PTSF 34 (with Craig Heacock)

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In today’s Solidarity Fridays episode, the typical Solidarity Fridays format is switched up again, this time with Joe interviewing podcast host and psychiatrist specializing in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, Craig Heacock. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Will Hall's <a href= "https://psychedelicstoday.com/2020/10/30/pt-solidarity-fridays-episode-31-with-will-hall/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2</a> <a href= "https://psychedelicstoday.com/2020/11/06/ptsf-32-with-will-hall/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">recent</a> SF episodes spurred a lot of conversation, and led to Heacock reaching out to Psychedelics Today to counter some of Hall's points, and stand up a bit on behalf of psychiatry. He feels that while psychiatry isn't perfect, saying to replace it isn't helpful, and doesn't feel that anyone in psychiatry is saying a pill will fix anything, but rather, that if psychedelics can help people get in touch with buried trauma (something that typically takes a lot of time and relationship/trust-building and often still doesn't work), then shouldn't we not only be treating them like medicine, but also learning as much as we possibly can about them? </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">He points out some of the most obvious flaws with our model of psychiatry (and how we deal with mental health in general), discusses the barriers stopping physicians from learning more about ketamine, looks at the "spiritual emergency vs. psychotic break" argument from a different perspective, talks about what he sees in his practice and how much ketamine has helped his clients, and really brings home one of Will Hall's main points from a different perspective- while Hall talked about how science isn't always the answer because of how much nuance there is from person to person, he points out the amount of nuance in how mental health physicians treat clients, how clients arrived at their mental state in the first place, and how differently they respond,