and to our sexuality.
Speaker 2: And the experience of taking psychedelics itself is an erotic
Speaker 2: experience because it is somatic. It puts us in touch
Speaker 2: with the divine, and those are deeply spiritual erotic experiences,
Speaker 2: and the pleasure of the experience itself is healing. Microdosing
Speaker 2: on the other hand, not to put it down in
Speaker 2: any way, because people mental health is impacted in really
Speaker 2: positive ways by my redosing, but it's looking at these
Speaker 2: medicines as something that could be integrated into our life
Speaker 2: for the purpose of mental health versus how will we
Speaker 2: changed on a large scale through the experience of pleasure,
Speaker 2: embodiment and connection with spirituality.
Speaker 1: M amazing. I should have mentioned before we started that
Speaker 1: I wrote a book a few years ago called Cannabis
Speaker 1: and Sexual Healing for Men, And.
Speaker 2: I've heard of that book.
Speaker 1: I Oh really, I think it's the same publisher you're with,
Speaker 1: Inner Traditions, right, yeah, oh yeah, it was Barren Company,
Speaker 1: which is one of their companies. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that I discovered is that cannabis heightens sexual pleasure,
Speaker 1: and I had never thought about And you list the
Speaker 1: various types of psychedelics kennamine as well as masculine piote
Speaker 1: d mt LSD as a form of sexual enhancement. I mean,
Speaker 1: because they're so powerful, how do you work with them
Speaker 1: in a way that allows for enough expressions so that
Speaker 1: you to get sexual pleasure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a really interesting question because my work really
Speaker 2: focuses on the post acute effects of psychedelics. So there's
Speaker 2: different ways to think about psychedelics and sexuality, And one
Speaker 2: is sex on psychedelics. So what is the experience of
Speaker 2: adding a psychedelic to a sexual experience? And I do
Speaker 2: write about that in the book, But the area of
Speaker 2: interest that is much deeper for me is how are
Speaker 2: we changed as sexual people because of our psychedelic experiences.
Speaker 2: How does it make us more connected to our partners,
Speaker 2: more embodied, more present in our sexual experiences. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I do write that there are some medicines that people
Speaker 2: have seemed to experience as libido enhancing or sexuality enhancing
Speaker 2: LSD being one of them. And again as a therapist
Speaker 2: for example, to give you the opposite side of this.
Speaker 2: You know, I work clinically in my psychotherapy practice with ketamine,
Speaker 2: but I'm certainly not working with people who are having
Speaker 2: sex on ketamine. But what they may be doing in
Speaker 2: my office in a you know, controlled clinical context, is
Speaker 2: addressing issues about their sexuality, particularly sexual trauma, that help
Speaker 2: them to feel as though they are more healed sexual
Speaker 2: people in the world. And so many medicines can be
Speaker 2: profoundly helpful with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I gotta say, for those of you listening,
Speaker 1: Dedi's book is outstanding in its coverage of these different psychedelics.
Speaker 1: But also, and we'll talk about this in a minute,
Speaker 1: she has great case studies which we'll bring up a
Speaker 1: little bit later. Talking a little bit about your personal
Speaker 1: journey as a I guess you could call it a
Speaker 1: sexual trauma victim. Was this part of your work, or
Speaker 1: is this a foundation for your work and to go
Speaker 1: to school become a psychotherapy and to focus on sexual trauma.
Speaker 2: Well, like many therapists, I have a deeply personal investment
Speaker 2: in the work that I do. So yes, I am
Speaker 2: a survivor of sexual violence. That's something that I've really
Speaker 2: empowered myself to talk about publicly, and I do so
Speaker 2: because I want if there's any message that I have
Speaker 2: for people, it's to see that healing is possible and
Speaker 2: to stand in the world as an example that terrible
Speaker 2: things might have happened in your life and there is
Speaker 2: the possibility of healing that is always accessible to us.
Speaker 2: So it felt very important to me to sort of
Speaker 2: own that publicly, that this is part of my history.
Speaker 2: So I had treatment resistant PTSD for quite a long time,
Speaker 2: and I tried many different approaches to healings, certainly traditional
Speaker 2: talk psychotherapy. I got very deeply involved in Eastern spiritual practices,
Speaker 2: which were very helpful to me. I was a very
Speaker 2: diligent meditator, as I remained to this day, and there
Speaker 2: was a certain point in my healing trajectory where I
Speaker 2: was introduced to ceremonial psychedelic medicines, And when I say ceremonial,
Speaker 2: we often think of the healing of trauma as occurring
Speaker 2: only in clinical contexts with psychedelics, because many people are
Speaker 2: sort of familiar with psychedelics as a recreational tool or
Speaker 2: psychedelics as a clinical tool. And for me, the experience
Speaker 2: was quite different. I was very lucky to be able
Speaker 2: to go to Peru and experience plant medicines in a
Speaker 2: ceremonial context. Fantastic and there many times I've been to
Speaker 2: Peru now, and this offered a legal, safe way to
Speaker 2: experience medicines that had been held ancestrally for generations, and
Speaker 2: those experiences there at the beginning of that journey, there
Speaker 2: was a lot of hard work that I had to
Speaker 2: do about confronting the traumas that I have experienced, and
Speaker 2: those were really hard experiences. It took a lot of
Speaker 2: work in integration and took a lot of persistence to
Speaker 2: actually work through all of that trauma. But really the
Speaker 2: foundation of the book takes off from the perspective that
Speaker 2: in the West were often told that healing happens through
Speaker 2: hard work, that we might encounter psychedelics in a clinical
Speaker 2: context or otherwise, and it's about confronting terrible things that
Speaker 2: have happened to you. But in my healing journey, there
Speaker 2: was a particular healing point where I had done all
Speaker 2: of that hard work and I had a ceremony in
Speaker 2: Peru with San Pedro medicine, which which is also known
Speaker 2: as what Chuma medicine, and the active component of that
Speaker 2: is mescaline, and that's really been the medicine that's been
Speaker 2: the most heart healing for me. And I remember this
Speaker 2: day of being on this mountaintop and for the first
Speaker 2: time feeling so alive in my body, so connected to
Speaker 2: the earth, connected to the other people I was with,
Speaker 2: without any thought of trauma at all. And that is
Speaker 2: the moment that I realized that that was actually the healing,
Speaker 2: that the hard work that I had done in those
Speaker 2: previous ceremonies led me to this point where the real
Speaker 2: healing was about being connected to myself, the earth, and
Speaker 2: to the divine again in this way that was so
Speaker 2: deeply pleasurable. So when I undertook the process of writing
Speaker 2: this book, that was really the message that I wanted
Speaker 2: to convey, is that there's something beyond the hard work.
Speaker 2: There's a reason to keep going and that reason is
Speaker 2: the reconnection of pleasure in your life.
Speaker 1: Wow, sexual pleasure is a huge deal for the body.
Speaker 1: It's released as hormones. We know a lot about it,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot we don't know. Would you say
Speaker 1: that these psychedelics, these plant medicines provide a shortcut for healing,
Speaker 1: another way to access the body, the mind, the spirit
Speaker 1: and integrate them in a way that brings you to
Speaker 1: the problem quicker and resolves it, perhaps well not necessarily
Speaker 1: resolves it, but helps you understand it, which I think
Speaker 1: is where the healing is. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'm holding onto your question, and I preemptively
Speaker 2: want for our listeners to go back and just define
Speaker 2: how I talk about pleasure in the book. So, the
Speaker 2: concept of pleasure in general, I think is one that's
Speaker 2: really misunderstood because it's a word we use colloquially all
Speaker 2: the time, and it can mean when we talk about
Speaker 2: something that's pleasurable, it could mean eating a food you like,
Speaker 2: It could mean kind of disappearing into your phone and
Speaker 2: scrolling on it. Now, I am not trying to make
Speaker 2: the argument that those types of activities which I put
Speaker 2: under the umbrella of leisure are going to necessarily be healing.
Speaker 2: They have their utility right, because sometimes it can actually
Speaker 2: be very relaxing or helpful to us in some way
Speaker 2: to disengage from life. So I'm not anti leisure. But
Speaker 2: the pleasure that I'm talking about that I think can
Speaker 2: lead to the healing that will address in your question
Speaker 2: is actually when we have the experience of being awake,
Speaker 2: mindfully tuned to the present moment, with an experience of
Speaker 2: savoring the sensual. So it has to be something that
Speaker 2: is embodied, alive and wakes us up to how good
Speaker 2: it feels to be in our human experience, which is
Speaker 2: something when people experience trauma or really anything just being
Speaker 2: a person in this world, we can become very disconnected
Speaker 2: from the pleasure of our own humanity. So when we
Speaker 2: take this a step further to address your question directly
Speaker 2: about sexual pleasure, erotic pleasure or sexual pleasure, I think
Speaker 2: is probably one of the most profound and heightened forms
Speaker 2: of pleasure we have, and paradoxically, it's also the form
Speaker 2: of pleasure around which we feel the most shame. So
Speaker 2: one of the reasons I focused on sexual pleasure in
Speaker 2: the book is because I think almost all of us
Speaker 2: walk in the world with something within us that needs
Speaker 2: a little healing around our capacity to own our right
Speaker 2: to sexual pleasure. So I think when we endeavor to
Speaker 2: heal that we can actually access really deep parts of
Speaker 2: ourselves that we can become cut off from psychedelic medicines.
Speaker 2: I think research does tell us that they have multiple
Speaker 2: different quality that are shown time and again in different
Speaker 2: research studies to support connecting to this type of pleasure
Speaker 2: that can be relationship enhancing, that can heal our relationship
Speaker 2: to our bodies, that can make us more attuned to
Speaker 2: sexual pleasure in sexual experiences, and those categories are that
Speaker 2: psychedelics induce the equality of openness, meaning we have more
Speaker 2: capacity for fantasy, we have more cognitive flexibility. Psychedelics are
Speaker 2: also empathy enhancing, so we have greater capacity to be
Speaker 2: in our relationships and feel empathy for ourselves and other people,
Speaker 2: which makes us more connected. Psychedelics also are mindfulness enhancing.
Speaker 2: So what's really interesting. There's a sex researcher I really
Speaker 2: respect named Lori Brato, and she wrote a book about
Speaker 2: sexuality and mindfulness, and what she found is that people
Speaker 2: we're not experiencing as much pleasure as possible because we
Speaker 2: are so habituated to multitasking, we actually are unable to
Speaker 2: focus on the sensations and queues that can turn us on,
Speaker 2: that can make us feel alive and awake in a
Speaker 2: sexual experience. So psychedelics are tools in deepening all of
Speaker 2: these categories which can lead to sexual keeling and enhancement
Speaker 2: of pleasure.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a short commercial break to allow
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Speaker 1: my guest today, d D Goldpa discussing her new book,
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Speaker 1: mentioning us at checkout. My guest today is d D Goldpas.
Speaker 1: She is a psychotherapist who uses psychedelics in her therapy
Speaker 1: sessions to release sexual trauma. I kept hearing in my
Speaker 1: head orgasm orgasm. Is do these psychedelics induce orgasm easier
Speaker 1: or is it just part of the process that you're
Speaker 1: going to have an orgasm on a regular basis. That's
Speaker 1: a big deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And it's a really interesting question because some
Speaker 2: of the people that I interviewed for the section of
Speaker 2: the book that are personal accounts from some of the
Speaker 2: authors of those personal accounts that I interviewed or named,
Speaker 2: and some chose to go by pseudonyms, but some people
Speaker 2: do talk about the experience of orgasm during psychedelic experiences
Speaker 2: as being deeper, spiritual, completely transcendent for them. And as
Speaker 2: a sex therapist, when I'm working with clients, I often
Speaker 2: find that getting people to focus more on the experience itself,
Speaker 2: on the attunement to sensation in their body is helpful
Speaker 2: for them over single mindedly focusing on orgasm. So most
Speaker 2: people who are having sexual experiences want to have orgasms,
Speaker 2: but in fact, more satisfying sexual experiences can happen when
Speaker 2: we're savoring the entire experience instead of just this one
Speaker 2: part of it. So broadening people's sexual scripts, helping them
Speaker 2: to be more present and attuned in sexual experiences is
Speaker 2: one of the strategies that I use as a sex therapist.
Speaker 1: Fantastic, All right, So I come to dit, I come
Speaker 1: to your office, and I come with my partner and
Speaker 1: we're having issues and we sit with you and so
Speaker 1: forth and so on. When do you begin to integrate
Speaker 1: the plant medicine? How does that work?
Speaker 2: Well, that's also a really interesting question because right now
Speaker 2: in most places in the United States, psychedelics, most of
Speaker 2: them continue to be illegal.
Speaker 1: Exactly that was my next question.
Speaker 2: They are federally illegal, right, so we have certain decriminalized
Speaker 2: places within the United States where there's more flexibility. I
Speaker 2: do not live in a decriminalized state. I practice in
Speaker 2: New York State. I live in Woodstock, New York, perhaps
Speaker 2: the most psychedelic small town in all of America, and
Speaker 2: yet these medicines remain illegal. So what I can work
Speaker 2: with as a tool is ketamine assistant therapy. That is
Speaker 2: a legal, medically supervised intervention that I work with under
Speaker 2: medical guidance with a physician. On the other hand, many
Speaker 2: clients come to my office. I would say the majority
Speaker 2: of people that are coming for any kind of therapy
Speaker 2: that addresses psychedelics are not doing the psychedelics with me.
Speaker 2: They are coming for psychedelic integration therapy, which means that
Speaker 2: they are using these medicines on their own and they
Speaker 2: are coming for therapeutic support. They're either using them independently,
Speaker 2: they are experiencing them with guides or sitters, or they
Speaker 2: are going to retreats or ceremonial contexts outside of the country.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let me understand it. So you're you're there
Speaker 1: to as a therapist to find the trauma or the
Speaker 1: disease in the relationship and working to ease that. And
Speaker 1: then you're saying, are you saying I suggest that you
Speaker 1: use this retreat e ketamine retreat or are you I mean?
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into the I do want
Speaker 1: to get into the legal legalization we can. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: do you bring in the suggestion of using the plant medicine?
Speaker 2: Legally, I can tell a client you are an exibing
Speaker 2: symptoms for which I think a medical evaluation for ketamine
Speaker 2: would be appropriate, right, because that is legal. Now if
Speaker 2: they say I want to do ayahuasca, this becomes a predicament, right,
Speaker 2: because I can't guarantee safety in an unregulated context. So
Speaker 2: the ethical boundary that I've set as a therapist is
Speaker 2: I don't recommend or refer clients to practitioners or contexts
Speaker 2: that are currently illegal. And this is why creating legal
Speaker 2: pathways to these medicines is so important, because it is
Speaker 2: not stopping anyone from doing them, it's only making it
Speaker 2: more dangerous. Oh interesting, So to protect my license, right,
Speaker 2: I don't tell a client you should go out and
Speaker 2: get this substance that is illegal and do it. If
Speaker 2: a client says, hey, I just had a huge bushroom trip,
Speaker 2: and I need to make sense of that with a
Speaker 2: knowledgeable therapist. I'm your person, right that is a place
Speaker 2: where you can come to my office and I can
Speaker 2: help you make sense of an experience you have had.
Speaker 1: Oh, very good. So you're actually helping them define the
Speaker 1: experience that they're having on a plant medicine. Yes, with
Speaker 1: their partner or individually.
Speaker 2: With their partner or individually, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, fantastic, that is fantastic. I have to say this
Speaker 1: that I haven't tried ayahuasca. I'm on the fence about
Speaker 1: it right now, but it is so powerful and it's
Speaker 1: so transformational that it's almost like you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: be in control. And so do you suggest that people
Speaker 1: use an intention that's kind of a software application to
Speaker 1: the hardware, hardware being the app the drug itself, and say,
Speaker 1: you know, my intention is to do this and have
Speaker 1: this experience for a healing or what.
Speaker 2: With ayahuasca, particularly when I write about ayahuasca in the book,
Speaker 2: it is an extremely powerful medicine. And the first thing
Speaker 2: I would say is that people should have a lot
Speaker 2: of discernment about whom they sit in a nyahuasca circle with,
Speaker 2: because an ayahuasca circle that is held by someone who
Speaker 2: is a lineage holder with the rights and responsibilities to
Speaker 2: hold space for that particular medicine. It requires a tremendous
Speaker 2: amount of training, spiritual and training related to safely holding
Speaker 2: the space. And the truth is ayahuasca has proliferated around
Speaker 2: the globe in so many ways that there are many
Speaker 2: people that are undertrained, and it can be a particularly
Speaker 2: dangerous medicine when it is not held well. With ayahuasca,
Speaker 2: I think what you're really pointing at is that there
Speaker 2: are some medicine experiences that can be overwhelming, profound, beautiful,
Speaker 2: even terrifying at times, and there's something about them that
Speaker 2: requires us to surrender. So how do we get ready
Speaker 2: to surrender? And I would say the first step to
Speaker 2: rendering in a way that's therapeutically useful to us is
Speaker 2: that we know we are safe to do so, which
Speaker 2: is why it's so important to find a safe context.
Speaker 2: Intention is the other piece that you asked about. In
Speaker 2: the psychedelic assistant therapy world, people love to talk about
Speaker 2: intentions and to me, intention and it's like saying, I
Speaker 2: need this medicine to give me this, I want to
Speaker 2: feel less depressed. I want to feel healed in this
Speaker 2: particular way. That's not a bad thing. I mean, it
Speaker 2: is completely understandable to me why somebody going through all
Speaker 2: of the of the trials of finding these contexts and
Speaker 2: undergoing these ceremonies would want something specific for themselves. But
Speaker 2: I exercise a lot of caution around intention, and I
Speaker 2: encourage my clients to define intentions broadly about what they
Speaker 2: would like to invite in in the experience. So instead
Speaker 2: of saying I don't want to feel this way anymore,
Speaker 2: would invite a question that has to do with being
Speaker 2: curious about yourself, I would invite an intention that might
Speaker 2: say I'd like to be more open to intimacy, or
Speaker 2: I'd like to understand more about my blocks around my
Speaker 2: sexuality or something like that. So you know, I personally
Speaker 2: feel like and the way I write about it in
Speaker 2: the book is like our intention is like our north star.
Speaker 2: So if we start to feel lost in an overwhelming experience,
Speaker 2: we can come back to this star and think about
Speaker 2: where we want it to head in all of this.
Speaker 2: But it isn't it shouldn't be what defines the experience itself.
Speaker 2: Like that psychedelics can be surprising.
Speaker 1: It's funny you mentioned intentions where someone will actually form
Speaker 1: a question or an intention that is kind of like
Speaker 1: almost negative. I don't want to have this experience anymore.
Speaker 1: I don't want to feel bad about myself anymore. I
Speaker 1: don't want to, you know, be depressed all the time.
Speaker 1: That's like that I was. I was never think my
Speaker 1: idea of an intention is a very positive forward as
Speaker 1: I keep using the term software because it's you're using
Speaker 1: this tool to ask the plant medicine to work with you.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a heads up ahead of time.
Speaker 1: So in your practice, and I'm curious, would you say
Speaker 1: that your clients are a mix of people that have
Speaker 1: sexual dysfunction, sexual trauma, or they just want to have
Speaker 1: more connectivity with the relationship.
Speaker 2: Mm, well, I'm not an interesting career phase right now.
Speaker 2: I mean, I have many years of experience as a
Speaker 2: psychotherapism going into my eighteenth year of practice, so I've
Speaker 2: probably I mean, I really couldn't say the number, but
Speaker 2: it's got to be over somewhere in the five hundred
Speaker 2: to one thousand range, right of individual people who I
Speaker 2: have seen over time, right for at least some kind
Speaker 2: of therapy to context, and they have been vast people
Speaker 2: with sexual dysfunction issues, people with relationship issues, people with trauma.
Speaker 2: But as I moved through my career sort of where
Speaker 2: I am right now. I'm at a place where I
Speaker 2: have a number of long term clients that I've been
Speaker 2: working with for a while. I do a lot of
Speaker 2: supervision and consultation, and of course writing and teaching are
Speaker 2: big parts of my career now. But when clients come
Speaker 2: to my practice some of the more common issues that
Speaker 2: I feel that I really specialize in. I do see
Speaker 2: people for sexual dysfunction issues, but I think looking at
Speaker 2: our relationship to sexuality, into our relationships in general through
Speaker 2: a spiritual existential lens, and healing trauma through a spiritual
Speaker 2: existential lens is really sort of where I shine as
Speaker 2: a therapist. There are a lot of really well resourced
Speaker 2: therapists that do sex therapy for issues of sexual dysfunction.
Speaker 2: But I feel like where I've gone in my career
Speaker 2: and where I feel the most connected to my work
Speaker 2: is when people are really asking themselves, who do I
Speaker 2: want to be in this relationship or what do I
Speaker 2: want my relationship to my sexuality to be? And that
Speaker 2: might be about disrupting harmful narratives that we internalize about ourselves,
Speaker 2: to really looking at blocks to intimacy and learning how
Speaker 2: to open our hearts and connect more deeply to love.
Speaker 2: Because to me, at the end of the day, is
Speaker 2: as cheesy as it might sound, love really is the
Speaker 2: most important thing. And if I can help my clients
Speaker 2: to feel more love in their life, that is a
Speaker 2: job well done.
Speaker 1: But you got to admit that having good sex is huge,
Speaker 1: you know, Yes, of course, good sex is huge. I
Speaker 1: want to address something that you have in the book,
Speaker 1: which is how do psychedelics address something like ed or
Speaker 1: frigidity in a woman, unresponsive sexual sexuality, things like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't. It's really something that when you're
Speaker 1: lost in the plant medicine, it's like what do I
Speaker 1: grasp on to? You know, in my mind, I have
Speaker 1: this feeling that you're in the room with the couple
Speaker 1: or with the individual and kind of guiding them along.
Speaker 1: But maybe that's too much to think about. I'm just
Speaker 1: curious about how that works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the practice of sex therapy and even
Speaker 2: psychedelic therapies don't necessarily include any kind of I do
Speaker 2: give people somatic exercises, but it's exercises they're doing in
Speaker 2: the privacy of their own homes and then we're talking
Speaker 2: about it, right, So I'm not actually present for that part.
Speaker 2: Although there's disciplines such a sexological body work where people
Speaker 2: do work much more hands on with people, that is
Speaker 2: just not part of the discipline of psychotherapy. So you
Speaker 2: mentioned ED. That is a really interesting one because the
Speaker 2: majority of men who experience rectile issues is it has
Speaker 2: a psychological ideology. So that means that it is not
Speaker 2: coming from any kind of physical dysfunction, which could commonly be,
Speaker 2: for example, circulatory or cardiac problems. That is, if you
Speaker 2: have ED and it does have a physical ideology, it's
Speaker 2: a big indicator you might have something going on with
Speaker 2: your heart, for example. Most men who experience it, it
Speaker 2: has a psychological basis. So there's almost no research about
Speaker 2: this in psychedelic science, but we're starting to explore this
Speaker 2: and point in that direction. But what we do know
Speaker 2: is that psychedelics can radically shift how people feel about
Speaker 2: themselves as sexual beings are open to new ways of
Speaker 2: being sexual, and they can be very anxiety reducing. So
Speaker 2: a lot of men with a reptile issues really, what
Speaker 2: it's coming down to is ruminations. Right, they are in
Speaker 2: their head and not their body. There is relationship dissatisfaction,
Speaker 2: or they're not asking for what they want, right, There
Speaker 2: could be It varies based on the individual. So it's
Speaker 2: an interesting way to look at it because we really
Speaker 2: don't have research that says particular sexual dysfunctions respond to
Speaker 2: psychedelic treatments, which we may in time, but what we
Speaker 2: do know is that the underlying psychological reasons people experience
Speaker 2: sexual dysfunction can be improved greatly by using psychedelics. Now,
Speaker 2: you mentioned the word frigidity, and I think that is
Speaker 2: actually an interesting one to look at because one of
Speaker 2: the things that I do write about in the book
Speaker 2: is a case example of the treatment historically of frigidity
Speaker 2: in women with LSD. Now that term in sex therapy
Speaker 2: has evolved to a term called hyposexual arousal desire disorder,
Speaker 2: so the term evolved clinically, but the idea, right that
Speaker 2: we do have some really interesting case examples, and there's
Speaker 2: one that is quasi famous. That was a woman who
Speaker 2: presented with a problem with frigidity who was treated psychiatrically
Speaker 2: with LSD, and she wrote a memoir of her experience
Speaker 2: with being treated with LSD, and I have to tell
Speaker 2: you it is a very very interesting read. And this
Speaker 2: comes out of the early psychedelic experiments of the fifties,
Speaker 2: before these were scheduled substances, before we had the Controlled
Speaker 2: Substances Act. Now, when you look into it a little
Speaker 2: bit more deeply, what's really interesting is kind of a
Speaker 2: time piece that pathologizes female sexuality and really points to
Speaker 2: that there is a right way for women to be sexual.
Speaker 2: And thankfully, I think we've evolved a lot beyond that,
Speaker 2: because if you look at these old documents from the fifties,
Speaker 2: they very much point to if a woman is not
Speaker 2: satisfying her husband in a certain way, she is suffering
Speaker 2: from a problem. Doesn't look like any of the social
Speaker 2: these social circumstances that might suggest why a woman in
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties or even women today might not be
Speaker 2: so incredibly jazzed about their sexual lives with husbands when
Speaker 2: it's all vectored towards their pleasure.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So again, I think, like, what the interesting evolution in
Speaker 2: the field is, you know, the way psychedelics can help
Speaker 2: us to actually discover our own relationship to our sexuality
Speaker 2: and ways to be more generous and connected in our partnerships.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a short commercial break to allow
Speaker 1: our sponsors to identify themselves and will return shortly with
Speaker 1: my guest today, Did Gopa and her new book Embrace Pleasure,
Speaker 1: How Psychedelics can Heal our Sexuality. Will be right back.
Speaker 1: Did Gopa is my guest today. Her new book Embraced
Speaker 1: Pleasure highlights psychedelics plant medicines as a form of therapy,
Speaker 1: and she uses kennamine in her own practice. This is
Speaker 1: another form of therapy and it is proving to be
Speaker 1: very effective with a number of clients. Fascinating. Have you
Speaker 1: studied the work of Rick Strassman and his DMT studies
Speaker 1: on He doesn't get into sexuality at all, And this
Speaker 1: is my next I'm forming my next question, which is
Speaker 1: why hasn't more studied been attempted by these clinics on
Speaker 1: plant medicines and pleasure.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that that goes back to one of
Speaker 2: the very first things that I've mentioned is that it
Speaker 2: is still an incredibly taboo topic. There are a couple
Speaker 2: of research studies out that are really extraordinary in the field,
Speaker 2: and two that I want to point to is the
Speaker 2: work of Tamaso Barbara at Imperial College, which was a
Speaker 2: really beautiful comprehensive study on psychedelics and sexual satisfaction, and
Speaker 2: another by Daniel Krueger that was really looking at psychedelics
Speaker 2: impact on people's sexual self perception. The reason that this
Speaker 2: is not studied is because, first of all, it is
Speaker 2: incredibly hard and incredibly expensive to run psychedelic clinical trials
Speaker 2: because in general they are not being funded by the government.
Speaker 2: They are being funded either by for profit pharmaceutical companies
Speaker 2: or academic institutions. And the highest level of priority is
Speaker 2: not sexuality and pleasure. It is finding specific molecules that
Speaker 2: can treat specific mental health disorders so they are patentable,
Speaker 2: can be marketed. And I don't mean to sound cynical,
Speaker 2: but I mean that is the truth of the clinical
Speaker 2: research world. So this really interesting research that you see
Speaker 2: emerging around sexuality, and I think there's going to be
Speaker 2: a lot more of it coming out, are really being
Speaker 2: done by researchers who are in academic contexts, who are
Speaker 2: interested in exploring these questions. And honestly, these these preliminary
Speaker 2: kind of groundbreaking research studies I think are paving the way.
Speaker 2: There are smaller ones that are people are doing more
Speaker 2: qualitative or observational studies, and all of that will start
Speaker 2: to multiply over time.
Speaker 1: Wow, uh, I don't trust big pharma when it comes
Speaker 1: to psychedelics. I don't trust uh. You know they're going
Speaker 1: to synthesize ayahuasca one day and it's going to be
Speaker 1: a mess. I just it's not going to be something
Speaker 1: you want to use at all. Talk about kennamine in
Speaker 1: your personal journey. You you're a practitioner who uses it
Speaker 1: in your own healing. What's the high, what's the feeling?
Speaker 1: And how do you address you? I don't want to
Speaker 1: say your well, I will say your sexuality or your
Speaker 1: issue using ketamine.
Speaker 2: Well. I am a ketemine assisted psychotherapist and straight up
Speaker 2: ketamine has not been part of my personal healing journey.
Speaker 2: I have experienced ketamine treatment in my training as a
Speaker 2: kedemine therapist. So thankfully you know their opportunities as a
Speaker 2: practitioner to receive treatment, so we know how to adequately
Speaker 2: hold space. Yeah, right, as you should. And I know
Speaker 2: that this is a debate in the field, but I
Speaker 2: will come down very very clearly on the side of
Speaker 2: people who operate as psychedelic assisted therapists should have experience
Speaker 2: with psychedelics themselves, and I strongly hold that opinion. So
Speaker 2: ketamine is a surprising one. And I began to use
Speaker 2: it at my practice because that was what was legally
Speaker 2: accessible to me. And I'll be honest with you, I
Speaker 2: didn't feel any kind of heart connection to it. It's
Speaker 2: not a medicine that I felt offered me profound healing.
Speaker 2: But I thought people really are benefiting from it, and
Speaker 2: the research is there to support this, so why wouldn't
Speaker 2: I offer it? And much to my surprise, I've learned
Speaker 2: that there are ways that you can create a container
Speaker 2: around ketamine within the context of clinical practice and guidelines
Speaker 2: that can be very sacred for people, that can help
Speaker 2: people to achieve expanded states of consciousness that could help
Speaker 2: them deeply connect to themselves. So the experience of ketamine ketamine,
Speaker 2: I should say for our listeners first, is it's a
Speaker 2: little bit like the Pluto of psychedelics, right, It's kind
Speaker 2: of like outside of the psychedelic solar system. It's there,
Speaker 2: but it's not really one of one of the classic
Speaker 2: psychedelics or one of the ones that we kind of
Speaker 2: keep in our pantheon of medicines. It's a dissociative that
Speaker 2: is used as an anesthetic, And what was discovered is
Speaker 2: that in a certain dosing range, there's like a mid
Speaker 2: range where ketamine induces an altered state of consciousness that
Speaker 2: unique from other psychedelic experiences. Can almost be dream like.
Speaker 2: It can induce visions, it can induce a sense of
Speaker 2: connection with the divine in some cases a sense of
Speaker 2: disconnection from the body, which is unique. And it can
Speaker 2: also have different effects at different dosing levels. So a
Speaker 2: full psychedelic dose of ketamine might put someone into a
Speaker 2: dissociated state where they feel connected to the universe, and
Speaker 2: a very low dose of ketamine might mean that someone
Speaker 2: in my office can sit and talk and have a
Speaker 2: psychotherapy session, but do so with many of their defenses
Speaker 2: being lowered. And specifically, the way I think that this
Speaker 2: is very helpful around sexual healing and sexual trauma healing
Speaker 2: is that I have found optimally dosed ketamine can relax
Speaker 2: the physical body to an extent that topics or memories
Speaker 2: that are normally extremely activating for someone, they are not
Speaker 2: feeling it in their body in the same way their
Speaker 2: body isn't starting to tense, their heart isn't starting to race.
Speaker 2: So what I find with my trauma clients is that
Speaker 2: they're able to have a psychedelic journey, the experience of
Speaker 2: which is helpful for them and the content of it.
Speaker 2: But as they're coming out of the ketamine medicine, we've
Speaker 2: got this therapeutically optimal time to talk where they are
Speaker 2: extremely expanded and relaxed, but they're still lucid and able
Speaker 2: to communicate in therapy. So they're very interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it kind of sets the body from the mind,
Speaker 1: separates them and a person can actually function and actually
Speaker 1: respond in a very clear status.
Speaker 2: Sounds like there's also some colleagues of mine who I
Speaker 2: respect deeply who are really innovating in the area of
Speaker 2: ketemine assisted couples therapy, and I've also facilitated ketemine assisted
Speaker 2: couple's therapy retreats. And one would think, like that doesn't
Speaker 2: feel like an obvious fit, but I was very surprised
Speaker 2: to see that ketamine can really disarm people so that
Speaker 2: they have their experience of journeying together and then they're
Speaker 2: able to connect as a couple in ways that they
Speaker 2: normally could not so, I will say I do think
Speaker 2: certain psychedelic medicines are a better fit for certain people
Speaker 2: or certain problems. And we certainly don't have the clinical
Speaker 2: evidence to suggest any psychedelic could be healing for any problem.
Speaker 2: But I do suspect that people who have psychedelic experiences together,
Speaker 2: that go through a journey experience and then share that
Speaker 2: with each other, that that is an essentially heart connecting experience.
Speaker 1: H amazing. Talk a little bit about sexual trauma, Define it,
Speaker 1: but also what are the levels of sexual trauma? Because
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily have to be physical. Someone could be
Speaker 1: as a child, influenced by a parent, a guardian, or
Speaker 1: somebody who's who's doing inappropriate things that trigger this trauma.
Speaker 1: So give us the definition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, in the book, I use what's a relatively
Speaker 2: controversial definition because we have to first start with the
Speaker 2: idea that we have a clinical definition of trauma that
Speaker 2: for someone to meet the diagnosis of PTSD, there are
Speaker 2: certain clinical symptoms that they have to experience over a
Speaker 2: period of time. I understand why we need diagnostic criteria
Speaker 2: and why that is important, but it is not the
Speaker 2: framework that I rely on most heavily in my practice.
Speaker 2: Of working with human beings. The way I think about
Speaker 2: sexual trauma is any experience that we have in our
Speaker 2: lives that prevents us from being able to access pleasure
Speaker 2: that impacts our sexuality or that impacts our sexual self perception.
Speaker 2: And the most important part of this is in an
Speaker 2: enduring way. We have negative experiences all the time. We
Speaker 2: might have experiences with a partner that don't feel good
Speaker 2: to us at all, but our nervous system is capable
Speaker 2: of actually metabolizing a lot. Right. We can have something
Speaker 2: that's not a great experience and we get over it,
Speaker 2: we move on with our lives, and it might not
Speaker 2: be thought of as something we want to have happened again.
Speaker 2: But it's not necessarily a trauma. So what makes something
Speaker 2: traumatic is that it stays with us and it begins
Speaker 2: to define how we see other experiences and the levels
Speaker 2: of trauma that you mentioned. It's really easy to identify
Speaker 2: the traumas that we might think of as the quote
Speaker 2: unquote big ta ones, and that might mean sexual assault,
Speaker 2: being sexually abused as a child, But we are also
Speaker 2: on the other end of that spectrum, steeped in a
Speaker 2: sex negative culture that's giving us constant messages about the
Speaker 2: right way to be sexual, about who we're supposed to
Speaker 2: be as sexual people. We might be shamed for certain
Speaker 2: expressions of sexuality and those can actually create really enduring harm,
Speaker 2: and I consider them sexual trauma or slash sexual violence
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: How do we know when we've been traumatized? In other words,
Speaker 1: if you are traumatized as a young person and you've forgotten,
Speaker 1: what are the signs?
Speaker 2: That is a really complex question, because one of my
Speaker 2: areas of clinical focus is psychedelic induced recovered memories of
Speaker 2: sexual abuse is a huge issue. It is a very
Speaker 2: complicated one and it is one that can it requires
Speaker 2: a lot of delicacy to talk about it ethically.
Speaker 1: So are you saying that psychedelics can actually extract the
Speaker 1: source of the trauma.
Speaker 2: Well, there is currently some very interesting research being done
Speaker 2: in this on the scientific side of things, So I
Speaker 2: think one thing, this is an incredibly in depth topic,
Speaker 2: So I'm going to attempt to talk about it in
Speaker 2: very simple ways. We can, as children experience inappropriate sexual
Speaker 2: events and at the time not experience them as terrifying
Speaker 2: and in fact not even know that they're sexual, and
Speaker 2: so those memories can be stored away we are not
Speaker 2: walking around feeling like we're traumatized until later, as adults,
Speaker 2: we remember the experience, and when it's recontextualized as inappropriate,
Speaker 2: it can become traumatic. So that is an experience where
Speaker 2: a person essentially doesn't repress, but forgets an experience and
Speaker 2: then later is reminded of it. The interesting piece of
Speaker 2: this is that in laboratory studies, we have no evidence
Speaker 2: for repressed memories, meaning that a person could have a
Speaker 2: horribly traumatic thing happened to them and then repress it entirely.
Speaker 2: The clinicians in the field report continually that they experience
Speaker 2: this as true incredible in their clients, that people can
Speaker 2: indeed have experiences that are deeply traumatic, and then those
Speaker 2: experiences are later unearthed, either through psychotherapy or in psychedelic experiences. Now,
Speaker 2: what gets really complicated is that we have this legacy
Speaker 2: in the nineteen nineties of this phenomenon where therapists were
Speaker 2: suggesting to clients it sounds to me like you were
Speaker 2: sexually abused, rather than the clients coming forward with that information.
Speaker 2: This created a frenzy of false accusations. It harmed a
Speaker 2: lot of people. So this sort of the memory wars
Speaker 2: of the nineteen nineties are very much in our cultural
Speaker 2: consciousness around this issue. So what we see in psychedelics
Speaker 2: is that there is a couple of different things on
Speaker 2: both sides of the coin. I have worked with many
Speaker 2: survivors who have had experiences, usually in more intense psychedelic states,
Speaker 2: where they recover a memory of being sexually abused, and
Speaker 2: that memory comes through either somatically, meaning they have a
Speaker 2: sense of knowing in their body, or they experience a
Speaker 2: narrative that they see depicted visually. For some of those people,
Speaker 2: they come to realize that that was indeed a memory
Speaker 2: that did indeed happen to them, And some of my
Speaker 2: clients conclude that it was not something that actually happened
Speaker 2: in the way they saw or experienced it, but it
Speaker 2: represents feelings that were part of their childhood. Some clients
Speaker 2: even come to believe that that has to do with
Speaker 2: an ancestral memory. I mean, this is getting into the
Speaker 2: more of the shamanic, right, So some clients that I've
Speaker 2: worked with believe that they were having a real memory
Speaker 2: that is not their memory. So it really creates this
Speaker 2: situation for clinicians who are really undertrained in this area
Speaker 2: and want very desperately to either endorse or deny that
Speaker 2: these memories are real or not, and therapists can't do that.
Speaker 2: All we can do is sit with our clients and
Speaker 2: try to support them ethically and help them to understand
Speaker 2: and to decide for themselves what it is, and then
Speaker 2: how do we go about healing from that, because the
Speaker 2: experience of having this recovered memory be quite traumatic in
Speaker 2: and of itself. And the last piece that I feel
Speaker 2: is really important for listeners to hear is that psychedelics
Speaker 2: can induce suggestibility, which means that we're in a psychedelic state,
Speaker 2: we are more suggestible to outside information. So if somebody
Speaker 2: were to suggest or there was something in the environment
Speaker 2: that led us to be predisposed to have a recovered memory,
Speaker 2: it's conceivable that that could happen, which is why ethical
Speaker 2: space holding in diligent psychotherapy is really of the utmost importance,
Speaker 2: because our minds are more flexible and suggestible in this state.
Speaker 1: We want to take a short commercial break to allow
Speaker 1: our sponsors to identify themselves, and we'll return shortly with
Speaker 1: my guest today, did Gopa presenting her newest book, Embrace Pleasure.
Speaker 1: Will be right back Didi Goldpa is my guest today.
Speaker 1: Her new book, Embraced Pleasure, highlights microducing of various psychedelics
Speaker 1: otherwise known as plant medicines, and follows the indigenous tradition
Speaker 1: of working with healing and therapeutic effects. I'm so glad
Speaker 1: you brought up ancestral healing because this is a very
Speaker 1: big theme right now in your practice. Do you see
Speaker 1: this bleed through of unknown traumas or fears or psychological
Speaker 1: states that are not present that could have been generational
Speaker 1: handed down from the parents, from the grandparents and so forth.
Speaker 2: My personal opinion is absolutely. I think the epigenetic research
Speaker 2: that's emerging right now that we actually can genetically carry
Speaker 2: trauma from previous generations is starting to substantiate the idea
Speaker 2: that this is scientifically credible. And what feels important to
Speaker 2: me as a therapist is I'm not interpreting that for
Speaker 2: a client. I don't say to my clients I'm wondering
Speaker 2: if this could be ancestral trauma. Well, people start to
Speaker 2: wonder that when peg start to be curious about it
Speaker 2: for themselves, I am absolutely there to deepen that inquiry
Speaker 2: with them. Another piece that I've been exploring that I
Speaker 2: just think is a really uplifting opposites to the idea
Speaker 2: of ancestral trauma, is how we may be epigenetically encoded
Speaker 2: to ancestral ways of knowing, because I feel like we're
Speaker 2: in a moment on planet Earth right when we're facing
Speaker 2: some really dire political circumstances, and at the same time
Speaker 2: people are becoming so interested in consciousness movements and learning
Speaker 2: indigenous technologies and trying to learn more about their own ancestry.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like that is incredibly present with
Speaker 2: us in our culture, and for so many of us,
Speaker 2: our Earth based ancestral traditions are lost. So if we
Speaker 2: can carry ancestral trauma, we can also carry ancestral knowing,
Speaker 2: which means inside of you are into suative ways of knowing,
Speaker 2: how to connect with the earth, how to work with plants,
Speaker 2: how to create ritual that our ancestors knew you have
Speaker 2: it as well. So because if you can carry the bad,
Speaker 2: you can also carry the good. And I am particularly
Speaker 2: interested with learning how to turn that on in people
Speaker 2: and help them to connect into these ancestral ways of knowing,
Speaker 2: which is also part of your birthright.
Speaker 1: That was my next question is as a therapist, How
Speaker 1: do you provide tools for someone who's dealing with an
Speaker 1: ancestral trauma. I mean, I, off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: as a lifelong meditator, help them understand the importance of meditation.
Speaker 1: But that could be minor if it's a really big issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I can say that internal family systems therapy
Speaker 2: has some really elegant tools for dealing with legacy burdens,
Speaker 2: meaning things that we carry that are part of our ancestry.
Speaker 2: So there are some therapeutic modalities that acknowledge and have
Speaker 2: tools within them for addressing ancestral traumas. For me, I
Speaker 2: feel like when a client is receptive to it, developing
Speaker 2: ritual practice can be one of the most profound ways
Speaker 2: that people can can address ancestral trauma. And so what
Speaker 2: that can look like is it doesn't have to be
Speaker 2: a ritual that has any particular religious form, It doesn't
Speaker 2: need to look like it's ceremonial per se. But ritual
Speaker 2: can be symbolic practices that help us to either deal
Speaker 2: with that burden that we're carrying in some way. It
Speaker 2: can be visualization, It can be writing a letter and
Speaker 2: burning it. It can be creating an altar in the
Speaker 2: woods that honors the experience of that ancestor. But something
Speaker 2: that we do to mark in some way that we
Speaker 2: are releasing an energy that we have been carrying. It
Speaker 2: has a profound psychological effect, and my personal opinion is
Speaker 2: that it also has a profound spiritual effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was my next question. It sounds like you
Speaker 1: do understand the components of spirituality and you are are
Speaker 1: you integrating that into the practice that you have.
Speaker 2: Well, I approach spirituality in a very pragmatic way, So
Speaker 2: when I am working with a new client, I am
Speaker 2: listening very carefully for how they talk about spirituality. So
Speaker 2: if someone is using the language of God, that's the
Speaker 2: language I'm using. If somebody is talking about ancestors or
Speaker 2: certain kinds of trans personal practices, that's what I'm mirroring
Speaker 2: back to them. And if somebody says I'm not a
Speaker 2: spiritual person at all, I say, okay. But the way
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about the spiritual domain in our work is
Speaker 2: fundamentally around the question how connected are you? How connected
Speaker 2: are you to the earth? How connected are you to
Speaker 2: experiences of the ecstatic experiences of the divine? So honestly,
Speaker 2: nobody people who come in and say I am not
Speaker 2: a spiritual person at all. I believe all people are
Speaker 2: spiritual people. I think that I respect that in people
Speaker 2: because most of the people that tell me that, when
Speaker 2: I get them to know them well enough, the core
Speaker 2: of it is that they have been traumatized by organized
Speaker 2: religion in some way.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: So I am not going to be the person that
Speaker 2: forces that on them again. But helping someone to connect
Speaker 2: to their spiritual self is really addressing that question of connection.
Speaker 1: To me. Yeah, the books called Embrace Pleasure, How Psychedelgics
Speaker 1: can Heal Our Spirituality? And my guess today has been
Speaker 1: d D GOPA. As we conclude, d D, can you
Speaker 1: give us a couple of case studies, obviously without naming
Speaker 1: names of people who've come in and worked with you,
Speaker 1: and your suggestions on the plant medicines.
Speaker 2: Sure, I will take some of these. I do in
Speaker 2: the book talk about clients, but they aren't real clients.
Speaker 2: They're all composites. It felt very important to me too,
Speaker 2: and I say that in the forward of the book
Speaker 2: that the case studies that are in the book are composites,
Speaker 2: because I feel like what happens in the in the
Speaker 2: privacy of psychotherapy is really sacred. So the stories are
Speaker 2: stories that are the stories of many clients that are
Speaker 2: sort of composites under a fictional facade, if you will.
Speaker 1: Interesting you did that, yeah, yeah, because I was going
Speaker 1: to pick out a couple of people in here.
Speaker 2: I thought, well, I mean, you can certainly ask about it.
Speaker 2: But the stories in the book that are actual people
Speaker 2: is a chapter later in the book that our first
Speaker 2: hand accounts of people I interviewed, and those people are
Speaker 2: not my clients. But there are some particularly beautiful, beautiful stories,
Speaker 2: one of a woman calling back her child self and
Speaker 2: healing from sexual abuse she experienced as a child with ayahuasca.
Speaker 2: There is also a range of ages. I interviewed Charlie
Speaker 2: and Shelley Shelley Winninger, who are a very prominent couple
Speaker 2: in the psychedelic community here in New York City, and
Speaker 2: they're in their seventies, and they talk very much about
Speaker 2: how psychedelics have shaped their sex life and their experience
Speaker 2: of love and their relationship together. I interview somebody who's
Speaker 2: actually quite a good friend of mine, who is a
Speaker 2: Rabbi who's a transper, and talks about their experience of
Speaker 2: gender unfolding through their psychedelic experiences, so I really just
Speaker 2: have That was some of the most beautiful part of
Speaker 2: writing the book was hearing people's personal stories that they
Speaker 2: were willing to share with me. But you can absolutely
Speaker 2: ask me about any of the case studies you'd like.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do that because the book. You know,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of work in this book, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to go with page twenty two. You know,
Speaker 1: that would be just a little too much. You mentioned
Speaker 1: the trans community, and I'm here in San Francisco. It's
Speaker 1: very big. I don't I don't follow it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have a couple of friends that are trans, but
Speaker 1: that's a really challenging position to be in society. And
Speaker 1: I can imagine. Do you have clients that are dealing
Speaker 1: in that situation?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I specialize in working with the LGBT community.
Speaker 2: So the interesting thing about transness is I think the
Speaker 2: hardest thing about being trans is living in a country
Speaker 2: that is persecuting trans people.
Speaker 1: Now right, now, Yeah, you're right, yeah, And that talk
Speaker 1: about trauma. You can't go out and be yourself. I guess,
Speaker 1: you know it's crazy, you know.
Speaker 2: I tend to think about all queer identities as having
Speaker 2: a really divine aspect to them, because queerness in any
Speaker 2: way is some expanded state of personhood, right, and being
Speaker 2: queer trans it's really about celebrating parts of yourself the
Speaker 2: society normally thinks of as different, aberrant, unnatural, and standing
Speaker 2: in your power and saying, not only is this who
Speaker 2: I am, but this is one of the best parts
Speaker 2: of who I am. That's what really a queer affirming
Speaker 2: or trans affirming perspective is. So yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 2: think there has been a lot that's probably beyond the
Speaker 2: scope of what we could say on this podcast about
Speaker 2: the intersections of LGBT identities and psychedelics. And one piece
Speaker 2: that I can touch on briefly, which I do touch
Speaker 2: on in the book, unfortunately, is that there has been
Speaker 2: a legacy of psychedelics being used for conversion therapy.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so say conversion therapy. It's like someone's homosexual
Speaker 1: and the physician wants to make them heterosexual, giant what
Speaker 1: are they called that? Conversion therapy?
Speaker 2: Correct Social conversion therapy is a really tricky topic because
Speaker 2: many people have the perception that it's an involuntary treatment
Speaker 2: inflicted upon queer minners by clergy, and that is one
Speaker 2: way that conversion therapy happens. But many of the case
Speaker 2: studies we have in the psychedelic litter point to voluntary
Speaker 2: treatments that LGBT individuals voluntarily undertook in order to change
Speaker 2: their sexual identity. So any treatment that a person provides
Speaker 2: that is aimed at changing the sexuality or gender identity
Speaker 2: of another person, whether it's voluntary or involuntary, is conversion therapy.
Speaker 2: And we have so many mountains of clinical evidence to
Speaker 2: tell us that conversion therapy, whether voluntary or coerced, is harmful.
Speaker 2: The percentage I don't have the statistic right on the
Speaker 2: top of my head, but a large percentage of people
Speaker 2: who have experienced these treatments become more depressed, more anxious,
Speaker 2: more suicidal afterwards. So to me, part of the reason
Speaker 2: that it's important to shine light on this and psychedelics
Speaker 2: is so that in this moment we can create consensus
Speaker 2: as psychedelic therapy is gaining traction that these treatments were harmful,
Speaker 2: that they are harmful, and that the psychedelic community needs
Speaker 2: to have consensus that psychedelics will not be used in
Speaker 2: this way.
Speaker 1: Again, Wow, yeah, that's heavy. If someone's feeling less than
Speaker 1: that the community, that the society they live in is
Speaker 1: not happy about their sexual identity, and they start taking
Speaker 1: psychedelics thinking that that's going to be the solution. That's terrible.
Speaker 2: And you're right.
Speaker 1: The church and medicine, Oh boy, I can't imagine. That
Speaker 1: must be tough. DDI. It's been a real pleasure having
Speaker 1: you on the program. How can people learn more about you?
Speaker 1: You have a website? Give us your website.
Speaker 2: I do. Indeed, the book has a website, and if
Speaker 2: you would like to read it, and I hope that
Speaker 2: you will, you can go to Embrace Pleasure dot com.
Speaker 2: There's many different buying options. You can read more about
Speaker 2: myself and my work. I also have a personal website,
Speaker 2: which is ddegoldpod dot com, and you can connect me
Speaker 2: with me in that way.
Speaker 1: Did you must have a YouTube channel with videos? Come on, now,
Speaker 1: what's going on?
Speaker 2: I don't I'm really just getting on this.
Speaker 1: So I've spoken you need to have a video page, girl,
Speaker 1: Come on, No, but I've.
Speaker 2: Been sitting in my house writing this book through a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 1: No, it's uh, you're a natural, and get a camera
Speaker 1: in your face and uh, let's see some video because
Speaker 1: that's another way of I mean, I'm learning the hard
Speaker 1: way too. There's a whole generation that won't listen to
Speaker 1: a podcast and list it's on YouTube, so you got
Speaker 1: to consider that.
Speaker 2: Well, if this airs tomorrow, I will say, if you
Speaker 2: happen to be in the New York City area on Saturday,
Speaker 2: I'm doing an event with my colleague Mitzi Bautista at
Speaker 2: the Brooklyn Psychedelic Society and it's going to be a
Speaker 2: really interesting offering and it's going to be a dialogue
Speaker 2: that takes in the perspective of Western psychedelic traditions and
Speaker 2: indigenous traditions to try to talk about right relationship to
Speaker 2: these medicines. And it's going to have audience engagement, music,
Speaker 2: somatic practices. So if people happen to hear this podcast
Speaker 2: and they happen to be in the area, we would
Speaker 2: love to have you.
Speaker 1: Well, podcasts will be out shortly twenty four hours. Are
Speaker 1: you promoting that and just locally or are you promoting
Speaker 1: it will be like aired or streamed in some way.
Speaker 2: No, it's going to be a closed event that will
Speaker 2: be in person only, because we hope it'll be an
Speaker 2: intimate experience with the people who attend, But if you
Speaker 2: happen to be in New York City, you can check
Speaker 2: out the Brooklyn Psychedelic Society website and learn more about
Speaker 2: the event.
Speaker 1: Psychedelic Society. I like that. It sounds very cool. Ddy
Speaker 1: much success on this new book. I love the cover,
Speaker 1: I love the material, and I think you got something
Speaker 1: going on. In fact, I have a prediction. I think
Speaker 1: there's one or two more books that are coming forth
Speaker 1: very soon.
Speaker 2: Am I right, I've got some I've got some things cooking.
Speaker 2: I'll say that.
Speaker 1: Fantastic. Hey, real pleasure having you on the program.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Cliff. Take care.
Speaker 1: You have to read this book, Embrace Pleasure, because she
Speaker 1: gets into great detail about using psychedelics, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I've always heard about using them for microdose sessions for
Speaker 1: creativity and for working with mood alterations and things like that.
Speaker 1: But dd is working in a special environment and she's
Speaker 1: very very talented and very on board on what to use.
Speaker 1: And I'm not a real expert on canemine, and I'm
Speaker 1: wondering just how that affects you because it's it's a anesthetic.
Speaker 1: It's a general anesthetic that they use in surgery. So
Speaker 1: what's the dosage and what's the application? And can you
Speaker 1: take too much? Can you take too little? How do
Speaker 1: you gauge you? Those are all things we could have
Speaker 1: talked about. But you need to read the book. It
Speaker 1: just came out. You can get it on Amazon and
Speaker 1: all the details are on Amazon. Also check out her website.
Speaker 1: Her website has a lot of information and she's great.
Speaker 1: I thought she was very very well informed and presented
Speaker 1: a really strong case for working with trauma. So there
Speaker 1: you go. Hey, if you're enjoying Earth Ancient's Destiny and
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Speaker 1: that's it for this show. I want to thank my
Speaker 1: guest today, Dd Goldpa, coming to us from New York.
Speaker 1: As always, the team of Gel Tour, Mark Foster and
Speaker 1: Feya Pavar. You guys rock all right, take care of
Speaker 1: you well and we will talk to you next time.
Speaker 1: And I