Psychedelic Therapy and Cancer Care ? Where do we stand?

Hi friends, Charlie here. I want to talk about an exciting topic that is really taking over both the digital health space, health care, as well as wall street. And that’s the exciting developments in the use of psychedelics for mental health treatment? I think in the last 90 days we seen three companies go public and they’re almost viewed while they are viewed as you know therapeutic biotech companies. And the revolution in the science has actually been around for awhile. I guess you call it a revolution that it’s more a revolution of adoption and acceptance than it is about some type of breakthrough. Just a little history of the psychedelic movement where it’s really it’s really starts. I think with Johns Hopkins has a school for psychedelic studies and I have been working for almost 10 years now on studies that associate with post-traumatic stress disorder using psychedelics and guided therapies.

So keep in mind, this is at this stage, it’s not, we’re not talking about, you know, just handing somebody a tab of acid and saying, good luck with that, all that. This is using certain dosages, low dosages that are then paired with therapy, so guided meditation and or guided therapy. So, you know, the psychedelics and this we’re talking about psilocybin MDMA, which is ecstasy. You know there’s a few other ones, but essentially, you know, the science is amazing. I mean, it’s just basically, if you combine, you know, getting a therapist to key in, on some trauma I E and with vets and, and you know, post-traumatic stress, the psychedelics allow the brain to kind of gain a perspective and there’s almost a rewiring of the neurons with that trauma. And it is just a kind of a doorway. It’s a re rewiring process that is dramatic.

It is a literally like rewiring a computer with natural compounds, so that that’s, what’s incredible. And Johns Hopkins, they did a five-year study with posttraumatic stress disorder. We’re talking fives, I’m sorry, three sessions you know, guided, guided trip sessions with therapy therapists. And after five years, something like 75% of the participants had no indications of post-traumatic stress had no issues with depression. It was just, it’s unbelievable. So that’s kind of started a whole revolution and, you know, now these psychedelic compounds are being experimented with whether they’re actually making artificial compounds at campus pathways and law in England, or, you know, just experimenting with magic mushrooms you know, with therapy. So where does this all sit with cancer patients and my company, and what’s our vision, what’s our kind of stance on this whole thing. And I think I will say it right now.

I think we, as a company and as you know, patients, you know, who are dealing with end of life, you know, we should be at the forefront of both, either partnering with companies who are trying to develop these therapies from a clinical trial perspective you know, or having our own sort of services associated with end of life, palliative care hospice. I mean, I think going forward, I’m talking about, you know, 12 to 24 months from now, you know, our movement is going to be into end of life care. And I think that what needs to be done and how I see it evolving is, is it’s, it’s a preparation, it’s a process, it’s a preparation. And these types of therapies have shown to load low lowering anxiety, give great perspective. And I can’t, you know, I believe it’s going to be big.

I think it’s going to be a standard of care for hospice treatment, probably in the next, you know, three to five years. You know, I want to tell those two stories associated with cancer patients and psychedelics one is a woman who had pancreatic cancer diagnosed pancreatic cancer twice. I mean, and still living today. She was part of the joy of the Johns Hopkins study. And I, she and I spoke at length about her experience. And she said that the experience completely wired her rewired, her brain, that she felt less fear about death than she ever had. She told me just jokingly. She said, honestly, every day I wake up and I look myself in the mirror and say, one day you’re going to die, but not today. And for someone that has faced such a horrible diagnosis, I mean, that’s, that’s magical to me.

Number two is even more personal story about a friend of mine that I was introduced to. I want to say seven years ago his name was Dan and Dan had childhood brain cancer around. I want to say when he was 10 to 12 years old. And through the treatments, you know, two years of treatments, two years of surgeries it left him really kind of, you know, sort of limited in, in his intellectual capacity. So to speak and years later, almost 20 years later, he got rediagnosed with the same cancer. The cancer had come back and that’s what I was introduced to him. And we spent a lot of time together. It was very clear to me that a lot of his friends pull back after this diagnosis kind of like, you know, it was almost like they had decided he was already gonna die and they didn’t want to deal.

So I spent a lot of time with him. In fact, I used to go down and hang out with him every Wednesday when I was headed down to the city for therapy, I used to sit with him for four to five PM almost every Wednesday just to talk. I mean, just, he needed a friend and we spent a lot of time. And one of the saddest moments for him was when he told me I’m really depressed. And I said, why? He goes, because they told me the tumor is shrinking. And I said, oh my God, Dan, like, what do you mean? He’s like, I’m just done. I feel like I have no life. I feel like I’m lonely. I feel like I don’t want to live like this anymore. And, you know, he was really in a, in a, you know, a dark place.

His parents were well aware of his emotional status. And, you know, I tried to really respect him as a person and wishes and, and just tried to listen and be supportive a few weeks later. I actually took him down to my mother’s beach house for the weekend. And, and we did a mushroom trip together. I had, I’d known that, that this, you know, had shown evidence of improving, you know, mental outlook and, you know, he was all for it. And I can tell you, you know, after that experience, he, his whole mood changed. I mean, it was dramatic. His parents say, Charlie, like, you know, what, what did you do with a weekend? And I’m like, well, we just talked a lot. That’s all I could kind of disclose. But it was at that moment where I realized there was something, there was something to this, and that’s actually what started me on my education of, of silicide bean and the work with Dr.

Paul Stamets out in his facility has his research Institute out in the Northwest. So I, you know, unfortunately about six months after that experience, Dan committed suicide he had fallen back in and, you know, everyone had done everything we could to, to sort of try to convince them otherwise, but that was his choice. And I’m certainly not condoning suicide as a method for folks. But I can understand. I mean, all I can say is I can understand when we I’ve said this before in my previous post about symptom management, quality of life and depression, it’s like when you have no quality of life and you have no function, you lose meaning and you fall into depression and that can lead to a place of, of frankly giving up. So the bottom line from my perspective and my company’s perspective is we are, you know, 1000% supportive of the use of psychedelics for end of life cancer died, you know, treatment.

I, you know, I want to lead in this area and I’m, you know, I’ll say to any, any psychedelic research companies that are involved, who want to get in the cancer space, we are open for business to try to partner up with you guys to, to both find patients and run studies. And I’ve got some amazing contacts in the space. And it’s something that I can see, like I said, in five years, where part of the service offering is, you know, in, in some type of hospice end of life care would be the use of guided psychedelic therapy. So that’s my take on it. Wishing all the best and take care.