Program Notes
https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty
Guest speakers: Annie Oak, Shannon Clare Petitt, and Rick Doblin
In this 2016 Palenque Norte Lecture, Annie Oak, founder of the Women’s Visionary Congress, teaches how to use Naloxone to help a person who has had an opioid overdose. She is followed by Shannon Clare Petitt who tells us about some of the work being done by MAPS’ Zendo Project. Finally, we get to hear Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS, talk about how he first learned about MDMA and what his first experience with that substance was like.
John Oliver Blasts Pharma’s Role in U.S. Opioid Epidemic:‘This Is Happening Everywhere’
“Some towns have been devastated,” Oliver warned.
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:23 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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And the first thing that I’d like to do today is to thank several of our fellow salonners who sent in donations during the past ten days or so.
00:00:32 ►
They are Ryan J., Vincenzo C., Richard R., Bent J., and D. Gale from Navasota,
00:00:43 ►
the blues capital of Texas, if I remember correctly.
00:00:47 ►
Anyway, your donations will be used to ensure the continuing operation of the salon
00:00:52 ►
on into the, well, the exciting future that lies ahead.
00:00:56 ►
I’m sure it will be.
00:00:57 ►
And so, thank you ever so much for your financial support of the salon.
00:01:01 ►
It’s truly appreciated.
00:01:03 ►
Now, after we listen to the three
00:01:06 ►
talks that I’ll be playing for you today, I’ll be talking about an idea that I have for some of us
00:01:12 ►
to get together in person on a somewhat regular schedule. But first, I’d like to play one of this
00:01:18 ►
year’s Palenque Norte lectures for you. It was given by Annie Oak, and for someone, it may be the most important talk that I’ve played
00:01:27 ►
here in this salon. If you’ve been involved with the psychedelic community for a while, I’m sad to
00:01:32 ►
say that the probability is that you probably have lost at least one person you knew through the
00:01:39 ►
misuse of drugs of one sort or another, whether it was through an overdose of some kind or possibly a drunk driving accident.
00:01:47 ►
My guess, however, is that even some of your closest friends and family members sometimes probably look a little askance at your interest in our sacred medicines.
00:01:58 ►
And that’s based mainly on their concern for your safety.
00:02:06 ►
concern for your safety. In my own case, even I have family members who think that I’ve gone off the rails with my support of cannabis and other psychoactive substances. But I think that one of
00:02:12 ►
the reasons for that is because the establishment that is setting the agenda for the war on drugs
00:02:18 ►
has successfully lumped all non-legal drugs into the same category. And yet most of the practicing psychonauts that I know
00:02:27 ►
have little or nothing to do with cocaine and crack,
00:02:31 ►
nor with heroin or the other opioids.
00:02:34 ►
In my own case, well, that isn’t because I’ve never tried them.
00:02:38 ►
I have, at least some of them.
00:02:39 ►
I’ve not tried crack or heroin,
00:02:42 ►
but I have tasted cocaine and a few of the opioids,
00:02:45 ►
and, well, fortunately for me, I just didn’t like them.
00:02:50 ►
Now, one of the things that some of us old-timers seem to have in common
00:02:54 ►
is that, well, many of us have lost friends to improperly using various substances.
00:03:00 ►
And most of these accidents involve doing substances while in water or mixing them with alcohol.
00:03:06 ►
How easy it is for us to forget that alcohol and nicotine are also drugs.
00:03:12 ►
In fact, those two drugs account for a huge number of deaths each year.
00:03:17 ►
But they are legal, and so our friends and family members don’t care if we smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol,
00:03:24 ►
but they freak out about our using cannabis or psychedelics.
00:03:28 ►
However, a new epidemic of dangerous drug use has now come on the scene, and it’s begun to give our critics a little something more to think about.
00:03:37 ►
As you guessed, I’m talking about the serious rise in overdoses of prescription opioids.
00:03:42 ►
There’s a serious rise in overdoses of prescription opioids.
00:03:47 ►
The number of deaths caused by opioid overdose in the U.S.
00:03:51 ►
has now passed the number of deaths in automobile accidents each year.
00:03:59 ►
So one question that comes up here in our community is whether there is something that we, as individuals,
00:04:02 ►
can do to alleviate this situation somewhat.
00:04:07 ►
And that is precisely what Annie Oak is now going to talk about.
00:04:12 ►
So the next speaker in the Palenque Norte lecture series is Annie Oak.
00:04:17 ►
And the title of the talk today is Using Naloxone to Prevent Opioid Overdose.
00:04:21 ►
So Annie is the founder of the Women’s Visionary Congress.
00:04:25 ►
She holds an MS in science journalism and works with researchers who analyze data about human rights violations.
00:04:27 ►
Creator of the San Francisco-based Full Circle Tea House,
00:04:30 ►
which we’ve all been enjoying at our camp here today.
00:04:33 ►
She also produces…
00:04:34 ►
Thank you.
00:04:36 ►
An extremely, extremely popular place here at Burning Man.
00:04:39 ►
She also produces community events
00:04:41 ►
and studies medicinal plants.
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Thank you.
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Good afternoon, everybody.
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How’s everybody doing?
00:04:49 ►
All right.
00:04:51 ►
So we’re here to talk about risk reduction today.
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An important part of risk reduction is self-care.
00:04:58 ►
Step one in triage, you have to take care of yourself before you can assist others.
00:05:03 ►
Put the oxygen mask on yourself first
00:05:06 ►
before assisting others during your flight.
00:05:10 ►
So we try to take really good care of ourselves.
00:05:14 ►
I’m going to ask you during this discussion
00:05:17 ►
to keep checking in with yourselves.
00:05:19 ►
We’re going to talk about some maybe intense stuff for you guys,
00:05:23 ►
maybe not, but we really want you to keep
00:05:26 ►
checking in, and if you want to stop and ask a question, make a comment, please feel free
00:05:33 ►
to do that.
00:05:36 ►
So as the nice gentleman just said, my name is Annie Oak.
00:05:42 ►
Nice gentleman just said, my name is Annie Oak.
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I’m the co-founder of the Women’s Visionary Congress, which is a group of psychedelic women based in San Francisco.
00:05:53 ►
We’re 10 years old now.
00:05:55 ►
And we have just recently launched a risk reduction initiative
00:06:00 ►
to teach the three, what we consider the three basic drug-related skills
00:06:06 ►
that every community supporter, concerned community member should know. One of those
00:06:14 ►
skills is how to use a microgram scale. If you all don’t know how to do that, it’s a really good
00:06:19 ►
skill to acquire. Second skill is learning how to use reagent testing kits to test substances
00:06:26 ►
that people may or may not want to ingest. And the third skill that we teach in our workshops
00:06:32 ►
is how to use naloxone. So we’re going to focus on that skill today. We’re going to
00:06:38 ►
talk about why we’re teaching people how to use naloxone. And then we’re going to talk about how the law protects you
00:06:46 ►
to use it and administer it to others. And then we’re going to do a hands-on training.
00:06:53 ►
And you are going to get each of you a prescription to use naloxone and walk away from here with
00:06:59 ►
a free naloxone kit that you were trained to use. All right.
00:07:03 ►
a free naloxone kit that you were trained to use.
00:07:04 ►
All right.
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Great.
00:07:09 ►
Question.
00:07:14 ►
So naloxone is also called Narcan.
00:07:15 ►
You may know it as Narcan.
00:07:18 ►
And it is an opioid inhibitor. It is a substance that is prescribed,
00:07:21 ►
and you are about to get prescriptions today,
00:07:24 ►
and it blocks the opioid
00:07:26 ►
receptors in your body. So if you have taken an opioid, let’s say a opioid painkiller like
00:07:37 ►
Vicodin, or another opioid like Methadone or Heroin or Oxycontin, and you’ve overdosed on an opioid,
00:07:49 ►
what often happens is you go into respiratory arrest,
00:07:55 ►
or you begin to have trouble breathing.
00:07:58 ►
It suppresses respiration.
00:08:02 ►
So if your respirations are suppressed,
00:08:05 ►
you’re not getting enough oxygen,
00:08:07 ►
you could be in real trouble.
00:08:09 ►
And if you stop breathing, you will die.
00:08:11 ►
And that’s how people die of opioid overdoses.
00:08:15 ►
They stop breathing.
00:08:17 ►
So we’re going to talk about some things we can do
00:08:23 ►
if you encounter or are with a person that you suspect is having an overdose to opioids.
00:08:33 ►
You can intervene and perhaps save their life.
00:08:38 ►
So the first thing that is important to know, you may or may not know this, but the U.S. and also many countries
00:08:47 ►
around the world are in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic right now. According to the U.S.
00:08:56 ►
government centers for disease control and prevention, who gathers data on this,
00:09:01 ►
who gathers data on this.
00:09:08 ►
Opioids, including opioid pain relievers prescribed,
00:09:13 ►
purchased either through doctors or through the black market,
00:09:16 ►
and many are purchased through the black market,
00:09:21 ►
killed more than 28,000 people in the U.S. in 2014.
00:09:29 ►
And many more thousand were killed this year and last year.
00:09:31 ►
We don’t have that data yet. But a lot of people die from opioid overdose.
00:09:36 ►
Overall, opioid overdoses and deaths associated with them
00:09:40 ►
have quadrupled since 1999,
00:09:44 ►
and so have sales of these prescription drugs.
00:09:49 ►
From 1999 to 2014, more than 165,000 people in the U.S. died from prescription opioid-related
00:10:00 ►
overdoses.
00:10:08 ►
related overdoses. So of all the overdoses of opioids, half of the opioid overdoses that related to deaths, that resulted in deaths, were from prescription opioids. And half were
00:10:16 ►
from opioids that we associate with non-prescription use, such as heroin or methadone. So it’s important to remember that people who take
00:10:30 ►
opioids are often marginalized, particularly people who take injectable opioids, such as
00:10:37 ►
heroin or methadone. And part of our mission as good community members is to stop marginalizing or shaming people
00:10:47 ►
for their choice of intoxicants
00:10:51 ►
and to remember that people who take prescription opioids
00:10:57 ►
for pain relief, prescribed or from the black market,
00:11:01 ►
are also at risk for overdose.
00:11:10 ►
So overdose rates are highest among people 25 to 54,
00:11:12 ►
which is largely our demographic.
00:11:19 ►
And opioid overdose is now the top cause of death by injury in the United States.
00:11:24 ►
It has surpassed car accidents for the number one cause of death.
00:11:28 ►
And it is higher among non-Hispanic whites and indigenous people
00:11:30 ►
than Hispanic people or African American people.
00:11:35 ►
So it is really within largely,
00:11:40 ►
mostly our demographic here.
00:11:43 ►
Men are more likely to die from overdose,
00:11:45 ►
but the mortality gap between men and women is closing quickly.
00:11:50 ►
So what we’re going to do today is
00:11:52 ►
we’re going to talk a little bit about
00:11:54 ►
what we can do to prevent opioid overdose.
00:11:58 ►
And the first thing I want to say is that
00:12:00 ►
you’ll be receiving a prescription to carry naloxone.
00:12:06 ►
And here’s some really important information about that.
00:12:10 ►
In May 2015, the governor of Nevada, Brian Sandoval,
00:12:16 ►
signed a new law called the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act,
00:12:21 ►
which was Senate Bill SB 459 that provides legal protections to people who call for
00:12:28 ►
help when witnessing an overdose. Yeah, could I have an amen? Yep. And it authorizes certain
00:12:36 ►
healthcare providers to prescribe naloxone to family members or friends of an individual who
00:12:42 ►
may be at risk for an opioid overdose.
00:12:49 ►
I would suggest that all of us in our social circles knows somebody, whether you’re aware of it or not,
00:12:53 ►
who is using an opioid for some reason
00:12:56 ►
and is at risk for overdose.
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So that includes all of us here in this room.
00:13:03 ►
Now, Nevada has the fourth highest
00:13:06 ►
drug overdose mortality rate in the U.S.
00:13:10 ►
So when you get your naloxone kit,
00:13:15 ►
you are participating in taking care
00:13:18 ►
of our burner community,
00:13:20 ►
the community here in Nevada,
00:13:22 ►
your community back home.
00:13:25 ►
This so-called Good Samaritan Law is really prevalent throughout the U.S.
00:13:33 ►
Twenty-eight states, including California, where I received my prescription
00:13:37 ►
and where these prescriptions were created for all of you,
00:13:42 ►
is one of 28 states.
00:13:44 ►
created for all of you is one of 28 states.
00:13:53 ►
And we’re really hoping that more states join to pass laws like this that protect all of us.
00:13:56 ►
So I was trained to use naloxone and was trained as a trainer
00:14:00 ►
by a group called New Leaf Recovery,
00:14:03 ►
which is a nonprofit foundation
00:14:07 ►
that provides addiction medicine and treatment.
00:14:11 ►
It’s based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
00:14:14 ►
And they receive naloxone kits
00:14:18 ►
for people who want to learn how to do this.
00:14:26 ►
And they also provide some literature and materials
00:14:31 ►
that we’re going to use in our training as well.
00:14:36 ►
And they get them free from the manufacturers.
00:14:39 ►
And we can get them free to give to you.
00:14:44 ►
So the manufacturers of naloxone have been donating kits
00:14:49 ►
and teaching people how to distribute and use them,
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and we’d like to make this more prevalent.
00:15:00 ►
So the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to pass out.
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Could someone help me pass these out?
00:15:12 ►
These are going to be our training docs for today.
00:15:19 ►
So the information that I’m going to give to you is in this pamphlet.
00:15:25 ►
And you can follow along with me as we talk about this.
00:15:35 ►
So New Leaf Recovery, which has provided the naloxone kits that we’re going to give out today,
00:15:37 ►
has asked us to also give them the names of people who are receiving prescriptions to use naloxone.
00:15:53 ►
So we have these sign-up forms that you can use, and we’ll pass these out in a moment.
00:16:00 ►
The purpose of these forms is to allow New Leaf Recovery to tell the naloxone manufacturer how many people are being trained so that they can justify getting more free kits.
00:16:13 ►
Now, these forms ask some basic information, including your name, email, optional, residence, county, date of birth, signature.
00:16:23 ►
Because this is Burning Man and because we really want to destigmatize this,
00:16:27 ►
you can use any name you wish
00:16:29 ►
and you can put any information in this form that you want.
00:16:33 ►
I don’t want people to feel uncomfortable about this,
00:16:36 ►
but it’s useful to New Leaf,
00:16:39 ►
which is why we’re doing this for them.
00:16:43 ►
So if you don’t want to fill out a form or you don’t want to
00:16:48 ►
give your name, your real name, that’s okay. If you do, it’s useful to New Leaf Recovery,
00:16:55 ►
or you can decide to be Queen Elizabeth II. So let’s talk about the mechanism of opiate and opioid overdose.
00:17:05 ►
Usually, the category of prescription medicines is known as opioids.
00:17:13 ►
That’s the large category of medicines and substances we’re talking about.
00:17:19 ►
Some people also refer to them as opiates.
00:17:22 ►
Some people also refer to them as opiates.
00:17:30 ►
And as I said earlier, opioid overdose happens when somebody dies because they’ve stopped breathing.
00:17:36 ►
Now, with overdoses of other substances, such as stimulants,
00:17:41 ►
the heart stops or the person has seizures or a stroke.
00:17:43 ►
They die in different ways. But with opioids, somebody stops breathing or they
00:17:49 ►
go into respiratory distress. Now, some of the risk factors for dying or going into distress from an opioid overdose, is mixing an opioid with alcohol, pills, or other substances such as cocaine.
00:18:13 ►
And the prevention is use one drug at a time.
00:18:16 ►
Don’t mix up the highest-use drugs.
00:18:19 ►
Especially don’t mix opioids with alcohol.
00:18:23 ►
Second risk factor is tolerance.
00:18:26 ►
People who are exiting a
00:18:28 ►
detox situation,
00:18:30 ►
jail, hospital,
00:18:32 ►
especially a methadone
00:18:34 ►
detox,
00:18:35 ►
and then using opioids again,
00:18:37 ►
their tolerance is down.
00:18:40 ►
So people can
00:18:42 ►
prevent an overdose by using
00:18:44 ►
less when their tolerance is low at these times.
00:18:48 ►
Another risk factor is quantity and quality.
00:18:53 ►
Qualities of many black market drugs, opioids, and many other substances,
00:18:57 ►
it’s unpredictable.
00:19:01 ►
The prevention is to use reliable sources If you have one, do test shots, etc
00:19:07 ►
If you’re using injectable opioids
00:19:10 ►
If you buy opioid pain relievers on the black market
00:19:14 ►
They could be laced with something else
00:19:17 ►
This is what killed Prince
00:19:19 ►
News just came out the other day
00:19:22 ►
They found some Oxycontin pills in his house that had fentanyl in them.
00:19:28 ►
This is not uncommon.
00:19:31 ►
Dealers dealing opioids on the black market will often lace their opioids with fentanyl,
00:19:37 ►
which is a very powerful opioid, in order to increase the impact of the dose.
00:19:44 ►
And it’s possible, because Prince died of a fentanyl overdose,
00:19:48 ►
that he didn’t know those OxyContin pills
00:19:51 ►
that he was perhaps taking to relieve, reportedly, his pain
00:19:57 ►
were laced with fentanyl.
00:19:59 ►
And they think that’s what killed him.
00:20:02 ►
So when people buy prescription painkillers on the black market,
00:20:08 ►
they can often be laced with other opioids.
00:20:11 ►
This is also true of materials sold as heroin or methadone.
00:20:16 ►
People who are using opioids alone,
00:20:19 ►
behind a closed or locked door where they can’t be found,
00:20:23 ►
that’s also a risk factor.
00:20:26 ►
Prevention, use opioids with a friend.
00:20:30 ►
Leave the door unlocked.
00:20:32 ►
Call somebody.
00:20:35 ►
Don’t use opioids by yourself.
00:20:37 ►
If you’re using a prescription opioid
00:20:40 ►
and you’re concerned about overdose,
00:20:43 ►
tell somebody.
00:20:45 ►
Say, hey,
00:20:46 ►
I have just taken a prescription opioid for my pain
00:20:50 ►
and I’m concerned potentially about overdose
00:20:54 ►
or I just want someone to know what I’ve done.
00:20:58 ►
There’s no shame in doing that.
00:21:00 ►
Tell somebody.
00:21:02 ►
Let a friend know.
00:21:03 ►
And have them monitor your breathing
00:21:05 ►
in case you get into some form of respiratory arrest.
00:21:10 ►
Now, how do you know when somebody
00:21:13 ►
is having a potential opioid overdose?
00:21:20 ►
What would be some signs of that?
00:21:23 ►
They could be unconscious.
00:21:28 ►
What else? They could be gasping. They could not be breathing properly. They could be gargling or snoring or have a raspy,
00:21:36 ►
irregular breath. Now, that would be a sign that perhaps they’ve taken an opioid that is depressing
00:21:44 ►
their respiration.
00:21:45 ►
I can tell you that here in the tea house next door where people go to sleep, we’re watching people breathe.
00:21:52 ►
We watch you breathe.
00:21:53 ►
If you’re deep asleep, and a lot of people sleep in the tea house, we want to make sure that your mouth is uncovered.
00:22:01 ►
You’re not face down sleeping.
00:22:04 ►
That you have an open airway, and we like to watch
00:22:07 ►
your chest rise and fall. So if you come across somebody and they have very slow, very shallow
00:22:16 ►
breathing, you can look, listen, and feel. You can turn your head to the side and see if their chest is rising and falling. You can put
00:22:26 ►
your ear next to their mouth and hear that they’re breathing. You can put your hand over their mouth
00:22:33 ►
and nose to feel their respiration. You want to know that people are breathing in a really steady and normal way. You can also wake them up, rouse them.
00:22:48 ►
Are they rousable?
00:22:50 ►
And one way to do that is to shake them and say,
00:22:54 ►
hey, hey, are you okay?
00:22:56 ►
Or, you know, shake them a little bit and say,
00:22:59 ►
hey, are you all right?
00:23:01 ►
You look like you’re sleeping deeply.
00:23:03 ►
Just wake them up a little bit.
00:23:05 ►
Just make sure that they can say,
00:23:08 ►
yeah, I’m okay,
00:23:10 ►
that they seem to have normal respiration.
00:23:12 ►
We do this for people in the tea house.
00:23:13 ►
If they’ve been really out for a while
00:23:15 ►
and we see that, you know,
00:23:19 ►
we like to know that they can talk to us
00:23:22 ►
in a normal voice,
00:23:23 ►
if they can sit up and wake up for a second,
00:23:25 ►
then they’re probably okay.
00:23:27 ►
Other ways to rouse people,
00:23:29 ►
if they’re deep in some sort of reflective state,
00:23:35 ►
or you want to know if they’re rousable,
00:23:37 ►
you can pinch their fingernails,
00:23:39 ►
or you can take your knuckle and rub them on the sternum.
00:23:45 ►
And that will elicit a response.
00:23:47 ►
It hurts a little bit.
00:23:48 ►
So you want to see if they’re rousable.
00:23:53 ►
Can you rouse them?
00:23:55 ►
Are they responsive?
00:23:58 ►
Will they sit up and talk with you?
00:24:00 ►
Or just wake up and talk with you?
00:24:04 ►
That’s really important.
00:24:06 ►
So you can also, if you know their name,
00:24:09 ►
ask for their name.
00:24:12 ►
Hey, hey.
00:24:13 ►
You know, Cheddar, are you okay?
00:24:19 ►
If they’re not rousable,
00:24:21 ►
the first thing that you want to do
00:24:23 ►
is you want to make sure that they have an open
00:24:27 ►
airway because you want to do everything you can to encourage them to breathe, even if their
00:24:33 ►
breathing is labored or not regular in some way. Now, we have two volunteers who have offered,
00:24:46 ►
thank you, Natalie and Theo,
00:24:51 ►
to demo how you would put somebody that you might find unresponsive
00:24:55 ►
in a position to best breathe.
00:25:01 ►
Theo, would you mind,
00:25:02 ►
whoever is going to be the…
00:25:04 ►
I would probably be responsive… Oh, lovely.
00:25:06 ►
Would you mind sprawling on your belly in a way that would be perhaps a way that would not facilitate good breathing?
00:25:14 ►
All right, so here we have Natalie, and she’s got her face down on the ground.
00:25:22 ►
What are you going to do, Theo, to see if she’s breathing or rousable?
00:25:28 ►
Her stomach is moving, so I know she’s breathing, but her face is covered.
00:25:33 ►
So I might say, hi, Natalie.
00:25:35 ►
Natalie?
00:25:37 ►
Hi, sweetheart.
00:25:39 ►
Hey, are you awake?
00:25:40 ►
How are you doing?
00:25:41 ►
Natalie?
00:25:42 ►
Natalie?
00:25:49 ►
How you doing? Natalie? So she’s unresponsive. So I would probably gently roll her over or maybe open up her airway of some kind or shake her a little bit. I mean, if I know her, I’m not going
00:25:54 ►
to like, you know, but she’s unresponsive. So, but her mouth is closed. so I would feel for breathing first,
00:26:06 ►
and then I would open her mouth while also still checking in with her to see if she’s responsive.
00:26:16 ►
So you want to do what’s called the head lift and chin tilt to make sure that her airway is open. And what might
00:26:26 ►
you want to look for in her mouth?
00:26:28 ►
Do you want to see whether there’s anything
00:26:30 ►
obstructing her mouth? Is there gum in there?
00:26:32 ►
Is there something that would obstruct
00:26:34 ►
her airway?
00:26:39 ►
You don’t see anything in there.
00:26:40 ►
Her airway appears to be open, but she’s
00:26:42 ►
non-responsive.
00:26:43 ►
How’s her breathing?
00:26:54 ►
It’s not regular. Irregular breathing. Okay, so you have somebody who has some irregular breathing. Now, irregular, they’re gasping, they’re snorting, they’re gargling, they’re
00:27:01 ►
snoring, and they’re not rousable. You cannot rouse them.
00:27:06 ►
He has shaken her and called her name
00:27:09 ►
and perhaps done a little sternum rub.
00:27:13 ►
Ouch.
00:27:14 ►
Or pinched her fingernails.
00:27:18 ►
16 to 20 breaths a minute is a normal respiratory rate.
00:27:22 ►
Dr. Natalie has reminded us.
00:27:27 ►
So if they’re not breathing at that rate, and they’re not breathing evenly, then you want to make sure
00:27:35 ►
that you can get some help. So let’s say that Theo is alone, and he needs to go for help.
00:27:46 ►
Let’s say that you’re the only ones around.
00:27:49 ►
Theo, could you put Natalie in a recovery position?
00:27:52 ►
In a recovery position.
00:27:53 ►
In a recovery position.
00:27:56 ►
Perhaps Natalie could help you do that.
00:28:00 ►
So if Theo had to go get help and leave Natalie alone,
00:28:04 ►
he would put Natalie in this recovery position.
00:28:07 ►
And this position makes sure that if Natalie throws up, she doesn’t choke, keeps her airway open.
00:28:39 ►
And either go to the phone and call 911 or say to somebody, go call 911, tell them that we have an unresponsive person, and then come back here and let me know that you’ve done that.
00:28:40 ►
Okay?
00:28:43 ►
So the first thing you want to do is call for help.
00:29:03 ►
If you have to leave them alone, put them in the recovery position and call for help. If you can send someone out to call for help, go have that person call 911. That’s one of the most important things you can do. Because you want the paramedics to come and help you out. Now, if he had come across Natalie,
00:29:09 ►
and Natalie was really not breathing at all,
00:29:13 ►
then you want to, before you initiate the call 911 process,
00:29:19 ►
you want to start what we call rescue breathing,
00:29:21 ►
because remember, people die of respiratory failure
00:29:25 ►
during overdose. So you want to do what’s called rescue breathing, which is breathing for them.
00:29:32 ►
And to breathe for them, you want to put their head back and put their chin up,
00:29:39 ►
open up their mouth. You want to pinch their nose.
00:29:48 ►
And you want to give them two regular breaths.
00:29:52 ►
Not hurricane breaths, but breaths.
00:29:54 ►
You are breathing for them.
00:29:57 ►
So give them two breaths.
00:30:02 ►
And then you want to breathe for them in this way every five seconds until the paramedics come.
00:30:06 ►
And the only break in your rescue breathing
00:30:08 ►
should when you start preparing your naloxone
00:30:11 ►
to give the injection.
00:30:14 ►
Yes, Rue.
00:30:16 ►
When giving rescue, put in the rescue breath.
00:30:21 ►
Thank you, Rue.
00:30:23 ►
We have a lot of knowledge in this room.
00:30:26 ►
How many people here are trained in CPR?
00:30:29 ►
Awesome.
00:30:31 ►
If you’re not trained in CPR, please go get CPR training.
00:30:35 ►
When they train you in CPR,
00:30:37 ►
they’re usually training you to help people
00:30:40 ►
who have had a heart attack
00:30:43 ►
or other types of incidents
00:30:46 ►
where you want to do chest compressions
00:30:48 ►
to get their circulation going.
00:30:51 ►
In the case of an overdose
00:30:52 ►
where somebody is not breathing,
00:30:55 ►
you want to focus on rescue breaths.
00:30:57 ►
That’s the most important thing.
00:30:59 ►
So you’ll do, as Ru just demonstrated,
00:31:02 ►
really tilt the head back,
00:31:05 ►
really open the mouth, tilt the jaw, pinch the nose,
00:31:09 ►
and give that person one rescue breath every five seconds
00:31:15 ►
until the EMTs come and take over from you.
00:31:21 ►
and take over from you.
00:31:29 ►
So remember when you ask somebody to call 911,
00:31:36 ►
remember to remind them to tell the dispatcher your location.
00:31:37 ►
Where are you?
00:31:40 ►
You have a non-responsive person.
00:31:42 ►
We’re at 8 and B. If somebody went unresponsive here, we would send a runner
00:31:46 ►
to medical, or we would find somebody with a radio, and we would say, we’re at the Palenque
00:31:52 ►
Norte tent. At the corner of 8 and B, we have a nonresponsive person, and we need help immediately.
00:32:01 ►
And you would say that to a dispatcher on the radio or on your phone, or in our case, on the radio or to a runner. You don’t need to say anything about drugs.
00:32:11 ►
You just need to say that a person is non-responsive and maybe not breathing properly
00:32:16 ►
or not breathing at all. That’s all you need to say. And hopefully the EMTs will be on their way.
00:32:23 ►
Hopefully the EMTs will be on their way.
00:32:27 ►
So as you’re doing rescue breathing,
00:32:32 ►
you want to be assembling your naloxone,
00:32:38 ►
which you’re going to inject to block the opioid receptors to take Natalie out of respiratory distress.
00:32:46 ►
So sometimes the person is not breathing well.
00:32:49 ►
You won’t know for sure whether or not they’ve taken an opioid.
00:32:54 ►
The great thing about naloxone, and here are our kits.
00:33:00 ►
The great thing about naloxone is that it is not toxic.
00:33:04 ►
It won’t hurt you.
00:33:06 ►
If Natalie is not having an opioid overdose
00:33:10 ►
and you inject her with naloxone,
00:33:12 ►
it’s not going to hurt her.
00:33:14 ►
If I took this kid and injected myself in the thigh right now with naloxone,
00:33:20 ►
the injection wouldn’t feel great,
00:33:22 ►
but it’s not going to hurt me.
00:33:24 ►
Also, it doesn’t combine negatively with other substances.
00:33:31 ►
So if in doubt, if you think it could be an opioid overdose,
00:33:36 ►
give the naloxone.
00:33:37 ►
It’s not going to hurt them.
00:33:40 ►
And you are covered by the Good Samaritan laws
00:33:42 ►
as long as you are using naloxone in a reasonable way.
00:33:47 ►
What we like to say is in the thigh and not the eye.
00:33:50 ►
As long as you’re injecting them in a place where one would reasonably do that,
00:33:58 ►
the naloxone itself is not going to hurt them,
00:34:00 ►
and it could save their life.
00:34:04 ►
That’s the beautiful thing about naloxone. It’s not going to hurt them and it could save their life. That’s the beautiful thing about naloxone. It’s not going to
00:34:08 ►
hurt them. It could save their life. If in doubt, do the injection. So generally, when we do the
00:34:19 ►
injection, the naloxone is what we call intramuscular. It goes into the muscle, not into the vein or an artery.
00:34:27 ►
So the biggest, nicest, muscular thing is Natalie’s lovely thigh.
00:34:36 ►
Yeah, can we hear it for Natalie’s lovely thigh?
00:34:38 ►
Woo!
00:34:40 ►
A great, beautiful target.
00:34:43 ►
Also booty.
00:34:45 ►
Also booty. Let’s target. Also booty. Also booty.
00:34:46 ►
Let’s not forget the booty.
00:34:49 ►
Or the arm.
00:34:51 ►
Fleshy part.
00:34:53 ►
Now, when you give the injection,
00:34:55 ►
you don’t have to take their clothes off.
00:34:57 ►
You don’t have to clean their skin.
00:35:00 ►
You can inject them right through a pair of jeans
00:35:03 ►
or right through their clothes.
00:35:06 ►
You don’t have to do anything except make sure that you get the dose inside them.
00:35:12 ►
And what we’re going to do today is we’re going to practice giving an injection.
00:35:18 ►
For those of you who have never done that.
00:35:21 ►
And we’re going to practice loading up a dose of naloxone
00:35:25 ►
into a syringe.
00:35:28 ►
We’re not going to inject the pads.
00:35:34 ►
These are our lovely injection pads.
00:35:37 ►
Because we don’t want to mess up our pads,
00:35:41 ►
but we’re going to practice up drawing up the naloxone
00:35:44 ►
into a syringe,
00:35:46 ►
and then we’re going to take the naloxone out of the syringe, and we’re going to practice
00:35:51 ►
doing an injection. So the way we’re going to do this is we’re going to set up some injection
00:36:03 ►
stations when we’re ready to do it. We have about six of these pads, and we’re going to set up some injection stations when we’re ready to do it.
00:36:05 ►
We have about six of these pads,
00:36:08 ►
and we’re going to set up some stations with some syringes,
00:36:12 ►
and we’re going to teach you some basic safety methods for handling syringes
00:36:18 ►
and pulling up an injection of naloxone out of an ampule.
00:36:24 ►
And we’re going to talk about how to do that.
00:36:30 ►
So one of the things that’s important to know about naloxone is that it takes several minutes
00:36:40 ►
to kick in. We’ve all seen Pulp Fiction. How many people have seen that awesome scene in Pulp Fiction
00:36:46 ►
where the guy takes the needle
00:36:48 ►
and he puts it right into her heart?
00:36:54 ►
And of course it’s Uma Thurman who’s looking fabulous.
00:36:57 ►
And then Uma immediately comes to
00:36:59 ►
and it’s very dramatic.
00:37:00 ►
Well, it doesn’t work like that with naloxone, unfortunately.
00:37:05 ►
And we won’t look like Uma Thurman, sadly, while we’re doing it. I’m sorry about that. So Uma’s
00:37:14 ►
looking great, and she immediately sits up and, you know, does her Uma Thurman thing.
00:37:21 ►
But with naloxone, what happens is it takes a couple of minutes to take effect.
00:37:28 ►
So you can inject somebody in the thigh or in the upper arm or the booty,
00:37:34 ►
and it will take a few minutes to take effect. While that’s happening, you need to continue doing rescue breathing every five seconds.
00:37:48 ►
And if the EMTs come, a good thing to do is to, they’re going to rush in with all their gear,
00:37:56 ►
EMTs, EMTs. You want a calm scene. If you’ve given an injection, you want to put the syringe away,
00:38:06 ►
scene. If you’ve given an injection, you want to put the syringe away, keep the area clear of paraphernalia. You want to carefully explain to them what you’ve done, that you’re prescribed to
00:38:13 ►
use naloxone, why you’ve chosen to administer naloxone to this person, how you found them.
00:38:20 ►
They were unresponsive. They were not breathing properly.
00:38:28 ►
And you want to present a scene that’s
00:38:30 ►
calm and in control.
00:38:32 ►
And this is especially true if
00:38:33 ►
law enforcement shows up.
00:38:36 ►
They’re going to want to know, like, who are you?
00:38:37 ►
What are you doing?
00:38:39 ►
If the person
00:38:40 ►
wakes up after
00:38:43 ►
a few minutes, perhaps one to five minutes, they’re going to be
00:38:50 ►
a little surprised and they’re going to be a little uncomfortable because you have just
00:38:59 ►
interrupted their experience and they’re going to be in immediate withdrawal because the naloxone
00:39:05 ►
blocks the opioid receptors now if you want to see how this looks go to youtube because on youtube
00:39:12 ►
there are a whole bunch of videos that show this happening in real time and you can see
00:39:18 ►
somebody going oh my gosh my friend’s breathing. I think this is an opioid overdose. They load up
00:39:27 ►
the dose, they give it to them, and then you can see how long it takes to take effect and what a
00:39:33 ►
person looks like when they come to. And they’re often not really happy. So they might be thrashing
00:39:40 ►
around a little bit. You want to keep doing your rescue breathing.
00:39:46 ►
Make sure their airway is open.
00:39:49 ►
They come to, you want to reassure them.
00:39:53 ►
You can say, hey, Natalie, you weren’t breathing.
00:39:58 ►
We were really concerned that you were perhaps overdosing.
00:40:01 ►
We have given you a naloxone injection.
00:40:02 ►
We’re here.
00:40:04 ►
We’re staying with you. We’re not going to leave you. Oh, by
00:40:07 ►
the way, here are the EMTs, or here’s the nice police officer who’s ideally being supportive
00:40:14 ►
of what we’ve just done. Tell them what’s going on. Inform them of what’s happening.
00:40:20 ►
The person won’t remember overdosing. They won’t know what’s happening at all.
00:40:27 ►
Now, if the person doesn’t respond
00:40:29 ►
within a minute to five minutes of this happening
00:40:32 ►
and you’re still doing the rescue breathing,
00:40:34 ►
there’s a second dose of naloxone.
00:40:37 ►
There are two doses of naloxone in each of these kits.
00:40:42 ►
Give them the second dose.
00:40:44 ►
But know that the naloxone, each dose of naloxone will
00:40:49 ►
wear off within 30 to 45 minutes. And that person can go back into overdose. So it’s important
00:40:57 ►
that you really get them to medical care or that you summon the medical care because you could
00:41:03 ►
give them the injection and they could
00:41:05 ►
start overdosing again. Okay? And this kind of goes without saying, but it’s probably a good
00:41:14 ►
idea to not let them do more opioids in this interim after you’ve given the naloxone. No more
00:41:20 ►
prescription painkillers, no more heroin, no more methadone, whatever it is that they’ve done, and no more other substances.
00:41:30 ►
Don’t let them intoxicate with whatever they’ve been doing.
00:41:33 ►
If they come to and they want water, sit them up.
00:41:37 ►
Don’t let them choke or aspirate on water.
00:41:41 ►
Keep that airway open.
00:41:43 ►
Make sure that their airway is open and that they’re breathing.
00:41:47 ►
And you really need to keep an eye on that person. Ideally, by this time, either the EMTs have come
00:41:53 ►
or you can find a way to get them to a hospital or to a clinic or to a medical facility within an
00:42:00 ►
hour, ideally, or they will start to overdose again.
00:42:05 ►
The naloxone will wear off.
00:42:09 ►
Now, as I said,
00:42:12 ►
each of these packets
00:42:14 ►
contains two doses of naloxone.
00:42:20 ►
It also includes a really handy card.
00:42:26 ►
If you completely forget what to do,
00:42:29 ►
this handy card here will tell you exactly what to do.
00:42:32 ►
Number one, call 911.
00:42:35 ►
Number two, rescue breathing.
00:42:36 ►
Number three, give naloxone.
00:42:39 ►
Right?
00:42:40 ►
So those are the steps.
00:42:43 ►
If you come across somebody and they’re not breathing at all,
00:42:46 ►
give them a couple rescue breaths, get 911 going,
00:42:49 ►
keep the rescue breathing going, of course.
00:42:52 ►
So, each kit contains this,
00:42:55 ►
and it also contains information about what the kit contains.
00:43:00 ►
Two naloxone vials, or two vials of Narcan.
00:43:05 ►
Two vials of Narcan. Two vials of Narcan.
00:43:08 ►
Two syringes with safety needles and a card with training information and a summary of the Good Samaritan Law.
00:43:16 ►
So it has a summary of the Good Samaritan Law from California where these kits come from.
00:43:22 ►
The Good Samaritan Law in California was passed in January 2014,
00:43:28 ►
and that is a year earlier than the Good Samaritan Law was passed in Nevada.
00:43:33 ►
But there’s reciprocity.
00:43:35 ►
So since these kits are being prescribed to you
00:43:38 ►
under the Good Samaritan Law in California,
00:43:40 ►
the Good Samaritan Law in Nevada will cover you for the use of these kits.
00:43:46 ►
So the kit contains an aloxone, this card, which has information about the Good Samaritan
00:43:51 ►
Law on it. In case anybody asks you, what law are you citing to use this kit? It’s right
00:43:58 ►
here. And if you’re in Nevada, you can say, hey, Nevada passed a law like this last year. Isn’t that awesome?
00:44:05 ►
Yes.
00:44:16 ►
And the kit also includes a card, which is your overdose prevention and rescue certification.
00:44:19 ►
This is your prescription for naloxone. And it says this card certifies, and you’re going to fill your name onto this card after you get your training.
00:44:28 ►
It certifies that you have been trained in overdose and prevention and rescue by the New Leaf Recovery Foundation,
00:44:36 ►
which is the addiction medicine and treatment foundation that is giving out these kits,
00:44:46 ►
Treatment Foundation that is giving out these kits, and given a prescription to carry naloxone by, in this case, Dr. Alex Stolkoop, MD, and there’s his license number. He’s the medical
00:44:52 ►
director of New Leaf. And it’s going to be issued on a certain date, so we’ll fill out this date.
00:45:00 ►
And then it has the address and the phone number and the fax number and the web address of New Leaf Recovery Foundation, just in case anybody asks.
00:45:11 ►
Like, where did you get this?
00:45:13 ►
Who gave this to you?
00:45:14 ►
Who trained you to use this?
00:45:17 ►
And you’ll be able to say right here, this is how I’ve been trained to use this.
00:45:24 ►
So this kit also contains two syringes.
00:45:31 ►
Now these syringes are awesome
00:45:35 ►
because these syringes, you see the gray thing
00:45:38 ►
on the top of this syringe?
00:45:40 ►
These are safety syringes.
00:45:43 ►
So that means that once you use the syringe, you can clip the
00:45:47 ►
safety clip over it. It’s a piece of plastic. And this syringe cannot be used again, second time.
00:45:55 ►
So you don’t need a sharps box or a box to prevent you from being stuck by a used syringe. You don’t
00:46:02 ►
have to put a cap on it like you do other kinds of syringes.
00:46:06 ►
You can just click over this safety,
00:46:09 ►
and we’ll show you how to do that.
00:46:11 ►
And you can dispose of these syringes
00:46:13 ►
at any pharmacy or hospital or doctor’s office
00:46:19 ►
that will take a used syringe.
00:46:23 ►
So these are really awesome to have.
00:46:26 ►
They’re really handy.
00:46:28 ►
So what we’re going to practice
00:46:30 ►
is we’re going to practice how to give an injection
00:46:35 ►
and how to draw up naloxone from a syringe.
00:46:42 ►
And I’m going to demo this first, and then we’re going to set up six of these stations
00:46:50 ►
and let you practice how to draw up some naloxone from a syringe. Okay? You guys all set?
00:46:59 ►
Any questions? No. If you give them two naloxone injections,
00:47:07 ►
then that’s still okay.
00:47:11 ►
It’s a really good question.
00:47:13 ►
Each of these vials has 400 micrograms of naloxone.
00:47:22 ►
The EMTs carry kits with 2,000 micrograms.
00:47:28 ►
So what you’re giving them is a dose
00:47:30 ►
that will block the opioid receptors
00:47:33 ►
but isn’t nearly as big a dose as the EMTs will give you.
00:47:38 ►
And if the naloxone you’ve given that person is not working,
00:47:42 ►
they might choose to give them another dose.
00:47:48 ►
You can’t hurt them. Naloxone is a very safe substance.
00:48:02 ►
Yes, the doses do expire and the kits will have information on them about the expiration of the doses. This dose expires the 1st of February 2017. If your dose is expiring
00:48:12 ►
or you have an expired dose and that’s all you have, use it. If you want to get a new dose and
00:48:20 ►
it’s expired, you can contact New Leaf Recovery and their phone number is
00:48:27 ►
right on the pouch, or go in your local community to somebody else who is distributing naloxone.
00:48:34 ►
Okay?
00:48:37 ►
And before I forget to mention it, that recording was sent to the salon by Frank Nuccio, who
00:48:44 ►
also recorded the rest of this year’s Palenque Norte lectures,
00:48:47 ►
which will be played here in the salon over the next few months.
00:48:51 ►
So, hey, thanks again, Frank.
00:48:53 ►
And also, a big thank you to Annie Oak.
00:48:56 ►
If you’ve been with us here in the salon for a while,
00:48:58 ►
you are already familiar with some of the important work that Annie has done for the psychedelic community.
00:49:04 ►
In addition to founding the Women’s Visionary Congress,
00:49:07 ►
which has grown into one of the world’s leading forums for women and psychedelics,
00:49:12 ►
Annie is also one of the co-founders of Camp Soft Landing at Burning Man,
00:49:16 ►
which is the camp that hosts the Planque Norte lectures each year.
00:49:21 ►
And while there are many, many people involved in both the camp and the Congress,
00:49:25 ►
well, they both began as the spark of an idea in the mind of one person, and we are truly honored
00:49:32 ►
to have her wisdom and guidance here in our community. And now I’m pleased to let you know
00:49:39 ►
that the Symposia Magazine and Storytelling events, well, they’re producing quite a few new stories and talks,
00:49:46 ►
and some of which are going to be played here in the salon.
00:49:49 ►
And it looks like we’re going to be hearing a lot more from this group in the future,
00:49:53 ►
in that several of them are also members of the Psychedelic Salon 2.0 team.
00:49:59 ►
Actually, we’ve already been treated to some of their work,
00:50:02 ►
and, well, right now I’m going to play a talk that was recorded at one of their events last October, right after the Horizons Conference in New York.
00:50:10 ►
The speaker is Shannon Clare Pettit, who is also the Zendo Project Community Engagement Coordinator for MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
00:50:21 ►
for Psychedelic Studies.
00:50:25 ►
And if you’ve been to Burning Man or some of the other large festivals,
00:50:31 ►
well, you recognize the Zendo Project as one of the major harm reduction activities in the dance community.
00:50:33 ►
So now let’s join Shannon and learn a little more about this community-based risk reduction effort.
00:50:49 ►
So how many of you have heard about the zendo project before okay yeah you’re you’re our community um so i’m you know i’m not going to preach to you about what
00:50:59 ►
the zendo does and um you know a lot of the stories from our guests are their stories. So I’m not even here to tell you, you know, their story, although I’ll make reference to it.
00:51:11 ►
But I wanted to talk about, as a community, what the Zendo community is and what it represents.
00:51:18 ►
You see some Zendo people here.
00:51:20 ►
And what we can do as a community.
00:51:24 ►
So Zendo is really a response to crisis.
00:51:27 ►
We call it harm reduction.
00:51:30 ►
And when somebody is having a difficult psychedelic experience,
00:51:34 ►
they can come to the safe space that we create,
00:51:36 ►
the Zendo space, music festivals.
00:51:40 ►
And we go to music festivals internationally,
00:51:46 ►
also nationally, lots of small ones especially on the west coast
00:51:47 ►
and just talking to one of our volunteers, Mason
00:51:50 ►
about trying to bring more of a presence on the east coast here
00:51:54 ►
so it is a space that we create physically
00:51:59 ►
at music festivals
00:52:01 ►
but it’s a space that we create with each other
00:52:02 ►
and so the four principles of psychedelic harm reduction are sitting, not guiding,
00:52:09 ►
that we sit with each other.
00:52:11 ►
I’m not here to tell you what to think, what to do with your night,
00:52:15 ►
what to do with your drug use, what to ingest tonight or what not to ingest,
00:52:20 ►
but we’re having a conversation about how that could be.
00:52:26 ►
Guidance.
00:52:26 ►
And especially if you came to me in a crisis, not sure, kind of confused, maybe paranoid, uncertain,
00:52:34 ►
I’m not going to direct you.
00:52:37 ►
I’m going to be with your experience.
00:52:39 ►
So I want to be with you here and figure out how we can collect our experiences and create a community.
00:52:44 ►
I want to be with you here and figure out how we can collect our experiences and create a community.
00:52:53 ►
The second psychedelic principle is, well, I got them out of order now, but the first one is creating safety.
00:52:56 ►
So we create safety in lots of different ways. It can be a physical safety.
00:52:58 ►
It can be an emotional safety.
00:53:01 ►
So can you just shout out a couple things of what makes you feel safe in community
00:53:06 ►
or at a party? Teddy bears. Listening. Hugs. Comfortable seating. Water. Quiet. Jokes. Smiling.
00:53:22 ►
jokes,
00:53:23 ►
smiling,
00:53:24 ►
toilets.
00:53:27 ►
Think about how you might want your toilet to be
00:53:29 ►
a bit safe.
00:53:32 ►
And think about
00:53:33 ►
the most unsafe toilet you’ve ever seen.
00:53:38 ►
So we create safety
00:53:40 ►
and especially in a psychedelic
00:53:42 ►
experience, we’re very sensitive to that.
00:53:46 ►
That’s why the porta-potties at Burning Man are really that awful
00:53:48 ►
and so
00:53:49 ►
as I know we’ve gotten smart
00:53:52 ►
we actually have special
00:53:54 ►
porta-potties that we hire now just for our
00:53:56 ►
guests that have locks on them
00:53:57 ►
we have little lights in there
00:53:59 ►
those kinds of things
00:54:02 ►
are the kinds of things that
00:54:03 ►
let you know,
00:54:05 ►
that let me know when I see somebody doing that for me that I’m cared for.
00:54:09 ►
So that’s a way that we create safety here.
00:54:13 ►
You know, even in this room is how are people, you know, have their arms together?
00:54:18 ►
How are you feeling touched by people around you?
00:54:21 ►
And in some ways that doesn’t feel comfortable.
00:54:24 ►
In some ways it produces comfort.
00:54:27 ►
Speaking of which, there’s a very small chair up here
00:54:28 ►
if you’d like to sit.
00:54:31 ►
So that’s safety.
00:54:33 ►
I told you about sitting, not guiding.
00:54:35 ►
And talking through, not down.
00:54:38 ►
So similar to sitting, not guiding.
00:54:40 ►
We’re going through a process.
00:54:42 ►
So there’s no particular agenda.
00:54:45 ►
Somebody mentioned agenda.
00:54:46 ►
There’s no way that you are, well, there are ways that you are expected to be.
00:54:52 ►
So how do we deal with what our expectations are and yet having authenticity and authentic expression?
00:55:00 ►
That’s one of the really amazing things about the psychedelic community is acceptance. Look at the kind of clothes that people are wearing at our conference. Look
00:55:09 ►
at the kinds of ways that they’re talking. But there’s still a long ways to go. Has there
00:55:16 ►
been something that you wanted to say tonight that you felt like, oh, I couldn’t say that?
00:55:19 ►
They would think I was strange or they might not understand what I meant or you know you might
00:55:25 ►
have felt that way at the conference so figuring out as a community not just zendo working with
00:55:32 ►
people but here together how can we encourage each other to be expressive how can we create
00:55:38 ►
space for that how can we role model that you know it scary, you can be vulnerable, but we can be expressive together.
00:55:48 ►
So the fourth principle, difficult. Difficult is not the same as bad.
00:55:55 ►
I like to talk about awkwardness too. So you can see I’m relating things that happen in the Zendo,
00:56:00 ►
which is a very specific environment to community, which is a much broader one, which can include us here.
00:56:08 ►
And difficult can be social awkwardness.
00:56:15 ►
MAPS has a study that deals with social anxiety and autism.
00:56:19 ►
I think we all have a certain degree of social anxiety.
00:56:22 ►
And psychedelics can prohibit us from engaging, but they can
00:56:28 ►
also take away our inhibitions and allow us to engage. So really, how do we, in those
00:56:35 ►
moments that we might be stuck in the paranoia, perhaps, or feeling like everyone’s staring
00:56:41 ►
at you, whether you’re on a psychedelic or not.
00:56:49 ►
How do we work with that, and how do we communicate with other people?
00:56:50 ►
You’re okay, you’re loved here.
00:56:56 ►
So I’m kind of just planting some, throwing out some ideas and maybe planting some seeds of a conversation I hope is, you know,
00:57:01 ►
I know is already happening, I know is continuing,
00:57:04 ►
and I’d like it to be even more literal if possible about, you know, I know is already happening, I know is continuing, and I’d like it to be even
00:57:06 ►
more literal if possible about, you know, what do we want to create together, not just in our
00:57:11 ►
research, not just in our projects, but in the way that we interact with each other,
00:57:16 ►
in the way that we interact with our families, in the way that we interact with our co-workers,
00:57:23 ►
and acknowledging that there are social
00:57:25 ►
expectations and boundaries and you know I’m not saying let’s get rid of all of that and be
00:57:31 ►
full peer expression 24 hours a day but how can we create that avenue for artistic freedom
00:57:40 ►
um so I kind of want to give you guys a dare and um my dare is you know and you don’t
00:57:48 ►
have to do it it’s totally optional um is is for tonight to do something that’s vulnerable for you
00:57:54 ►
to be vulnerable and if you want the bonus dare it’s to do it with somebody you don’t know
00:58:00 ►
and that could be sharing a personal story that you might have kept to yourself or doing a dance move in the hallway because you felt like it whereas you might not have
00:58:11 ►
done it because you weren’t sure how people would have responded to it or it might just
00:58:16 ►
be approaching somebody and asking what they’re passionate about so we can kind of use tonight
00:58:23 ►
as a medium and tomorrow and all the rest of the days of our life
00:58:26 ►
as an experiment about being together.
00:58:31 ►
There’s so much that can be said about that,
00:58:34 ►
but I’m just going to let the community be the experiment
00:58:38 ►
and hopefully I can continue talking about how that looks
00:58:42 ►
with you in individual conversations.
00:58:44 ►
Thank you.
00:59:01 ►
Now, in addition to providing a platform for activists like Shannon to tell about their programs,
00:59:06 ►
the Symposia people also provide a place for us to come and tell our stories.
00:59:11 ►
I’ve heard several of these stories now, and I find them all very interesting.
00:59:15 ►
By keeping their allowed presentation time short,
00:59:20 ►
I think that they’ve forced the storytellers to keep it simple and stay on point,
00:59:25 ►
which can sometimes be a problem for the more loquacious members of our community.
00:59:32 ►
I say this with a smile on my face because the next story that I’m going to play from that same recording session is by my somewhat loquacious friend Rick Doblin, the founder of
00:59:38 ►
MAPS, which is the sponsor of the Zendo project. And after we hear Rick’s story, I’ll be back and try to pull these three talks together for you.
00:59:48 ►
And so we’ll get a story from Rick Doblin,
00:59:50 ►
who figured out a way to make a difference.
00:59:52 ►
Thank you.
01:00:01 ►
Thank you.
01:00:03 ►
Thank you.
01:00:06 ►
Well, one of the ways that I made a difference
01:00:08 ►
was being inspired by my own psychedelic experiences.
01:00:12 ►
And so I thank you for the opportunity to tell some drug story.
01:00:19 ►
Today there was a fair amount of discussion about the mystical experience
01:00:25 ►
and how the mystical experience is connected to therapeutic outcome with psilocybin,
01:00:31 ►
but how that’s not the case with MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder.
01:00:36 ►
And yet, for me, the most mystical experience I’ve ever had was with MDMA.
01:00:40 ►
So I’ve been thinking about that a lot
01:00:42 ►
and thought that that might be a story to share how that came about.
01:00:47 ►
And it began at Esalen where I was learning about MDMA, back actually in 1982.
01:00:53 ►
And it was a month-long workshop on the mystical quest taught by Stan and Christina Groff.
01:00:59 ►
And it involved holotropic breath work and a lot of guest lecturers. And one of them was Brother David Steindlrost,
01:01:09 ►
who’s a Roman Catholic monk who is amazing.
01:01:13 ►
He hasn’t been excommunicated.
01:01:14 ►
But he’s like a mystic, ecumenical, very open-minded.
01:01:25 ►
And when I learned about MDMA, it was legal in 1982,
01:01:30 ►
and we were starting to think we needed to approach other people
01:01:34 ►
from not stereotypical kind of drug-using groups,
01:01:40 ►
but just people like monks and rabbis and meditators.
01:01:47 ►
And so I started talking about MDMA with Brother David,
01:01:52 ►
and it felt to me like it’s very peaceful, it’s very self-accepting,
01:01:58 ►
and that in half dose it could be really good for meditation.
01:02:02 ►
So Brother David tried it in the monastery
01:02:06 ►
and talked about some of the, one of the other monks started trying it as well. And I got
01:02:14 ►
called to the Father Superior, like, what is these monks, and you know, and it was really
01:02:27 ►
And it was really helpful that it was legal still.
01:02:33 ►
And I said it’s part of this understanding of mysticism and global spirituality.
01:02:43 ►
And there’s this deeper kind of respect that’s being paid to the experience.
01:02:45 ►
And it’s not something you do all the time,
01:02:48 ►
but you can deepen your meditation practice perhaps,
01:02:52 ►
and people have used fasting and all these ways.
01:02:57 ►
And this father of spirit said, okay, they can keep doing it.
01:03:03 ►
Which was kind of amazing. And so I just was thinking about that a lot.
01:03:06 ►
And there was this part of this suing the DEA
01:03:11 ►
where it was a little bit unclear for me
01:03:17 ►
how to do it in a skillful way
01:03:19 ►
and not get really smashed.
01:03:22 ►
And yet at the same time, I felt it could be done. And I had, through these
01:03:28 ►
workshops at Esalen and
01:03:29 ►
the meetings, I’d gotten pretty comfortable at being there and I’d found
01:03:36 ►
my spot. I found a place to camp out.
01:03:39 ►
You’re not supposed to camp out there, but there’s a place right down by the ocean where it was kind of
01:03:44 ►
private.
01:03:53 ►
And when the tide went out, I could gather up some small stones and stuff in buckets and create this little bed.
01:03:55 ►
The mountain came straight down to the ocean. There was big rocks out there that blocked the waves.
01:04:01 ►
There was a freshwater stream going right by.
01:04:04 ►
There’s mountains right behind you.
01:04:07 ►
And the high tide would come, like on this stage,
01:04:10 ►
the high tide would come, like, right where you guys, your feet are, right there.
01:04:13 ►
But you could have this, and then the mountain is right here.
01:04:15 ►
But there was this little spot that was, like, perfectly safe throughout the night,
01:04:23 ►
throughout the high tides and the low tides.
01:04:24 ►
It was just, you know an exquisite little spot there.
01:04:28 ►
And I got pretty comfortable camping out there and
01:04:32 ►
walking around there at night. And I thought, okay, this is
01:04:36 ►
a really good spot to take MDMA one night.
01:04:39 ►
And I felt like I could do it by myself, that there
01:04:44 ►
was people there if I needed to talk to anybody. It was, you know, I felt like I could do it by myself, that there was people there if I needed to talk to anybody.
01:04:47 ►
I felt really protected in that way.
01:04:50 ►
I didn’t have to worry the phone was going to ring, the police were going to come by.
01:04:55 ►
Nothing.
01:04:55 ►
And so I did it at night.
01:04:58 ►
It was just an incredible night.
01:04:59 ►
And I spent a fair amount of time looking at a tree and imagining it was different like
01:05:05 ►
DEA people
01:05:06 ►
sort of looking at me.
01:05:10 ►
And I was trying to figure out
01:05:12 ►
well, how do I
01:05:14 ►
build this relationship?
01:05:22 ►
And I thought, well, okay,
01:05:24 ►
if I could see ominous figures or friendly figures,
01:05:29 ►
and I just somehow came to the idea that they’re looking for what’s under the rock.
01:05:36 ►
They’re looking for what’s hidden.
01:05:37 ►
The whole thing is conspiracies and secrets and all this kind of stuff.
01:05:40 ►
And you just come at them straight, directly.
01:05:44 ►
It’s probably a safer way to do it,
01:05:47 ►
even if you’re still occasionally having these experiences yourself
01:05:52 ►
and talking about it and being willing to acknowledge that.
01:05:57 ►
But it’s something that I felt like, okay, I could do it in that way.
01:06:03 ►
And that there’s a part of the DEA people
01:06:05 ►
that really want to know what drugs are like.
01:06:09 ►
I mean, they do,
01:06:11 ►
because the stuff that they’ve been told
01:06:15 ►
about how bad it is,
01:06:16 ►
it’s like nobody would want to take this stuff.
01:06:19 ►
But people do.
01:06:20 ►
So they’re kind of curious about it.
01:06:23 ►
And it’s good to, I think, help them see sometimes.
01:06:28 ►
So I found myself even sometimes explaining what it was like to be high or stuff with some DEA people.
01:06:37 ►
And so I sort of worked through that kind of process, and then the tree came back to a tree
01:06:45 ►
and then I just was like
01:06:48 ►
amazed. It’s like it was now
01:06:52 ►
in the middle of the night and the stars were just so
01:06:54 ►
super bright and the waves were crashing
01:06:56 ►
and I just felt like
01:06:58 ►
the universe was so big
01:07:00 ►
and I was just this little speck and then
01:07:02 ►
I felt scared I could just disappear.
01:07:04 ►
It was like
01:07:04 ►
and I was just this little speck. And then I felt scared I could just disappear.
01:07:11 ►
And I just almost like thrown up in the universe.
01:07:13 ►
I’d just be connected, just somehow lose.
01:07:17 ►
It just was a little bit scary part for a moment.
01:07:21 ►
And then I felt like, well, I haven’t disappeared.
01:07:23 ►
Somehow I am still there. I mean, just like, and it was just
01:07:28 ►
this kind of recognition there was something that was keeping me there,
01:07:31 ►
and that this something was gravity. And this gravity
01:07:36 ►
was this loving force that was keeping me
01:07:40 ►
together. And I was wondering, like, how does
01:07:44 ►
Brother David live a celibate life?
01:07:47 ►
You know, why do you want to do that?
01:07:54 ►
And then I kind of saw that the good part of it is that then I felt like this gravity,
01:08:01 ►
that I was cradled in the arms of gravity. And it was like a lover.
01:08:05 ►
I didn’t have a girlfriend at the time.
01:08:08 ►
It felt like so warm, like it was actually a real person.
01:08:12 ►
But it was this gravitational force, gravity.
01:08:17 ►
And I felt this cradled in the arms of gravity.
01:08:20 ►
And it made me feel connected in a way that I never was quite so lonely ever
01:08:28 ►
again after that.
01:08:31 ►
And it felt like a sense of, yeah, this was the most woven into everything, me disappearing
01:08:42 ►
and still being there and feeling this loving connection.
01:08:46 ►
And that was 1985.
01:08:49 ►
It did have those positive effects.
01:08:51 ►
And then a few months ago, I had a chance to sit next to Brother David after 30 years
01:08:58 ►
at a conference in Madison.
01:09:03 ►
And so I was able to talk to him a little bit.
01:09:06 ►
And I kind of was able to share with him
01:09:10 ►
that this most mystical experience of my life
01:09:13 ►
had been contemplating him and his life.
01:09:16 ►
And that I wondered, you know, what…
01:09:20 ►
And he’s an amazing man.
01:09:24 ►
And so he… I said it was about gravity,
01:09:27 ►
that for me it came to be the loving force of gravity.
01:09:32 ►
And he looked at me and he said,
01:09:33 ►
you know, I think about gravity every single day.
01:09:39 ►
Thank you.
01:09:40 ►
Thank you. you’re listening to the psychedelic salon where people are changing their lives one thought at a
01:09:59 ►
time it’s all about gravity and dare say, it’s also about levity.
01:10:07 ►
And I’ll let you think that through for yourself.
01:10:10 ►
Actually, I’d planned on doing what I said earlier
01:10:13 ►
and attempt to pull these three talks together in a way that, well, at least made sense to me.
01:10:19 ►
However, well, it was almost a week ago that I got to the point where we now find ourselves.
01:10:25 ►
And during that time, I wrote several pages of comments to add here.
01:10:29 ►
Then I rewrote those comments several times.
01:10:32 ►
And yet I kept hitting a wall of some kind that kept me from finishing this podcast.
01:10:37 ►
So I went ahead and revised my comments yet again.
01:10:41 ►
My problem was that everything that I wanted to say took, well, lengthy explanations to
01:10:47 ►
fit into the context of this podcast. But I’ve finally come to the conclusion that, well,
01:10:52 ►
if I don’t get to some kind of a stopping point here, I’ll never get today’s program out to you.
01:10:58 ►
And so I’m going to abandon all of the things that I’d planned on saying right now and
01:11:02 ►
just finish with a single story, one that
01:11:05 ►
I hope fits in with our theme of risk reduction.
01:11:09 ►
However, this story isn’t about someone dying of an overdose.
01:11:12 ►
It’s about the fact that, like it or not, from time to time we all wind up with some
01:11:18 ►
kind of a responsibility here and there to keep our more impetuous friends from getting
01:11:23 ►
into trouble.
01:11:24 ►
here and there to keep our more impetuous friends from getting into trouble.
01:11:31 ►
During the summer of 1962, I had one of the greatest summer jobs that a college student could get.
01:11:32 ►
I was the sailing instructor at the Houston Yacht Club, and one of my duties was to sit
01:11:37 ►
in on the meetings of the club’s junior sailors.
01:11:40 ►
They called themselves the Ragnots, and my only responsibility was to attend their
01:11:45 ►
meetings and answer any technical questions that came up about the tactics and rules of
01:11:50 ►
sailboat racing. In this particular afternoon, which was a week or so before the summer season
01:11:56 ►
at the club was to end, well, when their meeting was finished, I became kind of engaged in a hot
01:12:02 ►
argument about a situation that had occurred the previous week during one of our races.
01:12:07 ►
And while I was talking with some of the kids, I didn’t notice that one of them, a brilliant 13-year-old,
01:12:14 ►
had jumped into the front seat of an older kid’s car.
01:12:17 ►
Now, since I was a close friend of his parents, I was aware of the fact that they didn’t allow him to ride in cars with other teenage drivers.
01:12:26 ►
But it really wasn’t my responsibility to watch him or anyone else when they weren’t out on the water.
01:12:32 ►
So, well, I really wasn’t paying any attention when several cars full of kids sped out of the club’s parking lot.
01:12:39 ►
A short while later, the club’s manager came down to the docks to find me
01:12:44 ►
and tell me that he had just received a call from the local police.
01:12:48 ►
There had been a car accident nearby.
01:12:50 ►
It was a single car accident, and one of the people in the car was dead at the scene.
01:12:55 ►
And so the manager told me that he wanted me to drive down to the culvert,
01:12:59 ►
where the car went off the road,
01:13:01 ►
and see if it was actually one of our member’s children, as the police suggested. Now this was in the days before cars had seatbelts, and unfortunately my young friend
01:13:12 ►
had been thrown through the windshield and went headfirst into the cement culvert that the driver
01:13:16 ►
had skidded into. I don’t need to go into the gory details, but I’m sure you can imagine what I found.
01:13:26 ►
into the gory details, but I’m sure you can imagine what I found. Now, this young man was one of the golden children. He came from a wealthy and well-connected family. He was exceptionally
01:13:32 ►
bright and had a very charming personality. On top of that, he was one of the best young sailors at
01:13:38 ►
the club. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he would go on to do great things. But suddenly,
01:13:46 ►
doubt in anyone’s mind that he would go on to do great things. But suddenly, very suddenly,
01:13:53 ►
there he was, a shredded piece of human flesh with not a speck of life left in his body.
01:13:59 ►
For over 50 years now, I’ve been asking myself why I wasn’t paying closer attention to the commotion of that gang of kids taking off from the club. Because if I had been, well,
01:14:04 ►
maybe I would have noticed that young man getting into a situation
01:14:08 ►
that he wasn’t allowed to be in and that wasn’t safe.
01:14:11 ►
He was a truly integral part of our community, and in my heart I have always felt that I let him and his family down.
01:14:19 ►
So why am I telling this non-drug related story here in the salon?
01:14:26 ►
am I telling this non-drug related story here in the salon? Well, it’s because we all most likely have been at a point where one of our friends maybe had too much to drink, but still insisted
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on driving home. And more often than not, those drunken friends get on the road because we are
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too timid to make a scene and take their keys away. That too is a form of risk reduction and
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is one that will most likely come up in your life more frequently
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than having to deal with an overdose or other emergency.
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More often than any of us would like it to happen,
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we find ourselves in a position to do or say something
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that perhaps could lessen a friend’s chances of doing harm to herself or himself.
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And what we do or what we don’t do about it
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may be something that dogs us for the rest of our lives.
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Harm reduction and risk reduction
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is the responsibility of each and every one of us.
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In the psychedelic community,
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we seem to have more people willing to take risks
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than is found in the general population.
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Actually, we wouldn’t be using psychedelic substances
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if we weren’t risk-takers.
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But my hope, however, is that in the decades ahead
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we can grow into a healthy community of very old risk-takers.
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And it’s up to each and every one of us to make that happen.
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So I hope that you’ll follow up on some of the things that you’ve heard today
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and prepare yourself to be one of the people that we can count on
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to move us safely into the future.
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And in regards to moving into the future, well, next week over in the forums, I’ll be posting more information about this.
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But I’ve decided to put a stake in the ground and begin hosting a monthly salon at a little coffee shop here in North San Diego County.
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Now these salons will take place at noon on the second Sunday of each month,
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and soon I’ll be posting the details about these salons on our forums.
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Hopefully I’ll see you there, and if you can’t make it, well who knows, maybe we can even
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periscope some of them. But for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
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Be well, my friends.