Episode 88

hello everybody my name is Brandon Burns chief executive officer for Peaks recovery centers very excited to be joining you all today for a new year and a new finding Peaks episode from yours truly your favorite Brandon Burris the host with the mostest joined today by Chief clinical Officer Jason friesma LPC Lac all the clinical things as Peaks recovery as you know him and uh as you all kind of know a quick background before we introduce our special guest today the natural medicine Health Act passed here in the state of Colorado and that means by 2025 the state of Colorado and namely its Healthcare Providers will be able to deliver plant-based medicine interventions namely psilocybin plant-based interventions at this time and so we’re going to continue to be curious over the next few years about these underground movements these above ground movements that are taking place in the world and the delivery of care and what that might mean for the state of Colorado and individuals within treatment for both substance use disorder and mental health and so we’re joined today by Tom fiegel chief executive officer and founder of Beyond that’s b-e-o-n-d dot us if you’re going to find it on the good World Wide Web but Tom thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show today thank you so much for the invitation it’s great to meet you it’s great to be together virtually um I’m coming to you from Cancun Mexico where we’re based uh but uh wonderful to meet you thank you for the invitation absolutely looking forward to diving in this episode with you certainly have had the pleasure of speaking with some of your team members already and getting to know your guys’s company but let’s get it out there in the open and talk about the successes and so forth and I think what’s you know special about this journey that you guys are on and what you’re doing to facilitate Karen to you know offer meaningful services to individuals who are suffering in the world is that you have your own recovery Journey story uh intact as well too prior to arriving at this and just curious for the viewers out there what you know uh what that recovery Journey looked like meant for you and then kind of how it kind of led into this um you know new phase of life that you’re going through yeah sure thank you so I um uh you know I come from a you know a family uh long long history of alcoholism and um and as far as I know I’m the only person uh that that found my way uh into recovery I mean I’m sure some others that I don’t know of may have experimented with their efforts but for for me you know I lost my dad um and had my first son in the same year almost uh one month period And I was at that point um you know a new parent and I was really the you know the active addiction the wheels of the active addiction just came off there was no more kind of um um separate identities where I was drinking or using and then could you know pull it together and get to work um it was it was all on and that uh for me uh almost 20 years ago um was the defining event that really forced me to acknowledge and accept a few things first of all I couldn’t live that way anymore second of all I didn’t want to replicate the experience that I had as a child with my my who you know my first child um and uh I was dying I was dying inside I was dying outside and I had to find something uh better um you know I nowadays we might think of it as the old-fashioned way you know I um uh was strongly encouraged by my spouse to get help and I had the benefit of therapists I had the benefit of specialist addiction the benefit of treatment experts and you know um but at the time I didn’t have recovery I didn’t all I knew was I was in trouble and um I think for me uh what was different in my experience was I had always I I had always done well in school you know it was hard because I was oftentimes um uh you know not ready for school um but a structured program I had never heard of the 12 steps you know or 12-step type program or anything like that smart recovery anything and so when I was ready and I was introduced to it I I I was sort of willing to just do what I was told to take suggestion and what excited me most about it was I felt better fast I missed a lot of you know I thought I’d never have fun again I thought I would all my friends I’d have to get rid of all my friends I did have to change my phone number all the normal things but what was clear to me was I I immediately started to feel more alive um and it didn’t mean that life got better all of a sudden it meant that I could deal with life better all of a sudden and I had a lot of problems to solve a lot of relationships demand amends to make Etc but I felt better doing it that for me was very real very palpable and plus I had a new baby so I was I felt very deeply connected to him very quickly [Music] um but I did that the old-fashioned way you know 12-step um it’s still the new fashion way it’s still brilliant Innovative for some but um I didn’t know about the relationship between I knew about Spiritual Awakening I knew about Carl Young I knew about the you know the Hopeless in my case hopeless alcoholic um but what I didn’t know is that there were other technologies that might be available to people to help um expand and accelerate the experience of of a spiritual awakening um and it wasn’t until nine years into recovery that I even learned about anything related to psychedelics that weren’t recreational so Tom can you can you kind of describe what you felt like was maybe missing from your life uh if during those nine years during that transitionary period before maybe you found a different way to find a spiritual awakening absolutely um so I was very active in a program programs uh several of the 12-step programs um and uh I I what what was missing for me was uh I got very good at minimizing the downside of using an active using so I knew I wasn’t going to get in trouble or DUI or lose my job or you know embarrass people or wreck my life anymore um and I felt like I was growing I felt like everything was getting better fast but what wasn’t happening was um the uh a sense of self-love or a sense of healing that was continuous my the in the uh introduction to recovery was about stopping using and staying stopping using and makes no mistakes those are the two goals for sure how do we get you to stop and how do we help you stay stopped I know that we know that here at Beyond but the question of why uh at a deeper level wasn’t uh as uh satisfactory the answer to the question why I wanted to stay stopped and I wanted it to um to be a renewable resource of uh inspiration wasn’t um satisfying for me and so I felt like I was getting more active I had sponsees I you know I was going to more meetings going to workshops going to conventions doing all those things I was clearly better but if you had asked me about healing the Early Childhood trauma that was uh sort of at the root probably of why I was self-medicating and anesthetizing I didn’t know much about that at all and so it wasn’t until uh and you know uh years into recovery that I began to do that work that I got a sense of oh wait I’m not just not using and drinking anymore I’m actually working towards a healing of uh both my uh Early Childhood trauma some of the trauma I’d caused myself as an adult but I also saw began to see healing as synonymous with growth and growth as synonymous with living and then it then I was like oh now this is infinitely renewable and and appliable and it was something that I could much more effectively relate to and share and engage others in in the process of no matter where they were in their recovery Journey that the goal wasn’t to stop or just stay stopped it was to feel that sense of purposeful self-motivated healing yeah I mean that oh yeah 100 it reminds me so much of like you know take take away the drugs like now what you know what happens next in the the recovery process okay now I now I’m left without these uh historically reliable numbing resources for emotional physical pain or otherwise but in this moment now you know what’s the next thing and for me it it’s something we constantly talk about on the show but like in an existential weight what is the next motivator what is the thing I’m going to carry out of here Beyond this moment and instead of it just being a Brute Force I’m stopping into I’ve stopped and I cannot wait for this next kind of next episode and um part of my journey and uh and it sounds like you kind of went through like a ladder of it right starting with you know the rooms in the AAA Community oh and then into you know the therapy therapeutic processes and those types of interventions and then you know just kind of following the staircase to Wellness right wherever that path was taken you you were convicted looking you know at your you know little baby boy and being inspired in that way to show up in the best possible way but with an internal desire at the same time it sounds like to State uh I can’t show up in this way if I don’t get this part right right that kind of an accurate yes it was it was very much that I around nine years I started to get very curious about what what else was there what more was there um uh to the the underlying uh sort of reason to to want to live that way and it and you know I’d gone through lots of Cycles it you know it wasn’t to get the heat off anymore it wasn’t just to like feel better or feel healthy uh because as a result of as you put it take away the drugs what am I left with I was left of pain I was left with depression anxiety and you know PTSD sometimes this sense of like uh I remember uh at one point I had these uh episodes where I was just falling apart in the afternoon I had a good job I was working and it wasn’t until I went to a therapist and they said hey let’s look at that there’s something else going on because I wasn’t using um and um so I got very curious and I you know again I was using the tools right I was praying I was meditating I had active spiritual practice a conscious contact with what I considered to be I use the term greater power um to keep it less hierarchical but a greater power a greater intelligence that was all real for me very real but it but I still felt uh like I was having this I had this psychological weight and wound and emotional Dynamic that was not um satisfactory and the best that the pharmaceutical industry could offer me was a bunch of ssris uh or sleeping medication and that just didn’t make sense to me I I tried it I did it for as long as it would work but frankly you know I had a very uh unsatisfactory side effects you know sexual dysfunction weight gain you know sleep dysfunction Etc I was like this there’s got to be better than this and I got very curious about what else was there and that’s when sort of I kept all of those tools in place but began to look for you know a uh A Spiritual Awakening that could be in alignment with a Consciousness expansion
so then I I do kind of Wonder you know is your story then progresses I know um there’s sometimes in the rooms uh uh people in the rooms can maybe frown on alternative uh medicine and that sort of thing as a way to seek recovery how did how did you kind of cross that threshold into uh seeking further help I guess with uh perhaps exploring the psychedelics I was that guy absolutely 100 against any uh any drugs at all um you know and I was very much aligned with you know the sort of reading into uh the help from outside professionals and interpreting that as if the prescription was we all know that there’s truth to that we should take medication when it is effective uh at the same time we also I can’t ignore a certain amount of cynicism about the fact that many so-called qualified uh licensed credentialed professionals over prescribed you know they’re they they don’t seem to be in the healing business they seem to be in the the business of writing scripts um and so I had to balance that like it’s okay for me to take something as long as I get it from a doctor but I know I’m reading the newspaper there’s you know drugs that are being over prescribed they’re being misrepresented in their level of addict you know uh you know that how much they are going to cause people to be addictive they say they’re less addictive they’re in fact more addictive Etc and I knew those people that were suffering they went they had back surgery there they had an accident they took the medicines as prescribed and then they ended up being unable to get off and the best that their doctor could do was a lifetime sentence of you know some maintenance drug that that was not my story but it raised for me some questions about like what level of um engagement did I want to have my own investigation instead of just a binary interpretation of the big book or whatever so so I I was that guy frowned upon any use of any like not even and mouthwash nothing and and that worked for me for a long time I also started to hear stories about people who had had uh experiences with certain types of plant medicines or certain uh Consciousness expansion experiences through breath work through meditation uh and I was very curious about that I was like wait you can sort of get high through meditation what did that mean and and all the research was seeming to suggest significant physiological uh and mental Wellness benefits from not using anything and just meditating and I was you know I meditated already so I began to get very active in meditation very active I was already active in service very active in prayer and it left me feeling like well maybe there’s some more research to do so I found all a lot of different authors that had written about ethnobotany and the use of certain plants for certain healing properties we all know that that is you know that’s where medicine comes from you know uh and then it gets synthesized and we usually they create a synthetic version of something that is originates through nature or through some organic material penicillin Etc so I I started reading about that and I I remember actually it was Terence McKenna where the reading of Terence McKenna’s work really helped me but come to believe that um uh the uh non-western uh science of medicine was worthy of a lot of investigation and I went to Peru and I uh tried Ayahuasca for the first time in a very authentic indigenous manner deep deep in the jungle with a third generation iOS Iowa you know he didn’t speak Spanish or English I didn’t speak um you know um shapeebos from the shapibo tribe in Peru we had literally nothing in common about a deep uh curiosity about what would happen if I allowed you know these the the part of my mind that was willing to believe that maybe nature that predated humans might have something to offer me and I thought then that I was going to the Jungle to hire the plants in this case Ayahuasca to help me heal to help me heal and expand my understanding what had happened to me as a kid why was I feeling the way I was feeling and what more might there be to the definition of my being than just the story of my trauma and my recovery or you know what else was there and um and that frankly when I did that over the course of a month in Peru or thereabouts I realized that there was actually a lot of compatibility what I had been seeking with drugs and alcohol wasn’t just anesthesia it was expansion and there was a part of that behavior and a part of that Community a part of that freedom a part of that Adventure that I wanted but I was using the wrong medication at the wrong dose at the wrong frequency and the alternative wasn’t a pharmaceutical it was a very very controlled and systematic investigation of certain psychedelic substances uh certainly always with someone that had a deep reverence or training or technical knowledge of what it was for and why I was qualified to do it um and so in the end I came away from that experience not thinking that I had hired the plans to heal me but actually that I was part of nature that one of the biggest problems that I had was a sense of separation of himself and a sense of separation from Spirit sense of separation from nature and that uh in fact I wanted to be more like the plants look at them what do they do best they grow what am I trying to do grow look at them they seem to be very satisfied with their imperfections I going in felt very unsatisfied and very afraid to admit any imperfections they seem to be using what they had uh and making the most of it I was worried about the future and what I didn’t have often times they didn’t seem to be comparing themselves saying if only I was a palm tree and not a rose I would be happy and then finally I was like they’re not they’re you know they’re not uh greedy they don’t seem to think like if I had all the sunlight in all the water then I could be generous and happy no they were like Hey we’re all sharing in the same relationship with the source of our growth what you’re doing is fine for you with what is working for uh for me is working for me so I my whole perspective on my willingness to experiment in a certain very structured context with so-called alternative healing modalities uh significantly um opened up make sense yeah it does beautiful sense that and love the love the relationship and the the metaphor with nature um so one of the big things we’ve been trying to do around the natural medicine Health act because we see plant-based medicines as an Innovative tool for uh recovery Journeys mental health Journeys or yeah I mean even just individuals who aren’t suffering in the sense of like a medicalized diagnosis and things like that but just uh you know on the path of recovery and then generating a new awareness for you know meaning and purpose in this world I think there’s so many advantages to plant-based medicines but you know so we’ve been trying to open the hearts and Minds uh to the individuals out there is really just kind of the concept we’ve been running with because there’s a lot of you know scariness around its stories background uh you know government interventions all these types of things that have placed a lot of narratives in a lot of people’s minds my mind included in that regard and so we’re kind of you know peeling back the onion layer again into a new direction of this and uh in in pursuit of opening hearts and minds of individuals you know it’s I think it it’s important to acknowledge that these plant-based medicines don’t have the same sort of addictive potential in the research and in the experiences of its users and so for somebody who you know had those addictive experiences and had has a great deal awareness around that you take this you know plant-based medicine called Ayahuasca um just hopefully you can share more with us about why after that moment it wasn’t like I need to be on this every day and how and how it shifted from an alcohol regimen of frequency right because that’s kind of the anesthetic attitude towards but Ayahuasca seems to be bringing something much more different than I got to be on this and anesthetized at all points right it’s that’s a great point and you’re you’re exactly right um uh so remember I’m already in this story I’m I’m already nine years into recovery when this happens right so I’ve been free uh so to speak but not feeling and still doing a lot of therapy still doing a lot of the things that were suggested but I didn’t feel healed and it and actually came to feel like I never would that that it would just be a little less bad forever and it didn’t that meant like I was I was running marathons I was meditating you know I was uh you know doing whatever reading self-help books I was doing whatever I could so it wasn’t like I was inactive and then went to the Jungle to you know see what would happen it was like I was really seeking and um and so the Ayahuasca experience just like other you know plant-based um psychedelic experience including ibogaine which we use at beyond beyond it was not pleasant I mean this is not a recreational activity at the least of which it was hot buggy uh environment this is this is super like rugged territory and it’s a unpleasant Taste of this this goopy uh um uh you know like stuff that I drank and then the experience itself causes caused a lot of purging uh which means vomiting which is colloquially known as getting well um you know and the purging uh you know there’s various levels of interpretation spiritual interpretation of what’s going on but for me it was not something I was dying to like do again uh right away now it’s it is true that because of the um the sensory Distortion and a sense of dreamlike experience that it could be um you know an experience that somebody would would seek kind of for those effects but it’s but it’s very unpleasant it’s not relaxing it’s a long experience and it’s um you know it’s one that and leaves one and feeling uh with a lot of insight a lot of clarity of mind a lot of a sense of purpose but getting there is a lot of work and so that’s why you know I don’t think people are you know as eager to it’s not fun is this not a rave drug and and likewise I’ve again which is not on the spectrum of plant medicines and psychedelic substances is even worse meaning the experience is very intense um and it needs to be administered in a medically safe way but the effects are unique in so far as it immediately uh reduces or eliminates any withdrawals particularly from opioids opiates stimulants or alcohol and for a lot of people we know that avoiding withdrawals is one of the reasons why they don’t start to stop that they they want to but they can’t start to stop because the withdrawals are so painful ibogaine is unique among psychedelics that in so far as it seems to dramatically reduce you know High double-digit percentages of post-acute withdrawal syndrome um symptoms uh immediately within the first dose and when I heard about that I got very very curious as to why was that not available to people who wanted it or needed it and then I started getting very interested in what would need to be true for people to have access to uh you know a a plant a natural substance which when used ethically and medically safe would offer that benefit so that they could begin the therapy that had taken me nine years to get ready for it like why did why did I have to wait nine years to really be ready to do the deeper work and I just got uh very interested in that question as I learned about through Terence McKenna in the study of other uh experts on these topics how do they work and why do they work in the way that they work in what would happen What would need to be true if more people had access to them um finally it was only then that I learned that people who didn’t have any chemical dependency but had severe PTSD I had both were using ibogaine you know these are stories of Marcus Capone and others who had come back from tours of Duty in combat and had done everything they were asked to do benefited from all the training and they couldn’t find relief from severe symptoms of PTSD but I began work for them and I was like now this is this is not something I ignore anymore these people don’t they don’t lie like they’re they’re talking about something very important and I met those people and I asked them about their experience long before I ever tried ibogaine so I guess you actually took the question I was going to ask so I just have to move on to my next one so I was wondering how you made the transition from Ayahuasca to looking into the aboga plant and and ibogaine and that sort of thing so you know the question that that kind of rattles around in my head is this is so new um and obviously you have to do this uh from Cancun Mexico probably because of the scheduling of these uh drugs if you will by the FDA causes them to have severe consequences for using them here in the U.S but how how do you ensure kind of the plant-based experience and the dosing of ibogaine like how does it go from a Boga to ibogaine uh in your setting yeah it’s great great question so for me the Curiosity became kind of more of a mission when I um I I met people in recovery who had said like oh this is how they got off opiates this is how they got off opioids this is how they got off alcohol and they you know as we mentioned before they weren’t talking about it openly in program but they they admitted that in sort of the you know the more vulnerable uh private conversations and um
I I wanted to understand like how it worked and and if it was true that’s that I was just curious about that is it true uh and there’s a lot of clinical studies or observational studies of psychedelics that suggest a lot of very strong evidence that that the stories that were I was being exposed to were true um what happened for me is you know someone in my family actually later actually had an opiate addiction not my uh immediate family of origin but it in my family and they did ibogaine they went to Mexico they struggled first of all they struggled they went to rehabs they got out of rehabs and somewhere down the line they would have craving they weren’t in withdrawals they have a craving something wasn’t right they would use and then it would all be right back where it was and went to several rehabs had this similar experience and it wasn’t until a friend of theirs said they had gone to Mexico and used ibogaine uh and that the withdrawals and the Cravings were gone and that they had stayed gone for an extended period of time and when I when I heard that story uh from someone in my own family I was like okay now I really need to understand this and um uh so I still had a career it wasn’t involved in psychedelics it had nothing to do with recovery business strategy I was an entrepreneur and um uh I heard about their experience and I heard the medicine worked but the environment was terrible and it wasn’t it wasn’t because it was intended to be terrible it was because for all kind of the best reasons someone had been an addict they had done Ivy gain or been provided I began it had worked and they decided to try to share it with the world they had a little place and people could go there and do it and that’s where the person from my family went again no medical infrastructure no psychology no nutrition you know no um addiction medicine expertise at all and the substance still worked right and and so I made a promise to them if I ever could start the place they should have gone I would and it and so I have that idea and about four or five years ago I started to see that there there was red regulatory sort of ease or relaxation in certain air jurisdictions around first medical marijuana and then certainty Crim movement decriminalization movements around so I get certain psychedelics and then all of a sudden there was like an industry emerging around mental Wellness using so-called off-label substances like ketamine in the context of the therapist I’ve never done that myself by the way but I was like wait a second I think what I’ve been thinking about is now becoming a thing and um and so I I I really wanted to understand why could it not be delivered at scale safely by medical professionals uh and you mentioned the most important run one in the US I began and other plant substances are at the same level of schedule or illegality uh by the DEA as cannabis cannabis is federally a schedule one substance uh just like I would do and uh and you know we can argue about why that is and when that might change or what it would take to change but I realized that in nearly three dozen states it was being sold recreationally but yet it’s a scheduling substance now I was very confused why this other substance which could actually save people’s lives was not the ego I leave that to The Advocates and lawyers and the politicians hopefully the right ones um not just in Colorado but other places and I decided that I would want to legally medically ethically scientifically uh create an environment where my family members should have gone and that meant it had to be in Mexico uh that’s the closest place to where I’m from the United States where it could be done and it is unregulated in Mexico so it’s not illegal it’s been done for decades it’s been done for you know many hundreds if not thousands of years ceremonially uh but not in the way that it’s being used here at Beyond and so the they need to do it in Mexico is simply because I don’t want to do anything illegal that you know I stopped doing that a long time ago um and uh I wanted to make sure that everything we did was transparent that we could tell a hundred percent of the truth about the pricing the results uh the people involved Etc and that was the thing that was missing you could find I began on the internet but nobody seemed to be willing to put it into the light you know to just be a hundred percent open about it and that to me was suppressing the potential rate of adoption the use and frankly the benefits because anytime I was I’ve ever done anything where I was rooted in fear of being caught it wasn’t a good thing and so I when when I decided to investigate the creation of beyond that was a an absolute must that it would have to be legal transparent and out in the open and I hired a lawyer who’s a career Department of Justice former DEA prosecutor to help us figure out what is the way to do it where it would be legal 100 legal and of course that meant we couldn’t do it in the United States we would never buy possess sell store manufacture any schedule and substance in the jurisdiction where it was illegal so here we are in Mexico we have licensed credential doctors that are trained in the United States licensed prudentialed uh therapists that are that have addiction medicine expertise that are trained and uh have practiced in the United States uh that work here uh you know nutritionists uh other adjunct therapists nurses ICU certified nurses many of whom have training from the United States it’s not to suggest that training from the United States is better than training in Mexico but it it it is to suggest that I’m not the only one that thinks this technology is important that so important that it should be delivered and that they’re willing to change their lives to enable it to be delivered effectively and safely to people who need it
beautiful uh I I yeah I appreciate so much of the discussion and uh how we’ve arrived to this juncture with it and so it it’s kind of just nicely landed into your facility now so uh now that we’ve arrived at Beyond and we’re in Cancun Mexico you know the patient arrives on your doorstep uh from the moment they you know uh you know knock out the door so to speak and uh what what how does that process start and then you know take us kind of kind of through the full treatment episode and what their Haitian experience is like for the individual no problem we’ve spent a lot of time working out a delivery model and then having outside experts peer review it to try to make it as best as it can be I like to say we’re not the best we’re the best at getting better and we’re continually trying to improve what we do I know you guys are too I’m super impressed with your own um you know descriptions and transparency about your own work that you do uh and admire that a lot and I think it makes a lot of people much more comfortable uh with being willing uh to to raise their hand and say I’m ready and can you help like that’s that’s what it’s all about and so uh so nobody shows up here and knocked on the door what happens is they start we have a five phase delivery model uh we call it Insight oriented ibogain because the intention is is to identify actionable insights that will enable someone to heal from the root cause of whether it’s addiction depression anxiety or symptoms of PTSD or some combination thereof heel from the root cause and then have a plan of action after the practice that while they’re here so the first phase is preparation right really phase zero is education so we take a lot of time and we take very seriously the uh objective goal of just helping people understand what options they have is this right for them what does it work for what does it not work for and why what has to be true for it to be safe like that we actually commissioned a clinical summary of all the research that had been done on ibogaine it would give it away in context on our website for free because you have to do anything for it you have to give your email you can just download it you can read it because I thought no one should ever have to go to Google or whatever your preferred search engine is and type in does ibogaine work for or what does it do do and then hope for the best that that just seems to me to be a total disservice to the self-motivation of someone who’s interested in in knowing more or knowing more for a loved one I can empathize with that because I’ve been there and I’ve been there for other people right so the first phase zero um is education help decision making support phase one is preparation so this happens remotely this happens for our guests uh we call them guests not clients or patients uh it happens remotely using telemedicine they meet for several one-hour sessions with a therapist or a therapeutic coach that is helping them understand why are they doing this what is the potential what should they do to prepare what should they uh you know uh do with any anxiety or sense of a desire to be ready or feel ready how can they prepare and so that happens before someone ever leaves their home and it happens with a team member from here uh and it’s very structured but it’s really the goal is to start that engagement that therapeutic engagement uh and really to set the the agenda the table for if you will for the guests to say this is work you’re about to do some real work and you deserve to do the work but we can’t do it for you uh you have to do your own work and we’ve we’ve gone through it many times as many other people will help you but you got to do the work so that happens before you leave home then they fly usually to Mexico and um their uh picked up at the airport uh safely they there’s no wandering around they go directly from the the gate to the car through immigration Customs obviously taken directly to this facility which is a Class one medical facility um and uh they’re greeted by every staff member we do in introductions there’s a full medical assessment of course like any other facility in this domain there’s thorough search you know we just want to make sure everybody’s safe um and they begin that uh that first uh uh phase the second phase of pre-treatment we call it so from the time they arrived to the time they actually have a psychedelic experience is usually about four days four or five days and they’re in one-on-one therapy they’re an adjunct therapy they might be doing um other types of modalities a lot of meditation of course a lot of writing a lot of Discovery work and then the goal of this phase of be treatment is what we call setting the personal psychedelic agenda so this is not about you hear sometimes people say what are your intentions this is a road map we’re trying to actually use one-on-one therapy group therapy writing it could be you know um Fitness we do high intensity uh interval training um nutrition all of this is really to help somebody feel safe medically psychologically emotionally and spiritually safe so they can do the therapy and the work that’s necessary to take full advantage of the third phase which is the Psychedelic experience which what we call treatment that experience takes about 12 hours so it starts like clockwork at the same time in the morning in a a part of our facility that looks like an ICU same technology as you would have in any you know Urban environment the United States any Hospital uh you know heart monitors all the same training all the same uh Technologies available to monitor uh the uh the client while they’re going through this experience so that we’re aware of any potential risk that needs to be mitigated remember the nurses are ICU certified they’re ACLS certified like this is a medical facility that’s sort of masquerading as a retreat center that uses psychedelics it looks better in my opinion you know not a lot of icus have big murals and salt lamps and music playing and burn Sage but the theme environment with the same talent and the same training as you would find in it as you would want for a loved one if they went to the hospital so the the treatment lasts about 12 hours the first six hours of that is a very intense very visually active psychedelic experience uh where it’s they say that certain psychedelics help people go uh feel like they’ve gone out or wide or go you know they they go further they say about Ayahuasca and mushrooms and things like that or so Simon that those plant medicines cause one to feel like they they discover more outside other dimensions and so on ibogaine which as you mentioned comes from Ebola a root bark from Source from Gabon in central western Africa helped one go deeper so it’s not wider it’s deeper and while you wear a beautiful set of noise canceling headphones you’re listening beautiful music you’re wearing an eye mask the sense is the the physiological senses that you’re going out into sort of uh a vast expanse but it’s actually all about your memory and your life experience and so whether it’s good memories or challenging memories or traumatic events or experiences that are joyous and happy um everything that happens in an I begin experience is somehow tied to you so the analogy that we sometimes use is ibogaine can be thought of as the intellectuals Psychedelic because you’re totally rational the whole time uh your your your your rational mind is very present you know what’s happening and you can uh perceive and observe and be familiar with the expansion of consciousness and the the depths of our memory of our of our mind um you’re not unmoored from reality and it’s not like Trainspotting where you’re forced to watch the most horrible events of your life at all it’s it can be challenging because people have had very painful experiences what it does is allows us to observe those with not re-experiencing it or becoming attached to it which shifts our perspective usually shifts the perspective of what happened and how do I relate to it did it really does it really mean what I thought it meant before I had this experience variance is there more to it and then the second half of the I begin experience is not visual at all it’s much more contemplative so it’s it’s an experience where people are deep in thought about what they observed and about the meaning of what they observed and how to relate to it and that that’s like a 12-hour experience while you’re you’re monitored by doctors nurses and therapists in an environment where you feel totally safe and cared for and loved the next day so that’s phase three the next day is the beginning of acute Aftercare where we’re back in therapy we’re drawing um connections between the observations during the Psychedelic experience with the goals of change in personal transformation so how did what I saw about my relationships about my childhood about my dreams about love about self-esteem about trauma worthiness self-love a relationship with Spirit or or God if you want to call it that um how do I use that and we begin building a road map and a a very actionable roadmap we chose to design this from the arbitrary date of one year from The ivigating Experience where will you be where do you need to be or want to be and how do we get there and all the action all the insights that lead to actions and the actions that lead to sort of uh behavioral change and and relationship change sometimes it’s living environment whatever it might be career change but plenty of people come and say wow I’m not so sure I want to be a criminal defense attorney anymore you know maybe maybe there’s more you know whatever it might be the discovery of that new relationship with a deeper meaning for uh of myself my being leads to a lot of actionable insights related to relationships career goals of life and so on so we the fourth thing is that acute Aftercare is all about building that plan that road map that Aftercare plan and then the fifth phase after someone goes home or leaves they’re discharged medically discharged uh what happens is they use that plan in the context of uh therapy with our team so they’re on the phone back where they were in preparation but they’re on Zoom they’re they might be going to meetings they might be going to therapy they might be um seeing other types of professionals but it’s all about where are you on that plan and what are the benefits that you’re seeing happen and how can we support that so five days listening to particularly that third phase there obviously the my clinical experience kind of makes it seem like there’s a lot of similarities between what somebody’s experiencing on up again as EMDR somatic experiencing but it feels like it’s really compressed into just kind of one extended intervention um it there’s okay and there’s part of me that’s like that that 12 hours is a long time to expose somebody to to an experience like that and I’m curious I’m curious about that the most powerful psychedelic plant medicine that’s one of the when we say psychedelic one of the characteristics that makes it a psychedelic is a shift of profound shift in sensory perception right so so we it feels sometimes feels like 45 minutes so you know you’re not anesthetized you could easily take your eye mask off and know where you are now you’re very off very you know um unstable you’re not going anywhere uh but it doesn’t feel like 12 hours it really feels like time has time’s not an issue anymore um uh so yeah if if it was 12 hours and it felt like 12 hours that would for me that would feel like 10 years and I wouldn’t be anywhere near it yeah it doesn’t feel like that at all but the point that you made about EMDR and somatic and other types of therapeutic modalities which I respect have benefited from and and recommend frankly um uh what we’re noticing is the I begin experience is very similar but an accelerant um and there’s inside so it’s not that we don’t that we think that somebody shouldn’t do long-term therapy or use those Technologies and use those modalities it’s that you shouldn’t have to use them for so long to accomplish uh the a significant set of benefits you should use them and you might use them for a long time but we would hope that people can eliminate withdrawals eliminate Cravings have this deep and profound sense of purpose to their recovery quicker so that they can go further longer after they leave here absolutely it’s a to me plant-based medicines are fascinating tools that give individuals that accelerated moment in their Journey you know when they’re at Peaks recovery centers and going through you know our curriculum and our therapeutic interventions it largely feels like they’re leaving safe and satisfied and you guys care about me and there’s a weight there it’s it’s when they walk out the door how much further will that weight carry them so that they can make the next you know stair step as you were doing in your own recovery Journey Tom and I think that’s one of the most challenging aspects of interventions in the way that they’ve existed and why we believe plant-based medicines are such a potential for Innovation within our industry because we want to see that weight continue we want that Curiosity we want to turn over that next Stone beyond the treatment walls okay now I’ve done SC I’ve got to turn that over I’m going to do EMDR I’m going to turn that over it’s plant-based medicines I’m going to turn that over I’m going to keep pursuing this until I you know discover that Wellness aspect not just not being doing drugs but discover wellness and with that existential weight I imagine you guys are seeing a lot of positivity in relationship to outcomes the family experiences the patient experiences and what does that look like for you guys post treatment however you’re falling or tracking that what are you guys experiencing about those outcomes and that that reflection period well I really appreciate what you’re saying because um we call that that sort of uh you know that experience of unlocking each of those aspects that feeling of healing a feeling of a remember self-motivated desire to actually feel that progress as quickly as possible ideally because there’s more to it there’s more momentum there’s more motivation there’s more of a sense of rewards uh and so people keep going and they’re advocates for it right it’s a remarkable talking about outcomes a lot of the people that come to Peaks or they come to Beyond that you know if they didn’t have to come if there was some other way to to you know change they probably would uh the eager uh to experience that they come because nothing else worked uh or their you know they’re at a place where in their life where everyone’s recommending it and now they’ve finally agreed and um so what’s interesting uh and one of the outcomes that we see is people come here and they think they’re a problem not they have a problem they think they are a problem and they’ve heard that for so long they believe it and it’s not that the fentanyl or the Oxys or the alcohol or the stimulus those are the problems it’s a I’m a problem and um and they leave here knowing they’re not a problem they leave here knowing that they’re a solution that they actually have impact not only on themselves because on Christmas this year and New Year’s as you probably did we get a lot of letters a lot of text a lot of you know uh calls people say you saved my life you saved my life and we remind them every time that they they need to go say that and look in the mirror that they save their own life uh we just created a place and a way for them to take advantage of their willingness to save their own lives and they did the work we just supported them and sort of created a an environment for them to do that work um they see themselves as a solution not a problem they see themselves as a hero not a villain when they go back into their their family environment because we know that most of the people that are suffering long term from depression anxiety PTSD or chemical dependency they have a family Dynamic that’s also been suffering with them and what I love most is people leave here with a plan and we share that plan with the family one of the rituals one of the therapeutic engagements is they present the plan to their family when they’re here and so they’re all worried about the same thing my mom or my wife or my husband and sister someone’s going to ask me what’s your plan now that you’re back now that you’re out of of treatment what’s your plan and we go show them the plan you know what is their plan and actually help them develop their plan because they need to plan as much as you do for the recovery within that family Dynamic and they become very motivated to share that plan it’s not something they’re ashamed of I we tell them hanging up on the refrigerator and leave room for everyone else’s plan so the outcomes that that we see are you know uh high double-digit percentage of continuous recovery uh meaning are guests in follow-up calls we do them nearly every day therapists do them tonight in fact in 30 minutes we have an alumni call with our previous guests it’s a zoom I should say and it’s just an alumni event where people can get together and share and talk about how is it going as they’re working their Aftercare plans together obviously they talk about a lot of other stuff too new babies vacations new jobs some challenges Etc High double digit percentage about twice the you know industry average is reported of a conventional uh drug alcohol rehabilities rehabilitation facility um but remember we’ve only been operating for a a a little less than a year technically we opened last year we the company started last year but we started taking people in the first quarter um obviously uh some there there has been low single digit um report of relapse uh however having been in recovery for a long time and been in program for a long time what is remarkable is the relapses are fast they’re short they’re much shorter and I think one of the reasons for that is people don’t leave here thinking oh no I don’t get to do drugs anymore oh no I’ve got you know I don’t get to drink anymore I have to like hold on to that they don’t want to and then some very small number of them end up in some situation where they do but it’s not like they lose that resolve or awareness that that was their intention and they made a mistake they relapsed they they they they need they want to start uh restart that uh recovery practice faster than anything I’ve ever seen in you know um uh you know AAA or elsewhere we know it happens uh we’re in touch with people to be there if it happens um but it doesn’t last as long it’s not like we never hear from people again like that phenomenon I think in part comes from you know a little bit more of an orientation towards harm reduction that we have than the binary you either are clean or you’re not clean you know um and I in the end I want people to be healthy and live happy healthy lives and be safe and and grow and be you know satisfied I think that one of the reasons that they raise their hand and they say I had to slip faster like immediately and they they they want to know what can they do is because there’s not a lot of underlying shame uh or or fear about telling the truth uh in this type of practice this type of environment whereas a lot of recovery environments you know um it’s like you either are or you’re not in recovery and I can identify with a lot of that I spent years and years and years in that orientation and I still believe that from obviously the use of alcohol and illicit drugs and so on but I think there’s just a general um uh solidarity a strength of solidarity of saying hey you know we are going to do what it takes and if that means admitting that we made a mistake the goal doesn’t change at all yeah and I can wholeheartedly appreciate that I mean just in my own journey and I have the the unfortunate Normie disposition and a substance use sort of you know chemical dependency culture mental health you know um and that’s okay I accept that about myself but what I’m what I’m trying to get at is that you know it as yeah right now right now I’m running in marathons and those types of things like you’re aware of but you know but but what what I’ve noticed is that um you know having a drink six years ago you know versus having a drink now it changed for me and I’m highlighting that because that’s to me what the ibogaine experiences around those Swift relapses that you’re talking about maybe there is something of curiosity of like okay I had this profound experience I’m in this difficult moment I can’t remember my coping mechanisms and I use well ingesting a drug at that time after this profound awareness and Awakening can completely shift the relationship between the user uh and and the chemical that’s in front of them and so that resonates with me uh wholeheartedly and it again I think speaks to that that weight that you carry out and forward with uh in that regard and it’s and it’s empowering to hear that individuals are experiencing that as well too uh in that regard so uh before I tie this up as I always say in our finding Peaks episodes the you know the kids at home you know the social media is flipping through it they only have so much capacity and attention to to hear these things out but for the kids at home listen to all of it because it’s important uh in that regard but um how how can they find uh you know beyond uh what are the what are the future kind of build out modeling look like for you guys uh you know help us help us bring that home yeah I mean we can’t do this alone I mean you can find Beyond it b-e-o-n-d dot uh usnd.us
um on same thing on Instagram and and Tick Tock um and um but you know in November 2021 I saw the same news articles about the CDC study you saw a hundred thousand overdose deaths in one year and that’s when I knew like I wasn’t going to be able to sleep well at night if I didn’t do something that would radically change the outcomes uh the effort to help people um and it’s getting worse right so there’s no way we can do this alone but we hope that someday there will be medically safe ethical scientifically based uh ibogaine and other psychedelic assisted uh therapies and treatments for addiction PTSD depression anxiety at scale like that’s what the world seems to need um and so we think that we encourage more people to do this do this right do this in the way that we think is the best way possible but for people that are in need of course if they’re medically qualified and we can help them we would love to at Beyond absolutely beautiful and uh and wholeheartedly here at you know Peaks recovery centers just appreciate the courage to build a business model around this and to um you know be a leader on this side of the industry and the Innovative aspects of things and you know for all the viewers out there I’ve had you know several opportunities to connect with Tom and his team out there and it is a wholehearted caring team uh it’s not just a place to go and to use plant-based medicines for the sake of it as he stated in the beginning of this episode there is a real fundamental principle taking place here and a real opportunity for individuals to get well and so seek them out um you know be courageous in a self reach out to them see what’s going on check out the data that they’re freely giving you you don’t have to give away your email you don’t have to talk to anybody to do it all of this is true of that website and I think again it just speaks to where their hearts are at in this process and appreciate all the viewers out there and Tom thank you so much for being on this episode with us today it is such a pleasure to meet you it’s a Joy it’s a joy to be here thank you very much yeah means that means a lot to share this aspect of this industry and this movement that’s taking place and the leaders that are on the Forefront of it so I appreciate your services and with that folks just like uh Tom and Beyond on the Instagram tick tocks all those types of things you can find finding Peaks Peaks recovery centers all of those things on uh on our social medias check them out finding Peaks at peaksrecovery.com it might be finding Peaks at findingpeaks.com now I I should have checked into that before I got onto this but either way you can find us out there again we’re going to keep bringing you the good stuff throughout the year and as Colorado moves in the similar direction that Tom’s a part of currently as we move into this in 2025 you know we’re going to continue to bring and showcase uh this very real possible solution in an intervention that exists out there for everybody so uh Brandon Burns chief executive officer Chief clinical Officer Jason friezma signing off on the first episode of Finding peaks in 2023 thank you so much for joining us and we’ll see you next time foreign