Blake Hunsley 0:00
Hello and Welcome to Season Two of within our reach, a podcast all about accessibility, inclusion and leveling the playing field at work, at home and in your community. I'm Blake Hunsley, and I'm joined with my co host, Shelley Alward MacLeod, and today we're joined by reachability alum and friend of the show, Amanda Grinter. Amanda is a registered counseling therapist with the Nova Scotia College of counseling therapists, and is a Canadian certified counselor with the Canadian counseling and psychotherapy Association. She specializes in psilocybin assisted psychotherapy and EMDR Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy. And if it sounds like I'm reading all of that straight from her own website, yes, I am, and I will need all of that patiently explained, but that's why we're here, so we can all learn together. Thank you Amanda and Shelly for joining us.

Amanda Grinter 0:41
Oh, thank you so much for having me and being open to this topic. It's kind of a buzz right now. It's fascinating, and people are very curious.

Blake Hunsley 0:52
Let's hope they are, because I want our listeners All right, so let's get right to it then, because we know out of those, out of those two, the headline grabbing one is connected to psychedelic therapy, I'm sure. So let's start with that. So what is psychedelic therapy, and how is it different from traditional, say, Talk based therapy?

Amanda Grinter 1:09
Yeah. So that's such a beautiful starting question, and it's big. Often people who are reaching out to me think this is a new therapy. It's an emerging brand new therapy. And we're reminding people culturally, this is actually one of the oldest forms of treatment and therapeutic models. So indigenous communities across the world have been using psychedelic medicines and substances for 1000s of years for different reasons, of course, but yeah, so I like to remind people there's nothing new about it. It's actually one of the original ways of connecting. And so one of the biggest things that sets it apart from our western model of therapy is that it's truly holistic. So we hear that word used a lot in the therapy world, holistic therapy. When we take a look at the foundation of a holistic approach to the human experience. We have that beautiful triangle of mind, body, spirit. So are we acknowledging and caring for mind? Are we acknowledging caring for body, and are we incorporating spiritual competency as well or spiritual experience? And in traditional therapy models, typically, we separate them. So we do cognitive work, we work on the mind, and then maybe we do body work. We do somatic therapy. People specialize in that. There are very few therapies in our western model that incorporate spirit, so the spiritual significance and experience that many humans have. And then there's, you know, when we zoom out of that, there's very, very limited therapies that incorporate all three at once, because we usually have to, you know, just be working on one at a time. So psychedelic therapy enter psychedelics for therapeutic purposes. Here it really is one of the only therapies where all three get to come together and be explored at the same time. So it separates from that holistic perspective. It separates itself by being this really inclusive way of having all of the human experience on board and being acknowledged at the same time.

Blake Hunsley 3:16
Now I'm curious, how would you define Spirit, the Spirit element that we're talking about from sort of a psychological perspective.

Amanda Grinter 3:23
Yeah, spirit, I would say psychologically would be the myth, the mystical side of life, things that are inexplainable or not intellectual, not really rational, not logical. That's all the cognitive piece. So things that maybe are ineffable. I can't even describe it in words. It was something I experienced. People sometimes might have an out of body experience. There are people who've had near death experiences where, you know, they've gone to a place, or they've seen things from that perspective that it's not explainable from, from the medical or the or the therapeutic side of things. So spirit really is what the eye can't see, but the our system still experiences, there is still an awareness of something, but we can't necessarily always measure it. So sometimes people link spirituality to religion. That's a very common thing to say. I get people all the time, oh, spirit, yeah, no, I don't follow religion. I'm like, that's okay, that's that's not the only path to having a spiritual connection, but it really is the acknowledgement that we are not just mind and body. There's something else that we have access to and an awareness of.

Blake Hunsley 4:35
Okay, that's fascinating. All right, so what I'm I'm curious, what is the if I hate to phrase it this way, but what is the science behind psychedelic therapy? Like, yeah, the from an evidentiary sort of perspective,

Amanda Grinter 4:46
yeah, that's always a curious thing. People are like, what's going on in my brain when I'm with these medicines? What's the neuroscience with most psychedelic medicines? Some of them act on different systems in the body, and I can talk a little bit about the. The most common psychedelics we use for therapy later. But what's happening really is our default mode network, which is six or seven different areas of the brain that come together and make a network. There is a huge new highway of activity in those areas, so they communicate differently when we are with the medicine, as well as when we're after and we're sober again after the medicine, there's new activity. So think about what happens in the default mode network default meaning it's the belief system that we always come back to. It's our default way of seeing the world, of seeing ourselves, our perspective on others and humanity, and that usually gets formed before the age of eight, which is kind of incredible to think like, Oh, my foundational beliefs were probably things that were told to me or shown to me or given to me and handed to me. They weren't really things that I discovered on my own about self or about life or existence. And so our default mode network. It's shaken up with these medicines. And what that translates to, in a literal sense, is after, after somebody has a psychedelic experience, there's a really rich opportunity where we can develop new perspectives, more expanded outlooks on things different and new mindsets. So there's a lot of shift in mentality, but there's also people will describe this expansion. So I feel not just like I'm living in the confines of who I thought I was before. So I have a character. She's called Amanda. I was called Amanda. What does that mean? I don't know. I'm still discovering that yours is called Shelly. Yours is called Blake. We were given these, and these are constructed characters. We call this the ego. In psychology, this is the ego. So a lot of us come from that programmed place. We just live out our programming. Psychedelics really challenges that, and that can often be a hard part for people. Even though it's what they want, it's difficult to realize you are more than just who you thought you were.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 7:06
Yeah, exactly. So this is very, I don't even know where to be like, you know, be logical about this. Okay, so, so let's then talk first. I do want to talk about before we get into the psychedelic therapy. I really want to talk about this. EMDR, yeah, because I didn't even, I don't even know what that means. So maybe we could talk about that first, because Blake introduced that, and I remember when I saw it, I was like, Oh, we're gonna need to

Blake Hunsley 7:39
that was a fully new one for me, believe me,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 7:41
talk about that first, and then let's get into, like, psychedelic therapy, but absolutely explain that. What's EMDR, yeah.

Amanda Grinter 7:49
EMDR, like Blake was reading earlier, stands for eye movement desensitization, reprocessing. So the overall goal, it's, it really is used a lot for people with trauma, who are re experiencing trauma, having flashbacks, feeling like they can't orient to reality because they're living their experiences, their fear and their survival system just won't, won't go to a place of contentment. So they're always on. They're always vigilant, always hyper vigilant, lots of cortisol and adrenaline, trying to protect myself and get a semblance of safety. So really hard way to live. EMDR, what it does is it uses eye movement patterns that mimic REM sleep patterns. So if you've ever seen someone sleeping and you can see their eyes moving through their eyelids, that means they're going through a REM cycle. And what happens during REM is right brain says, Oh, we're going to do this funky little thing called a dream, this abstract thing. And then left brain says, okay, she's distracted. Let's get to work. So left brain says, What did Amanda go through today? And where does it need to go in the brain? Oh, she has an appointment tomorrow. She has to remember that when she wakes up. We're going to put that in short term. Oh, she had a fun day with her dog at the beach. She doesn't need to remember it, but she wants to keep that. We'll put that in long term. She got really overwhelmed in traffic today. Okay, maybe that there's something she needs to work on. We're going to put that in the amygdala. So the brain does this really beautiful categorization and filing. It stores things where they need to go. The thing about when something traumatic or shocking happens, especially if that event comes with any sort of danger, risk or threat to our safety or even our sense of self, because the ego feels threatened sometimes even when we're safe. If there's any danger, risk or threat, our brain doesn't know where to put that. It doesn't have a file for that, so it's automatically going to put it in short term memory, because it wants to keep you safe when the brain is not letting something go, it's trying to almost force us to make a plan to prepare for the next time. So surface level, example of this would be if we're on a hike and we have a bear encounter the next time we go on a hike, that's not just going to be missing from our minds, that's going to be present. Isn't, and our brain's not trying to torture us, but it's trying to say, what are you going to do if that happens again? And sometimes that's where we get stuck, because we're like, oh no, oh no, oh no. Rather than, what will I do? Maybe I should get a can of mace or get my rattle or whatever the bear protocol is. I don't know, but our brain is keeping things fresh because it wants us to keep ourselves safe by making a plan or preparing or saying, Okay, I need to avoid this person or this area or this this system, so our brain will naturally default to storing something in short term memory, so meaning it's very easily triggerable, and it's very easily relivable Because it's fresh. And so what EMDR does is we mimic eye movement patterns that happen during REM sleep, so that the brain naturally will be forced to file it somewhere out of short term memory. It's also very disruptive. So in an EMDR session, we bring up the trauma to the surface as much as someone can access it, and then the eye movements are also very disruptive. So it's almost like, if you've ever been talking and someone interrupts you, and you're like, Oh God, what was I saying? I can't remember where I was. I'm off track. Now we want that in EMDR, we want that to ignite. We want you to bring up what's hard to deal with and then have it shut down, and then bring it back up and shut it down. So not similar to psychedelics, but similar to the new neural connections that psychedelics create. EMDR allows us to break free from the A to B. So when I'm triggered, I go right into the reliving, and that gets a well worn pathway very often for people, we disrupt that so much that when the a trigger comes up. The brain's like, wait a minute, what do I do here? So then it's forced to create something new. So yeah. EMDR, that's the desensitization piece. We don't want the emotional overwhelm that comes especially when we are actually safe. Because the body doesn't know your nervous system doesn't know it's safe. That's our job. We have to be like, You know what? We're okay. We're not there. That's not actually happening. But that's hard when you know something threatening did happen. So we want the desensitization, and then again, the REM sleep, the eye movement patterns are what reprocesses, which is the R and EMDR reprocess. The is the event beyond the short term memory so it can get stored. We don't forget it. No one ever forgets their experiences. But we're not living life from that place. We're not looking around and seeing the world reflect that danger back to

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 12:29
or crippling ourselves. Because I can never go on a hike again, because there's the potential for right here. As a matter of fact, you know what? I shouldn't even go out walking around my house, because I could probably see what if they're that close,

Amanda Grinter 12:39
that could be closer. This is it, right? Like it, yeah, plays on you. Yeah, it plays and then we do things that make us feel like we're protecting ourselves, right? And not that. That's not necessary. We do need to protect ourselves, but there's a threshold, and we can cross that to like you said, well, now I'm not going to leave my house because there's freaking bears everywhere, right?

Blake Hunsley 12:59
Correct me if I'm wrong, too. One of the things I read about EMDR was that it's particularly good for people processing trauma, because you don't have to verbally go through the entire experience. It's more about like you said, dislodging it out of the short term memory and having it affect you, but you don't have to rehash everything you've been through.

Amanda Grinter 13:18
That's right, yeah. In fact, with EMDR, I get a lot of people in my practice who say, you know, I really want to start a therapy, working in therapy again, but gosh, I told my story so many times, like, I'm sick of telling it. I'm not getting anywhere with that. And so EMDR is really good for people who don't want to go into the details. They don't they don't want to go into the background of it, because there's very little talking with EMDR. There is check ins and there is expression, but there's very little talking. So it's more of a solution focused, action based, also body based therapy. So yeah, you don't really have to rehash a lot. The information we would need would be what belief came from that experience. So for many people with trauma, it's I'm not safe, or the world is a dangerous place, or depending on what the nature of it is, you know, we have a list of examples that experiences can turn into a core belief and often frame the way we see the world. So we bring up the belief that was created, we can identify the target, but the target identification just literally needs to be my hike last year. That's all because you know what that means. I don't need to know what that means. You need to know what that means. That's meaningful for you, that will bring you there. But I don't need to know about the bear encounter. I don't need to know what happened or the outcome. You know that, and that's enough, so it doesn't require, yeah,

Blake Hunsley 14:44
that's right. This sounds like it would be particularly good for and I'm going to out myself really hard here, but say a neurodiverse person who's very good at intellectualizing what's going on in their head. And I can tell you all about my emotions in great detail, and I can tell you that I know exactly where they come from and where they. Stem from how to get them out of My short term memory and stop processing or stop rehashing it. Talking that out again is not the kind of thing that I could see working for me. So I could see that being a lot more palatable of an approach than a traditional talk therapy would for really any neurodiverse person I would expect, or a lot of us anyway.

Amanda Grinter 15:18
Yeah, that's a beautiful connection to make and so true, because, you know, I get people in my practice who know more about therapy than I do, because they are intellectuals. They want to learn all the info, and yet something still feels incomplete. Something still feels missing, right? I know all the things I know, all the tools I utilize them, but there's still something missing. And that's why I love EMDR as well as psychedelic therapy, because they often do fill that piece of like, okay, I've done the cognitive work. I know all the things you know, all the things

Blake Hunsley 15:50
I've thought about it

Amanda Grinter 15:51
enough I've thought about it in great detail. What do we do now? What do I do? What do I do? How do I implement? How can I facilitate change?

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 16:00
Exactly, so that's a good segue into, then the goal of psychedelic therapy, right? And and walk us through that, like, what's the goal of psychedelic therapy? And then I really, really interested in the next piece, which is like, what does a session look like?

Blake Hunsley 16:18
Yeah, this is, and I mean, you and I have both read about this a bit. You and Amanda, you and I have talked about this a bit, but having never been through it, yes, I'm very curious what a session even looks like. I have no idea. I don't imagine most

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 16:31
of our listeners do either. Exactly, for sure,

Amanda Grinter 16:34
the intended outcome depends on the pathway and the motivations of why someone is seeking this type of therapy. For the most part. You know, Health Canada approves people who have major depressive disorder that's been treatment resistant. So they've tried different therapies. They've tried different medications, different doses of medications. They've tried community engagement, they tried all the things. And again, there's still something missing. There's still something that's not quite what they need. They haven't found what they need yet. So major depressive disorder, we get a lot of people through that pathway. One really interesting pathway is people who have a terminal diagnosis. Interesting, yeah, so the first four people in Canadian history, back in 2018 who were approved for this therapy through Health Canada were all people who were terminal. So they were given a death date, essentially. And all four of them outlive their death date by a long shot, by years, which is very curious,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 17:32
yeah, but very

Amanda Grinter 17:35
really, what they showed up for was, as I'm sure you can imagine, the existential anxiety and dread about what's next. Of course, we don't really, we don't talk about death. We don't normalize it, at least not in the circles I find myself come

Blake Hunsley 17:48
to dinner at my house sometime morbid Mary's around the dinner table.

Amanda Grinter 17:56
But there's this. It is the ultimate unknown for most people, and so you know, our minds, our finite minds, don't really know how to hold something infinite or something completely unknown. And so what we've seen in that demographic of people is a drastic reduction of anxiety, stress, existential fear, loops of thinking, not being able to be in the present reality, because they're thinking about, you know, what's next? What happens when I die? So a dramatic reduction of that in the nervous system is actually very helpful for people with chronic illness, specifically cancer. So a body that is calm and content in a nervous state, that is in a relaxed having a relaxed experience, we've lessened the cortisol. We've lessened the adrenaline response, that constant flood. And so what what they see is that psychedelics aren't necessarily responsible for people out living their diagnosis, but it's more so what they allow them to do differently and being content and

Blake Hunsley 19:01
relaxed the system's not so strained, most likely physically, because of the

Amanda Grinter 19:04
effect Exactly, exactly

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 19:07
which, which you do see a lot in people who you know have a terminal diagnosis, who focus rather than be worried, upset, spend their time In that turmoil, to those people who focus on, okay, here's my list of things I want to do. I need to, you know, I want this to happen. I want this to happen. And often you hear about, oh, they lived to that date. And then some, yeah, because they're focused on that, as opposed to thinking about all the like, oh, woe is me, all those anxiety ridden things. They're like,

Amanda Grinter 19:46
Yeah, more calm

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 19:49
because they're focused on getting things done, enjoying Yeah, enjoying the time they have, enjoying moments, yeah,

Amanda Grinter 19:57
staying right here. Yeah, like you're alive right now. What? You want to do with this time that you're in this present moment? Yes, yeah, it is. It's really curious. So that was actually the first demographic of people who received this therapy in in Canada back in 2018 and since then, the clinical trials. So I would say Johns Hopkins in the US. They they have a whole wing of psychedelic research now, right? So they're always hosting clinical trials. Their 2025, demographic, demographic was people with OCD. So what they're hypothesizing through the research and through the results is, okay, here's the different areas of the brain that start performing differently after these medicines, based on what we already know about other illnesses or diseases or disorders that might impact that area of the brain, there could be some change here. And because the risks are very low, the risks are quite low. For psychedelic therapy, they're not zero, but they're very low. There is this really, really beautiful consideration of, Wow, maybe people with this illness could benefit from this or maybe we might see change in people with this disorder, this disorder, maybe they'll be able to do something differently where they there might be this stuck feeling. So if we think about major depressive disorder, that's treatment resistant. So treatment resistant depression, there's it's resistant. So there's a stuckness. You're stuck in this experience, or you feel stuck in this experience with OCD, it is a very stuck feeling. You're stuck and you and you develop behaviors that keep you feeling, you know, somewhat safe, but you're stuck. So 2024, Johns Hopkins was working with people who had eating disorders as well. So again, behaviorally stuck. I feel like I'm in control. I'm being controlled by this behavior or my body. I'm not in control. What sort of,

Blake Hunsley 21:50
what sort of responses have been measured from this or have been, have been seen. I'm really

Amanda Grinter 21:55
curious about these. Yeah, so with that expansion with psychedelics, so the changes in the default mode network translating to new ways of thinking and experiencing and seeing. What happens is that there's more. So it's almost like we tap into an access of, oh, I felt stuck, but now I just realized there's a whole other slew of options here for me, and that's where the after therapy comes in as well, which sometimes we hear people, you know, you might hear like, oh, I had a bad trip on psychedelics. They weren't doing it in a therapeutic model. They were like, at a rave, and it's like, unprepared, and they took something and was like, Oh my gosh. I didn't know what I was getting myself into here, but that's where the aftercare and the after therapy. So we call it integration therapy, which means, how are you going to take this experience? So the insights, the themes that came up in your journey, maybe the visions that you received, or messages that the medicine gave you, how can you take that and keep it so that it's it actually informs the way you move forward? So this expansion of more, I realize there's more. There's other ways that I can behave, there's other ways that I can see. There's other feelings of, you know, new feelings of trust, maybe in self or in the world. So that expansion really gives us more, which is kind of the opposite of what people fear of psychedelics, which is, what if I lose myself? I'm afraid of losing my mind or losing myself, you don't lose anything you gain. And that can be hard. Again, that expansion can be hard. It takes time to adapt. And so, yeah, just that there's so much more psychedelics opens us up to more. And even in a literal way, people will say colors are brighter. My vision is more clear and crispy. I feel like I see things. I look at a leaf, and I'm not just like, oh yeah, a leaf. It's like, I can see, wow, this leaf was had a whole, like, birth cycle, just like me. I can see its beautiful intricacies and patterns. So it's almost like we tap into something that we feel like we didn't have access before. So that expansion, we don't lose anything. We expand.

Blake Hunsley 24:03
I think the mention of aftercare, I think, is a great segue here. So let's go through from start to finish, if we can of what say, gonna use air quotes your typical psychedelic therapy session would look like, yeah, in practice. And then the aftercare part, I'm fascinated about as well.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 24:18
Yeah, absolutely, because I'm sure it's not exactly like we saw in the movies for

Blake Hunsley 24:26
legal purposes. We're all we're all gonna just say we have an experiment to the psychedelics on our heart, and we're just gonna nod and smile across the room.

Amanda Grinter 24:33
Yeah, this is it. Yeah, it's so the training that I did for psychedelic therapy is through an organization out of BC called theracil. So their model is very much we prep so we do depending on someone's previous experiences or what needs to happen before, because some people might need to come off of a medication to do this therapy, or titrate and reduce the medication. So that has to be done with our doctors. So we would. Do, first of all, an assessment. So what needs to happen? Are they a candidate, you know, talking about affordability, because it's unfortunately, it's not financially accessible

Blake Hunsley 25:11
barriers, that is definitely

Amanda Grinter 25:13
for sure. So we would do an assessment just to see where someone is at and their readiness and where their medications are at. And after the assessment, if it's a go, our doctors, or your own doctor, if they're if they're familiar with this process, would apply to Health Canada under the SAP program, which is the Special Access Program. And this grants people an exemption to use a controlled substance for therapeutic purposes, okay, which we're going to get

Blake Hunsley 25:38
into a little bit after this too. We want to address some of the legalities and things.

Amanda Grinter 25:42
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So after that, Health Canada would come back with a yay or nay. The approval rate right now is about 52% for people who qualify, so we're at around half. But if you were approved, then you would meet with the person who you'd be doing it with. So our doctors typically wouldn't be working with someone from the beginning to end. That's where the therapists come in. So if you, let's say Shelly, you were approved, and you came to me, we would do two to three prep sessions. So the prep sessions are pretty guided. There's a lot you know, part of trauma informed care is letting someone know what's going to happen on that day in terms of the flow of the process, not what's going to come up in your journey, because I can't tell you that, but what's going to happen from beginning to end of day. So getting people to go there before it actually happens lessens the anxiety. So we talk about what happens when I show up at 10am what we're going to start doing, and what it's going to look like, and everything I bring all the ceremony that goes into it. So getting people really familiar with what that day is going to look like as part of a trauma informed approach. So we start there, and then we talk about some common, normal, natural experiences that people have in the journey mind, body, spirit. Because sometimes you know, the medicines can depending on the medicine, but they can take a little while to start to arrive, and some of them are more slow and gradual and gentle. And so when someone is sitting and waiting, the mind is going to be searching. It's going to be like, where is it? Oh, I feel a tingle in my toe. Is that it the mind is searching and seeking. And a mind that is in is in this process of seeking, can sometimes turn into anxiety. So it can be like, Oh, is that it? I don't think I feel anything yet. Did Amanda give me the right cup? I've had that one before. Yes. What's going on? Like, this isn't working for me. Oh, here we go again. Another thing that's not working. So the spiral, the spiral of the mind when we're waiting before the medicine starts. One, one thing that's helpful is normalizing that, that getting there process. So people, if your anxious mind is still online, your logical mind is, you still have access to it too. So going over common experiences so people don't take something and run with it is really helpful prep. So if I say, you know, it's really common for people to feel like they're yawning a lot, or like they're moving their jaw around. And so when that happens in the journey, they're not like, Oh, this is bad. Something's going wrong. This is not normal, right? And then the panic no one wants

Blake Hunsley 28:13
to feel unique when they're in a vulnerable position, really comforting,

Amanda Grinter 28:16
exactly, or even to be able to like, you know, some people don't want to take their blindfold off, and I'll tell you more about that, but they don't want to check in with me every five minutes and be like, is this normal? I'm feeling this. Should I be feeling this? They're trying their best to really ease into the experience. So normalizing what is typical and common before the journey is very helpful. And then part of prep too is just airing out any fears and anxieties and normalizing that, because everyone is nervous on journey day, when you come to the clinic, or we come to you, wherever the setting is going to be, I like to tell people, if I show up and you're not nervous, I'm going to be concerned, because you're walking into the unknown, and our minds don't really know how to hold that. They don't it doesn't know what to expect, so it's going to create all kinds of scenarios. So really helpful for just getting people familiar with what to expect on from the process and flow of Journey day, and then we have journey day. So depending on the medicines, the three we work with, most that are approved through Health Canada are ketamine. So ketamine is actually a prescribable substance. You don't need to go through the Health Canada process. Interesting, yeah, you can just come to our clinic in Bedford, and we can do an intake and assess you there for applicability and appropriateness. And our doctors can prescribe ketamine. It doesn't have to be approval through Health Canada. But we also have psilocybin, which is mushrooms, magic mushrooms, also known as that, that would have to have a Health Canada approval. And then we have MDMA. So MDMA not a classic psychedelic, because we don't necessarily have an altered state of consciousness. It's more emotional. So it brings us back to our love. Of essentially, so really helpful for people with PTSD who it's not safe to put them in an altered state of consciousness, right? So those are the three, ketamine, psilocybin, mushrooms and MDMA are the three most common we work with.

Blake Hunsley 30:14
Okay, so how long does journey day last? How long I hate the term trip, that's probably not the appropriate terminology, but yeah, how long would a session last for somebody typically

Amanda Grinter 30:25
with ketamine? So ketamine is about an hour, okay, and that's done in office, so it's pretty accessible in terms of time. Ketamine at the clinic that I work for is intramuscular injection, so it's like a flu shot. Essentially, there are some places where you can get IV. So it's a constant drip for however long the chosen therapy is. But yeah, it's about 45 minutes to an hour. After an hour, most people are about 90% sober. Mushrooms is longer. It's a longer day. So mushrooms, typically people are around the four to five hours. They're with the medicine for about four to five hours. So I would be with them for between seven and eight hours, because there's prep when I arrive, and then being with them after is they're still in that tender space, so it's important to support before and after too. But yeah, their journey with the medicine would be between four and five hours. Some people metabolize a little quicker. It's around the three hour mark. What we've just learned actually, is these newer medications for people who are diabetic or trying to lose weight, so the GLP ones and semaglutide, they slow your digestion, so it actually extends the journey for much longer.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 31:35
So somebody's on that, then they're

Amanda Grinter 31:37
they're in it for longer. Yeah, yeah. They're having a longer experience.

Blake Hunsley 31:41
Expect your ads for Wegovy and ozempic. Okay, so what does the aftercare portion of it look like? Because I do. I think that's really important as much as I love that you're soothing people's anxiety going into it. I love that there's some hand holding, for lack of a better term at the end, to kind of totally keep this going for them, but keep the momentum

Amanda Grinter 31:42
going totally. And the biggest part of that, you know, I've actually worked with people who have, quote, unquote, identified they've had a bad trip before, and doing them, doing the medicine in a therapeutic model, actually heals that experience. It expands the way they're able to think about it and what they can take from it. So it completely changes their view on a previous experience, which is really fascinating, basically,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 32:26
to hold their hand the whole way.

Amanda Grinter 32:28
Yeah, that's right. You have a support. You have an anchor to this 3d world. So it's very common for people to feel like, is this real, or is Amanda's life real? Like, does Amanda still exist? And then it can be helpful to just look out at me, and they're like, Okay, yeah, Amanda exists. She's holding down the I can go out and to the Beyond and to the Beyond self. So after care day of so I'm usually with people for about an hour after they're sober and after their journey is complete. Some people, most people, want to talk about what came up and the things they experienced and seen. Some people don't they want silence. They just want to rest and bathe in the glow. Other people, they want some more music on, because the music is quite significant during a journey as well. Music is part of the guide. I'm not guiding because I don't disrupt the process of the mushroom. But yeah, the aftercare that day is about an hour. And then the integration sessions post journey are kind of like a traditional one hour therapy session, but we talk all about what came up and how to make meaning of it, and we

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 33:33
don't do that on the day of the journey. We allow that to you have another session separate to that. Yeah, we

Amanda Grinter 33:39
can, because some people come back and they're like, oh my gosh, I want to tell you all about it. No problem at all. You absolutely can. But often on when you're coming out of the medicine, it can be hard to, like, find words so back, once you're fully back on Earth, a few days later, that's when we would have our first integration session. So I like having the first session within the week of the journey. So we're not waiting too long, because we want you know it to be fresh. So that looks like creating meaning out of things or messages or insights or visions that came to you in your journey. So I tell people, we don't make sense of them, because your your logical mind is pretty offline in the journey, because you're not thinking in the same way as we normally do. So when the logical mind comes back online after journey, it's like, oh, I want to figure that out. And that can be a bit of a, you know, a crunchy part for people, because something that wasn't present to the experience is trying to figure out the experience. So people are like, I can't make sense of this. Yeah, you can't make sense of it because it didn't make sense. So we don't make sense of things. We make meaning of it. So we might say, you know, if someone saw, let's say, an image of something that looked like an octopus, we might they might be like, Yeah, I don't know what that meant. That was kind of random. It was cool, but I don't know what it meant. We might take a look at what that represents. So an octopus has a lot of arms. It's able to, kind of, like, be in a lot of places that'll, you know, at different times. Do you sometimes feel like you wish you had, quote, unquote, more arms? Like, yeah, I do. I feel like I can't get all of the stuff done that I need to do in the day. You know, I have kids that pull me away from, you know, my duties and things. So sometimes I do wish I had like, eight arms. So sometimes, you know, people might not know what something represents, but that's my job. That's where I that's where we come in. Our team comes in who's trained in this and knows about some of the themes that can come up and what they might mean. I imagine having

Blake Hunsley 35:38
a team of professionals guide you through this too. Has got to do a lot of heavy lifting for removing stigma from this as

Amanda Grinter 35:44
a process. Yeah, yeah, the stigma piece, you know, sometimes we get people who are just curious, or sometimes we get people are like, I would never do that, because my sister had a bad trip. And then when you hear about it, you're like, Well, yeah, of course she did. That's a bad night. And unfortunately, she was that in psychedelics. So yeah, there's stigma, there's fear, for sure. You know, our egos don't really like relinquishing control. I should speak for myself, my ego doesn't.

Amanda Grinter 36:19
Yeah, the control and so, yeah, there is still some resistance to that. I mean, there was fear mongering back in the 50s and 60s. They were, they were doing a lot of rich research back then, and it got shut down because of all the fears. And, you know, there's obviously roots to that we don't need to get into. But, yeah, just fears, just, you know, think about like Reefer Madness back when that came out. So anything that was bringing people closer to connecting with self and in spirit wasn't allowed. The benefit was not really celebrated. So, yeah, there's, there's old kind of downloads that we have about, you know, these quote, unquote drugs. So we, you've heard me use the word today a lot, medicines, yes, right? We're trying to move into language that supports an openness to this, yeah, an understanding of it. So journey versus trip? Yeah, I still use the word trip. But you know, when we're in that medical space, the clinical space we talk about, it's your journey. This is medicine, right? There is a

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 37:24
different connotation. That's a bit of a reframing, absolutely. How has

Blake Hunsley 37:29
the legal framework changed around that too? Because we've hinted around a little bit about it here, but Shelly and I were quite curious, coming in, what the legal status of this is. You've talked a bit about Health Canada regulating it as well, so I'm curious to know more about that.

Amanda Grinter 37:41
Yeah, so the Health Canada pathway, if you were so ketamine right now, wouldn't need to go healthy Canada. Surprises me, to be honest with you, yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, ketamine. Ketamine is used a lot in hospitals for surgeries. It's a dissociative, so it creates this really helpful sometimes Mind Body disconnect, so the mind can go wherever it wants, and the body doesn't jump on board in fight or flight or like, Oh, it doesn't react in the same way because it's it's relaxed, it's content. So ketamine, it would be more so you would, you would see one of our doctors, or a doctor at another clinic, and talk about, you know, your ability to access that based on where you're at and what you're wanting from it. So ketamine is the most legal and most accessible. Psilocybin and MDMA would be the Health Canada pathway. So with psilocybin, they would send not the actual mushroom, not the fruiting body of the mushroom, but they would send you have your choice between an extract or a synthetic copy, interesting and

Blake Hunsley 38:45
it's pill form. Is there much of a difference that you noticed and experienced between the two, the synthetic and the not or not

Amanda Grinter 38:50
really, when they first started formulating the medicines, there were some issues about like, some people weren't. It wasn't working. So the just, you know, they were, they were coming out after an hour, being like, I don't feel anything at all. And so I think they have explored, you know, different options and different formulations, but those are still the two options. So there's two companies, and one does an extract which comes from the actual substance, and one does a synthetic replica. And then MDMA is, it's a synthetic anyways, it's not a naturally occurring substance, so you would get it in pill form, right? Yeah. Okay, yeah. So the legalities right now are, they are still controlled substances, so you can't go to, you know, the NSLC cannabis and buy it yet,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 39:41
but can't even actually get it prescribed routinely from your doctor. It has to go through this special approval

Amanda Grinter 39:47
process that's right, yep, every

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 39:48
time, right? And by Health Canada, do any of the provinces interfere in that process or have anything to do? Or it's truly to Health Canada.

Amanda Grinter 39:57
It's truly to Health Canada. Yeah. Yeah, not in a legal way, but the climate of psychedelics and using them for therapy, we do see like BC, like BC kind of just does what they want, which is great. I love that attitude. They're just like, we're doing it. So there's shops that will pop up that sell psychedelic substances, they usually do get shut down, like, there's none that have any sort of longevity, but they'll just pop up again, right? So there are places you can go and buy it, but those aren't regulated sources or anything like that. It was kind of like, right before marijuana was legalized. It's, we're kind of in that area where it's like, you can find it. It's out there. People are trying to bring it forward. Businesses are trying, but it's still not legal to just go and walk in and buy it somewhere or order it.

Blake Hunsley 40:47
Which does question your comparison to pre cannabis legalization or decriminalization? Do you think we're headed the same way for other psychedelic drugs in the country at this point? Or is it too early to tell that's

Amanda Grinter 40:59
a curious question. Yeah, I'm not sure. Or, I guess, to reframe it,

Blake Hunsley 41:05
would you like us to see a movement in that way? Or do you think it's better kind of the way it's controlled under Health Canada now? Or is there any benefit to either side?

Amanda Grinter 41:13
Yeah, I think giving people the option, because not everyone is open to an extract or, you know, a pharmaceutical replica. Not, not everybody wants that. We get people who are like, you know, there's mushrooms in my backyard. Can I just use those? But, you know, we do still want to include safety and regulation and so, yeah, I think there's space for both. I think there's absolutely space for both. When we think about, you know, cannabis products. There's all kinds of different formulations and ways that, you know, smoking doesn't work. There's edibles, if that's not what you're looking for, we have, like, pain relief creams, there's tinctures and oils and things. So, yeah, I'm not sure where it's going. I mean, it's not at a place of decriminalization right now, but I think it was Alberta that tried that a few years ago, not with psychedelics, but they decriminalized, like, cocaine, heroin. Decriminalized personal use because people do drugs this, like, this is not a big surprise. So it's like, what are we doing here? Criminalizing people who are just trying to, you know, survive. They're just trying to get through this life like we all are.

Blake Hunsley 42:24
And so implying the War on Drugs has been a failure. Amanda, we can all endorse that position,

Amanda Grinter 42:30
yes, yeah. So I think it was either BC or Alberta tried that a few years ago. So yeah. I mean, decriminalization would be a step so that we can acknowledge people can use their medicines as medicines, and they're allowed to do that if we think about, you know, cultural considerations. There are still people who are incarcerated and have criminal records for substances that are now legal. There are indigenous people still incarcerated for using their medicines from their land, exactly. And so, yeah, there's, there's a lot of layers to the to the either decriminalization or legality of it, but in terms of, you know, in true reachability fashion accessibility, there's a lot of people who were more willing to try cannabis after it was legal and to explore the benefits of that. And so sometimes the mindset of something shifting to a legal substance really opens people to moving forward to it more

Blake Hunsley 43:27
the effect it has on stigma so quickly. I mean, immediately I can think of some people in my in my own household, the devil's lettuce before it was legal, and now that it's legalized, they sure do sleep better with their little pills

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 43:41
before bedtime. There's stigma and then anxiety attached to that, right? If you're a rule follower, right? Having it be legalized does open more doors to you? Yeah, right,

Amanda Grinter 43:57
and it makes people feel safer sometimes. And if that you assume

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 44:01
it's controlled, then, like, the difference between controlled and everyday Joe, like, I could still get it from every day Joe, but, like, I actually can get it from somewhere that's controlled Health Canada, there's regulations. So yeah, remove some of that maybe helps to remove some of that fear.

Amanda Grinter 44:18
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It makes people feel a little more open to it. Well, they'll

Blake Hunsley 44:22
feel less judged by their peers, too. I'm sure there's a lot of fear of judgment there is with any kind of psychological treatment, really. So if you add legal issues into it, then you're going to be even stuck farther behind. I'm actually really pleased to hear that it is that Health Canada is allowing it as much as they are. I mean, coming into this conversation, I really didn't know where we stood on that 52% you know, it would probably be nice if that was a slightly higher rate of approval. But, yeah, we're at least moving in the right direction. So that's great. Anything that reduces stigma to any kind of mental health care, I will take as a win.

Amanda Grinter 44:53
Yeah, that's right. That's right, yeah. And sometimes, like, one of the biggest barriers for people. Is the back and forth sometimes that Health Canada can engage in when somebody applies in an SAP. So they might say, oh, based on the information, you know, we want them to try this first. And they're like, I don't want to try that. I don't want to do that. This is what I want. This is my medicine. Maybe they've had a previous experience and it was really helpful for them, or they haven't, but they've heard all of the, you know, the results from the trials and the research that's coming out. So there's, they don't really take into account patient choice, patient agency. Well, what I want, that's a healthcare in Canada

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 45:36
standard, right? Sadly, that's an insurance company as well. Still, okay, that's there that, you know, like, your doctor decides, listen, we've tried this, this and this. Like, you're gonna, I need you to go on this. Like, we need to, like, kind of the middleman put you to here, because you've been through so much. Like, that's crazy. You have a doctor for a reason, and the insurance company is like, No, we need them to do this, this and this, because, of course, we know your patient better, yeah, which is, yeah, Bs, right. Like, I yeah, I think it's actually costing our health care more, yeah, money, because now I have to spend more time in the health care system, yeah, trying to get better. Yeah, right. Like, at least I'm trying to get better. So I think there's likely some of this same process there health candidates don't know, maybe try this, which can be very frustrating, I know, because I I'm on biologics for a specific disease, and that is a huge issue getting coverage, right? So it's not like accessibility. I think for medicine is an issue for

Blake Hunsley 46:49
everybody, which does beg the question too, what sort of a barrier is there financially for people who want to explore financially under Health Canada, under health under you know? I guess, yeah, under Health Canada, or is this something that people are paying out of pocket for? What sort of

Amanda Grinter 47:05
there is a lot of out of pocket cost right at this at this moment. So it costs to pay the doctor to submit the application, unless you have a family doctor who is willing to, like, the sap is a hefty it's not just like a one page document. Like, it's, I think it's like, you know, 15 to 30 pages. Oh, wow. Okay, so I don't know, I don't know of any, like, nsha doctors who are submitting that. It's really the doctors who specialize in psychedelic-

Blake Hunsley 47:32
It seems prohibitive, on person, on purpose, 15 pages.

Amanda Grinter 47:35
It's a lot of work, yeah, and then it's usually a back and forth. Like, it's very rare to submit something and then just have it approved. So they send it back, and they're like, you know, which is not a trauma informed practice, to say, We want your client to do this. And the clients like, I don't want to do that. Yeah, I don't want to do our TMS first, exactly. So there is a cost for just the application alone, which doesn't, doesn't guarantee you access, it doesn't guarantee a yes. So at our clinic, it's $260 for the application, okay? And then if approved, the medication is actually $760 for one dose. Significant barriers. Then very significant barriers if people have

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 48:19
a health spending account, because it's likely not covered under like they might pharmaceuticals, no, but it would so it might be covered under health spending accounts, like a lot of companies, network are allowing some health spending accounts for some of these things, medications, yeah, offset some of These costs.

Blake Hunsley 48:38
Benefits provider, out of general curiosity, don't

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 48:40
Most health spending accounts , like, don't have like, caveats on them.

Blake Hunsley 48:46
interesting.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 48:47
Would have some very broad but it's for just that reason. Okay, So Amanda, we're as always, we get deep in these discussions, and then where you're, like, almost at a time. So let's you know, put a plug in for you and your clinic. Like, if somebody is wanting to discuss this more, they think some of the things that they've heard today might help them or a loved one. What do they do? How do they get in touch with you?

Amanda Grinter 49:16
Yeah, so if someone was interested in the ketamine route, the clinic that I work for in Bedford is called holos integrative health that's down on waterfront drive in Bedford. It's a beautiful facility, really lovely people running the show there. So they could send an email, book, a discovery call, where one of our team members would connect and see what they're looking for, what they're interested in, and then Pair them to the appropriate practitioner. If someone were looking for support on the SAP application, our doctors at holos can also support that. Or if someone's just looking for more information, they can send me an email, and I'm willing to have, you know, just a free phone call with someone who wants some more information or virtual call. No problem at all. I love spreading the word. So yeah, they can email me info@amandagrinter.ca, or, like I said, visit holos integrative health, their website, or give them a call. You can book. You can book right into their calendar online. So sometimes that's more convenient for people than a back and forth. Are you free this date? Are you free this date? They can

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 50:18
just book themselves in perfect Yeah, that's fantastic.

Amanda Grinter 50:22
Yep. And connecting doesn't mean you're signing up for anything. It's just some people just want the info, and we have lots of info to share.

Blake Hunsley 50:28
Well, if you haven't learned enough listening to our episode, then now you know exactly who to call.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 50:32
Please. This is so great. Thank you so much. Amanda for being here today. Thank you for having me, and thanks to our listeners for joining us on this episode of within our reach, season two of our podcast is made possible thanks to the support of the Province of Nova Scotia and the support for Culture Program. If you have feedback on an episode, please keep it to yourself, no just kidding, or an idea of a future episode topics, or if you're interested in appearing as a guest, write us at withinourreach@reachability.org, Thanks again, everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai