🌱Trying Plant medicine🌿 FRESH PACIFIC podcast looks at the possibilities of psychedelic therapies in Hawaiʻi.

“I have certainly seen depression rise, suicide thinking go up, Iʻve had some of my long term substance abuse patients that had been sober, alcoholics, for a long time have relapsed. Iʻve been dealing with a lot of increased demand for psychiatric services. My colleagues around Honolulu report the same thing,” says Hawai’i psychiatrist, Dr. Thomas Cook. “And thereʻs an uptick in child issues too, a lot of increased stress among children because of all the change weʻve seen.” 

Addressing stress, depression, anxiety, and other issues must be tailored to each situation, each person. In some cases, Dr. Cook advocates the clinical use of psychedelics to treat some mental illnesses. He says depressed people, people caught in repetitive, hamster-wheel types of patterns can benefit. In 2019, the FDA called psilocybin "breakthrough therapy" for treating depression. 

In November 2021, the New York Times reported on U.S. veterans lobbying for psychedelic therapy options. The Veterans Administration has launched at least 5 studies on the effectiveness of psilocybin to treat PTSD. 

“The point of psychedelics is the altered mental state and the learning from the experience that comes with that.” Psychedelics get people off drugs they’ve been taking for years, and Dr. Cook explains how that works.

He also explains who might be against that. Guess who? Then, first hand experiences of transformation from a woman with brain cancer, and a Vietnam veteran who took mushrooms on Maui. Psychedelic therapies and recreation are already happening from Hanalei to Hawi.

There are a couple of entertaining articles in the New Yorker, one, from 2016 describes an ayahuasca boom in the U.S. Another article, printed in 2022 describes how one advocate of ingesting secretions from the back of a toad for psychedelic rebirth, "smoking toad," appears to have gone off the rails.

Michael Pollanʻs 2018 book, How to Change Your Mind, lifted the curtain on a re-examination of psychoactive drugs and their effects for a new generation. He does for organic psychedelics what he did for eating plants in 2006, with The Omnivoreʻs Dilemma.

It’s not for everybody.

Ashley Lukens is founder of the Clarity Project, advocating for clinical use of psychedelics. A brain cancer survivor, she attributes her wellness to therapies including ayahuasca and psilocybin. Meditation, mindfulness, psychoanalysis are all pathways as well, she says, but “I would argue there are a lot of people that do not attain the clarity that psychedelics provide you through meditation and psychoanalysis because there is a firmly entrenched mental block. Psychedelics have shown, time and time again to help you overcome that barrier.”

As for music in this episode, my deepest thanks to Kit Ebersbach and to Dae Han, both of whom deserve closer listening on their own!

Music List

Kit Ebersbach: Faux Lyre and Lull. Find his work on popular platforms and at Aloha Got Soul.

Dae Han. In a Dream.