Ep. 21 - Dr. Ira Price

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Ira Price, an emergency physician and founder of Synergy Health Services. Ira shares his unconventional journey from dropping out of high school to enrolling in one of the top medical schools in the world. As someone who struggled with ADHD, he opens up about strategies that helped him finally understand how to learn and succeed.

 

Ira's story is a reminder that you can break the mold, take a different path, and still create something meaningful.

 

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

 

– Growing up with ADHD

– Discovering Ritalin and how it changed his ability to learn

– Leaving high school and finding his way into medicine

– Psychedelics and the early moments of self-awareness

– Starting Synergy Health Services and developing cannabis protocols

– Being a father and learning through failure

– Honest thoughts on modern medicine and what needs to change

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Doctor Ira Price. Hey welcome.
Thanks so much for having me here.
No, it's our our pleasure, man. Shit, my dad taught.
My dad taught me, yeah. It's, it always makes me smile
when we see somebody come in with a doctor or a bunch of
initials after their name. It's it's humbling.
My humbling. My grade 10 drop out ass here
getting to have. Conversations Grade 11, OK for a

(00:25):
couple years. So I was right with you.
Took a break. I did.
I just took a break. I travelled.
That's it man, I want to get into that, but we I would be
remiss to not start our show with our ChatGPT, which is now
our signature G and I phoning itin looking like we did the did
the hard work. So I'm going to read it out and
that's. How I work in a merch.
I'm kidding, sorry. What's my different wig?

(00:48):
So I'll start with this and the.Complexity.
Tell me. So Doctor Ira Price is a
trailblazing Canadian physician who spent over 15 years working
at the intersection of emergencymedicine, cannabis based
therapies and integrative health.
Integrative. Yeah, definitely.
Is that how that's about Jamie's?
Not integrated, yeah. Integrated Health.

(01:10):
Integrated, but I know the word.That's that's that's integrated
as I said. About the great 10 things.
So hang in there with me. Me too.
As the founder of Synergy HealthServices, he was among the first
in Canada to open a medical cannabis clinic, helping shape
both public policy and clinical standards in the early days of
legalization. Beyond his pioneering work in
cannabis medicine, Doctor Price is a passionate advocate for

(01:33):
functional, personalized and preventative healthcare.
He challenges outdated medical norms and pushes for a future
where patients are empowered, treatment and individualized and
plant based medicine plays a central role in healing.
Is this all through a chat? Cheap.
Told you. That's amazing.
Yeah. What's you need?
A promoter. It took it off your own
Wikipedia page. 100% yeah. We wrote it like did the prompt

(01:57):
thing one time and now we just hit the chat, go back to it and
go back to it. It's one copy and paste.
Beautiful. You know what they say?
Garbage in, garbage out. Yeah, it's just data, yeah.
And there's one last hit line here.
It says whether he's treating trauma in the ER, lecturing to
medical students or speaking on global stages, Doctor Price is
known for his honesty, brilliance and deep commitment
to doing what's right, not just what's common.

(02:20):
Who's paid? Did you?
Who did you just make that up? Can you change my website to put
that on there? Yeah, put that last.
Paragraph Coffee's very. Cool.
So let's go way back, man. We started talking about school.
We started talking about that. So maybe you start there.
What was it like growing up? Oh boy, talk about family,
whatever you want. Oh boy, yeah, I told you I

(02:40):
didn't want to cry on this show.Oh shit, The things.
That like 2. Minutes.
Yeah, it doesn't take too. Long I'm weird I have like 6 or
7. Break.
I have a therapist like tomorrowat 10.
That's like, that's what this isfor, isn't it?
We don't charge your dollar bucks.
All right there. OK, great.
Yeah. I actually had, I think, a
pretty, pretty awesome childhood, but not when it came

(03:03):
to school. It's interesting you said that
you dropped out in grade 10. I dropped out in grade 11 or 12
or at some point in time. I was a horrible, horrible
student. I was not because I was like a
bad student. I just never sat down in class.
I never, I never really went to school much.
Actually in 4th grade, I was told I'd never make it to high

(03:25):
school. I was told that I would probably
end up in jail or something. I was sent to some very
religious schools growing up andI never really fit into those
schools, whether it was because I was like, at that time, back
in the early, like early 90s, late, I guess it would be like
late 80s, early 90s, you know, hyperactivity was just seen as

(03:48):
like a, you were just a bad kid.And I was always athletic.
I was always into sports. Unfortunately the world didn't
really understand yet like ADHD or any of these, you know,
hyperactivity disorders. And I'm sure you guys can
relate. You were just told you were some
sort of bad kid, nobody really cared and wrote you off.
So I was the class clown. I was, I was always great at

(04:10):
athletics, always the first chosen for a sport, but last
when it came to anything relatedto school.
So kind of crazy how I became a doctor, right?
So, you know, 4th grade, I was told that I was never going
anywhere By like 5th grade, 6th grade, I had one good teacher I
remember who sort of, I, I really loved Shakespeare of all
things. And she just kind of let me sit

(04:30):
in class and, and read and write.
I couldn't really spell. I was a horrible speller.
I was terrible at that stuff. And by grade eight, I was
probably in three or four schools already.
And my, my mom always tried to, you know, figure out she was
taking me from. Doctor to doctor.
From person to person trying to figure out what the Hell's wrong

(04:52):
with this kid. Everybody's saying something's
wrong with him, something you know, he's he's got an issue.
So they would take me, make me look at all those weird
pictures. Remember, you don't you guys
never had these problems, you fuckers.
And telling me you dropped out of school.
You guys don't understand. Yes, they may.
I went from psychiatrist to psychiatrist and it was just,
you know, something had to be wrong.

(05:12):
And so school was never really astrong point, strong suit for
me. But athletics was.
And that was really my outlet while people were watching
sports. I don't like, I don't watch
sports. I know nothing about watching
sports. I was outside playing the sport.
I was, you know, I played competitive baseball.
I can play competitive rugby pretty much my whole life,
skiing, martial arts, like I didall the things, but I was never

(05:35):
watching them when everybody wasinside.
I was outside in hockey. I was, I was playing those
sports, right. So sports was a big outlet for
me. But I never had school and I had
a ton of friends. I was always doing the thing,
but I was outside probably. But that time when we hacky
sacked and smoking a joint, doing something like that, yeah,
I was doing all that stuff in the 90s, right?

(05:55):
But I until 11th grade and in grade 11, finally early, like
early days of recognizing ADD, there was a new medication on
the market called Ritalin. Didn't know much about it at the
time, but my mother finally found a Doctor Who I would say
saved my life. His name was, there's a couple

(06:17):
things that saved my life, but in particular, they got me to a
physician or a psychiatrist. His name was Meyer Hoffer in
Toronto. And I walked in and I actually
wrote it all in my screenplay. When I come into this office,
it's like, you know, nobody's around.
Nobody has any idea what's like my I'm there with my mother and

(06:37):
my father. And it's, it kind of is like a
building like this. So it's like a house that has
been turned into a clinic. No secretary, no administrative
assistance, nothing going on. It's like just a waiting room.
Like you just don't know what todo, right?
And so you're turning the cornerand says, wait here.
OK, so we wait here. Outcomes this crazy dude.

(06:59):
He's like, I don't know, shorterthan I am.
And I'm not tall, right? You guys are tall.
I'm, well, you're tall. I don't butcher.
I'm not I'm. Sitting on a pillow.
I can be sitting on a damn pillow.
Right now so this this guy comesover hair bushy like like he
looks like mad Einstein all right sits us down in in his

(07:20):
office. He says all right tell me about
yourself kind of like you guys are doing here.
This is free therapy and and says, all right, well, here's
what I need you to do. I need you to bring me every
report card he's ever had since 2nd grade.
OK, so this is now I'm like 1616, seventeen years old.
Most people are are in their third year of high school.

(07:42):
I've like, and at that time we had credits and always seeing
all that stuff people have like,I don't know, every year you get
8 of them. I think I was in my third year
of high school with eight credits, right.
So what school? Nothing was going great at that
time for school wise, socially, it was fucking awesome.
But when it came to school was awful.
So this guy says, bring us all your report cards from 2nd
grade. OK, So I bring, we come back, we

(08:03):
bring these report cards and this guy doesn't have like
administrative assistant. He's sitting there and kind of
like like sort of like off the beaten path with like this crazy
hair. Looks like he's going to play
tennis all the time. And he looks at my report cards
and says, and what it shows is great kid can't sit still.
Great kid, doesn't stop talking.Great kid out of class, great
kid. I don't know where he is, like

(08:24):
every single thing. So at that time there wasn't
many options. And he's like, well, this is
pretty straightforward. We have this new medication,
we're going to try it on you. And it was riddling at the time.
And literally overnight, it was just nuts.
It was the first time I ever satdown.
My mother says, says to me, it'sthe first time we ever had a
conversation with you. Like, oh really?

(08:46):
That's weird. Yeah.
Like you're actually talking to us.
You're looking at us in the eyesand like, we're just, you're not
running outside. You know, I was never
aggressive, but I was always hyperactive.
And. And I read my first book that
year, which was Lord of the Flies.
I know it sounds crazy because it's the first book I ever read
in my life. Like the like, I couldn't spell
house. I probably still can't.

(09:08):
I had like a third grade readinglevel, but like somehow could do
like super complicated, you know, historical facts from
like, you know that you wouldn'tknow that most people like
obscured information. Somehow I knew but couldn't do
basic stuff which defined basically a learning disability
as well. So I, I started taking Ritalin

(09:31):
and like overnight I just went from, I don't know, like failing
everything like 35% in pretty much every class.
I had to like 90 just overnight.It, there was no, there was no
in between. It wasn't like you went from,
you know, 35507590. You did it just like overnight
and. Our high school, it was you were

(09:52):
either the kids that had Ritalinor you were the kids that bought
Ritalin. Yeah.
Yeah, I was doing both. No, I wasn't.
Don't actually. Let's take that back.
No, it wasn't. I wasn't doing.
I wasn't. I wasn't selling it at all.
But that was just a joke. I didn't say which side I was
on, Yeah. So I, it like changed my life
overnight, but you know, all andmy friends were starting to

(10:13):
leave school and graduate, so I just dropped out.
I left. I was like, this isn't for me.
I got to go somewhere and I wentto actually went to Israel for a
year and travelled the Middle East.
I went to Egypt and and Israel. I spent a bunch of time there
and then I came back and finished school and but I had to
teach basically everything to myself.

(10:33):
So for years I had no guidance or direction.
What is your parents there's through this process like what
were. So my, my mom was super helpful.
She but in the sense that she, she didn't really know what I
was going through. I think our parents were like
that whole generation was, I want to say they were, well,
they were like absent parents kind of.

(10:54):
They, they wanted the best for you.
They were really nice at home. They were amazing.
But my dad worked all the time. My mother was like at home
watching, you know, soap operas and trying the best she could.
But they didn't really, I don't know, they didn't have the tools
to deal with that. Not like we do today where which
is because of our lived experience, I think we have a

(11:14):
better opportunity. Their families were were first,
they were first generation out of the Holocaust, you know, and
they were first generation in like immigrant families from,
you know, Europe or wherever. So they didn't have, you know, I
don't think they had the tools. They were just happy to be there
and you know, you know, they were giving the best they could.
My, you know, my father was amazing.

(11:34):
He was an awesome dude. He, he's a dentist and a rabbi.
But he would come to my hockey games and he'd be reading his
Bible, like sitting there like this reading.
And I was on playing hockey, youknow what I mean?
Like they didn't really do. Supportive, but a different kind
of supportive. Yeah, exactly.
They were awesome to be there. They never, you know, there was
nothing negative I can say in the sense of like of of, you

(11:57):
know, wasn't abused or anything like that.
They were, you know, present in the best way they could possibly
be as parents for that generation.
But it was that, you know, lights are off, go home kind of
thing. There was nobody, there was no
guidance per SE, you know, and not like I would have fucking
listened. I was like doing my own thing,
you know, there was no way I wasgoing to listen Like it was, you

(12:17):
know, the, you would change the,the bag of weed for tobacco if
you got caught and be like, it'snot weed, mom, You know, it's
just, oh, the, the cleaning ladymust have put it there like you
would just come up with all these things.
So my childhood was pretty good,you know, in the sense that I
had a supportive family. Do what you want.
I remember one day my dad said, if you ever get an A, this is
how far off I was. I will buy you a Porsche.

(12:40):
My dad said to me, if you ever got an A, you buy AI buy you a
Porsche. I got to university and I got an
A. He's like, yeah, too late.
And he's like, that's too late. I remember one day I was sitting
in a in a restaurant actually where I'm going tonight.
I haven't been there in forever,but it's my father's birthday
coming up. And so we're going there tonight
just to have dinner. And I remember I was sitting in

(13:01):
this restaurant and we were, I was first year medical student
at the time, or maybe second year Med student.
And somebody was talking to me and saying congratulations on
getting into Med school. And this guy turns around Ira,
Ira Price, you're in Med school.Like as if it was the most
shocking thing anybody could ever like believe.

(13:22):
You know, that was my childhood,you know, so it wasn't, it
wasn't believable And and it wasa lot of hard work.
I basically taught myself everything from day one of
university. I had to go back all the way.
And you know, I got into university at I went to York in
my undergrad and it was interesting.
First it was called Physet. I thought I was going into

(13:44):
Physet because like they're like, go look at the university
catalog and decide what you wantto do.
Okay, I'll go figure this out. It says phys Ed.
I want to do phys Ed. Great.
Choose some courses there something said forms of fantasy.
I'm like forms of fantasy, bro. I know all about drugs.
Like I'm in, I'll do this. So the day I get in, they change
the name to Kinesiology. I'm like, I don't even know what

(14:05):
that word means. I never really thought too far
into the future and I still don't.
I think about how can I get through today?
How can I be, you know, productive today?
That was always like my mission.I just got to get through today
and tomorrow's going to happen. Whatever, whatever decision I
make today will maybe inform tomorrow, but I'm not thinking
about tomorrow. So I got into kinesiology at

(14:27):
like at York, which was phys Ed when I applied and took all
these weird courses that I thought were going to be all
about drugs, but they were like,learn how to like it was learn
how to critically analyze old texts.
That's what forms of fantasy basically was.
So you're reading books, you're looking at art, you're doing all
of this analytical critical thinking about the historical,

(14:51):
like historical texts, basically.
And that really helped me learn and develop skills on how to
critically evaluate things in life, right.
Things aren't always like they seem.
Why is it that you know, if you're looking at a triptych and
like, what does like this art, right and why, you know, what
does that mean? What does this stand for?
You know, I'm reading Ovid's metamorphosis.

(15:13):
I never read a book. Like I said, the only book I
ever read in my fucking life wasLord of the Flies, like and, and
wrote like AI did all my, I had book reports on Janis Joplin's
box set. Like that's, that's where I was
at, you know, And so I learned and taught myself all these
skills that I never had growing up because I never went to
school really until the last year of school.

(15:36):
So basically all that work culminated in like an ability
for me to just learn how to critically think and lifelong
learning. And really that's what it came
down to for me was learning how to learn.
That really taught me how to or gave me the skills to be
successful to where I am today. You know, I'd love to say I had

(16:02):
a lot of people to thank along the way, but I didn't.
I really was myself if it didn'tcome down to me doing the work.
I was provided A privileged opportunity.
I, I recognize that my parents gave me the opportunity to be
successful, but not the skills to be successful.
My, I had a teacher, my, my high, I had a high school

(16:22):
teacher. I was in special Ed.
My special Ed teacher believed that I could do it, believed
that I could be something. So she provided me the
opportunity, but nobody providedthe skill.
I provided the skill and I literally spent like in
university when people go back, I lost my entire university
partying days. I kind of started consuming

(16:44):
knowledge like non-stop, partially because I could now
sit down and learn, you know, and we could talk about how
Riddlin does that and how, you know, or you know, Concerta or
methylphenidate in the generic name, how it works.
And I never have those skills. I literally sat down and taught

(17:04):
those things to myself. So when people would like, let's
say people do 5 courses in a semester, I would do four and
then I would do summer school. But when people would go home at
like, let's say you're in schoolfor four hours a day or five
hours a day, for every class that I had, I spent 2 hours a
night studying for that same class.

(17:26):
So I would do school and then I'd go home and spend 8 hours
studying every single day for four years, every single day.
I didn't. All I did was play rugby for
university and go home and study.
That's it. That's all I did.
I didn't party in my undergrad and people don't recognize when
you become a physician. These people, like most people
don't go like don't have a life until me until I was 32 years

(17:48):
old. I mean, my life was when I was
in high school. That took me 7 years to get out
of. After that, the next 14 years,
13 years of university, I had zero life.
It was studying day and night. That's what I had to do to get
by. My undergrad was the hardest
part of all of school because I had no skills.

(18:08):
I taught myself those skills, made medicine pretty easy for
me, but I had to teach myself those skills.
So I didn't really have, I had, I had support.
I didn't that would provide me opportunity, but at the end of
the day, it was myself that guided me and provided me with
those skills. That meant I fucked up a lot

(18:30):
because I didn't have the personto say this person is who I want
to follow. This is the person who I think
is going like, you know, people have mentors.
I didn't have a mentor. I had in medicine.
I have mentors 100%. When I learned like you need a
mentor. That's the number one thing I
would suggest to any individual is find somebody who you respect

(18:52):
and you believe their path. Find that, but whether it
doesn't have a religious figure.I'm not a religious human now.
I was at one time very much so, but you need to find that
individual. I didn't have that individual
until, until I got older, until I figured out, until medicine

(19:13):
and then I, and then I found, you know, those, you know, those
mentors until the one. And then you find the mentor's
like, yeah, man, you're just like the, you're the biggest
tragedy that ever happened to, to cannabis, for example,
medicine, like, and then you, the mentor says shit like that
to you, 'cause like, you know, it's hard.
It's really hard to, when you don't fit in the box, it's

(19:34):
really hard to find anybody thatreally has the same worldview as
you do. I and I don't think many people
do because in some ways I'm, I'mconservative, in some ways I'm
very centric and, and it's hard to find people in those places,
so. Once you realize that you had to
to find a mentor, do you find that like, because you've got

(19:54):
those different voids that you're trying to, like fill,
you've had to find a few different mentors for different
reasons, right? One might be the one that you go
to for comfort and, you know, assurance and that kind of
stuff. And then one does something
totally different for you. Have you found you've had to do
that? Yeah.
Yes, it's very hard, very hard. I still don't have somebody who
I would say, you know, this, this is the person I just want

(20:17):
to listen to. There are some like super
intelligent sages, of course, but everybody has a bias towards
something and I just can never, there's there's no one single
individual. And like that's in life that who
completes every part that you need.
You know, I, I always describe myself as a Venn diagram.
You know, I'm part, you know, a Venn diagram, a circle that has

(20:37):
all these different pies in it and there's different parts of
you to everything. So each individual part needs a
different mentor, you know, and,and it's hard.
It's very hard. I think that's probably the
hardest thing in life is to findsome a path.
There's no single path. There's to find individuals who,
who fit each one of those, each one of those parts of that, of

(20:58):
that pie in that Venn diagram. That's always been my biggest
problem. And it shows up in in some ways,
in a negative way for me. It shows up in my lack of
judgement in certain things. I recognize where my my
shortcomings are. I know I have them in, I know
that I it's because I lack that mentor or that direction from

(21:22):
early days growing up. I don't have that.
So I have to create that. And if I search for people who
have that and I'm like, yeah, this is good.
But like, you know, you're, you're, you're too.
You're you. Haven't been through what I've
been through, yeah. Exactly.
They can't relate to. It no, it's hard.
It's really hard. Or I just feel like you're way
on a different level than me. Maybe you're too smart, maybe

(21:45):
you're too dumb. Maybe you're too this, you're
too that. I mean, I guess I can always
find fault. Everybody has fault.
I just it's hard to find individuals who you who you
connect with on those levels. And I think going back to that
too, like, you know, you said you didn't have that, but like
in my head, and I know this about myself too, is sometimes
I'm the guy that can't sit still.

(22:05):
I'm the guy that can't focus on it.
And you don't do inventory of what's around, right?
Because you're already bouncing on to the next thing.
So like maybe in high school, that mentor was there, but you
weren't ready to see it 100%, you know, and that, and that
goes to right through to today, right.
And as we get a little bit older, it's easy to think you
know everything and you've done the inventory and you've done
the work. But like, I'm just getting

(22:27):
started. And, and that's, that's what's
so interesting about meeting guys like yourself is I want to
sponge the perspective and sponge the learnings and, and
try and figure myself out at thesame time.
And I think, too, to give your mom a huge shout out, having the
discipline to read all those report cards.
Yeah. And not think that that was full
and final verdict. Yeah.

(22:47):
And still advocating for your care and making sure that you
walked into that house and sat with that great doctor.
And that's a missing. Piece I see you're right.
I would two things on my for my mother's side, like I guess both
of them because my dad would just go along with that whatever
my mother said. My mother can run in Jewish
culture, the the mother runs thefamily.

(23:08):
That's just how it is. Whatever mom as goes and my
mother always believed in me, didn't matter what I did.
And I think that's really, I guess I don't give her enough
credit. I don't give them enough credit
for that. It didn't matter how bad things
got. They never gave up on me ever.
And they may not have known whatto do with me, but they never

(23:30):
gave up. They never kicked me out of the
house. They never said we don't love
you. They always provided a
supportive mechanism or supportive environment for me to
succeed should I have wanted to choose to succeed.
And I, and I would also say thatwhen it came to my worldly view
on like kindness, that all came from, I mean, both my parents,

(23:53):
but my dad especially, he's like, there's no, there are some
people in this world that exist that have only pure natures to
them to their detriment, right? So there are some people that
have only like only strength, only like only like very

(24:13):
reserved, very, you know, maybe not kindness on like just sort
of very direct, very, you know, mean whatever.
Then there's people that have pure kindness to them.
They get taken advantage of. They have no meanness in them
whatsoever, will always do something for the benefit of
somebody else. And then there's people that

(24:34):
sort of learn to combine those two things together, right?
You know, Lucas is saying, oh, he's talking Kabbalah right now.
Kind of I'm talking a little. There is a little aspect that
I'm talking about. I get it.
My father was purely put on thisearth to do kindness.
He has not another. There is nothing else to him

(24:56):
other than kindness to his detriment.
Taken advantage by all people inhis life.
Doesn't matter. He will give the shirt off.
It's not just a shirt off his back.
He starts, you know he has charities.
He has, he has, he has homeless shelters.
He has. Doesn't matter what he's doing.
75 I went and audited. I wondered why he like hadn't

(25:16):
he's a dentist outside of being a rabbi.
And I wondered why the dude was so broke.
And I went and audited his practice. 75% of his practice
was pro bono. He was going to pick people up
to drive them to do as their owndentistry on like it was crazy
like that. You can't like now I'm
supporting you. What what is happening here?
You're a dentist and you're broke.
I don't get it. But that's that is the kind of

(25:37):
human he is. He was his purpose on this
planet was pure kindness, right?And then there's the total
opposite. And then there's something in
between, which is where I'm trying to be, but it's very hard
to do that. So on, on the one side, I would
say my worldly view came from him.
My, my, my inability to really get angry.

(25:58):
My mother never got really mad. Nobody ever got mad in my family
really came from my mother. And so I give them full credit
for all of that. Did they have guidance per SE?
No. They led by example.
Absolutely. Yeah, that's cool.
And then so Fast forward, so you're a dad now.
How many kids? Yeah, so I actually, so I've

(26:21):
been married twice. I met my ex-wife when I was
actually traveling and doing allthis stuff in Israel when I was
18 years old. My first time getting married, I
think I was 21 or 22 years old. I thought I was doing all the
right things. You see, it was during the time
when I had left high school whenI was 18.
And and so I was trying to do all the religious stuff and

(26:44):
follow all this like, you know, follow a path.
I was trying to follow a path versus creating my own path that
I that led to something greater.Anyway, so I was married for
about 10 years, 910 years. And I had three children.
Yeah. During that time who are now one
has graduated university 1's going into their last year,

(27:06):
one's just starting. Haven't spoken to them in eight
years. Yeah.
Pretty awful in my very like is very it's just unfortunate.
Yeah, I was a non religious heathen is basically what it
came down to initially and that's for a whole other
episode, but just really awful. I reached out for the longest

(27:27):
time, but whatever their mother was telling them, I mean they
just something happened over there that unfortunately didn't
include continuing a relationship with me.
I still reach out. I never hear back but I find
them on social media. I'm probably blocked on most of
the social medias I think cuz I have to sort of find them in

(27:48):
between and see what's up. So I have 3 kids from a previous
marriage who I haven't spoken toin a long time.
That court case went on for 12 years basically and always about
money back and forth. Money one money.
Anyway, it's a whole thing. Listen, I think at the end of
the day, what I didn't want to do was disrupt their life too

(28:08):
much. I didn't want them to live
miserably. Never spoke to them about when
we did. When I did have them, I never
spoke to them about the situations that was happening
between my ex and myself. I know potentially that happened
elsewhere but like that wasn't my my like that's not how I

(28:28):
wanted chose to live. So I haven't spoken to them till
long in a long time. I remarried 11 years ago and I
have an we have an amazing daughter who just turned 10.
Name is Cecilia. She's amazing.
She's a theater kid, She sings and she's just awesome.
And I couldn't, like, I got the opportunity to raise a daughter.

(28:52):
You know, I never wanted anotherkid.
I never wanted to be married again.
I never wanted any kids. Obviously, it was a drunk night
in Mexico, and I wasn't getting away from that.
No, she'll tell you the same thing.
And I fuck, I swear to God, you know, all the gods, all the gods
know because there's a photo. And I have no idea how it
happened because I'm sitting there like this.
I'm like, she's like, that's thenight.

(29:14):
I'm like, Are you sure? There's no way I did anything
that night. She's like, yeah, that was the
night. Oh my God damn.
It it was assisted, it wasn't. I'm riddling though.
I wasn't riddling. Yeah, it was, it was pretty
amazing. Yeah.
So she's my, she's like the light of, of our lives.
She's amazing. And I wouldn't do anything to

(29:35):
change the position that I'm in now.
So I'm very thankful. I'm very, very lucky.
You know, people say they thank God.
I, I just whatever it was, you know, I don't, I don't
necessarily believe in, in an individual deity any any longer.
Whatever it is, call it spirit, call it nature.
I don't know something greater than myself has provided me the

(29:58):
strength to continue and live the life that I am and provided
me with all the success that I have.
But I would say that 99% of it was myself working my fucking
ass off to get to where I am. You know, they talk about, you
know, you can go to, you know, you know, you can go to meetings
and a, a meetings and all the meetings in the world.

(30:21):
And they say, you know, your first step is to believe in, you
know, some higher power. Something's out of your control,
which is why I just doesn't fit for me.
Like, no, everything is in your control.
You just have to control it. It's really hard.
There are there is nature to us,but I do believe that our brain
can control our emotions and that, you know, keeps us, keeps

(30:43):
us as individuals on a path to, you know, that's straight.
You don't have to, you know, youwant to, you want to murder
somebody, become a fucking butcher.
You know, you don't have to fallfor all those things.
And that's where where I'm what I'm working on and I
consistently work on those things.
We fight, we I like I have flaws.

(31:05):
We all have flaws. I've mentioned this before and I
know where they are and we just have to continuously work.
And I do believe that our brain can control those emotions.
That's where I'm at with all of it.
It's just very hard. Like medicine is, is tough.
I've. I've skipped all of medicine,
you know, And the trouble has followed me forever.

(31:25):
Like, from from fucking birth. I was born with my cord around
my neck hanging upside down. Like from that day till today,
it hasn't stopped following me. But we make the best of what we
got and we work hard at it. Yeah.
Let's talk about professional life.
Yeah, let's talk about being a doctor.
Where? Where?
What did you? What did you take?

(31:45):
What do you focus on? What, What?
What gets you excited about whatyou do?
Wasn't that long enough? No, I'm sorry.
I I I can just keep on talking. I'm sorry about that.
Yeah. So, you know, I was an unlikely
Dr. as I mentioned, like I I still go into this two fist
thing. I've used that I I was an

(32:07):
unlikely Dr. right? My, my, my.
As you heard, my youth was not that wasn't the path that I was
on my path. I actually something I left out,
which is probably one of the most important things how
mushrooms change my life. You know, it's done that for a
lot of people, I'm sure. But I had AI wouldn't be a

(32:31):
revelation like I don't, you know, I had an epiphany one
night when I was young and I wasprobably 17 years old and it
was, I was having like a really,really horrible experience on a
lot of, you know, on, on, on mushrooms at the time and
whatever other drugs. Like it was mostly that and, and

(32:58):
the next day I'm like, my life'sgoing to change.
You know, when we, you know, we talk a lot about psychedelics
and now psychedelics and medicine are, are making a huge
impact on, on mental health. And I believe there is a big
role for them. But it changed my life.
It, it, it showed me stuff that was it was such a dark spot that

(33:20):
the only way to go was into the light.
And my whole life changed the next day and it was like
everything is very abrupt. I think in my life it was like
here, now here, here, now here. There is nothing choice go,
yeah, choice go. Which could be the ADD, you know
what I mean? Like, OK, there's no like here,
let's think about this process. And I don't, I don't doesn't

(33:40):
work like that. It's like, OK, here's my
thought. Let's move.
Which is why I'm an emerge doc, I think cuz you have to make
quick decisions using a lot of knowledge and information that
you've already accumulated versus spending all the time
gathering it. You have to have that algorithm
in your brain make a decisioninggo, which is why I think
emergency medicine works for me.But anyway, so my, my life fully

(34:02):
like changed at that time towards the path that I, I, I
eventually went down to where everything became very positive
in life and every like I just focused on all the good things
that were happening. So yeah, while I was I, I'd say
it's like unlikely that I would be a physician based on
everything that's happened to mein my history.

(34:22):
But after I got into into after my undergrad, I was actually
working as a personal trainer ina gym.
And when this is how I got into medicine, it's so kind of crazy.
And one day I had AI had a client who came in and she was
running on the treadmill. She was about to get married, I
think in two months or whatever.And her heart rate just kept

(34:43):
going up from like, you know, you, we train and your regular
heart rate 220 minus your age, minus whatever on a grand
scheme, her heart rate just keptgoing up to like one 5170200210.
I'm like, whoa, you got to stop and you need to go to your
doctor. Like there's clearly something
wrong here, which is called SVT.Anyway, it's where you get an

(35:03):
abnormal heart rate. And so she went, she I'm like
this, this is not normal. Obviously you need to go to, you
know, a doctor. And while she was gone to the
doctor, I'm like, you know what?What the fuck is going on here?
I'm like, I need to know what's going on here.
So I applied to medical school and and I got in and like that's
how I got into medical school because I was just curious as to

(35:25):
why she had this. I'm like, I can't.
There was no, we didn't have ChatGPT.
We didn't have cell phones. You know, this was in 2000 and
two, 2001. There was no cell phone yet.
There may be a Nokia flip phone.I can't remember.
And the only place that I could gain this knowledge, I thought
at the time was applying to Med school.
So I applied to McMaster as likeas a shot of you didn't have to

(35:51):
like you just as like, just like, I don't know, random dude.
I didn't know much about medicine.
My career path wasn't heading that way.
And but I had a lot. I was so inquisitive and and so
I got in. They were like, we just have an
open gap with somebody that has no clue what they wanted to.
Do so like I went to an interview.

(36:12):
I could always interview well. I was super personable with
people and, and then, and I had a ton of experience with
volunteer work with extracurricular activities
because I wasn't in school for so much like I, I, like, I had
everything else. But then in my last year of high
school and my whole undergrad, Idid amazing because like I
finally figured it out. So I had this resume that just

(36:35):
kept going. And so I applied to to the one
school that took people not downa traditional path.
And that's the school I got into, which, you know, it has
the most applicants in the world.
But I took a shot at it. And out of the 4500 applicants,
120 of us got in. And I was one of those people.
I remember I got in off the waitlist and great story I was

(36:58):
seeing. I I was working as a trainer and
I took like the afternoon off because scooby-doo 2 was out.
So I was in the movie theater watching it by myself.
On mushrooms, no. Not a bad but maybe I don't
know. Anyway, and yeah, and I got in
and medical school was, was was easier than my undergrad.

(37:23):
I had a lot of knowledge. I worked hard.
I had worked so hard in my undergrad in Physiology and
anatomy and I had that stuff. And that's really what medical
school is, is anatomy, Physiology, learning how to
learn, learning how to find information.
Well, I had to learn that because I taught it to myself
and my undergrad because I needed that information.
As somebody who had ADHD, nobodyhad that.

(37:45):
Like what is the method here? They would put my books on tape
for me. I could get all that kind of
weird stuff to happen but but nothing really happened.
Nothing changed until I taught myself or learned the skills on
how to learn and how to manage my time and become rigid in my
own way, where rigidity was never something I was good at

(38:06):
because as you know, ADD boom, squirrel, you're gone right
then. And I'm still like that.
If somebody, if I hear somethingcool, I'm like, sorry, boys, I
got to go, you know, like that's, that's what it was.
So medical school was, was was not super difficult in the
school since, but you know, a lot of things challenged my, my,
my perspectives and I had to adapt and learn and I learned

(38:31):
Aloe like Western medicine. Western medicine, you know,
provides amazing opportunities that took us places that, you
know, I would say religion hadn't taken us in thousands of
years and traditional medicine hadn't taken us in thousands of
years. Were Western medicine was
solving problems and I appreciated that And it was

(38:53):
tough. Hey, listen, I had people try to
throw me out of medical school saying I forged my application,
you know, like a lot of hate from people that didn't like
Jewish folks at the time too. And they tried to, you know,
like they've they literally tried to throw me out of medical
school. And I'm like, well, if you don't
believe my references, call them.
I'm like, I don't see why this is an issue.

(39:15):
You know, obviously it didn't work out for them.
And because because I'm not traditional people be are like,
like, how are you a doctor? People still just don't get it.
But my brain I'm a I'm a walkingcontradiction or I'm a walking
like I'm that Venn diagram. I may have a perspective one
way, but at the same time I haveall of this other stuff and that

(39:38):
I can't even explain. So I remember in in my first
year of medicine. It's a crazy story.
Well, they still bleed up. Trust me.
It's coming to a conclusion. I know you're trying to get out
of here. Absolutely not medical.
School honestly the mushrooms are just kicking at.
Us so this is in my in my in my third you know it was my second

(40:00):
year maybe of medical school I can't remember now but it was it
was sometime actually it was November of my first year of
medical school they. I had a trauma surgeon come give
us a lecture. There was a trauma surgeon
talking about trauma. And I'm like, oh God, I spent
most of my days in the emergencydepartment.
What I skipped through all of this is, you know, being the
hyperactive kid, I've went everywhere from breaking my neck

(40:22):
to my arms to my legs to like, every part of my body has been
broken in one way or another. And I spent my days in the
emergency department and this guy comes up and says we have a
spot for two elective students, but you have to call us at 5:00
in the morning if you want to get into this elective.
And they were telling us about trauma.
And it's and just so cool to me that you know what, what you

(40:45):
know, I knew trauma surgeons because I had been involved with
trauma surgeons. See, I was a ski patroller for a
while, but while I was patrolling or while I was on off
time, we would jump everything we could possibly get in the in
the parks. And sometimes it didn't go well
and I would break parts of my body.
And so I knew trauma surgeons and I knew what like Emerge was
like. And I'm like, this sounds really

(41:07):
cool 'cause I initially came in thinking I was going to be an
orthopedic surgeon. I was going to be a bone doctor,
'cause that was cool, 'cause they said a whole bunch of my
bones. But then he started talking
about this and I'm like, so the next day I called at 5:00, 5/30.
Finally they I get through they're like, okay, fine, you
can have this position, come seeus, blah blah, blah.
They give us a pager. This back then it was these big

(41:29):
ass pagers said if the pager goes off for the next two
months, you can come anytime youwant.
I kept the pager for four years and never gave it back and just
kept showing up to every single trauma every till the, till the
point where I was a Med student,people thought I was a resident.
They knew who I was in the emergency department and they're
like, can you do this? That?
So I was doing things in the emerge that like through

(41:50):
clerkship, through all the stuff, through like my whole
medical school program, I just kept showing up whether it was a
Saturday night and whether it was like I loved it and I was
just eating it up. So, and I just never gave back
that pager. And so people started to know
who I was in the emergency department.
They could see that I was reallyinterested because if I'm really

(42:11):
interested in it, I'm all in. And I'm sure people who
understand ADHD or understand like that, that, you know,
there's 22 parts of your brain. The one that can, you know,
doesn't really focus well. And then the one that gets right
into something when it does the transition is with the hard part
is, and that's the skills that we need to learn between the the
system that can sit you down andthe system that needs a break

(42:34):
all the time. The ADD thing, this isn't aside,
this is where my brain just went.
The ADD thing where you have to learn the skill is how to
transition between those two. When you learn how to transition
between the hyperactive part that needs to go and the part
that needs to focus, that's whenyou become a master at figuring
yourself out. And those people in life are
super successful when they figure out how to master the

(42:55):
movement between the two systems.
So anyway, I don't even know where I was talking about, but I
was talking, OK, talking about that, that elective.
So I just kept it and I just kept the, I kept the pager and
it came time to apply for residency programs.
Everybody knew me, so they already knew me in the emergency
program in Hamilton. I applied all over, but I wanted

(43:16):
to be in Hamilton. So I got into the emergency, the
it's called the Royal College Program in Emergency Medicine.
So it's five years instead of like doing family medicine and
then an extra year of training. I did the five years, call it
the slow learners program, but it's really, it makes me an
academic. So I became an academic
physician. So for this kid who was a high
school dropout and now I'm an academic physician in one of the

(43:39):
best institutions in the world, right?
And and it doesn't make sense. I love that though.
But none of it makes. I call a change in your stars
like, yeah, people need to know that they can change their
stars. There's no, there's no real
path. There is no and that's the
thing, you create your path. You want something to happen.
A lot of luck. Like obviously I had to get into
medical school, right? Like it wasn't, it wasn't me

(44:02):
that got and it was somebody whoread my chart or sorry, read my
resume or my application and hadto believe that, well, this guy
might be pretty good, pretty cool to be with in medical
school. So let's give that individual a
chance, right? So I had to get chances along
the way. Nobody fucking spoon fed mean
nothing I. Created those things.

(44:23):
The harder you work, the luckieryou got right.
It's true every time because youput the effort into that
application and it said the right things and then you knew
what you were doing. So that's awesome.
The Venn diagram, to use your analogy that I want to ask you
about is so your medical career today, yeah, talked about
traditional medicines, your Ritalin story's great.
So obviously pharmaceuticals and, and having the ability to

(44:45):
to play in the traditional system.
But now there's this whole modern, yeah, there's plant
based there's. How do you balance those two
out? Where's your head out?
Yeah, so I was in my I was in residency just the end of
residency early. I wasn't even yet actually a
staff. So 2010 I became and into like I
practiced into is when I passed my board exams, right.
So 2005 to 2010, really into 11.I did a fellowship in sports

(45:10):
medicine. We'll talk about in a second.
So I did, I still love sports. So I did a fellowship in 2010,
2011 with Doc Levy, David Levy, who was at the time the, the,
the doc of the Hamilton Tiger Cats.
So I was a team doc with the tiecats for a couple of years as
well and then took on varsity rugby till 2017.

(45:30):
I've only done things that I love.
I never did anything that I did not enjoy.
But during that time, while I was working in the emergency
department, I would say in 2002,nine, 2010, early days of early
days of the opioid pandemic or epidemic, pandemic, everything
you can possibly imagine, Ick atthe end started wondering and

(45:56):
started thinking like I was seeing patients coming in to the
emergency department, either they're like overdosed or
they're dead or they're in withdrawal or they're seeking or
they're seeking drugs. And I started to recognize like
this pattern and it was really awful, but I didn't know what to
do. And I realized that our tool,
our tool bag, or like, look at it like your, whatever your tool

(46:17):
bag, just call it tool bag. Our tool bag for treating pain
was awful. We don't have one and we didn't
have a very good one in medicine.
The way I, I, I describe it is you have a, you're trying to
build a house and in your tool bag you have a nail and you have
a screwdriver. You don't have a hammer, You

(46:38):
don't have any of the other stuff that would normally get
that nail into the wall. So you turn the screwdriver
upside down with the thick handle and you start banging it
into the wall. Eventually it's going to get in,
but it's going to crack the walls as you go.
That's how I, that's how I, the analogy I give to how we treat
pain at the time. So we have these tools, but
they're not great tools. We gave.

(46:59):
We gave narcotics. We thought that was the answer.
Pardue, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, which doesn't exist anymore,
told everybody that that's what you have to give for every
single thing. We know that's true because it's
out in all the statements. I'm not telling any information.
That's a word of documentaries. Now that's on Netflix.
Yeah, there's no, there's no word of a lie that I'm I'm
putting there. And that's what they said.

(47:20):
They said these are the and so everybody just prescribed it and
I'm like, something else must happen, must be going on one
day. I'm working.
So as I'm done, I did sports medicine, as I mentioned, I'm
working in a clinic in Toronto doing sports medicine, doing
medical evaluations for patientswho are in car accidents, all
this other stuff. And I get a phone call from one

(47:44):
of the guys who was a partner inthis clinic and who I actually
knew from my younger days. And he's like, hey, Ira, you
know, a psychiatrist. And I'm like, I mean, I, I mean,
I know a bunch of psychiatrists.What do you need a psychiatrist
for? It's like, well, there's this
program that people can get access to cannabis at the time,

(48:05):
they're still calling it marijuana.
Marijuana is a derogatory word. And if so, we don't use that
term anymore, right? We use the word cannabis, which
basically represents what's in the plant itself.
So he's like, do you know anybody in in the cannabis at
the time? He says marijuana space, Anybody
in the marijuana space, we need them for to write these to

(48:25):
evaluate people for for it. And psychiatrists seem to be OK
with doing it. We can't find other specialists.
I'm like, whoa, are you talking about cannabis right now?
I'm like, I hadn't used cannabis.
I had been like I had not used any drug, nothing medicine
otherwise since I was 17 years old.
OK, since the end of my like whatever, since high school

(48:47):
changed for me. I, I had stayed away from a
still a proponent, still maybe like a little bit in like the
end of high school, but that's it.
My entire medical career, my undergrad, nothing.
I was like a straight edge as I didn't even drink alcohol.
I needed to focus, right, But I still, I'm still from cannabis
culture and I'm like, well, I know a lot about cannabis, but I

(49:10):
only know it from a recreationalperspective back in the day.
They're like, well, would you beinterested in working with
something like this for pain? And I'm thinking to myself,
well, currently our way that we treat pain right now is awful
and we're using and people are dying left, right and center.
I'm willing to do now remember, I'm also an academic physician

(49:33):
now. So I'm like, how do I bridge
this gap? How do I take cannabis from
something that doesn't exist in Canada really?
And anybody who had started it was always stopped by their
colleges or by something other. How do I bridge the gap between
academic medicine and this recreational culture that I came

(49:54):
from? How do we do that?
So I said, I'm willing to give it a shot so long as you set up
a conference for me. Now, there were no cannabis
conferences at the time, so I said I need somebody who's
growing cannabis, I need somebody who's selling cannabis,
I need somebody who's through the medical.
At that time it was called MMA or whatever, through the legal

(50:17):
sense. I need a lawyer, I need people
who are consuming it, and I needsome patience at this thing.
They're like, OK, I think we cando that.
So they set up like a little conference, probably the first
cannabis conference in Canada. It was 2010, maybe 9.
No, it's 2000, early 2010, and at a lawyer's house and they

(50:41):
educated me on the whole processand what was happening and what
they needed and why it was so important because you have all
these people dying in these painpatients.
Most of it was pain at the time and these pain patients are
suffering and nobody's doing fuck all.
Nobody's helping them in the waythey need to be helped.
Very similar to what Lee is doing now with cancer is what I

(51:01):
was doing with pain back in the early 2000s or early 2, like
2010. There was nothing out there.
So I said how am I going to bridge this gap?
So I started writing protocols and on there was no way to even
convert. Like how do you convert?
At the time there was like it just came as here, this has like
10% cannabis or 10% THC in it. This has, I don't know, 30% THC.

(51:27):
Well, how do you change that to a milligram dosing, right.
So I started writing equations on how to how to convert.
I was called a drug math. I started writing equations on
on how to convert percentages into milligrams dosing and how
to how much bioavailability you get from smoking a joint versus
using a vaporizer versus ingesting cannabis.
And I started doing all the research, looking at what was

(51:49):
available, what research had been done.
And there was a ton of research,just none of it was brought
medical like brought into the forefront of an everyday thing.
So I then opened up like the first clinic.
Well, it was maybe the second clinic, but the longest acting
clinic in Canada in like 2011. That was where Synergy, Synergy

(52:09):
health services came into the into the picture.
And at the time, the reason I did that was because why did I
call it synergy? What is synergy?
What does the word actually mean?
Like you don't have to answer. I don't answer it.
I mean, you can answer it if youwant.
Do you know? We didn't go to university.

(52:30):
So synergy means that you becomesomething greater than the sum
of your parts, right? That's what a synergy is.
You have A and you have B&A&B are great on their own, but when
you do A&B together, it becomes greater than A or B
individually. That is what the word synergy
means. In my undergrad, I always wanted
to start something called synergy Wellness.
It was like going to be my, my, like my fitness studio.

(52:54):
And, and so I finally got to do it.
And, and so I called it Synergy Health services.
And what we were doing in there was it was a chronic pain clinic
and I had written protocols and somebody in.
Chronic. Chronic, it was for chronic pain
patients. And actually somebody even named

(53:17):
the protocols on prescribing cannabis called the price
protocol. I didn't name it was named after
me at the time and I wrote the guides and I wrote.
Then I started educating the other physicians and initially
when I started, and this is where I talked about I guess in
that, in that bio thing where internationally known lecturers,
nobody was doing it. Nobody knew what to do.
I had created these protocols because I understood cannabis

(53:39):
world and I understood medicine.So I sort of sat as a bridge to
these two worlds. I was people hated me at the
time on both sides. I was either too medical for the
community or too community for medical.
And so it was like, and I alwayssay it was like waving the like
waving this flag that said hit me in the middle of a highway
with people coming at you on both ends.

(54:00):
And I was like dip dodging, diving all over the place.
And it was, it was actually really hard, probably took years
off my life, but I knew we were doing something good.
And eventually from the 97% of self referred people from
patients that were self referring 99.5% by the time I
left in 2021 that clinic, 99.5% of those patients were referred

(54:24):
from other physicians. It took me a long time to get
through to them, but I think people slowly started to
recognize that something else needed to be done.
And we started publishing papersand I published 3 or 4 papers in
big medical journals or was a co-author on some of them on
both the side effects of cannabis because it's not
harmless. No drug in the world is

(54:45):
harmless, but also on the benefits of them.
And there's no doubt now based on the studies that cannabis,
medical cannabis or any cannabiscalled cannabis in general is
good for certain things, specifically for chronic non
cancer and cancer pain. So we were, I, I ran a study, a
1200 patients study taking to see if I can get people off of

(55:07):
narcotics. It was a questionnaire.
So it was a questionnaire, prospective cohort
questionnaire. So I took 1200 patients over a
year. All I haven't published the data
yet. And yeah, and of the 1200, it
took about a year and a half to collect the data. 85% of them
were off their narcotics using cannabis, most of them within

(55:29):
three months. Like massive and they and like
these are studies. These are massive, you know what
I mean? So you know, at the end of the
day, there was a rule to bridge a gap.
Unfortunately. You know, there's a concept,
there's a book called Nexus by Harare, what's his name?

(55:52):
Yuval Harare great book talks about information, the the
passage of information from ancient information where we
were scribbled on, scribbled on stones to AI, right, where we
get our information from these external sources.
But one of the concepts that he talks about in this book is
truth versus order, right? If you have all truth where

(56:17):
everywhere knowledge, which we have right now, where knowledge
is disseminated everywhere, right?
In today's world, you just you could find all these 10,000
different perspectives. We have chaos, right?
Because there's so much data available to us.
It's chaos. And on the other side, you have
all this order and you have no order on the first side.

(56:38):
On the other side, you have all order, but not much truth,
right? You can look at like Stalin,
look at communism as that or, orextreme or fascism, both
extremes, you find that it's allorder, but truth is is lacking,
right? So you have to find this happy
medium. The problem with all of what
what we do when we don't fit into a box, what Lee is doing

(57:03):
now or what I was doing with cannabis in the early days is
that we have structure and orderand people don't want to lose
that. Because if you have, no matter
how much truth you have, you're going to lose order and it will
become chaotic. So you have groups of people and
I would say in traditional medicine, and that exists

(57:24):
everywhere, you know, you have whether it's society, whether
we're governments or whether we're on a macrocosm as
governments or whether we're in our own little worlds with
religion or whether we're in ourown smaller worlds with
medicine. People want to create order.
And as soon as you create something other than what
they're used to, they're like work creates chaos.

(57:46):
We're losing they, we're going to lose our ability to maintain
order may not be true. We have to find a happy balance
between the two. And that's where we struggle
back and forth right now in medicine is where's that happy,
happy balance? We lost it during COVID.
There was no balance. We lose, we lost it with medical
cannabis. There is no balance, you know,

(58:08):
so that's kind of kind of where I sort of find myself is
bridging this gap between chaos and order, between, you know,
the community and medicine. And because I came from the
community and I'm not your traditional physician who just
had one narrow path forward. And you'll find many physicians
haven't, It's just not the majority of them.
I have that ability to do it. So I don't really fit into any

(58:31):
community. I don't fit into one, I don't
fit into the other. And people from each one who
know me sort of can understand me.
Otherwise, they kind of just write it off.
That's kind of where I am right now.
What's the future of that look like?
What's what are you excited about?
New treatments? New.
So I mean, there's a couple things, you know, right now

(58:54):
we've developed, you know, I would say about 3 or 4 years
ago. You know, I think it's the idea
of bridging the gaps again when it comes to health and Wellness.
I think a lot of what we've been, what Western medicine was
amazing at was treating a disease.
You have a disease, treat a disease, cure that disease.

(59:15):
For the most part, we stopped people dying from malaria.
We stopped people dying from streptococcal diseases, from
bacteria, pneumonia. We have antibiotics like we have
insulin. People don't die from from
diabetes anymore. You don't have to die from that.
Those were great things. Allopathic medicine was disease
focused. The switch, the hard part is

(59:38):
switching from disease focus to preventative medicine that can
also at the same time treat diseases, right.
The way I just you can look at it is back in the day you have,
you know, and still today, whichis where cannabis kind of came
into the picture. You have a disease and you have
9 medications that you have to take to treat this one disease.

(59:58):
That's Western medicine, right? You have high blood pressure, we
give you 1 medication doesn't work, 2-3 medication, 4
medication, you're on 4 medications for your blood
pressure. You have diabetes, you're on 4
medications for your diabetes. The switch, the paradigm shift
comes from the idea that we havesomething like cannabis where we
have one medicine that can treat9 diseases.

(01:00:19):
So it's a total shift of perspective.
Right. And so now we, what I focused on
in the last little bit is creating a socially responsible
biopharmaceutical company, whichwe did a couple years back and
thanks to, thanks to what Lee isworking on now with his cancer
medicine. And we've created now an immune

(01:00:40):
support which which is, which isfantastic.
I, I got really sick. I ended up hospitalized for two
weeks. I ended up with aseptic
meningitis and two days after, well, I thought I was going to
die and even the doctors didn't know what really what to do,
throw me on all these antibiotics, all these
medicines. And then.

(01:01:01):
But I had a prototype of this, of an immune support that that I
created and I started taking it and like a couple days later, I
was fine. It was crazy.
Yeah, I, I, I don't know, I don't have the research
necessarily on it, but it worked.
And so that's where I'm focusingnow on creating products that

(01:01:25):
are beneficial to society and don't hurt you.
That's really where I am. And I still work in the
emergency department. I love my job.
I love working. I've been there for it is it's
20, it's 15 years now, 16 years as an independent practitioner
of emergency medicine, only working night shifts.
I don't work days. I only work nice because they
work for me. I don't do well when lots of

(01:01:47):
people are in the department, you know, because somebody tell
me what to do and I go the otherdirection.
So, you know, for me it works and that's where the chaos is.
I, I function highly when thingsaren't in order and because I've
learned how to do those things. So I continue to do that and I'm
working hard as a, as a father to be a better father for my

(01:02:08):
daughter and a better husband tomy wife.
And these things are, are, are fucking brutally difficult.
It is not easy. And especially when you're
somebody who is not focused by nature.
My nature is to not be focused. I know that that's my biggest,
my my biggest challenge in life is my focus.
When do you see that Canada or like even the States might go

(01:02:31):
down the path of finally puttingsome more money in funding and
testing behind like the psychedelic side of things
'cause like I'm heavily investedinto like psychedelic stocks
from like 8-9 years ago. Like I, I truly believe in it.
There's three, three companies in Canada that I'm, I'm like big
time invested in. I think that's like the true
path to yeah, I. Was.
I was my Med from the beginning,yeah.

(01:02:52):
And I and I sold it as it all. Good for you, I did not.
But I've still got trips. I've been numinous.
Wellness. Yeah, Yeah.
So I'm a big believer in that stuff.
Yeah, I mean, the problem is it's hard to to trademark or
copyright or to find like it's such an open drug, you know,

(01:03:17):
it's like open AI. How do you, how do you, what's
the word I'm looking for? Regulate it?
Yeah. It's really hard to patent.
These things, intellectual property around it.
If you can, yeah, there are waysyou can stick little tracers and
markers and all these things into your own medicine and there
are ways, but it's very difficult.
So when you have, when you have pharma, that's all like when you

(01:03:39):
look at pharmaceutical companies, don't look at them
as, as makers of drugs. They're, they're, they're
marketing companies. That's what they are.
They hire labs to do all the work for them.
And then they just market the drug.
That's what a pharmaceutical company does.
So what's the goal of a pharmaceutical of a, of a
marketing company to make money,right.
So these guys are, you know, they're interested in making

(01:03:59):
money. So how can you make money?
And if you can't patent a drug, it's not very easy.
Or if you can cure something, it's not very easy because you
know it's hard. And I'm not and if people can't
get addicted to it because like,yeah, if you're, if you're micro
dosing, you're not really getting addicted to it.
Or hey, let's give them a bunch of Zoloft or whatever.
And like, then they need double the amount six months later and
you know. Yeah, so the, but the question
at the same, I mean, I'm not a conspiracy.

(01:04:21):
So this is where I'm I'm not a conspiracy theorist.
I'm a, I'm a realist and I, I don't think it's such a
conspiracy to say that if, if money is the goal of a
pharmaceutical company, then they'll go to where the money is
and I think they'll go there every single time.
I don't think that's far fetchedto say you don't have to be a
conspiracy theorist. Like any marketing company, they

(01:04:42):
want to make money. They work for the shareholders.
Yeah, exactly. And I'm not against making
money. Like I don't think that's a like
that's a bad thing. You just need to have people
that aren't that who are on and and you have to have a
government and you have to have some regulation around that that
is able to say, OK, company X, you're allowed to make money.
But here's what we have to do. We have to have independent

(01:05:05):
people doing research as well, not just these big guys.
That's where you have academic centers.
And the question then becomes who's doing the research?
Who's sponsoring the research? How are you getting paid?
And, and it makes it very difficult in today's world to do
anything. And it's even in the cannabis
industry. It's in the psychedelic
industry. You have stocks, right?
You have stocks in three companies.

(01:05:25):
Those three companies are are have a fiduciary responsibility
to you. If they're not making money,
they're not doing their job. So their goal at the end of the
day is to do what? Make money.
The only person I've ever met that didn't wasn't in this to
make money was Lee Whitley. He was giving away millions.
Is he there? Yeah.
He was giving away millions of dollars of his medicine for free

(01:05:48):
for fucking nothing, for nothing.
Millions of I don't know how many millions of dollars the guy
gave away. Now today, now he's today, he's
obviously he's got, he's trying to recoup some of this, right?
Because people have taken advantage of that guy, right?
But he's the only person I've met in medicine or he's not in
medicine in, in, I don't know, the peripheral of medicine,

(01:06:09):
whatever it is, whatever, like any fucking industry you can
talk about. That wasn't asking anybody for
money. When I met him 10 years ago, he
wasn't asking anybody for money.It was only in the last year
that he started taking donationsand now sell some of the stuff
or whatever he's doing. He was giving it away because he
wanted to help. You don't find that in medicine.

(01:06:31):
No, that's not true. Lots of medicine is like that.
That's not the words I'm lookingfor.
You don't find that in this world.
There are not many people in. This not the industry norm.
To who are just looking to help somebody else without without
personal gain of money for sure whether and and so which is why
it's like, I mean, it's so hard to believe that his medicine was

(01:06:54):
doing such wonderful things until you see it with your own
eyes and your own eyes can't aren't lying to you, you know,
but yeah, so I I think it's I think it's difficult.
I think it's difficult for, for anybody in healthcare to find
the truth when money is your is the goal.
And, and if you're, if you have,you know, if you're reliant on

(01:07:18):
shareholders and that's what youhave a fiduciary responsibility,
it's it's hard, It's very. Difficult a lot of its
government too, right, because like those companies all want to
make money for sure, but like they want to bring this stuff to
market and make money with it, which is fine, like great.
But it's the government regulation that's holding them
back and that they, the governments don't want to allow,
you know, legalizing more drugs.So you know this, there is the

(01:07:39):
concept of you only are allowed two legal drugs in any society,
right? Alcohol and cannabis is what we
get. Excuse me here, but well, you
know, I think there are strong lobbyists.
Should they have, should the Pharmaceutical industry have
wanted cannabis, excuse me, to be, or psychedelics in general

(01:08:00):
to be legal or to be studied in,in clinical settings?
And which they, which by the way, psychedelics have been
studied for a very long time. There are more studies,
especially positive outcome studies of LSD, for example,
which I, I personally like as a medicine more than even
mushrooms because it's easily titratable and it's synthetic

(01:08:20):
and whatever it's it, it's a, it's a easily workable drug.
There are thousands of very positive studies, more than with
cannabis that are in the clinical setting.
If we had strong lobbyists for those that came from the
Pharmaceutical industry, then I'm certain it would have passed
government law by now, right, Because that's, that's kind of

(01:08:40):
the lobbyists work closely with governments and it's just
nobody's presented a strong enough argument and you can't
blame government. They don't have a strong
argument and they're trying to manage everybody's expectation.
I'm a realist at the same time. Sure, government, I've, we've
all have our issues with the government, right, Especially
Health Canada, FDA and United States, whatever it is, we have
our issues with them. But looking at it from their

(01:09:01):
perspective, they're trying to manage everybody's expectations
and that's, that's, that's next to impossible.
The lobbyists I blame the pharmaceutical industries who
who I blame for this mostly. Why?
Because if they wanted it to be to happen, it would have
happened by now. Just like they got narcotics
legalized and everything else legalized.

(01:09:23):
They go and acquire these guys for pennies only dollar. 100%
yeah, they have No. Which I'm hoping happens
eventually. Me too, me too, but it's not.
It's not tomorrow. It's not tomorrow, but it should
be. I mean, we're seeing and there
are ways to get legal psilocybinspecifically for palliative care
patients and for resistant depression where you've already

(01:09:46):
tried two other, you know, medications and SSRISNRI, which
we've looked at those studies aswell.
And a lot of those studies don'thold up to being useful when it
comes to the how we treat mentalhealth.
You know, we, we use all, again,we have 8 medications.
I know people on 8 medications to treat 11, you know, to treat
a resistant depression, you know, or a bipolar or a

(01:10:09):
schizophrenic or, you know, whereas we have psychedelics
that do very well in that realm.So I, I blame the pharmaceutical
companies really. And I don't know why people
haven't showed up to Lee's, you know, Lee's doorstep and said,
let's go study. I mean, I do understand why, but
at the same time they should. It's cool getting the

(01:10:32):
perspective from like a professional in the industry
that you really do find that middle ground, like, you know,
not to steer too far one way or the other way because you really
you, you're super analytical about that stuff.
So it's it's cool to get your perspective.
It's hard because people think, you know when I start saying,
you know, when they want me to go off on government, you put
the blocker. Out.

(01:10:53):
Because I understand their perspective having lived in it,
but I also live in the communityand so I really get their
perspective. Which is like both sides hate
you and. Everyone, you won't be no,
everybody, because there is, youknow, there is an alt middle and
I really, I'm, I really believe in, in medicine, there is an alt

(01:11:13):
middle and and that middle, you know, Maimonides said it, the
middle path is truth. It's just hard to find, man.
It's especially in today's world.
Right. Yeah, we're trying to live in
that space too. I love that we try and hold
space for some creative thinkersfrom some people who've got some
big ideas. I love what you guys are doing
here, man. I appreciate that.

(01:11:33):
Now I'm gonna be listening to this podcast.
Well, we, I mean, super honored to have you.
We could talk for days and greatstuff, man.
Anything else you want to cover just before we start to wind
down? Anything else you want to talk
about? Excited about shout outs?
You know, yeah, shout out my SO I did what I left out by the
way, is so being ADD is great because you get to do so much.

(01:11:54):
Stuff. You got so many cool stories
that just pop up. So my, my wife and I have a
couple fitness studios now. Yeah.
So this is how the health and Wellness thing came together.
So we own Spinco Burlington. OH, cool.
And Spinco Hamilton and we own Fusion Studio, which is so
Spinco is I'm sure as you know abunch.

(01:12:15):
Of my wife's friends go yeah. Yeah.
So that's that's our studio. That's wicked.
Yeah. So that's in beat based cycling.
We started Fusion which is in Hamilton now, but it'll be out
here soon and moving to Ancastervery soon as well.
With that is, is beat based resistance training.
So it's group fitness, same idea.
And and what we do is a combination of yoga with

(01:12:39):
calisthetics and resistance training and bands all in 150
minute class. So it's pretty cool.
You know, when I first started, I thought we were going to get a
whole bunch of elite athletes that are going to love doing
this stuff. What you realize at the end of
the day is everyone's just looking for community.
People want to find a place where they're not judged where
they can be who they are and canhave a good time doing it.

(01:13:02):
And that's really what it found that this place offers.
And so I, I mean, I love it. I just came from that class.
That'll take me to the dad joke.Can I tell you a dad joke,
please? Forgot about the dad joke.
OK, so it's not funny, but I think it's really funny.
So I came out of class today. By the way, check it out at
Studio Fusion on Instagram. Studio fusion.ca also perfect.

(01:13:26):
Yeah, we'll throw it. In SO.
Tell us your best dad. Joke.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, and you can check me out on
on Instagram as well. It's Doctor.
What is it? The doctor dot higher price.
Yeah, that's it. I don't even know my own damn
super anyway. OK, so here's my joke.
So we get out of this. So I came out of class today and
I was like dying. Like I was like deaf.

(01:13:47):
I hate doing lower body stuff anyway, so I but I had to do it
and I'm yelling the whole time. Could we be like biceps?
No, she didn't like that. So I come out, I'm exhausted.
I go to the front desk and I'm like, oh, I can barely move.
I'm drinking a thing and she pulls out like a container of
dates and she says want a date? I said no, I'm married.

(01:14:10):
Yeah, I thought it was funny. Boom.
Boom, boom and then. She's like, do you want a second
date? I'm like all ready this.
Is moving too quick? OK, that's my dad joke for the
day all. Right.
And she's like, do I need to call HR?
That's me. I'm HR.
Best man. Well, we'll, we'll sign off for
now, but I can't wait to follow along and thanks for all you do.

(01:14:31):
Yeah. Thank you, Sir.
Thanks for having me guys, Take care bro.