Yeshaia Blakeney

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Plant Medicine, Ayahuasca, & the Right Relationship Model

What to expect in this episode:

 

  1. Plant Medicine like psilocybin and ayahuasca are a burgeoning underground addiction solution
  2. Much like diet, there is a sliding scale of harm – in food and drug – but most fall into a fuzzy middle
  3. The future will see movement away from the abstinence-based model toward more individual recovery care

 

Plant Medicine, the spectrum of harm, and the Right Relationship Model

Looking at the future of recovery, another phenomenon that we’re experiencing now, it’s underground and it’s on the horizon, at least in the United States. Is using plant medicine to treat addiction.

 

So there are some great studies with nicotine and psilocybin which is the psychoactive component in magic mushrooms.

 

They’re also using psilocybin to treat depression, which of often is an underlying condition addiction, there has also been a lot of fanfare about Ayahuasca, which is a powerful psychedelic from South America that was used traditionally for either hundreds or thousands of years.

 

And the thought behind plant medicine is to invoke a spiritual experience and to disrupt the default network of the brain, meaning the patterns of our thinking and feeling, in such a way that people can get a boost in breaking free from addiction. Something gets rewired, you know, in the shorthand.

 

Plant medicine is becoming popular in the underground and so if you go online you’ll find it kind of buried there amongst different ways to deal with addiction, I’ve come across a lot of clients, both successful and unsuccessful, who have either tried or use plant medicine to treat addiction

 

it’s it’s a fascinating area, my own general philosophy on if I’m speaking to a parent or a potential client who’s looking for recovery and looking for help is I don’t have a philosophy it’s whatever works

 

The Future is a Multiplicity of Approaches

 

The way that I think the future of addiction is going to break down is there’s going to be a multiplicity of approaches and in the end, I think the best parallel when looking at the future of addiction is looking at how human beings approach diet. There have been all these diet fads that come and go – everybody is on keto now –  where I think it’s going to go as modern science is getting there, is what specific diet is right for you.

 

so I think we’ll break away a little bit of overtime from an abstinence-base model meaning you can’t use any substances, to understanding your body and your neurochemistry better and specifically what substances in foods does your body and self react well to, and what substances and foods does is it not react well to

 

So I think about it on a spectrum write pretty much everybody knows that processed sugars and saturated fats really aren’t good for anybody hardly ever. You want to stay away from that stuff.

 

On the other side broccoli, celery. all these things we really don’t like,  are pretty much healthy for everybody. So we have the stuff that’s pretty much healthy for everybody and pretty much bad for everybody then there’s a spectrum of the middle

 

That has to do with your own body. For some people red meat, the iron in red meat is good, and for some people, it’s not. Trying to figure that out, I think will happen with drugs eventually is the same kind of approach.

 

The Right Relationship Model

 

I call it the “right relationship model’.

 

Which is pretty much for everybody crack cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin… is not good for your life!

 

And I think we can all pretty much agree on that. But there are a group of substance is over here, in the proper set and setting, that can be good for huge groups of people.

 

The way that I think about that is: there are certain substances that narrow our consciousness, right, when you use methamphetamine – people use it to, like Adderall,  it’s similar to methamphetamine, a stimulant, it helps you focus.

 

The problem with methamphetamine is that it narrows your consciousness! So, you’re actually not that connected to the things around you or the people around you, more important, over time.

 

Heroin narrows our consciousness in a different way, If you’ve ever seen somebody do a large dose of heroin, they just pass out, so it’s not focusing your consciousness, it’s obliterating your consciousness, and you pass out into oblivion. But they have the same general narrowing effect.

 

Alcohol is another substance that is like that, you drink alcohol and it lowers your inhibitions and your consciousness – which is what we appreciate about it – we don’t have to think so much and deal with all those feelings of anxiety.

 

So there’s a group of substance over there that narrow and dim consciousness, that’s why we like them, there’s a group of substances in the middle – people respond differently to marijuana and even wine or something at a smaller dose,

 

Although it dims your consciousness, it maybe connects you a little more, so there’s a little bit of space there in the middle. Which is why I think we have some agreement that they are kind of, KIND OF okay.

 

Plant Medicine | Expanding your Consciousness & Empathy

 

Then you actually have this group of substances, largely in the plant medicine world, but also MDMA, that have the capacity to expand your consciousness and empathy, and it’s real it is very well documented that it actually kind of lets filters down and allows you to have a wider awareness and vision

 

and anybody who’s done MDMA knows you have an incredible amount of empathy on MDMA and you rarely see people fight, you don’t get in a fistfight on the street, on MDMA. They are dancing together with glow sticks, it’s incredible.

 

So I think where it’s going, is into that kind of model were people, meaning people in society as a whole, is figuring out what kind of substances are good for us as a whole, and in what setting, and how we deal with that legally,

 

And what substances are really killing us and separating us?

 

I’m kind of optimistic about that vision, but every vision of the future is problematic. They are huge problems with that vision, just like they’re huge problems with the way we approach drugs and alcohol the abstinence-based model now,

 

It’s more just looking at what’s probable… as to what’s good, I never know what’s good in a complex phenomenon.

 

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Medical Approach to Addiction

What to expect in this episode:

 

  1. The medical approach. Treating addiction as a medical condition. The primary tool that we use for a medical condition is medicine.
  2. There are also non-harm-reduction, medical approaches to addiction.
  3. Predicting more and more complex pharmaceutical approaches to addiction in the future.

 

The Medical Approach to Addiction

 

The future of recovery I see it in 4 strands, 4 different areas. We’ve covered traditional recovery.

 

One that we’ve been in, but I think will become more sophisticated, is the medical approach. Treating addiction as a medical condition. The primary tool that we use for a medical condition is medicine.

 

A great example is Methadone, for opiate addicts, methadone is a substance that is similar to opiates, but reduces a lot of the harm that comes along with an opiate addiction.

 

So if you are using heroin, you need a drug dealer, you have to break the law. You don’t know exactly what you’re getting when you are buying a bag of black tar or powder from somebody’s probably not that trustworthy and you’re putting it in a needle and shooting it in your arm – its and incredibly harmful or dangerous habit to have, often deadly

 

The thought was, “can we come up with something  that is like heroin, but people can still function better, that we can distribute legally, to stop people from dying & falling apart?”

 

Methadone, in many ways, has been effective. There are huge downsides, whatever, it’s a medical harm reduction approach.

 

There are also non-harm-reduction, medical approaches to addiction.

 

Antabuse is an alcohol deterrent substance. If you’re taking Antabuse and you drink, you violently throw up. And it deters you from drinking – without getting you drunk.

 

Vivitrol is a blocker. Its been around a couple of decades, it’s not widely publicized enough.

 

But if you are an opiate addict and you are on Vivitrol, then even if you use opiates you can’t get high. It just blocks the effects of drug usage. It’s actually a great tool in the world of addiction.

 

I see more and more complex pharmaceutical approaches to addiction in the future.

 

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Professional Meet & Greet at Recover Integrity

Hey Neighbors, 👋

We want to get to know you, build up our personal & professional relationship, and feed you snacks! ☕️🍩

Please stop by for coffee & appetizers as we formally introduce ourselves, get to know you and fellow health care professionals in the building, 🏥 and learn how we can positively contribute to our respective missions.

A core value of Recover Integrity is building a family-like community, and we want to build that out into our professional neighborhood.

We are actively looking to connect with nutritionists, trauma specialists, and eating disorder specialists – so, please! Feel free to bring guests.

📍 12301 Wilshire Blvd, #206, Los Angeles, CA 90025-1073, United States

📧 Questions: admin@recoverintegrity.com

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Traditional 12-Step Treatment

What to expect in this episode:

 

  1. Understanding the evolution of addiction rehab & recovery is important to understand where we are heading
  2. The 12-Step program is a spiritual program that evolved after psychotherapy failed to help
  3. This has become the foundation for most North American Treatment Programs, but the success rate could improve…

 

Traditional Addiction Rehab | The 12-Step Program

 

In terms of the future of recovery, I think we’re already in the midst of a rapid change in; let’s call it the recovery underground. To understand, first I think we need to understand traditional recovery and where that even comes from.

 

Traditional recovery is pretty much 12-step based in North America. Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous everyone is familiar with that. The reason why traditional recovery developed in the first place is because the mental health and physical health systems that we’ve had historically weren’t helpful when it came to treating addiction.

 

So we knew very early on in 20s 30s 40s even before that, that Psychotherapy did not work with helping people to recover from addictions it’s a well-known historical fact. We’ve kind of forgotten that over time but it’s a well-known historical fact.  Alcoholics Anonymous came along as an interesting spiritual program with elements of therapy and morality and eventually community and literature that people started to get sober and people start to recover. That worked and works!

 

So traditional recovery in North America is 12-step and it was it was the dominant form of recovery for the… last eighty years let’s call it. The success rates that we see now, I think they’re controversial, to be honest with you, I think it’s a difficult question to ask, to talk about that, but let’s say the success rates are 15%. That might be generous that might be stingy,

 

it just isn’t good enough.

 

What are the Alternatives that are on the horizon for people in recovery?

 

 

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Marijuana Decriminalization | The Future of Addiction

What to expect in this episode:

  1. Exploring how marijuana fits in society
  2. Being Pro-decriminalization doesn’t mean there is no harm or side effects
  3. We’re in an interesting experiment to see what happens when we decriminalize a substance, the stigma goes away, & how that affects our society in general over time.

 

Marijuana Decriminalization | The Future of Addiction

 

I don’t think we really know over the long-term what it’s like to regulate self-medicating marijuana over 5 years 10 years 15 years 20 years and the impact that has on individuals and the impact that has on groups or productivity or our society as a whole.

 

So we’re in the midst of an interesting experiment to see what happens when we decriminalize a substance and the stigma goes away, which I think is a good thing, how does that affect our society in general over time.

 

So part of what will be understanding is what does society look like in relationship to mass consumption of marijuana over a long period of time.

 

Probably chill.

 

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Suboxone Treatment | The Future of Addiction

What to expect in this episode:

  1. The immediate future of addiction is going to be dealing with the fallout of our current harm-reduction approach to the opiate crisis
  2. Suboxone or Subutex is currently subscribed widely to save lives but we don’t know what years of use will do
  3. It is widely known that suboxone is much harder to detox from than heroin, so what happens when all these people need or want to stop taking it?

The Immediate Future of Addiction | Suboxone and the Opiate Crisis

 

The most immediate thing I see on the horizon in terms of the near future of addiction is consequences of what we’re doing now with addiction.

 

The most immediate thing I see on the horizon in terms of the near future of addiction is consequences of what we're doing now with addiction. Share on X

 

So, we have a gigantic opiate crisis in the United States, unprecedented really. One of the things that we’ve done to save people’s lives, understandably, is we’ve approached it from a governmental level and an Institutional level, and our approach has been harm reduction. Which means finding medications that reduce the amount of harm caused by heroin and oxy and these drugs and so the consequence of that is we are going to have a generation of young people or some percentage of this next generation that is on some sort of opiate blocker or opiate substitute the most common is called Suboxone most common is called a Suboxone or Subutex and the first crisis we’re going to deal with in terms of the future of addiction as we’re going to have hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who have been on Suboxone or Subutex for 3, 4, 5,10 years and we don’t really understand on that scale the effects of those drugs long-term on the individual.

 

We don’t know how that affects people’s development over the long-term you know, what happens when you put it on 18-year-old on Suboxone how does it affect the development when they are 24. Maybe it’s hardly at all, maybe it’s a really big deal, we don’t really know. But my guess is it’s something we’re going to have to deal with. As people start to have mental health problems years out of their development may be in relation to the Suboxone the questions going to be how do we get these people off of this drug? And, what I found in my own experience in treatment, is it’s actually harder to come off of suboxone than it is to come off of heroin – it’s actually well known. If you’ve been on Suboxone for a long time, you know, two, three, four, five years the detox is horrendous and often the depression is really heavy and lasts months if not years and so…

 

The immediate future of addiction looks like what are we going to do with this group of people who will put a bandaid on their situation that we had to do so they wouldn't die but they didn't completely heal Share on X

 

The immediate future of addiction looks like what are we going to do with this group of people who will put a bandaid on their situation that we had to do so they wouldn’t die but they didn’t completely heal and they’re on this medication, maybe for life or maybe they want to get off and what do we do so that’s a new media crisis that we will be in the headlines in a couple of years.

 

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The Future of Addiction

What to expect in this episode:

 

  1. The drug and alcohol treatment industry tends to be very reactive
  2. How addiction works in relation to social phenomenon and social systems; increased anxiety and depression
  3. Prediction: Vaping, vaporizers & increasingly complex designer drugs.

 

The Future of Addiction

 

The question of what drug addiction looks like in the future is massively important. What I am experiencing working in drug and alcohol treatment is that we are very reactive. We’re in the midst of an opiate epidemic, methamphetamine use is also on the rise, and we’re so busy dealing with that we’re not looking at what’s coming down the pipeline, which I think is an important conversation to have.

 

I see addiction working in relation to social phenomenon and social systems, things that are happening in the world around us. I think the biggest thing that’s happening in the world around us, the biggest event of our time, is the rise of technology and the complexity of human urban life; and we don’t know how to deal with it. So we know how to engineer complex systems but we don’t know how to deal with our feelings. We’re not necessarily training our children to make their bed and do the laundry, even though they can be top scorer on Fortnite or whatever.

 

And so what I see is (this is already happening) I see massive growth in anxiety and depression which are internal disorders that come from coping with the difficulties of life. And so when I think about what’s happening in the future of addiction, I think of what’s happening in the future of mental health. My prediction is that there’s going to be more and more complex designer drugs.

 

Designer drugs are drugs where the molecular structure is modified usually from an existing drug for a specific application like Pharmaceuticals are designer drugs and what I see is a massive growth in designer drugs and their distribution online and so if you go online right now and you look up how many different kinds of drugs there are that list is growing more rapidly or drugs are coming out in the recipes are available and I think they’re going to be used for people to self medicate to treat feeling that they don’t know how to deal with a don’t know how to live into.

 

The other thing that’s happening is the way that drugs are being ingested is changing. There’s been maybe seven different routes of ingesting drugs for the last hundred years and when the vaporizer came on the scene I took notice. It was a new way to ingest a substance rapidly right that you can inhale and it’s also concealed you can flavor it however you want so the odor changes. We know that with marijuana THC and nicotine that you could… we have high schoolers that are running around vaping weed and nobody knows, nobody smells it so you can completely conceal it.

 

Now you can also Vape methamphetamine, you can also Vape dimethyltryptamine, in fact you can be anything that’s water soluble. So you can imagine the mix that you can see on the horizon as clever human beings all of these designer drugs all of these mental health problems and having a way to ingest them that’s hidden difficult for police officers and authorities to detect, parents, Etc.

 

So, I see a lot of complexity on the horizon and I see nobody talking about it. Interestingly I am not anti-drug. I think human beings have had relationships with two substances for all of history and it’s not a bad thing. The question is how we collectively deal with our relationship to drugs and alcohol, which is a really deep question.

 

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Moment of Surrender

What to expect in this episode:

 

  1. Yeshaia Blakeney hit bottom on Pico in Los Angeles
  2.  He was pulled over an arrested for selling marijuana
  3. That was the moment of surrender for him, where he said ok. I give up. I lose. Show me the way out…

 

The Moment of Surrender

 

My bottom was on Pico in Los Angeles.  

 

I got pulled over.  I was selling marijuana.  

 

A police officer said, “Okay if I search your car?”

 

I said, “Why are you going to do that?”  He said, “Step out of the car sir” and searched my car.  

 

I knew I was going to get arrested and I knew I was in big trouble.

 

I remember sitting on the curb and I felt defeated, not just in that moment, but in my whole life.  I felt like I had been living one way and it wasn’t working anymore and that was the moment of surrender for me.  

 

Where I said, “Okay world, you win, I lose”.

 

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My Favorite Questions

What to expect in this episode:

 

  1. If you’re in a real situation that is making your life difficult I would say go inside of yourself and say, where are you stuck?
  2.  If there’s a favorite question, it’s those that the answers have a real impact on somebody’s life
  3. I’m trying to get off heroin, what do you think about Suboxone Maintenance? That’s a common question, but important question…

 

My Favorite Questions

If you’re in a real situation in real time in real life that is making your life difficult, whether that’s an act of addiction or you’re stuck in your sobriety or it’s somebody that you love and you’re stuck, I would say go inside of yourself and say, where are you stuck, what is it you don’t get, what is it you need at this moment, how would you frame that as a question?

 

So, if there’s a question, my favorite questions, are the questions that the answers have a real impact on somebody’s life.

 

It could be something technical, so it could be – I’m trying to get off heroin, what do you think about Suboxone Maintenance? Right. That’s a common question, but that’s an important question, right because that question is going to impact your life potentially for the next six months to the next year.

 

You know, so it could be a technical question around something like that or it could be a question about I keep letting my kid come back home and they keep relapsing. It’s been five times in two years, what should I do? Well, that’s a really deep question. Right. It’s easy to say, just lock them out and let them hit bottom.

 

It’s easy to say, just keep them and love them, you know what I mean? It’s hard to say you’re in a really difficult situation where any choice you make isn’t good – something bad could happen and that’s the first thing you have to acknowledge, that holding your kid in your house while they’re getting high, does not keep them safe and kicking them out doesn’t keep them safe.

 

So, my answer, for instance, to a question like that would be to tell your child that all you can support is their recovery right now and if they’re not being willing to engage in recovery than you can’t support them, because the only part of them you can support right now is recovery and that’s a hard thing to do, but at least it puts the ball in their court.

 

Where you’re saying “I’m not kicking you out, I’ll help you get somewhere, but I’m not just going to keep you here in your addiction either.”

 

And sometimes a little phrase, I know I had to say that.

 

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Moment of Grace

What to expect in this episode:

 

  1. When I first came into recovery it was like a giant mountain I didn’t know how to climb
  2. People were giving me info, love, encouragement, support, so I began The Climb
  3. You begin to plateau, but then you are granted a moment of grace – when all those burdens flip off your shoulders and become a foundation…

 

My Moment of Grace

When I first came into recovery, I just remember kind of walking into treatment and all this information that was given, and it was like a giant mountain and I was like “Whoa, how am I ever going to climb that thing?”

 

And there were people that were encouraging me and giving me information and giving me love and giving me care, and so I started to climb the mountain and I’m like “Whoa, this is – okay, I can do this”. And then it just felt like the progress was slow, it was like trying to climb a hill in roller skates, you know.

 

And everything felt so heavy, but there’s something that happens in that recovery journey. It’s not something that can be measured. It’s not scientific. It’s not in any manuals. It’s something close to grace and all of those things that are weighing you down, all of those burdens that are making you heavy and making you small and making you feel like you’ve never be able to stand up straight.

 

You’ll never be able to look yourself in the eyes. You’ll never be able to feel love, none of that. Something happens in an unmeasurable instant, at some point in that journey, where all of those rocks on top of you, all of those burdens, all of that weight, it just flips.

 

And suddenly, you have this new capacity, you have – you’re in touch with something different. I call it Hope, you can call it what you want and you’re able to travel up to the top of that hill. And once you get to the top of that hill and you’re standing on top of that mountain, once you’re there, there’s nothing to do but just dance, because you’re free and you’re dancing the dance of recovery.

 

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