The New Health Club

Today we are checking in with a scientist again, and a really important one for our German-speaking audience. Meet Prof. Dr. Gerhard Gründer, a Professor of Psychiatry and head of the Molecular Neuroimaging Department at the Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim. He is the Principal Investigator of the German Psilocybin Depression Trial conducted by ZI Mannheim and Charité Berlin. He is also the Principal Investigator at the aforementioned Psilocybin Depression Study in cooperation with the MIND European Foundation for Psychedelic Research. Just a little note: this episode today will be in German, and we will talk about the first major psilocybin study, which is supported by the German government. There is tons of information about psychedelics already out there in English, but not so much in German. German-speakers, please enjoy our interview! Professor Gründer and I discuss the lack of innovation in psychiatry when it comes to medication, the old school and new schools of depression research, ketamine therapy as a temporary solution, and why depression and mental health will soon be looked at and researched in a new way.

Meet Paul Stamets, my new favourite Mr. Mushroom. Paul is an American mycologist and entrepreneur. He is an author and advocate of the “medicinal” fungi. Stamets runs “Fungi Perfecti” (https://fungi.com/) a family-owned, environmentally friendly company specializing in using mushrooms to improve the health of the planet and its people. Fungi perfecti has become synonymous with cutting-edge mycological research and innovative mycological solutions. Stamets has been talking about these “Mycologiclal solutions” for years and since the movie “Fantatsic Funghi” (https://fantasticfungi.com/watch/) that everyone should watch, one could call Stamets the most passionate advocate of mushrooms. And yes, also Magic Mushrooms, the ones that changed Pauls life long time ago.He often talk about his experience with Magic Mushrooms and he is pretty well known for his mushrooms micro dosing protocoll. But Paul is not a big fan of using magic mushrooms in any other way then thoughtful and purposeful. And FYI,he loathes the word “shrooms”! Paul is an incredible mind, a perfect guest with millions of stories and one of them is, that Stamets once was the german name Steinmetz from Bavaria and we ended our conversation with me promising Paul to look for his ancestors in Bavaria. So, hey, let’s hear the mushrooms theories it from Paul!

David Bronner is an incredible American corporate executive and activist. As the top executive at Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, David has positioned himself as the “Chief Cosmic Officer” and is known for his activism around a range of issues, especially fair trade, sustainable agriculture, animal rights, and importantly to us, drug policy reform.Full disclosure: David's company Dr. Bronner’s have a special personal meaning to me and to The New Health Club, since the company generously sponsored the podcast for most of 2020 and will continue to do so in the new year. I met David in February this year for the first time in Germany for our first podcast together and none of us knew at that time that we would experience such an exciting year in psychedelics as the one that we’ve had. Dr. Bronner’s as a company has supported the most important decriminalization movements in the US this year such as DC Measure 81–Decriminalize Nature DC, which passed with 76% of the vote and supports the enforcement of laws against natural plant medicines. You might also remember that the chairwoman of Decrim DC Melissa Lavasani was on our show before the US election! Dr. Bronner’s also supported the Oregon Model, Measure 109 which passed with 56% of the vote and legalises regulated access to psilocybin therapy administered by trained state-licensed facilitators in a therapeutic setting. The model already made a big impact on the worth of stocks from both new psychedelic companies and startups.Dr. Bronner’s also supported Decrim Chicago and the spokesperson Daniel Carcillo, an incredible ex-NHL player, who treated his depression with psilocybin. Of course, we also had Daniel on our show too, a very emotional episode indeed and please check it out if you have not done so already.I am thrilled to have David on the show as our last guest for 2020. We talk the exciting year in psychedelics, why the US (and Europe) are so ready for new mental health drugs, we discuss David's German heritage (the Bronner family is originally from Heilbronn), the next level in the upcoming psychedelic world and we are even joined by David’s dog during our talk.

I talked to Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, the Vice Chair for Veterans Affairs in the Psychiatry Department, and the Director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She also leads the PTSD clinical research program at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center. In 2020 she became director of the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research at Mount Sinai.Rachel is an important woman, and will be even more important in the years to come. She is researching the generational effect of the holocaust trauma. The neuroscientist and I discuss how the Holocaust, famine, and other catastrophic experiences can affect our DNA. And how MDMA therapy might be able to change that.I could not wait to talk to Rachel! She is a specialist in researching epigenetic trauma in the context of Holocaust survivors and she is a pioneer in understanding how the effects of stress and trauma can transmit biologically to the next generation. She has studied the children of Holocaust survivors and of pregnant women who survived the 9/11 attacks. How is it possible that children or grandchildren of traumatised parents struggle with anxiety and depression but not the parents themselves? And where do psychedelics fit into this picture? Rachel will also start a research program to treat these trauma-related depression with MDMA, all in collaboration with MAPS. What happens if one undertakes a psychedelic journey, and experiences their traumatic past during their trip? What does that mean for our future ability to look at the world in general? How can we do the work on post-traumatic growth? What new stories can come from exploring this psychodynamic narrative? And what tools do we need to re-story our past? Using psychedelics and MDMA can be really powerful tools in understanding conflict, shame and guilt on a deeper personal level.

My guest today is Finn Age Hänsel, Co -Founder of the Sanity Group, ([https://sanitygroup.com/]) which also owns the CDB Brand VAAY. ([https://vaay.com/]) I am big fan of their night CBD Spray called “Mind, Cosy, Back,Doze” It’s my ritual before I go to bed. But back to Finn’s tech career, so far already very impressive. He founded 5 companies. He is an Entrepreneur and CEO for 7 years with a strong passion and and knowledge for product, brand, technology and consumer goods. And he started to speak out for a cannabis decriminalisation at the age of 17, in the conservative party CDU- even more impressive. But now Finn is fully engaging in the idea of Cannabis as a tool, to make life better and healthier, his company Sanity Group is developing innovative cannabinoid-based pharmaceuticals and wellbeing products, which should be widely accessible. I talk to Finn, why and how Cannabis can be a mental health support system, why the winner of this US election are new mental heath drugs. We talk about his early days as a cannabis supporter in a political system and why life as an entrepreneur is so much better and more fun, if you have real mission. Like Finn.

The world is suffering from a big metal health crisis and new mental health drugs can be the answer to this crisis. My guest on the show is working on these new drugs: JR Rahn. He is the founder & Co-CEO of Mind Med, a global company that discovers, develops and deploys psychedelic inspired medicines and experiential therapies through FDA clinical trials. JR and I talk about the current status of mental health in the US, and the world, which seems to have never been near as bad as now. “Eleven per cent of Americans seriously considered suicide in June,” Rahn observed—a doubling since last year. “We’re not O.K.” says JR and this has been the case for a while, which turned JR into a passionate founder to help research LSD and MDMA in a new way and turn them into modern mind medicine. We also address JRs personal history with trauma, we discuss the Ritalin and the Xanax generation and why they are often the ones ending up taking anti depressants later in life. I always enjoy talking to JR, I love how passionate he is in bringing the psychedelic industry and renaissance forward, an I love how thinks I sound like a german spy from homeland. https://www.mindmed.co/

My guest on the show today is Dr. Monnica T. Williams, certified licensed clinical psychologist and Associate Professor at the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa. She received her undergraduate degree from M.I.T. in 1992 and she holds a Doctoral Degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia. Monnica is researching how PTSD symptoms can result from racism and what racial trauma and race-based trauma look like. Monnica also researches, partly in the context of MAPS, how to treat racial trauma with psychedelic-assisted therapy, such as with MDMA or Ketamine.I also talk to Monnica about diversity in the psychedelic science field, about the effects MDMA-assisted therapy can have on racial trauma, and what happens if your therapist might not be aware of their own racism. I think the questions we need to ask if it comes to the topic of race and mental health are quite endless. And we are only just starting.

https://maps.org/capstone

https://tim.blog/2020/06/16/maps-capstone-challenge-mdma-ptsd/