Human Up Season 1 Ep 10: Exploring Psychedelic Assisted Therapy

This is a transcript of Human Up Podcast Season 1, Episode 10 with Ellie Holbrook, which you can watch and listen to here:

Dave: Hi, and welcome to the Human Up podcast. I'm Dave Marlon and I'm honored to spend this time with Ellie Holbrook. Ellie is a clinical professional counselor like I am, and she's also the CEO and founder of a pretty good size counseling center in Reno. I'm looking forward to asking her some specific questions about her specialties in psychedelic assisted therapy, which I find fascinating. And I also really like the name of your counseling center, Sojo Counseling.

Ellie: Yes.

Dave: Can you tell me how you came up with that name?

Ellie: Yeah, absolutely. So when I started out in the field, I was a solo practitioner, just myself, and I transitioned into a group practice about a year after I moved to Reno. And at the time I also had a small boutique yoga studio that I was seeing clients out of just for myself, and then practicing yoga and teaching small groups, and that was called Sojourn Studio. And the reason I had named that Sojourn was always kind of looking at yoga as a resting place. I mean, the definition of sojourn is a resting place on our journey, so not necessarily the journey itself and not necessarily that destination neither. And so that term always resonated with me for our personal practice of self refinement, that we also need respite, we need places to stop and rest. And I feel like that's what counseling can often be.

Dave: Wow, that's beautiful.

Ellie: Yeah. Thank you!

Dave: I'm a big, big appreciator of this journey that I'm on and that we are all on. It's interesting to me that I have a boxing gym in the center of my counseling center, and I found it was a place to release endorphins to kind of get, well place a break from my journey that could occur and then really merge the two. And it sounds like you did a similar thing, yoga studio and counseling. That's beautiful.

Ellie: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I wasn't aware of that. That was your setup because I think having embodiment practices and somatic practices such as boxing or yoga or whatever resonates with people. So much of our counseling practice can be so cerebral and in our head and a lot of intellect heavy that we can become disconnected from the body and we need places to bring that together and also express, and especially to express some rage and anger and not just repress it and hope it dissolves, but also to have a place to release some aggression. A big part of life too.

Dave: It sure is. I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict, so I understand. I used to have an unhealthy way to express or to deal with rage or being pissed off often as a result of my own behaviors and consequences, but rage nonetheless. So it's one thing to get into recovery, it's another thing to enter into a practice to be able to deal with life.

Ellie: Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you on that. I also live in active recovery. I am sober from alcohol and drugs, and that is part of what has informed. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. That's also part of what's informed my counseling practice, but also psychedelics that oftentimes we think that maybe those two can exist in the same space, and they certainly can, but with addiction, as we know, it's really just an attempt to cope. And when we can look at it with a softer, more compassionate lens, I think there's actually a lot of wisdom behind the drivers of addiction, and we can work with that same energy and recovery. And so having other outlets and having other ways to deescalate or express or whatever that may be, and that's kind of what our program is ultimately designed to do.

Dave: First of all, I honestly want to spend our entire time just talking about this. Two things. One, I'm a hardcore recovery guy, like no weed, no alcohol, no mind altering substances. I I'm a 19 year guy, a solid, regular, 12 step attendee. I also happen to be a guy who's taken over a hundred trips.

Ellie: Yeah, good for you.

Dave: Which puts me in a different category. One, I know I can't take a high level position in the government, but it also has me as a person who appreciates the benefits and recognizes that it's one thing to get addicted to methamphetamine or to an opioid or to alcohol or even a cannabis, but a hallucinogen is a whole nother ball of wax. Now, do you get pushback being in recovery but experimenting or utilizing hallucinogens?

Ellie: Yes. Yes. So I hear you, and I'm the same. I'm 100% sober. And psychedelics also fit into my recovery and my sobriety as I would define it, I guess. And for a while, I was 100% sober, no psychedelics, anything. I was more straight edge and psychedelics were brought to me a little bit later while having had some experiences while I was using, but I was straight edge for a while and did a lot of really honest work with myself and the steps and therapy and things like that, that I think I needed complete sobriety for a while before I could really explore what I need to do, explore from an altered state with psychedelics. But I think there is a lot of pushback and misunderstanding when it comes to psychedelics and recovery and addiction because the war on drugs included psychedelics. And so it was too myopic and really villainized substances, it villainized drugs, it villainized people that use drugs. And really there wasn't a lot of understanding and education, I think, in how else we can approach that. And psychedelics was lumped into that. And we're still kind of disentangling those things. And while psychedelics and hallucinogens are certainly mind altering, as you know, if you've had those experiences, they're mind altering with a completely different experience. We're really not numbing out from anything when we're on psychedelics, when we're drinking alcohol, we're really not also escaping anything when we're on psychedelics. It's kind the opposite. If

Dave: You kind of the opposite, I would always tell people if somebody's having trouble or you're going through a breakup or you're in an emotional state now, it's not the day to go on a trip. However, if you're really good about where you are and you have a person who, honestly, most of the times I ended up being, I wasn't a shaman or anything. I was just the guy who the designated driver. And I recognize the role of that Sherpa or that leader through the trip is really important. And it's funny because I'm a parent as well, and when my kids, when he was younger and really having a hard times, some people would look and say, why won't you reprimand him? And I would know. I knew my kid. A distraction is a way better intervention in certain circumstances. And that's absolutely the case when taking people through a trip. Now you probably don't call it a trip, what do you call it?

Ellie: We can use trip. Yeah. I think interchangeably a trip or a journey, depending on the medicine that we're working with, journey's probably used most often because I think it's also trying to decontextualize it from more recreational experiences, which there's nothing wrong with for people that use recreational psychedelics, but I think a journey is often a little bit more intentional of approaching the medicine with a certain intention and maybe addressing certain topics or having a hopeful outcome or a ceremony as well. Depending on the medicine, if it's approached, if it's more an indigenous plant or the facilitators have other training, it's often referred to as a ceremony. So I typically will refer to my work as a ceremony or a journey, but a trip, I mean a trip isn't like there's nothing wrong with referring it to that as that either.

Dave: Now, in my experience, and granted this has been 30 years ago, they were always pretty long.

Ellie: They can be

Dave: Like 12 hours, like 18 hours.

Ellie: Yes, they sure can be. It depends on the medicine. So LSD is typically significantly longer. LSD can be worked within a variety of ways. On the lower end of the spectrum, it can be microdosed. And so a microdose for the audience, if they're not familiar, it's a sub perceptual amount of a substance that's taken to help sub perceptual. So meaning we would take that very small amount of psilocybin or LSD for benefit. That might be almost like if you were to take vitamin D, the accumulating vitamin D over time, we notice an improvement in a mood or improvement in cognition, but you take one vitamin D, it's not going to change your day. Right. Same thing with psilocybin and LSD at a microdose, you may notice effects of feeling like, oh, my mood is elevated, I am processing faster, I have more energy. But it's really meant to steer the ship over time. So there's often a regimen that someone might follow for a month or a few months, but just taking it once probably isn't going to reach any profound changes. And so LSD we can use in that way with microdosing, or like you said, it can be in a higher dose that will last 12, 14, 16, 18 hours depending. And other medicines like ibogaine and other things like that are typically longer experiences as well.

Dave: Have you tried ibogaine?

Ellie: Not yet, no.

Dave: Okay. Have you tried LSD?

Ellie: I have done LSD, yes.

Dave: You've done now, unfortunately, granted this is a long time ago for me, but the places I used to buy it, I was never able to use medicine as the category category. Are you able to get controlled dosage? No,

Ellie: Not yet.

Dave: No. Alright. So there's still, it's a trusting relationship with an illicit provider,

Ellie: Right? Yes. So ones that we can give kind of above ground, as I say, or legally are psilocybin in some states and some cities it's legalized and ketamine is legal nationwide. So people can get a prescription for ketamine or go to a ketamine clinic and get an infusion or an IM shot, and it can be used as medicine that way. Same thing with psilocybin. We're working towards that with MDMA. That's partly why we're working with the FDA and the VA is to get that legalized to help with PTSD and other things. But for now, yeah, everything else is underground.

Dave: Interesting. Yeah. MDMA as well, I personally, I'm on the, not in my recovery, although I'd love to. I really enjoyed MDMA long time ago, although I have a proclivity to compulsivity

Ellie: And

Dave: I'd be worried if I changed the lines of my recovery. The slippery slope argument, and this is something I use often when I talk to clients or colleagues, is that recovery has made my life so amazing that it would make no sense at all for me to adjust the dials. I have a conversation I had with my sponsor, I was like, Hey, how many meetings do I have to go to a week? And he's like, well, how many do you go to now? And I'm like, well, I go to one every day. And he's like, well, here's how you find out each week, go to one less meeting and keep doing that until you go out and get drunk and crash your life to the ground. And then you'll know. And I'm like, thanks buddy. I guess I'm going to leave well left alone

Ellie: Right

Dave: Now. I like the fact that you talked about how you went through a period of abstinence, became solid in your recovery, did the work, cleaned house, and then fell ready to do this. Can you tell me a little bit more about that readiness?

Ellie: Yes, absolutely. And that's a great question. And I think too, like you said, there's that it's such a personal journey and a personal definition of recovery and sobriety. So disclaimer, this is what has worked for me, and if it resonates for other people, I don't want to project that onto other people if it doesn't. But I did. I have a history of addiction in my family. When I was young, before I became a therapist, I struggled with anxiety and depression and eating disorder. And I had a lot of those types of, that whole wheelhouse of mental health things that kind of manifest in different ways. And that was kind of my journey into addiction as well, was first eating disorder, eating disorder, recovery kind of stuck. And then I, addiction hopped into alcoholism, and we see that a lot in the rooms and other programs that we're able to get a handle of it enough, but it's slippery and so it can shapeshift into something else.

That was my, so when I had kind of the aha moment that I was in fact an alcoholic, it was a really lackluster, unsexy moment of just feeling like, shit, this, this isn't in control. I didn't have this really catastrophic bottom experience, which is good, but I was also removed from a lot of the habits that I was in. I had just moved across the country, so I wasn't hanging out with the same friends, and I wasn't doing a lot of the same things. So I was able to really take inventory of my own life and recognize what was working and what wasn't. And my alcohol consumption was one of those things that I realized I was leaning way too heavily into. And then having a long line of alcoholics on both sides of my family, it made a lot of sense.

And so I finally saw that for what it was and realized this has got to change. I know it's going to happen if it doesn't. So I got sober. I went to AA as well. Yeah, thank you. And actually, the process of getting sober was what helped solidify in my mind that I was an alcoholic, that I thought that I could just quit. I thought it was just willpower and motivation, like many other habit changes in my life. And when that wasn't able to stick is when I realized it was a bigger problem. And in those early days of my recovery, so much started coming up. I call it whack-a-mole that I all the feelings and all the traumas and all the things, and we'd just try to knock it. And so I had that upheaval. Many of us do. And that just drove me deeper into some of the other support systems. I was already in therapy. I already had my yoga practice. I had a lot of really amazing things in my life that I could lean into and sobriety. Eventually it stuck. And then I was straight edge for a few years, I think five years before I started looking into psychedelics. And that came to me through really my clinical experience where there was more and more research emerging about psychedelics. And I had psychedelic experiences before I got sober that were always positive, often insightful, somewhat spiritual,

That we're a little bit of an outlier from any other addiction behavior with drinking or drugs or any other thing that comes with life.

Dave: It's definitely a different category,

Ellie: Very different. And so I always looked at that as like, yes, it's a substance, it's mind altering, but it was a whole different category. And so when more and more research was emerging as a clinician about the potential for psychedelics, I was really drawn to that and often thought about if I had had exposure to psychedelics when I was really in the throes of eating disorder or early addiction, it would've really helped me because I had support that was helpful. But I was plagued by that stuff for a long time. And so I think if I had had psychedelic assisted therapy, it probably would've expedited my course of treatment. So I was really drawn to it in that way. And then in 2021, I was just exposed more and more. I ended up going on an ayahuasca retreat with a friend of mine at her invitation she wanted to go.

I was like, okay, that feels okay for me. And so that was actually my first reintroduction into psychedelics again as a sober person. But because I was approaching it from just a completely different mindset than I was with alcoholism, with alcohol and drugs and sex, drugs, rock and roll, that whole thing, we're really, we're thrill seeking. We're trying to avoid, we're trying to evade, we're trying to self-medicate. And with ayahuasca, it's not that. And if you're approaching it that way, you're going to be sorely disappointed, I think because it's just such a magnifier. We call psychedelics a non-specific magnifier that whatever is going on within us is going to be blown up on a high resolution screen, and that can be really challenging. And that was actually my experience. And so with that, as challenging as it was on the other side of it, was also so profound and rewarding that I just felt like for me, there's virtually no risk of abuse because I had other support systems in my life.

My life was very desirable at that time. There was no reason to gamble with ruining anything. And so it just felt it was a value add. And I also felt like I trusted my recovery and my sobriety enough to be able to explore these altered states with that support and intention that I felt like I would also have the awareness to not go into that territory. And that's how it was for me. So even when I'm working with psychedelics, there's some medicines I'm not drawn to because I think they do have a higher risk of abuse. There's also states that I don't think benefit me just to brown out and disassociate. I've done enough in that in my life. And so there's some medicines that I don't work with. They're just not for me. But with the other ones, even MDMA, when we're doing that at a clinical dose, it's a completely different experience than what we would do recreationally. It's not always easy. It's very intense. And so that's where I think that it can be utilized in a way that I can actually help addiction. And that's been a lot of my personal experience as well. Yeah,

Dave: I don't disagree with anything you've said and then recognize, it certainly has power to provoke insight. Now, I used to call it turbulence on the beginning of a trip. Was the turbulence difficult with ayahuasca?

Ellie: Yeah. So the retreat that I went on, that first retreat, we sat with the medicine four times. So it was a week long retreat. And yeah, four times we sit at night. So it was first night, second night, a break in between. And then third and fourth, I had a really rough initiation. I had a lot of turbulence. So my first four ceremonies ever were really challenging. So there was that, I mean, it's physically uncomfortable. The emotional content that was brought up was challenging. I had no idea what to expect. So I really had to dig into distress tolerance and grounding and just reminding myself that it would end. But it also brought forward so much that I don't think I could have accessed as quickly and as easily without that assistance.

Dave: Now, the shaman or the clinician or the trip leader now, how were they?

Ellie: They're phenomenal. So I left the country. I went to Costa Rica and I was at a retreat center. So they're very skilled and very, very experienced with this medicine. And they followed an indigenous tradition called the Tibo. And so the Maestros or the Icaros, they're the ones that serve the medicine to the people. They're indigenous, don't speak English, barely speak Spanish. So they're serving the medicine and they're really facilitating that experience. And then there were support people that were from the states that were also helping support the whole process. So they had a lot of experience and a lot of background knowledge. And there was an intake process to make sure that everyone was safe because there can be contraindications of mental health, physical health. So we had to be cleared by a doctor. It was a very thorough process. So I felt that it was fantastic.

Dave: And now you are adept to doing just that?

Ellie: Yes. Yep. So I

Dave: Cool.

Ellie: Yeah, thank you. So after I had that experience, I kind of walked away from knowing that I wanted to integrate that into my profession, more of it for my personal life, and walk that walk, but then also be trained so that I can work with it with clients. And so shortly after that experience, I signed up for a year long training program through a school called I I. It was working under professors like G Mate and Rick Schwartz, and some really legendary names in the industry that we got to learn directly from to work with different medicines and have in-person experiences for a year. And that's where I got my certification program to work with psychedelics. So I am able to support people stateside. And then also I leave the country with another group that I work with to work with Ayahuasca, and I provide support that way as well.

Dave: When you provide support, do you go on the trip?

Ellie: Yes. And when I do with the Ayahuasca, so my support with the Ayahuasca retreats that I've worked with, I do a lot of support with intake to help make sure that people are a candidate or that they have the mental health support system so that we're not creating more problems than they're coming in.

Dave: Yeah, it's just a stark difference between somebody who's coming and somebody who's there to help out, but not coming. I cannot emphasize how kind, don't even talk to me if you're not coming on this road.

Ellie: Right, exactly. So I provide a lot of that front end and backend support after the retreat too, to make sure that people are landing well and that there's supported and they're integrating. And then while we're there, I also provide a lot of support if people need to process what their experience was, or if they're having a hard time, then I'm there to provide support one-on-one or at a group level and help teach retreat or I'm sorry, treat workshops and things like that. And then I also will sit with the medicine because during those ceremonies I'm receiving.

Dave: Wow. To me, that's the only way to do it. So I kind of asked, but okay. Wow.

Ellie: I think that in the psychedelic community, we really need to have walked the walk in order to be effective and ethical professionals. It's kind of like when we're working with addiction, clients that are struggling with addiction are much better served by therapists that have also intimately known addiction and they can smell when people have it. And I think the same as with psychedelics, just because it's such a profound experience. That's impossible to describe that. I think we have to have some InVivo experiences ourself.

Dave: I respect and appreciate the InVivo experience, although I've run big counseling agencies like you do. And I ran a 400 bed treatment center in Vegas for years, and I found I had about half my staff in recovery and about half not in recovery.

Ellie: And

Dave: For some work, my non recovery people were the best There was.

Ellie: I agree with that.

Dave: So I recognize that book smart's helpful, lived experience is helpful. I also have this funny story, I'm just going to tell you quick, is when my practicum, 15 years ago, I went to two sites. I went to community counseling. I was there for half a year, and I was at Salvation Army for half a year. And although I came to work in my suit every day, one location I spent the whole six months, I never told anybody that I was in recovery. And then the other one at community counseling, I let people know I was,

Ellie: And

Dave: I learned that it didn't change anything, that it was just my shit that I was bringing to the table. And it has no business being there that a counselor is there to help people on their sojourn.

Ellie: Yes. Yeah, right. Great point. I do agree with that. I do agree with that, that we need both surf. We need both. And I think that there's certain things, things we don't have to have an identical journey. And I think that there can also be some integrated work that can happen, especially when we're working with the psychedelic realm. To have familiarity from the lived experience I think is really important.

Dave: Yeah, that's paramount. Paramount. I talked about this as the Human Up podcast, which we jumped into. Could you tell me what does Human Up mean to you?

Ellie: I like that when I first read it at the introduction to me on the podcast, and it landed almost as the adage of Man Up. And if we remove gender from that, that there's kind of this human up is really, for me, it's kind of drawing from within, almost like pulling ourselves up from our bootstraps, which involves some grit, but it also involves some compassion, some self-compassion, and just working that system for ourselves to grow, to self refine, to strive for better. And while I don't think that that should be the only goal, I think that we always need a break from that to rest and play and step back. But that was kind of how it resonated, is that on a human to human level of really rising up from wherever we're coming from.

Dave: Well, that's awesome. And I've asked each of my nine other guests, and you were the closest to the impetus of Human Up, because I'm a tough son of a bitch, and I was able to do a lot of things, but I couldn't stop using drugs. I couldn't man up. It was beyond my scope of capabilities. I needed outside help, which is weird. You wouldn't think an Italian from New York who likes boxing would end up wanting to be a clinician like yourself. To me, you seem more meant to be a clinician. Your insightfulness comes out just in every conversation we have. It's very

Ellie: Clear.

Dave: And I'm not sure if some of that was due to your psychedelic experiences or is that just innate? What do you think?

Ellie: I think it's more innate. I think it's more innate. Yeah. I also started therapy early as a child. I was in family therapy and I was a teen, and I was really thrown into a lot of therapy and rehab. So I also come by it naturally that way, just from my own personal experiences as a client. But I hear you, what you say as an Italian from New York with a different background. And I think that that's also really necessary to have diversity within our field, to be able to really connect with other people, not always through resonance and sameness, but also to look at things from a different angle as well. Because sometimes that's exactly what clients need is their status quo to be challenged and being a therapist from a different perspective is definitely going to offer that.

Dave: Agreed. And thank you. Yeah. Is there anything else we should talk about or before we close, Allie?

Ellie: I don't think so. This is a fantastic conversation. Thank you.

Dave: Yeah, agreed. Thank you so much for your time. If somebody wants to learn more about Psychedelic Assisted therapy, where would they go?

Ellie: Yes, so I have two websites. The first one is sojourn counseling group.com, and that is the website for my practice, my group practice that I own. I also have a personal website, and that's ellie holbrook.net. And there's my email addresses on there. I'm also on Instagram at L-E-L-H-O-L-B-R-O-O-K. That's my handle. And then I'm on Facebook too. So those are probably the fastest ways to reach me to ask questions.

Dave: Awesome. I already have a referral that I'm going to be sending you when we finish. Thank you so much for blind being willing to come on and be a guest on this podcast.

Ellie: My pleasure.

Dave: Thank you, Ellie.

Ellie: Thank you. Anytime.

Dave: Alright, bye-bye. And everybody human up. Yeah.