Episode #45

Episode #45: Alissa Bazinet & Tom Eckert on The Psychedelic Leadership Podcast.

Intro:

My name is Laura Dawn, and you’re listening to episode #45 of the psychedelic leadership podcast featuring my conversation with Tom Eckert and Alissa Bazinet. Tom was the visionary who came up with idea to craft Measure 109 in Oregon, and Alissa is a clinical psychologist who serves on the training subcommittee of the Oregon psilocybin advisory board.   

We are living through remarkable times, where psychedelics are making a comeback unlike most people could have imagined, but you know what? Some people did imagine…

People like Tom Eckert did imagine a very different future for psychedelics, a future that many people said was impossible. Who is a great example of what psychedelic leadership is all about. And being a visionary leader, means you need to clearly communicate a vision that inspires other people to support the bringing that vision to fruition, and now many people, including Alissa Bazinet are supporting this very complex process of implementing measure 109.

So there are two layers to which you can tune into this episode. On one level, We cover the basics of measure 109, which is pretty wild, because by measure basically states that by 2023 which is less than a year away psilocybin service providers are going to be legal in Oregon, as long as they have adequate training. Now of course this opens up a lot of questions, like what does training look like, who’s offering it? All questions we cover in this episode. 

So if you already are in the psychedelic space and want to go a more legal route, which is very appealing for a lot of people, or you’re thinking about stepping into this space, it’s worth understanding what’s happening in Oregon and what Measure 109 entails. Because in a very real sense, this could open a new door of possibility for you and literally change the course of your life.  

It’s also so fascinating to hold space for conversations like this because it’s being a part of psychedelic history in the making. 

So that’s one layers, all the details we cover about measure 109, but if you listen to this from a zoomed out perspective, which is really the angle that I love, you’ll hear a story about someone who came up with an idea and who worked with psilocybin to really tune in and formulate that idea, and who, align with his late wide Sherie Eckert imagined the impossible, and who took a massive risk and a major step into the unknown and as a result of courage, changed policy on a governmental level and is now changing history. 

And that’s a story worth listening to, and being inspired by, and it’s how I think about what psychedelic leadership really is. 

Because  it’s one thing to have an idea, and it’s another thing altogether to transmute that idea into reality. 

So we start by hearing the remarkable origin stotry of measure 109, then for the middle section we talk about everything related to measure 109, the nitty gritty details, and then the last 1/3rd we talk about leadership,  How psychedelics have informed how they show up to lead. 

and what the both have learned about themselves in this process, and that’s the part of the conversation that I’m most interested, although the rest is important to know and be aware of. 

Now, I respect Tom and his work immensely. I also know that things are a lot more complicated under the surface. And as I’ve mentioned in the past, the more I peer under the hood of the “psychedelic industry” the more you sort of see the dark side of things. And  I alluded to some of that in the episode, but very lightly. And after we recorded this, VICE came out with an article titled: 

In Oregon, Psychedelics Regulators Confront Conflicts of Interest: The need for financial—and personal—disclosures is another growing pain for the nascent psychedelics industry.

Now I’m intentionally not offering a personal opinion on this, but I will include a link in the shownotes to this article, if you’d like to also peer under that hood and formulate your own opinions. And simply wanted to mention this article to be more inclusive of all sides of the story. 

Also, if you are wanting to go through a psychedelic facilitation training, I will be releasing an episode next week featuring Kyle Buller from Psychedelics today and they are kicking off a year long facilitation program called VITAL, and to my understanding they are doing their best to stay in alignment with the Oregon licensing requirements. 

I have a link to that training in the shownotes, if you want to check out what their program entails. 

Also, while I’m mentioning programs, if you want to get certified as a psychedelic integration coach, that focused on addiction recovery, I recommend checking out Being True to You, 

I had the founder of Being True to You, Deanne Adamson, on episode #34, so if you want to go back and listen to that episode, she goes into details about the program. 

But their next cohort starts March 9th. 

And I’ll include a link to check that out as well, in the shownotes. 

And, just as a reminder, if you want to access all the resources mentioned, the full transcript, or if you want to learn more about Tom and Alissa and the work they are doing, and want to check out links to featured musician, you can go to lauradawn.co/45. 

Alright friends, I’m going to be leaving you with a song called  

Song: Strongest of our Kind – some fun hip hop vibes for the end of the show today, and that’s a song by Mihali, featuring  G. Love & Special Sauce 

If you have favorite musicians, or song recommendations, send them my way! I love being turned on to new music, and you can interpret that in any way you like…

And the easiest way would be to send me links through my instagram DM’s @livefreelaurad 

If you want to check out all the free downloads I have including my 4 playlists for psychedelic journeys and beyond, you can access all of those free offerings at lauradawn.co/downloads

I would also love to hear from you. What have been your favorite episodes so far? What have been your favorite topics? Do you enjoy topics like this, that cover legalities and policy like measure 109? Let me know if you like this episode, And also what are some of the topics you’d really like me to cover and focus on? I’m always open to hearing from you and open to suggestions, and ultimately, I like to follow inspiration and conversations that light me up and inspire.  

And I hope this episode inspires you. Without any further ado, here is my conversation with Tom Eckert and Alissa Bazinet. 

Laura Dawn: Everywhere without any further ado. Here is my conversation with Tom Eckhart and Alissa Banet. Welcome, Tom and Alissa. It is such a pleasure to have both of you on the show today for us to dive into and explore what is happening in Oregon. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me here today.

Alissa Banet: Thank you.

Tom Eckhart: Thank you.

Laura Dawn: So, I can’t wait to dive into this conversation. Tom, I heard you share quite a moving story, back at horizons in December, and it was quite a personal story and you also shared the origin story of the Oregon campaign that took us back to 2015. So, I thought it would be a good place to start and I wanted to open this conversation by giving you space to share that story here with our listeners.

Tom Eckhart: Thanks, Laura. I appreciate that. Yeah, it’s kind of a long story. We always aimed for 2020, but we got the ball rolling way back in 2015 and that was a different landscape for psychedelics back then, the research was coming into effect and there’d been some great studies. They were starting to get attention, but nothing now it was not a mainstream kind of conversation at all. My wife at the time has since passed away and we can chat about that as we tell the story. But she and I, her name was Sheri. We’re therapists, I’m still a therapist, although I’m focused on psychedelics and program development now, but at the time we were therapists in private practice and I had a kind of a long history with psychedelics as a lot of us do, just kind of working with them on my own and kind of understanding the power.

It’s hard not to, when you get into a practice with psychedelics, Sheri was kind of new to the game, but we had started dabbling together for the first time and that was impactful on our relationship and our connection. And so, it was kind of in the air for us. We were working with Psilocybin and learning about the experience and about each other and context and then one day we came across an article in the New Yorker called the Trip Treatment by Michael Pollen. This is before his now-famous book, kind of a forerunner in some ways to his book. It was a really comprehensive article that for the first time, for me laid all kinds of aspects of the research and also went into the kind of experiences of some of the participants in the research.

And it was just so moving and how Michael writes and how excellence. He puts things together and it hit me like this is really a comprehensive potential movement and science and therapy, therapeutic modality that could really shift the narrative on mental health, and that kind of hit me all. It kind of had a sense of that, but I never really put it together. So, I thank Michael for bringing it together so beautifully and for everything he’s done since in helping the movement along. Anyway, I read that article and was moved by it and Sherie read it as well and we got into a dialogue. We started talking as therapists, we were moved by the potential to transform as therapists. We know that it’s very difficult to really change on a fundamental level, right.

To change personality characteristics, for example, that doesn’t necessarily happen in talk therapy, not very often. So, we see this potential here and I think she posed the question to me. She said something if you could, would you focus on this professionally? Is this something you would want to focus on or specialize in? And I’m thinking to myself like, well, yeah, I would, but I can’t, none of us can’t. There’s really no platform for it except inside the research itself and that kind of bugged us and I think it bugged a lot of people at the time, once we started kind of tapping into the energy out there. It was something of an injustice that prohibition had been 50 years in counting may be less than that at the time. But we know the long history there and kind of the political nature of the origins of the prohibition on psychedelics.

And so that became a dialogue, and at some point I had, I mean, I remember the moment actually when the ballot initiative concept kind of fell into my mind and it did feel a little bit like catching lightning in a bottle as soon as I thought of that, it was like, whoa, that’s something and at the time cannabis had just been legalized via a ballot initiative in Oregon, and that was kind of in the air. So, I saw the potential, for political impact and drug policy reform, but it had never been applied to psychedelics, and I remember getting on Google and looking around to see if anyone was thinking about anything like that, like policy reform in the psychedelic domain and the answer was no, since this is well before any campaigns popped up around the country and around the world now, which I’m glad to see, but at the time it was crickets out there, nobody was talking about psychedelic policy reform.

There was interest in changing, you know, getting rescheduling psychedelics on a national level, but not on a grassroots policy level. So, she and I had to sit with that because we were kind of overwhelmed with the responsibility of taking that on and thinking like how fragile the movement was. We certainly didn’t want to get in the way of progress or a wrong move. So, we took the decision very, you know, we didn’t take anything lightly. In fact, we sat on it for about a week feeling rather anxious about whether or not to move forward with this kind of grand idea, and then we finally realized there’s really only one thing left to do, and that is consulting the mushroom. So, we packed up the car with camping equipment and went up to Mount Rainier. Which is a beautiful mountain here in the Pacific Northwest near Seattle, went camping and took a nice hefty dose of Psilocybin in a beautiful old-growth forest amongst the giant furs and under the out and took a beautiful hike, came back to our camp spot, and started a campfire.

The sun went down, we went quiet. The golden teachers came alive and we sat with our intention of coming to some conclusion has to, if we would move forward on this, and I remember my mind kind of expanded outward to kind of a frame. I like to think of it as like a thousand years wide. I kind of felt the distant future in some interesting way and I remember thinking to myself, what are the kind of historians of this future time of an advanced civilization that actually survives and makes it through? What would the historians of that period think about our civilization? Kind of looking back through the folds of time, what would they see? And this is my expanded state, this was my altered perception. I almost felt like I could feel them looking back and it kind of felt to me like they wouldn’t be looking at our technologies or our ridiculous politics or anything like that.

They’d be looking at our consciousness and specific our kind of lack of connection, with our own inner resources, our own inner sanctum on if you will. And so, I was deep in that place and kind of lost in my own thoughts around that and it was somewhere in that mix, Thatcher pierced the quiet and kind of voice spurred an odd statement. She said, I think I’m pregnant and I thought this was kind of interesting, we couldn’t have kids. So, I knew that there was something up with that statement and she said, finally, she said, this campaign, this mission, this vision will be our baby and we’ll raise it as such and will care for it and help it grow strong and I remember thinking to myself, as soon as I, that I knew I was down and we would carry this all the way to its end and we did, we started a campaign that always aimed for 2020. We knew that science needed to develop and the public opinion would need to evolve and that we needed to build structure and coalitions. And so, we took our time with doing that and the rest is history. There are lots of stories that can be told about the campaign itself, but I’ll pause there and leave that as the general origin story of measure 1 0 9.

Laura Dawn: That’s beautiful and I love how you weave in just the real-time process of checking in with these plant teachers, these fungi teachers, especially at this time where you’re moving into unchartered territory. So, it’s like, and that’s what really psychedelic leadership to me is all about how do we do this in a good way and stay behind the medicine and really tend to this with a lot of responsibility. So, I really appreciate that story. So, I want to share at the horizons conference, I heard Joe Green, who you guys know from the psychedelic science funders collaborative. Now Joe said numerous times, I don’t know if you heard this, but at horizons, he said on stage in his keynote and at the business day, he said, not enough people are paying attention to what’s going on in Oregon. So, for people who don’t know what’s happening and what measure 1 0 9 is, let’s just take a moment to give an overview of that.

Tom Eckhart: Want to take that one and Alissa?

Alissa Banet: Sure. So, the review of measure 109 is really providing state-regulated legal access to Psilocybin and Experiences. It was intentionally designed to cover a wide range of possible settings and situations where people could use Psilocybin. So, it’s really inspiring in that regard. That’s my favorite part of the measure is that it’s intended for there to be a lot of different ways that people can have these experiences. So, we hear this debate in the national space about, is it going to be medicalization that takes over psychedelics, or is it going to be legalization or decriminalization, and measure 1 0 9 is really none of that. It’s really intended to be a hybrid of those things. So, it’s in the middle where folks will have supported services available to them. So, they do have to have Psilocybin given to them at a Psilocybin Service site with an adult who is in the room providing support while they have that experience, and there is preparation involved so that people can enter into fully informed consent and understand what it is that they are going to be experiencing, and then there’s optional integration. So, it is slightly different than the protocols that have been studied in the clinical trials so far, where there does tend to be more structured integration and more of a psychotherapy component, and measure 1 0 9, allows room for that. But it also allows room for people to just come have a Psilocybin experience for their own personal growth or wellness or spiritual experience. It doesn’t necessarily have to be to treat some sort of disorder or diagnosis. So, it’s really beautiful, really the intention of the whole system, and then in practicality, there’s how do we implement that and how do we create state regulations and rules that govern all of those different types of experiences, and I think that’s the meat of what we’re in right now on the and advisory board and Tom and I are both on the training subcommittee. So, we’ve been hashing out the rules and regulations of what a state-regulated training program should look like, and then there are other subcommittees looking at research and licensing and products, and so it’s a really complicated process of implementing this measure.

Laura Dawn: Oh my gosh. And I commend you both so much. It’s so interesting because when you look at the psychedelic space, everyone’s got a very strong opinion around how this whole thing should go down the, so how to even hold space for multi-stakeholder meetings where everyone has a seat at the table and what I heard you say is that it’s not necessarily just for people who are like, oh, I’m struggling with depression, but someone might want to have a psycho-spiritual experience. And so, you are really creating space for the full spectrum of why people might intend to come to these medicines, which actually makes it far more complicated to hold space for. So, I’m kind of curious, I think the next place would be to go in the direction of, I mean, we also see a huge facilitation race there’s companies who are racing to create facilitation programs, and that’s a big topic.

And I know a lot of people in my audience are very interested in that, and it seems like that is a huge opportunity for a lot of people, and I think when we spoke Alissa, it was kind of news to me that anyone actually could come into Oregon and create a program that was sort of under the umbrella of what the approved facilitation training looked like, but it could actually look in many, many different ways. So, maybe we can just talk a little bit about the facilitation subcommittee under that and like how you guys are deciding what goes into what makes a good facilitation program? What are the elements that have to be included in that? I mean, we could dive into this on such a deep level here because there’s a lot here.

Tom Eckhart: Just to back up and kind of connect this all to the origin story. We in our inspiration and motivation to move forward was really based on the question of, well, not only ending prohibition and addressing the mental health crisis we’re experiencing here in Oregon but also thinking deeply about how to integrate psychedelics back into the culture. What is the way that makes the most sense? and psychedelics as an intervention, as a modality, as a wellness paradigm, it doesn’t fit neatly into that medical model because it’s more inclusive than that. The psychedelic experience itself is what facilitates the change and then inter and careful support enhances and optimizes that effect. So, the fact that it’s an experience we’re talking about in a very profound and deep experience and vulnerable experience, puts it in this kind of therapeutic and wellness frame, as opposed to just thinking of it as another antidepressant or a pharma intervention.

This is really an experience and it’s to Alissa’s point it’s about how we care for that experience? How do we create space for it? How do we facilitate in a way that doesn’t get in the way of the actual experience itself? But rather affirms it and optimizes it and facilitates it. And so that is the frame we’re looking at, and it wouldn’t make sense to just narrow that down to kind of diagnostic categories because those of us who kind of understand a little bit about psychedelics through our own use, kind of know that it tends to go where it needs to go, because it’s your experience, from a medical standpoint, you might call that transdiagnostic efficacy. It works in a lot of different ways, depending on what you’re working on and where you start with because your own subjective energies you’re working with and a facilitator to understand that is kind of a unique, discipline to understand how to work with that, sit with that.

Not get in the way of it, right? So, that’s kind of a backdrop there and I think that measure 109 is trying to create an integrated platform in which all of these possibilities can be addressed, concerns from even preventative and wellness to therapeutic and medical. All of that on one platform, and all of those kinds of concerns and requirements have different nuances to them and the idea is to sort that all out. So, that’s kind of the 10,000-foot view. Now, when we look at training there’s been a lot of discussion as to how we create a training program that covers these core competencies that are relevant to all aspects of the work while also being mindful of the scope of practice and particular needs that will come up.

And so the core competencies, we’re not rebuilding the, you know, we’re not reinventing the wheel gear. There’s great information out there. We are trying to integrate lots of perspectives in a way that makes sense for the Oregon model specifically. So, the training subcommittee has heard a lot of expertise from the research community, from indigenous, wisdom traditions, from private, the private sector. We’re trying to just gather as much information as we can, which I think we’ve done and now we’re more in an active phase of making recommendations to the Oregon health authority regarding what needs to be in training both administratively and in terms of curriculum. So, that’s a bit of backdrop and Alissa feels free to jump in. I don’t know if we want to get into the curriculum itself or just kind of overview some of that if you want to.

Laura Banet: Maybe before we go there, Alyssa getting into like the nitty-gritty of the curriculum, I’m kind of curious. So, is it accurate to say that as of 2023 that’s Psilocybin is legal in Oregon?

Alissa Banet: Yes. That is the goal that in 2020 threes Psilocybin services will commence. And so we’re doing all of the prep work now to make sure that we are ready to provide those services.

Tom Eckhart: So, there are thinker services is a keyword there, as opposed to just Psilocybin being legal, like cannabis.

Laura Dawn: Dive into that a little bit more because it’s not just anyone can possess Psilocybin and it’s legal, but it’s actually legal within certain frameworks and that leads to who can provide those services.

Alissa Banet: So, just a little bit of the distinction there. So, Psilocybin services will be legal, meaning people can come to a state-approved Psilocybin services site with a licensed facilitator and have a Psilocybin experience on the premises of that site. So, they can’t go to the site and purchase Psilocybin and take it home for their own use. It will have to be sort of supervised onsite. There is also a caveat that Oregon also decriminalized all substances. There are some limitations there, but decriminalized possession of personal use possession of all substances, including Psilocybin. However, there are limits to that I believe, and I think that it’s something like five grams of psilocybin, maybe it’s seven grams, it’s not very much so that beyond that, if somebody were to possess more than seven grams, then that would still be criminalized.

Laura Dawn: So, all of the people who are trying to jump the gun on selling Psilocybin microdoses, which is happening now is like, oh, well, I can do it legally in Oregon starting 2023, but that’s not accurate. You can’t sell Psilocybin microdoses.

Tom Eckhart: No.

Alissa Banet: Not at this point, although I will say that that is a current debate, on Psilocybin advisory board and in the public, because there’s nothing necessarily written in the measure that prevents microdosing models from being available, but the debate is about, okay, well, if somebody comes to Psilocybin services site and they want to take a microdose, the idea is that they’re supposed to be supervised while they’re under the influence of Psilocybin. But since microdoses are not typically perceptible, how do we define that? Would it be okay for somebody to come on-site, take the microdose and then leave because they’re not acutely feeling the effects in the same way that you would with a microdose? So, this is the nuance that’s received quite a bit of discussion lately.

Laura Dawn: Okay. So, the way that I’m understanding it, based on a recent conversation that we had on the phone, Alyssa, is that it sort of like school models like state governs school models, were like the Waldorf school is like, actually, we want to do school a little differently, but we still need to meet these government level sort of tar or regulations. So, different organizations can come into Oregon and say, okay, as long as we’re sort of fulfilling these certain targets of required training that actually the training could look very, very different. So, there could be, is this accurate to say there could be one level of supervision that might just actually be more like trips in, and then there might be another model that’s within like a different context. I think even I heard Joe Green say, oh, if someone wants to do a training, that’s like somatic-based or that’s within the framework of Judaism or something that they could technically do that as long as they’re hitting certain requirements. So, training programs could actually be very different, there could be shamanic-based worldview training versus, somatic-based training. Is that accurate?

Alissa Banet: Yes. I would say that’s accurate. There’s definitely a degree of creativity and what the training programs can include. However, the minimum requirements as we have recommended them to the Oregon health authority so far are pretty comprehensive. So, maybe this is a good time to just hit what some of those modules are and what the topics the required topics are, and again, none of this is yet official through OHA, but this is what the recommendations have been from the advisory board.

Tom Eckhart: And be a little careful with saying that training programs could look kind of wildly different. I think they can be different and some of your points are well taken that you can have different perspectives that are leaned on and that are kind of your signature, but they have to meet these kinds of core requirements around non-active facilitation. So, this is not where we’re going to have training programs that are kind of outside of the box of what we know to work and what we know that won’t cause harm specifically and there is flexibility in there. So, there’s no doubt that training programs will have, there are unique signatures and that’s great, but importantly there is a very strong set of core requirements that are pretty detailed around what needs to be in the training program and what shouldn’t be in a training program, and that’s super important because this is the training is the heart of the program and the program is based on safety and practice standards and ethical standards and access, I would say. So, there is a commonality between all the training and there should be a community between all the training, such that we are adhering to these kinds of evolving standards.

Laura Dawn: Okay, great. Well maybe Alissa, you can share a few of what these standards are looking like.

Alissa Banet: Sure. So, we are requiring that training programs cover sort of the full spectrum of ways of knowing with regard to working with Soul Assign. So, this means that there will be a requirement for historical and traditional use as well as more westernized scientific-based models of understanding. So, really the full, comprehensive picture of all of the ways in which cultures throughout time have been used. Psilocybin really has a heavy emphasis on cultural equity as well as health equity, social justice, racial justice. So, this will be a requirement, safety, ethics, and responsibility. So, this is the ethics of facilitation of understanding standing boundaries between the facilitator and the client obtaining fully informed consent, understanding things like role, power differentials, where the facilitator is in a typical role of power and the client is often in a more vulnerable position and how to ethically work with that state.

There will be requirements of the understanding of trauma, how that shows up in the body. What is happening physiologically when people are experiencing a traumatic memory? And then there will be a lot of focus on just the elements of a facilitation session. So, what does proper preparation look like? What kinds of screening is necessary, how to actually hold space during the administration session? A lot of focus is on the facilitator being aware of their own inner process and their own nervous system and how that might affect the space that’s being held for the client, and then integration as well as group facilitation. So, I think those are the main components. Tom, let me know if I am missing something.

Tom Eckhart: Yeah, I think you got it. I would just add to the administrative or administration session, the actual Psilocybin session, there’s a real focus on being prepared to respond to difficult behaviors or unusual things that may come up. Clearly, safety is at the forefront and we’re working with folk in very vulnerable states of mind, as you know, and so a big part of maturing into that facilitator role is being able to s