It's Hard Being Human | Psymposia

Peter Addy, PhD shares his story about administering high dose pure Salvinorin A at Yale during his clinical psychology post-doc.

Filmed by Evan Roberts, Roberto Farruggio, Laura Krasovitzky.
Edited by J Warner

psymposia.com

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.

[00:01] Hi so well when Lex and I first met I was doing my postdoc research at Yale University and we were doing a study on salvia divor if anyone's heard of that at the same time I was doing this research I was also doing my Clinical Psychology postdoc and substance abuse so these are two very different worlds so I've got two stories not just one but they're both linked in my mind because they both kind of occurred I witnessed these stories at a similar time in my life I guess for context to take up that dare I'll mention that I have fibromyalgia which is a chronic health condition which one of the symptoms is chronic pain throughout my entire body all the time and so I'm always very interested to hear other people's stories about how they relate to pain and how they relate with their bodies so

[01:02] At Yale I was helping someone to take a pure salvor in a is very potent psychedelic compound and it's very short acting and so this individual took a high dose of salvia and then they just kind of had their experience for about 10 minutes and then they came back and started talking about it and they told me that they inhaled Salvia and they were transported to kind of a garden it was like this sort of a garden area with very bright colors and they were just sort of existing in it they didn't have a body they were existing outside of any sort of physical boundary and they were moving through this space in this beautiful natural area and there were other nonodi entities there as well and they were all sorts of they were all kind of moving and dancing around and being with each other and it was this beautiful peaceful like Bliss state for a very brief time and then as a Salvia

[02:04] Trip inevitably ends they were forced back into their bodies into the research setting in the room and as this person was recounting the story to me they started crying and I gave them a minute and they were just kind of crying and they said it's just it's hard being human and I really felt that you know cuz they for a brief moment they weren't human they were outside of being a human they were outside of having a body and then to come back to that and to come back to verbal language and to come back to this sort of meat space that we have to interact with each other and it's hard you know it's hard to be a body and to be a human and they just cried from that and I was totally with there with them not long after I was talking with a patient of mine who had gotten in an accident of some sort and they required new surgery and as part of

[03:06] The recovery from new surgery they were given Fentanyl and Fentanyl is a highly addictive overid and they became addicted they started abusing it and it became a point where they started they were eventually using their work and they got caught and they got fired and then they had to talk to me and just it was a really bad scene for them and I just really started thinking about this person how they were in pain and the medical establishment you know the person that that this person is going for help gave them Fentanyl and for a good you know wholesome reason but it became too much and they started using it too often and they became addicted to it and a lot of bad things happened and so for the second for my patient the second person they had a body they were a person with a body and this body was in pain they wanted to take a drug to remove the pain and the shortterm benefit of taking fentanyl was

[04:06] Met with a very longterm several years process of really negative legal and social consequences for being caught taking fent work not supposed to do that sort of thing and so you have a body and bodies are painful bodies are full of suffering and sometimes we just want to take drugs to get away from that but it's not it leads to these negative sides side effects but another the first person that I was talking to they left their body they stopped being an embodied individual for a short amount of time and it was just so different it was so Blissful and then to be forced back into that was just worthy of tears to be this again and sometimes it's really sucks to have a body but we are bodies and that's whether we like it or not the pain that comes that we experience comes from our bodies but also the pleasure

[05:07] You know the good things the joy the connection with other people we connect through our bodies we feel good emotions through our bodies we feel bad emotions through our bodies so to just so if you take fentanyl it's really good at distancing you from your body and that can be great for short term but it's really not good for the long term taking Salvia can very much distance you from your body for the short term but you come back and it's not really a long-term solution either so escaping your body doesn't seem to be an answer so instead we live with it as a an unexpected followup this woman in my Salvia study she was also a yoga practitioner and maybe a year maybe 2 years later I go into a yoga class and I see this person again and they come up to me and we start chatting and they said oh you should come back we're doing another study we'd love to have you and they said well I'd love to but I'm about

[06:08] To move to Bali to be a yoga instructor so they for them a way out of this painful suffering having of a body is through a physical practice like yoke and the same for me it's my primary spiritual practice so drugs can help you to get in touch with your body drugs can help you to escape from your body but the core of it is that we are bodies we have bodies and through a lot of my experiences with people who have bad relationships with drugs or for people who are taking drugs in a research setting I learn and I have the pleasure of witnessing people exploring and learning about their relationships with their bodies and it's very insightful it's very meaningful to me so I guess my the my storytelling is about people having bodies and I encourage you I challenge all of you to notice that I mean so

[07:09] Often we're just brains floating around that maybe have these sort of visceral appendages we don't really understand or think about much but we actually are embodied beings and that's a beautiful thing it's also a really painful thing but it's through our bod is that we understand ourselves and the world around us and so my challenge to everyone one is to notice and to really be in your bodies [Applause]