Psychedelics for Mental Health with Shannon Duncan

Shannon Duncan is an entrepreneur and author. Duncan lives in California and is finding his way to an authentic expression of himself, including and especially his sense of humor, which has been the most rewarding aspect of healing from trauma. His newest book, Coming Full Circle: Using Psychedelics to Heal Trauma is available now.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey is Dollar White and this isthe Dollar White Podcast. I am back
from my brand new beautiful studio,which I love. Gonna be releasing content
at least every other week, ifnot every week, haven't exactly made my
mind on that, but I'll atleast be releasing content every other week,
starting today with a great episode.My guest is Shannon Duncan. He's the

(00:20):
author of a new book called ComingFull Circle. Using Psychedelics to Heal Trauma.
Now, before we get started,I thought this was just something going
on on the West Coast, butapparently this is nationwide and you can actually
do it right here in Nashville,Tennessee. There are places that you can
pay to go to they will usepsychedelics to help you heal your trauma.

(00:40):
And if you can do it inTennessee, there's a great chance no matter
where you are in the United Statesof America, this kind of therapy has
offered to you as well. Sosomething to look into if you like with
Shannon has to say about it.And I can't see any case where you
wouldn't. So let's get it started. Welcome to the Dollar White Podcast.
Yeah, not live, it's completelyrecorded, broadcasting from one of the top

(01:03):
recording studios in all of Nashville,Gennessee. Yeah, that's not true at
all. I'm probably at home doingthis. He's been called one of the
greatest thinkers of his time. Literally, no one has ever called me that.
I do kind of agree with itthough, right right here, twenty
seven teen Wissippi into the Nobel PeacePrize. That's just a flat ali talking
politics, community, race, religion, entertainment, sports, and whatever the

(01:26):
fuck else. White Podcast, AllRight, Episode one hundred and four,
Now the Dola White Podcast. Myguest today, author the new book Coming
Full Circle Using Psychedelics to Heal Trauma, Shannon Duncan. Thank you for being
here, Thanks for having me.So your book is about your journey using
psychedelics in therapy. It's almost likea journal correct Is that? Am I

(01:48):
getting that right? It's a it'sa combination of a memoir of my own
experience of going through not not journalistic, but you know, just hopping in
and out of parts of my storyof you know, what brought me to
using psychedelics in this way and whatmy experiences were and what I learned along
the way. But it's also adetailed, informative guide for anyone who's curious
about or interested in exploring psychedelics asa means to heal treatment resistant trauma,

(02:15):
to really understand what that looks likeand you know what to look for and
want to watch out for as theyas they investigate this for themselves. It's
really it's really meant to help somebodycome into it with their eyes wide open
to what it's really about. Thisis a relatively new form. I don't
want to say relatively new, becauseI'm sure this has been happening for millions
and millions of years as most thingswhen you deal with things like mushrooms that

(02:38):
have been around for a long timein nature, we have ancestors that we're
doing a millions and millions of yearsago. But for us here in modern
times, it's relatively new to usethese in healing the way that you had
correct. This is kind of whenI was growing up, drugs were bad.
Just say no, you know whatI mean? Like that? That's

(02:59):
that. Now we're getting into,you know, where things that are legal
that we never thought would be.There's been an underground scene since the sixties
with some truly capable guides. They'veoften been therapists or psychiatrists or psychologists who
are deeply informed on how to workwith trauma and they've been holding sessions for

(03:23):
people for a very long time.But it's underground and it's been growing in
recent years. And like you said, there have been new legal channels starting
to show up that they have theirlimitations. The bureaucratic red tape has their
hands pretty firmly shackled. That canlimit its effectiveness to a degree. But
it has to start somewhere, andmy hope is that people who understand how

(03:46):
this process really works start getting avoice at the table to shape how legal
therapeutic use of psychedelics is held.But yeah, the War on drugs and
the just Say No campaigns had someintensely dishonest propaganda that was pushed really hard.

(04:08):
You know, remember the old rememberthe old ads with the egg frying
in the pangs drugs and uh,you know, psychedelics were looped into the
same circle as drugs like heroin orPCP or cocaine, and they're very different.
They're very different, and that's whyso often you hear psychedelics described as

(04:28):
medicine, psychedelic medicine instead of psychedelicdrugs. Just because it kind of helps
separate it from the stigma what allconstitutes is a psychedelic Like what drugs are
those? For those of us thatwere just yeah, I was young,
I took some stuff. I don'tknow. Yeah, I don't count,
like where are we? But therereally common they really common. Well known
ones are like LSD and mushrooms.Um MBMA, otherwise known as ecstasy,

(04:53):
is a really potent one and that'sfrequently used in the legal clinical trials that
are going on to get every ecstasyin college and it was the greatest drug
I've ever taken. Like I justsaid, yeah, it can be very
very pleasurable, and it can alsobe it can also be incredibly healing.
Before I ever did a guided session, I was one time walking with a

(05:15):
friend on MBMA and it was thefirst time I ever had kinder loving feelings
towards myself and I never knew thatthat had been missing until all of a
sudden, I've felt it. Andthat's the kind of thing that can happen
just from casual psychedelic use. Youget these flashes of insight of something different
that you never knew before, andit can change your life profoundly. But
when I got into actually doing thisin a guided way, it opened me

(05:41):
up at a level that I wastruly that was truly profound. It opened
me up to a level that Inever knew was possible and allowed a process
of healing to start. The yearsof talk therapy never came anywhere close to
years of expansive psychedelic use. Doingmy own exploring, trying to heal on
my own never got anywhere near.And that's really the power of having a

(06:02):
professionally guided psychedelic session from somebody who'struly qualified. How long do these sessions
last? I actually looked into thisto see I'm in I don't know what
state you're in. I'm in Tennessee, which is probably a little more strict
than most, but if you're inNashville, I can get a guided psychedelic
treatment session here. And so Ilooked into this in preparation of this podcast.

(06:25):
I'm like, Okay, this issomething to consider. So how long?
How long is this session? Normally, because I remember being on ecstasy,
it was like an all night thing, so I know if it's properly
done and not all legal channels doit do it very well, which is
important to know it's it's it's peoplethat don't understand how it works. They

(06:45):
think that you put the medicine inyour body and the medicine does something to
your brain and then you come outthe other side better, and it's not
really how it works. The psychedelicsgive you a direct, different experience of
yourself, a direct confrontation of yourselfwithout your normal blinders on, without the
normal resistance is on, so youcan see and interact with yourself in a
different way, and then you canbring that difference back into your everyday life.

(07:08):
But a normal session, it depends. Some people will go in in
three or four hours, they're kindof out of it, and then they're
just resting somewhere. I've had I'vehad deep sessions go nine and ten hours,
and it's but that's when you're doingit for real, that's when you're
really you're psychologically you're allowing the feltsense of the medicine to go really deep

(07:30):
and resonating in you in places thatyou don't normally allow yourself to go.
And that's what that's really what separatesthe recreational expansive kind of use from true
medicine work use is the intention thatyou're going to allow it to go into
those places that seem kind of scary, because that's where traumas live. And
when you have proper guidance and you'rereminded to breathe and you stay in your

(07:51):
body, it's not that scary andyou're able to release, deeply release hold
traumas for real. It's it's thedifference between blowing off some steam and feeling
better for a little bit, orhealing the source of the heat that causes
the steam and feeling better for therest of your life. And that's what
true deep medicine work is about,and that's what I wrote the book about

(08:13):
so people could understand that difference,what it really looks like, and how
do identify somebody that can even holda space for that. Do you remember
things in these in these sessions thatyou may have otherwise blocked out? Yes,
not everybody does. Not everybody hasthat. In my own circumstance,
that was a real thing, andI took a very long time. My

(08:35):
guide, my very qualified guide,right away said, look, these things,
you have to hold them lightly becauseyou can force a belief about something
that didn't happen in that way,your mind is just you know, the
emotion coming up, the feeling comingup is real. What you express in
the session is always real. You'renot going to cry or vomit or scream
or anything because of nothing right.Something real is being us from the body.

(09:01):
But sometimes the mind tries to puta different face on it, or
a different experience on it that feelssafer, or you're not ready to know
what the real truth was, andso it's important to always hold that lightly.
And sometimes it takes several sessions togo by, or it's the work
you do in the integration period afterwith a therapist that helps bring it all
to be clear, but it does, it can and does happen sometimes,

(09:22):
and it's just important to always approachit with a great deal of care,
not to rush out and make accusationsin anybody, because you might find that
that person you're accusing was a saferface than the actual perpetrator, or you
might find that it was a differentexperience altogether, and this is just what
your mind did to fill in theblanks, and so it's it's it's a
potent tool for recovering those kind ofmemories, but it has to be approached

(09:46):
with a great deal of caution andcare. One thing that I remember about
about ecstasy, and this is goingback twenty years, is that I never
once felt like I was out ofcontrol of myself. Does that make sense,
Like like I've been drunk before orand I've just been a blubbering ass,
But on ecstasy, like I wasable to be calm and relaxed and

(10:09):
still able to understand the situation.What you're saying with guided therapy with psychedelics
is I'm gonna guess it's something kindof like that and not like, let's
say a hypnotherapy type of thing whereyou're out of it and then you wake
up and you don't remember anything.This is something that you you recall your
sessions. You can remember everything whenthey're done. Yeah, sometimes if you're

(10:33):
on larger doses, which is whichsometimes you can work that way with the
more underground facilitators. The above groundfacilitators are highly regulated in the size of
doses. Sometimes with MBMA you'll havespots of the spots of the session that
aren't as clear for memory, butthey usually come back later. But that's
not really the important part. It'sthe it's not the ideas you come to

(10:56):
but the journey you took to getthere, and just the process of your
body having gone through the experience ofallowing previously restricted emotional material to be expressed
and discussed or however it is thatneeds to be expressed from you is the
thing that heals you. We talkabout trauma a lot of times, were

(11:16):
basically a lot of times talking childhoodstuff, everything that came out for you
childhood or where was there some moreadult type stuff as well? For me,
it was very early life experiences andit was Yeah, it was so
freeing, so liberating to just ownthe truth of what had affected me so

(11:39):
deeply, because that allowed it tobegin to be released and stop being something
alive in me today, but somethingthat happened in the past stop being something
I was identified it with as aswho I am, and it's just something
that happened to me at some pointin the future. That's that's really where
the healing starts to happen. That'swhere that's where the relief comes from.

(12:00):
Has everybody that you know that hastried this type of therapy kind of had
the same experience that you have thatit has worked, It has been freeing,
it has been releasing older trauma.You know, they're Unfortunately, how
some of these sessions are held arenot held in a way that would allow
it. Sometimes you have a guideor a therapist that hasn't done their own

(12:22):
deep work, and when somebody elsestarts going to a depth below where the
therapist or guide is gone, theystart getting triggered and they start pulling back,
and that affects the session. Theydon't want you to instinctively and unconsciously,
they don't want you to go toa place that's going to trigger them,
and so they keep the session shallow, unintentionally, unconsciously. But I
talk about this in the book,is that anyone who hasn't actually done real

(12:46):
deeps, not tripping out in collegekind of psychedelic experience, real deep,
focused psychedelic work within themselves cannot possiblyhold a beneficial session for a beneficial space
for somebody else. But unfortunately that'shappening a lot. There are therapists trying
or just Joe Schmos that had somebig psychedelic experiences and all of a sudden

(13:07):
they want to be a psychedelic guideand they start offering these services and people
go and sometimes you know it's interestingthat they didn't get that much from it,
or they're retraumatized because what came upwas just too scary and the person
there couldn't help them hold that inprocess. That and that I hear a
lot, and that's one of thereasons that I decided to write this book,

(13:28):
so that people could understand what thisreally looks like, what the process
is really like, what their mindsetshould be coming into it, and what
qualified help really looks like, sothat they can't when they go to have
this experience, they can actually getreal benefit from it. How many sessions
did you end up doing in whatwas it always m DMA or where did
you guys? Kind of mix itup a little bit? For me and

(13:52):
the early life situations that caused mytrauma and the intensity of the defenses that
were created to protect me from experiencingthat trauma, I was almost monthly for
four years. Wow. Yeah,And it was a deep, deep commitment
on my part. But every singletime I went into a journey, I
could feel that I was moving deeper, I was moving closer to the truth

(14:13):
I was. You know, whenI started, I didn't know that there
were my memories to be recovered that'snot what I was looking for, but
it was a powerful experience and areally interesting experience. My nerd out on
that kind of thing, so Iwas challenging. Sometimes it's really hard.
I was always very fearful going intoit because my body knew we were going
into stuff that was labeled as dangerous. And it's just you really got to

(14:35):
hold your intention to heal and allowthat fear. But that intention to heal
is what carries you through other people. There have been veterans with radical issues
with PTSD that have had three sessionswithin a clinical trial, three or four
sessions with MDMA, and they feelamazingly better, And so everybody's different.

(14:56):
It just really depends on how thoset has affected you and how defended you
are from feeling it, how muchterror there was at the time when you
experienced that and it got locked away. Those things all affected. And I've
worked with MDMA, I've worked withmushrooms, I've worked with ketamine. I've
worked with five m EO, DMT, three MMC, and two CB and
GHB, and sometimes they're layered togetherin a session. Each one has a

(15:20):
different resonance and it's and locks youin a different way, and I go
with what feels like needs to happen. I've developed a really strong instinct with
it. And um, but mostpeople will end up working with a single
practitioner in a single medicine. Icould talk to you about this all day,
but I know you got a hop. Is there any one thing that
we need to know about the psychedelicuh, you know, feeling that we

(15:43):
didn't cover already? If this is, you know, it's really why I
wrote the book. If there's alot to know and a lot to understand
and a lot to the mindset thatyou bring into approaching it. Um.
So yeah, that's uh, that'sa lot to cover. The book is
out there, and the ebook isactually really cheap right now. So it's

(16:03):
you know, just when a booklaunch, you put your ebook cheap to
help get some sales. And so, you know, if it's if money's
an issue to e books, throwa cheap it's like five dollars or something
or four dollars. And but there'san ebook in a print book and an
audio book. If you've got anaudible account or Spotify or any of those,
you can get the audio book.And yeah, I just with all
my heart, I hope it's hopefulif the audiobook or any if the book's

(16:26):
anything like our conversation. You've talkedme into this in these fifteen minutes,
so I don't think it's worth totry something I was definitely interested in to
begin with. But Shannon Duck,and thank you so much. The book
is Coming Full Circle using Psychedelics toHeal Trauma. Go get it and thank
you for your time. Thank thanksfor having me. Want to say thank
you once again to my guest,Shannon Ducan make sure you check out his

(16:47):
book, Coming Full Circle Using Psychedelicsto Heal Trauma's definitely interesting stuff there.
I don't know who my next guestis gonna be. I have a lot
of episodes that I've recorded that Ihave not released yet, one of which
is with Damon John, so I'mlooking for release in that episode. That
might be the next one, butI haven't made up my mind yet.
Anyway, thank you for supporting thepodcast. Thank you for waiting patiently for

(17:07):
me to get my shit together andget my studio up and running. I
definitely appreciate that. With that said, I'm out. Check back with me
either next week or in two weeks. I still haven't made up my mind
yet. I'll get my shit togetherand you'll get notified when there's another episode.
But thank you for checking out ofpodcast. I'm gone.