Onur Yildirim is the Director of Field Trip Health Amsterdam, a place that offers legal, safe, and vetted experiences and possibilities to rediscover life through psychedelics.
Field Trip Health stands for scientifically supported, legal psychedelic experiences that liberate and inspire you, and works with a step-by-step, professional approach to the use of psychedelics. This includes preparatory sessions and integrative therapy sessions. In Amsterdam, Field Trip is working with truffles, in The US and Canada with ketamine.
Onur, who leads a team of experienced therapists and psychiatrists at Field Trip, was originally trained in clinical psychology and worked as a psychologist during the first years of his career. Later, Onur earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Radboud University and worked in the R&D and MA of established pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Novartis, where he championed the research of psychedelic molecules as potential antidepressants. After his time in the pharmaceutical industry, he began his entrepreneurial career which eventually led him to Field Trip.
So you want to go on a truffle trip…?
Onur and I talk about what happens if you make the decision to engage in a psychedelic journey at FT, who are the people that are interested in this, and why the times of Covid are encouraging people to look into psychedelic support systems, if possible.
And full disclosure, Anne has done a guided Truffle experience at Field Trip in Amsterdam and it brought her many new insights. She decided to engage in a truffle experience twice a year - as a tool to support her own life’s and founder's journey.
Transcript
Anne Philippi
Hi, and welcome to a new episode of The New Health Club show. My guest today is Onur Yildirim. He's the director of Field Trip Health Amsterdam, a place that offers legal, safe and vetted experiences and possibilities to rediscover life through psychedelics. Field Trip Health stands for scientifically supported legal psychedelic experiences that liberate and inspire you. Field Trip works with a step by step professional approach to the use of psychedelics. This includes preparatory sessions and integrative therapy sessions, which is very important to all Field Trip places all over the world. So far in Amsterdam Field Trip is working with truffles in the US and Canada with ketamin. For now back to Onur. He leads a team of experienced therapists and psychiatrists that Field Trip originally trained in clinical psychology and worked as a psychologist during the first years of his career. Later, Onur earned his PhD in neuroscience from Radboud University, and worked in R&D and MA of established pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson and Johnson and Novartis, where he championed the research of psychedelic molecules as potential antidepressants. After his time in the pharmaceutical industry, he began his entrepreneurial career, which eventually led him to field trip. Online, I talk about what happens if you make the decision to engage in a psychedelic journey at future? And who are the people that are interested in this right now? And why are the times have Corona encouraging for most people to look into a psychedelic support system if possible. And full disclosure, I have done a guided travel experience that field trip and it brought me many new insights, since I decided to engage in a travel experience twice a year to support my own life and my founders journey. But now over to Onur and please enjoy the podcast. I think it's a really good idea to explain first, what this is what you guys are doing in Amsterdam.
Onur Yildirim 2:49
Field trip health currently has multiple clinics all over the world, I think Canada now and Amsterdam. When we expanded to Amsterdam, we wanted to do something extra on top of what we already did in the US. And of course, in the Netherlands, truffles are legal, psychedelic truffles. So we want to go for a program with psychedelic truffles. And with ketamine, the thing is you can't you can't do ketamine and truffles in the same legal structure. Ketamin is a medical product. Truffles cannot be given in a medical context. So we have to choose. And since we're already doing ketamine, in the States, we chose to go for the psychedelic truffles, the psilocybin basically. So in the Netherlands, we are providing different programs that are centered around a psychedelic travel dosing. But they have components of psychotherapy before and after, which means that the truffles are mainly used as a catalyst to help you get deeper into your themes deeper into the things that play into your conscious and subconscious. And then afterwards, also discuss these things and integrate them into your more conscious psyche into your more conscious behavioral patterns with a psychologist. So basically, this program is both psychotherapy and and dosing with truffles to really sinister genetically help each other to come deeper into your issue to understand yourself faster, and thereby also work towards new solutions faster.
Anne Philippi 4:27
So it's kind of, let's say, also a new idea of life support, life enhancement, maybe. But what's interesting to me is, since you guys are open for a couple of months, who are the people so far who are coming to check into the program? Is there a couple of groups that you could talk about?
Onur Yildirim 4:54
If I had to divide them into different specific categories? I would say that there are three main groups that come in and the first group would be the healthcare professional. So the people that are following these, these developments in the in the medical community with with psychedelics, and they're just very curious, they just want to know what it's about. And now there's this new group new team that does this. So you know what, let's try it out. Let's see what this whole new hype in the medical community is about. So those are definitely a group, another group or the people that work that that that started their spiritual journey that want to work on their spirituality want to grow spiritually want to work on different issues, or the work through their life, the things that they have accumulated in their life. So basically, people come in for spiritual personal growth. This is also a very big group, I would say, these are the people ranging between 30 and 60 years old, that mainly come for these kinds of experiences to really go deep understand themselves better. Second, big group. And then a third big group would be the group of people that have walked into different depressions anxieties, throughout the have, have tried different treatments, and now out of treatment, no treatments anymore, and that they want to, and they want to know if this might be something for them to, to go deeper to understand themselves better, and possibly also have a sort of treatment. I mean, in the end, it is psychotherapy, a lot of our programs consist of psychotherapy, and maybe the truffles can help them go deeper, and then really get to the core of the issue with the therapist. I do want to say that with this last group, these are only the more my like, let's say they have had different treatments and that sort of stuff, and they want to try this. Still, we have very strict our eligibility process, whereby only two people come in, that have mild or psychological issues that we think are eligible to integrate a psychedelic experience. So yeah, we do have a strict inclusion exclusion process.
Anne Philippi 7:20
So of course, most people who approach us are interested in these experiences, and they start reading up about it. There's a lot of media coverage now even in established media. The talk is about psilocybin. Everybody has heard it so far. So but the question is still, what is happening to you, once you booked yourself into this, or once you said to get in touch with you guys, because there's a process that you guys offer, so maybe you can introduce us to the process that Field Trip is offering?
Onur Yildirim 7:54
Yes. So currently, psilocybin and psychedelic truffles are and acknowledged as medication aren't technologist therapeutic, which means that there are no regulations surrounding. However, at the same time, of course, there is some awareness from the government that these things are happening, they're a little bit cautious, this new industry coming up and in. And of course, there's a lot of stigmatization. So what we decided when setting up the program was to put safety first and foremost to make sure that whatever happens that, that no serious incidents happen with us that can endanger the industry, the industry going forward as a whole in whatever way. So we have certain checkup points, let's put it like that. When you apply for the program, you go to the website, and you fill in the form you say, I'm interested, you can book in call immediately with the care coordinators. And this is a very casual talk where the care coordinators just go through the different questions that you might have the different conditions and the different things that you might need to know before go into treatment. And these calls can happen multiple times, it doesn't have to be one call. If you're not ready after one call, they can say you know what we'll call back again after a week so you can really get to know the program, get to ask all your questions that you have, etc. Once the care coordinator decide, okay, we've been through quite a lot and we feel that this person if we direct them to the psychiatric consultation will be eligible because of course, if you during the care coordinator call tell them that you've been psychotic just two months ago, then the scare corners will be saying something like you know what, maybe not a good idea to go through the cycle. You want to be eligible. Anyway. So anyway, so if this all correct, there's a good feeling there's a good click the care coordinators danken Make an appointment with a psychiatrist, really going through all the psychiatric backgrounds. And we have a psychiatrist that is very intuitively strong, which means that this person also is able to really feel where someone is in their development, which is very important. And after the psychiatric screening, getting psychological intake, and that after this intake, you have the psychiatrist with the psychologist discussing about your, about your case, and to see if you're actually eligible to do something like that. Only after that, when everybody agrees, the person is admitted into the program, and then the program starts basically.
Anne Philippi 10:44
So and before we talk about the actual coming to the, to the place and eating the truffle. So why for you is this, let's say, this vetting system is so important, because as we know, we could easily go now on Google and find (illegal) mushroom retreats, wherever, and then you will or like, even even more, or you ask her office, I guess right now, so and as we hear many times people come back from this have problems integrating themselves in their lives again, or they have a really bad experience. So maybe you can explain. And I think that's what a lot of people are very interested in. Why is this vetting so important?
Onur Yildirim 11:29
That's actually a very good question. The reason why vetting is so important is because what psychedelics do in the brain isn't always experienced as easy, calm, or even necessarily directly as a catalyst to become better. So what I try to say by that is that psychedelics is such as psilocybin containing truffles, what they do is they actually force an integration of everything that is in the psyche, which means that if the most easy example to give here, let's say that you've just come out of an acute trauma, that you just had a very serious trauma, someone tried to kill you, or whatever, and you're just coming out of the trauma, and you're just still having nightmares and flashbacks, and you can't sleep and you're like hypervigilance all the time. Let's say that such a person comes into a psychedelic psilocybin mediated therapy, what can happen is that this, this, this compounds for system integration in the psyche, which means that all of the things that you wish to just for the time being put in a different place, because they're too much to handle too much to integrate. You can't do that anymore, the psilocybin makes it, that everything comes up all of your issues, all of your pains, all of you. And this can be pretty heavy for someone that's just been traumatized, to really, really have the old trauma as if it's happening again, without control. Normally what we do we do it step by step, right? It's the same as when someone is afraid of a spider, you just don't do a throw a spider on that person and say, deal with it, you'll get over it. You don't do that, right. Now, if you let that person imagine a spider, and then you then they see a spider on a children's book than a real photo. And then you know, like it goes step by step. And that's a little bit the thing with psychedelics, the fattening process is so important. First of all, because you don't want to read traumatize people that come out of trauma. Secondly, because it can bring about such a shift in perspective, let's say you've been depressed, but you have sensitivity towards manic or bipolar tendencies. What can happen is once you see certain illusions for what they are and your depression, that keeping your depression, you can just completely shift into the other side and become manic say, Yeah, I understand it all. Now. Now. It's all done and they go up and then you make all these decisions, and they're also not helpful. So a bipolar sensitivity is very important to exclude for, and psychosis. Yeah, that speaks for itself. So I would say some people, when they go into confusing or some dark thoughts, they can easily get caught up in paranoia or whatever. And these are people that are found in bubbles for psychosis. And then maybe the very last group is in general people that are that have been sheltered their entire life that has very difficulty to, to acknowledge and to get in touch with their dark sites. What happens when you put because psychedelics can be really dark because they don't only put bring out all of the positive things that are in you. They bring out everything so there's a Yeah, there's there's a lot of hate or envy or whatever it is, this will also come up and really be experienced as strong, but it gives you of course, the opportunity to work through them. But at the same time, if you don't have a strong personality structure, this can be pretty heavy. So yes, the factoring process made sure that we exclude the people that might have a very intense, too intense and overwhelming experience of that can't integrate it well.
Anne Philippi 15:32
Right. But I feel we should say that, and I had that experience, too, because I went through the program. And in Amsterdam, I feel it, the most interesting thing is that the pain you will experience or the painful topics that come up, you have a very different experience in the trip, because you can look almost at yourself in the painful situation. But but you don't feel that pain you would feel otherwise. So you just look at yourself, Oh, this is interesting. This is so this is happening to that person. So and that's a very interesting, almost like, of course, otherwise unknown way of dealing with certain topics. So I think that's kind of almost very hard to explain that this is happening to you in a psychedelic experience. Because if you tell people, well, I saw myself cut open on an operation table, they're like, Oh, my God. So what a horror, is it? No, actually, you just look at a person looking a lying on that table. So and that's kind of this, almost like miracle, almost this kind of very unusual way of approaching things that seem to be unbearable, if you listen to them without any psychedelic interference, but Okay, so let's say you're vetted, you're good to go. You made the appointment, you sitting in front of the therapist, and the day you arrive, so and what happens then, so maybe you can walk us through the process, once you've made the decision, and you're accepted to the program.
Onur Yildirim 17:08
Yeah, so when you are accepted into the program, basically, you get to plan your sessions. And it depends, of course, on which program you selected on how many sessions you have. But let's go for the basic program, which is on psilocybin or one a truffle session. So first of all, you have two different people that will guide you intimately, and then different other people that will guide you indirectly. But the two most important are the therapist and the facilitator. The facilitator is basically your buddy. And the therapist is your psychologist, like literally just put it like that, which means that you have preparatory sessions with the therapist about your team's your background, the emotions that play inside of you. Basically, the role of the therapist is to bring up as much as possible from the subconscious into the conscious. So that you become aware of the themes that are playing inside, you become aware of the emotions that might have been suppressed, become aware of the conflicts you have with people that these are all your working memory so that we go into the dosing session, that you can actually work through them that you can use these memories and work through them. That's what the therapists do does during the preparatory sessions, they have to facilitate or also, that also does some preparatory sessions does two of them to be precise. And one of them, they just get to know the client, just like a buddy literally like okay, hey, you're facilitating, I'm going to help you get through this, and some tips and advices. And in the second. In the second session, the facilitator give some practical information. So very practical, how does dosing day look like? How do you come in? What can you expect the cetera, et cetera. And then, after all, these preparatory sessions with therapists and facilitator, you go into the dosing, that's a, that's an entire day. And this happens with the facilitator at your site and with a nurse outside of the door. So you're always looking and looked over by two people, basically, during the end of the dosing session, you also have some time alone to let it sink in. And towards the very end of the day, you talk with your facilitator about how it went, what are the things that you ran out into etc. And then after this, you also have an integration period, whereby you go back to the therapist and have some integration sessions to talk about what happened, how to integrate them into your everyday life. So then the integration ends and you get an integration program that that continues to journey after you left us on how to deal with certain emotions if they come up how to deal with certain insights. If they come up at cetera, and after a month, three months or six months, you also have contact again with us to go through again, like, Okay, what have you discovered? Are the are distinct still, which you have to change your life? Have you fallen back on certain certain topics? How can we be of help? etc. So we can find also have some care afterwards.
Anne Philippi 20:24
But it's interesting, you already mentioned these six months, so because I think it's just, it's understood that in the six months after the trip, things will come forward, you will experience moments in your life that you're kind of where you feel, Oh, I've always behaved like this and that moment, but suddenly, without even you interfering, it's almost like your system says, no, no, I'm not going to do this anymore. without you being part of this, it's like your system takes over and says, like, No, I'm not going to engage in this anymore, which I find really, first of all, I really had that experience many times. And it's really fascinating how you almost can just lie back and relax and your, your new psych system takes over. So can you can you talk about that
Onur Yildirim 21:16
Yes, yes, I can. It actually does work like that. And, and for people to understand the more complex part of it what like how your personality changes your how your automatic response style changes, to understand a much simpler example, actually, because it's a can be told in a much simpler way, which is, for example, when I had a site here, site, psychedelic retreats, I've done a retreat. And when I was asked to retreat in the toilets, the Fouts the foul foul chat, or how you call that is the same way. Yeah, we put it on, you don't have to put it off again, you just put it on wait. And then it stops by itself, right? You have. And I was in such a plastic state, apparently, when I was there. And I went to the bathroom quite often, that what I came back, something had happened in my brain that I didn't wasn't aware of, I went to the toilet, I turn on the water, and I just walked away, I just left it on, the whole concept of Wait a second, you also have to turn it off, again, have been overwritten by this repeated action that I've done while under the influence of psychedelics that I don't have to turn off the faucet anymore. So I came home and I forget it all the time. I forgot it like four or five times, like what's happening? Like, why would I even forget that I have to turn this off. Right. And that's a very beautiful example of how, when you're under the influence of psychedelics, if you think certain things repeatedly, if you, for example, you have an insight, and it's like, okay, this is something I think, but it's not correct. And then you go through that non correctness and you change it in inside of yourself, you repeatedly think it and think it suddenly becomes something automatic. without you even know you go, someone says something, and automatically your spots like that, like I automatically turned on the faucet and then turn it off again, like it becomes an automatic thing to you. And if it's something that you should do, like turning off the fire I read literally had to remind myself, No, this was only there. Normally, we turn off the faucet. Right? So this was very interesting how fast the that became an automatic understanding of how to operate a faucet, you know, and that's life. But the same thing happens in the deeper layers of your brains regarding belief systems regarding a way to think so.
Anne Philippi 23:49
It's almost like conflicts that you were kind of used to have, let's say with a certain person, suddenly, your brain seems to not find this conflict anymore, or kind of skips the step where Oh, now the conflict is coming in, for example. So and that's super fascinating to me, we have to say, because
Onur Yildirim 24:14
Normally I would say that we don't even like it starts off with a conflict by itself by the original conflict like someone's virtue. But then what we basically do is it becomes a routine it becomes a routine way of thinking every time a certain trigger happens that reminds us of this person or off this conflict we go back into oh, god damn just this happened. And I don't like it. Done. Okay, this this becomes like a routine like Yes. It's not even in the here and now maybe it happened five years ago, maybe they obtained but each time like, we like each time you think about a good friend, just like yeah, that was also a good friend. And this is and then whenever we go back into the conflict diagram, right And what happens, I would say with, like, what I just explained also is that you get the CDs things in a different way. And once you see it, once you shine the light of consciousness on illusions, they disappear forever. That's simple. Just how it works. You just never shine the light of your consciousness on it, you always have ignored it as something that hurts you. So you just like, yeah, he's now. So instead of like, look at it, shine your your consciousness on it and see that you are actually hurt. And that you have to deal with your hurt. Exactly. You're dealing with that also stops you. Or that
Anne Philippi 25:47
You're that your pain comes from somewhere else, but not even from that situation. That's that's quite interesting, too. I mean, like, what is the? I mean, some people now have already gone through the program, you guys are open for a couple of months. What is the main feedback you're getting from people who have experience in a trip?
Onur Yildirim 26:06
Yeah, the main feedback we are getting is is very positive, I'm really happy with that. And the positivity mainly is in the sense that people are surprised that this is possible. Oh, well, let's start with the really surprised people will that are people who actually have used psychedelics themselves? So they're like, Yeah, I've used this stuff. Like, why is it so different this time? Right. Yeah. So that's a very interesting thing that people have used psilocybin before, but then they comment, it's like, no, this was different. And I think different. First of all, you have complete and utter focus from the people around you to help you go through this trip. people that really know what they do, they can really sense you when you are dissociating, when you're escaping into certain things to make it less heavy, or whatever, so they can really help you stay on the path. Second of all, of course, it's very important to set the setting you might have done it at home. But like the the simple small things are so important, even like how the room smells. It sounds ridiculous.
Anne Philippi 27:14
No no, it doesn't.
Onur Yildirim 27:16
But like even the smallest details like how this room smells can either make you let go completely or, or hold on a little like I should I'm still smelling it. I've never mind just forget, what is this? Just forgotten? What is this just forget and you go into that new stay with it? Well, if it just okay, you let go, it's more easier. So even though small details and Midwich smile details also mentioned the music, for example, the truffles themselves, so you have different kinds of truffles that have different alkaloids. So psilocybin is definitely not the only ingredient that works in truffles, they have around 2030 that are really active. And so what we did is we tested many truffles ourselves also, experientially just taking them to ourselves. And we came to the conclusion that this one particular truffle that we use, are the best, perhaps the best profile for the work that we want to do. So some truffles, I would say make you very activated as if you're drinking a lot of coffee maybe activate like to activate and a lot of thoughts and, and that sort of stuff like that doesn't really always help when you want to go into yourself. Some truffles make you very active in your mind, but confused. You're like, huh, huh, huh, you know, like confused about everything I just keep wondering. And then there are some truffles like the ones we use. We mainly work through emotional processes. So you think them as suddenly you feel all kinds of emotions coming up and welling up and like, Oh, I'm actually really sad about this. This hurts me and comes and you cry and you and when you cry, you go deeper into those emotions, like where did they come from? Oh, it comes from something that happened. And I I blame myself and now I feel guilty. But why did I blame myself? Am I guilty? No, I'm actually very pure and very, very innocent. And you see these things and you and you give yourself a hug and that sort of stuff like that's this kind of process that these truffles trigger and so we really made sure to have the right truffles, the right setting the right music, aromatherapy, people that that can feel where you are in your progress. All of these things. I think one client really summarized it perfectly said came out said I've done travel so many times. And every time they're they're fun, they helped me I sleep better. I feel I feel better the next day, but this was different. This was Healing. He said, this was really healing. It really changed me and a deeper core. It healed me. And that's something I never experienced before. And I would say that's the importance of using the right truffles, right? Satta setting all of it.
Anne Philippi 30:16
What is the truffle called that you guys are using? Can you tell?
Onur Yildirim 30:20
The truffles we use are called Mexican. And we have different we try different Mexicans from different people that grow them. There was one that's just the best in the sense of like, this is just the most emotional, the most pure in that regard, and really helps people to go deep into their arm processed stuff, and really helped. Like it helped me for example, when I tried all these different truffles, right? I tried them all myself, like some trips there. But the funny thing is, of course, I was also dealing with my own issues that was more than a year ago. And I was also dealing with some issues. And with most shuffles, I was like, not really going into the issues. I was more like, Ooh, this is interesting. Wow, this is strange, strange. I don't understand. Like, I was a little bit like that. And only with the max, every time I took to max con, I immediately went into the issues that were inside of me. And I was like, yes, what we want, we don't want people to feel philosophize and to be in their hand.
Anne Philippi 31:44
Now that if I think about my own experience a couple of weeks ago, at your facility, so I mean, if I've held like, so many things came up again, that especially was suppressed last year, and lockdown. And I mean that the main thing is I feel that you, you can start to really feel things again, but you feel safe and feeling them. And there's no problem that would arise from from these feelings, because you're in such a protected space. But I mean, I mean, I think it's something that we working on or like a thought that we discussing a lot is that maybe if you engage earlier in life, maybe already in your 20s and 30s, in an experience, like an in a high dose experience, what you guys are offering that it could almost work like a prevention for maybe severe depression in the years or the 10 or 20 years to come. And a few that really, this is something that I mean, of course, there might be studies around this that are not there yet. But my experience so far as if I talked to people who have done this a while ago, they really say that. Okay, my feeling is that if I wouldn't have done this, I might have been in a very severe depression, maybe in a couple of years. So is this something you guys think about? Or is this a topic in the whole programs that you're offering?
Onur Yildirim 33:17
Well, yes, it is definitely something that I'm familiar with. Personal personally, even I would say that 12 years ago, when I did my first Ayahuasca session, it changed me so much it diverted my path, so much that like, probably, at a completely different point than I would have been if I hadn't diverted that path back then. So I do definitely notice that. Regarding prevention, well, we can decide this for the people themselves. Of course, we can say anybody come here to buy because you might get depressed. However, if someone comes in, that is still young, but wants to grow on themselves, we do we do have an open mind to this, we do understand that, like you said, and this has also been acknowledged by science, as having a psychedelic experience in life can actually be a protective factor towards mental health issues. And it's actually very, very simple. You just have to have that experience, even if it's one time in your life, that your current consciousness based in ego, based in identity based in personality, that that's also just an illusion. You just have to see it just once even if you're 20 or 18. It doesn't. If you can just see it for once that that's also a construct that is not real. Then you can decide on how to deal with it, how you will observe it, it changes your relationship to these constructs of feeling important or unemployed. feeling worthy or unworthy? That sort of stuff. You have to have seen it for once that illusion there. And this changes a lot. I mean, it's natural that it would give people more sense of peace, more self love, more understanding towards themselves and naturally also more understanding towards others. I mean, yeah, so I do believe it is just that, how do you scan for people that might get depressed and say, hey, well, yeah, that's, you can't do that. But yes, if people decide to do it at that age, I always think that it might be a very good, very good thing to do. However, just one last thing I want to say about this. Again, if you do a tour early, when you're like, say, when you're still in the process in your teens, 18, 19, you're still in the process of exploration, your identity, etc, what it can do is consolidate a certain identity, that's not necessarily the identity that you want to go with for the rest of your life. For example, your 18 or19, you see that the identity of being a hippie that you just adopt for a while, like, Yes, this is it, and you go with it. Instead of maybe discovering this is not for me. So I can't wait to wait a little bit, explore your identity, explore the world become 22, 23, 24, before you really take on an adventure like this, to really look at it and say, is it correct? Do I want to change?
Anne Philippi 36:35
Well, I feel like most people that approached us i in that, let's say, for getting into this very early also, because now everybody reads about micro dosing, but they end up realizing, oh, maybe there's a micro dose, that's better. So I mean, they're mostly in their mid late 30s, this is when the first interest really becomes stronger, to look into things that they don't want to engage in anymore. But I mean, we should also talk about your background, that's actually a very interesting one, because you have a interesting mixture of being clinical psychologist, but you were also engaged in the in the pharma world. So in a more medical world, which makes you an interesting combination of person that comes from a, let's say, more like a new approach on psychology and psychedelics, but also coming from a very conservative world. So and maybe you can talk about your journey in the in the old pharma World to the New psychedelic world.
Onur Yildirim 37:40
When I started off, actually didn't even start off in psychology, I started off in industrial design, because I was a, I was a scientist, be scientists, meaning that I was interested in maths, physics and chemistry, so But that wasn't my thing became depressed back then I was 17 or 18. So I went through psychologist and really discovered that I want to think about the human mind and how it works. And of course, when you just start to learn all these things, you do your Master, you're very ideologic, you're like, Okay, this is a science, people have very smart people have done this for many years, they probably have figured it out, right. And now I'm the one following their footsteps until I figure it out that that just lasts for him like five, six years, you finish your school, you go work as a therapist, and after a while, I would say 10 years, I worked fat for five years as a therapist, you discovered that it's all ideologic, everything you've ever learned is just the theory that the real human is very complex, that it doesn't always work like that doesn't always work that linearly. Changing someone isn't that easy. All these things you learn along the way. And it sort of destroys your world through that how you have built up as a psychologist that, you know, every year like, Okay, I understand all the different issues. I understand if this happens, why it happened, if I can just show someone that it will change. It doesn't work like that. So you become frustrated. And that's when I went back to university to go deeper. I said, Okay, maybe we need to understand more about the neurobiology of like, how does the brain work? Maybe the brain resists certain changes or whatever, chemical imbalances or whatever you go, so I went really deep. I got my PhD in neurobiology, understand, understood and neurobiology. After years of working on in the university as a teacher, I eventually moved to the pharmaceutical industry, I was actually headhunted by dancer to work for their research and development department of neuroscience to to design new kinds of antidepressants to help set up these clinical trials. And while I was working there, of course, having understood the neurobiology better now, I saw that there was a very linear way of thinking. In other words, what they try to do is identify very specific neuro biological enzymes, whether proteins, whether these are receptors or, or whatever, and then see how they can modulate those very specific receptors to then treat the depression in all of its glory. Depression is a social psychological issue, you can't just reduce it to a brain function. So, of course, naturally all these rational drug design efforts failed. I had done Ayahuasca by Nance, so I was already studying psychedelics, and at Yonsei had a double agenda, I tried to, of course, go with the flow, I was new. But at the same time, I tried to plan in lectures for during lunch during different times that everybody was available, to really, to really show them that psychedelics had a promise in the future, not only by us, perceptually because I started off by explaining the perceptual part, but also biologically, literally, like, the biological profile really matches that of depression. And I walked into walls each and every time people are like, yeah, very interesting. But we can't have people hallucinating. Like, that's the whole point. But yeah, so after a while, what I'd said is, you know, what, very simply sad, and I hope you understand this is, is up until now we have designed different kinds of pharmaceutical agents that go to the to a certain chemical imbalance, and then suppress it. So let's say you have issues with emotions, because you're afraid of the world, you have panic and depression. So now we give them an antidepressant that helps this system function better, so that you still have the emotions, you still have the anxiety, you still feel trapped, and but because the system functions better, you're better able to control it to read, you're like, oh, this world is such a scary place, but I don't care anymore. Whatever, scary. It just doesn't register anymore, you're blunted. That's what's current antidepressants. However, the brain is an interface for the internal external world. So the brain what it thinks about the world will always translate into its internal world, if the brain sees the external world is strengthening, you can put as much SSRIs or antidepressant into it as you want, the brain eventually will say, Listen, what are you doing? We should feel this, the world is dangerous, you should be scared, why are you suppressing your fair? And so what it does is it regulates itself to be more sensitive to these compounds. So it's less as needed now to trigger the same fear. And that means that the antidepressant doesn't work anymore. When you look at psychedelics is the other way, what you actually do? This is also something that I tried to explain that the answer didn't really work is we don't only suppress the biology or health, but we also help the person plasticize their perception to make them able to think differently, basically, to dismantle all of their highways, all of the highways of thinking of the highways of automatic thinking in their brain, so that now they have to go through byway sideways and still come to the same conclusion meaning have to have new perspectives on the issue, see themselves from a third person perspective is what happens that's what you just told you see yourself as it from a third person perspective, instead of the automatic way of thinking about who you are. And this just enables you to literally look at yourself as you would look at someone else. It's like, I can always help other people by telling them what they should do, but I can't help myself. Yes, because you can't see yourself properly. You're in yourself. Basically. Psychedelics give you that opportunity to go out of yourself, see yourself as a separate person, and then it's like, oh, wait, this is so clear. This person is making this mistake. I'm in time again. You see it, or this is this person thinks that that he is unlovable or unworthy. Why look at him. He's so beautiful. Right? And that's what really changes your perspective, I would say on yourself. So that's something I discovered try to explain and the answer, didn't register, walked into walls and eventually said, You know what, I'm quitting Raskin. We can go through a little bit faster than I worked at Novartis, same issue quit there. Again, I said, after that I said, I'm quitting the career I basically true my entire career, my PhD, all of it, I build up so much into the Trashman, because I was like, corporate world is not going to work, I tried to change the system from within, I just keep walking into walls. And I don't have to, I don't want to get myself literally killed by tiredness by the age of 55, trying to fight the system. So I'm going to do it a different way. set up my own, set up my own companies. But of course, it's difficult set up your own company, make make it work, did that for many years, got a lot of experience and then field trip came on my path, and field trip combined. All the things that I've done, my research background, understand my psychedelics passion, my psychology and therapy, passion, all of these things, combined into the role that I have now the entrepreneurial spirit that I have. So it was a perfect, how you say that turn of events in the ends in the end.
