Joe Sanok (00:00:00) – Using different phone systems and devices to manage your practice is a headache. Open phone makes it simple with a single app that brings your business calls, texts, and contacts into a single place across all your devices. Activate your seven day free trial and get 20% off your first six months when you sign up at open phone. Com forward slash Jo. Again that’s open phone.com/jo. phone.com/joe. Speaker UU (00:00:36) – This is the. Joe Sanok (00:00:37) – Practice of the practice podcast with Joe San. Accession number 1033. Welcome welcome, welcome. we are hanging out here for Level Up Week and have had a full day yesterday. We are halfway through today, with our second of four webinars tomorrow and on Thursday we have even more coming your way. make sure you register for any of those extra ones over at practice of the practice.com/level up. Then you’re going to get access to all the things that we’re covering this week. I’m really excited today we’re talking about psychedelic assisted therapy today and today’s webinar. if you don’t know me, I’m Joe. Santokh and I started practice of the practice in 2012. Joe Sanok (00:01:25) – to really explore the business and clinical side of running a private practice, launch the practice of the Practice podcast in 2013. And, so we’re about up to episode 1000, June 4th, we’re going to hit episode 1000 of the podcast. So really excited to have so many people that we know here in the room already and have registered. I’m really excited to, have Jonathan Robinson. So, Jonathan’s team reached out to me, in regards to his newest book about MDMA assisted therapy and, the potential of MDMA, and had him on the podcast as part of our psychedelics series that’s going to go live in May. so it hasn’t gone live yet, but in May of 2024, that’s going live. But I was like, we gotta have Jonathan be a part of this. So often we’re hearing from clinicians that psychedelic assisted therapy is something they’re interested in, something that they’re focusing on, and that also that their clients are asking for and wanting to know more about. So we want to learn about kind of the ethics behind it. Joe Sanok (00:02:22) – We want to know about the the lore behind it or what the FDA is doing. As a reminder, Jonathan and I are not attorneys. and my attorney wants me to remind you that some of the things that we discuss are federally illegal. You always want to consult your own attorney in regards to your scope of practice and things like that. so that’s our disclaimer. right now, Jonathan is a psychotherapist, a bestselling author of 14 books, a professional speaker from Northern California. He has reached over 200 million people around the world with his practical methods, and his work has been translated into 47 languages. Jonathan has made numerous appearances on The Oprah Show, CNN, as well as other national TV talk shows, and for the last couple of years, Jonathan has been teaching other therapists and healers a protocol for doing MDMA assisted therapy over zoom. Jonathan. I’m so excited to have you here with us today. Jonathan Robinson (00:03:14) – Well, thank you, Joe. This is going to be fun and very informative. I’m going to do a, a PowerPoint talk for about 20 or 30 minutes and then answer a lot of questions. Jonathan Robinson (00:03:27) – because people have a lot of questions. I actually am doing a training now, regarding MDMA, for people, coaches, therapists, etc. it’s the largest training in the world, currently have over 250 people in it. And so what’s happening in this space is really wild. And I thought I would start with a PowerPoint, which hopefully I can put up soon and, go over some stuff and then we’ll answer a bunch of questions. It’s, it’s an exciting time in this space, as you know. Yeah, absolutely. So a little bit of my background. I got master’s degree back in 1984 on the therapeutic effects of MDMA and PTSD. And then two weeks later, the government made it illegal. so I’ve been kind of an underground therapist for the last 40 years. I’ve led about 800 journeys, and I’ve written a lot of books. Some of them became bestsellers, but my specialty has always been trying to find the most effective methods on the planet for helping to heal people, whether it be psychologically or spiritually. Jonathan Robinson (00:04:37) – And I offer trainings in that regard, obviously. But what got me interested in this was that I had a very difficult childhood. I had stepfather used to beat me up a lot, and I decided that once I got the household, I needed to figure out a way to heal myself. And when I came across MDMA, I realized that this was something very, very powerful. Obviously, I studied it academically, but it really made a difference in my life. And I’ve noticed that, you know, doing one MDMA journey with somebody that I facilitate is equal to about doing 2 to 3 years of normal therapy. the results are really incredible. That’s why the FDA is going to, for the first time in its history, take a, a legal drug and make it a medically prescribed drug. They’ve never done that before, not even for marijuana, but the effects of MDMA, were so positive in the studies that they did that. hopefully this August, they’ll be changing, the law around that. As I said, it’s never been done before. Jonathan Robinson (00:05:52) – So it’s been quite a journey. It’s taken 30 years of studies to get enough research to show that this is an amazing medicine that really does heal people, especially of things like PTSD. Now I had two sets of parents. One were very violent, but the others had parents was actually very good. And, they once asked me if they could take MDMA. I was a little bit surprised, but I said, yeah, you know, here’s the medicine and here’s how you might want to take in a good sentence setting. Well, years later, I asked them if, if they had taken the medicine and they said, well, yeah, we took it. So I asked him what happened, and they said, well, nothing happened. And I said, really? Well, what’d you do that night? And they said, well, you know, we waited like 10 or 15 minutes for the drug to take effect. But when it didn’t take effect, we had nothing planned for the night. Jonathan Robinson (00:06:46) – So we ended up sitting on the couch and it ended up being a really beautiful evening. We talked about how much we loved each other and how lucky we were for our lives, and how wonderful things were between us and our kids. And then we cuddled on the couch for a few hours, and it ended up being the most wonderful night of our marriage, despite the fact that the drug never took effect. Of course I’m laughing through all this because that’s exactly what the drug does. And what was interesting to me is that, you know, it didn’t feel like a drug to them. And that’s one of the things I like about MDMA. It just makes you feel like your best self. And in therapy, it allows you to get past all your defenses and get right to the heart of your issues. That’s why you can do so much in a short period of time. Now there’s other medicines as well. There’s things like ketamine. ketamine has been shown to be very effective in helping treatment resistant depression. Jonathan Robinson (00:07:48) – It’s also been effective in helping anxiety disorders, getting people to meditate and experience the peace of meditation at an accelerated rate. But one of the things I like about MDMA is it’s a little bit like a Swiss Army knife. It does everything well. And, you know, whether you’re using it for post-traumatic stress disorder or anxiety or depression or life decisions or certainly couples therapy, it really with a trained guide, it can really do amazing things. And we’re lucky that this medicine is likely to get FDA approval this year. psilocybin therapy is in the news. And LSD therapy, they just did a major LSD study showing that one dose of LSD can help people with anxiety disorders more than any other drug. just one dose. So that’s pretty amazing. Psilocybin is becoming more legal in different places, meaning there’s cities such as Oakland, California or, all of Oregon or Colorado are now decriminalizing and making psilocybin mushrooms legal. And that’s going to continue as well. And then, of course, there’s mixing medicines. You know, mixing psilocybin with MDMA is called, hippie flipping. Jonathan Robinson (00:09:15) – Mixing LSD with MDMA is called candy flipping, and these also have great therapeutic potential, although they haven’t been studied quite as much. Now, many of you here probably are familiar with what’s called maps, which is stands for the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies. They’re a group, set to try to legalize and medicalized some of these, substances. And they’ve had great, ability to do that. Obviously, MDMA is one of them. And, they’re also studying things like ibogaine and ketamine and, marijuana as well. But they have a protocol for using MDMA that was developed like 30 years ago. Somewhat by accident, to tell you the truth. And, a lot of people are following their protocol, not because it’s the best protocol, but it’s because the one that is likely to get FDA approval. What they do is they put a blindfold over clients that take the medicine, and then they have them listen to evocative music with headphones on. So they’re not really doing therapy during the journey. And the reason they did this is that they wanted to get FDA approval. Jonathan Robinson (00:10:41) – So the FDA stands for Food and Drug Administration, not the Food and Therapy Administration. So they really weren’t allowed to do therapy during the actual journey. Well, in my protocol, we do a one hour discovery call. maybe some time before the journey, maybe a week before. And I ask a lot of questions to see what success looks like and what people want to get out of the experience. And then we set a time to do a five hour journey. And in that five hour journey, we actually do therapy. I have a lot of therapeutic interventions in which people are, really going to trauma, really going to other issues, relationship issues, anxiety, depression, whatever they have going on. And it really accelerates it tremendously. Because there’s on MDMA, you feel safe, you feel like your normal defenses are gone and you can almost like, like get deep into the brain and rewire things very easily. It’s pretty amazing that way. Then about a week later, we do an integration call in which I take the the insights and discoveries and talk about how to put them into their daily life. Jonathan Robinson (00:11:59) – That’s my protocol. Now, I mainly have been able to do this either in person or over zoom, And I don’t work with any of the other psychedelics over zoom. They’re too unpredictable. But of the 800 journeys I’ve led, with MDMA, maybe 300 of them over zoom, I really haven’t had any major problems whatsoever. MDMA is very well tolerated. People don’t really have bad trips. Hardly ever. Maybe one tenth of 1%. But, in the 800 journeys I’ve led, nobody’s had what could be called a a bad trip. So it is one of those things that because it’s can be done over zoom, it greatly reduces the cost, makes it much easier for people to access. I mentioned a little bit about the maps, protocol. but even though they’re not doing therapy on the drug, they still had to have 80% effectiveness for helping people with PTSD. The Food and Drug Administration wanted to find out if you just take a pill will cure your PTSD. And in fact, it does. Now, my opinion is they’ll work better if you’re actually doing therapy on the medicine. Jonathan Robinson (00:13:13) – But, just taking the pill by itself seems to work quite well. so that’s pretty interesting that it has that type of effect, and a lot of veterans are already being helped with it. There’s a lot of studies dealing with war veterans and such, and it’s very moving to watch these transformations. you know, people who’ve had PTSD for 40 years who might be hard to function, you know, even going out of their house. They. Do the either maps protocol or my protocol and they’re better and it’s, it’s it’s very heartwarming to watch. So a lot of times people ask about integration. And I believe that most psychedelic therapy, whether it be MDMA. Psilocybin, LSD, ketamine, whatever, they really need a lot more improvement on how to do integration. right now that’s kind of like a weak link in the chain. And fortunately I have developed a protocol which is very integrative. in many ways, I’ll talk about in a moment. But, you know, you can’t just allow these insights to languish. Jonathan Robinson (00:14:26) – You need to make sure that they put them in their life into specific behavior changes. maps organization suggests that people journal maybe form a group with other people taking these medicines and talk about them or, you know, do more therapy, talk therapy afterwards. I think that’s helpful. I like to create a plan for people in which they actually write a contract as to what changes they plan to do. Like, maybe I’m going to meditate for 15 minutes a day, or I’m going to say one nice thing to my partner every day, or I’m going to stop, blaming somebody or whatever. It is very specific things that they’re trying to change. And I have a way of motivating them to make sure that they are accountable to these changes. So, they might email me once a week as to how they did on the plan changes that they’re trying to do with some of my clients. I do ongoing coaching or therapy, and that helps them to also, keep these changes alive. So the future what is the future of these medicines and psychedelic therapy? Well, I mentioned that MDMA is likely to get FDA approval for change in its status. Jonathan Robinson (00:15:51) – this August, it looks like that will allow the Maps protocol to go forward, but it’s going to take a long time for the government to actually, get to a place where, you know, a doctor can write a prescription and you can get your MDMA. They tend to work slowly in Australia. Last year, a year ago, they did the same thing where they reclassified MDMA, but only one person is legally done the therapy so far. So these things take time and even when they are done, they’re going to be very expensive. Because the FDA protocol involved two therapists sitting in the room, two therapists with PhDs. So they think that this therapy will eventually in clinics. Legal clinics cost about $14,000. now, insurance may eventually pay for some of that, but it’s going to be a long road. what I’m trying to do is teach underground therapists, meaning therapists, coaches, whatever, how to do this type of therapy very successfully. How to avoid bad outcomes like contraindications. What medicines don’t go together well? How to do specific therapy protocols that have been shown to be very effective. Jonathan Robinson (00:17:13) – and most of the people I know doing this work are charging somewhere between 1 and $2000 for the whole thing. they’re still making, you know, anywhere from 200, 180 to $300 an hour. So it’s not like they’re, doing volunteer work here. But, you know, if you can make money $200 an hour helping people transform their lives in a way that’s incredibly moving. That’s a good deal for everyone. And personally, I’m booked up many months in advance, for doing this type of therapy. That’s why I’m training. I currently have 250 people in my training that just started, a few days ago. If people are interested in, perhaps becoming part of that training, they can email me at my website, which is ext C as medicine. Com. so yeah, if you’re interested in that let me know. so the clinics are going to be very expensive. The underground movement when MDMA becomes, a medically prescribed drug is going to explode, as with a lot of these things, as they start to change the legality of psilocybin mushrooms as well, that most of the underground therapists I know are literally booked weeks months when when therapists I know is booked two years ahead. Jonathan Robinson (00:18:42) – So it can be a lucrative field. That’s one level, but on another level, I think is going to make a major difference in the whole psychological arena when tens of thousands and millions of people have access to these medicines and can use them in a safe and effective way. a little bit contact information. I do have a book, called Ecstasy as Medicine. If you’re interested in learning more about, how it’s used, how to do on yourself, how to do it with friends, how to avoid problems, the book is actually came out three months ago. It’s doing, like, almost ridiculously well. you can get an Amazon or Kindle for $0.99 if you’re interested. feel free to email me if you have any questions on anything I’ve talked about today, and we’re going to have time for Q&A in just a minute. So that’s a little bit of an overview of where psychedelic therapy is going. It’s really an exciting time because never before have all these opportunities shown up. And it’s a little bit of the Wild West now because different people are doing different things and eventually we’ll see what works the best. Jonathan Robinson (00:19:59) – So that’s a little bit about an intro. I want to make sure I we have plenty of time to answer every question possible. so, feel free to begin that process. Wonderful. Joe Sanok (00:20:13) – so I’m going to, put myself on a spotlight as well. And then we are going to add, Ryan just, raised his hand. So if you have questions, you can just drop them in the chat. or if you want to go back and forth, and if you feel like going on camera or, you know, turning your sound on, I’m going to bring Ryan in as a, let’s see if I can do a spotlight on someone without their video. I’m just going to ask you to unmute. And then if you do want to turn your video on, we can also have you join us in the spotlight. but yeah, go ahead. Ryan. Speaker 3 (00:20:49) – Hi, guys. Yeah, I can turn my video on real quick. Hey, guys, can you see me? Yes. Awesome. Jonathan, thanks so much, for the presentation. Speaker 3 (00:20:57) – Everything. And so. Yeah, what I. I’m a marketing consultant, but I try to blend the behavioral health worlds with the psychedelic worlds. you know, but a big, big interest of mine, obviously, MDMA and PTSD, from an academic standpoint, have followed it pretty closely. You know, the last, you know, 7 to 10 years of my professional life. yeah. I just would love to pick a brain a little bit more about what you’re seeing. as far as, like, cross referrals, you know, so what I, what I see is a big opportunity for traditional psychotherapists, maybe working with clients, when there is deep trauma. You know, we have other modalities, eMDR and all these sorts of therapeutic modalities. But of course, now psychedelic assisted therapy is is a perfect candidate for that kind of work as well. what kind of receptivity? What kind of things are you seeing? with traditional therapists referring clients into the psychedelic treatment spaces. What kind of barriers do you see? I just see a lot of potential there. Speaker 3 (00:21:53) – I just love your thoughts on that. Jonathan Robinson (00:21:55) – Yeah, a great question, Ryan. you know, in my course, we have a telegram group in which probably half the people are therapists and half are not. You know, usually they have some experience, and there’s there’s a lot of activity in these people who weren’t able to connect and know about each other so much are now connecting in telegram groups. And that’s been really fun to watch, because you want to meet like minded people who are interested in this stuff because of the legality before, where, you know, there was so much fear around it, nobody was talking openly. Now people are talking openly. So I tell people my training, you know, connect with therapists, tell them what you’re up to. you know, the government, the obviously these things are still illegal, but the government is not really that focused on, arresting individual therapists doing one session of transformation with one other person. because of several reasons. One, they know that the law is going to be changing very soon. Jonathan Robinson (00:23:03) – Two there’s 120,000 fentanyl deaths in the United States per year and only six MDMA deaths. So that’s a ratio of 20,000 to 1. You know, which one would you rather put your focus on? I mean, there’s 500 people a year that die of of Tylenol, you know, that’s 100 to 1 based on MDMA as well. So the law enforcement, I don’t know of a single person in the underground movement who has had any legal trouble. And I’ve looked for it because, you know, if you’re trying to help people, that’s different than dealing with fentanyl or some other crazy drug. So I encourage people in my trainings to put out the word that they take these referrals. because MDMA is in the news, I find that they are getting a lot of referrals that way. And, it’s it’s it’s kind of like, everybody’s finally coming together and realizing how effective this is. And the problem was that MDMA was considered a dance party drug until recently. And you know, the analogy I used is that you can use a laptop as a doorstop. Jonathan Robinson (00:24:21) – It will work as a doorstop, but there’s better uses for a laptop than a doorstop. And, MDMA was used as a dance party drug, but there’s better uses for MDMA than as a dance party drug. Yeah. And, this is going to continue as MDMA gets FDA approval. It’s going to be in the newspaper more and there’s a lot of research now going on that’s showing that this is probably the most effective psychological change drug ever created. And when that reaches a tipping point, as it’s really starting to get, I think it’s going to actually change the whole field of psychology. So it’s an exciting time. There may be turf battles that go on like, you know, I already see a little bit of that, but not not a lot. I think people when you go into the psychology field, you really do want to heal people. And that’s probably why I have so many people in my current training. Joe Sanok (00:25:17) – Thank you so much for that question and appreciate it. Jonathan Robinson (00:25:19) – You’re going Ryan. Cool. Speaker 3 (00:25:22) – I was just say beautiful stuff. Thank you. Thanks for taking the time. Joe Sanok (00:25:25) – Yeah. Thanks for kicking off our Q&A for us also. And we have some more questions that came in. I do have a question for your training. Is it transferable to, other psychedelics like ketamine or psilocybin or things like that, or would you recommend someone go through a training that is unique and specialized in that area? Jonathan Robinson (00:25:42) – Yeah. Well, you know, I’d say maybe half of it is, because they do have, you know, similarities. You have to know about contraindications. You have to know about certain setting. You have to know about how to deal with any kind of emergencies. You have to know how to avoid freakouts, you have to know, how to do with integration, etc.. What’s different is that you don’t really do so much therapy in mushrooms or ketamine. Really. You know, it’s more like the maps model where given the drug and hope for the best, whereas I’m really actually teaching people how to do therapeutic interventions. Jonathan Robinson (00:26:20) – And so it’s a little bit more complete than some of those other things. so I’d say maybe half of it is, the same, and then half of it is special to MDMA and how that can be used in its best ways. Joe Sanok (00:26:43) – As a therapist, I can tell you from experience that having the right EHR is an absolute lifeline. I recommend using therapy notes. They make billing, scheduling, note taking, telehealth, and e-prescribing incredibly easy. Best of all, they offer live telephone support. It’s available seven days a week. You don’t have to take my word for it. Do your own research and see for yourself. Therapy notes is the number one highest rated EHR system available today, with a 4.9 out of five stars on Trustpilot. Com and on Google, all you have to do is click the link below or type promo code Joe on their website over at Therapy notes.com and receive a special two month trial. Absolutely free. Again, that’s therapy notes at Com and use promo code Joe on the website. Joe Sanok (00:27:31) – If you’re coming from another EHR. Therapy notes will also import your demographic data quick and easy at no cost, so you can get started right away. Trust me, don’t waste any more of your time and try therapy notes. Just use promo code Joe at checkout. I’m going to just go through some of these questions coming in and keep them coming. the next one is if it’s underground, how do therapists protect their licenses? Jonathan Robinson (00:27:57) – Yeah. Great question. You know, I was a, LMT until about six years ago as as I started to go more public, I decided not to renew my license because I thought that might create some challenges. but as I said to Ryan earlier, that law enforcement doesn’t seem to be focused on this. if you are a therapist and you do this over zoom, you’re pretty safe because you can talk to anybody about anything over zoom. You’re not legally responsible for them being on a medicine, You know, you even have to ask them, you know, you can make an appointment and they wink at you. Jonathan Robinson (00:28:39) – You know, y’all be taking the medicine. Let’s do a five hour, therapy session over Zoom on Tuesday. And, you know, they’re responsible for the medicine that they’re on. You’re just doing a five hour, 4 to 5 hour therapy session. So that seems to be, pretty legally safe in that I’m not aware of anybody in the world being arrested for that experience. Once you have clients coming into your office and you giving them the medicine, then you get into potential legal trouble. So I try to avoid that by not doing that. And, therefore, I feel very confident that, there’s nothing bad going to happen to me or my client, and that’s, seems to have worked. Joe Sanok (00:29:26) – I think that, that answers answers the other question about legal jeopardy of license. There was a second question there that came in about the same time. A follow up question to that is like, how do you and share whatever you feel comfortable with, but like, how do you get the clients the medicine? You know, right now it’s federally illegal? you know, they’re on zoom in a different place, you know, do they just coordinate that themselves? Jonathan Robinson (00:29:48) – Yeah. Jonathan Robinson (00:29:48) – Good question. And I do want to say that, you know, because you are doing things that are illegal, you do have to be careful. but I make a distinction between what is illegal, which a lot of things are illegal. I mean, gay marriage is legal in America, but gay sex is not. Now, of course, that’s ridiculous. In 12 states. gay men who are married to each other are, can be arrested for having sex. marijuana, is federally illegal, which means that anybody working in dispensaries could end up in jail. Now, how many people have exactly? Zero. so you have to make a distinction between what’s illegal and what could get you, arrested. so I do most of my sessions over zoom. First of all, partly because the results tend to be better. You know, zoom actually is very, very safe for a client. When I used to see, say, rape victims in my office. You know, having a rape victim come into my office and take a drug that makes them feel very vulnerable. Jonathan Robinson (00:31:00) – That’s a pretty unsafe situation. And therapy does best when you have maximal safety. Now, in normal therapy, it might take a year or two until you totally trust your therapist. With MDMA, it takes about 11 minutes. So you know, you save a lot of time. so here, doing a resume is legally safer. It tends to get better outcomes. now, when it comes to the medicine, there’s two situations. One is your client can just find the medicine. You know, it’s not that hard for most people, but for people who do have a hard time finding the medicine. I have them, reach me on this, signal known as app. the app known as signal. Excuse me. And, they app, signal is a fully encrypted messaging service, and I give them on signal the name of somebody else on signal that has been good at supplying medicine. So that, once again, is probably illegal in some countries. But no one has ever been arrested for giving the a phone number on signal. Jonathan Robinson (00:32:21) – So that’s how I’ve dealt with it. But I try to stay out of it as much as possible because I want to keep doing this thing as long as I’m not doing things that in America are considered blatantly illegal. there’s no problem. So those are the two ways that I have dealt with that. Yeah. Well, and. Joe Sanok (00:32:43) – I would think that, you know, someone that’s as public as you writing books about this and being on Oprah and having such a footprint, you know, in the world and training, like, if anyone would probably be a target, it would be someone like you and you’re still doing the work. And so it’s like, now, I think another question is, you know, if this is federally illegal, and, you know, how do you market yourself if it’s underground? like, I know that when, when psilocybin was decriminalized in Colorado, I remember seeing a news article where some person was just, like, blatantly advertising that they were doing journeys and it was just, like, too much. Joe Sanok (00:33:21) – And, you know, the federal government kind of slept, I don’t know, remember what exactly happened, but they they came in and they did something to that person because it was so over-the-top blatant. It was, you know, they were just advertising too much. but that’s not been the case with even, you know, psilocybin assisted therapy. How do you market yourself? Do you do it loudly? Do you do it quietly? Do you like email, a bunch of your therapy friends? Or, you know, if people are thinking about doing this after going through your training, what’s appropriate marketing and what’s kind of like too much? Jonathan Robinson (00:33:51) – Well, I’ve been pretty out there. I’m doing podcasts, you know, mentioning my book. You know, people can go to my website, which is ecstasy as medicine. Com and if they put in their email address, they get a bunch of free stuff, like how to avoid bad trips, how to the 12 questions that lead to instant intimacy. A bunch of stuff. Jonathan Robinson (00:34:11) – But, what I do is I say that I guide people who are on MDMA, which is exactly what I do. You know, I’m not I’m not giving people MDMA. I’m not supplying them the drug. I’m talking to people while they’re on MDMA, and there is no law that says you cannot talk. You cannot talk to people on MDMA. And therefore there are certain things you can do that are completely legal that way. the other thing, though, is that most effective advertising happens through, word of mouth referral. So in my training I go into how to do that effectively. And, you know, Chris Rock said there are no drug pushers. There are drug suppliers. And, you know, where you don’t have to be a a pusher of this type of therapy. You know, I’m booked up for 11 months. You know, I have people trying to break down, you know, my email walls and say, you know, when can we do this? so it’s it’s really a matter of just letting people know you guide people while they’re on these medicines. Jonathan Robinson (00:35:31) – And a lot of people are interested in doing that because they read how effective it is. Joe Sanok (00:35:36) – Now, for your own personal not burning out, how many journeys a month do you host? Jonathan Robinson (00:35:42) – I find that I can do 2 or 3 a week, and after that it’s a little intense. I try to limit to two a week, so it’s eight a month. and other people, though, I know a woman who does three a week, she makes about $600,000 a year doing this. That’s not so bad. While other people are are thanking you for how you help them. So, it can be lucrative, but it takes time to, you know, let people know that you’re doing this and, as the information in the news comes out, how effective it is for certain conditions, people are definitely they want to find you. Joe Sanok (00:36:22) – Yeah. Another person, responded to that question. You just said a big part of it is certainly word of mouth and community based marketing. It’s also good to create educational content and medicines and protocols and share those. Joe Sanok (00:36:31) – So yeah, that’s great. Jonathan Robinson (00:36:34) – I do do that a little bit on my website. And I think that’s a really good resource because people do need to be educated. As I mentioned, a lot of people know of MDMA or ecstasy as a dance party drug. And when people only know it in that context and then they take it, in the therapeutic context, I do, they go, oh, man, I didn’t know that this drug could do that. You know, it’s a very different experience, obviously. Joe Sanok (00:37:03) – Yeah, great. Kind of personal. Like the therapist becoming the client question here. and I see so as a person with generalized anxiety disorder and licensed counselor, how can I become a patient first before I become a practitioner? Jonathan Robinson (00:37:17) – Well, people can email me. I can send a list of referrals of people who do this type of work. as I said, I’m booked many months in advance currently, but, they can email me at ecstacy as medicine. Com and I’d be glad to send, people I’ve trained who who are more available, and I agree that that’s a good way of going. Jonathan Robinson (00:37:41) – You know, try it for yourself, see what it does for you. And then if you find it incredibly valuable, then you can look into getting trained. Now, unfortunately, there is no training on earth currently that allows you to do this legally. Eventually there will be, but that might take a few years. so my training and other people’s trainings give you the information. My training tends to be a lot more practical than some of the other ones, but, that just allows you to be an underground therapist. There is no legal avenue currently anywhere, although Australia is going to establish one probably in about a year or so. Joe Sanok (00:38:24) – Next question is and it kind of goes off of your connecting someone on signal. How do they get the medicine safely if you don’t provide it. So you connect them on signal to someone that is a provider and then they just take it from there. Jonathan Robinson (00:38:37) – Yeah, I actually don’t even know what they do exactly. I do know the source that I’m aware of on signal has very good medicine at a reasonable price. Jonathan Robinson (00:38:47) – but they take it from there, I assume, I assume that he mails it or something. I don’t know how he does it, but it’s. Joe Sanok (00:38:55) – Probably good to stay out of that. the person making $600,000 a year, personally guiding people. what do they charge? Jonathan Robinson (00:39:04) – Well, most people are charging, 1000 to $2000. This person is charging 3800. and they do offer a couple extra integration sessions and kind of a, integration group. but, you know, they’re. They’re very good at what they do. And you do, three sessions a week. $12,000 times four is 50,000 a month. and then, you know, times 12, that’s the $600,000 a year. Yeah. that’s a little bit of a ridiculous amount of income helping people doing what you love. One of the reasons I like this work is that when you’re working with somebody on MDMA, there’s what’s called a contact high, which I feel very much, you know, so I tend to get into that MDMA space with my clients. Jonathan Robinson (00:40:04) – I don’t take the medicine, of course, but, to make that kind of money doing what you love is quite, a quite an experience. Joe Sanok (00:40:12) – Now, during those five hours, how much are you actively involved in that conversation? Are there times when they’re kind of more internal and you just sit and read a book? I mean, like, what’s what does that look like for those five hours? Jonathan Robinson (00:40:24) – Yeah. I leave it really up to them, you know? In fact, I even tell people if you want to use a blindfold and listen to music, just tell me. And, you know, you do that. And less than 2% choose that. So it’s interesting that the mask protocols like the default. But most people are like that. This is like we’re getting to the heart of my issues right now. This is incredible. Why would I want to listen to music when I’m I’m having the deepest therapeutic experience in my life? Yeah. So that’s what I have found in general. But sometimes people go internal for like five minutes and they, you know, explore something and I’m just sitting there, but most of the time it’s kind of like a conversation, a therapeutic conversation. Jonathan Robinson (00:41:11) – And I do have various methods that people find fascinating to use to clear, not clear trauma, but to, help neutralize trauma, help to deal with some of their issues around anxiety, depression, relationships, things like that. Joe Sanok (00:41:29) – love the you know, the comments here. Definitely we should be experienced with the medicines before guiding others so we can comfortably guide people through it, and it lifts our vibe too. Jonathan, we don’t have any other questions coming in, but we’d love to just give you some time as questions come in. Of what else haven’t we covered? Let’s dig in. Maybe a little deeper, like, what are those sessions look like If you were to break down the five hours or other important things that you know would be good for us to note. Jonathan Robinson (00:41:53) – Yeah, there’s, a statement in a lot of these medicines, which is let the medicine lead. I’ll give you a story. many years ago, my wife and I were having difficulty in our marriage. Or, to be more precise, she was angry at me all the time, and she’s normally not an angry person, so this is really unusual. Jonathan Robinson (00:42:16) – But she would get like angry over very small things like me leaving the light on or something. And after about three months of this, it being kind of intolerable for me and her, we asked a friend of ours that does guide the guides MDMA to come and, you know, guide us on a session to figure out what was going on. So he did that. And what came out was that her aunt, who had died three months earlier, she had not taken the time to be with her aunt during her final week, and she was very upset at herself and ashamed that she hadn’t done that. And it came out as being anger at me. Well, she cried when she realized that this was what was going on. And I held her. And, you know, we went through a forgiveness process for herself. And then all her anger at me was gone. Now, what’s interesting about this is that neither me nor her, nor our guide had any idea that that was the root cause. Jonathan Robinson (00:43:22) – But it was the root cause, and the medicine knew and it knew to bring it up. So a lot of times I wait to see what the medicine brings up and then talk about that. So, you know, I might say, as they’re feeling totally peaceful and at ease, what normally gets in the way of this. And usually people can see very clearly, oh, I have this little part of me that’s always looking for problems. And then when it finds a problem, it’s like a, you know, a Rottweiler. It doesn’t let go or whatever it is. So that’s a large part of it. I also help people to rediscover how they can experience more joy and love and peace in their life. I call it love training. What are the things that happen in your body, in your mind, in, in your dialogue that blocks love and peace or can help facilitate it so that when they’re not on the medicine, they have an easier time getting back there. In fact, I’ve been a meditator for 40 years. Jonathan Robinson (00:44:33) – and I used to be able to get into the state of MDMA after an hour of meditation. But when I started to get clear on what exactly was going on on MDMA and writing it down, I was able to then get back to that state much quicker. So now it only takes me about 30s to get into the MDMA state, whereas it used to take me much longer and I can train people to to make progress that way as well. So that’s been really fun. So let’s see, there’s, what states can we possibly give people medicines? Colorado. Parts of California? Oregon. The reason I ask is I co-lead retreats with shamanic facilitator. Well, it depends on what medicines. if you’re talking about ketamine, It’s possible. That’s pretty relaxed nowadays. People can, Since ketamine is a legally prescribed medicine, it’s it’s pretty easy to guide people on that, really, anywhere in America. when it comes to psilocybin, only, Oregon and Colorado, have decriminalized that, but I’m not really that clear on what the laws are. Jonathan Robinson (00:45:52) – I would encourage you to Google that. You can buy psilocybin easily and legally in Oregon, in parts of Oregon and parts of Colorado and in parts of California, including Oakland. And you can also buy it pretty easily over the web. At this point, there’s a place called Soul Sabin. Soybean. Com that sells, psilocybin. So that’s getting easier and easier. Next question. Joe Sanok (00:46:21) – So a couple other questions. what supplements do you recommend for participants before. For preparation. Before. After to reduce the serotonin cliff. Jonathan Robinson (00:46:31) – There’s a supplement package that I recommend called roll kit.com. They have some. Costs maybe 11 bucks or something. That’s very good. mostly the short answer to that is you might want to give them five HTP 24 hours afterwards. There’s something called alpha lipoic acid and l-carnitine that are good. coenzyme Q10, vitamin C, during the journey, it’s good to give people about 200 or 300mg of magnesium to reduce, things with jaw and other unpleasant effects that can happen. in my book Exercise Medicine, I go more into depth about a few other things that are good, listing them generally in the order of importance, since you might not want to take ten pills, but, also just allowing yourself time to rest the next day. Jonathan Robinson (00:47:29) – Take it easy because, it’s it can be a powerful experience. Joe Sanok (00:47:34) – Well, Jonathan, I want to give you just a chance to give a final summary. when you think about MDMA, when you think about this work, what would you hope that therapists are thinking through? how can they continue to stay inspired? And. Yeah, just giving you the final, final capstone statement. Jonathan Robinson (00:47:52) – Well, you know, we’re lucky that we in this crazy time that we live in, that we have a medicine that, if used responsibly, can get us back to a place of love and peace and love and peace is really what heals us when we can tap into those experiences. You know, all of us in Western culture coming so much from our head. But when you really tap into these expanded states of consciousness and can do that more consistently and do that even when talking about difficult issues, magic happens, healing happens, and information isn’t transformation. But with the right guide and with the right medicines. some of the healing that we used to take years to create can now happen very, very quickly. Jonathan Robinson (00:48:43) – And and we’re very lucky that that’s, that’s a possible nowadays. Joe Sanok (00:48:48) – Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for hanging out with us today and all the information. And I dropped your email in the chat. And then people can connect with you for anything. follow up as well. just appreciate you being in the practice of the practice world. Have a great day, everybody. We’ll see you in 35 minutes or so. Like. You know, we also couldn’t do this show without amazing sponsors like therapy notes. Therapy notes is the best electronic health records out there. they will help you switch over from your current EHR. they also give you two months for free or, just money off if you use promo code Joe at checkout. they are phenomenal. They help with automated billing. it’s going to make it easier to outsource your billing. So many reasons to switch to therapy. You know, it’s just head on over to therapy notes.com. Read about it. And at checkout, just use promo code. Joe. Joe Sanok (00:49:46) – Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band. Silence is sexy for that intro music, and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.