Neuroscience of Psychedelics with Dr. Dave Rabin – Ayahuasca podcast

The Amplified Power of Group Healing

One of the key topics discussed was the exceptional effectiveness of group work in therapeutic settings, particularly with psychedelics. At 06:35, Dr. Rabin explained how group therapy can create a powerful magnification effect, where the collective energy and shared experiences of participants contribute to a deeper, more transformative healing process.

Dr. Rabin emphasized that one of the most significant challenges in healing trauma is the pervasive feeling of isolation. Many individuals who have endured extreme hardships or trauma often feel alone in their struggles, unable to express their pain honestly. This sense of isolation can reinforce the trauma and make the healing process more difficult.

However, in a group setting, individuals quickly realize they are not alone. At 15:22, Dr. Rabin stated, “When people come together to share their experiences, they discover that others have faced similar challenges.” This shared understanding creates a sense of camaraderie, making it easier for participants to open up and heal. As Dr. Rabin noted, the commonality of experience in a group setting fosters a sense of safety, which is crucial for successful healing.

He highlighted that healing in a communal setting is traditionally more effective than solo therapy. While individual therapy can be beneficial, it sometimes reinforces the feeling that the person is still alone in their journey. Group therapy, on the other hand, provides a support network—a “team” or “family”—that accompanies each person through the healing process. This support extends beyond the therapeutic setting, as participants often stay in touch and continue to help each other integrate their experiences into their daily lives.

The Legalization of MDMA: A Crucial Step for Mental Health

The conversation then shifted to the ongoing efforts to legalize MDMA-assisted therapy, a subject Dr. Rabin is deeply passionate about. At 34:50, he discussed the groundbreaking results from clinical trials for PTSD treatment using MDMA. With just three doses of MDMA and 42 hours of psychotherapy over 12 weeks, the trials showed unprecedented success rates—70 to 88% of participants responded positively to the treatment, and 50 to 70% achieved long-term remission.

Despite these remarkable outcomes, the path to legalization has been fraught with challenges. Dr. Rabin shared his frustration at 41:10 with a recent vote by an FDA advisory committee, which questioned the safety of MDMA-assisted therapy. The committee’s decision, influenced by aggressive lobbying from a radical group opposed to MDMA trials, contradicted the overwhelming evidence of the treatment’s effectiveness and safety.

This group, which does not consist of clinicians, has taken a stance against MDMA therapy, particularly for veterans, based on ideological beliefs rather than scientific evidence. Dr. Rabin expressed his concern that such opposition could hinder the progress of MDMA therapy, potentially depriving countless individuals of a life-changing treatment.

He urged listeners to stay informed and engaged with the ongoing discussions around MDMA therapy. As the FDA prepares to vote on the approval of MDMA-assisted therapy, it’s crucial for the public to understand the science behind the treatment and the profound impact it could have on mental health care.

A Call to Action

The episode concluded with a call to action from both Sam and Dr. Rabin. At 55:40, they encouraged listeners to educate themselves on the topic, engage in discussions, and advocate for the legalization of MDMA. The potential benefits of MDMA-assisted therapy extend beyond individual healing; they represent a critical step toward the broader acceptance of psychedelic medicines and a more compassionate approach to mental health treatment.

Dr. Rabin also invited listeners to learn more about his work and the Apollo Neuro technology, which integrates ancient knowledge with modern science to enhance therapeutic experiences. For those interested in staying updated on the latest developments in psychedelic therapy, he recommended checking out The Psychedelic Report on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

As Sam signed off at 62:20, he expressed his hope for a future where psychedelic therapies are recognized and accessible, leading to a better, more connected world.

This episode of the Ayahuasca Podcast highlights the transformative power of group healing and the urgent need to push forward with the legalization of MDMA-assisted therapy. As we stand at the brink of a new era in mental health care, the voices of those advocating for change are more important than ever.

Listen to the full episode here.

Full Transcript of the Episode

Sam Believ (00:04)
Hi guys and welcome to ayahuascapodcast .com. As always with you the host Sambiliyev. Today I’m interviewing Dr. Dave Rabin. ⁓ Dave is a psychiatrist, he’s a neuroscientist, he is a psychedelic assisted therapy pioneer, and he’s also a co -founder of Apollo Neuro wearable device. Dave, welcome to the

Dr. Dave Rabin (00:28)
Thanks so much for having me, Sam. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

Sam Believ (00:32)
So Dave is an expert in so many different fields and there’s so many things we can talk about him but I would like to first ask you Dave how did you get into this line of work and specifically started working more with psychedelics ⁓ and mental health as

Dr. Dave Rabin (00:52)
Sure. ⁓ It’s a great place to start. So I am a physician and a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist, as you mentioned, and I’ve been studying chronic stress for many years and the impact of stress on illness, particularly things like PTSD and traumatic brain injury and chronic pain disorders, mental health issues, and working with lot of veterans in the community. And what became very clear to me in ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (01:23)
between 2010 and 2012 when I was spending a lot more time working with these populations in the hospital and the outpatient clinical setting was that our treatments we were taught to use that were available like Paxil, Zoloft, antidepressant therapies and other psychotherapies and things while sometimes were effective, they were not effective in most people long -term.

Dr. Dave Rabin (01:50)
And the statistics now have come out showing something like 70 % of people who have post -traumatic stress disorder, who receive these current treatments that are available, are not responding to treatment long -term. ⁓ So over 70 % of people never get better once they receive a diagnosis of PTSD in the standard population. And it’s even worse for veterans. ⁓ So.

Dr. Dave Rabin (02:14)
Seeing that our patients were really struggling, I started to look outside the box at other techniques and tools that were available. ⁓ Everything from natural techniques like breath work, meditation, yoga, soothing touch, soothing music, service animals, all the way through to psychedelic assisted therapy. And then of course, including technology that falls in between like biofeedback, neurofeedback, and neuro stimulation techniques and things like that. And what became very clear,

Dr. Dave Rabin (02:44)
was that when you look at everything across the board, all of these different treatments or potential treatments that psychedelic assisted therapies, even going back to 2012, were having a much better impact with just a few doses of medicine than any of the other tools we had available by leaps and bounds, like double the benefits in many cases than what we were seeing in the world with the standard of care treatments.

Dr. Dave Rabin (03:11)
And as I started to see these early studies coming out in 2012, they were very, very promising. And it made me realize that I’ve always had a passion for studying consciousness and dreams and meaning making and how that impacts our lives. And so when I saw this work coming out of the psychedelic space and started to be published in world renowned journals, and then saw that this was having an impact on people with severe mental illnesses like depression and PTSD. ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (03:38)
I realized that this was the opportunity for me to be able to study consciousness and meaning making and mental illness together and that psychedelic medicines were kind of this gateway to that field and that it was actually having real transformative impact on people. And so it was around 2012 when I decided to study psychedelic medicines and mental health full time and then just continued on from

Sam Believ (04:05)
Thank you for sharing your story Dave. The key word you mentioned many times is the long term. ⁓ As a neuroscientist and now obviously knowing everything you know, what do you think happens with psychedelic that you have this experience and then somehow it stays with you long term ⁓ for some people for years and some people their life is completely changed forever. What is the process

Dr. Dave Rabin (04:29)
That’s a really great question. I ⁓ can’t say that we have all the answers yet. ⁓ There’s a lot of research still going on. ⁓ But I can tell you that from all the research, the neuroscience, mental health research has been done so far. ⁓ We have a lot of clues. So the two major clues are ⁓ number one, that psychedelic medicines enhance neuroplasticity and learning. So if you think ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (05:00)
the brain as like a organ that’s filled with different trails. And the trails are like paths that are well cut out between different neurons in different parts of the brain. ⁓ And you look at Eric Kandel’s Nobel Prize winning research on how memory works. He won the Nobel Prize for this in 2000, but was doing the work for 50 years before that with a number of other people.

Dr. Dave Rabin (05:29)
What’s very clear from that work, the main conclusion, is that when we practice doing anything, we get better at it and we get better at it because we’re strengthening neural networks in our brains in those pathways. If we don’t practice doing things, we don’t get better at them and it doesn’t strengthen our neural pathways. So to give you an idea of what that means, if we’re taught growing up to think about ourselves as not good enough all the time,

Dr. Dave Rabin (05:58)
and we start, not worthy of love, or not, you know, being worthy to society, et cetera, any of these things. ⁓ Every time we think about ourselves in that way, we strengthen the neural pathway between our identity center of our brain and our fear center of our brain. Because we’re thinking about ourselves from a perspective of fear and threat, meaning if there’s something wrong with me, then I’m not sure I can be safe with myself.

Dr. Dave Rabin (06:27)
or trust myself, so then that strengthens the connections between my sense of self, my identity center in the front of the brain, and my fear center in the middle emotional part of the brain. So if you imagine now 10, 20, 30, 40 years later, you’ve been doing this and thinking about yourself the same way for your whole life, because that’s what we were taught, then we don’t necessarily know there’s another path that we can take for our brains and for our thought process. So when you would introduce and then learning and breaking those old patterns of thought become hard.

Dr. Dave Rabin (06:57)
the more tightly they’re entrained, the harder it is to break them. So it requires more effort. So when you apply a psychedelic medicine in the right safe context for people, ⁓ and I’m also an MDMA trained and ketamine trained therapist, and we do this work with ketamine in the clinic with PTSD all the time, what happens is that people have a sudden recognition ⁓ of, hey, I’ve been thinking about myself in the same way as being not good enough for years or decades.

Dr. Dave Rabin (07:27)
And there are all these other paths. There are all these other ways that I can think about myself, like the amazing feelings I’m having in my body right now, a feeling so good and so safe in my body. This is a feeling that’s unfamiliar to me, but I really like it. So how do I get back there? How do I start to train myself again and ⁓ to relearn how to love myself rather than to fear myself? And ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (07:53)
A lot of the work around psychedelic medicines that is so transformative for people involves the psychedelic medicine amplifying molecularly safety pathways in the brain that are ⁓ pathways that are ingrained and they’re hardwired for our whole lives, but we just haven’t been using them so much. And so when you introduce a psychedelic medicine, it boosts activity in those parts of the brain when you’re in a safe therapy, safe facilitated setting. ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (08:22)
It could be with a shaman, well -trained lineage -trained shaman, or it could be with a therapist or two therapists, but you’re in a safe place. You feel trusting. You feel like you’re able to be present and let go and just lean into the experience and connect with whatever that experience has to share with you. All of a sudden that safety pathway gets amplified and you have, people have a recognition that’s like, wow, I don’t remember the last time I felt so safe in my body. Or I do remember the last time I felt so safe in my body. It was when I was a little kid.

Dr. Dave Rabin (08:50)
And then that amplifies all the pathways around learning and relearning how to feel like ourselves safe in our bodies. ⁓ so then that accelerates, it’s like psychedelic medicines work in lot of ways, like a learning accelerator, ⁓ a molecular learning accelerator. So you’re just like adding a little fuel to the learning engine in the brain. And then that just speeds everything up at least for 72 hours afterwards for most psychedelics, sometimes longer. ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (09:19)
that benefit extends over time. So it’s just like accelerating the learning and habit change, habit reforming, restructuring process that we can all do normally, but it takes a lot longer, a lot more work to do without help. So that’s number one. And number two is the study I mentioned that we published in February of 2023 showing that when you have somebody with severe PTSD,

Dr. Dave Rabin (09:47)
their cortisol receptors are not functioning properly, which is work that came out of Rachel Yehuda’s lab from Yale and Sinai decades ago. And now it’s been replicated and shown that if you experience severe PTSD and you have a diagnosis, then you are more likely than not to have a cortisol receptor that’s not functioning properly. And you could measure it by looking at these epigenetic methylation markers on the receptor. ⁓ not only is the feeling of not being safe,

Dr. Dave Rabin (10:15)
stored in our neural connections in our brain. It’s also stored in our cells. It’s stored inside the core of the cell ⁓ on the DNA that regulates the way our cortisol receptors are made and the way our cortisol receptors function. And the cortisol receptor is one of the ⁓ most important receptors in the stress response pathway. And that pathway of stress response is important for regulating fear and safety. So you can see the connection here. So when you, what we showed in that February study,

Dr. Dave Rabin (10:44)
is that, which is a five year long study, that we showed that when we look at the subjects who have been through the MAPS MDMA assisted therapy trial, the phase three trial, when you compare their epigenetic cortisol markers before they receive MDMA, and then after three doses of MDMA with a 12 weeks of psychotherapy, you start to see that there is a repair of the cortisol receptor.

Dr. Dave Rabin (11:09)
functioning and methylation patterns that’s more consistent with the way the receptor looks when it’s not modified by trauma. So that is what we think contributes a lot to the long -term benefits of psychedelic medicines because epigenetic changes stick around for years. They last for a very, very long time. They can even be passed down to our offspring. So the fact that you ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (11:34)
Rewire a neural pathway is really interesting and it’s related to the epigenetic pathway. But once you start modifying the epigenetic pathway on the DNA layer, that’s creating long -term changes that start to stick for a very long time. So it’s almost like, if you think about it, it’s called epigenetic memory. So it’s the storage of information on the DNA layer. And MDMA -assisted therapy,

Dr. Dave Rabin (12:00)
you’ve done properly in the MAPS trial not only starts to repair the cortisol receptor ⁓ functioning in methylation markers, but the amount of repair is directly proportionate to the amount of symptom improvement. So now we have a ⁓ direct line between looking at what’s happening on the cortisol receptor in the DNA ⁓ and how much better are people getting, and we can start to predict from one to the other. ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (12:27)
that is really fascinating because that’s the first clue we’ve ever had about there being epigenetic regulation that can be controlled or modified by psychedelic assisted therapy that actually creates markers that last for months, years, decades. So that’s kind of what the science has shown so far that we’re continuing to

Sam Believ (12:49)
That’s a great explanation. Thank you, Dave. ⁓ We see it all the time here at ⁓ at Loire because people ⁓ in the ceremony, they all of a sudden realize like, ⁓ I just figure out I need to love myself. But all of a sudden, those words actually mean something. there something happens ⁓ in their brain, you know, that just makes that realization. And a lot of times it’s those cliche phrases that we hear over and over again. But this time they actually mean something to people. And ⁓ what you talk about ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (13:18)
was it’s because of the feeling, right? Like if you say, if you’re told to love yourself, but you don’t know what it feels like to love yourself, then it’s like throwing, ⁓ it’s like throwing darts in the dark. You don’t know where the bullseye is. You don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like, right? But if you, if the psychedelic medicine and the therapy session or the ceremony give you that feeling of what it feels like to love yourself, then all of a sudden,

Dr. Dave Rabin (13:43)
you connect the meaning of the words, right, going back to what we were talking about earlier with meaning making, you’re connecting the meaning of the words, I love me, I love myself, or self love, to the emotional feeling, which is called embodied knowing. It’s not just knowing up here, it’s knowing throughout your whole body. So once you make that connection in our brains and bodies between I love myself and I know what it feels like to love myself, now these are connected.

Dr. Dave Rabin (14:12)
Now it becomes easier to access that because you have a feeling target to aim for. Does that make sense?

Sam Believ (14:18)
Yeah, so ⁓ that’s the first thing you said and the second part about chronic ⁓ stress receptors in the body. I never heard about this before, but it makes a lot of sense because recently here we had the training for somatic experiencing and it’s in ayahuasca it’s evident how sometimes people process trauma and their body starts shaking and they start releasing something. So I guess maybe that’s the way it looks from outside when ⁓ this reset happens.

Sam Believ (14:47)
And I don’t know, do you know anything about that or is that somatic? You know, have you heard about somatic experiencing and just generally the top, top bottom approach ⁓ to mental health or bottom to bottom up approach? Yeah.

Dr. Dave Rabin (15:03)
⁓ Bottom up. Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. So it’s the idea that the mind and the body are connected. ⁓ And you can, you can store trauma in our bodies like most of us do. Just if anybody’s read The Body Keeps the Score, right? That’s what this book is about. But this is what all, this is what all tribal and indigenous and Eastern medicine traditions are about, which is understanding.

Dr. Dave Rabin (15:31)
how stress and trauma are stored in the body and injury are stored in the body, and then how to release them. So if we think that everything’s stuck up here and we neglect this, then we’re not actually solving the problem. it’s so, and many of us were taught that the mind and the body are separate, but that’s not true, right? Modern neuroscience has shown very clearly the mind and the body are connected and that the somatic experience, somatic meaning body experience ⁓ is

Dr. Dave Rabin (15:59)
Directly connected to the mind experience and the mind experience is connected to the somatic experience So if you are mentally or emotionally unwell And you don’t do anything about it your body will get sick and if your body is unwell Physically and then you don’t do anything about it. You will also become emotionally and mentally unwell. So they’re directly connected they’re not separable ⁓ and It ⁓ this is one of the most common fallacies of modern

Dr. Dave Rabin (16:29)
mental health and science is that people forget this. They forget that the mind and body are connected. So they are connected. So once we understand they’re connected, then the somatic body experience becomes a critical essential component of healing that we don’t do that much with in Western mental health care, but it’s actually critically important. It’s like fundamental to the whole healing process. So we do a lot of work with people, which is called somatic experiencing, which

Dr. Dave Rabin (16:57)
helping them understand the feelings in their body. Where are those feelings coming from? What are they trying to tell you? Without judging them, can you interpret any information from them ⁓ and try to understand what these feelings are trying to tell you? They’re not good or bad, they’re just feelings. They’re just signals to you. And so then how do we reinterpret that? ⁓ And most of us were not taught how to interpret our emotions from our bodies. ⁓ So having that relearning opportunity to understand, hey, these are just signals trying

Dr. Dave Rabin (17:27)
tell me to something, one thing or another, let’s interpret what the signal’s mean, rather than, I see the signal coming in, I don’t like that signal, I’m just gonna shut it down. ⁓ Those are very, very different approaches. So ⁓ it’s not about ultimately whether we like the emotion or not, the emotion’s there and it’s there for a reason. The trick is, how do we quickly feel it, process it, understand it, and allow ourselves to get the information we need to get from the emotion so that it can pass?

Dr. Dave Rabin (17:56)
And then once we do that, the emotion passes and we move on to the next one. But if we resist it, then we get stuck.

Sam Believ (18:03)
Yeah, it’s like you’re driving in a car and you get a check engine light and you freak out and you take a black marker and just paint over it. And you keep painting over all the lights that come up instead of like going to the ⁓ mechanic and the problems accumulate. But it’s really great because ⁓ like I kind of had this understanding of mind, body, and obviously the role of psychedelics in it. But it’s nice to know that there is also ⁓ scientific studies. So thank you for ⁓ being a part of that and conducting

Sam Believ (18:32)
⁓ You mentioned neuroplasticity, right? So ⁓ what I like to say to people that are leaving retreat is that neuroplasticity and that suggestibility state is somewhat neutral, right? So ⁓ you can also use it in a negative way. So if you have a bad habit and you keep reinforcing it in those plastic days where your brain is very ⁓ malleable, then it can ⁓ attach to you even stronger. ⁓

Sam Believ (19:02)
Can you talk a little bit about that? also like in, you mentioned that it’s the therapy plus, ⁓ it’s the psychedelic plus the therapy or in case of a traditional setting, it’s the psychedelic and it’s the integration. ⁓ where are we going with all this? Yeah, with the people’s experiences.

Sam Believ (19:26)
It’s not like we talk about the positive ⁓ option where they realize this nice emotions, but what about when it goes to the sort of negative direction and then we can kind of link it to your devices, the Poloneur, if we could somehow use them to take people to the positive direction. So it’s not really a question. I’m just kind of like throwing it out there. Let’s see what you want to talk

Dr. Dave Rabin (19:50)
Sure, ⁓ so I think, you know, it comes back to this theme of safety and the idea that psychedelic experiences, psychedelic medicines are ⁓ non -specific amplifiers of awareness and learning. So that means that they amplify our awareness of all things, not just good things and joyful things, but can also be sad or challenging things. ⁓ And if we’re in an environment

Dr. Dave Rabin (20:21)
that is not safe for us or we perceive threat from the environment, even threat like somebody in the room is judging me can be threatening, right? Then we’re not gonna feel comfortable to allow some of this stuff that is vulnerable to us or traumatic to come up, ⁓ the challenging stuff. But that challenging stuff sometimes wants to come up. So ultimately, when we talk about ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (20:50)
the word neuroplasticity and learning, neuroplasticity is a fancy neuroscience word for learning. So people are learning all the time. There’s for your whole life, you’re learning for your whole life, you’re neuroplastic, but there are certain parts of your life like childhood ⁓ and psychedelic states and other states where learning happens more. ⁓ And those are states that we call neuroplastic states.

Dr. Dave Rabin (21:17)
because learning is amplified. So learning and neuroplasticity are synonymous words. We use them interchangeably. ⁓ But the point is, to your point, that you can learn anything. You can learn stuff that’s good for you and great habits and change your life, or you can reinforce bad and old habits or pick up new bad habits ⁓ and ⁓ mess things up. So that’s why the therapy is so important ⁓ and the safety, because the therapy ⁓ or the ceremony is the guidance

Dr. Dave Rabin (21:47)
that sets a framework, a structure or a space around the individual who’s experiencing the medicine to have a like guideposts down the right path. This is what you’re here to learn. That’s why intention setting is so important, right? You’re not going in to the psychedelic experience blind with no idea of what’s gonna happen. You’ve done some work in advance. You’ve ideally thought about it and unpacked some stuff in advance with your therapist or with

Dr. Dave Rabin (22:17)
⁓ ceremonial leader, and then you know what you want to get out of this experience, or you at have some idea. So you have these guideposts around your experience that help to keep you in the realm of safety so that you don’t have to be afraid ⁓ or shut down anything that comes up to the surface. You can let anything that comes up, come up because it was meant to be there. So that’s where the therapy comes in. And then the therapy is critically important because

Dr. Dave Rabin (22:46)
creates these long lasting results for people that last a really long time because it helps them integrate, like you said, and unpack the challenging experiences when they have them and then understand how to reinterpret them from a perspective of safety and then pull them back into their regular lives. So that’s what we call integration. ⁓ And this is critical. And people who have been through psychedelic experiences that are highly guided with a well -trained facilitator,

Dr. Dave Rabin (23:15)
and who have been through or facilitators who have been through psychedelic experiences recreationally without any facilitation will often say that the experiences are so different that they believe that the therapy actually contributes something like 70 to 80 % of the effect. So that’s way more than the drug. That only leaves 20 to 30 % for the drug. 70 to 80 % they’re saying is the therapy. And that’s a broad and common report.

Dr. Dave Rabin (23:44)
So that is just testament to how powerful the therapy is to set the foundation that the psychedelic medicines build off of. way that the reason why, ⁓ and so safety is really important because that helps to restructure the brain and to learn around safety and to reduce the unwanted danger, threat response, the stress response that trauma might’ve caused. And it creates that accelerated relearning of safety. ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (24:14)
that facilitates healing because healing can be painful and vulnerable. So it requires safety to be activated. Safety activates healing, threat and stress and fear suppress healing. That’s just how our nervous system works. That’s how every single mammal’s nervous system works and possibly every animal with a nervous system. ⁓ So this is critically important to understand. And Apollo that you see me wearing on my chest is a tool that we developed out of my research at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Dave Rabin (24:43)
It’s a wearable that delivers soothing vibrations to the body that feel like deep breathing or feel like getting a hug. ⁓ And ⁓ it is extremely calming and safe feeling to the body. And it’s the first technology that actually is being used with psychedelic medicine ⁓ other than music. So ⁓ it’s being used in integration after MDMA. It’s being used in people doing ayahuasca, sir.

Dr. Dave Rabin (25:10)
Ceremonies it’s been using ketamine clinics and thousands of patients over the last few years and psilocybin treatment as well. And so this is a really interesting tool because it helps people when they haven’t learned the breathing techniques or the meditation techniques or mastered the self -regulation techniques and they’re having a hard experience, they can literally just turn their Apollo on ⁓ and it will ground them back into their bodies and help them navigate the challenging experience. And we use ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (25:39)
all the time in our psychedelic therapy sessions and it’s extremely effective, which is really exciting.

Sam Believ (25:45)
Yes, I can definitely see the potential for, let’s say, ⁓ some of the people that come to the retreat that, you know, they may be more on the, they’re very worried about negative experience. And even though the set and setting here is extremely safe and very beautiful and very conducive for the healing. ⁓ And we spent first 24 hours ⁓

Sam Believ (26:10)
preparing people for their ceremony. So there’s a lot of trust building between the team members and the group members. So in that formula that you said, know, that therapy does 70%, I don’t know the exact numbers, but I would say it’s like an equal share between the medicine itself, the set and setting, then the group dynamics, because also people heal people, and then the integration or the therapy. And together, if you do it right, that comes really nice. But what I am personally,

Sam Believ (26:40)
very curious about is trying your device on myself, you know, and then seeing how it works in the ceremony to maybe ⁓ give you that little extra support to go deeper, to allow yourself to go deeper and like not freak out. So that’s really interesting. ⁓ I know ⁓ you’re a big fan of MDMA and ketamine assisted therapy, ⁓ but I was surprised in the beginning of this interview that you said you also

Sam Believ (27:10)
conducted a study with Ayahuasca, would be curious to know what differences or similarities have you observed in those different modalities and ⁓ yeah, ⁓ what are your thoughts? And for me personally is ⁓ like how can we take sides of one thing and make the other side better to create this more holistic and basically just the best version of healing for

Dr. Dave Rabin (27:36)
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I’m actually fascinated by all psychedelic medicines that have been studied. You know, I think there is a huge potential for these medicines for healing and recovery and really transforming our entire society to be one that’s more compassionate, more graceful, more accepting, more loving of each other, and more collaborative, most importantly, right? More adaptable, because the more we work together,

Dr. Dave Rabin (28:05)
the longer we survive, the better lives we all have. We’ve known about that for thousands of years. The only reason humans are still on the earth is because we’ve worked together ⁓ towards a common goal. Otherwise, we would have been eradicated a long time ago. So this collaborative adaptation concept of seeing each other ⁓ as human first, rather than for our differences and fearing them, ⁓ is critical.

Dr. Dave Rabin (28:33)
And that is a really interesting thing that happens with all psychedelic medicines is pretty much when they’re used properly in guided settings is that people have this sudden recognition of, ⁓ my needs are actually very similar to everybody else’s needs. all for before we need anything else, what do we need? We need food, we need water, we need air, we need shelter. We need love and connection and acceptance by our community. We need sleep, right?

Dr. Dave Rabin (29:03)
Those are the things we all need to survive. Everything else is extra. So when you think about that first, which is what psychedelic medicines kind of ground us in, it helps us to recognize that we have a lot more in common than we do different. And when I started to see that experience in my patients, and then from studying these medicines and research, what I realized was that what’s fascinating is that as a scientific culture, we have a pattern and a habit

Dr. Dave Rabin (29:33)
And to some extent a bad habit of separating every single drug because of their molecular structure. And when you look at ketamine and MDMA and psilocybin and LSD and ayahuasca and all these other peyote, mescaline, et cetera, molecularly, they are all different. They activate similar parts of the brain, but they’re all different and they work differently. DMT works differently, right? So like these are ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (30:03)
different. So when you just look at the molecule, it’s confusing to understand, to think about how they have so much in common. But when you look at their effects and the way they actually are used and how to get the best outcomes with patients, they actually have a lot more in common than they do different. And so this has been a huge passion of my work is not just looking at MDMA and ketamine, but what do these modern applications of psychedelics in the Western model

Dr. Dave Rabin (30:33)
in common with the traditional application of psychedelics in the ancient models? ⁓ With psilocybin, with mescaline, peyote cactus, San Pedro, and with ayahuasca, how are these similar to what we’re doing now? Because those have been used for thousands of years, and we’ve only used the modern psychedelics for 100 years, if that, right? So that is kind of where I started. And the reason why I started there was because from studying

Dr. Dave Rabin (31:00)
starting in 2012 when I started studying MDMA and psilocybin and ketamine therapy and seeing the benefits people were getting, what I realized very quickly is that I had to go back and look at ancient ayahuasca and psilocybin and San Pedro ceremony styles. And what I found was that the way the ancient people and these indigenous cultures deliver ayahuasca, San Pedro and psilocybin to get the best results are actually very similar to the way that we get best results with ketamine.

Dr. Dave Rabin (31:30)
and MDMA and psilocybin in our models. And the ⁓ commonalities are, it’s just one or a few doses over an extended period of time. There’s always facilitation and guidance. There’s always preparation and integration. There’s always ⁓ safety as a core component of the experience. ⁓ And we’re always talking about resolving and processing trauma, right?

Dr. Dave Rabin (31:59)
So whether you’re doing MDMA or ketamine therapy or psilocybin in the Western model in a clinic, or whether you’re doing ayahuasca or psilocybin or San Pedro or peyote in the jungle, you or the desert, the whole purpose of what you’re doing is to increase your awareness of past challenges and ⁓ traumas that have held you back and stifled our energy flow so that we can ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (32:28)
process them, bring them to the surface for processing and resolve them and heal them. And when I went down to do a research study in 2017 with the Shipibo people in Peru, which is one of the oldest and most well -respected South American ayahuasca tribal lineages that does a lot of medicine work with ayahuasca and tobacco and other things. ⁓ What’s fascinating is that when you ask them, what do you think ayahuasca is doing to people when they’re healing? They say,

Dr. Dave Rabin (32:58)
we’re fixing their trauma ⁓ and that the ayahuasca brings the, like ⁓ trauma is blockages to our energy flow and that it’s stored in the body and that when a person takes ayahuasca and the shaman is present, the shaman is able to watch somebody’s energy flow and see where their energy is getting stuck. They can see the different parts of the body where the energy flow is stifled or not moving properly.

Dr. Dave Rabin (33:28)
And then what they do is they sing Icarus. They sing by taking what they’re observing in the individual and taking what they’re getting from what they would call like the spiritual plane, and they’re channeling that into vibrations, sound waves, that shake up the trauma blockages and dissolve them so that the energy flows more freely.

Dr. Dave Rabin (33:55)
And when you look at what we do with MDMA -assisted therapy or ketamine therapy in the Western trauma treatment model, it’s the same thing. We’re using music, we’re using, we’re doing trauma, ⁓ trauma surfacing techniques, we’re doing somatic body techniques. It’s all the same stuff. So I think what’s fascinating is that these are actually, all these substances and medicines are much more similar than they are different. And the Western culture ⁓ actually has a tremendous amount to learn from these traditional

Dr. Dave Rabin (34:24)
cultures that have been doing this for thousands of years and doing a really good job and doing it in groups, which I think is also really important. I think the group therapy actually works a lot better than the individual therapy. We’re starting to figure this out now in, you know, group ketamine and psilocybin experiences with first responders in some early studies in the US and Canada. So this is really interesting, but I think the takeaway for everybody is all these medicines have much more in common than they do different.

Dr. Dave Rabin (34:53)
They all work in similar ways. They all make us more responsive to music and to vibration in the environment. ⁓ And music steers the experience, set and setting steers the experience, the safety steers the experience, and that we can understand by looking across the medicines of what they have in common and then start to use that information to understand how to get more out of them for people and use them more safely and affordably in the Western.

Sam Believ (35:22)
Thank you, Dave. That’s a great explanation. I must say I’m really surprised to hear from you as a neuroscientist terms like energy flow. ⁓ And ⁓ I’m really curious to see ⁓ what is your understanding of it. But obviously working with the ayahuasca, for example, and I have an indigenous shaman that comes from a long lineage of shamans as well. In Colombia, they have a tribe called Inga. There’s five tribes here that work with medicine primarily, but Ingas are one of the most musical tradition actually.

Sam Believ (35:52)
⁓ because a really rare case in Colombia that the shaman is also a singer. I ⁓ know in Peru it’s really common. But if you ask a shaman how does medicine work, know, they’ll use terms like it’s the plant spirit that works through, if you ask a scientist, they will say, you know, neuroplasticity. And there’s many different ways ⁓ to explain how it works.

Sam Believ (36:18)
But I personally ⁓ am coming now to this more holistic approach of understanding there’s different levels. There’s the physical body, ⁓ the mind, the thoughts, and then there’s also the spiritual body. ⁓ as a neuroscientist, ⁓ how would you ⁓ maybe explain ⁓ what is the spiritual side of that healing? ⁓ there anything we understand as of now? Because if somebody knows, it must be

Dr. Dave Rabin (36:47)
Yeah, mean, you know, Western science, I’ve been fascinated by consciousness and spirituality, right? ⁓ For many years, spirituality is a core component of consciousness. It’s existed for as long as human beings have been on the earth. So we can’t deny it, right? Just like the mind and the body connection exists, and we denied it for a long time, but it’s still there. It’s the same thing with the mind -body spirit, right? The spirit is still there. It’s still a thing that exists, whether

Dr. Dave Rabin (37:17)
admit that it’s there or not, it’s still there. So, and ⁓ it has an impact on us. And we know that people who have belief in a higher power, or who have belief in something bigger than them, have generally more happiness and better lives. And they live longer and they struggle with illness less, because there’s something that’s driving them with hope and ⁓ belief, which is very powerful, that’s bigger than

Dr. Dave Rabin (37:45)
They know that they don’t take everything personally, right? ⁓ They’re different, there’s a difference there. ⁓ And I think this is really what the, ⁓ going back to what we were just talking about with spirituality, spirituality is a very sensitive topic. A lot of people get judged for being spiritual. A lot of people get, when they say they’re spiritual, they get associated with modern religion that’s very like indoctrinated and it’s different than ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (38:15)
and religion is like a doctrine, it’s a dogma of rules you’re supposed to follow. Spirituality is personal, it’s your thing. ⁓ And I think if you go back into ancient traditions, ⁓ what’s really interesting ⁓ is that even Hippocrates, who was the father of Western medicine ⁓ and the other ancient traditions in Ayurvedic yoga traditions, indigenous tribal traditions,

Dr. Dave Rabin (38:43)
They talk about spirituality differently in that it’s like a very personal thing and that there doesn’t need to be anybody between you and spirit. In the Western religious model, there’s a priest or a rabbi or an ⁓ imam or somebody who’s a gatekeeper between you and God or you and divinity, you and spirit, right? In ancient traditions, there’s no gatekeeper except you. ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (39:13)
That true spirituality, which I think is very beautiful, ⁓ is ⁓ actually you just loving and connecting with yourself. And that trauma is often, when we call trauma as, if we think about trauma from the Shippibo perspective as energy blockages or blockages to our energy flow, if you imagine that we all have an energy, we have human energy inside of us, it’s moving around, we know that it’s there.

Dr. Dave Rabin (39:42)
We have a hard time measuring it, but we know it’s there. keeps us going every day. Right. That energy could be flowing like this, or it can get gunked up and start to slow down and then just stop. Right. And say, normally it’s flowing. If you just imagine it’s flowing from the earth, from the ground to our feet, and then up through our heads, imagine it just like stops in our stomach and gets stuck or it stops in our chest. Right. Or it stops in our solar plexus and doesn’t come out. So.

Dr. Dave Rabin (40:11)
That’s a very simple kind of ⁓ metaphor or example, but I’m just trying to oversimplify it to make it easy for everyone, is that trauma stifles or blocks energy flow, and we need our energy to flow freely from our feet out to top of our heads so that we can function with our full potential and access all of ourselves.

Dr. Dave Rabin (40:35)
So if our energy is blocked by trauma, we’re not accessing our full self. We’re missing a bunch. It’s stuck here or here or here. So why ⁓ this is interesting is because what many of the Shopeebo shamans believe is ⁓ that true divinity, true access to spirit, unfettered, ⁓ unblocked access to spirituality comes from inside of each of us, that we all have the ability to access

Dr. Dave Rabin (41:05)
the spirit, and to access our connection to spirit, higher power, divinity, ⁓ our fullest versions of ourselves, just by looking inside, and just by nourishing that connection and admitting that it’s there. First, we have to admit it’s there, right? You have to admit that there’s something more that I want to explore here. Then you start to explore it, you start to nourish it, you start to do spiritual healing practices, maybe it’s in yoga, stretching, breathing, anything that connects you with yourself a little more every day.

Dr. Dave Rabin (41:35)
And what ⁓ people find is that when they start doing these techniques, they access something as a part of themselves that is effectively, ⁓ for lack of a better word, divine. It’s a part of ourselves that’s higher than the part of ourselves that’s just doing our daily tasks of daily living and self -care and ⁓ work every day. It’s a part of ourselves that ⁓ is ⁓ quite, you ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (42:05)
perfect, for lack of a better term. Perfect is not a good word because perfection only exists in the spiritual and universal realms, but ⁓ not really on Earth, but ultimately except in nature. ⁓ But the spirit is like the perfect part of us that’s always there, that is in sync with nature. And when we’re disconnected from it or blocked from it, because we haven’t nourished that part of ourselves, then we are ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (42:34)
⁓ effectively disconnected from nature, right? We’re disconnected from the harmony ⁓ of everything that’s going on around us. And what does that do? It creates dissonance, like an orchestra that’s all playing at the same time, but out of tune. And so we lose that connection. And that connection doesn’t become as useful to us. We become disconnected from it, or worst case, dissonant from it. So it’s vibrating.

Dr. Dave Rabin (43:00)
at a different rate than we are and we are don’t even realize what’s happening or that it’s there that we can access it. So what happens that causes a trauma of self denial. Self denial and self rejection is one of the core traumas that we all face as human beings. So for us as human beings, accepting our mind, body, spiritual connection is really a fundamental part of healing. And it’s actually nourishing our own connection to ourselves, not going through

Dr. Dave Rabin (43:28)
⁓ a religion, organized religion, not going through a rabbi or a priest or some kind of religious leader. It’s about recognizing that, when I quiet my mind and focus on my body and take care of myself, I have access to my own connection to spirit. And that’s personal to me. And nobody else can tell me what’s right and wrong about it. It’s my connection. And when we start to recognize that we all have that ability, then all of a sudden that connection becomes natural and we can train ourselves

Dr. Dave Rabin (43:58)
to access at any time, and it becomes a source of energy and power for us. So to me, that hasn’t been studied as well in Western medicine because it’s very, very hard to study, but ancient medicine techniques have studied this for a very long time. And so we know there’s something there. Do we know exactly how it works? No, but we know there’s something there, and we know it involves the mind -body, not just the mind and not just the body, it involves both. And there’s also a spiritual part of us.

Dr. Dave Rabin (44:25)
that’s critical to that process.

Sam Believ (44:29)
Thank you. ⁓ Thank you, Dave. That’s a beautiful explanation. I must say it’s very refreshing to hear ⁓ spiritual conversation, like a reasonable spiritual conversation from a scientist. And I think that’s what psychedelics are going to do for us as a society, you know, because I personally, was a marine mechanical engineer. I grew up non -religious, ⁓ zero spirituality all the way till I had my first ayahuasca experience. And from then on, my understanding started to rise, but ⁓

Sam Believ (44:58)
What I personally understand ⁓ now after all this experience is that ⁓ spirituality is inevitable. like being born is a spiritual process and even dying is a spiritual process and everything in between. No ⁓ matter how much you try to ignore it, the question is ⁓ what do we do with it, right? And even if you look at some higher levels of science, it’s now kind of coming to the questions and it starts to ⁓ sound more and more like spirituality.

Sam Believ (45:27)
the deeper you go, right? Cause like it is in the end, just the whole like mind, and spirit. And it’s just the whole, we just kind of like in our simplicity and in our ignorance as human beings, we tried to like separate things so we can better understand them. But in that process, we kind of like break away the whole picture. ⁓ Another thing you mentioned ⁓ was, know, group therapy and how much better it is. Well, we do mostly group retreats here.

Sam Believ (45:55)
15 to 25 people but we occasionally do private retreats and and those are more private and more exclusive and more expensive but they’re not more powerful I’ve been observing it over and over again like there is some magic with with the group work especially with psychedelics as in somehow one plus one is three in this setting there’s there’s this magnetic magnification effect

Sam Believ (46:25)
⁓ In your work with groups, have you noticed that or maybe is there any way to explain it apart from just like human connection? ⁓ What do you think about that? Why is group work more

Dr. Dave Rabin (46:42)
I think group work is more powerful because ⁓ you have like a team of people that you’re going into it with who all have a lot in common. ⁓ And you don’t necessarily know how much you have in common until you go into the experience with this group of people. But ⁓ we actually have a tremendous amount that we can learn from each other in these states and before and after because

Dr. Dave Rabin (47:12)
One of the biggest challenges and one of the biggest trauma reinforcers that makes healing from healing hard is that we think we’re in it alone. Right? Like many people have suffered extreme hardship, extreme challenges in their lives, trauma, they’ve never been able to actually talk to anybody about it, honestly, and how they felt. So if you don’t feel like you’re able to communicate and get out ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (47:42)
has been hard for you, then that makes you feel alone and makes you feel like you’re the only one going through what you’re going through. All of a sudden, when you go into a group experience, you sit down with 10, 12, 20 other people, and you’re sitting there and you’re listening to everyone’s experience and what they’re coming in with, and you realize every single person sitting in this room feels the same way that I

Dr. Dave Rabin (48:09)
Right? Every single person in this room has had hard things happen to them that they also didn’t feel comfortable telling anybody else that also made them feel as alone as I thought I was. But now I know I’m not alone because all of these people are here with me experiencing the same thing. So my experience has commonality and it’s that experience, that commonality of experience that actually makes it easier.

Dr. Dave Rabin (48:38)
to heal because we realize that it’s not just us, right? Like it’s not personal that I’m struggling right now. Look at all these other people who are also struggling, right? And some of them may be struggling more than me and some of them may be struggling less than me, but they’re all similar struggles. And so I can start to see and become aware of ⁓ the common ground that we all share. And then I’m not alone in this struggle. All of a sudden you have a team of people.

Dr. Dave Rabin (49:06)
who are going to be, who are in the struggle with you, who are also going through the processing of it and coming out the other side with you. So you have like colleagues, have ⁓ a team. And it’s really that team healing experience, I think, that contributes a tremendous amount to people feeling safer in their experiences and to feeling safer before and after that gets people.

Dr. Dave Rabin (49:33)
longer lasting, ⁓ better results right away, but also longer lasting outcomes in the future because people that last for a long time, because people feel more connected and it’s disconnection that makes healing hard because disconnection or perceived disconnection, because we think we’re disconnected or we’re not accepted, that makes us feel unsafe. So again, safety is the foundation. So the more that we can bring people together to reinforce that sense of safety, the more that we can help heal each other.

Dr. Dave Rabin (50:02)
and our communities as groups. And the groups then start to emanate the results of the healing out to their own communities when they go home, right? So if you heal like 20 people in an ayahuasca ceremony, then all those, and you integrate that, all those people go home, they’re all still in touch with each other. They can still integrate afterwards as a group and share common experiences, the struggles of returning home, the struggles

Dr. Dave Rabin (50:28)
getting back to their regular lives, what that looks like, why is it hard, what’s easy, what strategies work for me, what could work for you. ⁓ And you have a team, you have a family, right? And we know that healing in the communal setting is always traditionally ⁓ more effective when you have a team and you don’t feel alone than when you do. And the problem with solo therapy, even though it works, is that sometimes people ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (50:57)
Like it’s just them still, they’re the only ones, right? And so that’s why I think the group therapy is really, really

Sam Believ (51:04)
Yeah, the key for a communal setting is vulnerability and it’s a societal problem because Instagram and social media and everything has just taught us to pretend somebody who we’re not and basically it’s a block in this healing. ⁓ So last question before we wrap it up, slightly on a different topic, but I know you’re very passionate about this topic. ⁓ Legalization of MDMA. ⁓ I know you’re in the forefront of this. What is happening

Sam Believ (51:33)
What do you think is gonna happen?

Dr. Dave Rabin (51:40)
So we don’t really know what’s gonna happen. ⁓ I’m not sure when this interview’s coming out, but the FDA is supposed to vote on MDMA -assisted therapies clearance or approval for use with patients based on the study results sometime in August 11th or just shortly thereafter. I ⁓ think the main thing to understand for anybody who’s listening is that if anybody has not read the clinical trials results that have been published in multiple,

Dr. Dave Rabin (52:09)
multiple articles in world -renowned journals such as Nature Medicine, it’s very clear that the results from the MDMA trials for PTSD with just three doses of MDMA and 42 hours of psychotherapy over 12 weeks have better results than any medicine or therapy we’ve ever seen in the history of psychiatry for any mental illness. So we’re seeing something like 70 to 88 % response rates, meaning 70 to 88 % of people are actually responding somewhat to treatment.

Dr. Dave Rabin (52:38)
And then we see 50 to 70 % remission rates, meaning long -term benefits where people are no longer meeting diagnostic criteria for PTSD. So that is incredible. ⁓ And the FDA advisory committee that did a early vote on this subject did not seem to take the results into account or even review them. They didn’t really comment on the results and how groundbreaking the results are. ⁓ just voted ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (53:06)
They believe that it’s safer to live with PTSD than it is to receive MDMA -assisted therapy, which couldn’t be more false. ⁓ People with, veterans with PTSD have twice the suicide rate of the average population. General public with PTSD has higher suicide rate than the average population. These people cost sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a year to treat, ⁓ and they’re extremely ⁓ sick. Can you hold on one sec? I’m late for my next call. need to…

Dr. Dave Rabin (53:36)
us.

Sam Believ (53:36)
⁓ I’ll cut it out, don’t

Dr. Dave Rabin (54:25)
Back to it. ⁓

Sam Believ (54:26)
Yeah, I’ll cut this piece out. Just just finish that topic and we can we can wrap it

Dr. Dave Rabin (54:31)
⁓ So ⁓ the FDA committee, ⁓ the advisory committee, which has only had one member of the FDA on it that put together this preliminary vote ⁓ on the review of the trials, which is supposed to be an objective review on June 4th ⁓ of this year, said that it’s safer to live with PTSD than it is to receive MDMA -assisted therapy, which based on the results that I just mentioned to you from the trials,

Dr. Dave Rabin (55:00)
is directly contradictory to what any doctor who practices in this space or anyone who knows anything about these trial outcomes would say, because the trial outcomes with MDMA -assisted therapy, again, are better than anything we’ve ever seen in the history of psychiatry by a long shot. So ⁓ it was very surprising and unexpected and frankly short -sighted for the FDA advisory committee.

Dr. Dave Rabin (55:25)
who’s not the FDA, they’re the advisory committee that advises the FDA, but for them to say something like, the risks outweigh the benefits of MDMA -assisted therapy, given what we’re seeing, given the epidemic of PTSD in this country, ⁓ given that we don’t have any other good treatments that work better than 30 % of the time for veterans, it was a really out of context vote. ⁓ I, frankly, a lot of clinicians, a lot of researchers have written to the FDA and have been cited in articles

Dr. Dave Rabin (55:55)
over the last couple of months saying blatantly that the committee was off base and that they don’t know what they’re talking about. There’s only one person on the committee with psychedelic experience. There’s only one person on the committee with a background in MAP’s journey with the FDA. ⁓ So the committee was definitely off base and it was really surprising. And so if anybody’s interested in learning more about this, you can check out ⁓ the latest news on the subject on the Psychedelic Report on Spotify

Dr. Dave Rabin (56:23)
Apple podcasts, we’ve been covering this for the last ⁓ several weeks since June 4th, but ultimately what the latest news has shown is that ⁓ a group, ⁓ a radical group ⁓ known as Symposia has publicly admitted that they are trying to squash the MDMA trials because they don’t believe that veterans have a right to healing. ⁓ And

Dr. Dave Rabin (56:51)
In medicine, these people are not clinicians. They’re, you know, people who don’t see patients. They don’t understand the Hippocratic oath, I don’t think, or what treating patients means. But as clinicians and doctors, we take an oath to treat everybody, regardless of who they are, that everybody deserves healing. That’s like the fundamental basis of practice of medicine. In every tradition, everybody deserves healing. The criminal justice system can take over after we heal them, but everybody deserves

Dr. Dave Rabin (57:20)
We ⁓ can’t judge who deserves healing and who doesn’t. Everybody deserves healing when they’re in need. So this group has decided to write a bunch of letters lobbying this FDA advisory committee, which they then admitted after the committee released their vote, saying that they wrote specifically telling the committee to not approve MDMA because they’re concerned about the dangers.

Dr. Dave Rabin (57:48)
Meanwhile, all the dangers that we know about have been publicly admitted by maps to the FDA. So everything that we know about has been reported. This group has been saying that ⁓ there’s been all this extra danger that was not reported that they are claiming to report. And there’s no definitive evidence of that. And that’s been brought to light to date that there’s anything that knew that wasn’t reported. ⁓ ultimately,

Dr. Dave Rabin (58:15)
The objective FDA advisory committee that voted down MDMA, they were not objective. They were lobbied by, aggressively lobbied by a radical anti -capitalist, anti -veteran group that wants to see MDMA fail. ⁓ And they don’t care what the societal impact is. They consider veterans to be white supremacists, as they’ve publicly stated, which is wild, never heard that before, and that veterans don’t deserve the right to heal because they’re part of the capitalist

Dr. Dave Rabin (58:44)
So I think we as a culture, as a society, whether we’re looking at this from the indigenous tribal perspective of healing, or they’re looking at it from the Western perspective of healing, the FDA being part of the Western model, we need to very critically evaluate the science and the results from the clinical trials ⁓ and the way we’re treating patients today, how poorly those treatments are working, and the way we could be treating patients tomorrow with the help of things like MDMA -assisted therapy.

Dr. Dave Rabin (59:13)
and really make a critical assessment of is it actually safer to live with PTSD untreated ⁓ than to have MDMA -assisted therapy provided by a trained provider? ⁓ Or is it safer to get MDMA -assisted therapy from a trained provider, right? And I think when you actually evaluate that question and you actually look at the study results, it’s very, very clear that it’s safer to receive MDMA -assisted therapy from a trained provider according to the MAPS protocol

Dr. Dave Rabin (59:42)
maybe the tuned up MAPS protocol, but it’s safer to do that than it is to live a life of PTSD untreated. So that’s the vote that’s coming up. That’s what we all need to be aware of. And this is what we should all be talking about right now because ⁓ nothing is more important to the future of mental health than getting MDMA over the line with the FDA.

Sam Believ (60:02)
Yeah, this is frustrating to say the least. ⁓ Yeah, people definitely who listening to this should go write some comments and hopefully we can talk about it more enough that they will listen and because legalizing MDMA eventually will lead to legalizing more plant medicines and psychedelics in general and a better future for our ⁓ world ⁓ as a society. ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (60:20)
It’s a first step for everything.

Sam Believ (60:26)
Dave, thank you so much for this episode. I know you need to run now and it’s been extremely valuable and extremely interesting. Where can people find more about you or maybe more about Apollo, Neuro or ⁓ other things you’d want to share?

Dr. Dave Rabin (60:40)
Sure. ⁓ So you can find me, and thanks again for having me. It’s a pleasure. ⁓ You can find me at my personal website at drdave .io. ⁓ We also have our clinic website, apolloneuro .clinic. You can find me on socials. I love to hear from you on Instagram or Twitter at Dr. David Rabin. ⁓ And you can ⁓ find apolloneuro at apolloneuro .com or wearablehugs .com.

Dr. Dave Rabin (61:07)
And for anybody who’s listening who has an iPhone, you could download the Apollo neuro app for free on your iPhone and then try it on your phone for free as a demo. ⁓ And we’re happy to share that with anybody. It is very fun to try and it upgrades your phone for free on us ⁓ to deliver soothing therapeutic vibrations that were actually, didn’t talk about this much, but they’re inspired by our studies with Shipibo Shamans singing Icaros to the

Dr. Dave Rabin (61:35)
So this is a big part of the work that we do is really bringing together ancient knowledge with modern science and Apollo is the manifestation of that. So we really encourage everybody to try it out. ⁓ It is a game changer for psychedelic experiences. We’ve never seen anything like it. And the folks who are using it in trials have never seen anything like it. ⁓ And it’s very exciting. So ⁓ check it out. Always feel free to write to me, write to us. We’d love to hear what you think. ⁓

Dr. Dave Rabin (62:04)
and hear your experiences. ⁓ And if you want to learn more about what’s going on right now with the ⁓ MDMA assisted therapy trials and to stay up to date with the news, you can check out the latest on the psychedelic news at The Psychedelic Report on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Sam Believ (62:20)
Thank you, David. Guys, thank you for listening to Iwaska Podcast. As always with you hosts, I’m Belyev, and I will see you in the next episode.