April 21, 2025 • 30 mins
In this episode of the Meaning Project podcast, Dr. Dan discusses the importance of meaning, purpose, and resilience in mental health. He explores the potential of psychedelic therapies, the role of lifestyle factors in mental well-being, and the significance of spirituality in healing. The conversation also delves into trauma, resilience, and the mind-body connection, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach to mental health.
Takeaways
Takeaways
- The importance of integrating meaning and purpose into daily life.
- Psychedelic therapies can offer significant healing benefits.
- Lifestyle factors such as sleep, nutrition, and relationships are crucial for mental health.
- Spirituality plays a foundational role in overall well-being.
- Trauma can impact mental health, but resilience can be developed.
- The mind-body connection is essential for understanding mental health issues.
- Addressing lifestyle habits can lead to improved mental health outcomes.
- Psychedelics have been used historically for healing and can be beneficial today.
- Understanding one's trauma history is important for mental health.
- The Meaning Project community aims to provide support and education on these topics.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Hello, and welcome to the Meeting Project podcast. I'm your host,
doctor daniel A Franz, and as always, thank you for
this opportunity to bring a little bit of meaning, purpose
and resilience to your day, to your week, to your months,
your year, to your life. And boy, what a I
know I've been saying this a lot lately. What a
week it's been. A good friend, classmate in the Integrative
(00:48):
Psychiatry Institute Psychonauts, and friend of the show. Guest of
the show, therapist Rob Romano, just left, like literally just
an hour ago, packed up. He being the digital nomad
that he is, stuffed off here on his way from
South Florida to Connecticut, which is quite the trajectory, not
(01:12):
a straight line, on his way home for Easter to
visit his family. Decided to stay with my family for
a couple of days, and wow, we had some amazing
conversations we both Although we both had to work, we
dedicated some time just to kind of hang out, hang
out with my family and talk about the work that
we do. And it was interesting. You know, I have
(01:34):
coffee with a lot of other psychedelic therapists, ketamine providers,
et cetera. Trying to figure out just what we're going
to do with this stuff, how we're going to help people.
As you know, more and more, just this week, just
the conversations I had with Rob and interestingly, the the
insight that my family was able to provide through these
(01:57):
conversations only continue use to reinforce. We had coffee with Juliatis,
former guest of the show My My Ketymine Provider, and
just talking about how much kenemine and psilocybin specifically, those
are the areas I'm working in now. I'm reading a
(02:19):
book in Psychedelic Cannabis Use. Why well, because it's more available.
It's still not available in my area. But cannabis has
gotten a bad rap for so long we haven't studied
the clinical opportunities to it. There's a great book out
(02:40):
there that describes it, and I am neck deep in
that right now. And then of course we have you know,
some of our peers, Robin, my peers and friends are
working in I begain bofu, d m T five MEO
DMT and a variety of other substances that are bringing
(03:03):
great healing to people, which might sound strange, right, What Dan,
what are you talking about? All these illegal drugs. Right,
they've been illegal for about I don't know, a little
less than one hundred years, maybe fifty years. But each
one of these I begain, Cannabis, psilocybin, dmt LSD all
(03:31):
come from nature, right, and we haven't been able to
use them, to experiment with them, to research them for
so long. We're just now getting to it. And it's
an exciting science actually, now that I think about it.
Oh my goodness, I am recording today's podcast on bicycle Day.
(03:53):
Bicycle Day, April nineteenth is a traditional holiday. I don't
know if it's holiday. It's something we recognize as the
kind of the beginning of the psychedelic renaissance. It was
on this day. Ooh, I can't remember the year, nineteen
thirty eight ish forty two. Maybe I'll have to do
(04:17):
the research. Chemists, Swiss chemists Albert Hoffmann had refound LSD
and he had actually so ls actually you know, it's
a naturally occurring acid in decaying fungus, I believe, found
(04:42):
on the barley plant. And he had recreated an a
laboratory and put it away years prior and then for
some reason got it out in that year and was
working on it a few days before April nineteenth and
found he felt a little funny after using it and
(05:07):
couldn't figure out why. I did some thinking, did some research,
and that may have been on the sixteenth or seventeenth,
and realized, oh my goodness, it was this compound I
was working with. He went back to his lab today
April nineteenth, and more scientifically administered a dose by today's standards,
a fairly large dose, and had a full on psychedelic experience.
(05:34):
But he didn't know that. He thought he may have
been going a little crazy, and so his assistant was
not working with him that day, and he couldn't get
a car ride home, so he rode his bicycle back
to his house from his laboratory and proceeded to have
(05:57):
a psychedelic and mystical experience. So that was kind of
the birth of the use of LSD for psychedelics and
for healing, and eventually co opted by the CIA of
the United States in the fifties for the MS. I'd
(06:18):
have to look up the numbers. My memory is not going.
We were just talking about that yesterday. Memory not great
this week, too much conversation. I'd up thinking, but that
yes their experiments to use LSD as a al as
an agent for for psychological warfare. All of that to say,
(06:41):
you know, as I continue to study these things and
put myself in this world and see the healing potential
of indigenous substances used for thousands of years, I continue
to get frustrated with our modern medical use of well
big pharma SSRIs and benzodiazepines that must be used on
(07:04):
a daily basis continue to line the pockets of drug
manufacturers while people still aren't getting healthy. I've heard of
clients being on the same SSRI antidepressant for decades. Meanwhile,
research is telling us for some people, one experience with
(07:25):
psilocybin or MDMA or DMT can be restorative in healing,
and two or three experiences over the course of a
few months can produce lasting change. And people don't need
to be on these other drugs on a daily basis
for their lives. So however, I still face we face
(07:49):
issues of legality and criminality and where we can do
these things. So just know, as I continue to you know, unfortunately,
you know one more reason, it's been quite a week.
We are wrapping up our studies with IPA. Not there
yet it's the home stretch. It's mile twenty two of
the twenty six mile marathon. We're getting to the finish line.
(08:12):
But then even after the finish line is a two
day intensive I don't know, sixteen hours of lectures and
then we have twelve more hours of supplemental material. They
tricked us, So the finish line, after the finish line,
the stretch is yet to come, and then there's a
two hundred question exam. But as we finish up our studies,
many of us are getting together to discuss how do
(08:35):
we continue to help people with these amazing substances in
ways that are legal and won't get us in trouble
but help people. So as the Meaning Project Community comes
online here in the next few months, that is certainly
(08:56):
going to be you know, at one time, one edition
of the Meeting Project Community was just lecture in education
on Frankel's logo therapy. But in my studies over the
past few years, my work has been come so much
more than that. So the Meeting Project community will have
an area to learn about the meaningful use of these
(09:20):
substances that I've studied, either on your own or with me,
or in a community in a group setting. I will
find a way to provide these safely and legally to
those who want to adventure with me to Oregon, Colorado, Michigan,
(09:45):
Costa Rica, Mexico. Rob's putting those together or maybe just
my backyard. Who knows, but these opportunities will be im sure.
At this point, if you've been a long time listener,
you recognize the change into psychedelic substances for a while.
(10:09):
I promise you we are getting back to more Frankel
and logo therapy. It always ties in there. Love to
hear your feedback. What do you think about this? You
know what? Are you shaking your head and rolling your
eyes and saying, my god, doctor Dan, what are you doing?
Are you intrigued? Are you interested? Do you want to
hop in the Meaning Project community and find out more?
(10:31):
Let me know. Feel free to email me, text me only.
Many of you have my office text as well as
my person Let me know what you think. But a
few weeks ago, I promise you to go more back
into the field of psychology and logo therapy. So I
(10:55):
had a beautiful recent picture in IPI, the Integrative Psychiatry Institute,
and I'm going to try to share the screen here
for those of you on YouTube, for those of you
listening to the podcast, I'll include a link and you
can go check out this image. This is come on
(11:18):
screen share. There we go, beautiful. This is a treatment
map the IPI uses when working with clients, and I
love how it addresses the whole human. You've probably heard
me say before, certainly recently. Excuse me while I get
(11:39):
a little coffee here. Oh shoot, I forgot. This is
a new coffee. My kids thought it was a terrible idea.
This is a ghost pepper infused coffee beans. Instead of
just putting cayenne in my coffee gets you're right there
(11:59):
in the throat a little bit. It is delicious, but
not for everybody's palate. This treatment model here that I'm
showing on the YouTube or on you can look it
up if you got the podcast link right kind of
shows the human in the center with these circles coming
out that are so much more a whole human approach
(12:19):
rather than what I rail against, well, the modern the
twenty five year ago away that Western therapists were trained
and educated. It addresses lifestyle is kind of being the
most outside circle. Of course, the body coming more in
(12:40):
towards the person and then the mind and then what
most meant much of psychology, some of psychology still doesn't
accept and that's the spiritual component. You know. I take
some of that back. Maybe it's more society, whereas I
(13:01):
believe many fields of psychology are recognizing spirituality, the spirit
the nuos, as logo therapy calls it is such a
core and foundational principle to be addressed in human health,
as this model points out lifestyle the outside. I gotta
(13:24):
go back right because my god, Frankel one hundred years ago,
eighty years ago was telling us the human being is
more just the mind and body. He was railing against
Abler and Freud saying no, we have to address the
human spirit. And I just feel so refreshed sitting here
looking at this model as it recognizes spirituality as a core,
(13:48):
the core of human mental health and wellness. Now I
recognize there's a bias. I'm attracted to this kind of study.
This kind of a study is attracted to me, So
we're kind of symbiotic in this. But I hope you
see this and recognize like it is a reality. It
is a psychological fact that human spirituality is such a
core principle and being a healthy human, and we'll talk
(14:12):
about that. I'm gonna go from the outside in, right.
When it comes to lifestyle, lifestyle refers to relationships, sleep, habits, nutrition,
and exercise, some of those things. I called it the
human basics, right, and past versions of the meaning project community? Right,
How relationships? How's our communication? What's our attachment style? Right?
(14:35):
Think it goes all the way back to childhood? And
what is our tendency to isolate? You've heard me say
before that alcohol and isolation. Distillation and isolation is a
recipe for disaster. But just today we kind of joke
of how our teenagers go upstairs or into their rooms
on their phones and could be there for hours at
(14:57):
a time. And that's a non a known issue of adolescence.
I guess you would say that need to isolate, but
sometimes what they're isolating on is detrimental and unhealthy. Go
in there and do things with your teenagers, spend time
with them, but also your partner, your spouse, or yourself.
If you find yourself isolating, it certainly isn't healthy. We
(15:20):
are wired for connection, and in the more healthy ways
we connect and communicate, the healthier we are. Obviously, sleep
is of a key importance. If you're not getting enough sleep,
your brain function will suffer. Right, Insomnia apnea are things
that need to be treated medically. Your circadian rhythm you
can balance, but may need some work. As I've shared before,
(15:44):
I've been I've found myself drinking a little bit of
mugwort t mugwort and have had some of the most
wonderful sleep of my life and then waking up refreshed.
I highly recommend it. It's available on Amazon. Easy to
get to A former psychedelic of the Barbarians and Vikings,
(16:07):
haven't I've just made tea out of it. Apparently you
can smoke it too, because it's a grass, but haven't
done that yet. Maybe someday. Relationships sleep habits, I love
this right. What are our eating habits? This model refers
to disordered eating. Oh boy, we can spend days on that,
(16:27):
our technology habits, you know, I've spent days on that,
and of course our substance habits. I've spent a lifetime
study in that. So our habits are such a key
component to our lifestyle and our overall health. And then
it goes even deeper into nutrition. Diet, toxins, food sensitivities, gluten,
all of these things we have to pay attention to.
And then of course exercise, especially well at all phases
(16:51):
of life. Some form of flexibility, strength and cardio is
such a key ingredient and one that has often missed.
And so when people come to me with depression and anxiety,
these are the low hanging fruit. These are the simple
things to address that you don't need me to address this,
but so many people forget these things, relationships, exercise, habits,
(17:15):
and they're so important to address for overall health and wellness.
This model talks about the body. Some of this needs
to be dealt with in a medical sense, right the gut, brain, access,
the microbiome, leaky gut. These are all things that are
becoming prominent in the research. We need to pay attention
to what is our gut health because what is going
(17:37):
on in our gut impacts our brain. There's a mind
body connection, and what we eat and how we process
it impacts our thinking and our feeling. How's our metabolic regulation?
Are we processing insulin? What are genetics? What are our
hormone levels? I have many clients throughout the years who
(17:58):
found it healthy to go. Get their hormone levels checked
before considering any kind of daily psychotropic or antidepressant. It
might be your hormones. Are they out of whack? Are
they out of whack in relationship to what you're eating.
We know much of the food we are you being
served in the United States is full of hormones and antibiotics,
(18:21):
and that builds up and that Hey, you can hear
me lecture about this all the time. If you're concerned
about mental emotional health, get your hormones checked. How's your
brain working right? Is it firing all the way? Is
there some neuro degenerat disorder? Did you Are you victim
of a TBI that has altered your brain? The Aiman
(18:41):
Clinic does amazing or inspect scans for the brain, but
you can always hop on. There's so many ways to
optimize your brain. A lot of it has to do
with your food. But if you receive some of these
issues TBI or neurodisorders, there's ways to improve that that
impact mental emotional. Immune modulation. We're finding out more and
(19:06):
more about autoimmune disorders, inflammation, infectious disorders, things like this
mold toxins that's right next to it in this kind
of body issue. What are your detox paths? You know,
do you have an excess of metals? I ran into
a sad, sad case probably ten or fifteen years ago,
and I first came to town here a friend of
(19:26):
a friend of a friend was experiencing these terrible difficulties
where he was like degenerating before your eyes. His ability
to speak was like disappearing. He was slurring like a drunk,
completely sober. Turns out his body wasn't processing copper effectively,
(19:47):
and once they established that or able to remove the
copper from his body, it was a path back to normalcy.
But thank god, he is a happy and healthy human
these days. Molds. I've heard so many stories of molds,
whether it was my good friend doctor b Out in
Colorado or people here living a lake life. Mold comes
in and it can definitely affect our mental health, our
(20:11):
physical health. So that's I mean, there's a lot to
consider in the body and the mind body relationship. And
of course when we talk about the mind, right, what
are our traumas? Do we have a single event PTSD
related trauma or is there a complex trauma for some
(20:34):
reason this week, these maybe these past two weeks, I've
had a lot of first responders coming into the office,
police officers, firefighters, veterans with some seriously complex trauma. And well,
(20:54):
going back to my previous conversation, we're finding the modern,
the modern, the thousand year old psychedelic substances like psilocybin
and iva gain are so helpful in helping first responders
and warriors get past their trauma, their complex trauma. And
as I dive into the history of it, you know,
(21:15):
we live in one of the safest times in human history.
Imagine what past cultures went through and what helping professionals help,
you know, first responders of ancient times and warriors went through.
And there's often tales of these coming of age stories
and rituals, war rituals, post war rituals that involve these
substances to help them heal. And it's just it, truly,
(21:39):
it incredibly saddens me and damn near just breaks my
heart to see how these people that want to help
are still struggling years decades later. So for you, when
it comes to your overall mental emotional health, what's your
trauma history? Do you have trauma? Have you now again
(22:00):
talked about this Robin. I talked about this a lot
with some of my other therapists and my friends and
co workers this week. Just because you experienced trauma doesn't
mean you're traumatized. For some people, they develop resilience out
of it. And even if you have been traumatized and
you're working through it, the goal is to develop resilience. Right.
It's much like when I would teach young people about
(22:21):
the triggers of substance abuse that they were trying to avoid.
We can't avoid all difficulty in life. We can't avoid
all triggers, but we can learn to deal with it better.
We can optimize that. When it comes to the mind,
we also talk about beliefs, our values, our conflicting polarized thoughts, feelings,
and power empowerment. These are all things that are in
(22:41):
the realm of psychology and therapy that you can be
helped with. But sometimes just a good self help book
the right podcast can help you. But as you can
see from this model, it all comes down to the core,
our core, our healthy core, as we talk about in
logo therapy, and this model illustrates our spirituality. How do
we deal with grief? How do we deal with loss?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Right?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
How do we deal with the existential crisis of knowing
we're going to die? My goodness, how many times have
we talked about this in Frankel's Tragic Triad? How do
we deal with disconnection? If we go all the way
out to the top of the model, here it talks
about connection and communication, and in the core here it
talks about feeling disconnected. And of course how ironic you get.
(23:24):
You can see the logo there. This is straight from
the Integrated Psychiatry Institute, the school where I'm attending IPI.
But what does that say right there? What is a
part of spirituality meaning make it? I say? We say
in local therapy discovering meaning? But here they talk about
still in some ways finding meaning. If we are misaligned
(23:45):
in these areas as you see on this model, what
are the symptoms depression, anxiety or what we call depression
and anxiety? As I've said before, the way I was
trained twenty five years ago to talk to a person,
look at their criteria, some of their criteria, and match
them to a diagnosis called anxiety or depression just doesn't
work anymore. Many people claim to suffer from anxiety and depression.
(24:10):
But if we look at this model. Maybe it's a
combination that they can't communicate in the relationships there there
Therefore they feel isolated and disconnected and aggrieved that they
can't connect along with Maybe they experience the TBI and
have some kind of metals in their body or experiencing
some molds. They've got a little bit of leaky gut
going on and they're not exercising. Look at all the
(24:32):
possibilities that we can impact to change things like anxiety
and depression. We can impact insomnia, mania, irritability, How many
irritable pep I know there's an irritable little troll out
there listening right now. And I'm not referring to anybody
in general, but a very specific person. He knows who
he is, and I love him dearly. But you know,
(24:53):
we all struggle with irritability at one point or another.
Which one of these or two or ten of these
situations impact irritability? And of course we get into the
realm of psychology of psychosis, compulsions and attention headaches, impulsivity. Right,
there's so many things there. Let me unshared to continue
(25:16):
the conversation, and please I'll include a link in the
show notes. Go have a look at this. It's such
a beautiful and powerful model. So I don't know. I
love that model. It's a beautiful synthesis of everything I
get to work on when people come into my office
(25:37):
or when I share with them on Zoom, or when
I talk to you here. These are the things that
over the course of nearly two hundred episodes of The
Meaning Project, we've talked about and addressed in different ways,
and I will continue to address in different ways through
this work, through my work with the Cardion app. Please
go download it. We are going into sales mode here soon,
(25:59):
so you still have an opportunity to download it for free,
but at some point there will be a paywall. I'm
doing that work and bringing Ketymine and other psychedelic assistant
therapy through the office, the Meaning Project community, and of
course my own personal work. I think I've shared with
you As I said, these are my four words, my
four topics at the beginning of the year, not my resolutions,
(26:20):
but the words that I was going to focus on.
Cardion cap Ketemine assistant psychotherapy, and psychedelic assistant psycho therapy,
the Meaning Project community, and one hundred miles I started
training for that one hundred mile bike ride. It won't
It certainly will not be a race. It will be
(26:40):
a bike ride simply to finish and accomplish and logan miles.
I don't know. Five days a week. I think two
days off, five days on, ten here, twenty, there different things.
So for me, I've recognized that is something as I
look at my calendar and I go, oh, God, is
so full, it's because I've blocked out. I've actually consciously
(27:04):
blocked out time these five days every week, and actually
there's something on my calendar even on the rest days.
I've blocked out time to rest because we are all
pretty busy these days, and I think we are all
feeling a bit of dysregulation. And many of us blame
(27:24):
the political situation in the United States and all the
I don't know how you assess it, chaos or constructiveness.
Whatever's going on has everybody, I don't know, We're all
feeling it in different ways. And it is important to
get in that calendar, to go back to this model
that I just shared with you, and look at what
(27:46):
do you need to do? What are two areas this
month that you want to improve upon? And what are
you going to do with it, and how are you
going to block out time to do it? I would
challenge you if you feel any areas of dysregulation that
we just talked about, go look at this model. Pick
two of them, Pick two and starting. I mean, this
(28:07):
is a beautiful time of year as we transition from
winter to spring, as we go from kind of death
to rebirth, right, and you know trees are blooming flowers
ideally or blooming here. How are you going to bloom?
How do you want to grow? How will you change?
What areas will you address? How will you address them?
(28:30):
And how will you block it out on your schedule
to make that happen? That is not the way I
saw this podcast going. But much like app mental health
and wellness, app development, or psychedelic journeys, life does not
always go the way we plan it to. But ideally
(28:52):
there's some kind of pleasant ending at some point, some
kind of finish line we can look forward to. And
the one finish line we know well, I mean, we're
this again. It's bicycle Day, April nineteenth. Just a few
days ago we celebrated tax Day, right, and so we
know at some point the tax day comes every year
(29:14):
and death comes for all of us. What are you
going to do to continue to fill those granaries of
time as Frankel calls them, to continue to make meaningful choices,
and to grow and evolve, as doctor Frankel calls it,
to become, to become the human being that you are
supposed to be, to accomplish the tasks you were put
(29:34):
here to accomplish. Man, I love talking about this stuff.
I love sharing with you. I would love to share
with you directly in the Meaning Project community, working one
to one or in groups as we move forward with
different projects. So hey, as always, thank you for this
opportunity to bring a little bit of mental health and meaning,
(29:55):
purpose and resilience to your day.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Take care, S S S S S SA
Hello, and welcome to the Meeting Project podcast. I'm your host,
doctor daniel A Franz, and as always, thank you for
this opportunity to bring a little bit of meaning, purpose
and resilience to your day, to your week, to your months,
your year, to your life. And boy, what a I
know I've been saying this a lot lately. What a
week it's been. A good friend, classmate in the Integrative
(00:48):
Psychiatry Institute Psychonauts, and friend of the show. Guest of
the show, therapist Rob Romano, just left, like literally just
an hour ago, packed up. He being the digital nomad
that he is, stuffed off here on his way from
South Florida to Connecticut, which is quite the trajectory, not
(01:12):
a straight line, on his way home for Easter to
visit his family. Decided to stay with my family for
a couple of days, and wow, we had some amazing
conversations we both Although we both had to work, we
dedicated some time just to kind of hang out, hang
out with my family and talk about the work that
we do. And it was interesting. You know, I have
(01:34):
coffee with a lot of other psychedelic therapists, ketamine providers,
et cetera. Trying to figure out just what we're going
to do with this stuff, how we're going to help people.
As you know, more and more, just this week, just
the conversations I had with Rob and interestingly, the the
insight that my family was able to provide through these
(01:57):
conversations only continue use to reinforce. We had coffee with Juliatis,
former guest of the show My My Ketymine Provider, and
just talking about how much kenemine and psilocybin specifically, those
are the areas I'm working in now. I'm reading a
(02:19):
book in Psychedelic Cannabis Use. Why well, because it's more available.
It's still not available in my area. But cannabis has
gotten a bad rap for so long we haven't studied
the clinical opportunities to it. There's a great book out
(02:40):
there that describes it, and I am neck deep in
that right now. And then of course we have you know,
some of our peers, Robin, my peers and friends are
working in I begain bofu, d m T five MEO
DMT and a variety of other substances that are bringing
(03:03):
great healing to people, which might sound strange, right, What Dan,
what are you talking about? All these illegal drugs. Right,
they've been illegal for about I don't know, a little
less than one hundred years, maybe fifty years. But each
one of these I begain, Cannabis, psilocybin, dmt LSD all
(03:31):
come from nature, right, and we haven't been able to
use them, to experiment with them, to research them for
so long. We're just now getting to it. And it's
an exciting science actually, now that I think about it.
Oh my goodness, I am recording today's podcast on bicycle Day.
(03:53):
Bicycle Day, April nineteenth is a traditional holiday. I don't
know if it's holiday. It's something we recognize as the
kind of the beginning of the psychedelic renaissance. It was
on this day. Ooh, I can't remember the year, nineteen
thirty eight ish forty two. Maybe I'll have to do
(04:17):
the research. Chemists, Swiss chemists Albert Hoffmann had refound LSD
and he had actually so ls actually you know, it's
a naturally occurring acid in decaying fungus, I believe, found
(04:42):
on the barley plant. And he had recreated an a
laboratory and put it away years prior and then for
some reason got it out in that year and was
working on it a few days before April nineteenth and
found he felt a little funny after using it and
(05:07):
couldn't figure out why. I did some thinking, did some research,
and that may have been on the sixteenth or seventeenth,
and realized, oh my goodness, it was this compound I
was working with. He went back to his lab today
April nineteenth, and more scientifically administered a dose by today's standards,
a fairly large dose, and had a full on psychedelic experience.
(05:34):
But he didn't know that. He thought he may have
been going a little crazy, and so his assistant was
not working with him that day, and he couldn't get
a car ride home, so he rode his bicycle back
to his house from his laboratory and proceeded to have
(05:57):
a psychedelic and mystical experience. So that was kind of
the birth of the use of LSD for psychedelics and
for healing, and eventually co opted by the CIA of
the United States in the fifties for the MS. I'd
(06:18):
have to look up the numbers. My memory is not going.
We were just talking about that yesterday. Memory not great
this week, too much conversation. I'd up thinking, but that
yes their experiments to use LSD as a al as
an agent for for psychological warfare. All of that to say,
(06:41):
you know, as I continue to study these things and
put myself in this world and see the healing potential
of indigenous substances used for thousands of years, I continue
to get frustrated with our modern medical use of well
big pharma SSRIs and benzodiazepines that must be used on
(07:04):
a daily basis continue to line the pockets of drug
manufacturers while people still aren't getting healthy. I've heard of
clients being on the same SSRI antidepressant for decades. Meanwhile,
research is telling us for some people, one experience with
(07:25):
psilocybin or MDMA or DMT can be restorative in healing,
and two or three experiences over the course of a
few months can produce lasting change. And people don't need
to be on these other drugs on a daily basis
for their lives. So however, I still face we face
(07:49):
issues of legality and criminality and where we can do
these things. So just know, as I continue to you know, unfortunately,
you know one more reason, it's been quite a week.
We are wrapping up our studies with IPA. Not there
yet it's the home stretch. It's mile twenty two of
the twenty six mile marathon. We're getting to the finish line.
(08:12):
But then even after the finish line is a two
day intensive I don't know, sixteen hours of lectures and
then we have twelve more hours of supplemental material. They
tricked us, So the finish line, after the finish line,
the stretch is yet to come, and then there's a
two hundred question exam. But as we finish up our studies,
many of us are getting together to discuss how do
(08:35):
we continue to help people with these amazing substances in
ways that are legal and won't get us in trouble
but help people. So as the Meaning Project Community comes
online here in the next few months, that is certainly
(08:56):
going to be you know, at one time, one edition
of the Meeting Project Community was just lecture in education
on Frankel's logo therapy. But in my studies over the
past few years, my work has been come so much
more than that. So the Meeting Project community will have
an area to learn about the meaningful use of these
(09:20):
substances that I've studied, either on your own or with me,
or in a community in a group setting. I will
find a way to provide these safely and legally to
those who want to adventure with me to Oregon, Colorado, Michigan,
(09:45):
Costa Rica, Mexico. Rob's putting those together or maybe just
my backyard. Who knows, but these opportunities will be im sure.
At this point, if you've been a long time listener,
you recognize the change into psychedelic substances for a while.
(10:09):
I promise you we are getting back to more Frankel
and logo therapy. It always ties in there. Love to
hear your feedback. What do you think about this? You
know what? Are you shaking your head and rolling your
eyes and saying, my god, doctor Dan, what are you doing?
Are you intrigued? Are you interested? Do you want to
hop in the Meaning Project community and find out more?
(10:31):
Let me know. Feel free to email me, text me only.
Many of you have my office text as well as
my person Let me know what you think. But a
few weeks ago, I promise you to go more back
into the field of psychology and logo therapy. So I
(10:55):
had a beautiful recent picture in IPI, the Integrative Psychiatry Institute,
and I'm going to try to share the screen here
for those of you on YouTube, for those of you
listening to the podcast, I'll include a link and you
can go check out this image. This is come on
(11:18):
screen share. There we go, beautiful. This is a treatment
map the IPI uses when working with clients, and I
love how it addresses the whole human. You've probably heard
me say before, certainly recently. Excuse me while I get
(11:39):
a little coffee here. Oh shoot, I forgot. This is
a new coffee. My kids thought it was a terrible idea.
This is a ghost pepper infused coffee beans. Instead of
just putting cayenne in my coffee gets you're right there
(11:59):
in the throat a little bit. It is delicious, but
not for everybody's palate. This treatment model here that I'm
showing on the YouTube or on you can look it
up if you got the podcast link right kind of
shows the human in the center with these circles coming
out that are so much more a whole human approach
(12:19):
rather than what I rail against, well, the modern the
twenty five year ago away that Western therapists were trained
and educated. It addresses lifestyle is kind of being the
most outside circle. Of course, the body coming more in
(12:40):
towards the person and then the mind and then what
most meant much of psychology, some of psychology still doesn't
accept and that's the spiritual component. You know. I take
some of that back. Maybe it's more society, whereas I
(13:01):
believe many fields of psychology are recognizing spirituality, the spirit
the nuos, as logo therapy calls it is such a
core and foundational principle to be addressed in human health,
as this model points out lifestyle the outside. I gotta
(13:24):
go back right because my god, Frankel one hundred years ago,
eighty years ago was telling us the human being is
more just the mind and body. He was railing against
Abler and Freud saying no, we have to address the
human spirit. And I just feel so refreshed sitting here
looking at this model as it recognizes spirituality as a core,
(13:48):
the core of human mental health and wellness. Now I
recognize there's a bias. I'm attracted to this kind of study.
This kind of a study is attracted to me, So
we're kind of symbiotic in this. But I hope you
see this and recognize like it is a reality. It
is a psychological fact that human spirituality is such a
core principle and being a healthy human, and we'll talk
(14:12):
about that. I'm gonna go from the outside in, right.
When it comes to lifestyle, lifestyle refers to relationships, sleep, habits, nutrition,
and exercise, some of those things. I called it the
human basics, right, and past versions of the meaning project community? Right,
How relationships? How's our communication? What's our attachment style? Right?
(14:35):
Think it goes all the way back to childhood? And
what is our tendency to isolate? You've heard me say
before that alcohol and isolation. Distillation and isolation is a
recipe for disaster. But just today we kind of joke
of how our teenagers go upstairs or into their rooms
on their phones and could be there for hours at
(14:57):
a time. And that's a non a known issue of adolescence.
I guess you would say that need to isolate, but
sometimes what they're isolating on is detrimental and unhealthy. Go
in there and do things with your teenagers, spend time
with them, but also your partner, your spouse, or yourself.
If you find yourself isolating, it certainly isn't healthy. We
(15:20):
are wired for connection, and in the more healthy ways
we connect and communicate, the healthier we are. Obviously, sleep
is of a key importance. If you're not getting enough sleep,
your brain function will suffer. Right, Insomnia apnea are things
that need to be treated medically. Your circadian rhythm you
can balance, but may need some work. As I've shared before,
(15:44):
I've been I've found myself drinking a little bit of
mugwort t mugwort and have had some of the most
wonderful sleep of my life and then waking up refreshed.
I highly recommend it. It's available on Amazon. Easy to
get to A former psychedelic of the Barbarians and Vikings,
(16:07):
haven't I've just made tea out of it. Apparently you
can smoke it too, because it's a grass, but haven't
done that yet. Maybe someday. Relationships sleep habits, I love
this right. What are our eating habits? This model refers
to disordered eating. Oh boy, we can spend days on that,
(16:27):
our technology habits, you know, I've spent days on that,
and of course our substance habits. I've spent a lifetime
study in that. So our habits are such a key
component to our lifestyle and our overall health. And then
it goes even deeper into nutrition. Diet, toxins, food sensitivities, gluten,
all of these things we have to pay attention to.
And then of course exercise, especially well at all phases
(16:51):
of life. Some form of flexibility, strength and cardio is
such a key ingredient and one that has often missed.
And so when people come to me with depression and anxiety,
these are the low hanging fruit. These are the simple
things to address that you don't need me to address this,
but so many people forget these things, relationships, exercise, habits,
(17:15):
and they're so important to address for overall health and wellness.
This model talks about the body. Some of this needs
to be dealt with in a medical sense, right the gut, brain, access,
the microbiome, leaky gut. These are all things that are
becoming prominent in the research. We need to pay attention
to what is our gut health because what is going
(17:37):
on in our gut impacts our brain. There's a mind
body connection, and what we eat and how we process
it impacts our thinking and our feeling. How's our metabolic regulation?
Are we processing insulin? What are genetics? What are our
hormone levels? I have many clients throughout the years who
(17:58):
found it healthy to go. Get their hormone levels checked
before considering any kind of daily psychotropic or antidepressant. It
might be your hormones. Are they out of whack? Are
they out of whack in relationship to what you're eating.
We know much of the food we are you being
served in the United States is full of hormones and antibiotics,
(18:21):
and that builds up and that Hey, you can hear
me lecture about this all the time. If you're concerned
about mental emotional health, get your hormones checked. How's your
brain working right? Is it firing all the way? Is
there some neuro degenerat disorder? Did you Are you victim
of a TBI that has altered your brain? The Aiman
(18:41):
Clinic does amazing or inspect scans for the brain, but
you can always hop on. There's so many ways to
optimize your brain. A lot of it has to do
with your food. But if you receive some of these
issues TBI or neurodisorders, there's ways to improve that that
impact mental emotional. Immune modulation. We're finding out more and
(19:06):
more about autoimmune disorders, inflammation, infectious disorders, things like this
mold toxins that's right next to it in this kind
of body issue. What are your detox paths? You know,
do you have an excess of metals? I ran into
a sad, sad case probably ten or fifteen years ago,
and I first came to town here a friend of
(19:26):
a friend of a friend was experiencing these terrible difficulties
where he was like degenerating before your eyes. His ability
to speak was like disappearing. He was slurring like a drunk,
completely sober. Turns out his body wasn't processing copper effectively,
(19:47):
and once they established that or able to remove the
copper from his body, it was a path back to normalcy.
But thank god, he is a happy and healthy human
these days. Molds. I've heard so many stories of molds,
whether it was my good friend doctor b Out in
Colorado or people here living a lake life. Mold comes
in and it can definitely affect our mental health, our
(20:11):
physical health. So that's I mean, there's a lot to
consider in the body and the mind body relationship. And
of course when we talk about the mind, right, what
are our traumas? Do we have a single event PTSD
related trauma or is there a complex trauma for some
(20:34):
reason this week, these maybe these past two weeks, I've
had a lot of first responders coming into the office,
police officers, firefighters, veterans with some seriously complex trauma. And well,
(20:54):
going back to my previous conversation, we're finding the modern,
the modern, the thousand year old psychedelic substances like psilocybin
and iva gain are so helpful in helping first responders
and warriors get past their trauma, their complex trauma. And
as I dive into the history of it, you know,
(21:15):
we live in one of the safest times in human history.
Imagine what past cultures went through and what helping professionals help,
you know, first responders of ancient times and warriors went through.
And there's often tales of these coming of age stories
and rituals, war rituals, post war rituals that involve these
substances to help them heal. And it's just it, truly,
(21:39):
it incredibly saddens me and damn near just breaks my
heart to see how these people that want to help
are still struggling years decades later. So for you, when
it comes to your overall mental emotional health, what's your
trauma history? Do you have trauma? Have you now again
(22:00):
talked about this Robin. I talked about this a lot
with some of my other therapists and my friends and
co workers this week. Just because you experienced trauma doesn't
mean you're traumatized. For some people, they develop resilience out
of it. And even if you have been traumatized and
you're working through it, the goal is to develop resilience. Right.
It's much like when I would teach young people about
(22:21):
the triggers of substance abuse that they were trying to avoid.
We can't avoid all difficulty in life. We can't avoid
all triggers, but we can learn to deal with it better.
We can optimize that. When it comes to the mind,
we also talk about beliefs, our values, our conflicting polarized thoughts, feelings,
and power empowerment. These are all things that are in
(22:41):
the realm of psychology and therapy that you can be
helped with. But sometimes just a good self help book
the right podcast can help you. But as you can
see from this model, it all comes down to the core,
our core, our healthy core, as we talk about in
logo therapy, and this model illustrates our spirituality. How do
we deal with grief? How do we deal with loss?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Right?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
How do we deal with the existential crisis of knowing
we're going to die? My goodness, how many times have
we talked about this in Frankel's Tragic Triad? How do
we deal with disconnection? If we go all the way
out to the top of the model, here it talks
about connection and communication, and in the core here it
talks about feeling disconnected. And of course how ironic you get.
(23:24):
You can see the logo there. This is straight from
the Integrated Psychiatry Institute, the school where I'm attending IPI.
But what does that say right there? What is a
part of spirituality meaning make it? I say? We say
in local therapy discovering meaning? But here they talk about
still in some ways finding meaning. If we are misaligned
(23:45):
in these areas as you see on this model, what
are the symptoms depression, anxiety or what we call depression
and anxiety? As I've said before, the way I was
trained twenty five years ago to talk to a person,
look at their criteria, some of their criteria, and match
them to a diagnosis called anxiety or depression just doesn't
work anymore. Many people claim to suffer from anxiety and depression.
(24:10):
But if we look at this model. Maybe it's a
combination that they can't communicate in the relationships there there
Therefore they feel isolated and disconnected and aggrieved that they
can't connect along with Maybe they experience the TBI and
have some kind of metals in their body or experiencing
some molds. They've got a little bit of leaky gut
going on and they're not exercising. Look at all the
(24:32):
possibilities that we can impact to change things like anxiety
and depression. We can impact insomnia, mania, irritability, How many
irritable pep I know there's an irritable little troll out
there listening right now. And I'm not referring to anybody
in general, but a very specific person. He knows who
he is, and I love him dearly. But you know,
(24:53):
we all struggle with irritability at one point or another.
Which one of these or two or ten of these
situations impact irritability? And of course we get into the
realm of psychology of psychosis, compulsions and attention headaches, impulsivity. Right,
there's so many things there. Let me unshared to continue
(25:16):
the conversation, and please I'll include a link in the
show notes. Go have a look at this. It's such
a beautiful and powerful model. So I don't know. I
love that model. It's a beautiful synthesis of everything I
get to work on when people come into my office
(25:37):
or when I share with them on Zoom, or when
I talk to you here. These are the things that
over the course of nearly two hundred episodes of The
Meaning Project, we've talked about and addressed in different ways,
and I will continue to address in different ways through
this work, through my work with the Cardion app. Please
go download it. We are going into sales mode here soon,
(25:59):
so you still have an opportunity to download it for free,
but at some point there will be a paywall. I'm
doing that work and bringing Ketymine and other psychedelic assistant
therapy through the office, the Meaning Project community, and of
course my own personal work. I think I've shared with
you As I said, these are my four words, my
four topics at the beginning of the year, not my resolutions,
(26:20):
but the words that I was going to focus on.
Cardion cap Ketemine assistant psychotherapy, and psychedelic assistant psycho therapy,
the Meaning Project community, and one hundred miles I started
training for that one hundred mile bike ride. It won't
It certainly will not be a race. It will be
(26:40):
a bike ride simply to finish and accomplish and logan miles.
I don't know. Five days a week. I think two
days off, five days on, ten here, twenty, there different things.
So for me, I've recognized that is something as I
look at my calendar and I go, oh, God, is
so full, it's because I've blocked out. I've actually consciously
(27:04):
blocked out time these five days every week, and actually
there's something on my calendar even on the rest days.
I've blocked out time to rest because we are all
pretty busy these days, and I think we are all
feeling a bit of dysregulation. And many of us blame
(27:24):
the political situation in the United States and all the
I don't know how you assess it, chaos or constructiveness.
Whatever's going on has everybody, I don't know, We're all
feeling it in different ways. And it is important to
get in that calendar, to go back to this model
that I just shared with you, and look at what
(27:46):
do you need to do? What are two areas this
month that you want to improve upon? And what are
you going to do with it, and how are you
going to block out time to do it? I would
challenge you if you feel any areas of dysregulation that
we just talked about, go look at this model. Pick
two of them, Pick two and starting. I mean, this
(28:07):
is a beautiful time of year as we transition from
winter to spring, as we go from kind of death
to rebirth, right, and you know trees are blooming flowers
ideally or blooming here. How are you going to bloom?
How do you want to grow? How will you change?
What areas will you address? How will you address them?
(28:30):
And how will you block it out on your schedule
to make that happen? That is not the way I
saw this podcast going. But much like app mental health
and wellness, app development, or psychedelic journeys, life does not
always go the way we plan it to. But ideally
(28:52):
there's some kind of pleasant ending at some point, some
kind of finish line we can look forward to. And
the one finish line we know well, I mean, we're
this again. It's bicycle Day, April nineteenth. Just a few
days ago we celebrated tax Day, right, and so we
know at some point the tax day comes every year
(29:14):
and death comes for all of us. What are you
going to do to continue to fill those granaries of
time as Frankel calls them, to continue to make meaningful choices,
and to grow and evolve, as doctor Frankel calls it,
to become, to become the human being that you are
supposed to be, to accomplish the tasks you were put
(29:34):
here to accomplish. Man, I love talking about this stuff.
I love sharing with you. I would love to share
with you directly in the Meaning Project community, working one
to one or in groups as we move forward with
different projects. So hey, as always, thank you for this
opportunity to bring a little bit of mental health and meaning,
(29:55):
purpose and resilience to your day.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Take care, S S S S S SA
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